Teaching Poker to a Dog

Here’s the thing – I don’t understand this word dominance.

For sure, I know what it means, just as I know all too well what it feels like to be on the receiving end of dominance.

What I mean is that I do not understand what it is to be dominant in a D/s context.  I don’t understand the drives behind it and neither do I understand the feelings, pleasures and emotions that a dominant gets from their dominance.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to understand.  I’ve had some long conversations with my former mistress where she tries to explain not just how it feels to be dominant in general but also specifically what I brought to the table; what was it about me as a submissive that added to her experience and enjoyment of dominance ?

I like the phrase “it’s like teaching poker to a dog.”  You can easily visualise a picture of a dog with it’s head cocked to one side, perhaps an ear flopping – it’s an attentive, if quizzical expression, yet the dog will never understand.

There’s a point in her explanation where she could be telling me that three of a kind beats two pairs and whilst I know the words in my head, I’m not associating them with understood concepts and memories.  Quite simply they don’t translate.

And when I hear what excites, gives goosebumps or even a dom/me rush I can never visualise wanting to know it for myself – not even to try.  What’s really odd is that I’m someone full of curiosity in so many directions, yet the thought of being curious enough to even try switching leaves me stone cold.

I see, feel or hear the dom/me rush manifesting and I have no internal reference to empathise with it.  My former mistress and her giggly excitement from chastity control, still there even after years of me being locked up.  Then there’s my current domme, the palpable change in demeanour on first use of the gunge blaster gun I’d brought to the sploshing session.  Or, to me even weirder, the almost hyper-excitement at seeing me physically drained after 8 hours in the sleep sack listening to a difficult brainwashing loop.  (As an aside, my former mistress also said that to her great surprise she got an immense rush out of keeping someone in sensory deprivation for 8 hours.)

Okay, I might imagine I could use the gunge blaster on another person, but almost nothing else from the dom/mes repertoire is anything I could ever see myself inflicting on another person.  I can talk through the merits of a flogger or cane yet my only reference is how it feels applied to me.  I know that sounds very self-centred and perhaps that’s one of the absolutions allowed in submission.  Where the dom/me allows you to enter that zone of being completely self-centred, indeed they want to take you there for no reason I can actually fathom.

The question of where does the dom/me pleasure comes from is more fully answered when the person concerned is no longer your dominant.  It’s rare that I’ll get a direct answer from my current domme – we both enjoy the truthfulness of my spontaneous reactions and direct answers could influence this.  Instead I have to pick up on the clues.

Slowly I’m learning that I resonate when I hear and feel her joy in expressing her dominance as she sees it in action reverberating off my submission.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the difference between a dom/me and a top was patience.  When I became owned I realised that previous experiences were with a top.  The dommes I have known have almost infinite patience.  Years of patience to exert chastity control and to enjoy it even more, years down the line.  The patience to make plans for my D/s evolution and be prepared to spend years waiting for results and getting that dom/me rush with each progression.

Those are additional features of dominance that I appreciate and benefit from as a submissive, yet find too mind boggling to contemplate executing myself, or at least deriving pleasure from doing so.

I doubt I will ever learn to understand the attractions of dominance beyond the abstract.

As a submissive I appreciate those who follow the path of dominance, but I do have to say vive la différence.

Written for the #TellMeAbout prompt “Dominance #8”.  Click on the image to read informative posts from across the D/s spectrum.