Cynthia Payne

I was sad to read of the death of Cynthia Payne, who died on November 15th aged 82. As this obituary makes clear she had a rich and complicated life, and was a famous advocate for sex work. Despite having a great name for a dominatrix, she wasn’t strictly that. Instead she worked as an escort, brothel manager, sex party organizer and general provider of both kinky and non-kinky experiences. Maybe it says something about the English that she started as a general sex worker, but became known for all the kinky activities she was asked to help organize.

Two different films were shot based on her life. The early years were portrayed in Wish You Were Here. However, the more relevant one for this blog is Personal Services. Directed by Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) and starring Julie Walters (from films such as Educating Rita and Billy Elliot), it told the story of her later life and sex work. It’s pretty tame by today’s standards, but I think worth seeking out. I think this quote gives a flavor for the very British humor involved…

[Wing Commander Morten, dressed in a French maid’s uniform, is dragged along the corridor to the cells after a police raid on the brothel]

Morten: [yells] I am retired officer of the RAF, twice decorated. I flew two hundred and seven missions over occupied territory – in bra and panties!
Policeman: You’re a disgrace.
[the cell door slams shut]
Morten: [yells, with hands on hips] This is no way to treat a lady!

I don’t have a picture of that scene, but here’s another one from the movie featuring another particularly British kink.
PersonalServices

Coffee and cunnilingus

I think all four drawings here are cute, but I particularly like the first one. Some people like their coffee first thing in the morning. Personally I like it as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Whatever the time, I have to think that oral sex would be a ‘Nice’ bonus to add to it. Maybe Starbucks should put this drawing on all their cups for the new year?

Coffee and cunnilingusThere’s no artist signature on the image (or somebody has chopped it off) and I didn’t find anything useful via a reverse image search. If anyone can help me attribute it to the original creator then please leave a comment or drop me an email.

Observational bias

Jezebel has a fairly silly article on the increase in young tech workers visiting pro-dommes. Like a lot of similar articles it suffers from the problem of observational bias.

Pro-dommes are often the face of kink, as they’re easy to find and (in some cases) happy to advertise. Unfortunately they’re also expensive to visit. On the West coast that means $200 to $300 per hour, which is a lot for the average household. That means the clientele skews to the well off. And since well off men tend to be older, we end up with the cliche of the middle aged banker or lawyer who needs to blow off steam between doing million dollar deals. Now the booming tech economy in some parts of the US has landed a bunch of cash on a small number of software developers, and we get stories about them visiting pro-dommes. The key issue here isn’t kink or sexuality, it’s opportunity. I’m pretty certain if all pro-dommes universally reduced prices to $10 per hour, we’d be seeing articles on the incredibly variety of different people who visit them.

On the plus side, the article does give me an excuse to feature a photograph of one of the dommes interviewed – the lovely Mistress Morgana of San Francisco.

5625250_orig

Hedy Lamarr

Google used one of their doodles to pay a nice tribute to the actress Hedy Lamarr this week. She combined two very unusual careers – Hollywood leading lady and inventor. There have been many attractive femme fatales in movie history, but I’m unaware of any others who held a patent on frequency hopping wireless communication. That’s an idea that forms the basis for modern WiFi and cellphone signals.

As an actress one of her more famous roles was as the biblical Delilah in the 1949 movie. I’ve always thought that Delilah’s reputation for betrayal and deceit was somewhat undeserved. The biblical verses in question say that Samson loved her, but they don’t say how she felt about the issue. It would be one thing if she betrayed the love of her life, but maybe he was just an annoying jerk who wouldn’t take no for an answer. More importantly, every time he claimed to tell her the secret of his strength, she immediately betrayed him to the Philistines in a very obvious fashion. Yet despite three separate betrayals, Samson still went on to tell her the truth about his hair. The lesson from this shouldn’t be that Delilah was deceitful. It’s that Samson was a colossal moron.

Delilah

Straight City

I’ve commented before that Las Vegas is not a place I visit for kink. It always struck me as a place for mainstream thrills rather than alternative ones. What I hadn’t noticed until last weekend was just how straight it is.

I spent five days in ‘sin city’ and I saw literally hundreds of heterosexual couples holding hands while wandering down the Vegas strip. Lots of happy vacationing couples keeping close together and affirming their connection. In that same period I saw exactly zero homosexual couples holding hands. In hindsight, given the numbers involved, it seems really weird. Do very few gay people go to Vegas? Is the atmosphere that hostile to gay people? In Seattle I see same sex couples walking together every day of the week. Is Vegas such an aggressively straight touristy city that the pink dollar stays away?

CuteCoupleSadly I’ve no idea who took this shot. If anyone can help me with the attribution then please leave a comment.

Ruining is all the fun

Fans of ruined orgasms and milking play might enjoy these two tumblrs: Forced to Cum and Eternally Edged. The animated gif is almost the perfect format for presenting these kind of teasing shots, and both of them feature them heavily. I don’t want to have a huge animated image on my front page, but click through on the still below to see one particularly entertaining example. I love their gleeful looks.

GleefulLookThis is captured from a movie by Christina Qccp (the lady clapping in the back). If you want to see more from her then she has a professional website and a movie site with loads of bondage and ruined orgasms shots.

Religion and Kink

I don’t feature the topic of religion in many of my posts. It’s typically something I have no interest in. A bit like reality television or college sports. I recognize that some people get very excited about them, but I don’t really get why.

Despite this fact, I did enjoy this article by Valerie Tarico on the common themes of Christianity and kink. That’s certainly not a new comparison and many people have commented on it in the past. I just found this article to be one of the more interesting and readable takes on it.

Oddly enough (in my weirdest segue ever), it reminds me of the old joke about Ayn Rand and Orcs. To paraphrase it for this context: If forced to pick between religion and kink, then keep in mind that one’s a strange cult involving odd outfits, tortured naked bodies, unbelievable stories of perverse practices and punishment by all powerful authority figures. The other is a great way to have sex.

femdom-nun-1This image is from the Divine Bitches site. I’m not a big fan of that name, but in this case it is unusually appropriate.

Happy Halloween

Las Vegas at Halloween is less crazy than you might imagine. A friend of mine joked that you could start a tumblr called Halloween versus Las Vegas. The game would be to spot the difference between standard Las Vegas wackiness and unusual Halloween outfits. When you’re a place the specializes in nightlife and parties, there’s less room for extravagance when it comes to special events.

This image seems like a good one to finish my Halloween themed posts on. It’s from the Kinky Mistresses site. Personally I’m not a fan of hoods at the best of times. I think a pumpkin hood would be particularly traumatic.

Halloween

Fright Night

Haunted houses have evolved since I was a child. I used to be frighted by plastic skeletons and huge rubber spiders. Events like the one run by kink.com at their armory headquarters now allow you to be be spooked by guys cutting their dick off and pretend prisoners wearing diapers and smearing fake shit on people.

The most extreme example I’ve read about is the one called McKamey Manor. The linked article describes it as something for masochists, but to this masochist it sounds horribly unappealing. Partly because I need a sense of connection and intimacy to go along with my pain. Partly because it doesn’t sound like the people running it have any kind of training in the extreme activities they undertake. Certainly doesn’t seem like RACK or SSC.

Sticking to the scary theme – how about this particular set-up? No ghouls or ghosts in sight, but it does give me a shiver. That thick tightly wound rope and big ring suggests that a significant load is expected to be applied. I’m not sure what load that attachment point has been tested up to, but it doesn’t quite as sturdy as a typical playspace hard point.

Ring
There’s no watermark on the image, but I’m pretty certain it’s a kink.com one.