MRF says,

>>> Even without the legal mechanisms which insure "freedom" in this nation, there's a simple catch 22. If submission is the conscious choice to obey the orders of another, then it is going to be subject to the possibility of revocation as long as the individual has the ability to choose. Contrawise, if they can't choose, they can't actively submit. <<<

Hi MRF,

I'm going to use your quote as a jumping off place for my thoughts on the way submission works with me. Respond if you wish, but this isn't aimed directly at you or anything you've said; it's more of a "there's more than one way to skin a cat...and here's how I do it" kind of piece.

I agree with your contrawise statement, but not with the one that came before it. I believe that in certain situations people can make choices that are irrevocable, not in any theoretically absolute sense, but in a practical sense of "this choice will never be revoked." In some cultures or with some people, entering a religious order is an irrevocable choice. You just don't leave the monastary, church, temple once you join. Once you're in, you're in for life. There are all kind of vows that people can swear to, and, if the person is the sort that does not break such vows, them they are irrevocable for that person.

I sometimes have trouble getting this idea across to people, because sure, theoretically, the person who has taken the vow can break it whenever they choose, so theoretically, choice is not gone. But the theoretical isn't all that matters, in fact, I've noticed it matters very little in most everyday life. In practical and realistic terms the choice is gone because the person simply will not break the vow. Ever. Yes, the choice is still there in the same sense that a bottle of champagne that you have left sitting out all night is still there but in practical terms it has lost all power and reality, just as the stale, flat champagne has lost its ability to affect you. Another way of putting it is that the possibility of making the choice is always there, but the probablity of one's actually doing it is so low that it is, for all practical purposes, non-existent for you.

That's how I experience submission, in fact that's how I _have_ to experience submission for it to give me what I want and need. I made the choice not to choose once, and ever since then I have had no choice. This is not a masturbatory headgame I am playing in solitaire: Donald feels exactly the same way (that I no longer have a choice) and that is the reality between us. If for some as-yet-unforeseen reason, I should "choose" to exercize my practically non-existent choice to leave the relationship, then I would fully expect Donald to exercize his right to get me back by whatever methods he should deem necessary. This isn't a game. We've both agreed that I belong to him--period. We've both agreed that I have given up all right to any choice unless he gives it to me.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that some people are not constantly making a choice day-by-day, hour-by-hour to be or not to be someone's slave. I don't have that option. More importantly, I don't want that option. If I had that choice, that option to leave the realtionship if I decided I didn't want to submit to Donald anymore, I'd feel like the dominant in the relationship. To me, the person with the final say, the ultimate choice, the one who holds in his or her hands the deciding power...is the dominant (or at least the one with all the power that matters--which is pretty much the same thing, in my book). What use or meaning would there be in Donald deciding everything else about my life if I always, at every minute, had final veto power, in the sense that I could cancel the relationship whenever I decided that I had had enough or that I didn't agree with a particular decision or set of decisions? For me, having that veto power would cancel everything I have craved and striven to experience all of my life. It would put me right back in the driver's seat, the position I have been trying to abdicate all of my life. It would turn the apparent power dynamic between myself and my master into a ludricrous lie.

Now let's say I change some day far in the future and do a complete about face, decide I hate living as a slave, or hate my life with Donald and want out...only I can't get out of my own accord. Is this the most horrible, terrifying, awful experience in my universe? There's absolutely no reason why it has to be! Having no choice is not nearly as horrendous as those who have never experienced the state often imagine it to be. If you've made the right final choice to begin with (in my case, submitted to the right person) you don't have to worry much about not having any choice. Again, in the theoretical world (you know, the one that contains the monkeys who will eventually type Shakespeare--g), terrible unspeakable things happen to those who give up all choice. In the specific practical, everyday, realistic life that I live with Donald, the absolutely, most awful thing that's ever arisen from my inability to choose was that I was dressed down in front of a complete stranger for an unintentional transgression. At the time I very much wanted to run out of the room, but I was ordered to stay put. As you can see, I survived to write about the experience .

But let's say, for the sake of arguing, that I felt after that event that it was the straw that broke the camel's back, that I couldn't stand to live with Donald anymore, that this event was so terrible that I could not bear being his slave anymore, that I had to get out of the relationship. So what would a choiceless one like myself do? I'd do what Donald and I agreed I would do way back when I still had a choice, way back when we spent hours discussing every possible contingency and problem situation that my paranoid mind could come up with in regards to slavery (a more positive way to describe that process is "building a solid relationship foundation"--and I strongly recommend it to anyone considering doing the master-slave thing--g) anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I'd do what I'd agreed I would do: I would tell him that I was unhappy and wanted out, and leave the decisions or "whether" and/or "when" up to him. I already know what he would do in such a situation, because he told me way back when I still had..., etc. etc.: he would give it plenty of time (months, possibly years) and watch and listen to me even more closely than he already does. If, after that time, I still was miserable and wanted out, he'd set me free. He no more wants to live with an unhappy slave than I want to be an unhappy slave, but, as the breaking of such a union is a very serious matter, he'd have to make absolutely sure on his part that it was (a) the best thing for me and for him and (b) what I really wanted, and (c) that it was a permanent feeling on my part, and (d) that the cause of the split was not something we could fix or work out together.

If I really wanted out of the relationship, that waiting period would be quite hard to deal with, but nevertheless I would deal with it because the alternative (breaking my word--both to him and to myself--to be Donald's slave until or unless he decides otherwise) would be unbearable. I don't know how each of you looks at things, but the way I see it is that almost everything in life is transitory: things, money, places, abodes, friends, one's memory, sometimes even life-partners, they come in one door and go out the other. Exit, stage left. About the only things you can hang onto in life, make really yours, are those intangible things that you carry around inside you: pieces of your character. I have pieces of my character that I'm not particularly fond of and am busily trying to chuck out the back door (my spineless shyness, for example--g) and I have pieces that I intend to hang onto until I lose my body or my brain, whichever comes first. Honesty, integrity, my ability to keep my word, my abilty to be myself, these are all I really have to hang onto and to develop. These things give me a sense of permanence and continuity and...self that is so important that the thought of trading them in for a little personal ease or gratification seems beyond stupid to me. Talk about selling your birthright for a bowl of sugar frosted flakes! Being relatively choiceless is extraordinarly difficult at times, but with patience and practice, it begins to feel like second nature, and after awhile, you hardly even notice it unless some unusual circumstance brings it to your attention.

And oh my, the delicious minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour consciousness that I am really not in control is worth, in my estimation, at-least one-hundredfold the difficulty I have experienced thus far. There's a short a capella at the end of one of Yes's albums (any of you old fogies out there remember Yes?) whose optimistic tone and lyrics pretty much sums up the way I feel about the life I lead these days "We...have...heaven.... we...LIKE...heaven."