Letters That Fail

M. Matisse,

I couldn't help notice you mentioned Jae in your blog the other day. You haven't mentioned her in quite some time. Couldn't help wondering if you two had a falling-out. I know it's none of my business but you, at one time, talked about her often. I imagine your readers are curious too. Might make a interesting post, "When A Domme And Sub Part."

Recently you talked about the passing of your cat but you never mentioned if you'd get another one. Again readers might like to know.

I get a lot of perfectly nice, appropriate letters from people.

This would not be one of them.

I think I know who wrote this letter. There’s a certain man in Seattle who has approached me several times, first electronically and then in-person, to ask me about the exact status of my relationship with Jae. And - even more annoyingly - where she is and how she can be contacted. This is, I believe, the 4th time he’s done this.

His behavior is so astoundingly inappropriate that it leaves me almost speechless. A complete stranger thinks it is okay to walk up to me at a public event and demand information about my intimate relationships? Uh, no. That’s a really big no.

I don’t think he’s dangerous. I just think he’s unbelievably rude. No, if there’s someone likely to be dangerous in this situation, it’s me. Because I do not lose my temper easily, but if I do – oh, it won’t be pretty.

I gave him a civil non-response the first time he emailed me, and ignored him thereafter, and when he caught me in person and asked again, I spoke to him rather sharply. There were other people present, though, and one of them had the wit to draw him away before the conversation devolved too far. And then someone else had a talk with him, so I though we’d dealt with this problem. It seems not.

It is possible that the writer of this letter is not the same man who cornered me in public. But it would be a striking coincidence if they weren’t. I’d prefer not to believe in multiple people being so insensitive. "When A Domme And Sub Part." Good lord, that is really offensive. Obviously you are not even a frequent reader, because if you were, you’d know I loathe the abbreviation “sub”.

But regardless of vocabulary, prying for juicy details about what you think is happening in my private life is tacky. Had it occurred to you that if someone was estranged from an intimate partner, that having strangers demand details of that rift might be, oh, upsetting to them?

And in the same breath, you’re bringing up the death of my cat and asking if I’ve gotten another one? Are you serious?

Let me be clear: It’s fine to ask me advice about something intimate that’s happening in your life, if you wish to. It’s fine to ask me things like what public events I’m attending, where I like to go for dinner, where I got such-and-such a dress. It’s fine to ask me if I’ve ever tried a particular BDSM technique or a particular polyamory structure.

But there are questions one does not ask a stranger. At the very least, one pauses and ponders, “Does this question have the potential to be painful or distressing? And do I have any pressing need for the information - or am I just being nosy?”

At some level, this person knows he’s being inappropriate. Notice the repetition of the phrase “I couldn’t help”, and the attempt to deflect responsibility and distance himself from what he’s asking by saying he thinks my readers would want to know.

No, Mr. Writer-Of-This-Letter, you want to know. And you could indeed have “helped yourself” from writing this email. But you asked, so here’s the answer: you are not entitled to any information about the precise status and nature of my relationship with Jae – or anyone else in the world.

You see, my private life is, by definition, private. If I write about something, then that’s carefully-chosen information I’ve decided I’m willing to share. But the fact that I’ve shared some information does not mean that I am obligated to offer up anything you want to know, just to satisfy your prurient curiosity. That's like saying that if I wear a short skirt in public, you’re entitled to come flip it up and look underneath it. I’d deliver a swift kick to anyone who did that in person. You should not be surprised to find yourself on this end of a written one.

So in the future, don’t just say “Oh, I know this is none of my business, but..." and then proceed to try and make it your business. Stop and tell yourself: "No. This is none of my business."

The new Stranger column, talking about my recent Kink.com shoot, is here.

Also, as I do every year, I donated a two-hour session to the Stranger's annual charity auction, Strangercrombie. This year the auction benefits Country Doctor, Urban Rest Stop, and Senior Services. Last year, we raised more than $50,000, so this auction is going to be a real shot in the arm for those cash-strapped and very important organizations.

So this is the one time of year you can buy a session with me via credit card. Through eBay, no less! And yes, I'll honor it, even though I don't really take new people very much anymore. It's good for a single person or for a couple.

Strangercrombie bidding ends on Friday, December 11th at 5 pm. Go! Buy me! Buy other cool things! Or people! But buy something, please. Those services could really use the help.

Dan Savage had me back again as a guest on his podcast, and we had a lovely, silly time answering the call-in questions about kinky sex. Episode #163, listen to that here!

Letters To The Mistress

I'd like to politely ask your opinion on something I've come across and I'm asking you because nowhere else have I read someone writing about BDSM and everything around it with better accuracy and insight.

A female friend of mine (she's very vanilla and wonderfully sensitive) was recently confronted with the 'dark' past of her new boyfriend: he hasn't had a relationship before without BDSM and after being together for two and a half years, he's starting to miss it. So he asked her if she's okay with him starting a dom-sub relationship with someone else.

To get to the point: I don't want to help her or him, what they do is their business, but I'm moved by my curiosity. How were your experiences? Do you know about people who have dom-sub relationships without sex? If so, do you know what it was like for them, specifically?

I know what it’s like for them very well, because one of them is me.

And not just me, either. I have known many people who have dominant/submissive relationships without sex. It’s not uncommon.

What’s also quite common are relationships in which sex is not strictly off-limits, but very infrequent. I had a woman named Jae, who I have written about before, in a dominant/submissive relationship with me for a couple of years, and we had sex, oh, maybe half a dozen times?

And it wasn’t because she wasn’t sexy, it was simply – not what we were about. Being someone’s Mistress is different from being her/his lover.

Non-sexual doesn’t mean cold and distant. I was affectionate and loving with Jae. It was very definitely an intimate relationship. We did a lot of physical BDSM. I simply found it more… effective to not have sex with her very often. It made the occasions on which I did very special and meaningful.

But my hunch is that none of this will be helpful to your friend. I’m guessing that she is not polyamorous. If she was, the non-sexual question would not arise. My experience of monogamous people is that many of them would be highly uneasy about their partner having an emotionally intense, intimate relationship with someone else, even if it did not include sex in the very strict and literal sense of the word. (I have known people who got aroused and could achieve orgasm from certain types of non-genital stimulation - like spanking. So there’s the whole issue of defining what, exactly, the word sex even means.)

The uneasiness is apt to be even more pronounced in the case of a vanilla person handling his/her lover having a type of partnership they don’t understand, like a D/s relationship.

So my prediction is that this will be a relationship challenge that they will have to work through in some manner. It’s do-able, and I wish them the best of luck, but I imagine that it will be tricky. Tell your friend she can write me, if she wishes.

***

Now, my response to you: That “confronted with the 'dark' past” remark? I want you to hear me saying this to you in a mild, gentle tone of voice: Knock that shit off. Really. Do not empower, even as a joke, negative attitudes about BDSM - especially when you are talking to a BDSM person.

You probably did think you meant it in a kidding way, but it's also gauche, at best, to make that sort of joke to me, because it presumes you and I have such a level of intimacy that you can abjure politeness about my sexual orientation. We do not. As you are a stranger to me, I must entertain the idea that you're indicating your literal feelings on the matter. That seems in contradiction to you writing me in the first place. But I say this to you so you can understand how people might misconstrue what you say, and sharpen your communication in the future.

That’s my accurate insight on that matter.

A couple of pictures from the everythingbutt.com shoot! Click on them, they get bigger. Or go see the whole thing!

This is not a rant. But it is a suggestion to my guys – and the men who visit other sex workers.

A lot of men have a dedicated email account that they use only for sexy stuff. And very often it’s a web-based email that doesn’t show up on their desktop or their handheld device. For a lot of guys I know, that’s the only way I have of communicating with them.

I understand the reasons for all that and I have no objections. Privacy is a good thing.

(I do have phone numbers for some of my guys, but in my situation, calling a gentleman is… Well, it’s rather like giving a girl a facial: you better be very, very sure that it’s okay before you do it, or it’s going to be a mess, and she’s going to be very annoyed with you.

So some guys have my phone number, but I don't have theirs, and that's all right. I only give my phone number to people I know very well, so I do not have to fear random-whoever calling me, thus I don’t even save the numbers of their incoming calls. If someone specially says, “You can call me, use this the number,” and tells me any rules about days/times/etc. for calling, then okay, I'll call them. Otherwise, calling people is a huge no-no. I hear about ladies doing this occasionally and I am horrified by the bad manners of it. Do not ever call clients unless he gives you the number and explicitly states that it’s all right.)

Anyway, back to that dedicated private email system. What happens sometimes is this: the guy uses that email to talk to me, we make a date, confirm it, and then - he doesn’t check that email anymore. That’s the flaw in that system. It's an omission that can lead to some wasted journeys. I almost never cancel dates, but I had to cancel some this week because of being ill. One of those gentlemen showed up anyway – because he hadn’t checked that account.

Getting no answer at the door, he called me, and I had to say, “Oh honey, I’m sorry, I’m not there. I’m sick. I sent you an email.”

It’s a shame for him, he could have saved himself some time. And I feel bad for him. But as reliable as I am, I am human. Unforeseeable and unavoidable things do happen to me sometimes. They happen to everyone.

So if you use that system, check that email even after you make the date! Ideally you’d check it the night before that date, the morning of, and perhaps an hour or two before. But at least check it before you show up, because otherwise a useful level of privacy turns into a cutting off of useful information.

I wish I had something terribly interesting to say. However, I don't. Besides: don't get stomach flu, because it is no fun. But I'm assuming you already knew that.

I was so pleased about getting back to blogging 4-5 times a week, too. And then I got derailed.

Today, I'm working on a Stranger column, and a FilthyGorgeousThings.com piece, and when I get them sent off later this week, I'll have time to blog in more than just a placeholder fashion.

Monk and I plan on recording some podcasts next week, and I'm pleased to say that I've been invited to be on Dan Savage's podcast soon, too. So stay tuned for all those amusing things. I shall return.

A new Stranger column about types of tops.

Now I'm off to have some early-birthday festivities with Armani... bye!

I’m working on a Stranger column about my overall experiences of shooting with the Kink.com site, EverythingButt.com. But today I’ll just answer some of the questions that people have emailed me about it.

Why EverythingButt.com? Because the director, Lochai, is a pal of mine from the BDSM scene. I ran into him at Folsom Street Fair, and he asked me to come model. And I actually do a lot of ass play, so it seemed like a good fit, if you’ll pardon the expression.

What exactly did you do in the shoot? There’s some spanking, and a lot of really pretty ass-fucking. I think it’s a very sexy shoot that will appeal to people who like sensual dominance, and even people who may not think of themselves as having a specific fetish for anal play, but who like to see beautiful women having kinky sex.

Did you know the submissive? No, I had never met Bobbi Starr. I’d seen pictures, so I knew she was quite lovely, but I had no idea what to really expect from her, and from the overall scene. I did not know what the theme of the shoot was going to be until that morning. That’s how it usually works in porn. But it was a type of scene I like, and Bobbi was great.

Will you have pictures/video from the shoot? Yes, I’ll have some images. I don’t think I get video clips, although kink.com always has free trailers.

Are you going to model for of the other Kink.com sites? I don’t know. I haven’t been invited to. If one of the other directors asks me – or if Lochai asks me back - then I suppose I’ll decide when it comes up.

Are you going to model for any other BDSM porn sites? I might, if someone asked me, and I had a good feeling about the company, and the concept of the shoot. I’d be hesitant to do a BDSM porn shoot where I didn’t know any of the people involved in the production. So I don’t say “I would never…” But I’d have to be quite sure we were all on the same page about things.

I want to be a porn model! How much did you get paid? How much I got paid is between me and the IRS. But Kink.com posts their general pay rates here.

Did you see lots of other hot and kinky things happening while you were there? Nope. I saw a few other models walking around in the halls and such, but nothing kinky. It’s not like being at a play party.

One random thing I noticed: porn people seem very, very concerned about santorum. Like, very. I myself have been playing with people's asses for a long time, and I am a little casual about it. No, I am not into scat. Yes, if you want me to play with your ass, you should definitely clean it up. (I cannot tell you how many boys I have seen over the years who did not even wipe themselves properly. I’m serious. I think little boys do not get trained about wiping themselves as much as little girls do, or something.

Here’s how you do it, gentlemen. While you are still sitting, wipe, and then look at the toilet paper. Is it dirty? Drop it, get a fresh handful and wipe again. Repeat this until the paper shows no smudges. Is that clear? The while you’re sitting part is important because it means your ass is more spread open and thus easier to clean.)

So we’ll assume that the outside of your ass is clean. If you just want a few fingers or a smallish buttplug, not too much deep, serious fucking, then cleaning the inside is pretty simple. One of those disposable enemas is probably fine. They’re in the drugstore, usually less than a dollar. They have some chemicals in them, and some people don’t like that, so if you don’t, dump out the fluid and refill it with lukewarm water. Do this at least an hour or so before you want to play, because sometimes small amounts of water don’t come out right away. So if you do the anal-douche and then immediately fuck, that water will come out on your partner. Not the end of the world, but not what you planned.

For more advanced fucking, more advanced cleaning techniques are required, but that’s beyond the scope of today’s post.

But Ms. Bobbi Starr clearly knows those techniques, because her ass was as clean as a whistle throughout a four-hour shoot - and some very large toys. I would not have been surprised or upset by a little bit of schmutz. Shit happens, you know? It's not the goal, but it’s sometimes the price of admission. You do want to be aware, because shit can be gritty and make anal fucking uncomfortable, but otherwise – that’s what black towels are for. Change your gloves, change the condom, wipe it up, whatever – and keep fucking.

(And yes, wash up carefully afterwards. But you should be doing that anyway.)

So that’s my philosophy. But not in porn, no no. Every time a toy came out my co-star’s ass, there was a whole little flutter with the director and the camera crew about "Is it clean? It's not dirty, is it?"

I was like, “No, it looks fine, but hey, it’s no big deal.” However, my view was clearly the minority. I briefly wondered if it was a legal issue of some kind. I know there are some elements in porn that, theoretically, make prosecutors more likely to tag you with an obscenity charge.

But that seems unlikely. I was left with the assumption that kink.com – and porn people in general - know what their viewers like, and they know what the viewers get turned off if they see. And seeing anything brown was clearly a no-no.

Which would explain why the bathroom in the Armory has shelves and shelves full of disposable enema kits – both the pre-filled kind and empty single-use bottles – for free use by the performers. Art does not imitate life when it comes to anal sex in porn.

Last Night
I want you to imagine an enormous warehouse. Huge. Big enough to comfortably house, say, a DC-9. It might be even bigger, but the bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling only dimly illuminate the raw and rather dirty walls and concrete floor, so the furthest corners simply fade into unmeasurable blackness.

There’s some detritus here and there – pallets, tarps, boxes – but it’s mostly empty, except for four cars parked in the center of the room, and in one far corner, an RV. A gallery runs around the perimeter of the room, at second-floor height. The lights don’t reach it, so it’s impossible to see what – or who – is up there.

And in one corner of this vast, chilly room, there’s a hot tub. And in that hot tub, quite alone, and naked, is me – lounging against the jets and smiling to myself at the oddity of it. Here I am, in what is arguably the kinkiest place in town, and I am engaged in that most vanilla of all the pseudo-sexy experiences, hot-tubbing. Alone. Edgy, huh? Not so much.

I am choosing to ignore the fact that there is a security camera nearby, and there is a security guard sitting, with a bank of screens in front of him, just a few hundred feet away from me. He’s around a corner, out of sight, but there is no door between us. But what the hell - if the camera is on, and he sees me - well then, he sees me. It seems silly to cavil, when after tomorrow, he’ll be able to very easily buy much better quality images of me. (However, he has been strictly polite and professional to me, not so much as a flicker of anything else, even when we had to go exploring together to find this hot tub. He himself was unaware that it here, and while his English seems fluent enough, he literally did not know the meaning of the phrase “hot tub”. He seemed a little confused even when I pulled off the cover and showed it to him, splashing my hand in the water. But he shrugged and left me to it.)

Soon I will get out, dry myself, and go up the stairs and down the long hallway to the little dormitory-style room I was assigned and go to bed. My shoot doesn’t begin too early, but I have a feeling the building will come to life tomorrow morning and be a very different place than the silent, echoing place it is now.

Okay, I know, it's totally teenage-girl to blog about my horoscope. I might as well go buy a Twilight t-shirt, right? (Not that I don't know some grown women who have one.... Ahem. Not naming any names or anything. And I have nothing whatsoever against fluffy fiction. But god, those books are boring fluffy fiction. I'm just saying.)

But Rob Brezney is so cool. And I'm convinced that sometimes, he lives under my bed and takes notes. This is what he says for Scorpio for the next seven days.

A 13-year-old girl shocked everyone by winning a plowing contest in England. Driving a 12,000-pound tractor and pulling a five-furrow plow, Elly Deacon did a better job than all of the middle-aged male farmers she was competing against. What's more remarkable is that she was a newcomer, having had less than a week's experience in the fine art of tilling the soil with a giant machine. She's your role model for the coming week, Scorpio. Like her, you have the potential to perform wonders, even if you're a rookie, as you prepare a circumscribed area for future growth.

Glad to know I can look forward to winning the plowing contest I have coming up. Heh.

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I have blogged before about how I am not one to be chatty with strangers. I can be a trifle reserved even in places where “the roof constitutes an introduction”, but with random strangers in public places, I am generally very aloof. Most of the time, that’s simply because I am preoccupied with my own thoughts. Or I'm just not in the mood to be social, and I am pretending I'm invisible. So I try not be out-and-out rude, but any attempts to strike up a conversation with me in a grocery store line or on a street corner will not flourish. It’s just…how I am.

I know people who are the opposite: friendly and prone to chatting with anyone who crosses their path. Usually I just shrug and dismiss it as a matter of personal style. Occasionally, though, I think: Huh, other people seem to enjoy those conversations, so maybe I’m missing out on something here.

But I should know better, because somehow that talking-to-strangers thing just never works out well for me.

Latest example: The other day I had an errand to run in Nordstrom Medical Tower. It’s a tall building, and it can be a long elevator ride from the lobby to the upper floors. Two women got on the elevator with me. And for some reason, I consciously decided that I would emulate Max and be friendly to these two strangers.

(You’d think I’d know better. I have had several notably bad – if amusing in retrospect – encounters with people on elevators. But no, I never learn.)

Thus, I said, “Good morning.” For me, that is a wildly effusive thing to say in this situation.

One of them, an older lady who reminded me a bit of my own grandmother, smiled and said good morning back, and observed that the sky looked as if it might rain later. I agreed that it was indeed rather cloudy.

My other elevator companion was a stocky, thirty-something woman, wearing glasses with thick, dark frames, and a white lab coat over office attire. Her black hair was straggling out of a haphazard-looking bun, and she had a tangle of three or four ID badges on brightly-colored lanyards around her neck. She was carrying a thick stack of file folders in one arm. She murmured a response to my greeting and began fiddling with her folders.

My social duty done, I pulled out my Blackberry and started scrolling through Twitter posts. The older lady got off the elevator, leaving me alone with the lab-coated woman.

The doors closed. Then I heard her make an impatient sort of huffing noise. I looked up and met her black-framed gaze inquiringly. Is one not supposed to be text-messaging in elevators now?

“Oh,” she said in an explanatory way, “I just had a very bad encounter with someone.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, rather automatically. What, the old lady? Me? No, she’s talking about something else.

“People can be such assholes, can’t they? Goddamn it.”

Whoa, swearing. Is that a conventional response to someone in an elevator saying good morning? Seems like we’re upping the conversational stakes here. Not in a good way.

I made some noncommittal noise, nodded sympathetically, and turned my face down towards my phone again. We’re done talking now, all right? The numbered buttons next to the door lit up and then went dark, one by one, as we ascended. Not very quickly, though.

“I mean, it’s the end result that matters, right? What’s best for the people involved?”

Unwillingly, I looked up at her. She was shifting from one sensibly-shod foot to the other, and clawing ineffectually at the locks of hair that were hanging around her face. She made the huffing noise again, pressing her lips together and blowing air out her nose in irritable little bursts.

“Really,” she said, speaking more quickly, “it doesn’t matter is everyone else thinks you’re crazy, right? If it’s for the best? Even if everyone else thinks you’re absolutely fucking insane?”

Um, yeah – it actually might matter if everyone else thinks you’re crazy. Because, you know, you might be. And here I am, in the damn elevator with you. I just hope one of those badges around your neck doesn’t say License To Kill on it.

When I choose to engage in it, I am rarely at a loss for polite social chitchat, but being in an elevator with an angry, swearing stranger who is proposing that insane ends justify insane means – well, that stumped me.

Just then, the elevator emitted a ping! sound. Saved by the bell. I said something like, “hope that works out okay,” slipped sideways through the doors as they were still opening, and made my escape down the hall.

You see, this is what happens to me when I say good morning to people.

Goodness, I really blew off blogging this week, didn't I? Ah well. We'll resume our regularly scheduled rants and observations next week.

Meanwhile, there is a fresh Stranger column up.

I also have a publicly-available piece up on FilthyGorgeousThings.com, about BDSM euphoria.

And Monk has some video footage of a show he did at Columbia City Cabaret recently.

So there, be entertained by that!

Complete and Unedited Email! Plus, remarks on kinky coffee...

SUBJECT: Rashead from Bangladesh

Hello,
What is your Father's name do you know?
If yes, I will become your HUSBAND. Right?
Rashead.

Um, no. No, I don’t know my father’s name. Nope. No idea whatsoever. I'm an orphan. Of two orphan parents. What a shame.

(Actually, I think this email is a game. Meaning I don’t really think this is from a guy named Rashead who thinks he could marry me. It’s too weird, and yet not weird enough. The sentence structure is too good for someone whose grasp of reality is so loose. But hey, I’m not one to pass up good blog fodder when it’s served right to me.)

***

So, about this coffee shop thing: I keep getting email from people telling me about a coffee shop in San Francisco called Wicked Grounds. It’s described as “San Francisco’s first and only kink café and boutique.”

It's sweet of people to think of me and send me notes about things. That's just fine and dandy, I like that. And yes, I do know about the café. I didn’t get around to dropping by when I was down for Folsom, but it sounds like an absolutely charming place. I think it’s lovely that SF has a kinky café, and I wish them much success.

However, the idea of a kinky coffee shop is not really a novel one to me - or to anyone who's been in the Seattle kink scene for a while. Here in Seattle, we had our first one open in 1995: Beyond the Edge Café. It was open for about five years, and then the owner of that café, Allena Gabosch, went on to help create The Wet Spot, now known as The Center For Sex Positive Culture.

Here's a Stranger article from 2000 that mentions the cafe, in context of the greater Seattle fetish scene. It's interesting reading. (And no, not just because it mentions me.)

Now we have The Little Red Bistro, which is not a BDSM café exactly, but more of a generally sex-positive and kink-friendly space. With really good food.

So I’d definitely visit Wicked Grounds when you’re in San Francisco, but don’t think we don’t have options right here in Seattle!

I am so insanely busy for the next few days that thoughtful, intelligent blogging - well, that's right out the window. I can keep up with Twittering. But otherwise: lower your expectations, people.

And you know the old saying - "If you can't say anything nice, then make fun of other people." So I will. Here, for example, is the complete and unedited text of a recent email.

i was wanting to know iu tape ur sessions if so can u do 1 on webcam

Fail. Number one: typos, which we all make, me included. But come on, it's one lousy line, you can proofread that!

Number two: netspeak, which I hate. I am especially annoyed by the bastardization of "u" for you and "ur" for your. Those abbreviations are appropriate in one, and only one, type of communication. That is: a letter that's wrapped around a rock, and which will be delivered by throwing it through a window.

Okay, maybe one more - they are acceptable for a ransom note that's composed of cut-out letters from a newspaper. Otherwise - wrong, wrong, wrong.

Number three, and the real crux of it: I have no idea what he's asking me. Is he asking me if I will tape a session with another guy and let him watch? (No.) Or is he asking me if I'll do a session with him, via webcam? (No.)

Now... I am trying to think of a cute ending line for this post - and I'm failing. Perhaps it's a sign that I should not be so hard on other people's writing. Or perhaps it means that sometimes, I'm a better disciplinarian than a writer. Luckily I can live with that.

Occasionally people tell me they miss the "stupid phone calls" posts. They were easy to write, god knows. But I don't miss actually having to answer those phone calls.

But here's an oldie-goldie from the vaults. Faithful long-term readers may remember the one and only Ryker Blackstar! Wonder how that House of Blackstar thing worked out?

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I'm off to Atlanta today on a family visit. I'm flying home next Weds, so between now and then, I'll get to email as best I can - but don't expect lighting-fast replies.

Meanwhile: the new Stranger column.

Bye!

Whenever I have no writing inspiration, it is a comfort to me that I can reach in the mail file and find something to talk about...

I got a letter from a reader who said nice things and observed all the I-know-you're-really-busy amenities, and because she did that, I will answer for her some questions that she might have been able to answer for herself, if she'd done a bit more searching of the archives. This blog needs a design overhaul anyway, and one of things it needs is the Top Ten Most Asked Questions List. "How To Be A Pro Domme" would be high on that list.

What's a fair range of prices to ask for an hour long session? How do you determine what your time's worth, how much to ad for extras outside my norm(if I decide to do so). Do you have any tips for how I could determine that of my time? And last but far from least, when you were just starting, how did you protect yourself? I'm well read, fairly involved in my (sparse) local scene and I broke my teeth in on the larger London clubs and parties like Torture Garden, but nowhere I've looked has helped me figure out how to price or organize this.

Okay, here's my standard advice: First, go here, enter this blog's URL and search for "sex work" and "pro domme" and read all the tons of advice I've given about that in the last five years. Some of it will apply directly to you and some won't, but it's all information worth having.

Read this. And then read this book, in it's entirety.

Then read this one, too. ("But I'm not going to be an escort, I'm going to be a pro domme!" For the vast majority of your purposes, the difference is immaterial. Read it. Information is never a waste.)

Because the writer mentions London, I suspect she might be in the UK. Or maybe not, I don't know. But if she is, I am badly positioned to give her much more advice, because both the legal and the social system around sex work is entirely different there. She'd need to talk to a pro domme in the same country.

But perhaps she's in the US. Even if she isn't, someone else will want to know the answers to those questions anyway. So let me just step all of you through this as simply as I can.

Say we want to sell something - something we know is of value. In this case, it's our time and attention, but it could be anything at all. How do we determine it's value? We go and find other people who are selling the same thing and see what they are charging! Aside from a few stints waitressing, I have never had a job that didn't involve someone getting naked. But surely this is how you non-sex-workers determine what's a fair wage for your labor, or a fair price for your product? It's no different for us.

It is my policy that I do not tell other people how much money they should charge for their time. And since this reader didn't tell me where she lived, I can't do her Googling for her. But she - and anyone else - can type mistress, pro domme, dominatrix + the name of her city, and Bob's your uncle. Look at the sites, see what the existing ladies are charging, charge the same.

One point: I don't recommend having a menu of fees. Decide what you will and won't do, set an hourly rate for your time that assumes all those activities, and that's it. I think it's unseemly to mess around with the nickel-and-dime add-ons. Per-activity rates also suggest that you could be wheedled down in price. "How much if I just want a spanking, with no nipple clamps?"

Also, in the US, extra fees are legally risky. Ask a lawyer why.

Protection: This kind of question about protection always makes me roll my eyes a bit. The myth that sex workers live in a state of constant peril was created by people who want to control what we do with our bodies. Certainly some sex workers get assaulted. Women get assaulted by their husbands and boyfriends, too - and by their friends, their co-workers, members of their family, and total strangers. That seemingly common-sense notion that nice girls aren't assaulted as often as bad girls is just a tool to keep you nice girls scared and in line. The idea that there's a way that sex workers have to make themselves safe that other women don't is fallacious.

So, how have you protected yourself in your life so far? Whatever you've done, ask yourself: has my way of doing that worked out well? Or do I need to get better at it?

There's a lot of stuff about safety in the archived entries here about sex work, so read them. And read The Gift Of Fear, too, it's the best handbook I know on assessing and dealing with dangerous people.

But I can't say, "Okay, here's the ONE rule that will always prevent you from assault." There are a hundred thousand rules. Some of them you'll need and some you won't, and just based on this letter, I can't tell you what you need to feel safe.

You will have to decide. Remove the money aspect from it and think: what would I do if I was just meeting a guy for fun? How would I protect myself in that situation? And do that.

Certain kinds of sex work questions there are right/wrong answers to. But if you want to operate your own business - any business - you need to be able to look at a problem, reason it out, and make a judgment call by yourself. The best advice I can give you is: Get used to thinking like that.

Dear Mistress Matisse,

I've been reading your blog for several years now, and I always enjoy your columns. I've been curious about something: do you see transmen as clients? I know you take a hard line about not seeing women as clients, but I also know that your understanding of queers and the queer community is rather nuanced (and you were once married to a transman, no?).

Point of clarification before I go on: transman means someone who started out female and transitioned to male. I know we can get into a discussion about whether transmen were ever truly female, I’m not questioning anyone’s feelings on that. Let us say: they were assigned the female gender when they were born.

Now then...

Some letters that I get, I think “I don’t know how to answer this without sounding like a twit.”

Well, in a way I can answer this. I don’t have any female-to-male transexual clients. In fact, I’ve never had anyone who told me he was transexual even ask me for a professional session. And since I see 99% of my clients naked, yes, I’d know if one of my guys was trans. The surgery for female-to-male transexuals is not nearly as advanced as it is for male-to-female people.

So, the issue has not arisen.

I’m not sure what I would say if a transman did ask me, though. Because the situation is, as you say, nuanced.

Yes, I was queer-identified for most of my twenties. My lovers were female and I socialized in mainly queer spaces. And then I did indeed marry (and subsequently divorce) a transman. 

In my experience, a woman who is lovers with a transman occupies a very curious social space between queer and straight. But my former husband looked very, very male indeed. He used to resemble a shorter Mike Ditka, in fact. Looking the way he felt - male - was precisely what he wanted, although on occasion it complicated matters. Like the day I took him to the hospital for his scheduled hysterectomy.

He was understandably a bit anxious about having this major surgery. And it seem like when you’re waiting for surgery, every yahoo with a lab coat just wanders by at random, picks up your chart, and reads it. Picture Mike Ditka in a hospital bed. And his chart says he's having a hysterectomy. The possibility of having a gender “Who’s On First?” sort of exchange was strong.

I was not going allow that to happen. I stood at his bedside poised like a jaguar, ready to spring at the throat of any clueless medical staff who looked at him, and then looked at his chart, and then said something stupid. There were several moments when various people looked like they were trembling on the brink of a throat-tearing remark, but - they refrained. Perhaps it was the I-will-kill-you look I was giving them.

This is all my way of explaining that I am aware of the incredible complexities and challenges transmen have to deal with. *

But that’s a lot of complexities to deal with in just sixty minutes, in a dungeon. With a not-a-transexual man, I have a head-start. I can safely assume a lot about where he’s coming from, culturally, and what the some of his hot buttons and wet dreams and taboo fantasies are likely to be. I know how to do the traditional male-female dance, and I know how to twist it sideways, lube it up, and jam it into someone’s sweet pink ass.

My experience of transmen in intimate situations is that they are emotionally vulnerable in a way that I can validate and sympathize with, and they are just tremendously complex. The social/psychological dynamic is all over the map. He’s a man, which in a patriarchal world means he has social power - but he’s a transman, which means that power is actually as fragile and as permeable as a tissue.

Often he has lived for part of his life being seen as female, so he knows what that’s like. But straight transmen don’t usually want to relate to women as someone-who-used-to-be-female, they just want to be a guy. So there’s this knowingness there - but one mustn’t make too much of the fact that this guy knows exactly what menstrual cramps feel like.

Transmen’s relationships with their bodies is tricky, too. I have never had any uneasiness about interacting - in a BDSM context, or sexually - with a transman's body. I’m good with bodies. I don't care whether your body looks exactly like other men's bodies, I just want to know how you work. If I can look at you and touch you, I can figure out your body pretty quickly.

But, understandably, a lot of transmen are not super-confident about their body. They are not always comfortable being seen and being touched. Stripped naked, their vulnerability is often, to me, heart-wrenchingly intense. One can learn how each individual transman wants to be looked at and touched, and teach them to trust you, but that takes time.

And one hour simply isn’t enough, in my opinion. It's completely different from dating a transman, where you go as slow as you need to. For me as a professional – wow, I’m daunted by the idea of trying to create a scene for a transman that I’d feel really good about in that short of a time. Since I have some personal history there, I’d feel extra-frustrated by doing a scene I didn’t think was as good as it should be.

What’s also true is that my professional time is not cheap, and most of the transmen I have met were not rich. I suppose if I met a transman who was wealthy, and he wanted to see me a lot and develop that type of BDSM relationship with me, and I felt we were well-suited as play-partners – well, I’d do that.

I would bet that’s a decision I will not have to make, though.


*Of course, everything I say is a broad generalization that only reflects my view from the outside. Every transexual person has his/her/hir own different and utterly valid experience.

I wasn’t going to upload this last podcast. But Monk says I’m being silly. And lord knows, I need the blog-content, I've been way too busy to write much lately.

So, I am ignoring a voice in the back of my head that says it is slightly undignified. Unladylike, in fact.

Yes, I know – I don’t feel the slightest qualm about posting photos of myself sticking needles in people. That's perfectly dignified. It's kinky, but it's not undignified.

But I do feel that it is a trifle undignified to post slightly-tipsy rants about one of my pet topics: Crazy People And Sex Work.

Just to be clear – thank you, President Obama – I am not disclaiming the basic opinions I express here. I just wish I had voiced them a little less profanely and a little less… stridently. Whoops.

There's also a whole side conversation about fisting, in which I make an ill-advised personal disclosure.

Thus, I bring to a close the era of cocktails while podcasting. So enjoy us in all our ranty, TMI glory, the next round will be far more calm, sober and public-radio-esque. (Well, I will be, at least. I cannot speak for Monk.)

Notes From A Party

I was at a lovely party over the weekend, with a lot of my usual kinky friends and also, a bunch of people I am not so acquainted with. Many interesting things happened.

At one point in the evening, I was standing in a hallway, talking to various people. If I looked to the left, I could see some strangers fucking in a dimly-lit bedroom. If I looked right, I could see Monk doing a suspension-bondage scene in the living room. It was a nice location.

Observation connected to that experience and a lot of others just like it: if you mix swingers and kinky people at a party, the swingers will eventually go find a bedroom (or someplace) to have sex in. The kinky people, on the other hand, will start doing BDSM – although not sex – right in the living room.

***

I am fortunate enough to have some very attractive friends who really like to run around naked. It’s a charming trait.

***

A man I did not know walked by me and accidentally stepped on my toes. Such things do happen, and he apologized instantly, and there was certainly no permanent injury. But I wasn’t able to arrange my facial expression into anything that resembled understanding forgiveness – at least, not quickly enough. After he’d moved away, I felt a little bad about the frosty glare I’d given him, as it was a bit disproportionate to the crime.

Coda: the next day, my hostess told me that he was mortified by the incident, and apparently jokes were made about him dying his hair and changing his name before the next party. To which I say: dear man, your party foul was a trifling one. I was just having a bitchy moment, it’s an occupational hazard. All is forgiven and forgotten.

***

Other Opportunities For Mortification: Occasionally I’ll be standing alone, watching a BDSM scene, and someone will walk up, stand next to me and watch with me, and strike up a conversation. That’s fine, but sometimes – perhaps because I’m not wearing a leather dress or carrying a flogger – they will assume I don’t know anything about BDSM. And they start explaining the scene to me. That is highly, but highly, amusing to me. Especially when they get it completely wrong. Especially when one of the people in the scene is Max or Monk.

When I am feeling kind, I will politely clue them in right away. When I am not, I’ll let them go on for a while before I casually mention that yeah, I'm a pro domme, and that guy is actually my boyfriend.

***

Speaking of Stepping: in spite of the fact that I had arrived with no intention of playing, Jae succeeded in goading me into standing on her chest. I did some pushups with my elbows planted in her pectoral muscles, too. And then Puck and I then determined that with pressure, Jae’s legs would almost, but not quite, rotate enough for us to form a perfect T-shape with her body. Jae’s remark: “Jesus, I feel like a cross between a sex doll and a Gumby!”

***

My slightly-awkward moment for the evening? When I wanted my purse, which I had carefully stashed in the bedroom - where people were now fucking. I certainly don't have any problem with that, it's just... "Oh, sorry, don't mind me, I just need to grab my lipstick, here. No no, it's fine, don't stop. I have a girl in the living room I should be beating up, gotta get back to that. Carry on, please."

The new Stranger column. It's about a common bit of sex-industry infighting, and I see in the comments that the stripper version of this argument is also getting some airtime.

I'm not surprised. As a former stripper myself, I have known many strippers who spent a lot of time and energy trying to control the behavior of other strippers, and that always baffled me.

For one thing, trying to get a bunch of strippers to do anything at all is like herding cats. (No pun intended.)

But trying to get a bunch of strippers, many of whom are not exactly deeply invested in strict professionalism, some of whom are chemically altered in some fashion when they're at work, and all of whom are actually in financial competition with each other to adhere to a highly-interpretable set of behavioral boundaries just because you want them to - you're kidding me, right? Never gonna happen.

The amount of blood, sweat and tears some strippers will put into policing whether some other chick put her hand on a guy's thigh or his crotch, whether she brushed up against him or she rubbed up against him - you know, you could put all that energy into getting a job where there really are strict rules about how people are supposed to act. That seems like what you want.

But sex work? This is the wild wild west, baby. We ain't got no sheriffs, and we don't need no stinkin' badges.

I’m off to Vegas until Friday, so while I jet away, enjoy a new podcast. This one is letters from readers with questions about polyamory.

First letter: when to disclose to a potential new partner that you are poly, if they don’t know already.

And then: dealing with weirdness from your partner’s other partners. (AKA “metamours”.)

It’s a lot of unbridled snark with (hopefully) some nuggets of wisdom. And all admittedly somewhat fueled by alcoholic beverages. I am wincing slightly as I listen to myself tipsily hold forth on these, so I think that means I must make a ban on drinking + podcasting in the future.

But I will not be podcasting in Vegas! Bye!

EDIT: The formatting is coming out weird on the podcast page, not sure why. But it downloads okay, just click on the little icon.

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

A new podcast! First there’s a lot of silly banter about needles and being naked in bed, and then Monk reads a letter about how to do fast, easy rope bondage during a resistance play scene, and I make some comments about securing a bottom who is larger than you.
After that, I both scold and encourage a reader who is exploring BDSM, but who wants me to do their kinky thinking for them. About 16 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy thwacking!

Complete and unedited text of a recent email...

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

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

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

Right.

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

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

Updated Availability

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Attachments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Polyamory in Pop Culture

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

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

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

From The MailBag

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

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

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

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

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

Zap! Bzzzzz....Ka-bam!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Me Elsewhere

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

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

Facials - Not The Spa Kind

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

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

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

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

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

What? what? we all asked.

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

We howled with laughter.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes About My Schedule

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

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

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

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

I love fashion. Especially when it looks like this.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Mailbag

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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