Lady Phoenix

I’m safely back in Seattle after my UK trip. Hopefully, slightly more regular posting will now resume.

Before I left I was lucky enough to play with Lady Phoenix in her London space. That proved to be a fabulous way to round off my trip. We indulged in some electrical play, sounding, CBT, watersports and a lot of tease/denial and edging. Combining those activities with a really talented and lovely domme is guaranteed to send me home with a smile on my face.

Thanks to limited time in London I’d done a session just two days earlier with Mistress Miranda (as covered in my previous post). Scheduling sessions so closely together is always a risk because of the short recovery time. Delicate areas are sometimes still in their recovery phase. I think my nipples were described as ‘crusty’ which is  a never an expression you want associated with an erogenous zone! Fortunately, Lady Phoenix worked with the slightly bruised goods I was presenting and judged the intensity of our play beautifully.

If you’re in the London area and interested in sessions, then I’d definitely suggest seeking Lady Phoenix out. She has a great central London space and it was a lot of fun to connect and play with her.

This image of Lady Phoenix is from her Bluesky feed. You can find all her other links here.

Bondage Thoughts

Apologies for the lack of recent activity. I’ve been having a lot of fun doing sessions in London. Between those and visiting fancy restaurants it hasn’t left a lot of time for blogging.

On Saturday I was fortunate enough to play with Mistress Miranda at her Bondage Laboratory. We snapped many photographs which I haven’t yet had time to sort through. I’ll therefore do a more detailed write up in a later post when I’m back in Seattle. In the meantime I thought I’d share a thought on bondage that the session triggered.

It’s never occurred to me before but I think there are really two types of bondage: Reaction control and body control.

Reaction control is the sort of bondage most BDSM play features. It’s cuffing hands out of the way, fixing feet to a St. Andrews cross, tying someone spread eagle on a bed, etc. It’s the type of bondage you can forget about when other things are going on. I call it reaction control because it’s mostly about stopping reactions like pulling away or covering yourself. It’s enough to keep the body exposed and vulnerable but that’s all.

In contrast, body control is the kind of heavy bondage which seeks to immobilize all parts of the body. It’s bondage that uses multiple layers and techniques to lock things down. Think of straightjackets combined with straps, padlocks, ropes, harnesses and gags. You’re always aware of bondage that controls the body this way, no matter what other sensations you’re experiencing.

You could argue that’s this distinction is really just a matter of degrees. Bondage severity definitely exists on a continuum. However, I think there’s a distinction in intention and effect. Reaction control bondage is a precursor to the main event. Setting it up feels like a step to establishing a scene, rather than the scene itself. Body control bondage is the main event. It’s deeply arousing even before anything else has happened.

For example, take the shot below. This was the first set-up Mistress Miranda used in our recent session. There’s a body harness suspending me, a spreader bar on my ankles and stiff armbinders with mittens which are wrapped with straps and attached with rope to the spreader bar. There’s also a head harness which immobilizes the head and a gag. Layering all those components and feeling my body get locked into position got me into subspace very quickly. Even if the scene had stopped with the bondage, it still would have felt amazing. The various torments and pleasures that got added after the bondage were thus a very happy bonus rather than the main event.

Back in the Big Smoke

After doing a lot of family stuff over last couple of weeks, I’m finally back in London with a decadent weekend ahead. I’ve been reading a lot of bondage fiction recently, so planning to lean into that kink over a couple of sessions. Should be an uncomfortably fun time.

While I’m not planning on any inverted suspension scenes, I did like this image. It’s a little old fashioned in style – I’m guessing it’s from the 90’s – but the combination of simplicity and extremes is appealing.

Escalation

Ariel Anderessen has a new substack article up on the subject of pornographic escalation. That’s the highly dubious theory that consumers of porn get bored with their initial sexual interests and seek out harder and harder material. So you might start out with furtive glances at the Sear’s catalogue lingerie section but you’ll ultimately end up masturbating furiously to snuff videos from the dark web.

Ariel gives this theory a good kicking and she’s right to do so. It seems like  a bunch of nonsense from the anti-porn crowd. However, while I agree with everything she says, I think there’s an interesting angle she didn’t cover – evolution of fantasy.

Some people are pretty fixed in their kinks. They liked spanking as a teenager, they like spanking in their 60’s. That’s simply their thing. For others fantasy and interests can evolve over time. I think that’s particularly true when your fundamental kink is an underlying emotion or dynamic rather than a specific act or appearance.

For example, I think one of my main kinks is control. That manifests itself in different ways. The original kinky porn I saw featured bondage and corporal punishment, so that became a means of control that I looked for and fantasized about. Over time I encountered different ways you can play with control and that expanded my interests. Today I think that both cuckolding and toilet play are hot, but they weren’t even on my radar 20 years ago. A casual observer might see that as escalation due to porn. In reality my underlying interest hasn’t changed, it has just found new ways to surface.

I also think that fantasy and pornography tends to exist at the border between what you can do and what you can imagine. If you start exploring your kinks and playing out fantasies in real life, then the porn and erotica you desire tend to shift to the edge of that. For example, I still love bondage and still fantasize about it. But now I do regularly get tied up, the erotica I like tends to shift towards heavier and more extreme bondage (like this story). That might look like pornographic escalation, but it’s not porn that’s caused that. It’s the fact I want my fantasy world to exist slightly ahead of my real life world.

This is a shot of Ariel from her social media feeds. You can find more of her writing on her substack. She’s primarily a sub, but for those who like all types of kink you can find links to her work here.  She also has a memoir out.

An Afternoon with Vera

By now it seems that every fashion / lifestyle magazine has done some variation on the ‘Day with a Dominatrix’ article. Today it’s the turn of Australia’s Fashion Journal with this article featuring Vera Beaufort.

I’m featuring it here because I think it’s one of the better examples of its kind. Less sensational and voyeuristic and more in touch with the dynamics of a real session. The play described is a lot more formalized and ritualistic than my sessions but still has the ring of truth to it.

The other reason to feature it is that it gives me an excuse to post a sexy picture from Vera Beaufort’s site. She has a lot that fit that description but I particularly liked this one. The intimacy of the spit contrasts beautiful with the control and objectification of his outfit.

Vera Beaufort is based out of Melbourne and in person sessions can be scheduled via her site. You can also find her on Bluesky.

Virgin Island

Virgin Island is a reality TV show from the UK featuring 12 virgins on a 3 week intimacy retreat. Their virginity is unwanted and so the viewer gets to watch them work with sex therapists/surrogates and overcome their issues around intimacy. It sounds like the kind of show I’d absolutely hate and watching it would create a serious risk of death by second hand embarrassment.

However, it actually gets positive reviews and seems to have been created with some thought and a lot more sensitivity than the average reality TV show. I’m still never going to watch it, but it’s good to see thoughtful coverage of sex in a genre that typically leans into the exploitative.

I mention it here because an episode in the last season actually featured some femdom. One of the participants (Ed) was interested in submission and got to roleplay it with the resident BDSM coach – Shelby Devlin. There was exploration of spanking, forniphilia and some mild humiliation. All fun stuff and I hope Ed gets a chance for more kinky exploration in future. Preferably without a camera crew around.

This is the aforementioned Shelby Devlin. She’s a sex / intimacy and BDSM coach with a Master’s degree in Sexuality Studies. You can find her general website here and one that seems more targeted to BDSM and Kink coaching here. She runs workshops that are detailed here.

I believe this photograph was created by Alyssa Keys Photography.

Career Women

This is an old comic from a 1956 edition of Army & Navy Fun Parade. Obviously, given the patriarchal nature of America in the 50’s, this was a bit of absurd humor. A laugh at the crazy idea of a career woman with a house husband in a pinny. However, I wonder, did a few male readers see this and experience a strange frisson of excitement? Did it trigger any odd feelings of the rightness of the scene? I’m going to bet there were at least a few.

I sourced this via Reddit.

Luggage

As I’m currently traveling, this seemed an appropriate image to share. One wonders what the storage arrangement inside the train is. Getting him into an overhead luggage bin would seem tricky. I’m picturing a special luggage van with rows of lock points for the wheels and the handle. Perfect for safely transporting all the slaves for the ladies on the train.

I found this via tumblr, but I’m certain it’s the creation of Loviante. You can get more of their work via their Subscribestar.

A Stupid Step

Given I’m currently visiting the UK, it seems appropriate to rant about their increasingly stupid pornography laws. Last year they were targeting a ban on depictions of choking. Earlier this year they went after depictions of sex acts between step family members. That last one is particularly stupid because they’re banning the fictional depiction of something that’s not actually illegal in the UK. So by all means fuck your step brother/sister/mom/whatever, just don’t pretend to do so on film.

It is of course reasonable to say that you don’t care about either of these kinks. The problem with that view is that the kind of government that’ll pass these laws is unlikely to stop there. Is a politician that votes for these bills going to take a different tack on say ABDL? Or Mommy Domme scenes? Or even just any regular kind of BDSM? If you think someone watching two porn actors call each other ‘step-sister/brother’ deserves jail time, what about watching a domme beat up a ‘helpless’ guy and then piss on him? Is an MP going to stand up and say there was a good argument for the step-family porn ban, but watersports and bondage deserve protection under the law?

From a selfish perspective, I find it particularly depressing. The UK is the obvious place for me to relocate if the US political situation continues to deteriorate. Yet here we have a left wing government wasting time on some seriously stupid stuff. This is a country where just 2.7% of reported rapes result in charges and the trials themselves face growing backlogs. You’d think the clear and obvious massive harm there would be a priority over what fictional material people jerk off to, but apparently not.

As far as I know this kind of image is still OK to share. But frankly who can tell? I don’t think that’s supposed to be the step-mom standing behind, but imagine trying to debate that fact in court.

The artwork is by Rosie-BRS over at DeviantArt.