The most recent Sunday Times’ “Style” magazine had a neat little feature on a new type of a lifestyle consultant: the guy moves in for however long you can afford him,* detoxes your life, whatever that involves, – and moves out.
You can tell what I’m thinking, right? I’ve written and read lots of stories where a girl in need of discipline is sent to live in a structured, strict environment, but I haven’t come across a scenario where the discipline and the person who wields it comes to stay at the girl’s house.
I could have tons of fun with this idea. “What’s this in your drawer, young lady? Last year’s laddered pantyhose? Out it goes.” A tick on the clipboard to mark a stroke of the paddle to come at bedtime. “It’s October. Why is your wall calendar still on August?” Another tick. And so forth.
Obviously, seeing how an appropriately strict husband is a good lifestyle guru substitute ( 
), I don’t feel an immediate need to experiment. Even if I did, though, I don’t think this regime will work for me very well. And here’s why:
- I couldn’t accept discipline from somebody who didn’t care about/for me. Having to pay somebody to take an interest in my doings would smash my self-image all to pieces.
- Acquiring self-discipline is a long, terrible, ongoing process, a battle with no end. Any disciplinarian needs to pay me constant attention, even when I’ve been doing well for a while. Simply moving out when a semblance of order has been achieved would be no use.
- Even if the disciplinarian worked out of charity, the moving out thing would undoubtedly shatter any progress we might have made. Because being cared for/about somehow involves the disciplinarian person not leaving.
I don’t think I could even write this as a story: I can’t imagine a girl for whom it would work well enough that she hired such a person.
On the other hand, if she were sentenced to receive “live-in guidance” (as it would be called by the courts) – as a form of house arrest, I suppose…
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* The article quotes 350 – 500 GBP and hour, plus travel. Eep!
My cousin (a guy) as a persona trainer who tells him what to eat, and the guy comes to my house and asks for skim milk… Skim milk, people, green skim milk in my house, where we drink no less than WHOLE milk! That’s my attitude towards that sorta thing.
Hmm. I can see it. I used to imagine such a thing when I watched the show “Clean Sweep” (on BBC it would be “Life Laundry”). The Aussie organizer in particular seemed like the right sort to top. Perhaps it would work as a story if the organizer were coming in to both make the fictional you do the organization / de-cluttering while at the same time training the fictional Abel on the issues to watch for after they were gone.
And, of course, part of the service could be surprise periodic check-ins. (!!!) This would definitely work for me. If only I had time to write some fiction.
And Amber, while Pablo would agree with you about the whole milk, if I have to drink the real thing I definitely prefer skim. Whole milk, for me, has a terrible texture and feels like trying to swallow blood. Ick.
That said, because of allergies, I generally use soy milk.
I’m a 2% kind of girl myself.
I really like the Clean Sweep-esque take on this concept. I can see the trainer thoroughly disgusted with his client’s way of life but attracted to her underlying desire to please.
We might not have to worry about him moving out, after all.
Of course the consultant would *care* about you.
They’d be a ‘consultant’, right. Caring would be part of their service level agreement. They’d have attended courses in caring; they’d speak at conferences on caring; they’d write articles for learned journals on caring. They’d hold Fellowships in the Association of Caring Professionals.
Of course, there’s *caring* and there’s *caring*. But who could accuse consultants of being insincere?
That’s America’s Dairyland for you! The thing about cousin is that the guy doesn’t drink milk like we do not because it’s the matter of taste but because he’s a yuppie who doesn’t know what to do with the money he makes selling money and is paying someone to make sure he doesn’t get fat. Then he packs on food with MSG, I have no doubt about it, and spends all the time indoors and thinks he’s leading a healthy lifestyle.
A. has already sorta been thinking about this. A few nights before he left we were talking about what would happen should he get really busy with work (hopefully!). “I mean, who’s going to spank me?” I asked. “The nanny,” A. replied without a moment of hesitation.
I think a nanny/governess for an adult would sort of be a bit like a live-in lifestyle consultant. I mean, Mary Poppins sort of worked like that. Of course, how that would work in, you know, the *real* world is an entirely different matter… 😉
I used to fantasise about this when I was an uninitiated teen, before the days when it had even occurred to me that such an arrangement could form part of a *real* relationship. There was a dating-type agency where you went and registered, gave them all the info on what you needed your rent-a-top to do, what issues he (was always a he!) should address, what you felt would/wouldn’t motivate you. Then a suitable candidate was identified from their books, an appointment made and he turned up to sort out both you and your life. Even in my unawakened state, I managed to find this incredibly hot as a concept!
On the personal training front, I was whingeing to mine the other day that he’d stacked too much weight on the chest press and that I didn’t wanna lift it cos it would hurt! (Surely this is not an unreasonable thought process?!) In response he came out with something like “Get on with it or your arse will hurt as well”!! A spanko friend who also sees him has spotted the odd similar comment too, we can’t work out whether he’s sussed us, is a closet spanko too or if these are innocent comments which he think will help motivate us! The latter is true anyway: I *did* lift the 2×10 sets as instructed and my pecs *do* hurt still as a result!
I haven’t said this out loud to anyone, so keep it quiet would you, but I have fantasised about this repeatedly. One such scenario is that my husband is required to travel for a month or so, and can’t leave me without some structured discipline for that long, so he hires someone to live in. It is sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes a friend, sometimes a stranger, sometimes just someone who checks in every couple of days to see how things are going – might do a drive by late at night to check to see if my bedside light is on and I am reading into the night against the rules. This scenario can take you many places…….