We were in the pub when Liam asked me how I felt about handcuffs.

Handcuffs, I don’t mind as long as they are not fluffy. Fluffy seems like a cop-out – a toy, not a restraint.
Did I like discipline spanking? Discipline? Whips? Ropes?
Here it was, my chance to experience my very own Fifty Shades Of Grey – if I wanted it.
Like the protagonist of EL James’ best selling novel, Liam was young, handsome and was a committed practitioner of BDSM – bondage and discipline/dominance and submission and sado-maochism. Unfortunately he wasn’t a billionaire, or even a millionaire – worse luck! Then again, I am not an impressionable 21-year-old virgin, so who am I to quibble over details?
Fifty Shades Of Grey is essentially your bog-standard Mills & Boon romance, with added kink for spice. Personally I think it’s all a bit dull, but when you work your way through the Marquis de Sade’s collected works at a young age, you become inured.
I’d also read Pauline Réage’s The Story Of O and Venus In Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch because BDSM relationships fascinated me, and books were my initial education. But that was when I was a teenager. Since then I’ve grown up. Been there, done that, and at this stage I’ve no real desire to buy the ball gag.
I told Liam that I didn’t think we’d be sexually compatible. This was not without regrets. Did I mention how handsome he was? And having been out with him a few times, I’d learnt that he wasn’t all tight t-shirt and no substance either.
I understand the pleasure of pain, and the fine line between the two. I like the costumes the BDSM community tend to favour, but the dom and sub, or master and slave, relationship – that’s just not for me. I don’t do submission, I told Liam, but he didn’t believe me.
“We’ll see”, he said.
“You’ll see”, I replied.
As I stood up to go to the bathroom, Liam smacked me on the backside. In the mirror I could see that the left cheek was red.
“You’d better even that out”, I told him when I returned, and he hit the other cheek.
“Harder.”
He complied.
“Now the other side and put some wrist into it.”
He smacked me again.
“I thought you didn’t do discipline?” he asked.
“I don’t,” I replied. “Which one of us is giving the orders here?”
In my experience, and I have met a few, doms seem to believe that through sheer force of will they will be able to exert authority over you, and this brings out my obstreperous and mischievous side. Perhaps I have yet to meet the right one, but that’s fine with me. Some people find pleasure in submission, but that’s not for me.
The dom may hold the key to the handcuffs, they may be the one who cracks the whip, they may have tied you up in ropes making any but the tiniest movements impossible, and all of this makes them forget that they are not the one in control.
In any consensual BDSM relationship, the slave has the choice to comply – or not – to domination, otherwise it becomes abuse, and most practitioners are extremely careful not to cross that line. The slave or sub has the safe word, the get-out clause, the ability to make the dom stop or continue – at least when it comes to sex. A good sub hides the fact that this is in essence nothing more than an elaborate role-playing game.
Once you bring the BDSM relationship outside the bedroom, then things get a little different. Here the sub really is submissive. The way you behave in public and in private is a reflection on the dom and a good sub is dedicated to making the master or mistress happy.
I questioned Liam about his experiences. He told me about the master/slave relationship he had with a friend. The relationship wasn’t sexual – or at least that’s what he claimed. Instead her role was to comply with his orders, no matter what these were.
“I made her squat on the floor for an hour,” he said.
“Why?” I wanted to know.
“To see if she obeyed.”
That Liam’s slave chose to comply, and to such a demand, was her business. I can only presume she got some pleasure out of doing so, but I can’t see it. To me it seemed pointless – not sexy,
not titillating, not dangerous, not taboo, not kinky. If anything, it was rather silly.
I knew that if I was going to have sex with Liam, it was going to have be on my terms. Someone who enjoyed giving orders, simply for the pleasure of having them obeyed, was not a person for whom an egalitarian relationship was possible. One of us was going to have to be the alpha dog.
I don’t like any relationships where there is a power play. Order me around and my first impulse is to do the opposite. I can do compromise, I can do negotiation, and for the most part I am relatively agreeable – but obedience is not in my nature. Obedience is for children, and even as a child I wouldn’t obey unless my parents had a good reason for their demands. A power play brings out my worst qualities – I don’t like to lose. No, that’s not it – I need to win, and I need the other person to know I’ve won.
A few years back I met Robert, a tall, dark and handsome dom in a nightclub.
“You will be my slave,” he told me.
“I don’t think so,” I warned him but he wouldn’t listen.
He promised that he could make me feel more pleasure than I had ever felt before, but only if I complied with his orders.
The first order was to address him as ‘Master’ or ‘Sir.’ The second was that I was to meet him in the ladies’ toilets in five minutes’ time.
“Make me,” I said, but Robert, used to having his dictates obeyed, thought a stern command was enough. Of course I didn’t meet him in the toilets. I headed for the dancefloor instead. Ten minutes later he came storming across the club, fuming that I’d kept him waiting.
“Come with me now,” he commanded.
“I told you I’m not a slave”, I said. “You’re not much of a master, are you?”
Whatever faults he had, Robert was not one to give up easily. Having got my number from a mutual friend he texted me for months. Whenever he was in Dublin for business, he sent demands that I should meet him at his hotel. Not requests, mind you, orders, including details of what I was to wear and how I should behave.
“No,” I texted back, every single time. “No thanks.”
Eventually he gave in and phoned me. “Why won’t you have sex with me?” he whined.
“I am not your slave,” I told him again.
“No,” he agreed.
“Say it,” I said.
“You’re not the slave. You are the master.”
There it was. I’d won. He’d lost. Victory, but a hollow one. I could
never have sex with him and we both knew it.