Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook (18 page)

Online Relationship Slave Contract

As we stated earlier in this chapter, slave
contracts are far more common in the online BDSM culture than anywhere else,
for fairly obvious reasons.  An
online relationship slave contract
serves several purposes that are practically tailor-made for the internet
culture.  For example, when contact with your partner may be limited to
just a few minutes or hours each day
or less
, it may be difficult to
communicate one’s expectations and assumptions to your partner in the limited
time that you have.  It therefore becomes useful to have a document that
can be referred to and studied when your partner is not online.  It serves
an
educational
function.  The online slave contract also gives the
partners in an online relationship something that is seemingly tangible and
authoritative, in an environment where practically
nothing
else
is. 
It makes the whole thing
seem more real. 
Finally,
online slave contracts help to instill a sense of obligation and responsibility
towards the relationship, even though the internet culture in general seems to
encourage just the opposite.  The lyrics of a song called
“Do You Want
to Date my Avatar,”
by Felicia Day and the Guild, illustrate this tendency
perfectly:  “
And if you think I’m not the one, log-off! Log-off, and
we’ll be done!”

The major differences between online slave contracts
and real-world contracts are the provisions which make certain allowances for
the fleeting nature of online relationships, the time constraints, the
anonymity of participants, and the disclosure of personal information. 
Since many online relationships exist in
secrecy
and in
addition
to the participants’ real-world relationships, the potential for wreaking havoc
in each other’s personal lives is almost always high.  Hence, there are
almost always clauses in these kinds of slave contracts which emphasize the
importance of discretion and privacy.

Owner/pet Contract

An Owner/pet contract is similar in some ways to a
Master/slave contract, particularly in the sense that a pet is usually
considered the
property
of his owner.  But it is also similar to
the Dominant/submissive contract in the way it specifies which parts of a pet’s
life are to be considered under the jurisdiction of the Owner, and sets
limits. 

There is one major factor which makes all Owner/pet
contracts unique, and that is the amount of attention which must be devoted to
the
role-play aspects
of the Owner/pet relationship.  After all,
slaves like to consider themselves
real slaves
, and submissives can
actually be
real submissives
, but a
ponygirl
  is not a
real
pony
, and no
contract
can make her one.  Therefore, a great
deal of verbiage must typically be devoted to accommodating those differences.

Scene Contract

A scene contract typically applies to a single event
or BDSM scene, but it can also be applied to specific individuals with whom you
play on a frequent basis, even though there may be no significant relationship
between them.  Scene contracts are usually negotiated prior to an event,
and should spell out what is supposed to happen during the scene, identify hard
and soft limits, list safety precautions such as safe-words, and specify
whether or not sexual or body-fluid contact is permitted.

In this chapter, we’ve discussed the various types
of
commitments
that can be made by anyone who might be considering
entering into a D/s relationship.  We cannot stress enough the fact that
no
two relationships are alike
, and any attempt to force
your
existing
or potential relationship into a cookie-cutter D/s relationship mold will
likely result in a great deal of heartache for everyone concerned.  The
one-size-fits-all
slave contracts
that litter the internet as downloadable forms generally aren’t
worth a damn.

This lifestyle is full of people who will try to
define
your
relationship dynamic according to
their
world-view or
try to make
your
collar conform to their
own
notions concerning
such things.  Don’t buy into their delusions, and don’t allow them to
project either their naïve optimism
or
their gloomy cynicism onto
your
symbol,
your
collar, or
your
relationship dynamic. 

Beware of those who would preach of a
“One True
Way,”
as no such thing exists,
nor should it.

Ever since she was a little girl, Jade had always
been fascinated with dragons.  In college, she studied ancient mythology
and as an adult she decorated the shelves at home with dragon figurines. 
A painting of a dragon hung on the wall above her bed, and a pewter dragon
wrapped itself around the hilt of a large steel sword propped in a corner
behind the bedroom door.  Jade didn’t particularly care for
tattoos
,
but if she was ever going to get one, it would most assuredly depict a
dragon
. 

Jade not only
loved
dragons, but she had
always
identified
with them.  That became less certain, however,
after she experienced an odd dream.  Jade always took her dreams
seriously, particularly in light of the fact that the women in her family have
always had a long history of prescient gifts bordering on clairvoyance,
manifested mostly in visions and dreams.  But this dream confused
her.  It had come at a turning point in her life.  She and I had met
and grown close while playing an online game, and we progressed over the
following months to phone calls, video chats and planning a future
together.  As we were planning our first real-life meeting, she had this
dream.  Her dream was of a
phoenix
, the mythical bird of ancient
Greek legend that was consumed by flame and reborn from the ashes to start life
anew.    She had always loved and identified with
dragons,
yet this dream seemed to imply that she was
the phoenix
, reborn out of
the ashes of a former life, which had disappointed in so many ways.  If
that were the case, then perhaps her dream was trying to tell her that the
dragon represented
her new Master
.

Interestingly enough, the symbolism of the dragon
and phoenix had some significance to
me
, as well.  When Jade told
me of her dream, I was immediately reminded of the
Asian
depictions of
these mythical creatures that I’d grown up with in Japan and Hawaii, where
Asian traditions are commonplace.  Asian folklore involving dragons comes
primarily from China, where the dragon represents the highest-ranking animal in
the Chinese hierarchy of animals.  Historically, the dragon was revered
the symbol of the
Chinese emperor
, while the
empress
was
represented by the mythical
fenghuang
, more commonly known to westerners
as the
Chinese phoenix
.   

I researched the symbolism of the dragon and phoenix
together.  I learned that in both ancient and modern Chinese culture, the
dragon and phoenix together are considered a
yin and yang
metaphor, and
because they are symbolic of the blissful relations between a man and wife,
they are often used as symbolic of
weddings
and
new beginnings
. 

Each part of the Chinese phoenix’s body was
associated with a particular virtue. The head represented
virtue
, the
wings represented
duty
, the back represented
propriety
, the
abdomen represented
belief
, and the chest
mercy
.  In both
China and Japan, the phoenix exemplified the
sun, fire, justice, obedience
and fidelity
.  The more I learned about the symbolism of the dragon
and phoenix together, the more I believed in and appreciated the power of
Jade’s dream.  I set out to find the perfect collar for Jade, one that
would not only honor her dream and her new beginnings, but would represent all
of the things that we hoped for in our relationship as Master and submissive. 

A few weeks later, at our first real-life meeting, I
presented Jade with her new collar – a simple gold chain with a pendant
comprised of a disk-shaped ring of jade with a center inlaid with an 18K gold
depiction of a dragon and phoenix together.  From that day forward, for
the next six years, that collar was never dishonored and never left her neck
until the day we were compelled to go our separate ways. 

Even then
,
her collar did not lose its meaning or significance, and it never will.

"It is strange," he said, "I have
faced sleen and the steel of fierce enemies.  I am a warrior, and am high
among warriors.  Yet you, a mere girl, would conquer me with a smile and a
tear."

~ 
John Norman, Slave Girl of Gor

There are many in the D/s and BDSM lifestyles who
believe that any discussion of Gor and Gorean tradition would be more
appropriate to a forum related to fantasy and science-fiction than in any
conversation about
relationships and sexuality
.  In fact, there is
no shortage of people who typically react to the merest
mention
of Gor
almost
viscerally,
with much hostility and resentment.  What causes
them to respond so
negatively
to
anyone or anything
seemingly
connected to the Gorean way?  The answer lies in two little words:
the
internet.
  

For close to twenty years, internet chat rooms and
online virtual worlds have been overrun by
millions
of
Gorean role
players,
many of them
teens and young adults
seeking a fantasy role
play world that would push their
sexual
limits in ways that
Dungeons
& Dragons
never could.  Even though the Gorean novels upon which
this fandom is based had already been widely read for over twenty years, the
sudden and geometric growth of
internet chat
in the 80s and 90s allowed
virtually
anyone
to assume the role of a Gorean slave master
anonymously and, for the most part, unchallenged
.  To muddy the waters
even further, many of these role players, drunk with their very first taste of
power over another human being, deliberately set out to blur the lines between
their
role play
activities and
real life
by concealing their
ages, experience levels, and the fact that most of them
were still in high
school.
  As a result, an
astonishingly
large number of curious
and bored middle-aged housewives were sucked into the charade, and suddenly
found themselves
slaves
to deceptive and sadistic
teenagers
who,
more often than not,
had never read a single page
of any of John
Norman’s 32 Gor novels.
 

It would not be unreasonable to assume that
many
of the teenaged Gorean “Masters”
had never even had a real girlfriend
prior
to becoming the proud owners of
actual women
who fancied themselves
Gorean slave girls.  Unfortunately, this
catastrophic combination
of rampant deceit, adolescent immaturity, inexperience in adult relationships,
and even their
rank incompetence at role playing
over the past twenty
years has left literally
millions of women
and the people who cared for
them with an intense hatred for anything Gorean.  As if that wasn’t bad
enough, the online Gor phenomenon demonstrated exquisitely poor timing by
gaining popularity at the
peak
of the American feminist
movement.   Gorean notions of male dominance and the treatment of
women as sex objects and property didn’t earn them many friends among rank and
file feminists.

The poor reputations rightfully earned by these
chat
room Goreans
make it extremely difficult to present an unbiased portrait of
the
actual Gorean way
, versus the
caricatures
and distortions
that have shaped public opinion for so many years.  It would be a little
like trying to write a serious book about ghosts and spirits, using only
Halloween
costumes
as your source material.  Luckily, we have a way to bypass
the role players and the bad publicity in order to go directly to the literary
source of the Gor phenomenon, the thirty-two
“Counter-Earth”
novels by
John Lange Jr., writing as
John Norman.
 

John Frederick Lange Jr. was an aspiring science
fiction novelist who greatly admired the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
(b.
September 1, 1875 – d. March 19, 1950). 
There was, after all, a lot
to admire about Burroughs, who was the celebrated author of twenty-six
successful
Tarzan
novels and close to a dozen books about an earth man
who becomes an unlikely hero called
John Carter of Mars. 
Lange,
who earned his Ph.D. in 1963 from Princeton University and currently teaches at
Queens College, University of New York, is perhaps better known to millions of
science fiction and fetish lifestyle fans as
John Norman
, the author of
a series of pulp sci-fi novels about the planet
Gor. 
Under that
name, he published twenty-five
Gor
novels from 1967 through the
mid-1980s, and an additional seven Gor novels in the following decades. 
The popularity of the
Gor
novels over the past four decades has spawned
a cult-like following reminiscent of the millions of enthusiastic
“trekkies”
who are devoted to memorializing and making real, to the greatest extent
possible, Gene Roddenberry’s fictional
Star Trek
universe.  The
difference, of course, is that trekkies typically keep their
warp drives
and
sex drives
completely
separate.

There are some of you reading this right now who
would have preferred that I give anything having to do with Gor a far more
cursory treatment in this book than I have.  Much of that disinterest and
animosity is a natural result of the events and resulting bad feelings which I
have just described.  Some of it is also the result of a general lack of
awareness of the critical role that the Gor novels have played in the growth of
the D/s movement in the past fifty years.  A lot of what we take for
granted in the lifestyle today got its start in John Norman’s pulp
fiction.  Much of our lifestyle’s customs, protocols, language and
traditions
(such as collaring)
can trace its heritage
directly
to
the Gor novels.  Even so, it can be difficult to discuss this lineage and
the impact it has had without encountering the lingering animosity and
misinformation that plagues this particular D/s subculture. 

Separating the common misperceptions and negative
biases from what might be considered the
“real”
Gorean way has been an
almost-insurmountable challenge in the writing of this chapter.  My
solution has been to rely less upon what people
think
Gor is about, and
more upon what John Norman
says
it is about.  For that reason, I’ll
be borrowing heavily from the Gor books
themselves
to illustrate the
tenets, traditions, and values that are the
Gorean way.