Care and Handling of the Autistic-Spectrum-Disorder S-Type

by Raven Kaldera & Joshua Tenpenny

Switching Gears

This is reprinted from Broken Toys: Submissives with Mental Illness and Neurological Dysfunctionedited by Del Tashlin & Raven Kaldera.

Raven:

Have I mentioned yet that ASD folks don’t like change much? That includes hour-to-hour changes. I’m a versatile master with a lot of different needs. Sometimes I want a quiet, efficient sidekick who will follow my instructions in the moment to the letter. Sometimes I want an intelligent, problem-solving sidekick who will brainstorm effective methods for a project with me. Sometimes I want a warm, supportive partner who will talk to me about emotionally intimate things, remaining respectful and loving at all times. Sometimes I want someone to hold me when I’m wracked with pain and at the end of my own resources. Sometimes I want an eager servant who wants nothing more than to give me pleasure, and glows at my compliment or orgasm. Sometimes I want a completely surrendered slave who trembles at my touch and desperately wants to spread himself vulnerably for me.

Joshua wants very much to be able to give me every one of those things, and he has. The problems inherent in that versatility, however, are twofold. First, although by the time I got him he’d already figured out how to act out some of those roles, there were others that he had no clue about, and I had to train him very specifically. “When I do this, you do that. When I am like this, you do that. When I indicate that I want this - in one of these three ways - then you do it in this way.” While I’m not ASD, I’m also not a very emotionally-oriented person - and, being a “control enthusiast” as a friend of mine put it, I can find pleasure in “programming” my slave to act in exactly the way I want, when I want it. I just have to be willing to put in the clear, precise work to do it. I also need to have a good understanding that for him, these “artificially trained” affects are not him slapping on an alien mask over his natural way of expressing; it’s that he doesn’t have a natural way of expressing them, and he might as well use one that pleases me. (He’ll talk more about that further on. He’s one of the less emotionally expressive sorts, in case you hadn’t figured that out by now.)

Second, I have to make it very clear to him which sort of “slave role” I want from him, and for best results I need to let him know at least half an hour beforehand. For the more “intense” roles, it’s best if he has an hour or thereabouts to himself, to get his head switched over to the affect and body language and emotional responses that I want from him. This takes time and effort for him; switching gears doesn’t come quickly or easily. If I ask him to go into a mode of total surrender straight from coming home from work or playing an engrossing video game, he will become flustered and distressed, and be unable to give that to me. By giving him advance warning, I don’t set him up for failure. This does cut down on a certain amount of spontaneity, but it’s a compromise I am willing to make in order to get what I want. (If constant emotional and situational spontaneity was a very high priority for me in a M/s relationship, perhaps an Aspie slave wouldn’t be the best choice. That’s just a matter of being realistic about what you want before you get stuck together.)

Joshua:

I often feel like my inner pressure cooker of emotions has no vent. I can feel like I’m full of emotions - I feel my body doing something - but the things that neurotypical people do to vent and express those emotions don’t work. My emotions don’t make the connection. For example, let’s say that I think I may be sad right now. What do “ordinary” people do when they’re sad? Well, they cry. Let me try to cry. No, this isn’t helping, it doesn’t connect to that emotion at all. It would be as if someone neurotypical was sad and I suggested that they lick their nose to feel better. Over time I’ve been able to program or condition myself into having my emotions connect to some activities, but really, it’s all artificial for me. So I might as well condition actions that my master likes.

Where it’s especially hard for him is that my behavior and the apparent intensity of my emotions may have little to do with the intensity of my internal emotional experience, so he can’t make assumptions based on my body language and affect. I will inadvertently act as if I feel strongly about something when I don’t, or not have much affect when I’m actually experiencing very intense emotions. It’s up to me to communicate it verbally, because I know that I’m not giving clear nonverbal signals. Any relationship that didn’t have a lot of radical honesty about emotions wouldn’t work for me. If a partner did the “Oh, nothing’s wrong,” thing, I’d never catch on. I also need my master to trust that I’m giving him truthful information about my current state, so I’m careful when I communicate that in words.

I can’t speak for anyone else but me here, but for me, being deeply surrendered and having problem-solving skills are two opposing states. When I’m in a state of vulnerability and deep surrender, I panic when asked to do anything that requires more than a trivial amount of cognitive thinking. It’s terrifying to follow any but the simplest and clearest of single-step orders, or established protocol that I’ve done so many times I could do them in my sleep. Being asked for my opinion or preferences in that state is also panic-inducing, because I lose them when I go there. It’s also hard for me to keep my affect going - you’d be surprised how much work an expressive affect is for an Aspie - and that surrendered state comes with a purity of single-minded emotion that uses up all the resources I would normally use for facial expressions and body language. If I have to solve a problem or figure out an order, I have to come out of that space and go into “work mode”.

I find that state very calming and fulfilling, but I realize that perversely, it’s not all that much fun for my master, unless he’s only interested in a warm body to do things to. I love being in a mindless, robotic state, but it’s really not his kink. We still hold out hope that we can find a mutually fulfilling activity that can be done in that state, because it’s no fun for either of us if he’s doing something just to humor me.

Continued: Social Skills