My date is telling me that by being transgender I am seriously reducing the field of possible partners. “I only need one,” I say, “woman,” I add.
“Even more reduced,” she says. I am processing this as her way of saying that I had better get in while the going is good.
“I’m not worried,” I said.
“Consider poly,” she says.
“I imagine myself in community,” I said, “a community of women.”
“I can see that.”
“I saw a dominatrix for a while last year, and she was big on purpose. Maybe it seems odd, maybe it is odd, but I asked her to help me find the real me.”
“I guess that worked,” she smiled.
“I’d say. One of the things she had me do was to think about my goals and how I might achieve them.”
“And?”
“Well, we worked on it for quite a bit of time, and in the end, what came out is that my dream is to be surrounded by women in community. I could exist in service to the community.”
“I can see that you would like that.”
“I’m getting there,” I said, and laid out my plans.
Included in these is my joy in the company of sex workers. In the end, I am really just a so-so client, if that. I don’t have nearly the money that indulging the passion requires. I can’t have sex, and I know that many escorts actually enjoy this aspect of their jobs. And honestly, this is a part of a fear that will likely lurk in relationships which happen to me in the “vanilla” world, which is a world that is falling away from me altogether.
And boy, I can’t help but feel it is wrong to think that a woman who would be with me, would choose me, is perhaps choosing a form of modern-day lesbianism. That’s fine, great even, the “wrong” part is that social conditioning in me is so great, and lingering doubts about biological imperatives mean that letting go of the hetero-normative structure of society is hard. In a way, I wonder that as we break down gender barriers, we might finally achieve a true cultural shift, one of those defining upgrades to civilization where people connect to people for love only. Idealistic I guess.
All I would need is one woman as crazy as me.
My date is telling me that she is one of them. The hidden signal in her words is to grasp her while I can. I shall. Even though she is managing my expectations to know that I will be an aside, that she wants a man as her primary partner. That’s okay. As long as we don’t have to play together.
[Separately, many submissive men lament the apparent lack of dominant women–I used to include myself in this group. But I understand on a very real level why this is not true, and those women who have spoken out about this are onto something. The reason that submissive men don’t often find dominant women is that their submission is on their own terms, may be laced with desire, a particular fetish, whatever, some form of conditionality. In some ways this appears core to male sexuality. And wouldn’t it be ironic that my journey to becoming a fulfilled male submissive has required my relinquishing in a formal sense all claims to masculinity? I’ve never been a sissy, never been a cross-dresser in the sexual sense, never been into cuckolding or forced feminisation, so many of the things that seem to go with the territory. And what have I found? That dominant women are everywhere? Everywhere. They just don’t show themselves to people who can’t hear them, aren’t really submissive to the dominant woman. Somehow, almost every woman I meet these days is a dominant woman, whether lifestyle or professional but met in a vanilla context. Women who own themselves and who are independent and strong and confident and who are aroused by being respected. They are everywhere. You don’t even have to look. They will find you if you have the right heart, right mind. The “problem” is that many men equate female dominance with ideas that exist in their own heads, without understanding what female dominance really is–spoiler alert, it’s all about her, not you, her. And if you can actually feel that, find that what arouses you is her pleasure, not yours, then you are there.]
Slave leanings, male sexuality and an emerging female sexuality
Separately, I have had two people irl with whom I have dabbled in the world of slavery with. They have not gone anywhere for very different reasons. The first time it was founded on falsehood. Eventually the glimpse behind the curtain showed this to be so. The second time was scarred by the first time, but more helpfully, taken with open eyes. I also believe that Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT) has fundamentally rewired how I experience all of this. It’s true.
Male sexuality is very insistent. It is goal oriented. ‘I am aroused, so I must satisfy that arousal’. And it is also cumulative. ‘If I don’t get satisfaction today, I will be even more aroused tomorrow’. This can lead to good things when processed in a healthy way, but it can also beget toxicity in many forms: a sense of entitlement, a misplaced sense of familiarity with strangers, sex obsession, confusion of porn (used to satisfy it) and real life—which in turn begets ever-stronger feelings.
That is easy to understand in the context of two sex partners getting together and having intercourse. It becomes more complex, yet no different, in the world of kink. Let’s just say for example that a man is most turned on by the idea of some kinky practice (and whatever it is and whatever its origin is really not material)…for example being blindfolded (let’s go easy for once). Perhaps being blindfolded is not so necessary that it has become a fetish, without which our said man cannot get off, but rather he is one who finds being blindfolded an intoxicating addition to any and every sexual encounter. What matters here is that this male’s sexual desire, insistence, lust becomes tied up in this situation, sensation, in a way which is obsessive. It seems an unavoidable by-product of male sexuality.
I had plenty of those. And they did change over time. Pretty much, any kink that was introduced to me by a partner became like that for me.
My first girlfriend, first real girlfriend, the one to whom I “lost” my virginity, was also the first person to tie me up, first person to give me sexy lingerie, first person to blindfold me. Her kinks were born from trauma, real trauma, that nearly led to her death by her own hand many years later. She’s a lucky one, for she has mastered her demons, is happily in relationship and with lovely children, living a good life. She’s an angel.
And the contrast to me, though particular, now feels relevant as I experience both sides. One of my trans women friends described a delicious period of a year or so when she could still “remember” what it felt like to think like a man—in other words, to process things as a man would, whilst also doing it with her new female brain. I understand what she means now, but when she first told me I wasn’t so sure.
Still Kinky
I am most definitely still kinky. But what I am also finding is that I don’t need any of it in the same way. Kink is titillating, a prelude to an open conversation, to a wide range of feelings, but not at all necessary. It is no longer “thrusting” in importance. It is just there and I could just as easily have one, or several, all or even none. And the reason is simple. GAHT has changed my orientation away from the act, from the scene, from the situation, to the person. All that matters is the energy she has. The energy between us. The connection. Emotional bond. Spirit thinking. Happy interplay in conversation. Common feelings.
I think I might still be submissive after all
Fast forward a few days and I was getting onto a video call for a “job” interview. I had responded to an ad placed by a pro-Domme for a service slave. This is hard to comprehend for a rational human. Even some of my kinky friends don’t get it. But pressing send gave me butterflies. And the very, very long wait before she replied took me through a range of emotions, from hope after send to a dawning sense that it wouldn’t go anywhere, to what was I thinking that such a person would wish to follow through with me—after all, my life is way too complicated.
And then there was plenty in the scheduling which rendered the connection increasingly unlikely, and then it happened. And it was an interview. A ‘tell me about you’ kind of discussion. And after we had done that, I asked her what she was looking for, how someone might meet the need she had expressed in her ad.
What happened next bowled me away. In the most nonchalant way, she described what she wanted. Anyone from outside of the world of BDSM would have thought the two of us were depraved. But what she described to me in such a blasé way went straight into my guts and produced a full-body physical reaction that I haven’t felt in quite some time. She triggered full submissive by simply saying what she wanted. I wasn’t expecting this…I had given up hope that my inner submissive was dead.
Rules, consequences, service = arousal. Egads, a new success formula!
And I’m wondering whether the reflexologist’s magnetic button that she put in my ear to unblock me and to help me step into my female sexuality has somehow done this. Because ever since she did that to me, I have been full-body aroused. And boy does it feel different from male arousal. Holy cow. It’s like my skin wants to rip my guts out. I ache for touch and to be touched, and it affects everything from how I walk to how I talk to how I behave. It’s like springtime is in the air, that I am a coiled spring.
And I hope this makes sense, the not-so-subtle differences between my experience of male arousal and female arousal. They are very stark when you have male bits that are utterly dormant and yet you are totally aroused. That feeling has to go somewhere. And it does. It is everywhere in my body. Full arousal. And because it is diffuse in this way, it has no object. It has no direct need. It cannot be satisfied by coitus. It feels more like it would be satisfied by crying, by having a warm bath, by a massage, but most of all by soft dancing eyes in conversation between two people who are curious about each other, who touch one another with innocent and delicious wonder, and who take this feeling as the chance to leave the conscious mind on the bedroom floor as we flutter and explore.
I am pleased to report that I have been asked back for a second interview.
second interview – looks like good news to me – fingers crossed
Thank you Alan. It was really weird. Felt wonderful. Sometimes we meet people who seem to have a very visceral affect on us. This was one. When that happens, one must lean in.