Fifty Shades of Domination - My True Story (9 page)

My work in the café had served me – and the preternatural cleanliness of my grandmother’s home – well. It did feel, however, that it was time to move on to a Saturday job that might be a fraction more interesting. I found another opportunity locally that offered slightly better wages and the chance to stay serving
behind
a counter rather than mixing in with the frequently obnoxious and ungrateful customers. The only trouble was that accepting this particular summer job meant facing up to my only serious fear in life.

I have a confession to make: ‘My name is Miranda – I am a secret spheksophobic.’ I have a morbid fear of wasps.

Now, every good dominatrix loves uncovering a client’s secret phobias, their deep-seated fears that one can exploit to weaken their will, bend them to their knees and generally scare them half to death. Facing one’s fears is a major part of why my clients come to visit me in the first place. They may outwardly be asking for a spanking, a caning, public humiliation and degradation, or to be wrapped up in multiple layers of latex: inwardly they are unknowingly facing their innermost, and most secret, fears. I always think that when a man or a woman confesses they are claustrophobic, for
example, that a spell in my dungeon ‘coffin box’ will suit them just fine. It is a person-sized box in which I may bind you immovably, with multiple leather straps securing your wrists, forearms, ankles, calves, thighs, tummy, chest and forehead tight to the wall. When the coffin lid closes shut, just inches from your face, you are unable to move a muscle, unable to see through the inky blackness and even the sound of the outside world will be muffled. How long I leave you in that state depends on me. The skill, of course, which I have honed to a fine art over the years, is to know precisely when your rising terror is almost, but not quite, at the point of true panic. The whimpers you make, the sound of your breathing speeding up, the note of desperation in your voice all tell me precisely when you have suffered enough to have pumped-up adrenaline levels and your sexual desires to the max, whilst leaving you (just) on the right side of sanity.

Having praised the therapeutic benefits of facing one’s fear, it will surprise you not one jot to know that I would not possibly follow my own advice and face up to my own phobia: spheksophobia… the fear of wasps. Given my total terror of having wasps anywhere near me, it was perhaps not the wisest move to accept my new job in a baker’s shop. Attracted by the ever-present scent of jam doughnuts and cream cakes, the shop was wasp central station throughout the summer months. I was paranoid about being stung and once fled from the shop, abandoning an open till full of money rather than face up to a massive wasp that had chased me round the room. We are talking about a
big
wasp here; so large it could hardly fly… a doodlebug of an insect, probably a hornet, and maybe worse!

It is never easy to understand where such irrational fears
come from but I do remember one childhood incident which may have been to blame for turning me into a manic wasp-a-phobe. I was perhaps five years old when I saw a young girl in the playground who had two wasps caught up in her long blonde hair. She was screaming and slapping her hair trying to stop them buzzing round her ears and everyone – especially me – was too scared to help her. I can remember thinking, ‘Oh God, thank God that isn’t me.’ No way on earth could I have helped her. The connection is that my reaction now to wasps follows a similar pattern. I throw up my hands to cover my ears and look around for something with which to cut off my hair if it flies in my direction. Better to have a rough and ready urchin haircut than a wasp in my ear.

CHAPTER 9

‘A GOOD EDUCATION…’

F
rom an early age, my loving grandfather drummed into me the importance of a ‘good education’.

A highly intelligent man, Granddad was of a generation for whom a university education was outside of their wildest dreams. Instead he had left school early, joined the Navy and had later worked in a frustratingly modest job at a West London factory. Finally, ill-health forced him into premature retirement and led to a life in which we all existed on State benefits and the tiny sum my grandmother earned as a school dinner-lady. Perhaps spurred on by the way that good schooling had been denied to him, he was determined that I should not suffer the same fate. ‘A
good
education Miranda,’ he would tell me. ‘You must get a good education. That’s what will get you a good job, good money and a good life. Get a good education.’

With his words ringing in my ears, it was I who selected an all-girls’ school for my secondary education. It may appear to be a decision more mature than my years might allow, but I was already aware that schools differed in their respective performances and also that girls almost always do better when the distraction of boys is removed from the educational equation. My home was just a few hundred yards from a mixed High School to which all of my friends were going; you could literally look out of our front door and see the school gates. I knew, however, that it was not a particularly high-achieving school. That knowledge came not from some in-depth study of educational league tables but from far more down-to-earth data – my grandmother worked there, and she didn’t rate it at all.

My chosen alternative was much further away in Acton, the more highly-regarded Ellen Wilkinson School for Girls. Getting there involved a lengthy bus ride and then a walk of more than a mile but I knew it was the only way of keeping the faith with my granddad’s dream. I never quite gathered who Ellen Wilkinson was but I did know her school was my best shot at that all important good education.

I always did well at school and working at weekends and in school holidays didn’t stop my progress in the classroom. I could perhaps have done better, but life was always so busy with work and sport that I found I could leave exam preparation to the last moment and still pass with flying colours. Even for subjects such as English Literature, I would often get by without ever reading the books we were supposed to be studying. I would pick up instant study guides and flip through the summaries they provided, gleaning
enough information to fake my way through the required essays and discussions. The one area that I could never fake, then or now, was my inability to spell. Often the simplest words can leave me stumped. The problem was that my teachers put all of the emphasis on skills such as being able to structure an essay and took no account of spelling. I would get top marks for an essay and receive the comment ‘obviously the spelling needs more work’, but I was never marked down for that weakness. On top of that I was always bursting with ideas that I wanted to get down on paper and I would write 20 pages when other kids were writing two. That sort of urgency leaves no time for proof-reading or worrying if one’s handwriting can even be deciphered.

My other problem in gaining the education that I hoped would lead to a sparkling and fascinating career was the lack of parental support. My grandparents’ tiny home, where I wrote on the kitchen table, was hardly made for undisturbed homework and my grandparents, deeply caring though they were, had no idea of how they might provide an environment conductive to study. Their lack of supportive skills was even more noticeable when it came to careers advice. I can remember saying to my grandmother: ‘How do I know what job I should do and what courses there are? I don’t know what to do.’ She had no idea of how to help. She was a good dressmaker and had done menial cleaning work, so had not the faintest idea how to look for a job in an office. My grandparents’ knowledge of the careers market came from jobs such as working in a shop or on the factory floor. They could never have guided me towards being a doctor or a lawyer or any profession like that. Yet when I look back, I bear no
resentment: their lack of knowledge was their limitation, not a lack of willingness to help.

I could get slightly more guidance on the occasions when my birth-mother came to visit us. Knowing that other parents at the school often set their own children private homework, she would give me writing tasks to complete and sometimes we would talk about what career I might follow. But such advice was thinly spread and infrequently offered. In retrospect I can see that my life might have taken a very different direction if I had been raised by my younger birth-mother rather than by elderly grandparents. She could never have loved me more than they undoubtedly did, but perhaps my ambitions might have been channelled in other directions. And maybe the good things my grandparents gave me – a strong work ethic, a drive to succeed, a desire to make my own way in the world – would have been lost.

There is however one part of my teenage life that could have been very different if I had been raised by my mother rather than my grandmother. The larger than natural generation gap between me and my parents was having an effect. My unstoppable desire for increasing independence throughout my early teens was coming up against the immoveable object of my elderly grandparents’ rules of behaviour. It was a clash beyond the normal generations: it could only lead to trouble.

CHAPTER 10

SPREADING MY WINGS

J
ust 13 years old, I was a tall girl for my age and even on my limited budget – and even though I say so myself – I looked pretty sexy when I was dressed up for a night on the town.

My closest friends and I easily got into clubs where the bouncers were more interested in the cleavage we were showing than in checking our IDs to ensure we were the requisite 18-plus. Distracting the doormen was not the reason I wore clubbing clothes revealing a lot more than they concealed, but it certainly helped at the entrance.

One favourite haunt was West London’s biggest club, the famous Hammersmith Palais, sadly now demolished but in its time a great place for dancing. We rarely paid to get in because on many club nights entry was free before ten o’clock and we would slip in a few moments before the deadline,
clutching handbags in which were hidden small bottles of gin, for me, and Pernod-and-Southern Comfort for Jennifer, still then my closest friend. The doormen were only really interested in searching the guys for anything dangerous, like knives. We had so few clothes on that they would have had trouble searching us anyway without being accused of indecent assault, so we invariably got away with our mini-smuggling operation. It meant that a few soft drink mixers were our only expense for the evening. Jennifer was always keen to get guys to buy us drink, but I was rarely interested in the men: I was there to drink and dance and, with the exception of the occasional kiss, I was always well behaved. The club had box-like, raised platforms on which you could dance and Jennifer and I would monopolise one of these for the night and dance our hearts out. One picture taken around that time shows me in tight black shorts and wearing a gold bum-bag: all the rage at the time. I’m not sure I was ever a great dancer but I just
loved
those nights, dancing for hours and eyeing up the talent, even if I was not particularly interested in the talent taking things any further.

In fact, I rarely got chatted up at the club nights. I immodestly thought I was the prettiest girl in the group but I must have been giving out ‘I want to be alone’ signals because I was so shy. I just got on with the dancing, fending off the occasional bad chat-up line from unattractive guys whom I would never have wanted to be with in a million years. I always seemed to attract the weird ones. I’ve been told many times since that I do have an ‘unapproachable’ air about me that deters men from trying to chat. If that’s the case, it’s ironic that I spend my days now surrounded by men who kneel at
my feet, profess to worship the ground I walk on and constantly crave my attention. Perhaps ‘treat them mean… keep them keen’ really does work after all.

If you’re going to do the job properly then clubbing takes a lot of energy and long, long hours late, late into the night – just the sort of energy levels we possess in our early teens. I was unstoppable when I was having fun. The downside, of course, was that dancing till the early hours isn’t conducive to waking up bright and breezy for school in the morning. On top of that, at the age of 13 or 14, I was often trying to get home late at night from some pretty seedy parts of London and it is no surprise that my desire for independence was giving my elderly grandparents nightmares. The irony is that, at least at that age, I truly was not doing anything naughty on my nights out and they really could have slept easily in their beds. Both Nan and Granddad were however convinced that I must be meeting men and would undoubtedly end up being raped or worse – although I was never quite certain what the ‘worse’ might entail. It was a typical clash of the generations, with me testing their boundaries and my grandparents struggling constantly to rein me in. The only difference in this case was that the game had skipped a generation; where I should have been pushing against someone of my birth-mother’s age, I was struggling against ‘parents’ of a generation once removed. It was a recipe for seemingly endless conflict and eventual disaster.

As my rows with Nan and Granddad escalated they began to despair of having any control over me. Looking back on it now, I must have been a nightmare for them. I was no longer
listening to anything they said. I was rude, disrespectful, had a tendency to slam doors on my way up to my room where I would pump my music up loud in the certain knowledge that the noise would drive them crazy. I’m not proud of my behaviour then and I am so glad that when I had eventually matured enough to realise what a shit I had been, I was able to apologise to them before they died for putting them through the hell of my teenage years.