Happy Friday, everyone... a quick post, because I only have a minute before Roman and I need to check out of the motel we're in. We're in Eugene, of all places. What are we doing in a small college town in central Oregan? Two words: bachelorette party.
It was completely wild. I think we ratcheted up the general kink quotient of this town several percentage points last night.
So more about that - and hopefully pictures as well - later. For now, go read my column and see how to make some kink happen in your own life.

Just a brief note, because I'm getting ready for a road trip. Roman and I are off to do something special. I can't say anything about it now - it's Top Secret. But I'll tell you about it tomorrow. For now, I've got music, a diet Mountain Dew, and a bag full of Rainier cherries. It'll soon be time for us to hit the road, vroom...

To my boys: I won't be back in town til late afternoon Friday, so no appointments today or tomorrow, sorry. Next week, I'm here in Seattle til Wednesday the 20th, and then I'm out of town at Thunder In The Mountains from Thursday the 21st to Monday the 25th. Because of all this traveling, I am considering taking Saturday or Sunday appointments this weekend only. So call me or email me if you're interested in that.

Oh, by the way: Does anyone know what language this is?

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An observant reader noticed my comment in yesterday's post and asked: "You say you don't usually have sex with your submissives. But you have sex with Roman, don't you? What makes him an exception?"

Good lord, let me make something clear right now. Roman is not my submissive. Roman is so very, very, not my submissive. Roman is not anyone's submissive. And that's because Roman is not submissive. At all.

And – if it even needs to be said – I'm not his submissive either.

He's my lover, which is an entirely different thing. And we do really kinky things with each other, because, well, we're just perverted that way. It gets us off. So I like sticking needles in him, and punching him in the chest and on the back with my fists, and biting him really hard, cutting him with a scalpel – you know, the sweet, loving kinds of things all lovers like doing to each other, right?

And he likes me doing that to him. It gets him an endorphin high, for one thing. And just last week, he had this big knot of muscle tension in his back from work and various other stress factors, and after I punched it for a while with my sharp little knuckles, why – it was gone. It's kinda like high-impact massage. The biting probably helped, too.

If you're new to kink, you may not yet understand that what someone does with their body, and where someone goes with their head, may be two very different things. But check out this little diagram I made.

See, two different scales. Dominance/submission is about the purely emotional/psychological aspect of BDSM. Sadism/masochism is about what you do with your body – the physical stuff. Every kinkster is at their own special place on these two lines. You might be at the far end of both scales – very dominant and very sadistic. (Did someone mention Max's name?) Or very submissive and very masochistic. But you can be any place at all on these scales, to include being say, very sadistic and very submissive, or very masochistic and also very dominant. Such a combination makes it more challenging to find appropriate kink partners, but not by any means impossible. And it's not at all uncommon to be not emotionally/psychologically submissive at all, but to enjoy some intense physical sensation. (What vanilla people would call pain.) Or maybe you don't like any intense sensation, but you do like to submit. Wherever you are, it's okay. And of course, where someone finds themself on this scale will often evolve over time.

So, is Roman a bit of an erotic masochist? Um, yeah. (Not that I know anything about that myself, oh nooooo.) But my god, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's less submissive. This is the man who, as I was unsheathing needles to pierce him with, was laughing and taunting me. Like this…

"Oh, is that all you got? I thought you were going to do something seriously mean."
"Jesus, you are so asking for it," I replied.
"I mean – I thought you were some kinda nasty sadist. You're an Avon Lady, you know that. You're like – a Hummel Figurine collector. You're duckies and bunnies. You're –." He broke off and howled as I put the needle through his skin.
"Duckies and bunnies, am I?"
He gasped for air and took a few quick breaths. "You - are - little - pink - bunnies. With big pink bows on. Ow! Shit! That fucking hurt."
"Good. Look, I've got bigger needles. See this one? This is an 18 gauge. Looks like a railroad spike, doesn't it?"
"God, you are an evil bitch. Never change."
"I won't." I kissed him.

Essentially, Roman and I are both dominants, but we're dominants who like to play with sadism/masochism in the context of our sexual relationship. The brief moments of dominance/submission we sometimes have are playful, and they usually shift back and forth between us from one minute to the next. We do have dates where one of us is the official top for the evening, but a lot of the time, whoever has an idea will simply say, "Hey! Why don't I attach these clothespins to your naughty bits and then we'll have sex?" And the other person will say, "Sounds great!" It's pretty far from traditional, high-protocol BDSM, but why should we get hung up on rules at this stage of the game?

Some other day, when I'm feeling ambitious, I'll attempt to explain my relationship with Max... Now that's complicated.

Bio

Max and I are going down the Bay Area in September to present at the Folsom Fringe Festival. We haven't been to this particular conference before, but they asked us to come down, so we decided to give it a try.

Folsom Fringe is a relatively new con, being put on to coincide with the annual Folsom Street Fair. I've been to FSF before, of course. It's kinda like going to Jerusalem - every leather person should go at least once. FSF has been called "the grandaddy of all leather events", and that's true, as long as you understand that ol' granpappy will be wearing a studded leather jockstrap and not much else. And oh, there will be four hundred thousand people at grandad's house on the day of the party.

Yeah, I said four hundred thousand. It's really overwhelming. The streets are mobbed with people - mainly gay men, but other leather people too - cruising, shopping the vendor's booths, flirting, snapping pictures. I've been twice, and at the time I enjoyed prancing around downtown San Francisco with my shirt off - because this is very much a done thing at FSF - but that was a number of years ago, and I haven't had a strong desire to go back.

For one thing, I actually get sort of edgy in heavy crowds. And plus, the non-kinky tourists are becoming more of a presence every year. If you're dressed up fetishy, or doing anything at all interesting, random strangers will snap pictures of you like crazy and then do who-knows-what with them. I've run across refrigerator magnets at tourist stands at the Fisherman's Wharf with photos of my friends being spanked. I'm sure there are videos and DVDs with the kink equivalent of "Girls Gone Wild" out there somewhere. No thanks – if you're going to exploit my image I want to be paid for it. Last time I was running around topless at FSF I had a Super Soaker that I aimed at anyone who pointed a camera at me without asking permission. That scared most of 'em off, but I'm told the looky-loos are so prevalent now that it's impossible to deter them. So I will not be dressing up, or stripping down, this year. At least Roman will have a booth, so if the crowd gets to be too much, I'll have a sanctuary to escape into.

Max told me I needed to send the Folsom Fringe folks a bio and a picture, since I'm co-presenting. Going through my "bio" folder, I found this. J and I wrote and submitted these as our presenters bios for the Living In Leather conference in 1996, as a humorous protest against a wave of unbelievably pompous, overblown, and self-aggrandizing bios. Some people got the humor part, some people didn't... This isn't the one I'm sending to the Fringe folks. But J's part is very sweet, isn't it?

Mistress Matisse invented SM and everything about it. In her younger days, she did 4 to7 at the California Women's Penitentiary for lewd and lascivious behavior in conjunction with an assault with a deadly weapon. With the help of Thorazine, she has been acquitted of all felony charges since then. (Just don't get your hands too near her mouth…)

Her book, How I Invented SM And Everything About It, is forthcoming from Domlier-Than-Thou Press. But in spite of her massive international fame, to the SM community, she is simply and fondly known as Mistress Matisse - The Illuminated Imperial Goddess of All, Empress of All She Surveys, I'm-King-Of-The-World!, Domina of Dominas, Queen of the Nile, Princess Most High, Hostess with the Mostess, Defender of the Faith, Belle of the Ball, Genuflect-When-You-Speak-Her-Name, Czarina of all the Russias, Sultan of Swing, Miss Congeniality, Void Where Prohibited, Some Restrictions May Apply…

j belongs heart, soul and body to Mistress Matisse. She would like to add that her Mistress has, out of modesty, failed to mention that she is also...Genie of the lamp, lily of the valley, creature of the night, eye of the storm, and the heart of the matter. She once broke the backbone of society, and tipped over the pillar of the community. She is the leader of the band, inventor of the wheel, the salt of the earth, the life of the party, the rest of the story, the ghost of Christmas past, the singer of the song, the Fuck of the Century, the hair of the dog that bit you, the Secret Square, a lighthouse to others, the jewel on the crown, and the moral of the story. She has snatched the pebble and walked the ricepaper- has the keys to j's heart and its immediate surroundings. Most recently she is noted for hanging the moon and lighting the stars.