From the "silly emails" department...

I wanted to say hello to You and say I was impressed with Your site.1 it was also nice not to see the typical "I will dominate you for $xx.xx".2 I think Your site seems genuinely interested in the wants and needs of submissives, which brings me to my question. Who is really in charge if a session is set up for all the wants and needs of the submissive?3 What i want to know, is what do YOU truely enjoy?4. When You have a submissive alone and its for enjoyment and not really for a "session".5

1. I think the indicating-dominance-by-capitalizing thing is silly and affected, but I understand that people like doing it, and so I usually don’t say anything. However, if you’re going to write to me and capitalize Me and Mine and so on, you need to also lowercase your I. That’s how that convention works, you see.

2. Uh, what’s with the decimal point? Have you really ever seen a website where a sex worker listed a fee in dollars and cents? I mean, what would that look like? One hour: $249.99 I bet not.

3. This marking the seventeen thousandth, four hundred and thirty-first time I’ve heard the “submissives are really the ones in control” theory. Here are a couple of the responses I’ve made to it before, if you search back through the archives I’m sure you can find more. Nutshell version: yes, BDSM requires the consent of both parties. But if you think “consenting to a scene” equals “being totally in control of everything that happens”, you are obviously playing with the wrong people.

4. Oh, now we’re lapsing into the lowercase i. Or maybe it’s just a typo, which is what that always looks like to me anyway. And then the all-caps emphasis, and then one of my least-favorite misspellings.

5. And now we’re culminating in a flat demand that I write him a dirty email and reveal to him what he seems to think is personal information. Gee, what a truly submissive guy he must be.

It’s impressive how many annoying things this writer was able to pack into one short email. That takes skill. What you don’t know is that this guy has re-sent this email to me at least three times in the last few weeks. Maybe more, I’ve lost track. I guess he was getting impatient with me because I wasn’t giving him the information he wanted promptly enough. Snap to it, Mistress, inquiring minds want to know! So, here’s my answer…

The “no, tell me what you really like” thing is thing is irksome, first of all because it presumes I’m lying and must be cross-examined. Bah. In my dungeon, I don’t have to do a damn thing I don’t want to do. Thus, if I say I enjoy doing certain types of scenes, it’s because I do actually enjoy them. And if my word isn't good enough for you, then don't play with me.

But that isn’t going to satisfy a guy like this. I know this type. Back when I was a dancer, there would be guys who’d pester you to tell them your real name. Even after you said no, they’d still wheedle and beg and bribe you about it endlessly.

“Why do you want to know?” I’d say.

“I just want to,” they'd answer.

The trick was to hold out for a while, and then sigh heavily and say, “Okay, fine. It’s Heather. Now you know.”

Most of them would be very happy then, because they felt special. Sometimes the smarter ones would say indignantly, “Hey, that’s not your real name either, is it? You just made that up.”

However, I am not inclined to make up a pretty story for this man’s entertainment. (Although it’s always tempting to write back and say, “What I really get off on is castration scenes. Wanna play?”)

Do the math, my misspelled friend – if I was concealing things I thought were secret, why the heck would I spill them, just like that, to some random yabbo who sends me an anonymous email?

Some random sexual thoughts…

Suggestion for strap-on wielding ladies: if you haven’t got some already, buy yourself a pair of snugly fitting boy-shorts style panties. Get some that are a fairly thick knit, nothing too wispy. Put the strap-on harness over the panties. Then take a vibrator and shove it snugly into the front of the panties over the right spot. Now fuck. The panties will hold it in place better than just the harness, and pressure and movement of the dildo and harness over the vibrator is very nice, I find….

***

Someone told me lately about how his balls got all chafed during a sporting activity, and now I can’t stop thinking about scrotums and abrasion play. And ever since I saw this story, I also keep thinking about these fish. What if you got a whole lot of them? And they were really hungry? And what if you put sensitive bits of someone's flesh into a bowl full of them and told that someone they were, say, piranhas? (I know they don't look like piranhas, but they could be a special, rare variety. Say, Norwegian piranhas! Hey, you don't know for sure those don't exist. The thing about Norwegian piranhas is that they always circle a few minutes before they attack, like sharks. So you'd just have to wait and see, wouldn't you?)

Oh, this sort of thing makes me mad. Way to go, Christian educators. Granted, you don't have to like or employ the author of the sex blog, but could you not visit the "sins" of the mother upon her child? Especially when you already agreed not to? The "Catalina Loves" controversy.

From The Mail Bag

I'm a Seattle-based indie pornographer, and I'm looking to buy a condo in the near future. I'm looking to get a studio on the low end of the pricing scale, and almost all studios in cute older buildings are co-ops. The idea of going before a co-op board and explaining myself is quite terrifying to me. I'm wondering if you have any feel as to how sex worker friendly the co-op boards in Capital Hill might be?

Secondly, do you have a recommendation for a sex worker friendly accountant/ tax preparer?

Well, all right, this is definitely not one of those questions that one could just Google. Talk about highly specific. This is a micro-targeted question.

But I’m sorry, I have no information about how sex-work friendly a co-op board would generally be, let alone any specific information about any particular one in Seattle. Frankly, I’m only vaguely conversant with how co-ops are run. (Except for that fact that I’m told they are not a great real-estate investment.)

However, you’re quite right to be concerned about the idea of telling a bunch of strangers, who hold your fate in their hands, that you’re a part of the sex industry. I predict that won’t go well. Odds are, at least some of them are going to disapprove on moral grounds. Some of them probably wouldn’t care in the abstract, but will fear that you’ll be doing noisy/obtrusive porno things in your space that will bother them or be inappropriate for children to be aware of. And some of them will suspect – with some justification – that an indie pornographer’s income is likely to be unstable. So I strongly suggest you don’t tell them.

You see, part of being a successful sexual outlaw is avoiding the gaze of the straight world. (By straight I mean non-outlaw, not necessarily heterosexual.) If you don’t have a good cover story for how you make your money constructed, you better sit down and put one together. Others may advocate being out to everyone, all the time. But my observation is that that’s a luxury one can’t always afford.

And speaking of afford, I further think that if you can’t afford a space where you don’t require your neighbor’s approval of your profession, then you should keep saving money until you do. But that’s your decision.

About a tax-prep person? Another perfectly reasonable question that I don't have an answer to. I have a great guy who handles me very nicely. But I’m not able to give out his name freely, sorry.

I wish I did have more professional recommendations to give out, people ask me all the time. So if you’re a Seattle area professional person and you’re happy to do work for sex work/queer/kink/poly people, drop me a note and tell me what you do. I’ll keep you in my files and send you any business I can…

Most often asked for are tax, accounting and all types of financial stuff, lawyers, real estate people, contractors and all types of home improvement professionals.

I also get asked for referrals for therapists ALL the time, and while I know some cool people, I don’t know anyone who specializes in dealing with the sexual minority community.

I might suggest, though, that you get a copy of the GSBA. Yes, it’s targeted mainly at the Gay community, and certainly not all homosexual people are porn-friendly. However, I think your odds of getting someone cool through this type of guide are better than just random chance, so…. Good luck.

Edit: There is this lady. However, I do not know her personally, and I do not know anyone who's worked with her, so all I'm doing is pointing out the link... The Tax Domme

Today is Monk's birthday.

There are a lot of amazingly cool things about Monk, as I have noted in previous birthday posts. But the best thing about him is that he just keeps on getting more amazing all the time. We've been partners for a little over four years now - which is sort of amazing in and of itself. He was wonderful when I met him. However, he soon surpassed mere wonderfulness and moved on to being fabulous, and thence to sensational, and then onto - dare I say it? - awesometastic.

How long can this sort of thing go on? Surely, you're thinking, there must be some limit. Nope. Not with Monk. His ability to achieve new heights of amazingly-coolness has no boundaries. I am quite certain that this coming year will prove to be yet another demonstration of that fact.

So Happy Birthday, darling. I look forward to another year of seeing you achieve dizzying new heights of amazingness.