Mistress Matisse's Journal

Max's class: Rope Bondage 201

This Sunday, 11/1/09 2:30 - 5:30 at the CSPC

This workshop helps you get beyond the fundamentals by combining knotwork and positions with some of the softer elements of a rope scene - things like rhythm, pacing, connection and style. No prior experience is required, so this is a great starting point for your bondage education, even if you missed the last Fundamentals of Rope Bondage workshop.

Labels: events, Max

I am so insanely busy for the next few days that thoughtful, intelligent blogging - well, that's right out the window. I can keep up with Twittering. But otherwise: lower your expectations, people.

And you know the old saying - "If you can't say anything nice, then make fun of other people." So I will. Here, for example, is the complete and unedited text of a recent email.

i was wanting to know iu tape ur sessions if so can u do 1 on webcam

Fail. Number one: typos, which we all make, me included. But come on, it's one lousy line, you can proofread that!

Number two: netspeak, which I hate. I am especially annoyed by the bastardization of "u" for you and "ur" for your. Those abbreviations are appropriate in one, and only one, type of communication. That is: a letter that's wrapped around a rock, and which will be delivered by throwing it through a window.

Okay, maybe one more - they are acceptable for a ransom note that's composed of cut-out letters from a newspaper. Otherwise - wrong, wrong, wrong.

Number three, and the real crux of it: I have no idea what he's asking me. Is he asking me if I will tape a session with another guy and let him watch? (No.) Or is he asking me if I'll do a session with him, via webcam? (No.)

Now... I am trying to think of a cute ending line for this post - and I'm failing. Perhaps it's a sign that I should not be so hard on other people's writing. Or perhaps it means that sometimes, I'm a better disciplinarian than a writer. Luckily I can live with that.

Labels: intellectual laziness, letters

Occasionally people tell me they miss the "stupid phone calls" posts. They were easy to write, god knows. But I don't miss actually having to answer those phone calls.

But here's an oldie-goldie from the vaults. Faithful long-term readers may remember the one and only Ryker Blackstar! Wonder how that House of Blackstar thing worked out?

Labels: phone calls

I'm behind on my blogging... But this family visit has offered little free time, and even less privacy, until today. I’m sitting on the porch at my father’s place, feeling the seabreeze on my cheeks. My hair is curling into tendrils around my face because of the humidity, but the mid-seventies temperature is actually perfect.

My crazy schedule doesn’t end anytime soon. I’m home late Wednesday the 28th, and then a few days after that, I leave again for another visit to Las Vegas. So I’m gone November 3rd to November 6th.

A little over a week later, I'm back to San Francisco. The details are still being worked out, but it looks like I’m flying down on November 15th to do a shoot with Kink.com. (I’ll talk more about that in another post.) As it stands, I am only intending to stay one night in San Francisco. If any of my intimate friends wanted to do a rendezvous there, I’d stay another night. Drop me a note and let me know.

Now I’m going to go wade in the ocean. It’s a little cool for swimming, and it’s been cloudy today as well. But still, it’s warm enough to dip my toes in the water.

Labels: schedule, travel notes

I'm off to Atlanta today on a family visit. I'm flying home next Weds, so between now and then, I'll get to email as best I can - but don't expect lighting-fast replies.

Meanwhile: the new Stranger column.

Bye!

Labels: column, travel notes

Whenever I have no writing inspiration, it is a comfort to me that I can reach in the mail file and find something to talk about...

I got a letter from a reader who said nice things and observed all the I-know-you're-really-busy amenities, and because she did that, I will answer for her some questions that she might have been able to answer for herself, if she'd done a bit more searching of the archives. This blog needs a design overhaul anyway, and one of things it needs is the Top Ten Most Asked Questions List. "How To Be A Pro Domme" would be high on that list.

What's a fair range of prices to ask for an hour long session? How do you determine what your time's worth, how much to ad for extras outside my norm(if I decide to do so). Do you have any tips for how I could determine that of my time? And last but far from least, when you were just starting, how did you protect yourself? I'm well read, fairly involved in my (sparse) local scene and I broke my teeth in on the larger London clubs and parties like Torture Garden, but nowhere I've looked has helped me figure out how to price or organize this.

Okay, here's my standard advice: First, go here, enter this blog's URL and search for "sex work" and "pro domme" and read all the tons of advice I've given about that in the last five years. Some of it will apply directly to you and some won't, but it's all information worth having.

Read this. And then read this book, in it's entirety.

Then read this one, too. ("But I'm not going to be an escort, I'm going to be a pro domme!" For the vast majority of your purposes, the difference is immaterial. Read it. Information is never a waste.)

Because the writer mentions London, I suspect she might be in the UK. Or maybe not, I don't know. But if she is, I am badly positioned to give her much more advice, because both the legal and the social system around sex work is entirely different there. She'd need to talk to a pro domme in the same country.

But perhaps she's in the US. Even if she isn't, someone else will want to know the answers to those questions anyway. So let me just step all of you through this as simply as I can.

Say we want to sell something - something we know is of value. In this case, it's our time and attention, but it could be anything at all. How do we determine it's value? We go and find other people who are selling the same thing and see what they are charging! Aside from a few stints waitressing, I have never had a job that didn't involve someone getting naked. But surely this is how you non-sex-workers determine what's a fair wage for your labor, or a fair price for your product? It's no different for us.

It is my policy that I do not tell other people how much money they should charge for their time. And since this reader didn't tell me where she lived, I can't do her Googling for her. But she - and anyone else - can type mistress, pro domme, dominatrix + the name of her city, and Bob's your uncle. Look at the sites, see what the existing ladies are charging, charge the same.

One point: I don't recommend having a menu of fees. Decide what you will and won't do, set an hourly rate for your time that assumes all those activities, and that's it. I think it's unseemly to mess around with the nickel-and-dime add-ons. Per-activity rates also suggest that you could be wheedled down in price. "How much if I just want a spanking, with no nipple clamps?"

Also, in the US, extra fees are legally risky. Ask a lawyer why.

Protection: This kind of question about protection always makes me roll my eyes a bit. The myth that sex workers live in a state of constant peril was created by people who want to control what we do with our bodies. Certainly some sex workers get assaulted. Women get assaulted by their husbands and boyfriends, too - and by their friends, their co-workers, members of their family, and total strangers. That seemingly common-sense notion that nice girls aren't assaulted as often as bad girls is just a tool to keep you nice girls scared and in line. The idea that there's a way that sex workers have to make themselves safe that other women don't is fallacious.

So, how have you protected yourself in your life so far? Whatever you've done, ask yourself: has my way of doing that worked out well? Or do I need to get better at it?

There's a lot of stuff about safety in the archived entries here about sex work, so read them. And read The Gift Of Fear, too, it's the best handbook I know on assessing and dealing with dangerous people.

But I can't say, "Okay, here's the ONE rule that will always prevent you from assault." There are a hundred thousand rules. Some of them you'll need and some you won't, and just based on this letter, I can't tell you what you need to feel safe.

You will have to decide. Remove the money aspect from it and think: what would I do if I was just meeting a guy for fun? How would I protect myself in that situation? And do that.

Certain kinds of sex work questions there are right/wrong answers to. But if you want to operate your own business - any business - you need to be able to look at a problem, reason it out, and make a judgment call by yourself. The best advice I can give you is: Get used to thinking like that.

Labels: sex work

Point of clarification before I go on: transman means someone who started out female and transitioned to male. I know we can get into a discussion about whether transmen were ever truly female, I’m not questioning anyone’s feelings on that. Let us say: they were assigned the female gender when they were born.

Now then...

Some letters that I get, I think “I don’t know how to answer this without sounding like a twit.”

Well, in a way I can answer this. I don’t have any female-to-male transexual clients. In fact, I’ve never had anyone who told me he was transexual even ask me for a professional session. And since I see 99% of my clients naked, yes, I’d know if one of my guys was trans. The surgery for female-to-male transexuals is not nearly as advanced as it is for male-to-female people.

So, the issue has not arisen.

I’m not sure what I would say if a transman did ask me, though. Because the situation is, as you say, nuanced.

Yes, I was queer-identified for most of my twenties. My lovers were female and I socialized in mainly queer spaces. And then I did indeed marry (and subsequently divorce) a transman. (Not Max or Monk. This was way before them. )

In my experience, a woman who is lovers with a transman occupies a very curious social space between queer and straight. But my former husband looked very, very male indeed. He used to resemble a shorter Mike Ditka, in fact. Looking the way he felt - male - was precisely what he wanted, although on occasion it complicated matters. Like the day I took him to the hospital for his scheduled hysterectomy.

He was understandably a bit anxious about having this major surgery. And it seem like when you’re waiting for surgery, every yahoo with a lab coat just wanders by at random, picks up your chart, and reads it. Picture Mike Ditka in a hospital bed. And his chart says he's having a hysterectomy. The possibility of having a gender “Who’s On First?” sort of exchange was strong.

I was not going allow that to happen. I stood at his bedside poised like a jaguar, ready to spring at the throat of any clueless medical staff who looked at him, and then looked at his chart, and then said something stupid. There were several moments when various people looked like they were trembling on the brink of a throat-tearing remark, but - they refrained. Perhaps it was the I-will-kill-you look I was giving them.

This is all my way of explaining that I am aware of the incredible complexities and challenges transmen have to deal with. *

But that’s a lot of complexities to deal with in just sixty minutes, in a dungeon. With a not-a-transexual man, I have a head-start. I can safely assume a lot about where he’s coming from, culturally, and what the some of his hot buttons and wet dreams and taboo fantasies are likely to be. I know how to do the traditional male-female dance, and I know how to twist it sideways, lube it up, and jam it into someone’s sweet pink ass.

My experience of transmen in intimate situations is that they are emotionally vulnerable in a way that I can validate and sympathize with, and they are just tremendously complex. The social/psychological dynamic is all over the map. He’s a man, which in a patriarchal world means he has social power - but he’s a transman, which means that power is actually as fragile and as permeable as a tissue.

Often he has lived for part of his life being seen as female, so he knows what that’s like. But straight transmen don’t usually want to relate to women as someone-who-used-to-be-female, they just want to be a guy. So there’s this knowingness there - but one mustn’t make too much of the fact that this guy knows exactly what menstrual cramps feel like.

Transmen’s relationships with their bodies is tricky, too. I have never had any uneasiness about interacting - in a BDSM context, or sexually - with a transman's body. I’m good with bodies. I don't care whether your body looks exactly like other men's bodies, I just want to know how you work. If I can look at you and touch you, I can figure out your body pretty quickly.

But, understandably, a lot of transmen are not super-confident about their body. They are not always comfortable being seen and being touched. Stripped naked, their vulnerability is often, to me, heart-wrenchingly intense. One can learn how each individual transman wants to be looked at and touched, and teach them to trust you, but that takes time.

And one hour simply isn’t enough, in my opinion. It's completely different from dating a transman, where you go as slow as you need to. For me as a professional – wow, I’m daunted by the idea of trying to create a scene for a transman that I’d feel really good about in that short of a time. Since I have some personal history there, I’d feel extra-frustrated by doing a scene I didn’t think was as good as it should be.

What’s also true is that my professional time is not cheap, and most of the transmen I have met were not rich. I suppose if I met a transman who was wealthy, and he wanted to see me a lot and develop that type of BDSM relationship with me, and I felt we were well-suited as play-partners – well, I’d do that.

I would bet that’s a decision I will not have to make, though.


*Of course, everything I say is a broad generalization that only reflects my view from the outside. Every transexual person has his/her/hir own different and utterly valid experience.

Labels: kinky life, relationships

I wasn’t going to upload this last podcast. But Monk says I’m being silly. And lord knows, I need the blog-content, I've been way too busy to write much lately.

So, I am ignoring a voice in the back of my head that says it is slightly undignified. Unladylike, in fact.

Yes, I know – I don’t feel the slightest qualm about posting photos of myself sticking needles in people. That's perfectly dignified. It's kinky, but it's not undignified.

But I do feel that it is a trifle undignified to post slightly-tipsy rants about one of my pet topics: Crazy People And Sex Work.

Just to be clear – thank you, President Obama – I am not disclaiming the basic opinions I express here. I just wish I had voiced them a little less profanely and a little less… stridently. Whoops.

There's also a whole side conversation about fisting, in which I make an ill-advised personal disclosure.

Thus, I bring to a close the era of cocktails while podcasting. So enjoy us in all our ranty, TMI glory, the next round will be far more calm, sober and public-radio-esque. (Well, I will be, at least. I cannot speak for Monk.)

Labels: Monk, podcast

Notes From A Party

I was at a lovely party over the weekend, with a lot of my usual kinky friends and also, a bunch of people I am not so acquainted with. Many interesting things happened.

At one point in the evening, I was standing in a hallway, talking to various people. If I looked to the left, I could see some strangers fucking in a dimly-lit bedroom. If I looked right, I could see Monk doing a suspension-bondage scene in the living room. It was a nice location.

Observation connected to that experience and a lot of others just like it: if you mix swingers and kinky people at a party, the swingers will eventually go find a bedroom (or someplace) to have sex in. The kinky people, on the other hand, will start doing BDSM – although not sex – right in the living room.


I am fortunate enough to have some very attractive friends who really like to run around naked. It’s a charming trait.


A man I did not know walked by me and accidentally stepped on my toes. Such things do happen, and he apologized instantly, and there was certainly no permanent injury. But I wasn’t able to arrange my facial expression into anything that resembled understanding forgiveness – at least, not quickly enough. After he’d moved away, I felt a little bad about the frosty glare I’d given him, as it was a bit disproportionate to the crime.

Coda: the next day, my hostess told me that he was mortified by the incident, and apparently jokes were made about him dying his hair and changing his name before the next party. To which I say: dear man, your party foul was a trifling one. I was just having a bitchy moment, it’s an occupational hazard. All is forgiven and forgotten.


Other Opportunities For Mortification: Occasionally I’ll be standing alone, watching a BDSM scene, and someone will walk up, stand next to me and watch with me, and strike up a conversation. That’s fine, but sometimes – perhaps because I’m not wearing a leather dress or carrying a flogger – they will assume I don’t know anything about BDSM. And they start explaining the scene to me. That is highly, but highly, amusing to me. Especially when they get it completely wrong. Especially when one of the people in the scene is Max or Monk.

When I am feeling kind, I will politely clue them in right away. When I am not, I’ll let them go on for a while before I casually mention that yeah, I'm a pro domme, and that guy is actually my boyfriend.


Speaking of Stepping: in spite of the fact that I had arrived with no intention of playing, Jae succeeded in goading me into standing on her chest. I did some pushups with my elbows planted in her pectoral muscles, too. And then Puck and I then determined that with pressure, Jae’s legs would almost, but not quite, rotate enough for us to form a perfect T-shape with her body. Jae’s remark: “Jesus, I feel like a cross between a sex doll and a Gumby!”

Labels: kinky life

The new Stranger column. It's about a common bit of sex-industry infighting, and I see in the comments that the stripper version of this argument is also getting some airtime.

I'm not surprised. As a former stripper myself, I have known many strippers who spent a lot of time and energy trying to control the behavior of other strippers, and that always baffled me.

For one thing, trying to get a bunch of strippers to do anything at all is like herding cats. (No pun intended.)

But trying to get a bunch of strippers, many of whom are not exactly deeply invested in strict professionalism, some of whom are chemically altered in some fashion when they're at work, and all of whom are actually in financial competition with each other to adhere to a highly-interpretable set of behavioral boundaries just because you want them to - you're kidding me, right? Never gonna happen.

The amount of blood, sweat and tears some strippers will put into policing whether some other chick put her hand on a guy's thigh or his crotch, whether she brushed up against him or she rubbed up against him - you know, you could put all that energy into getting a job where there really are strict rules about how people are supposed to act. That seems like what you want.

But sex work? This is the wild wild west, baby. We ain't got no sheriffs, and we don't need no stinkin' badges.

Labels: column, sex work

I’m off to Vegas until Friday, so while I jet away, enjoy a new podcast. This one is letters from readers with questions about polyamory.

First letter: when to disclose to a potential new partner that you are poly, if they don’t know already.

And then: dealing with weirdness from your partner’s other partners. (AKA “metamours”.)

It’s a lot of unbridled snark with (hopefully) some nuggets of wisdom. And all admittedly somewhat fueled by alcoholic beverages. I am wincing slightly as I listen to myself tipsily hold forth on these, so I think that means I must make a ban on drinking + podcasting in the future.

But I will not be podcasting in Vegas! Bye!

EDIT: The formatting is coming out weird on the podcast page, not sure why. But it downloads okay, just click on the little icon.

Labels: Monk, podcast, polyamory, travel notes

Max is teaching his famous "Fundamentals of Rope Bondage" class on Sunday!

A lot of good rope-riggers around the scene got started with rope bondage by taking this very class. My darling Max is one of the best (if not THE best) rope instructors I have ever seen. And I would think that even if he wasn't my partner!

This is a 101 class, no experience required. Loaner-rope is available, or you can bring your own, or Monk will be vending, so you can pick up some gorgeous hemp while you're there.

A partner is not required, we'll pair you with a practice-partner if you're single. You don't have to takes any clothes off, either.

Plus, it's just fun! More info: Sunday October 4th, 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM, at the Center for Sex Positive Culture (CSPC) in Seattle.

Labels: bdsm techniques, events, Max

Pictures: I put a couple of snapshots from Folsom on my Flickr feed… Just some street shots, but not terribly work-safe. If you’re interested in getting a broader sense of what Folsom Street Fair is like, go watch the five-minute documentary from Peter Acworth, the owner of Kink.com. Watch closely, you never know who you might see in the background. (Not me, though.)

Speaking of Kink.com, you might be seeing me very much in the foreground of some of their photos in months to come. I’ve never modeled for them, or for any BDSM porn site. Until lately, I have just not seen any real reason why I should. I don’t want a big career as a fetish model. If I want pictures of myself playing, I can arrange that on my own. Why give up control of the images?

But Kink.com is becoming sort of a cultural institution for pervy people, and it might be time to try the experience of working with them on for size. Lord knows they have some fancy sets and some specialized toys that would be fun to use.

Why now? Well, one reason is the person who asked me. Kink.com is a huge operation and over the years, I have watched them hire a lot of people I know to run the various sites. One of those folks is a guy named Lochai.

Now, Lochai and I do not know each other well even now, but for a while we just barely knew each other at all. We said hi to each other at kink events, but it was a very slight social acquaintance.

Then, some years ago, he did something that utterly charmed me. I will not give too many specifics, but the story goes something like this. I was at a kink conference, in a class with a bunch of people, including Lochai. The instructor of this class started saying some very biased and factually untrue things about polyamory. It wasn’t a class about poly, he was just taking advantage of an opportunity to say that poly, basically, didn’t work. Could never work.

Naturally I was quite annoyed by this. But for various reasons, I felt it would be unwise of me to speak up. Because of the situation, it might have caused a problem for someone else if I had said what I thought, which was, “You’re a pompous twit and you don’t know anything about poly, so shut up about it. Not that I think you know jack about the supposed topic, anyway.”

So I was sitting there, biting my tongue, when a hand was raised in the class, and someone began, with perfect civility, to punch holes in all the poly-doesn't-work statements the pompous twit had been making. Lochai.

The pompous twit huffed and puffed. Lochai smiled and continued to politely deflate him. Pompous twit stopped talking about poly. And I went up to Lochai after the class and whispered in his ear, “You are so fabulous. Thank you.” Anyone who steps forward and, without ever saying anything ugly, takes the piss out of someone who richly deserves it is a cool guy in my book.

We’ve been friendlier ever since then. I ran into Lochai this year at Folsom. I got a nice hug from him, and he said, “Hey, I’m looking for models the new site I’m doing, EverythingButt.com, and I need dominant women. You should come do a shoot for me.”

So you know, I just might.

Labels: kinky life, photos

A new podcast! First there’s a lot of silly banter about needles and being naked in bed, and then Monk reads a letter about how to do fast, easy rope bondage during a resistance play scene, and I make some comments about securing a bottom who is larger than you.
After that, I both scold and encourage a reader who is exploring BDSM, but who wants me to do their kinky thinking for them. About 16 minutes.

Labels: Monk, podcast