By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com
www.sensuoussadie.com

This series is the story of my relationship with Vladimir, who lives just over the Canadian border, not far north of my home in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to being my Dominant, Vladimir is a writer and editor himself and had full editorial control of this essay.

June 2006

This Series
My Promise to Vladimir 
That Old Monogamy Commitment Fandangle 
Caging my Submissive Spirit 
The Perils of Transparency 
A Very Short Love Affair
They say you should never sleep with your friends
An Ode to Master Xavier (and tell him not to get a swelled head over it either)
When Do Broken Hearts Heal? Not Soon Enough, If You Ask Me

Photos of Vladimir

This is a story about anticipation. The kind in that old song by Carly Simon, anticipation that keeps you waiting. I'm writing it now because in a few days, this feeling will be gone, replaced by something new. That something new will be special too, but this will be the last time I will ever feel this, and I want to hold it tenderly, like a baby bird in your hand. This feeling is for Vladimir who has been my best friend since I first met him five long months ago. Vladimir is an artist and a writer, with an abiding interest in BDSM and spirituality, which is what brought us together. We've been like two peas in a pod ever since, writing compatriots and more. And yes, that's his real name; he thinks pseudonyms are ridiculous.

I was probably in love with Vladimir from the day I met him, but he wasn't in love with me, so friends we stayed. I've always believed in accepting what the universe brings you, and I wasn't about to turn away a such an amazing companion, even one who I sometimes wanted to punch in the nose. We always worked out our disagreements through, and that's pretty cool. I had my moments of wishful thinking too, but I'd pretty much accepted the state of things, even playing cupid to help him find his own Submissive.

Then last week Vladimir decided that he wanted to be my Dominant. Not just a fuck-buddy or a weekend top though, because he doesn't do relationships that way. He's actually an old fashioned relationship guy in a newfangled, play every weekend with a different partner world. I like that about him, because I'm that way too. Even so, I figured he was just having a lustful moment and I was handy, so I asked him to think it over for a few days. I thought surely he'd come to his senses, surely it was just a passing fancy. Turns out though, that his offer is for real. After five months of repressing my hopes and dreams, I'm now zoned out in a state of disbelief. I think maybe I'm dreaming all this. I think maybe I’m imagining it.

Dreaming or not, now I am sending him reams of information about myself, and he to me. Lists, stories, wishes, fantasies, scenes gone bad from our past. I know him well, but all this is new. After all, friends don't usually share this kind of intimate stuff and I had no idea about how he actually dominated a woman; really – I didn't want to know. I keep thinking that he'll read some fantasy of mine and he'll run off, because you never know what will freak someone out. It's silly I know, but as they say: the head is 18 inches from the heart.

On the other hand, I am entranced by what I have learned about him. He offers me that I have never done before, things I yearn for. One is that he does BDSM throughout his day, integrated into his life; and he does it in a proactively spiritual manner. He writes, "Spirituality is not only a constant striving for integration and balance, but for perfection, both immanent and transcendent. It is not a destination; it is a process, something admittedly difficult for us to accept in our goal-obsessed culture. It is not the attainment of the holy; it removes the barriers to it. Spirituality, when relentlessly practiced, clears the road towards transformation and transcendence. Any spirituality worth its salt demands more than a passing experience of bliss; it demands an effort of every moment." In contrast, I have only done BDSM in scenes from 8 PM to 10 PM, figuratively speaking. And although I have touched on the spiritual aspects, they have only been appetizers, leaving me hungry for the rest of the meal. His style sounds in some ways like the classic 24/7 but I don't think he'd describe it that way. I think he'd say that in the 24/7 lifestyle the BDSM is the foundation, and in his life the spiritual aspect comes first, and BDSM flows out of that. I want to know what it's like to live it his way; I'm hungry for that.

Vladimir is not talking out of his ass however, he practices what he preaches. In fact he is so serious about his spiritual life that he is associated with an abbey near to his home. He wants not only to live a spiritual discipline, but to integrate it into his relationship with his Submissive. He says it this way, "In our discipline we can cultivate self-control; in our obedience we can learn a degree of selflessness; in our commitment to another we can cultivate stability. All these are antitheses to our age and, we must admit, to much of our approach to the scene: self-indulgence; self-centeredness; a constant, remote-control approach to everything we do. D/S, when well done, brings about nothing short of a conversion of manners—to both submissive and dominant." I think in a way it was his fully developed ideas that most drew me to him. I love a brilliant man, but even more I love a man who can engage that mind in his daily life. That's very sexy.

As we prepare for these opening moments of the play, I too am figuring out what my role is. I want to be different this time too, for many reasons. This time I am committing in a different way. While my body and my heart are his, and have been all along – there is a part of me that I am keeping for myself this time. In my last relationship I made an internal commitment to my Dominant too early, something along the lines of "I belong to you and I'll stick by you no matter what." This time I will wait to make that commitment − if I ever will − until I know for sure that Vladimir is not going to do any crazy stuff like disappear on me. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that people change and commitments like "no matter what" don't hold water when the shit hits the fan. Sadie the Warrior Goddess is here to protect me this time, and Vladimir knows this. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to bother him any; in fact he seems glad for it. I guess he's had his share of crazy Submissives too.

That said, we are doing something else that I've not done before, something which requires a different kind of commitment. What we are doing is called Transparency and comes from Guy Baldwin's book Slavecraft. Now, I don't identify as a slave, rather more as a Submissive in that there are many parts of my life that I will always own: my career, my writing, and my finances. Even so, there is so much that I can give to my Dominant, and transparency is the foundation of that. In Slavecraft, "a grateful slave" writes, "i believe that He cannot master me if i am hiding from Him in any way. In fact, to the extent that i can hide myself from my Master, i am not surrendering to Him. By hiding something, anything, i undermine His power and my respect for him- essentially, i castrate Him (figuratively, of course) without His even knowing it and, simultaneously, sabotage my surrender. Ball cutting slaves are the undoing of Master. i believe this because i have asked Them about it."

When I think about being transparent to my Dominant, I feel all the way from my soul that it is the right thing for me. I want and need Vladimir to see me entirely, to see all that I am. That sounds easy, and obvious maybe. But when it comes down to the reality, it is ever so difficult and sometimes makes me painfully vulnerable. It requires so much trust, it's almost unimaginable. It means actually telling him of my fears, fears I might rather keep to myself because they might frighten him away or because I might get something I fantasize about but which really should have remained a fantasy. If I actually admitted to needing certain kinds of punishment, he might, actually, give it to me. I've never actually been punished; not really. I mean the real kind, not the fun kind. It means explaining exactly why something turned me on, even when that might embarrass me. I don't really want him to know how helpless I might feel if he put a Jennings mouth gag on me, but how much I might really need to experience something like that. I don't think I ever really have.

With all my Dominants I have always held back and kept some thoughts to myself. Sometimes it was because they were inexperienced and I didn't want to hurt their feelings, or because I knew they wouldn't know what to do with the complex yearnings I had. But this time there doesn't seem to be a choice, Vladimir demands it and I won't even consider hiding from him. I want to be as in the classic slave position: sitting nude back on my ankles with my palms open to him; all of me open to him to know and use as he wishes. This is my promise to him then, to let him see everything that I am, even the scary stuff. Even the stuff he might not really want to see. My leap of faith is that his heart and soul are strong enough and wise enough to handle it.

In Slavecraft the author goes on to say, "Transparency is not a two-way street. Privacy is one of a Master's rights and privileges. He tells me what He chooses to tell." Even though Vladimir is my Dominant, and not my "Master" per se, I think this may still be true. If I demand to know everything then it will erode his control over me. But God knows my naturally controlling self may get whiney. I guess this is what it's all about though, learning to surrender. Does this sound too self evident? Maybe it does, but then I'm not your typical Submissive either. So that's the rest of my promise, to surrender one step at a time. To be present fully in whatever he brings. To take his hand and follow wherever he leads.

Perhaps my anticipation won't end when he finally takes me to bed and elsewhere, because there will always be anticipation of where we will go next, and I will always be waiting, held tenderly like a baby bird in his hands.





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REFERENCES

[1] Kozicki, Vladimir. "D/S AS LIFE: or how to come out and live a 24/7 without scaring grand-ma. Diving into spirituality head first." Spiritual Transformation through BDSM; Stories and Submissions from Fellow Travelers. Edited. Sensuous Sadie. Burlington, Vermont: Ephemera Bound, 2006.

[1] Kozicki, Vladimir. Ibid.

[1] a grateful slave, with Guy Baldwin, M.S., Slavecraft. 1st. Los Angeles, CA: Daedalus Publishing Company, 2002.

Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. Read an excerpt at http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html. She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2006 Sadie Sez Publications