The Hat
16 January 1999
I really should write about the hat.
It's hard to write this you know... it's so damn *trivial*.
No whips, no chains, no revelations, no gasping or moaning
or titles with capital letters. Hardly BDSM at all!
Except it isn't trivial. What it symbolised is as big as all outdoors.
Not bad for your common or garden Akubra.
It wasn't the hat as such of course. Could have been anything. It
is what I did with the hat that counts.
The scene: a cafe in Sydney. A few people talking about BDSM--the
first meeting of what I hope will become a regular discussion group.
The nominal topic was how BDSM affected your life, but like all such
things it moved about. I was my usual verbose self, and was talking
from both sides, sub and dom.
As usually happens, some people turned up late. As usually happens,
the others shifted about, brought another table, moved the stuff on
the floor. Including the hat. It wasn't on the floor, it was on
Peter's pack, which he moved. So there he was with his hat in his
hand looking for somewhere to put it... and he gave it to me.
No words spoken, I hardly noticed, I just took the hat and put it
on my lap. I was fiddling with it a bit, as you do when you
have something in your hands and other people are speaking. It sat
quite happily on my lap, didn't need to hold it there when I
drank the milkshake for example.
As far as *I* was aware that was it. Hardly noticed it except as
something to do with my hands.
Afterwards, Peter told me there was rather more to it. He'd been
watching me.
It seems that everytime I spoke up, I picked up the hat and put it on
the table. When I'd finished speaking, I picked up the hat from the
table and put it back on my lap.
Completely unconsciously switching from "Peter's sub, looking after
something of his as she'd been told" to "Zebee, taking part as
her normal self in a conversation".
I couldn't talk - especially on a dom topic - while I had the hat.
I had to put that submissive, serving, part of me in the background by
putting the hat down. When done, I took back the hat and returned to
being my submissive self whose job was to look after the hat.
Completely unconsciously. Showing just how much a part of me is
that submissive self, how ingrained it is, how the ability to
become that has become easy, how the ability to put it in the
background when required is unconscious, and how I was
returning it to the foreground as soon as possible.
Only your common or garden Akubra. Size 60, grey, slightly
skew in the pinch on the crown.
But a true and powerful thing, in the right circumstances.
Zebee
|