Mistress Matisse's Journal

The new Stranger column, about what happens when monogamous attempt to rustle the polyamorous. It's sure to provoke either winces of recognition or indignant argument. Enjoy!

Labels: column, polyamory

If you have a cock and a tape measure, I need a little favor from you.

No, I do not want to know the size of your cock. What I want to know is: what the measurement from your mouth to the base of your groin? And here’s the important part – I need the measurement of it taken while you are lying down.

That’s an odd request, isn’t it? Let me explain… You see, I am having a charming piece of kink equipment made for me by some superb local craftspeople. This is a vacuum bed. (Click through for a larger image and an explanation of how it works.)






I’ve been thinking of getting one for years, but I’ve always been put off by the fact that the person inside, while rendered truly immobile in a fashion that does induce an intense psychological response, would not sufficiently accessible to me.

However, lately I have seen examples of vacuum beds with, shall we say, greater access. So I asked Seattle latex designer Tonya Winter if she could create something like that for me. She’s hard at work on it, and her design incorporates a gusset with a flap of latex at the crotch, a few inches around, that could be either opened, to provide access, or smoothed shut and secured in some fashion.

So essentially she is creating an envelope of latex for me, and it will have two holes in it. One to breathe through, and one for access to those nicely sensitive places. So the question becomes: where does one place those holes relative to each other? Latex does stretch, but one has to have some idea of the average distance from mouth to groin.

Naturally I have some boys on hand, as it were, that I can measure. But I’d like a greater sample. Who knows, if that number turns out to vary quite widely, I may end up having more than one envelope made. But I wish to start with the measurement that’s more or less in the middle, statistically. And I’m sure that my lovely readers would enjoy knowing that they had contributed to this design.

So if you'd like that as much as I think you would: lie down – because that’s the position people will be in when they are in the bed – and measure from your mouth to where your cock joins your body. Send that to me, and just for good measure, tell me your height and approximate weight. I’ll be ever so grateful to each and every one of you.

Labels: bdsm gear

Books I’m Reading Lately

There’s been Sex At Dawn of course, of which much has already been said. I’m enjoying it very much, and I recommend it. But I have other books going on as well.

One of them I consider half professional training – given that I do speak in public on occasion - and half sheer curiosity about what must be a challenging way to make a living: Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun.
"Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. Highlights include: how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrong, the worst-and funniest-disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use). Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read."

And then there is my penchant for anything historical, lately expressing itself in the true-crime genre: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale.
"Summerscale delivers a mesmerizing portrait of one of England's first detectives and the gruesome murder investigation that nearly destroyed him. In 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found murdered in the outdoor privy of his family's country estate. Scotland Yard Det.-Insp. Jonathan Jack Whicher was called in and immediately suspected the unthinkable: someone in the Kent family killed Saville. Theories abounded as everyone from the nursemaid to Saville's father became a suspect. Whicher tirelessly pursued every lead but with little evidence and no confession, the case went cold and Whicher returned to London, a broken man. Five years later, the killer came forward with a shocking account of the crime, leading to a sensational trial. Whicher is a fascinating hero, and readers will delight in following every lurid twist and turn in his investigation."

And also: The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century by Harold Schechter.
True-crime historian Schechter delivers a thrilling account of a murder case that rocked Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. Roland Molineux was a proud member of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, where he was considered a talented but snooty sportsman, repeatedly instigating spats with the club's athletic director, Harry Cornish. Roland doggedly wooed Blanche Chesebrough, but when one of Molineux's romantic competitors, Henry Barnet, died, Cornish was poisoned (he survived), Roland topped the list of suspects. The sensational trial became one of the costliest in New York State history. Schechter expertly weaves a rich historical tapestry—exploring everything from the birth of yellow journalism to the history of poison as a murder weapon—without sacrificing a novelistic sense of character, pacing and suspense. The result is a riveting tale of murder, seduction and tabloid journalism run rampant in a New York not so different from today's."

Labels: books

A New Podcast

In this podcast, Monk and I riff about phallic-looking microphones, and then read and discuss a letter from a reader pondering how to begin a polyamorous relationship. How do you treat the Other Significant Other? Monk says "Treat them as you'd wish to be treated." I agree - with some qualifications. Also mentioned: the value of just keeping your mouth closed.
Listen to it here... (About ten minutes.)

Labels: podcast

Linkage to this and that...

The new Stranger column, in which I wax nostalgic about flying blood, and reveal the problem with Mormon vampires.

And Monk's latest video-blog on Carnal Nation. Leather History: Bound To The Past, about the Leather Archives And Museum. (Located in Chicago, serving the world. Yeah, I was there when Joe Bean trained us all to chant that phrase back to him whenever he mentioned the place in a speech. I think he eventually got sick of hearing it. But hey, when Joe trains you, you stay trained.)

And - I have fresh podcasts! So look for those in a day or so...

Labels: column, links

From the 2004 archives: letter from the infamous Tampon Man.

Now this? This is a good old-fashioned weirdo letter. It’s sort of sad - I hardly ever get this kind of email anymore. (And god knows I don’t get actual snail-mail letters like this anymore, although once in a great one, The Stranger forwards some entertainingly strange missive sent to me at their office.)

What makes it a classic? It’s not the fetish itself. I have known perfectly charming men who found bloody women erotic.

No, it’s the writing style. The bludgeon-like use of capital letters! The insistently interrogative multiple question marks! The jarring juxtaposition of the flowery, hyper-submissive phrases with slightly offensive made-up words like “cuntsume”. And the bizarre rhetorical questions, that remind me of advertisements for snake-oil, or personal-injury attorneys.

Sheer length also counts – the original of this letter was about four pages long. I do not lie.

He also gets bonus points for the use of then-current events as emotional reference points to sell his concept. Menstruation = Weapons Of Mass Destruction? That’s bold branding, people. Bold!

I just think it’s a shame people don’t put the same sort of effort into writing oddball letters as they used to. Now they just Twitter or text. Sigh. Passing of an age.

Labels: letters

Podcast fans: listen to the Part II of a podcast Monk and I did with Richard Wagner of Dr. Dick's Sex Advice.

And, a plug for a show opening this weekend. SHINE: A Burlesque Musical. From the web page...

Internationally-acclaimed comedy cabaret duo The Wet Spots (John Woods and Cass King), in collaboration with Theatre Off Jackson and the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, will present 12 performances of SHINE: A Burlesque Musical July 8 to 18, 2010 at the Theatre Off Jackson.

A recent winner of a Vancouver Ovation Award for “Outstanding New Work”, SHINE is a tassel-twirling original, full-book musical about an infamous burlesque theatre and the family of talented misfits who try to save it from demolition… or worse, respectability.

It looks like a great show, and I know that some of the performances are sold out already, so get your tickets soon!

Labels: events, podcast

I just finished polishing the final draft for the next Stranger column, so in honor of that, my answers to a few often-asked questions about me and The Stranger.

I get a lot of emails telling me the columns are too short. I love hearing that you like my column. I wish it was longer too. Writing something interesting in 490 words is very, very challenging. Very.

But, The Stranger sets my word count, and I cannot exceed that. It's a business decision. Each dead-tree page of the paper costs money to print. In order for The Stranger not to go bankrupt, the paper can only be so many pages long. On each of those pages, there is a certain percentage of space dedicated to editorial content (like: my column), and a certain percentage of space dedicated to the advertising that pays for the paper. Removing an ad so my column could be another hundred words long would make you and me happy, but it doesn’t make business sense for The Stranger. And I’d like them to stay in business.

So there is no wiggle-room on the column length, that's it. If I write it too long, someone else will cut out parts to make it shorter, and ooooo, writers hate that. So it behooves me to make it the right length.

Maybe you should just print the first part of the column and put the longer version online. We tried that a while back, actually, and I didn’t like it. I had a lot of people coming up to me saying, “Hey, I read the first part of your column, but I keep forgetting to go online and read the last part. What did it say?” This is the sort of question that makes a writer want to scream. Apparently The Stranger didn’t like this system either, so we scrapped it, for which I am profoundly grateful.

You should write one version of a column for the Stranger and do a longer version of the same column for the blog. That would be a rather unprofessional thing to do to The Stranger. They don’t pay me a lot of money, but they do pay me, god love ‘em. And when you pay me to write something, you get an exclusive.

The fact that certain words are printed in bold? I get many emails about this. No, I don’t do that, it’s not under my control. Someone at The Stranger does that. If you have an opinion about it, I’m sure they would be happy to hear it.

There's about a 7-day gap between my submitting a column and it being printed. The column I turn in today, for example, will be in the paper published next week. There's some cushion there, time-wise, in case an editor reads what I turned in and decides he wants a big revision of it, but that very rarely happens for short pieces like mine.

If you're imagining me at The Stranger editorial offices, verbally sparring with the other staffers like a kinky Rosalind Russell in His Gal Friday, I fear I must disabuse you of that charming notion. I am very rarely in The Stranger offices. I just email them a column when it's due.

The person I submit to (yes, yes, I said submit!) will show me whatever edits he's making to what I turned it. But our exchanges about it are usually pretty brief. My mother was an editor for years, and I learned from her that while all writers think every single word they write is like the perfect tear of a unicorn falling upon a golden page, editors... don't. They are not butchering up your precious creation just to be mean, it's their job. And they get cranky if you spend a lot of time arguing with them about the placement of a comma or some such thing, because they're on a deadline and they have a damn paper to put out.

Most of the time my column doesn't get edited very much. It galls me only slightly to say that the edits that do get made are usually an improvement, because the editor has a fresh eye.

I choose my own topics, too. Very occasionally someone from The Stranger will make a suggestion to me about an idea, and when they do, I usually do it.

Can I reprint this very recent column of yours in my small publication? I cannot grant you permission to do that. Obviously people do, and I cannot stop them, but once again – The Stranger paid me to write that for them. It’s rude, at best, for me to then turn around and immediately give it away to someone else.

It’ll be ten years this fall that I’ve been writing for The Stranger. Ten years. That’s hard to believe when I stop and think about it. I’m grateful they took a chance on me then, given that I had no noticeable writing credentials when I pitched them the idea. And the way the newspaper industry has gone, I’m damn lucky to still see be seeing my name in ink-on-paper. I have no plans to quit, so we’ll see what the next ten years bring to me, in my adventures in tabloid journalism.

Labels: writer's life

To entertain you... My new Stranger column is on the site, about Seattle's pro domme houses. (Or, the lack thereof.)

Also, a podcast I did with Dr Dick of Dr. Dick's Sex Advice is up. It's fun, it's kinky, and it's also very silly. Go listen!

Labels: column, podcast