As time goes by

It is now two weeks since I’ve seen my husband and telephone conversations have mainly related to him telling me the state of play with his affairs. I’ve tried hard to remain supportive, not to be needy and to assure him all is well at home. But, last night I think I let my guard drop for a moment or two there because he said, “Ohhh, you really need it, don’t you?”

He was right. The desire to feel some tangible control in my life washes over me like a wave. With no foreseeable end to this situation, I can feel like I am being starved for a vital component; as important to me as the air I breathe.

Distraction is a critical strategy for me and when we said goodbye I busied myself with making a salad and ordering the Friday night pizza for us: the boys, a girlfriend and me. If I’m not careful I can end up watching a Kung Fu movie so when they looked like they were settling into some crap movie I told them that it was my turn to choose – to choose anything but that! With a glass of pleasant pinot noir in hand I surveyed the television menu and when I saw that ‘The Secretary’ had just begun, I spoke up. “I want that one!”

It was better than ever; much better than the first time I saw it (and the time after that) because this time it was feeding me at a time when I was positively starving. I drank in every line. I had forgotten how hungry Lee was too; how exasperated she was when he wouldn’t play with her any more.

“Finally!” she whispers to herself when she feels him engage once more after she sends him the worm in an envelope. Even my young son laughed when he circled the worm over and over with his red pen. I used to purposely draw a mark on my boss's blotting paper of his writing pad but let's not go there.

I thought as I watched it again after several years since first seeing it, how authentic Lee is. The words she spoke and the way she spoke them as she took her first walk home struck me as just the words any one of us (submissives) might use.

“Because he had given me permission...”
“I felt he was with me...”

It is exactly how I have felt so many times before.

The very first time I saw ‘The Secretary’ it freaked me out. I felt that someone must have been watching me live my life. How could someone know all these things that had happened to me? It took a while to realize that it was merely a co-incidence.

At my interview for a secretarial position, I was told the exact same things that Mr. Grey tells Lee: that I was overqualified, that he only needed someone with good English to type and answer the phones; that I would be bored. I answered as she did.

I got the ‘answering the telephone’ lesson just like Lee. I had to be assertive and I had to use a bigger voice, just like her. And, like Lee I had to buy new clothes. I was given a clothing allowance and given specifications as to how to use it. My Mr. Grey didn’t have a red pen but he did circle spelling mistakes and I did get told off when he found them. And, he did occasionally say that it was a “good letter” if he had told me off badly enough about finding a mistake and made me type it again. Like Lee, I used a typewriter and not a computer.

He had a habit of standing behind me as I typed just as Mr. Grey tended to do to Lee on occasion and like Mr. Grey he vacillated between being dictatorial and obsessive and tender and sweet.

For Mr. Grey, snorting (or was it snivelling?) was Lee’s crime but in my case it was sneezing. Something at the time was making me sneeze repeatedly and although he knew on a logical level that I couldn’t help it, it still offended him. If I felt it coming on, I would dash into another room where I hoped he wouldn’t hear me.

He didn’t call me at home to eat a scoop of mashed potatoes, three peas and all the ice cream I wanted but he insisted that I eat more vegetables since he accredited the sneezing and my (naturally) pale skin to inadequate vegetables. To ensure this was carried out, he had a habit of passing by my house on the way home from his holiday house on a Sunday evening and leaving me a box of vegetables fresh from his garden.

When he took me to lunch he put an end to my ordering fish and ordered me a steak instead. I was skinny back then and he would tell the waiter to bring his secretary a good steak and plenty of vegetables. It bothered him that I didn’t order dessert because he did and so the compromise was that I eat fruit salad.

Oh dear! I could go and on and on.

I suppose I should have felt better after seeing the movie but the truth is that now I wanted something more than I had before and there was no way to get it. I ran a bath and sat there listening to the water run (one of my habits) feeling a bit sorry for myself when I suddenly had an idea: Fetlife! Maybe the doll could have her own account on Fetlife and somebody would like to talk to the doll. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?!

I got the laptop and quick as a wink I signed the dolli up. And, waited. And, waited. It seems that nobody was waiting at the other end. Not quite as easy as the doll thought...

So, I signed up for some groups and thought to get some sustenance from a discussion thread about the kind of thing submissives like to hear their Dominants say, or the things they like to say to provoke them to say the things they want to hear:

“You call THAT a spanking?”
“Time to inspect the bruises”
“Can’t get away, can you?”
“I’m going to play with my toy”

This wasn’t helping at all! I didn’t want to just read about these things tonight. I wanted someone to say them to me! And, I still do...if anyone happens to be taking notes.