Memories of a Special Person
I thought it time to write of the first domme I knew in the flesh as there’s an unexpected twist to the tale.
In the mid 1990’s I was active on various online sites and regularly chatted with some dommes. Logistics, courage and other factors meant that nothing progressed from the safety of being behind the keyboard. There was another site which I came across that was a place for much more serious discussions and I learned a lot. Many still fondly remember Informed Consent and lament its passing.
One day, out of the blue I received a DM on Informed Consent from a domme called S. She liked some of my quirky forum posts and wanted to know more. I was very much just feeling my way when it came to understanding D/s and why it resonated inside me.
One of the questions I was struggling with was my thoughts on pain. It almost seemed to be a mandatory interest if one was to identify as a sub and yet I had no inkling as to how I might react if pain was inflicted. It was a very prominent question that seemed to have no answer.
S suggested we meet up and that she could demonstrate various implements and their effects. Which led me to my first live (knowing) encounter with a domme, under the clock at Paddington Station. After a coffee she led me on a weaving path through the underground all the way out to her place near Woolwhich. Back then it was a lovely quiet backwater ignored by most of the rest of London. The flat was typically pokey for London but had a wonderful view across the river of the City Airport.
This was a big leap for me, only bolstered by determination to honour the promises I’d made to be open and ready. Also the knowledge that some level of trust in S was justified because she was well known on the London scene and was a house domme at some events. I wasn’t subjecting myself to some random psycho.
It was a strange experience to be naked in front of someone so unknown and with absolutely no sexual overtones. Silk scarves tied me spread-eagled to the bed and she began to introduce me to many new sensations.
The mists of time preclude me from recounting details. Though it was the first time I experienced that “go with the flow” sensation, similar to the state I’d learned to enter for long haul flights, except so much deeper. You’d probably say that I went straight in to sub space that very first time, though it would be a long time before I recognised it for what it was.
It was also the point where I discovered that the deeper I went, the more inarticulate I become. All the prior discussion on safe words and traffic lights rendered pointless. She wasn’t too phased about that and just ensured she was careful. I’ve no recollection of how long she took wielding her toys, yet I can still smell the chamomile lotion she massaged in to me as she brought me back to Earth.
We arranged another session for a couple of weeks later. S thought she had the solution to my inarticulation. She had a small ceramic bell that she placed in my hand. The experiences of the previous session were repeated a little bit harder and my primary memory of that session is that as I was going deeper the one thing left for my mind to focus on to the exclusion of everything else was the death grip on that bell. I would never let it go.
S made a comment in response to this that haunted me for the best part of 20 years. She said that from what she’d observed I had all the makings of a pain slut.
And here’s the unexpected twist. We knew by now that there was no D/s dynamic between us, and yet, there was an incredible intellectual affinity. Instead of a smile, a thank you and walking away from each other, we became friends. She became my mentor, she became the big sister I’d never had.
On the face of it we had nothing in common. I learned so much from this person who was so different from me. She was open and out in all aspects of her life. She’d been in a long term lesbian relationship, she’d graduated to polyamorous. Her life out in the clubs being a domme was another world to me.
Above all I learned what it meant to care for a person who suffers from severe depression. The good days and bad days that defy logic and rationalisation. The perilous path between providing support and pandering to the symptoms. To learn that it’s still the same person and not someone suddenly inferior.
I recall that the weekend I took her away to go to the theatre in Oxford was two days after her relationship with her sub was untimely ended, S was infatuated with him. She was heartbroken and a series of events would play out that read like a Shakespearean tragedy.
Her job, stressful as it already was, became too much to cope with in the middle of heartbreak. Her lovely peaceful area of London suddenly underwent upheaval. With the area earmarked for the Olympics, landlords were turfing out all the tenants.
I financed her move to a place in Sutton and she seemed to be on a slow path to recovery. We had some lovely times, she especially liked to cook when I could pop over and she was a damned fine cook, we could talk about so many things in to the small hours.
There was a time I was driving up to London to go to a trade show. This was the day after I’d been told I had the choice of an 80% pay cut or redundancy which they couldn’t afford to pay me and that I had 24 hours to make the decision. The one person who was there for me to turn to was my big sister, so I went there instead of going to the show.
There’s no real happy ending, life doesn’t have to give you one.
It all became too much for S and she retreated back to the rural isolation near the family home. I kept in touch as best I could but she cut herself off from the world.
For several years I rather feared that she had died until a year or so ago when I found a breadcrumb on LinkedIn to suggest she was looking for work. She never responded to the message I sent, not that I really expected her to. I was just relieved to know that my big sister was functional at some level and hopefully at peace with herself.
S was not the domme for me, she became something infinitely more, a friend for life.