The Pleasure Boy 23

Note: Henceforth, for convenience and clarity, I will talk about 'Sorkin' or 'Prof. Sorkin' in connection with her public persona and our official, student-teacher relationship. Talking about her as a Domme, and about our private, D/s relationship, I will call her 'Mistress Natasha,' or 'Natasha' for short, with no disrespect intended. One thing that I admired about her, and one of her strengths as my Domme, was her ability to keep those roles separate.

After I'd stripped for her and licked her to a good orgasm, Natasha dismissed me. She had agreed to accept me as her pupil and to become my thesis advisor eventually. I had agreed to train her from below as a com­petent Domme, serving her sexually and as a research assistant. At that first meeting, that was as far as we got. No arrangements had been made. No details had been discussed. The professor had sent me off, saying that she would phone when she wished to see me again. I knew that we would need a formal contract eventually and had notified my Mom and Lisa accordingly. But for the time being, my new Mistress Natasha wanted to keep our relationship quiet, and we would have to play it by ear.

Still, there was a lot to think about, because our relationship would not be a simple one. My service to her would be restricted in at least two ways: by my own studies and research as a graduate student, and by my need to earn some money. My father had agreed to help me, and I had agreed to accept his help. I did not need to worry about paying McGill's tuition. Even my food and rent would be paid for if needed. But I did not wish to be completely dependent on my well-to-do father. Though he could easily afford to put me through school, a difference of opinion about my life plans had come between us at the outset, and had set me on this geisho path with my mother's help. Working part-time, I meant to earn a significant income by myself.

Eventually, the terms of this arrangement would need to be spelled out in my contract with Natasha Sorkin. At the outset, however, they would have to evolve day-by-day in our working routines by mutual understanding. I would serve and obey my Mistress-in-training, and would accept discipline for any failures. She would always have the last word, and the right to punish me for disobedience. At the same time, I would insist on my necessary study time, research time and work time and would require my Mistress to accept that autonomy. Of course, that meant we would sometimes have to argue over details, and that my bum would sometimes get stripes; but with a shared commitment to make the relationship work, we would take its problems in stride.

With all these thoughts in mind, I attended classes, went about my business, and awaited a first summons from Mistress Natasha. Almost two weeks went by while I wondered what she was thinking. Finally, on a Friday evening, she called. "Is this a command or an invitation?" she asked me. "Does our arrangement give me power to command your presence, or do you have the right to refuse?"

I thought quickly how I should answer her. "That's something that will need to be agreed between us, and spelled out in our contract eventually. By default, as my Mistress, you can command me. But there will be specified situations in which I'll have a right to decline. I may have a work gig scheduled. I may have an exam coming up and need the time to study. I may have a prior engagement. We may agree that I'm entitled to some notice. As it happens, this evening I'm free so there is no problem. I can say 'Your wish is my command, Mistress,' and come right over. But it's something we need to talk about. We'll need some agreements to make this arrangement work."

"Right now, I need to shower and shave before I come over. I'll be about an hour."

"No," Natasha said. "Just bring your razor and come. I'm going to tell you how I want you shaved, and watch you do it. Then we'll shower together. I've been following some of those links you sent me on what it means to be a Domme with a sub. This will be a good way to get started."

"Yes, Mistress," I answered. "I'll be right over."

When I got there, Natasha had me strip and pose for her while she looked me over. "I like the light hair on your arms and legs," she said. "I'll let you keep that. And your face and head are fine. You don't have too much hair on your chest, and I'll also leave that alone. But I'm going to take the hair off your back and bum, and all around your groin. Your armpits too."

"We'll do it in the bathroom, where it will be easy to clean up. Come."

In her bedroom, she had me undress her. As nude as I was, we went to the bathroom, where she plugged my electric razor into the wall and watched me shave my face, my armpits and my pubic hair. Then she took the razor from me and used it for a first pass on my backside, followed up with her own shaving cream and safety razor. Finally, she had me lie face-up on the floor and hold my legs apart while she shaved my scrotum and anus. "There," she said. "This is how I want you. You can do almost all of it by yourself. I'll help you when you come over, with any parts you can't reach." In fact, though she often inspected me, she almost never needed to do anything. I had the grooming staff at Allard's assist me with my back and between my legs when I was prepping for a gig.

Next we showered together. First, she washed every part of me, taking this time to fondle it and get to know my body. Then she had me do the same for her, except for her hair, which she did herself. "I'll teach you how to care for my hair some other time," she said. She had me dry every part of her, worshipfully and carefully. Then she let me dry myself.

"Before we have sex, let's have a drink and talk," she ordered. "There are a few things I need to tell you."

"One rule, before we start," I told her. "BDSM and alcohol don't mix. You should never drink or do a recreational drug before a scene. As in driving, you need to be alert and in full control. And if you can't indulge, your sub certainly should not."

"Understood," my Mistress said. "We can have gin and tonics without the gin. Is that all right with you?" She brought two iced glasses with lime wedges from her fridge along with two cans of tonic water. After she poured, we waved our glasses to toast each other.

"As I said," she went on, "I've been doing some reading. I understand that as my submissive, all the sex we have will be on my terms."

"That's correct," I answered. As your sub, my first pleasure is to give you pleasure - and to enjoy the pleasure that you are having. Any other pleasure that I receive is a gift from you, or a reward for my good service. In particular I'm not allowed to cum or masturbate without your permission. I've been trained in self-control; but if you don't trust me not to play with myself, or have any unauthorized sex, you can have me wear a cock cage."

"As I said before about commands and invitations, that is the default. There will have to be exceptions for my escort gigs."

"OK," Natasha said. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'll probably get you a cock cage soon, just for the pleasure of watching you wear it. And for the pleasure of taking it off you when allow you the use of your penis. But there's no hurry with that. But, if you are going to serve me sexually, I need to give you some rules and guidelines."

"The main point is that I am not a great fan of the missionary position, or of male genital penetration in any position. There will be times when I want a good poke. There will be times when I allow you to fuck me because you deserve a reward. But, in general, what gets me off is skilful stimulation with your lips, tongue and fingers. As a professional sub, you'd probably be insulted if I asked whether you can accept that, so I won't. I'll just tell you that that's how it will be."

"Very good, Mistress," I replied. "It will be as you say." And so it was.

At the outset, that was all I really knew about about Natasha's sexual interests. As the weeks passed, and my Friday evenings with her became a habit for both of us, I came to learn much more about her. I learned:

• that she was strongly interested in

power

, including sexual power, and in the creative uses of power

per se

- the power to make choices and to get things done;

• that she had little interest in romantic, egalitarian sex, where there was no clear distinction between the taker and the taken, between the fuck

er

and the fuck

ee

; that she mostly preferred to be the taker, but also like the other role sometimes;

• that scenes of consensual bondage or punishment turned her on, where scenes of coerced bondage or punishment strongly turned her off.

Among these findings, the only one that surprised her was her potential for lesbian D/s relationships. "I've worked for attractive women and had some attractive women working for me," she told me, "I felt attraction aesthetically, but never sexually. I never felt I wanted to get it on with them."

I answered, "Ma'am, you probably never thought of other women as possible sexual targets before. See what happens now that you've read and watched some good lesbian BDSM erotica."

Much later, Natasha acknowledged that she was looking at attractive women in a new way. "It's not that I now want to dominate females or have sex with them. It's still good-looking, interesting guys that I want serving me. But I now imagine power contests with some women in sexual terms. Fantasies of a defeated female rival kneeling in submission between my thighs. That sort of thing. I never did that before."

Now with a professional submissive at her beck and call, Mistress Natasha's sexual appetite increased markedly. Able now to get skilfully induced orgasms whenever she wanted them, she found herself wanting them much more frequently. At the beginning, Natasha sent for me only once a week - on the Friday night decreed for such indulgence. But soon she was summoning me several times a week, and trying to keep me around on weekends. She was cutting into my study time and money-making time, and I had to slow her down. In this way, clear contracting between us became an urgent need.

Mistress Natasha was already proficient in the uses of feminine power; on this level, she needed scope and encouragement, but no instruction from me. Somehow, she had learned - as most girls do - that men and women draw social power from different sources, and respond to the power of others in different ways. Where men rely too much on aggressivity and physical strength, women notoriously compensate with subtlety and guile. But women also have two specifically female sources of power: the prolonged experience that we all share of having been nagged and nurtured by mothers, and a greater prerogative of sexual selection than the males of our species, just as Darwin described. Many cultures discourage women from using their natural feminine powers. Many women who get past this discouragement become family tyrants. Relatively few women learn to use their feminine powers adroitly and wisely.

Natasha Sorkin, for all the tragedy of her childhood, had found some good instructors and role models and had grown up very well. An attractive woman with a high-status position in an open society, she was also a gifted, natural Domme. I had occasional objections, but no real complaints about the ways she used me. When I had to remind her that I needed more study time, or more work time than she was allowing me, she readily apologized and moderated her demands. Her only real limitation as a Domme - and I am careful to say 'limitation,' not 'shortcoming' - was a certain chilliness of temperament. I could not find the same warmth in her that I felt in Dominants like Mistress Lotte or Master Thomas or my mother. With a sub who liked to feel a little afraid of his Domme, she might have been perfect. With a sub like me who preferred close friendship and love, there would always be an element of frustration.

In our time-out discussions, when I called her on her traits of coolness and reserve, she told me that she was aware of them herself. "Remember my background," she would say. "I grew up and was educated in Russia. As my parents had been killed in the war with Hitler, I grew up in a State orphanage. The staff knew very well what had happened to our country, and they tried their best to compensate for our loss. I was very well cared-for, but even the best professionals are not the same as loving parents."

"Much later, as an adult, I came to Canada where I found welcome and some prestige as a Russia-expert, but was stalked and sometimes insulted as an attractive young woman. Where could I have learned 'warmth'? I've had to learn to live without it. I use skill and care as substitutes for love. I'm aware of what is missing in me, and I try to fake it (sometimes successfully); but I'm aware too that sensitive friends, students, colleagues and lovers can tell I'm faking something that I don't really feel."

"What can I say, Jim? I'm giving you what I have. Too bad for both of us, if it's not enough."

Topping from below, trying to help my Mistress any way I could, I made allowances. I tried to model emotional openness and warmth in my own behaviour. Occasionally, I mentioned this matter in our time-out chats - never as an accusation; always just as something she might want to work on and improve. In her time with me she learned to fake warmth better, and I could only hope that some day it might be real.

It soon became clear that Mistress and I were managing a complicated two-headed affiliation: our academic relationship, and our D/s sexual connection. Keeping them straight and giving each their due was a tricky problem for both of us.

We were not living together yet. Apart from keeping her sexually satisfied and doing the occasional chore for her, I served my Mistress primarily as a research assistant. Sorkin's field could be summed up as the history of Central Asia's natural resources - the history of their ownership, extraction and processing. In ancient and medieval times, the main resource had been solar energy, captured and converted into usable calories by the vast steppe grass lands, which were then controlled and exploited by Scythian, Mongol and Turkic horse-archers who lived on the meat and milk of the animals that grazed there. In modern times (beginning roughly in the 18

th

century), it became apparent that Central Asia was rich in other natural resources - potable water, hydroelectric power, hydrocarbon fuels and assorted scarce metals and other materials - of value only to peoples with the advanced technologies needed to extract and process them and to market their products. Control of these resources had more and more fallen into the hands of a fragile Russian Empire which had repeatedly fallen and revived again, and was at present warring to rebuild itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the whole world, Sorkin was one of just a few dozen authorities on Russian empire in central Asia, with its Chinese, Turkish, European and now American opponents and rivals. Her research at that time was on the current conflicts for control of Central Asian resources. She used me to write up and help organize her notes, to check her various sources one against another, and then to review, edit and proofread the manuscripts of her journal papers. This was difficult (if not specially responsible) work that could only be done by a colleague-in-training, which is what graduate students are.

The sexual side of our relationship might have been handled by any competent lover with BDSM experience, but I was and am rather more than that. I was a trained specialist in the paradoxical, geisha field of pain and discipline as pleasure. My role with Natasha Sorkin was not just to gratify her sexually, but to teach her the rudiments of my art as she was teaching me hers. From below, as her submissive, I was teaching her to be a competent, amateur, lifestyle Domme, not just with me but with other subs who might attract her. That was the assignment she had given me, and I was doing my best, as matter of professional pride and for my own self-interest as her currently serving partner.

You will understand that our complicated relationship had its inherent conflicts of interest:

• as Sorkin's pupil I had to study hard and 'steal her knowledge,' so to speak - take what I could from her of the best she had;

• as her research assistant I had to serve her loyally and well, doing the job and not withholding nuggets to advance my own career;

• as her submissive lover, I had to take almost anything she might choose to give me; in return, give her pleasure and, in large part, take most my own pleasure from the pleasure I gave her;

• and finally, as her instructor and trainer, I had to teach her the attitudes, knowledge and skills she might need to handle other lifestyle submissives. She wanted to be a Domme, and would not have me around forever.

For myself, and for her too, I think, it took some fancy juggling to keep those balls in the air.

One crucial skill that I had to teach my Mistress was the art of corporal punishment. How do you inflict pain in such a way that your submissive craves it and comes back for more? How do you actually

punish

(when you need to) someone for whom discipline and pain itself are something of a reward? For a novice Domme, some skill with the implements of BDSM is easily acquired given proper instruction and practice. The needed sensitivity - to be aware of the effects that you are actually producing on this other person's body and soul can only come with experience - to a Domme who already has a good attitude, which is largely a matter of temperament, but of penal philosophy as well. In real life, punishment is inflicted on wrong-doers for a variety of inconsistent purposes: for retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and restoration of a damaged (or broken) relationship. In D/s, only deterrence of undesired behaviour and restoration or refinement of the relationship are appropriate aims for the Dominant.

Both in D/s and in real life, relationship is key. Bad laws and criminal behaviour can be seen as symptoms of defective relationship. The ideal purpose of law and punishment is to establish, maintain and restore a right relationship among the citizens of a society, and of each individual to the group as a whole.

Having grown up in Soviet Russia, the idea that pain might be inflicted on someone either as punishment or sadistically, just for the fun of it, was certainly not new to Natasha Sorkin. But the idea that measured, precisely controlled pain might be accepted, and even desired and welcomed by someone was very new. Also, like most decent, well-meaning people, Natasha at first resisted the recognition of her own natural sadism. I gave her a tawse, and got her to spank me with it when she was in any way displeased with me. I even got her to review my punishment book with me every week, as Lisa had been doing, and to work off demerit points on my bottom. She was appalled at the discovery that she enjoyed this ritual, and could not grasp that I had been trained to need and want this discipline.

As an educated Russian woman, she had read Dostoevsky's novel on this subject ('

Crime and Punishment

,' written in 1866), but the idea that authentically accepted punishment could be liberating, cleansing, even redemptive, was foreign to her - though that is a central point of the book. Likewise, though she enjoyed having me nude and over her knee, and could lay into my bare ass like a champion, she felt guilty for enjoying this as much as she did. My problem was

both

to get her to accept and enjoy her natural sadism, and to keep it under control - not to inflict more pain than would help further the D/s relationship, and never to inflict permanent damage or even break the skin.