Role Play: A Means To An End

I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I have actually submitted, by which I mean accepted a “punishment” (real or roleplay) in my head as well as in my body. I will pretty much always submit physically, but in my mind is a different matter. I mentally fight what's happening to me, fight the power that someone has over me, swear to myself that I will not let them break me, and sometimes even have to end scenes if I can feel that I'm reaching that breaking point. I will often exhibit signs of this fight as well, as anyone who has played with me would recognise. I roll my eyes, sigh, talk back, am stroppy in tone and body language. All ways of me making my mark on the situation and proving that you may have my body but you don't have my mind. (Anyone reading this who has played with me and seen me doing that, it's nothing personal, I promise!)

The trouble is that this can actually be awfully tiring, for me as well as for whoever I'm playing with. Sometimes I actually do just want to submit, mentally. To know what it feels like. To experience what I've always thought must be a certain kind of peace. Just to accept something and go with it rather than fighting it every step of the way must be actually quite nice. The problem of course being that as myself, I would find that very hard to do. Especially at the moment. I'm in such a place with work and various other things that it feels as though letting “Eliane” break, submit, would be an exceptionally bad idea. So I had to come up with some other way. And that way was to create a character who could, and would submit.

Thus Alice was born. As alluded to in my previous post, Alice is an 18 year old orphan who has lived in an orphanage since the age of 1, and who is a shy and obedient girl. The worst she's ever beaten for is reading when she should be working, and she's an innocent and something of a loner. She's never had a boyfriend as the boys at school would never have deigned to go near an orphanage girl, and all in all she's something of a throw back to a former era, even though she is based in today's world. Again, as described in the previous post, Alice is being taken on by a Mr Thomas, strict but fair gentleman, to work as part of his staff, starting on the bottom rung and working her way up. In the role play Alice is meeting Mr Thomas for the first time, to be interviewed. She has been told that he is strict but fair, that this is a wonderful opportunity for her, and that she must show him what a good and obedient girl she is.

I was always pretty sure, as I was creating Alice in my head, that very little of Eliane would be left in there. I deliberately created a shy, easily intimidated girl who wouldn't say boo to a goose. But I wasn't sure. Would “I” creep back in to Alice? Would there be flashes of my obstinacy, my fight, or would I actually manage to submit to someone else's will as Alice? I think the answer surprised me a little and surprised “Mr Thomas” more than a little. From the moment I opened the door as Alice, there wasn't a trace of Eliane. Alice was the most perfectly behaved (and to be frank, pathetic) creature you've ever seen. She was petrified of this gentleman. Even though he was perfectly polite at the start, explaining what the job and interview would entail, and asking her questions about herself, she could barely speak above a whisper to answer him. When he started talking about the discipline regime in his household the fear became even worse.

The poor girl's ordeal had barely started, though. She was forced to take a series of tests on arithmetic, general knowledge, history and geography (proving conclusively to Eliane that I forgot how to do long division a long time ago!). Then she was forced to read out the letter she had written to Mt Thomas on his instruction. She had already been warned several time above speaking clearly and loudly, but eventually Mr Thomas lost patience and ordered her over the back of the chair to belt her. That was not the worst though. Punishment at the orphanage had always taken place with the girl leaving her knickers up and legs together. Alice had never been in a state of even semi-undress in front of a man until Mr Thomas forced her to lower her knickers and then spread her legs. She was mortified. But she did it anyway, and accepted the beating without question or rebellion.

Worse punishments than a belting were to come during the course of the interview, but Alice was utterly submissive. She did not question, she did not hesitate. She just obeyed. There was no talking back, no eye rolling, no sulking, no attitude, in fact no sign that Alice and Eliane were in fact one and the same person. By the end of the role play, Alice was so totally under the thumb of Mr Thomas that she probably would have gone and run around the garden naked if he had told her to. Questioning that instruction would not have been within her capabilities. Not because she is a stupid character (only a little pathetic!) but rather because she (and via “her”, me) had submitted to such a degree that it would not even have occurred to her that there was something to be questioned.

And do you know what? It was liberating. And I would do it again in a heart beat. Because of, and in spite of, the intensity. When we had finished I was shaking and crying. Not because I was upset or hurt, or anything, just the shear amount of adrenaline and excitement that was running through me at what I'd done and what I'd achieved. It took a good 20 minutes of talking for me to start approaching normality again. Even given that, using that role to allow me to experience “real” submission was a fabulous idea. Letting go to that degree as myself is still something that I don't think I would be able to do, certainly in the foreseeable future, but having a character, a headspace, to do that through was exactly the right way to do it for me. So long live Alice, pathetic little wretch that she is, and long live role play as a way of accessing emotions and experiences that you can't always access yourself.