Demeter Sows
Discovering submission as the path to psychological safety
As the door slammed shut behind me, she calmly said “Aren’t you going to take off my boots?”
A few hours earlier, I had stepped out of a discrete mathematics class during my freshman semester at an east-coast university. As I walked towards the nearest subway station, I crossed paths with a woman who was frantically looking for an art supply store before it closed. At first glance, this woman was unremarkable, short in stature with olive skin and distinctly Greek features, she looked like thousands of other European immigrants that give the city its unique culture.
“You should come with me, I’m not sure if I’ll make it in time”
I led her through dimly lit streets and the crisp autumn air to overpriced pens, sketchbooks and ink. We barely spoke to one another, as she walked through the aisles filling her basket with supplies. Each time I put on my tuque and prepared to head back home, she looked at me with disarming eyes and beckoned me to follow her. As she shopped, she barely spoke to me choosing instead to carefully examine every item and feel my eyes running over her body.
I don’t remember what she told me as she paid for her purchases, but I do remember her reaching for my hand. She wore black leather gloves that only softly led me out the door. My heart was pounding — has this woman chosen me? I wasn’t sure if I was attracted to her or not, I barely knew her, most of her body was covered by a red wool petticoat that made her look like a mediterranean Carmen Sandiego.
She led me to an old bar in the city’s downtown core, a bar decorated in kitsch opulence that was meant to be a nod to the 20’s. We sat across from one another at the bar, where she bought me red vermouth and watched my lips move as I told her my story. I nervously jumped between hopes, dreams ambitions and teenage experiences as she dragged on her Du Maurier. When the band’s trumpeter launched into a solo during a bad rendition of “Freddie Freeloader”, she took my hand again and placed it halfway up her cold thigh.
“My name is Georgia, by the way”
“I’m Charl — ”
“I don’t care”
I walked Georgia home through the dark streets of city’s gay village, I felt uneasy. As a 19 year old Italian-Canadian, I lived a sheltered life — dated nice girls, studied, played hockey on the weekends and lived with my parents. Boys like me partied on Saturdays and went to church on Sundays. We dated skinny girls who wore Miss Sixty jeans and expected stuffed animals and Hallmark cards as testaments of our love.
Now, here I was in the bad part of town, with a woman who was clearly twice my age, and who I knew almost nothing about. Georgia was a departure from every woman I had ever met. She was the kind of woman my parents warned me about, the kind that was awakened, strong and rejected the gender roles society thrust upon her.
Why was I walking home with her? What would happen once I got there? Could I ever be happy with a woman who didn’t need me? What does it say about me that I’m letting this happen to me? Am I a slut?
“Well, are you?”
She sat on her ivory victorian sofa as I crouched down.
“No honey, get on your knees”, her hardwood floors quickly sent aches through my joints. As a hot-blooded young man I had watched my share of porn, videos and images I always sought to imitate. This was the first time I was on my knees, looking up at Georgia and wondering why I could no longer emulate the virility I had seen on screen so many times.
I hastily unzipped the long zipper on each of her black suede boots. Carefully taking them off and putting them to the side. As I slid them off she suddenly held my face and kissed me.
“So soft, you are 19, right?”
“Of course Georgia”
Her kiss was different than any I had experienced before. She was aggressive and determined. She kissed me as I imagined a man would, with a hunger I know now came from tasting my youth.
Georgia ran her fingers through my hair and guided my head around her legs, running my lips over her stockinged feet, calves and thighs. She watched me grow with hunger as the texture and scent of her legs pulled me into her. In that moment I ached with a pain I would not feel again for years to come.
“Am I beautiful?”
“Yes, Georgia”
“So show me”
I worshipped a woman’s body for the first time. I could only think of making her know the attraction I felt towards her. I needed to know that I thought she was beautiful. I held her closely and ran my hands along every part of her body. My hands grabbed, explored and massaged each curve, stopping to admire and tend to every bit of flesh that most men would ignore.
I showed her my admiration as best I could, as well as any 19 year old could, until she lowered her pantyhose to mid thigh and trapped my head between her legs. She held me firmly as I pleasured her, patiently giving me clear instructions on how to please her. I listened to her w0rds — and her movement, as she told me what she needed from me. My desire for her mounting as she effervesced and nearly suffocated me with her grip, before she suddenly spread her legs and pushed me away.
“Show me how you’ll think about this when you’re alone.”
I complied, watching her stare at me almost expressionless as I slowly undressed —
“Dance.”
and touched myself. I had never been watched this way before. She wasn’t hungry as I was, she was examining me until I finished in a burst of ecstasy and shame.
As we laid on her faux-Persian rug, I felt her warmth engulf me like an amoeba. She held me close to her and pet me gently.
“Thank you, Charles. You’re going to make the right woman really happy someday”
As the weeks went on, I took my place in Georgia’s harem. Her vice was ambitious young men, men who could touch her with the hungry, clumsy touch of a horny teenager. Men without baggage to deal with. Men she could mould. Men she could trap in the triangle of her tights and take an orgasm from in exchange for her warm, almost maternal embrace. A safety which adulthood would simply not afford any of us.
I had given up on pursuing many women my own age so that I could spend an evening or two a week with Georgia. I was in love with her and soon my life revolved around my studies and my sessions spent pleasuring her. I had neglected my family, and the need for my own pleasure. Each week I’d worship Georgia… first with my hands, then with my mouth, then by demonstrating my desire for her through my own masturbation. This sustained me.
What was love really like? Would I ever have a family? Could I really share Georgia with her other men? I needed more, I needed to dive deeper and I needed to build a life so I ran away from Georgia with the same speed and ferocity at which she thrust herself in my life. Pulling away searching for something normal, that I could understand.
A decade later, I found myself married and successful and crying on my bathroom floor. My wife had dug her nails into my forearm in a fit of rage — blood streamed down my arm onto the cold ceramic tile. My eyes closed, I curled up on the floor in a sunbeam and for an instant remembered the warmth I had once found in servitude.
I ran from Georgia to find a vanilla existence from which I could build a loving life and family. Instead, I found abuse (the kind I didn’t consent to) in all its forms, at a level more intense than any I’ve experienced among the sadists I’ve served.
In her fetishistic dominance, Georgia treated me with respect. She recognized me as a human being who was separate yet connected to her. A human she cared deeply about. She used me because she loved me. I served her because I loved her.
It was in that very moment, lying bleeding on my bathroom floor that I finally realized, submission wasn’t supposed to be about playing with strange women in the bad part of town — it was the only way I could truly be safe.
