Negotiation or Seduction? #BDSM #negotiation #nostalgia

By Lisabet Sarai

I wish now that I’d kept his letters—the ones in which he detailed his fantasies about spanking me, tying me to his bed, dripping hot wax over my breasts, then asked for my reactions. We hadn’t touched each other at that point, just flirted over a chess board (he almost always won). I’d never thought about the activities he described in his multi-page messages, at least not consciously, though I’d had kidnap fantasies since before puberty.

Somehow he sensed that I was susceptible, before I knew this myself. With old-fashioned, pen-on-paper epistles, then later through lengthy, expensive phone calls, he revealed his kinky nature and explored mine. When we finally met again in person, more than six months after he’d left grad school and moved to the West Coast, we were in essence already lovers, though we’d never even kissed. With his arrogance, eloquence, and calculated crudeness, he’d captured my erotic imagination and won my consent. We both knew we’d have sex, and not vanilla sex, either. (Hard to believe, but I didn’t even know the term “vanilla” at that point!) I was ready to yield, eager, despite the fact that I had no idea what to expect.

But actually, that’s not true—I had learned about his desires as he interrogated me about mine. Face to face, we didn’t need to negotiate anything. I trusted him, somehow, with my body and my spirit. I think he was surprised by how easy it was.

I was too overwhelmed by emotion and sensation to even consider the question.

That was almost exactly forty years ago. I’ve wondered, since then, whether he and I would have come together if he’d stayed on to get his PhD instead of putting 2500 miles between us. Geeky and awkward as he was, would he have had the courage to offer himself as my master? Struggling to deal with my own raging hormones, would I have paid enough attention to him that I would have seen who he really was?

Believe—believe in me, and in your own dreams.

For I will make them real.

I am the one, the Master.

Give me your nakedness, your naked heart.

As you open yourself to me, so I will satisfy your lust.

I don’t have those letters anymore. One day, years ago, I destroyed all the correspondence I’d saved. I decided it was unhealthy to hold onto them. Rereading them over and over them was too guilty a pleasure. I worried that my obsession with our past love might be damaging my marriage. But a few of his words and phrases live on, quoted verbatim in my novels—like the snippet above from RawSilk.

Lisabet Sarai probably would not exist if not for that long-ago, long-distance negotiation. I’d always written stories, but without my memories of that incandescent passion, would I have been so moved to write erotica, especially erotica featuring power exchange? I doubt it.

I really wish I had those letters. Would I still react the same way? Or would his words sound cheesy and silly? I am no longer the innocent I was. We were both so young. Still, even at twenty four, he had the true instincts of a dominant. In those letters, he both guided and tempted me. I fell for his lines. I answered his embarrassing questions. I gave myself wholeheartedly into his hands.

I’ve never for an instant regretted it.

For an earlier post about negotiation, go here:

http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/2010/06/delicate-art-of-negotiation.html

For a fantasy about those letters:

http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/2016/02/stash.html