Sunday, February 6, 2011

Fiction: You can't always get what you want

Many of us have dreams and fantasies. But it falls to few of us to realise those fantasies and live them in our daily lives. This is the tale of one such fortunate soul, whom I will call David.

Part 1 - Fantasy

David had been troubled – or delighted – by fantasies of submission to dominant women, since early childhood. He could dimly remember, before teenage years, before any notion of a sexual dimension to the thoughts, lying in bed and constructing elaborate fantasy worlds in which wicked ladies (often nurses) did unspeakably degrading things to him and to other boys. Just occasionally, he would supplement these thoughts with thoughts of some of the girls at school, in some way forcing him to wear their soiled knickers and humiliating him in public.

He knew enough even at this tender age, to say nothing to anyone of these thoughts. And so the solitary vice continued, stimulated by occasional passages in novels in which “S&M” was mentioned, fired further by occasional photos of women dressed in leather or rubber, to illustrate boring articles in the magazines his parents read, and once flamed to a white heat by the rocket fuel of a brief scene in a Pink Panther movie, in which the bumbling French detective is whipped and chased by a leather-clad dominatrix (a term he could find sexually exciting just from its dictionary definition).  He also discovered the link with sex and with masturbation, a link that only wired the impulses ever harder.

At college he made his first nervous foray to seedy shops in London to buy pornography. At the same time, he discovered real sex with real girls, and enjoyed the novelty. But the two were different, like lemonade and vodka.

After college and some success in his career, he was continuing to pursue both interests, now as a married man. Alice had been a college friend, elegant and attractive, clever and rather serious-minded, and always fiercely sought-after. He had – as he convinced himself - fallen in love, and had been surprised and delighted when on meeting up some years later, his feelings had been cautiously welcomed and eventually reciprocated. They married, and seemed headed for the typical life of a successful middle class couple. Alice, it turned out, could not have children and the love of the two for one another sustained them through the desperate disappointment this caused.

It was not this blow that drew them apart, but simple boredom, nurtured by the resurgence of David’s fantasy life, more vigorously than ever.

After about a year and half of marriage, he had finally taken the step he had been dreaming of since childhood and visited a professional dominatrix. Terrified that his fantasies would come crashing down in a squalid flat with an uninterested aging gin in leather several sizes too small for her, he had instead been surprised and delighted by the understanding and creativity his Miss Whiplash (as we shall impertinently call her) brought to her work. He was a little disappointed in his ability to ‘take’ or in any way enjoy real pain, and by how tedious and uncomfortable he found it when briefly assigned repetitive household tasks. But he felt that his addiction was being fed in the best way it could be and if, like any addiction, it grew more needy rather than more sated as a result, well he found that his career provided ever more money and the increasingly loveless marriage ever more time for more of the drug.

Part 2 - discovery

Then one day – as they say – everything changed. David was woken on a Saturday by his wife, who had been up for some hours, and said she wanted to talk to him. Downstairs, laid out across the dining room table, was the report of a private detective whom Alice had engaged for the last two months. Everything was there – the timings of David’s visits to the suburban dungeon in Kent, receipts for the ‘little presents’ he had taken her, photographs of him arriving at the house bearing flowers and furtively knocking at the door.

Hopes David had of somehow convincing her that this was a ‘normal’ affair were scotched by photos the private eye had secured of Miss Whiplash entering and leaving her house, in normal street clothes, and comparing them to pictures of her in her working outfits from her web site. As the clinching evidence, a long telephoto lens seemed to have produced a blurred and dark image of someone in a maid’s uniform, seen through a kitchen window through into a neighbouring room, standing in front of someone sitting on a couch and apparently raising his skirt. It was ‘his’ skirt, because although the photo was so blurred as for identity to be fully arguable in a court of law, David and his wife knew him immediately, from the stance and something about the set of the shoulders.

In any case, the private eye had also helpfully laid out David’s fantasy life for Alice’s inspection by eviscerating his computer. From the hidden, password protected areas, the investigator seemed effortlessly to have extracted photos and lists of videos. Casting his eye across it, David reflected ruefully that he had done a good job in presenting a representative selection of the immense stock of material. All of David’s fantasy life was here: from leather-clad dominatrices whipping pony boys and other slaves in the open air in Eastern Europe, via stern governesses wielding canes over quaking ‘schoolboys’, alongside nurses performing surprisingly intimate procedures wearing rubber gloves, to more maternal types, welcoming their naughty charges across their aproned laps with a wooden hairbrush and an understanding smile.

Finally, there were emails to Miss Whiplash: emails of thanks for past joys and of hopes for the future. They were all signed ‘little davey’.

David looked into Alice’s accusing eyes.

“I…I’m sorry” he began.

“How much?” she broke in coldly.

“How much? How much what?” he replied in confusion.

“How much of our money have you spent on her? On that tart? On all this? How much?”

In some ways relieved that he wasn’t being asked to explain or discuss his behaviour – at this stage – David worked out for her how much money had been spent, on ‘tribute’, on presents and suchlike. It came to an amount that surprised him, and he stood again in silence.

Alice thought for a while.

“Go back up to our bedroom” she said, flatly without looking at him. “I’ll come up and talk to you later.”

Part 3 - reality

About an hour later, she walked into their bedroom without knocking. He looked up from the tear-stained pillow where he had been lying in misery.

“I’ve been reading about this stuff, since the investigator gave me a preliminary report about a month again”,
she informed him. “I know you need discipline, and to be given orders and humiliated.”

He started to trot out his rehearsed protests of how he would change, all this would be put aside, but she cut him short.

“Don’t lie to me. I know you can’t stop either. It’s an addiction. You need this. Do you want to try telling me that isn’t true?”

He opened his mouth but no words emerged. It was true, and both knew it.

“I’m not having you spending our money on that whore.” she went on, with the air of someone who has come a decision.

“So from now on, I’ll be doing it for you.”

She walked over to her dressing table and picked up a hair brush.

“You need to be spanked, I’ll spank you for free. And it stays here, in the house.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Here” she said, simply, pointing to her lap.

David looked at her, aghast. This was not an outcome he had expected or wanted. It had been a long time since he connected this middle-aged woman with anything sexual. As he looked at her, looking tired and depressed, with bags under her eyes from lack of sleep and no makeup, David was appalled at the thought of playing his sexual games with her. She was nice enough in her way but he just didn’t think of her…like that. He looked at her white flabby thighs and thought longingly of Miss Whiplash’s legs, all fishnetted elegance.

“Look, Darling, I really don’t think you need to – “ he began.

“Over here NOW!” she shouted.

And David scrambled into position. He was no sooner there than CRACK! as the hairbrush hurtled down to crack against the unprotected skin of his backside, as his dressing gown lay open.

“Oh Christ!” he shouted, unthinkingly. “Fucking hell Alice, not like that – “

SLAP!

“AH! No, it’s a fucking game, it’s just a fucking – oh no, Jesus, don’t”

CRACK!

“Oaaagh. Oh God, Alice, it’s a game with a safeword, let me tell you about fucking safew – “

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!

Taking advantage of his momentary breathlessness following three punishing blows to his sore rump, Alice put the brush down as she calmly explained that she was well aware that little Miss Whiplash didn’t do it like this. That was because little Miss Whiplash was being paid to play games, and she, Alice, was doing it for real this time.

Picking up the hairbrush again, Alice resumed the slapping, this time at a steady pace. And over the increasing howls and horrified pleading coming from below, she calmly explained that sometimes she might play games, but she would also do this for real when she was angry with him. And today, she was very angry indeed.

When he was finally pushed off, David was sent downstairs to make Alice a cup of tea. Halfway downstairs he paused by a mirror and gingerly lifted his dressing gown to look at the damage. Christ – the mad bitch had almost killed him. Alice played tennis regularly, and had strong arms and a good wrist action. And David had really felt it, he thought, tears returning to his eyes. His rear was a mass of bruises, glowing and angry like their perpetrator. He staggered on downstairs barely able to walk with straightened legs, such was the pain he was in.

While the tea brewed, he resolved on a course of action. He would sit down (gently!) and try to have an adult conversation with her about all this stuff. After all, she was very new to it. She had to be told that this simply wouldn’t work. In a friendly manner (“Look here, old girl…”) he’d explain that there was a world of difference between being battered by a (middle-aged! dumpy!) wife on the one hand, and playing complex psychological roleplay games with a professional (young! gorgeous!) dominatrix on the other. He would promise to go for psychological counselling. Or the bitch can have a divorce, he told himself as he went back upstairs with the tea and a cup of coffee for himself, ruefully calculating the likely alimony required to buy her silence.

But the conversation didn’t go like that. Instead, Alice simply inquired why he had made himself a cup of coffee when she had instructed him only to make the tea for her.

“There are new rules now in this house” she remarked, getting up and staring him in the eye. And she hit him – hard – across the left cheek. When he straightened up to protest, she hit him again, this time across the right cheek.

“But – “ he began, but shut up when he saw the glare on her face, through his teared-up eyes.

“Give me your dressing gown cord” she commanded, and David handed it to her wordlessly. Alice took a pair of scissors from her dressing table and neatly cut it in two.

“Turn around” she ordered “and put your hands behind your back.”

Unable to be surprised by anything more today, David felt oddly normal as his wife firmly tied his wrists together behind his back. She gave a final tug to tighten it.

“Ouch!” he winced. “Not so tight – you can cut off the blood if you’re not careful.”

She spun him round to face her.

“I have heard quite enough for one day” she informed him coldly, and taking the other cord half she neatly tied a large squashy knot in its middle.

“Open wide”.

David did as he was bidden, without a word. And so, as the bunched up cloth entered his mouth, to be secured firmly behind the back of David’s head, the last chance passed for him to influence, or even comment on, the future course of his life.

The gag stayed on all day, with a brief break at lunchtime for silent refreshment, the wrists stayed tied until the morning after. When the gag was removed, David understood a lot of things about how things were going to be in the future. Above all, he understood that it was not up to him.

Alice had explained that she knew about his needs and was going to meet them. Often, the way she would meet them would not be pleasant or enjoyable for David.

She explained that she herself gained no sexual pleasure from punishing him. However, she would use it to enforce her wishes. She liked the thought of being obeyed without argument, and she liked the thought of the housework being done by David. She did not like dressing up in ‘erotic’ costume or anything like that, and she would not be doing it. She did not like the thought of ‘foot worship’ or anything similar, so there would be none of that either. She liked the idea of being in control of all the finances and making all the decisions about their lives, and she was also looking forward to making David work harder to be more successful in his career. She did not like the thought of masturbation – which would be strictly controlled – or pornography which would be banned.

She explained all of this in a way that left David in no room for doubt, either about her wishes or her determination to enforce them. This was how she wanted it to be, from now on. And that was that.

Part 4 – misery?

Fast forward eleven years.

Alice is sitting in their living room. There are a few changes. She has become rather fat. Not gross or obese, but Alice enjoys her food and sees little reason to keep herself in trim. She wears no makeup. She sits there in an armchair, looking quite self-contained, reading a magazine quietly.

You would be forgiven for not noticing David, but he is still there. He has not become fat. On the contrary, he is rather gaunt. He stands quietly at the back of the room, hands by his side, wearing a maid’s costume. This is not a frilly, sissy frou-frou naughty French maid’s outfit but just a straight up and down black pinafore, hard-wearing and hard-working as worn by equally gaunt cleaners in hard-up hotels up and down the country. David’s knees are red and callused. Clearly, he spends a lot of time down on them.

There is an umbrella stand in the corner. In it, along with two walking sticks and an umbrella, stands a crook-handled cane. To you, this might be barely noticeable. To David, it - together with his wife - forms one of the two focal points of the room. He is constantly aware of it. The cane is rarely used in their marriage, but when it is, it is not soon forgotten.

Alice never did see the point of playful punishment, and continued to apply herself with the same forceful determination to inflect real pain that she displayed so shockingly with the hairbrush on that very first day. With the cane, she can reduce David to howling, fearful incoherence with just a couple of strokes – and double and redouble the pain with every subsequent stroke. With the cane, she can dictate obedience, as David will willingly submit to any punishment, to any humiliation knowing that the cane stands ready for use as a last resort. With the cane, Alice rules her marriage. It comes out of its stand not more than once or twice a year. Then it is used on David’s buttocks. But every day, and every hour of every day, it is used on David’s mind.

Were he to raise his skirt (which he would not do without an order) we would see David’s chastity device. This was always a great fantasy of his, and occasionally in later years he tried to remember why. Chastity is a sexy idea, but it is sexy primarily for the thought of release. Under Alice’s command, release is never to be discussed (an early, tentative inquiry by David as to when Alice might be considering it brought about one of the earliest and best-remembered encounters with the cane).

Release does come, but when it does it is unannounced and brief. Typically, Alice unlocks the device and informs David that he has five or ten minutes to himself in the bathroom, before she comes in to supervise a cold shower and the re-encasement of his neglected genitals. This has generally happened every few months or so, but lately Alice seems to have lost interest or forgotten, as it has been six months since the last occasion. David has not forgotten and is still very interested, but dare not speak about the subject.

Alice has consistently refused to accommodate any notion that the discipline and punishment within their marriage has any sexual component. Early on, they tried forced oral sex. Alice found it mildly stimulating, but she never became the nymphomaniac ordering daily intimate worship, of David’s fantasies. Actually, David had thought this just as well, as the half-hours spent before her on his knees had been agony, and his tongue had always started to ache long before any signs of sexual satisfaction on her part. So their marriage had become completely sexless. Alice had later taken up with a young lesbian called Clare, but David was kept firmly hidden away during that affair, and Clare never did discover that her partner was even married.

David rises every day at 5.30, doing chores before heading off to work at 7am. On his return at 7pm (or later, if he has a legitimate work-related reason for lateness and seeks permission by phone) he changes into his maid’s uniform, prepares Alice’s dinner and serves her. After dinner, he present receipts for any money he has spent during the day, he waits for any further instruction – which is where we see him now – and is eventually given permission to go to bed. His room is a cubbyhole in the cellar.

Adjoining his room is the utility room, where David spends a lot of his weekends ironing. It also doubles as a punishment room. Alice keeps meaning to soundproof the room, but has never really got round to it (and in any case feels mildly embarrassed at the thought of knowing looks from the workmen), so a gag is usually employed during beatings, to spare the neighbours’ feelings. Alice has moved on from the makeshift dressing gown cord gag of that very first day, and a well-chewed ball gag hangs on the wall, next to the equally worn and well-used instruments of correction.

And so this is their ‘marriage’. In early years, Alice would refer to him as her ‘slave’ and David had to admit that in all relevant aspects, that word was the right one. He had just once laid plans for escape, carefully accumulating cash in a hiding place in the utility room, following a rather complex series of transactions that allowed him to keep about 10% of his work expense claims out of sight of his wife. He had almost saved up enough, and had already made discrete arrangements to sleep on the sofa of an old friend who lived in the North, while he looked around for a menial job under an assumed identity. But on the day before his escape, he had quietly told a few people at work that he was unlikely to return. Unknown to him, one of his female colleagues had long ago been befriended by Alice, who had asked her to look out for any peculiar behaviour by her serially unfaithful husband. David had indeed failed to show up for work the next day, calling in ill, and it was the next Monday before he reappeared. The informant colleague (still incognito to David) thought he looked as if he’d had a good telling-off and so indeed, among other things, he had. He had also learnt that Alice had no intention of allowing him or anyone else to change their living arrangements. He had thought that he had already experienced the worst she could do. But he had been wrong.

And so he is a slave, truly a slave. Alice still prefers to call him ‘husband’, but she knows and he knows it means the same thing. David will retire in a few years’ time, with a large pension, the thanks of his grateful co-workers and nothing but years of hard labour and pain ahead of him.

This is – is it not? – the life of his fantasies.

Is David happy?

Look at his face, as he stands meekly there by the wall. No – he is not happy. He hates the chastity, he hates the housework and the early mornings, he hates that gag and above all he hates the pain. Every time Alice hits him, with leather, wood, plastic or hand, whether on his bottom, his palms, his thighs, his face or any other part of his abused, battered body; he is reminded all over again how startlingly painful real pain is, and wonders how he ever fantasised about it. He is miserable. As he cries himself to sleep each night, in pain and rage and frustration and hatred of the bitter lot that is his life, he wishes every time that he had never married her, that she would just leave or…or go away some other way. The love went out of their marriage long ago. It was a shock when he finally admitted it to himself (and I am sorry to have to report this) but David hates her: hates her cruelty, her indifference and her power.

But the fear she inspires is stronger than the hate, and every morning, chores complete, he knows he will knock gently at her door, tiptoe in and deposit the silver tray of her breakfast at the side of her bed. Then he will go to the dressing table, pick up the same hairbrush that she deployed all those years before, kiss it gently then place it near her on the bed. Then he will meekly await his morning spanking. Not a single day has passed since that first one when the hairbrush has not been used. And it hurts like hell now, just as it did all those spankings before. As it will every day that is yet to come.

So – is it a sad tale, this one of David’s? Perhaps. But Alice has been a most constant wife to him. She never said she would give him what he wants, but only what he needs. He does not want it, he does not like it… and this many years after his infidelity, perhaps he does not even deserve it any more. But deep down, he suspects that she is right about this, that she knows him better than he knows himself, that to be treated as he is, is what he needs.

And if she’s wrong - well, she wouldn’t care and David’s in no position to object and no one else knows.

And anyway, it’s all just a silly fantasy for my femdom stories and captions blog. Isn’t it?  I did make quite clear that nothing here is real, so why worry?


PS – Miss Whiplash, in case you were wondering, is no longer Miss Whiplash but runs a small shop selling pet supplies down in Bournemouth. She takes in and looks after stray cats, and she is happy. One of the cats is called ‘little davey’.

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