I've been being lazy for a few days, my dear readers, but I will be more in a writing mood soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the newest Stranger column: The Naked Truth Is Not Online.

Letters To The Mistress

I have been interested in BDSM for some time, and would very much like to become a part of the community as a submissive where I live. I have read multiple books on the subject, spoken with people in the lifestyle online, and searched the hell out of google. However, I have never had sex, BDSM or otherwise. I was wondering if you think that it would be better to have a vanilla experience first or just jump right in to the good stuff.

Okay, this is a complex question. First, let’s back off and define our terms here. BDSM is not, actually, sex. It is a large set of activities and attitudes that may be erotically charged for most people, most of the time. But not everyone, and not all the time. You can do BDSM without having sex. I frequently do so, and I am not unusual in this. So do lots of other people I know.

I have some BDSM play-partners with whom I never have sex, in even the broadest and most comprehensive sense of that word. I have some BDSM play-partners that I sometimes have sex with, but not other times. And I have some that I always have sex with. It really varies. Thus, you can engage in BDSM while still remaining a sexual virgin. I’m not saying you should, I’m just saying they are two different things that you may or may not wish to combine.

You don’t say how old you are, and I can’t give a razor-sharp answer without knowing whether you are fourteen, or twenty-three, or forty, or what. Neither do you tell me your gender or sexual identity, which would also shape my answer somewhat. And what's true is that I can't really tell a stranger on the internet what would be best in this situation, it's way too delicate and individual.

But I get asked somewhat similar questions by inexperienced people all the time. Here’s a quote from a longer, previous post I wrote on the subject of virginity and BDSM… Go read the whole thing.

“…BDSM is graduate-school sexuality. You take all the usual complications and confusions of a non-kinky romantic connection and overlay it with this intense and still rather taboo way of relating and being sexual. Creating and maintaining a kinky relationship is tricky, and it requires skill, persistence, and work. Dating in one’s teens and early twenties is often the boot camp where we get basic training in how to interact with the objects of our desire. Clearly that’s easier if one is heterosexual, monogamous and not kinky. But even the most dismal and banal of dating encounters – like, say, my high school dates – teach you things. Thus, I think if you aren’t going on dates with people, you should. Don’t have sex with anyone – unless you really want to. Just get some practice in the rituals of beginning a relationship. There will be hideously embarrassing blunders that will make you writhe to think of afterwards. We all have those, I assure you. Me included. But you don’t get good at something without some trial and error."

I hope that gives you some sense of how I think about BDSM and adult sexual relationships. Good for you for researching and learning all you can. Now go talk to real people in real life and see how that feels to you. Take it slow and easy, but take it. Having a good BDSM relationship is like getting to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice.

What am I reading lately? A little of everything…

I bought, but have not read yet, this one: In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food, by Stewart Lee Allen. It appealed to my noted weakness for history-of books.
“Lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, greed, blasphemy, and anger--the seven deadly sins have all been linked to food. Matching the food to the sin, Stewart Lee Allen offers a high-spirited look at the way foods over time have been forbidden, even criminalized, for their "evil" effects. Food has often been, shockingly, morally weighted, from the tomato, originally called the love apple and thought to excite lust; to the potato, whose popularity in Ireland led British Protestants to associate it with sloth; to foods like corn or bread whose use was once believed to delineate "lowness," thus inflaming class pride…the real focus is on the human response to a primal pleasure--eating--and the way people have sought to control it, in every society and every culture, through prohibition.” (From review.)

He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys, by Greg Behrendt. The press around this book – and then the movie – annoyed me so much that I refused to read this book when it first came out, but for some reason curiosity overcame me lately.
It wasn't a demanding read, to say the least. It’s a lot like a long magazine article. Pretty thin text for a book, although Mr. Behrendt has gone on to write more books in the same vein, so apparently some people think he has something new to say. Overall: meh. I agree with some of what he says: some people do chase after people who are obviously - well, not that into them. Unfortunately, I doubt this fluffed-out Cosmo article is going to dissuade them. And much of the time, I think Mr. Behrendt slides from clever flippancy into repetitive heavy-handedness. When it comes to wittily capturing the social patterns and dysfunctions of love, he is no Jane Austen.

Speaking of love, here’s one book I will not be buying: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. I have previously expressed my opinion, both here and in the Stranger, about Ms Gottlieb’s plan of: “Marry any half-way decent man who asks you, because being married, even to someone you don’t love, is better than being single. Plus you need his sperm to get pregnant, and his income to support the little devils.”

I will note that the author, in spite of having stated, in print, that her standards for marriage are extremely low, is still not partnered. Why am I not surprised? I could have told her that. Oh, wait, I did tell her that. This looks like a classic case of saying you want something, but then sabotaging your stated goal as hard as you can. Why she’s doing that I can only speculate.

***

In good print news: Check out The Stranger's article about local kink artisans and entrepreneurs. Featuring, of course, Twisted Monk! Plus, Scott Paul and Tonya Winter - it's a great piece.

From The Archive

Last year on this date, I posted what is surely one of the most charming photos ever taken of an action-movie hero:



















Makes me happy just looking at it.

Then, in 2008 on this day, I posted a sort-of-kinky-but-not-really photo of Monk and I in bondage together.

And today in 2007, I posted a tour, with photos, of my pretty pink box. It's probably not quite what you think...

Three years, with three different but all delightfully kink-inspired posts and photos...

While I zoom off to Las Vegas, here's my latest column in The Stranger, about the passing of a Seattle sex landmark, The Lusty Lady.
Bye!

The first sample from the shoot on Tuesday...














I don't have the CD's from the shoot yet - but Craig was kind enough to email me a preview. I think this one turned out nicely, don't you? The pose isn't quite the same as the Winslet/Vanity Fair shot - I think I slid down more on my stomach in some of the other versions of this, to more closely copy it. But it has some of the same mood, I think.

I didn't Photoshop this, and I don't think Craig did much, if anything. So what knocks me out how perfectly he got the light on me. And that's just natural light, by the way. The photographers among you will appreciate what a feat that is. I'm a big fan of natural light for photos. All those awesome white-dress pictures of me from my last shoot with Craig are done in natural light.

This time, Craig had one strobe that he used for fill-light in some of the other shots. But there are big windows in front of me and on my right, and he just used reflectors and fiddled with the curtains to provide the perfect blend of light and shadow. Look, you can even see where I've been doing all those damn lat pull-downs at the gym!

This was taken in the suite at a certain hotel in San Francisco. Every time I've stayed there, I have looked at the enormous windows all along two walls and thought "The light in this room is so pretty. I really want to do some photos here." My hopes are fully realized by this result. I'll show you more as I get them.

I was tired of having the old post still be at the top of the blog. But I'm out of town, I'm writing a Stranger column, and I have a photo shoot today. Thus, I have no brain cells to devote to creative blogging.

So instead, let's make fun of this hideously ugly and ridiculously expensive dress. When I look at this, it reminds me of that doll my grandmother had on the back of the toilet, the one with her skirt over the extra roll of tissue. Didn't everyone's grandmother have one of those?




Or maybe it looks like a feather-duster. Or perhaps some faux-kinky sex toy, I don't know. What it does not look like is a dress any reasonable woman would pay $6,600 for.

Bye!

This blog post will not make much sense to you if you didn’t read my column last week, and the blog post that went with it. You also need to read my column this week, and if you want the fullest possible perspective, listen to the 50-minute-long audio file linked from it.

***

Let me preface this by saying clearly: Ms. Febos, I do not think you are a bad person. I don’t harbor any personal rancor towards you.

I am not attempting to “silence” you, either, and to demonstrate that, I asked the The Stranger to make the audio of our entire conversation available for download so people can hear exactly what you said when I interviewed you.

For the readers, let me also just run down the timeline of how our meeting came about:

• I arranged this interview with Ms. Febos, via her agent, on March 15th, and I told him that I would publish my review of "Whip Smart" in advance of her Seattle appearances the weekend of the 27th/28th. I had a personal email exchange with Ms. Febos subsequent to that.

• My review of "Whip Smart" was published in print and went live on the web on Wednesday March 24th.

• Saturday March 27th at 5pm, Ms. Febos walked into an interview with me – without having read my review. In fact, she admitted that while she had heard of me, she had actually never read anything I’ve written.

That was not a smart way to handle a professional situation. Ms. Febos teaches writing to college students. One wonders what she would think if a student of hers showed up for class without doing any homework whatsoever.

So it’s true that I didn’t like her book, but books are not people. I was completely prepared for this interview to reverse my opinion of Ms. Febos’ perceptions of BDSM and sex work. It failed to do so.

I don’t wish you unhappiness, Ms. Febos, but this not about just you and me. This is about some bigger issues. That’s why you are making another appearance in my Stranger column this week.

***

In many ways, Ms. Febos is a striking example of what happens when people write about kink and sex work in cultural isolation. She is not a part of the BDSM community, nor is she participatory in any sex-work activism circles, so she has not been educated by leaders in those communities on how to talk about them without putting her foot in her mouth.

She’s getting a remedial education now, and not just from me. I’m sure she’s not enjoying it. Judging by the difference in both her tone of voice and in the answers she’s given in her more recent interviews, Ms. Febos is adapting quickly to the feedback she’s gotten. That’s good. But it does indicate to me that her perspective on her experiences is still very much evolving. That’s understandable, because according to my calculations, Ms. Febos finished writing "Whip Smart" when she was just twenty-six years old. I myself shudder to think of the book-length memoir I would have produced at twenty-six. That’s the tough part about writing: once the words are out there, you can’t unwrite them. They take on a life of their own - but you still have to stand behind them.

Aside it just being too soon for her to write this book, I think Ms. Febos’ post-addiction views about BDSM sexuality and sex work have been largely shaped by vanilla people - 12-step people, therapists, family – who have a very one-dimensional view of kink and sex work. She has not put herself in situations where kinky, sex-working people who are smarter than she is can raise her consciousness. I could tell, talking to her, that a lot of the experiences and reactions she thought were uniquely hers were, actually, experiences and reactions I’ve seen people have time and again. Some of them I’ve had myself.

One's experiences are not either right or wrong, they just are. But the conclusions we draw from them can be either accurate and insightful, or – not. When I had some of what I might call the Universal Kink/Sex-Work Experiences, I had the advantage of having like-minded people to turn to and say, “Hey, this weird thing happened and I’m feeling X way about it.” Not everyone in my communities always dispenses Solomon-like wisdom. But you can’t get education; you can’t get perspective, if you never talk to anyone who knows more than you do.

I have been asked why I can’t just “be nice”, and say nothing critical about Ms. Febos’ words. No, I cannot do that, because I am part of these communities, and I would not be the person I am, or have the life I do, without them. When I was just beginning to understand who and what I was, writers like Susie Bright and Patrick Califia literally changed my life by brilliantly and ceaselessly refuting the lies that are told about people like me. And I would not be here now, safe and sane and happy, without the kinky, sex-working people in my everyday life who corrected me when I made mistakes, and told me truths I didn’t always want to hear. So while I didn’t necessarily like it at the time, it’s a damn good thing they did it, and now I owe them.

At the end of the interview, Ms. Febos said something that explained a lot to me. She said, “Learning how to do something new in public is so uncomfortable.... I’m not good at being a beginner at anything.”

I thought to myself, And therein lies the problem here. Because she is a beginner when it comes to talking and writing about BDSM and sex work. Unfortunately, by publishing the book, Ms. Febos has placed herself in the expert’s seat. Now she has to learn, in public, to handle her discomfort in that position.

Under My Protection and Collars of Consideration

I saw some questions about this on a kink community board I’m on, so I’m using them as a blog-prompt for myself.

When someone says, “So-and-so is under my protection”, what does that mean?

That phrase may or may not mean that two people involved are playing together. The general translation of that sentiment, in my mind, is: “I’m fond of this person, and either because of his/her newness to kink, or just general emotional issues, I perceive her/him as being vulnerable to predatory personalities. So go ahead and chat them up, it’s all good, but just be aware: you fuck with them, you’re fucking with me. And you don’t want to fuck with me.”

Your mileage may vary, of course. But that’s what it means when I say it.

What is a Collar of Consideration?

A tiresome bit of pretentiousness? Collars of Consideration, indeed. What am I, a kinky seminary or something?

Oh, all right, I don’t really mean that. I mean: I don’t do that sort of thing myself. I don’t generally use collars very much at all. (Although they are pretty to look at, and sometimes useful, too.) But other people place a lot of meaning in them, and that’s fine. And whatever you want to call them is also fine with me - as long as you don’t pretend that there is some sort of universally agreed-upon BDSM system of ranking the person wearing them according to the title of the collar, or its color, or its material, or anything like that, because there is not.

I suppose you could say a “Collar of Consideration” might be the kink version of a Promise Ring – the people involved are engaged to be engaged, if you will, in a committed D/s relationship. That would be my take on that.

As always in BDSM, when in doubt, politely say to the person you're talking to, "I don't want to be rude, but I'm not sure I understand the etiquette here - can you tell me what that means, exactly?" That'll pretty much cover you no matter what.

Another letter, because there’s a bunch of them stacked up in the mailbox…. This came to "Mistress Matisse and Twisted Monk", but I’m just giving my take on it. I have a feeling Monk would agree with me, anyway.

I'm lost and need some advice.

This all began several years ago...13 to be exact. Me and 'Master J' have been best friends for as long as I can remember, but thirteen years ago things got serious when we were in sixth grade. We got together, and I revealed my kinky side, to begin with he tried to be just as kinky as I, but lately it seems that he is getting bored of the lifestyle, he claims that He has fulfilled his every fantasy, but in the process he has forgotten my greatest fantasy...to be his loved pet. I tried to remind him by making my own collars, he brushed it off. I even bought two very nice, semi expensive collars...of them one was locking. He only locked me after I asked him. It didn’t feel like any collaring that I have ever read about.

Should I give up my kinky side to live with him happily? I don’t want to leave him, he is my Master, my lover, and my world. How can I rekindle the spark of kink that we once had? Is there anyway to make him see how I truly feel about being his pet?

Okay, honey. Let me first say: I’m sorry you’re having a hard time in your relationship. Mismatched sexual desires are indeed very frustrating.

But I keep doing the math here and coming up with this: most sixth graders are 11 or 12 years old, so unless you and Master J flunked a whole lot of years in school, ya’ll are now about 25 years old.

You’re saying you began having a serious master/slave relationship with this guy in sixth grade? Really? You want to know what my significant sexual milepost of sixth grade was? I French-kissed a boy for the first time. That the full extent of my sixth-grade sexiness. I was aware of my own sexuality at that age, and looking back I can see there was kink mixed into it even then. But I didn’t have any sophisticated language or concepts for how I was feeling, I didn’t know exactly what to do about any of the concepts I did have, and I sure as hell was not capable of creating a complex, structured kinky/sexual relationship with another person. I was also not capable of falling in love with anyone in any meaningful, mature fashion at that age.

And it’s perfectly appropriate that I wasn’t able to do those things. Because even if she/he has started puberty, a twelve-year-old is still a child, mentally and emotionally. So I think you’re exaggerating a bit when you say you’ve been serious with this man for thirteen years. No, what you’re saying is you had a childhood sweetheart, which is fine. And then you had a teenage boyfriend, which is also fine. And you two fooled around with kinky stuff in whatever fashion you did, exploring the different flavors of this mysterious thing, sex.

Now, at twenty-five, you’re both truly adults – and he’s changed since he was twelve. Well, yeah. Most people do change a lot between twelve and twenty-five. You grow up, basically. It appears that you’ve grown up to be a kinky woman, and he’s grown up to be a man who isn’t interested in having a master/slave relationship with you. I don’t think it’s a question of getting him to see how you truly feel. Buying collars and asking him to lock them on you seems very clear to me. I would guess that he sees it – and he just doesn’t want to do it.

Do I think you should give up your kinky desires to stay with your childhood sweetheart? Um, no. Naturally "should I stay or should I go?" is not a question I can really answer for anyone else. But what I can tell you is that trying to get an unwilling partner to dominate you is the single most doomed-to-frustration endeavor I can imagine. Even if you succeed in getting him to do it… you’re still getting him to do it.

My personal opinion is that you’ve just begun your life as a sexual adult, and you have a long way to go, believe me. Kiss your adolescent romance a fond goodbye and go find a guy who really wants to own you.

Today, a selection from the dusty vaults: a blog post from this date (more or less) five years ago. It’s not exactly a phone calls post, but rather one of my humorous takes on the voice-mails I used to get.

Since I no longer have a public phone line, I no longer get to experience the mingled amusement/exasperation of listening to such things. Like many mingled things, it’s less exasperation and more amusement when it's all firmly in the past. But occasionally - very occasionally - I miss the controlled but raw feed of utterly random input from anyone with pocket change and a copy of The Stranger.

Letters: Advice From An Expert

So today, I decided to let my very best friend in the whole world take a crack at the Letters file. In addition to just being a smart cookie, Miss K also happens to be a therapist, which makes her a handy pal to have. Her advice is advice worth taking. Thus, without further ado...

For the past two years I have been dating a man in what can only be called an abusive relationship with a woman he's been with for over a decade. Typically the abuse, which from what I can tell started about five years ago, is verbal, but it is occasionally backed up by threats of or actual violence (such as punching, throwing things or biting).

I've discussed the abuse issues with him, but if you know anyone who's been in such a relationship for a long time, you know how futile that can be. So I've been continuing to see him, enjoy him, and offer him whatever support I can while not entangling myself in their issues. Since my relationship with him is long-distance, I've managed to draw a pretty thick line between me and her.

About a month ago, she found a book I'd given him on emotional abuse. You can imagine the consequences. Their relationship is one with a veto, and apparently the veto has no time limit, because she's used it. The thing is, he wants to continue to see me, but in secret. I've always considered myself an ethical, upstanding poly person, and normally I wouldn't consider cheating. But every rule has its exceptions, and I'm wondering if this is one of them. In another situation I'd insist that he stand up to her and tell her he plans to consider seeing me if he does in fact want to. But he'll be punished--severely and for a long time--if he stands up to her and says he wants to continue to see me. And while I don't have any illusions that I can save him (until he's ready to save himself), I also don't want to withdraw the love and support that could eventually help him find the strength and courage to leave this situation.

In short, my ethics about how to deal with a friend and lover suffering in an abusive relationship are in conflict with my ethics about honesty and disclosure in multiple relationships. What's an ethical slut to do?

***

Miss K says: An ethical slut must do what's right for herself, and allow others the opportunity to do the same for themselves. You must consider this as any other poly relationship: If you would not see someone secretly under normal circumstances, you must not do so here either. Your love and support, while valuable, can still be made available to him if/when he decides to change his circumstances.

In the meantime, he is an adult who knows his options, and only when the pain of maintaining the status quo becomes greater than the pain of changing will he make a move. Your removal from the situation may turn out to be just the thing that tips those scales. Besides, who are you to keep him from his misery?

It comes down to this: You are not his only resource. You are not even his most important resource - that title goes to his own will to survive. Step back, maintain your ethics and open-heartedness, and let his process unfold.

Here's my newest column in The Stranger. It's a review of a book called "Whip Smart" by Melissa Febos.

Before you go read, hear me say this: it's a critique of the book. It is not a critique of the author as a person. There's been a fair amount of negative reaction in the BDSM community to the book, and to some of things Ms. Febos said in her recent NPR interview. I myself thought Terry Gross was condescending and ill-informed in that interview, although I've never been a fan of hers anyway.

Ms. Febos had been scheduled to appear at the Center For Sex Positive Culture, but that appearance was canceled by the author/her publicist. I have not been told first-hand the reason for that, but what I have heard is that Ms. Febos was upset by some comments made on Fetlife about that interview, by people who are presumed to be CSPC members, and thus declined to read there.

Now, I understand why all this is happening. BDSM people are a marginalized subculture, and thus we are naturally sensitive to being unflatteringly characterized. We also dislike it when people seem to be claiming to represent us when we did not elect them, so to speak.

However, Ms. Febos has not, that I know of, explicitly claimed to be a spokesperson for the BDSM community. Popular media likes to label people. For the moment, Ms. Febos has been assigned the label of The Dominatrix, and it's been implied that her experience is The Experience Of All Kinky People and also of All Sex Workers. But I have not heard her say that herself - not exactly, anyway.

My criticisms of her book aside, I have some sympathy for her in this matter, since, on a smaller scale, I get the same sort of thing myself. People read something I wrote about my life and think that I'm saying something about them, or they read carelessly and respond to something I never said at all. It's very frustrating.

But at least for me, those criticisms have happened over time, in small bites, and I can take any useful ideas and use them to tailor future pieces. A book is not a dynamic thing, it's just there. And my own little measure of fame has also grown slowly. I have had time to get used to moving gracefully in each stage of it, whereas Ms. Febos has been rather suddenly thrust into a larger arena.

As luck would have it, Ms. Febos is reading her book at Elliot Bay this weekend, and I have scheduled an interview with her for Saturday afternoon. I'm going to let that be her opportunity to clarify her feelings about the BDSM community, and on this aspect of publishing her story. I would bet this will be the only author-interview she'll do with someone who is also a dominatrix, who also writes about her life. Ms. Febos is now a writing teacher, but I hope she'll find it refreshing to not have to teach another interviewer Pro Domme 101.

Time for another podcast! In this one, Monk reads an original poem – or at least, we hope it is original – sent to him by a reader. And he reads it in the voice of William Shatner, because the William Shatner-voice makes everything better.

Moving on, we read a letter from a kinky person asking how to keep a pleasant sexual tension alive in a long-term relationship. This is a type of question that we get a lot, so we both have plenty to say about it. As a man who’s been happily married for over twenty years, Monk waxes particularly eloquent. High point: he compares BDSM to Pokemon. I’m serious.

About fourteen minutes.

Back in Seattle, and busy catching up on my life. Because of all my travel recently, I had to regretfully turn down far too many charming invitations from intimate friends. If you're one of those people, drop me a note and we'll talk about a rendezvous.

And if you're a local fan of foot worship, you should know about this party. Seattle Footnight! April 1st, from 8pm-midnight. These are fun events, I've gone to several of them before. I'll be at this one, and so will my lovely friend Lady Lydia, as well as other beautiful women. Check out the site and register for the party!

A new Stranger column is up - this one about that very annoying "You're Kinky? You Must Have Been Abused As A Child" myth... Enjoy!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

If you’re a sex worker who likes her career, and if you talk about it and read other people’s thoughts about it at all, there comes a point when you realize you’ve heard all the standard anti-sex work arguments before. The trouble is the people making them think they’re new ideas, and trot them out to you as though you hadn’t already answered them 3,458 times.

I have toyed with the idea of making a quick reference, flow-chartish sort of handout to give people. It would list all the usual lines of attack and all the answers to those lines. But I doubt that anyone who’s going to say these things would pay any heed to that.

However, FurryGirl had the charming idea to create Bingo cards with all the standard anti-sex work talking points on them. (And so did Renegade Evolution.) I have certainly sat through many, many meetings and lectures and panel discussions where one could have gotten to Bingo! very quickly with one of these.
























See the larger version in the original blog post by Furrygirl.

Still, I have to say I like the idea of creating a drinking game with them even better. I don’t know what one would win as a prize in such a Bingo game, but I’m certain doing shots of something strong would make the experiences of listening to offensive drivel like this much more enjoyable. Perhaps some sort of board game - that included drinking. A roll-and-move style of game, not unlike Monopoly. Some of the squares would say things like, “You Got A Book Contract! Collect Two Hundred Dollars.” Other would say “Your Strip Club Got Raided! Lose A Turn.”

It’s certainly far more entertaining than arguing with anti-sex work people…

I’m excited about what’s happening in my dungeon today: I’m getting the carpet swapped out! No, that's not some bit of sexual slang, I mean carpet. Kinky, huh?

Okay, maybe it's not sexy to you. But I’m very happy with my place. Buying my own house was an extremely big deal to me, and I’m still pleased and proud of it. I love having a place I own to play in, it makes me feel way more private and secure than I ever did in rented spaces. I have a strong sense of “mine!” about my house. It’s an extension of who I am.

That being the case, I’m constantly seeking to improve it. Last year, I renovated the whole first floor, and part of that was removing a wall between two rooms to make them into one bigger one. The main playspace has thick black carpet, blood-red walls, and a black ceiling. I actually brought the black paint down around the top edge of the wall, to a picture-rail style of molding that’s about six inches from the ceiling, and the result is that the room seems taller than it is. It all looks very sharp, and nicely finished.

Except that one-third of the newly-redone space was still carpeted in the same deep gold carpet as the rest of the house. Can you say clash? It’s been driving me crazy, looking at it. But, as remodeling always does, the whole extravaganza cost me more than I’d projected. So I gritted my teeth and waited until I could afford to pull up the gold carpet and put in the black without feeling guilty about a not-absolutely-necessary expense. Which would be – now!

I have other plans as well, but my other projects are all on the main floor. First is getting my terrible crumbly popcorn ceiling sheet-rocked over. (It’s less mess than scraping it off, I assure you.) Hopefully I can have my unbelievably big, ugly, 70’s faux-river-stone horror of a fireplace mantle taken out at the same time, and the boys can sheetrock that, too. And some new lighting fixtures, some new sliding doors, and a new coat of paint – and I think that’ll probably be most of my remodeling budget for the year!

The stage-by-stage remodeling will probably be going on for a couple more years – I still have two more really dated-looking bathrooms (think: avocado green cabinets and glittery metallic-bronze tub surrounds) and a kitchen that’s pretty beat up. But that’s all right. I’m connected to this space, in a way that I haven’t been to any other. I love my house, and it loves me right back. I’ll give it anything it wants.

Another podcast, and another riff from Monk about how I’m playing with my nipple. Even though I’m not.

Then, letters: the first is from a listener asking about jealousy and threesome sex/BDSM. Threesomes are fraught with peril, in my opinion. The best threesome experiences I have had were in situations with three previously-uninvolved people.* The emotional stakes are considerably lower when no one has ever slept with anyone else before. An established couple plus one? That’s a very tricky situation. But it's a common fantasy, so Monk and I step through some of the ways it could happen.

Next, a request for guidance from a BDSM person who’s wondering about how to answer her friend’s question: “Am I cut out to be a slave?”

The last letter asks, “Is it fair for a people in a polyamory group to veto the partners of other partners?” Monk and I both have some opinions about the term “veto” and making rules that create the illusion of control over other people. I predict they will not be universally agreed-with, but what would be the point of listening if you already agreed with everything we said?

About twenty minutes.


*I did have a three-way romp not long ago that was quite, quite lovely, and it was with two people who were - let us say they were previously involved, if not precisely a couple. But - they are both exceptional people.