Linky Goodness…

The new column and the Kink Calendar are up, so check those out…

Apparently I've been nominated – a couple of time – for a BOB Award. (That's Best Of Blog.) I seem to have a lot of company, but still, that's nice. Plus, the link-list of the other nominees makes for interesting surfing.

An award I hope I never get: The Literary Review Bad Sex award, given for "the worst description of sex in a contemporary novel." This year's winner, Tom Wolfe, declined the invitation to accept the award and his prize, a statue (of what, I do not know) and a bottle of champagne.

I've read a bit about this before, but it's nice to see the history of the vibrator making mainstream news…In the "Health Features" section, no less. (Link snagged from Amorous Propensities)

A note to clients - I'm out of town from the 20th to the 27th. I'll be checking email at least daily and phone messages every couple of days, so if you'd like to see me after I get back, drop me a note, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Speaking of travel – I'm looking for suggestions. I've got two trips in mind for the late winter/early spring, and I'd be pleased to hear ideas from ya'll.

Trip number one: a low-key weekend getaway – so, let's say someplace less than four hours drive from Seattle. Something on the Oregon coast, maybe? I had in mind something like a cabin or a cottage, rather than a hotel, something on the beach or in woods, that kinda scenario. Something rather private and quiet - comfortable, but not necessarily fancy.

Trip number two: I've never been to Mexico. (Well, Tijuana, but that doesn't really count.) So I was thinking about a vacation down there, but I don't know where to go. And finding the right destination is going to be tough, because I'd be quite happy to lie on an empty beach with a drink in my hand and read trashy novels for a few days, but Max would quickly get bored with that – he likes to do things on a vacation, and he generally prefer a more metropolitan atmosphere.

Of course, Miss K and I have been saying for several years we should go on a vacation somewhere warm together, so it may wind up like that…Not as sexy as going with Max, but good best-friend-bonding time.

Either way, for this trip I'm not looking for anything too rustic - I don't speak Spanish, and I'll go into withdrawal if I can't check my email everyday, so no remote villages with mud huts.

Ideas?

Lucky Girl

I write a lot about the silliness I deal with from would-be clients via the phone and email, to amuse both myself and you.

But what I don't write about as often is how really, really fabulous my regular clients are. I'm always aware of what wonderful guys I have, but I'm thinking of it more than usual right now, because I have been on the receiving end of some incredibly sweet and thoughtful gifts lately. Between my birthday last month, and now Christmas presents, several of my favorite boys have turned up with gifts that they obviously took a lot of time and trouble over, from the careful choices to the pretty wrapping (that they did themselves!). It's immensely touching to me that they did that for me. I've gotten great books, a plushy, velvety-soft black bathrobe, David Yurman jewelry, a vintage camera and some lenses, a bunch of high-end electrical toys, and a beautiful bustier, not to mention more than the usual amount of flowers, candy and wine. One of my best boys has actually offered to send Max and I on a trip to New York. (And I know he means it!) How amazing is that?

And even the less-traditional things touch me – one sweet boy turned up with a bunch of gorgeous tomatoes in the wake of my post about them. I like it when people pay attention to what I say and use that knowledge to do something I'd like.

And you know, it's not the things themselves that are so important, although they're quite nice. I'm just so touched that my clients would go out of their way to do this for me. They don't have to. You don't need to buy me presents to be a favorite of mine. That only requires that you treat me with respect, behave towards me with integrity, and communicate honestly. (It also helps if we have big fun playing together.) That's what I want from my boys. And having guys who give me that, and bring me lovely presents…Well, it just really knocks me out sometimes.

I always say I don't believe in luck. We make our luck – it's called hard work. But when I look at what sweet boys I have, I have to admit – I think there's some plain old good luck involved here…

Okay, who remembers the Top Secret Date? I've gotten a few plaintive emails about this, but not until now could the secret be revealed. So here it is:

Yeah, that's a plaster dick. It's made from a mold of an actual person, though, and that person is, of course – Roman.

(Now, I have to do a sidebar here. Would those of you have not yet figured out that Roman = Monk of Twisted Monk please raise your hands? Okay, you, you, and you over there, listen up: "Roman" is the pseudonym I gave Monk when we started seeing each other, and that worked fine for a while. However, lately Monk and I have decided that we actually don't care who knows our little secret anymore – we know we weren't fooling many of you, anyway. I think we'll probably continue to use the pet names we gave each other on the blogs for the sake of continuity, but yes, the secret is now officially out. Okay, back to the regularly scheduled program.)

So, at some point in the past, Roman's lovely wife had apparently made some remark to him about how it would be cool to have his dick cast in plaster. Actually, I was told there was also some conversation about having one cast in a nice flexible silicone, too – "for when he wasn't around"….And what a charming idea that is.

Loving husband that he is, Roman decided to pursue this idea as a birthday gift for her. So one fine weekend when she was out of town, he called me and said, "Hey, I'm going to go get a dick casting – wanna come with me?"
"Can I bring the video camera?" I asked.
"Sure," he replied.

So off we went to see Cosmo, plaster body-caster extraordinaire. I did indeed bring the video camera, and I've uploaded a 4-minute video clip of the adventure. The video-hosting site, Onfuego.com, isn't down with anything too sexy, so it's a pretty PG-13 version of the afternoon. (Although streaming a huge video file would be problematic for us, Roman and I are considering making the adult version available on a limited-edition DVD or something…)

Because, you see - the thing about doing a dick-casting like this is that, well, you have to be hard. (Now you see why he asked me to come along.) The unexpurgated version shows me doing various things to encourage that state – not that Roman needs much encouragement – and then tying his dick up in some nice hemp line to help him maintain the erection while he had cold, gloppy alginate goop poured all over it.

And then of course I had to offer the sweet boy some comfort while he had his dick trapped in a PVC tube full of what looked like lumpy baby food that was slowly hardening into a solid state. Mwah hah hah hah ha…I may have to get some of that stuff for the dungeon – talk about cock and ball bondage!

Luckily, Roman was able to detumesce enough to get his dick out without messing up the mold, and while art takes time, he recently took delivery of several lovely plaster replicas of himself. Mrs. Roman's response? "This is AWESOME!"
So I think that counts as a successful gift.

It's apparently a sucess art-wise, too - I understand that Cosmo will probably be displaying Roman's cock in the next Seattle Erotic Art show.

Oh, and why did he get more than one, you ask? Well, I wanted one, too, naturally. Doesn't that picture look nice, with the rope all wrapped around it?

Trust Me – I'm a Professional

This is a written version of a small rant that, for some time now, I've been delivering to my cool sex-worker friends whenever we get to talking about certain behaviors we see in the larger sex-work community. I'm quite sure they're all tired of hearing me go on about it, so hopefully posting it here will exorcise me of some of my tendency to harp about it in person. One does hate to be tedious.

There are lots of women in the world who do sexy stuff for a living, and while I support their right to do so, from a business standpoint, they are definitely not all created equal. I have a way I categorize it. To me, there are people who are professionals, and then there are what I call the "lifestyle girls".

A professional sex worker is someone who cares about doing what she does to the best of her ability, and to that end, she looks beyond the money that's in her hand right this minute. She asks herself: What about tomorrow? What about next month, next year? Where do I want to be, business-wise, and how can I make sure I get there? What are the best strategies for running my business?

Me, I'm a professional. For example, I have a schedule – it's been the same schedule for years now. My boys know when I'm available.
I have an office. Yeah, it's a dungeon – but it's my dedicated space for what I do.
I make appointments with carefully chosen clients, and unless I'm all but spurting arterial blood, I keep those appointments, on time, every time. I admit, there have been some days when I really didn't feel like playing. But I take pride in what I do, so – I get my game on, and I do it. And not in a half-assed manner, either. There is such a thing as chemistry, and I do click with some guys more than others. But if I agree to an appointment with you, and I take your money, I will do my damnedest to deliver a good experience, every time. And you know what? I usually find that I feel extra-good about myself when I can make some magic happen for someone even if I'm not feeling much like a rock star. It's deeply satisfying.

Occasionally, yes, there are unforeseeable circumstances that are beyond my control. But I think I've canceled maybe five appointments in the last eight years. (And it goes without saying that I do not "no-show".) This is the way I run my business, because I am a professional person.

The lifestyle girls, well – that's a different story. That's what I call the women who derive their income from sex work, but who seem to just drift from moment to moment, without any kind of plan about what they're doing. They don't run their business in any ongoing, organized manner, it seems to revolve around whatever the next financial crisis is. The rent is due tomorrow? Oh, guess I better try to work tonight.

So they put a post up on Craig's List, shove their kid's toys under the living room couch, and start sending out their address via email. Or they get a motel room, or whatever. And some guy shows up, and maybe they do what they said they would, or maybe they just try to get as much money as they can, while doing as little as possible. She doesn't take any pride in what she's doing, he sure as hell isn't made happy by his experience, and because the whole thing just doesn't feel right, she tries to numb the critical part of her brain by drinking or getting high. And, as financial responsibilities inevitably come due, the cycle repeats over and over. Unprofessional sex worker has unhappy interactions with dissatisfied clients and resorts to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with it all. Not good.

Now, on an emotional level, I have some compassion for people who, for whatever reason, are caught up in negative patterns of behavior. There are a lot people doing sex work who, though they are not emotionally equipped for it, feel like they have no other acceptable options. I think that's a damn shame.

But on a professional level, these women drive me nuts. Not the truly desperate ones, you understand – the girls on the street, or the really low-end escorts – because I don't ever have any contact with them. But I have dealt with a lot of other women from what I call "the middle-class of sex workers". Nice girls, who were plenty smart enough, and pretty enough, to create a safe and stable business that would support them comfortably.

But a lot of them just can't seem to do it. They'll go along all right for a few weeks, and then you begin hearing about the problems. They make appointments and then cancel them at the last minute, or just fail to show up at all. They don't return calls or emails to make new appointments. If they do see clients, they don't fulfill the job description, and the client is unhappy. Word of all these things spreads a bit, and the phone doesn't ring as often.
And then they realize that, oh shit, the power is going to be shut off if they don't pay the bill right now! So they panic, and in that state of panic they accept a date with a client who, if they were thinking clearly, they would know better than to go anywhere near. They have an unpleasant experience – anything from just emotionally icky to downright dangerous – and coping with that just sets them back even further on the road to stability and physical/emotional safety as a sex worker.

Over the years that I've been doing sex work, I have watched so many different women go through this loop so many times, I can now spot it a mile away. When I was younger and more optimistic, I used to try to mentor women who were engaged in the cycle. I mean, it didn't seem like rocket science to me. Plan ahead, I'd say. Figure out how much money you need to make each week to meet your bills. Schedule yourself days on and days off, so you don't get either burned out or too far behind.

Yeah, that's a good idea, they'd reply. And then the next week they'd tell me about how they blew off an appointment because they were so stoned they forgot about it. Oh, and could they borrow a hundred dollars to pay the phone bill?

I realize I may be coming off like some kind of sex work Uncle Tom here, but that's not what I'm about. There are lots of smart, together women doing sex work. It's just frustrating to watch people squander an economic opportunity for no discernable reason. I'm not saying anyone should do anything they don't want to do. It's crucial to figure out where your personal boundaries lie and work within them. But allowing for that, choosing to stay perpetually on the edge of financial crisis, even though you're capable of generating an adequate income, is inconceivable to me. Why the hell would you do that?

So now when I see someone who's in the lifestyle loop, I just steer very clear of any involvement with them. It may seem callous, but it's like that old adage about teaching a pig to sing. I'm not so concerned about annoying the pig, but I definitely dislike having my time wasted.

Google searches that have led people to this blog:

Some are pretty predictable - but I'm guessing I'm not exactly what some of these folks were originally looking for...

This person's quite specific: Pictures of complete humiliation of men in dresses & lingerie by women

This is so not me: High Protocol in BDSM?

Some people need me to do a fashion intervention, it's true. Mistress Haircut Forced

Everyone has their fetish: Odd shaped dicks

I really hope they meant "chosen family": Family in BDSM

I'm down with this concept, although the porn-speak seems a little over the top: severus bondage oh god yes more yes yes yes

Eeeeeewww: DOG FUCK GRANNY

Oh, this is weird: wanna know jesus livejournal

Depends on what you mean by small: small money investment

Some seriously off-topic results: Candy making classes seattle

Last night, Roman talked dirty to me in the voice of Yoda. "Mmnn, daddy, who is your?" "Very sexy ass have you, mmnn!"
My abdominal muscles hurt from laughing so hard. And maybe from some other isometric stresses as well...

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After dinner and a bitch session with Miss K, we came up with…

Five Ways To Really Annoy Sex Workers*

Miss K says…When calling about an appointment, ask them "Are you clean?" Oh yeah, 'cause if she did have the clap or something, she would definitely tell you about that, since you asked. Right. And we're not even a little offended by the suggestion that we're so unclean, while your hound-doggin' ass is somehow presumed to be all sanctified, even though you've been dipping your wick who-knows-where.

She also says…When calling about an appointment, ask them, "Is this discreet?" Yeah, we know so many ladies have a big neon sign over their door saying, "This Way For Pussy! C'mon In!" And publishing your client's names in the newspaper is such a good way to create repeat business, isn't it? What smart business woman wouldn't do that?

We both agree you shouldn't…Haggle over price. Do we really need to talk about this? Tacky, tacky, tacky.

My pet peeve…Require major emotional handholding prior to the session. If you want to do three (or more) separate phone calls with me to process your feelings of anxiety and guilt before you've ever even seen me, you don't need a dominatrix, you need a shrink. Or a nursemaid. Grow some balls, and then call me back.

Also high on my bullshit list…Ask for something, then flip out about it afterwards. If you get all hot and bothered and ask me to (for example) piss on you, don't start freaking out on me after the session is over and trying to say I shouldn't have done that. You're responsible for what you say, even if it's the little head that's doing the talking.

While we're dispensing advice, Miss K would also like to mention that while going down on a woman, you should swallow your own saliva occasionally, so that your partner doesn't wind up lying in a puddle of drool. She doesn't find that erotic, and I can't say I blame her. I've not ever had that problem, but then – I'm usually on top.

*(Okay, now, if you're one of my good regular boys, don't go off into a tailspin just because I'm having a snarky moment. Don't take any of this personally, none of this means I don't like you. If I'm seeing you, assume that I think you're cool. If you weren't, I'd let you know about it, trust me.)

No video clip today, sorry. Video clips will return next week, though...For now, some links and a bit of poly discussion.

I did an email interview with an e-zine called, "All Things Girl" a while back, and it's up on the site now. It won't tell you, my regular readers, anything you don't know already. But I was surprised by the fact that a pretty mainstream site would want to publish something like an interview with a dominatrix. We must be making some progress somewhere.

This guy always makes me laugh. Which is good, because otherwise I'd be screaming.

Unusual But True: I was once (legally) married to one of the guys on this page.

Interesting webpage about secondary partnerships in poly. I agree with a lot of what's written here, but there's one passage that I choke on...

"When I am in a relationship with one person, I am in a relationship with all the other people that person is involved with, especially the primary partner(s)--even if there is no romantic connection between us!"

Nope, I'm not down with that idea. I'm much more in line with the "Passionate Marriage" concept of well-differentiated partners. That means: I'm one person, Max is another. We're lovers, we're partners, we have a primary commitment to each other. But that doesn't mean we are thus morphed into one socio-sexual unit. Max is friendly with Roman, for example. But he isn't having "a relationship" with him, any more than I'm having one with Maura. Max and I adore each other, but we're two separate people, and I view with extreme skepticism any notion that tries to blur us into one entity. (Hell, if we wanted to do that, we'd get married.)

The author goes on to say...
"When one partner has problems with a poly relationship, it can tend to negatively affect a secondary partner, creating unhappiness for everyone. Compassion demands that everyone involved work to resolve any resentment that may exist on the part of any of the members of a primary relationship toward the secondary relationship."

I agree that serious problems shouldn't be ignored, and I agree that secondary partners should always be treated with courtesy and kindness by the primary. (And vice versa, for that matter.)
But I reject the idea that a poly-related problem in the primary relationship must necessarily affect the secondary. Max and I have resolved any number of hiccups in our poly without having to hold a three-way committee meeting about it. The secondary partner in question never even knew there was a problem at all, and that was fine, because it wasn't their dog. It was between Max and I. This is what I call "having good boundaries". If I have a problem, it's mine to deal with, and likewise, I expect other people to deal with theirs. Ask for help from your lovers? Sure, that's fine. But I don't accept what I see as a "my problem is everybody's problem" attitude.

So the workshop yesterday went very well…Workshop days are always busy ones for me, and yesterday was especially so because Maura, Max's submissive, injured her hand lately and was unable to help us the way she usually does. Max and I have a deal, you see – when one of us teaches, the other acts as stage manager, assistant and general fetcher-and-carrier.

Max has been teaching these classes at the Wet Spot for over a year now, so we know the drill, and the three of us can usually set everything up in twenty minutes flat. But things do go more slowly when you only have two pairs of hands, and it's tough because many of the attendees are friends and acquaintances, and the temptation to stop and chat with them as they arrive is severe. But one has to stay focused on the set-up, or the class won't start on time. And my friends, the phrase "not on time" isn't in Max's vocabulary. I have remarked to several people that if you want to bottom to Max, there are three crucial rules to remember.

Rule Number One: Be on time.
Rule Number Two: Be on time.
Rule Number Three: Make good coffee.

The coffee part is easy to learn how to do. The Turkish say, "Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death and sweet as love." Max doesn't take sugar, but otherwise…well, you get the picture.

The punctuality part – that seems harder to teach, but it's essential. No matter how cute or how sexy or how whatever you are, your ass better be on time, because Max takes that quite seriously. And in the finest traditions of good tops, he holds himself to an equal or greater standard of behavior. He once told me, "If I'm ever twenty minutes late for anything, call the hospital." He was kidding – a little. A very little.

So starting the workshop a few minutes late was not an option, and we were moving around pretty smartly gearing up for it. After it started, though, I got to sit down and catch my breath while Max did his thing. I like watching him, and I generally like teaching myself, but I'm lazy about creating opportunities to do it. If Toys In Babeland calls and asks me to come teach, I'm happy to do that. But producing workshops is a lot of work and I'm too damn busy already. Thus, I'm quite happy to just help Max, and get some of the pleasures of teaching with much less responsibility.

So we did the class, loaded out, and went over to Louie's for dinner, and then we came back to the Bondage Party. Max circulated, dispensing advice and technique tips, and I just lounged and chatted. I watched two friends do a suspension scene involving a nosehook (!), I was cuddled by the lovely Trinity, and then I watched Max do a complex and charmingly brutal suspension scene with a certain girl who isn't nearly as fragile as her dainty appearance would suggest.

Half the fun of that was playing commentator to the friends sitting with me. I know Max's style and habits so well that I can predict what he's going to do with a fair amount of accuracy.

"Oh, watch, he's going to do a mid-air inversion. Yep, there she goes…"

"Jesus, see how he's winding that rope around her. He's going to spin her like a top."

"Now, check this out, he'll lower her down until her feet are almost touching the floor, but not quite."

You must imagine me saying this in tones of great fondness and admiration, of course. Because I do admire skill and creativity in sadism, and my darling Max has skill, creativity and sadism to burn.

Email Silliness...

Dear Mistress,
Your website is penetrating, poignant and articulate. And indeed, You are absolutely stunning, Mistress Matisse, as You must surely know. I am a handsome and well-built 35 year old man from London. Whilst successful in the vanilla world, I crave to give it all up to live as a pathetic slave who has nothing but love and obedience towards his rightful Female Owner. And as You are the most beautiful Mistress in the world, I am already humbled by You and crave to submit to You.

Well, it's always nice to be told I'm beautiful, although it strains even my credulity to believe that I'm "the most beautiful Mistress in the world". I'd like to know exactly how much research he did to arrive at that conclusion.
And I'm pleased to hear that he finds me articulate – but just based on this first paragraph, I have a feeling he may not have really grasped what I try to convey about my style of dominance, since pathetic slaves really aren’t my thing. I prefer slightly sassy ones, who sometimes laugh while I'm torturing them.

I hope that my Owner-to-be will eventually take everything from me over a sustained period - my manhood, my real estate, my assets and my inheritance. And better still to expose my demise and castration on Her website, whilst I am photographed naked, weeping, genderless and penniless whilst Mistress is amused at my plight and maybe even wearing my former testicles as ear-rings to display Her supremacy over me, hence total humiliation is complete.

Honey, if I'm wearing your balls as earrings, I will be the one who is humiliated. Testicle earrings are so five minutes ago! The new thing now is to put them into a lava lamp, in either a blood red or milky white fluid.

I wish to ask you whether you have experience in luring a (vanilla) successful submissive man into a safe and legal medical castration (by professionals) in tandem with signing his life and assets to You?

Ah, yes, my good friends and professional associates, the Safe and Legal Medical Castrators, LLC. Just look them up in the yellow pages! They do a sideline in getting people to sign over assets while under sedation. It's a pricey extra service, but I have always found it worthwhile in the dozens of other cases where I've had them safely and legally castrate someone for me.
I just call them up and say, "I'm luring in a successful man! He's vanilla! Can you get us in at 2?"
"Sure!" they say cheerfully. "Would you like the testicle earrings with that?" They don't realize, you see, and I'm sure some mistresses who are not as hip as I am are still wearing those silly testicle earrings, not realizing that they are so out of fashion.

If so, do You maintain a D/s relationship with Your subjects who undergo this?

No, once I've milked you dry – so to speak – I will throw you, naked, weeping, genderless and penniless out into the snow to die. (But perhaps you won't die. Perhaps, instead, you'll crawl away into the woods, where you'll hide. You'll survive by eating insects and berries and trapping small animals, gradually regaining your strength, and you'll continue living in the woods in a crudely constructed hut. The local villagers will fear you as a madman, but one day you'll encounter a lost traveler who's desperately ill, and you'll take him into your hut and nurse him back to health with your newly-learned herbal lore. He'll turn out to be a Jedi Knight, who's on his way to help otherthrow the evil Lord Vader, and as a reward for saving his life you'll ask him to take you with him as his sidekick and train you in the ways of a Jedi, so that you can eventually take your revenge on me, and he'll decide to say yes, without knowing that, in the interval of time that's passed, I've actually become Lord Vader's girlfriend, and…No, wait, wait, wait – that's a whole different movie!)

And then there's the emails that balance him out.

Matisse:
I'll tell you what- I just want to get my huge cock in your hot vagina, save the torture for some wuss. I want to mount you, because I am KING STUD!!!
Thanks sweetheart…

"Ooooh, mount me, baby, mount me now!" Mount? What the fuck kind of word is that? Has this ignoranus been reading too many romance novels or something? Or maybe animal husbandry – it's hard to say. Why is it that the ones who really need their balls cut off never ask for it?

I had a lovely, lovely time with Roman last night…details on that later, since I'm about to plunge into a busy day.
I will note that - big event here - Roman stayed over last night. Meaning, he slept with me in the literal sense, as well as the euphemistic. That's only the second time in a roughly six-month relationship. (Usually we play at my studio, and then we both stagger home at some ungodly hour.)
Sleeping with a secondary has generally been a limit for him, and the first time we did it, during the Week Of Wickedness, he was sort of endearingly nervous about breaking his own rule. But it was fine, and then lately he told me, "I'd like to do that again." So we played at my house, and then slept together, and it was…very sweet. A nice marker for a relationship.

Meanwhile, if you're in Seattle, don't forget about my darling primary partner Max's bondage class this Sunday…I'll be there with him, doing my kinky Vanna White impersonation. (No sequined dresses, though.)

Fixed Point Bondage - Soft Flesh, Unyielding Objects
Sunday December 5th
2:30 PM to 5:30 PM at the Wet Spot in Seattle

Remember Little Nell on the railroad tracks?
Learn how to tie your lover to a variety of objects, from posts to chairs to bamboo poles.
This month's workshop presents a number of ways to tie your partner to something else. We'll cover a few basic knots and techniques, do a very nice demo, and then spend the bulk of the workshop practicing positions involving fixed points and/or pieces of bamboo.
The positions presented are broadly adaptable and don't require special hardware or equipment. In fact, we'll be using the furniture, posts, doors and other fixtures in ways guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing.
While some familiarity with rope and bondage will be useful, this workshop assumes no previous bondage experience. The knots presented in the workshop are all pretty simple - the fun is in the things we'll do with those basic knots.
Most of the class will consist of hands-on exercises so you'll have plenty of time to practice and enjoy what you've learned. And, as always, the handout distributed at the workshop will help you when you practice at home.
If you can, come with a practice partner. If you don't have a partner, come anyway and we'll make sure you get a chance to practice the basic techniques. Rope Bottoms - this is your chance to meet some rope tops - come learn and get tied up!
Some rope will be provided for the workshop, but bring four 10’ lengths and three 20-30’ lengths of 3/8” rope if you can.

Registration and Fees
Workshop fee: $30
Workshop + party (Wet Spot members only): $35

Wet Spot membership is NOT required for the workshop. Please bring ID to verify that you're at least 18 years old.

The "Bondage is the Point" party afterward is limited to Wet Spot members, who will receive a $5 discount if they attend both the workshop and the party.

Apparently I should have cultivated a taste for caviar instead…Bad weather and pest problems have created a tomato shortage. That's bad news for me, since la pomme d'amour is one of my favorite foods, either cooked or raw. QFC sells me a whole lot of those vine-ripened tomatoes in the little plastic boxes, even though they're so bloody expensive I think that I could buy good quality heroin for less money. And now they're going to be more so, apparently. Sigh.

Interesting article about managing jealousy in poly relationships…

A twistedly humorous page about military discipline - or, not.

Speaking of discipline, here's something kinky: Steve Unfreid, a principal at a Christian school, was fired for being voluntary whipped in front of two students. Steve, Steve, Steve - those paperback books you've been hiding in the garage? Those are fiction. Really.

And speaking of being voluntarily whipped...I have a date with Roman tonight, and I'm definitely of a mind to be evil. No flogging, I don't think. I did that last time, and one doesn't want to be too predictable. However, Roman has thrown down a gauntlet or two lately, and hey, call me easily manipulated, but I do like to rise to a challenge from a lover. (Of course, Roman rises to challenges very nicely himself. I do like that in a man.)
There may well be pictures. Perhaps even video. Possess your souls in patience, and maybe I'll post one within a few days...

Event Notes…

So the Sex Life Live show taping at ReBar last night went well. (Much more fun this time than the last time I worked with Dane, because I was actually sick as a dog for that one.) We had a good-sized crowd, and they seemed to enjoy me, as well as Allena Gabosch, Caroline from The Stranger, and Monk. You'll have to check Monk's blog for his version of events, but I think we done good. When the show goes live on the Sex Life website, I'll post a note…

Best left-handed compliment of the night: in the midst of a swirl of people talking to me after the show, a sweet young thing rushed up, saying, "Mistress, mistress, mistress!" excitedly.

Erg. Now, I'm quite fine with being introduced to people as "Mistress Matisse", because that is my professional title. But in fact, I really prefer people wanting to converse with me one-on-one to just address me as Matisse. Unless I'm actually playing with you (or you are my contracted personal submissive), calling me "mistress" – well, it's just a shade too familiar.

But that's a very fine point of BDSM etiquette, and not one most people could be expected to know. This girl clearly meant no harm, so I smiled at her. "Yes?"

"I just wanted to tell you, I've been reading your column, and I kind of had a certain mental image of you from that, and I just had to tell you; wow, you're like, so much hotter in person than I thought you'd be! It's amazing!"

Um. Okay. Thank you. I think. (What, do I write like an ugly person?) I do give her credit for good intentions - it was obvious she meant to be paying me a compliment. But – hmmn.

I just smiled again and thanked her for coming to the show.

I also met someone else who is a blog reader – or so her friend claimed. So, greetings to The Woman in White Overalls.

A note about video clips, because I got a plaintive little email about this today - because of the bandwidth issues presented by maintaining a permanent archive of all the clips, the clip will be replaced each week. (Or I should say, each clip will be replaced by its successor. I may not have something video-able every single week.)
What that means is that if see something you love and will want to watch again and again, download it to your hard drive - for your personal use only, of course - because it will go away soon.

So, it's Video Clip Day, and this week I've decided it time to show you the latest bizarre toy in my collection: The Fucking Machine. Now, before you get all excited: this clip is just of the machine. There is no victim attached, sorry. (If some cute girl or boy volunteers themselves as a video star in the future, I'll think about that.)

But I thought it might amuse those of you who've not seen such a thing before. And even if you have, like snowflakes, few fucking machine are precisely the same...

I was going to lay a music track over this clip, but Max said, "Oh no, you should let people hear the the sound it makes."

Be aware that this mechanical delight lives at my house, not at the location where I see my clients. So if you are thinking of coming to see me in my professional capacity, you need not fear it's insistent attentions.

As usual, hosting for the clip has been generously provided by Twisted Monk, a man who is not afraid to accessorize his cock with miniature mariachi hats and tiny guitars. (Don't try this at home, kids, he's a professional.)
Click Here To See "The Fucking Machine"

Downloaded from ITunes lately…

All My Life, by Foo Fighters
Barrel of a Gun, by Depeche Mode
Bela Lugosi's Dead, by Bauhaus
Born Under A Bad Sign, by the Neville Brothers & Buddy Guy
Brave and Crazy, by Melissa Etheridege
Can't Get You Out Of My Head, by Kylie Minogue
I Put A Spell On You, By Screaming Jay Hawkins
Nights In White Satin, by The Moody Blues
Paper In Fire, By John Mellancamp
Personal Jesus, by Johhny Cash
Rubberneckin' by Elvis, the Paul Oakenfold Remix
Sex Is Violent, by Diamanda Galás & Jane's Addiction
She's Tight, by Cheap Trick
Show Me How To Live, by AudioSlave

I have very eclectic taste in music, and since I'm not a music-scene hipster, I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers (and friends) to expand my musical horizons. Any suggestions?

Miss K and I were sitting in Hana during one of our weekly dinners, talking about work.
"So there's this guy I saw once, a long time ago, who's still calling me. I mean, I saw him when you still had your old dungeon, off Dexter Avenue," she began.
"God, that was five years ago. You saw him once and he still calls you?"
"Yeah, and I didn't like him, so I don't want to see him again. And I've got his number programmed into the phone so I usually know not to answer. But this one time a couple of days ago I didn't look at the caller ID before I picked up, and of course, it was him."
"Fuck, don't you hate that?"
"Yeah, and it's like – how do you say 'no' and get off the phone gracefully?"
"What'd you do?" I asked.
"Well, he hardly lets you get a word in edgewise - he was going on and on about wanting to see me again. He has this panty fetish, and I don't mean sexy panties, I mean he has a thing for granny panties." She made a face. "Really ugly big white polyester granny panties."
"Let me guess – he brought you some to the session you had with him and asked you to wear them?"
"Yep. And I did. If you're paying me, and you like ugly panties, hey, I'll put 'em on for you. Whatever floats your boat." She took a sip of her water. "Within reason, that is. If they want really weird shit, I send them to you." She grinned.
"Oh, thank you ever so much, dear," I said. "But I can do without any guy who's still calling the same escort for five years even though she never calls him back. That's a little freaky."
"You're telling me. So I said to him, 'You know, honey, you should call someone else, because I really don't think we're very compatible'."
"How'd he take that?"
"Oh, he started trying to persuade me to change my mind. He said, 'No, no, you don't understand, I've been dreaming of you all this time'."
"All this time? What is he, Rip Van Winkle?"
"Oh, wait, it gets better," she said. "Then he tells me how he wants to see me so much, that I was a goddess, that our session together was the best one he ever had, etc. And he wanted to know if I still had the panties that he gave me in our session together."
I laughed. "He wanted to know if you'd saved his granny panties for five years? Well, I'm guessing they'd be in perfect shape because you never, ever wore them again."
"Yeah, except I think I used them to wipe bird shit off my car right after I saw him. So I explained to him that no, I didn't have his panties - and he asked me 'Why not? Did you gain weight or something?'"
"Smooth talker, huh?"
She snorted. "Yeah. I said, no, I hadn't, that I was still the same size as the last time he saw me, and I was going on to say that I didn't save them because I didn't want to do another session with him, but he interrupted me and said, "Tell me what you look like again?'"
I started to laugh. "Wait, wait, wait – you're saying this guy told you that you were a goddess, and that he's been dreaming of you for five years, and then asked you what you looked like?"
She pressed her tongue deeply into her cheek and nodded, eyes closed in disbelief.
I laughed harder. "What did you say?" I asked, when I caught my breath.
"What'd you think? I said, 'What, you've been dreaming about me for five years but you don't remember what I look like?'"
"To which he replied…?"
"He said, "I remember that you're tall."
I laughed again. "Oh, that's special."
"Yeah. But it was fine, because it made me feel much less sorry for him when I told I never wanted to see him again."
"Boorishness does make it easier to be clear, doesn't it?"

I wouldn't normally do another link roundup so soon after the last one…but I'm having a busy few days, and I don't want you, my loyal readers, to go without any entertainment from me. So, presented for your approval...

I've been watching – with horror – the advances made by anti-evolutionists in terms of children's textbooks. When I came across this page of disclaimer stickers for science textbooks, I had to laugh, although my laughter is heavily tinged with incredulity. I mean, what next – the world is flat?

You knew it was only a matter of time before the BK chicken spawned some cheesy but amusing imitators. If you haven't already, go see the Virtual Bartender:
Suggested orders: butt, splits, kiss her, topless, cowgirl, kiss, wet, yoga, banana, pillow fight, fight, kick, sleep, jiggle, naked, tattoo, jump, pour beer, drink beer, sing, stretch, dance, lick, hummer, wave, tickle, hat, strip, breast, dance on bar, be a pimp, magic, karate, robot, shoes, show me something, spin, read, write, hair, belly, gymnastics, fire, spread, pitcher, kiss me, hand stand, arms, phone number, I love you and laugh.

And here's a newer blog, written by someone I know, chronicling her life as an emerging kinkster… I think that's always worth encouraging.

More and better posts soon....

So, to those of you here in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving... Max is downstairs right now, gearing up to cook the big traditional dinner, which I think is amusing considering just how un-traditional we are. But he enjoys it, and he's definitely the chef in this family – I can cook some basic meals, but I prefer to just be the assistant on occasions like this.
And in any case, the whole big-traditional-meal thing is a gentle compromise on my part, because left to my own devices, I'd go out for Chinese and a movie and skip the whole thing. T-Day is just not my favorite holiday. It just reminds me of tedious family get-togethers where, in lieu of real conversation, everyone just bickers mildly over exactly the same meaningless things they bickered about last year, to the soundtrack of the endless games of televised football. I'm fond my parents and my brother, but I'm not close to anyone in my extended family. We just don't have much to talk about.

For that reason, I haven't gone to visit my blood family on Thanksgiving for, let me think - at least seven years. If I have to do the turkey and all, let it be with friends. So Miss K and her husband and Roman and his wife are coming over, which will be nice.

Actually, when I think about it, I'm not really into any organized holiday. Christmas is sort of nice, I suppose, but most of the other big ones – July 4th, New Years Eve, Halloween, Valentines Day – I'm pretty whatever about. I resist being told by someone else when exactly I should feel merry or thankful or romantic.

But dinner with friends is always a good thing, so I'll enjoy that. And if you're doing The Bird, I hope you enjoy it, too.

Hey, it's Tuesday, and that means it's Video Clip Day.

This week's clip: Mistress Matisse Pierces a Nipple. This would be a temporary piercing, often called a "play-piercing", not the permanent kind you put jewelry in. I myself don't think this clip is particularly disturbing, but yes, I am pushing a needle through flesh, so don't look if this idea flips you out. There's also a quick glimpse of some naked boy-bits, so it's definitely not work-safe.
For those of you who are interested in learning more about this, SubRosa has written an interesting post, with a good photo, about play-piercing.
The footage was shot by my friend Gwen, and special thanks to my brave and anonymous play-partner, who generously allowed us to make use of his body.
Once again, hosting for the clip has been generously provided by Twisted Monk, just because he's a fabulous guy.

Click Here To See "Needle Play"