Introduction
Written: April 23, 2005
This is the part where I thank you for coming to my web page, reading some or all of my stories, and then ask you to send me your comments. As I've made the analogy before, usually when I've released a new story to the newsies, comments and feedback are the lubricant that web authors use to keep the creative story-making machine running. The power to drive the machine is all the author's, but the oil that keeps the machine running smoothly, that keeps it from developing creaks and groans of apathy - keeps it from grinding to a dry and painful halt altogether ... that's your feedback. I figure that a lot of time was spent getting to the choice of sending something in: I've written the story, a self-immolating act of blood, sweat and tears; you've taken the time to read it ... and now, send something back to me.
Ok, that's a little dramatic. I'll skip to the other parts that I promised, the thanking for coming to my web page.
Thanks for coming to my web page.
Since everything else on this site deals with story-telling, I thought it would be cool to write about my life in the form of one of my stories. The best part about this is that I can be as sarcastic and pithy as I want. Plus, it may not be as boring as me just dropping the bunch of vital (or non-vital, depending on your point of view - from where I'm at, they're vital) aspects of my life on the page, sort of an act of auto-biographical vomiting. (There, how many autobiographical pages have you read that have the word "vomiting" on them? Heh-heh) So without further ado, here's my story, as of this date.
Once upon a time I was born. The world rejoiced. I was always special (I can say that with more than a little modesty, although I'm sure everyone considers their birthday special). Really, I was special - I was born on Leap Day, February 29, 1964. Great things ensued. Actually, I had a relatively normal childhood in the Midwest USA (I could tell you that I've been a Cubs fan since I could spell Durocher but that wouldn't nail down much - we bastard Cubs fans are everywhere. But suffice to say, I was born and raised not far from Chicago - ninety miles west to be exact). My father owned his own business and was a dominating but loving man. My mother was the house mom from the Brady Bunch - Alice was my grandmother who came to live with my mom and dad the year before I was born. And that was a funny thing too - my mom and dad tried to have me for seven years and the week following the death of my grandfather, the central figure in my dad's life, it was announced that my mom was pregnant with me.
I was short, fat, and wore glasses. The only reason I didn't get the holy shit kicked out of me regularly was that I was good for a fight - I was always going to land at least one good one and it was going to hurt. So I managed to keep the big kids off my back. I think the first inkling that I was interested in something like D/s came around the time that I was in grade school. I usually didn't play with the guys at recess (have I mentioned that I'm a male - I forgot that Toran really is sort of a non-gender name, not like George which is almost always attached to a male). What I did at recess in the first grade was play house with the girls - only I was the house dog. Hmmmm, crawling around on all fours, taking orders from girls, barking on command. What the hell?
One other thing that sticks out in my mind as having something to do with my love of bondage is that I was born pigeon-toed and at that time in the medical world (maybe even today, I don't know) a pigeon-toed kid was fitted with shoes that pointed the correct way with a steel bar welded to the soles between to ensure that the foot always pointed straight. They were worn to bed, of course - no spreader bars for the walking toddler Toran. So, being semi-immobilized as a toddler and playing dog as a kid are what tipped me off, in retrospect, to the kinks that would develop later.
I played little league baseball and because of my size and the inaccuracy of little kid's throwing arms, I got beaned regularly. Points for masochism. My family moved out to a small farm when I was twelve and I did spend many lazy summer afternoons tied to a beam with twine in one of the small deserted wings of our big barn. Self-bondage, country style.
I'll pause here - I never really fantasized I was a guy being bound by a woman. What I fantasized, as I was tying myself up to the heavy wooden beam in the barn, the smell of hay everywhere, the sound of the pigs and chickens outside coming to me - what I fantasized about was that I was a girl being tied. Kind of weird. I've never fantasized about being a girl, have no desire to cross-dress (although forced feminization turns me on for other reasons, see below), and I am not attracted in the least to men. I just wanted to get in the head space of the tied-up damsels in the Hustlers and Playboys that I found under my dad's bed - what were they thinking as the ropes bit into their flesh? What was it like to be desirable and helpless?
OK, back to the narrative. I went to college in a certain city with a big arch downtown and graduated in three years with an engineering degree that bought my way into the Reagan years defense build-up machine. Over the course of four years I lived on both coasts, worked at NASA, helped develop a fighter plane (YF-23) that was promptly beaten in a multi-company bid, and ended up back at home. In the meantime, I'd lived with a girl who probably would have turned into a great Domme, were she not so Catholic that she thought everything I wanted to do to her was too sleazy. I actually got her to let me tie her up, but she insisted that she wear the most un-sexy clothes (baggy sweats) and two obnoxious fish slippers, complete with little button eyes that tinkled in their forever damning way whenever she moved. I couldn't tie another girl up for years, as the image of those two lifeless incriminating eyes flashed through my head. I say this girl could have made a great Domme, and maybe has (I haven't kept up with her) because she did have a thing for making me strip and forcing me to wear her panties while handcuffed. Unfortunately, we went our separate ways due to purely vanilla reasons - she started to hate my guts.
As I said, I ended up at home, taking one of the smaller rooms at the farm with just my mom and dad - the other four siblings were off doing their stints in college. I couldn't bear to move back into my old bedroom so I took one of the others. Worked at the Post Office for a summer, mostly because of their wonderful idea of hiring part time help for six months to avoid having to pay for benefits. Worked at Radio Shack until a disgruntled customer threw batteries at me when I pressured him to let me put his phone number into the computer. (Actually, that's a fib - he threw the batteries at me when I caught him shoplifting a remote controlled car, but Radio Shack is so known for wanting your telephone number that I morphed that bit in - see how a master story-teller works? Take notes...)
So I ran out of the 401K money from engineering and decided that Radio Shack and the crappy job I took later (where I met my wife) would not pay the bills and I got back into engineering, first with a water company, and now with a company that makes fire. So, follow this: I started out in aerospace (air), worked in water, and now fire. Only the ground is left and I, like everyone else, has a date with Mother Earth, sooner or later.
I met my wife in the last shit-hole job I ever took, reading newspapers and magazines (can you believe you can do that and get paid?) but the management felt the need to beat us all down into brain-dead amoeba-things and that wasn't something I wanted to experience daily. I love my wife - she is truly the best friend I ever had and probably ever will have. I think the words soul mate is a little too New Age-y and somewhat pretentious, but we connect on a level that I've never had with anyone else. Unfortunately, she isn't into bondage. Or D/s. Spanking is ok, so long as it isn't hard and isn't demeaning, which is cool with me. That's one of the things about bondage and Dominance and submission - limits and trust. My wife's limits are different than mine but I love her dearly and she trusts me that her limits will be honored.
End of story. Now, the reason I write. I've written all my life - my mom still has a construction paper story I wrote in grade school, complete with crayon illustrations, of Chief Fart-Alot, the legendary Chief of the Stinky Indians who apparently had a gas problem that was remedied by a steel ass cup. My teachers thought the story was precious, and pretty much gave my dad a wide berth at PTA meetings.
I write now because the stories are in me and nothing gives me a greater sense of satisfaction than visiting a tied and gagged gal for an entire rainy afternoon and finally typing in the last word of her story. Yeah, I've got some Dommes in there as well, and that's a part of me that I'm exploring in a way, I guess. But I write because it feels good and it is about the world that I feel right in, the D/s world. I don't get a lot of that in reality so this is my Alice in Wonderland hole that I can crawl into. The cool thing is that I get to share it all with you.
If you keep track of the dates of my stories (like I really have fans who get into that - I'm happy when someone even reads my stuff!) I was really interested in thresholds early on in my erotica writing. I'm still interested, but the novelty has worn off and the concept of thresholds has been so firmly entrenched in the foundation of my outlook on D/s that writing about it is going over old trails. The concept of thresholds is simple - we in the free world aren't born into physical bondage - the jury is out on mental bondage, though, but that's not the point I'm making. For any of us to willingly allow ourselves to be made helpless, physically helpless, to another person (lover, friend, paid sex industry associate) - that's a threshold that we have to pass through. And that threshold starts long before the click of the second cuff or the snugging of a rope knot. It starts in the mind, way deep inside, where what I call The Beast lives. The Beast is another hot button concept for me. All of us in the non-vanilla world have that little voice inside us that says funny things at the most odd times. Like, walking in the mall and seeing a nicely dressed woman with knee boots. Little voice says, "wonder what she'd do when you rope her legs up into a tight hogtie - wonder if she's a moaner?" Or, passing another woman in a smart leather coat the little voice says, "she's got a cat belted to her waist and it's got little metal tips that will dig deep." Not to leave the ladies out, just switch genders of those involved. Not to leave those attracted to same sex, don't switch the genders. And for those that think I'm talking about, oh, I don't know, could it be ... Satan? Nope. I'm a pagan. To me Satan ranks right up there with Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. They don't exist in my current model of the universe. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
What I am saying is that there's something deep inside that propels us to take that first step, pass through the first threshold. And that's the bitch - these thresholds are generally one way. That's the beauty of bondage. But it doesn't end there. You don't cross the first threshold and think, "that's it." Your first threshold doesn't normally leave you in a closed in room. That's why its call the first threshold - there's more. The room on the other side of the first threshold isn't a room - it's a hallway. A hallway of thresholds. Each one more exciting and more important. Each threshold takes you closer to your Beast, because that's who is behind that last threshold. Calling to you.
I want to say something else. There's also a lot of non-consensual stuff in my head that ends up on the page or PC screen. That's one threshold I've had a hard time dealing with. It's a fantasy of mine, to be forced into bondage or slavery, and in one or two stories, to make the ultimate sacrifice. To follow the little buttons that bring pleasure, listen to the whispers of the Beast, even if it means dire consequences - either for me or my victim. I've listened to those dark fantasies, and written stories about them. I know they are fantasies. The problem is that this is the Internet. Anyone and their mother can view my pages or read my stuff on the newsies. What they do is out of my control. I wonder: am I fueling something more than a fantasy, something called criminal obsession? I debated long and hard at having my nc stuff pulled from the sites that were gracious enough to run them. But in the end I didn't. I believe in freedom - freedom to discuss anything, write about anything, learn and embrace anything. Freedom to make our own decisions and form our own beliefs. I believe that censorship is a valid path only when dealing with kids, with minds that are still absorbing the world around them, still forming their own model of the universe. Still trying to sort through right and wrong. Those who commit those nc acts in real life aren't kids. They know right from wrong. There's nothing I can do to change them. But can my words fuel their criminal passions? I don't know. We are talking about a criminal act against another human being. We are talking about monsters. If my stories are the food that these monsters eat, the fuel, the energy to propel them to do horrible things, would taking away my stories change anything? In the end, I thought, no. We don't live in a world of rainbows, bubble gum and lollipops - we live in a world where monsters do come in through the window, monsters do take young girls from their cars at the mall, monsters do beat those who love them to death. My stories don't amount to jack in the face of those monsters. So I didn't pull them.
On a final, lighter, note, I'm sure you've heard or read or even experienced D/s as a lifestyle and for some that is a really special thing, to be with the one you love, playing in a way that you love, full time. For others, D/s is a spice, mixed with others to "liven" up the vanilla taste of reality (not to say that there's anything wrong with vanilla - my favorite milk shake and ice cream is vanilla!) As I've mentioned earlier in this longer-than-I-envisioned Introduction, I've never experienced lifestyle D/s. As such, there aren't many real lifestyle stories here. The majority are those first time experience kinds of stories. As I age (and don't get me going on that one) I will write as I grow. The human body is an odd thing - we're given a huge amount of energy to expend when we are young and then have to rely on wisdom and the lessons learned at the school of hard knocks to get us through the rest. Some of these stories were written when I was in my 20's (late 20's). I'm now early 40's. Has my perspective changed? You bet. Has my writing changed? Sure. Has my model of the universe changed and more importantly the world itself? Of course. It's all about the journey. And the thresholds that we pass through.
Please share your comments with me by sending your feedback. I have a day job - this is all a labor of love and your comments are held dear. And donate to ASSTR so this can continue to be made possible.
Toran