The new column in the new Stranger....

Note to my Dear Readers: yes, I'm aware that there was recently a snarky letter to the editor about me in The Stranger. It would be nice if everyone thought I was wonderful all the time, but unfortunately, that's not how things work. And I learned long ago that if you're going to live your life in the public eye (even in a small way), then you better develop a thick skin.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. If you'd like to offer yours - about my column, or anything else - to The Stranger, I'm sure they'd be pleased to hear from you: Editor@thestranger.com

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More Notes From Las Vegas

The Cher show? Was great. In addition to the (more or less) live songs, she included a lot of video clips from the old Sonny & Cher variety show, and it was a delightful reminder of the fact that Cher's been doing this gig since I was just a tot. Which I still am, compared to Cher. And damn, I hope I look as good as she does when I'm in my sixties. (I don't care that she's had surgery. If you look good, it doesn't matter to me how you brought that about, I'm on board with it.)

Afterward Elvis and I went dancing at this club in Caesar's, called Cleopatra's Barge, and one of the songs they played was - oh my god - Abba. Seriously. Dancing Queen, to be specific. The DJ had this seventies-riffic theme he was on, and he was into it.

So we were laughing and dancing to Abba, and suddenly I had a almost painfully vivid memory of my sophomore year of high school. You see, I was in the jazz chorus, and we sang Dancing Queen. Really. I'm not kidding. Six little Catholic high school girls, warbling "You're a tease and you turn him on - leave him burning, and then you're goooooooooone". Sounds more like someone being given a case of the clap than a romance, but hey, maybe it's a Swedish thing.

As I danced, I remembered - with a slight inward wince - performing that song. Badly, I'm sure. In those tacky little outfits that we wore. That our mothers had to make for us. Lordy.

Then the visceral intensity of the memory passed, and I was back in Vegas, in the now. Wearing my favorite white Herve Leger dress, stiletto heels, and all my bling, drinking champagne, and getting into mischief. Quite a difference, to put it mildly. If you had said to that fifteen-year-old girl, "Hey, when you're a grown-up, here's what your life will look like..." Well, I have no idea how that girl would have reacted. With disbelief, probably.

It's so strange how we get from one place to another in our lives. But I love my life. Yeah, I really do.

Well, here I am in Vegas. I haven't been here since my ill-fated wedding here in 1999. I've actually only been here once before that, so I am not a Vegas expert. Thus, I gawked like a rube as we drove down the Strip.

I had forgotten how surreal casinos are, how Disney-esque. It's easy to just step out of your life into this non-real world. (Which is exactly what they want you to do, of course.)

Musing on that, I thought to myself, I wish I could afford a kink equivalent of this. An dungeon space that's just so encompassing, so perfect, and so other-world-ish that you'd forget there was anything else. I've seen a few spaces like that. There used to be a place down in Atlanta run by two gay men. The Sanctuary, I think it was called? That place was amazing. And I don't even though how much money, and work, it must have cost to create. A lot, that's all. It's gone now.

But then I thought about it some more, and actually I changed my mind. Naturally I like having a pretty place to play with people, nice dungeon furniture, et cetera. But I like it better that the power I have to make the world go away for a little while is in me. Not my toys, my furniture, my decor, or anything material thing. But in my eyes, my voice, and my touch.

That way, I can go wherever I like, and make a little magic happen for whomever I'm with.

Wow, it's hot.

But as fate would have it, I'm about to go someplace even hotter. No, I don't mean Hell. (Although if that place actually existed, I have no doubt that once I arrived there, I'd be given a corner office. After all, to quote Motley Crue, "The Devil is a friend of mine...")

No, I'm going to Las Vegas for a few days, with a man who I think I will dub - Elvis. I haven't been on a trip with Elvis before, so this will be an adventure for us both. I think it's going to be big fun. We're staying at Caesar's Palace, in one of the new towers, and we have tickets to what looks like a completely fabulous show, and I imagine there will be much wining and dining and gambling.

I'm also looking forward to checking out one of the "European-style" pools at Caesar's. (Meaning: women can go topless!) I don't care if it's 105 degrees, as long as I have a drink with an umbrella in it and the cabana boy comes by and mists me every little while, I'll be very happy. I'll take pictures and post them to the Flickr stream.

I'm off early Monday and I'm back late on Wednesday, so getting me on the phone those days will be tricky. I will be checking email, of course, and I'll try to respond to messages as quickly as I can.

So if you hear about an Elvis sighting in Sin City in the next few days, think of me.

From the "silly emails" department...

I wanted to say hello to You and say I was impressed with Your site.1 it was also nice not to see the typical "I will dominate you for $xx.xx".2 I think Your site seems genuinely interested in the wants and needs of submissives, which brings me to my question. Who is really in charge if a session is set up for all the wants and needs of the submissive?3 What i want to know, is what do YOU truely enjoy?4. When You have a submissive alone and its for enjoyment and not really for a "session".5

1. I think the indicating-dominance-by-capitalizing thing is silly and affected, but I understand that people like doing it, and so I usually don’t say anything. However, if you’re going to write to me and capitalize Me and Mine and so on, you need to also lowercase your I. That’s how that convention works, you see.

2. Uh, what’s with the decimal point? Have you really ever seen a website where a sex worker listed a fee in dollars and cents? I mean, what would that look like? One hour: $249.99 I bet not.

3. This marking the seventeen thousandth, four hundred and thirty-first time I’ve heard the “submissives are really the ones in control” theory. Here are a couple of the responses I’ve made to it before, if you search back through the archives I’m sure you can find more. Nutshell version: yes, BDSM requires the consent of both parties. But if you think “consenting to a scene” equals “being totally in control of everything that happens”, you are obviously playing with the wrong people.

4. Oh, now we’re lapsing into the lowercase i. Or maybe it’s just a typo, which is what that always looks like to me anyway. And then the all-caps emphasis, and then one of my least-favorite misspellings.

5. And now we’re culminating in a flat demand that I write him a dirty email and reveal to him what he seems to think is personal information. Gee, what a truly submissive guy he must be.

It’s impressive how many annoying things this writer was able to pack into one short email. That takes skill. What you don’t know is that this guy has re-sent this email to me at least three times in the last few weeks. Maybe more, I’ve lost track. I guess he was getting impatient with me because I wasn’t giving him the information he wanted promptly enough. Snap to it, Mistress, inquiring minds want to know! So, here’s my answer…

The “no, tell me what you really like” thing is thing is irksome, first of all because it presumes I’m lying and must be cross-examined. Bah. In my dungeon, I don’t have to do a damn thing I don’t want to do. Thus, if I say I enjoy doing certain types of scenes, it’s because I do actually enjoy them. And if my word isn't good enough for you, then don't play with me.

But that isn’t going to satisfy a guy like this. I know this type. Back when I was a dancer, there would be guys who’d pester you to tell them your real name. Even after you said no, they’d still wheedle and beg and bribe you about it endlessly.

“Why do you want to know?” I’d say.

“I just want to,” they'd answer.

The trick was to hold out for a while, and then sigh heavily and say, “Okay, fine. It’s Heather. Now you know.”

Most of them would be very happy then, because they felt special. Sometimes the smarter ones would say indignantly, “Hey, that’s not your real name either, is it? You just made that up.”

However, I am not inclined to make up a pretty story for this man’s entertainment. (Although it’s always tempting to write back and say, “What I really get off on is castration scenes. Wanna play?”)

Do the math, my misspelled friend – if I was concealing things I thought were secret, why the heck would I spill them, just like that, to some random yabbo who sends me an anonymous email?

Some random sexual thoughts…

Suggestion for strap-on wielding ladies: if you haven’t got some already, buy yourself a pair of snugly fitting boy-shorts style panties. Get some that are a fairly thick knit, nothing too wispy. Put the strap-on harness over the panties. Then take a vibrator and shove it snugly into the front of the panties over the right spot. Now fuck. The panties will hold it in place better than just the harness, and pressure and movement of the dildo and harness over the vibrator is very nice, I find….

***

Someone told me lately about how his balls got all chafed during a sporting activity, and now I can’t stop thinking about scrotums and abrasion play. And ever since I saw this story, I also keep thinking about these fish. What if you got a whole lot of them? And they were really hungry? And what if you put sensitive bits of someone's flesh into a bowl full of them and told that someone they were, say, piranhas? (I know they don't look like piranhas, but they could be a special, rare variety. Say, Norwegian piranhas! Hey, you don't know for sure those don't exist. The thing about Norwegian piranhas is that they always circle a few minutes before they attack, like sharks. So you'd just have to wait and see, wouldn't you?)

Oh, this sort of thing makes me mad. Way to go, Christian educators. Granted, you don't have to like or employ the author of the sex blog, but could you not visit the "sins" of the mother upon her child? Especially when you already agreed not to? The "Catalina Loves" controversy.

From The Mail Bag

I'm a Seattle-based indie pornographer, and I'm looking to buy a condo in the near future. I'm looking to get a studio on the low end of the pricing scale, and almost all studios in cute older buildings are co-ops. The idea of going before a co-op board and explaining myself is quite terrifying to me. I'm wondering if you have any feel as to how sex worker friendly the co-op boards in Capital Hill might be?

Secondly, do you have a recommendation for a sex worker friendly accountant/ tax preparer?

Well, all right, this is definitely not one of those questions that one could just Google. Talk about highly specific. This is a micro-targeted question.

But I’m sorry, I have no information about how sex-work friendly a co-op board would generally be, let alone any specific information about any particular one in Seattle. Frankly, I’m only vaguely conversant with how co-ops are run. (Except for that fact that I’m told they are not a great real-estate investment.)

However, you’re quite right to be concerned about the idea of telling a bunch of strangers, who hold your fate in their hands, that you’re a part of the sex industry. I predict that won’t go well. Odds are, at least some of them are going to disapprove on moral grounds. Some of them probably wouldn’t care in the abstract, but will fear that you’ll be doing noisy/obtrusive porno things in your space that will bother them or be inappropriate for children to be aware of. And some of them will suspect – with some justification – that an indie pornographer’s income is likely to be unstable. So I strongly suggest you don’t tell them.

You see, part of being a successful sexual outlaw is avoiding the gaze of the straight world. (By straight I mean non-outlaw, not necessarily heterosexual.) If you don’t have a good cover story for how you make your money constructed, you better sit down and put one together. Others may advocate being out to everyone, all the time. But my observation is that that’s a luxury one can’t always afford.

And speaking of afford, I further think that if you can’t afford a space where you don’t require your neighbor’s approval of your profession, then you should keep saving money until you do. But that’s your decision.

About a tax-prep person? Another perfectly reasonable question that I don't have an answer to. I have a great guy who handles me very nicely. But I’m not able to give out his name freely, sorry.

I wish I did have more professional recommendations to give out, people ask me all the time. So if you’re a Seattle area professional person and you’re happy to do work for sex work/queer/kink/poly people, drop me a note and tell me what you do. I’ll keep you in my files and send you any business I can…

Most often asked for are tax, accounting and all types of financial stuff, lawyers, real estate people, contractors and all types of home improvement professionals.

I also get asked for referrals for therapists ALL the time, and while I know some cool people, I don’t know anyone who specializes in dealing with the sexual minority community.

I might suggest, though, that you get a copy of the GSBA. Yes, it’s targeted mainly at the Gay community, and certainly not all homosexual people are porn-friendly. However, I think your odds of getting someone cool through this type of guide are better than just random chance, so…. Good luck.

Edit: There is this lady. However, I do not know her personally, and I do not know anyone who's worked with her, so all I'm doing is pointing out the link... The Tax Domme

Today is Monk's birthday.

There are a lot of amazingly cool things about Monk, as I have noted in previous birthday posts. But the best thing about him is that he just keeps on getting more amazing all the time. We've been partners for a little over four years now - which is sort of amazing in and of itself. He was wonderful when I met him. However, he soon surpassed mere wonderfulness and moved on to being fabulous, and thence to sensational, and then onto - dare I say it? - awesometastic.

How long can this sort of thing go on? Surely, you're thinking, there must be some limit. Nope. Not with Monk. His ability to achieve new heights of amazingly-coolness has no boundaries. I am quite certain that this coming year will prove to be yet another demonstration of that fact.

So Happy Birthday, darling. I look forward to another year of seeing you achieve dizzying new heights of amazingness.

I don't really believe in astrology - but I like Rob Brezsny.

Scorpio Horoscope for week of August 7, 2008
The guy who gave his name to North and South America was a pickle salesman and writer as well as an explorer. After a stint in Spain selling his vitamin C-rich pickles to outbound ships, Amerigo Vespucci got to travel to the New World in 1499 and 1502. The stories he penned about his adventures there were highly imaginative, like his description of giant native women with huge breasts who employed poisonous fluids extracted from insects to super-size their husbands' penises. I nominate Amerigo to be your role model in the coming weeks, Scorpio. May you, too, do what comes natural and be your funky self in ways that lead to glory and renown. (My source for the info about Amerigo is Tony Horwitz's book A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.)

A good reminder, Rob, thanks. I've been rather distracted, for the last few weeks, with various things that have not felt either funky or glorious. But I think that's just about done with, and I'm looking forward to acting more like a creature of someone's imagination again.

Next week: photos, several rounds of letter-answering, and some remarks on cougars. Have a lovely weekend...

The new Stranger column, about the difference between "no-strings fucking" and "a romance."

And today, after forty-eight hours of non-stop Good Daughter duty, I am back in my playroom being my naturally kinky self. Thank god.

A new podcast, in which Monk and I rant a lot - because we can - about BDSM culture, "getting into the scene", and being a BDSM vendor. A bit longer than usual: 17 minutes. And not safe for work. Enjoy!

Wow, did I get a lot of advice and helpful suggestions about my refrigerator! Ya’ll are better than “This Old House.” So thank you, nice people, for all your words of wisdom.

Several clever readers noted that they Googled for answers to this domestic puzzle. Perhaps they were insinuating something. Yes, I know I lecture you about intellectual laziness and tell all of you to ask Mistress Google something before you ask me. But hey, those rules don’t apply to me, I’m a special snowflake, right?

Mixed in with the suggestions were several emails that read, “Yeah, mine is doing that too, would you post the other emails so I can see them?” So without further ado, Mistress Matisse’s Supah-Sexy Refrigerator Repair Tips! I myself will be trying all of these out as soon as possible.

***

I’m sitting at my desk preparing for a class I’m teaching at the Emerald City Writer's Conference in October. I was very pleased to be asked to present at this con, and I’m excited by the prospect of talking about kink, polyamory and sex work to people outside of what I sometimes call “the love bubble.” I think that will be very interesting. It’s not like teaching a how-to BDSM 101 sort of class, which I always find a little frustrating. It’s more about teaching people what kinky/poly/sex work people are like, which I think I’ll enjoy much more.

I’m also pleased that this is specifically a romance writer’s conference. I think romance writers are a bit like the sex workers of the writing world – a lot of people like to turn up their noses at them because they write about ew, dirty things. And because the books are just all fluffy insubstantial crap. But the romance genre accounts for a very large chunk of the popular-fiction market - so regardless of the sneers, a lot of people are voting with their dollars.

And while I have certainly read romance novels I thought were terrible, I’ve also read plenty of them that amused and entertained me. I think genre fiction novels are a bit like sonnets, in a way. You have this clearly defined structure and rhyme scheme, but within that form there’s flexibility and plenty of room, I find, for originality.

I want this class to be good - so I should go work on it now. Bye!

Notes about my schedule. It seem like it’s been a long time that I’ve been writing about how I’m extra-busy because my Mom is here. But this is the last week of that. Starting the 11^th, I’ll be back to my normal level of insane-busyness.

Also: I will be unavailable August 18^th, 19^th and 20^th – I’m going down to Las Vegas for a few days. That should be fun, I haven't been to Vegas in forever.

***

Now, for an unsexy question. I give a lot of advice here, now I need some myself. It’s about my refrigerator. The problem is that it’s peeing on my floor and I don’t know why.

It’s a very basic standard fridge. There is not an ice-maker in the refrigerator compartment or the freezer compartment, there is no water-dispenser on the door, none of that stuff. It is not connected to a water source of any kind. It is a plain white box that plugs into the wall and gets cold. That’s it.

Yet for some reason, puddles of water are forming inside it and trickling out when one opens the door. I’m talking a couple of ounces here, enough to make a large puddle on the kitchen floor. And rings of water are forming around everything in the fridge, on every shelf. It’s a mess, and very annoying.

I cannot figure out why this is happening. It’s set to the average level of coldness. I tried setting it colder, but that does not prevent the water from happening, the water just freezes. (And so do all the other liquids in the refrigerator, which is not ideal.)

The appliance is not showing any other obvious signs of distress. It’s not new, it came with the house when I bought it a little over two years ago, and I believe we determined that it was about seven years old. But that’s not ancient.

I could call a repairman. And if I had some idea that this was a fifty-dollar fix, I’d do that. But my experience of repairing large appliances is that somehow, it always winds up being more like a two-hundred-dollar fix. My philosophy is that if the cost of repairing an item is 50% or more of the price of a brand-new one, then to hell with it, I’ll just buy a brand-new one. A new refrigerator just like this one is about four hundred dollars. Thus, my dilemma.

So – anyone have any “yeah, that happened with mine and it turned out to be X” stories for me? Send them along - my email address is over on the right, there. Quick, before I kill myself slipping in these puddles of water.

I'm busy catching up with my life today, but this funny video clip about how birth control is marketed to women cracked me up, so - enjoy. (Thanks to Heresygirl for turning me on to it. 3 minutes, has sound, maybe-sorta work-safe?)

I am really pleased to see this…

“In a ruling with potentially wide implications for press freedom in Britain, a judge ruled Thursday that a tabloid newspaper breached the privacy of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing, when it published an article in March claiming that he had participated in a sadomasochistic “orgy” with a Nazi theme.”

The judge also said “…Mr. Mosley had a “reasonable expectation” of privacy for sexual activities that took place on private premises and that did not involve violations of the criminal law.”

I have commented before on Mr. Mosley's sex life. And this is happening in the UK, so of course it won’t have any legal effect here in the US.

But I like that phrase, “a reasonable expectation of privacy.” I think we should all consider that. Gossip about famous people is big business, and tabloid fare is comfortably distant from our own lives. But where does that mentality stop? What about our friends and lovers? What is their reasonable expectation of privacy? Because there is such a thing as harmless gossip – but there’s also information that one simply should not disclose about other people. But sometimes it happens anyway.

I’m not saying I’ve never gossiped about anyone. Of course I have, I’m human. But I’ve seen how it hurts people - and I’ve been hurt by it myself. It may be that one has to be on the wrong end of it before one really understands the power of hurtful gossip, and the responsibility to not engage in it.

So now, before I talk about Person A to Person B, I ask myself some questions, like: Did I experience this myself, or am I just repeating what someone else told me? Do I absolutely know this to be true, or is it even partly hearsay/supposition on my part? If the person I’m talking about was in front of me, would I be willing to say this to their face?

And the other thing about malicious gossip? It’s like negative political campaigning – it reflects badly on the speaker. My grandmother used to say, “No one looks pretty saying ugly things.” It’s one thing to be a little snarky, but if you really start slinging mud, some of that mud will stick to you. If I hear somebody talking trash and spreading rumors about someone else, I assume that given the opportunity, they’d do the same to me.

So you have to think before you open your mouth, because once you speak, the words take on a life of their own. It’s nice for Mosley that the court found in his favor, but that doesn’t remove the violation of his privacy from everyone’s mind. It’s easy to see a tabloid paper’s motivations for printing embarrassing gossip – it sells papers, and that’s all they care about. It isn’t so clear for individuals. Like so many other things in life, you have to continually examine yourself. What is my motivation for this? And is it a motive I’m proud of? Think about it before you speak.

I'm away from home today, so forgive me if I'm a bit slow answering phone calls and emails. It's a busy thing, being a Mistress. But there's a philosophy I find succinctly expressed on this pair of panties...


So while I am engaged in my Mistress-y activities, enjoy a podcast from Monk and I. This one... well, truthfully, it's a bit less topic-oriented and more just a conversation between Monk and I about our tech toys and how we use them.
Bye!

I like this idea. But what's this "be gentle" nonsense?

A link to the new column, about how poly people don’t get toaster-ovens.

I drank a fair amount of very nice wine last night. I went to dinner at Armani’s house, which was just lovely, and he showed all us guests his wine cellar, and we cracked some seals. Now, I like wine - champagne, especially. But I don't really think much about it, or talk the whole wine-talk thing while I'm drinking it. I pretty much just knock it back and say, Mmmm, that was yummy, and then pour myself another glass...