My Cinderella Thing

I have a thing for Cinderella, and I have done for as long as I can remember.  By that I mean early childhood, long before puberty hit.  My thing for Cinderella arrived before I even knew what sexuality and sexual arousal were, before I knew what that strange feeling down there in my body meant.  Cinderella is why I believe that I was born this way.  Cinderella was my first encounter with the idea of dominance and submission, and I couldn't get enough of it.

606d reprazent

This book.  This one here, the Ladybird Series 606d 'Well-Loved Tales' version.  We had a copy in the house when I was a child, and I kept going back to it, reading and re-reading the story, looking at the pictures and wondering how on earth a fairy-tale could make me feel like that.

Later on, another version came into the house, this time with an audio cassette for added fun.  Diana Rigg FTW.

It might sound like a strange thing for a small boy to become fascinated by, but what drew me time and time again to this story was not what draws most people to it.  I'm not interested in handsome prince, the rags-to-riches plot or even the pervy bit about having feet small enough to fit into a tiny shoe.  I'm interested in the first act, the setup.  I'm interested in the cruelty that Cinderella suffers at the hands of her step-sisters.  I'm interested in the power exchange.

Before we have a look at the wonderful artwork by Eric Winter, let me try to describe the feeling that Cinderella gives me.  It's like butterflies in your stomach, a nervous panic at the thought of being in such a humiliating position.  I had no idea as a child of 3 what it was, but I knew that it felt strange and pleasurable at the same time, so naturally I sought out the books and spent time thinking about the story.  I knew that the step-sisters were the bad guys, and I almost started to resent the end of the story, when the good girl escapes them and wins.  For pretty much my whole childhood, as the books got handed down to my younger siblings and we moved houses a few times, I always made sure I knew where they were, and I would seek them out from time to time and enjoy the butterflies afresh.

I had no idea what it was until I hit puberty, and then the same feelings started to make things happen down there, so to speak.  I made the connection between dominance and submission and my raging hard-on, and my imagination took off.  I started developing my first major fantasy world (more on that in a later post), but wherever my imagination has taken me since that day, I have never strayed too far from Cinderella.  I see it as Where It All Began for me, and to this day, it gives me a boner.

I'll no doubt return to this subject and write some more about it at a later date, as it really is fundamental to understanding my sexuality.  Compared with the second major influence on my sexual fantasies, namely Flash Gordon (1980) (yes, that Flash Gordon), Cinderella is still very much alive and well, while the fantasy world I built around Flash Gordon had more or less petered out by the time I left for University.  Cinderella is perennial, and crucial for me, and elements of it pop up all over the place as this blog develops.  Keep an eye out.

QP