The Pleasure Boy 34

Apart from the explanations and discussions, Judith and I trained identified pairs groups of candidates for the Mars posting by modeling the lifemate relationship in front of them, along with film clips that we'd prepared. We showed them how we disagreed about something, how I stopped talking after I'd said my piece and Judith showed that she had heard me; how I sometimes brought her round to my desire or way of thinking but obeyed without complaint once she'd put her foot down.

We got them talking about favourite sexual activities, and showed them films quite similar to those my mother had once shown me, while they wore a monitor just as I had. We modelled sexual service for them by offering to pleasure each one of them for a whole evening in any way they asked, or as we thought they'd like. Then we asked them to imagine themselves as courtesans or gigolos and then pair off and do the same for each other - giving and receiving sexual service and taking pride in the skills of doing so. We promised them privacy for these experiments - that we would not be watching them - and we kept that promise. We showed them how to find further information on every kind of sexual activity in the Mars Base electronic library. In these ways, we taught them that quite apart from its reproductive function, sex is neither just 'good, clean fun' or (necessarily) an expression of love, but primarily an establishment and affirmation of intimate relationship. To help endure eight years of isolation on Mars, it would be very useful.

To introduce consensual correction we began by having them keep a journal in which they described what they were learning and kept track of any failures or shortcomings. Having taught them how to give a sexy spanking as an erotic technique, we showed them different ways a spanking could be varied gradually until the subject was unsure whether it was pleasure or pain that they were feeling. Then we staged a live demonstration for the group, in which I confessed some faults to Judith, asked for correction, and was strapped soundly as a result. It was well within my range for pleasure, but they had no way of knowing that.

"Why do you take that?" they asked me, when Judith was not around. "Why do you let her punish you like a naughty child?"

"We don't think of it as punishment," I answered. "Neither she nor I would punish a child like that. We understand it as a ritual that we perform together to correct something which might damage our relationship."

"No on will make you spank or be spanked - not here, and certainly not on Mars. But it's traditional in the D/s culture and you may find it helpful, (as I do), to keep things clear between you... to remember what 'submission' means."

At the end of this training, the couple would be be invited to sign a contract which would commit them to the lifemate relationship, contingent on their final selection for a Mars posting. We were instructed to tell them that signing was not compulsory, but strongly encouraged - that in the final selection for Mars, preference would be given to couples who had bound themselves as lifemates for their service. Their contract would come into effect at once, but would terminate automatically if the couple lost out in the final selection. It would, of course, be meaningless during their months of suspended animation on the trip to Mars but would resume when they awakened at the other end. It would govern their relationship during their eight-year sojourn on the red planet, and would terminate back on Earth, after their debriefing. At that point, if desired, the couple on their own could negotiate and sign a new contract to continue the relationship.

Judith and I trained a number of such couples before the first pair actually took off. We did it again two years later. After that, the job was taken over by a lifemate couple at NASA and became part of its regular training program for human astronauts. It was a fitting coda to our experience with the WoodLuMP program, and really the last thing of any great interest that we did with it.

You may remember that years ago, when our initial, pilot contract was terminated by the approval and launching of Woodruffe's lifemate program, Judith had insisted on another year of trial relationship to think through and plan for the 17-year age difference between us. This second contract specified that I would serve Judith under Alan Arnold looking after applicant matching and couple mentoring and in 'such other duties as she assigned me.' My living arrangements at her home remained unchanged; Judith would now collect my salary from Woodruffe Electronics, keep a bit less than half of it to reimburse herself for feeding me and providing the roof over my head (a portion of her mortgage), and turn the balance over to me. I budgeted 2/3 of that income for clothing, incidental expenses and pocket money and put 1/3 into savings.

The new contract also charged me to think seriously about making a lifetime commitment to a woman 17 year older than myself, and what provisions I would ask to make this possible. As I already felt committed to Mistress Judith in this way, all I could do was imagine how things would be if Judith needed 24/7 nursing care while I still had some sort of life apart from her that made demands on me. In that case, I could promise to care for her as adult children with families of their own contrive for a senile parent. I would see to it that she lived as comfortably and with the best care that I could afford to give her, visiting her regularly and doing what I could to keep her happy.

As she and I, between us were making excellent incomes and investing a healthy fraction of them each month, and as I would be very rich even­tually, unless my father, on some unlikely whim, chose to disinherit me completely, money was not likely to be an issue. Judith would have whatever she needed or wanted; and in theory, as her permanent lifemate, she would have an unlimited claim on my obedience and time. What she was telling me now, was to think what reservation I would want, what liberty I would ask, so that my duty of service to her would not grow onerous to me. As I did, I recognized that her side of a lifemate contract would be to recognize her submissive's needs, desires and limitations, and not make demands that might damage the relationship. The only question was, did I trust her to do this? The answer, most certainly, was yes! When the time came to write our third contract, the one intended to be permanent, all I needed was that she consult me, and make her decision - our decision - for the relationship's best interests, as she had always done.

My duties at the office were now lighter and more routine than they had been while I was designing the program and learning the basics of HRM. From time to time, Judith had me assist in other aspects of her department's work. Right in line with my geisho training, she first had me assist, then put me in charge of the planning and facilitation of our monthly corporate morale raising events - a company picnic, golf day, cross-country ski race and the rest. She involved me too in her advisory work for my father, as a research assistant and technical writer.

With her permission, to give us both a little more free time, I spent some of our money on a catering service that brought us a good dinner every weekday evening and kept our fridge and pantry stocked as we required. By arrangement with a bonded cleaning service, I also had a young woman come in every weekday morning, to make our beds, tidy the kitchen after breakfast and do the whole house (except for our dungeon-playroom) once a week. These chores were still my responsibility, but now I only supervised and managed them. Judith decided that she had better uses for my time, so I no longer had to do them myself.

I must report that as my Mistress aged and grew accustomed to having me as a permanent, resident submissive, her sexual interests changed. Though she was always loving and safe, they became increasingly sadistic. She took increasing pleasure in controlling me, and in inflicting well-controlled 'punishments' for fictional misdeeds or none at all. She lost most of her interest in cowgirl sex - in riding my cock or face to her climax. She got more into pain-play with tease and denial - keeping me cock-locked for days at a time, but making me pleasure her orally, or just watch her, in strict bondage, while she pleasured herself. She augmented my frustration by having me do her intimate laundry - her panties, bras, lingerie and nighties. She taught me to wash them tenderly by hand as if I were making love to them, then hang them up to dry, perfume them lightly, fold them with precision and arrange them in the correct drawers of her dresser. Before giving me a load to do, she made a game of taking off her panties after a day of work and having me sniff and masturbate over them until she gave me permission to cum. Then I was required to lick my seed from them and put them in the basket with the rest of her things, to wash after dinner while she was doing office work.

She also developed a new taste for working me in public. Once a month or so, she would take me to The Club, for a public session - up on stage, in front of an audience. The club rules gave her a time slot: half an hour for her to do as she liked with me, so long as I did not use the club's safe word and she showed the Dungeon Masters that she was in control, knew what she was doing, and would cause no injury that would not heal in a few days. Within those limits, she loved to show off my training and obedience with what she called 'participatory discipline.' For that whole half hour, she would spank or flog me with various implements and in various positions, naked, of course, making me present each part of my body for her attentions. I was required to accept my stripes with dignity and thank for each as it was given. I had to fetch each implement as she demanded from a table on stage-right where her whole bag of tools had been oiled and laid out (by me) for her use. When she asked for the hair brush, the martininet, the razor strap, the thin cane, or any other implement, I had to go immediately to the table, fetch it, present it formally on my knees, and ask to feel its lesson on my skin. When she pretended to notice the slightest hesitation, she awarded extra strokes, asking our audience for suggestions.

She also signed up for shibari lessons at a private club in Montreal, using me as her model, of course. Along with six other willing submissives in that class, serving as models for six other, Dominant students, I had to stand, sit or kneel, completely naked on our little platform while Judith wrapped and tied me with coarse, supple rope, following the master's lecture and closely copying what he did. While he was teaching, two spotters walked among us, checking the students' efforts and correcting their mistakes. Between key knots, the master did the same, chiding a student and making him go back and start a step from the beginning when he saw that his model had been wrapped too tightly so that his circulation or breathing were impeded, or a joint was under excessive stress. He emphasized safety at all times, insisting that each student must have rope shears in her kit and be willing to cut the ropes at the model's safety signal or at a spotter's call. He insisted, however, that this should never happen because the model - no matter how uncomfortable and even distressed - should never feel unsafe. "In bondage," he said, "a little pain and fear are good, but panic can be a mortal hazard. Models can seriously harm themselves, if they panic and try to struggle free."

This master's specialty - quickly becoming a favourite game for Mistress Judith - was 'predicament bondage,' so called because the model finds himself forced to choose or oscillate between two or more forms of discomfort. Thus, imagine me tethered by my wrists to a pulley in our ceiling, hanging in such a way that I am pulled up on tiptoe. I am also sitting on a pegging saddle, impaled on a thick dildo jutting up from a thin plank passing between my thighs. If I rise higher on my toes, straining my calf muscles. I can relieve the anal intrusion and the pull on my shoulders. If I lower my self to stand more comfortably on my feet, the plank cuts into and chafes my perineum and the dildo stretches my sphincter. I can briefly ease these torments by tightening my biceps as if I were chinning myself - but not for very long. In less than half a minute I must relax my arms to take the weight on the balls of my feet (with those aching calf muscles) or in my crotch and anus. That's an example of predicament bondage, in one of its simplest forms.

Apart from these classes, always watched and enjoyed by spectators, Judith loved to work at home in the evening, reading her papers, sipping a malt scotch and watching me suffer in that position. She could have me do it to myself - pull the pegging saddle into her study, under the ceiling ring and pulley, and next to her desk chair for convenience. Then I had to get naked, lubricate the peg, step up onto a small block (about the size of a thick book) and straddle the plank so that the peg's tip just touched my hole. Last, I had to squat a little, to insert the intruder ever so slightly. Now all that Judith had to do was buckle the suspension cuffs around my wrists, clip them to the ends of a trapeze bar that would hold them about twice my shoulder width apart, pull on the rope and tie it off so that my arms were taut above my head, and kick the block out from under my feet. In that position, I was effectively crucified - without the nails, but with the same stress on my breathing as the weight of my body pulled my ribcage open, making it difficult to exhale. I could relieve that stress by going higher on my toes, or by accepting more pain in my nether parts.

Sometimes she tied a black silk blindfold over my eyes, so that I could not even her watch her watching me - was left completely alone in my own body. It was safe enough. I could have used my safeword at any point, if it became too much for me. If I had lost consciousness, or shown signs of serious distress, Judith would have had me down in an instant. As it was, I could only hang there, a sacrifice to Judith's sexual interests and my own, working hard just to breathe while trying to be as comfortable as possible, trapped between three kinds of pain. For her part, Judith just sat at her desk, reading a paper that she held with her right hand, with my cock in easy reach of her left. Sometimes she stroked me to keep me at full erection. Sometimes she didn't. Sometimes, just holding her hand around my swollen shaft, she gave me permission to cum - my only opportunity to do so that evening, before she caged me again. In every sense, my suspense amused her. With the half-inch of play that remained to me, I would pump myself in her loosely gripping fist until my seed erupted in her hand. Then she would wipe herself on my face and have me lick her clean.

Early in our relationship, there had been a lot to discuss; we had spent many evenings, sitting and talking as equals, since Judith always wanted to hear my thoughts and feelings, even when she knew she would overrule me. As we came to know each other, as I knew her needs and tastes and as she knew mine, our lives together settled into a pattern and there was less need for talk. She found that she could practice her predicament bondage on me, and get work done at the same time.

In all this, I too was changing. What I had to stop and think and come to terms with, was that Judith's creative sadism aroused in me a corresponding taste for 'humiliation' that was altogether new. From the beginning, my sexual tastes had run toward submission. My geisha mother had spotted them in my late adolescence when she tested me. I had always loved to obey and please - especially someone I loved and looked up to. In my training, I'd quickly discovered the 'pain slut's' trick of converting of converting pain into pleasure by accepting and relishing sensory overload. But the element of humiliation in BDSM had never done much for me, one way or the other. I'd learned to accept going naked in public - and kissing feet, giving head, or being flogged while an audience watched. But such public 'degradation' gave me no special thrill. We are all 'naked apes,' I had always felt naked under my clothing. The protocol of submission was just that: a formal protocol. I had never felt especially shamed or aroused by it. It was just the way we did things.

Now, however, adapting to my Mistress' new interests, I began to feel the exhibitionist's kick from 'humiliation' in front of others. Except that 'humiliation' did not seem like the right word, which is why I am using scare quotes. I thought of this new (for me), exhibitionistic pleasure as 'humiliance,' the French word for 'humiliation,' available to English as a loan-word, with a somewhat different meaning. I would define 'humiliance' as the erotic pleasure of being out in public without one's social mask - freed from the stress of keeping up that mask; expressing oneself and seen by others as the naked creature that one 'really' is without its veneer of socialization. Humiliance is eroticized shame - ritualized degradation, jeered and pointed at by others. This aspect of submissive experience had never held much interest for me. Now, watching Judith's pleasure at degrading me, both at the Club and at home, for her own enjoyment, it became a new turn-on for me.

Back in Guild School and in discussions with my mother, I had heard many times that "Submission is liberating," and had always understood this to mean that obedience and acceptance free the submissive of his or her need to conform to social norms. Your Dom gives you permission to experience and do what would otherwise be forbidden. This is true as far it goes, but with Judith now, I was seeing another level. Having me do things (both at home, and out in public), that I found distasteful had the secondary result of freeing me from the tyranny of my own volition and my own standards and tastes. I know this sounds paradoxical, and may be completely unintelligible, but there is a real point here, one I had never seen before: Needing always to have things one's own way, can be the cruelest slavery of all. While it feels great to have things just the way you like them and great to give a loved one exactly what you know they want (because they've ordered it), it can feel really bad when you need to have things just the way you like them - when you cannot bear to have them otherwise. At the outset, Mistress Judith's new interests - in predicament bondage and public, participatory discipline went against my grain. Though distasteful initially, in the end I came to enjoy these games, finding this new level of liberation.

Nothing lasts forever, and people certainly don't. It's what we do with ourselves while we're alive that matters. In the next decades, while Mars gradually became a human outpost, all of us grew older - in lockstep, at the rate of one year per year - and our lives changed accordingly. With her lifemate Richard, Myrna Stiles had two children, a girl and then a boy. They were broken-hearted when their son died of lymphoma in early middle age, and they retired shortly after.

When she turned 70, Judith retired as VP of Human Resources, to be succeeded in that post by Alan Arnold; but she remained active as a kind of privy counsellor or consigliere to my father, not only on human resources, but almost all his business affairs. Sponsored by my mother, and by Mistress Myrna Stiles and Mistress Charlotte ('Lotte') Steiner, the Guild recognized me as a master after the WoodLuMP program was launched and had proved successful. I continued to work for Alan on the mentoring for that program and as well, began to work part time for Mom and Lotte at HanaLot, gradually becoming qualified as a professional mentor. In this capacity I came to see a lot of my old friend (and training Mistress) Lisa Woodruffe (who had changed her name from 'Schmidt' when my mother adopted her), bought Mom's share of HanaLot and eventually Charlotte Steiner's as well. She continued their business all by herself, though its named remained 'HanaLot Mentoring' - both to pay respect to its founders and to capitalize on their reputations.