Scheduling Note To My Clients

I’m going to be out of town from Oct 13^th to the 16^th, and I’m already booked for most the time before I leave - Thurs the 12^th is totally booked, for example. I will make perhaps one or two more appointments at most before my trip. So speak now, or hold your peace - not forever, though, just until I return. (Although I see that at the moment, I’m already booked up for the 17^th, too, and for Friday the 20^th.)
Yes, it’s hard to get time with me sometimes, but I hope my favorite guys will persevere.

Zoom!

I'm having a busy day today, but to entertain you, here's the new column and calendar.

A Letter From A Reader

Mistress Matisse:

Long time reader of your Stranger column. Love your work.

I know it is weird for me to be asking this sort of very personal question, but quite honestly I don't know who better to ask on the planet than you. The anonymity helps too. If this is a faux pas of some sort, then I apologize in advance! And I also apologize in advance for going on and on about myself.

Basically, I'm a submissive guy. Now that isn't very interesting or unusual, I know. It's more in the emotional, relationship sense and less in the bedroom sense, if there's any difference between the two (is there? you probably know better than me).

I simply don't want it to be about what *I* want.

I want to be able to give myself up completely to a woman who expects it and even demands it, and serve her yet still retain my dignity and my basic equality as a human being. If that makes any sense. But I don't know what to do about it.

Well, I can tell you some things right off the bat. Stop putting yourself down, and stop apologizing so much. Some guys think dominant women find that attractive. We don’t. It feels like you’re manipulating us for an inappropriate amount of reassurance.

What you’re describing, when you say you want to, “retain my dignity and my basic equality as a human being” – well, darlin’, that’s what every submissive wants. I have met a few people who claimed they wanted to have their dignity and their basic humanity stripped away from them, but a) that’s rare and b) I don't think it’s an emotionally healthy goal.

So aside from them, every submissive says “I don’t want it to be about what I want.” Of course you don’t. That would defeat the purpose.

But in another sense, you do, because you want to feel the way you want to feel. Thus is the challenge for the top in consensual, erotic, dominant/submissive relationships.

So yes, in that arena, you’re quite normal. What puzzles me is the remark about being submissive in the relationship but not in the bedroom? That’s the opposite of what I often hear, which is that someone wants to be sexually submissive but operate as an equal in the rest of the relationship. So I think what you’re saying is that you want a bossy controlling woman to have more-or-less vanilla sex with? That’s perfectly okay – bossy women need love too - let’s just get that clear.

The letter continues:

For one thing, no woman I've ever dated has ever been emotionally dominant. Perhaps it's because I live in the Midwest, (city deleted), but they generally want the man to "be a man" and take charge. Which is fine... I can fake dominance with the best of them. But that leaves me unfulfilled and the relationships never last that long.

If you want a dominant woman, you gotta go where the ducks are instead of just hoping one falls into your lap. (Or perhaps more appropriately, onto your face.) The area of the country has nothing to do with it, sweetheart, especially since you named a pretty large city. It’s not like you’re in Cowflop, Arkansas. And really, since the internet came around, you can find kinky people wherever you are. I’ve been to your town, so I happen to know that there are kink resources there. Here’s what you need to do to access them.

So I should turn to a pro, right?

Okay, this is where the conclusion-leaping really gets going. No, you should definitely not turn to a pro. Far from it. A pro domme is not a substitute for a partner, especially when what you want is to be submissive in an “emotional, relationship sense.” I’m fond of all my boys, but I am not a replacement for a girlfriend or a wife.

I apologize if I say the wrong thing, since this is your turf, but it seems like with a pro, the man is paying the dominatrix and telling her what to do. Therefore, she is serving him. No matter how much they roleplay, there is no escaping the reality of that central transaction. If I give you five hundred bucks and order you to boss me around, then you're just following my orders. Again, I'm not trying to impugn what you do but at least for me personally, it kind of defeats the purpose. So it seems like in any emotional relationship with a female, I always have to be boss.

My dear boy, you are very far from the first person to try and float this line of thinking to me. Actually, you can even subtract the money aspect from it completely, and most every kinky person will tell you they’ve heard this one before. The "dominance is an illusion because the bottom is really in control" is an old, old argument.

But you’re wrong. True, BDSM spins on consent. The bottom can withdraw consent at any time, and the dominant must stop, or else what’s happening becomes abuse or assault. That’s true in a scene, or in the relationship as a whole. You can never permanently give up your right to withdraw consent. So yes, the submissive always has that power.

When people come to me initially, I do indeed have them give me some ideas about what they think they’d like to explore. I do that in part because it gives me pleasure to make people analyze and vocalize their intimate fantasy. They often blush and stammer, it's quite charming.

And hearing people answer my questions is part of how I feel their consent to what I’m about to do. Saying the words aloud has a power, it's a little like casting a spell. Anyone can just haul off and hit someone, or bark orders at them. There's no art in that, no magic - that's just being a bully. A good dominant creates another world for herself and her submissive. And makes them want to inhabit it.

Don't believe me? You try going to a pro domme and “ordering” her to boss you around. Go ahead. Just try. Tell her she has to “follow your orders”, and that you’re the boss, because you’re paying her. You’ll be on the sidewalk, pal. That’s not how this works. That’s not how it works with any good dominant, no matter what incentive you offer them to play with you. Thus, I can infer that you haven't ever had a really good dominant/submissive experience.

However, the point is moot, because by your persistent use of the phrase “emotional relationship”, you make it clear that you need a lover, not a pro domme. But what this bit sounds like to me is someone talking themselves into believing that they can’t win, so they are excused from having to try. It’s defeatist.

On to the next paragraph:

Also, you admit that in your own relationship, you are submissive to your primary boyfriend. (I think I remember something about you being a starship and he's the Death Star.) So that got me thinking. If even you, a card-carrying dominant female in a blue state, can only truly love a man if he is dominant over you, that means I should probably just grow up, be a man and take charge, right?

Whoa, whoa, whoa – what? Where on earth did you get the notion that I can “only truly love a man if he is dominant”? Roman would be extremely surprised to hear that, given that I love him and we don’t have a D/s relationship of any kind. You’re totally wrong here, and what I’m seeing you do, again, is take a small piece of information – that I sometimes bottom  – and twist it until it fits into your defeatist mind-set.

Isn't my little desire to be "owned" (not literally, but you know what I mean) just plain selfish of me... childishly demanding from the woman what she considers to be the best part of being a woman in a relationship with a man?

Once again, defeatist, and also I’m feeling that “reassure me, mistress, reassure me,” tug at my sleeve. It’s not that wanting reassurance is inherently bad, but you’re asking for it in a passive-aggressive way. Since you’re a long-time reader of my writing, you know perfectly well that I support D/s relationships, and you know I’m not going to tell you that it’s selfish of you to want to be a slave. So why approach me like this? If you can’t be honest even in an email to a BDSM person who you will never meet face-to-face, how can you ever hope to get what you want with a real person? It has to start somewhere.

I’ve addressed the “how do I find a partner” question endlessly both here and in the Stranger column, so I’m not going to get into that here. But it’s not just about getting in the same room with a kinky woman – you have to be emotionally ready as well. Your anxiety about who you are is inhibiting your ability to just accept yourself. Your view of kink, and women, and what kinky women want, is all very one-dimensional and rigid. That’s not how healthy human sexuality works, and if you don’t learn flexibility, even if you find a dominant women, your D/s relationships will fail. If you keep putting yourself down for being submissive, and telling yourself that what you want doesn’t exist anyway, over time you’ll harden into a classic Mr. Defensive, and that’s not a person you want to be.

Thank you for your time in reading that long email, and again love your work. Have a great day.

Well, we’ll see if you still think I’m so great after this dose of tough-love. But as I said in my private reply to you, I think there are a lot of people in the world who might benefit from some of it as well. What you want is out there, but it’s going to take some work to get it. Good luck to you in that journey.

Speaking of photos, Roman has a bunch of links to photos of Folsom Street Fair over on his blog. There are some in the comment string as well. Not safe for work viewing, but otherwise delightful...

I'm Glad It's Monday So I Can Relax.

Well, not really. But it was a crazy weekend, with a big private party Saturday night, and the bondage class and party at the Wet Spot last night. I’ve had no time to write. But here’s a picture from the event I was at Saturday night.

My friend T. has been placed into a leather body-bag and laced into a metal frame, so that he’s suspended in the air. It’s a fairly low-stress bondage experience, but you can hardly move at all. (I should remark that it's low-stress unless some evil man takes the pin out and spins that frame end over end, which did happen, eep!)

So T. looked so nice all encased and strung up that we decided a certain cute (and petite) lady should stretch out on top of him and relax. I mean, she was wearing these awfully high heels. It hurts a girl's feet to be standing up in those all evening.

Poor guy. It's terrible what we do to people in Seattle...

From the Mailbag

Dear Matisse,

I occasionally peruse the escort ads and use their services. However, I am really looking for a specific service (it’s nothing too weird) but have often been disappointed because I didn’t really get what I wanted. I’ve sometimes tried to ask but the girls I call are always hesitant to talk about their services for fear I’m a cop or part of a sting - which I completely understand. How do I broach the subject and find out if I can get what I’m looking for before setting up an 'encounter'?

You can’t. Not if it involves asking for anything illegal. People ask me this all the time, on both sides of the equation, and it always sort of puzzles me. I recall a young escort getting really upset with me because I “wouldn’t” tell her the proper way to inform a prospective customer that she’d do sex for money. The proper way meaning: a way that was completely clear to the client, but a way in which no police officer would know (or be able to prove) what she meant. She refused to believe me that I didn’t know of any such way.

There are certain terms and phrases, of course. But vice cops are just as up on code words and jargon as sex workers and their clients - that’s their job, after all. And if there was some easy and reliable word game you could play to get around the laws, the laws wouldn’t be much good, would they? Not that they are terribly effective as they stand. And not that I agree with them for an instant. But one has to deal with things as they are, not as one wishes them to be.

There are escort review boards, of course, although you shouldn’t believe everything you read there. And you should assume that cops read those boards, too.

So, no, there is no risk-free way to negotiate illegal services with a stranger. If you do that – and lots of people do – you do so at a certain level of risk. Is it a big risk? When you look at how many people, on both sides, who engage in sex for money each day, versus how many of those people get arrested, you could say the risk is relatively small. Of course, if it’s you who gets busted, it’s not going to matter that you’re the exception to the rule.

You do have my sympathy in your dilemma, but the only advice I can offer would be: you can either spend the money to shop around until you meet someone who does what you’re looking for and stick with her, or you can hunt for cheap airfares to Nevada, where prostitution is legal. In the meantime, stop voting for law-and-order conservatives who promise to “clean up” crime, because this is the dirty stuff they’re talking about.

I'm home. I had a lovely, lovely time, but it's good to be back. I missed my darling Max, and I missed Roman, and my cat was quite put out with me for being gone so long.

So while I unpack, entertain yourself with the new column... Fans of the silly phone calls will enjoy it.

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Public Service Announcement

So if you were in our suite last night and you've lost your glasses, we have them...

***

Yikes! I'm deep in the usual about-to-leave-town, have-a-million-things-to-do panic. But as promised, my advice to those concerned about the recent fake-sex-ad issue on Craig's List. Dan Savage also addresses the incident in his column, and I agree with his take on it.

Bye!

I came home last night after kissing Roman goodbye for a few days – due to our jam-packed schedule for the next week, we won’t have another real date until Thursday the 28^th, so we had to get a lot of kissing (and other things) in before that separation. I mean, we’ll see each other at Folsom, but he’s there to have face time with some of his major customers, and sell rope/perform at the street fair. It’ll be a mad swirl of activity, so we’ll have some stolen smooches, but we’re not counting on a lot more than that. However, as Max and I noticed while he was away on his trip, sometimes missing the one you love can be a sweet thing, when you know it won't be for too-too long.

Since I’m on the subject of relationships, perhaps I should give you an update on the various people in my world. There’s a sweet young thing, often to be found in my house lately, who we will call Puck. (Yes, as in Shakespeare’s Puck.) She’s wearing Max’s collar. She survived what sounded like a fairly eventful road-trip with Max and she still seems to like him, so that’s good. And she’s going down to Folsom with him. Just in case you were wondering what kinky people do for fun on a chilly Tuesday night: yesterday she and Max took part in a rubber-duck race. That’s not a typo. In celebration of Puck’s birthday, a number of people went to the new flowing fountain at Cal Anderson Park with those yellow plastic rubber ducks and raced them. While I’m told competition was brutal, it’s unclear to me who won. However, when I came home from my date with Roman, I found a souvenir on my keyboard.

Looks perfectly appropriate for “Talk Like a Pirate” day.

I have been asked about Xavier. Yes, he’s a real person, and yes, he’s a lot of fun. I’m not being deliberately mysterious about him, it’s simply that unlike Max and Roman, Xavier has not expressed any interest in being written about, and he has no public persona in the BDSM community that I can reference. What I can say about him is that he played me the song “Brand New Key”, as covered by an artist named RobinElla, and now it is totally stuck in my head.

Rope. Rubber duckies. Rollerskates. So goeth the days and nights of a professional dominatrix.

Example #437 of how I have the coolest clients in the world: In response to my angsty post about buggy OS reinstalls and missing drivers, the sweet guy who actually gave me the otherwise-fabulous laptop to begin with (whom I am hereby dubbing Jet because I hate doing the one-initial thing), called me yesterday, made arrangements to meet me in a coffee shop, and spent an hour and half of his not-very-abundant time fixing my machine. I’m very happy now. Yes, I could have paid someone to do it, and given a lot of time and patience I might have been able to puzzle it out myself, but I’m extremely grateful to Jet for taking the trouble. My guys are so good to me.

Other client events: I also met with a new client yesterday, who was so extremely nervous that he was sweating and visibly trembling. I mean – this was happening while he was just sitting in the living room talking to me. I was concerned that he had some medical condition I would need to be careful of, so I asked him and he told me, no, he was just nervous. It was sort of endearing, although when someone is that nervous, it’s hard for me to tell if the scene is working for them. I have a number of ways of measuring enthusiasm and overall happiness with the scene – facial expression, body language, tone of voice, and, ahem, other physical indications… Someone who walks into the room in a highly nervous state skews all those cues. So one has to just take them on faith. Fortunately it was not a physically intense scene – mainly foot worship, which happens to be one of my favorites. He was very sweet guy and I hope we meet again.

Very Good Thing In My Life:

Max is home from his trip! Yay! My sweetheart is back! We get to spend 4 days together and then he leaves Friday for Folsom, and I leave the day afterwards.

A Not-So-Good Thing:

My laptop is acting up. Basically, I could not reliably connect to the web, and I thought it was a software conflict issue, so I re-installed the OS from the boot disk. That didn't go very smoothly, though - I got a lot of messages about how it couldn't find various files. I went on with the install anyway, and it boots up and everything, but now the ethernet light isn't showing green and I cannot get an internet connection at all. Arg.

I’m leaving town Saturday and this needs to be resolved by then. Anyone have a laptop repair place they like close to Capitol Hill?

Edited to add: The other good thing? I just realized - there's an H&M in San Francisco now! w00t! I am so there.

I'll write a real post for tomorrow, but in the meantime, enjoy the new column....

My dear readers: Yes, I am very much aware of the RF Jason thing. I am always pleased to know what's on your minds, but please, at last count I'd gotten some fifty-odd emails telling me about it. I'm on it, really. Look for a column with my opinion in next week's Stranger.

What did I do over the weekend?

Well, I implemented a new (to me and Xavier, anyway) form of bondage: twenty-five pound bags of salt! My ever-thoughtful Roman conceived of the idea, and provided me with the bags themselves. He uses them in his dye process. It’s so nice to have sweetly supportive poly-partners.

Xavier lay down on the floor and I piled them on his arms and legs, pinning him (mostly) down. It was great fun, but dammit, Xavier, being both large and strong, is not an easy guy to immobilize. Perhaps fifty-pound bags next time.

And I also went out to dinner and a movie with my darling Roman. As a reward for a booth-bunny job well done, he took me to see Crank. Roman is very good at picking movies I'll like, and this one stars Jason Statham, who I have loved since I saw him in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Afterwards we had dinner at the Buenos Aires Grill, where we had a meat orgy to rival the BBQ we ate in Austin last week. And we still took home a box full of leftovers - there was about twice as much food as could eat, and we ate a lot. So I strongly recommend the family-style mixed grill, even if I did accidentally consume some sweetbread before I realized that I was eating a pancreas, for god’s sake. I am very strange about food sometimes. Muscle meats = good, organ meats = eeeeeeew! I know it’s absurd, but there it is.

Where is my sweet Max in this weekend, you ask? Out of town, actually, on his annual roar-around-at-high-speed-road-trip. I hope he and his companion are have a lovely time. While I miss him, I have been enjoying having a few days to myself quite thoroughly. I expect to continue to do so…

Today, I have not one but two pieces in The Stranger. The regular column, and a separate article about local porn producers Rodney Moore and Farrell Timlake.

In other news: I so cannot wait to see this show. It's going to be amazing.

Bye!

So, now that the roaring insanity of my life has been whipped back onto its haunches… I believe I promised to tell ya'll something about my trip to Texas.

I have to consider what can I talk about, though. It would be indiscreet to tell some of the stories here, you see. Like how during one of the bondage (?) classes, Extremely Annoying Presenter X was adroitly skewered by a barbed remark from the back row, and I laughed so hard I had to duck down in the booth to try to control myself. No, I shouldn't say any more about that one.

Some of them you just had to be there for. Like GrayDancer’s keynote speech – soon to be featured on his podcast – during which he stripped down from a garish kimono, to a t-shirt that said “100% Kimono Boy”*, and then to a rope corset and g-string, and then to no clothes whatsoever. Yep, that's right, buck naked, in front of all of us. That took guts. I generally hate speeches and ceremonies, but I liked this one.

The important part is: Twisted Monk sold a ton of rope. I mean – wow. A lot. And it was really interesting for me to be there sort of incognito. (I was not introducing myself as Matisse, you see.) A handful of people knew who I was, but I think I largely flew under the radar, which was just fine with me. I get plenty of time in the spotlight - this was Roman’s show. It was great to see all the people that wanted to see him and talk to him and get rope from him – he worked really hard to create what he’s got, and I’m proud of him.

We did co-star Saturday night, though, because the same sweet pretty girl that we did the kidnapping scene with offered us a re-match at the dungeon party. So we did what any right-thinking perverts would do. We threw Miss Red down on the floor, Roman sliced off her clothes with a knife, and we proceeded to pummel, clamp, flog, crop and pierce her naked body.

Now, there are some thing you can count on at any dungeon party, and one of them is that is you get a cute girl naked, people are going to stop and look at your scene. So I’m thinking that was one of the reasons why, when I stepped back for a moment to catch my breath, I saw that damn near everyone who wasn’t engaged in play already was standing at the minimum polite distance away, watching us. It was flattering, if slightly startling, because I hadn’t been aware of them all coming to our corner of the room.

But perhaps another reason was that Roman and I put on a good show when we co-top. The party attendees weren’t the only ones watching, however. I forget sometimes that other places are not as bloodsports-friendly as Seattle.

Snippet of an email I sent to a freind the next day:

Monk and I thrashed this cute girl last night, and the damn Dungeon Monitor stood over our scene the whole time scowling. I think he didn't like us doing needles. But hey, there were no rules against them.

My pal's reply:

Imagine - the Austin ROPE Symposium, and the DM didn't like needles! You are such a nasty transgressive girl.

Oh yeah. I forgot. You get spoiled in your hometown, when everybody knows you, and the DMs don’t bother you. Especially when the hometown is Seattle. The scene we did with Miss Red was pretty to look at, extremely fun to do, and definitely physically intense for her. However, it would not be regarded as edgy or dangerous here in Seattle. In Austin, however, the DM acted as if we were about to do heart surgery with chainsaws. Oy. It did not enhance the mood.

But we had a good time in spite of that. There were actually a number of attractive Austin people I would have enjoyed playing with, and I regretted that by Sunday night I was really too tired to do another scene. But perhaps I’ll get other opportunities.

______

*Gray is not, in fact, a Kimono Boy, which is what made it so funny. However, I imagine that there probably was a serious Kimono Boy or two in the audience.

Also: I have time tomorrow and Friday, so if you've been thinking of seeing me, call me...

Okay, I know I said I’d tell stories today – but I’m buried under a small avalanche of obligations and deadlines. More soon, I swear.
I will share one snippet of information, though. If you ever wish to engage in a meat orgy near Austin, this would be the place. And dear god, they even have mail-order. That's dangerous. Thanks to Goose & Gander, Hannah, and Red & Chance for turning Roman and I on to this fleshy delight, and for all their helpful hospitality this past weekend.