Expectations

Three years of an online friendship. Three years of blog posts and comments, instant messages, e-mails, postal mail, even small gifts exchanged. Three years of digital photos and Webcam images and the occasional physical photo to hold in my hands. Three years of the occasional telephone call and multiple Skype conversations. Three years of helping her to learn about this strange realm which I inhabit and which has intrigued her for many years. Three years and half a world of distance.

...and she is finally coming. Her career has reached a milestone, and she has been transferred to the States. After only two weeks in the new office, she has already impressed her new bosses and colleagues. Yes, she is a beautiful young foreign woman with an easy-on-the-ears accent and a soothing personality matched by a gracious heart and a fashion flare which attracts all eyes in a room, but from the recent conversations, her colleagues are only now truly beginning to realize just how intelligent she is, that she did not sleep her way to her position, that behind the bright blue eyes she scrutinizes the world and devours the details as she processes information with the facility of a supercomputer, providing the output in elegant reports and to-the-point speech which makes it hard to believe that English is not her native language.

That is the friend I have come to know over the past three years. That is the woman who will soon be landing at Hobby. That is the aspiring submissive who is coming to finally gain firsthand knowledge of the theory taught over the past three years.

Perhaps only one other person on this planet knows me better than she does. She knows my strengths and my weaknesses. She knows my fears and my desires. She has shared my victories and consoled me following my defeats. She knows that I can be gentle and loving or mean and sadistic. Yet she is airborne at this moment, surrounded by perhaps two hundred other people heading to the same airport, perhaps some of them also meeting someone in person for the very first time.

I know that this first face-to-face meeting will be significant. I need to ensure that I present the proper image, for she is coming to meet a longtime friend, but especially to learn... and possibly to escalate what we currently share from a deep meaningful friendship to something more.

My clothes are already laid out: all-black shirt, jeans, socks, shoes, and even underwear; my usual silver rings and the old Japanese yen coin strung on a black leather strip. As I walk out the door, I will pick up the sunglasses with the lenses so dark that someone could be standing directly in front of me and not be able to see even the outlines of my eyes. I know that I will present a very foreboding image, that most people at the airport will see me and fall back.

...but not her. She will see me and embrace me like the long-lost friends we have become due to circumstances of time and distance.

...circumstances which her bosses mitigated in transferring her to the States.

...circumstances which the long holiday weekend is mitigating in our schedules.

I already know deep in my heart that she can be a good and effective submissive. She has the desire to learn, the desire to please, and the will to keep striving even during times of difficulty. She has the curiousness of a cat with infinite lives, and the inquisitiveness of a professional student seeking to learn everything possible for the sake of knowledge itself. I know that she will be able to take all that I can teach her -- on this weekend and on many other visits -- and transform it into something meaningful to us both.

In one way, the weekend has already begun. Despite her sexually-charged body, she has not been permitted to touch herself for the past six days, other than the bare minimum required for cleaning herself. Her last test message to me before she boarded the airplane had been telling:

I'm hornier than I have ever been, but I'm obeying.

I stand inside the closed door, looking at the bookshelf to the right. The collar and leash are already there, but I reposition them to ensure that she will see them immediately upon entering my abode. I already know what will happen when she arrives: I will order her to strip as I set her bags aside, and once she is naked, I will apply the collar and the leash and order her to her knees, parading her from room to room, showing her firsthand where and how I live while reinforcing her lower status for the long weekend. Then and only then, as I sit on the sofa and enjoy her performance, will she be permitted the orgasm she craves, and that will be her final orgasm until just before I must return her to Hobby for her flight back up north.

Glancing at my watch, I see that I need to leave in forty-five minutes. I walk into my small home office, the space which doubles as a makeshift dungeon, noting the floggers and the canes mounted on the north wall, appraising the collapsible bondage horse which has already been erected, noting the coils of rope and the lengths of chain atop a small table. This is where she and I will spend much of tomorrow, these four walls absorbing ever bite of leather and ever grunt of pain and every squeal of pleasure. This is where she will be photographed while blindfolded and videotaped while being choked. This is where she will gain much of her firsthand knowledge and begin the long and arduous transformation from a willing submissive to -- hopefully -- a devoted slave.

I look at several of her pictures on the wall by my desk. One is of her in a canoe with her best friend from high school, both of them smiling for the camera as they approach a sandy shore. One is of her alone, topless, gently squeezing her smallish breasts. Another is a close-up shot of her favorite thong, the outline of her sex clearly evident.

She will be wearing that thong underneath her skirt when she arrives.

With a smile and a strong erection from the anticipatory thoughts in my head, I move to the master bedroom to undress and prepare myself, for I know that she has expectations of me which I need to meet. I need to prove myself worthy of her submission, worthy of accepting her slavery if she chooses to penetrate this realm so deeply. I must be strong and firm with her, yet not at the cost of my usual nurturing nature. I need to be a friend to her, yet I also need to mentor her. And most importantly, I need to quickly learn how to read her -- her body language, her unspoken pleas and needs -- so that I can ensure the safety of her body and her mind and her heart.

Each of us is certainly anticipating this visit. I already know that she will live up to my expectations. I can only do my best to live up to hers.