“If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately … then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish our overall power to feel, know and value deeply.” –Judith Plaskow
FOREWARD
It’s no coincidence that the main character of my story and I distribute the same first name, Elizabeth. She is both me and not me. She is the ‘me’ as I want to be … unfettered, open, elusive, alluring, sensual, seductive, submissive, wild … and many more other adjectives than I can readily list. This story follows my true introduction to this genre in the form of the movie, Fifty Shades of Grey. For all its failings, Fifty Shades at least brought the subject of BDSM into the open for all to see, and I was one of those women who saw into this for the first time. Quite a few of Elizabeth’s first experiences in the story followed my own inquisitorial search, but where she ventured to do so for real, I was left fantasizing and wanting more. That’s where our paths diverged.
Therefore, here in this story, I give you Elizabeth Brandt. She is the perfected ‘me,’ the ideal ‘me,’ the ‘me’ that I would become if society and career and life had no other holds on me. I am happy with the life I chose and the one I continue to live, but here, in the four corners of this story of my namesake, I present to you my ultimate fantasy. I hope you all, men and women alike, enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. I would love to hear your feedback.
PS – I’ve written 20 or so chapters, 500+ pages, and I’m 95% done. I just need to edit the remaining chapters and will post the others as soon as they are ready, within the next few days/weeks. Please let me know what you think, as this will hurry me along. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 01
Ugh! … another sleepless night … I glanced at the clock and realized that it was almost 2:30 a.m. I’d been fighting to go to sleep for the last four hours. Again. So frustrating! I got up out of bed, straightening my nightgown as I stood up. It had become twisted around my waist as I tossed and turned in bed during the night. I pulled it down to my thighs where it draped down fully, now smooth against my body. As walked out of the room, I glanced over at my husband, Jonathan, asleep and snoring as usual. ‘Normal,’ I mused silently, to no one but myself. I left the bedroom, closing the door quietly but tightly behind me.
I ventured towards the living room, stopping first in the kitchen to make a glass of iced tea. Our bay window isn’t shuttered, so I ducked back quickly, wondering if anyone could see me in my nightgown. At 5’7″ and 132 lbs., I’m no stubby fat middle–aged married woman, but that still doesn’t mean I want to give the neighbors a show. I could see it now, the talk of the neighbors … “did you see Elizabeth Brandt last night? … She was almost naked in front of her window?!! How scandalous!!”
I’m being silly, I thought. At this time of the morning, no one would be up, much less looking out of their window on the odd chance of catching a sneak peek of a neighbor in her nightgown. I glanced in the hall mirror, noticing how disheveled my hair was from my restless sleep. I grabbed a brush out of my purse hanging by the back door and picked up my glass of tea.
Making my way to the living room, I sat down on the couch. I relaxed and pulled my legs up, stretching out their length and rubbing them together, stretching my arms overhead as well. Unfortunately, I was more awake than ever now, so I grabbed the remote, turned on the TV and started flipping through the channels, looking for something interesting, or even very boring, as maybe that would help get me back to sleep. Feeling a bit chilly in the night air, I grabbed a light blanket from the drawer under the coffee table, covered my legs up to my stomach, and settled in.
Taking a sip of the tea, I leaned back into the couch, looking at the guide on the TV as it came to life. I turned down the volume and kept it low, not that it would awaken my husband, snoring loudly in the other room, but still I was at least conscious of that. I flipped through the guide … Late Night News … ‘no’ … sports channels … another ‘no’ … kids channels … ha, I don’t have any children … so after the pang of regret and longing washed over me, I just as quickly skipped those channels and moved on. Extended channels now … Hallmark … ‘no,’ not in the mood for a sappy romance at all … some Lifetime shows appeared that looked okay, maybe I’ll come back to those. I skipped ahead to the pay channels… HBO … Showtime … action … drama … suspense … crime … quite a range, but nothing appealing. Then I spied something that caught my attention … Fifty Shades of Grey .
I scrolled to the channel and read the description, along with seeing a small thumbnail preview of the current part of the movie showing in the guide on the TV. I’ve heard of this movie of course… who hasn’t at least heard of it? … but I knew very little about it. It was a topic of conversation more than once at lunch or coffee or other meetings with friends and co–workers. “Appalling,” was the most common word I remember, “stupid” was another, “ridiculous” yet another. As they commented, I watched my friends and colleagues look down their noses at the simple mention of it. None had seen the movie, or if they had, they would never admit it. The movie had already started and was about twenty minutes in. It was late, Jonathan was asleep, and I had to admit that I was a little intrigued. Even if Jonathan woke up–ha, right, like that would happen–I could grab the remote and change it before he even knew what was on. I clicked the channel and started to watch.
Absentmindedly brushing my hair as the show played on the TV before me, I became more and more focused on what was going on in the movie. For the first time ever, I was openly exposed to the subject matter of “BDSM.” This was no longer a topic that was hidden … this movie at least put it in front of you with a stark, blatant depiction of what BDSM was, or at least what this screen writer thought it was. Dakota Johnson is a lovely woman, and Jamie Dornan certainly has a gorgeous body and abdominal muscles that would make any woman swoon, but as I watched, if found that their characters were, well, unconvincing. It wasn’t the characters or their story that held my interest, though, … it was the blatant sexuality of what they were doing, the extreme things they were doing. That is what kept me enthralled.
I watched with growing curiosity and interest. At first I watched with a distant, uninvolved, nonchalant approach, like I was watching a documentary. As the movie played out before me, though, I watched with more personal introspection and, well, yes, even arousal. The real turning point for me, and what really intrigued me and made me really start to get into the movie, was the scene when they negotiated their “contract” about what items and activities they would include in their sexual encounters, which included many things of which I had never heard. “Do people really do that?” I thought. I asked that question to myself meaning both two things: “Do people really do all those wild sexual things, and do people into BDSM really negotiate contracts like that?”
As I watched further, the sensuality of the scenes began to take their toll on me. I was getting aroused. My breathing was shallower during certain scenes. I felt my nipples harden, rubbing against the fabric of my gown as my breathing became more intense. After a few minutes, I realized that I was unknowingly running my fingers on the upper edge of my nightgown, just over my chest near my collarbone. As the back of my nails touched the inside of my breasts, I could feel my arousal further down as well, between my legs, and all over my body. As the movie played on into its final scene, I was lost in the character of Anastasia Steele. I was no longer watching the movie or watching her … I was feeling the part, as if I *was* her.
The final scene was a bit of a shock that brought me out of my imagined role and sensual arousal. The character of Ms. Steele allowed herself to be spanked by Mr. Grey. Not a playful spanking or even a hard swat or two by a lover. Instead, this was a sheer, all out whipping, a beating, and her character reacted as I would have expected an abused woman to react, or even as I wondered I would have reacted myself. She told her lover that she would never allow him to do that to her again.
As the movie concluded, I was far from sleepy, and the story and the content really seeped into my mind. I let the credits just roll as I stared at the screen. It didn’t fit. The last scene, the sensuality of their play throughout the film, the physical restraint, all of it up to that point was intimate and sensual, even if it was a bit wild, with the specialized BDSM room and all the metal and leather restraints and devices. However, her submission to the whipping at the end of the movie, followed by her rejection of it, all bound with his desire to inflict pain on someone he professed to care about, well, it just didn’t fit. Is this what BDSM is really about, I wondered, or is it just Hollywood attempting to portray the subject, yet failing to do it properly through a lack of understanding?
My thoughts turned to one of the scenes, one of the first times they made love. There was some restraint there, where she was cuffed on her wrists and ankles, and that certainly got my blood flowing again. I reclined quietly and let my imagination go, thinking of my hands like hers, over my head, held in place by my lover’s hands, or bound with cuffs or rope, blindfolded so I could not see what my lover was doing, where he was looking, or what he was about to touch. Were his lips hovering over my mouth, about to give me a deep, passionate kiss? Was he focused more on his own hands, about to play with my chest or move between my legs? Or was he just simply positioning himself over me, about to lay on top of me, ready to plunge into me and make me his?
Almost involuntarily, my hand moved in between my legs, touching myself, and I was almost surprised at how wet I was. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt myself get that wet before without someone else to help. Certainly never when I was by myself, alone. My mind moved past that wondered, my hand still holding the hairbrush, moving it between my legs and pressing the end of the brush into my body. Not inside me, just using the pressure of the brush handle against my more, well, sensitive spots. It didn’t take me much longer before I felt an orgasm create, and I let it consume me. I stifled my panting and breathing as best I could, but some sounds I just couldn’t prevent. That actually made the pleasure subside, as I couldn’t focus as much on it as I wanted to. It wasn’t a full out natural release. I had to contain it, or I might be yelling out, making way too much noise, and surely wake Jonathan.
Wait … Jonathan? I wondered of Jonathan, my husband, for the first time since I started the movie, as the feeling of my orgasm subsided. In this little fantasy of mine, with my lover over me, not once was there a wondered of Jonathan. I mean, I could find out if I had wondered about Jamie Dornan and pictured him over me, since I had just watched several intimate scenes with him in them. However, it wasn’t him I imagined either. It was instead some nameless, faceless, hard–bodied lover that just exerted his strength over me.
I lay back, pondering this as I closed my eyes and relaxed on the couch. I wondered about the whole BDSM fantasy that I had just imagined, whether BDSM was really like what was depicted in the movie, or whether it was something entirely different. I thought what so many people found so fascinating about it. I also wondered about this nameless, faceless lover, one who knew me intimately, knew what excited me physically, emotionally, mentally, and one who had complete dominion over me. Before I knew it, while laying back imagining this beautiful other man with me, I drifted off into another fitful sleep.
