The Vetting
GISELE
Preferred Name: Gissy
The cursor blinked, awaiting my answer. With snacks in hand, I’d camped out on my comfortable sofa, already in my pajamas in the late afternoon, to answer this whole vetting document Jo?o sent me last night.
We hadn’t gone on a date since our last one. We texted every day, check-ins from him about my well-being and what I was up to, me trying to gauge how this new normal between us would be. No matter what, Jo?o never alluded to what we had been building in the past.
So, after a fulfilling volunteer day at the Gifted Athletes Center, I came home eager to start answering his questions. I hadn’t expected the process to be this hard.
Age: 36
Pronouns: She/Her
Birthday (Month I really just used it to search any adult-style accounts when looking for stimulating information. Not wanting to keep anything from him, I answered.
Twitter: @wannabeasub
How often do you use Social Media? Once a day.
Do you have a KynkLyfe? If so, what is your username?
What in the world was KynkLyfe? My fingers itched to open the search browser, curiosity tickling the back of my head, but the instructions said not to do that. In the end, I just answered that I had no idea what the platform was and proceeded to the next question.
The questions ranged from my understanding of what a submissive and a Dominant were to questions of why I wanted to be a submissive and what roles I identified with.
It was clear he had personalized this, keeping in mind it was my first experience, but he still held me accountable for entering this dynamic with knowledge.
Excited vibrations coursed through me as I typed my responses.
Never had I been so close to fulfilling my fantasies.
My bag of popcorn lay forgotten next to me, accusing me of having no appetite, but honestly, how could I when there was so much to take in?
Question 13 asked what it meant to be submissive and my fingers hovered over the laptop keyboard, the flow of thoughts running into a dead end.
When I imagined my submission and truly let myself fully embrace my desires, I saw myself in a total power exchange dynamic.
A Dom looking for a sub that would make his life easier and better and, in turn, guide me to do the same.
I imagined myself hosting dinners for him, doing his laundry—preferably in panties and a tank top—and cleaning the house in whatever skimpy clothes he wanted me to wear until he couldn’t take it anymore and he came and made me come until I couldn’t take it anymore.
The most realistic image of us out and about materialized, this no-name Dom giving me one look and a sign, and I knew exactly what to do.
If the Dom in my imagination looked like Jo?o’s doppelganger, it was a complete coincidence…and now I was lying to myself. God wouldn’t be pleased.
Submission meant total and full surrender because, in that surrender, I would allow my Dom to draw from my power, and together, we would elevate each other.
I didn’t need someone to tell me what to do.
Being a rule follower and doing the right thing had been my North Star.
I wanted someone who saw that, celebrated me, enhanced my submission, and made me feel cherished.
To me, being a submissive meant entrusting someone so fully that I could be the rawest, most vulnerable version of me without fear.
My fingers flew across the keyboard as my heart took charge of the rest.
Questions such as identifying what punishments I would consent to and what kinks I had and wanted to explore were expected, but I was surprised by inquiries about my health, employment, pet peeves, and more.
All the things I’d been afraid to explore due to my religion finally came out and breathed free.
After question 13, the rest of the questionnaire went by more easily as I set aside any trepidation and just trusted. I just submitted to the process.
JO?O
The black binder rested on my oakwood desk, waiting to be addressed. I’d found it there when I arrived for the day, probably dropped off early, right before Gisele’s commute. Her text at six this morning was perfunctory, but I could sense her excitement.
Gisele: I left something for you in your office. Have a good day, Jo?o.
Gisele had taken the liberty of printing out our Dominant/submissive agreement so that we would both have physically identical copies.
Her eagerness to serve was a drug I could no longer resist, not that I was doing a good job before.
She’d burrowed herself under my skin until I’d found myself acting just the way I despised. Self-centered and with little control.
That combination could be catastrophic if a Dominant didn’t have self-awareness.
I did. I understood how heady it could be to be in a total power exchange dynamic where a submissive was so eager to please that they didn’t enforce their limits.
I’d been afraid—still was—that Gisele would be like that, but she’d meticulously listed her hard and soft limits and the punishments she consented to with no problem.
The list of limits was extensive, but the punishment list, not so much. Limited impact play with specific instruments, orgasm denial, repetitive menial tasks, and removal of physical touch. I chuckled at her note in asterisks right below:
*I’m willing to negotiate punishments, but who in their right mind just gives a bunch of ways to be tormented?*
Her answers were insightful and showed me how serious and dedicated she was to her desires.
How could she be so committed to her religion and her need for a church family that would expect vanilla behavior from her and still be so specific in the many ways she wanted to explore BDSM?
I took it all in with awe. If only she divested herself from the need to conform to the narrow views of her religion, she’d be unstoppable.
But this was why our terms were limited and we’d agreed on only six months.
Because I needed fences around my desire for Gisele, for my need of her to be everything to me, submissive and my woman.
Something I’d never craved as much as I did with Gisele.
The expected knock on my door put a pause on my musings.
“Enter.” I stood up and circled my desk as Jardel, Joaquim, Pedro, and Moses walked in, each finding a spot in my office.
“So?” I asked without preamble, resting against the polished wood edge of my desk.
“Daaamn. Good afternoon, irm?o. How are you? Me? I’m okay.
Our brother here is good, tired but alright.
And your friends are good too. All here to assist,” Joaquim said, plopping himself in one of my large armchairs.
I stared at Jardel, who nodded apologetically for bringing Joaquim.
I figured there was a reason for it, though.
Joaquim was the soft-hearted one and we protected him because of it; he didn’t need to worry about anything going on with LaSalle and the moves he’d been making these past weeks.
“LaSalle tried to hack the database for the club. Sal told Joaquim out of concern without knowing what’s going down,” Jardel answered the unspoken question.
“Not surprised, but I thought we were prepared for that and well-fortified?” I looked at Moses, who nodded.
“We are, and he wouldn’t have been able to get through, but your sister was running a penetration test without telling you. Apparently, she does this periodically for everyone she loves. She traced back the attempts to an associate of LaSalle’s and put two and two together.” Moses shrugged.
“I’m surprised she’s not here?” I looked at Jardel.
“Devon,” both Jardel and Joaquim said succinctly, and I said a brief prayer of thanks and protection for my brother-in-law.
Whatever he had to do to convince Sal to stay away from this meeting would be a price she’d make him pay for days, if not a couple of weeks.
Knowing the man, he’d relish the challenge.
“I was expecting this. I wasn’t expecting Sal to catch it, but I knew he’d try different ways to get leverage.”
“So you’ve let this linger for weeks, knowing he’s circling around, wanting your club.
When do we put a stop to it? He’s been approaching some of our members, instilling fear with rumors about future ownership,” Pedro said, his annoyance loud and clear.
I accepted it as par for the course. The same frustrations bubbling around my inner circle were simmering in me, but for completely different reasons.
The sense of purpose, the will to fight…it fizzled away; the emptiness had kept creeping up these last six weeks during the vetting process with Gisele.
We’d negotiated our contract via revisions in a shared document, both too busy with our daily duties.
Her with her never-ending hospital tasks, volunteering, and church searching, and me putting every single dollar and document in order while gathering all the information I had on LaSalle, preparing to fight a man who operated on the same side of the law as Julio Jo?o.
But that fire that blazed bright and constant when Julio was alive and threatening my siblings’ peace of mind and my own was gone.
The sense of purpose me and my siblings found when searching for the women that my father had used had smoked out when the list of them dwindled until we’d done right by all of them.