Reading the Signs

We spotted this sign a few years ago adjacent to an island of monkeys in Dublin Zoo, unedited, unPhotshopped, exactly as displayed for the education of thousands of school children, their teachers and parents.

Hasn't sex education come on since our day. I'm surprised they aren't queuing up the street for Nimh.

Still in Awe

48 hours on from the events described in my first post and I am still a bit dizzy and in mental overdrive.

Our only previous experience of any kind of public presence for this kind of scene were two visits a year ago to the London Fetish Fair. Despite feeling safely far from home walking up a street in north London (it was at Shillibeers at the time), we were quite uncomfortable walking in on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Its at moments like that when you suddenly recall that no visit to London is ever complete without meeting a neighbor or workmate from Dublin. Despite the LFF really being not much more than a collection of stalls, I'm afraid it was heads down and get a pint in our hands to cautiously peer over the top of. The first sight of a sub being obviously led by their master, or of a fairly deliberate flash of knicker lace, had the pair of us diving back into our glasses and going so natively English as to stare intently into each others faces and earnestly discuss the weather.

Roll on a year, with no public manifestation of our kink, and we find ourselves once again in a strange setting, clasping plastic glasses (which don't take to being squeezed comfortingly). Thank you F for some refreshingly ordinary words of welcome like any bloke you'd meet in any ordinary bar, but I have no recollection of what I said, my mind was so divided between my mouth and my surroundings.

But .....

just an hour later, I walk up to the cloakroom, show my ticket to the girl and request the bag I left in when we arrived. I dig down into it, calmly remove a high leather collar and a length of chain. I hand the bag back with a friendly relaxed "Thanks". I turn to B, gently raise her chin and secure the collar in place. I remove a carbinier clip from my belt, click it smoothly onto one of the collar D-rings and latch the chain on. This has all been done without any verbal exchange between us.

Finally, I click the other end of the chain to the free carbinier clip on my belt, between the ones holding the leather flogger and the two tail tawse. I turn on my heel and walk away from the cloakroom and across the floor, B following a chain length behind me.

The last time I saw a couple do this, we were both too embarrassed to watch. Now I am proudly parading my beautifully submissive wife in front of the most appreciative audience in Ireland. What a transformation!

Who Am I and What is this About

I am an Irish male, in my mid-50's, in a stable well established marriage to a woman I love very much. Our children, mostly grown, are gradually, as is the way these days, leaving the nest.

As you can tell from my age, myself and my wife are children of the 60's. She would have been a supporter of, what I would call, leading edge intellectual feminism, when a student and we are both the generation of professionals who have, through our careers, been the first wave to unquestionably support the rights of women to full equality in all political, management, work, sport, financial and other arenas. Us men probably found it a little more difficult to be equally embracing of other traditionally female roles but we have tried. In truth, the generation of men before us were a lot more reluctant to cook meals, go shopping, mind babies or show their true emotions than we are.

So how on earth did I wake up this morning to be embraced by my beloved wife and thanked for holding firm and bringing her to Nimhneach for the first time, for either of us, where she was spanked by me in public, followed me on a chain and was even confined to a cage for "time out"!

This is a further landmark in a joint journey of discovery which started a few years ago.

Slap and tickle, coy naughtiness and voyeuristic fantasy talk are the heady stuff of many romances. But for "new age" man there often is a carefully shared lightheartedness. Political correctness, even in the unregulated bedroom, is subtly policed when you are of our generation, because we all, platonically mind you, linked arms to crusade for equality. Believe me, that equality did not run to ever considering that I could place my wife onto an A-frame in view of complete strangers, raise her skirt to reveal a narrow strip of black lace, a cross between a knicker and a suspender belt, and strike her bottom with a leather strap because she had forgotten my instruction to address me as "Sir". As a consequence, I am of the age and mindset that struggles to comprehend the visible reality that the same woman, not one iota compromised in her political, social or religious beliefs, is glowing radiantly the next morning, skipping and jumping, happier than I have seen her all week.

The locals amongst you will, of course, point out that the grey November clouds rolled away this weekend and Dublin returned to more appropriate weather arrangements, but that wasn't the only reason. As I said, this is just one more step for us in a fascinating path of learning how an old fashioned masterful approach to domestic love can provide strength, support, feelings of worth and purpose. We are discovering that "role" is much more potent than "role play".