It’s last Tuesday, I’m sitting in my office, and the scene outside my window is dazzling white. I’m working on the computer, being happy that I don’t have to leave my house today, when the phone rings…

Ring ring!

I weigh the wisdom of answering it at all, but it might be someone I actually want to talk to, so…

Me: Hello?
Caller: Mistress Matisse?
Me: Yes, this is she.
Caller: Yeah, how soon could you be at the Westin?

Now, that’s a question with many different answers. If I could tell Scotty to beam me there, I could arrive instantly. If I had wings and could fly, I bet I could be there in ten minutes. If my mother was there on her deathbed, I would get there very quickly even if I had to steal the neighbor’s Jeep.
But as it is, the answer for this caller is: never. Never, ever, in this lifetime, as far as you’re concerned, pal.

(Long-term readers and real-life clients will know already how outrageously rude I find it when strangers start out by just assuming I’m going to grace them with my presence merely because they wish it, and that the only point to be negotiated is when and where. Ha. There are qualifications to meeting me that go beyond the possession of a phone and a copy of The Stranger’s back pages. Mainly: I have to think I’d like you. I don’t think I’d like this man.)

And I’m not really interested in discussing this at length.

Me: No.
Caller: What?
Me: I said no.
Caller: Well, when could you be here?

Excuse me, are we having the same conversation?

Me: (very slowly) No. I am not coming to the Westin.

There’s a long pause, like he’s waiting for me to explain myself further. I don’t. With this caller’s apparent lack of listening skills, I think less is definitely more.

Caller: So you can’t come down here?

I don’t believe I used the word “can’t”. That word subtly implies a sense of constraint, and I feel perfectly at ease about not going to Westin to meet this caller. But let’s not quibble.

Me: That’s correct.

Click. He hangs up.

I go back to my work. I need to get a separate line for my good boys…

The Mistress is a busy girl today.... so entertain yourself with the new column.

Prompted by a reader comment yesterday, here is a snippet from a type of email I get occasionally…

Why don’t you write about what you really think about your work/clients?…Your fears and dark moods? You’re always so artificially upbeat and perky, you’re not a spooky mistress, you’re like a cheerleader!

Spooky? I think this particular person has confused BDSM with Goth. No, I am not spooky. I am kinky.

And I am always mildly surprised when random people tell me that I should be writing this blog to suit their specifications. (Especially when you consider that hey folks, you ain’t paying me for this. If you want to hire me to write something, you just speak right up and we’ll talk about that.)

I don’t write about my sex-worker angst because I don’t have any. Bear in mind, I’ve been in the industry since I was nineteen. I’ve worked through a lot of the beginner issues and I’m in a really good place with my career now. Sure, I get stressed and cranky sometimes. That power outage last month? I had to cancel appointments, I lost money, and I was so cranky about that. I was the newly-elected Mayor Of Crankyville during those few days. Believe me.

But huge, sweeping bouts of work-related emotional trauma that encompass my whole being? Nah. Doesn’t happen. I’m a boringly even-keeled kinda girl. I hear that I’m messing with your ideas of what a sex worker thinks and feels, but – deal.

And – as I say this for perhaps the ten thousandth time – questions like this presuppose that I have an adversarial relationship with my clients. That's way off base. I’ve met a few genuine assholes in the course of my career – although not as many as you’d think. Most guys I’ve met had good intentions. Sometimes they just need to be schooled a bit in the fine points.

Far more than assholes, I’ve met guys who didn’t mean any harm, exactly, but who had a lot of intense issues about their own sexuality. I can help with that in some cases, but some guys bring so much negative energy to the session that I simply can’t deal with them. It’s too bad, but the amount of work it takes to stay centered and keep good boundaries with someone like that – it’s exhausting. I’d rather spend the time with someone with whom I can relax.

So I’ve phased out all the guys that I didn’t like playing with, and I’ve learned how to pick new clients that I will like. And I have worked my way to a place where I do get to pick and choose. I hardly see anyone new anymore, it’s almost all guys I know. They treat me extremely well, and I try to treat them just as well in return. To include: protecting their privacy. I take that very seriously.

True, some guys tell me, “You can write about me, I’m okay with that.” But there are still problems with that, as I talked about here. I don’t want my guys to feel jealous and competitive, so I don’t write much about clients at all.

Sex work is not something I do in order to have something interesting to write about. This is my career. I have a lot of clients say to me, “Please don’t quit or move anywhere, don’t retire.” I find that very sweet – and I’m not going anywhere. This is what I do, I like it, and I’ll be doing it until I’m quite old and the phone doesn’t ring anymore. And after that happens, then I will write a book all about how I did it, and there will be some stories there that I haven’t told before.

But that’s a long way away. And you’ll have to buy the book!

Writing a column, and downloading from iTunes…

Ship of Fools, World Party. Loved this song when it came out in the eighties, and I used it have it on vinyl. I was delighted to find it on iTunes.

Tall Cool One, Robert Plant.

Little by Little, Robert Plant. Love the lyric hooks with the Zepplin-y riffs.

Who Do You Want To Be, Oingo Boing. I remember dancing to this one the first time I ever snuck into a bar underage. It's another oldie-goldie I had on vinyl. I say I had it, although actually, I think there’s still a dusty crate of old albums sitting in the back of a closet somewhere. And I still have a turntable, too - although I’m not sure I have a needle.

The Rockafella Skank, Fatboy Slim.

Cherry Bomb, The Runaways.

Brother of The Mayor of Bridegwater, The World/Inferno Friendship Society. I don’t know why I like this song. It’s just…strangely catchy.

Let Love In, Goo Goo Dolls.

She’s Crafty, Beastie Boys. Because I am. (Even though the Beastie Boys don’t seem to mean that in an entirely complimentary way here, heh.) This song was on the jukebox at The Lusty Lady when I danced there, so I have shaken my naked behind to it a lot.

Sex And Candy, Marcy Playground.

Red Right Hand, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. I have a fantasy about having sex with Nick Cave while he sings in my ear the whole time. And there’s another version of the fantasy where I do a threesome with him and Tom Waits. And they both sing. (Tom would sing something from Bone Machine, of course.) I think we'd all have to drink whisky and smoke cigarettes for it to really work, though.

Okay, back to work…

I had an amazingly nice weekend. I love my whirlwind social life, but it’s very nice to get to spend relaxed time alone with Monk. Sunday I slept late  – yay – and then Monk and I went to Banya 5. This is so the weather for hot tubs and steam rooms. I swear I could feel all the molecules in my body, which had sort of shrunk down lately with dry cold, get all warm and lubricated and say, “Ahhh….”

And I booked both of us a salt scrub. Now, a salt scrub, if you haven’t had one, is one of life’s great pleasure/pain experiences. It is just what it sounds like: they put you on something like a massage table, take handfuls of coarse sea salt, and scrub your body with it. It exfoliates all the dead skin off you. My general experience with spa scrubs is that the first so-many strokes feel good, and then it starts to be a little intense, and then right before you’re about to say, “Whoa, ease up a little,” the scrubber moves to a different part of your body. Sort of like being taken right up to your safeword, over and over.

At most spas it’s done like this: you lay under a drape, they scrub one small area at a time, wipe all the salt off, and then cover it up again. Very chaste and discreet.

This one was different because of the setup: the whole room is a wet room, all tile and concrete, with a drain in the floor, and lots of hoses and buckets around. The girl giving me the scrub offered me the option of drape or no drape, and I chose none, of course. I took off my swimsuit and lay down naked on the black vinyl-covered table. (It looks a lot like the table I have in my dungeon, actually.)

She tied on a black rubber apron and started off by pouring buckets of warm water all over me. Big buckets. It’s interesting to lie on a table and get totally drenched like that, and just see and hear the water going everywhere.

Then she rubbed me down with some honey-something-or-other mixture, just kinda slopping it anywhere in a charming fashion, and then poured more water over me to rinse me. And then she scrubbed me - very thoroughly. I think I’m now an eighth of an inch smaller in circumference, she scrubbed me so hard. Yow. But my skin is all soft and gleam-y, like a pearl.

So while there was nothing whatsoever sexual about this treatment, I did look around the room – and around the whole spa in general – and think about what kind of wet room I’d like to build into my house. I don’t do scat scenes, so I don’t need such a room for that. But I do other wet, messy things, and plus, tiles and hoses can just be very sexy all by themselves. I want to do some remodeling on the house this year, and while I don’t know for sure if a big bathroom redesign is in the cards, it’s definitely something I want to get some bids on. I’m a big fan of warm and lubricated.

First, about the new column. The Stranger is doing a re-org of both the website and the dead-tree paper, and things have been a little confused. Thank you to all my fans who wrote the webmaster and said, "hey, where's Control Tower?" They were still in process, but have no fear, here is the link.

I haven't seen a paper copy of this issue yet - but it's possible I got bumped. No one has told me so, it's just a hunch I have. So if you're a paper-reader, and I am not there, I'll be back next week. (Edit: I checked. I got bumped. Whoops. Oh well, read me online for this week.)

The Kink Calendar, sadly, will now be online-only. Sorry, kids, they needed some space. There will be a little blurb in the paper saying "Hey, go look online for the kinky events!"

Okay, now we have that squared away... Boys, prepare to be bored. (Unless you're a drag queen. Or seriously, seriously metrosexual.) Because the rest of this post is all about makeup.

So, ladies, after some nudging by pals, I decided that perhaps I was in a rut, and thus I have lately been trying out a wider range of hair and beauty stuff. Allow me to share with you what worked and what didn’t.

Girlie stuff I have tried lately that rocked:
Jonathan Product: Create Root Volume Brushable Lifting Spray. We Southern girls like big hair, and this stuff, whoo! Volume is right. High volume. It is the stuff teenage-beauty-pageant dreams are made of. I could be in an eighties music video with this hairspray. I love it.

Shu Uemura Fiber Xtension Mascara. It’s good, although it gets clumpy if you reapply later, so that’s a problem. But still, impressive.

Nars Powder Blush. I got the color called "Orgasm", of course. I don't know if it's really the color of afterglow, but it's a pretty natural-looking shade that blends nicely and stays put better than most.

Nars Cream Eye Shadow. I chose the shade called “Swing”, which is an eggplant color I think looks nice with brown eyes. Teamed with Urban Decay lid primer, this stuff actually - gasp - stays on my eyelids with vanishing or getting all creased. I’m in awe.

And ladies, SkinCeuticals? Woot. Love this stuff. The C+E Ferulic makes my skin so happy and bright. Yeah, it is pricey…but you know, eBay is a wonderful place. I’m just saying.

Stuff that was pretty good:
Frederic Fekkai Technician Color Care Mask. My hair wasn’t really damaged before, because Craig, my Hair God, would never allow that to be so. So I wouldn’t say this conditioner changed my life or anything. But still, winter-time dryness and all, one’s hair needs some extra pampering, and it’s a good intense conditioner.

Jonathan Product: Silky Dirt Shine & Define Crème: Not bad, although I think Secret Weapon is nearly as good and much less expensive.

Stuff I thought was lame:
Smashbox Photo Finish Foundation Primer: Everyone loves this stuff. I tried it and it made me look like a corpse. Maybe the problem is that I don’t actually wear foundation, just a little powder, so… But it felt like I was wearing Spackle. I hated it, so back to the store it went.

Jonathan Product: Create Volume Thickening Foam: Uh, Jonathan, this watery foam of yours doesn’t create anything except crunchy, stringy rat-tail-looking hair. Refund, please!

Stuff that the jury is still out on:
MD Skincare Alpha Beta Daily Body Peel: Well, I don’t know about “peel”, because I am not peeling. However, there’s a 30-day supply of these product-soaked pads – which are rather small, and annoyingly prone to rolling up into a wad – and you’re supposed to rub them all over yourself. So I’ll see what I think when I have used them all up…but I wouldn’t rush right out and buy this.

MAC Studio Fix powder. Again, everyone else loves this stuff, and I’m not sure. It’s a nice texture and the oh-so-glamorous boy at the MAC counter downtown did a good job picking out the right shade for me.
However, it's pretty heavy, which, if that’s what you want, is great. But I’m not used to wearing thick makeup on my skin, especially not for everyday. I think I might save it and use it for photo shoots, any kind of performance I might do, or for going out clubbing, I think it would be fine for that. Max is taking me shopping for (belated) Xmas gifts this weekend, maybe I’ll look for something sheerer from MAC.

Last night was interesting: I got snowed in at my studio. I started a session at four pm with Milo, and all was clear. We were playing pretty seriously for about two hours, and I forgot all about snow. Then, as I slowly returned to an awareness of a world outside my dungeon, I thought, Oh, I should check outside. I pulled back the curtains, and boom, it was winter wonderland out there.

Milo has a 4-wheel drive and he’s used to driving in snow, so he got out on the road to go home. But I went outside and looked down the not-small hill my house sits on top of, and looked at the three-plus inches of snow, and thought, no way. The Florida girl is staying right here.

I was, however, hungry. Now, my part of town is not extensively served by food delivery people. It’s pretty much Pizza Hut and Dominos. So I called Pizza Hut, because I can actually stomach Pizza Hut pizza okay.

They weren’t delivering. Because of the snow. Damn.

Now, I haven’t eaten Dominos since I found out they were owned by a Bible-thumper. Well, actually, I think I’d given them up before that, because their pizza’s not very good. But I believe he’s since sold out, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

I called. It sounded a bit confused on the other end. “Are you still delivering?” I asked.

“….uh, yeah. Yeah. (speaks off-phone: Are we still delivering?) Yeah, sure.”

I was not filled with confidence by that exchange. But in the spirit of optimism, I gave them an order and got on with other things.

Forty-five minutes went by. Dinner began to seem like an unlikely possibility.

An hour. Okay, I’ve officially given up, and instead successfully made arrangement with a rescue party to send in a St Bernard.

Then: ding-dong! I fling open the door to find a small dark-skinned man in a red cap, holding a flat box. Snow was falling steadily behind him.

“Holy cow! I can’t believe you made it!”

“I left car,” he said, gesturing down to the bottom of the steep hill. “I walk up hill.” He held out the box.

“You walked up the hill? Good god.” I took the box. It was warm. “Here,” I said, handing him some money. “That’s for the pizza.” Then I handed him another twenty. “And that’s for you.”

He looked at the bill, seeming confused. “Is too much money.”

“No, keep that, that’s for you, for walking up the hill. Hazard pay!”

He looked unconvinced.

“Take it,” I said.

He smiled uncertainly and ducked his head. “Thanks.”

The pizza itself? About as good as I remembered it: not terribly. But hey, it was hot and it was food. And I hope that dedicated pizza guy bought himself a stiff drink with that tip, because he deserves one.

From the Mailbag

…I am only 21 but I have known for several years that I don’t want to be involved in any sexual dynamic other than as a submissive. This means I occasionally have to deflect perfectly interesting girls because I know any vanilla entanglements are ultimately doomed. No big deal really, people turn each other down for a millions reasons every day. But recently I fucked up in a big way. I allowed myself to get swept away by a girl and before I knew it we were dating. I realized that I was making an absolute douchebag move by allowing her to get attached in a romantic sense but I couldn’t seem to halt the momentum. I then made the unforgivably cowardly choice of faking sexual enjoyment until I could think of a way to diffuse the situation with out making her feel rejected because of something that is not her fault. So far I have no ideas. I could tell her the truth but I am almost positive that would result in my entire social circle finding out about my proclivities. Which I am not really ashamed of but I think most people would rather not know, even my urbane, little hipster buddies.
So how do you tell a really great person that you can’t see them anymore because you need a girl who can make you cry? Is better for everyone to lie about things like this? What is an uncreepy way of telling your friends about your sexual variance?
Thank you very much for your time. Good luck with a new year of columns.

j

PS Has becoming a public figure altered the dynamic of meeting new clients? I mean do subs approach you differently now that you are 'famous'?

Last question first: yeah, it’s changed the dynamic. I know some perfectly nice guys are afraid to approach me. And being high-profile means people come in with a lot of preconceived ideas about what you’ll be like, many of which are inaccurate. But it’s nice that in I now get so much potential business that I can really pick and choose.

Now, to your situation. Sweet boy, integrity is an important thing, but don’t flay yourself bloody over this. (That’s a woman’s job.) I myself did this exact same thing when I was in my late teens and early twenties. You know you’re kinky, but if you’re not finding other kink partners, it’s easy to drift into vanilla relationships. You meet someone nice and fun and cute, and you’re bored, and perhaps a bit lonely and horny…And then whoops, you wake up in bed with your new girl/boyfriend and think, “Shit, what I am doing here? This isn’t going to work.”

And I agree that yeah, sometimes it’s okay to lie in this situation. The vague, non-judgmental, “You’re great, but this just isn’t working out for me” – that’s the way to go here. No matter what she says, do not get into the kink thing. Coming out under stress like this is the worst way to go. Be gentlemanly about it, but be firm and do not waffle. Do not discuss her or the situation with your mutual pals. Once it’s broken off, do not go back.

If you decide later that you want to talk about your kink to your friends, I suggest you let it happen sort of organically. My practice – back when I had vanilla friends - was that I didn’t volunteer a lot of information, but I would respond to remarks like the one in this hypothetical situation…

Friend: (watching TV) Hey, look at that chick all dressed in leather with a whip in her hand, that’s freaky.

You: I think it’s pretty cool.

Friend: You do?

You: Yeah. I like kinky girls.

Friend: You mean, you’d like a girl to like tie you up and whip you or something?

You: Yeah, I think it would be hot. (Or, “Yeah, I’ve done it and it was hot.”)

Friend. Wow…. (silence as friend thinks about this.)

Don’t act embarrassed, be very cool and matter-of-fact about it. Don’t try to prolong the exchange, just let your friend shut up and mull the whole idea over, and I can pretty much guarantee that soon, they’ll raise the topic with you again. The trick is to make them ask the questions. That removes the creepy TMI aspect. So, respond honestly to remarks about kink, and if that provokes questions, answer them, although not at too much length. Maintain a little mystery.

My experience is that if someone brings up the topic more than, say, twice, it may be because they’re curious about kink themselves. They may or may not be someone you want to date, however.

One exception to the answering-remarks rule: if someone presents themselves as rabidly anti-BDSM, or is openly mocking you for your sexuality, do not engage them in conversation. That’s a no-win situation. Just shrug and smile and refuse to debate them, and remove yourself from the situation if they won't let it drop.

Now get out of that vanilla relationship and go find a nasty girl.

Just a few remarks, because I’m busy writing a column…

The workshop Sunday where I tied up Monk’s bits? Was great. It was just about twenty minutes or so, very basic cock and ball ties, but Monk and I always have great comic timing together whenever we perform, and we had fun. Monk looked oh-so-buff and muscular and sexy all naked. I was quite proud of him - he’s got balls, that man. (As everyone saw.) I was a stripper for years, but there’s a difference between being one dancer among many in a dark club, and being the only naked person in a brightly-lit room with forty-something people looking at you. That takes a lot of self-confidence. But considering how hard Monk works at the gym, he should be self-confident. Woot.

We got a lot of feedback from people wanting more genital-bondage information, so we’re considering doing a specific class for that sometime, rather than just an overview mixed in with the head- and hair-bondage class. But I think we should charge more for the tickets, because while our bondage models are usually volunteers, I’d want to pay anyone who modeled for an in-depth class on that subject. That would be pretty intense for them.

So, completely off the kink map… I’ve been following this story with interest, and I totally support the parents and doctors in their decision. This poor child is destined to be a permanent infant, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making it easier for her family to care for her. So what if she’s shorter? She’s not going to be playing pro basketball or walking a runway in Milan, so it doesn’t matter to her. And she definitely doesn’t need to have periods, let alone have the possibility of getting pregnant. Even at the size she is now, changing her diapers, bathing her, and moving her from bed to wheelchair has got to be difficult. I don’t begrudge those parents anything they can do to try to preserve some time and energy for their other kids, and for their own lives.

So I was looking at the rather low level of comments last week and thinking, huh, must be a slow week for blog hits. That happens sometimes. I get a respectable number of hits per day, on average. Sometimes it dips a bit, other times there are little spikes when some higher-ranking blog links to me. But I don’t fuss much about it.

Then I checked my actual numbers. Wow, Wednesday of last week I had more than double the usual visitors! Ya’ll weren’t saying much, but you sure were here. I thought maybe ErosBlog or someone else big had linked to me because of the naughty photos. But there’s no big surge from any one URL. The numbers dipped back to normal over the next few days. Funny.

Monk and I have talked about what kinds of posts generate the most comments on our blogs. The amusing thing is that, lately, I think I get the most comments when I talk about clothes or fashion. Maybe it’s that unlike kink or poly or sex work, those are easily accessible topics and people can feel comfortable offering their opinion. Whereas if I talk about how I tied up Monk’s boy bits for the genital bondage section of the bondage class yesterday, that’s not an experience everyone can relate to, so people don’t talk back as much.

It’s not that the sheer number of comments is the only measure of success in a blog. I get a lot of really sweet emails telling me how much they enjoy reading me, and a lot of in-person comments as well, which is nice. And I am pleased by how rarely I have to delete nasty flame-type stuff. Comment-spamming is a worse problem, but still, it’s easy enough to delete and ban the IP.

It’s been almost three years that I’ve been blogging now, and overall, I’m pleased about how this blog has turned out for me. It’s had a big effect on my life, much bigger than I ever thought it would. My existing clients now know much more about my day to day life than they used to, and potential new clients tell me they feel more at ease with me having read how I feel about what I do. My friends can keep up with what I’m doing, and I’ve met some really neat new people that I probably wouldn’t have known otherwise. And I got a chunk of it published, which was quite delightful.

The fact that Time magazine named bloggers (among others) Person of The Year suggests to some that blogs are now hopelessly out of fashion. Perhaps they are no longer the hippest new thing, but I doubt they’re going anywhere soon.

As has been noted elsewhere... This Sunday Max does his monthly bondage class, and this month he's doing head, hair and genital bondage. I'll be making a guest-expert appearance to discuss and demo some cock and ball bondage, and guess who's agreed to be my stunt-model, even though he's not really a bottom? Monk. So that should be highly entertaining.
And it'll just be a great class overall - see you there!

As I continue to take a few days off from writing... the new Stranger column: 2006 Sex News In Review.

And: this is how my sweetheart Max was entertaining himself (and a number of other people) New Year's Eve doing while I was drinking champage and taking dirty pictures of cage sex. (Warning: sexy bondage photo!)

There are some other NYE photos of this bamboo tripod in use, too. I'm hoping to see some of them posted over on another blog.

You know, I think I’ll take the week off from actually writing in this blog and just show you New Year's Eve pictures instead.

Like this one of Miss Candy sitting on top of the cage. A dangerous place to sit when it's busy. Note the arm already snaking up to unzip her latex gown.

There was plenty of sexy action.

The people watching were amazed that they could move around so much in there.

And there were plenty of appreciative watchers, too.

But while naked people in our cage is something of a NYE party tradition, the cage wasn’t the only party hotspot. More on that tomorrow…

Oh, my god, did I have a good time New Year’s Eve. I have a lot of party pictures, and a number of stories, but for today, here’s a cute one of two happy guests doing piggy-back bondage...



And one very sexy one of some hot naughtiness in the cage….
More stories soon…

One more family-holiday highlight: I turned my mother on to the Fatboy Slim music video, "Weapon Of Choice", which she loved. She has a major thing for men who dance. And like many people, she actually didn't know that Christopher Walken was a trained dancer. She insisted we watch it about four times in a row and I had to swear to send her the link for it. Very cute.

Okay, have to run, I'm gearing up for a very festive weekend indeed. Hopefully I'll get some pictures from the annual New Years Eve debauch that I can post...

New Column in The Stranger...

Today I fly home. My power is on, I'm not traveling anywhere for a while, and there are no major holidays coming up. I'm really, really looking forward to getting back to my usual happy, kinky routine...

Well, I had a nice Christmas day, and if you observe Christmas, I hope you did too. I’m not the biggest Christmas fan. Left to my own devices, I’d probably swap a gift or two with my loved ones and then spend the day hanging out quietly at home or going to a movie.

But my family makes a big deal out of it, so I go along. It’s interesting to be down in Georgia again. My relatives have been coming out to Seattle a lot lately, so it’s been two years since I visited. Max tells me that just a few short hours after we stepped off the plane, my southern accent was back in full force. I believe him – it took me some time to un-learn it when I moved north, but I didn’t want to sound like a hick. Thus, if you see me within a few days of my return Wednesday, don’t be surprised to hear me drawling and ya’ll-ing…

Notable moment: Max and I were at a large family party being given by my mother’s husband’s daughter. (That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? But saying “my stepsister” seems odd, given that my mom married this man when I was in my mid-twenties, and I hardly know her.) Anyway, suffice it to say that this lady and her husband are both gracious and genteel people, if rather conservative, and definitely not the sort to whom one would make lewd jokes. Max and I and a half dozen other people were sitting around the enormous mahogany dining-room table, finishing dessert after a buffet luncheon. Everyone was perfectly groomed and dressed in the usual way of well-to-do Atlantans, and everyone was, of course, on their very best social behavior.

Our host – who has the air of a man who might actually be a lot of fun if you got him alone and gave him a few drinks – was commenting on his impatience with their rambunctious pedigreed dog.

“You need to give Daisy her Christmas present,” his wife observed.

“I did!” He explained to the rest of us that he’d bought the dog an electric collar – the kind that gives the dog a small shock when it barks, thus inducing it to be quiet. Max and I exchanged glances. I own an electric dog collar, too. But I don’t put it on canines. I strap it around the genitals of human boys and zap them. It’s big fun.

The host went on.“And I put it on her, but it’s not working, Daisy's still out there barking like crazy.”

Without missing a beat, Max piped up. “Maybe she likes it.”

There was a momentary silence and then a titter of nervous laughter around the room, and I elbowed him under the table. My step-brother-in-law gave Max a look. “We’re not going to get into that conversation.”

But one corner of his mouth twitched.

It was sunny and seventy-something degrees on Tybee Island today. I could have gone swimming in the ocean.
Maybe I should come down for Christmas more often.

Spent a lovely day in Atlanta, and today I hop a plane over to Savannah to see my father. He actually lives on an island off the coast of Georgia, Tybee Island. Tybee is an interesting place in a time-capsule kind of way. Twenty years ago when my father bought his house there, it was a funky little beach town with a very sort of late-sixties look and feel to it. It was certainly not a moneyed place, not like Hiltonhead or Sea Island, and while it's slowly getting gentrified, it’s still pretty working-class. But he likes it, and the beach is gorgeous. I miss southeastern beaches.

Okay, last picture from the Malixe shoot, until I get back to Seattle and process some more…I think the three of these make a nice triptych.