Open To Suggestions

I was talking to Monk last night about the whole 12 second video thing. He and I have both been saying for a while that we'd like to incorporate more video clips into our content. But somehow, we're just not feeling clear about what that would look like.

I'm never going to go all-video, all-the-time. I'm a writer. But the 12 second format attracted me because I thought, "Okay, 12 seconds - I could just do that from the phone cam and accept that it would be low-rez and unpolished."

Thus, I walk around in the world thinking "Well, I could video this. But no, this is boring. I have to wait for something interesting to happen." And then something interesting happens, and I'm busy doing it, and I don't video it. Sigh.

And it can't be anything pornographic, anyway. I would definitely not video any of my sessions - even the parts without anyone naked - unless someone begged and pleaded for me to do so, and even then I'd be hesitant. You put something on the internet, and you lose control of it. I'd have to be really sure someone was one-thousand-percent all right with that before I did any such thing.

I thought: Maybe I need a theme, to kinda get me started with this. For example, I could go through my toy cabinet, and show you, one by one, my different toys. It would take a while, believe me.

And then it occurred to me - I could just ask you. Since you're the people who are going to be watching it, after all. So tell me, what would you like to watch 12 seconds of?

Remember, this is via phone cam, so think low resolution and bad light. And since I'll be holding the camera, it's going to hard to get to see me doing much of anything. It's more like: what do I see that you'd like to see?

(Note to the clueless: no, you don't get to watch me do anything sexual. That is so not going to happen.)

I look forward to some inspirational emails.

Here's the new Stranger column.

Now I'm off into a busy day of errands and shopping, and then some spa time at Banya 5. Bye!

The newest installment of the web series about a polyamorous triad, Family.

I was pleased to see that they got some good press in the Seattle Times. Nice when art overlaps with activism. Enjoy...

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Over the years, I’ve gotten used to some wild swings in my activities and surroundings. This weekend was one for the books, though. On Friday night, Armani and I had a very luxurious and decadent day and night at a local resort, with 90-minute massages, Chateaubriand, a hot tub, lots of wine - and lots of other things.

Saturday morning we woke up to snow – quite a lot of that, too. Now, I don’t know what it is, but it seems like whenever Armani and I leave town for a getaway, some dramatic weather-related thing happens. Like the ferry ride that we took in the windstorm of ‘07 – yeah, that ferry! Just our luck, we seem to stir up Mother Nature.

But Armani is a talented man, and he got us down off the mountain and delivered me home at noon. Whereupon I discovered that the cleaning people I had engaged – the highly trained team of professionals who were going to remove the heavy layer of nasty post-construction dust that was coating every single surface and every single object in my whole house – were not coming. At all.

So I was looking at a busy week starting Monday, with lots of people coming to see me, and a very filthy house. So guess what I was doing for nine hours alone on Saturday and for another four, with Monk, Sunday? Yeah. I looked like a chimney sweep on Saturday, only grayish-white instead of black.

People did offer to help me Saturday, but I’m hard to help sometimes. Certain types of things I can easily give clear directions about, but some things – well, I know how I want it done, but the effort of conceptualizing and then clearly communicating exactly what to do and why to do it that way? Oh, I’d honestly just rather do it myself. Unwillingness to delegate - it's a failing of mine. Control issues, me? Why would you ever think such a thing?

If the team had come, I would given them the keys and walked away - and then come back later and re-done whatever they didn’t do right. But directing another person, moment-by-moment for hours, in a huge and vaguely defined task, that’s actually composed of ten thousand tiny little tasks? Oh, no. As exhausting as it was to do alone, I would have been twice as stressed trying to do it and simultaneously manage someone else.

So Monk came on Sunday, when I had a clear and specific list of things I needed him to do, and that’s just exactly perfect. This is why I don’t have “apprentices” - and what a silly term that is - or personal slaves. I do not enjoy labor management - even the labor of people I’m very fond of.

I'm off today on a little overnight retreat with Armani. We're going to a secret location to have some spa time - hot stone massage, mmmm... And then a decadent dinner together. A lovely mini-vacation.

And - I'm not taking the laptop. I know! Shocking! 24 hours without a computer, me? That never happens. I'll have the B'berry, so I won't be totally cold turkey. But still, it's a slightly edgy choice.

I'll be back Saturday afternoon, whereupon I will immediately get started unpacking the dungeon and getting things ready for Monday, when the grand unveiling of the remodeled space will begin.

Not a minute too soon, either. This has been a rather stressful time for me. My space - emphasis on the my - is important to me, and having it all in turmoil and unavailable to me has been... Well, it's worked out okay, but I've had to expend a fair amount of energy to make it work out okay, if you know what I mean. My dear close pals have been extremely helpful and accommodating about this whole process. I get by with a little help from my friends.

So if I owe you emails/phone calls, please bear with me for the next few days, as I get my normal routine and surroundings, that I am so very fond of, back online after a month of construction.

I myself often look at random people and try to imagine what they'd look like naked. Sometimes I do so while waiting in line at the bank or the dry cleaners, just to pass the time. I also do it with people I know are soon going to be naked in front of me, and then when they are, see how accurate my mental image was.

If you'd like to hone your skill at this, I have a website for you: http://www.naked-people.de/ It's all in German, so I have no idea what the text says. But click enter, and then click on the picture of the clothed person, and presto, their clothes melt away.

Maybe someone who speaks both German and English fluently will tell me what the heck this site is saying about itself. (I get a lot of letters from non-English-speaking people who have obviously used online-translators, and it's almost impossible to understand what they are saying, so I'm not even going that route.)

But these are obviously regular people - not professional models or porn performers - all ages, shapes and genders. Perhaps this is some sort of statement about showing us what non-model people look like nude? Or maybe it's just someone saying, "Hey! Check it out, I got all these people to take off all their clothes for me!"

Hat Tip to Gander!

EDIT: I have had a lot of very cool people send me translations of the site text. It says:

"Clothes are your second skin. They cover, they reveal, they are able to express what we feel inside or, on the contrary, hide it. Clothes can enable us to show what we work as, what our social standing/class is or they express our emotional state. A suit may lead us to peg someone as being a banker, an office worker or an insurance salesman, etc. In our society, this is a characteristic of "being serious".
But to what extent is this judgement correct? Can we blindly trust the shell? What is really underneath it? Can the illusion be shattered if a tattoo is revealed underneath the suit or does the person remain inscrutable? Here, you have the possibility of experiencing the different effects a clothed or naked person make on you.
If you are interested in participating in this art project as a model, please write me an email. If you want to sponsor the project by donating, you can do so by pushing the PayPal button."

Thanks to German speakers Anna, Nina, Nils, Lu, MK, Kari, Tom, Art, Lief, Aviva, and two nice people who didn't sign a name, for translating it for me!

Literary Masochism

I recently finished the Dan Simmons novel, Drood. And that is no mean feat, my friends, even for a devoted (and fast) reader like myself. It's 785 pages. I browsed it in a bookshop, weighed it in my hand, and thought, I'm not sure if I should read this or use it as a boat anchor. Thank god for my Kindle, tamer of bursitis-inducing tomes.

Here's how the New Yorker describes Drood.

"In this creepy intertextual tale of professional jealousy and possible madness, Wilkie Collins tells of his friendship and rivalry with Charles Dickens, and of the mysterious phantasm named Edwin Drood, who pursues them both. Drood, cadaverous and pale, first appears at the scene of a railway accident in which Dickens was one of the few survivors; later, Dickens and Collins descend into London's sewer in search of his lair. Meanwhile, a retired police detective warns Collins that Drood is responsible for more than three hundred murders, and that he will destroy Dickens in his quest for immortality. Collins is peevish, vain, and cruel, and the most unreliable of narrators: an opium addict, prone to nightmarish visions. The narrative is overlong, with discarded subplots and red herrings, but Simmons, a master of otherworldly suspense, cleverly explores envy's corrosive effects."

Now, I like history, so Simmons's meanderings into historical trivia about London and Dickens did not bother me overmuch. Simmons clearly indulged himself with the length of this novel, and of course, it suits the period he's writing about.

And I agree, it's a very deftly done portrait of seeming friendship being poisoned by envy. The Wilkie Collins that Simmons portrays is sympathetic - at first. The bombastic Dickens, who was indeed the literary rock star of his time, is pretty condescending to Collins, and you feel both his anger and his impotence over it.

But then, as you get to know him, Simmons shows you that his Collins is actually a nasty piece of work. And then the story shifts from being mostly about the petty slights and insults that two dear friends can inflict upon each other, and takes a turn into a very Collins-esque sort of horror.

So, yes, it could have been cut down quite a bit. But I enjoyed getting to know all the vile twists and turns of this fictional Wilkie Collins. Makes me want to re-read The Woman in White.

I had an email exchange with someone lately that reminded me, for one thing, how happy I am that I don’t have to see anyone new unless I think we’re really well-suited to each other. Because this man and I were clearly not a good match.

Essentially, he wanted to do a boxing/punching scene in which I punched him, in the face and head, until he went unconscious. (He would not fight back.) His exact phrase was “The session ends when I am knocked out, or just can't get up.”

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this as a fantasy. Chester French videos aside, this kind of masochism isn’t as sexualized as often as, say, spanking. But there are men around who like it, and I know of women who do it. Still, it’s not my specialty, and so I do not have vast experience doing boxing and punching.

Thus my response was that I was willing to discuss a scene where I hit him, but I was definitely not willing to beat him unconscious. That is not a safe thing to do. Frankly, I’m not sure that I would feel comfortable punching someone in the face, period. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, given that I do other painful things to people. From what I have seen, one generally wears boxing gloves for scenes like this. And people box and get hit in the face every day. But still, I have no training in how to hit someone in face, and even if I did it lightly, it just seems like a really easy way to damage someone. And my personal limit is that I will hurt you, in ways you consent to, but I will not consent to damage you.

There’s a big difference, to me. Pain = sensation in the moment. Or at least something that’s short-term and that will heal. A bruised butt is painful in the making and sore for a while afterwards, but it’s not damage. I define damage as: a permanent change to your body that impairs normal function and/or causes ongoing emotional distress. A big scar that you didn’t want, for example, is damage, even if it doesn’t impair your functioning.

So in the course of my response to him, I said, “Any scene with me ends when I say it does.” Meaning, I wasn’t going to keep hitting him if I judged it to be a bad idea. Even if he wanted me to.

Well, he didn’t want me to have that limit. So, he and I are not going to meet. It’s funny, when people talk about consent in BDSM, they always talk about bottoms getting pushed past their personal limits. You don’t hear as much about a bottom trying to make a top hurt him/her beyond the top’s boundaries. However, my right to safeword out of a scene is just as valid as a bottom’s. Consent has to be present on both sides. The minute that's not there, what you’re doing is no longer anything I consider healthy BDSM. So I think we’ll call this negotiation a Technical Knock-Out.

Another podcast: Monk and I speculate about Jews and kink, and then Monk explains the story of how he got into kink and became a rope-maker. Also briefly mentioned is my ability to shoot laser beams from my eyes. Enjoy!

A new column in The Stranger. Not for the easily squicked. Hardy souls, enjoy!

So, I'm flying to Las Vegas today with the ever-rockin' Elvis. I think we're going to have much fun, and I'll be Twittering and Flickering and perhaps even 12second-videoing, so stay tuned to all that.

I'll be there until Saturday, so I'll be around for next week. I will return messages as soon as I can. As always, email is best.

***

Speaking of video, I found this via The Rumpus: Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine:



I think it's very cool. Obviously, it's about how to call someone on racist behavior. But actually, it's excellent advice for talking to anyone about any kind of unacceptable behavior. He makes excellent points about staying focused on "this is what you did" and not getting sucked into the losing strategy of "this is what you are."

I also love "No Homo."

So, I have been digitally acquainted with San Francisco writer and editor Stephen Elliot for a while. He's the editor of the online arts and culture magazine "The Rumpus", in which Monk was profiled not long ago. And soon I will get to make his acquaintance in person, because Stephen has a cool event happening here in Seattle in March. Read all about it!

Tuesday, March 24, The Rumpus, in association with Northwest Film Forum, presents PIG HUNT.

"Perhaps the finest horror film to have been made this year," according to Eye For Film. PIG HUNT is the tale of a Guy's Weekend of hunting gone wrong in the backwoods of Northern California, set amidst the chaos of marijuana, meth, rednecks, and a killer cult that worships a legendary 3,000 pound wild boar called "The Ripper."

Join us for the Seattle launch of The Rumpus, and the first Seattle screening of Pighunt.

Hosted by author and editor of The Rumpus, Stephen Elliott. Rumpus contributor Ryan Boudinot will give a reading before the film and director Jim Isaac and writer/producer Robert Mailer Anderson will answer questions following the screening. The party will continue across the street at the Vermillion art gallery.

6 p.m. Happy Hour at Vermilion, 1508 11th Ave.

7 p.m. Screening of "Pig Hunt," preceded by a short reading by Ryan Boudinot, at Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, Seattle. Following the film, director Jim Isaac and writer producer Robert Mailer Anderson will take questions.

9:30 p.m. Post-screening party at Vermillion

Get tickets online at Brown Paper Tickets.

Episode #8 in the Seattle-produced web-series about polyamory, "Family". It's Part II of the "Meet The Parents" espisode!

A clever reader sent me this letter...

I think I can claim to have read all your blog archives, and would never presume to advise you about topics to bring up (waaaait for it!), I did want to ask you, though, if you had seen the film Holy Smoke, by Jane Campion and if you'd ever thought about podcasting/blogging about the amazing exploration of power exchange that goes on between its two main characters. Aside from the explicit message about coming into your power and learning not to abuse it, the script deftly demonstrates how fun it can be when "who's on top" is continually renegotiated, how physically overpowering someone isn't necessarily as effective as verbally cutting to the quick (Harvey Keitel to Kate Winslet: "Your physical superiority makes you unkind"), and how knowing one's own boundaries is always of utmost importance. Oh! And don't let me forget pissing as an act of submission! Just such a great film for every kind of kink - even if your kink is no kink.

Darlin', I think you did just blog about it!

And yes, I have seen the film. I thought it was well-acted, well-written, and occasionally hilarious (like the scene where the shallow flirtatious mother allows her cavorting child to do a face-plant into the dirt because she's preening for an indifferent man.) It has some hot, sexy moments, and it's generally very intense and gripping.

(Question: does Harvey Keitel demand a frontal nude scene in every role he takes? Not that I object, I'm just wondering.)

Like pretty much every movie I've ever seen that explores kink themes, I would not point to these characters and say, "Here are some great dominant/submissive role models!" No. Keitel and Winslet are playing flawed and damaged people, and a lot of the way they interact is far from emotionally healthy.

But still, it's a good movie even for the non-kinky, and I know that BDSM people will appreciate the themes woven into it. Consider it recommended!

Complete and unedited email...

Hi Mistress my name is slave X.Hi ave this fantasy from a long time to get a permanent damage in a cbt torture session from a bieutifull goddess like you .My offer is this i live in canada montreal to be more presice my offer is this i can send you a first class airplane tickets plus all your expense pay with hotel food and avery thing you need and i will pay you 10000 in canadian dollars for a 2 hours session of cbt , face kicking ,busting and body and head trample .this is a serious offer if your intresting or if its not enough money lets me no your price is my price tank you for your time slave X.sorry for my english im french and im learning

Wow, this is rather painful to read. But I give him credit where it’s due: his English is better than my French. And I have certainly heard from native English speakers who write just as badly as this.

So I am going to try, for a moment, to assume that his mistakes are in words rather than intent. The fact that he’s trying to negotiate a heavy BDSM scene in a language he doesn’t speak well is a mistake in itself, though. BDSM is a thing you want to be able to negotiate very precisely. That way, you ask NOT to get “permanent damage”.

Also – face kicking? That’s one I hadn’t heard. Unless we’re talking tiny foot-taps, that sounds like a bad idea.

Now let’s talk about that ten thousand dollars. Only we can’t, because it doesn’t exist. This is where my kind assumption that the oddities of this email are language-based break down. Either this man mistakenly tapped in one too many zeros, or – and frankly I think this is more likely – the whole thing is a crazy wanker fantasy.

What makes it crazy? To me, seriously asking for permanent damage = crazy. And also because no sane person is going to pay me five thousand dollars an hour. I’m good, but honey, ain’t nobody that good. Permanent damage? I’d have to kill you, and then raise you from the dead, to warrant that kind of tab.

There is an extremely small chance that the writer of this email, while crazy, does indeed have ten thousand dollars which he’d give me if I got in the room with him and tried to do him permanent damage. But that’s an extremely, extremely small chance indeed.

And you know what? I still wouldn’t do it. Because I don’t deal with crazy people, no matter how much money they offer me. I don't permanently damage people, either.

I get emails like this all the time. Most sex workers do. If you’re a woman who’s new to the industry, take note: If a stranger offers you a unreasonably huge sum of money for what sounds like very little in return, 99.9% of the time, you won’t get it. Chances are you’ll wind up having wasted time and energy chasing it, and sometimes even spent money of your own trying to make the date happen. (“Oh, I’m transferring funds from overseas and they got held up, can you get your own plane ticket and I’ll reimburse you….” Just like the Nigerian scams, only different.)

Note: I am not speaking of getting gifts from someone you know. I have been the fortunate recipient of some incredibly generous gifts from people I had relationships with, and I know other women who have as well. So yes, that happens. But not from a total stranger.

I suppose somewhere in the world, there have been a few Indecent Proposal-type scenarios that were real, but I have never seen one come true. Ever. (And look at all the drama Demi Moore went through with that, anyway.) The writers are either crazy people, or it’s someone deliberately playing games with a carrot on a stick.

It’s a fantasy to have a stranger appear and offer you a large sum of cash. But remember all those children’s stories about magical creatures who offer ordinary people three wishes, or a genie in a bottle? But somehow those wishes, those magic powers, they never turned out like the user wanted, did they? There was always a trick or a sting in them. The lesson of those stories was: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. So beware the modern-day version of trolls under a bridge.

First off, thank you to all the nice people who sent me that small avalanche of "happy blog-anniversary" emails yesterday. That was very sweet.

Here's another podcast from me and Monk. Sometimes we have letters to answer, or a specific topic to address, but on this one we got off into a discussion about fashion. Thus, it's a rarity: a podcast that actually contains no sex-with-lawn-gnomes jokes, and seems to be pretty safe for work. (Although I have no idea if anyone really listens to me at work. I mean, aren't you supposed to be working? I have never had an office job in my life, so that whole world is very strange and mysterious to me.)

Anyway, listen to us chat about style icons, rubber dresses, kilts, kimonos, and schoolgirl outfits.

A milestone: as of yesterday, I have been blogging for five years.

Five years. That feels like a long time. I had no idea, when I started, that this blog would become such a defining part of Mistress Matisse. But it has. I have often wondered what would have happened if I’d started blogging anonymously. Would I have as many readers? Would I have been outed by now, or would I have been able to remain a mystery? And what would I have said, and not said, differently? I’ll never know.

I’ve been writing for The Stranger for about eight years, and between that column and this, I have a lot of words out there in the world. (Plus there’s the podcasts, and a few video clips here and there.) There are good sides and bad sides to that. If you want to get to know me, there’s a lot of information available. If you’re wondering about an issue that might fall under my umbrella of expertise, search around a bit, chances are I’ve talked about it.

Or, if you want something to be offended about, you can just cherry-pick through the archives, and I’m sure you can find something I’ve said that you think is reprehensible. I actually don’t subscribe to the idea that “if you don’t piss people off, you aren’t doing it right.” But as even-handed as I think I’m being, some people seem determined to be offended. Which I find baffling… but hey, if that’s what you get off on, enjoy yourselves. I have weird hobbies too.

I admit that some days I think, “Oh god, I have to blog. I don’t want to, I have nothing to say, I don't feel like writing... but I have to put something up.” My relationship with this blog is sometimes a bit like the one Seymour had with his blood-sucking alien plant in Little Shop of Horrors. It’s brought me a lot of great things – and great people – but it does suck up a lot of my personal juice.

But over the years, I’ve learned to worry less about it – I don’t check my hit counts every day, like I once did, or obsess about Technocrati ranks. Internet fame is an ephemeral thing. If you try to hang your hat on it, you’ll just make yourself crazy. As a blogger, I’ve learned a lot about just doing the best I can, and being gentle with myself for not always doing moremoreMORE.

Having the Twitter feed does makes me a feel a bit less derelict in my duty when I play hooky. It also allows me to have some back-and-forth with people, without having the flood of comment-spam and hate-bombers that the comment feature unfortunately devolved into. I’m interested in doing more podcasting, too, and I’m also intrigued by this application, as brought to my attention by the clever Violet Blue: 12seconds video. So you may be seeing some of that in the near future…

It’s hard to know how this blog will end. Perhaps fashions in internet communications will evolve and render blogs obsolete. Or maybe I’ll just wake up one day and realize I’m done with it. But for now, I’m still here. We’ll see what the next five years brings.

The new Stranger column is up: Fluid Sex. Enjoy!

Today I come home from Portland and see just what sort of remodeling activity has been going on in my house while I've been away. My contractor assures me all is well, but still, color me slightly nervous.

Meanwhile, enjoy the newest episode of the web-series about a polyamorous triad, Family. Warning: there's a sex scene with a full-frontal naked guy, and it's quite charming, but probably not something to watch at work.