Today I'm off to spend a few days with a friend, so while I finish preparing for that, here's a book I've been reading that I enjoyed greatly...

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer

From Booklist: Trust your hunches, for intuition does have an underlying rationale, according to this accessible account from a German scientist of human cognition. Permeated with everyday scenarios, such as picking stocks, schools, or spouses, the book adopts an evolutionary perspective of how people act on the basis of incomplete information (usually successfully). He sets the table with an example of a baseball player pursuing a fly ball, who relies not on conscious calculation but on an evolved "gaze heuristic" to make the catch. Definitions of such rules of thumb dot the text, which Gigerenzer embeds amid his presentations of studies that indicate, for example, that financial analysts don't predict markets any better than partially informed amateurs. Explaining this as an outcome of a "recognition heuristic," Gigerenzer argues that knowing a little rather than everything about something is sufficient to take action on it. He forges on into medicine, law, and moral behavior, succeeding in the process in converting a specialized topic into a conduit for greater self-awareness among his readers.

Anyone who reads me knows I love books about how we make decisions, especially ways that aren't strictly rational. Sociology geek that I am, I'm a total sucker for any book that uses the word "heuristic" a lot. Talk academic to me, baby!

So yes, this is a more scholarly book than Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, although Gladwell says he was influenced by Dr. Gigerenzer's work. So while it doesn't click along at Gladwell's pace, it's still absorbing, if you enjoy learning why we do the things we do, and how we know how to do them.

It's Thursday, and the new column is up at The Stranger. It's about sex work and the economy, and it would not have been possible without help from some very cool Seattle sex-working ladies, who took time to answer a bunch of my nosy questions about how much money they were making. I regret that due to the space limitations of the column, I could not publish all of the wise and witty answers I got. So thank you very much, ladies, I really appreciate your input! Keep making money!

EDIT: Please know that the names used in the column are NOT the "real" professional names of the ladies in question. Everyone quoted got an alias!

Man, a lot of store-front sexy places are either getting busted or closing up - perhaps to avoid a bust?. What is this, the last hurrah of SPD vice squad before the budget cuts really kick in?

(Not that I'm saying the X-otic Tan ladies did handjobs, because I had pals who worked there and they said nope, they didn't. And they have no reason to lie to me. But there was definitely sexy stuff happening.)

The Lavender Salon place was right across the street from where I get my nails done, and I could tell at a glance it was a sex work business. Monk and I did a podcast, soon to be aired, about how I could tell. One tip: people, do not paint a sex work establishment a really lurid, eye-catching shade of purple. I'm not kidding - the whole building was vividly, painfully purple. It did not blend, in genteel old Madison Park. And Madison Park is a terrible place to put a store-front sex work business, anyway, so that was a bad idea all by itself.

Overall, I'm just glad I'm not taking new people these days, it seems a little weird around town right now. However, the New York Times is quite mistaken if it thinks the recession is going to put an end - or even a really serious damper - on the sex industry. Look for my column in The Stranger on exactly that topic tomorrow.

I’d like to make some clarification about my stance on “sex work in the news” stories. It’s one thing to comment at length on certain types of stories. But several people have sent me links to recent news stories about a fetish model who suffered a horrific attack and lost someone she loved, and asked me what I think about it.

The answer is: I think it’s a terrible tragedy. What else could anyone think? An unbalanced man targeted her for his obsession, killed her boyfriend and kidnapped her. Thank God she survived. I can only imagine how devastated I’d be if I was her. I think we should shut up and leave her decently alone to recover as best she can.

Thus, I have nothing else to say about the matter, except that I’m rather appalled at the “news” stories that took the opportunity to post galleries of sexy photos of her in fetishwear, as if they were somehow germane to the story. Voyeuristic vultures. No, I’m not going to link to them or say her name. You can find the stories if you want to, but really, there’s nothing there that hasn’t happened before.

And that’s the really tragic part – that this sort of thing happens to all kinds of women, and to some men, too. I don’t know if anything anyone might have done would have prevented this. But please, please, buy and read this book: The Gift Of Fear. It is the best resource I’ve ever come across for recognizing and avoiding dangerous people. They do walk among us, and they don’t just prey on pretty models.

Fun Stuff To Do This Weekend!

There's some good sexy stuff happening around town this weekend. First, on Saturday, it's PLAYDAY! What's that, you ask? Playday is a once-a-year event at Seattle's historic 1st Ave peep show, the Lusty Lady.

What is a peep show? Is it like a strip club? No, it's a place where one stands in private booths and feed coins into a slot to watch sexy nude girls dance through a glass window. Remember that Madonna video, "Open Your Heart"? Kinda like that. Only naked, and definitely sexier.

What events go on for Playday?
Normally at a peep show, the ladies don't ever come out from behind the glass. But on Playday, the dancers will out from the glass box for a day to play. Special events include: dressing room tours, "hot seat" dances, multi-girl shows. Meet and take a photo with your favorite performer, and much, much more. Special events are held though all day and night from 10am-3am this Saturday, December 6.

Here's the cool part: Unlike other sex workers, the girls at the Lusty Lady are legal employees, and they get paid an hourly wage. However, all money spent on Playday goes to them. The proceeds from Playday are split between all the dancers - it's their holiday bonus. Which is a very cool thing. When I danced at the LL, the Playday check was a really nice thing to get! So go down, see some sexy action, and give some money to the hard-working girls at the Lusty Lady.

The ladies have a MySpace page here, check it out if you want more info.


See you there!

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Call For Questions: Monk and I are going to record some more podcasts Thursday. (I know, I know - finally. Hey, we’re busy, people!) So now’s the time to send me those looooooong and complicated questions. Fire 'em off, we'll try our best to answer, with a few dirty jokes along the way.

***

On an entirely separate subject…

I am on several polyamory email lists and web-groups and communities, and there’s something I see over and over again than I’m going to try to summarize here. And then give my opinion about.

It starts when Well-Meaning Person* posts for advice about a poly relationship they are having with someone who is, to put it succinctly, emotionally unstable. Like, seriously unstable. The manifestations I see most often cited are things like: the person has wild swings in their feelings of self-worth, an inability to identify internal preferences (including sexual), and a tendency to become involved in intense and unstable relationships, often leading to emotional crisis. The unstable person can be extremely charming, but also extremely insecure, is prone to making recurrent threats or acts of self-harm; they experience chronic feelings of emptiness, and they display excessive efforts to avoid abandonment.

And the Well-Meaning Person wants to know how to do poly with someone who is like that.

The answer is: NOT. You can’t do it. A person who behaves like that is not equipped to handle the emotional challenges of polyamory. None of those behaviors are fun to be around, but it’s the last one that’s really a killer for poly. That’s why I italicized it. The phrases are taken from a textbook description of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Now, BPD is a diagnosis that some people think is valid and some people don’t. I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, but I have met people who act exactly like that description. So I can’t say if it’s inappropriately slapped on people who don’t warrant it, but I do know there are folks running around who fit it.

So, what such emotionally unstable people should do about how they are is outside my scope of expertise. But I know something they should not do, and that’s try to be polyamorous. The part about insecurity and excessive efforts to avoid abandonment? Yeah. I think some of the unstable people think if they have more lovers, they’ll feel more loved, and thus safer. But it never seems to work out that way. (I suppose if they were polyamorous and all their lovers were monogamous, maybe. But that’s usually not the way it is.) Polyamory requires an ability to tolerate and self-soothe some short-term emotional discomforts, and to trust that one isn’t going to be abandoned. This kind of unstable person does not possess those traits.

In these situations, I sometimes try to suggest that this simply isn’t going to work. Well-Meaning Person usually doesn’t want to hear that. There’s an idea that WMP could stop the unstable person from manifesting those behaviors, if the WMP person just knew how to comfort and reassure the unstable person properly. That’s what I call the “I Can Love Them All Better” fallacy. No. You can’t. You can love someone in spite of the behaviors, but no matter how much or how well you love them, you will not love those behaviors out of existence.

The “Love Them All Better” thing is often bolstered by other people on the list making suggestions for what kind of med/therapy/ect the unstable person should be doing. None of which is bad information, and if the unstable person wants resources, I’m all for giving them. But to me, the way the situation is expressed, and the way the advice is given, it often subtly reinforces the idea that the WMP person should be fixing the unstable person.

I really don’t agree with that. Adults are responsible for their own physical health. Unless you fall unconscious on the sidewalk, if there’s something wrong with you, you are the one responsible for either dealing with it yourself, or getting someone to help you deal with it, like a doctor. I think the same is true of mental health. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help. You should, definitely. But you have to be the one doing the asking, and then doing the work it takes to get fixed.

However, I’m definitely not going to argue with anyone on the internet about their relationship. I’m not Sigmund Freud or Dr Phil or anything – what I say is based only on my personal observations. And no one stops doing anything – including having relationships with emotionally unstable people – until they’re ready to. It’s sometimes hard to watch Well-Meaning People run around and around in a hamster wheel

But I can vent about on my blog. So I did.



*Yes, I know I have posted before about how "help" is sometimes just a nice word for "control". But today, we’ll give the WMP the benefit of the doubt.

Nothing like seeing one's community skewered on video, as only a member of that community can.

Laugh/wince inducer #1: the next installment of the polyamory web-series, Family. Yikes. Okay, it's a little over the top, character-wise - but only a little. It's set in a polyamory potluck. I've been to events like this, and they definitely aren't all this bad, but... yeah. Those people and those conversations are not unfamiliar to me.


Laugh/wince inducer #2: Even though it's days after Thanksgiving, I have to mention this video Monk embedded on his blog. It's so funny, just because it's also painfully accurate. I've met that top. I've seen that whole scene before. Okay, not with a plucked fowl, but still. As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I may have even been that top at some point. (Before I had ten thousand hours of practice, of course!) And the Asian-style jacket he's wearing - oh, it's priceless. I wish this guy would do a whole series!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it!

And my deepest sympathy to all the people suffering in Mumbai. I am thankful for many things, but I am very thankful today to just be safe. Terrible.

***

And on a completely non-holiday-ish topic, here's the new Stranger column. I have a feeling I'm going to catch some heat about this one. Or maybe not? But I did get some extra word-count this week to talk about my view, which is great. Boiling that down to 500 words would have been extremely difficult. The Stranger page has comments, so you can talk amongst yourselves there, if you have an opinion...

More book stuff...

I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and it's interesting. I liked Blink a great deal, and Tipping Point was also thought-provoking. I'm generally inclined to like Gladwell's ideas and think they have some merit, even though he certainly has his critics.

But I'd like to quote you a lengthy passage because it supports what I feel about being a truly high-ranking dominant. It's a neat refutation of that nonsense I occasionally hear about how So-And-So is a "natural" dominant, and thus doesn't need to educate themselves or practice their craft. It just happens, like magic. Hah. You may have talent, my friend, but the way you get to the Carnegie Hall of kink is practice, practice, practice.

"In the early 90s, the psychologist K Anders Ericsson and two colleagues set up shop at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. With the help of the academy's professors, they divided the school's violinists into three groups. The first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. The second were those judged to be merely "good". The third were students who were unlikely ever to play professionally, and intended to be music teachers in the school system. All the violinists were then asked the same question. Over the course of your career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practised?

Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time - around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount - about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.

The curious thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals" - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find "grinds", people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn't have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. What's more, the people at the very top don't just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

This is true even of people we think of as prodigies. Mozart, for example, famously started writing music at six. But, the psychologist Michael Howe writes in his book Genius Explained, by the standards of mature composers Mozart's early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Wolfgang's childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos for piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that contain only music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No9 K271) was not composed until he was 21: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for 10 years.

To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about 10 years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fischer got to that elite level in less than that time: it took him nine years.) And what's 10 years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in 10,000 hours of hard practice."

Now, that's not to say that ten thousand hours of practice automatically equals world-class expertise. But I will think about this next time I see someone who arrived in the scene about five minutes ago flouncing around - either virtually or in reality - styling themselves Sir Lord Master Domley-Dom of All He Surveys, or High Goddess Dominatchya Von Meanbitch, and scoffing at the notion that they might need to go to school and do their homework. If you don't like BDSM enough to do it a lot and really learn it, then why do it at all?

Since you asked: things and places from my life lately, as requested via email and Twitter...

The restaurant I went to last night: ART, in the new Four Seasons Hotel. It's very good. True to it's name, it's artsy, and I usually view artsy food with suspicion. But given that I ordered a shrimp appetizer, a steak, and French fries, and little baby doughnuts with vanilla ice cream for dessert, I would say that my relentlessly middlebrow food tastes were more than amply satisfied. (There is trendier stuff as well, if that's your liking.)

I'm pretty sure my friend enjoyed his dinner too, although he may have been distracted from the dining experience by my playing with this. Heh.

For those that asked about shoes: Nordstrom didn't have the shoes on their website, but here's a link to them on Zappos. So cute, just what I wanted for casual-but-feminine looks. And then we found some pretty black boots from Barney's.


Last week, Armani and I were here: Ummelina. It's a very nice spa, and the massage was divine. It's a bit woo-woo, but not to a point of complete absurdity.
I believe I'll not say where we had dinner, though. I think that's best. I did grab a quick phone-cam shot of the dress I was wearing, which does not really do it justice. It's a berry-pink satin Dolce & Gabbana number, and very low-cut. I have serious cleavage in this dress, and it's highly entertaining to wear it someplace swanky and observe the well-trained male staff very politely not stare at it. I would not be offended if they did, since I myself often look at women's cleavage. There's just something alluring about the curves.

And here's a bit of jewelry-porn for you: Armani gave me this for my birthday. Isn't it gorgeous?

A nice opinion column from Seattle PI writer Cathy Sorbo on how we should decriminalize prostitution. Pleasant to see it in a mainstream daily paper.

Moving from text to video... You do not see too many realistic depictions of polyamorous people in media, so here's a new and welcome thing from a Seattle film company: "Family: Episode 1 of a Web-series". Not sure how exactly to describe it, but it's a comedy/drama about the lives of some poly people. About six minutes, has sound, work safe. Enjoy...

Today is my birthday! I'm happy to be me, and happy to be starting another year in my very interesting life...
Now I'm going to be spoiled some more. Bye!

There’s a lot of sex worker stuff in the news lately, isn’t there?

So yes, I’ve been reading about the busts at the tanning salon/brothels on Aurora Ave. I have some sympathy for the female manager who got arrested, seeing as how I once managed a “sensual touch” business myself. And just because you read something in the paper doesn’t make it true. However, if she and the owner really were running women in and out of other states, through three different locations, all I can say is: with an operation that size, you should have seen this coming. I hope you both have a good lawyer.

See, I have this thing about sex work. One woman working for herself? Great. A couple women decide to band together to share a space and perhaps swap clients back and forth? Fine. Anything where it’s a small group of peers working together - okay, I’m all down with that. But this kind of set-up makes me deeply suspicious.

Now, it’s possible those women wanted to be doing what they did, that it was a very safe and egalitarian workplace, no one ever felt pressured to do anything they didn’t want to, and they were paid as well as they should have been.

But… I bet not. I just don’t get a sense of that from places like this. They look like strip-clubs without the pole, if you know what I mean. And strip-club management works like this: use the women to get as much money as you can from the men, and then take as much of that money as you can from the women. In this situation, I’m betting they took a lot.

In the place I managed, the house supported itself by taking a set portion of the basic appointment fee – “the gate fee” we called it. My job was mostly to keep track of that, coordinate everyone’s schedule, and to deal with the new clients and the guys who needed, for whatever reason, a lot of wrangling. Occasionally I would have to pull rank and tell someone that, for example, leaving a large pink vibrator on the coffee table in the public area was really not okay. Showing up an hour late for the shift? Not okay. Coming out of the session room accompanied by a literal cloud of pot smoke? Not okay.

But I was by no means controlling the six women who worked there. (Hah. As if. Most of them were pals of mine.) And once the client and the woman were in the room together, whatever extra services were negotiated, whatever other money was exchanged, that was all strictly between them. We did not ask about it or monitor it in any way, and we did not ever, ever take any of that money. That was her money.

Once in a while the owner would wistfully mention how she wished the house could get a cut of that cash, and I would threaten to instantly quit before I’d participate in any such practice. That always put an end to that conversation, especially since half the staff would have quit with me, and the owner knew it.

But this looks like the kind of place where you’d get pushed to get as much money as you could from the guy, and then you’d have to give it all to the house. You’d think it would be easy to hide your tips and keep them, but it’s harder than you think. The trick of moving women around is that not only do you create variety for the clients, you prevent the women from forming alliances with each other. So you can’t trust the other girls not to rat you out if they find out you’re holding money back. And you don’t stay on one place long enough to get to know and trust the regular clients, so you can’t rely on them to not say anything, even as an innocent mistake. Some places like this are wired for sound – or even cameras, although not always – so management will see or hear if a girl gets more money in the session rooms.

If they were moving the women around, it’s possible that they were housing them, too. That’s not unheard of even in more legitimate sex work jobs – strip clubs in Alaska used to fly girls up there and put them in what we called “the barracks”. I don’t know if they still have those, but I stayed in one once. It wasn’t a bad place – it looked like a low-end college dormitory, or a hostel. But I got out and found my own place to stay after a week, because it was feeling strange to never be someplace really separate from my work. You need that, I think. But if these people were moving the women around and housing them – oh, that would look pretty bad to me. That would look a lot like trafficking.

Of course I don’t know that, it’s all speculation at this point, so I’ll be interested to see how this story develops. But from this perspective, they don’t look much like people I’d have much in common with.

So, I'm busy fine-tuning a column for The Stranger, but here's a local resource question for you Seattle people: Monk is looking for someone who's an expert on fixing/maintaining Maytag washing machines. He uses them in his shop - you know, the place where he makes bondage rope? And he just really doesn't want to deal with unsuspecting repair people walking into his place and getting all flipped out because of what he does there. So he's seeking someone who is, if not kink-friendly, at least kink-neutral.

I understand this completely. The thing I hate the most is when I have to call a service person over to my dungeon space to fix something. Naturally I always hide all the toys and throw sheets over the bondage furniture. But still, it looks a little... odd in there, and people always ask questions, or at least look at me really funny. I loathe dealing with it.

So if you know your way around washing machines, you're cool with an unusual atmosphere, and you'd like some occasional work, email Monk: Monk@twistedmonk.com.

I am disgusted by the smear job KOMO news tried to do on the Wet Spot (The Sex Positive Community Center) last night. It was a terrible piece - sensationalistic and inflammatory crap. They made both completely false and very misleading statements, and implied that something legally questionable was going on with the Center's tax-exempt status. I wrote them a letter telling them how I felt about it, and so should you!

As Dakwallah pointed out, it's November sweeps time. I suppose they were bored with inventing excuses to get footage inside a strip club - that's the usual way to titillate people while making them feel that as though they're watching "news". Bah.

UPDATE: The link doesn't work because KOMO seems to have pulled the story. No trace of it can be found anywhere on the website. Isn't THAT interesting! Looks like a flood of negative responses cowed the station, as well it should have. Of course they can't un-show it to all the people who watched last night.

Here's the piece on YouTube, though...

What I'm Reading

For an early birthday gift, I just received this: Proust Was A Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer.

From Publishers Weekly: “With impressively clear prose, Lehrer explores the oft-overlooked places in literary history where novelists, poets and the occasional cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights… how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections…”

I love stuff about how our minds work, so this looks fascinating to me. And I’m charmed that the sweet man who gave it to me knew it’s exactly the sort of thing I like.

In fiction, I just finished this: The Wolfman, by Nicholas Pekearo.

From Publishers Weekly: Marlowe Higgins, who's both a werewolf and a detective, lives in the small town of Evelyn, just outside the Tennessee border, flipping burgers by day and waiting for the full moon that will awaken the blood curse that has afflicted his family for generations. Higgins has hit on a way to alleviate the guilt he feels for having claimed countless innocent lives—he investigates vicious crimes that have gone unsolved by the police and targets the perpetrators in his lupine form. When a sadistic serial killer known as the Rose Killer for the flowers left in the victims' eye sockets appears in Evelyn, Higgins turns his attention to tracking him down.”

I got this book after seeing it reviewed on the Slog. I figured if those hipster book snobs had to grudgingly admit it was good, then I’d definitely like it. (I do not dig highbrow fiction any more than I dig highbrow films, or for that matter, highbrow food. Philistines, unite!)

And I did indeed like it. Pekearo’s prose is spare, and almost too terse for my taste - but not quite. He reminds me of a tightly edited Steven King, and also of the author who King says influenced him, Richard Matheson. It’s got the stark landscape – both inner and outer – of a lot of King’s horror novels, but with a flavor of the hard-boiled-detective genre, too. If I was casting this as a movie, I’d want someone like Nick Nolte or Nicholas Cage as the lead – a guy who’d taken some hard knocks and survived, but who had very little to lose and as a result, feared nothing.

(One quibble – this teensy little town in the middle of nowhere has not one but two flourishing multi-girl brothels, and one of them is very upscale? Oh please. I can believe in a werewolf easier than I can believe in that.)

The story unrolls smoothly for most of the book, wobbling only a trifle towards the end. Still, I liked the characters enough to shrug it off and enjoy it overall. Sadly, the author has died, so we’ll see no sequels to this book.

And now I have another twist-on-the-genre novel loaded on the Kindle and ready to go…

The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setter.

From Publishers Weekly: “Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter…is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator.”

I like classic Gothic novels, and this looks like an entertaining twist on that genre. I’ll let you know what I think after I read it.

I had a lovely time at the Footnight party last night. It was nice to put real-life faces to people I’ve only known electronically – Hi Trixie! I also got to meet the organizer, Kourhina, which was great, and a bunch of other pretty ladies.

And I adore having my feet kissed and touched, so having lots of lovely people doing that was just delicious. I went to some of these parties a couple of years ago, and then they stopped happening for a while. I’m very glad they’ve been revived. There’s a story I wrote about one of the 2004 parties here. In retrospect, I thought the whole thing was somewhat amusing, because no one got into any real trouble. What’s also true is that the parties are now held in a very private location, not a hotel. The hotel was the problem. I am completely and totally confident that the awkward ending of this party won’t ever be repeated.

The coda to the story linked above is that the guy who I was with at the moment I realized the cops had showed up was actually at the party I went to last night. We laughed about it together. “You were the first one out the door,” he said. “You were out of there like a shot.”

Damn straight I was. I used to dance in clubs down south that got raided with annoying regularity, and I’ve seen a few strip-club raids up here too. They never arrested me – usually the girls they took downtown were women who had outstanding warrants or who had drugs on them, and I had neither of those things. But in strip clubs you learn that at the very first glimpse of a uniform, you vamoose. It’s bad enough that you’re going to lose the night’s earnings - you still don’t want to get stuck sitting there for hours and hours and hours while they run an ID check on every single girl there, search all your bags and lockers, and ask a lot of questions, before they finally let you go home. If you get gone fast enough, you can sometimes evade that. So I’m not suggesting you run from cops if you’ve done something wrong – but if I can discreetly leave a situation before they decide that I have done something wrong, it is my policy to do so.

I’m pleased that such things are no longer a big issue to me, though. Nice to have people and places that I know I can trust…

The new Stranger column, in which I talk about the failure of Proposition K, which would have ended the arrest of prostitutes in San Francisco...

See you at the Footnight party tonight!

A Recent Email

SUBJECT LINE: Hi, would like appointment and/or other info

I just wanted to know how to get started in this profession in a safe way. I figured group sessions were my best bet but I just don't know where to go or who to talk to about it. I feel like I'm going to lose my mind. I know I could get a lot out of this line of work and I don't mean a lot of money. I have fantasies that I want to act on but I know they could cost me a lot in the end. Please help me get in touch with someone in my area so that I can learn about being a mistress and see if it is the right thing for me. I'm young, five nine, one hundred forty pounds and attractive. Thank you for your time.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? I had to read this email about three times to figure out what this woman (at least I now assume it's a woman) is asking me. Because of the subject line, I started out thinking it was a request from a man who wanted to see me professionally, which made no sense with the body of the email. (Insert here my obligatory rant about the poor writing/communication skills displayed by people who want me to do something for them, but make it hard for me to understand what.)

What I'm reading here is that she wants to be a professional dominatrix. And I am not going to help her do that. Nope, sorry. Not for the usual reasons, though. Not because the email is badly written, or because the writer wants to be spoon-fed, or because she clearly doesn't know much about either sex work or BDSM.

I would not facilitate this person's entry into sex work because there's a dark thread in this email that bothers me. "I feel like I'm going to lose my mind?" Dear girl - no. Do not get into sex work when you're already feeling emotionally/psychologically challenged in some way. That will go badly, I promise. Whatever it is that's making you feel like you might go crazy, fix that first. If you get into sex work with your head in the wrong place, you will have bad experiences, and I don't want any woman have bad experiences.

"I have fantasies that I want to act on but I know they could cost me a lot in the end. " I don't know exactly what this means, but I sure don't like the sound of it. I have seen a lot of women use sex work as a vehicle for self-destructive behavior, and I'm getting a strong sense of that here. If you have self-esteem issues, there are plenty of people in the industry ready and willing to treat you just as disrespectfully as you think you deserve. Men and women both, clients, co-workers and employers. They will reinforce your negative feelings about yourself, you will make worse and worse choices, and yes, it will indeed cost you a lot in the end.

The challenge of sex work in our society is to do it while staying happy, healthy, safe and sane. Many of the difficulties are external and require only observation and cleverness to evade. But you also need a certain psychological makeup. The impression I have from this email is of someone who is really not wired to get up every morning, put out a lot of emotional energy to create intimate experiences for people she met five minutes ago, and whom she may or may not even like, and go home every night feeling good about that. I have very connected, ongoing relationships with my guys, but I'm unusual, and I think I've attracted some unusually cool guys to me and created something rare with them. Most sex work, especially at the entry level, demands much and gives little, emotionally. I think pro dommes have a slight advantage over other areas - our clients tend to be more loyal and long-term. As you build trust over time, the emotional balance can shift and the relationship becomes more mutual.

However, learning the skills to create mutually positive experiences/relationships takes time, and in the interim, you must have the emotional reserves. I don't think this person does. Not now, at least, and maybe never. If you want my advice about how to feel better about whatever is troubling you, you can ask me and I'll give you my take. But I cannot in good conscience give you advice about becoming a pro domme.

A few notes for the coming days...

Foot-lovers, remember the Footnight party this Thursday!

***

There continues to be a fuss in certain sex worker circles about the whole Craigslist “erotic services” thing. In light of that, I’m composing a column about it, and I hope to get a quote from Craig himself. I am crafting an email to him with some questions, but as I’m guessing he gets a fair amount of email, I fear it may get caught in some filter or other. So just in case someone who knows him personally reads this blog: Hi Craig! I hope you get my note!

Also, if you’re a Seattle sex worker with an opinion about the matter, feel free to write me. I can’t promise I’ll use your quote, but I’m interested in what you have to say.

Edit: I just found some interesting blog posts on the subject. I agree with Mike Masnick, and the data shown by Kohler is also just what I'd expect.

***

In personal news, I see that my birthday seems to be coming right up. I’ve been too busy to think a lot about it, but feel free to bombard me with well-wishes on November 21st.

I have gotten so many emails about Craiglist's supposed "crackdown" on prostitution that I thought I'd give you all a quick answer about it. And that answer is: Good, it'll keep out the riff-raff.

That may surprise you. But there's two parts to this, so let's break it down.

The first is the "Craigslist charging for ads that used to be free" aspect. To that I say: hey, that's capitalism in action, my friends. People who are selling sex - which many people would also prefer to get for free - should not get pissy that they'll no longer get to place free ads to do that. That's just the cost of doing business.

Then there's the law enforcement angle. The story says the Craigslist will supply LE with advertiser's billing information if they are subpoenaed. Well, yeah. I'm guessing any business that sells ads - The Stranger, The Weekly, Eros Guide - would have to do that. Regardless of what certain Republicans seem to think, when you get a subpoena, that means you have to comply. That being said, I am not aware of any of those places actually being subpoenaed.

Why not? Because if you want to arrest prostitutes - especially the type of prostitute who advertises on Craigslist - it ain't all that difficult. You call them up and you get in the room with them and when the time is right, you whip out the badge and take them downtown. I'm not saying I like it, I'm just saying that most of the time, getting a judge to give you a subpoena is unnecessary. Simple prostitution - one woman, working for herself - is a misdemeanor. Statistically, the majority of women who work for themselves do not get arrested, because unless there's a lot of complaints about her, LE has bigger fish to fry.

What subpoenas are about is busting the people who run large-group operations. And if you're running a whole bunch of women on Craigslist, then chances are, you're a pimp. And I don't mean the honest and fair owner of an escort service, I mean a pimp. That's what I see on Craigslist. I don't like pimps, in case that wasn't clear. To me a pimp = a bad person who exploits and coerces women into sex work, or even flat-out forces them. I would not be a bit sorry to see someone like that get arrested.

I believe that there are probably a few honest escort-service owners who use Craigslist. To them I say: You are dealing in felony territory here, so I hope you have a lawyer on retainer, and I hope you understand the risks inherent in the business that you're running. It's my opinion that on the list of ways you might get busted, Craigslist giving up your data is probably the least-likely scenario. But I'd get off there anyway, it's not doing your business image any good.

I think this decision by Craigslist will also help keep under-18 people off the site, and that's also good. Whether they want to be sex-workers when they grow up, they should not be doing it underage.

I think it will also calm down the citizen's complaints, because Craigslist is the place where people who are not looking for sex workers are most likely to stumble across them, and be all outraged about it. It's the online equivalent of soliciting in front of a neighborhood flea market, with families coming in and out. That's just not what you should be doing. It gets people all upset and draws down the heat. Would it be nice if prostitution wasn't illegal so we didn't have to worry about this? Yeah, that would be great. But that's not the reality.

The people who really have my support in sex work are the independent businesswomen like myself, and people who run honest and professional businesses arranging dates between adult contractors and clients. I think those people are unlikely to be strongly affected by the Craigslist's decision.

So I feel like I should write about something other than politics, just because that's all we've been talking and thinking about for days now. But I can't. Because I actually walked around yesterday being sort of emotional and a little teary and feeling like, "Oh my god, the world is a better place than I thought it was, and there's still a lot of problems, but it's going to get even better." I felt really proud and happy to be an American.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've always been pleased that I was American, in a calm and rational way. But it was a passive sort of feeling. I don't recall ever feeling quite so actively happy about it.

I would not say I was a cynical person. But I do tend to be, shall we say, skeptical and analytical. I'm suspicious of anything that looks like a cult of personality, and I am not prone to going along with the crowd just for the sake of it.

But he's really gotten to me, Mr Obama, because I feel hopeful, in a way I haven't felt for a while. And while a tiny, stubborn part of me still says "Don't get your hopes up, don't drink the Kool-Aid, that way you won't be disappointed if it fails..." the rest of me says "No, I'm going to trust this feeling." So I am.

It's interesting to me, too, that I don't recall feeling this way when Bill Clinton got elected. And you know how much I like Bill. I like him a lot. Bill is on the very short list of men who could booty-call me, and I'd go. He wouldn't have to buy me dinner or anything. I think Bill is that hot.

(Who else is on the list? Christopher Walken, John Stewart, and Jason Statham. If any of those guys ever call me, I'm there, no questions asked, boom. I have already cleared this with Monk. Just in case.)

Obama does not turn me on sexually, although I suppose you could say he excites me intellectually. Frankly, in spite of the fact that I once made up some stuff about what he would be like in bed, I do not get a sexy vibe from him at all. Maybe it's different in person. Then too, I'm guessing he has not been feeling all that sexy the last little while here, on account of being under just a teensy bit of stress.

But Obama is an iconic figure in a way that Clinton, for all his skill and charm and accomplishments, is not. I suppose as we get used to an Obama presidency, and his inevitable flaws and shortcomings begin to show, that may wear off some. But until then, I doubt I'm going to be able to think of him sexually. To me, it's the little flaws that make someone feel three-dimensional and thus, human. Icons aren't sexual to me because they're one-dimensional.

However, I'm guessing Mr. President-Elect can get along just fine without me being sexually attracted to him. And if he's just as good a president as we need him to be, I'm fine with that too. I hope he will be.

Wow. Wow. What an amazing and historic night. Monk and I sat watching the returns, shrieking and clutching each other and saying "Omigod, omigod, he's really going to do it!"

What a big change is coming - really coming - in our world. I'm not someone who thinks Barack Obama walks on water, heals the sick and raises the dead. He's just a man. But he's a good man, and he's a smart man, and I think he's honest and has integrity, and I think he really wants to lead us well, and make the country a better place than it currently is. I haven't felt that way about my president for eight years, so it makes me very happy that I now do.

Amazing to live through history being made.

I'm voting today! No, I didn't do mail-in like most people, I get a weird pleasure out of going to the actual polling place. We're going to all-mail voting in Washington soon, so this may be the last time I ever do this. And I've never had to wait in line more than a few minutes, possibly because I go in the middle of the day. But I will, if I have to.

So off I go, to happily vote for Obama, and somewhat resignedly for Gregoire. She's not that great of a governor, but at least she's better than the anti-choice, Christian-fundy Dino Rossi.

The Death With Dignity measure? I'm voting for it, we should have the right to die when we're terminally ill.

And then I'll be watching the returns tonight, although... it seems like curtains for McCain. It's not over, of course. But Nate Silver assures me that a McCain win is quite unlikely.

I've been highly amused by this site - I bet they have something fun in store for the finale!

Now I'm just wondering what should I do with the very large chunk of time and brainpower I have been devoting to reading and processing tons of political information. (And ranting about it.) Wait, never mind, I seem to have a very dusty "To-Do" list here. I think I wrote it six months ago. Perhaps I'll get started on it!

Today, a book recommendation. If you haven’t read this already, you should. It used to be shocking - now it’s a classic book of American sexual history: Thy Neighbor's Wife, a non-fiction book by Gay Talese, originally published in 1981. It's out of print now, but you can buy it used for practically nothing.

It’s hard to describe what kind of book Thy Neighbors Wife is. “Narrative nonfiction” is the best way to say it, I think. It’s an exploration of the emergence of certain kinds of sexual outlaws in America from about the 1940’s to the 1970’s, with a few dips further back in history. Much of it is about a time we’ll never live again – after the Pill, but before AIDS.

Talese doesn’t cover much gay culture, and there’s not a lot about BDSM, either. This is mainly interweaving stories about straight nudist/swinger culture, some sex work history – massage parlors and porn modeling - and very personal biographies of influential people in the alternative sex culture like Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, and a number of others. If you’re an American swinger, or a polyamorous person, or a sex worker, or a sex writer/publisher, this is a piece of your history. The people in this book have all had – and in some cases, continue to have - a strong influence the alternative sexual culture we have now.

It’s a thick book, and it’s complex and absorbing reading, but Talese keeps you engaged. The wealth of detail he provides gives one a sense of really knowing these people.

Talese also tells a lot of stories about government’s very active censorship of sexually oriented materials in that period. People now take for granted their access to educational sexual materials, erotic literature, and unabashed pornorgraphy, but it wasn’t that long ago that many, many people couldn’t get those things. Some of the details of the Supreme Court cases aren’t super-sexy reading, but I think it’s important to know where your rights came from. People – actual live people – got arrested, stood trial, lost their livelihoods and their freedom, and fought back, so that you could read and look at whatever you liked. Pay them a bit of homage by reading and knowing about them.

***

Note on the subject of books and reading: several nice people have invited me to join Goodreads. Thank you for thinking of me, and it’s a cool idea, but I simply cannot handle contributing to even one more social website. It’s the same reason I haven’t signed up for FetLife, which I am also regularly told I should do. So I fear I must decline…

You know, I usually try to not resort to profanity and personal insults when I have a negative opinion about someone. I feel it’s a failure of creativity, for one thing. As a writer, I generally think I should come up with something better. And just in terms of rational discourse, that kind of thing doesn’t advance a discussion.

However, there are exceptions to that. This is one of them, because I am angry, and these people do not deserve thoughtful refutation.

So, Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review? Fuck you, asshole. Your snarky piece about how prostitutes and their clients tend to vote Democratic is tacky, clumsy, uncalled-for and offensive. It’s an obvious attempt to smear Democrats, because after all, if dirty filthy hookers and “johns” like them – not to mention pimps and transsexual sex workers - that’s bad, right? You’re a leering prat and I hope you get crotch rot.

(You’re also a lousy investigative reporter. “Johns” ? No one says johns anymore, you idiot. That term was out-of-date back in the eighties. And putting it in McCain-esque quotes like that, as if it’s a new and daring bit of street-slang, makes it even lamer.)

And Kathryn Jean Lopez: Fuck you, you sanctimonious bitch, for linking to the piece on The National Review Online by saying: “What Sells in Pennsylvania: Some Pennsylvania prostitutes are clear which party they want to go to.”
I suppose when one’s party is flailing as desperately as yours is, you need to clutch at anything you can to make yourself feel one-up. Or – as I look at pictures of you - maybe it’s evidence of a deeper type of insecurity. Either way, you lose.

You don't see as many of these types of sneering put-downs of sex workers as you used to. But man, it really makes me mad when I do.

A few notes on social events…

First, a special hello to the people I met last night at a lovely private event. Jae and I enjoyed seeing you all.

If you like pretty women’s feet, there’s a party coming up for you in Seattle! I will be appearing at the grand re-launching of the Seattle Footnight Parties on Thursday November 13th! If you’re interested, check out the web site for more information and registration.

I attended several of these parties when they were happening a couple of years ago in Seattle, and they were great fun. They stopped happening for a while, so I’m pleased that local domme/model Kourhina has gotten something happening for all the local foot-loving men. The party organizers have got a great space, and I think it’ll be a very successful party.

And if the website is correct, several other cool ladies I know are going to be there: Lady Lydia and Mistress Carmen are slated to appear. So is Tasty Trixie, who I know only through our blogs, but whom will be pleased to meet in Real Life.

A new Stranger, in which I speculate about politicians and the Kink Vote...

Bye!

Random Sex Tip #47

It’s been my observation that very often, when men are having trouble reaching an orgasm, it’s not because they aren't enjoying the sex, it's just because they’re thinking too much. They are too much in their head - and not the little one.

(Absent there being a real physiological issue, of course – fatigue, for example, or a prescription drug that’s slowing things down.)

It could be work matters that are intruding into his mind, or some nagging bit of sexual anxiety. It happens to women, too, of course. But I think with men, the trick is to do at least one of two things:

1) Give them something compelling to look at. Men are generally visual creatures, no big news there. So if there’s nothing happening for him to watch, give him something. Whatever it is you’re doing, shift positions so he can see you clearly, and arrange yourself so as to present the prettiest picture. Making more noise will probably help, too. That added stimulus will help occupy the part of his brain that’s getting distracted from the sex.

2) Put something in his mouth. I’m serious. I have seen it over and over again – if a man is having trouble getting off, a body part in his mouth will focus him and push him over the edge. Could be a pussy, a cock, a nipple, your tongue, your toes, whatever. No matter what it is, if you like it sucked and he knows that, then push that oral-fixation button, baby. And if he doesn’t orgasm - well, you’ve got his tongue in a happy place, so that’s all good. Letting him give you pleasure is a smooth way to shift into some other sexual gear, if need be. Cocks can get over-stimulated and balk. Giving them a little time to cool off and then circling back around to them often works better than trying to insist that they come now.

Naturally sex doesn’t have to end in an orgasm to be good, hot sex. But when you want one, you want one! So happy sexing…

A couple of new photos in the Flickr Stream...


And also...

***

Letters From Readers

I found your website on the internet, and actually, I'm not emailing for a session. I'm emailing because I want your opinions.

I'm a 25-year-old man not learning about submission and domination but learning more about myself. I need to know what it is about men that makes them want to serve you completely…your personal house slaves.

I ask because I have noticed that when I feel chemistry with a woman I feel a desire to be completely controlled by her, but not in the way that might be familiar to you….I feel seriously deprived emotionally, and sometimes I feel like all I want is to serve a woman hand and foot because of an emotional need to please rather than to be put down or controlled. In other words, I don't like the silly domination games such as, "Clean the kitchen while you’re naked." The kind of games that are designed to see how far a person would go to serve the dominatrix.

As an example, my best friend is actually a very beautiful lesbian with whom I have a lot of chemistry, but who obviously would never have sex with me. She is a very materialistic girl, and I've found that nothing makes me happier than to make her happy and to talk to her. I actually don't even like pursuing straight girls anymore because I'm intrigued by how she makes me feel. And of course, the fact that she's unavailable makes her more tantalizing, but that's one of the things I want to understand.

I want to know why your slaves do what they do. Do you find them to be emotionally involved with you? Or do they expect that eventually you will have sex with them and become disappointed when you don't?

I'm asking you because this is the kind of thing I can't discuss with most people, but of course, it wouldn't surprise you. Thank you if you do even read this email, and more so if you actually answer it. Emailing you has actually been somewhat helpful.

Well, just between you and I – I do not, in fact, have full-time slaves in the sense that you mean.

I know, I know, it's practically heresy for a dominatrix to say that, but it's true. I don’t have them because while I love having control of someone else in erotic situations, and I’m pleased to maintain some low level of dominant/submissive energy with certain people even out of scene, I don’t want to have total control of another person every single minute of every single day. I’m not that kind of dominant. To have a relationship, ethically and skillfully, with someone you call your slave is a huge responsibility that I don’t want. So I don’t do it.

Moreover, I think strict, highly-polarized D/s relationships are extremely difficult to sustain over more than a few months of time. (That is, they are if you see each other very often. If you don't see each other very much, it's easier.) I’ve known a few people who were able to do day-in/day-out relationships like that, but not many. It is not nearly as common as BDSM fiction would have you think.

However, of the people I know who have strict D/s relationships – some of them are sexual with their slaves, some are not. It’s a matter of personal style, and the wishes of those involved. But I would definitely say that they are all emotionally involved with each other. It’s a very deep emotional connection to have that kind of relationship with someone.

Now, I have to say: I’m somewhat baffled by this letter. If the kind of control you fantasize about is not the kind you think I do, then why are you asking me for advice?

But if you’re just asking for my opinion in general, I’d say that just based on the situation you’re describing… you’re an emotional masochist. And that’s not a good thing.

That’s not a real psychological term, of course, and it’s not a BDSM term, either. But you’re engaging in an unrequited love/lust thing with a bitchy-but-beautiful lesbian who doesn’t return your feelings. You imply that you’re giving her money or gifts or something? And you’re not even trying to find a woman who might love you back? I call that emotional masochism, my friend. I will bet you any amount of money that the situation you're describing is not going to end in you being happy and getting what you want.

I think you need to work out whatever is so fascinating to you about this kind of interaction, or else you’re going to keep doing it over and over. You’re only 25, so nip this in the bud now and learn how to have real relationships, because whether you're vanilla or kinky or somewhere in between, being attracted to unavailability is a recipe for frustration and unhappiness.

There are many different motivations to be a submissive, and I’m not one to say “Your motives are valid - but you over there, yours are not.” But I think a spell of good talk therapy would teach you a lot about yourself that you need to know, and then you can make a better decision about whether you really want to be controlled by another person.

Good lord, I'd have run for Vice-President myself if I'd known I'd get $150 thousand dollars worth of new clothes. Wow. I mean, I spend more on clothes than the average woman, and I am also fortunate enough to have people who are very, very generous to me in that way. I get clothes from Saks and Neiman Marcus, I know how much designer stuff costs, and still, that's a lot of money.

Especially right now. I myself have an unusual opportunity today: I've got a couple of hours to kill in Atlanta, where there is - drumroll, please - a Neiman Marcus store. I like NM, and we don't have one in Seattle, you see. So when I first booked this trip, I had thought I'd take the opportunity to do a little post-parental retail therapy. I was quite looking forward to it.

But you know, I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to bring myself to spend any money. I'm just that uneasy. It's disappointing, but I just don't think I can justify it to myself. I do feel that in the long term, the economy will recover itself, and my personal financial life will be okay. But today, even though I am not experiencing any let-up whatsoever in my business, I don't think I'm going to be comfortable buying any expensive clothes.

Which is a shame, because I would like to. Is it too late to declare myself a candidate for VP?

A slightly late Wednesday post... I'm having a nice, mellow time at my father's place out on Tybee Island. Every time I come out here, I think I need to come here in say, January, and rent one of beachfront condos that otherwise sit vacant all winter. And spend two weeks or so writing for eight hours every single day, no distractions. There's not a lot to do on Tybee in the winter, which is perfect. I'd go have dinner at Dad's restaurant every night, bundle up and walk on the beach a bit, but otherwise, sit at the computer and hammer out... all the stuff I'd like to hammer out.

But I'm pleased to be heading home tomorrow. I fly from Savannah to Atlanta, and then I have about five hours to kill before my flight to Seattle. That's a long time to hang out at the airport, even with WiFi. I'm seriously considering getting in a cab and going to up Lenox Mall to do a little shopping. (Or maybe I'd take MARTA, although I'm not familiar with the system.)
It's either that or I find a Gold's Gym and get in a workout. Exercise versus retail, that's a tough one...

The visit with my Mom is going fine. Guess what? She is just as obsessed as I am with the election. Must be something genetic, huh? We're talking about it incessantly, and we pretty much agree on everything. My sweet little Southern-lady, deeply-Catholic mother absolutely foams at the mouth when she talks about Bush and Cheney. She loathes them. And like me, she's also disappointed in McCain and enraged by Palin. She's already cast her vote for Obama.

Her husband hasn't said as much, but I think he's considering voting for Obama, too. For him even to be on the fence about it is significant. This is an affluent, conservative, older white man, former military, pillar of the business community, born and raised right here in Atlanta. He's been quietly but steadily Republican all his life. If this type of man is doubting McCain, that's a bad sign for that campaign. Anything could happen, but...

***

Also, as promised: pictures!

So, I'm in Atlanta visiting Mom, and then Thursday I go over to my Dad's. And somewhere in there before Wednesday, I also have to write a column. Thus, I'm pulling the ace card of all sex bloggers from up my sleeve: sexy pictures. Like this.



I think pictures and Twitters will be all I'm good for until Thursday.

I'm traveling today, but I got a note from sex blogger Catalina asking me to link to this! It's a fund-raiser for someone who's in need. Pop over and take a look...

Bye!

Some days, the writing-clever-things mode in my brain goes on vacation. Today? Was one of those days.
But I have such wonderful fabulous people in my life who love me even when I'm not super-witty. Thank you, fabulous people.
And I have pretty pictures to look at. Monk likes this one.



I'll be clever again soon...

The new column, in which I reveal a secret and somewhat taboo fantasy. Don't judge me.

In other political gossip, I did get a nice email from Bill Whittle, the guy who wrote the National Review Online article I blogged about last week. Someone told him I'd written about his piece, and we had a pleasant exchange about it. It's safe to say he and I don't agree about the overall health care issue. He says that having free health care would makes us slaves. I think that Mr. Whittle has no idea how difficult it is to make even one person a really good slave, let alone a nation of them. Sure, we'd all be in chat rooms and on personals sites, saying we were slaves, but in reality we'd be whining, demanding, manipulative do-me queens, who expected our government overlords to fall out of bed every morning in full fetish attire and spank our butts before they even had a cup of coffee. Trust me on this, Mr. Whittle - in six months our liberal Masters and Mistresses would be running for the exits. It's not for wimps, this slave-making business.

But he disagreed with something I said in that post. I represented him as having his mind firmly made up on the matter, but he says that's not so. Mr. Whittle says, "I will be the first person to admit when I am wrong, if I can be convinced I was wrong by a sound argument supported by facts and logic. To say I changed my mind is a badge of honor for me."

Well, all right then, I stand corrected. Let the record show his statement. Let the record also show that he complimented the picture of me in the white dress. Always nice to find some points of agreement with everyone you meet...

I got a CD from Craig Morey today - all the images from the last shoot. Good lord, there are over a thousand images here. Some of them are fabulous, like the samples... and some of them will never see the light of internet if I have anything to say about it.

It'll take me a while to go through and pick out my real favorites, so check the Flickr feed as I slowly upload the good ones. But here's a snapshot of me in the place where all good photos have their genesis: the makeup chair.



I'm very very pleased to have new images. So thank you to Craig, for his lovely work!

A new podcast! Monk and I read a letter from a woman who asks, "What qualifies someone as kinky?" Then Monk and I address that, and then joke a bit about how East Coast people think too much. Next letter: a man asks me about seeing pro dommes, and Monk and I talk about a kink scene as compared to cooking. Monk talks about his own experiences as a professional dominant. About fifteen minutes.

Monk and I need to go record some more episodes, this is the last one in the chute. So if you have long and complex questions about BDSM or sex work or polyamory or quantum mechanics* or the global economy**, and you're okay with some kidding, write us. We may read your letter on the air and give you the benefit of whatever wisdom/sarcasm we possess.


*Well, not really. I mean, you could ask us, but...

** Okay, definitely not. Unless it's something I could answer by quoting you an article in The Economist.

Well, I had a busy weekend. For one thing, I taught a class at a writer's convention, which I was excited but somewhat stressed about. It's one thing to teach how-to classes to kinky people. I know, generally, how to teach stuff like that.

But teaching a class full of authors how to write about kink, or sex work, or polyamory in fiction? That's different. And I just never know how people outside the love bubble - especially women - are going to respond to the full-on "Mistress Matisse" experience. But the attendees were cool, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I also got to hang out with Hannah and Sparkle, which was great.

Another cause for happiness: I have six whole days before I have to fly anywhere! I'm going to Atlanta on the 19th, to visit my family, and I'm coming back the 23rd. (Special thanks go out to the man appropriately nicknamed Jet, for scoring me a first class ticket. That's a really nice thing to have on any flight, but if I'm traveling coast to coast, it's absolutely mandatory.)

So if you're wanting to get time with me, contact me soon. I have some time available this week, and I'd love to see some of the friends I've had to regretfully decline due to my recently-insane schedule.

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In reference to Friday's post: I got some really interesting and thoughtful responses to the question of whether or not health care is "a right", and I choose some to post here. I must say, it's such a pleasure and an honor to have such smart readers. Thanks for your thoughts!

Just For Some Political Balance…

This is why I don’t think I’m ever going to be a really gold-star liberal. I sorta kinda agree a little bit with this article in the National Review.

I know, the National freakin’ Review, bastion of hard-right-wingers everywhere. Don’t ask how I got to the link, I read way too much political stuff, and I’m not sure it’s entirely good for me. I was ranting about the general idiocy of Lou Dobbs to a friend yesterday. He stared at me thoughtfully and said, “You should really not be allowed to watch TV or read the newspapers until after the election.” I think he feared for my blood pressure or something.

(Hah, like you could keep me from reading. Good luck with that. So, anyway, I somehow clicked through some link or other and wound up reading the article. This post will make no sense to you unless you do, too, but the article is pretty short, so you can click over there and then come back.)

It’s about health care, and the question author Bill Whittle poses is: is health care a right? He’s springboarding off the answer Obama gave in the last debate – which was “Yes.” Mr. Whittle, you will not be astonished to learn, disagrees.

Now understand, I have not spent any more time studying the problem of health care than the average healthy person. That means: not much. But it’s true that when people say “health care is a right”, I think to myself, really?

I mean, a right. Seriously? I don’t understand that. I can see, as any reasonable person can, that everyone having all the health care they need is by far the most desirable state of affairs, and that it’s a worthy goal for us to strive for as compassionate human beings. I can understand the idea that we should all make some contribution to the world and be kind to people who are less fortunate than ourselves. I have no argument with that.

But a right? I think of rights as pretty basic things: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to free speech and free association – those are examples of rights, in my mind. I don’t know if having health care, as needful as it is, is in that category to me. I generally dislike “slippery slope” arguments, because they don’t really address the issue. But Whittle’s extension of the idea to food and shelter has a certain punch: you will die without food, so why is food not “a right”?

Of course, many people would say that being fed and housed is a right. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to want to care for other people, and to work towards that goal, I’m simply saying I don’t understand how those things are rights. Those types of statements feel to me like they’re watering down the idea of what a right really is. When I think of rights, I think of things that I have, inside me, which should not be taken away from me by any outside force. They are things that are integral to me being a human being. I don’t inherently have health care, or food or shelter. I must create some situation in which I get them. Or someone else must create it. But it doesn't just happen.

It may well be that I just have a blind spot about this. I’ve almost never been legally employed by anyone, and I have definitely never been employed anywhere that had health care benefits. Thus, I’ve always had to provide my own health care insurance. That’s just…what you do, in my head. In fact, I’ve never even entertained the idea of getting any form of government assistance, like unemployment, welfare, food stamps, student loans/grants, or anything like that. I don’t think those programs are bad, I just haven’t participated in them. The whole concept of anyone else being involved in providing my health care is foreign to me. I suppose when I’m old I’ll make use of Medicare, if it’s still there. And if I try, I can certainly construct a scenario in my head – an extremely unpleasant one- which would end with me applying for government aid. So I'm not saying "oh, I'm too good for that, I'd never do it."

I can see that there’s some disconnect between my ideas that “It’s okay that taxes fund some food/shelter/medical care for people who need it” and “But it’s not a right”. If it’s not a right, then why is it acceptable for the government to pay for it? I don’t know. That’s a gap in my reasoning that I can’t explain. But my point is not that the government shouldn’t help people. It’s just that the idea of my having a right to some external thing I didn’t work for/pay for is puzzling to me. Unlike the author, I’m not unwilling to be persuaded to another point of view. If someone makes a clear and cogent argument to me about how health care really qualifies as a right, then I’ll change my mind. I haven’t heard that yet, though.

In contrast to yesterday's Blackberry shot - Craig Morey sent me some samples from our shoot two weeks ago. He does such yummy work.




(Bigger versions in the Flickr feed.)

Lately whenever I post studio photos, someone invariably remarks, "You don't look very domme-ly." To which I reply, "Just because I'm a dominatrix does not mean I have to brandish a riding drop and sneer in every damn photo I ever pose for." I've done the corset-and-thigh-high-boots shots. That was fine then, and some of the pictures turned out very nicely, but I'm over it. It's boring. I cannot do a good shoot if I'm just bored to pieces by what I'm doing. I wanted pictures of me in the clothes that make me feel sexy and good. And I assure you, I can deploy my cuffs, clothespins, floggers, electrodes, et cetera just as well in a designer dress - or jeans, for that matter, or nothing at all - as I can wearing a plastic outfit from Hot Topic.

What I would like to do, sometime, is a shoot where I just play with someone - someone I have a real and genuine connection with - and someone shoots it. No posing, no "wait, stop, that's good, but do it again with your shoulder turned this way" directions. That I would do, and I'd enjoy it. So maybe when my life slows down a bit I'll see about arranging such a thing. Meanwhile, enjoy the previews of coming attractions.

I'm flying home from Vegas today.



It's been great - we lolled by the pool, we gambled a bit, we shopped. (That's me at the shops in the Venetian Hotel - a very, very dangerous place.)

We also saw Zumanity, which was delightful. It's funny - there are not many "fantasy" careers that really appeal to me. I think I have a fantasy career, frankly. So I don't wish I was a rock star, or a supermodel, or a movie star. (Or a vice-presidential candidate.)

The only thing that ever makes me fantasize about a different life is watching Cirque du Soleil shows. I'm not going to run away and join the circus - although I did take trapeze and Spanish Rope lessons for a while - but Cirque du Soleil makes me wish, just for little while, that I could. Even though I've seen lots of their shows, they always have moments of such beauty and grace that I envy the performers, even though I have some idea of what physical rigors they go through in order to achieve it. Our bodies are such fragile and impermanent things, and the art they make also lasts only a brief moment - but it's so lovely in that moment. It just moves me.

I'm having a lovely time in Las Vegas. Since the stock market is tanking, I've decided to take my life savings and see if I can win a fortune here instead. The odds can't be much worse than Wall Street.
Okay, I'm kidding, I'm not really going to do that. Maybe I'll put twenty dollars into a slot machine instead, that's about my speed for gambling.
Meanwhile - a new podcast, in which Monk and I talk sex work strategies for safety and emotional self-care.

A few observations as I get ready to jet off to Las Vegas...

My cat and I have spent more time in the vet's office lately that either one of us cared to - a rare instance in which we are in complete agreement on something - but a couple rounds of medication later, we seem to be on the right track. I am vastly amused to find that many years of sticking needles into adult humans as a form of recreation does seem to help when getting the hang of injecting meds into a disapproving feline. I don't need to be told how to not stick myself in the thumb, for example. Nor need I be told how to properly dispose of used needles.
So once again, thank you for the well-wishes.

Veering from the home front to the national: I am not a serious Maureen Dowd fan. However, I was very entertained by this column, and I agree with what she's saying . These kinds of feelings are the root of my negative response to Sarah Palin and others of her "Just Folks" political brand. "Frontier Baroque", indeed. In fact, some of my pre-campaign willingness to consider voting for McCain was based on the fact that he never, ever talked like that.

Thoughts on "Religulous": I am not a serious Bill Maher fan, either. He's clever and funny, of course, but too often his cynicism comes off, to me, as bitterness. Now, there are plenty of things in the world one might reasonably be bitter about. But that's not something I seek out as entertainment. Jon Stewart, for example, manages to rant and rail hilariously, and yet maintain a certain sweetness and charm that makes me think he'd be pleasant to be around in person.

Still, I wanted to see this documentary just because it's been so talked-about. And Bill does pretty much just what you'd think he would do - goes around with a camera and a microphone and skewers strongly religious people with the illogic of their beliefs. It is funny, although it's so heavily edited that one wonders what was cut out. And some of the people he interviews - well, when you are not accustomed to talking to the media, it's easy to get lured into saying things that make you look like a fool. There were moments when I did think, "Oh come on Bill, pick on someone your own size."

Many of them are worthy targets, though, and the segments with the evangelical Senator from Arkansas are hilarious. Overall, I think it's well worth seeing. Also worthy of note: the movie audience clapped at the end. Loudly. They also clapped and cheered for trailer of the upcoming Oliver Stone movie about G. W. Bush. As I said to Monk, "It is nice to be living in a liberal city."