Life is all about anticipation. Good or bad, the journey to
our goal often eclipses the event. R L Stephenson said, and I paraphrase, that
it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Literally true in the case of
some, long anticipated, holidays or theatrical offering. The pleasure, with
rueful hindsight, was all in the preparation. Fearful anticipation is similar
but frequently emotions are reversed. If we express disappointment when
arriving at a dreary hotel that had filled our weeks with excitement, we equally
express pleasurable relief when an experience we feared turned out to be
nothing of the kind. Flying, visits to dentists, an important interview. All
come into this category. Good or bad, whatever enriches or blights our lives is
filled with anticipation. We spend every day anticipating tomorrow, whatever it
may bring.
I have been thinking much on anticipation this past week or
so. A few weeks ago I rashly booked an appointment with someone who specialises
in sensual domination. The gender is irrelevant as, tied up and naked and
blindfolded, it is only you that matters. Or it is in my case. I have flirted,
briefly, with this side of my nature for some time. But a fully fledged session
was a first. And I had a couple of weeks to think about it. Anticipation kicked
in big time. Pleasure and fear combined and a fee, or tribute as it is
sometimes called, was well earned even before I set out. The powerful force of
anticipation had gone into overdrive and, good or bad, the actual experience
could not negate that. I reckon, for submissives, it was always thus. We are
hardwired from birth. Think about it.
The most fearful childhood memory for many of us of a certain
age was that dreaded phrase ‘Wait till
your father gets home.’ It is almost a cliché but it has that ring of awful
truth. The uttered phrase usually meant, a few agonising hours later, a very
sore bottom. However hard we were whacked it almost came as a blessed relief.
No searing sting to our naked backsides could be as painful as the mind numbing
wait. It was the same at school. Told in assembly to wait outside the
headmaster’s study was the ultimate fear for every schoolboy. Long before any
cane landed on juvenile trousers many were reduced to tears in anticipation.
And if it was likely that those same trousers would be taken down the fear
increased fourfold. Abject pain was quickly followed by relief. It was all over
and the reality had been more bearable than the prospect. Summoned for
unexpected corporal punishment in class created a similar scenario. Except the
time between anticipation and bending down was considerably reduced and the
relief, when it came, muted.
But it is when we get older that the pleasurable ingredient
of anticipatory discipline begins to kick in. Initially it is a fearful,
inexplicable, thrill when the teacher produces his cane or strap. You are
frightened, you are scared, but you are also excited. Instant pain in your
bottom is assuaged by comradely attention and the displaying of the marks. The
suffering is eclipsed by the attention from schoolfellows. In your young and
developing mind you begin to enjoy the anticipation regardless of the pain. It
is but a short step to total enjoyment of the anticipatory fear, especially if
your pants are coming down, and a lifetime of disciplinary pleasure. Without
that anticipation no willing erstwhile schoolboy would ever stand in front of
his master or mistress preparing to drop his pants. Without that anticipation, joyfully
embraced or fearfully denied, no bottom would be bared and no cane would swing.
Or at least not for a fee.
I paid that fee, it was a female dominant for those who wish
to know such things, and it was well worth it. Tied up, naked, blindfolded, it
was a long way from my school days. But in some respects, nasty cane landing on
bare bottom, it was little different. Samuel Johnson said that ‘Nothing concentrates a man’s mind as much as knowing he will be
hanged in the morning.’ Submissives would say that nothing concentrates the
mind as much as knowing that his pants are coming down for a caning. That is
what he loves, that is what he anticipates. Fathers and schoolmasters have a
lot to answer for. Alfred Roy