Chipping Away at the Stone
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
I was on my way to Manchester from London to discuss a possible D/s relationship with a submissive I had never met - at least, not in person. I had met her virtually on FetLife and she seemed right for me, in a kinky way.
Earlier that day, I had stood at London Bridge station, waiting for someone else - a woman I had met on match.com. Her name was Linda and she was, so far anyway, looking like a good vanilla option for a relationship.
Fate (and a busy calendar) had conspired to put these two choices in front of me on the same day. That day was a turning point in my life, one of a few actually. There's been a lot of twisting and turning, but that’s ‘the journey’ for you; it’s rarely, if ever, a straight road.
I was into Star Wars as a kid and had all the toys; poor old Princess Leia was always being captured and tied up somehow. My first memories of masturbating involved a kinky fantasy: a faceless woman was tied naked to my bedroom ceiling, slowly being lowered towards me. I never found out what happened when she reached me. I always finished long before that. When I first started having sex, I naturally took the lead, but in those teenage years, that’s as far as it went. I never tried kink until I was a young adult in my first long-term relationship at around age 20.
In actuality, we considered ourselves more ‘adventurous’ than kinky, and it was always confined to the bedroom. We had no internet back then, which meant no resource material and no real desire to search out others. We were happy keeping it private. Although we experimented through role play, I only saw snippets of what I wanted, but nowhere near what I really needed. Those moments were a tantalising taste of Dominance.
In most ways, my partner and I were vanilla, save for those occasions when the kids were away for the night and we could ‘swing off the chandeliers’ as we called it. But it wasn’t enough for me; I needed more. I needed an outlet. Exactly for what I didn’t know; I just knew that there was more to me than occasional racy sex.
After that relationship came to an amicable close almost two decades later, it took a few years for me to get my head around dating. In the meantime I wrote some BDSM fiction as an outlet for my growing interest in the scene. The more I researched, the more things started falling into place. The more I read, the more I realised I was kinky, and that it was a central part of my identity. Previously, I was unable to recognise and respect my own fetishes, let alone those of a potential partner.
When I started dating again, I wasn’t really looking for hook-ups. I met a few nice women and had a few relationships. I tried to introduce some kink into it, but like my previous relationships, there was always something missing. In hindsight they were simply not kinky people, just open-minded and adventurous in a vanilla way. I was trying to put a square peg in a round hole and it just wasn’t working.
I was now searching for more information and resources and looking not just for a kinky partner to explore D/s with, but kinky friends too. I wanted to be a part of the scene, but had nobody to explore it with. I knew about munches, but not where to find them or what to expect from them. Then I stumbled across Fetlife and it was the missing piece of the puzzle for me.
I took to Fet like a duck to water. It was like I’d come home. Seeing so many proudly own words I'd always found negative, like 'sadist' empowered me to embrace them, too. Certain writings hit me so deep it could have been written for me. The pictures and videos gave me a tangible sense of what was possible, and I quickly realised Fet is not a dating site. I had planned to use it as a social tool, to meet friends and build a circle of kinky friends. With any luck I could then socialise with them in the real world and go to events with them.
I thought that if I was lucky, I’d meet someone who was right for me on the scene. Sure enough, within a few weeks of joining FetLife, I’d gone to my first munch and was making like-minded friends. I met a submissive online and we began talking. She lived in Manchester.
So there I was, having just concluded a great date with Linda at London Bridge, on my way to see a submissive woman. Linda had been almost everything I wanted from a relationship. The stark contrast in choices that day solidified my thinking.
As I headed north, unsure of how things would work out, I knew that I’d never again be in a vanilla relationship. I was never going to be happy if I didn’t find a way to explore myself and the things that make me tick sexually and emotionally.
I didn’t choose to be a Dom, it chose me. And like Michelangelo’s angel my kink has always been there, only hidden. I’ve come to understand that the journey never ends; we’ll always be chipping away at that marble to reveal what lies beneath.
About the Author: Dansak is a bearded, tattooed guy who identifies as a Dom, Sadist, Daddy and ray of sunshine. Not necessarily in that order!
