5

Greedy and Needy

One of the characters in John Updike’s novel Villages remarks that most women would rather be hit on the head than ignored. This may be a touch extreme, but I think I know what he means. Is it not the perennial cry of women the world over that men don’t talk to them, that men don’t listen to them, that they don’t notice? Only a couple of weeks back I was having lunch with an old and dear woman friend and I remarked that she had highlights in her hair and how pretty it looked. I thought I might get points for observation. “Oh, men,” she said witheringly. “I have always had highlights in my hair.” She then went into a highly abstruse discourse on the technical aspects of hair-tinting, explaining that although there had been some minor changes since the last time I saw her, I had failed to observe what was to her blindingly obvious. She was not about to let me off the hook.

If women are greedy for attention, how much more so are submissives? How they yearn even for a look from their Dom, how they crave his undivided attention. They don’t just want him to tie them up and spank their bottoms till they squeal or torment their nipples till they whimper. Of course, they want that, any time it’s available. But they want more, so much more. I think what many submissives want above all is to live within a regime of strict control. Not that everything they do is subject to their Dom’s approval; some submissives don’t want every aspect of their lives to be subordinated to his whims and wishes. But what they do want is to feel that a framework is in place. They want to know that he cares enough to give them instructions, however mundane. It might be red varnish on your toenails today. It might be wear the bracelet I gave you. It might be, at precisely 3pm say out loud, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, “I belong to Master. He owns me utterly and completely.” Maybe he has her kneel for five minutes every day. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, like three blow-jobs before breakfast. It can be anything, just so long as it means he is paying her attention. And of course, he will have to follow up. Did you kneel today? Where’s your bracelet? Instructions are worse than useless if they aren’t policed.

I don’t say these little things will be enough. Whatever you give her it will never be enough. If you want to be a good Dom you will have to learn that. Submissives, in my experience, are all high-maintenance. It’s in the maintenance that she finds her true self and the Dom finds his pleasure. If you can’t be bothered with all that, don’t try to be a Dom. But I think a little and often, rather than a heavy session of discipline once in a blue moon, is what most submissives thrive on.

Submissives are needy because they make themselves so vulnerable. They open themselves up so, and if what they want to give is ignored, they can suffer severely. The worst thing a Dom can do is withdraw from her. Punishment through silence is the worst form of cruelty, and no Dom should ever stoop to such a thing. If she has done wrong, talk to her, chide her, scold her, humiliate her if that is what she needs, and punish her when she accepts that she deserves it. But don’t ever ignore her. Don’t shut her in a cold, dark cell of silence. A submissive’s worst nightmare is to be abandoned, without explanation, without appeal, without hope.

***

I used to think, in my salad days when I was green in judgment, that the spectrum of submissiveness ran from, on the one hand, the girl who thought it was a giggle to be put over her boyfriend’s knee now and again and receive a few swats with the flat of his hand, and even perhaps, if either was feeling especially daring, on her bare bottom, her knickers about her ankles; while at the other extreme was the submissive whose deepest, darkest desire was to be locked in a cage all night, taken out only to be savagely whipped, or perhaps offered to other men as their plaything. Doubtless there are even more extreme things than that. I’m sure you all have your favorite ways of scaring yourself deliciously half to death.

But I see things differently now. For me the real distinction is not between varying degrees of appetite for pain or humiliation. What interests me is the extent to which she wants to involve her whole self in the experience. Some women just want to be bottoms. Even if they crave a really severe beating, once it’s done they revert quickly to everyday life. But increasingly the kind of submissive who most interests me is the one who longs for a total experience. It doesn’t necessarily have to last 24/7; indeed, unless you haven’t got much else going on in your life this is not very practical. But while the action continues she wants to be the very centre of her Dom’s world.

Here’s another thing I used to think. I believed that a submissive wanted nothing but to please her Dom. I believed altruism and submissiveness went hand in hand. But that’s a superficial view. In fact, it now seems to me that the more submissive a woman is, the more what she is really seeking is to have her narcissism indulged. What she wants, while it lasts, an hour, an afternoon, a weekend, is that her Dom, while pleasing himself to the full, does not take his eye off her for a moment. Don’t get me wrong; narcissism in sex is good; in fact, it’s essential. We all need to find someone who will allow us to be the centre of their obsession. Submission is not about self-abnegation; quite the opposite. It’s about self-fulfillment. You concede control; but only so that he will take full advantage. Both Dom and sub gorge on each other’s need.

Her Dom may stand her in the corner and forbid her to move or speak. But what she wants to know is that he is observing her minutely, trying to catch her out. If he stands her in the corner and goes away to watch the TV news or take a phone call, the spell is broken. But if she thinks just for a moment that she is unobserved and furtively rubs her bare bottom, still smarting from when he strapped her, then when he steps up behind her and cruelly twists her hair while hissing in her ear that clearly she has not yet learned her lesson – why then she knows that his concentration upon her is total, and that now she is for the high-jump. And isn’t that the thing she wants above all?

***

Submissive girls are apt to be greedy. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one complaining that she gets too much spanking, is just dying for a rest from all these relentless impacts on her ass. But I’ve heard a lot of them ruing the fact that they don’t get nearly enough, haven’t been spanked in a week, or a month, or a lifetime. Or that it’s the wrong kind of spanking, or even the wrong spanker. Of course I could come over all domly and tell them, it’s not for a submissive girl to decide when or how she gets a spanking, she’ll get one when she needs one, etc, etc. I could say that; but I don’t think they’d be listening. Their longing for a spanking is just too great.

So what’s a girl to do if she isn’t getting enough? Let me say first of all, that I am with Gordon Gekko on this; “greed is good” in the realm of D/s. I like it when women want more and more; I like to give it to them. But what should I say to her if she doesn’t belong to me, if her Dom is another guy, a guy who, whatever his undoubted qualities, is less engaged in the spanking process than she is.

It depends on the people involved. Some girls provoke. They deliberately do things they ought not to, in the expectation of a punishment. If that works for you, fine. Personally, I prefer a girl to be good. I might very occasionally try a punishment scenario, just for fun (“so, the dog ate your homework; hmmm…”) But it’s not really my style. I suppose it could become so if I met a girl who really got off on this. I’m a very adaptable Dom, and there are few things I can’t be enticed into. But, as I say, engineering a punishment is something I tend to take a dim view of. It’s manipulation, and if there’s any manipulating to be done, I know who is going to be doing it.

A girl who’s trying to provoke her Dom into a spanking always runs the risk that she ends up topping from the bottom. I’m not a purist; I realize a certain amount of this is always going on, in any D/s relationship. It’s a two-way street, after all. But at the end of the day, she doesn’t really want to be the one making the running. She wants to be overcome, not obliged.

Even so, one thing that never does any harm is communicating. If you need more spanking, simply let him know. That’s not topping. But what if that doesn’t work? You have to try to explain, difficult though it may be, exactly what it is about spanking that excites you so. And when you do get spanked, don’t be afraid of letting him know how it feels. Most Doms, I think, enjoy getting a response. It’s not enough to spank; he wants to know the spanking is achieving its desired effect. I don’t necessarily mean every girl should be a screamer. But suffering in a passive way runs the risk of him thinking it isn’t doing much for you. If he can see the profound effect, he’s more likely to do it again.

I can’t teach you what body language or sounds will inflame him. I know one thing that works for me. It’s when I see she’s a bit scared, rather apprehensive about what she’s got herself into, wondering if this might end up going too far. Usually she goes a bit quiet. That’s very arousing for me. I don’t like her accepting a spanking with too much alacrity. A slight degree of resistance, or at least hesitation, gets my adrenalin flowing. But of course, if he’s a reluctant spanker in the first place, you run the risk of giving off the wrong signals.

It’s a difficult business, this spanking caper. You might think, oh, he likes to spank, you like to be spanked, and off you go and have lots of fun. But you learn eventually there’s more to it than that. Still, things really worth doing are never easy, are they?

***

However much you give submissive girls, they always want more. So they like to have their nipples teased and tormented? No matter how much they squeal and writhe and look at you with eyes that implore you to be merciful, you can depend on it that the moment you stop they are looking to have just a little more. Their nipples were a moment ago suffering unbearably, like red-hot needles piercing them, but once the pain stops they are hoping you may do it again. Don’t tell me it isn’t so. I’ve been there with them, I’ve seen how they feed on the pain, how the more it hurts the more they need.

It’s the same with a beating. A mere hand-spanking, across the knee, just whets the appetite. Something a bit harsher, a belt maybe or a tawse, convinces them that you are serious. And the one thing a submissive girl needs to know is that you are not a dilettanti, you aren’t just messing around. You really mean to give her a leathering. You mean to make your mark. She wants it to sting so that at each stroke she gives a little jump and hops around and tries to position herself so the next one won’t hit quite the same spot. But if you know what you are doing, that’s exactly what it will do, land precisely on the place that is smarting from the previous blow. For the true pain-slut, all this is merely the warm-up. What she needs is something cruel, something that will take her breath away, something that will deliver more than she bargained for.

So, with a greedy little slut bent over and squirming and moaning, you want to make sure you don’t disappoint. You don’t want to hear her say afterwards, very softly yet in a voice that has an unmistakable note of, if not complaint, then entreaty for next time, “I could have taken more, Sir.”

What if, despite all your best endeavors, you are still left with a sneaking suspicion that you could have, should have, gone further? You didn’t quite take her to where she was sated with pain and humiliation. In her dark heart, or in her greedy little mind, she craved just a little more.

So what is to be done? How to satisfy the insatiable? I think what one has to bear in mind is that a submissive girl longs not only for pain but also for control. She wants to feel that things have been taken out of her hands, that she no longer makes the decisions. Doing what she is told is a source of no less pleasure to her than is a beating at your hands. So, instead of trying to squeeze every last bit of masochistic desire out of her, make it very clear that you intend to leave her wanting, that this is all part of the plan. “Yes,” you say, “I think you can take more. Perhaps next time you will take more. But right now you need to know who decides when enough is enough. And I think it’s very clear it’s not you. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Highly Sexed

I’ve heard it said that submissive girls have a high sex drive. My own experience has not been sufficiently broad to constitute a scientifically valid sample (I’m tempted to add “alas”, but one mustn’t be greedy), but speaking anecdotally, I would confirm the observation. The girls I have known have all been notably libidinous. At least they seemed so to me.

Why should submissive girls want sex more than the average woman? Is it that being submissive makes them more aware of sex, enables them to tap into the wellspring of desire? Or is it that many women who are naturally highly sexed find themselves channeling their desire into fantasies of submission?

Let’s consider the latter possibility. Why might it be the case that women who need a lot of sex seek to submit themselves? I don’t think it’s because women as a whole are “naturally” submissive, the weaker sex who instinctively recognize the “superiority” of the male. None of the women I have known would buy into notions of female submission simply reflecting how things are in the “real world”. Nor do I think highly-sexed women choose to become submissive as an easy way of attracting men. It’s true that announcing to the male sex that you will do anything they want will gain you attention, but much of it will not be of the kind any self-respecting girl would welcome. Girls already know what sort of creatures are lurking in the woodwork, and I doubt they want to encourage them out into the light of day. In any case, it doesn’t seem to me that you can make a conscious decision to become submissive simply as a strategy for enhancing your dating prospects. It’s something much more deep-rooted than that.

My guess is that for some girls whose minds stray rather frequently towards sexual matters, it goes a bit like this. In our civilization girls are brought up to be wary of sex. It’s not necessarily the case that they are taught it is bad, though clearly some are. It’s rather that it’s dangerous and can all too easily get out of hand, and so a tight rein has to be kept on sexual thoughts and actions. But these girls want a lot of sex, more than people tell them they ought to. Stirring in their brains (and lower down) are impulses, often dark and dirty ones (at least, social conditioning tells them that they are so). They hesitate to let loose these impulses, and yet they crave to indulge them.

If such a girl can find a Dom to submit herself to, the responsibility for controlling her sexuality is passed to him. No more must she decide whether she ought to do this wicked thing which she secretly delights in. Not only does the Dom give her license to indulge herself; he positively orders her to perform acts, take part in fantasies which she would previously have barely acknowledged an interest in. If one can get psychological for a moment, the super-ego part of her identity, which normally rules and regulates her sexual behavior, is transferred out of herself, and becomes part of the persona of the Dom. The id which it largely suppressed can now run amok, if the Dom sanctions it, and he will, so long as it conforms to his own requirements; all Doms crave a slut, do they not, a slut at their beck and call?

OK, it’s dollar-book Freud, I know. And I don’t think this is the whole story. What it doesn’t take account of is the fact that submissive women have an intense desire to please. My description of the mechanism of submissive desire makes it appear a largely selfish one, a strategy designed to gratify the submissive’s own desires. But a large part of her pleasure comes from indulging his desires, rather than her own. That’s what being submissive means to many women, after all. But does she in some way still need the man’s “permission” to be submissive to him?

Of course, I may be arguing from false assumptions. Maybe the proportion of highly-sexed women is just as great (or even greater) in the vanilla population. It’s just that the way my life is arranged, those aren’t the ones I meet.