Cassi said:

>>>...where *I* always get screwed up is that I know that I nearly always have ultimate control, even sans safeword, and frankly it bugs me. <<<

Here's where our perspectives differ, perhaps because our experiences and intent differ. I've talked about this particular issue at length at least four or five times in ASB. Each time I try to repeat myself in a slightly different way, because I've realized (primarily from the responses I've gotten) that what I am describing is hard for many people--even many people into power exchange--to understand. Armchair theorists, people with (perhaps) intellects and lots of nifty ideas but little practical experience with power exchange love to bring up that tired old idea that the submissive always has the ultimate veto--the submissive can always walk away. That idea sounds be-you-ti-full on paper, absolutely, flawlessly logical--if you do not ever apply actual, real experience to it. I'm going to use a couple of analogies now, the first one having to do with armchair theorism, to show you how I view these objections.

Analogy One: Some pervert is always writing on ASB generally but glowingly about his "Delilah," how wonderfully sensitive Delilah is, how she fulfills his every need, how beautiful and wise her eyes are, how resplendently sexy her woo-woo, and so on. Those of us who think in images form a picture in our minds of what Delilah looks like, as I did recently with Laurel's master, Rage. Those of us who don't think in images still feel we know her pretty well, after listening to six months of "Delilah" rave reviews. Tom, Delilah's beloved, even begins to make plans to host a play party out at his secluded country place, so that those special friends he's made on ASB can finally meet Delilah and witness her submissive charms firsthand.

Then Delilah's beloved posts a distraught message: she's had an accident and fractured her leg. And then he doesn't post for a while. The devoted soul is too busy taking care of his mate, some of us kindly think, to have time for selfish pursuits like posting to ASB. A week later he is back, and in his first post announces how much he misses Delilah. "What? She hobbled out on you on crutches? She died of complications of a a broken leg?" "No, nothing like that I shot her, of course."

You can probably by now (if you couldn't before) see where this very simple analogy is going, but let me finish it anyway. The armchair theorists among us immediately bellyflop into the thread, posting long, well-reasoned, and emotionally stirring missives about how morally wrong, not to mention illogical, it is to take one's play partner's life, just because she broke her leg. Plans are made among the posters to turn Tom over to the authorities; after all, he is obviously a very dangerous, nonconsensual player. Even if Delilah had agreed to let him murder her, she may have done so while not in her right mind or while under duress, and Tom took this ultimate power scene waaay too far.

Unfortunately, said armchair theorists lack one little piece of information which would send their beautiful castles in the air crumpling down around their knees (mixed metaphor intentional--g), a piece of information that the tiniest bit of actual, real, true experience with Delilah would have provided: our dear non-present netgoddess of ASB and significant other of the lucky Tom was a horse. And that's precisely how, with a few more layers of complexity added (which have to do with the fact that we're dealing with several pieces of experiential information, not just one simple fact), I see the armchair theorists of ASB who tell me that my actual, real, true experience of having no power at all, not even walk-out-the-door veto power, doesn't really exist, because quite rationally and logically and scientifically blah blah blah it can't. And you know what I have to say to them? "Neiiiiggggghhhhh!"

Now I've got to provide those missing pieces of experiential information to an audience who, for the most part, haven't experienced them. Simplest thing in the world! Like describing an onion to someone who's never tasted one in his life: "Well, while its taste and textures resemble those of the garlic family, it has its own unique sandlewood bouquet with a frangelican aftertaste containing a hint of Old Spice combined with a dash of celery mint." And then, in sweet, cloying anticipation (you can dig it, you know exactly what I mean), you taste the onion for the very first time, spit it out and say, "The hell it is." Even worse is a situation where you have a mob of onion-virgins and you try to describe the taste, telling them how it enhances dishes, etc., but they all are for various reasons unable or unwilling to taste onions themselves. At best they all gang up on you and try to shout down your nonsense about onions (who ever heard of such claptrap?); at worst they gang up on you and get you committed. It's called a majority ideology, or mob psychology, if you prefer. It happens on ASB all the time. But hey, I like attempting the impossible--I'm a masochist, remember. The one thing I find almost intolerable, however, are those hypocrites who enthusiastically deny the existence of the lowly, but quite plausible onion yet rave on and on about the magical melts-in-your-mouth dragon's wings they've tasted. Kind of a My Reality Tunnel Is OK, Your Reality Tunnel Is Not OK thing, I suppose.

So, anyway, I do feel that I don't have ultimate control, ever, in my D&S relationship, and here's one reason why (more to come later): I chose not to (that's past-tense), once, a long time ago, and the thought that I constantly choose not to (present tense), that I am constantly exercising my restraint over using a "walk out the door" ultimate-sub-holds-all-the-power veto never enters my head, just as I imagine that the thought of walking into the garage, dusting off the old axe, bringing it inside, and slowing chopping one's children into nice little scarlet pieces doesn't constantly enter the head of the average, loving parent. I am just your average, loving slave (notice that I am not saying "sub" here), and for the likes of me, exercising my "right" to walk out the door and away from my master at any time would be the equivalent of getting an axe and chopping my soul, what I perceive to be the essence of me, into gruesome bloody little bits. I could no more betray what I am and what I have striven to be since my first conscious memories than I can betray the commitment I made 6.5 years ago to the man I call my owner: I see both as absolutely sacred, as absolutely off limits. The price for breaking either commitment, for me, would be a broken personality, most probably an insane personality, incapable of trusting or knowing herself to any significant degree ever again. I'm talking about serious shit here: paradise lost, mortal sin, the ultimate betrayal, etc. Being a very, very good little girl (which, in this case, is certainly synonymous with hard core), I will never, ever break that which is not mine to break: myself.

Do you see the steel in my pixels? I'm trying very hard to show you my inner core right now. I picture it as a core of solid stainless steel--of absolute dedication and determination. Now contrast that against the common Western attitude that commitments are made to be broken, promises are meant not to be kept, and everything lasting must be torn down by our own hands because (yawn) "The only constant is change" and (even bigger yawn) "We all grow and change." Yes, we all grow (or at least change) up until the point we die (and congratulations to those rocket scientists out there who have newly discovered this most basic of facts) but not in the ways that are central to our being--we seldom change after puberty whom, at rock bottom, we really are. (Sure, anyone can give me examples galore of post-pubescent change, but I'm likely to point out that (a) these changes aren't on as deep a level as I'm talking about, or that (b) these are examples of rare change, a once-a-decade event.) Those of us--at least those of us who have reached that elusive state called adulthood--don't change our cores that often. If we're lucky, we learn who we really are; if we're very lucky we learn how to develop that; but if we're like the average Joe, we spend our lives cluelessly and pointlessly, being blown by the wind from one enthusiasm to the next, one appetite to the next, one "deep surprising revelation" about our souls to the next (which usually perfectly contradicts the previous revelation), and when we die, we discover that we know as much about ourselves as we did at age nine.

Continue to contrast my core of steely dedication, as I have described it above, with the need of most people to have an escape hatch, a way out, a dodge, an excuse, anything to prevent their culturally programmed sense of independence from being compromised to the least little degree. Submissives submit their entire beings to their dominants except for this one small tiny piece: their career, the kids, their writing, their Corvettes, whatever, that they feel (I would say "that is programmed into them to feel") they must keep separate and sacrosanct from what is controlled by their dominants. That may be submission and power exchange, but it ain't slavery, at least not to the degree that it is possible to practice it.

See how difficult it is to get the taste of an onion, just from words? You can sorta kinda see what I mean, but you don't share the experience, you don't live it.

I want to say more now about commitment. What Donald, my master, and I are doing is cooperating, building something together that is very, very, good for both of us. We are creating our own reality--and if you think that is nuts, just look at the fantasy worlds that virtually everyone spends their lives in: the man who dreams he is a great lover and surrounds himself with casual affairs to prove it to himself; the dissatisfied wife who fantasizes that a handsome prince will come and carry her away from her dreary relationship and makes her dream come true with a tawdry affair at work that tears her life and family apart; the mid-level executive or plodding lawyer who dream that their talents will be recognized soon, next year, in five years, and that the sought-after promotion will soon be awarded.

My master's and my cooperative effort is actually creating something real between us. We are not dreaming of something that may someday come along, not destroying our lives in the attempt to achieve something unrealistic. We are creating the reality of an absolute master-slave relationship between us, and to do that, both of us refrain from indulging in the negative, self-defeating activities that couples involved in less serious, less committed pursuits engage in. We do not sabotage each other. We do not insult or put each others' interests down, no matter how foreign to us: we gently try to nurture these. We drop everything else to resolve difficulties as they occur; we never put them off; we never, ever go to bed angry at each other. We both sacrifice for the other, because we both want to--I in my submissive fashion; he in his dominant fashion. In six short years we've been through experiences that tear other couples asunder: a major stressful move across country, financial ruin of one partner coupled with a very long period where the other partner couldn't find work; one partner becoming very sick and coming within a fraction of an inch of death; one partner's physical handicaps which preclude even the most common of physical activities all of you in good health take for granted. Yeah, it's an unusual relationship, but it works for me. In fact, it's perfect for me. So I cooperate in refraining from most of the shitty little stuff because what we are building is so important to our happiness, so wonderful, that we want nothing to slow it down, nothing to retard its growth.

To move on to one of the other "experiential complexities" that make my story significantly less simple than that horse's tale, I also feel, on top of (or beside) the core of steel, beside the cooperation, a strong conviction that despite my unbroken ankle, despite the fact that I am not bound, I do not have choice. I can't speak for other countries, but I think that every person in the USA is brought up so strongly with the idea that they always have free choice that no matter how economically constrained they are, no matter how propagandized and mentally ruled by the dominant ideology, no matter how tied down in sick co-dependent relationships they are, no matter how much they know they will never, in actuality, dig themselves out of the safe dead-end little ruts they have made for themselves, they still feel that they have free choice and plenty of it. Freedom! It's the American Way! I think even most convicts in our prisons think they have considerable free choice--the propaganda we receive is that strong.

In living my life as a slave, however, I have an ongoing experience of actually being in prison. I don't need a cage, nor bondage, nor locks on the doors to keep me in, because my mind knows that I am imprisoned, my mind knows that it is part of a slave. This is even harder to get across than the commitment or cooperation stuff. After all, the latter two are at least marginally politically correct and in accord with the Great American Way. But allowing oneself to reach a state of mind (indeed, actually striving for it) in which one never breaks for freedom because one is not free goes against every little bit of cultural conditioning you have been bombarded with all of your life. My master's ongoing experience, in contrast, is that of the the imprisoner. I know, because I have asked him about it many times, that he feels his absolute ownership of me as intensely as I feel my lack of free choice. If I were to go temporarily insane and run away, he'd find me and bring me back. It would be his right: he agrees and I agree, and we don't give a flying fuck what anybody else thinks about it. This is our little conspiracy; this is our mutually built reality. It's an invisible imprisonment, but does that make it any the less real? (Hint: this isn't a question that can be answered with 2-D logic; we've leaped up a dimension into the realm of experience again.)

>>> I remember we've gone through this one before, Rosie, and you talked about the idea that you can't leave Donald because you gave your word that you wouldn't. <<<

Yeah, this is a deja vu scene we're doing here, but I don't mind restating in 10,000 words what you've so succinctly said in 12. Here, want me to repeat it for you again? (scratches head in puzzlement as Cassi runs, screaming "Safeword," into the sunset)

>>>...[I] would, if I felt my survival were at stake, break a promise. <<<

If it's any consolation, I would, too--because I've been expressly ordered to. Donald's been doing power stuff for a long, long time, and he's had years to think through all of these issues. During one of our extensive talks before I became his slave, I asked him what he would wish me to do if my life were threatened, specifically by him or as the result of his actions. I asked him this, by the way, not as a test (he had already passed all my tests, such as they were) but as a result of my need for information. For me, the imperative to obey supercedes all others, including the imperative for personal survival, and although this situation seemed rather silly in its theoretical unlikeliness, I had to know what his desires were in this area. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was to run, not walk, out of there. And so I will save my life, too, if it comes down to it, because I'm under standing orders to. It's not that I hate life so much, either; if I have a self-destructive urge, I've yet to find it after 20 years of searching. It's just that I regard some things (a very few things) as more important than one's own life. I think that many parents might agree with me on this, when it comes to their children.

You know, I don't believe that placing a desire to survive above a desire to obey makes you more or less upstanding than another person; it just indicates that your priorities--the ones that work for you in your life--are slightly different than another person's. For all we know, there are half a dozen things you would allow yourself to be killed over that I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. I see the differences in our styles of submission, such as they are, a matter of each of us making choices, the best choices for us as individuals. My hard-core absolute master-slave attitude comes from an intense need or desire, an imperative that I must fill at all cost, at any risk. At rock bottom, it's absolutely selfish, but then, you could make a good case that this is true of everything people do. .

>>> All I know is that there's a line I won't cross for a dom any more (been there, done that, got the scars to prove it) <<<<

Ok, stop the action right here. Rewind tape. This is important. This is an area where our experiences differ widely, and because they differ, our actions (including our desires) are different. I often say somewhere in my long messages something like "I lucked out," or "I was very lucky," when talking about my S&M experiences. I don't just say that to lord it over everybody. I use those specific words when talking at any significant length about my experiences, because it is important to me that people understand that my experiences are, in fact, not typical, that they are actually quite rare and not what you should expect from your average first S&M encounter. I was lucky to find the person, the dominant, perfect for me at my very first try at this game of life-style D&S. In other words, I probably beat odds better than 100,000 to 1. Yes I was prepared, yes I was ready for the experience of slavery, but no more so than many sincere submissives.

My experiences have all had a chance to come about through an act of simple, random luck, through being in the right place at the right time. Because of simple, random luck I have never had a bad D&S relationship, never had my trust betrayed, never even had to run the gauntlet of posting a personal and then wading through hundreds of unsuitable wannas. I've never gone to a playparty or a convention or a workshop or a club in the hope of meeting a partner. I've never had the experience of someone being almost perfect but not really right for me in the long run. I've never been disappointed. I have no scars. Do you get the picture, or should I provide even more longwinded paraphrases? And finally, while I'm not loath to give as much of myself away as possible to someone, I have other fears, caused by other experiences: intense and crippling social shyness, a fire phobia. Wanna trade?

There are lines I don't think I could cross for my dominant, try as I might. I'm pretty sure I'd break under severe torture of the kind that Amnesty International reports, for example. But most of the usual barriers, most of the common "I won't do, I can't do that for anyone"'s are not there, because my experience, my rare and lucky experience (which I did as much to earn as someone who wins the Florida lottery), gives me no good reason for them actually to be there. I tell you, Cassi, if Donald ever dies and I decide I want to live and even seek out another mate after someday, I am going to be a babe in the woods who is up a shit creek without a paddle, to put it mildly . Karmically speaking, that's when I'll probably "pay my dues."