gold, glitter, shadows and wandering - some things that are stolen, can never be replaced . . .

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring . . . 
    --  J. R. R. Tolkien

Some things that are stolen, can never be replaced - A Cautionary Tale by M. Samadhi

Serafina and I have a wonderful new friend who's going to be venturing off to see a prospective new dominant tomorrow . . .

While thoughts of romance and wonderful good times of dominance and submission are always exciting, the "mother hen" in us is always filled with a bit of trepidation, a touch of anxiety, when contemplating the risk/reward equation that needs to be considered when approaching situations like this.

We ourselves are living proof that online meetings can end in true love, happiness, and all the good things you see in our relationship.  We also know that meetings of this sort can go in the opposite direction.  We know both sides of this coin all too well, I had a close friend who became victimized by one of the predators who inhabits the fringes of the BDSM community.

I once knew a beautiful submissive lady I'll call Victoria, since that was her name.  Victoria's story is one of great loss, it's a cautionary tale that isn't about a single meeting gone wrong, that alone would be tragic enough, but instead she became the kind of long term victim of which horror stories are made.

It began simply enough, in middle age my friend Victoria discovered her submissive tendencies and began to explore them.  It seems like it was just yesterday I met her online for the first time, but the cold hard reality of life is that time flies by quickly, and I now realize that our first encounter was 15 years ago.

When we met, Victoria had just been collared by a charming man who also happened to be a radio personality in a pretty substantial southern US media market.  I'll call this would be dominant John, because once again, that was his name.  I know he called himself Master John on AOL back in the late 1990's, and I believe his radio name was John Masters, although that's a detail I never really got close enough to confirm for myself.

I also know that John had a hypnotic voice and knew how to use it.  I know this first hand because the one time I allowed my former submissive and ex-wife (Blissful Torment I had named her) to talk to him on the phone it evolved into a glorious disaster.  I left Ms Torment alone on the phone with him for a few minutes, and returned to find her attempting to perform fellatio on my dog!

I'm not making that up, and there's no special background or back story that would have led to this being something I might have suspected could happen.  We're talking the kind of shock that occurs if an individual walks in on a spouse involved in an affair.  I think my heart stopped, you could have knocked me over with a freaking feather, and I'm a big burly guy who has played and coached football. I stand six foot tall and weigh in at well over 200 pounds . . .

Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that my ex and I must have been into bestiality, I can assure you that's simply not the case.  Yes my ex and I had read books like Anne Rice's Beauty trilogy that have occasional mild bestiality references, but that was it.  Sex with animals had always been a hard limit for both of us.  Let's be honest, sex with critters is a hard limit for most folks, and it should be, as there's no way that an animal can consent to being used in that way.

Let me be very clear about my position on this topic.  Critters are not capable of consent.  Bestiality is a form of animal cruelty.

The reality facing me was that my ex had allowed herself to be hypnotized, I'm of the opinion that John had managed to place Ms Torment into a hypnotic trance with just a little prodding and some simple instruction.  I'm not trying to absolve myself or Ms Torment of any culpability in what happened, it's more simply an explanation of my best understanding of how things got so weird so fast.

OK moving on . . .

As might be expected, John and I had some really select fucking words.  I called him every name the son of a packing house worker might know, and I do believe my nasty vocabulary is extensive.  I threatened him with a variety of actions that would cause his physical demise, and made clear enough my ability to follow through on the threats that I never again saw him in an AOL chat room.  For his sake that was just as well anyway, I spread the alarm about this so called dominant far and wide, passing the word along in chat rooms as a cautionary tale.

A lot of good that does, right?  Screen names and handles are a dime a dozen, ruin an online predator and they just reappear in a different guise, the relative anonymity of the Internet makes that all too simple.  I would have been better off with a more discrete campaign to raise the alarm, but I've always been the type to attack problems head on, and that's exactly what I had done.

The only individual I tried to warn but couldn't convince was his submissive, Victoria.

In response to that failure, I'll be damned if Ms Torment didn't decide to make Victoria a "project" - just like the predator, my ex changed screen names and befriended Victoria under false pretenses.  I can't say that I approved, but it's not something I forbid either.  I knew at that point that forbidding it would have simply made Ms Torment hide her actions from me, she had become obsessed with "saving" Victoria.

I wish I could tell you that somehow, though efforts of my former submissive and myself, Victoria was saved pain, embarrassment, humiliation and/or financial ruin.  I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said we saved her from anything.  All the good intentions and gentle direction in the world wasn't going to save Miss Victoria, and the subterfuge of befriending someone to "save" them wasn't something that sat well with my own personal sense of honor.

Like I said, despite it all, we saved her from nothing.

Before it was all said and done, John had "borrowed" every bit of savings Victoria had managed to accumulate, cleaning out her bank accounts, cashing in CD's, etc.  Before it was all said and done, John had maxed out every one of Victoria's credit cards.  Before it was all said and done, John had even managed to have Victoria borrow against her future retirement!

Once John had built his own home recording studio, once all the money and loans and credit cards were gone, once he'd had one last visit where he had her perform every debauched and debasing action his sick mind could conceive, including a special performance with his guard dog, she was dismissed without concern or care.

Not even a thank you.  Hell, she didn't even get a, "Fuck you".

All she got was a dispassionate, "You can leave, now," and not another word.  Not another word despite crying, pleading, begging, offers to further debase herself, offers to somehow find more money for him.

Nothing.

I know it's hard to read this tale, it's even harder to write, and it was harder still to watch.  Can you imagine what it was like to live?

Victoria came to my ex, asked if we wouldn't take her as a submissive, wouldn't we show her how it was done right, that D/s didn't have to mean abuse, couldn't we heal her?

I tried.

I was motivated by compassion more than desire, but I tried.

John's voice was still inside her head, and while she didn't want the abuse, Victoria still craved the kind of attention John had given her over the phone, with the hypnotizing voice.  This poor lady had been possessed and debased to the point that she had no idea who she was herself, and she was simply looking for another to fill her in the only way she knew.

Just because it has a label

 

does not guarantee genuine gold

My heart was never in it.  It's with tears in my eyes that I tell you, dear reader, that after one meeting in person I dismissed Victoria.  I had no choice, I couldn't do it.

I know after that Victoria totally left the D/s community behind, returning to her conservative rural southern Baptist roots.

I ran across her briefly not long after I'd met Serafina and fell in love.  She asked bitterly if she'd been "replaced" and I honestly said that a submissive lady had captured my heart, but that she was married and lived in another country.  I could almost hear the plaintive wail in her voice, as the words came over the chat box on my computer - "What does she have that I don't?"

I told her "Nothing!" then said I had to go.  I guess that was goodbye too . . .

The answer, had I been brutally honest, would have been . . .

"Self-respect!"

We all have desires we want, we need, we have to have fulfilled.  Some of us wait a lifetime for the opportunity.  In the end, the pleasures can be fleeting, and the consequences rather long lasting.

That last time I talked to Victoria she did tell me she was on a financial path to have everything restored by 2012, so I'd guess by today she's finally had her financial recovery.  I wish I could have given back the part of her that other dominant stole, but some things are beyond even the grasp of even the most experienced Master.

And that's the conclusion of today's heart-wrenching tale.  Sometimes life is ugly.  There's no tidy moral to my story, I've quite obviously gift wrapped nothing, and I'm not going to wrap the ending in a bow.  Some things that are stolen, simply cannot ever be replaced.