“He kissed her now on the mouth for the first time. He kissed her like he owned her, as he owned her. He kissed her like her mouth was his mouth, her lips were his lips, her tongue was his tongue. They were one flesh. They needed no wedding ring, no ceremony to know that was true. She had the collar around her neck.” - THE SIREN
I finished THE SIREN at the tail end of a visit from M. The fascinatingly complex relationship between the main character, Nora, and her Dominant, Soren, spoke to me, tugging at my insides like familiar echoes. I had to stop and re-read, soaking in Tiffany Reisz’s words like a balm to my tattered heart. For the first time I was reading a novel that captured an accurate view of what it feels like to be a collared and owned submissive. I wanted to weep for a story so achingly beautiful, and shout from the rooftops that I found an author who truly understands.
It is no easy thing to submit. There is the instinctive struggle against another human being striving to Dominate me that simultaneously coexists with the internal struggle of two opposing forces; my need to submit grates against my need to stand alone. I am a woman with a business, a child and a full life that requires my leadership and attention outside of my kinky preferences. It’s my fierce independence that fights against my need to give control to another. But I understand how it may appear weak to others. I know this perspective first hand because, during the times in my life when I doubted my submissive instincts, I used that same word…weak.
When I choose to kneel at the feet of a man with a thick leather collar around my neck, striving to please Him with my manner and actions, I have, for a moment in time, completely surrendered my body and will to Him. I need to submit. It’s part of my emotional make-up like my need for physical affection or my need for love. It is with love and complete trust that I give Him my body to wound with a flogger, a whip, or a set of lacquered canes that I both fear and adore. I have two words, my safeword and my slow down word. One will halt our play in an instant, and the other pauses our game to give me a chance to re-center myself and allows M the opportunity to adjust in order to continue the scene.
“After so many years together she’d learned how to prepare herself for a flogging, for the whip and the strap. She knew tricks, ways to breathe, ways to hold herself, to alleviate the pain even as she received it. But when it came to the cane, nothing helped. And when the first strike landed on her lower thighs, she could do nothing but cry out.” - THE SIREN
At first glance one would assume that M holds all the control. After all, he’s the one with a whip in his hand. But who has the final say in how we play? I do. More importantly, if I do not choose to kneel in the first place, if I refuse to submit, there will be no play at all. In a Master/slave relationship, it is the submissive who ultimately holds the trump card…the gift of submission. I can honestly say that M has never steamrolled me into doing something I didn’t want to do. Yes, he pushes me, but I have my magic words. Like Nora says in THE SIREN, “if at any point you want to stop everything and just go home, you can say [safeword] and we’re done. We’ve all safed out. It’s completely okay.”
My empathy with Nora is contrasted by a different character with whom I’m intimately acquainted. It’s a different book written by a different friend. He called me his Muse and felt inspired to write a love story of sorts that was supposed to be a version of us in a different life. The main character shared my name and some other details from my real life. She was also kinky. At the end of the story, she killed the man she loved, her true love, at the behest of her Master. She literally ripped out her lover’s heart because her Master commanded it.
I felt insulted. A person whom I had considered a close friend saw my submission as a mindless, weak-willed, compulsion. He viewed me as a victim, as something that was preyed upon by a stronger personality. What was even more alarming was his obvious need to “save” me from the evil clutches of my Master. I bit my tongue and didn’t tell him that if he ever tried to take my collar in real life (in BDSM language when a slave leaves a Master’s service then he/she no longer wears their collar) I’d kick his ass my own damn self.
I chose M as surely as he chose me, and our M/s relationship is carefully constructed and more negotiated than any traditional relationship I’ve ever experienced. We have a contract and a safeword and a hundred other things that ensure that our relationship is safe, sane and consensual. Trust me when I say this, a weak person makes a shit slave. No way could a lesser person wear my collar and succeed as I have.
Nora, the heroine of THE SIREN, is a woman after my own heart. Her kinkyness is a facet of who she is but not the summation of her entirety. She’s a force of nature who is intelligent, courageous and kind. She’s complex and takes responsibility for her choices, good and bad. Regardless of what you may think of her character, I doubt you’ll see her as weak. She is charming and human, and captivating in her flawed beauty. As I told Tiffany after first reading Nora’s adventures, “I don’t know whether I want to hug her and bake her cookies, or have sex with her.” Yeah, she might be my hero.
