The (New and Improved) Loving Dominant

by John Warren

  “Captain, as Executive Officer on this ship I must protest your extraordinarily passive behavior in the presence of a sub.”

  “Mr. Libido, protest if you will, but the sub will be handled my way, or it will not be handled at all.”

  “Sir, do you mean we will capture it by projecting a calm, secure image on the rough seas?”

  “Mr. Libido, continue to learn. One day you will be a captain of a dominant ship yourself.”

  Rose, a New York submissive, phrased it this way: “I like a guy who respects himself. He is more likely to respect me and my gift to him. He is more likely to take care of himself, and by extension of me. I like a guy who understands that trust of this depth can only evolve if we take our time.

  “Some guys always overdrive their headlights, no matter how rotten the driving conditions. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like to travel fast — only that there is a time and place for that and the beginning is figuring out where all the buttons are and what they do.

  “Finally, since this is all about domination and submission, shaping behaviors and pleasing each other, I like a guy who understands at least the rudiments of shaping behavior. Some people are natural-born dominants, masters or trainers, but that doesn’t mean the skills can’t be learned. And there are lots of rules about shaping behavior that apply, no matter whom you’re shaping.”

  Making contact

  There are various media outlets for avowed dominants and submissives to seek each other out: newspapers, magazines, the Internet, clubs and associations.

  Whatever the medium, the method is to give and gain trust, for a dominant must earn the trust of a submissive by being trusting, while keeping alert for those who are flying false colors. Submissives look for this trust in an attempt to separate us from the nonconsensual sadists and those who would do them harm. Unfortunately, there are those among them who would use this trust to hurt us.

  Because of this danger, it is a good idea not to reveal too much about yourself during initial contacts. This, naturally, is directly at odds with the need to give trust. It is a delicate balance, not susceptible to easy solution.

  It’s also good to keep a sense of humor. This may not seem easy when you feel as if your beating heart has been ripped from your chest by some bastard or bitch, but life goes on. It’s important to keep both the victories and defeats in proportion.

  Without going into details, I’ll draw an illustration from my own life when things looked extremely black, so black in fact that I was sitting on my porch looking at a shotgun and debating using it to end the pain. As I sat there, I realized I needed to take a piss. At first, it enraged me that so physical a feeling should be intruding on the depth of despair I was feeling. But, then I really, really needed to take a piss. It hurt. Suddenly, I realized just how shallow a person I was to let a thing like a full bladder encroach on a moment of metaphysical torment. I broke out laughing, I pissed, and I went on with my life.

  Contact at a distance

  This is the section of Loving Dominant which has undergone the most “sea changes” as one edition follows another. Part of the changes have been due to advances in technology. When the first edition was being written, the Internet was still mostly a thing of corporations, universities and governments. Most people who had online lives did so with thirty-baud dial-up modems and connected directly to bulletin board systems, which could be as huge as Prodigy or CompuServe or as small as a home computer in someone’s spare room. Now, high speed lines connect homes to an information superhighway, and the web’s potential has increased exponentially. But one thing remains the same. People want to meet people, and computers provide powerful tools to do so.

  Before the Internet, magazine and newspaper advertisements were the preferred way to cast a wide, but impersonal, net over a large population. There were kink- dedicated, kink-friendly publications like Latent Image, or swinging magazines where you could spell out exactly what you wanted. More difficult were vanilla publications where a kind of code was prevalent. Submissives would talk about “wanting to surrender to an assertive man/ woman” or “give up control.” Dominants would mention seeking someone “restrained” or “passive.” Often, literary references supplied the clues. “I loved reading Exit to Eden/Story of 0/ Venus in Furs”… with the writer hoping the minimum-wage toiler on the advertising desk wouldn’t be able to pick up the reference.

  It is interesting that this same sort of subterfuge was necessary on some online systems in the early days. Prodigy, for one, was initially very anti-BDSM and would refuse to post messages referring to any sort of scene play. The kinky folks quickly found that they could gather in the literature section and post comments about Anne Rice’s Beauty books that were, in reality, thinly disguised description of their interests and activities.

  Now most of these magazines are things of the past, and computers are the modern way to meet others who share your interests. During a class at The Boston Dungeon Society, one female instructor casually commented, “I don’t know how anyone can be serious about their sex life if they don’t have a computer.” It got a big laugh, but the point was serious. As the computer came of age, people realized that they had a very powerful tool for communicating as well as calculating. By linking the computers to other computers, people have created thousands of networks both large and small, which can help people of similar interests find each other.

  One of the most attractive facets of most computer systems is anonymity. Most systems allow you to choose a name that serves as both an identification and as a mailing address. Your true name is a closely guarded secret.

  This is both a positive and a negative thing.

  The anonymity permits you and the other people to have frank, honest discussions on subjects which might be impossible to broach if your true identity were online. Many, dominant and submissive, male and female, feel they might be in danger of social condemnation if our vanilla friends and colleagues learned of kinky interests. Online, we can let our hair down and be ourselves, protected by the shield of anonymity.

  The dark side of the “cyber mask” is that it plays into the hands of those whom believe “honesty” is just a word in the dictionary.

  If you spend any significant amount of time in the scene, particularly online, you will encounter mindfuckers and confidence tricksters. Although they are most prevalent online, drawn there by the anonymity of the exchanges, they aren’t a creation of the computer age. Back, as Libby often puts it, “when dinosaurs roamed the Earth,” people in the scene often made contact through classified advertisements. One knowledgeable individual from that era put the percentage of fake advertisements at more than ninety percent.

  One fuel for this engine of deception was the reply mechanism. You were expected to send a letter in a sealed envelope with the advertiser’s code number written in pencil on the outside. This was supposed to be accompanied by a fee and a loose stamp. Since the publishers made money from both selling the advertisement and forwarding the reply, many succumbed to the temptation to create false advertisements and simply pocketed the reply fees (and the unattached stamp). Some recent lawsuits indicate that online dating services may be following a similar strategy to run up their numbers, increase advertising fees and tempt more people into becoming paying members.

  As Alphonse Karr put it in 1849, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” or “The more things change the more they stay the same.”

  A common form of deception is often called “the mindfucker.” Some of these mindfuckers seem have no malevolent intent, but they are simply confused or terrified by what they want. Others are just intentionally cruel.

  The most common encounter of this type begins with the exchange of a series of passionate notes or phone calls, in which she or he seems to be everything you ever wanted and more. You get hotter and hotter – and suddenly the contact is broken off. A crueler scenario could have you traveling hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles to have no one waiting for
you when you arrive.

  There is really no perfect defense from these people. The old saying, “If it seems too good to be real, it is,” applies. Getting as much information about the submissive as possible before committing to any major inconvenience or making any significant commitment is key. However, many genuine submissives are reluctant to give out much information to a relative stranger because there are nuts masquerading as dominants, too. Therefore, you must strike a balance between what you perceive as a risk and what you have as a need.

  The same rule applies to the confidence tricksters. However, they generally reveal themselves in their singleminded search for money. The scenario goes like this – she (males are most often the victims here) seems to be your dream partner. There is an exchange of letters and, perhaps, phone calls. She informs you that she wishes to fly to your arms and dungeon, but she doesn’t have the price of a plane ticket. Would you…?

  This is not to say that there are no dominants and submissives who are short on traveling money. However, such a request should send up warning flags. Other clues are typed rather than written letters and an inability or unwillingness to phone you. Again, some people find it easier to type personal letters than to write them, and a small percentage truly lacks the ability to send and receive calls. However, caution is called for.

  Fortunately, most tricksters who sink to this kind of work are woefully lacking in skill and intelligence. If they were smarter, wouldn’t they have been running an oil company? I have received “personal” letters that were photocopied, unsigned computer-generated letters and “personal” photographs that had been photocopied from bondage magazines. I don’t really object to them trying to trick me. I just wish they had a higher opinion of my intelligence.

  These sort of scams have become so common that some online matching services have posted warnings that email asking for money or originating in certain countries, like Nigeria, are to be looked at skeptically.

  Blackmailers are more difficult to deal with.

  Fortunately, the numbing of the American mind has made this a vanishing breed, except when political figures and socialites are the targets. If you don’t fit into either category, you probably have little to fear. In more than forty years in the scene, every single one of the “blackmail” efforts with which I’ve come in contact has been a byproduct of a personal dispute within the scene. Most have come out of divorces where one spouse tries to paint the other as some kind of a perverted monster either for custody reasons or to gain a monetary advantage. Less often, they have been like the flake whose loony behavior in a private club got him banned and set him on a letter writing campaign to get “even” with the club.

  These scoundrels generally constitute a minor threat. However, you run a much, much greater risk going online from the place where you work. Many people have gotten used to running quick web searches and even making online purchases on company time without a problem, and this emboldens them to do other, personal things when they are at work. The logic is, “If the company hasn’t blocked the website or mentioned the other stuff, they must not be watching.” That may not be true.

  Many companies monitor which websites their computers access. Some go further and watch each keystroke made on all the company computers. However, bosses are human and likely to ignore minor infractions of the rules as long as the work flow isn’t interfered with. They may ignore an occasional purchase or visit to a joke web-site, but things can get very different when sex is involved. Even if the boss is willing to let things slide, do you really want some pimple-faced IT drone looking electronically over your shoulder while you type? A good rule-of-thumb is, keep it at home and on your personal computer.

  Like anonymity, the Internet’s international reach is both a positive and a negative thing. It’s positive because you can be in contact with literally thousands of people, which significantly increases the chances of your finding a perfect match. On the other hand, your perfect match could be 3,000 miles away.

  When this book came out, I tried to provide a comprehensive list of websites. At the time it seemed doable. Now, with hindsight, it was like trying to count the snowflakes while standing in the middle of the damned blizzard.

  While I was rewriting this section of Loving Dominant, I did a few quick Google and Yahoo searches just on BDSM. They both returned more than twenty two million hits. That’s no longer a blizzard — that’s an ice age.

  You know how to conduct a web search, but I’ll just add a few hints. Because the search engines use information from inside the web-site, there isn’t a perfect formula for finding anything. Just try to think up terms that you think would be in the kind of page you are looking for and experiment, experiment, experiment. For example, if I were looking for a BDSM group in south Florida I might offer “BDSM,” “group” and “southeast Florida,” and I might get some hits.

  Or I might not, because a lot of sites don’t have “southeast Florida” specifically in their description. I could go wider and look for “BDSM” “group” and “Florida.” This would yield a lot more sites, but many that would be too far away to be of interest. Another approach would be to try “BDSM” “group” and “Boynton Beach,” “BDSM” “group” and “Delray Beach” or “BDSM” “group” and “Palm Beach.” There would be fewer hits, but the ones I got should be more likely to be of interest.

  Some websites are purely one way. They have information that you can see. These are the books and the advertisements of the Internet, but other sites allow you to interact with other viewers. Message areas allow you to leave a message, much like pinning a note up on a wall. Anyone who comes by can read it, and if they want, comment on it by adding other messages linked to it. Chat areas are just what they sound like. You are in a room with other people and can chat back and forth by typing messages.

  Chat rooms are really nothing new. I first encountered chat rooms when I was a graduate student at Ohio State University in the mid-’70s. A local company, CompuServe, was looking for subscribers and I joined using 110-baud teletype (kids, ask your grandfather about those). One exciting aspect was what CS called “CB Simulator.” Just as it sounds, it was a chat room that worked like the contemporary Citizen’s Band radios. After searching a bit, I found one channel that catered to people with BDSM interests. Let’s just say there was a lot of paper at the end of each day to throw away and the introduction of a CRT screen was a blessing.

  Look at chat sites as if they are scene clubs, and message sites as if they were magazines carrying classified advertisements, and things become a lot clearer. In fact, a chat room can have an advantage over a scene club. In a scene club, there are a lot of factors coming into play that may be less than helpful for the average person. Because people can see each other, they often favor the beautiful people over the interesting people. Since ninety percent of the population isn’t beautiful, we tend to get the short end of the stick in such an environment. In chat, you only see the other person’s words. That can be a big advantage in getting to know him or her. Also, online, you don’t have to contend with the blasting music that some clubs substitute for ambiance. Some people like the challenge inherent in trying to lip-read whether the person they’ve just met is mouthing “You’re cute; I like you” or “You’ve backed into a candle and your jacket is on fire.” I don’t.

  The chat sites also combine an air of intimacy with a certain psychological distance. I know one male submissive who had a great deal of difficulty with the club scene because when his advances were rejected he tended to become so embarrassed that he would leave. When his offers were rejected in a chat he found that it didn’t quite have the same impact.

  Also, in a club, people are often thinking, “Who can I go home with tonight?” This doesn’t help when you are looking for a relationship. This attitude also tends to keep a significant portion of the scene population out of these places. In a chat room, things can move at a more sedate pace. People know you aren’t going leap through the screen at the
m so they can be more forthright about what they want and how they want it.

  In a message area, you can just leave a classified advertisement if the rules allow it, but this would be the equivalent of buying a Lotus to drive to the corner store. Usually on these message boards, series of messages appear, discussing all sorts of matters from whipping techniques to levels of submission. If you start replying to messages and expressing your opinion or asking questions, you can quickly develop a reputation on the board as a thoughtful, intelligent person, and you may well find that you are being approached by someone whose interests complement your own.

  I make it a point to post helpful hints regularly on the message centers where I have accounts. I also respond to requests for information. The posts can be as simple as a list of BDSM books I have found enjoyable or as technical as scene design and execution. In fact, many of the sections of this book first appeared as messages on Prodigy between 1989 and 1991 as informational posts.

  These notes allow cautious submissives to evaluate me as a dominant without even revealing their presence. They can get an idea of what my level of skill is and how closely my philosophy of BDSM matches what they are looking for.

  By the time they contact me, the “hook” is firmly set. All that is necessary is for me to decide the extent of involvement I will permit. In many cases, it is limited to guidance and advice; in others, the involvement can become much more intense. However, the computer has permitted each of us to exercise control in an area that was appropriate.

  The most successful of these attempts yielded a short email on February 19, 1992. The full text of the message was “I think we share some interests in common.” The message was from Libby, the woman who has become my world…and my wife.

  What are you looking for?

  In my opinion, one of the major, self-imposed impediments both dominants and submissives bring to the search for a partner is a long list of requirements. Now this doesn’t mean that we need to drop back to the level of a teen- aged boy, whose only requirements in a sex partner is she needs to be alive and breathing. Compatibility is important even in a casual scene. (And if you don’t believe me, try watching the outcome of a scene between a pain-play bottom and a pony/control-play top.) In a long-term relationship, it’s vital, but just what does it take to make “compatibility?”