What has happened to the emptiness of my life, I wonder. It has started to disappear…
I woke up at 7 in the morning and played with the kittens a little. Today it is the first day that they ate proper food and I am very proud of them. They still walk unsteadily but they are very curious and they like exploring the entire house. I finally opened the door of their room. I was keeping them in isolation with their mother until they got strong enough to confront the other cats. I am still keeping an eye on them, though, because male cats sometimes eat the small kittens, even if they are their own offspring. So they say, but I do not know if it is true. It could be an urban legend, just so that we take better care of our babies. For the time being their father is looking at them very curiously…
Life is storming by me and I am trying to balance in the center. Everything is changing rapidly. My children are preparing to leave. They say they will go and meet their future. I will also have to go soon. I have so many things to prepare, so many people to say goodbye to. I need this bike ride like crazy, I need to put my thoughts in order. The words are eluding me today. I think that only music can express what I am feeling. I love my new song, as well as my new name. So, I am no longer a D.
It is so difficult to engage in BDSM the way we intend it, to invent our own universe in the midst of not so gentle Vanilalland. It may seem absurd to propose a non egalitarian life between Masters and slaves, Doms and subs, Owners and properties, Yet in our universe, we all agree to it. It is the United Nations of Vanilla that is absurd, where no side agrees on anything. UNV doesn’t deal with corporal punishment, anal fisting and other immoral acts, only with genocides. This does not guarantee us any right. Vanillaland inc. imposes legal and moral obligations. So we put forward the ultimate argument: individualism. I do not care how and why my neighbor beats her male slave and he shows her his gratitude, kissing her dirty feet. I only care about the authority my slave has given me, to control her soul and mind, her entire life. There are no external rules, no arbitration. The way we look at each other belongs exclusively to us. I set the rules and she is grateful for each one of them. I define what her life will be, what her behavior must be, why she must be punished, her sexuality, everything.
“La vie n’est pas un problème qui puisse être résolu en divisant la lumière par l’obscurité et les jours par les nuits, c’est un voyage imprévisible entre des lieux qui n’existent pas.” (Stig Dagerman)
It is so damn difficult to exist on this earth from reality to reality and ultimately from dream to dream. Franz Kafka said it in four words: “Notre défaite: le quotidien”. But BDSM is not a utopia. We belong to utopia, we reside here. This is our land and we are exiled here.
That is the problem: we live in a culture that depends on suffering, on unwanted dependence and submission. We are trying to live free in a world that wants to imprison us in its vileness. Aren’t we “l’ Avant garde”, the surrealists among “Les Damnés de la Terre” who have to obey imposed rules by a “behind the scenes” superpower? At least, in our world, in our lifestyle, in our marginal tribes, there is no misunderstanding: an ass, a cunt, a mouth are holes and they can be offered and used without hypocrisy.
Desecration then. Indeed, BDSM does not have much more to do with eroticism or orgasms, rather than include them in a dialectic with what is holy. In desecration, there is the “how” of BDSM. Masters who know that often become owners to men and women alike. Desecration does not recognize sexes. Desecration transforms a female or a male slave to a holy thing. The Master creates a new world every time he discovers a virgin in the anus of an old whore. And we keep doing that right next to people who go to church, following their illusions.
That is an overwhelming moment: to stand free in front of an enslaved world.
When we meet, you will kiss both my hands. Once on the upper side of the palm and once inside the palm.
When we are alone in the hotel room, you will kneel in front of me, you will kiss my shoes and you will lick the soles of my shoes underneath.
I hope it is clear why I am asking you this. When you kiss my hands, it will not be because you are honoring something larger than our selves. There is nothing larger than our selves. I will not allow you the foundation of the Church of Holy BDSM, with me at its center. You will kiss my hands because you are asking to become my slave. You will kiss my shoes because you accept my Domination over you. You will lick the soles of my shoes because I am asking you to do it.
There is nothing larger to honor. It is just us. You and I. Nothing else.
לפני 9 שנים. 20 ביולי 2015 בשעה 7:20
Music is pure emotion. My father was an opera lover. A man of poor origins…He came from a mountain village. My grandmother nursed him until he was four. There was only human milk available and they made use of it to survive. Then he came to Thessaloniki, he got an education, he became a lawyer, made money. He met my mother and married her. She came from a bourgeois family in Volos. Her ancestors were land-owners, never worked a day in their life. They’d go hunting for fox, drink excessively, and then stick pistols down their throats and pull the trigger, because life was unbearable.
How those two managed to live together is a mystery. My father loathed aristocrats, my mother loathed everyone. While she was teaching me how to make words, he taught me that money has no value at all. Just as knowledge has no value, unless you know what to do with it. At nights, he would go to the living room, which was forbidden to me and my brother. He would pour himself a malt, no ice, and listen to Verdi. Nabucco, Aida… This music marked my childhood. It felt good to be a kid, growing up in that house, with this beautiful music coming from the forbidden room.
The day after the military coup by the junta, my father took me out to the main street of my town. I was four years old but I remember. The streets were empty. There were policemen in the street, no cars, nor pedestrians. Only a father and his daughter, walking hand in hand. I could sense there was danger but it was okay. I held on to him.
I do not know how or when submissiveness is born. I only know one has it or not.
Today I perhaps took my last bike ride as a free person. I was thinking that I would not miss this town if I left. It was never my own. I have no home. I have been a stranger in a strange land for the longest time. I feel lost.
That is what Nabucco means to me. I need to return where I belong.
“Je ne fais pas d’une esclave une princesse si elle ne rampe pas pour quémander ma reconnaissance.” That is what you said. The thing is I do not really need to become a princess. But I do need to return.
I have needs, yes, but I am not easy, nor am I desperate. But it would be an insult to wait any longer. I don’t think that the Jews in the desert put their God to the test, to see if he was real. Besides, we are all proven to be what we really are, sooner or later.
These are things that are felt, are known intuitively and cannot be explained. Besides, we Greeks invented madness. There is no other way to live our life meaningfully and the Greeks knew that. If this be madness, I embrace it.
And if I am to become meat to you, this is not something dirty, not what most people imagine. This is a most noble thing. For this is the only way to protect ourselves from the word. The word keeps us imprisoned. The word is at the same time our enemy and our savior. The word will save us from ourselves and will lead us back to animality. The word will bring itself down, again and again. For it is unbearable to live (only) in the word.
All sense of privacy will be eliminated at once. I stand naked, with my hands behind my back, my legs slightly open. My genitals are half opened. The thick, fleshy, completely shaved outer lips protrude like a vulgar reminder of my availability. One finger, then two are inserted in me, the nails lightly scratching the tender walls of my vagina. They come out then, the fingers all satisfied and wet. I am made to open my mouth, my tongue is pushed down with a small spoon, my throat is examined, an index finger, the same one that scratched my genitals, now palpates my gums and my teeth and ventures towards my epiglottis, making me gag. If I vomit, I will have to eat it. I hold it in.
No shame.
I bend forward and grab my ankles. I am ordered to spread my buttocks and hold them well apart. The same finger that explored the cavity of my mouth is now inserted in my anus. It probes and probes until the finger has done its job. It exits suddenly and I am left stretched open and quite sore. I feel I have to go to the bathroom. I am to remain bent forward, holding my buttocks well apart, providing full visual access to my anus. I stay there for a very long time.
No shame.
I am allowed to use the pot. I am even allowed to squat. A mirror is placed in front of me, so that all the previously private matters will be displayed in the open. I do what I have to and I look down at the floor but I am made to look up, into human eyes.
No shame.
There is no meaning to the fourth commandment. It is pure existence.
I just came back from a ride on my bike along the pier. It is a sunny day here. This ride gave me the time to think about my sudden predicament. It was really quiet by the sea. All I could hear was the cries of the seagulls. There was a light breeze and I could see the harbor in the distance.
There is no hesitation, none whatsoever. There was never a choice really, not after I put a name to it. Middle-class BDSM you called it? Perhaps. I, being disgustingly snobbish, call it the Fortensky choice. I cannot go back to it without feeling ashamed. Besides, Taylor was a has-been, whereas I am a will-be.
I know that this is the right choice, because as I was reading the words, my genitals opened and closed momentarily, like a thirsty flower. My body always likes to interfere and tell me what the right choices are. I usually listen to it. If the choice is not the right one, I will simply get hurt once again.
An important part of pleasure is to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. I don’t know if I will fit in your dreams, but I do know this: when we have danced with the devil in the moonlight, it is hard to return to the usual run-of-the-mill activities, such as a tumble in the hay with a Daddy Dom.
My description as an empty box is not the sad story of a woman who suddenly finds herself without an Owner. It is a rather funny story, as I receive daily hundreds of messages, but if these people are potential owners, then I am an astronaut.
Most people have their lives, their desires, their plans. I need someone to fill the emptiness, because I do not know how to do it on my own. I could fill it with anything and it would most definitely be a bad choice. Even if it were not so bad, I don’t think that I would be able to withstand its burden. When asked, “D, what do you want?” I have two standard answers, which I give interchangeably, since they are basically the same: “I don’t know”, or “I want everything and I want it now.”
The Master is called upon to handle an immense freedom. He is someone who is not afraid of chaos. He can give it whatever form he wants. The slave is pure energy with no direction. It is a sea – a sea that dreams of becoming a river…
I have been struggling with myself for a long time now. I know many things about me, perhaps more than I would like to know. Most people do not have these grand conversations with their shadow. It is not the easiest thing in the world, because our shadow carries these unbearable truths, which are softened a bit by the fairy tales we make during the day. Yet the fairy tales are all lies. Our shadow sings to a different tune.
I will tell you something and I would like you to forget it immediately afterwards. I am not interested in anything else about you apart from your shadow. Your good elements are there only in order to make the shadow viable. I have no use for them whatsoever. Of course, if they were not there, the shadow would never come to life. We would remain two people who are simply dreaming.
Modern philosophy has tried anything and everything in the effort to help the individual to transcend himself objectively, which is a wholly impossible feat; existence exercises its restraining influence, and if philosophers nowadays had not become mere scribblers in the service of a fantastic thinking and its preoccupation, they would long ago have perceived that suicide was the only tolerable practical interpretation of its striving. But the scribbling modern philosophy holds passion in contempt; and yet passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual--and we are all of us existing individuals. In passion the existing subject is rendered infinite in the eternity of the imaginative representation, and yet he is at the same time most definitely himself.
It was from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Kierkegaard. I do not know why, but I copied this passage meticulously on a piece of paper and kept it with me. I carried it with me, in my purse, wherever I went. Sometimes I would take it out and read it again. I grew older, I got married, had children. Then the time came and the children no longer needed me. I decided to answer the question, the only question worth answering. To be or not to be. That is the question.
Well, no. The answer was not to be. Not unless…
And then, in my quest for a reason to be, I discovered passion.
A potential slave has no other necessary quality but this: she is capable of passion. This is not an easy matter. All eternal decisiveness is rooted in subjectivity. This means that there is no objective way to measure security in a decision of this type. No objective way to measure sensibility. The potential slave is not a reasonable, cautious person. And yet, she decides. The objective way deems itself to have security which the subjective way does not have (and, of course, existence and existing cannot be thought in combination with objective security); it thinks to escape a danger which threatens the subjective way, and this danger is at its maximum: madness.
The Concluding Unscientific Postscript will always provide a good argument, in favour of the leap of faith. The leap of faith is absolutely essential if two people decide to engage in madness.
But isn’t this idea to be dismissed as romantic? Yes, it will be dismissed by most people. Don Quixote is the prototype for a subjective madness, in which the passion of inwardness embraces a particular finite fixed idea. There is no other human project for Don Quixote. Or, if there are other projects, they are secondary to the main one. They spring from the main project. The main project is this: is it worth living? Is there one single idea that makes all other ideas worth it? That is why priorities are important. That is why there can be only one concern and the others will have to follow. I live like this. Or rather, I need to live like this.
One who does not understand these matters will dismiss Don Quixote as a lunatic, in the same way as he will dismiss a potential slave as having a fixation. In the type of madness which manifests itself as an aberrant inwardness, the tragic and the comic is that the something which is of such infinite concern to the unfortunate individual is a particular fixation which does not really concern anybody. Of course, loneliness is part of the decision, part of the fixation. Who will understand? Nobody. One shrinks from looking into the eyes of a madman… lest one be compelled to plumb there the depths of his delirium.
I am a slave. What does this mean? What does my capacity for passion translate to? How fast is too fast and how slow is too slow? Are these measures destined for a slave’s soul or are they thoroughly inappropriate and irrelevant? Picture a dog, devoted to its Master. The Master lifts his hand and picks up an imaginary stick in the air. He pretends to throw it away. The dog follows the movement of the Master’s hand. Every single time the dog goes for the imaginary stick. Every single time the dog follows that which does not exist. Every single time the dog returns with nothing. It never complains, never wonders, never questions. If the Master pretends to throw the stick a million times, the dog will go and fetch the imaginary stick a million times.
That is a relationship based on faith. That is loyalty.
Let us take as an example the knowledge of God. Objectively, reflection is directed to the problem of whether this object is the true God; subjectively, reflection is directed to the question whether the individual is related to a something in such a manner that his relationship is in truth a God-relationship.
So how long before the slave finds the objectivity of that which she already knows subjectively? The existing individual who chooses the subjective way apprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having to use some time, perhaps a long time, in finding God objectively; and [she] feels this dialectical difficulty in all its painfulness, because every moment is wasted in which [she] does not have God.
How long is too long?
It is at this point, so difficult dialectically, that the way swings off for everyone who knows what it means to think, and to think existentially; which is something very different from sitting at a desk and writing about what one has never done, something very different from writing de omnibus dubitandum and at the same time being as credulous existentially as the most sensuous of [people]. Here is where the way swings off, and the change is marked by the fact that while objective knowledge rambles comfortably on by way of the long road of approximation without being impelled by the urge of passion, subjective knowledge counts every delay a deadly peril, and the decision so infinitely important and so instantly pressing that it is as if the opportunity had already passed.
The leap of faith can be made only in the face of uncertainty. If one is certain about things, one cannot exercise this unique quality of faith. A slave needs the opportunity to exercise this unique quality. No one should deprive her of that moment of uncertainty, where she discovers her faith. In that moment, her passion becomes infinite.
A young girl may enjoy all the sweetness of love on the basis of what is merely a weak hope that she is beloved. Hope never dies. I will keep going for the ghost of that stick, a million times if I have to. Because I know it is there.
And that is why I said, from the very first moment, what I said. Because,
If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.
I have to live in a man’s shirt. If I were a snake, I would change my shirt every spring. I would skin myself from within and give birth to a new, crispy shirt, shiny and new and a different color every spring. But I am not a snake. So I have to live in a man’s shirt.
The shirt barely covers the top of my thighs. My thighs are soft and white and thin. I look like those girls in the movies, who stayed over at a man’s house and in the morning they were given one of his shirts. But having to live in it is a whole different story. It is the permanence of the rule that makes it almost unbearable. It is the duration of the task that makes it so difficult, fit only for a woman with the heart of a slave. The shirt is for ever. That makes it unbearable, but it also makes it valuable. It cannot be changed with a million dollars.
I go about the house and I clean up and then I do the laundry. I open the fridge and I pour a glass of orange juice and drink it. I cook and I eat. I sit in the chair and I feel the hard seat on my naked bottom. My genitals are wide open under the shirt.
I look at the way other women live and I shake my head sadly. They dress for the part. They think they are prettier that way. I feel sorry for them. They know not what they are doing.
The third commandment turns me into a real woman. That is the meaning of the shirt.
La Reine Elisabeth I disait: “je trouve l’ impossible beaucoup plus intéressant.” The slave I am looking for will not have any rights. The Master decides for everything. You will have to redefine your entire thinking, word for word. You will create a new Dictionary of life, where you will write a new word every day. I ask you to choose between the adventure of a life of slavery which will be renewed every day and a type of middle-class BDSM with a Daddy Dom.
I am writing to you from the library of Luxembourg. Sometimes I come here to work and do my research in the largest library of the world. It is amazing how such a small country with a population of 500.000 could have such a palace of books. I come here at 10.30 in the morning and I leave at 6.00 in the evening, with plenty of notes and after having searched through hundreds of books. Today I am researching the rebirth of the republic of Poland, for a book I am writing on the subject. But my thoughts keep straying to that sensitive opening between a slave and a Master, just as the Master’s finger would softly open your genitals, whenever he wanted it. Nabucco, Verdi’s opera, has a similar beginning. Historical events are the perfect background for a thoroughly romantic plot.
A few things about me: I studied in Geneva and in East Berlin, Political Science and contemporary history. I was a journalist and a political correspondent specializing in Arab countries. I have worked in Beirut, London, New York, Frankfurt, Cyprus, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Strasbourg, Brussels… I am a Belgian citizen, but my family was one of the oldest Jewish families of Poland. My parents escaped the holocaust, the Shoah as we call it. I am an atheist and a communist. I have some trouble reconciling my political beliefs with Domination, but perhaps I am not the only one.
I want you to think about it and decide: will you say yes to adventure or yes to Daddy? Don’t be in hurry to answer, I want you to be sure. The words are always significant in the creation of an initial framework, before submission becomes a reality. There must be rules right away, as far as your behavior and your habits. Word for word, rule after rule, control is required. You do understand that there can be no other way.
Je veux faire de toi une putain, une chienne, une princesse, une salope, une esclave, une souillon, ma propriété et tant d’autres choses. Surtout, je te veux l’objet de ton maître. If you became my slave, D, I would forbid cynicism and I would demand irony from you. You would be reading Jankelevitch on your knees and go peeing on your self, right there on the floor, after each chapter. You would be acquiring knowledge in the shame of your urine. Irony is the thing that suits slaves. Irony leads them to a personal victory, liberates them from a self-defeating cynicism.
Sadomasochistic thinking does not go through the ass or the cunt. Sadomasochism is born from the word and lives in the word. There are no sadomasochists outside imagination.
Should you wear my collar, you will call me Adon. If not, this will still be a good adventure. Adventure is a word that belongs to nobility.
He came out of nowhere like an old Jewish ghost, those that people call a dibbuk. I was sitting there quietly, trying not to bother anybody, discussing my future with a sweet Daddy Dom from old England. I was thinking about applying for a teaching post in a small College in London. I had made adequate connections and was already planning my future activities and autumn festivities. The London community seemed pretty dead, just munches and silly games with fish-hooks and such. They could definitely use a good dose of D. Besides, I was looking for new material, as I wanted to finish the last book of the damn trilogy, the one with the catchy title, ”The Steel of Desire”. A bildungsroman should ideally be completed, and I was approaching the end of my journeys.
But what I was not eager to discuss with my Daddy Dom (who would actually be the second chef of my career) was that I felt like the late Elizabeth Taylor. And here I was, getting ready to climb into the pickup truck of a love affair with Larry Fortensky - instead of waiting for Richard. What was I to do? Settle for less again? Maybe for a while? Did I have the right to do that?
No, I did not. The real problem, as everybody knows, is not to find someone with matching vices. No. What we need to do is to find someone with whom we can discuss the Concluding unscientific postscript by Kierkegaard, which is much more relevant to this entire business of slavery than anyone might imagine.
And so I answered:
Is it possible that I have found what I have been looking for in the past four years? “Out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith…” What surprises me most is that hope never dies. A slight rekindling, and there, after all the betrayals and the disappointments, the ashes come back to life. I should be delivering seminars on the art of losing. And here I am, starting all over again.
These are the words that were missing….
I am a bit reluctant to talk about myself as if I were some item on the shelf, to be picked up and examined. But that is what I am. So, pick me up and look at the box and the label. It is a small box, pink, with a golden top. On the side it says "fragile", but the fine print says "This will last a lifetime". Open it (if you know how). Inside the box you will find all the pleasures and all the pains of this earth, wrapped in the fragrance of the most exquisite female secretions. A healthy sense of cynicism is dancing hand in hand with a fierce romanticism, to the tune of a French accordion. And right in the middle of the box, where its heart should be, there is the emptiness of the unowned slave…
