The life choice

My tone was the low rumbling you got just before tribal priest sterted looking for a virgin to sacrifice to the volcano god. In the Pacific North West geologists would have been in two groups at my voice, those who thought it a fantastic idea to study and come closer and those who knew studying a super volcano was best done from a very long way away.

I rolled around and tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in until light filtered around the blind in the window. Louise was sleeping in the front passenger seat, I got a blanket and covered her so that she was warmer and started packing.

She came to me as I was taking folding the tripods up. she tried for a peace offering with a cup of coffee. She said nothing as I packed ignoring the coffee. I took time to cool off when I was angry she knew that too and she was seeing if it was safe to talk to me.

"What were you trying to find out with this documentary?" she asked.

"I wasn't trying to find anything out. I was trying to make you some money for a start."

"That's your problem. You need to lead your audience to a conclusion you already have."

"Not the way it works Lou. You don't have a conclusion and gather data to support it. You gather information and then draw a conclusion you can communicate and substantiate."

"Yeah so you're going to go to couples who have been together for years and have me ask them about their sex lives?"

"No, not their sex lives. Their love lives, why have they been together for years? Decades in some cases. There is a difference. We're not going to film private sex scenes. We going to film couples who live a chosen lifestyle and find out why it suits them. Did you read the Typical Questions sheet I gave you?"

"Why the outfits then?"

"Because we're going to go to a few clubs to speak to people who see the lifestyle. We might need to go in, find someone prepared to talk to us and do another take later the next day and then you'll need to look the same."

"You were always so touchy about your image..."

"Not my image Lou, my reputation. You fucked that up yesterday while I was trying to keep yours."

Louise was quiet as I finished the tripods and checked the boxes to make sure everything was packed. Satisfied I closed everything and locked the boxes then I got busy with my clothes. She watched me without making a move to dress.

"Why BDSM? Not homosexual marriages? Why not long distance relationships? Platonic cross gender friendships?" Louise asked

"Because I can't figure it out. It can't be sex, nobody is that masochist. There has to be something more. What is it? Blackmail? Love? Terminal self loathing? Also because it gets attention and the market for BDSM is lucrative."

"No other interest?"

I kept quiet. The honest answer was yes. I had spent hours looking at pictures imagining myself in those situations. I had read about the ethics and the etiquette codes. A good part of my justification for the outfits had been curiosity about what they felt like to wear.

"Stay. I'll tell if you don't." Louise had no trouble reading my silence.

"Tell who? Mom and Dad? They were two of the people who responded willing to be interviewed. Nobody else will really care."

The only way to counter blackmail is to call the threat. It's either a bluff or you take the hit and demolish the person who blackmailed because you just destroyed his weapon. It helped if you could bluff to make the effect of the disclosure seem to be minor. The things I had learned from Louise...

Louise paused as she considered this nugget. I picked my bag up and went to the door. She probably had no real idea of what our parents enjoyed sexually but mom had known the BDSM theme would sell.

"I need this Gary. Please?" She asked.

I waited.

"When Rob fired me. I trashed their server, couldn't plant any ransom-ware, no time, but I did forward all his emails to me to his wife and sent some juicy ones regarding big clients, their wives anyway, to the clients. He fucked my name up throughout the industry before his company folded. I need something different."

I put my bag back, checked that the Bronco was still there and hitched properly and sat down in the little dining area to eat breakfast. I could buy Louise doing that. I thought it more likely she had not thought of ransom-ware. That was not how she worked.

"What do you have in mind?"

"No clue."

"I'm behind the camera Lou, I stay there. We work together."

"Alright."

"Keep your eyes open for something else. We need to be able to give mom and dad a plan when we get back. They're going to fucking freak if they find out we did all this and you have nothing to back it."

"Yeah..."

I started the RV and drove us to the first interview. The couple lived in an utterly normal apartment in Gillette, Wyoming. I explained that I was not interested in filming a play scene. I was only interested in a naked submissive if that was normal in the situation. Once the couple realized that I was the one calling the shots and sincere they opened up and had a three hour conversation with Louise and I off camera. With them happy we moved from the restaurant where we met to their home. They were a lifestyle couple, the woman was happy to show us her collar and made sure it was visible throughout the time she was on camera. There was a very clear structure of authority, the man was in charge and he expressly gave his wife permission to be open about their relationship.

She hated spankings. She was completely against being tied up and spanked. But she loved that he would handle anything, including her, if she needed him to. She had stars in her eyes when she spoke about him and smiled broadly to reveal that he had believed in starting as they intended to carry on. He had never tested her limits unless she asked. He had never beaten her after a shitty day at work, never got drunk and harmed her. Her one regret was that she couldn't get pregnant She shyly confessed that she would love for a young lady to join them who could get pregnant and given them children.

She happily sat on the floor beside his knee when we interviewed him and let him stroke her hair. He explained that he went hunting when he was angry and shot something. He was very clear that he loved her very much and seldom needed to discipline her. Slyly he finished the interview by saying that his wife worked with a young lady who was very helpful and that he was considering bringing her into their marriage because she could have children but he needed to know that his wife and the young lady loved each other.

We needed to see ourselves out.

Over the next few days we drove to Minneapolis to visit one fetish club and bickered our way through a chat with the manager. We asked him if he could tell which relationships would last and he replied that he knew of one, Louise and mine. He explained that fetish clubs were not a place to meet a match or even bring a match. It was a place where couples hooked up having got to know each other on the internet, in some cases established couples would play a scene in a club but a scene was no indicator of the health of a relationship. He did say that he had never met a couple in his club who had been together for more than ten years.

He smiled broadly and gave us another interview to put up on our channel as a marketing spot. He took us through the etiquette in his club and walked us through the facilities. He also gave a short tutorial about some of the apparatus he had and invited Louise to put me in one. She declined saying that Gary was very shy about public play.

We drove to the next interview idly discussing which of us was the dominant. We could decide so we stopped at a scenic spot along the way and made a video of us discussing the comments on our channel and putting it to the viewers to tell us which of us was the dominant.

That next interview was with a male submissive couple. The dominant was insistent that we blur her submissive's face. She wanted to see how we did it first and only after we satisfied her did she allow the interview. The submissive was a well known businessman and refused to be interviewed without his dominant present even though she was fine with him speaking to us privately.

He was also entirely happy to be in a visibly submissive position while with his wife. She was focused on his maintenance budget and the household budget and went into detail about what she herself cost to keep as a housewife. She was incredibly proud of her husband who provided that and more every month. To him it was a relief to have his wife give him objectives to achieve and to take irritations like groceries, school fees for their children, suits he wore to work, and home decor out of his hands.

She was clear that her submissive was a man, not a wannabe woman. He was tough and capable but needed direction. They had come to their relationship patiently, with lots of late night discussion, and a lot of experimentation. They had played BDSM scenes and in those she had been the submissive until he refused one day saying that she was in charge when they played because she had the power to stop him and he was always desperately afraid to harm her. He had gone on to ask her to take the role of his full time dominant. Over the course of living together with him having a safe word for four years they had developed an understanding and trust and he set his right to a safe word aside. She had immense respect for him for his caution and his honesty; trying to meet it every day with consistency.

That couple thanked Louise and I for the copy of what we had recorded of them on the channel at our next post. The first couple joined in and said we had done the same there. With that other couples got involved and soon we had three more couples prepared to speak to us.

We stopped in Ohio at mom and dad's home town and for a kick decided to track any aunts and uncles we had down. We didn't find any. We found out that mom and dad had had the same mother but different fathers. Granny had been a hooker in the eighties and not very good at using condoms. Reading up, we didn't blame mom and dad for moving to Washington State.

Louise also started addressing the issues we had with only one camera on a tripod. We had twenty thousand dollars as people sent us money over and above the profit we were making from our channel so we shopped in Pittsburgh. after our third interview.

Just before our next interview she unveiled a film standard quad copter with a gyro stabilized mount, a movement sensor, and shot composition algorithm with a variety of settings. She also unveiled a moving lights system based on go-pro quad copters that used light sensors in the area being filmed to provide optimum light conditions.

The director lending me the equipment went wild. He could now achieve lighting effects not possible before and he had a movie coming up that would need those effects. He also had manufacturing contacts and agreed to patent the designs in exchange for a partnership. Louise developed a control program to run up to twenty of the drones as we continued with our journey.

We made a point of not revealing where we were going next or what we would do and our fan base started running a pool with ideas about where we would stop. We found hundred of good ideas for places to film posts at and we would openly thanks some fans fans for good locations. Every time we did we got a spike in donations and viewers. We also got requests that we tell who was the dominant. The fan poll was that I was the dominant interestingly and when we revealed that we just got more questions.

We had an interview with an elderly couple who had been together for thirty five years in Tennessee. They lived on a small farm, by request we didn't show what they made their money from, understandable because it was a mix of moonshine, weed, and horses. They had a very clear division of responsibilities. The man did the work of the farm, his wife kept their home and the kids in line. The man was clearly the dominant and he showed us their dungeon, his wife stood in the cellar that was their dungeon and explained that she had been a porn actress playing the role of a dominatrix when they met each other. He had been fresh out of the One Hundred and First Airborne, and she hired him to be her body guard. He had been full of good advice and fantastic at fixing things on set. It was only when he inherited the farm and came to farm that she realized he ruled her life and that she needed him for more than safety on set. So she walked off set and offered herself to him.

The man was not comfortable in front of the camera but was fantastic to speak to when he was busy so Louise and I used our new capabilities to interview him while he fixed his irrigation dam. Then he exploded into a wise patriarch with a huge and subtle sense of humor. Louise was pissed off when the batteries were flat and I had to stop filming. She just kept on speaking to him while helping him and left me to sort the drones out.

We were bickering about the batteries when his wife crashed her car into our RV. The man was furious with her and immediately had our RV and the car towed to be repaired. He went away for a few hours and returned to have us film his wife being punished for not telling him the brakes on her car were giving trouble.

It was not pretty or exciting in the way porn channels showed it. It was personal though, the man telling his wife why he was going to punish her. It had nothing to do with the cost of the repairs to our surprise. He wasn't even angry, he had calmed down but she had been negligent for her own safety and had delayed Louise and I. He tied her down and then whipped her until she was crying. There weren't visually intriguing red weals, there were a few cuts, one nasty one. When she was really crying a lot he stopped. He held her and she promised to be more careful and to tell him about issues with the car in future. He kissed her gently and then stitched the nasty cut and treated the other wounds before putting her to bed.

We stayed at a motel that night with what Louise had spent making the drones we didn't have much money and could only afford one room. We shared the bed that night, Louise deeply affected by what she saw at the farm. She whimpered in her sleep and when I held her she turned and latched onto me fiercely. At three in the morning Louise woke me up muttering in her sleep.

I listened and heard her actually saying words. She had muttered throughout our trip but never real words, just syllables. I had not paid attention much, she had sleep walked as a child and one of my most disturbing memories was of my thirteen year old sister dancing in her room, stark naked, singing at the top of her lungs. She had calmed down since then and a few mutters meant nothing. Now though with real words coming out I listened.

"Bad girl!" Woke me up.

"Nobody is allowed... not my Gary."

I perked up at that.

"What do you mean Lou?"

"Not allowed... Gary...MINE!"

The sudden ferocity left me slightly rattled. I stroked her hair and whispered that I was there, not going anywhere. She calmed down and snuggled her nose into my neck. Soon she was peacefully asleep again and I was wide awake with an erection as her leg wrapped over my waist again.

I went to sleep again after half an hour of thinking anything other than turning her over and screwing her.

The RV took a few days to fix and we had interviews in Kentucky. So we left most of the gear with the farmer and took the Bronco. The next were a family around a matriarch who ruled her home decisively, they farmed herbs and trained race horses with the daughter of eighteen acting as a jockey in horse and cart races. It was the first time we had children to interview and they were entirely aware that mom spanked dad too when he was out of line.

The children had in fact already figured out what roles they would like in their own marriages and surprisingly only one of the four wanted to dominate. I was intrigued that they had a very clear idea of what happened when their mom took their dad to the one stall that was always empty and the door was closed. they children had no trouble with it because the rules were consistent, something I would keep for later.

As for the two parents, the husband was home. He trained the horses, he grew the herbs. He saw to it that the maintenance was done and prospective owners were impressed with what they saw. The matriarch went to the races and sold the crops.

We were at a racetrack for our next post. She was bumped out of the way by a large man while she was interviewing a woman coming to watch the races. I flew out of the Bronco and stopped in front of him.

He tried brushing me out of the way so I gripped his hand and squeezed his pinky into the palm of his had as hard as I could. While he blinked and his face contorted in anger I shouted that I wanted a cop to arrest the man for assaulting Louise.

A security officer was on the scene in a second and delegated the situation upwards the moment he saw that Louise had a microphone in her hand and there was a go-pro camera orbiting around her. A senior official of the race track had given permission for us to film a spot about the racecourse and saw a PR disaster looming.

The large man, obviously a major player on the racetrack, suddenly became minor as the racetrack official nodded that the cops should arrest the large man. The large man could not afford a jail sentence because that would mean he could not race his horses on that track. He tried that he raced eighty horses on the track but he knew those eighty horses replaced within hours of scratching anything from his stable most probably with the same horse suddenly racing for other stables. He had a lot of horses but no spectacular winners so him falling out of races was a recoverable loss for the racetrack in this situation. The race track was not going to recover lost punters if the episode went viral and it had to be stopped now.

The racecourse apologized and had the man arrested then devoted a security guard to see to it that Louise was not bumped again. Louise put a positive angle on the incident by telling the camera that assholes were unavoidable but the racecourse itself had been superb about dealing with it, nothing more could be expected. The official was unhappy that the episode would go out but at least the racecourse looked blameless.

We dropped the charges before we needed to give a statement as the large man's lawyer gave us sixty thousand dollars in cash and promised another forty in a month. Louise had already visited the man's car with her laptop and a laughing security guard while the go-pro battery charged. Clearly the man was a big player but not well liked. We took the money and ran because the malfunctions about to hit his car would be counter sued in court. I only found out about it from the guard after the lawyer had offered me the deal. Personally I was in favor of laying the charge because it was Louise, money was secondary to her.

We were standing standing watching the owners and jockeys in the paddock when the course veterinarian Approached us to tell us a story. I set the tripod camera up with Louise's motion detector rig and sat in the front seat handling sound as he told us about the day he treated people instead of horses. A BDSM group came from the big city on a weekend party once. A submissive girl told her dominant she could run faster than the horse he was backing so he tied her to a cart and made her prove it.

The other dominants thought it a good idea so there was a cart race of dominants whipping their partners over a furlong. Eight people needed treatment including one Domme who got too competitive and hit the wrong submissive with her whip. The race was never finished as it became a naked brawl in the middle of the racetrack.