Author’s note: This essay discusses power, consent, kink, religion, masculinity, and emotional responsibility. Details have been blurred to protect privacy. The point is not exposure. The point is what power reveals.

The first thing I usually noticed was how fast somebody said yes.

Not the outfit. Not the room. Not the fantasy they carried in with them like a lit match.

The yes.

Sometimes it came too quick. Too eager. Too clean. Like they wanted to skip the part where they had to be a person and get straight to being desired. Like if they could become the fantasy fast enough, nobody would have to ask what hurt them.

One night, I stopped before anything really started.

I had asked a boundary question. Nothing graphic. Something ordinary enough that most people would have missed the way her answer left her body before she did.

“Yes.”

Not nervous.

Not grounded either.

Just automatic.

Like a student trying to pass a test.

So I asked again, slower.

“Do you actually want that, or do you want to be the kind of person who can say yes to that?”

The room changed.

Not dramatically. Nobody stormed out. Nobody cried. The lights did not flicker like we were in somebody’s prestige drama about desire and damage. But something shifted. Her face got quieter. Her body came back into the room a little bit.

That is the part people do not understand.

Everybody thinks the Dom is the powerful one because they imagine command. Voice. Posture. Somebody kneeling. Somebody obeying. Whatever movie taught them kink was just trauma in better lighting.

But the fantasy is control.

The reality is attention.

You are watching breath. Shoulders. Eyes. The little flinch somebody swears did not mean anything. You are listening for the difference between arousal and panic, performance and permission, surrender and disappearance.

You learn that yes is not enough by itself.

Folks will offer you things they do not fully know how to give yet.

That was the part nobody told me.

The power was never in what I could make someone do.

The power was in what I knew not to take.

I spent some time as a Dom.

That sentence looks louder than it feels. People hear it and immediately start decorating the room in their minds. Leather. Red lights. Danger. Somebody’s secret Tumblr from 2014. And yeah, there were aesthetics. There were roles. There were voices I learned how to use. There were stories I still probably should not tell with names attached.

But the truth is quieter than people want it to be.

A lot of domination is paperwork without paper.

It is negotiation. It is asking questions that interrupt the fantasy long enough to protect it.

What do you want?

What do you not want?

What scares you in a good way?

What scares you in a bad way?

What have people misunderstood about your body?

What do you say when you are overwhelmed?

What do you do when you are trying to please somebody instead of telling the truth?

That last question matters more than people think.

Because people lie with their mouths all the time. Not always maliciously. Sometimes they lie because they want to be wanted. Sometimes they lie because desire has trained them to audition. Sometimes they lie because shame taught them to treat their own limits like bad manners.

Sometimes they say yes when what they mean is, “Please don’t stop seeing me as desirable.”

And as the Dom, you have to decide what kind of man you are going to be in the presence of that.

You can pretend the offer is clean because it benefits you.

Or you can pay attention.

That is where the actual power begins.

Not in the command. Not in the posture. Not in the fact that someone is willing to surrender something to you. Power starts when someone gives you access and you still refuse to confuse permission with wisdom.

A lot of men want control because they do not know how to be trusted.

That is the part I had to sit with.

It would be easy to write this like I was above the whole thing. Like I entered every room as some enlightened, emotionally literate, consent-forward philosopher king with perfect lighting and a working knowledge of everybody’s childhood wounds.

That would be cute.

It would also be a lie.

There were parts of it I liked because they made me feel chosen. Needed. Exceptional.

There is a specific kind of validation in being trusted with somebody’s surrender. It can make you feel almost holy if you are not careful. Somebody is not just wanting you. They are placing themselves in your hands and saying, “I believe you will know what to do with me.”

That can feed the best parts of you.

It can also feed the worst.

Sometimes I liked being trusted because it let me avoid being questioned.

That is not a pretty admission, but it is true.

When you are the one holding the structure, people can mistake your control for clarity. They can mistake your attentiveness for wholeness. They can mistake your ability to read them for proof that you know how to be read.

And I liked that.

I liked being seen as safe.

I liked being Sir.

I liked being Daddy.

I liked what those names did to the room. How they gave shape to the air. How they made me feel wanted without having to ask for wanting. How they let me stand inside a role that already knew what to do with its hands.

That is the part I have to tell the truth about.

Because being called Sir or Daddy gave me a script.

Ordinary intimacy did not.

Ordinary intimacy asked questions I did not always know how to answer.

Do you want me when I am not controlling the room?

Do you want me when I am unsure?

Do you want me when I am not useful, not impressive, not leading, not reading your body like scripture and telling you what comes next?

The role let me be wanted without having to wonder if I was loved.

And that was easier than I want to admit.

Sometimes I wanted credit for refusing what I never should have taken in the first place.

That is the ego trap.

A scene had rules. Love did not. A scene had language. Love made me improvise. And I have always been better with a script than with an ache.

That is a dangerous kind of safety.

There were times I liked the clarity too much. The boundaries. The language. The structure. Everybody knew what the room was for. Nobody had to pretend power was not present. Nobody had to do that fake grown-up thing where two people are clearly negotiating desire, ego, abandonment, shame, fantasy, and control, but calling it “just seeing where things go.”

I liked that kink told the truth.

Power is here.

Desire is here.

Risk is here.

Say what you mean before somebody gets hurt.

That clarity mattered to me because I had spent too much of my life in spaces where power wore church clothes.

In church, people used soft language for domination.

Submission.

Covering.

Accountability.

Leadership.

Servanthood.

Headship.

Discipleship.

All these pretty words that could mean care or control depending on who was holding them.

I saw people call coercion wisdom.

I saw people call fear obedience.

I saw people call silence unity.

I saw men with no emotional discipline claim spiritual authority over people who were just trying to be loved by God and not abandoned by community.

And that thing will mess with you.

Because at least in kink, when somebody called me Sir or Daddy, we both knew a role was being played.

That sounds crude until you have been in enough respectable rooms where nobody admits the role is a role. Where the man at the front says he is serving while everybody else adjusts their life around his appetite. Where somebody tells you your discomfort is rebellion. Where somebody else’s need for control gets baptized and handed back to you as your responsibility.

Kink did not make power harmless.

But it did make power visible.

And once power is visible, it can be negotiated.

That is no small thing.

There was a mercy in the stop.

The stop was sacred.

Not dramatic. Not theatrical. Just stop.

Immediately.

No sermon. No guilt. No “are you sure?” No “maybe you’re overthinking.” No “don’t ruin the moment.” No spiritual manipulation dressed up like concern.

Just stop.

The whole universe had to obey that word.

That kind of clarity will ruin you for relationships where people punish you for having boundaries.

It taught me that consent is not just permission. It is structure. It is pacing. It is the right to change your mind without being treated like you broke the spell.

And honestly, that is where a lot of people fail each other outside the room.

They want access without maintenance.

Desire without conversation.

Intensity without accountability.

They want the feeling of being trusted, but not the responsibility of becoming trustworthy.

I have been guilty of that too.

That is the line I cannot skip if I am going to tell the truth.

Because I know what it feels like to be wanted for the version of you that performs well.

The calm one.

The intense one.

The one who knows what to say.

The one who can hold the room.

The one who seems dangerous, but safe enough to confess to.

That version of me has opened a lot of doors.

It has also kept me from knocking on some.

Being a Dom can hide a lonely man beautifully.

People do not talk about that part.

Control can become a costume for longing. It can make you feel above need because everybody else’s need is louder. You are checking on them. Guiding them. Holding the boundary. Reading the signals. Deciding when to push and when to stop.

You get so focused on being the container that you do not have to admit how badly you want to be held by something too.

That is why aftercare stayed with me more than the scenes.

Not the spectacle.

Not the part people would ask about first while pretending not to be nosy.

Aftercare.

The quiet after.

The return.

The water. The blanket. The hand on the back. The nervous laugh when somebody came back into themselves. The softness after intensity had done its work. The reminder that the person was not an object, not a fantasy, not a body arranged around my ego.

A person.

A whole person.

Somebody’s child.

Somebody’s wound.

Somebody trying, like all of us, to figure out how to be wanted without disappearing.

That part humbled me.

Because anybody can enjoy being obeyed.

Not everybody can care for what obedience opens.

That is the difference between domination and consumption.

Consumption asks, “How much can I get?”

The ethical version asks, “How much can I hold without becoming careless?”

It is not tender because it avoids intensity.

It is tender because it refuses to abandon care once intensity arrives.

And tenderness is not weakness.

Tenderness is discipline.

A man who cannot be tender with power should not be trusted with it.

I believe that more now than I did then. Maybe because I have seen too many men treat access like conquest. Too many people confuse being desired with being entitled. Too many rooms where the person with the most power was also the least accountable.

The older I get, the less impressed I am by people who can take up space.

I care more about what they do with the space they take.

Do they make people smaller?

Do they make people perform safety for them?

Do they need to be feared in order to feel respected?

Do they punish honesty when it interrupts the fantasy?

Do they only like surrender when it flatters them?

Because that is not power.

That is hunger with better posture.

Real power can hear no and not fall apart. Real power understands that somebody can give you their body and still not owe you their soul.

I learned that in rooms people would judge before they understood.

I learned that desire is not automatically honest just because it is intense.

I learned that people can ask for things they are not ready to receive.

I learned that being wanted can still leave you lonely if you are hiding behind the version of yourself that gets wanted.

I learned that control is only sexy when everybody can leave.

And I learned that sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is no.

Not the no that rejects somebody.

The no that protects them.

No, not like that.

No, not while you are trying to prove something.

No, not if you are only saying yes because you think I will want you more.

No, not if this costs you yourself.

There is a mercy in that kind of control.

That is the part I keep coming back to.

Because my life has been shaped by so many forms of power that did not know how to be merciful. Religious authority. Masculine control. Community pressure. Romantic need. The strange power of being praised, misunderstood, projected onto, and then punished for becoming a person inside the role.

So yes, I spent some time as a Dom.

And yes, I liked being Sir. I liked being Daddy. I liked the hush those names could put in a room.

I liked being trusted with somebody’s surrender because it made me feel like maybe I was not as lost as I actually was.

And no, the lesson was not that I am dangerous.

Danger without care is cheap.

Any reckless man can scare somebody. Any hungry man can take. Any insecure man can call himself dominant if he mistakes volume for authority and fear for respect.

That is not rare.

That is everywhere.

The harder thing is restraint.

The harder thing is listening.

The harder thing is being trusted with somebody’s surrender and not using it to worship yourself.

The lesson was that surrender is sacred when it is chosen, reversible, and protected.

The lesson was that power reveals you. It does not create your character. It exposes it. It showed me that sometimes I did not want control because I was strong. Sometimes I wanted it because uncertainty made me feel exposed.

People think domination is about what you can make somebody do.

It is not.

It is about what you can be trusted not to do.

Get full access to Amen. Aśe. And All That S**t. at amenaseandall.substack.com/subscribe