Learning My Safeword (M+/f, BDSM, humor)

The Y2K Bug and the surrounding hullabaloo is remembered by people in different ways. For me it simply puts a date, New Year’s Eve 2000, which would mark a transitional point from quiet, ordinary “normal” person with “unusual” secret desires to the beginning of the road to the person I am today.

I’m going to skip over the first six months of the year 2000, not because there’s nothing to tell – there is plenty – but because this upcoming weekend is the third anniversary of a significant moment which I’d like to tell you about today.

I didn’t take BDSM very seriously at all for the first six months. For me, when I first got into the scene all I really wanted to do was dress up in the lovely Mistress clothes I liked so much. Alas, to wear Mistress clothes – (Hot Couture 😉 – it was expected I BE a Mistress. It quickly became apparent, after a few feeble attempts which raised more laughs than whelts, I realized it was my lot in life to be the *spankee* and not the *spanker*.

Once this little identity crisis was resolved, I slowly – VERY slowly – became comfortable with people identifying me as a “submissive”. It took a while for me to settle into the role but I took to it like a duck to water. Sure, all the other submissives I came to know usually ended up having their bottoms spanked, flogged and whatever but I felt this would be a small price to pay if it meant I didn’t have to learn to behave myself and always act with the power-emitting rays of self-control, everything understated and potentially menacing, which seemed to be the way it was if you were a Dominant. I just wanted to have a bit of fun is what I’m trying to say and didn’t want my BDSM experiences to remind me too much of work (where protocols and rules are the order of the day.)

Like most new submissives being ushered into play scenes involving discipline or anything else likely to result in pain or discomfort, the whole system of the “safeword” was explained to me on day one. For me, once the concept sank in, I thought “wow! I can do whatever I like, get myself into so much trouble that SOMEBODY will SPANK me, and then as soon as I’ve had as much of that as suits me, all I had to do is say “RED” and everybody has to stop.”

People let me get away with this for about six months which brings me to June, 2000.

I had been such a naughty little submissive in that time that a number of the Doms in the club decided it was time I learned a proper safeword – something that was mine and mine alone, mostly because “RED” obviously wasn’t being used properly by me and I should have a word that actually MEANS something to me.

I immediately guessed I was in real trouble when Master T, an older English man considered something of an elder statesman among the local Dominants, was brought in to conduct my “lesson”. It had all been plotted in advance by my husband, who knew something about me that I could never have imagined would be used this way against me. Master T informed me that my new safeword, because I found it easy saying the old one at the drop of a hat, would have to be something that I would be loathed to say. An utterance I would only let fall from my lips when I REALLY meant “stop at once!”

Ever the optimist I thought, sure, go ahead, I’ll agree to use it while secretly thinking this is too easy! I nearly died of shock when Master T informed me my new safeword was to be “H”. The letter “H”, that is.

What’s the big deal about that, you ask? Well, unless you’ve been educated in a school like the one I went to where they taught you to “speak proper English, like a Lady” you might not immediately see how fiendish their plan was. You see, there are two ways people generally pronounce the letter “H” and the proper English pronounciation – the one I was taught under fear of pain if I said it any other way – was ‘Aitch, with the “H” silent and not “Haitch” – like Haaay’ch”, which was the way “common people” said it, according to my teachers at school. You can guess, can’t you? I can barely bring myself to vocalize the sound of it in my mind but Master T said I was to pronounce it as “Haitch” – the common way! He went on to say he was about to give me a caning to punish me for having been such a naughty subbie for the previous six months, abusing my “RED” safeword, and generally running amok at the Club and that the ONLY word he would hear from me if I wanted it to stop was “Haitch”. MEANIE!

So that was that then. Everybody was agreed, although I knew I’d been set up, and the caning began.

In hindsight it was all really, really funny as Master T, assuming the role of Doctor ‘Iggins (from My Fair Lady, a film I actually adore!) and me in the role of the poor Eliza except in reverse where I was being given a lesson in how to be a commoner “wot don’t speak proper English like a Layyy-dy, an’ all.”

It was the most profoundly pleasurable experience playing the game: Master T, whose speciality I might add is the cane, worked me into that most magical of places which I’d heard other subbies talking about but thought was some kind of myth – “sub space”. At the time I had no idea what had come over me except I was deeply loving every moment, including the pain although even that blurred as I lost myself in my own thoughts.

When I first joined the scene I was adament I wasn’t a “pain slut” (and I still maintain that to this day) however I took such a severe caning that night that I literally couldn’t sit down for a week and do you know what? I DIDN’T SAFEWORD! That abominable sound refused to pass my lips!

I protested long and hard for days afterwards about how mean everybody had been to make me have THAT as a safeword. I even remember saying to my husband the morning after “if you wanted to give me a word I NEVER would normally use, why couldn’t have been CUNT!” We both roared laughing because I honestly never do say that word either but it would have been preferable to, well, let’s just say I’d rather say CUNT. See, I said it twice 😉

Don’t get me wrong here – it’s not like I’d want to be caned like that every day of the week. What ultimately happened, not through any plan or anything, was that it was precisely a year later before I received another caning. I have pictures of both sessions as proof, if anybody thinks I’m making up all this. Anyway, the reason for mentioning any of this at all is because this upcoming weekend will be the third anniversary of my caning initiation. Nobody has told me anything yet, but I suspect this is going to become an annual event on my submission calendar 😉