The Ultimate Dominant

This was received from the Florida BDSM email group

It seems there is a major quest for each dominant to become the ultimate dominant, the one all others will cascade from. So it started me thinking what this quintessential dominant would be like... who would he/she have modeled themselves after?

The first name that comes to many minds is the Marquis De Sade, the man who gave his name to inflicting of pain, sadism. Surely this man must be what we all aspire to. OK, major problem with this one is that he was in fact a serial rapist and inept serial killer.

The wonderful Marquis raped the women he played with and killed one, at least two others escaped as he tried to kill them. It is actually believed by criminologist that he killed others and never got caught. His position in society did lend him a certain power to escape.

While I agree he held a zest for life that is truly amazing in some respects, some of his lesser known essays speak volumes about the man behind the quill. Essays such as his discussion of how wonderful it would be to kill people in many different ways and be able to watch their faces as they died. This brings to my mind a lack of the BDSM credo of safe, sane and consensual on all counts. The romantic depiction of him as this great Dom who opened BDSM to the world is a wonderful fantasy but that is all it is.

My next choice would be a Lord Byron type figure. Passionate, articulate, powerful, sexually potent, and beautiful. Major draw back would be the bi-polar disorder and the drug abuse. OK, while he was on an upswing he was a fun party type guy, the down side was just as extreme.

Perhaps switching genders will help. My nomination for a female dominant figure would have to be Cleopatra. This woman made subbie pups out of the emperors of Rome! She had some major voodoo going on in her. It was said no man that ever met her could resist her. The down side to her of course was that whole suicide scene. To me that begs the sane aspect. But if we discount that we still have the sexual promiscuity and the fact that she had 20 slaves drowned one day because her dinner was not on time. Not a real forgiving Domme.

So where are we to find this model dominant to follow in their footsteps and become the perfect dominant?

My view on this is two fold. To be the perfect dominant would be boring as hell. Part of the glory of being a dominant is constantly striving to improve yourself... learning one more technique, one more aspect of the psychology of the submissive mind to be able to move a submissive that much closer to the edge and allow them to fly. Perfect would be fun for about 4 scenes then you'd sorta get bored.

The second aspect is, to be perfect you must assume that you are perfect in all aspects which means that all subs would be exactly the same. Perfection is subjective and intangible. It is not a state of being but a state of questing. Each sub evolves through the scening, changes, grows, and becomes. This is the goal. Perfection then would have to be in a constant state of flux to keep up with it.

Perhaps then it is the quest for perfection that truly hides perfection. Perhaps it is our desire to become perfect even though we never will that truly defines us. It is that Don Quixote dreaming the impossible dream that keeps us fresh and new. Perhaps it is each piece of knowledge being added to the whole that makes us perfect to our submissives. As we enjoy their service, they enjoy our quest. We are perfect in so long as we are imperfect for then we strive towards betterment and change.

So you want to know a good model for the perfect dominant? Look in the mirror. That's him/her staring back at you. You are perfect in the potential you possess. You are perfect in your quest. You are the perfect dominant... but only if you believe you are. For in the end, you are perfect in your faith in yourself.

Be true to yourself and enjoy the quest.