Introduction

 

She stared at the horizon as she ran. The bright sun had turned the ocean a subtle turquoise, an amazing blue-green color that seemed to merge with the deep blue sky. Beauty...it was an elusive idea, she thought, a two-faced demon that had defined and dominated her life forever.

She turned her head to the left and was struck by another kind of beauty; it was different but equally stunning. The girl ran with the youthful effortless stride of an athlete that in itself was beautiful to see. But she had more to offer, much more as she stood tall and proud in her harness. She was stark naked except for the mouth bit, waist belt, and hoof boots. Her nakedness and bondage would have been shocking in the real world, but here, in Heaven, it worked to draw attention to her amazing body.

People talked about "tits and ass" as if the more T&A the better. Teresa was a perfect example of why this simply was not true. Everything about her was balanced, like Botticelli's Venus; every part of her body was firm, hard, and proportional. It was "the whole of her" that grabbed the attention of male onlookers and sent an enormous jolt of dopamine into their brains. She could see the arousal, the desire on their faces as they passed.

It was distracting but entertaining the way their muscles tightened, the way they bent at the waist from a sudden erection, the way their mouths opened, and they began to pant with the increased need for oxygen. But those were just the brutes, the T&A men; the more sophisticated cocks-men focused their attention on the most stimulating part of Teresa's anatomy -- her face.

Her hair was pulled back tight and tied in a ponytail. It framed her squarish shape down to her jawline, where there was a gentle slope to her chin. People described the unique look as mesmerizing. Her eyes were green and almond shaped with dark lashes on the top and bottom; her brows were naturally thin and shaped in a way that accentuated the come-fuck-me look in her eyes; and her nose and nostrils led the way down to her lips, which were slightly open, open enough to see her tongue. And what lips they were, full and delicately shaped. They would suggest one and only one thing to a man -- that she was a cocksucker.

Whap...!

Aieee...!

She yelped in pain as the sudden sting of the carriage whip forced her attention back to the front. Their driver didn't tolerate distractions. Not only were distractions disobedient and disrespectful, but they were also dangerous. Even at this moderate pace, an accident could easily tip their cart, which was called a racing sulky, and result in serious injury to all of them. The carbon fiber construction made the sulky unbelievably light for its size and strong, but it was still heavy enough to break bones.

He had punished her for the same offense just a day earlier. He had locked her in the stable's S&P (Stock-and-Pillory) and paddled her bare ass and legs. The memory made her shudder along with the thought that he might do the same today for the same offense. Maybe not... As sulky drivers go, he was one of the best -- knowledgeable, strict, and intelligent. He knew when to show mercy and compassion and when to instill fear. They trusted him; they trusted his judgement, his dominance.

His dominance...!

The word turned her mind once again to the question she asked herself all the time -- how had she gotten here? How had she gone from being an aggressive businesswoman, an aspiring manager at a stogy investment bank, to being a ponygirl? She was not into bondage; she had never had anything more than a natural curiosity for the subject, for the alternative lifestyle that BDSM advocates promoted. Yes, like every other girl, she had enjoyed thinking about herself as a slave, as the captive of a wild and savage Fabio, even masturbating to the idea sometimes. But those were ordinary sexual fantasies, she thought, not markers of her natural submissiveness.

Her natural submissiveness...!

Her first experience with serious bondage proved that she was...submissive. The first time she felt tight ropes on her wrists and elbows, the first time she felt the helplessness, she came. It was just a shudder, a minor climax, easily missed, but it was enough to tell her that she had found "the answer." At that moment, she knew what she was, who she was. It was almost as if...

"Whoa...!"

The verbal command and the driver's steady even pull on reins told her that he wanted to stop. She slowed her pace as they had trained, coordinating her movements with Teresa as the push of the sulky's T-yoke on her back increased then suddenly lessened. She could hear the driver setting the brake then dismounting, but she didn't turn her head. "Eyes and head forward" was the standing order while in harness. Violation meant a dozen swipes with the riding crop he carried for close punishment.

He walked around and stood at her front. The were both tall, the three of them were tall enough to look into each other's eyes, but she didn't. A bold direct stare could be viewed as disrespectful, potentially even as resistance. The consequences for disrespect were severe, and she didn't even want to think about what they would mete out for active resistance.

"You're distracted and your step is off. Is there something wrong."

She looked up respectfully and instantly replied, "no sir."

He started into her eyes then he knelt, circling her upper thigh with his hands. She could feel the hairs of the back of his hand brushing against her bare pussy. Slowly, he ran his two hands hard down her leg to the top of her hoof-shaped boot, testing her muscles for any cramps or spasms. He did the same for the other leg, carelessly pressing the back of his hand even harder into her swollen labia. His touch always caused her genitalia to swell, her nipples to harden.

He stood up and faced her again.

"It must be in your head," he said simply. "Do you want me to put you back on the S&P?"

"No sir."

"If I do it, I'll use the cane this time since the paddle doesn't seem to have had the desired effect. Is this what you want?"

"No sir."

"What's your name...?"

She blinked, surprised by the question. They didn't use names here...a name was something that made them feel human, and the people who ran this place didn't want that, ever. They typically just referred to them as animals.

"Brooke, sir. My name is Brooke If it pleases you"

She was trembling now, literally vibrating with fear. Teresa turned her head slightly in sympathy.

"Eyes and head forward," the driver growled at her, "...unless you want to join her on the stock. Is that what you want?"

"No....no sir," Teresa answered, her voice shaking.

"...Then keep your eyes forward."

Teresa began to shake as well with the threat. It was no joke to be bent over and helpless in the S&P while one of the stable boys cropped your bare ass. She glanced at Teresa; they were both terrorized as he intended.

"Any more distracted behavior and I will whip both of your sorry asses, understand?"

"Yes sir," they said in unison.

He re-mounted the sulky and released the break. They waited for the snap of the whip overhead then pushed off together, she on her right foot, her power foot, and Teresa on her left. This was the proper running style for ponygirls; if they both started on their strong foot, they would soon be rocking from side to side. After a time, they settled into a perfectly coordinated and balanced trot, both concentrating on their step and the path ahead.

 

 

Chapter 1 - The Yenta

 

Pleasure and pain...

In all her years of reading and studying psychiatry, of therapeutic practice and careful observation, it all came down to two simple drivers -- pain and pleasure. Every human behavior could be traced back to one or the other; they even drove the behavior of the insane and the unconscious. Many of those in her profession made it much more complicated, but they were wrong; at the source, nature stimulated all living things with these two primitives and no others.

It wasn't only about behavior of course; modern psychiatry was focused on much more, but these were the causes, everything else were the downstream effects. This was what everyone was missing; we scientists were focusing on the symptoms and theorizing that the symptoms were organic disorders. This was wrong, dead wrong. Although some people might be more susceptible to certain effects than others, the root causes were still pain and pleasure.

It wasn't that simple though. Pain and pleasure were not like opposite magnetic poles; pleasure was often the gateway to pain, and pain could often lead to pleasure, especially if it was taken to excess. This second idea was all the rage these days as more people experimented with BDSM.

Esther Rabinowitz, M.D., PsyD, F.A.C.P., BC-TMH stared down at her yellow pad and wrote the two words again then circled them with her pen. Fifty years of study and practice, she thought, and this was all she could offer her patients -- two simple words. Maybe this was all she needed to offer them. Sometimes, with all the complexity involved with psychiatry, they lost sight of this simple truth. Maybe she had lost sight of it, and maybe she needed to heed her own words, and more importantly, to act on them...

The two manila folders on her desk seemed to glow with the yellow light from her old-fashioned lamp. She had owned the mica-glass antique since college. Her father, who had used it for half a century, had handed it down to her.

"Pain and pleasure... pain and pleasure... pain and pleasure..."

She spoke the words softly until they became a mantra. Did she have the courage to push back, to resist unnecessary complication? It was hard for her, for any scientist, to accept simple solutions. Simple solutions diminished them, they made them look trivial and unnecessary. Yet, the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the simple solution here was the right one. She had scoured the writings and all the available research looking for another approach but had not found one. Which was why she kept returning to the most obvious answer.

"Ockham's razor...," she whispered aloud.

If ever there was a justification for Ockham's Razor -- the theory that in most cases the simplest solution was the best -- this was it. What most people forgot about with Ockham's Razor though was the part that said with all other thing being equal or unknown. This was what was bugging her -- had she really established that all other things were equal, that they were truly unknown, or had she missed something?

"A shadchan," she whispered to herself, smiling, "...a shadchan. In the end, I have become nothing more than the village shadchan."

Shadchan was the Yiddish word for matchmaker, what the goyim mistakenly call a yenta. Was this what all her degrees and certifications, her awards, her fifty years of psychiatric practice, her many nuanced papers and speeches had led to...matchmaking? The thought made her smile again. Many that was all that was necessary sometimes -- to make a good match; maybe we try too hard to make it more complicated, to make ourselves more necessary.

She lifted one of the heavy folders and read the white and red label...Phillip A. Harding III. She had neatly typed the name herself on an old IBM Selectric typewriter. Most of her colleagues use electronic records nowadays, but she still preferred physical folders and paper. There was just something more genuine about handling a physical document. They also favored a practice with several doctors and lots of staff. She found that the odds of a sensible diagnosis and treatment plan had a negative relationship with the number of people involved.

This was New York, she reasoned, where one-upping others was a way of life. She remembered the old joke about how psychiatrists greet each other, "You're fine, how am I." It was funny but also true. She had never known a psychiatrist who just nodded his or her agreement when asked for an opinion. They always had something to add...always.

She shook her head. She knew her orneriness was just irrational prejudice, but it was how she functioned these days -- with a mix of ornery and experience. She opened the first folder and began to read.

 

Phillip A. Harding III

94 E. 65^th Street

New York, NY 10065

 

SUMMARY

 

Phillip Harding is a handsome man in his early forties. He has a strong and winning personality, which makes him immediately likeable to most people. He is highly intelligent, and he listens to others with a rare intensity; qualities that allow him to be unusually persuasive. This has made him respected in the business community. He is quite wealthy, having inherited the family business -- office furniture -- and grown it into a global enterprise. Phillip has a net worth at the time of this writing of more than $150 million.

 

Phillip came to me after the failure of his second marriage. He was in a state of distress believing that there was some inherent flaw in his personality that had cause his two marriages to fail.

 

She smiled at her handwritten summary on the first page. It had taken her decades to expunge the acana of her profession from her writing. The use of technical language, she found, begat more technical language until the descriptions became meaningless, often running to 10,000 words or more of useless self-aggrandizing prattle that said nothing more than she could say in a normal paragraph. She much preferred the more straightforward approach...at least in the summary.

Phillip had come to her a year ago believing that some flaw in his personality that had caused two good women to leave him. She smiled again. Of course there was a flaw in your personality, Phillip, she thought -- to put it simply, you're crazy, at least in conventional terms.

 

DIAGNOSIS

 

Although his psychopathology appears be in the normal range for a modern man in his socio-economic group, Phillip's DBS [Dominance Behavioral System] score is off-the-chart, especially in his need for power and personal pleasure. Note that he hides these traits with great success, and he is only peripherally aware of them himself.

 

NEXT STEPS

 

TBD

 

Off-the-charts... She smiled again at her inexcusably loose language. She would be drummed out of the American College of Physicians if anyone knew. Not that she would mind much, the ACP was full of stogy close-minded professionals. Still, what she had written was true and accurate. Phillip was a perfectly ordinary American man -- a model of behavioral normalcy -- who was also, under the surface, a power-mad sadist and unrepentant pleasure-seeker. After a year of weekly sessions she knew he was pathologically selfish, not in his pleasant everyday demeanor, but inside, in the deepest recess of his mind. It was no great mystery why his marriages had failed. The only mystery was why he had only a faint notion that this was what was driving his behavior.

Poor Phillip, she thought sadly. There was no cure for what ailed him. She could help -- basically by getting him see what he was really like inside and working on some moderating behavior, but that was not going to change his core. He would always be the same power-mad prick that he was now, wrapped in the attractive package of the man he wanted to present to the world. Sad...

She dropped the folder on her desk and picked up the second...Brooke Devereaux.

 

Brooke Devereaux

455 East 79^th Street Apartment 3k

New York, NY 10027

 

SUMMARY

Brooke Devereaux is a beautiful young woman in her early twenties with a serious personality and an intense demeanor. She speaks softly and smiles often to hide this intensity, but it is still evident. This is likely the result of her rather formal, hands-off upbringing. She is a college graduate and now works for a hard-driving global investment firm where she is well-regarded for her initiative and aggressiveness. She is the granddaughter of Anton Devereaux, the founder of Global Mining and Materials (NYSE:GMM).

 

Brooke had come to her for psychoneurotic depression bordering on clinical psychosis. In other words, she was seriously depressed about herself and her life. She thought her depression was the result of her cold family and her overbearing personality, but the truth turned out to be just the opposite. She returned to her summary.

 

The proximate cause of her seeking my help was her breakup with her boyfriend, which she blamed on herself and her unyielding personality.

 

Outwardly, Brooke is driven to succeed at everything, including personal relationships. This drive is manifest in her aggressiveness, impatience, and self-centered behavior. However, my diagnosis is that this behavior is masking a very different and much more pervasive condition.

 

Brooke's DBS scores are unusually low, So low, that it is amazing to me that she remains unaware of them in her normal life. Regardless, there is little question in my mind that she suffers from an acute case of DPD (Dependent Personality Disorder)...that is, chronic submissiveness.

 

Note that although I believe she is unaware of her DPD condition, I also believe it is possible that she is consciously suppressing her feelings of submission to appease other members of her family, especially her grandfather, who, according to her, has no patience for indecisiveness or weakness.

 

DIAGNOSIS

Brookes DPD is not curable. It is also not obvious to me that helping her to understand that this is the cause of her depression will be therapeutic or helpful. It might even exacerbate her depression. However, I am convinced that I must try as her depression appears to be increasing. She is not a candidate for drug therapy as [understandably given the side effects] she has adamantly refuses to go this route.

 

NEXT STEPS

 

TBD

 

TBD...!

In other words, she had no damned idea how to help her or Phillip. People high on the Dominance Behavioral System spectrum (Doms) and those with Dependent Personality Disorder (subs) had chronic conditions that were typically incurable and only moderately responsive to moderating therapies.

She held Brooke's folder in one hand and Phillip's in the other, weighing the two. The "therapy" she was considering -- getting these two together -- didn't need all her degrees, it was obvious to anyone who could add. It was also unconventional, unethical, and perhaps even illegal.

Their personalities were perfect complements, they were meant for each other, she thought. They fit together in so many ways it was scary, which made her decision that much more difficult. It was an ethical dilemma that bordered on criminal and certainly was well in the territory of immoral. This was, according to the dictates of her profession. Psychiatrists simply did not match Doms and sub together to affect a cure. There were too many uncertainties, too many things that could go wrong.

Pain and pleasure...!

The thought leapt into her mind. In the end, they could each satisfy the other's need for pain and pleasure. Wasn't this what she now believed?

It was, but acting on it was unethical...at best. On the other hand, she was a doctor, sworn to help her patients. She knew that bringing these two together would go a long way towards solving the problems that plagued them, the problems that had brought them to her. Wasn't this her primary duty, to help her patients?

Or was "helping her patients" just a rationalization? As a psychiatrist who subscribed to the professions' code of ethical conduct, she had only a limited number of ways she could affect the lives of her patients. She could, for example, influence their behavior with psychotherapy -- ideas and suggestions -- but she could not go around the patient to change their life even if she believed it was in their interests.

She glanced down again at the two words on the yellow pad on her desk -- pleasure and pain. In her professional opinion, Phillip was inescapably driven to seek pleasure through the exercise of power and Brooke was inescapably driven to seek pleasure by succumbing to power. Neither of them was deterred by the consequence of these drivers, by the pain they caused.

Yes, there were other therapeutic techniques available to her that could help them live with their destructive urges, but these therapies only worked around the edges. There was nothing she could do to change the fundamental drivers of their personalities. She had 50 years of hard-won experience to prove it.

"Fuck it!" she whispered to the dark room. "Fuck it. My patients come first."