The most difficult thing about maintaining a stable in the suburbs is paying for it.
Cost of living is high, and when you're one person working to support five mouths, you have to have a good job, live close to the ground, or both. In my case, I have a decent job, and am accustomed to going hungryâwhich is a good thing, because I would never, ever allow my pets to be hungry or cold, or go without even the slightest creature comforts.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let me take a step back and begin at the beginning.
About me, personally, there's not much to say.
I'm in my late twenties, was born and raised in a large suburban cityâlike many others across the continentâwhich houses the majority of those who work in the actual city twenty kilometers down the road. My childhood was uneventful, and my life, up until I acquired my first pet, pleasantly mundane. However, last winter, a little after New Years, I decided as part of my resolutions to make a lifestyle change I'd been dreaming about since puberty.
Interpersonal power dynamics have always interested me.
That one person could presume themselvesâand therefore becomeâbetter than another, and that that other, equal in every way, would be willing to accept such a preposterous notion is a concept I find endlessly fascinating.
When I was younger, this interest or obsession, if you prefer, like my interest in the opposite sex, lay dormant. I would read about or see such arrangements depicted in movies or on TV, and while a part of me acknowledged a special interestâa kind of pre-sexual cognizanceâthe rest of me remained ignorant of the impact such a realization should make.
Then puberty happened and everything changed.
My feelings began to take a decidedly sexual note.
My first remembered orgasm was to an imagined fantasy involving one of my classmates struggling to free herself from a web of ropes I'd woven around her. I don't know what turned me on more: her exertionsâshe was really stuckâor the fact that, in my twisted little fantasy, she had submitted herself willingly to that situation, in order to please me.
Suddenly I was scouring our collection of VHS tapesâlater I would turn to my dad's collection of yellowing booksâfor any sight or sign of a damsel in distress. On one particularly shameful occasion, while the rest of my family was out doing something, I snuck into my sisters room and stole her a couple of her dollsâwhich I then promptly bound with twine taken from the kitchen. All of which was fun, but felt to me decidedly juvenile. I was in high school, then, and hungry for information, certain there was more to these feelings than I, in my limited capacity, understood. Like everyone my age, I turned to the internet, and two things happened almost at once. First, I learned a generic term to describe that which I'd been enamored with my whole life, and second, I discovered pornography.
I watched grainy, slow-to-buffer videos of women being gagged, tied up, whipped. I devoured images of bondage, humiliation, pleasure and pain mixed together in a series of snapshots that told a story far more effectively than the videos (the technology wasn't yet there to support video of any length or quality). Most important of all, I readâanything and everything I could find about the mysterious and sometimes baffling world of Bondage, Dominance, Sadism and Masochism. Like the related visuals, the quality of written works was all over the place. Some of it was obviously written by crackpots, lost in their own delusions; but a lot of it was good, offering sound, practical advice about how to safely practice the various ways of surrendering to or receiving power from another. There were fiction stories, too, written in abundance, some of which I still turn to for inspiration to this day.
But as you know, there is a big difference between reading about somethingâdreaming and fantasizing about itâand actually doing it. Parallel to all this, I had my first relationships. Given our ages at the time, I won't reveal here the more prurient aspects of those relationships, but what I will say is this: by the time I reached the age of majority, I knew what my role in relation to the opposite sex would be; likewise, I also knew what kind of woman I found attractive, and with which I wold like to spend the rest of my life.
***
Prior to acquiring a job that allowed me the privilege of working from home, I used to leave before six in the morning and I wouldn't return until well after five in the evening. In that time, my petsâthough in the beginning there was only oneâwere free to occupy themselves in any number of ways proscribed in advance by me, subject to their own approval. For instance, different days allowed for different domestic chores, and each pet had a list of things she was responsible for on a weekly basis. These occupied the bulk of her time, so the sooner she completed her list, the more free time she had. Of course that meant that, in the beginning when I had only one pet, she was almost as busy as I wasâcooking, cleaning, doing the laundryâbut there was always time built into her schedule for leisure. (In my experience, a bored slave is an unhappy slave, and even the least imaginative require some relief from their daily existence.) But the more pets I got, the less each had to do, which meant coming up with things to keep them occupied until I got home was more and more of a hassle.
Apart from my comings and goings, which were always celebrated and lamented, respectively, I had very little time left each night with which to spend on my pets. Rather than foster a spirit of cooperation and mutual admiration and respect (between my pets), this led to competition and strife, both of which I had no use for in my household.
I realized I had a choice.
Either I could put up with my job and all its faults, or I could find a new one.
I knew it wouldn't be easy, given my skillset and the amount I required to keep the lights on each month, but then, nothing worth doing is easy, if you'll pardon the cliche. I could bore you with the details of my job search, which I conducted nights and weekends after having worked a full day, trying to find time in between it all to make sure my pets were satisfied. But I won't. Suffice it to say that, after a lot of digging, I got lucky, which is probably how more of us get elevated in our station than we'd care to admit (the main difference between me and someone else are the factors that increase my odds of being noticed: being male and caucasian, for example, with the rubber stamp of a university educationâeven in something as useless as arts). I landed a job doing freelance writing, and all of a sudden I was home most of the week, and making more money than before.
That night, I assembled my pets, all four of them, and we celebrated together in the living room.
Paris, my first and most beloved, a pale, beautiful brunette, with big brown eyes and even bigger breasts, raised a toast in my honor.
"To our master," she said from where she knelt, naked save for a pair of sheer black stockings, front and centre of the little group of women, two on one side of her and one on the other. "Who feeds and takes care of us, and gives meaning to our lives."
My other pets raised their glasses, we touched, then drank together.
Some of my pets had champagne in their glasses, while others sipped chilled urine.
And it was this simple fact that reminded me of two important things:
First, what extremes my pets will go to for our mutual pleasure. Second, how insubstantial, how utterly unimportant and small I would be without them. A "dominant man" without a submissive (or submissives) to form the yin to his yang is nothing more than a glorified fuck boy. A poseur extraordinaire who deserves all the contempt in the universe. Trust is earned, if you'll allow me to add truisms to my list of literary sins, and I've devoted my life to earning the trust of those who live in my house and under my rules.
***
In addition to Paris, whom I've already mentioned, there are three other women in my suburban stable:
Jamie is nineteen. She moved in a few weeks after she graduated high school, mostly to escape her parents but also to satisfy a lifelong curiosity she's had about the submissive lifestyle. She's tall and thin, a lithe blonde with intense grey eyes that, on the rare occasions they meet mine, are enough to make me questionâif only momentarilyâwho is in charge. She likes strict, and I can't emphasize that enough, bondage, and she gets off on denial. Her days most often consist of doing a few odd chores, attending to her personal hygiene, and being left tied as tightly as it is safe for her to be, so she can wriggle endlessly in her bonds.
Melissa is, after Paris, the oldest. At twenty five, she's a few years younger than me. A recent graduate of universityâshe studied history at the same school I went toâshe learned about her kinky proclivities from her first boyfriend, who introduced her to the works of Pauline Reage, Jean de Berg, and the Marquis de Sade. She is a dyed in the wool masochist with a particular taste for emotional torment and humiliation. Short, curvy, and utterly captivating, her dark hair, brown eyes and tan skin lend her the appearance of a Greek goddessâfeminine and powerful, the picture of health and beauty (even if she sometimes needs reassurances to both facts).