Sunday, August 24, 2008

Sweet Sacrifice

A hottie named Mortisha turned me on to this song and video. Enjoy!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Life's Little Adventures

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Sunday, August 10, 2008

Coming from the Heart

I am not someone who hangs out in the larger BDSM community. Instead, I have cultivated a few close friendships with others who also endeavor to approach this lifestyle from a place that is heart-centered and life-affirming. So it disappoints me when I hear stories of mistreatment from fellow players.

Of course, it may seem obvious to some that explorations of the darker side of the sexual psyche could lead to dysfunction. Yet I think it's such a cop-out to abuse the trust and vulnerability integral to this kind of play. It's all about the mind fuck. And as such, when compared to erotic exchanges that are based on a purely physical-sexual level, there's more room to get hurt and therefore a greater responsibility on the part of the participants, particularly the tops.

When I engage in power exchange, I am seeking to know myself better as well as connect in an authentic way with another being. Yet what I have seen is that these same rituals can be used as a substitute and barrier to intimacy. It can become a means of maintaining separation between oneself and the other. This other may be defined as client, male, caucasian, straight or vanilla person - whatever the label, it serves to dehumanize and distance, blocking true empathy.

I can see the defense mechanisms at play in this process, and recognize that many pro dommes protect themselves by creating these barriers, which they may regard as necessary boundaries. Yet disconnecting from those we choose to engage with only leads to our own emotional isolation. I have watched some move further and further away from mutual understanding with those who session with them, leading to bitterness as honest communication falls on the wayside.

What's troubling me most right now is to hear stories of how friends, who by no means fit into the alpha role within the dominant paradigm, have been subject to real cruelty and prejudice - in the lifestyle, as clients and as pros. These are people who already have to deal with judgments from society at large because of their race, size, age, physical ability and (trans)gender. What is it that makes people want to abuse those they perceive as defenseless? What joy does one get out of mistreating the less powerful? How heart-breaking to bare one's most precious secrets, only to have it thrown back in your face and made to feel wrong for being who you are, whether wanting to submit or top. What gets me is how some people act so proud of their "daring" alternative lifestyle, yet with their actions end up reinforcing conventional heirarchies and discrimination. I'm not talking about un-PC roleplays (which can be very hot), but about playing into the hands of close-mindedness and hatred.

When I top someone, I want to acknowledge their power. I want to pay respect to it by not assuming they're easy to conquer. I want to mentally and physically tussle until I have their submission. It makes the dynamic an earned rather than performed experience. That's the problem with so much pro play. It's thought of more as a performance than an encounter. So much of the good, juicy stuff gets lost in this illusion. And so much hurt can happen when playing mind games without heart.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Working the Kinks Out

A friend of mine - let's call her Dara - was training to be an aesthetician and offered to give me a free facial. I happily obliged. As we chatted during the appointment, Dara told me she needed more practice with men's bikini waxing. Knowing what I do, a lightbulb went off in her head. "Wait a minute! You must have some guys I can work on," she said.

"Oh, I'm sure I could talk a few slaves into the idea," I said. "But do you really want to see my people?" I asked, conscious that while she was open-minded, my friend was quite the innocent.

"Just send them over. It'll be awesome!" she reassured me.

So I emailed a couple of my boys and encouraged them to set up appointments with Dara. Afterwards, I received giddy messages from both letting me know how much fun they had. One of my sissies even chatted about feminization with her. Dara also contacted me almost immediately afterward to thank me for the referrals, letting me know how sweet they both were. "Somehow I could tell they were your slaves," she giggled.

I hadn't realized how powerful and titillating it would be to send my submissives off to be worked on by a friend, that it would in some ways be an extension of the existing dynamic between us. I think it must have felt pretty liberating knowing that they could be themselves with a trusted friend of mine.

The very act of waxing is sadomasochistic in and of itself. I hadn't realized how much so until I had it done. Dara convinced me to return the following week for my first bikini wax ever. I wanted to find out how it feels to have your pubic hair ripped out by the roots. I was thrown off by how much it hurt, letting out a little scream until I learned to cover my own mouth. Even after the disturbingly hot wax was pulled off, she wasn't finished until the remaining stray hairs were plucked out with a tweezer. Wow.

It's funny when we can turn normally vanilla situations into a kinky fieldtrip! Of course, consensuality for any overt acts is important. But along these same lines, one of my tried and true sent me a note about his experience at the dentist's office:

The dentist and her assistant were making a couple of soft castings of my mouth and during that process poured warm molten silicone rubber into my mouth and then used a lot of force and TLC to get it out once it had cured. They must have thought I was crazy to be smiling during this very uncomfortable process, but I thought it very cool to be subjected to this. Of course I didn't tell them that I'm quite used to having intelligent, beautiful women forcing silicone rubber products in and out of my mouth with semi-regularity.


Since winding down from the pro scene, how I go about my days could aptly be described as "lifestyle" kinky. Meaning that situations have become more free-flowing, less restricted to the dungeon and more integrated into my everyday life. Admittedly, I've always hated the word "lifestyle" and how it was used in a snobby sort of way to distinguish oneself as better than more commercially-oriented dommes. I've been fortunate in that I was not raised to buy into convention, so my lifestyle has never really been vanilla. And I've bristled at how alternative culture can simply replace one type of uniform and stereotyped thinking with another. But I suppose "lifestyle" can, at times, be a useful delineator.

Whatever you call this hybrid existence, I am enjoying not having to adhere to any industry standard, protocol, peer pressure and the like. I am enjoying not stepping outside myself to critique my performance in anticipation of a review, or otherwise getting bogged down in the hustle of it all.

I am revelling in connecting with my wants, not my shoulds. I am playing with people I deeply care about, trust and respect. Surprising and delighting myself with each discovery, I am unearthing new dimensions to myself, tapping into novel avenues of exploration and cultivation of my personal power. Working the kinks out is a very good thing...

Friday, August 1, 2008

Know Thyself

Know thyself. We are all familiar with the dictum. Yet I've come to see how difficult it is to maintain clarity in relationships closest to oneself. In particular, I am struck by our seeming inability to perceive clearly in three key relationships: with our individual selves, with our significant others, and with our family. There just seems to be too much attachment in these situations, leading to a sort of funhouse mirror effect on our ability to reflect back a shared reality.

I first started noticing a pattern to these blindspots in people during my observations of other women in erotic work. Most of us seem to need to put blinders on of one sort or another to justify ourselves, likely due to the lack of support in society as a whole for what we do. "What's up with her? I just don't get her. I feel like she's not really there," I was telling a mutual friend of a new girl at The Gates, back in the days when I worked there. I prided myself on being able to figure out what made everyone tick and act accordingly, but this woman remained a cypher to me, especially after an awkward double session together.

"You know, I thought about this a lot," my friend said, "It's weird because she can be really insightful when helping me sort out stuff going on in my life, but she can't make sense of her own predicaments. One time she thanked me for giving her great advice and I told her I just thought of what she would say to me under the same circumstances. There's this blurriness there when it comes to trying to understand herself, especially her self image in relation to men." She was not alone.

There was a woman who interviewed with me to be an apprentice dominatrix. A pretty young Eurasian just out of college, she had been stripping for the past five years and wanted to try something different. I was taken aback by how sweet and innocent this woman seemed to be, and as I talked to her I learned that it really wasn't an act. "Just so you know, this work is not about explicit sexuality. I have friends who escort, but this is not what it is," I said to her.

"Oh my God! I would never be friends with someone who does that!" she wrinkled her cute little nose in disdain. We ended our lunch on friendly terms, but she didn't follow up (she seemed disappointed when we talked about the money involved in session work). I ran into her a few weeks later at a swinger-themed dance party that was being thrown in one of the City's strip clubs. "See that older woman over there," she pointed to the stage where a hot Sandra Romain look-alike writhed topless, grinding against another woman. I appreciatively took in her olive skin and porn star rack, as well as the lusty sneer on her sultry face. "She tried to hit on me the last time I was here, but I think she's a prostitute." My stripper acquaintance said this last word with a snarl, almost like she should spit afterwards to get the bad taste out of her mouth. Later on, I saw her lap-dancing her date in a secluded area. It puzzled me, this strange mix of overt sexuality and prudishness, yet I would come to see it time and time again (even in myself!). It's like we tell ourselves that we're still good girls even though we do this and this, but if we do that - that awful thing! - then we are a bad girl and shame shame shame! My goodness, it's kind of ridiculous isn't it?

This inability to see things clearly when they hit closest to home marks our relationships with our family and significant others as well. I've read that there is a "primitive" society where children are never raised by their biological parents, but by their aunt and uncle instead. They believe the parents and children will have a better relationship for it, and that the aunt and uncle will not have the same attachments (i.e. over-identification) which can get in the way of nurturing independence and autonomy in the child.

"I told him you tell him that. He won't listen if it comes from me," a woman was telling me how she got her husband to take some much-needed advice by having a friend do it for her. The interdependence of our egos and the delicate balance of power in our relationships with significant others can sometimes call for such diplomacy. And the spelling out of overidentification in the form of traditional marriage (e.g. the woman changes her name to the man's name) makes seeing clearly that much more difficult, as spouses begin to think of one another as each other's possessions. I've always marvelled at how men I've met through my professional play seem delighted to hear of my latest exploits, and I've heard the same from other women in the work. There is this pure joyfulness in hearing of our pleasures, no attempts to control or restrain. So different from how most of us approach our "real" relationships. But of course, it doesn't have to be that way. Many of us are exploring new ways of being together through polyamory aka (but not necessarily the same thing as) swinging - I have many thoughts on this topic, deserving of its own post later. Have a great weekend!