The Lazy Vanilla Man

A neophyte sub once asked me a silly question: “How do you tell the difference between a Master and a lazy vanilla man?” 

I think my first reaction was to dismiss the question out of hand as ridiculous. The difference was obvious to anyone with even half a brain. I’d spent my own considerable time coming fully to grips with my orientation as a Master. It would be more than a little deflating to think all that effort directed at personal growth had left me further behind than where I started, nothing more than some vanilla sluggard. 

But in the course of discussing the question, it began to seem far less silly than I first imagined. The curious sub had intuitively recognized something that is surprisingly easy to forget, particularly as the weeks of a relationship grow into months, and the months grow into years—namely that domination and submisssion are not two sides of a single coin as we sometimes mistakenly think. Rather, they are distinct needs that require separate fulfillment, for both Master and slave. 

I know few Masters who have not found themselves guilty of behaving like lazy vanilla men, at least at some point in time. After all, if a slave’s service is fully satisfactory, what need is there for active domination? Isn’t accepting the service dominant enough? 

Maybe there was an acute need for overtly expressing dominance in the past, when the slave needed to learn the Master’s preferences and idiosyncrasies, the boundary discriminating acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. During that honeymoon period, the separate needs for submisssion and domination were naturally fulfilled by the process of defining the scope of service. 

We sometimes see remarkably beautiful relationships in our communities, ones with an elegance of service that outsiders envy, tailor-made in every respect to the Master’s individual preferences. As outsiders, what we often don’t see is an unexpected feeling of malaise and unfulfillment that has infected the parties to the relationship itself. More often than not, the source of that malaise is a waning of the expression of dominance. 

In a very real and sad sense, the Master has become nothing more a lazy vanilla man. And the successful fulfillment of both parties’ needs has suffered.

Who Has the Power?

I remember the day. 

My slave and I were enjoying a quiet moment in the early evening. Autumn’s coolness was making its early presence known through a gentle breeze floating in from the open door. I was relaxing on the couch and she was on the floor at my feet, leashed, as I still often have her, all these years later. She grew quiet in the way she often does when she’s been processing something that she wants to raise and discuss with me. 

She looked up, met my eyes. 

“Master,” she said, “I can’t disobey you.” 

Good, I thought, perhaps a bit smug, that’s the whole point of being a slave. 

But I didn’t say anything aloud. I know her. In moments like those, her first statement is inevitably just the opening to a much deeper discussion. 

Looking down at her hands playing nervously with the leash, she elaborated, “I mean, I don’t think I’m capable any more of disobeying you, even if I wanted to. The thought of it makes me physically sick, makes me need to throw up.” Like an alcoholic taking Antab*se. “It scares me.” 

At the time, I didn’t know all that much about Master Tanos and his ideas of internal enslavement, which have become much more widely known and embraced in the years since. But I knew I liked what my slave was saying about herself, about us, even if she feared it. It meant that she was truly enslaved to me. Not only did I hold a physical leash that gave her comfort, I held a metaphorical one—an unbreakable metaphorical one. 

It is a common trope in some segments of our communities that “the sub has the ultimate power.” After all, they say, the sub can simply withdraw consent, can safeword, can decline to tribute, can log off, never to be seen again. I’ve seen the sentiment expressed on this very site, in some blog or other writing that I happened upon while hopping around. I think this is dangerously naïve thinking. 

At best, it applies to a different kind of relationship than the ones that sustain me. Or maybe I concede that it applies to the earlier phases of such relationships. But in those, the endless tide of scenes and tributes and domination and obedience steadily works its erosion on the once-rough rocks, rendering them as smooth as seashells polished by the waves. It happens slowly enough that it might not even be noticed—until the moment when it has become undeniable. 

On that late-summer day many years ago, my slave and I discussed her feelings and mine well into the night, until the earlier pleasant chill had deepened enough to cause her to shiver and she needed the leash unclasped long enough to close the door. 

We came to a shared understanding. Scary it might be, but it was also thrilling, satisfying, and mutually rewarding. Neither of us knew what would come next, of course, in this new phase of our relationship. We knew only that it was something special that we would both lean on in our exploration. We would continue together, taking intrepid steps along the obscure path, and see where it led. 

I’ll never forget that day.