Happy Friday, everyone. Here's the column for the week. And some social notes…

If, like me, you hate the Blue Angels and are bored breathless by terrible traffic, drunken crowds and noisy boat races, ditch that Seafair shit and come to Max’s Bondage For Beginners workshop at the Wet Spot on Sunday afternoon. We'll be at the party that night, too.

Call For Volunteers: Monk of Twisted Monk is having a large and fabulous party for all his kinky friends at his workspace, the Abbey, on August 19^th. There will be music and BDSM play and some sexy performances from the Thrillhammer people and Tamara the Trapeze Lady. To make all this happen, he needs some minions to help out. Nothing too complicated, mainly stuff like helping set up stages, music, and food, and some clean-up, all under the supervision of Monk, or Monk’s portable brain, NerdyGirl. Volunteering for events is an excellent way to meet people in the community, so if you’d like to be on the support team and attend the Monk-a-palooza, drop him or Nerdy a note. It’ll be a great evening.

And by the way - I wanted to include Plastic Man in this week's column about tertiary partners. I love Plastic Man, he's definitely the kinkiest superhero. But, you know, I only have so much column space.

Squeamish about blood or CBT? Don’t read further.

An email I received today...

I am just curious, would you be interested in doing a moderately severe cock and ball torture session with me. What I have in mind is very simple, to allow you to stick approximately a half a dozen needles through my cock head. Does this interest you at all? If so, what would your price quote be, I imagine it would be about an hour long session.
Thanks…
By the way I have absolutely no experience with cbt or sadism/masochism.

I’m pretty sure this is a troll. By that I mean: not a serious inquiry. Maybe he wants to be blogged about, maybe he wants to get some dirty email exchange going, I don’t know.

If it is a serious question – darlin’, I completely support your desire to have terrible things done to your dick. I cherish the hours – and there have been a lot of them - I have spent tormenting boy’s bits. Binding them, squeezing, slapping, pinching, pulling, shocking and just generally being evil - it’s not simply my profession. I actually feel it’s my vocation in this life.

But. The words “moderate” and “half a dozen needles through my cock head” do not go together. Especially when they are followed by “absolutely no experience”. Dear, dear man – no. I will not do this with you. I don’t know if you saw it on a porn site or what, but needles in your bits is advanced play. (Hell, needles anywhere on the body is considered higher-level play by many people.)

Do I play-pierce people’s genitals? Sure I do. I might put some needles through, say, the skin of the scrotum. Just the skin, mind, not through the testicle itself. And I have put needles through the top layer of skin – not the shaft proper – of dicks, and some around the ridge of the corona. That was with Mr. Wood, god bless him, a man with whom I have a long and bloody history of really heavy CBT. He knows the risks of what we’re doing. And believe me, I did too. It was one of those scenes where one thinks, “Shit, this is really hot - and I hope to god I do it just right.”

Needles straight through the head? I’ve not done that because I think the risk outweighs the possible pleasure. It's true that the glans penis is soft tissue. The chambers that fill up with blood and make the cock hard are in the shaft, so you’re not going to rupture one of those. On the other hand, that’s a thick piece of flesh. I mainly prefer to pierce through skin I can pinch up between my fingers. You know what you’re getting into there. I know professional piercers do it – the ampallang, the apadrayva - but as you’ve noticed, I am not a professional piercer.

And son, you want to walk in and have me do six needles through your cockhead, bam, just like that? You’d be howling like a coyote at the first one, and two would make you faint. I will bet you any money in this world on that. There is nothing moderate about this scene. It's very severe.

CBT fans often experiment on themselves to learn about where their limits are. Try that. You don’t need to spend a lot of money at first. Get a bag of clothespins, a paint stirrer, and a stiff scrub brush. Put on some kinky porn on and go to town. Put the clothespins on, wait a few minutes, and then take them off. Press the bristles of the brush against your cock as hard as you can stand it. Smack it with the stirrer. See how all that feels. Then talk to me again. Because I can actually put six needles into you in about two minutes, but I don’t want to spend the other fifty-eight watching you recover from your faint.

***

Obligatory Disclaimer: Piercing is not a 100% safe activity. If you are not experienced, you should not 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, get an infection or possibly even scar from this activity. You’ve been warned, proceed at your own risk.

So, since my run-in with the feminists two weeks ago, I’ve been poking around some more into the feminist blogosphere. I’ve been reading some of the more mainstream ones, like Feministe and Pandagon, for awhile, although I never comment. Alas, a Blog is interesting too, and well-moderated, which I like.

But if you link-hop a little off the beaten feminist-blog path – wow, it’s a whole other world. I don’t know what to call it, precisely – I’ve seen some of these bloggers refer to themselves as radfems, meaning radical feminists. Whatever one calls their world, it’s a place in which the feminist sex wars of the 80‘s are apparently still raging, especially lately.

I suppose it’s like any other subculture, capable of getting obsessed with its pet issues. You can certainly find blogs for the kink community, for example, where folks get all worked up and personal about insular issues like “We’re Old Guard” vs. “That’s Pretentious Crap”, as if it was something a tiny handful of people in cyberspace could decide once and for all, for everyone.

However, even with that experience under my belt, I’m boggled by how the merest suggestion that sex work could be a free and positive choice for some people makes these women’s blood pressure skyrocket. I mean, they come unglued. And the sheer venom of their remarks to/about sex-positive feminists - it’s like Anne Coulter has been cloned or something. I’m not going to link the tirades themselves, because I don’t feel like dealing with the blowback. But here are some links to friendlier sites (or at least more neutral ones) discussing the matter, and it’s easy to hop from there to the more extreme ones, if you wish.

(Mandatory disclaimer, in case anyone new to me comes along: sex work should only be done by freely consenting adults. Like BDSM, if there is not adult consent, it’s not okay, end of story. But I think I should be able to do whatever I want with my own body.)

What puzzles me is this: sex work is, in America and many other countries as well, either strictly limited or downright illegal. There’s a social stigma attached to sex work, and sex workers themselves are marginalized. Some more than others, it’s true, but no one completely escapes it, not even women like me – white, middle class, economically successful.

So, all that being true – what exactly do these women want to do to us that hasn’t already been done? I mean, you’d think we had control of the Senate or something. The most I can gather is that they find it offensive that we write articles and books about our lives and get them published. They call that “being overrepresented” and they want us to shut up and stop talking about how happy we are.

And they talk about “eliminating prostitution” – well, I suppose if you think it’s inherently and irredeemably evil, I can see where that would be your goal. But I don’t know of any culture or any time period where women trading sex for something else they wanted has not existed. It even happens in the animal world. So when I try to imagine what these particular women would do to make that happen – given that the whole illegal/stigma/marginalized thing is already in place - I’m stumped. They don’t give specifics, so maybe the first item on the agenda is to bicker with women who ID as sex-positive feminists and post lots of judgmental, divisive comments. They’ve certainly made tons of progress in that arena.

***

Edited To Add: It strikes me that I’ve written about weird people several times in the last two weeks or so. I’ve just been in the mood to observe and comment on the rest of the world lately. But that’s not a reflection on my general mood, which is actually quite good, and the overall happiness of my life.

Fat Actress

Ring Ring!

Me: Hello?

Caller: Hello, Mistress Matisse? I had a question for you. Do you know any really fat dominatrixes?

I am deeply suspicious. There’s something about the way this young man says “fat” that makes me think he does not respect and esteem big women.

Me: I’m sure there are some ladies around town, have you looked online?

Caller: Yeah, but – I want someone really big and fat. My buddy is getting married, it’s for his bachelor party. We’d want her to come in and tie him to a chair, dance on him, and like, smother him with her big tits and stuff.

Me: So, your buddy likes big girls?

Caller: No, no, that’s what I mean. It’d be like a gag to get a big fat girl, you know?

Yeah, I do know. Gag indeed - this guy is the one who should be gagged, preferably with something sharp. I’ve performed at some bachelor parties in my life – a long time ago, and never again, I assure you - and I can picture the kind of scenario he's talking about. This caller wants to hire a woman be mocked and made fun of by a bunch of drunken idiots because she’s a) big and b) being sexual. The fact that he’s conflating professional dommes with bachelor-party strippers is beside the point. The point is that I don’t approve of people hiring sex workers – of any size - specifically to demean them.

It’s interesting how rarely I run across this kind of nasty attitude. Perhaps it’s because I never deal with more than one man at a time. There’s something about groups of men, especially young men, that creates a space for that “Lord of Flies” mentality to happen. It’s sad that we live in a culture where some people are so terrified of their sexuality that they’re driven to scorn and humiliate proxy representations of it.

Perhaps the Mistress can give him a whack with the clue stick and make him realize.

Me: First of all, what you want is not a dominatrix, you want a stripper. Second, it’s a bad idea to hire someone and be rude to her. I do know some girls who specialize in performing at bachelor parties, I can give you their website.

Caller: Are they fat?

Me: No, hiring a big girl is a bad idea, because what you want to do would be really rude and disrespectful to her. You’d be making fun of her, and it would hurt her feelings.

Caller: (pauses) Well, it’s just a joke.

Me: I don’t think it’s funny. I bet she wouldn’t either. What if it were your sister or your girlfriend?

Click. He hangs up. I’m not surprised, he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who could be schooled. I just hope he doesn’t get any ladies to come to the party – he may not be a lacrosse player, but he doesn’t seem like any client I’d want to deal with.

The new column and calendar… Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

A Religious Experience

So one day not too long ago, I was at my workspace, getting ready for a client to show up. It was mid-afternoon on a sunny day. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror at ten til the hour, powdering my nose, putting on lipstick, fluffing up my hair, when the doorbell rang.

Damn. I hate it when people are early, because, of course, I’m not quite ready, and since I don’t have a butler, I have to stop and go open the door. At least in this house I’m on the same floor – actually, just a few steps from the front door. In my two previous dungeons, my dressing area was a fair distance away from the door, and a flight of stairs was involved. Did you know it’s very treacherous to run down stairs in six-inch platforms? Yeah.

But it was a new client and they are often a bit early, just out of eagerness. (And not knowing that I hate it.) So I sighed, put down my comb, and went and opened the door in my usual manner. That is, I opened it while standing behind it, so that I was invisible from the street. My door is situated at the end of a hallway-like entry area, so it’s hard to see into my house from the street unless you’re precisely lined up with the door. But even so, I strive to be discreet.

Then I peeked around the door. There’s a male silhouette, backlit by the bright sunlight streaming into the entry corridor. He was standing way over to one side, so I had to come out from behind the door to see him.

“Hi!” I said. “You’re a little early…”

There’s a shift of movement, and I realized that were are actually two men standing outside my door looking at me. Two? What the hell is this?

And then as my eyes adjusted from the relative dimness of the house to the glare of the sun, I got a good look at them. Two young white men, rather slim, wearing dark slacks and long-sleeved white shirts and neckties. And gold name badges.

Holy shit, it’s a pair of Mormons!

I was standing there wearing: a very short (like, it barely covers my butt), very tight, black spaghetti-strap PVC dress that gives me tons of cleavage, a waist cincher, thigh-high shiny black high-heeled boots, my hair teased up like mad, and vampire-red lipstick. And there were these two Mormon boys, who look just barely old enough to shave, clutching their notebooks in perspiring palms, looking back at me. I must have looked like either their wet dream or their worst nightmare, depending in how devout they were.

We stared at each other in mutual confusion for an instant. And then I came to my senses and said, “Oh! Oh, no, no - go away please!” and closed the door swiftly.

It was half hilarious and half mortifying. I imagined them walking away from my house, shaking their heads and jotting down a note next to my address: Hell-bound floozy lives here. Clearly beyond any hope of salvation.

Then I wondered what would have happened if I’d said, “Oh, you want to talk to me about your God? Okay.” And taken them downstairs into the dungeon, sat them down on the spanking bench and the bondage chair and said, “All right, boys, give me your best shot.” What would they have done? Would they have been able to maintain and give me the Jesus pitch? Is there some clause in the Bell-Ringing Bible-Thumpers Handbook that says if a woman dressed in black plastic wrap invites you into a room with a rack of whips, you should leave, and God won’t hold it against you? Or do you stay and keep (ahem) turning the other cheek, not because you want to, but in the hope of saving her soul?

Now that I think about it, it would make a fun little role-play, wouldn’t it?

I’ve been insanely busy the last few days, so if I owe you an email, bear with me, I’ll get to it. Life should slow down a bit later this week.

I actually wasn’t going to post any of the photos from Friday, but I’ve had a slew of people ask me and no time to write anything, so - here’s two. I’m not crazy about them.

This one is okay in some ways. I like the red color. But the single-spot lighting makes my face look flat and gives my jaw a prominence it doesn’t have in real life. Also, I’m actually holding a crop, but it’s been lost against my black catsuit. This shot needed subtle side lighting to work for my purposes.

This one – well, in retrospect, I should have known the shooting-down-at-me-pose was a bad idea and nixed it. It doesn’t suit my image. The backdrop I’m kneeling on came out looking bad. And once again, I’ve got the crop in my hand, and once again, it’s invisible.

Roman and Max didn’t care for them either. Max said, “They don’t look like you.” Roman was more vehement: “These so do not look like you. They look like someone wearing a Mistress Matisse mask. It’s kinda creepy. And that makeup artist put way too much black stuff around your eyes.”

So, it’s disappointing. But I’m trying to be philosophical about it. For me, hiring a photographer is like going to a dominatrix. You tell them what you want and they (hopefully) try to create it for you. But sometimes it just doesn’t work – you don’t have the same vision, you don’t connect, something just doesn’t click. All you can do is try elsewhere.

Busy Monday Update

Bloody hell, it's been hot.

The shoot? Jury's still out, officially, but unfortunately my first reaction to the pictures wasn't favorable. I don't have time to talk about why just now, except to say that Max and Roman don't like them either, so it's not just me. However, it's true that sometimes images have to grow on you, so I'm going to put them aside and let them sit for a few days before I pass final judgement. So no previews today.

Max's family is here visiting and they're delightful. It's keeping us busy, though.

I did get to steal some time with Roman over the weekend, and that was lovely. Among other things, he took me to a midnight movie at the Egyptian: Plan Nine From Outer Space. I knew about Ed Wood, but I'd never seen anything directed by him, and I have to say, it was the most magnificently bad movie I have ever seen in my life. An amazing achievement.

Okay, gotta run, places to go, people to beat....

Happy Friday, everyone...The new column is here, and I’m off to shoot photos with the new photographer today, so ya’ll think good thoughts for me, please. It’s been awhile since I shot with anyone besides Tommy Edwards, so I have no idea what this’ll be like. But I think it’ll be good to have a fresh eye, and I’m pleased to be getting new pictures.

Website photos are a tricky thing. You want to get images that make you look your best, and yes, Photoshop is a wonderful tool. But you have to go easy with the editing, because that photo has to match the woman who’s going to open the door, or you'll have some disappointed clients. I have a lot of clients meet me and tell me I’m prettier than my pictures. I think my personality is what they’re responding to, because I think energy and personality are what make people truly attractive. But boys will be visually-stimulated boys, so pretty pictures are a must. I’m looking forward to seeing what Don Conrad does with me.

And I’m also really looking forward to the end of the week-long Photo Shoot Diet. I do not diet, as a rule. I mean, I don’t gorge myself, but within reasonable limits, I eat what I want, and then I work it off at the gym. I was raised Catholic, so the whole sin/penance cycle is familiar to me. Eat French fries, run on the treadmill, it all evens out, and I’m happy with the shape my body is in.

But the camera adds weight, no question about it, and one has to compensate for that. So when I have a serious shoot planned, for a week prior, there are no French fries. Nor pizza or pasta, no bread, no candy or processed sugar/carbs of any kind*.… You get the idea. Fresh fruit and vegetables and lean protein, that’s it, and a restricted amount of them, to boot.

I can’t maintain such a regimen for the long haul, and I wouldn’t want to. A life entirely without Stellars pizza is not a life I care to contemplate. In the short term, though, it’ll take about four or five pounds right off me. Some of that’s water, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It just has to not be there for the one day.

Another restriction: love-bites and -bruises. My sex life with Max and with Roman is such that I have to remind them, “Honey, I have that shoot, so don’t mark me up, okay?”

So cantaloupe, grilled chicken breasts, and careful love-making have been my life this past week. But I’ll have pretty pictures, high-calorie treats, and bruise-inducing sex this weekend. I can’t wait.

* I made an exception for the cupcake Max brought me a few days ago. I mean, it was such a sweet thing to do, how could I not eat it?

Happy Things In My Life

Things have been a little stressful lately, what with hackers, irate feminists, impending photo shoots, and some new planets (all good, but new and different and requiring discussion) in the polyamory orbit that revolves around my house. Plus five members (two adults, three kids) of Max’s family are arriving for a week-long visit soon, eek!

So I’ve been a bit frayed. But it’s times like this when I really appreciate what wonderful partners I have in my life. They both pet me and spoil me a lot in general, which I like. And yesterday, Max went to the bakery just to buy me a Cupcake Royale – chocolate, with pink frosting and coconut - because he loves me and knew it would make me happy. Later, Roman brought me dinner after work and gave me a massage. They are so sweet and wonderful to me. (And yes, they both do other things with me that are less aw-that’s-sweet and more oh-that’s-sexy, but I’ll leave those to your imagination.)

It’s a little quiet lately, workwise. But what I lack in quantity, I’m making up for in quality, having had several extremely charming encounters in my dungeon. They include:
a) one of the hottest boy-on-boy sex scenes I have ever seen in my life, with two gorgeous men,

b) a visit from Blue Eyes and my friend Jae, in which she was introduced to the fucking machine Mike made me,

and c) several intense one-on-one sessions with boys who know who they are.

I’m anticipating a delightful afternoon and evening tonight, too. Two very lovely boys are coming to see me – although not together - and a female pal is coming over to make a guest appearance in a domestic role-play that I think is going to be big fun.

***

Also: I want to do a favor for Roman – there are two women in Seattle who do a fire-eating act. We saw them performing at the burlesque/fetish fashion show at the last night of the old Catwalk Club. He wants to talk to them about perhaps hiring them for a gig. Anyone have contact info for these women, or even know their names?

So yesterday I threw up a quick little post on the Stranger blog about a Village Voice article by Rachel Kramer Bussel about kinky/slutty sex, and a link to a feminist blog discussion about it. And I also mentioned, rather briefly, that I don’t call myself a feminist, even though I support most goals that feminists say they’re working for.

Well. You would have thought I said I performed recreational vivisection on puppies and kittens. The outrage poured forth all afternoon and into the evening. How dare I not call myself a feminist? How dare I say anything that seems critical of feminism? Lordy.

The funny thing is: the reason I stopped saying I was a feminist is because I got tired of defending myself against outraged feminists who insisted that I wasn’t. I’ve had feminists go after me for: being a sex worker, being kinky, being femme, fucking men, being poly, and being bisexual. I’ve been hissed at, shouted down, poison-penned, and boycotted. I’ve been called a “delusional tool of the patriarchy” in front of a college classroom and ignored by a woman I was supposed to be politely debating. Not only was I not a feminist, they said, I was actively hurting the feminist movement.

Those are all real incidents in my life. But apparently it’s bad of me to mention them, even casually, without the polite disclaimer that not all feminists, etc, etc. It certainly isn't that no one who isn't a feminist has ever done anything like that. Far from it. But one expects to be attacked by winger Jesus freaks. I spent years being confused and hurt by (some) feminist's refusal to even civilly disagree with me. Many of them still don't - but I just don't care anymore.

However, never let it be said I don't respond to my readers. Here we go, forever and all time:

Many feminists are not… (insert negative feminist stereotype here). Many feminists are smart wonderful sexy fabulous people who do good things.

There. I hope anyone who was mortally offended by my post yesterday feels properly soothed. God, talk about your no-win situations. The only way I could have gotten more flack on that thread was if I'd said I was a feminist.

On the bright side, Rachel Kramer Bussel wrote me a very sweet thank you note for mentioning her in the Stranger blog, and offered to send me some of her books. Smart, sexy and polite. What a nice combination.
(Edited to add a link to RKB's blog on the matter, here.)

P.S. While I was annoyed by some of the responses on that thread, that doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to anyone spout nasty anti-feminist crap on this one. I’m in favor of most stated feminist goals - even though most feminists do not, as a group, support mine. (Perhaps it’s my version of a D/s relationship.) So, meaningful discourse and personal experience, yes. "Feminists are ugly bitches", no.

I was going to write yesterday…but retail fever overcame me, and I went to the sale at Nordstrom. Dangerous place, very dangerous. One pair of black patent leather peep-toe pumps, one pair soft suede knee-high boots with spiky heels, black of course, with corset-lacing up the back. One pair black leather boots with a chunky heel and slightly bondage-y buckles on them, also knee high. A short, tight, shiny black skirt (that looks perfect with the new pumps), a few fetching casual t-shirts and tops, and a pair of faintly punk-rock black Capri pants.

And there’s the Express store next door in Pacific Place, where they have a cut of pants that, when I wear them, makes Roman say, “Oooo, the bootie pants!” So I had to go buy some more bootie pants – 3 pairs. And a silky camisole that goes with the short tight skirt. And a dark satiny long sleeved button-up shirt, looking a bit like the bastard offspring of Annie Hall and Saturday Night Fever, but fitting me so perfectly I just had to.

Thus did commerce and fashion, not writing, rule my day.

But what about the evening, Matisse - the evening? you say. Ah, that is another matter.

You see, Eros ruled my evening. Mmmmmm….. So I will say no more, and simply purr.

Notes on scheduling with me the week of the 16th...

I have a shoot booked with this guy Friday afternoon, so Friday is right out. And I'm booked Monday until about 4:30. But as of now, I've got most of the rest of the week open, and it's my intention to fill that up.

Note that while I am usually *not* available Thursday evening, this week, I am. In fact, if you like evening appointments in general, this would be a good week for that.

Late July and August can be quiet for ladies in the industry because lots of people go on vacation, but I'm not going anywhere until Labor Day weekend, so call me.

Hey ya'll... happy Friday: here's the new column and calendar....

Wella, wella, yesterday’s post definitely brought ya’ll out of the woodwork, didn’t it?

I’m seeing that for the guys, there seems to be two camps about telling a strange woman, in public, that she’s beautiful. (Or some similar remark.) One camp says: I’m not hitting on her, I just want to pay her a compliment. The other camp admits that when they say that, they’d like to get to know the lady better.

On the other side of the fence, a lot of the women seemed agree that a strange guy coming up to you in public can be startling, and make one uncomfortable.

As I said yesterday, it’s not that you can never speak to a strange woman in public, ever. As with most any social interaction, there’s a little dance to be done here, there are signals to give and to observe. That’s why I think the 3-Step Process is crucial. Let me elaborate.

We have a person who wants to initiate contact, and the person they want to speak to. Let’s say we’re talking a man and a woman. I think this is how it should be done regardless of gender, but what’s also true is that a woman is much less likely to perceive another woman as a potential physical threat.

1. Man stays a socially acceptable distance away from the woman. He makes eye contact with her for a few seconds.
2. During the eye contact – which may happen several times over a minute or two, as the woman looks, looks away, and then looks again – he smiles. Eye contact minus smile = creepy.
3. Then, and only then, does he move close enough (if that’s necessary) to her to say “I just wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful.”

That’s the process. She’s far less likely to be startled, because you signaled your intentions. She may or may not respond the way you’d like her to, but I know that when someone follows this process with me, I am much more likely to smile and say, “thank you!” than I am to jump back and fumble for my pepper spray.

You’ll notice this can all be done in the time it takes a stoplight to change. If you really just want to pay a lady a compliment, I think the ideal circumstance is one where she can thank you and then be free to physically move on if she wants to. So, for example, tell the lady as you’re both getting off the elevator, not as you’re getting on.

I define "socially acceptable distance" as arms-length at least. There are exceptions where strangers routinely stand closer to each other - subway cars in New York, for example. But the closer you get, the more likely you are to seem like a potential threat.

I think the maximum time you can hang out after you pay a compliment and she says thank you is about five seconds. Past that, you’re hoping for a longer exchange, and the compliment has become a means to that end. That doesn’t make you a crazed serial killer, but if you want to not make an ass of yourself, there is another set of signals you should observe, in my opinion.

1. A woman who physically steps away from you is saying I don’t want to talk to you, and in fact, you’re making me uncomfortable. A gentleman respects such a signal. Do not step closer to her again. Don’t say, “hey, don’t run away”, or “don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you”. What that tells me is that you are thinking about hurting me, so I should run run run away.

2. That stuff seems all fairly obvious to me, but there are subtler signals too. A woman who maintains eye contact with you and smiles past the five-second window is signaling that she’s open to further conversation. If she also turns her body towards you she’s definitely interested in talking. But a woman who turns away and looks away, steadily, is signaling no thanks.

I say steadily because there are shy girls who sometimes do that look-away, peep-back thing. (Is he looking at me? I hope he’s looking at me. Omigod omigod, he’s looking. Eeek! Like that.) Facial expression would be the indicator with a peeper. Is she smiling (or better yet, giggling) – or is her expression better suited to someone visualizing you in a police lineup? If she keeps her face and body mostly turned away, but cuts her eyes back to check on you, and she is not smiling, that means I don’t want to talk to you.

Personally, I think that if a woman gives the move-away/look-away signals during Step 1 or Step 2 of the 3-Step Process, the initiator should back off. However I will allow that failure to do so doesn’t instantly brand you a Pushy Creep. But – if you speak, and she backs away, and you don’t respect that, you are indeed a Pushy Creep. Proof positive: you keep talking to her, and she either ignores you entirely or makes one-word answers, while not looking at you. You’re the Mayor of Creepyville now.

Other thoughts: Bad places to talk to strange women are parking lots, parking garages, elevators in parking garages, dark alleys, any place dark and/or largely unpopulated/isolated. And yes, I’ve had guys try to chat me up all these places. Bad strategy.

But it doesn’t have to be a dark, scary place for her to be uncomfortable - I’ve been on a little corner of a beautiful sunlit beach and been uneasy because some strange-vibe guy found me and just wouldn’t go away and leave me alone, and there wasn’t anyone else close by. So be aware that if you’re alone somewhere with a strange woman, odds are good that she’s going consider, at least momentarily, whether anyone would hear her if she screamed. If the answer is no, your courtship is unlikely to prosper. It’s a not a personal slam at you, it’s just the way the world works.

So you’ve gotten the okay, I’ll talk to you signal from her. Here are some other ways to avoid being kicked back to creepy weirdo status: do not ask her name for at least five minutes. Do not ask her last name, period. Do not ask where she lives, or where she works, or any other potential-stalker information. Basically, don't a lot of personal questions.

Don’t say anything else about her looks. Don’t ask if she has a boyfriend/husband.

Talk about innocuous stuff – movies, music, sports, pets, whatever. Nothing too emotionally intimate, either. The point is not the information, the point is showing her you get it that there are steps and stages you, the guy, have to go through in order to get to know her better. And if you as much as mention sex at this stage, you’re the President of The United States of Creepy.

The one think I don't know is how long you must talk before you can ask for (and successfully get) her phone number, because while I've occasionally talked to guys I met wherever, I've never been willing to give out my number to a stranger this way. I'd be interested to hear what women who have met guys like this would say.

See, paul_tex, I'm as good as a Cosmo article anyday!

Strangers Without Candy

I had dinner with Miss K last night, and we were talking about how, some days, one just wishes one could walk through the world and be invisible. We got started on this topic because although she has a car, Miss K takes the bus certain places, and apparently there are certain bus routes in Seattle that are fine and non-eventful, and certain bus routes that are to be avoided because they are just chock full of scary people. Scary people who all seem to be riding the bus more as a social event than as a mode of transport from one place to another, and there you are with them. Hi!

Both Miss K and I tend to be reserved about talking to strangers in public no matter what. But there are days when you really really don’t have the energy to fulfill to the social needs of random whoever. Miss K was telling me about how she was standing in a parking lot lately, completely absorbed in trying to make her cell phone behave, when all of a sudden this guy was right up next to her, saying “I just wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful.”

(Author's note: Miss K is indeed beautiful. Plus she’s six feet tall so it’s kinda hard to miss seeing her.)

She said, “He had some type of accent so it took me a minute to understand what he’d said. I was startled, but I just barely glanced up at him and said thank you and then looked down again.”

And to his credit, the guy did immediately go away. But this has happened to me, too, and it’s really jarring when you’re moving through the world alone, mentally composing a grocery list or the plot of your next novel, and someone decides that the two of you are going to have some sort of moment together. (Remember, I’m not talking about a social event or even a bar, where conversational sallies are expected. I’m talking about, say, Bartells, or the corner of 15th and Harrison St, or the aforementioned parking lot.)

There’s also the fact that I don’t believe any man makes a remark like this to a woman without at least some hope that she’ll respond by wanting to know him better. I know, some guys will say, no, I wasn’t trying to hit on her, I just wanted to tell her she looked beautiful. But I have never had a stranger approach me like this when I’m actually with a man. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. You gentlemen who claim you’re just being friendly, consider this: would you walk up to a strange woman who was with a guy and say, “You’re beautiful”? If not, why not? What would you think if you were with a woman and another man did so? (We won't even get into the whole issue of how two women together could very well be...together.)

Whatever the motivation, I myself think approaching women in public works better when you give them a little ramp-up. You know, make some eye contact, smile – then when you get closer and speak, they’re not so startled. And if they’d rather be left alone, they can signal that with the averted gaze, the turned back, or moving away from you. Want to ignore those signals? Well, I hear certain Metro buses are a great place to meet interesting people.

The Mistress sez: Well, that was a stupid little trick on someone's part, wasn't it? Okay, now back to the regularly scheduled program....

Sometimes reading other people’s journals is like watching Jerry Springer – it makes you really fucking glad you’re not that person. I was at a delightful party Saturday night with lots of my pals, and we were talking about a certain person (who shall remain nameless) whose journal I go read now and then. It was a bit surprising to find three other people who knew who I was talking about, but I suppose blogland is a small world, and the blogger has some slight claims to local fame.

Our verdict: the blogger in question is a train-wreck. I mean, seriously, but seriously whacko. I have several good friends who cheerfully identify themselves as crazy, and I’ve done a few rounds of “Hey, sweetie, I really think you need your meds adjusted. If you come in off that ledge you’re crouched on, I’ll drive you to the doctor, and I’ll buy you an ice cream cone afterwards. It’ll be okay, I promise.” So while I have no personal experience living in a head that doesn’t operate like other people’s, I know crazy when I see it. This woman is crazy.

And not well-managed in her craziness, either - that was one of the things that struck me. My closest friend Miss K, for example, has a life-long history with diagnoses and therapists and anti-depressant-this and mood-stabilizing-that, and she’s definitely learned to manage her unquiet mind and the effect it has on her life. There have been ups and downs in the thirteen years I've known her, but overall she’s become my yardstick for how well people handle their insanity. She always says, “Being crazy is a reason, not an excuse. You still have to take responsibility for yourself.”

So I read this blogger’s stuff, and I’m always torn between pity for her sheer animal pain, and eye-rolling what-the-hell-did-you-think-was-going-to-happen? disgust. We are handed a certain amount of unavoidable suffering in this life, but there is a whole lot more that actually can be avoided with even the most elementary of precautions, and when I see someone flinging themselves into a wood-chipper over and over again, it’s hard to view them as totally helpless victims of circumstance. One can only infer that she’s getting some kind of thrill out of her constant flirtations with physical, medical, financial and emotional disaster. God knows there seem to be any amount of people who will coo and say poor baby, poor baby, so maybe that’s it.

But good lord, do you have to heave it all up onto the web? We all have dark nights of the soul – I’ve certainly had mine. However, publishing the rawest, ugliest moments of one’s inner life to the world is a form of exhibitionism that’s incomprehensible to me. It’s not that there cannot be beauty in written descriptions of emotional pain. But all too many people fall into the pit of thinking that all written descriptions of emotional pain are, by default, beautiful.

There’s a story that BDSM author Laura Antoniou used to keep a shelf of the Chronicles of Gor novels above her writing desk, and that one interviewer claimed that her novels had been “inspired” by them. Ms. Antoniou clarified: the Gor novels were there to serve as a bad example, to remind her of the kind of books she didn’t want to write. One meets people in life like that: you look at them and think, “Wow, I really don’t want my life to look like hers.” And so you make that dental appointment you’ve been putting off, get the oil in car changed, and deposit that cash into your IRA. Then you spend time with the people who love you.

Seattle question: Max has some old home movies on 8-mm film (no, nothing dirty) that we'd like to get transferred to DVD. Does anyone have a specific business in the Seattle area they'd recommend? We'd prefer not to mail them off somewhere.

Scanty posting this week, I know. Life has been busy. But here's the new column and kink calendar.
Enjoy the weekend...