“I’m going to give you six whacks with this,” he says, and then he does. As he does, I have to count them. I know not why – tradition dictates it. As if dominant men are notoriously bad at simple arithmetic and if I don’t count them he’ll beat me forever. Maybe I’ll forget to count them.

Thwack. Hot stings and tingling, delicious arousal. I’m already part way to moaning out loud and begging him to fuck me. The counting is a bit of a distraction, if I’m honest, but needs must.

“One.”

I settle back in, focusing on the warmth of the first stinging smack against my naked arse. Ready for a second, a third. Wanting him to give up control and just beat me like he doesn’t care how many.

“What do you say?”

“I… umm… I said it – ‘one.'” I resolve to speak up a bit next time, to avoid having this awkward break in the proceedings.

“But what do you say?”

Oh Christ, he wants me to thank him. Try not to sound too stroppy…

“Thank you.”

Phew. Back to the beating. Any minute now the next stroke will come down and it’ll knock this irritation away, putting me back into the place where I can just whimper and gasp and love it.

“Thank you what?”

Oh for the love of Christ.

Sir

“Thank you Sir” works in very specific scenarios for me – ones in which we’re role-playing that he’s my boss, or my teacher, or anyone in a position of authority (if you’re reading this, guys who might be likely to beat me at some point in the future, I have never yet had angry military commander berating me – a junior member of his troop – while spanking me over the desk with a riding crop. Just FYI). In an authority scenario, ‘Sir’ sounds reasonably natural, and I could – at a push – see me using ‘sir’ with a regular dominant who’d decided he wanted me to address him as such.

But in my lounge? When I’ve got my jeans around my ankles and you’re still half in your work clothes? It doesn’t feel right. I’ll call you ‘Sir’ if you want me to, and beg “please, Sir, can I have some more?” as you’re flogging the backs of my thighs and working me into an stinging ball of lust, but it only serves to highlight that what we’re doing is play. If I use a formal term, I’m highlighting the fact that we’re not really taking this seriously.

Daddy

I’ve never gone with ‘Daddy’, although I’ll admit to a slight kick of envy for those couples who use this word during play. Something about purring ‘Daddy’ at my partner during a particularly intense session makes me melt with desire. I strongly suspect this is something that’s been conditioned via porn (both visual and written) in which the word is often used as a neat, sharp shortcut to establish in the mind of the reader that this is a dominant relationship. He orders: she obeys.

But saying it out loud? To my partner? My partner who brings me Marks and Spencer sweets after work and calls me a twat when I tell him the worst of my jokes? No matter how horny he is, I think he’d struggle to suspend disbelief for long enough to be convinced I really meant it.

Mister/Mr Surname

In my opinion, this is an underused term of BDSM endearment. I used to do a lot of school role play (what can I say? I just love knee socks and the smell of chalk) and I could not get enough of the delight of using the formal names of some of my best friends. In the evening, when we were sipping wine and chatting, a guy might be ‘Mark’, but in the schoolroom when he stood in front of me and asked me what on earth I thought I was doing, he was Mr Smith. I’d talk about them to other ‘girls’ just for the pleasure of rolling their new names around my tongue. Mr Smith told me this. Mr Smith gave us homework. Mr. Mister. Amazing.

Again, though, the whole thing collapses in on itself when it’s my regular partner, because he’ll never be a Mister to me. A ‘Mr Smith’ would sound like a sarcastic hint that we should get married someday, or a means of expressing my displeasure – it would never naturally indicate submission.

Name

That’s the one. The name. When asking ‘what should I call my Dom?’ the question itself feels nonsensical. Because I’ve never had a Dom, much as the sex-focused part of my brain would have liked one. Thing is, the sex part of my brain doesn’t always have the control – it’d be knackered and withered within a week if I let it run as rampant as it wants to go.

I’ve known deliciously dominant guys, and guys for whom holding a whip is a fun Friday-night activity but not something they’re deeply drawn towards. I’ve played with men who speak to me in German, and beat me with rigid and unrelenting authority. Men who have laughed when I’ve asked to be restrained and railed sarcastically at me as they hitch my skirt up and bend me over their knee. I’ve known guys whose feet I’ve wanted to fall at, naked and sobbing and begging them to hurt me in ways I’ve not imagined yet.

I really want to call them ‘Daddy’, or ‘Sir’. I am envious of the people in relationships where they can subdivide their play and make it – to my mind – more intense and all-encompassing. Where play is a deeper experience than the kind of casual tennis-match style of my own BDSM.

But ultimately, I’ve never ended up in the kind of relationship where it’d feel natural to call someone ‘Sir’ or ‘Daddy’ – even when he’s got his cock in the back of my throat and is taking swipes at my arse with a riding crop. When we’re in the pub, he’s [Name], and when we’re sitting on the sofa playing Fable 3 and arguing about whether we should have sex with the hairdresser, he’s [Name]. Beating me feels like an extension of the other stuff we do: different category, same tone.

What’s in a name? Everything.