A few comments on blow jobs. Well, a whole column's worth, actually, in The Stranger. Now excuse me while I run around like a crazy girl, getting to fly out of here tomorrow!

I was talking last night to a woman who is new to sex work, and it was interesting to hear how my advice on various matters differed from the advice she is getting from her co-workers.

For one thing, they’ve been advising her to say things about herself that aren’t true. Such as, “I don’t have a boyfriend.” But, she does. Actually she’s poly, so she has a couple of people she’s seeing.

I understand why they’re telling her to say this, and a few other things like it. I understand the fantasy that they are trying to create for the guys. Fantasies are great. But telling a guy a bunch of stuff about yourself that isn’t true only works when you just see him once or twice, and the relationship you have with him is extremely superficial. After that, it’s a struggle to remember the lies and maintain them. Plus, the fact that they are lies is going to get very obvious after a while. Like, here’s a really cute sexy young woman, and month after month, she has no boyfriend? Come on.

What is true is that any system where a group of women work together and are assigned clients by a third person is a system that's geared towards superficial encounters. It is a valid system, if that’s what you want to do. But I have a name for that. I call it, “McDonald's sex work,” because it’s a low-end, fast-turnover situation. The quality of what someone working in a sexual McDonalds can create is not very high. Of course, if you’re at a sexual McDonalds, your expectations should be pretty low.

When you’re new, working in a sexual McDonald's can be good boot-camp training - if it’s busy enough to be profitable. I have certainly done so myself. There’s some safety in numbers for the ladies, and you do learn valuable lessons from your co-workers. (Even if it’s by bad example, which often - it is.)

But once you’ve mastered the basic mechanics of how to do whatever it is that you do (be it escort work, sensual touch, domination, or whatever else) , then there’s not much reason to hang around, in my opinion. It is my firm belief that working independently is always better.

I said to her, “The truth actually works amazingly well. And your truth is pretty damn sexy anyway. Tell the truth.” Creating a good, sexy experience for someone you met five minutes ago – and feeling good about doing it - is challenging enough all by itself. The least of the fringe benefits should be not have to remember a bunch of porn-story lies about who and what you are.

Another podcast! This one's about polyamory. First, Monk and I answer a question about time-management for poly people: how many partners is too many? And then: the difficulty of finding polyamorous partners when you're very young. (Meaning: in your twenties.)

I feel compelled to note: In this last round of podcast taping, Monk brought alcoholic beverages to the studio. That's a switch - usually we're drinking Rock Star or Red Bull, or else just tons of super-strong coffee (him) and diet Mountain Dew (me). I have no idea why he decided we should have cocktails instead of caffeine while we taped this batch, but we did.

So we had great fun, but I fear they made us even less inhibited than usual. Which is not very much, anyway. Thank god we we don't do video blogging.

But if you're offended by anything I say in this podcast (or any of the next three), just remember: it's Monk's fault. Really!

I was going to write something clever, but the Stranger column ate my brain. So I'm not.

However, I got a sweet email asking me about buying one's first flogger, and that's a question I can answer even with no brain. Nervous beginners, what you want is a deerskin flogger, with tails that are not too long, no more than sixteen inches.

Deerskin is very light and soft, and I swear to you, you are not going to really hurt someone with a deerskin flogger. (Unless you poke them in the eye with the handle or something, so don't do that.)

I recommend this one. The Bare Leatherworks guys make lovely floggers. I’ve bought a number of them over the years. I find them very well made, pleasing to use, and they have held up very well to frequent – and often not gentle – action.

One step up in intensity from deerskin would probably be this one, the cowhide flogger. Still pretty soft and pleasantly thumpy, though.

Anything with rubber tails is going to sting and be more intense, and be more likely to leave marks, so I generally don't recommend rubber floggers for a beginner.

Happy thwacking!

Complete and unedited text of a recent email...

Would you consider doing me with a strap-on? A big fantasy of mine and she's just not into it.... Can you host?

Sure, come on over. Right now, baby. I mean, what else could any girl possibly need to know other than you have an orifice you'd like me to penetrate? That's all that matters to me. Lord knows, my opportunities to use my strap-on are so very, very rare. It's really tragic.

Only, you know, I sort of wish you'd attached a close-up picture of the area in question, because you know how we ladies love that.

Right.

Can I host? Wow, that's a term I haven't heard for a while. The only people I ever heard use the word host - and the companion term, guest - in this manner were swingers, in print-magazine ads of the 80's and 90's. The brevity of it made it useful for cutting down one one's character-count in the ad, thus saving money. Can host meant "You can come to my place" and Can guest meant, "I have to come to yours." I wonder if I'm dealing with an old-school swinger here?

At least he spelled everything right, I'll give him a point for that. But still, whoever he is, he will not be hosted or guested or anything else by me.

Updated Availability

Hey Seattle people: If you’re think of trying to see me, this coming week is a good time to do that. I have some time free, and I’ll be traveling a good bit in weeks to come. So, drop me a note soon if you want to get time with me.

For long term planning, here is my travel schedule through November.

I’m out of town, at Folsom Street Fair, from September 25th- 28th.
I’m in Vegas from October 6th to the 9th.
I am in Atlanta from October 23rd through Oct 28th.
And I am in Vegas from November 3rd through the 6th.

(Note: I mention cities only because my pals like to know where I am. I’ll be with an intimate friend on all of these trips, except for Atlanta, which is a family gathering. But either way, I am not available to do private sessions. Sorry!)

After way too long of an interval - blame it on our busy schedules - Monk and I got together in the usual zombie-proof sound studio and recorded some silly rants.

This one is a little short, only about seven minutes, but we hope it makes up in entertainment what it lacks in length. It's a letter from a reader who asks about sustaining BDSM energy in a long-term relationship. Enjoy!

Old Attachments

I did something significant lately. Significant to me, anyway. I cut off my old phone number.

It’s the one I got when I first became Mistress Matisse, in 1997. It was a land line then, and I recall that the landlord of my apartment inquired why I needed a second phone line – because of course I already had one.

I told him it was for my dial-up modem. He looked slightly confused – he was definitely not a techie guy - but just shrugged and nodded his head. I had a cell phone as well, but I think it was much cheaper to add a second land line than get a second cell phone, so that’s what I did.

When I moved out of that apartment, I was successful enough as Mistress Matisse that I could, in fact, get another cell. I arranged to have US West seamlessly forward the phone number to it. This was apparently not something most people knew you could do at the time, and it led to some amusing calls from phone-predators who, because it looked like a land-line number, would try to spook me by claiming they could trace me, find my address, and menace me somehow. I’d laugh and hang up. Good luck with that, halfwit.

It’s certainly the phone number that I’ve had the longest in my adult life, and I kept it until about a month ago. You see, for a sex worker, keeping the same phone number is highly desirable. That way your guys can always find you, without having to hunt down a print ad - or now, a website. If they have to look too hard to find you, they’ll probably give up and find someone else.

But truthfully, I have not listened to a voice mail from it in - oh, a year? Maybe more. And I haven’t routinely answered it for about two years. I very rarely see new people anymore, and the few I do meet contact me through email, with a referral from someone I know.

So I didn’t have time even for the perfectly-nice guys, and I was simply tired of dealing with the annoying and time-wasting phone calls. The reasonable thing to do was get another phone, and give the new number only to people I know and like. So I did.

Still, I was reluctant to let the old one go. What if my income suddenly dropped off and I had to start drumming up new business? That’s not how I want to structure my career anymore, but… better keep it, so if I had to, I could activate things at a moment’s notice.

It’s that Cinderella fear – the idea that wow, this is all going so well, and I’m happy and successful and busier than I can handle – but what if the clock strikes twelve and it all vanishes like a soap bubble? Better keep all the old options open, even if you don’t need them now.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping one’s options open – to a degree. But at a certain point, links to the past become anchors, not options. They weigh you down. You have to trust yourself, and trust the universe, that you’ll keep moving forward. Life looks a lot different for me than it did even a couple of years ago, and I’m trusting that I will never need that phone number again.

Polyamory in Pop Culture

MTV aired its "True Life" documentary titled "I'm Polyamorous." Poly in The News blog has a write-up of it.

And another episode of the web-cast series about polyamorous people, "Family."

Also: Monk and I are (finally) recording more podcasts tonight! Send us your questions about poly, kink, sex work, or anything else weird, and we'll answer them together - while making a lot of dirty jokes, of course...

From The MailBag

i wanted to ask your advice, about a punishment that i feel i deserve. i know you have lots of experience with punishments (spankings). i graduated high school in 2000. :) in 2000, i was 19 years old, ready to graduate. :) i was very excited about graduating. :) during the school year, it was about April 2000, when we were in art class, and the teacher went out of the room, and what happened was, i walked over near her desk, there was a can of spray adhesive, and i have no idea why, but what i did, was i sprayed the teacher's plants with the spray adhesive. it was very wrong of me, and i regretted it. i did get called to the principal office. i was originally gonna be suspended for 3 days, but i talked the principal into letting me give up my senior dismissal, so that i wouldn't be suspended. We had a school assistant who was there, her name was Mrs. X. She was a very strict woman. deep down, i knew i deserve to be suspended. a few days after i was given the punishment of, no senior dismissal, i began to wonder what it would be like, if i was punished by the school assistant, Mrs. X. i thought about how if she called me to her office, and was gonna punish me. i graduated, and continued to have these feelings of needing to be punished. i thought about how i deserved to be punished, and really wanted her to punish me. i began to imagine myself going into her office, closing the door, and her putting a paddle and cane on her desk, and me bending over her desk, and being severely spanked by her. 9 years later, i still have those feelings, of needing to be punished. i don't believe Mrs. X is working anymore, she left my high school, but i looked online to see if i could find her email address, so that i could tell her how i wish i had been punished by her.
i still feel very guilty about the whole thing, and i feel, i do deserve a very severe, and sound spanking. i've heard self-spanking can be affective, and i want to set a day, where it's a punishment day for me. i have a leather belt, a thin whippy bamboo cane, a wooden spoon, and i also have a butt plug. i was wondering, if you could sentence me to a punishment. Thank you, so very much. :)

Little known fact about me: I have, in my possession, an unusual and highly specialized machine. This very rare machine – normally not seen outside of FBI offices and the chambers of certain Supreme Court Justices - rivals anything you ever saw in a Batman or James Bond movie. It is a device so cunning, so technically advanced, it can analyze writing samples and detect whether something was written while someone was masturbating! Yes, it’s true! I have a Wank-O-Scope!

Normally a member of the public, such as yourself, would not have access to the findings of such a classified piece of technology. Wank-O-Scope read-outs are extremely hard to understand if you aren’t a highly trained professional like me. But just today, I’ll feed this sample through the Wank-O-Scope and interpret the results for you.

So okay, let me just insert this little doohickey here, push these buttons, and enter the secret code. Then I’ll don my protective headgear, and flip the clear plastic cover off the red button that says DANGER - DO NOT PUSH - WANK-O-SCOPE!

Now, stand clear, everyone. Children, do not try this at home. And for God’s sake, do not look directly at the Wank-O-Scope blast!

Zap! Bzzzzz....Ka-bam!

May I have the envelope, please? (And would someone keep Kayne West off the stage?) The Wank-O-Scope sez: congratulations, you’re a wanker! So your punishment is: take some remedial writing classes and let go of any now-creepy teenage obsessions you had with school officials. Then find someone in real life to spank you and stop bothering busy ladies.

A fashion post, for those of you who like such things…

I could not find a good picture online of the dress from the Twitpic yesterday! I’m surprised, even Barney’s doesn’t have it - on their own website! But I see that the designer, Derek Lam, also has a white version that is very similar – a little lower-cut, I think – and also super-yummy, at least in the pictures. A good little black dress is great, but I like wearing white dresses as well. It messes with people’s heads when I wear white.

So I liked both of them, but I think I’ll defer buying them.

Speaking of color: I did find this picture of a Derek Lam dress that would be very hot – except that it’s a terrible color. They call that mauve? Uh, no, that’s mud, is what that is. Ew. Too bad, the cut and style is lovely. (Designer Rick Owens does this a lot as well – good styles, but in terrible, ugly colors.)

What I may have to go back to Barney’s and buy is this skirt. The designer, Dries Van Noten, calls this fabric “reptile”, and that’s a good description. It’s got texture and shine, but it’s not puffy, or crunchy. And it fits like a skin, too! Really gorgeous. And a girl just can’t have too many pencil skirts, can she?

Read Me Elsewhere

The new column in The Stranger, in which I talk about the optimum intervals for going down on women. (I'm currently drafting a follow-up column about blow-jobs.)

Also, I have a new article here, in FilthyGorgeousThings.com. It is not free, but if you don't wish to subscribe, you can buy access to my piece for a very small fee. It is, however, a good website, and I recommend it.

Facials - Not The Spa Kind

Last night at Puck's birthday gathering, one of the dinner-table discussions was whether it's inherently demeaning to have a guy come on your face. (I love the conversations I can have with my friends. I really do.)

My feeling is that it's not - unless it's a scene and you both want it to be, and that's hot to you. And I was interested to find that the three other women and two men present agreed with me.

"So you take the Eleanor Roosevelt point of view - that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent?" I asked the woman sitting next to me.

"Yeah. If I was with some guy and he tried to make me feel all demeaned by coming on my face, I'd be like: whatever with you, phhffft!" She turned her head, lifting one shoulder in a very feminine gesture of dismissal. "I wouldn't feel bad, it would just be stupid of him."

Across the table, her partner - who has a gift for rapier-like ripostes - tapped his finger on his chin thoughtfully and remarked, "You know what you should say if a guy tries to do that? Be demeaning by coming on you, I mean."

What? what? we all asked.

He put on a wide-eyed, innocent expression and spoke in a girlish voice. "Is that - is that it? Oh... Okay, no, it's cool, I just... thought there would be more. Huh... Is it always like that?”

We howled with laughter.

He shrugged. "There's always a way to turn things around."

I finally saw Inglorious Basterds over the weekend, and a couple of people asked me what I thought of it, so… Spoilers/plot discussion follow!


It dragged a bit, mostly at the beginning. The opening sequence with Nazi officer Hans Landa and the French farmer, for example, could have been tightened up considerably. Still, there was always a payoff at the end of the scene. Was I the only person who watched Landa drink that glass of milk, and remembered Samuel Jackson drinking the Sprite of the boy he’s about to murder in Pulp Fiction? In Tarantino movies, people who come into your house and suck down your beverages are most likely about to kill someone.

The actor, Christopher Waltz, has won awards for the role, but I actually found Landa a little too cheerfully, charmingly evil. He needed a touch more menace for my taste – a little more Christopher Walken, or perhaps John Malkovich.

Loose end: Later, in the strudel scene, did Landa realize that Emmanuelle Mimieux was actually Shoshanna Drefuss? I was unable to tell. I thought he did, when he drank another glass of milk, but it was never made clear.

Emmanuelle Mimieux was, of course, a tragic heroine. And beautiful - Tarantino made Melanie Laurent look like a gorgeous young Ingrid Bergman in the shots of her preparing for the premiere. But will those girls ever learn: once you've plugged the villain and he's down, go shoot him again in the back of the head! As soon as I saw the oh-so-smug Frederick Zoller fall, I thought “He’s going to sit up in a minute, all bloody, and shoot her.” Which was sort of academic, since (I think) she and her lover were planning on dying in the fire anyway. But still – if you’re going to kill the bad guy, kill him very, very thoroughly.

Brad Pitt and his Basterds, on the other hand, were nothing if not thorough. I wish they’d gotten more screen time. I am lost in awe at how well Pitt did with his part. “Aldo The Apache” was such a cartoon-character of a role, with the accent and the scar and the hillbilly imperturbability, it would have been easy to push it into sheer burlesque.

But Pitt was able to make Aldo work, somehow. I’m amazed at how Pitt was able to contort and hold his face in that odd, bulldoggish expression. Did he have prosthetics on his chin and forehead to give him that look?

(The character of the English officer, Lt. Hicox, was actually much more of a cartoonish, stiff-upper-lipped Brit, although I had a sense that Tarantino did that on purpose. And I did not even recognize Mike Myers in his little bit as an English officer.)

Quibble: The scene where Landa slips the shoe, Cinderella-style, onto Bridget von Hammersmark’s foot and thus identifies her as a traitor was good – but I would have liked it better if the shoe had not fit. Remember: there was another woman in the tavern, the young barmaid. It could have been hers. There could have been a big build-up of tension and then – the shoe obviously isn’t her size. Hammersmark would have breathed a sigh of relief, thinking herself safe, and then Landa would have killed her anyway. That’s how I would have done that scene.

Can I just admit how much I loved that Tarantino used the “Cat People” theme song in his movie? That’s such a great, cheesy, slick eighties-pop-ballad. Was it anachronistic? Maybe, but the whole damn movie is alternate history anyway, so why get hung up on little details like that? I remarked to Monk, “That song was on a lot of my early ‘sex mix’ tapes.” He replied, “Honey, that was on everyone’s ‘sex mix’ tapes.”

So I don’t think it’s my favorite movie in the world, but I enjoyed it well enough, and I think, basically, it’s Quentin Tarantino. If you like Quentin, and you’re all right with brutal, violent imagery, and you’re in the mood for a movie that has nothing at all to do with actual history of the Nazis and World War II, then you’ll probably like the film. The man has a definite style, and I have to admire him for doing what he wants, exactly the way he wants.

You know, every now and then I have to post pictures of something scary just so ya'll don't forget I am, actually, very mean.
Don't misunderstand me: I'm sweet. I am undoubtedly the nicest, sweetest sadist you'll ever meet. But just because I'm sweet doesn't mean I don't also really enjoy putting needles in people's nipples. Because I do.

Notes About My Schedule

For my friends who like to plan ahead: I’m out of town Sept 26th to the 29th – I’ll be at Folsom Street Fair. (And that looks like it’s going to be a very, very interesting trip indeed.)

I’m back for a week, and then I’m in Vegas from Oct 5th through the 9th.

It’s looking like I might be going to Atlanta for the last week of October, or the first week of November, but I’ll post dates for that when it gets firmed up.

So now you know. And knowing is half the battle. (The other half? Stapling someone's balls to a chair. Heh.)

I love fashion. Especially when it looks like this.



Photo on the left? Eh. I don't do belts, generally, and those boots are odd. But: nice gymnastics, guys.

Photo on the right? Yum. Love the jacket (even with the belt), love that skirt! Love the shoes, and love the boy - although he doesn't look appropriately frightened. Hate the hair, but who cares about that. Nice set, too.

Full spread, for W magazine, with more pretty pictures.

I was reading a message board lately and saw someone talking about “open poly versus closed poly.” And I thought: what is the point of that term? It really baffles me.

“Closed polyamory,” as I understand it, is: more than two people in a sexual/romantic relationship who do not have sex or become romantically involved with anyone else outside their group.

If that’s how the people involved want to do their poly, that’s completely and utterly fine with me. But - why is it necessary to stick the word closed on the front of it? I do not see that system of poly as being somehow so different than other systems that it needs a discrete category. It just sounds like the speaker is trying to minimize the situation. “Okay, so we’re not monogamous. But we’re like monogamy + one. We opened up our relationship and let just this one other person in (or just these two other people, or however many). And then we closed the door again, boom! So we’re not like those other poly people, all open and stuff.”

Well, the people in the original dyad had to be open at least long enough to find another person, didn’t they? And let’s be realistic, most relationships – both mono and poly - end. So what happens when one of them does? Do the people remaining in a relationship switch over to being open again until they meet someone else, and then go back to being closed? If the relationship can be opened, then what is the advantage of designating it as closed in the first place? It’s not like people are taxis, and have to turn the light on the roof off and on.

I have no quarrel with words like triad, quad, or group marriage. I think those are clear, useful terms. And I'm mostly okay with the term polyfidelity, although it always reminds me of the movie High Fidelity with John Cusack.

As I said, people get to do poly however they want. If you want to have a designated group of people who have sex only amongst themselves, more power to you. But when phrases seem designed to minimize something, or distance the reality of a situation, then those phrases bother me. They remind me of chicks who have girlfriends but say, “Oh, I’m not really a lesbian, I just love her.” I have never met any homophobes who gave out The First Pussy Is Free! exemptions, so why bother with the limp denials? Likewise, I have never met an anti-poly person who would say, "Well, if you're just non-monogamous with these few people, that's all right."

I could channel John Cleese in the Bring Out Your Dead scene from Monty Python and The Holy Grail. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know.” In my opinion, you got the name, you might as well play the game.

From The Mailbag

Ever since I read The Story of O, I have been having some interesting thoughts on BDSM and Feminism. None of my friends are practitioners... I have been arguing the point that BDSM is compatible with feminism, as a woman who is in the dominant role would be actively exercising power over another person. The submissive role is also an expression of feminism, as the woman, comes to realize her own agency, and then of her own volition delegates that agency to another party.

My friends however, argue that's its violence against oneself (belief that comes from Sarte) to ever surrender agency, and furthermore, its anti-feminist to ever surrender any agency, as its is the ultimate goal of feminism to empower women to use their own agency, to be equals, not to subjugate themselves.

I have responded to this by mentioning that we all surrender our agency each and everyday when we walk into the work place, as another person delegates what our job should be, and with in what parameters we can operate.

I know that response is not great, but its the best I come up with on such short notice. I have a feeling that you would weigh in on the side of BDSM and Feminism being completely compatible, and I would love to hear what your response would be.

***

Oh, sweet reader, you are asking me to wade into one of the meanest, nastiest, longest-running debates in feminism. And my response is: I don’t care. I really do not give a damn if other people think my sexuality and feminism are compatible or not.

(I will say it’s slightly odd that your friends are using Sarte to defend their position, given that Mr. Being and Nothingness isn’t generally the darling of the feminist movement. What, no Audre Lorde? But hey, it’s been a long time since I was in a Philosophy class. Maybe perceptions have changed.)

My position is that if you think I’m a feminist, you’re right. And if you think I’m not a feminist, you’re right. What I definitely know that I am as kinky as hell. Don’t like that? Then don’t get in bed with me - in any sense of the word. But I do not define and practice my sexuality by any philosophy but my own.

In closing, The Story of O is not only a work of fiction, it’s a period piece. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you like it. But it is not a good basis for theorizing about women in the BDSM community today, and I would not cite it as a source to skeptical listeners. For more current discussions about BDSM and feminism, go here.

(Warning: there is NO sex or naughty stuff in this post. And like Pascal, I made it long because I lacked the time to make it short.)

Mistress Manners

I asked for questions from the Twitter-spere, and here’s one I got...

(Can you address) poly etiquette issues like when do invitations include all the partners or selected ones - differences between etiquette for poly, kinky and mainstream that you have noticed.

I presume this refers to social invitations – parties and so forth. I am further going to presume that for the purposes of this post, we are talking about events held in someone’s home or any other private space controlled by them.

As a party-giver, this is a subject close to my heart. So first let’s talk mainstream etiquette, because I think even that is often not adequately understood. My theory is: because many poly/kinky people are also geeky, the Geek Social Fallacies sometimes come into play. I am only slightly geeky, and I’m actually pretty traditional when it comes to social etiquette. It’s my Southern upbringing.

Let’s start with the big one: With very rare exceptions, I think it is terribly rude and crass to say “Oh, I heard you’re having a party, can I come?”

If your significant other is invited to a social event, and you’re really and truly not sure the invitation included you, then it’s acceptable for the invited person to ask. For most social events, it’s nice to ask both halves of a couple. But there are actually people in the world who are close to my partners, but not to me – and vice versa. And it’s completely conceivable that they’d want to have him over for, say, an intimate dinner party with eight carefully selected guests, and I’m not one of the other seven. That’s utterly fine with me. If you host an event, you get to have it exactly like you want it.

The invited person should phrase the question in such a way as to give the host a graceful way to say, “No, that person is not invited.”

One may not pretend to misunderstand as a ploy to try to wangle invitations.

If the invitation – either verbal or written – says “bring a date,” or “you plus a guest,” then the invited person may bring ONE guest without further clearance from the host. One.

If you really feel that there’s someone that your-dear-friend-the-host would enjoy having, who hasn’t been invited, then you may go to the host, and verbally and charmingly grovel, and sweetly acknowledge that you’re being terrible, and then ask him/her if you may invite other people. The groveling/acknowledging part? Not optional. I have done this myself. If I can do it, you can do it. As before, you must give the host a graceful out.

(Also: if they say yes, bring an extra-nice host gift.)

If the invitations say anything like “Bring your friends - all are welcome - the more the merrier - feel free to forward this”, then obviously it’s fine to arrive with pals, or tell them about it and have them show up on their own.

Even when it's specified that you don’t actually need an invitation, I think it’s always nice to talk to the hosts and tell them you’d like to come. (Or drop them an email, or message them on Fetlife, or whatever medium seems appropriate.) But that’s extra credit.

That’s mainstream good manners. And this will shock you, but it’s not dramatically different for kinky people or poly people.

The only special thing kinky people need to remember is that social events may or may not be kink-friendly. Obviously if someone invites you to a play-party, you can assume that, at the very least, wearing your leather pants would be okay.

Other types of events may be more ambiguous. I was married once – not to Max – and we had two weddings. One was kinky, and one was family, and you would not believe the lengths my then-husband and I went to in order to make sure our kinky pals did not show up to the family one in chaps and leather corsets, tugging their submissives along on leashes. It was An Issue, believe me. If there is the slightest doubt in your mind, ask. If you can’t ask, err on the side of caution.

For poly people it’s slightly more complex. Here’s how I do it: For the purposes of most social invitations issued to me, Max = my partner. We are an easily recognizable social unit.

Monk is also my partner, of course. And in some ways we too are a social unit, but since we don’t live together, I feel that doesn’t usually apply to social functions. In that sense, Tambo is his partner.

There have been times when Monk and I, specifically, have been invited somewhere. That’s also happened with Max and Puck. That’s all perfectly okay, in my view.

If you do not have a spousal-equivalent, then I think it's all right to ask for clarification. (As always: give the host a graceful out.)

What is true is that Monk and Max and I all move in the same general circle. It’s rare for me to get invited to a large social event that Monk isn’t also invited to. That eliminates a lot of problems, because the main difficulty I see with polyamory and social interactions is “I got invited to an event with one partner, and I want to bring a different partner,” or “...and I want to bring ALL my partners.” That’s where it gets tricky.

Far be it from me to tell someone who is, and who is not, their partner. Never would I wade into such shark-infested waters. What I will say is: if an invitation was issued to Max and I, and Max elected not to go, I would not just show up with Monk – or anyone else - without asking my host if that was all right. I think it’s just basic courtesy to let people know who you’d like to bring into their home. And as a host, I would probably not be hugely offended by such a one-for-one request.

Extra bonus points: But before you ask for a social substitution, ponder: is there a reason why my other partner wasn’t invited? It might be because the host doesn’t know him/her. Or it might be, for example, because the host’s other partner had a bad break-up with your other partner six years ago, and still thinks he’s a giant prat. That sort of scenario is not at all impossible, in the often-incestuous world of poly. You’ll want to have the facts before you start that conversation.

If you want to bring multiple people who were not invited – you’re back to the charmingly grovel/sweetly acknowledge/give the host an out set of rules. But essentially, just because you are intimately involved with someone does not mean they should automatically expect to go anywhere you get invited. It’s the host’s privilege to choose who they want to entertain. And it’s sort of like sex – he/she doesn’t need a compelling reason not to want someone. If you ask, and the host displays any reluctance, mentioning not enough space, the amount of food, any social excuse at all, you should drop it. Only a boor would ask for further justification.

If you cannot bear the idea of attending a social event without all your partners, and your host doesn’t wish to invite them, then the solution is simple: don’t go.