New Toys

I've gotten an influx of new toys lately. Want to see? First, I went shopping at Mr. S in San Francosco and I now have a vast collection of new, extremely nasty clamps. This picture is not particularly threatening. However, this one is a pair of those clamps in action on Jae's pink bits, and it may frighten people. Rest assured I've done worse to them.

Electricity fans, rejoice. Bruce of KinkyMedical.net was at vending at Kinkfest and from him I bought some new leads and these tiny, very tight little clamps. Look at those needle-y little beaks!

Also at Kinkfest was Sam St. Michael of Hoydengear. That's where my little Cobra Stinger came from, and Sam gave me a couple of new impact toys to try out. (Non-squicky photo.) Short answer: Jae says they're mean. I believe her. The longer one is shot-weighted, so it's heavy. The the shorter, two-tailed one is rubber, and rubber toys are always nasty. I believe Sam calls them "Trouble" and "The Rubber Demon", and I can see why. But it's getting hard to find toys I don't already have. So I'm just all about finding innovations in impact.

I’m on the move today, with my treasured iPod tucked in my pocket. I always think my downloads looks like they belong to someone with a multiple personality. On the one hand, there’s stuff like Get Me Off, by Basement Jaxx, which is mindless nasty techno-dance, and Irresistable Bitch, by Prince, an oldie-goldie by His Purpleness, and SexyBack by, yes, okay, Justin Timberlake.

Then there’s Down On The Street (Take 15) by The Stooges, Living Dead Girl, by Rob Zombie, and Ace Of Spades, by Motorhead.

Schizophrenic.

But no matter. It will entertain me as I catch up with my Seattle life, and then I will in turn entertain you, so stay tuned.

Home

So, got back home from Kinkfest yesterday afternoon. I have had a great time zooming around lately, but I am quite, quite happy to be done traveling for a bit. I like being home, going about my accustomed little routine.

But Kinkfest was delightful. I drove down Thursday, and Friday morning went to the three places I always go in Portland: Powell’s, Countermedia, and Oregon Leather. Books and leather, mmmmm....

Then I went off to help Monk sell rope until it was time to go to the dungeon party. We hadn’t really thought we’d be in the space to play, but the mood overtook us, and while we didn’t do a formal scene exactly, we did get a little aggressive with each other. It was great fun. We joke about teaching a workshop sometime entitled, “Switching On A Dime: Cooperative Intense Sensation Scenes.” Which means: neither one of us is really being submissive to the other, we’ve just figured out how to push each other’s endorphin buttons.

Saturday morning Monk got up at the crack of dawn to go vend, and I slept until eleven and then did the walk of shame (not really) up five floors to my room. Host hotels are so convenient that way. Spent the rest of the day hanging out in the vendor area and chatting, doing a little shopping (pictures of what I bought to come, probably tomorrow) and sticking my head, briefly, in a few workshops.

I’m a real tough sell for workshops. I’ve been going to leather conventions since 1989, so there are very few subjects that I haven’t already seen presented – several times, probably. That doesn’t mean I won’t go see them again, if I think the presenter has a new angle on it – or if it’s a presenter I think is really good. There are certain people on the BDSM conference circuit who are such entertaining speakers that they could teach Flogging 101 and I’d go. They’re just that much fun to watch. Other people, though…Not so much. You can be a really wonderful person, and know your subject, but doing interesting presentations is a skill in itself. So while I am sure there were some good classes, I was there to play and socialize.

Saturday night I had a date with Jae, who has been goading and taunting me for weeks now because she's been wanting a thrashing. How could I refuse such an opportunity? Especially when a lovely, generous, and sincerely twisted pal of mine loaned me her stun gun. (*Yes, I said stun gun. Hey, it’s a low-voltage one, only 150,000v. And only below the waist. It was fine. I loved it so much that now I will have to buy my own.)

I rolled Jae around on the floor, and zapped her girlie bits with the stun gun and the Cobra Stinger, stuck needles in her, and hit her with various nasty implements. I was also feeling a little carnivorous, so I bit her back up so much that a pal later remarked that she looked “as if she’d been to a piranha swinger party.” (Photo, mildly NWF.)

For the end of the scene, I pulled out something I was just sure she’d hate: a nose-clamp, from Axmar. When she saw it, she thought it went on her clit, so she was quite surprised when I slipped it onto her septum.

And I was quite surprised when it sent her even deeper into a submissive space. I had thought surely she’d kick and scream. She even said, “Can you make it tighter, Ma’am?” I was happy to do so, and I loved tugging her face (carefully) to one side and then the other with a line I’d slipped through it.

After that scene wound up, I hung out, chatted and walked around the dungeon a bit, and then we went back to our room and collapsed into bed.

Sunday was mellow, lots of social time, and a very nice private wind-down party given by a lovely Portland lady I’ve known for years. So thank you to her for hosting us.

Now I’m going to get caught up with all the boys I’ve missed seeing the last few weeks. I have new toys and some new ideas, and soon I’ll have new photos as well. I love my life.

* Caution: I’m a highly experienced BDSM player, and so is Jae. I’ve been playing with her for over nine years, and I know her overall medical status and her pain tolerance very well. I know how to play with electricity without causing serious harm. You should NOT just start randomly zapping people with any kind of electrical instrument without being thoroughly educated in how that’s done and the potential risks, because electricity is something that, done wrong, can seriously injure or kill someone. So be fucking careful.

Want to hear me talk about polyamory? Go listen to me chat with the cool folks at Blowfish about loving more than one person, poly structures, the nature of jealousy, and whether young science fiction people are rejecting poly because the older science fiction people embraced it. This is a link to the main podcast page. Episode number 57 is the one you want. I'm writing this late on Thursday night, and I'm too brain-dead at the moment to figure out how to link to the precise episode. But I'm sure some clever person will tell me....

Edit: direct link!

Here and Gone
I got home yesterday from San Francisco, unpacked my bags, did a bunch of laundry, and then re-packed them, because today, I'm off to Portland for Kinkfest.

I have taught classes and done highly-publicized scenes at Kinkfest before, but I'm just as pleased not to be teaching or performing or anything like that this year. BDSM conferences are always a social whirlwind even without those added complexities. I'm hoping to just see friends, go to a couple interesting workshops, and do some fun scenes.

So, while I zoom off to the Rose City, enjoy... the new column.

And, a candid snapshot of Craig Morey and me, as Craig explains the deep artistic significance of asymetrical stockings in Japanese porn. NWF.
(I'm kidding. I have no idea what Craig was telling me at this moment, but I'm sure it was something completely appropriate and professional.)

Bye!

Check this out – Polaroids! Taken the old-fashioned way, with a Hasselblad! I haven’t had a photographer take Polaroids of me in years, I thought that had gone the way of the dodo bird. I was charmed.

The shoot went very well. We arrived at 11 am, and we left at a quarter to seven, which tells you something. That’s a long bloody shoot, even with getting my hair and makeup done on the front end and taking some breaks along the way. But we just kept going and going… Partly because Craig did the same dang thing photographers always do: we’d shoot a set, and he’d say “Ok, relax for a second,” and I’d let out a big sigh and slump into some limp posture – because modeling is harder work than you think – and he’d say, “Oh, wait, wait, that’s a great pose, hold that! Now, put your arm up a little higher and turn your face more towards me, great, now arch your back a little, good….” And there would go my break.

Craig also indulged in the same artistic torture that Tommy Edwards and other great photographers enjoy – they twist you into a really strenuous pose, and then say, “Oh, wait, I need another memory card/roll of film, so just hold that…” and then start fiddling with the camera.

But I’m not really complaining, mind you. It’s very nice that he thought I was photogenic even when I was sprawled around, trying to get my various muscles to stop quivering from strain. And he’s a cool guy, I’m extremely pleased to have gotten to meet him and work with him. I’ll be getting a CD of the digital images from him soon, so I’ll have some of those to show you before long. I think I’ll get some great pictures, and he got some images he seemed to like as well.

We did do some art-nudes at the end – but I will not be posting those on the site, sorry. They’re intended for the pleasure of Max and of Monk. However, Craig took some photos of my ass that he seemed to think were noteworthy, so watch his site, and sometime you might see photos of my behind there. Of course, since my face isn't in the photo, you may have to be someone who’s made a close study of my posterior to recognize me. But that might be a bigger club that I think…

Today, I am completely focused on modeling for Craig Morey. Nothing else matters. That's what I'm doing.
And when I'm done, I'm going to eat a huge meal and go to sleep.

Here I am in foggy but fabulous San Francisco! Today, I’ll do a little fetish shopping, get in one last workout before the Craig Morey shoot, and go do a podcast with the super-cool people over at Blowfish.com. I did a podcast with them when I was in town for Folsom Street Fair last year, and they invited me back for another visit. I’m looking forward to that, and I’ll link to it as soon as it’s live.

While we’re on the subject of podcasts: Monk bought me a state of the art microphone for my own podcasts, so I will be setting all that up when I get back from Kinkfest. Should be fun!

Here's the link to the column that's up now. But it's a re-run, as I was far too ill last week to write.

In keeping with yesterday's theme: How to get hurt. Not in the good way, either.

On a fashion note: Where in San Francisco should a girl go to buy thigh-high boots? Also, has anyone been in West Coast Leather – formerly North Beach Leather – lately? How’s their stuff looking? I like Madame S, but more selection is always good.

I got a long letter recently – but unlike some, this writer wants me to publish his issue. However, what I have to say about it may not be exactly what he expects.

(Note: I did edit it down a bit for length.)

Dear Matisse,

My on-again/off-again partner has at times been a professional Dominatrix, although within our own personal relationship she is…submissive to me. I say "at times" with regard to BDSM work because her primary relationship is with drugs.

We have seen you around once or twice and you are her role model, on both a professional and personal basis. We read the Control Tower regularly and she's clipped many of your articles to make a scrap book…. I'm writing you because I believe that you are one of the few people who might get through to her and impact her. She has made half-hearted attempts to quit doing drugs, mainly by replacing meth use with increased pot use or alcohol binges. I'm beside myself with anguish, because the person I love most is letting her life go down the drain and I don't know what to do.

…Edited for length – the person in question is engaging in behavior the writer doesn’t like…

…I've told her I'm not about to help her go down the wrong path…snip… She's been in a circle of drugs and sex industry work for about 10 years, and I have a very strong belief that if you are a drug addict, this is certainly the wrong business to be in. I was surprised to find that after doing this for 10 years she had no money. ...snip... She still has no money, and despite my efforts to teach her how to fish, so to speak, she prefers to be given fish. Needless to say she gets resentful when there are no fish left or a person gets tired of giving handouts!

I would very much appreciate it if you could write a column with your thoughts on drugs and Dom/sub relationships... How they affect personal relationships and if you believe a woman should even be IN the sex industry if she's a drug user....snip... It just seems like a waste of life and so empty to me.

Rather than come back to me and a healthy, stable environment, she continues to think that if she just gets a hotel room at an Extended Stay for a week or so she will be able to take enough clients to get back on her feet. After seeing this pattern over the past several years and then getting calls for me to help put her up at a hotel again, I've said no. …Edit: he’s given her money and tried to help her in the past … I feel great guilt but realize I'm enabling and maybe even dragging out her time to hit rock bottom by chipping in. It has affected me immensely on an emotional level, but I feel that until she gets clean nothing will ever work, between us or in her own life.

As I mentioned before, she looks up to you and draws much of her insight from your columns. It's a long shot, but perhaps some pointed comments from you might strike a chord within her and wake her up. Nothing I say or do at this point makes a difference, and I'm sad to see that after 3 years I have had so little impact on her life.

Please write something about this. Meth is an evil drug that is such a huge problem in our society today....snip... it's like watching a movie and I can't do a thing about her self destruction.

***

Well, I had some reactions right away to this email. But rather than just respond from that place, I decided to ask my friend Miss K for her take. Not only is she just a smart person, she’s also a former sex worker. And – she’s a former drug addict. She’s been clean for some years now and I’m proud of her for that. I can’t think of anyone more qualified to comment on this email. Here’s what she said:

Here's my impression: the key phrase is: "It just seems like a waste of life and so empty to me." Yeah, to you. The problem is, it's not your life. Being a Republican, punching a clock and breeding seems like an empty, wasted life to me, but that doesn't give me any right, moral or otherwise, to stop someone from doing it. Now, if you throw in the disease of addiction, I also don't have the ability to stop them, and neither do you!

Basically: you're writing the letter? You're the one with a problem. I strongly suggest immediate participation in Al-Anon. Their hotline number is (206)625-0000, and their meeting directory and links are online at www.seattle-al-anon.org. You've made a strong case for this woman to get into a 12-step program like Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous, but the thing that makes those programs work is that they're not for people who need them, they're for people who want them...Until she reaches out for help (and not to you!) to get clean, consider her on her own path. You don't have to go with her! In fact, she may hit her bottom faster if you don't.

Oh, and as for being in the sex industry while using drugs? Yeah, bad idea, but again, that’s just an opinion. Not that I approve of it, but we can't really know what goes on behind those doors.

I agree with Miss K. The only problem you can fix is your own. If your girlfriend has a drug problem, it's her problem. You said it yourself: you can’t do a thing about her self-destruction. So stop trying.

I confess to you, when I first read your email, it really pissed me off. I thought, “God, what a controlling person, he picked a woman he knew had a drug problem when he started dating her, and now he’s all about trying to change her and make her act like he wants her to. And he wants to involve me in this game he's playing with her. No way, Jose."

And then I realized why this letter irritated me so. Because I used to do the same damn thing. Oh yeah, I did. For most of my twenties, I surrounded myself with broken people that I was trying to control… Oh, whoops, I mean help. Yeah, help, that’s it. Some of them were sex workers who acted just like your girlfriend is acting. Some of them were men. But it’s the same dance.

I had to bang my head against the wall until it was bloody before I finally learned: no matter how good and pure I think my intentions are, no matter how many books I read, or how many therapy appointments I drag people to, I cannot fix or change or save anyone else. It’s not within my power. And it's wrong for me to even try, because sometimes help is just the nice word for control.

I don't think it's within anyone's power to fix someone else. You can love them while they work to fix themselves. Or you can love them while they’re engaging in behaviors you don’t like, and make whatever boundaries you need to shield yourself from the negative fallout. But you have to let go of any idea you have about influencing them to behave differently. It won’t happen, and you’ll just make yourself miserable trying.

Plus, it keeps you from focusing on your own life and your own issues. That’s probably why people do it – it’s so much more comfortable to keep the spotlight on other people’s problems than your own.

If your girlfriend asked me for my advice, I’d give it to her. She hasn’t. But for you, I have some advice: end the relationship, sever all the ties, and walk away. Don’t get involved with another broken person, either. That’s always a real temptation, because there are lots of them around, and oh, they can be so alluring. They have so much potential, if they’d just – just – just… change.

Focus your energy on improving your own life. Isn’t there something you want to accomplish that’s just about you? Climb a mountain, go to Tibet, write a book, lose twenty pounds, get a promotion at work, buy a house – something? Do that. And let your ex-girlfriend find her own way to wherever she’s going.

Usually when I go over to eBay, I search for my favorites like "wolford dress". But last night I searched for "PVC dress". I meant for me, but instead I stumbled onto this: "Very handsome hero pvc dress for man to show muscle".

I think it's the word "dress" that amuses me so. A hero dress to show muscle! W00t! Like Superman in fetish drag? Hey, bid now, kinky heroes, the seller only has nine hundred and ninety-nine of them available. I think it's reversible, too, if the picture is be believed. How can you resist?

However, it is very honest of the seller to make clear that he's not selling the actual man in the picture. Because you don't want a bunch of negative feedback from disappointed buyers about that kind of thing, do you? (Although you'd think people would infer it from the shipping costs.)

I love eBay.

In spite of the fact that I’m a big ole sadist in my dungeon, I generally try be kind and helpful to people that I encounter in life. I don’t always succeed, but I do make an effort.

However, balanced against my altruistic kindness is my very strong sense of personal boundaries. I’m quite good at telling people I deal with what they can - and cannot - expect from me. I’m about to do that now.

I've started getting a fair amount of email from strangers that begins, "Don't publish this, don't put this in the blog!” And then the person in question proceeds to tell me all about some problem they have, usually kink or poly or sex work related, and ask me for help and advice. And I mean, they tell me all about themselves, and all about the issue, and all about all the things that they might do, but haven’t, and all the things that they think I might tell them, and why those things aren’t the right answer…. Length is a big feature of these emails. And to answer them in any reasonable fashion, I would need to write an equally lengthy letter in return.

Look, I have sympathy for people who are struggling, and I'm not trying to be mean here, but - no. Forget it. I do not spend my very scarce and very valuable free time writing long personal emails to people I don't even know. At any given moment in my life, there are thirty-seven extremely pressing things that I ought to be doing. I’m not about to blow them off to do unpaid social work via email. That is not my job. It’s not my idea of a good time, either.

What is my job, among other things, is being a writer. I write things, and then I publish them. I get paid for that by The Stranger, although not bloody much, and I publish this blog because it’s good exposure for me as a writer and it also helps my career as a pro domme. When I publish letters and answer them, that’s a win/win. The questioner gets information, and I get a piece out of it. When you write to me and say, “You can’t use this professionally, but I want to you to devote a lot of time to helping me anyway,” – well, that’s unreasonable. There’s nothing in that for me.

One aspect of these emails that always puzzles me is: there’s never anything striking unique about the situations. I can’t believe anyone would recognize the writer just by the question, even if they knew them. It’s always something fairly common: coping with a partner’s infidelity, unhappiness over a partner who is unwilling to explore kink, someone who is toying with the idea of sex work, or someone who’s feeling isolated about being kinky. So why does the writer feel so panicked about the idea of me publishing the letter? That I don’t know.

Maybe I should set up a Paypal thing where someone can pay me a fee - say, twenty-five dollars - and then I'll write a personal reply to those give-me-advice email. But short of that, if someone writes to me and asks me any question that can't be answered in five words or less, and says "You can’t publish this", that email is getting deleted.

I had a very nice relaxing weekend. And it's good that I got to chill out some, because my life is about to shift into high speed…It’s Monday, and I’m officially in Pre-Photo-Shoot-Week. Not only is it PPSW, I’m traveling down to San Francisco for the shoot, so the amount of preparation I’ve got going on is fearsome. Clothing must be chosen and packed, I’m spending most of a whole day at my salon having girlie things done to me, there will be extra gym time, it’s crazy.

I have to make an appearance at SEAF as well, which is a wonderful event, but I wish it wasn’t this week!

And plus I want to book some more appointments. Hey, I had a week off, if I don’t get to thrash someone soon, it’s going to be trouble. I get cranky if I don’t get to be evil on a regular basis. I still have time available on Tues and Thursday, and maybe Weds. Friday is gone, and so is today, of course. And after Friday of this week, I'm gone until the 27th.

Speaking of being gone: I have decided to go to Shibaricon. I was waffling, but several of my pals, and of course Monk will be all over the place, and so what the hell, I’ll go too.

But that’s not until May. Today, I going to do what a therapist I had once always advised me to do when I was feeling rather swamped. Just focus on the next indicated step, she’d say. And that’s San Francisco, so excuse me while I get out my suitcases and start making lists of fetishwear.

Light(Headed) Reading

Now that I'm all better... As much as I like my history, business, and self-improvement books, I must admit there are times when I don’t want to be intellectually challenged by what I read. And I don't really want anything new, either. I want to be soothed and comforted by easy, familiar stories. Thus, when I am sick, I put the usual fare to one side and go to a special storage box I have that’s full of battered paperbacks of a certain flavor.

Trash! Trash and children’s books. Okay, maybe trash is a little harsh. Take Barbara Michaels (aka Elizabeth Peters) – she’s has written dozens of fun, fluffy mystery novels and I’ve read every damn one of them. And loved them. She’s still cranking them out too, and I have nothing but respect for her, she’s a craftswoman. Would that I could produce so consistently for so long.

A lot of the earlier ones read as pretty dated now, but that only adds to their Scooby-Doo-episode charm.

“Look, everyone, it’s not a ghost at all, it’s Old Man Henderson, the curmudgeonly caretaker, dressed up in a sheet!”

“Darn you kids! I’d of gotten away with the secret treasure if it hadn’t been for you!”

That kind of thing. It’s perfect, not-at-all-taxing entertainment for the girl doing Robitussin shooters.

Now, Valley of the Dolls is trash. Really great trash. Naturally I wouldn’t stoop to read recently-published novels like this (yeah right), but the mega-best-sellers of yesteryear (1966, to be exact) acquire a certain patina. It was old when I first read it, and I dig it out about every five years or so. And I’ve read not only this, but all of Jacqueline Susann’s other novels too, most of which aren’t nearly as good. The Love Machine is fun, but the rest of them? Don’t bother.

I love Agatha Christie books. Everyone is so mannered and so jaunty. Hercule Poirot is my favorite, although Miss Marple is okay too. (Knowing my taste for old English homicide, Monk brought me the Father Brown omnibus, which I've only just started. It seems delightful so far.) But I've read all the Christies, (yes, even the boring Tommy & Tuppence ones) and I love the fact that I now get all the period references. There's a lot of in-jokes you miss, unless you know a fair amount about the era. Sure, okay, the "mysteries" are not exactly dense, I know. If I wanted dense, I'd read Umberto Eco. But Dame Christie, you can follow her along just fine even with a couple degrees of fever.

Then there’s the other school of comfort reading: books from your childhood. I had a lot of favorite books when I was a kid, but I’m sure no author would be more horrified by having me for a fan than the saintly Lucy Maud Montgomery. Mrs Montgomery was the creator of the Anne Of Green Gables books, in which no one cursed, vomited, or had a thought about anything below their waist, ever, ever, ever. I’m not even sure any of those characters had legs, actually. The “Anne” books are in all ways a classic rendering of the late-Victorian ideals of how women, children, and – to some degree – men should think, feel and be. (The men kinda get a pass, though, because there aren’t very many developed adult- male characters in the Anne books. I mean, Matthew dies at the end of the first one, and we never get to know Gilbert very well, do we?)

I think the reason why the reason why the sanitized, saccharine-sweet, lily-white domestic adventures of little Anne and her family please me is that Mrs. Montgomery has a gift for capturing the rhythms of trivial, workaday dialogue and storytelling between rural people, especially women. I’ll forgive a book a lot if, when I read conversations, the sound and the texture of them seem so real to me that I can imagine people I know having them. In this case, the people would be my grandmothers and aunts, when I was a child. Not my own mother – she was always a bit too urban/New Age to be talking about sewing and babies and did you hear what that naughty Nelson boy did? But even though they are widely separated by both time and space, the country women of my family sound very much like the wives and mothers of Avonlea. And when you’re sick, there’s nothing like a little visit from your family to make you feel better.

This week's new column....

I am vastly, but vastly, amused by this: "At Mistress Ishtar's Beck And Call," by Midori

Speaking as Mistress Ishtar's primary... well, I won't say "partner" because that's not right. Primary caregiver? Primary minion? You'd have to ask her for a precise definition, and she's better at stating immediate needs than at abstract definitions. But in any case, Midori has explained the situation perfectly. Mistress Ishtar is my longest-term adult relationship. When she was younger, it was pretty much just me that she wanted to top. Now, in her later years, she clearly feels secure enough in her power to command others to do her bidding as well. It just tickles me that she's chosen the great and powerful FetishDiva Midori as her favored service bottom.

So, I normally have a policy of not saying anything about it here when I get sick, because what I found was, if I so much as mentioned a sniffle, the phone would go dead silent and two weeks later, I'd still be getting guys saying, "Well, I read you were sick, so I didn't wanna call you and bother you..." Which is not good for my bottom line.

However, I realized that there are probably a number of guys wondering why I haven't returned their call/email, so for that reason, I admit it: I've had the flu. I started feeling a little tired late last week and then Friday, wow, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I won't get into specifics, except to say that this is definitely what a friend of mine would call Martian Death Flu.

But Max and Monk have been taking extra-specially good care of me, and I have medicine from my favorite doc, and I am generally being as well-looked-after as a girl could possibly be.

I expect to be up and around again by the end of the week. If that changes, I'll let you know...

A Saturday shopping post, skip if you're just looking for kinky stuff...

So, I'm wanting a longer David Yurman chain, and by longer I mean: longer than 20 inches. 24 inches at least, 26 or 28 inches would be cool. It's actually surprisingly hard to find any high-quality chains that length. (I want a long one because I've got necklaces in shorter lengths, although this heavy chain is very pretty. And I mean a fairly plain chain, although I am also really lusting for this as well.)

I keep looking around on eBay - but I think that much of the jewelry sold there as "David Yurman" is fake. I mean, when you see stuff like this advertised, and then you see the David Yurman merchandise bags being sold on eBay, well, it's hard not to imagine that there's a high probability of getting counterfeit goods.

Has anyone actually bought good jewelry on eBay, and do you have any people you recommend dealing with? Maybe I'm being too paranoid, but even with good eBay feedback, I'm just not willing to spend a chunk of money on something without some strong assurance of it being bona fide.

Alternately: it doesn't absolutely have to be Yurman, although I always like his stuff. Any have any experiences buying a high-quality chain by a different designer?

Books On The Bedside Table

What am I reading? Well…

The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers
And The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
I was gifted with these two books yesterday by a client who is new to me, but quite delightful. I’ve dipped into The 48 Laws of Power before, but I hadn’t seen the one on seduction before, and it’s very interesting. It’s not about candlelight and mood music, it’s about the psychology of seduction. All kinds of seduction: sexual, emotional, political. I remarked to Monk that it was a bit like reading The Gift Of Fear: I found myself nodding my head and saying to myself, Yes, yes, that’s true, I’ve seen that happen…Yes, I’ve done that… and yes, someone did that to me once, and it worked!

Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
by Suze Orman
I’m sorry, was there someone on the planet who didn’t realize Suze was a lesbian? But it’s nice that she’s coming out about it. Regardless of that, it’s an interesting investment book that talks about how women relate to money. Some of it tabs with me and my relationship with money, and some - not so much. But then I think professional sex workers have a whole different attitude about money than other women. We're more comfortable with cash, and yet less practical about it. Spending money as fast as you make it isn't the end of the world when you're a single girl in her twenties, but as time goes on, it's not such a smart choice anymore. I myself am working to get very practical about money while I'm still making it.

Heyday: A Novel by Kurt Andersen
This was also a gift from someone who knows I like historical novels. I haven’t started it yet, but it looks great, and the author’s previous novel – though quite different from this one - was widely praised.

Pickpockets, Beggars and Ratcatchers: Life in the Victorian Underworld, by Kellow Chesney. Monk got me this and it’s great. It’s extremely dense, written in a rather academic style, but well researched. I love reading about the social subcultures of other times - probably because I would be considered by many to be something of an underworld character myself. But in a hundred years, I'll simply be quaint, like Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady.

Lost Painting : Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr
“The mysterious fate of a lost masterpiece, an art restorer's obsession, and Caravaggio's troubled life are the focus of this riveting work of history.” I haven’t started it yet, but it seems as if it will blend art history and biography in a way that I love.

This week's new column...

And a note, in case you didn't know. I do indeed compile the Kink Calendar each week. But the little "joke" listing that appears there? I don't write or submit that. Someone else does. (I'm not sure who anymore, frankly. Except that no, it's not Dan Savage, either.) I don't even see it until the paper runs, so I have no idea what it's going to be. If you hate it, send your complaints to The Stranger, who will deal with them as they see fit. It's not in my power to change or delete those listings.
I might also suggest that you try to keep a sense of humor about the matter. The Stranger treats pretty much everything and everyone with irreverence. (At the very least.) Sexual matters are not going to be exempt from that. But I doubt that their attitude is going to truly cripple the flowering of sexual expression in Seattle.