A few years back, I saw an insanely rough sex moment in an adult flick.

A man was hitting it doggie style, shagging the hell out of a woman while pulling her arms into a painful stretch behind her. He then abruptly folded her arms together on the small of her back, swung his leg up to the couch, and planted his foot firmly on her head.

Suffice to say I found this deprecating cruelty terribly arousing. Pervert, remember?

Then a few months ago I came across the same thing again, and squealed in delight.

And then I wondered…as I often do, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

OK, pervs…come on. Is that not…hot??

It could only be better were he fully clothed, wearing boots. There is something hot and humiliating about being nude when your partner is fully dressed.

I simply adore the sensation of being vulnerable and bare in front of someone who is dressed and dominant. If clothes make the man, boots make the man hot as fuck.

I often struggle on the ego-totter with my deep-seated need to be humiliated in some way. On the one hand, my self-esteem is a fawn-footed creature, susceptible to light and noise and the softest of blows. On the other hand, under the withering harshness of brutal treatment, I find a hidden and oft unacknowledged strength that buoys me up and sends me into a chest-wrenching paroxysm of fierce pride when I have weathered scornful abuse.

Many years ago, I had a dominant to whom I’d newly submitted after knowing him for years. In the midst of a very brutal scene in which my stubbornness was in the fore, he had me down on the ground with a boot to my cheek. Using his heel as leverage, he rolled my head to one side and ordered me to lick the sole of his boot.

“OK. No.”

…was the clear voice from one side of my head.

“You have no choice. Do it.”

… was the voice, ever more strident, from the other.

I felt more humiliated, repulsed and horrified as I ever had before in a scene. I’m not entirely mysophobic…but it is pretty fucking close. So licking the sole of a street boot, no matter how sexy the boot was, squicked me to nausea. But my reflex to be obedient was strong.

And then came the Bad Voice.

“You are so desperate for this man’s attention you’ll do anything…anything…to amuse him. You sick, sick worthless bitch…” it sighed, claws extending deep into consciousness.

I shook, my eyes full of hot tears that ran down into my ears and pooled beneath my head.

He put the boot on my throat, regarding me coldly from above my naked prone body.

“You’d disobey me? What? Do you think you are above licking my boot?

I stared mutely at him, face frozen, staring.

“So. You think you’re worth more than that?”

I nodded. Slowly, then again. I hitched in a shuddering breath and waited for him to berate me further.

Instead, he was suddenly pulling me up and holding me tightly.

“Yes. You are. You are invaluable. And beautiful. And I am so proud of you.”

I was shocked, to say the least, as that wasn’t what I expected.

To this day, I look on that moment as being when I fully understood the value and place that humiliation has for me.

It is a broad-brush full-bore way for me to feel the worst of how I feel about myself, give it away to someone, and have them hold it.

Once someone else holds up for me, mirrors it back, shows me the depth of my own feelings, my self-deprecation, I can see it for what it is.

And then the let it go.

And then, they come back, and love me for who I TRULY am.

And then, sometimes just for a second, but sometimes for much longer…sometimes I DO feel that valuable. That special. That precious.