Pretty Things - Thank You, Tom Ford

Some of the best erotic photography these days is high-concept fashion advertising. The designer Tom Ford, in particular, has explored a theme that is near and dear to my heart: the vulnerability and beauty of the nude female form coupled with elegantly-clothed males. My favorite in this set is the wedding picture on the stairs. So, thanks Tommy.

Relish Her Tears

"Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare . . . It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure.  You should never have agreed to be a god for me if you were afraid to assume the duties of a god, and we all know that they are not as tender as all that. You have already seen me cry. Now you must learn to relish my tears. And my neck: is it not charming when, filled with a moan I am striving to stifle, it grows tense and contorted in spite of my attempts to control to it? It is all too true that when you come to call on us, you should bring a whip along."

Pauline Reage

The Plastic Maiden

Once the ropes are set I stand back to admire my handiwork.

She is bent over the end of the table, cuffed at the wrist and ankle. It is a big, sturdy country-style supper table, painted and stained lacquer black. Ropes tie each of her limbs to the four legs, pulled taught, unyielding and pitiless. I can see the strain in her shoulders, back, the long quadriceps quivering. I have positioned her high on the table, the edge bisecting her perfectly at the hip joints and pussy. She is long-legged but can barely reach the floor and only then up on her toes.

She has worn a black latex hood for the past hour while I spanked her and warmed up her nipples with small hair clips.  When I led her blindly into the back room she knew what was coming and trembled visibly while I prepared the ropes.

This table is my own special creation, custom-designed for suffering and pleasure. When I made it, I went to an office supply store and bought a simple plastic office floor mat, the kind with a flat surface backed by sharp teeth for gripping carpets.  I cut it into strips and then glued them, teeth-up, onto the table in two spots: the edge at one end and then another series of strips at the midpoint.  Craftsmanship is important; I carefully measured my submissive and the table to make sure she would feel exactly what I wanted her to.

And now, as I watch, she lays with the weight of her body hitting the rows of cruel points at her pussy and hips on one end and her tits on the other. She whimpers with the effort of trying to keep herself off the teeth. It is impossible, of course. Her arms are stretched so far in front of her that she gets only limited leverage with her elbows to ease the agony in her nipples.  Only when up on her toes can she bring at least some relief to her pussy and even then in only short bursts before her toes slip on the tile floor and the full weight of her hips drops back on top of the torture strips.

The Plastic Maiden, I call it. The mere mention of it brings dread into her eyes and quickens her breath. She fears it and craves it in equal measure.

The sides of her pale breasts as they pillow out from beneath her are stark contrast to the ice-colored plastic teeth and I know that her brown nipples, so prominent and sensitive, are trapped beneath her. It feels like being stung by ants, she had told me. I admire the calf muscles cording with effort and that ass, already striped red, bobbing as she tries to keep her pussy off the cruel points. She moans with the exertion, then cries out when she falls flat.

Her pussy? No. My pussy. Just watching her torment makes me hard.

Eventually I will flog her again but for now I don't want anything to distract from the stinging in her pussy and tits.

And after she is flogged and the burning in her shoulders, cheeks and thighs have begun to distract her from those endless, infinite rows of needlelike teeth, I  will lean over and whisper into her ear what's going to happen next.

"I'm going to fill that ass," I will whisper, tender as a lover. "I'm going to fuck it and fill it completely and I'm not going to stop."

But not yet. Right now I watch her squirm and sob softly in her helplessness and feel the blood rush into my cock.

Pretty Things - Simple Pleasures

Complication has it's place but in the end I always return to simple classicism: a submissive and her vulnerability. Nude, bound, blindfolded. True vulnerability and exposure. Intricate ropework and limb positioning can be lovely but what I want is accessibility.

Saturday Morning

            Saturday morning -- the best part of any week and the girl is still sleeping. Never an early riser, the one aspect of her training that has never taken is for her to wake first. I forgive her this because she has otherwise responded so eagerly to everything else I’ve demanded and because I love her but forgiveness does not evade consequences and she is reminded of this flaw on a regular basis.  She lays on her stomach, arms tucked under the pillow and face beneath a tangle of hair turned towards me. I draw the sheet back, all the way down the length of her body and her skin glows softly in the light streaming through the window. 

She is nude, as she has been since I came home from work yesterday and as she will be until I decide otherwise and I admire my handiwork: the long lines of her legs, firm ass, toned shoulders and back, the smooth even tan.  She is beautiful but dismissive when I tell her so – “You see me with special eyes,” is her usual response.  But she learned long ago to accept my opinion as the only one that matters and dutifully swims, goes to yoga and has (mostly) discarded her smoking and Krispy Kreme habit.  I am quite proud of her.

Her skin feels good beneath my palm as I trace the soft velvet curves and her ass moves against me. I love the cool flat of her back where sweat gathers when I am fucking her and the delicate arch of the trapezius between her shoulders and neck. I kiss here first then bite gently on my to her neck where I breathe in her scent and feel myself respond, growing hard against her hip. 

She is more awake now and moans softly, one hand coming up behind her to slide through my hair, gripping tightly. I nuzzle her neck, kissing and biting, then capture her wrist and flip her over bringing both wrists up above her head and pinning them to the mattress and at this she moans out loud and before the maneuver is even complete she has spread her legs wide, inviting, pleading. I gaze down at her: her half-lidded eyes, hard-tipped tits, the swell of her hips beneath her flat belly.  I can smell her already; she has been on restriction since last Sunday and for a girl who used to masturbate in her car on her lunch break to relieve her tension she has felt every one of the past five days.   I squeeze her tits and she arches against me and when I roll a nipple between my fingers she cries out loud.

Now her eyes are open, cloudy with need.

“Please, Master . . . “ she breathes.

I roll away from her onto my back pulling her over with me, directing her hand to where I want it to go.  She sits up, straddling my leg so that I can feel her wet against me and lowers her mouth to my waiting cock. I lean back and watch her serve me.  Her hair spills across my belly and she grips the shaft with one hand while her head bobs up and down, making a soft mewling noise with every stroke as if she were being fucked. The orgasm she gives me is as close as she’s going to get to an orgasm today and she knows it.  If I am happy with her this weekend she’ll get to cum for me tomorrow night. If I am happy. 

I live for these weekends when the days are scrubbed clean of mundane  demands and for two days we do not have to compromise who and what we are. If I want her nude and collared all day and night, so she shall be. I don’t have to share her in any way with jobs, chores, errands and even in our interactions with the outside world I set all of the terms.  Some of my vanilla friends know her as my leggy girlfriend who never wears a bra and I take perverse pleasure in that; for these two days, she is all mine in every conceivable.

As she sucks and grinds against me with increasing desperation I think about what I have planned for today – a trip to the nude beach and then dinner out – and what she will wear or not wear, where we will go what we do. A vision flashes before me: we are at dinner tonight on South Beach and she is a in a wispy dress that clings to her curves and highlights the color of her eyes, hair tumbling softly to her sun-kissed shoulders.  She looks at me across the table and I see the slight furrow in her brow and the seeing-not-seeing stare that means she is in a desire-fuelled haze of submission and I know that she belongs completely and unreservedly to me.

I cum instantly and hard, hands tangled in her hair.

Myriam

She could feel the villagers even though she couldn’t see them.  There were no sounds other than the clink and rattle of the soldiers’ buckles and straps, none of the usual background noise of the village.  No shouting or laughing or barking dogs or clucking chickens.  Just the roaring of blood in her own ears.  Myriam knew that they were taking her to the platform in the middle of the square, just a straight line from the door of the sachristy where she’d been held but she felt dizzy and disoriented, almost as if she couldn’t even tell which direction was up.  She could feel the mud and stones beneath her feet and between her toes and knew it should feel cold but it wasn’t, just wet. 

They didn’t bother to tell her when they arrived at the platform.  There was a hesitation in their forward motion and she kicked the bottom step with her toe.  Again, she knew it should hurt but all she felt was the pressure.  This was reassuring.  Maybe none of it will hurt, she thought.  Reaching out blindly with her feet she found the flat of the step and moved forward and now that were hands reaching for her, grabbing and pulling and lifting.  They were holding her arms and shoulders and hip, the palm of one sliding around behind her to cup one buttock as they turned her, strong fingers wrapped in her hair to guide her, pushing her off balance. For an instant she was weightless and almost cried out and then the bench came up hard beneath her and she was sitting.  The other hands were gone now, only the one in her hair and when he began speaking she realized it was the captain.

“You people!” he cried out.  “You have harbored a traitor and a whore in your midst!” He was trying to project his thin voice but it just came out loud and brassy. He took a deep breath. “This bastard bitch, whose mother was the village whore, you should have seen what she would become!  She fucked traitors and fed traitors and sheltered traitors and now you will watch her die like a traitor!”

The fingers in her hair pulled up so that she was sitting erect and there was a ripping noise that she couldn’t immediately place.  She heard the villagers gasp now and right away angry muttering, an old woman somewhere saying “Dios” and she was confused again until she felt the cool air sweeping over her, skin goosebumping and nipples rising to meet the evening mist and she realized they had torn off her blouse to display her to the crowd.  

“Look at her!” the captain said.  “Gaze upon her! She is not deserving of humility or respect for she has no shame! A brazen whore and traitor!”

Then he released her and she heard his boots scrape on the stairs and he was gone.

She still wasn’t cold but her breasts felt impossibly full and Myriam thought that here at the end her mind must be deserting her because, as she sat waiting for the crash of rifles, it occurred to her that if the captain were to return and touch her she would shudder with release right there on the platform before the entire village.

She took a deep breath.

Myriam woke up back in the sachristy and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a thick candle bleeding wax.

For a long time she stared at it, afraid to move or even take inventory of herself.  There was no feeling, not evening numbness, just floating even though she knew was laying on the same bench where she had spent the last four nights.  Nights. Was it day or night? The room was dark. She knew that a glance at the door would tell her whether daylight was seeping in from the bottom or not but she didn’t want to leave the candle.  She couldn’t remember anything after taking that last breath.  Had there been rifles? An intervention, divine or otherwise? Obviously she was back where she had started but did she walk or was she carried?

The candle flame didn’t flicker.  It burned steady and straight, unmoving.

Her senses began to return to her.  The smell of the small room – sweat, shit, damp – boiled up around her and she smiled as if at an old friend.  She could see beyond the candle now, at the same old table upon which it sat, the bare plaster wall behind, the blank spots on the walls where things had been hung.  Now she was aware of the straw and hard wood beneath her, scratchy against her skin, and the itch of dried sweat and her unshaven legs.

I’m here, she said and the sound of her own whispered voice startled her.

Slowly, as if she were made of glass and might shatter, she raised herself up, first on her arms and then sitting.

The world beyond the locked door was dark.  It was night.

They had returned her to her cell but taken her clothes and she was completely nude.  Even the blanket had been removed.  Myriam touched herself gingerly and was relieved to discover she had not been raped.  She felt no bruises or cuts or welts so apparently they had not beaten her, either. 

What had happened? A last minute reprieve, the prisoner dragged from the platform, stripped and locked away again. But who? Not the captain, surely, but he was the supreme power in the village and he was adamant about having her executed.  No one else had the authority to override his decision, at least not without using force.  Had Grimaldi returned and rescued her? But if that had had happened, why was she still a prisoner?

There was no way to know now. The truth would reveal itself eventually.

She lay back down, curled into herself against the chill, and soon was asleep.

A wagon pulled by a team of horses arrived in the village three days after the battle at the end of a long column of soldiers in blue-gray uniforms.  An officer on horseback had arrived first with his sword drawn, riding to the middle of the square where he was greeted by a sergeant and four privates, the only survivors of the force that had attacked and taken the town. The rest of his men filled in the square and then fanned out, searching and taking defensive positions.    There were irregular dark mounds lined up in the mud and even though he was expecting to see them, it took the colenel a moment to recognize that they were made up of corpses.  He looked at them just long enough to determine which were the enemy, which were his men and which were villagers and made no mention of the fact that the third pile was the largest.  Then he glanced around at the buildings fronting the square, noting with much more interest the pitted and gouged walls, broken out windows, the collapsed roof of the flame-scorched hulk of what appeared to have been the home of the town’s most prosperous citizen.

He received the sergeant’s report, less interested in the actual details than the numbers and was gratified to hear that the enemy’s losses were significantly higher than those of his own army but mildly annoyed that an estimated dozen of the enemy had slipped away.  The surviving attackers had begun to filter in from their positions, now occupied by the colenal’s men, throughout the town.  They were dirty, soot- and blood-stained, with hollow eyes and sagging shoulders.  Some of them supported wounded comrades wearing crude bandages or using broken rifle stocks as crutches.  As they assembled he nodded to his own orderly to bring wagon up.

“You fought well,” he told the sergeant.  “Where is Lieutenant Mendoza’s body?”

“We buried the dead, sir, behind the church.” He hesitated. “They were beginning to stink.”

The colenal nodded matter-of-fact.  “Disinter Mendoza, we’re returning him to the coast.  Leave the others.”  He turned as the wagon creaked to a stop.  “Your wounded who cannot walk, ride.  The rest walk.  Send out an advance patrol along the road, we’re leaving immediately.”  He was still holding his sword as if he intended to use it and as the sergeant barked out orders and wounded men climbed painfully or were lifted onto the wagon and a three-man patrol began trotting wearily back down the road along which the reinforcements had come he finally sheathed it.

“Now show me the girl,” he said.

The church had been battered but the sachristy, a low stone building built against one wall but not actual attached to it, seemed to have escaped.  It was the most secure structure on the square, with a heavy iron-hinged oak door and no windows.  Two men stood guard and a heavy padlock had to be negotiated – with difficulty as the colenal noted for the first time the sergeant was missing two fingers from one hand and although the wound was obviously fresh he wore no dressing – before entrance could be gained.  Watery sunlight filtered into a dark, stuffy room that at one time had stored vestments, bibles and other supplies but now was empty except for a low straw-covered bench and precarious table.  The air was hot and thick and smelled of piss and shit from the privy bucket that he could see in a far corner.

“It stinks in here,” he said and stopped just inside the doorway.

The sergeant waited outside and said nothing.

She had been laying on the bench and now raised herself up on one elbow, blinking sleepily.  The colenal had been a prisoner.  There isn’t much else to do but sleep.

“Stand up,” he told her.

The girl was filthy.  According to the sergeant, she had been held by the army for nearly a week before the battle, locked in the sachristy continuously except for one brief trip out into the square where the officer in charge had lined her up in front of a firing squad as the whole village watched.

“Why didn’t they shoot her?” he asked.

“At the very moment there was a report the rebels were attacking so they put her away to face the attack.  The officer intended to bring her out the next day and finish it but that was the day of our own attack.”

The colenal turned and looked at him. “How do you know this?”

“Prisoners, sir.”

“Prisoners? I didn’t see any prisoners.”

“We shot them, sir.”

He turned back.  The girl watched them impassively, her body relaxed and seemingly unconcerned but her eyes alert and never leaving his, not even when he ran his own gaze up and down her length.  His army had been in the field for more than three months, fighting their way inland from the coast and the only women he could remember seeing were either toothless old cronies or corpses.  This was one was decidedly neither.

“Who is she?”

“They said the daughter of the local whore.”

At this her gaze flickered, but only for a moment.

“Where is the mother now?”

He could hear the sergeant’s shrug.

“Where is your mother?

It took her several long moments before she tried to answer and even then she had to work her jaw and lips to produce enough saliva to speak and when she did her voice creaked with rust. 

“Dead, sir.”

“Father?”

“Dead, sir.”

“Why are you here?”

“She was fucking the rebel commander, sir.” the sergeant broke in.

At this the colonel laughed and turned back to the sergeant.  “They had an actual commander? Who kne?  What happened to him?”  

“Dead, Major.   They said they trapped him in a ravine just north of here and shot him.  The day before we arrived.”

The girl flinched, just barely.

“Well,” the colonel said. He sized her up again. Long legs, round hips, full high tits.  Her hair was matted and caked with dirt and sweat but it was thick and fell almost to the small of her back.  It didn’t take much imagination to see what was there. It didn’t take any, actually. Even in that state she would be a dangerous distraction to a fighting army on the move.

“Clean her up. Get something to cover her. Put her in the wagon with the wounded.  Cover that hair. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

The Girls of Fall - The Beautiful Cruelty of DCC - Making the Squad

Ah, the sights and sounds of fall (and here in the tropics it's still "fall" in early December the way people up north mean it): a loud, noisy stadium, the smells of frying meat and spilled beer, the green green playing field with freshly-chalked white lines, the snap and thunk of helmets and pads . . . and the neat rows of long, lean, leggy young women in boy shorts and knee-high boots on the sidelines (more about my boot fetish in future blogs).

Yes, I love football.  And in particular I love cheerleaders at football games. For the past three seasons there's been a television show about cheerleaders that has occupied a regular spot on my dvr recording list and that I've looked forward to as much I've anticipated opening kickoff, and that's "Dalls Cowboys Cheerleaders -- Making the Squad" on CMT on Friday nights. Of course it has an obvious appeal - impossibly All-American young ladies, earnest and eager and full of "Yes Ma'ams" wearing, as one girl put it, "my underwear in public." But beyond that, if you pay attention, there is much about the show that resonates in the world of BDSM.

The narrative arc is always the same, picking up with the cattle-call auditions and the frowning, sometimes incredulous director, Kelli, and choreographer, Judy, (both former cheerleaderes themselves) scanning the dense rows of hopefuls, making cryptic notes and whispering snarkily to each other like a pair of Junior League dommes.  There are a series of cuts until the group of rookies are invited to "Training Camp" where they are joined by the veterans.  And then the real fun begins because, as Kelli reminds them constantly, they've invited far more girls to camp than will make the final squad. 

So for nearly two months of episodes we watch several dozen attractive young women, physically fit, wearing their Lone Star-bedazzled jogbras – pink for the rookies, blue for the vets - and black spandex boy shorts, all toned legs, flat stomachs and bouncing hair sweating their way anxiously through dance routines, weight checks and uniform fittings. 

All of which is fine and good just right there.  But it is their palpable earnestness and desperation to please, and thereby make the squad, and the director's fierce application of strict standards, that speaks to my Dom heart.  Their efforts are literally re-evaluated every day and each class or event is another test to determine their worthiness. “To be a DCC," Kelli warns them, "you are always being judged."  That is the essence in many ways of what it is to be a submissive, to be in a state of perpetually striving to please your Dominant and having your efforts constant evaluated and being punished for failing to live up to those standards and follow those rules.

DCC pulls no punches.  In a recent episode near the end of training camp, the girls are assembled and told “a fabulous motivator is coming to teach them,” a tough-as-nails drill instructor-ish dance teacher named Kitty famous for her bluntness and whom many of the girls had already met. 

“As soon as she came through the door," says a bright-eyed blonde named Brittany, "we all knew, 'Here it comes, get ready.'”

Sure enough, as soon as Kitty makes her appearance the girls erupt into applause before lining up to begin performing. 

“Kitty is going to give the room some energy but she’s probably going to just slaughter somebody,” Kelli tells the camera ahead of time and it’s clear she’s not entirely unhappy at the prospect.  Cut to Kitty, beefy and biker-bar tough: “Hopefully we won’t slaughter too many dreams,” she tells the room in a tone of voice that lets you know that’s exactly what she’s going to do. “But stand up and let’s get started.”

 And Kitty pulls no punches as she critically scans the assemblage of perky dancers.

“Oh blondie you look like you’ve got a stick up you’re --- over here, what’s your name?“ she barks at one quaking teenager who is then drilled in front of the rest of the squad  “How’d you get this far anyway? You’re lost.” Kitty shakes her head. “This could be the night you’re walking through the parking lot bag in hand.”

Let's stop here a moment. When you realize how achingly so many of these girls want this (there is a constant chorus of "I wanted to be a Cowboys cheerleader since I was a little girl") does it take much of a leap of imagination to ponder if there is anything at all they wouldn't do to attain this goal?

And the pushing is relentless and unpitying.  One brunette pixie named Liz with huge blue eyes and glowing translucent skin had been singled out early on for being a little soft around the middle.  Not in any mortal sense, mind you, but in a Is she going to look good on the giant HD screen at Cowboys Stadium kind of way. After several weeks the DCC politburo is still not impressed.  “She looks great from the waist up," Kelli whispers, "she’s just so damn big.”

Kitty calls a break and singles her out.  “I like you, you’re a great little dancer,” she says and the girl literally beams, with a proud smile as big as Texas. Then Kitty turns to the group.  “Do we all know that because you’re a great dancer that doesn’t mean you’re going to make this squad?" Nods all around.  "We all know that, right? A lot of you are looking very soft. When you’ve got four inches of fabric covering your lower half am I going to be watching that or am I going to be watching the overflow?” With that Kitty turns back to the judging table and advises, “Just cut it and be done with it”

Every episode there are cuts and they follow the same ritual.  One by one the girls are called in to meet with Kelli and Judy individually, some to be warned and some to be told, "Tonight is your last night."  The two older women sit behind a desk and the examinee perches before them on a chair in her workout outfit awaiting judgment.  The show helpfully conducts interviews between when the girls are told they need to be seen and when they actually go in and there is nervous, sometimes tearful anxiety. Can there be a Dominant that doesn’t find that anxiety delicious, that palpable worry about having disappointed, been found lacking?

And the ritual must be played out according to script. There are tears ("There's nothing I can do?" pudgy Liz sobs), brave smiles, weary resignation but always a thanking of Kelli and Judy and the Cowboys organization for the opportunity to try out.  And there are many multiple-year candidates.  Thank you, ma'am, may I have another?  When one girl, who had tried out three years in a row and is dismissed yet again, allows her frustration and disappointment to boil over into anger and accuses the women of not being honest and wasting her time, this defiance is met with open-mouthed astonishment.   “I was getting lectured,” Kelli says to Judy in wonderment. 

On it goes until at the end there are 48 girls in blue-and-white, a sea of big hair and flat stomachs and long legs and we are all the happier for it.  The process as it is depicted on the show is one long BDSM training session without the bondage, nudity or spanking but with louder music and better dance moves.  There is a difference, of course and that is the cheerleader tryouts have an end game: if the girls are found lacking they are dismissed whereas if my submissive disappoints in some way large or small she is punished and learns to try harder and be better the next time.”

Come to think of it, I have a better solution for the DCC.  Rather than cutting poor Liz because of her "overflow," send her to me for the summer. I'm sure we can make sure she does better.