Early steps

[I corresponded with a few women before I found the person with whom I wanted to put theory into practice. Here’s some more extracts from emails I wrote to potential dommes, exploring my thoughts on what was happening to me.]

Thankyou for your memo. I am having trouble writing this reply because I`m not sure where to start. I have so many things I want to ask. I might just start blundering into my questions and hope for the best (my normal approach to life, anyway ;-))

I read your memo and your profile carefully. Some of it excited me - some of it alarmed me. Does it matter if I don`t think I like pain? I don`t know yet whether or not it arouses me…the only experience I`ve had was a drunken consensual beating from my friend after she boasted of the days of yore when she helped out a pro domme. She did her best, but it didn`t do anything for me sexually - it just HURT and I didn`t like it at all. Do you think that means I can never enjoy pain?

[edited to add - ha ha HA! If only I KNEW!]

I am just dipping my toes in the water. I may well go to a club in London next month with a friend who knows about BDSM but am very unsure about going from not having ANY experience to being an exhibitionist in public.

I know how much the thought of submission excites me - but what do you get out of this sort of activity? I can`t really see it from the other point of view, and am having trouble imagining what you could possibly get enjoyment-wise from something that…and please forgive if this sounds impertinent…basically involves being kind-of mean acting.

What I`m getting at here is- do you REALLY enjoy it? Because what turns me on is the idea that someone is actually turned on by topping me. I sort of feel as if anyone who wanted to do that to me would be indulging me/doing me a favour, and doing it to please me, not themselves.

[That was something I really struggled to get my head round, and I think it came from a total lack of desire to dominate in myself, and therefore a difficulty in understanding what anyone else could get out of it. Also, I’d spent years seeing sexual activity as something that someone else might give me as a favour, not out of any real desire to interact with me, and my sexual confidence was almost non-existant.]