I don’t usually blog on weekends, but Rachel Kramer Bussel is promoting her two new books, She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission and He's on Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission, by doing a virtual book tour. She asked me to participate, and today is my day, so I’m making an exception…

From She's On Top, here’s an excerpt a story about a professional dominatrix, called “The Mistress Meets Her Match”, by Kristina Wright.

If you’ve never squeezed a man’s balls in your hand and seen the terror in his eyes, you haven’t known power. If you’ve never cracked a whip and watched a man flinch, you haven’t known anticipation. And if you’ve never had a man grovel at your feet, you haven’t known what it means to be a bitch goddess. These men who come to me, hearts pounding, cocks hard, they know who I am, they know what they want. Because I am a benevolent bitch goddess, I usually give them what they want, but not before they suffer.

The story goes on to detail how the dominatrix meets a man who can be all things to her: submissive, lover, and occasionally, the boss in bed. It’s hot, I recommend it!

I snagged these Technorati tags/Blogger.com tags from Viviane, over at Sex Carnival. So thanks, Viviane!

• bdsm
• bondage
• book
• domination
• erotica
• femdom
• rachelkramerbussel
• submission

Many of you have written to say how much you liked the latest poly column. I'm pleased to hear it. If you'd like to hear more from me and my opinions about poly, you can listen to me on Cunning Minx's podcast, Polyamory Weekly.

I hope you find it interesting. Truthfully, I listened to it and thought, "Oh my God, I rambled on so bad in this! Jesus, I sound like I'd been smoking pot or something." (Which I had definitely not.)

The thing is, I've been speaking and teaching about kink, and also about sex work, for some years now. I have had the opportunity to respond to fairly similar sets of questions from the people I'm talking to, over and over again. So I have developed a pretty camera-ready set of tight, on-point answers to most of the common questions on those topics.

That's not true of poly. True, I've written some about it, but that's totally different. I haven't spoken or taught about it at all, except in very limited ways. So when Minx asked me questions, what she got was my unedited stream of consciousness. My lengthy stream of consciousness, which did not always include a precise answer to her original question. Tight and concise I am not, in this podcast. Oy.

Minx was very sweet about it, though. She split me into two parts, so I'll be on this week and perhaps next week as well, unless she decided to alternate me with something else. And she's a great host, so you should go listen. If you like it, send the lady a little donation, it's a labor of poly-love that she's doing there.

Have a lovely weekend...

The new Control Tower column...

What I’ve been reading lately…

Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World, or Six Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door, by Lynne Truss. I love observations on society and culture, and I love a good rant, especially when it’s a) about rude behavior and b) written by someone who styles herself “the Queen of Zero Tolerance”. So while this little book’s not what I would call weighty, it’s great fun to read, if only because you’ll find yourself nodding and saying, “yes, yes, I hate it when people do that!”

Fox Evil, by Minette Walters
From Booklist: The title of Walters' latest fright fest comes from a peculiarly virulent kind of skin disorder, in which hair falls out in mangy clumps. It also serves as the delightful nickname of one of Walters' main characters in this compulsive page-turner, which puts a deranged spin on the conventional village cozy. Walters, who has won both the American Edgar and the British Gold Dagger Award, is expert at ratcheting up suspense while she portrays credibly confused and terrified characters meeting their fates. Great psychological acuity in a hair-raising suspense story.

It’s pretty easy for me to find non-fiction I like, but I’m tough to please when it comes to fiction. I wanted to like this mystery novel – it seems like exactly the kind of thing I’d enjoy. And the author has a huge backlist I could buy up.
But while there was nothing really wrong with it, it was definitely not hair-raising. If anything, I was a teensy bit bored. Walters writes well, but the characters didn’t engage me.

Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold
From Booklist: Gold's debut novel opens with real-life magician Charles Carter executing a particularly grisly trick, using President Warren G. Harding as a volunteer. Shortly afterwards, Harding dies mysteriously in his San Francisco hotel room, and Carter is forced to flee the country. Or does he? It's only the first of many misdirections in a magical performance by Gold.

Another one I should have loved, since it’s about the life of a stage magician, and I have a little fetish for non-fiction about the history of magic. (Oddly, I have no desire to actually go see live magic shows, though. It’s the behind-the-scenes elements of the books that I like.) This novel certainly got a lot of critical acclaim. My verdict? Well…not bad. It doesn’t exactly zip along, that’s for sure – the slow pace reminded me of both The Prestige and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I did like seeing how the author wove real-life incidents from stage-magic history into the thread. However, like the Walter’s book, I found it rather put-downable. Still, it was a very sweet gift from a man I like playing with, and that alone endeared it to me.

Now, not everybody I see is into heavy intense sensation. But I do have a handful of boys who like it as heavy as I can dish it out.

I’ve written about this kind of scene before, and that may have been what prompted a gentlemen I’ll call the Bicycle Man to come see me. Like the guy in the column, Bicycle Man also likes impact on the ass, just as hard as I can do it. (I can actually get him to the "enough" point, though.)

There are so many different pleasures in BDSM - I could never settle for just one. But there is something viscerally satisfying about hitting something as hard as you can, and since I’m a sadist, I particularly like it when that something is a nicely responsive human body.

And since I’m a generous person, I decided that Jae should meet Bicycle Man, too. I'm strictly a gym queen when it comes to athletics, but Jae played softball in high school and college. Golf, too. She’s got a serious swing.

The three of us had a great time. Wanna see? (The usual disclaimers apply…)

Me lining up the stroke.

She swings and…

The bounce-back.

I do sort of bat like a girl, though, don't I? Jae has great follow-through.

We did catch one stroke just at the moment of impact.

But Jae and I are sure we could capture still more spanking art, so the Bicycle Man will just have to come see us again sometime…

***

Client Update: I still have time open on Wednesday and Friday of this week.

Also: Spring Cleaning at the dungeon continues. That means I'll be around there a lot over this weekend, and I'd love to be distracted from more mundane matters by spending an hour or two playing with someone. Thus, if you'd like a weekend appointment, contact me...

My glamorous life: I spent a lot of my weekend cleaning out a storage room in my workspace. Just over a year ago, when I moved in, I shoved a ton of boxes and excess dungeon furniture into the smallest bedroom and closed the door. I have rarely opened it since. I just haven’t wanted to bother with it.

However, it was high time I dealt with the matter. So Saturday I sorted a dozen large boxes of BDSM equipment into Throw Away, Give Away, and Keep piles. I found some toys I liked and had forgotten I had, some toys that I cannot imagine why I ever bought, and some things even I could not identify.

Luckily, Jae was with me - she was able to remind me about the provenance of a few of them. “That’s the paddle the guy from Montana made for you, you got those clamps when we were in Texas, and that looks like part of that leather sling you and (my ex) used to have in your basement.”

Afterwards, she and I studied the Throw Away pile, with old dildos, worn-out floggers, beat-up cock rings, and broken nipple clamps. She turned to me and said seriously, “Ma’am, I think you need to get some opaque trash bags for this.”

I laughed. “No kidding. The heavy-duty ones, too.” I don’t even want to know what the garbage collectors would make of a can full of my discarded BDSM gear.

The Give Away pile – which is pretty large – will be distributed according to propinquity. There are a few people close to me who get first look, and after they’ve chosen anything they want, then I’ll probably just set out the boxes at our next house party and say, “Take it away.” As I’ve stated before, I like passing along BDSM gear I'm not using. Nerdygirl was there helping out, and I gave her a black leather bar vest with an Onyx Leather tag in it. Raise your hand if you’re a Seattleite who remembers Onyx Leather. Yeah, not very many, huh? But way back in the day, if you wanted kinky leather work done, you went to PJ at Onyx Leather. She was pretty much the only game in town for a while.

So I explained that to Nerdy, and how this was a hand-made vest that been given to me, and I was now giving to her. She looks mighty cute in it.

And now I have a neatly organized room, instead of a disaster area, and a whole bunch of toys that I’d forgotten about to play with again. Kind of like going shopping without spending any money.