A new podcast! In which Monk and I talk about sex work busts in Seattle and what not to do if you're operating a store-front sex work business. We're such entrepreneurs ourselves that we're fascinated by other forms of sex-oriented businesses, and how they succeed or fail. We'd do a great sexy-business-advice radio show... except that we're too busy running our various businesses.

Have a lovely weekend!

So I'm mostly all about shopping for stuff for the house right now, since the Great Remodel of '09 is soon to begin. Thus, most of my recent shopping bookmarks look like this, or this, or this.

But I am thinking about kinky stuff too. I've long wanted one of these, for example, and have had trouble finding one that was sized for a MAN and not a five-foot-five, hundred-and-twenty pound woman. I'd need to go find a looooong hose extension for a vacuum, though, because I don't want the dang thing roaring away next to me while I play. I imagine I'll be in Home Depot-esque places a lot the next few weeks/months, that seems like an opportunity.

This, however... I don't know, part of me thinks it's very ingenious and cleverly made. But it's also sort of disturbing, somehow. I suppose that really, it is simply the equivalent of a strap-on dildo, and god knows I'm a big fan of those.

But there's just something a little squick-making about these images. I think I'd respond to it better if they'd pictured it ON someone. Or even a dummy. As it is, there's just something very Silence of The Lambs about the photos. Do men feel that way when they look at hyper-realistic dildos? I had not thought so, but...

Nonetheless, I'm sure it will sell like crazy. Not my fetish, but just fine if you're into it.

Complete and unedited text of a recent email...

Subject: Dominators
Mistress Matisse,

Do you know of any men who dominate women?

I saw a video of women getting her vagina spanked and thought it would be fun to do.

Are there women who like to get that done to them?
I thought you would know.
Thank you.
PS Of all the dominatrixes I have seen on the internet you are the most powerful looking.

Even after all these years, emails like this puzzle me. I mean, how can this man have found ME on the internet, and yet not have found any evidence of male dominants? Is he asking me how to find submissive women in real life? Or does he want more female-submissive porn? Or is he just asking me to confirm the existence of a species?

He's being polite, so I'd help him if I could. But I don't even know where to start with questions like this, except to be absolutely literal.

So: Yes, I know men who dominate women. Lots of them.

Yes, I am certain there are women who like their pussies spanked.

And - thank you.

Hope that's helpful to you in some way I don't comprehend...

Happy Inauguration Day!

This is a very historic day! And today, I am very happy and hopeful about the future of America! Yay, President Obama!

A few points of information about my schedule...

I have time available Wednesday of this week, so if you've been trying (and failing) to schedule with me, talk to me.

EDIT: Looks like I have some time Friday too.

***

About Evening Appointments: In the past, I have not been open to evening sessions - meaning, not after 8pm or so. The reasons for that rule were were two-fold.

One was my experience that, as the saying goes, "Nothing good happens after midnight". By that I mean: daytime sessions with new people are less likely to turn out badly than nighttime sessions with new people. Thus, no nighttime sessions equals less chance of bad experiences.

But things have changed since I made that rule. I almost never see new people anymore, so why not see my favored boys at night, if they ask nicely?

My other reason - which will still hold true to some degree - is that most other people I care about work in the daytime and socialize at night. If I want to spend time with my lovers and friends, I must arrange my schedule accordingly.

But life changes, and lately I have more flexibility there.

So if I have met you before, then I'm willing to spend an evening with you. Carpe noctum.

Okay, I am now officially obsessed with the whole remodeling/redecorating thing for my house. Ob-sessed. And what do I do when I’m obsessed with something? I buy a whole lot of books on the subject and start reading.

I had picked up a couple of decorating books and magazines the last few weeks, but today I made a special trip to the big magazine rack at the Broadway QFC and bought one of every interior-design magazine they had to offer. Wow, there’s a lot of them!

And then I went across the street to Bailey-Coy and bought a few more magazines, and I also bought this book: Domino: The Book of Decorating: A room-by-room guide to creating a home that makes you happy.

I had seen this book, but initially disdained it, because it does not have a big glossy photo of some fabulous room on the cover, and so what the heck good is that? And the styles of the rooms in the photos inside seemed all very modern, with lots of primary colors. Sort of first-apartment-ish, not at all what I'm thinking of.

But then I flipped through it a bit more and decided it would be helpful. It’s very step-by-step, room-by-room, and it explains a lot about why stuff works together, or doesn’t. It’s got lots of lists and charts and graphs, and I think it'll help me conceptualize what I want.

Much of what’s going to happen at the Little House doesn’t really fall in the “decorating” category. I’m taking out a interior wall to expand the playroom, and remodeling the adjoining bathroom. (And getting rid of that ugly mantle, which is this 70’s faux-rock horror. You know, those big brown stones that you could practically rock-climb on. Terrible!)

But doing that, plus some other factors, are inspiring me to pretty much redecorate the whole damn house - living room, dining room, ect. At least, until I run out of money. That’s a challenge, because I’ve never actually set out to decorate a house in any purposeful way. The furniture I have now is just random pieces I’ve picked up here and there, without any plan other than, “Oh, I like that - and hey, it’s on sale!”

The Big House is done in mostly sort of a contemporary style, with a lot of nice Danish teak pieces. I like that fine, but I am feeling a desire for a different look at my house. Something more classic/traditional, with some antique pieces, and a bit of a French/Italian feel to it. Warm and sexy and a little exotic. But not fussy. I do not like busy, cluttered spaces, with little chachkies everywhere. Some people do that look very well, and live with it comfortably, but not me. I want surroundings that are pretty, but I also like clear surfaces and some negative space for my eyes to rest upon.

So, the actual remodeling hasn’t even started yet – you know how these things go, twice as much and twice as long as you originally planned. But I’m excited about the process just the same.

Good Information To Have: a video from Red Light Chicago about what exactly happens if you get arrested on a misdemeanor prostitution charge. It's helpful in terms of planning what-if scenarios, and gives specific little details worth knowing. For example, because it's a collect call, you can't call a cell phone from jail, you can only call a land-line. So whoever you'd want to call in such an emergency, you need to have a land-line phone number memorized for them.

It's Part Two in the Know Your Rights series, but the whole site is worth checking out. I think these women are way cool!

For further information about your legal rights - everyone's rights, not just sex workers - in the event of an arrest, read this: Beat The Heat: How To Handle Encounters With Law Enforcement. This book is done in sort of a comic-book style, so it's VERY easy to understand, no legal education required. It's just the basics, this is no substitute for a real attorney. And I hope none of us ever need it, but hey, knowledge is power, so empower yourself.

So I put a new and terribly mean picture into the Flickr feed yesterday. (Nipples and staples and needles, oh my!)

And today some thoughtful reader sent me a link to this truly unpleasant little case history. Guys, you might want to get a firm grip on the family jewels before you read this. It's pretty eeek-making. One has to reluctantly admire the sheer fortitude of the man, but oooooo, that's just a whole series of bad ideas.

Moral of the story: don't try that at home, kids. Put yourselves into the hands of caring and thoughtful women like me. We'll see you through it without you - ahem - losing anything.

The latest Stranger column, about a subject that's near and dear to my heart: kinky sex. Enjoy!

While I'm off engaging in mean and delightful activities... Enjoy the newest episode of the polyamory web-series "Family".

I’m about to start having some remodeling done at the house where I have sessions with people. I’m a little nervous about this. This is one of those things where deep inside my head, there's a voice that says "Hey, you're not allowed to do this. Telling people to tear out bathroom fixtures is a grown-up thing to do, and you're not really a grown-up, you're just pretending to be."

I felt that way when I bought the house, too. Only - I am really am a grown-up, apparently. And thus I can authorize people to take a crowbar to that unbelievably ugly fireplace mantle in my living room. Thank god.

Fortunately, I happen to be friends with a contractor who is not only a good guy, but is also kinky, so he’s doing the work for me. And he's all right with working in the morning when I'm not there, and being done and gone for the day by the time I show up to be the Mistress. I think my pal Jerry gets up in the morning right about the time I'm going to bed at night. So that'll be fine.

Thus, on Saturday he and his partner and one of their guys showed up at my house to look it over and make some plans about what needed to happen.

So picture me in my playspace, with three big burly guys all dressed in smudged Carhart’s and steel-toed boots, stomping around thumping on my walls, peering at my plumbing, and talking about on-demand hot-water heaters. Sounds like a scene, doesn’t it? Not quite. Or at least I’m not sure who was topping who.

I completely trust Jerry, and I think the work itself is going to be fine, but we had a few let-me-correct-that-impression moments. I suppose that’s normal with these things.

For example, I expect that if you say the word dungeon to a non-kinky person, they automatically picture: cold, bare, industrial-looking room. God knows I have played in lots of places that looked like that, either because it’s cheap and practical for a public space, or because the owner liked that style. But it’s never appealed to me particularly. I’m not cold and hard in my scenes, I don’t want cold and hard in my décor.

So I had to clarify that a bit. We were all actually standing in my dungeon at the time, which is not at all cold or bare or industrial in appearance. It’s all red walls and black carpet and heavy velvety curtains - rather intimate.

I was talking about taking out a wall and putting in French doors to another room, and one of the not-kinky guys says, “Hey, you could put in a steel roll-down door, like on a garage!”

A steel roll-down door? Well, that would be perfect in a warehouse with concrete floors and eighteen-foot ceilings. But that’s not going to go so well in my house. I raised my eyebrow and looked at him sideways. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s the motif I’m going for.” I made a little look-around gesture.

He furrowed his brow. “Well, what are you going for?”

“Something more – feminine.”

“Feminine!” He let out a snort of laughter.

I put my hands on my hips. “Yes, feminine. I am a girl, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Jerry laughed too. “Oh, we noticed.” After that, they invoked the word “feminine” numerous times in discussing my design options, with an accompanying palms-up, wiggly-fingered gesture. So apparently I made my point about that. I doubt I’ll hear any more about garage doors.

Hey, it's another podcast! We're back on the ball with these things.

In this one, we respond to a letter asking about dominant women and fucking. I will note that as usual, Monk and I made a lot of bad jokes about the letter when we were recording. We've since actually met the woman who wrote us, and she's very nice, so I feel slightly bad about about kidding her so much, even in absentia.

However, the way Monk and I do these is: we shut ourselves up, in a little tiny soundproof room, with microphones and headsets and a sound guy in a glass booth making hand signals at us, and a handful of your printed-out emails, and we just answer one after another, until we have four or five episodes recorded. It's always at night, and we're often propping ourselves up with Red Bull or Monster or something like that, and the longer we go, the more silly and slightly snarky we become.

Thus, if your question happens to be one we answer at the beginning of a podcast session, we'll be sort of serious and thoughtful in our answer to it. If you happen to be the last email in the pile - oh, there's gonna be a lot of flippant wisecracks and sex-with-lawn-gnomes jokes. It's just the way it goes.

I think this was a last-one-of-the-nighter. So, pretty gonzo.

But I do hate the word "subbie" with a passion. Really.

Good lord, I thought I got fucked-up letters. Eleven Gay Bars In Seattle Receive Threats To Poison Their Patrons With Ricin.

The Stranger also received a letter warning of the poisoning threats, and the link is to the original post on the Slog. Click on the Slog main page for the follow-up posts, of which there are already several. There will undoubtedly be more updates on TheStranger.com as information becomes available.

There is a pub-crawl being planned for Friday night to show support for the bars being threatened.

Complete and unedited text of a recent email...

SUBJECT: ok I'm new at this
I love my wife but she refuses to dominate me in any way, shape or form. My secret desire to to have a woman with a strap-on to, well, fu(k me in the ass. I would wear panties while this happened.

any help?

Yes, clearly you are a beginner, dear man, or you would not have written such a letter to me. You want to be dominated? Good. Prepare to get spanked.

This letter is a perfect example of a behavior that is anathema to me: intellectual laziness. See my previous rants on the subject here, and here, and probably countless other dates that I can't be bothered to link to.

You see, I am not Dan Savage - I do not get paid to give sex advice. Sometimes, out of the simple goodness of my heart, I spend my very valuable time answering people's requests for help, both here on the blog, and via private email. But you have to make it easy for me. If you cannot be bothered to give me any more information than this, I really cannot imagine why I would bestir myself to try and give you advice. Am I supposed to use my psychic powers to deduce all the variables and form a sensible answer to your question?

Here's something I can guess without ESP, though. If you're putting as much effort into making this idea attractive to your wife as you did in writing this email, I can see why she's not going for the idea. I suggest you spend some time considering what's in it for her to fulfill your fantasy. Is she going to get lots of orgasms? Or a long foot massage and dinner cooked for her? Or a new pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes? I think she should get all three, but that's just me. Figure out what she wants, and give it to her. Then see about getting what you want.

I am not going to write about how much I hate snow.

***

If you know me – or you’ve been reading me for very long – you know that I am often a bit standoffish when I am unexpectedly approached by strangers in public. Call it good boundaries, or a suspicious nature, but I tend to mind my own business and let other people mind theirs.

However, occasionally it’s a good thing when strangers talk to me. It’s happened twice lately. Once was a very sweet girl introducing herself to me and Monk, in a restaurant on Broadway. She recognized us and came to our table to say hi, she was a fan of ours. She was just perfectly charming and appropriate about it, and we were pleased to meet her. So greetings go out to RhythmGirl.

The other occasion was different. Much less charming, but it definitely prevented me from doing something I shouldn’t have.

The day in question was December 30^th. I had some pre-NYE shopping to do at University Village. But it seemed I wasn’t the only one. It was mid-afternoon on a work day, but still, the place was jammed with people. Or more accurately, jammed with cars. I wasn’t trying to score Rock-Star Parking (meaning: ten feet from the door of your destination) but even in the furthest reaches of the lots, there were seemingly no parking spots available, and a lot of people cruising around looking for them.

So around and around I went, getting more and more frustrated, until after about fifteen minutes, I saw some people getting into a car in my aisle. They were on my left, so I put on the turn signal, and sat waiting for them to pull out. It took them a few minutes to organize themselves, but I wasn’t impatient, I do that too. I just waited.

They eased back out of the spot, and as they did, a little car came zipping down the lane, squeezed past the emerging car so tightly I expected to hear sheet metal scraping, and pulled into the space. My space.

Now, I expect anyone who drives has had this happen to them at some point or other, and it’s happened to me before. But it’s one thing when you think that maybe the other driver really didn’t see you.

This woman did. I know she did because when I saw what she was about to do, I laid on the horn. Twice. In some cities, that might be taken as a friendly hello, but in Seattle, that’s practically a declaration of road-rage. As the driver turned in front of me, she had her head twisted unnaturally far to the right, so I couldn’t see her face, and she wouldn’t have to look at me. She knew exactly what she was doing.

And rage is an accurate description of my response. I do not think of myself as having a quick temper, and I can overlook a lot of annoyances. But occasionally…I just snap. And it was just so blatant, and so depersonalizing. I mean, I doubt if that woman would have physically shoved me aside to get ahead of me in a line at QFC. But since we were both in cars, it was like I wasn’t really a person. This kind of thing is what gives car-drivers a bad rap.

As fate would have it, another car pulled out just a few spaces down. I parked my car and got out and let me tell you, dear readers, I had blood in my eye. I looked around and spotted the other driver walking rather quickly away, and I walked after her, adrenaline surging through my body. I had some very choice words for her, and I was going to deliver them, loudly. I did not care if she went into the fanciest store in U. Village, she was going to get an earful from me. I imagine I looked like a woman who was about to Start Something, because I was.

I was closing the distance between us when directly into my path hopped a small older woman. She was dressed in what I call Bellevue Peasant style – boots, long full skirt, poofy sweater and lots of scarves and jewelry. Sort of an expensive earth-mother look.

Her voice, however, was not small.

“Oh, my dear, oh I SAW what happened, oh my goodness I can’t believe that woman DID that, that is the rudest thing I ever SAW!”

I paused, and she kept talking, in a fast New York-ish voice, without seeming to draw breath. “You were there waiting, and she just – unbelievable! I think she got her driver’s license by correspondence course or something, I mean, honestly! Did you see her face? Vacant! I REALLY think she’s not all there!”

We both looked after the offending driver, who was still within view, and possibly even earshot, given the strength of my sympathizer’s voice. She had a soft knitted beret pulled over short dark hair, and the wrinkles around her dark eyes, as she shifted her gaze back to me, made her look wise and maternal.

“And I know, I know,” she went on. “You want to say something to her, and I understand, but you know, just let it go, let it go. Someone like that, pah, an idiot, she’s not worth bothering with, really.” She waved a diamond-ringed hand in dismissal.

I made some noise indicating my unsatisfied outrage, and she continued the soothing opera of abuse. “I know, it was SO unbelievably rude, inexcusable. She’s an absolute moron. But you have to just let things like that go. You’re a better person than that.”

I took a long breath in and out and relaxed my shoulders. “All right. All right. You’re right. I should just let it go.”

She patted my arm. “That’s the best thing. Don’t let it ruin your afternoon. It was stupid but now it’s over. You’re a better person.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you for saying that, it really helps.” And it did. I was still annoyed, but I wasn’t seeing-red angry anymore. “You’re very kind to do this.”

I wished her a pleasant afternoon and turned and walked in the opposite direction. And in retrospect, I am glad I didn’t vent my not-unreasonable wrath on the other driver. I had other things to do than give driver-etiquette lessons, and somehow I doubt those lessons would have been gratefully received.

So if you’ve the rude idiot who parked your blue car in this manner on the day in question, a nice lady saved you from an unpleasant confrontation. I wouldn’t count on her following you around, however, and the next person you offend may not be as easily placated as I was. Even if you don’t care about other people’s feelings, you might think about whether you want to be inviting such experiences upon yourself.

Wow, it's 2009 - first post for the new year. I got together with a number of my closest friends to see the old year out. We missed a few pals who had to be elsewhere (hi, Candy and MC!), but otherwise, it was a lovely, champagne-y evening with bondage, naked people, needles, and people getting pantsed. Of course, we had a lot of really gorgeously-gowned women and sharply-attired men, in addition to the naked people. I myself find the contrast between the two extremes quite charming.

And I'm ready for January. A lot of good things are going to happen this year, I feel sure of it. I'm going to start 2009 off with a super-busy day today, catching up with some people I have missed because of the snowstorm. So while I do that, please enjoy the latest installment of the polayamory web-series by the Seattle-based film group 3 Dog Pictures: Family, Episode 4 "10 O'clock News"

Happy day - it's a new podcast! (Finally, right? I know.)

First, Monk does a crazy 30-second riff on what a porn movie would sound like - on radio. (You’ll just have to listen to it.)

And then we address a letter from a reader who asks “Since monogamy is not an option, how do you make your primary partner feel special in a polyamorous relationship?” Monk and I have some thoughts about that, so listen and enjoy! About sixteen minutes.

Monk and I were sitting in the hot tub at Banya5 last night, talking about someone we know who lately started a business selling BDSM gear. It isn’t someone either of us know very well, so we can’t say if they will succeed in this or not. We certainly wish them good luck.

But privately, we tend to be a tad skeptical. It’s simply that, over the years, we’ve both seen a lot of people start kink-related businesses… And then, in a fairly short amount of time, they go out of business.

Most small businesses fail, that’s just a statistical fact. Both my parents own their own businesses, and it’s a lot of work. You have no idea how much, until you start doing it. So even though being a pro domme is quite different from the things my parents do, I knew from the start what being self-employed would entail.

Monk knows that too. It’s funny - people who are interested in our businesses ask us a lot of the same questions about how to succeed. And we give them more or less the same answers. “It’s going to take some time, and you’re going to have to work really hard.”

Naturally there are a lot more subtleties and complexities to both our careers than that. But if you don’t have the takes-time/work-hard part going on, then the rest of it doesn’t matter, because you won’t get that far.

One of the things I’ve observed about kink-businesses is this: if what you’re selling mainly appeals to dedicated, lifestyle BDSM people, you better have an awesome and unique product, and you better be a super-duper marketer. Because that’s a fairly small pool of customers, and there’s a lot of competition for their money. I think in some circles, there’s a belief that just being a kinky person means you’re well-suited to run a kink-related business. Or maybe that other kinky people will recognize you as one of their own, and unfailingly support you with their dollars. Neither is true. You have to learn it, and you have to earn it.

But no matter what you’re selling, there is one thing I think is indispensable to success. That is: you have to believe in what you’re doing.

No, I mean really, really believe in it. Take me: I believe that being a sex worker, specifically a professional dominant, is the single best job for me. I love doing this. This is who I am. Yes, there are down-sides and annoying things, and aspects that make it tricky, but I would not swap it for any other career I can think of. I get a charge out of what I do, and I think I’m creating something really cool every time I do it. It sounds a trifle melodramatic to say I was born for this, but it seems that way sometimes. I think Monk feels that way about running his company, too.

And it’s that passion for what you do that gets you through the tough times. The times where you aren’t making much money, the competition is nipping at your heels, and every snafu that can befall a business owner is happening to you. If you don’t have the passion when those times come around, you are going to fold up your tent and leave. I suppose it’s like being in a relationship, and your business is the lover. If you’re not really in love, you’ll walk out when it gets hard.

I have a sense that most people who set up shop as kink-related businesses are not passionately in love with what they do. And in an already-tough market, lack of passion will doom your small-business love affair.

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it!

I am planning on staying pretty close to home today, but I think I'll have a lovely, mellow day with people I love, and that's something worth doing any day of the year.

I hope you have a happy day, too, wherever you are...

Sigh. I have been frustrated, since last Thursday, by being unable to achieve anything of any satisfaction or import whatsoever that involved leaving the house. And yet, even though I have been doing nothing except dealing with the most banal necessities of life, I have had no time to do anything such as, for example, write more. It's amazing how much time and energy it takes to be stir-crazy.

However, yesterday saw some definite improvements in the snow situation, and I think that today I might actually get at least some portion of my normal life back. At which point I will undoubtedly start complaining about how busy I am am and how I have no time to stay quietly at home. Because that's just how I am, apparently.

Monk very carefully navigated my car downtown last night, and we saw Frost/Nixon. There were exactly three other patrons in the theater. Apparently not many people were willing to brave the ice-slick sidewalks to watch ninety minutes of two men talking.

However, we liked it. The whole cast did nicely, but Frank Langella did a masterly turn as Tricky Dick. You got a sense, that I had never seen before, that Nixon had a bizarre, slightly intimidating charm. Perhaps not charm, exactly, but something that attracted you, even as it made you uneasy. Not sexy - no, never that. But a personal power, and something compelling. I kept watching Langella, remembering him as the 1979 Dracula. This was in some way a negative image of that character. In both roles, there's a depiction a man who has power, and who is willing to be savage in the pursuit of more, and who feels justified by his circumstances in doing so. But Nixon is not a romantic figure to anyone, perhaps because of his unease, his palpable dislike, for most people.

Think snow-melting thoughts for me, please.

Okay, the word "shibari" has now officially jumped the shark. Not that this isn't a very cute dress, because it is. I'd wear it. But when Saks Fifth Avenue is selling something called "Shibari Shift Dress", it's no longer an in-group sort of word.

A mere $1495. But I'm sure there will be knock-offs soon. I think it's highly amusing!

I was snowed in all day yesterday, which was slightly annoying, since I had a date I wanted to keep. But there was no way I was driving anywhere. True, I do have a four-wheel drive Audi, but four-wheel drive doesn't really help if all four wheels are on ice, a fact seemingly lost on many Seattle drivers I have seen spinning like roulette wheels on the slick hills.

However, I made the best of a quiet day at home. And I am proud to say that thus far, I have not verbally flayed anyone who started chirping at me about pretty the snow was. That has not always been the case, in winters gone by. But I am learning to be both compassionate and self-disciplined about the views of people who actually like this stuff.

However, if this snowbound nonsense keeps up, I would not push that with me. If I wanted non-stop Winter Wonderland, I'd have moved to Chicago instead of Seattle. I have a life to live, and places to go. Thus, when it snows, I would advise you to not discuss the weather with me, unless you're prepared to endorse my view that vast quantities of frozen water falling from the sky is only slightly better than, say, a rain of frogs.

Puck and I are so mean. Look what we did! But you know, if someone buys you a box of sixteen-gauge needles and gives them to you, well - what can one do? One has to use them. It would be a crime not to!

Click on the image if you dare. It's a big, big needle! That black thing is a clamp, by the way. Because if you're putting needles that big through nipples, it's important to get some tension on the flesh. Otherwise, it's hard to push the needle through quickly, and you get a sort of dragging effect, instead of the quick punch through the flesh that I enjoy.

Of course, I'm told there are people who like putting needles in really slowly. Now that's mean!

The latest in a web-series about polyamory, called "Family." This one has nudity, so it's not work-safe.
I will also remark that if one was conducting an secret affair, I would think that one would not talk about it loudly in a Pilates studio, in front of one's (clearly disapproving) trainer, as if she were a post or something. Regardless of the subject matter, I'd do something painful to someone like that just for the rudeness of acting as if I weren't there. I forsee this guy getting some comeuppance in future episodes.

Today I'm off to spend a few days with a friend, so while I finish preparing for that, here's a book I've been reading that I enjoyed greatly...

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer

From Booklist: Trust your hunches, for intuition does have an underlying rationale, according to this accessible account from a German scientist of human cognition. Permeated with everyday scenarios, such as picking stocks, schools, or spouses, the book adopts an evolutionary perspective of how people act on the basis of incomplete information (usually successfully). He sets the table with an example of a baseball player pursuing a fly ball, who relies not on conscious calculation but on an evolved "gaze heuristic" to make the catch. Definitions of such rules of thumb dot the text, which Gigerenzer embeds amid his presentations of studies that indicate, for example, that financial analysts don't predict markets any better than partially informed amateurs. Explaining this as an outcome of a "recognition heuristic," Gigerenzer argues that knowing a little rather than everything about something is sufficient to take action on it. He forges on into medicine, law, and moral behavior, succeeding in the process in converting a specialized topic into a conduit for greater self-awareness among his readers.

Anyone who reads me knows I love books about how we make decisions, especially ways that aren't strictly rational. Sociology geek that I am, I'm a total sucker for any book that uses the word "heuristic" a lot. Talk academic to me, baby!

So yes, this is a more scholarly book than Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, although Gladwell says he was influenced by Dr. Gigerenzer's work. So while it doesn't click along at Gladwell's pace, it's still absorbing, if you enjoy learning why we do the things we do, and how we know how to do them.

It's Thursday, and the new column is up at The Stranger. It's about sex work and the economy, and it would not have been possible without help from some very cool Seattle sex-working ladies, who took time to answer a bunch of my nosy questions about how much money they were making. I regret that due to the space limitations of the column, I could not publish all of the wise and witty answers I got. So thank you very much, ladies, I really appreciate your input! Keep making money!

EDIT: Please know that the names used in the column are NOT the "real" professional names of the ladies in question. Everyone quoted got an alias!

Man, a lot of store-front sexy places are either getting busted or closing up - perhaps to avoid a bust?. What is this, the last hurrah of SPD vice squad before the budget cuts really kick in?

(Not that I'm saying the X-otic Tan ladies did handjobs, because I had pals who worked there and they said nope, they didn't. And they have no reason to lie to me. But there was definitely sexy stuff happening.)

The Lavender Salon place was right across the street from where I get my nails done, and I could tell at a glance it was a sex work business. Monk and I did a podcast, soon to be aired, about how I could tell. One tip: people, do not paint a sex work establishment a really lurid, eye-catching shade of purple. I'm not kidding - the whole building was vividly, painfully purple. It did not blend, in genteel old Madison Park. And Madison Park is a terrible place to put a store-front sex work business, anyway, so that was a bad idea all by itself.

Overall, I'm just glad I'm not taking new people these days, it seems a little weird around town right now. However, the New York Times is quite mistaken if it thinks the recession is going to put an end - or even a really serious damper - on the sex industry. Look for my column in The Stranger on exactly that topic tomorrow.

I’d like to make some clarification about my stance on “sex work in the news” stories. It’s one thing to comment at length on certain types of stories. But several people have sent me links to recent news stories about a fetish model who suffered a horrific attack and lost someone she loved, and asked me what I think about it.

The answer is: I think it’s a terrible tragedy. What else could anyone think? An unbalanced man targeted her for his obsession, killed her boyfriend and kidnapped her. Thank God she survived. I can only imagine how devastated I’d be if I was her. I think we should shut up and leave her decently alone to recover as best she can.

Thus, I have nothing else to say about the matter, except that I’m rather appalled at the “news” stories that took the opportunity to post galleries of sexy photos of her in fetishwear, as if they were somehow germane to the story. Voyeuristic vultures. No, I’m not going to link to them or say her name. You can find the stories if you want to, but really, there’s nothing there that hasn’t happened before.

And that’s the really tragic part – that this sort of thing happens to all kinds of women, and to some men, too. I don’t know if anything anyone might have done would have prevented this. But please, please, buy and read this book: The Gift Of Fear. It is the best resource I’ve ever come across for recognizing and avoiding dangerous people. They do walk among us, and they don’t just prey on pretty models.

Fun Stuff To Do This Weekend!

There's some good sexy stuff happening around town this weekend. First, on Saturday, it's PLAYDAY! What's that, you ask? Playday is a once-a-year event at Seattle's historic 1st Ave peep show, the Lusty Lady.

What is a peep show? Is it like a strip club? No, it's a place where one stands in private booths and feed coins into a slot to watch sexy nude girls dance through a glass window. Remember that Madonna video, "Open Your Heart"? Kinda like that. Only naked, and definitely sexier.

What events go on for Playday?
Normally at a peep show, the ladies don't ever come out from behind the glass. But on Playday, the dancers will out from the glass box for a day to play. Special events include: dressing room tours, "hot seat" dances, multi-girl shows. Meet and take a photo with your favorite performer, and much, much more. Special events are held though all day and night from 10am-3am this Saturday, December 6.

Here's the cool part: Unlike other sex workers, the girls at the Lusty Lady are legal employees, and they get paid an hourly wage. However, all money spent on Playday goes to them. The proceeds from Playday are split between all the dancers - it's their holiday bonus. Which is a very cool thing. When I danced at the LL, the Playday check was a really nice thing to get! So go down, see some sexy action, and give some money to the hard-working girls at the Lusty Lady.

The ladies have a MySpace page here, check it out if you want more info.


See you there!

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Call For Questions: Monk and I are going to record some more podcasts Thursday. (I know, I know - finally. Hey, we’re busy, people!) So now’s the time to send me those looooooong and complicated questions. Fire 'em off, we'll try our best to answer, with a few dirty jokes along the way.

***

On an entirely separate subject…

I am on several polyamory email lists and web-groups and communities, and there’s something I see over and over again than I’m going to try to summarize here. And then give my opinion about.

It starts when Well-Meaning Person* posts for advice about a poly relationship they are having with someone who is, to put it succinctly, emotionally unstable. Like, seriously unstable. The manifestations I see most often cited are things like: the person has wild swings in their feelings of self-worth, an inability to identify internal preferences (including sexual), and a tendency to become involved in intense and unstable relationships, often leading to emotional crisis. The unstable person can be extremely charming, but also extremely insecure, is prone to making recurrent threats or acts of self-harm; they experience chronic feelings of emptiness, and they display excessive efforts to avoid abandonment.

And the Well-Meaning Person wants to know how to do poly with someone who is like that.

The answer is: NOT. You can’t do it. A person who behaves like that is not equipped to handle the emotional challenges of polyamory. None of those behaviors are fun to be around, but it’s the last one that’s really a killer for poly. That’s why I italicized it. The phrases are taken from a textbook description of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Now, BPD is a diagnosis that some people think is valid and some people don’t. I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, but I have met people who act exactly like that description. So I can’t say if it’s inappropriately slapped on people who don’t warrant it, but I do know there are folks running around who fit it.

So, what such emotionally unstable people should do about how they are is outside my scope of expertise. But I know something they should not do, and that’s try to be polyamorous. The part about insecurity and excessive efforts to avoid abandonment? Yeah. I think some of the unstable people think if they have more lovers, they’ll feel more loved, and thus safer. But it never seems to work out that way. (I suppose if they were polyamorous and all their lovers were monogamous, maybe. But that’s usually not the way it is.) Polyamory requires an ability to tolerate and self-soothe some short-term emotional discomforts, and to trust that one isn’t going to be abandoned. This kind of unstable person does not possess those traits.

In these situations, I sometimes try to suggest that this simply isn’t going to work. Well-Meaning Person usually doesn’t want to hear that. There’s an idea that WMP could stop the unstable person from manifesting those behaviors, if the WMP person just knew how to comfort and reassure the unstable person properly. That’s what I call the “I Can Love Them All Better” fallacy. No. You can’t. You can love someone in spite of the behaviors, but no matter how much or how well you love them, you will not love those behaviors out of existence.

The “Love Them All Better” thing is often bolstered by other people on the list making suggestions for what kind of med/therapy/ect the unstable person should be doing. None of which is bad information, and if the unstable person wants resources, I’m all for giving them. But to me, the way the situation is expressed, and the way the advice is given, it often subtly reinforces the idea that the WMP person should be fixing the unstable person.

I really don’t agree with that. Adults are responsible for their own physical health. Unless you fall unconscious on the sidewalk, if there’s something wrong with you, you are the one responsible for either dealing with it yourself, or getting someone to help you deal with it, like a doctor. I think the same is true of mental health. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help. You should, definitely. But you have to be the one doing the asking, and then doing the work it takes to get fixed.

However, I’m definitely not going to argue with anyone on the internet about their relationship. I’m not Sigmund Freud or Dr Phil or anything – what I say is based only on my personal observations. And no one stops doing anything – including having relationships with emotionally unstable people – until they’re ready to. It’s sometimes hard to watch Well-Meaning People run around and around in a hamster wheel

But I can vent about on my blog. So I did.



*Yes, I know I have posted before about how "help" is sometimes just a nice word for "control". But today, we’ll give the WMP the benefit of the doubt.

Nothing like seeing one's community skewered on video, as only a member of that community can.

Laugh/wince inducer #1: the next installment of the polyamory web-series, Family. Yikes. Okay, it's a little over the top, character-wise - but only a little. It's set in a polyamory potluck. I've been to events like this, and they definitely aren't all this bad, but... yeah. Those people and those conversations are not unfamiliar to me.


Laugh/wince inducer #2: Even though it's days after Thanksgiving, I have to mention this video Monk embedded on his blog. It's so funny, just because it's also painfully accurate. I've met that top. I've seen that whole scene before. Okay, not with a plucked fowl, but still. As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I may have even been that top at some point. (Before I had ten thousand hours of practice, of course!) And the Asian-style jacket he's wearing - oh, it's priceless. I wish this guy would do a whole series!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it!

And my deepest sympathy to all the people suffering in Mumbai. I am thankful for many things, but I am very thankful today to just be safe. Terrible.

***

And on a completely non-holiday-ish topic, here's the new Stranger column. I have a feeling I'm going to catch some heat about this one. Or maybe not? But I did get some extra word-count this week to talk about my view, which is great. Boiling that down to 500 words would have been extremely difficult. The Stranger page has comments, so you can talk amongst yourselves there, if you have an opinion...

More book stuff...

I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and it's interesting. I liked Blink a great deal, and Tipping Point was also thought-provoking. I'm generally inclined to like Gladwell's ideas and think they have some merit, even though he certainly has his critics.

But I'd like to quote you a lengthy passage because it supports what I feel about being a truly high-ranking dominant. It's a neat refutation of that nonsense I occasionally hear about how So-And-So is a "natural" dominant, and thus doesn't need to educate themselves or practice their craft. It just happens, like magic. Hah. You may have talent, my friend, but the way you get to the Carnegie Hall of kink is practice, practice, practice.

"In the early 90s, the psychologist K Anders Ericsson and two colleagues set up shop at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. With the help of the academy's professors, they divided the school's violinists into three groups. The first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. The second were those judged to be merely "good". The third were students who were unlikely ever to play professionally, and intended to be music teachers in the school system. All the violinists were then asked the same question. Over the course of your career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practised?

Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time - around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount - about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.

The curious thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals" - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find "grinds", people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn't have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. What's more, the people at the very top don't just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

This is true even of people we think of as prodigies. Mozart, for example, famously started writing music at six. But, the psychologist Michael Howe writes in his book Genius Explained, by the standards of mature composers Mozart's early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Wolfgang's childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos for piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that contain only music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No9 K271) was not composed until he was 21: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for 10 years.

To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about 10 years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fischer got to that elite level in less than that time: it took him nine years.) And what's 10 years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in 10,000 hours of hard practice."

Now, that's not to say that ten thousand hours of practice automatically equals world-class expertise. But I will think about this next time I see someone who arrived in the scene about five minutes ago flouncing around - either virtually or in reality - styling themselves Sir Lord Master Domley-Dom of All He Surveys, or High Goddess Dominatchya Von Meanbitch, and scoffing at the notion that they might need to go to school and do their homework. If you don't like BDSM enough to do it a lot and really learn it, then why do it at all?

Since you asked: things and places from my life lately, as requested via email and Twitter...

The restaurant I went to last night: ART, in the new Four Seasons Hotel. It's very good. True to it's name, it's artsy, and I usually view artsy food with suspicion. But given that I ordered a shrimp appetizer, a steak, and French fries, and little baby doughnuts with vanilla ice cream for dessert, I would say that my relentlessly middlebrow food tastes were more than amply satisfied. (There is trendier stuff as well, if that's your liking.)

I'm pretty sure my friend enjoyed his dinner too, although he may have been distracted from the dining experience by my playing with this. Heh.

For those that asked about shoes: Nordstrom didn't have the shoes on their website, but here's a link to them on Zappos. So cute, just what I wanted for casual-but-feminine looks. And then we found some pretty black boots from Barney's.


Last week, Armani and I were here: Ummelina. It's a very nice spa, and the massage was divine. It's a bit woo-woo, but not to a point of complete absurdity.
I believe I'll not say where we had dinner, though. I think that's best. I did grab a quick phone-cam shot of the dress I was wearing, which does not really do it justice. It's a berry-pink satin Dolce & Gabbana number, and very low-cut. I have serious cleavage in this dress, and it's highly entertaining to wear it someplace swanky and observe the well-trained male staff very politely not stare at it. I would not be offended if they did, since I myself often look at women's cleavage. There's just something alluring about the curves.

And here's a bit of jewelry-porn for you: Armani gave me this for my birthday. Isn't it gorgeous?

A nice opinion column from Seattle PI writer Cathy Sorbo on how we should decriminalize prostitution. Pleasant to see it in a mainstream daily paper.

Moving from text to video... You do not see too many realistic depictions of polyamorous people in media, so here's a new and welcome thing from a Seattle film company: "Family: Episode 1 of a Web-series". Not sure how exactly to describe it, but it's a comedy/drama about the lives of some poly people. About six minutes, has sound, work safe. Enjoy...

Today is my birthday! I'm happy to be me, and happy to be starting another year in my very interesting life...
Now I'm going to be spoiled some more. Bye!

There’s a lot of sex worker stuff in the news lately, isn’t there?

So yes, I’ve been reading about the busts at the tanning salon/brothels on Aurora Ave. I have some sympathy for the female manager who got arrested, seeing as how I once managed a “sensual touch” business myself. And just because you read something in the paper doesn’t make it true. However, if she and the owner really were running women in and out of other states, through three different locations, all I can say is: with an operation that size, you should have seen this coming. I hope you both have a good lawyer.

See, I have this thing about sex work. One woman working for herself? Great. A couple women decide to band together to share a space and perhaps swap clients back and forth? Fine. Anything where it’s a small group of peers working together - okay, I’m all down with that. But this kind of set-up makes me deeply suspicious.

Now, it’s possible those women wanted to be doing what they did, that it was a very safe and egalitarian workplace, no one ever felt pressured to do anything they didn’t want to, and they were paid as well as they should have been.

But… I bet not. I just don’t get a sense of that from places like this. They look like strip-clubs without the pole, if you know what I mean. And strip-club management works like this: use the women to get as much money as you can from the men, and then take as much of that money as you can from the women. In this situation, I’m betting they took a lot.

In the place I managed, the house supported itself by taking a set portion of the basic appointment fee – “the gate fee” we called it. My job was mostly to keep track of that, coordinate everyone’s schedule, and to deal with the new clients and the guys who needed, for whatever reason, a lot of wrangling. Occasionally I would have to pull rank and tell someone that, for example, leaving a large pink vibrator on the coffee table in the public area was really not okay. Showing up an hour late for the shift? Not okay. Coming out of the session room accompanied by a literal cloud of pot smoke? Not okay.

But I was by no means controlling the six women who worked there. (Hah. As if. Most of them were pals of mine.) And once the client and the woman were in the room together, whatever extra services were negotiated, whatever other money was exchanged, that was all strictly between them. We did not ask about it or monitor it in any way, and we did not ever, ever take any of that money. That was her money.

Once in a while the owner would wistfully mention how she wished the house could get a cut of that cash, and I would threaten to instantly quit before I’d participate in any such practice. That always put an end to that conversation, especially since half the staff would have quit with me, and the owner knew it.

But this looks like the kind of place where you’d get pushed to get as much money as you could from the guy, and then you’d have to give it all to the house. You’d think it would be easy to hide your tips and keep them, but it’s harder than you think. The trick of moving women around is that not only do you create variety for the clients, you prevent the women from forming alliances with each other. So you can’t trust the other girls not to rat you out if they find out you’re holding money back. And you don’t stay on one place long enough to get to know and trust the regular clients, so you can’t rely on them to not say anything, even as an innocent mistake. Some places like this are wired for sound – or even cameras, although not always – so management will see or hear if a girl gets more money in the session rooms.

If they were moving the women around, it’s possible that they were housing them, too. That’s not unheard of even in more legitimate sex work jobs – strip clubs in Alaska used to fly girls up there and put them in what we called “the barracks”. I don’t know if they still have those, but I stayed in one once. It wasn’t a bad place – it looked like a low-end college dormitory, or a hostel. But I got out and found my own place to stay after a week, because it was feeling strange to never be someplace really separate from my work. You need that, I think. But if these people were moving the women around and housing them – oh, that would look pretty bad to me. That would look a lot like trafficking.

Of course I don’t know that, it’s all speculation at this point, so I’ll be interested to see how this story develops. But from this perspective, they don’t look much like people I’d have much in common with.

So, I'm busy fine-tuning a column for The Stranger, but here's a local resource question for you Seattle people: Monk is looking for someone who's an expert on fixing/maintaining Maytag washing machines. He uses them in his shop - you know, the place where he makes bondage rope? And he just really doesn't want to deal with unsuspecting repair people walking into his place and getting all flipped out because of what he does there. So he's seeking someone who is, if not kink-friendly, at least kink-neutral.

I understand this completely. The thing I hate the most is when I have to call a service person over to my dungeon space to fix something. Naturally I always hide all the toys and throw sheets over the bondage furniture. But still, it looks a little... odd in there, and people always ask questions, or at least look at me really funny. I loathe dealing with it.

So if you know your way around washing machines, you're cool with an unusual atmosphere, and you'd like some occasional work, email Monk: Monk@twistedmonk.com.

I am disgusted by the smear job KOMO news tried to do on the Wet Spot (The Sex Positive Community Center) last night. It was a terrible piece - sensationalistic and inflammatory crap. They made both completely false and very misleading statements, and implied that something legally questionable was going on with the Center's tax-exempt status. I wrote them a letter telling them how I felt about it, and so should you!

As Dakwallah pointed out, it's November sweeps time. I suppose they were bored with inventing excuses to get footage inside a strip club - that's the usual way to titillate people while making them feel that as though they're watching "news". Bah.

UPDATE: The link doesn't work because KOMO seems to have pulled the story. No trace of it can be found anywhere on the website. Isn't THAT interesting! Looks like a flood of negative responses cowed the station, as well it should have. Of course they can't un-show it to all the people who watched last night.

Here's the piece on YouTube, though...

What I'm Reading

For an early birthday gift, I just received this: Proust Was A Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer.

From Publishers Weekly: “With impressively clear prose, Lehrer explores the oft-overlooked places in literary history where novelists, poets and the occasional cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights… how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections…”

I love stuff about how our minds work, so this looks fascinating to me. And I’m charmed that the sweet man who gave it to me knew it’s exactly the sort of thing I like.

In fiction, I just finished this: The Wolfman, by Nicholas Pekearo.

From Publishers Weekly: Marlowe Higgins, who's both a werewolf and a detective, lives in the small town of Evelyn, just outside the Tennessee border, flipping burgers by day and waiting for the full moon that will awaken the blood curse that has afflicted his family for generations. Higgins has hit on a way to alleviate the guilt he feels for having claimed countless innocent lives—he investigates vicious crimes that have gone unsolved by the police and targets the perpetrators in his lupine form. When a sadistic serial killer known as the Rose Killer for the flowers left in the victims' eye sockets appears in Evelyn, Higgins turns his attention to tracking him down.”

I got this book after seeing it reviewed on the Slog. I figured if those hipster book snobs had to grudgingly admit it was good, then I’d definitely like it. (I do not dig highbrow fiction any more than I dig highbrow films, or for that matter, highbrow food. Philistines, unite!)

And I did indeed like it. Pekearo’s prose is spare, and almost too terse for my taste - but not quite. He reminds me of a tightly edited Steven King, and also of the author who King says influenced him, Richard Matheson. It’s got the stark landscape – both inner and outer – of a lot of King’s horror novels, but with a flavor of the hard-boiled-detective genre, too. If I was casting this as a movie, I’d want someone like Nick Nolte or Nicholas Cage as the lead – a guy who’d taken some hard knocks and survived, but who had very little to lose and as a result, feared nothing.

(One quibble – this teensy little town in the middle of nowhere has not one but two flourishing multi-girl brothels, and one of them is very upscale? Oh please. I can believe in a werewolf easier than I can believe in that.)

The story unrolls smoothly for most of the book, wobbling only a trifle towards the end. Still, I liked the characters enough to shrug it off and enjoy it overall. Sadly, the author has died, so we’ll see no sequels to this book.

And now I have another twist-on-the-genre novel loaded on the Kindle and ready to go…

The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setter.

From Publishers Weekly: “Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter…is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator.”

I like classic Gothic novels, and this looks like an entertaining twist on that genre. I’ll let you know what I think after I read it.

I had a lovely time at the Footnight party last night. It was nice to put real-life faces to people I’ve only known electronically – Hi Trixie! I also got to meet the organizer, Kourhina, which was great, and a bunch of other pretty ladies.

And I adore having my feet kissed and touched, so having lots of lovely people doing that was just delicious. I went to some of these parties a couple of years ago, and then they stopped happening for a while. I’m very glad they’ve been revived. There’s a story I wrote about one of the 2004 parties here. In retrospect, I thought the whole thing was somewhat amusing, because no one got into any real trouble. What’s also true is that the parties are now held in a very private location, not a hotel. The hotel was the problem. I am completely and totally confident that the awkward ending of this party won’t ever be repeated.

The coda to the story linked above is that the guy who I was with at the moment I realized the cops had showed up was actually at the party I went to last night. We laughed about it together. “You were the first one out the door,” he said. “You were out of there like a shot.”

Damn straight I was. I used to dance in clubs down south that got raided with annoying regularity, and I’ve seen a few strip-club raids up here too. They never arrested me – usually the girls they took downtown were women who had outstanding warrants or who had drugs on them, and I had neither of those things. But in strip clubs you learn that at the very first glimpse of a uniform, you vamoose. It’s bad enough that you’re going to lose the night’s earnings - you still don’t want to get stuck sitting there for hours and hours and hours while they run an ID check on every single girl there, search all your bags and lockers, and ask a lot of questions, before they finally let you go home. If you get gone fast enough, you can sometimes evade that. So I’m not suggesting you run from cops if you’ve done something wrong – but if I can discreetly leave a situation before they decide that I have done something wrong, it is my policy to do so.

I’m pleased that such things are no longer a big issue to me, though. Nice to have people and places that I know I can trust…

The new Stranger column, in which I talk about the failure of Proposition K, which would have ended the arrest of prostitutes in San Francisco...

See you at the Footnight party tonight!

A Recent Email

SUBJECT LINE: Hi, would like appointment and/or other info

I just wanted to know how to get started in this profession in a safe way. I figured group sessions were my best bet but I just don't know where to go or who to talk to about it. I feel like I'm going to lose my mind. I know I could get a lot out of this line of work and I don't mean a lot of money. I have fantasies that I want to act on but I know they could cost me a lot in the end. Please help me get in touch with someone in my area so that I can learn about being a mistress and see if it is the right thing for me. I'm young, five nine, one hundred forty pounds and attractive. Thank you for your time.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? I had to read this email about three times to figure out what this woman (at least I now assume it's a woman) is asking me. Because of the subject line, I started out thinking it was a request from a man who wanted to see me professionally, which made no sense with the body of the email. (Insert here my obligatory rant about the poor writing/communication skills displayed by people who want me to do something for them, but make it hard for me to understand what.)

What I'm reading here is that she wants to be a professional dominatrix. And I am not going to help her do that. Nope, sorry. Not for the usual reasons, though. Not because the email is badly written, or because the writer wants to be spoon-fed, or because she clearly doesn't know much about either sex work or BDSM.

I would not facilitate this person's entry into sex work because there's a dark thread in this email that bothers me. "I feel like I'm going to lose my mind?" Dear girl - no. Do not get into sex work when you're already feeling emotionally/psychologically challenged in some way. That will go badly, I promise. Whatever it is that's making you feel like you might go crazy, fix that first. If you get into sex work with your head in the wrong place, you will have bad experiences, and I don't want any woman have bad experiences.

"I have fantasies that I want to act on but I know they could cost me a lot in the end. " I don't know exactly what this means, but I sure don't like the sound of it. I have seen a lot of women use sex work as a vehicle for self-destructive behavior, and I'm getting a strong sense of that here. If you have self-esteem issues, there are plenty of people in the industry ready and willing to treat you just as disrespectfully as you think you deserve. Men and women both, clients, co-workers and employers. They will reinforce your negative feelings about yourself, you will make worse and worse choices, and yes, it will indeed cost you a lot in the end.

The challenge of sex work in our society is to do it while staying happy, healthy, safe and sane. Many of the difficulties are external and require only observation and cleverness to evade. But you also need a certain psychological makeup. The impression I have from this email is of someone who is really not wired to get up every morning, put out a lot of emotional energy to create intimate experiences for people she met five minutes ago, and whom she may or may not even like, and go home every night feeling good about that. I have very connected, ongoing relationships with my guys, but I'm unusual, and I think I've attracted some unusually cool guys to me and created something rare with them. Most sex work, especially at the entry level, demands much and gives little, emotionally. I think pro dommes have a slight advantage over other areas - our clients tend to be more loyal and long-term. As you build trust over time, the emotional balance can shift and the relationship becomes more mutual.

However, learning the skills to create mutually positive experiences/relationships takes time, and in the interim, you must have the emotional reserves. I don't think this person does. Not now, at least, and maybe never. If you want my advice about how to feel better about whatever is troubling you, you can ask me and I'll give you my take. But I cannot in good conscience give you advice about becoming a pro domme.

A few notes for the coming days...

Foot-lovers, remember the Footnight party this Thursday!

***

There continues to be a fuss in certain sex worker circles about the whole Craigslist “erotic services” thing. In light of that, I’m composing a column about it, and I hope to get a quote from Craig himself. I am crafting an email to him with some questions, but as I’m guessing he gets a fair amount of email, I fear it may get caught in some filter or other. So just in case someone who knows him personally reads this blog: Hi Craig! I hope you get my note!

Also, if you’re a Seattle sex worker with an opinion about the matter, feel free to write me. I can’t promise I’ll use your quote, but I’m interested in what you have to say.

Edit: I just found some interesting blog posts on the subject. I agree with Mike Masnick, and the data shown by Kohler is also just what I'd expect.

***

In personal news, I see that my birthday seems to be coming right up. I’ve been too busy to think a lot about it, but feel free to bombard me with well-wishes on November 21st.

I have gotten so many emails about Craiglist's supposed "crackdown" on prostitution that I thought I'd give you all a quick answer about it. And that answer is: Good, it'll keep out the riff-raff.

That may surprise you. But there's two parts to this, so let's break it down.

The first is the "Craigslist charging for ads that used to be free" aspect. To that I say: hey, that's capitalism in action, my friends. People who are selling sex - which many people would also prefer to get for free - should not get pissy that they'll no longer get to place free ads to do that. That's just the cost of doing business.

Then there's the law enforcement angle. The story says the Craigslist will supply LE with advertiser's billing information if they are subpoenaed. Well, yeah. I'm guessing any business that sells ads - The Stranger, The Weekly, Eros Guide - would have to do that. Regardless of what certain Republicans seem to think, when you get a subpoena, that means you have to comply. That being said, I am not aware of any of those places actually being subpoenaed.

Why not? Because if you want to arrest prostitutes - especially the type of prostitute who advertises on Craigslist - it ain't all that difficult. You call them up and you get in the room with them and when the time is right, you whip out the badge and take them downtown. I'm not saying I like it, I'm just saying that most of the time, getting a judge to give you a subpoena is unnecessary. Simple prostitution - one woman, working for herself - is a misdemeanor. Statistically, the majority of women who work for themselves do not get arrested, because unless there's a lot of complaints about her, LE has bigger fish to fry.

What subpoenas are about is busting the people who run large-group operations. And if you're running a whole bunch of women on Craigslist, then chances are, you're a pimp. And I don't mean the honest and fair owner of an escort service, I mean a pimp. That's what I see on Craigslist. I don't like pimps, in case that wasn't clear. To me a pimp = a bad person who exploits and coerces women into sex work, or even flat-out forces them. I would not be a bit sorry to see someone like that get arrested.

I believe that there are probably a few honest escort-service owners who use Craigslist. To them I say: You are dealing in felony territory here, so I hope you have a lawyer on retainer, and I hope you understand the risks inherent in the business that you're running. It's my opinion that on the list of ways you might get busted, Craigslist giving up your data is probably the least-likely scenario. But I'd get off there anyway, it's not doing your business image any good.

I think this decision by Craigslist will also help keep under-18 people off the site, and that's also good. Whether they want to be sex-workers when they grow up, they should not be doing it underage.

I think it will also calm down the citizen's complaints, because Craigslist is the place where people who are not looking for sex workers are most likely to stumble across them, and be all outraged about it. It's the online equivalent of soliciting in front of a neighborhood flea market, with families coming in and out. That's just not what you should be doing. It gets people all upset and draws down the heat. Would it be nice if prostitution wasn't illegal so we didn't have to worry about this? Yeah, that would be great. But that's not the reality.

The people who really have my support in sex work are the independent businesswomen like myself, and people who run honest and professional businesses arranging dates between adult contractors and clients. I think those people are unlikely to be strongly affected by the Craigslist's decision.