Weekend Service
There was a party at the kinky farm yesterday. Maitresse, Miss Lis, and Mitzi had come down from Sydney for the occasion and there was a pretty good turnout including quite a few new people and quite a few who had come down from Sydney.
Maitresse had originally come up with the idea of me attending the party in her service. I liked the idea immediately, but the idea of adopting an overtly submissive role in public also made me very anxious and hesitant.
I've served before. I regularly drive Mistress Jadis home, I help out with renovations at Carisbrook, and I've even served in public before and done so without feeling self-conscious or awkward. Service doesn't bother me. In fact, I enjoy it. But in previous times when I had done something identifiably submissive in public I was already blissed out in a nice subbie headspace. In those circumstances, it wasn't a big step.
To me it was a very big step to ask me to attend a party explicitly in service to someone from the very beginning. I don't generally start off at a party with a service oriented mentality. It takes time to warm up to it. I often find it awkward even seeing others in overtly submissive roles at the beginning of a party. Going in subbie from the word go is something I've never done before. Not with anyone. I've played with Maitresse a couple of times but she's not seen me at my most vulnerable, and so far nothing really intense has happened. It's not a commentary on her by any means. I do appreciate her talents, but it takes me time to open up. I am opening up more all the time, but although the level of trust and understanding in our relationship is growing, I haven't yet reached the point with her that I can go from zero to subbie service in the blink of an eye.
I knew I could attend in service to Maitresse under the right circumstances, but I don't live every moment of my life in those circumstances. Even when I was wracked with doubt, I still knew I could do it if I was prepared, but in the cold light of an unkinky day I found myself worrying about whether I would live up to the standards that other would expect, the standards she would expect, and the standards I would expect of myself.
Unfortunately, in saying I would feel self conscious about being there in service to her, I gave Maitresse the impression that I was ashamed to be publically identified as being in service to her. It read to her that my discomfort about what friends and strangers might think was of more consequence than my desire to please her. This, understandably, upset her. I wrestled with my conscience, trying to find a way to reconcile my desire to give her what she wanted (still a powerful ingredient in my kink) with the difficulty I had in giving it to her.
As I wrestled, Maitresse decided to call off the whole thing. I continued to try to find a way to work out how to grant her the service she desired. By Friday I had worked it out. If I could warm up to the idea of service during the day before the party, I would be in the right headspace when we arrived rather than going in cold. Triumphantly I informed her that I had worked it out and could now attend in service.
Unfortunately, as I discovered later on, this only compunded the level of frustration, because in addition to her thinking I was ashamed of her, she now also thought I was presumtuous. She read my announcement as me presuming that she would wait for me to come around and that whole thing depended simply on me working things out for myself. Having spent stressful days struggling to give her what she said she desired, I read her reaction to my announcement as her refusing to acknowledge my legitimate concerns.
She came to the party, but with the proviso that I was not to touch her. That would be my punishment. I came first, dressed as one of the Spartans from 300. (Funny how you tend to stick out when carrying a spear.) I was waiting to see what would happen when Miss Lis and Mitzi turned up about an hour later and informed me that Maitresse was coming on her own (but that she didn't have detailed directions to the off the beaten track farm that houses much of Canberra's kink scene.) Miss Lis suggested that she and I could drive back to Canberra to pick her up. It was good to have her in the car with me. She explained much of the frustration that Maitresse had been feeling over the past week, and having someone else to talk to who knew and cared about me made it much less likely that I would crash off the road distracted by my own confused and chaotic thoughts.
We picked Maitresse up and once we were all at the party things began to improve. It began with me fetching drink refills for Maitresse, Miss Lis, and Mitzi whenever they were needed. It was a simple and unobtrusive act that helped get me into a submissive mood without making me feel like my status was being broadcast to everyone in the room and without making me feel anxious or uncomfortable. My submission doesn't just happen. It has to be drawn out. That was precisely what was happening as I steadily got into the subbie headspace that I had experienced before. Afterwards, part of me wondered if in addition to upsetting her, my earlier suggestions had reminded her that she would have more luck if I was slowly brought into the right frame of mind.
At one point she sent me away for another refill. When I returned to give it to her, she signalled for me to kneel and present it to her, which I did. Looking back, that was the watershed moment. Having built up to it, I was now in the right headspace, and I was kneeling on the floor in front of a room full of strangers and friends without feeling the least bit awkward about it.
I didn't say much for a while. It was very easy sitting on the floor keeping to myself and not having to worry about social interaction. Over the next couple of hours, Maitresse stroked my head periodically as she chatted and networked and gave permission to a burgeoning new domme to do the same, Pascal (who organised the whole event and spent most of the night either getting flogged or pierced or caned or scratched or pinched) noted "so you finally found one" when he saw me on the floor. It sounded odd to hear it. Part of it was the fact that I've been to plenty of parties in Canberra now and pretty much everyone knows I'm on the subbie side, but they've never seen me attend a party with someone, and part of it was the fact that I managed to find a domme (a group that conventional wisdom says are difficult for a subbie guy to find) without really looking. No trolling through profiles on CollarMe or Fetlife or Alt, just making friends with no expectations.
Plenty of playing was done at the party, but the playing that Maitresse and I got up to apparently silenced the whole room according to Miss Lis. She called on me to do some push ups. Perfectly ordinary push ups just like the ones I do at the gym on a regular basis, execpt that at the low point of each push up, I kissed her shoes. Except for that detail, and the fact that a room full of kinky people were watching me do them wearing only my Spartanesque Bonds shorts, it was just like being at the gym. I counted 25 on each foot, and then another 15 on each foot counting in French along with a few additional ones thrown in for good measure. All in all I did about 100 pushups, which when combined with my workout earlier in the day was a pretty good days work.
I was also tasked with doing sit ups and kissing the hem of the skirt of a domme standing over me at the top of each sit up. Only two sets of 20 of those though, one for Maitresse, and one for Cinnabunny.
Maitresse and I had a good chat after the party, and I think we both have a better understanding of what happened. We're both reasonable people, neither of whom wanted to cause the other distress. Communication is a wonderful thing when done properly.
All four of us had brunch on Sunday that involved evaluating the various prospects available to Mitzi and Miss Lis. I joined the two of them later in the day as they shopped at Horseland for kinky supplies as Maitresse finished up a university assignment at my house. After dinner they drove back to Sydney in the rain. This will be posted by the time they arrive.
All in all, it was a good weekend.