Service With A Smile by Doc

Service With a Smile

Preface:  Submission is not about kink.  It’s not even about sex necessarily.  It’s about will.  Making choices.  Deciding to make one’s own wishes subordinate to someone else's.  Obedience.  Mostly obedience in search of finding meaning and purpose by making someone else’s life better.  DONE.
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Some days he found her attractive; other days he didn't.  It didn't matter.  She wanted a foot rub so he delivered.  She wanted a back-rub so he performed.  She didn't want sex, so he bit his tongue and waited.  And waited.  “My job not to reason why; my job just to do and die.”  He knew it was a reference to the horrendously unsuccessful charge of The Light Brigade during the Crimean War between the Russians on one side and the British and French on the other.  Flashes of the images of photographs of that battlefield from some book he’d read flashed into his mind’s eye.  They distracted him.  That was the point in reading history.

He had his wants and needs.  She had hers.  He could choose which to put first.  He chose hers.

Lots of times he’d be reading and think of sex.  “Not now”, was his interior answer.  He knew she would approve of him thinking ‘not now’ but he didn't utter it aloud. Aloud it sounded like pleading.  Begging.  She detested begging, probably because it implied she had an obligation – and she had obligations enough.  He didn't push things because her will was unbendable.  One might as well beg for rain or for the parting of The Red Sea.  (He didn't believe in miracles!)

So he did his jobs:  take out the garbage, wash and chop the Swiss chard, vacuum from time to time, clean the sink, wash the pots and pans.  There were always tasks to be done.  She would occasionally say, ‘I’m so glad to have you.  What would I do if you were not around?’  He never spoke the answer in his head, which was ‘You’d manage’.  It wouldn't have sounded very nice.  She liked it when he was nice.  He obliged.  His job was to agree and to do as she said (much as if he were her child).  It really didn’t matter.  Easier to go along than to fight.

He thought of the horses – thousands of horses – that died in Crimea unmourned (except possibly by their riders).   But their riders were long since gone, as were their horses.

“Honey, would you get the mail?”  “Yes, when I finish reading this chapter out of my book.”

“No”, she answered.  “I want it done now.”

He slipped a post-it into the page, rose, and headed out the door and off to the mailbox.  It was empty.

He looked at his house.  He was a very lucky man.  When he was 20 he had never dreamed he’d ever be wealthy enough to actually own a house.  The years had slipped by and – somehow – not only did he have a house, but clear title and no mortgage.  He was not the same person he was then.

Somehow he was dissatisfied.  He accepted that.  His job was to perform, not to revel in any phony ‘joy’ or ‘feeling of accomplishment’.  Tonight he would sleep in the upstairs bedroom and she would sleep in the master.  (She slept better without his snoring).  No doubt she’d want a back-rub before they went to sleep.  He’d do the right thing.

She made demands, he obeyed orders.  Just like those insane men who won glory and lost their lives in a silly charge (which would have been forgotten except for Alfred Lord Tennyson).  He wondered if he’d ever be rewarded with a poem dedicated simply to foot rubs and to back-rubs.  He doubted it.  If he wrote one himself, everyone would certainly think he was being sarcastic.  Or ironic.  Or something other than honest.  It really didn't matter anyway, though.  In 50 years all this would be gone.

He looked at his house, wondering what would stand there in 2064.  He headed back inside.

“Did we get anything?”

“No, dear.  Nothing.”