While I amuse my family, please amuse yourself with the new column and calendar.

The webpage tackles the question of the ages: How many condoms can you wear at once?
I believe them that you shouldn't try this with a real penis, although I can think of some guys who find tremendous pressure on their cocks to be fun. But I doubt they'd care for the removal process pictured here.

Having my family here visiting really, really distracts me. It's not a bad thing, per se, but you know you're really scattered when you pick up a can of deodorant and spray it on your hair. Thank god I haven't tried to brush my teeth with with my eye cream.

So if you're one of the people from whom I'm being distracted: sorry. I'll be normal again on Saturday.

So, Mom is here, my older brother and his girlfriend are arriving later today, it'll be the whole family fiesta. And they're all very impressed with my new house. Of course, they have no idea what debauched and evil deeds I'm going to be committing in it, heh. They think I'm going to rent it out.

My brother, alone of all my family members, has some slight notion of my alternate persona, because he lived here in Seattle for awhile. Basically, he knows about the column in The Stranger. He carefully cultivated ignorance about the rest of the sticky details.

But then, my whole family does that, which is quite fine with me. I've had people close to me be outed to their families about being kinky or poly or whatever, but if you tried to tell my family any juicy details about my sex life, they'd probably stick their fingers in their ears and go, "La-La-La-La-La-La-Laaaaaa, I can't hear you..." It's a convenient attitude. In fact, years ago, in the midst of our spectacularly unpleasant break up, my ex-husband actually did out me to my mom about being poly. She asked me about it, and we discussed it calmly for about five minutes. And then she sort of sighed, and we started talking about something else. The topic did not arise again until I brought it up three years later.

But all that aside, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of, shall we say, maintaining the boundaries between my lives. But my confidence about that has wavered slightly, because Christmas day, my mother told me that my brother's girlfriend was somewhat intimidated about meeting me.
"About meeting me? Why on earth would she be?"
My mother shrugged. "I don't know, he's told her some stories about you, or something."

Now my brother likes to make a good story out of things - he's an actor and a writer, it's an occupational hazard. But still, that surprised me. I mean: me? I'm a pussycat. I'm sugar and spice and everything nice. Aren't I? Damn, I thought I was. Unless, of course, we agree that it's going to be otherwise, but you know, with my brother's sweetie, that's just not a situation that's going to arise. (Yes, I do know that for sure. Some lines you do not cross.)

So I do wonder exactly what kinds of stories my dearest brother has told his sweet little girlfriend that she's scared of me. It's not the kind of thing you can ask outright, either. "So, did my brother tell you I'm a professional dominatrix?" At least, you don't say that kind of thing in my family. "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" cuts both ways.

While I'm off signing my life away: the new column and calendar...

Okay, I finally feel sure enough about this to reveal what all the mystery and busyness has been about lately: I’m closing on a house on Friday morning.

The act of actually buying a house for the first time feels strange. It’s such a grown-up, mainstream thing to do. And frankly, it's made me uneasy. I have strutted naked on stages in front of a crowd, I have made personal revelations to hostile audiences, I have done deeply intimate things with people whose names I didn’t know, I have looked into a stranger’s eyes and made a split second decision about whether or not I could trust them with my safety. None of those things make me particularly nervous.

Sitting across a desk from a mortgage broker made me nervous. That's why I've been unwilling to blog about the whole house-buying adventure step-by-step, because of my feeling that the mortgage process might very well go sideways at any moment. Max reassured me, and so did Roman. "These people want to give you a mortgage, really they do," they both told me. "When you get a mortgage, they make money." Well, that's a motivation I can certainly understand.

But still...I am not the kind of person banks like to lend money to. Don’t get me wrong, I pay my taxes and my bills. But my life simply does not fit into those little boxes on their forms. Dealing with banks makes me feel like Supergirl confronted with Kryptonite. The powers that serve me very well in most of my life do not work in the offices of financial institutions.

Except one – my ability to generate and save (reasonably) large chunks of money. Banks like that. Hence the recent hectic schedule.

I was on track to buy a house anyway – but I was thinking, oh, March of next year. Then in late October my landlord called and said “We want to sell the house – how soon do you think you could move out?” So my plans had to be fast-forwarded. I can do fast-forward, though, if I have to. So I did.

Of course, I had help. A lot of my guys were extra-generous during this period. But one particular guy - even more so than all my other really fabulous boys - was my angel in this matter, and for that, he merits special mention. He knows who he is so, thank you to him!

The other thank you goes to my terrific real estate agent, Ted Allison. I am not your average home-buyer, to put it mildly, but when I told Ted what I wanted, he listened without raising an eyebrow and got right into the spirit of it. He never tried to push me when I said, “It’s nice…but it’s not quite right”. And he worked really hard to get the deal I wanted on the house I wanted. He’s just been great, and I’d recommend him to anyone.

A point of clarification for my friends: I’m not moving out of Max’s house. The house that I’m buying will serve as the headquarters and private dungeon of Mistress Matisse, Inc. Note my use of the first person singular pronoun - I have always felt that in the same sense that good fences make good neighbors, having some separate financial investments makes for good relationships.

Now I have a new place for my dungeon, which I am looking forward to. And now I have to pack up the dungeon and move it, which I am not looking forward to. My new place isn’t far at all from where I am now, so those of you who know the way won’t have to learn a whole new route. Just go about half a mile further south, is all.

So now you know. I’ve always been something of a capitalist. But Friday, Mistress Matisse becomes part of the land-owning bourgeois.

Resistance Was Futile

Okay, okay, I give up. Everyone else has already read them, I’m way behind the cutting edge on this. (In fact, I think they've now become un-cool.) But lately I did at last succumb to the genre-novel pleasures of the early Laurel K. Hamilton “Anita Blake” books.

Notice I said the early ones. Because I’ve now read all of them, and my verdict is that the later ones? Are not so good. I think after book seven, Laurel’s agent came to her and said “Laurel, honey? Put in a lot more sex. Actually – put in a lot more kinky sex. We’ll make more money.” And Laurel did, and I’m sure they have made more money, but the books are not nearly as entertaining anymore.

You’d think I’d like kinky sex in novels, wouldn’t you? But you know, when you are kinky, it’s hard not to be really picky about the details. For me, it’s kinda like watching porn – since I’m a part of the sex industry, I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to not notice the shadow of the boom mike in the money shot. I don’t know if Ms Hamilton is a member of the BDSM community or not, but the way she writes about it – well, it just doesn’t feel like something she knows intimately. Maybe she does, and she’s just distancing herself from it a bit to keep from alienating the more squeamish readers. But it sure doesn’t get me wet. I usually find myself skimming quickly through the long (way too long) sex scenes, because they don’t ring any bells in my head.

Then there's the character herself. In the beginning, Anita Blake, as a zombie-raiser and vampire hunter, was a charming twist on the Dashiel Hammett hard-boiled detective type. She was tough, she got pissed easily and mouthed off to people a lot, and if they fucked with her, she killed them. Whoo-hoo, big fun.

Then she started fucking the vampires, and werewolves, too. Which is fine with me, but she’s so damn angsty about it that she comes across as whiny. I mean, a little angst about sleeping with monsters for one book, maybe two – okay, fine, it’s a growth opportunity. But my personal stance is: you can complain about something once or twice, and I’ll give you sympathy. After that, I’m going to ask you what you’re doing to change the situation, and if your answer is “nothing”, then I’m pretty much out of sympathy for you. This applies to fictional characters as well as real life. So Anita, face it: you’re kinky. And since you have practically a whole stable of male lovers, you’re poly, too. And you really need to get over all the whinging about it, because I’m tired of listening to it. It’s a good thing you’re not bi, because I’m sure we’d never hear the end of that.

All that aside: yes, they’re fun to read, and I’ve turned Roman onto them too. I’ve been so busy lately that light stuff I can pick up and put down has been just the thing. Ms. Blake has got two more Anita books coming out in 2006, and I’m still game to give her a chance on them. Better late than never.

I'm busy today, so just a PSA for now about the women's BDSM conference coming up here in Seattle next month... I'm a presenter, by the way, as are a number of my pervy friends. The conference is January 13-16, 2006.

From the press release:

The Wicked Womyn 2006 Conference is just around the corner and is expected to be a fantastic event. The mail-in registration deadline has ended but you can still register online between December 16, 2005 and January 7, 2006 and pay via PayPal. Go tohttp://wickedwomyn.com to register on-line.

After January 7th you can register at the door for $130.00.

Out of towners, take note: The host hotel, LaQuinta Inn, is almost sold out. So make your reservations soon, before the rooms are all gone.

Well, I had a busy but fun weekend. Saturday night I went to the last hurrah at The Catwalk, a bar that’s been open and hosting sexy events since I was just a pup in this town. It’s kinda sad to know that it's closing down. But the final event was good - Max and I got to see Miss Candy shaking her tail-feathers in some of Imp Of Satan’s newest creations, Nerdygirl do her best carnival barker impersonation, and Silver demonstrating her equestrian training skills. Charming. And we didn’t reek of cigarette smoke afterwards, what a nice change. Want to see a few pictures from Malixe? Go here.

I wore my black latex pants to this event, and when I got them out earlier that evening, I paused and realized that while they aren’t quite as old as The Catwalk, I have indeed had them a number of years. They’ve held up very well. There’s no label in them, but I’m pretty sure I got them from latex designer Naughty Nancy, back when she was here in Seattle. It’s a shame she went back to Canada, I always liked her stuff.

But still, perhaps it’s time for a new pair. Oh, look, Syren seems to be having a sale – how convenient. I think a bit of shopping is in order.

The other latex thing I want is one of these: a vacuum bed. Yes, I think I’m going to have to see about one of these quite soon. I have tried them, and they’re quite intense. I'd have to have one custom made, though, as I would want certain special features.

And now it’s Monday, the closing week of pre-Christmas insanity. My mother and brother get here Christmas day, so in addition to everything else that’s happening – and that’s a lot – I have that to prepare for.

But I’m looking forward to the next two weeks. Lots of big changes and events. My life is many things, but dull is simply not one of them.

Silly story I stole from the AP.

It's Not the Pipes, It's a Naked Man in Your Basement
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - A plumbing problem at a Spokane home turned out to be a naked man. Police say a woman who thought she was having a problem with water pipes beneath the floor called the Water Department. Employees found the basement barricaded, and when they determined there was someone behind the door, they called police.

Police broke through the door, found the naked man and took him into custody. They searched the basement but found no clothing for the man. They also found that a pipe had been broken and repaired.

The 36-year-old was booked into jail for investigation of burglary.

Hey, at least it wasn't a dead rat.

Late night: In bed with Roman, on his laptop... Clothespins and rope scattered around us.
Go read the new column.
Bye!

I have been very, very busy with clients lately. And that’s been a good thing. But wow - busy.

Fortunately for me, about 98% of my clients are really cool guys, and I like them. (There are about 2% who make me think, “I so do not understand this person,” but that’s another story. Most of them don't come see me very often, anyway.)

The thing is, I cannot talk specifically about any of my cool clients, because it would take more time than I’ve got to talk about all of them, and I don’t want to make any of them feel left out by not being mentioned on the blog. So I usually try to express my pleasure in their company in person, rather than putting it here.

But I have to say something, because I have some amazingly fabulous boys and they are so great, they just knock me out.

Yeah, you know you who are. You so rock, and I’m really glad you come to see me.

***

The other people I have to blow kisses to are Max, Roman and Miss K, all of whom have gotten much less of my time and attention than usual for the last few weeks, because I've been preparing for The Big Event*. I love you all. Thanks for your understanding...

(*What Big Event, you ask? I'll talk about it next week. Possess your souls in patience.)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

So I promised to talk about the party, didn’t I? Well, it all started out innocently enough with a platter of kinky gingerbread-people from Tambo and NerdyGirl. The image is a bit on the large side, because I’ve included a guide in this image, so you can tell what the various decorations are supposed to represent. This is actually only some of the cookies, because we were eating them pretty rapidly – they were yummy.

In many ways it was a typical private party for the crowd I hang around with. Max had a date to single-tail a pretty girl, which he did very nicely and at some length. Monk did terrible things to his wife, which made her giggle and try to bite him. I exposed Jae’s breasts to a roomful of people – which really didn’t raise any eyebrows - and complimented R on the colorful bruises I found there. I chatted, I gossiped, I ogled, I smooched.

And then my host, J, repeated an offer he’d made to me a week earlier – his body as a pincushion. I like piercing people, and he’d also invited R to join in, and so that just made us a happy little threesome.

This is why I love being at private parties as opposed to someplace like the Wet Spot. The Spot is great in lots of ways, but they have rules about things like where you can do bloodsports, and you have to obey them. (Yes, even me. Mostly.)

But since we were at J’s house, we just sat down on the couch and started sticking him, and if anyone didn’t want to watch, they were free to walk out of the room. We did lose two very nice - but not especially kinky - girls that were friends of one of the other guests. They’d gotten a bit quiet watching Max wield the single-tail, but I think the needles pushed them over the edge. Oh well.

People were sort of drifting in and out behind us, and apparently R and I missed some hot scenes in the other room, but we had a hell of a good time. We made J roar really nicely, and in between roars he looked very, very endorphin-stoned. I like that.

Then R got out her knife and started poking at the needles with it. She’s so mean! People think I am the evilest girl in town, but let me tell you, I have never taken hold of the hub of a needle and rotated the whole damn thing one hundred and eighty degrees clockwise in someone’s skin. (Of course, now that I’ve seen it done I will. Woot!) She got lots of roaring on that one. I thought J might levitate off the couch for a minute there.

Pinching needles is more my specialty, and we did lots of that too. Then J impressed us by putting two needles in his own chest. He was quite, quite stoned when we finished, and R and I had a nice little sadistic contact-high, too.*

It was a really good time. I should play at parties more, and I’m usually too busy talking and hanging out with pals. But it was a nice reminder of what I like about spontaneous scenes.

*Note: Piercing is not a 100% safe activity. You should never do anything like this without the supervision of people who have already done it and know what they are doing. Be sure to use only fresh, sterile needles, and use rubbing alcohol to clean the area before and after you do the piercings. Wear latex (or nitrile) gloves, and change them if you play for a long period or touch unclean stuff during the scene. Use needles once, on one person, then dispose of them in a bio-hazardous waste receptacle (sharps container). Even if it’s done correctly, you may bleed, bruise or possibly even scar from this activity.

Cleaning Diet Coke Off My Keyboard

Complete text of an extremely (unintentionally?) hilarious email sent to me, in the wake of Friday's post:

"A friend of mine runs a clothing store for men. He chooses not to sell jeans. He is a snappy dresser and disapproves of jeans. He doesn't like them so he doesn't sell them. In a way, he is imposing his opinion upon others. Even though he has no right to interfere with a sartorial decision made by a man, perhaps even with the advice of a fashion consultant. Are you truly saying that a person who owns a business can't decide what they want to sell and what they don't want to sell?

The nice thing about controlling birth control pills is that it keeps women in check. So long a women get pregnant they will need men to take care of them and their relative submission to proper male authority is assured. This is good because women are somewhere on the developmental scale between children and adults. They are not fully capable of making good decisions for themselves. They are not truly adult and, like children, the mentally retarded, animals, and members of some lesser races, are best herded along by the white male shepards who have made America the number one country in the history of mankind.

Now that you have a better understanding of the issues involved, perhaps you should retract your opinion and/or remove it from your website.

No need to thank me. Consider it noblesse oblige."

I'm really not sure what part of this is the most snicker-inspiring: is it the fact that he (and it was signed with a male name) thinks men's fashion and women's medical care are of equal importance? The fact that he's equating a doctor with a "fashion consultant"? ("Take two pairs of Miss Sixty jeans and call me in the morning.")

Or is it that he's pretending to think I'm now going to agree with him that women should be submissive to men? (White men, that is - you don't want those "lesser-race" men getting any ideas.) Oh yeah, sure, hold on a minute while I abandon my career and totally reverse my entire worldview based on your email. Uh-huh. Because I've certainly never had anyone tell me that white men are supposed to be in control of everything, all the time. That's a really fresh idea.

However, I don't believe this is sincere. I think it's just a troll. The spelling is far too correct, for one thing. A real sexist, racist butthead would write something like:

U KNOW U WEEMUN GOTS TO KNUW YER PLACE ALUNG WIT THEM COLOREED PEEPLE SO YU BETTR GET PREGNINT REEL SUUN MISSY.

So let that be a lesson to you, flame-baiters. Real fascists don't use commas correctly!

***

Tomorrow: pictures and commentary about a fun party I was at Saturday night. Sneak previews of some of the madness here, here and here. (Not-work-safe picture here.)

Today, not only is there a new column and kink calendar, but you also get to bid on something fun for Christmas: me! And not just me - me and some of Monk's finest hemp rope. It's Strangercrombie 2005, The Stranger's fourth annual holiday auction to benefit Northwest Harvest. They've got a lot of cool and unusual gift packages, and some time with me is one of them.

But there's lots of cool stuff, so buy something! It's for a good cause.

Another good cause: helping women get the birth control pills they've been prescribed. As you have probably heard, some pharmacists around the US have taken it upon themselves to refuse to fill prescriptions for BC pills, because they think contraception is morally wrong. This is bullshit. It's a legal prescription, and a pharmacist has no right to interfere with a medical decision made by a woman and her doctor.

Some pharmacy chains are not supporting a woman's right to choose to take The Pill. Target is one of them. So this site has started a photo petition to show Target the faces of people who won't be shopping there because of their failure to protect pharmacy customers from the interference of unethical pharmacists. I'll be sending them a picture. I hope you do too.

An example of how Max is so much nicer than I am…

The other day, Max goes into a busy bank on Capitol Hill and gets in line for the teller. There’s a woman, a stranger, standing in front of him, and when he joins the queue, she turns around and looks him up and down. Not politely, either. Kinda like: what the hell are you doing there?

Well, Max thinks, I’m standing in line behind you, obviously.

Her gaze alights on the logo on his t-shirt.

And she says, “'Thunder In The Mountains' – what’s that?”

Now, as I said, Max is a much friendlier and kinder person than me. My response to being questioned like this - and yes, it’s happened - is generally to fix the person with a cold eye and say, “I think you’ve got all the information I’m interested in sharing.”

Or, if I’m really feeling pissy, “Why don’t you explain to me just exactly why you think I should answer your questions?” I almost never talk to strangers in public places, and I very much resent having my thoughts intruded upon by rude people like this woman.

But Max said, “It’s a conference in Denver.” A polite but brief answer that should have been her cue to be quiet.

She didn’t take it. “I know that,” she said in this very exasperated tone of voice, as if he were being just so tiresomely obtuse. “What kind of conference?”

Now, she’d be way into “it’s none of your business” territory with me. But both Max and Roman have a sometime charming, sometimes alarming, willingness to come out to random strangers, if said random stranger asks enough questions. I will not do this. I think it’s a gender thing.

So Max replied, “A rope bondage conference.” (Technical note: yes, TITM is actually a BDSM con, not just a rope-bondage con. Max knows that. He just didn’t feel it was a really crucial distinction to make at the moment.)

When Max was relating this story to me, I laughed out loud and said, “I can’t believe you said that to her! What did she say then?”

“Her eyes got big,” he replied. “And she just looked at me for a minute and then said, 'I gotta get out of this town. It is just way too weird here, I gotta get back to Portland'.”

Huh. I wonder if she knows about this….

More news on Heidi Fliess’s plan to build an all-male brothel in Nevada. Color me very skeptical about the whole venture, although it certainly would be amusing if she actually did it.

I’m struck by this quote from Fliess, though:

"I have heard from very wealthy, very beautiful women who say they'll be first in line...”

Very beautiful? Hmmm, why the insistence on the women’s looks? If they’re paying the boys, why does it matter? Just take some Viagra and get the job done, gentlemen.

No, I think Heidi is playing to the gigolo fantasy that a lot of boys have, sending them the message that they’d get paid to fuck women they found attractive anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she’d cooked up some scheme to make money off the would-be male prostitutes, perhaps charging them a very high “room and board” fee, or something like that. That’s not uncommon in the industry – Lord knows the strip clubs right here in Seattle make the vast majority of their money off the “house fees” that the dancers pay to work there. The cover-charge and the soft-drink revenue is chump change by comparison.

I’ll be watching to see if any ground ever gets broken on this, or if it just dwindles into smaller and smaller news items.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas..

And that’s always a weird time of year for me. I like Christmas, don’t get me wrong. But I think I’d like it a lot better if the whole “holiday season” was about a week long. Maybe two weeks. But six plus weeks of being beaten over the head with it? Bah humbug. By the time December 25^th actually rolls around, I’m over it.

Then there's the whole present thing. I like giving people I love presents. But in the past, I have sometimes had a hard time accepting them. I’ve gotten better at it, but still, I have to remind myself from time to time that people give gifts because it honestly gives them pleasure to do so, and I don’t have to put pressure on myself to instantly reciprocate in some way, just because I think I need to keep some invisible set of scales neatly balanced. I know if I give someone something, it’s just because I think they’d like it and I enjoy the act of giving it to them and seeing them be happy about it. But that’s been something I’ve had to learn to trust in others.

All that said, I do have some very sweet and generous boys who have asked me for a Christmas gift list. So, okay, here goes.

Books are always good. Here's some stuff off my Amazon list I'd like to read over the holidays:

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz

The Girl in the Glass : A Novel, by Jeffrey Ford

London 1849 : A Victorian Murder Story, by Michael Alpert

The Virgin's Lover, by Philippa Gregory

A Breath of Snow and Ashes, by Diana Gabaldon

The Kinky Girl's Guide to Dating, by Luna Grey

Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless & Hopeful, by Anthony D. Ravenscroft

Something more personal? Well, I love this bracelet. (Of course this is nice, too, but it seems a bit excessive. I don't really move in a diamond-wearing crowd.)

I am also lusting after this jacket. This coat is pretty as well, although I've never worn such a long coat. But it looks warm, and I am a girl who's often wearing skimpy little outfits when it's cold outside. I'd have to have it in black, of course.

Boots. I love pretty boots. Love 'em. Size 8.5, if anyone's wondering.

Then there's kinky stuff. It's great when people bring me naughty things, because my rule is: you bring it to me, you're asking me to use it on you. Heh.
I do seriously want this sling. And while I have one fucking machine, this one looks uber-cool.
I could play some wickedly fun games with this little device, too.

Geek stuff? Gee, Santa, I want a laptop. Do the elves makes those? I also want one of these, although I'm still researching brands and models.

Of course, I'm not sure exactly how good of a girl I've been this year, but we'll see what the guy in the red suit does for me. Hey, even if he puts switches in my stocking, I'm sure I can think of something fun to do with them.

Yay, I've been saved from snow - real, sticky, snowed-in snow - once again. Whew. I'm sure that soon the Weather God is going to get tired of me telling him, "Snow tomorrow, and snow yesterday - but never snow today".
However, I feel like I dodged a frosty bullet, because baby, I've got things to do. Ain't got no time for no snow.
So while I go do them, read all about it.

Oh, and don't forget Cirque Du Noc on Saturday, and Max's bondage workshop on Sunday. Big fun.