Ah, a sweet date with Roman last night. We ate Ezell's and gave each other massages - before moving on to more...intense activities.
Now I'm off into my day. Enjoy the new column and calendar...

Several houses that I will not be buying. Way out of my price range. But ooh, they're pretty....

Nice light...

Pretty view - plus, you can check traffic!

Love the woodwork.

And hell, as long as we're in the no-possible-way department, check this one out, it's got it's own elevator. I know someone who'd like to do a suspension bondage scene in the shaft.

An article on kink in Psychology Today. It's a not a bad piece, I suppose, although someone really needs to tell the author - identified only as "PT Staff" - to stop saying "s AND m". That's soooooo dated. Just say "SM".

But overall, it's just a lot of cliches couched in comforting therapist-speak. I don't strongly object to that - there are certainly worse ways to have my community depicted. Can someone send this piece to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, please?

But snippets like this make me giggle....

"A common female masochistic fantasy is submission based on having one's body displayed to others. One of Baumeister's favorite--perhaps apocryphal--stories is that of a woman whose husband threw her a birthday party, inviting lots of people. She was posed nude and spread-eagle on the hors d'oeuvre table. Every party-goer who reached for a cracker or the vegetable dip had to reach across her bare self."

First of all, they're confusing - or perhaps equating - "masochism" with "submission". That's wrong, they're two different things. Masochism is about the desire for intense physical sensation, and submission involves emotional/phychological states. What's being described here doesn't seem to involve any intense sensation, so I would not call this a "masochistic" scene.

Also note the soothing suggestion that this story couldn't have really happened. Oh, my goodness, a woman being nude and helpess in front of lots of people? Shocking! Shocking, I tell you! I'm thinking that "PT Staff" would probably have a stroke if they ever came to the Wet Spot. Or a party at my house, for that matter. Lots of people doing a lot more than just being naked. Why, just Sunday night, I put chopsticks on a woman's outer labia, poked them with a bamboo skewer, and smacked them with a small wooden spoon. This, after Roman had stuck her lovely tits full of needles. That's my idea of a "common female masochistic fantasy".

Amusing things I did this past weekend…

Well, in the more vanilla portion of my weekend, I looked at lots of houses. Some of them were cute, but small. I like old houses, but a lot of them have dinky little rooms.

I looked at one house that was pretty from the outside, and large, with tall ceilings. It had big rooms, but unfortunately those rooms looked like the Parisian rioters had come through them. Actually, it looked like Parisian rioters had come in, installed hideous fake wood paneling, rioted, and then left. I could have dealt with holes in the walls and shredded carpet. But fake paneling? Save me.

When Max and my kink-friendly agent and I go look at houses, we immediately go down into the basement and look up. Good ceiling height? Okay, let’s go see the rest of the house. Are we banging our heads? Screw it, we don’t care about the Pergo or the patio or the jetted tub, we’re outa here. I’m sure any normal house-buyer would think we were very, very strange.

Sunday I hung out with Roman at Max’s bondage class, and then a bunch of us went to dinner before coming back for the bondage party. I had a date to teach Griffin how to do a cutting on Liss; meaning, how to take a scalpel and do a light, decorative incision on her skin. Yeah, it’s kinda painful. But not as much as you might think.

It's tough to practice a skill like cutting before you get to the actual scene. I’m not a big proponent of having people rehearse on objects like, say, tomatoes. I just don’t see the point unless you’re trying to hone your purely artistic skills, as opposed to your technical ones. People’s skin and the skin of a tomato – I just don’t feel like they’re that similar. I don’t know, do medical people practice on fruits and vegetables? (Eddie, wanna field this one?)

So Griffin had not handled a scalpel before. And it was also to be Liss’s first cutting. A double-cherry situation, how charming. Now, I’ve seen Liss do some extreme stuff as a bottom, but still, cutting can be intense. So I took the basic precaution of having Liss lie down for the scene. That’s always best, because that way, if someone passes out, hey, they can’t fall down.

I know Griffin does needle-play, so I was pretty sure he’d be fine. But just in case, I asked him, “You don’t faint at the sight of blood, do you?”
He grinned. “Not other people's.”

Well, all righty then. So after having some “materials, safety and technique” discussion with him, I took the blade and did one stroke on the ever-intrepid Liss myself. Not big, maybe two inches long. It elicited a small breathy noise from Liss and a pleased “ooooo” sound from Griffin.

First things first. “Liss, how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

She looked and sounded fine, too, so that was cool. I talked to Griffin a little more about what we were doing. When you cut, you don’t see anything for a few seconds, and then a thin red line suddenly appears. So cutting is most often a slow-paced, contemplative scene. (Yeah, yeah – some of us know a few people for whom it is something different. But let’s not frighten the other kids too much, all right?) You cut, you pause and wait and look at what you've got, and then you cut the next stroke.

Gauging how much pressure to put into the stroke is the key to safe cutting, and that’s a thing that’s hard to communicate verbally. Someone has to be sensitive enough to feel the skin responding to the blade as they go, and instantly make the tiny adjustment to go a little lighter, or a little more firmly. Lighter is always better, though. I always tell people: you can go back and recut, if it’s too light. If it’s too deep, though, that’s a problem less easily solved.

So I showed Griffin how to hold the scalpel – like a pencil – and said "Okay, here we go".

Watching someone open up skin for the first time is a kick. I vividly recall my first cutting, with a tall, green-eyed dyke standing behind me, coaching me like I was coaching Griffin. I remember being nervous, but tremendously excited. Griffin was just the same - later he remarked to me, “There’s all this excitement in your body, and you have to be careful not to let too much of it flow into your hand.”

The end result: he did a very good job – I think he’s got a knack for it. And Liss did very well, too. I’m not sure if she got a buzz off it or not, but she’ll have a pretty little design on her back to show for it. I do like teaching people new ways to express their kink.

Notes about my professional availability...

Well, the appointment with the mortgage broker went reasonably well. Based on that, I'm talking to an agent, letting him show me some houses, and thinking about all of my different options. But the end result of this is going to be me writing some mighty large checks. I've been preparing for that, financially, for a while. But things always cost a little more than you think they will, don't they?

What that means to you, dear beloved clients of mine, is that for the next two months or so, I’m going to be a little more professionally available than I usually am.

Here’s how that will look: I generally book appointments starting at two pm and ending at eight pm, and I don’t see people on the weekends. However, I’m going to relax those rules temporarily. As of today, I’ll book appointments as early as twelve noon, and if you’re someone I’ve met before, I’ll take appointments with an ending time of up to ten pm.

I’m also going to be so somewhat available on the weekends. I have social engagements booked for every Saturday night from now through Christmas, so Saturday night is right out. But Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon or evening, will be possible.

As far as evening appointments go, notice what I said: if I’ve met you before. I absolutely will not make late appointments with new people, just because there’s a very high no-show rate for first-timers on late appointments. Don’t ask me why, there just is. People call on a whim, and then they flake out, and I don’t have time for that.

Or they don’t flake out, and you wish they had, because they’ve been drinking or otherwise impairing their judgment. Bad, bad, bad.

So I’m not ever going to put myself in a situation of dealing with someone I’m not comfortable with, even to buy myself a mansion. I’m just expanding my hours a trifle, and it’s probably only until I close on the house. So this is a limited-time opportunity.

(Unless I decide I want to remodel or something…)