“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie.
Lately, it seems that this one has come back to me in one iteration or another until I have finally taken the hint and tried to chase the thought down in my maze of a mind. Submissives that object to one name, label, title, or another. A conversation with someone from another site about just how big a deal it may or may not be to lie about one's name. So many, may conversations from disparate directions and about so many disparate facets that all boil down to one thing...
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." ~ Wm. Shakespeare
Turning back the hands of time on the way-back machine, I was about twelve years old and was just hanging out at the local concrete swimming hole, waiting for my parents to make the two-mile drive out into the country to pick me up. I was, as was usually the case, the only one there except the combination lifeguard and swimming instructor who happened to be a junior high coach and science teacher during the school year.
And I had been curious for something long enough that I just could not contain it any longer.
"Coach? Your first name is Luther, right?"
He paused and gave me a look. However, lightning didn't come from the heavens and a tidal pool didn't form to suck me under.
"Yes," he said dangerously. "Yes, it is."
"Then why does everyone call you 'Scooter?'" I blurted.
I doubt anyone much younger, and quite a few my age, would understand just how fraught a minefield I was tip-toeing... no, that I was skipping through. In those days, in that place, it was questionable at best to use any adult's first name, even if they gave you permission. A teacher, much less a coach? If you were one of the unfortunate few to learn their first name, those syllables had damn sure never touch your lips!
Much less a nickname?!
Oh, yes. There was a reason that we used to understand just why ancient man had believed so firmly in the wrath of gods. We saw a not-much-diminished version every day in our own educational pantheon.
And coaches were very much the gods, greater and lesser, of war.
Anyone much younger and quite a few my age might not understand the danger I was courting, but I assuredly did. I rushed on in the hopes of at the least getting my question out before being rendered unconscious.
"What I mean is, your name is not 'Scooter.' It's 'Luther.' Why do they call you something that isn't your name? Why do you let them rather than making them call you by your right name?"
I watched the storm clouds in his eyes disperse as he studied me and saw the, as yet, scrawny little neurasthenic git who had been the natural prey of the corn-fed bully boys for the entirety of his school career. Who had never been called anything pleasant, that wasn't intended to be a cut of some form.
"It's a nickname," he said.
"But, nicknames are bad."
"Sometimes," he said gently. "But, sometimes they show that person has seen you more clearly than your birth name would."
I really, really did NOT like that explanation. Not after the shit names that had been piled on me! And he could tell.
"You'll understand someday," he told me.
My mother arrived just then and saved me from further folly as my blood boiled in my veins. What he had just said to me was not far removed from the hated "You'll understand when you are older." Which was tantamount to telling me that I couldn't possibly understand now.
At the risk of being misconstrued as sounding a trumpet fanfare to announce my greatness, I'd tested out on a collegiate reading level four years earlier, and the math and analytics just two years after that. I didn't just think, I knew that I was the smartest motherfucker in that damn pool. And even he had admitted, on no few occasions, that I was "the damn dumbest smartest kid I've ever even heard of!"
I understood plenty! It wasn't my damn fault if no one would bother to explain the shit that just didn't make any sense.
But, my chance to try to choke the answers out of him (and probably be piledriven into unconsciousness, if not drowned) faded as I swallowed the temper that had gotten me into far too much trouble over the years and used every lesson I had gleaned to control my smart mouth that had likewise caused no end of pain and misery. After all, I still had the rest of the summer at that pool and then fall and spring in athletics (but I prayed not his science class) when I would be subject to his "tender mercies."
As it happened, he was right. Two years later, I did earn a nickname that I not only enjoyed but reveled in. Given to me by, ironically, another coach. And I rather quickly wanted to be identified by this new name I had been given. That resonated with who I... maybe not who I was yet, but who I was becoming. Who I wanted to be.
Nine months later, though, shit got confusing again as I somehow got pinned with another, very different, nickname.
The really strange part... while it mortified the part of my personality that so adored the first nickname, there was another part of me that was pleased to be recognized and reveled in this new name.
Over the next several years, I came very, very close to developing something akin to a multiple personality disorder. I wore three very different names; the one hung on me at birth and two nicknames. Wore them proudly. Resonated to them.
And the people I interacted with could call out the various aspects of my personality depending on which of my names they used. Not quite flipping a switch. But, definitely shifting the wiring if I wasn't too resistant to it. It was still my choice to be who they were calling me to be. I wasn't quite so far gone as that. As more than a fair few found when they attempted to call on my gentler side after pushing me past the point of endurance, to where I no longer felt they deserved that gentler side.
Life rolled on, as it has a tendency to do. I graduated from the small bowl that I was considered a big fish in and got pitched out into the ocean.
I lost both of my names I'd earned and was reduced once more to the one inscribed on my toe tag when I slid feet first onto this carousel. It... chafed. It was something very like a spiritual wound.
Only...
Only when I splashed back into the fishbowl... or ran into another fish that had shared it with me as we tried to navigate the much larger ocean... I would be awarded my old name, my old identity, once more. Not because of anything new I had done. But, a reminiscence of what I had been and done. And, that chafed too.
Who gave a shit the road I had walked, run, slid, and skidded down (more than once on my face) to get to that point? I was doing bigger and better things now!
But, they either couldn't or wouldn't see it.
Whatever I was becoming, they could only see... could only let me be... what I had been.
Eventually, I picked up other names. More than a few titles. And each recognized what I was in that moment in some way. A few what "they" wanted me to be, which gave me the choice of filling that role or not. But, most some semblance of seeing the true me and what I already had become.
"Friend" was something of a tough one, I will admit. So many people toss that off so blithely when what they mean is what I would accord "acquaintance." Others use it to describe what I would call "lover."
"Lover" though is another tricky one. Is it possible to be a platonic lover? Or is sexual consummation inherent in the label? Some would have it one way and others the other. Is this a label, a noun, or is it a verb, a call to action?
"Husband" is used as a label, as a noun, but isn't it really a verb? Does one deserve that accolade through merely standing and saying a few words and slipping a ring on her finger (or through her nose) or through the actions that they undertake from that point on?
"Sir..."
As a wee lad, only knee-high to a grasshopper, I was taught to use "Sir" and "Ma'am" as a sign of respect to anyone who was my elder. Even, and perhaps especially, when I did not see just what beyond the fact that they had survived for a longer time might have merited it.
As I grew older, it became almost an epithet, spat at some instructor or supervisor that shouldn't have been in charge of a worm wrestle. In effect saying, "I hear you, jackass. Now get the fuck out of the damn way and let me see if I can figure out a way to make your latest mental abortion actually workable outside of your ivory fucking tower."
And I grew to be disgusted by the people who craved to be called that. I didn't... did most assuredly NOT... want to be lumped in with those self-important little assholes who were nobody by their own merits other than the shine of brown on their nose.
Many were the times that I stole the old saying from my childhood best friend's father, a former Marine Drill Instructor turned Baptist Minister. (And we did NOT see the same side of him on Saturday Night as his congregation did on Sunday Morning, let me tell you!) "Do not 'sir' me, boy. I actually work for a living."
"Mister" was another one that just... felt wrong. At first, it was my father's name, and I would look around to see if he was coming up behind me to whack me on the back of the head with his college class ring.
Later on, it also came to be something along the lines as an epithet as I noticed that so very many people demanded it without making even the slightest stride to deserve it. And the ones who did truly deserve it, in my eyes, either didn't care or actively dissuaded me from using it.
I came to quash calling me "Mister" almost as assiduously as I did calling me "Sir," baring written requirements in my job description to do so.
"Boss..." Oh, fuck no. Nope. Nope. Nope. McNopester. Bad enough that little self-important potentates who believed "The Golden Rule" meant "he who has the gold makes the rules" would often times demand this either in addition to or in lieu of "Sir" or "Mister." But, I also worked detention units for a long, long time. And I saw the sneer in their eyes even when it didn't quite reach their lips when some convict pissant would sling that title at another little pissant that was only different in the cut and color of his uniform and the fact that s/he could go home after eight hours.
And then there were the... softer, the gentler names.
I was bred, born, and raised in the south. Texas, in point of fact. And in these parts, no one thinks... or at least did then... about using "sugar," "honey," and so forth. Even when it is some stranger that you don't even know. These days, a man won't use them when talking to a woman so much anymore unless he knows her really well and "has a claim," but the women still use them to men, women, and children with no real thought on anyone's part.
It's a culture thing. And growing up in that culture, I learned to just shrug it off the way one does a period on a printed sentence. You almost notice the lack more than when it is present.
"Sweetie" for some reason will send me absolutely straight up the fucking wall, however. "Sweet (insert name, nickname, label, or title)" is one thing if it is as "pillow talk." I can even take "Sweetheart" if I look and can gauge just how it's meant. But, "sweetie?" Oh, fuck no. I'll write you a special dispensation and allow you to call me "Sir," Ma'am, as a special favor.
"Cutie..." Ok, do you want me to get out the anal probe, bend you over your desk, rip your panties off to cram them in your mouth, and see just how cute you think I am in about two-point-five minutes? Will you scream "cutie!" at that point?
Ngah!
However...
However, I recognize that these are just my own personal foibles. So, I generally allow most people who don't know me from Adam's Son to get away with it. Twice. At which point, I would remind them that they have my name right there on the little piece of paper in front of them. And it's not all that hard to pronounce since my parents didn't name me "Kummanayawannabanga."
At the same time that all of this was going on "out in the world," I was enduring a sexual awakening that made me aware that there just isn't really a whole lot of submit in me there either.
The thing is, it all happened in face to face situations and organically. There wasn't really a point or purpose behind labeling just what was going on. Because we were much, much too busy doing it to spend time talking about it beyond "more of that" or "nope, let's not do that again!" And, rarely (very rarely), "hey, why don't we try (insert whatever kink here)." Rarely, because, again, I didn't see a whole lot of point in talking when we could be doing and would just try it.
Calling me a specific name, nickname, label, or title... Eh. My philosophy was that if she could still make more than inarticulate sounds in the moment, I wasn't doing something right. And kissing and heavy petting should be enough to get us headed that way with no more words necessary than "No" where applicable to change directions.
And outside of the moment... nonverbals were much more potent than the words. The look on her face, in her eyes. The body posture. The timbre of her voice, even (or especially) if it was quiet, inarticulate sounds. The scent of her in the air. The feel of her before my hands even touched her that resonated through the space between us that whatever had come before and whatever might come after, right in that moment, she was mine in a profoundly simple way. Mine to do with, to, and for as I pleased. (At least until, and unless, I tromped on a hidden land mine in her psyche.)
But, there should be... at least I think... some interaction outside of sexual acts if the relationship is to be anything other than mutual masturbation using each other's bodies.
What do you call each other then?
Honestly, I didn't really care. Not so long as it was said with the proper respect and affection, even deference in most cases, that I expected from my then partner. My name from my birth certificate worked fine. And I would accept most nicknames. (Except for one that absolutely could not seem to get it through her head that "sweetie" was unacceptable! And in a voice that made Fran Drescher sound lyrical! Fuck!)
What did I call them?
With very rare exceptions (outside of the bedroom) what they named themselves.
Some of that may have been that... Well, truth be told I just wasn't that heavily invested in any of them up until the woman I nicknamed Love and eventually married.
How did she get the nickname "Love?" Because she was the embodiment of love to me. She was the first time I really felt it all.
Agape, I knew. I had been steeped in that from birth.
Philautia, I struggled with. I had my ups and downs with whether I was acceptable. Still do from time to time. But, for the most part, I figured I was who and what I was, and that was alright. And when it wasn't, it was my job to get better. To get it right.
Storge, ayup. Even when I didn't like them very much, I still loved my family.
Philia? You bet. Once I considered someone a friend, it took a lot to shake me.
Ludus? I was apparently a Master of Ludus, of playful flirting, almost from birth without ever recognizing it. (Eight "girlfriends" according to Mom [or "other members of the tricycle street gang" according to Dad] before I started to school.) I couldn't say just how many times someone... Mom, Sis, Love... someone (usually female) would tease me about how big a flirt I was. (And laugh harder as I scratched my head trying to figure out just what I had missed.)
Eros... Eros was a little trickier. I was raised believing it was wrong. That lust was wrong. Then, I had it, and if this was wrong, I wasn't sure I wanted to be right! And, pretty much went on to prove that what I was originally taught was correct, since once Eros entered the picture for me, everything else went right out the fucking window. I could count the number of decent conversations I had with someone I was also sexually entangled with on one hand...
... prior to Love walking in.
She was the first time I figured out I could be friends with someone I was also fucking. That I could value her mind, her conversation and still want to do debauched things to her body. She brought all six of the loves I had thought I had understood into a sharper focus.
And introduced me to the last, the one I had been missing. Pragma.
I had also thought I had some inkling of the enduring love that is Pragma before that. I had even offered to "grow old with" someone no less than three times prior to Love, in three failed engagements.
But, I didn't really know just what that looked like. Not in my soul. I could see old couples holding hands or leaning against each other on a park bench, and smile indulgently when she (whichever of the shes it was at the time) would squeal and whisper about how cute and how that would be us in X years or whatever.
I did not, however, fully grok that we would both age like that. In my soul, I saw us, X years later, exactly as we were in the moment. With maybe a little sprinkling of grey hairs to mark the passage of time.
And, even with Love, I didn't see it all exactly as it panned out. Among other things, I thought we would have more time together.
But, it didn't fucking matter! Even if I had seen every single moment exactly as it came to pass, I would have jumped on this fucking roller coaster anyway! Because whatever came to pass, I knew I wanted to experience it with her by my side. And me by hers.
That is why I called... why I call her "Love."
Why, yes. As a matter of fact, I did get laid after I explained it to her when she asked. But, I don't really see why you ask since all but the last couple of years, we were perfectly matched in my satyriasis and her nymphomania. And were only betrayed then not by her desire, but by her physiological capabilities.
But, what did she call me?
A lot of things over the years, actually. Most unworthy of note and a few that were downright embarrassing.
But, most often, she called me "Daddy."
The thing is, I didn't really know anything about DD/lg. I did know quite a bit about BDSM along with other sex-related scenarios since I had actively studied them, both for my own hyper-interests and with an eye to becoming a sex therapist. And we... I almost said "used," but we didn't really so much "use" BDSM so much as we just were who and what we were and some of that was various aspects of the scene either continually or from time to time.
But, again, I didn't really need to know about DD/lg. Not really. It wouldn't have changed anything if we'd each had our own textbook and made notes in the margins. It was who I was and who she was and who we were to each other, together. It was organic.
I said, "organic!" Not, "orgasmic."
Although,... yeah. It was that, too.
And I don't think it would have really changed anything if she'd never called me "Daddy." We still would have been who and what we were.
Then... the bitch up and died without my permission.
But, I've talked about that ad nauseam elsewhere.
And about how four months later someone showed up and managed to pick her way through the shattered shards of my heart to make herself a little fucking nest.
And started me down the road of LDR for the first time. Everything up to this point had been face-to-face, organic interaction. This was... new territory to me. Very much terra incognito.
Words, I came to figure out, eventually, were much more important when words were all you have.
The thing is... the labels and titles still didn't mean much to me. Not really. I saw us as what I saw us as. I acted as myself and saw how she acted towards me. Er... well, I didn't see, exactly. I interpreted it based on the text words we shared back and forth. We never cammed and she only shared nine pictures in total actually of herself.
We did talk on the phone, yes. Not as much as I would have liked. But, we did.
However, our primary method of exchange were stark black letters on a white screen, devoid of any meaning beyond definition, context, and inference. No "non-verbal" cues to help a poor practiced Dom, but neophyte as far as LDR, out.
Is it possible that I took things to mean something other than what she meant as she said them? Abso-fucking-lutely.
But, for nine roller-coaster months, I acted as a Daddy Dom towards her and felt her little respond to me.
Until one night, we were talking on the phone. Nothing sexual. Just talking about life, the universe, and everything as we linked music back and forth at each other over the computer.
I had read something in a forum post (on another website) that had resonated with me, and I brought it up. In the post, submissive women were lamenting "so-called Alpha Doms" that would message them as a first interaction calling them "slave" or "slut," telling them what would be done to them, how they would be used, and what title they would call their new (insert title here).
The thing is... I don't know. I had some questions about just whether I might be a Dominant at all if that happy horseshit was how these "players" rolled.
Everything I had ever experienced had come about organically, remember. And for me, what had worked was... different.
I didn't just slip the leash off my demons and turn them loose to look for an appropriate playground. Instead, I let the leash play out until they found the fenceline of her submission (whichever her we might be discussing), and then, if the Hell inside her was a decent enough size to allow it, I would slip the leash and let my demons play in her playground.
The only name I would give "her" to use was the one from my birth certificate. Any other nicknames, labels, or titles were her responsibility to come up with. An indication of how I resonated with her. The mark of, not only her consent, but just how deep her submission to me went.
And, for the most part, the names she preferred to be called were likewise her responsibility. At first. The name she gave me to use for her was all that would be used, until and unless we became close enough that I saw inside her something else.
I would... Or rather, my demons would press against the fenceline of her submission. I would try out the usual suspects. But, not in the way those poor women were lamenting in that forum thread! And not first rattle out of the cracker jack box!
And I rarely ever just called her "slut." It was always "MY slut" when I used it. Or perhaps, "my sweet slut." Or "my sexy slut." The "my" was not optional for me, the rest of the endearing adjectives were interchangeable and implied by tone of voice when they were left out.
"Bitch" was Love's favorite. But, similarly, "my bitch."
And, of course, others. Both with Love and with others. Until I found the crystalline resonance that would strike the purest note with their need.
But, never before I saw them naked, much less even knew their first name! What the fuck?! Really?
And it was on my mind that night as I sat on the phone and talked with the woman who identified as a submissive and a little on those same boards. Who I had been acting as a Daddy Dom towards and had been acting as a little towards me from everything I knew or had been able to learn.
I only got so far;
"So, I was reading something on the boards that I disagreed with. I don't think it's the Dominant's place to say what title the submissive will give him. Or his responsibility."
Right there, out of the blue, she interrupted me. Yelling at me over the phone.
"You are not my Daddy! You are not my Dom! You are no kind of Dominant at all!"
I've discussed that elsewhere. And the rest of the conversation. I won't belabor it here as the only reason I mention it is that I did take away a very important lesson.
Maybe it is or isn't so important to have the labels and titles spoken aloud (or typed) to mark the Dynamic. But, having them refuted is definitely a mark of what the Dynamic isn't. A refutation of consent.
And leads to some confusion about just what the hell the Dynamic is if it's not that when it has all the earmarks of it other than the title or label.
And I don't know. There was some small part of me that wondered if she was addressing the very point that I hadn't been allowed to mention. That perhaps a submissive might feel the very opposite of what I did, that it was my responsibility to give her the freedom of what to call me, once I identified what her resonance frequency was.
I also mentioned elsewhere that I moved on somewhat, but not really. That I did play with others while still maintaining her as the priority in my life when she could deign to drop back by my life. Each of them, I allowed to pick the title or the name they would accord me, categorize just how my demon resonated with the hell inside them.
At the time, the particular title or label accorded just didn't matter to me. It wasn't one of the rules that I chose to be responsible for and keep track of. In other words, I was much more interested in them and in us than some ego stroke from a mere, ephemeral title, label, name, or nickname.
However, something bothered me. Something bothered me very much. And it took me a while to chase it down.
The woman who I called "Little One" for a long time had never called me anything. Not at any time. Not even my given name.
But, why? Why did that bother me so much?
There was no one else on the line during our phone calls. Every word she spoke had to be to me, didn't it? No one else was privy to our emails. Every word she typed to me had to be to me, didn't it?
Or did it?
You see, six months after we met... after six months of leading me to believe that I was the only person she was talking to... she came clean to me that there had been someone else the entire time, dating from before me. That she wore someone else's collar on her hear and soul. That she had lied to me. Deceived me. Manipulated me.
Arguably, I probably should have cut myself loose from that entanglement at that point. But, for whatever reason, I didn't.
And, to this day, she does not understand that my problem is not, was not, has never been that there was someone else. It was that she baldfaced lied about it. She didn't "compartmentalize." She didn't "just not share this, but kept it secret." She bald-faced lied when she said "there is not anyone else." Period.
But, that's not the point here.
The point is that there was someone else she was talking to. At least one other person. How could I know that she was really talking to me? Even when I was the one on the other end of the phone, how could I know that in her mind she was not talking to him? Or an interchangeable fantasy man that was both and neither? How could I know that she wasn't just typing up a message and then copying and pasting it to both... or each... of us?
Speaking to someone face to face, you can see their eyes. You can see them looking at you. You can see when they are seeing you and when they aren't.
What gives that same indication when speaking over the phone? Or via text?
When we are born, we are given a name. And that name becomes our handle. It is what is used to tug our attention this direction or that.
More than that, however, it becomes a symbol of who we are. When someone uses it, it is a mark that they see us, that we matter.
Nicknames can take the place of our name. Some for a reason, others for a season. And still others we wear for the rest of our lives.
Labels and titles... I don't know. I really don't. I understand that they are part of this Dynamic that we all share an interest in, to a greater or lesser extent. But, I've worn titles and labels for a time, both in this Dynamic and in the larger world. And, with very few exceptions, they've felt... hollow. Like a uniform, I suppose.
"Sir" has become more acceptable to me. At least so long as it is accompanied by the appropriate respect that I can see and hear, that I can feel. With no rolled eyes. But, am I "Sir?" What about the last guy she called "Sir?" What about the next? If I resonate with her that way, then okay. But, I'm not sure it resonates with me. Not in any lasting and meaningful way.
"Daddy" on the other hand has a very meaningful connotation for me. And is not one I can, or I think should, allow to be demeaned by allowing anyone else to use it so freely. Not with me. They would be trying on a dead woman's clothes. And it would not be fair to either them or me for me to allow them to try to make me see Love in them.
"Master..." likewise, I have come to discover, has a very specific resonance with me. It is... or feels like it should be... a bond tantamount to marriage. Perhaps even beyond marriage. Connotations of "'til death do we part." I can't... **I** can't go there if it is just in play. I can't go there and then watch the person who called me that slip away without wondering if it was ever real. And, so, I can't go there until and unless I know that it is a forever kind of deal.
"Mentor," "Maestro," "Professor,"... eh. These all have a connotation of a limited nature for me. A contractual bond, which after a certain date will no longer exist. Which even "friendship" cannot extend past. You have finished my class, your training. But, you can never be anything more than my former student. Else, it would violate a, probably obscure, point of ethics with me.
And I know... I do know... that this is all just personal foibles. And ones that are most decidedly not typically shared by the community at large.
And that, I think, is the point. Humans have a need to categorize, to label, to slot neatly into this or that area. And I don't know. I've come to find out the hard way that words are important. That the wrong word at the right time can break a heart and the right word at the right time can mend one. That this is even truer when all you have are words in stark black and white on a screen than when whispered down a phone line.
And I think...
No, I know that for me, a name is the most important word in our arsenal.
You can call me NoOneofConsequence. Or NoC works too.
Unless I have chosen to give you my true name in private. And then you can use that. But, only in the same privacy I gave it to you, please.
Hell, you can even choose to try to fit me with a nickname if you think you've got a good one. But, it had better be a good one, or I will make you pay if you continue to use it over my objections.
And thus we end another long and rambling blog that probably was of less consequence than the author's pseudonym to all but a very few.
But, if you made it this far, and have a thought... some light to shed... on the use of names, nicknames, titles, or labels, then please do feel free to share them with us below or with me through a message above.
