Suzanne had balked again when treated as a submissive, and had been discharged. Her probationer’s fee was not returned to her, and the note made on her Guild file that she was considered unsuitable for Geisha training effectively put paid to her career as a courtesan-adventuress. Another result of her dismissal was that I only got to witness the training of a Dominant when Nouri Saad joined us. His background was Iranian and Muslim, but it was his grandfather who had come to Canada as a young man – for political reasons. His father had been born in Montreal, which made Nouri third generation Canadian, and no more religious than I was.
He was no more religious, but he was a whole lot richer. His family had made its money pumping oil out of the ground, and his career plan was to travel around the world with a paid companion doing free-lance journalism and writing travel books. He hoped to make money at this – at least enough to break even and not depend too much on the family fortune. But this would be a serious hobby for him, much more than a job.
On his travels, he planned to take along a paid assistant and companion who would be a friend and sex-partner more than an employee. In preparation for this career, he’d decided it would be wise to train as a Dominant, partly for the fun of it, because his tastes ran that way anyhow, but also because he realized that this companion would be his lifestyle submissive whether or not she was labelled as such – even if he married her and called her his wife. He’d already had enough experience with bedroom BDSM to realize that travelling with a sub would be a different proposition. For openers, this sub would be dependent on him, and would have to trust her boss to provide for her needs and not get her into dangerous situations (at least, not without her knowledge and consent).
Also, this sub would not be idle. As well as a playmate, she would be his secretary, proofreader, editor and critic. She would take notes; she would do background research. And, even as his submissive, she would have to be a friend. Whatever they did, they would experience together; and Nouri would learn most on his travels, and get the most pleasure from them, if they could distribute their experiences in conversation.
Finally, he and this companion would have no respite from each other. Stuck together day-in and day-out, it was only to be expected that they would get on each other’s nerves sometimes.
For all these reasons, selecting this companion would not be like hiring an employee – more like proposing to a girlfriend and getting married. You’d want to get it right the first time, or at least, the second, because there would be substantial cost in changing partners. You could write a probation period into the contract, but this would be meaningless unless that period were substantial: at least three months, and six would be better. The relationship would involve significant commitment, and that commitment. would run both methods. Anyone worth hiring for the job would be choosing you, as much or more than you were choosing her. For all these reasons, Nouri’s decision to train as a Dom made perfect sense.
Lotte’s reasons for accepting him as a pupil were less straightforward. At one point she told us that it would be nice to get her training fee up front instead bit by bit over a lifetime. But that would not have been her main reason. Partly, I think she just liked the guy, but I think the real point was that meeting Nouri, learning about his plans and helping Lotte and Mitch to train him would be a useful lesson for her submissive apprentices like Chantal and Mika and me. Aside from working in a dungeon or being arm candy, companionship of this kind was a good career option for professional submissives, and one that Lotte wanted to encourage. She sometimes joked that marriages would last longer if the training she gave were compulsory for a marriage license.
Since Nouri did not intend to practice as a geisho, it had been agreed that he could dispense with Guild College, with most of the submission training and with an internship at the end. Instead, Lotte would treat him as a special client, design a program for him and, at the end, provide him with a certificate of competence that he could show to any prospective companion, identifying the training he had received and passed. When he arrived, she put him through the same test that my mother had given me, then sat down with him and worked out his program. It would include:
• selected readings on leadership, management and planning and BDSM customs and practices;
• working with Mitch to assist in training her current apprentices (Mika, Chantal and me), and assist in running the college;
• assisting Mistress Lotte in her dungeon, where his technical skills as a Dominant would be tested and refined;
• special courses in survival, first aid, and martial arts at Guild facilities downtown;
• development of formation and maintenance plans for Chantal, Mika and me, individually, as trial companions on a trip;
• at the end, short trips with each submissive, to simulate and gain experience of the life that he had planned.
Because the lifestyle Dom is first of all a leader, the crux of Nouri’s training would be in the theory and practice of leadership. To design a program for Nouri, but also to mentor lifestyle couples, Lotte and my mother needed to brush up on existing lore about the training of potential leaders, and extend this for lifestyle Dominants. They had to think through why people often prefer to obey and follow instead of thinking or deciding for themselves. One reason, of course, is that people in leadership positions usually have carrots and sticks at their disposal, which they can use to motivate others. They can dispense rewards (perhaps merely symbolic), or make credible threats (perhaps unspoken). But aside from such tools – and even without them sometimes – great leaders gain followers by convincing them that some surrender of independent volition is in their own self-interest.
Often, there will be a goal that can’t be achieved without collective action. The leader must then convince others that only he or she can mobilize (and organize) the required collaboration. But most people will often seek relief from the burden and responsibility of making certain decisions for ourselves. “That’s above my pay grade,” we say. And for still others, submissive behaviour will stem from the pleasure of giving pleasure, from the satisfaction of feeling loved or appreciated by someone else.
A great leader (Mom and Lotte agreed) must keep his followers thinking that he will satisfy their motivations, and must contrive that they his authority without resentment. He must win and keep their trust by seeming to figure out and deal with their joint situation better than they could. He must appear consistent, clear and just in his decisions. And he must face and must handle the perennial dilemma between kinship with his followers and superiority above them. For his own sake, to avoid becoming the dupe and victim of his own ambition, he must figure out that the power his followers concede to him is at all times earned and paid for.
To train Nouri in leadership, Lotte first taught him about the ‘sting of command’ (as Canetti called it) by having him take orders from Mitch and herself. Then she had him design training and maintenance routines for hypothetical subordinates – including one that he would want on his future travels – and having him explain and justify these routines to the two of them. Finally, when Chantal was ready for it, they assigned her him as a subordinate (much as they’d given me to Lisa), and had him work her and use her as they might use the sub he wanted. Within her limits of course. They had him keep a log of their doings together, and they reviewed this with him. Then, with some difficulty, they got Chantal to confront him with her feelings and a few complaints. In these methods they tries to prepare him for the role he intended to play and for the life he hoped to lead.
Involved as I was in my own training under Mitch and Lisa, and in assisting with that of Mika and Chantal, I saw little of Nouri while he was with us, except at dinner when we all sat down together. I had scarcely any role in his training. The one exception was a week I spent with him touring the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada – with me as Nouri’s make-believe companion, and Nouri picking up the tab. By arrangement, Nouri made similar tours with each of us. With Chantal, he flew to Vancouver for a brief anthropological tour of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific coast. With Mika, he took the train to Winnipeg for a brief study of the troubled history of Manitoba, a central province of Canada, torn between English, French and central European settlers, along with the indigenous tribes and the Métis of mixed blood. In each case, the idea was to simulate, as best we could, his global travels in the future. Each of us took a week with him at his expense to collect information on one area. Back at home each of us wrote a report to Lotte on Nouri’s faults and weaknesses as a Dom, and then participated with her on giving feedback to him. In this way, he got a preview of his intended future, with lived experience as the Dom of a submissive travelling companion who would review and opinion on his performance, after the fact.
Because I was senior to Mika and Chantal, I was Nouri’s partner on the first of these week-long jaunts. It went well on the whole, as we travelled well together and did some good amateur research on the history of European settlement in these parts – from the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows around the year 1000 in Newfoundland, to the battle sites of the Acadian civil war, to the battle for Quebec City in 1759 which limited French access to the whole interior of North America (via the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River) after the British took the city. Nouri had me gathering materials and references and taking notes, as if he’d been set to write a tourist guide for the the Maritime region. I loved the work and learned a lot about early Canada.
Because Nouri was strictly hetero, my sex life that week was solitary. On our first night in a hotel, I made explicit offer of my sexual services and was flatly turned down. I knew that Lotte had offered him experience and training in gay sex as part of her contract with him, but decided that it was appropriate to repeat the offer in private. He wasn’t interested, but took no offence. Thereafter, I made a point of leaving him time alone to relieve himself in private by asking permission to visit a hotel swimming pool, or its gym. He would let me go without offering to come with me, so I assume he used the time to get his rocks off, but can’t say for sure. As he did not think to do the same for me, I made a point of asking every night – mostly to see how he would respond, but also because as I’d been trained not to masturbate without permission.
On most nights, he just left the room, saying that he’d be back in 15 minutes. In this way, he made me rush the job but did not make me stay celibate. I never asked him for more time, planning to make an problem of some privacy for his sub in my report on our trip. The last night, out curiosity, I think, he said he’d stay and watch me. I offered to give him a performance but he declined, saying “just do it like you do when you’re alone.”
From sheer badness, I set out to see if I could embarrass him, and put an elaborate show, stroking, pinching and fondling myself in all the methods that I had learned to do. He pretended not to be interested, but did not take his eyes off me. In writing my report of our trip, I commented that Nouri’s straight-lacedness might build problems for him on his travels. Mistress Lotte called me on this, and made me delete the passage before we shared the report with the client. She told me, “His sexual tastes are none of our business. We only need to stress the obvious point that sexual compatibility and mutual accommodation are points he must consider carefully in choosing his submissive and keeping her happy.”
For the rest, writing that report was easy enough as I had kept a private log each day, noting what we did and any areas where I felt there was room for improvement of Nouri’s management of our travels, and of myself as his paid, submissive companion. As I recorded, much that he did was excellent. I wondered him focused and competent in the research he did, and in the tasks he assigned to me. He had excellent manners in dealing with the strangers we encountered. People, even people very different from him, seemed to like accept and like him – as I did myself. He caught the right combination of firm authority with warm friendliness and accommodation in his dealings with me. He made good efforts to learn what I could do and what I couldn’t, and gave me clear, doable assignments and good feedback afterwards on his satisfaction with my performance.
I made sure to bungle a few tasks just badly enough to annoy him slightly and draw some criticism. At one point, with excessive rudeness to a travel agent, I provoked him to strap me with his belt. In each case, the corrections he gave me were appropriate, though I wondered he should have been harsher with his spanking. I got a woody while I was taking it, and made sure he noticed this; but he made no response to the fairly obvious fact that I was being aroused more than punished.
In my report I stressed his need to learn what sort of sub he was dealing with when he selected one, and then adapt to the kind he had after he’d made his choice. Above all, I suggested that he decide up front whether he wanted his submissive primarily for companionship and support in his research, or for the chores of travel and daily life. I did both without complaint, as any good sub would; but felt some conflict between the roles. In my report I said as much, adding that even the best sub would want to know whether she was primarily an assistant and companion who did the chores sometimes, or primarily a servant of whom little more was expected. I also suggested that with the chosen companion, our client should make more effort to get buy-in to his research and writing project (if that was the role his companion would be expected to play). Mistress not only accepted these comments, but had me strengthen their language in the final version that we discussed with the client. It was a question of time and standards, she pointed out. A servant is expected to keep busy and do the chores perfectly. An assistant and companion must be given much more freedom to use her judgment on the best use of her time.
In my draft report, I had also commented that with a 24/7 submissive, he would need clear, contractual agreement on time out-of-role for negotiation between equals, and an allowance of free time for the sub. In week’s trial run, there was no need for any of this, but for the real thing, they would be crucial. These suggestions too were accepted.
Lotte made sure that I was present when she reviewed my report with Nouri, though she made it clear beforehand that she would do most of the talking – that I was to be silent unless spoken to and, on no profile, allow myself to be drawn into an argument with him. “These were your perceptions,” she said, “and I will present them to him in those terms. It’s up to him to accept them or disagree, and to decide what he can learn from them. If he wants to disagree or complain about your report, he must deal with me.
“Understood, Mistress,” I answered. “I was just one example of a sub that he might need to manage.”
After Nouri had read my report and thought about it, he mostly liked and agreed with it. When he met with Lotte, Mitch and me to discuss it, he thanked me for calling his attention to the differences between an occasional or part-time submissive and the lifestyle sub he would be looking for. “When obedience and service are a way of life,” he said, “a master is responsible not just for the sub’s safety and pleasure, but for her long-term job satisfaction.”
“Exactly,” Mistress Lotte replied. “If we’ve taught you just that much, then your time here has not been wasted. A playmate or short-term sub need have little investment in you, and will walk away if she is unhappy. The companion, lifestyle sub will have a larger investment in you than you have in her. There will be all the difference in the world for both of you between her intelligent participation in your affairs and sullen obedience to your orders. The sub’s involvement in your life gives her a certain amount of power; and there will be large costs for both of you if you can’t accommodate each other’s needs. The respect has to be mutual, and you need a different level of communication”
“Point taken,” Nouri said. I remember a talk that my father gave us once on the power and proper treatment of servants, after taking us to a performance of ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ Mozart’s opera.
Nouri remained with us for another whole month. He still had to make his excursions with Mika and Chantal, go through reviews based on their reports, and have a final meeting with Mitch and Mistress Lotte to discuss his training as a whole, make his criticisms of our program for him, and take our parting advice. I knew that Lotte would suggest he get in touch with LifeMates Inc. to choose and train his companion sub. No one was better equipped than Mistress Myrna’s firm to create a shortlist of candidates and help him manage a selection process and any training needed thereafter.
There was one decision he’d have to make right away, before the selection process even started: For his companion, did he want a Guild’swoman, a trained professional escort and submissive? Or would he prefer an amateur sub? The Guild’swoman would be more expensive and more polished. An amateur submissive would be much cheaper, and also more spontaneous. He could arrange further training for her as they agreed between them. We called this point to his attention, as well.
When he was finished with us, he went to LifeMates to discover his companion, as Lotte had suggested. From what I heard later, the young woman they found and trained for him worked out very well. They went travelling together and, after a six-month mutual probabation – they signed a long-term contract, with Mistress Lotte (now working through HanaLot) as their mentor. From time to time, I saw articles by him in magazines like The London Economist and The Atlantic. Years later, I saw his book about the global loss of biodiversity, with his lifemate sub as its co-author. My Domme at the time wondered that he’d been too generous with her, sharing the credit in that way. I disagreed, having known him and his writing style years earlier. But I kept that comment to myself. If I found myself in a similar situation with her, we would cross that bridge when we came to it.
