(Clever Title)

i’ve always attracted very masochistic subs. people who wanted to be pushed. who wanted it rough and mean and relentless. and because i cared about them. because i genuinely wanted to give them what they needed. i’d lean into it. i’d be more sadistic than felt true to me. i’d say the things they wanted to hear. call them what they wanted to be called.

and sometimes it worked. sometimes i could get there. but a lot of the time i’d feel awful after. like i’d done something that looked right from the outside but felt wrong from the inside.

the way i naturally dominate is affectionate. attentive. deeply invested in the person in front of me. i want to take you apart slowly. i want to learn every small response. i want my hands in your hair and my voice in your ear telling you how well you’re doing while i do something that completely wrecks you. i want to be the reason you fall apart and the arms you fall into after. i want to ruin you gently. i want to make you feel so safe and so taken apart at the same time that you don’t know how to hold both things at once.

and yes. i can be harder. i can slap you. spank you. choke you. i can use your desperation against you in ways that make you sob. i can hold you right on the edge and watch you beg and feel absolutely nothing except satisfaction about it. i can call you pathetic. call you dumb. coo at you in that way that’s sweet and tender on the surface with something sharp underneath that you don’t fully clock until you’re already too far gone to care. that all lives in me naturally. i’m not performing any of that.

but there’s a line.

and i want to be clear about something before i talk about that line. i understand the appeal of harder degradation. i really do. i’ve read it. i’ve written adjacent to it. i know why it works for people. there’s something about being completely stripped down. having someone say the most filthy humiliating thing directly to you and feeling it land somewhere that nothing else reaches. i get that that’s fantasy. i get that it’s not literal. i get that the sub who wants to be called worthless doesn’t actually believe they’re worthless and the dom saying it doesn’t actually mean it that way either. i understand the mechanics of it. i understand why it hits.

i’m not judging anyone who lives there. some doms are genuinely built for that space and they’re incredible at it and the subs who need that deserve to find them.

i’m just not consistently one of those doms.

i can visit. i can push myself there occasionally if the connection is right and the context is right and something in the moment makes it feel true rather than performed. but i can’t live there. i can’t make it my default. i’ve tried. it doesn’t sit right in my chest after. something in me keeps an account of it and i don’t like what that account says about me even when i know rationally that it was consensual. that it was wanted. that it was play.

the thing i’ve had to make peace with is that i used to see all of this as a limitation. like i was somehow less capable. less versatile. like a real dom should be able to go anywhere their sub needs them to go regardless of how it felt to get there. i’d stretch myself. i’d push past what felt natural. i’d do things that felt wrong and call it flexibility. call it service. call it being a good partner.

i’m not the right dom for everyone. i’ve made full peace with that. some people need something i’m not built to give consistently and that’s not a failure on either side. it’s just fit. it’s just honesty about who you are and what you can actually offer without losing yourself in the process.

but for the right person.

twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street

a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode

judged by solely by christopher eccleston

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.