MDarcy

The Thing a Collar Is...For New Subs (And New Doms)

Ask 100 people into S&M what a collar is an you'll get a 1000 answers ranging from "a piece of safety equipment" to "jewelry that at most signifies a relationship" to "the same as a wedding ring".

None of those answers is wrong but there is one thing I have never heard that has hit me very hard in the past few years. Something so basic and fundamental I wish I had been told 20 years ago when I took my first tepid steps from reading the Beauty books into trying to learn something about what it is we do. Certainly I wish the first books I read in the early aughts had been explicit about this although S&M101 implies it in a couple of spots.

I haven't even heard anyone say it at SJW.

The thing a collar is is vulnerability.

Before you say, "Sure, but..." take a few seconds to say that out loud. Having read it with your eyes taste it on your tongue as it rolls out and hear it with your ears in your own voice. Smell those words on your breath and feel the air carrying them go through your lips.

Do all those things because that is what the vulnerability of a collar is. It isn't an abstract thing. It isn't just the normal emotional vulnerability of sex or a date or a relationship even though the collar may be on for a scene, a date of some kind, or because of a long term relationship.

A collar is being vulnerable to the person who owns it (and you) from the moment they lock it on until the moment they unlock it. That brief parenthetical statement says it all.
Take it out and make it a phrase: Who owns it and you...Who owns you...Owns you.

I don't care if you aren't M/s or O/p. I don't care care if it is a casual and negotiated almost to the point of being ed 15 minute scene. The physical act of locking a collar changes things into being owned in some way.

And property is always vulnerable to the whims of its owner.

Which is a wonderful thing...I'm typing this and glad I don't have to stand up. I love that feeling of it...I crave it. It is why I wore a collar 24/7 for years and the single hardest thing I have done as an adult and probably the single hardest thing in my life was to ask to be released from it. In my favorite picture of me I am touching it. I still reach for it every day and I am surprised to not find it.

The woman who locked it on loves me. She never wanted to hurt me. She feels incredibly guilty about her mistakes that led to it being gone even though it is more my fault than hers.

The horrid thing is she hurt me, without malice or intent, more than my ex-wife and the ex-gf who called the police accusing me of lying in wait when I was clear across the state combined. The horrid thing is that happened despite everything that she did combined not matching up to even one medium blow delivered by either of those women much less the worst blows.

But I wasn't vulnerable to them...not like I was to her.

She didn't understand that.

Why should she given I didn't understand that.

I think most Doms don't understand that.

Why should they when the submissives they are collaring don't.

We don't the first time. We generally don't until the vulnerability bites us in the ass. Then we blame the Dominant for being a horrid person despite the fact in all likelihood they are a good person and have, in the abstract, hurt us less than most vanilla partners. It is just that the collar is an amplifier of vulnerability.

There are dozens of posts of advice to new submissives on Fet. New ones are posted daily or close to it. They are full of good advice, definitions, safety procedures, and other things.

But this is my one thing to add...the one thing I never hear.

As a new submissive understand a collar is vulnerability. The moment you let a Dominant lock one on you even if for a fifteen minute session to train you in positions, you are accepting a kind of vulnerability you have never experienced and doing so without a net. You will crave a collar as it will arouse and fulfill you as you have never known, but it will also let the smallest thing hurt you in ways you have never felt.

Wear one and love it, but do so knowing what you are getting into.

SELF 2012 registration is open, complete with Charm School 2. Here is hoping more men sign up for it this year.

A Merry Christmas to all...

I stay at Ma'am's most Tuesdays. It's a standing date after my music lessons. Even before that I stayed at least once a week.

A few times she asked me to make her a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast while she got ready. Then one day I just made it for her. I have ever since.

No grand ritual is involved. No rules like I have to do it naked or use a measured amount of peanut butter or anything that you might expect from BDSM porn.

It is simply two slices of bread, a butter knife, and a jar of Jif. It is me naked or clothed when I think the timing is right.

The closest thing to ritual is how I wrap it in a paper towel, centered with the corners folded to the center in a star pattern. I watched her do it the first few times I made one and just did the same thing.

Yet, when we sat down to write our first contract she included it.

How did such a simple thing become an act of service in our contract? First and foremost because it is a service. It is something I do for her that makes her life easier. It means on a night I spend with her she has one less thing to worry about.

I won't claim some grand arousal or satisfaction from it. Do I enjoy it? Mostly I don't think about it. The biggest pleasure doesn't come from making the sandwich but the thank you she gives me when I had it to her. That thank you is usually accompanied by a smile. I do love seeing that smile.

So, service isn't a grand ritual. It isn't earth moving. Often, it is just a peanut butter sandwich.

If that makes things even a tiny bit easier for her and sometimes brings a smile it is more than enough.