photo credit: muztiko
My slave enjoys con­ver­sa­tions with an indi­vidual called L. Leav­ing it at that I believe that it is import­ant for her to have these con­ver­sa­tions and in one of these L eluded that I might be bluff­ing as we were dis­cuss­ing some con­sequences tied to my slave and hypo­thet­ical behaviours.

I thought it would be import­ant to invest­ig­ate the dic­tion­ary defin­i­tion of this word first. This is but one defin­i­tion of the many that are out in the wild. I think that it will give us a good idea to start from. I believe that num­ber seven and num­ber four are the ones which come closest to the areas I would like to discuss.

–verb (used with object)

• 1. to mis­lead by a dis­play of strength, self-confidence, or the like: He bluffed me into believ­ing that he was a doctor.
• 2. to gain by bluff­ing: He bluffed his way into the job.
• 3. Poker. to deceive by a show of con­fid­ence in the strength of one’s cards.

–verb (used without object)

• 4. to mis­lead someone by present­ing a bold, strong, or self-confident front: That open face makes it impossible for him to bluff.

–noun

• 5. an act or instance or the prac­tice of bluff­ing: Her pathetic story was all a bluff to get money from us. His assert­ive man­ner is mostly bluff.
• 6. a per­son who bluffs; bluffer: That big bluff doesn’t have a nickel to his name.

—Idiom

• 7. call someone’s bluff, to expose a person’s decep­tion; chal­lenge someone to carry out a threat: He always said he would quit, so we finally called his bluff.

Much that has to do with bluff­ing revolves around put­ting your­self into a pos­i­tion of strength when you can­not afford to be in such a pos­i­tion. The idea being very simple that another would not chal­lenge you while you are in this pos­i­tion of strength because they are unable to deal with the rami­fic­a­tions of an unsuc­cess­ful attack. As we can see from the idiom men­tioned in defin­i­tion seven it could be under­stood that bluff­ing is also the act of utter­ing a threat which has not fol­low through. Such as someone act­ing upon that threat and not receiv­ing the prom­ised consequence.

I very much believe that there is a dif­fer­ence between a threat and a prom­ise. I have a habit of prom­ising con­sequences and over the years I have built myself a repu­ta­tion of fol­low­ing through with my prom­ises. A threat to me is a hypo­thet­ical, whereas a prom­ise is an almost bind­ing agree­ment of some sort. The threat of spank­ing my slave is intro­du­cing the pos­sib­il­ity of a 50/50 split in terms of out­come. It might hap­pen or it might not. Me prom­ising my slave a spank­ing has no such weighted out­come, it becomes a cer­tainty. This his one import­ant dif­fer­ence when it comes to inter­act­ing with me and oper­at­ing in a mode where lim­it­a­tions are being tested.

If we look at defin­i­tion four it leads us to believe that someone who bluffs feels it neces­sary to rep­res­ent them­selves as some­thing they are not. In order to execute a threat, they have to seem like one. Whether that comes from a pos­i­tion of phys­ical or men­tal strength does not make a dif­fer­ence. When mak­ing a prom­ise this is not some­thing that is neces­sary. It is up to the receiver of said prom­ise to under­stand it as such, with a threat there has to be a cer­tainty of degree that the described out­come could hap­pen, with a prom­ise that is not neces­sary as it is based on the good faith of those involved.

I believe that any good bluff comes from a pos­i­tion of inner strength and the most valu­able bluff is the one where you down­play the pos­i­tion of strength you are in. This often leads to someone else under­es­tim­at­ing your cap­ab­il­it­ies, which makes it much easier to ana­lyse the situ­ation and react appro­pri­ately to it. My abil­ity to come across as soft and gentle, to be seen as insight­ful and charm­ing, my abil­ity to be not seen as a threat makes me more dan­ger­ous than most bulky Dom­in­ant which are quick to slap a girl across their face.

This is not some­thing I do on pur­pose though, it is a part of myself and it is also a part of soci­ety and how we have chosen to value and judge strength in those we inter­act with. This is a stigma that has been left with us from times where phys­ical strength was the only valid meas­ure of assess­ing to what level we should be duly impressed with the cap­ab­il­it­ies of another indi­vidual. This point of view has to change and I invite L, as well as any other indi­vidual out there to call my bluff, since they are tied to prom­ises, the onus will be on me to fol­low up on those promises.I enjoy the play­ful banter around con­ver­sa­tions such as the ones had with L, how­ever I enjoy the look of dis­be­lief on their face even more when it comes to pay­ing out the table.