What Love Looks Like To Me

Context: word choice used by BDSM practitioners with a white racialized identity that would be considered a slur by many if not most people of color. Also descriptions of sexuality, which include statements about rape.

It seems funny that I'm editing and reblogging this post on my Master's birthday; my birthday is on Friday. I started with an unpublished excerpt from the tentatively titled: "So Many Changes: Book Eight" (of the Vala's Story series.)- I am reminded I'm hopelessly behind my hoped-for publishing schedule :(.


The Queen hummed to himself as he pulled objects out of the box.

Prisca watched The Queen. "You look overstuffed with joy, playing with those things for Vala, my Queen."

"Yes." The Queen patted his bed beside him. "I have not had as much time to make up for Vala's rotten upbringing, as I have with you and some of my other slaves."

"Simon gone to get the rest of the stuff, my Queen?"

The Queen nodded. "Is this not wonderful? A rag doll in Bavarian dress." He smoothed the doll's long, fire engine red braids. He gently placed the doll back in the box.

Prisca leaned against The Queen's side. "It's lovely to see how excited you get about doing stuff for us slaves, my Queen."

The Queen held Prisca to his chest. "Well you all bring me such pleasure." He gazed into Prisca's face for a moment before catching her lips with his and kissing her roughly.

"Love you, my Queen." Prisca gasped and brought her arms up to The Queen's shoulders.

In the Vala's Story series, Vala experiences two birthdays: the 19th and 20th. Above is an excerpt from the scene in which The Queen is preparing Vala's 20th birthday gift. His other slave Prisca watches on as he loads things into a large box for Vala. Does this look like what *you* think love *should* look like?

Originally this post was largely inspired by something that happened on Goodreads- as a newbie self-publisher, I made the mistake of joining an "all genre" indie review group. Live and learn :D but even with "Fifty Shades of Grey" being so read, plenty of people just really don't understand what's meant by "A BDSM book." One reviewer- having been given the option to refuse my book because of its graphic nature- exchanged private messages with me; I was confused at how she misunderstood the relationships between The Queen and his slaves. Where I saw loving care, she saw "degradation and violence."

Now let me backtrack a moment. While we shouldn't be stuck in our pasts, they certainly influence our futures. For me, the subjects of love, sex, and BDSM start with a relationship between my parents (still married) that I saw as not particularly loving. Then having received abstinence-only sexual education, my hymen was broken by an older boy without my knowledgeable or legal consent at age 13 and was totally unprepared to understand what had happened. My parents didn't react in a helpful way and in my small town middle school, the opinion was that I hadn't been raped, that I'd been willing. So began my push out of my introversion into notoriety. I went the "path of promiscuity" in responding to my rape experiences. During this time, I also came out as bisexual. And I had my first loving-a-female experience, like Vala's first female love is Iona. I'm not sure where in all these experiences of mine it happened, but "love" and "sex" became separate things in my mind, unlike the "typical" American female, it seems. In the next years followed various sex work experiences, from trading sex for drugs as a bored suburban teenager to writing erotica to performing in live sex shows on the Internet. -- Of course this was before I met Michon Neal- ze's given me so many helpful words; I suggest you take yourself on over to hir Patreon https://www.patreon.com/michon, help a writer out, and learn something.

Within those years, I learned about BDSM. I was immediately infatuated, completely smitten. But I was never looking just to engage in casual play, of a dominant "scene-ing" with me in a public play space. From the very beginning, I was looking for the Master or Mistress who I could submit to and love who would love me in return. I couldn’t accept that a continuous, loving relationship with a Dominant was impossible. Well, I've had my struggles- first off, I never found my "Iona," my female dominant who isn't of the "lick my boots" stereotype. I was absolutely in love with Tom, the dominant on whom The Queen was originally based on, but that relationship didn't work for a variety of factors, many of them outside his or my control. I waited about three months like a lovesick puppy for him to get in touch with me after he lost his living space and had to move, but it never happened. Thankfully my Master was waiting... and pushing me to "shit or get off the pot" (as He's fond of saying.) In this case, that meant admitting that Tom wasn't coming back and I'd better beg my Master's collar because He was here, attracted to me, and I to Him.

Well I sit here about 16-ish years after the collaring now. We've been through a failed triad- the other leg was my ex husband. My Master and I have experienced financial difficulties, moves, learning to be parents along with our BDSM relationship. We do indeed love each other and I don't think that at all weakens the BDSM relationship.

Now I know the ways we show our love won't ever show up on a Hallmark greeting card. If He was to bring me a dozen roses for Valentine's Day, I'd ask Him why He wasted the money. And I'd never get Him any sort of card for any holiday or situation; nope, if I'm thinking right, the "gift" would be a blowjob. To show "loving care," He's most likely to take me over His knee and give me a spanking; that's something I'll appreciate far more than a heart-shaped box of chocolates. And a simple grope of my chest, my ass as I'm doing something mundane like dishes, Master knows I love that and He enjoys such as well. Of course, in showing love, for my Master and I, we get beyond even the cultural taboo of BDSM activities to polyamory. I can't understand a love that requires two people to never have sexual activities with anyone but each other. Of course, He and I have our understandings about it, as any polyamorous couple does. However, when He has sex with another woman, I know it doesn't mean He loves me any less. While we've been a long time without "a third," our interests, needs, wants, and where we live makes finding *her* tricky- I've taken to using the phrase "Mx. Right" because I'm open to feminine people of any gender, while I think He mostly wants me to have a "girlfriend" who can take some of the stress of being a partner to a Bipolar, Autistic woman (me) off His shoulders. A happy triad might be nice in theory, but it's too easy to look like "unicorn hunters" or to in fact act like them, so what I envision today is a polyamorous-V... when I'm only thinking of flesh-and-blood people.

It's not mainstream, but it's what love looks like for my Master and I.