A few notes as I gear up to leave for Portland for the BodyBound event…

So, the column for this week is actually…the same column from last week: the "kimono boys" piece. I’m very pleased that it wound up getting printed in the paper copy of The Stranger after all. However, it means that I don’t have a link to a new column for you. I’m not exactly sure why it turned out this way. Sometimes The Stranger moves in mysterious ways, it’s wonders to behold.

And yesterday I did a podcast interview with GrayDancer, about the whole “kimono boys” thing. Gray's podcast is called "Rope Weekly" and it's all about erotic rope bondage. (If you didn't already figure that out.) I haven't met Gray in person, but both Max and Roman have, and they say he's a cool guy. I certainly had a good experience with him. I like people with an active sense of humor, and Gray has a comic persona named “NawaMarquishiDeSade" who, as he says, is “a parody of precisely that brand of self-importance," which I was writing about. That’s who interviewed me, so it was all very tongue-in-cheek - although I think the essential message of "Dudes, don't take yourself quite so seriously," was underneath. In any case, I hope it’ll be funny to listen to. Not sure when it'll be available to listen to, but I imagine it'll go up here.

Midori took time out from her insanely busy schedule – I swear, she makes my life look uneventful – to comment here, and there has actually been a fresh round of comments on the original post last Friday, so scroll down and read over those if you haven’t lately.

Meanwhile, I'm off to Portland to help teach people how to be pervy rope tops. Have a good weekend...

Nice Problem To Have, But...

So I had a conversation yesterday with one of my several friends who’s a call girl. She asked me to pass a message along to all the otherwise-cool clients out there: please, please - don’t leave presents on a professional lady’s doorstep.

Yes, it’s very sweet that you want to give a girl you’re fond of a Valentines gift. No one doubts that your heart is in the right place. But it’s an issue of discretion. Because what if you tiptoe up to the door of her incall, bend down to put your bundle of flowers or your box of Godiva’s on her step, and just as you do, another gentleman opens the door to leave? There you both are, staring at each other, terribly embarrassed, everyone’s privacy totally comprised.

Think how you’d feel if you were the guy on his way out. How long has this weirdo been bent over with his ear at the door? you’d think, and justifiably so.

You could just as easily spook a guy who's on his way in to a scheduled appointment. Many people are a bit nervous when coming to visit an escort, and encountering a strange man hanging around the door (as they would see it) of her place would make a lot of people very uncomfortable.

And while many ladies – like me - don’t live where they work, some do, and that creates the potential for even more issues. What if the door opens and it’s her mother who had just dropped by for a visit? What are you going to say? How she is going to explain you?

Even if you don’t get caught outright, your gift could still create complications if the wrong person sees it on her doorstep. “Oh, look, someone left you a Valentine! Do you have a boyfriend? You didn’t tell us! Who is he, when do we get to meet him?” Yeah. Definitely a problem.

I’ve gotten some very sweet and generous gifts over the years and I appreciate the guys who’ve given them to me. But I'm glad to say I haven't had to deal with very many instances of the surprise-gift-drop. However, I'm also considerably more out about my life than many sex workers, so while I definitely don't encourage it, I would not completely freak out if it happened. (Although I am quite zealous about protecting my client's privacy, so that part certainly applies.)

So my friend is quite right in saying that the best way to present gifts is in person. I don't think any woman I know would be ungracious about you simply waiting and giving her the gift when next you meet, even if it's not on the actual holiday.

Or, if she gives you permission, you could mail them. (Or FedEx them, or UPS, or whatever.) But only if she's okay with that, because often the name she gives you is not the same name by which she recieves mail, and getting a package addressed to her nom de negligee could be awkward if the wrong person sees it. (If it gets delivered properly at all.)

If you really can't wait to give her something - call and ask if it's okay to drop off a gift, so she can make sure the coast is clear.

But the surprise-personal-delivery method? Don't go there. It's way too fraught with perilous possibilities.

Cool toy! I want one of these...

This is sort of disturbing to me, although I don't know why exactly. I certainly support free enterprise, although I always thought most hair-fetishists liked it still attached to people's heads. (And while human-hair wigs are quite expensive, prices in the $700-1100 range definitely suggest "fetish" to me, not wigmaker.)

Amusing: Several people have sent me this bit of viral video. Definitely not work safe. But funny.

Edit: Oh, and happy day of over-hyped, anxiety-fueled, corporate-dictated “love” that somehow got tagged with a Christian martyr’s name, in spite of the fact that his death had nothing whatsoever to do with romantic love.

Notable Events of Late

A client I’ve only met once before told I seemed “driven”. He meant it nicely, and I took it so. But it stuck in my head for some reason. Driven? Am I? What does that mean? I do say of myself that I’m like a shark – for me, to stop swimming is to die. Maybe that’s what being driven is. It's an interesting way of thinking about myself.

********************************

Roman and I went and bought a new bed together. We both have beds at our respective homes, of course, that we share with our primary partners. But the good thing about me having a dungeon of my own is that it provides a space for us to be when we spend time together. So this bed will live in a special room at my place, to be used on our dates. (I did have a bed already, but it was getting rather old and it's been due to be retired, so to speak.)

I’ve never bought a bed from a department store. Being a bargain-conscious girl, I’ve always gone the warehouse-store route when I was bed shopping. But Roman has had good dealings with Macy’s, so off we went. We lay on all the beds, and I giggled a lot. I think we were both sort of oddly nervous. Neither of us have ever done something like this – meaning, buy a piece of furniture – with a secondary partner.

Observation on bed-shopping number one: Having a creepy-looking salesman stare down at you while you roll around on a bed is, well...creepy. We kept trying to shoo him off, but he’d just stand there, staring at us with this gaze that somehow managed to combine bovine sloth with a serial-killer-like blankness.

Observation number two: It’s amazing how intimate I am with Roman in some ways, and yet there’s still so much to learn about him. Watching someone move through a business transaction – and a fairly large financial expenditure – you just see a whole different side of them than you do at say, The Wet Spot or when you’re alone together. It’s interesting.

After we’d made a choice and were making arrangements for delivery, I thought to myself: Great, now Creepy Salesguy knows my name and address, too.

Then Creepy Salesguy wanted to sell us the extended warranty. “So you know, if you’re having a romantic evening and you spill red wine on the mattress, we’ll either come clean it or give you a new one free.”

I did not like this guy looking at me as I rolled around on a bed, and definitely didn’t like him looking at me and speculating about my romantic evenings. Ew. I considered saying, “You know, on our bed, it’s more likely to be blood. Your warranty cover that?” But I decided I didn’t want to get into it.

So, god willing and the creek don’t rise, the bed will be delivered Wednesday. Another poly landmark that Roman and I – with the support of Mrs. Roman and Max – have successfully negotiated.