Cat with Claws

I just spent 15 minutes in a hotel bathroom trying to photograph the deep red scratches on my legs , thighs and chest. I gave up in the end because the lighting sucked and I figured nobody actually cared about seeing my post-session wounds. They are kind of cool though.

Marks from play are frequently surprising. Sometimes I think my flesh is going to look like a chewed up mess of black and purple stripes, and then when I get to a mirror its a pristine white snowfield, with just a faint red mark visible under the right light. Other times I’ll be puzzled why my body seems so sore, and then I’ll take off my clothes and be astonished at the bloom of colors and sharp slashes the skin shows. Despite years of experience, it’s still hard to tell how pain and pressure will translate into physical skin trauma.

In this case, my vivid long red stripes are courtesy of Mistress Lucy Khan and her vampire claws. In terms of the session they were just an intense but small part. The ribbed urethral sounds and the heavy paddles made a much bigger impression on me at the time. But in terms of a fun memento to admire in the shower and hide on the beach, her claws were definitely the winner.

Mistress Lucy is an LA based pro-domme, with a great space just outside downtown LA. I’ve played with her for years and had countless amazing sessions. Definitely someone worth seeking out if you’re in the area.

The Self Sustaining Pain Reaction

My kink-tastic LA 2018 tour (fall edition) continues apace. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get to play with Mistress Damiana Chi. Flogging, whipping, heavy bondage and CBT all had their opportunity to feature in the proceedings. Also screams, yowls, groans and whimpers.

Mistress Damiana was kind enough to snap a few images of me mid-torment. This shows saran wrap bondage, with layers of rope added on top, all based on suspended bondage board. The design of the board is quite clever, as the ropes quickly snap into the eyelets on the side, making it relatively fast to rig. You can see another angle here, showing the legs are wrapped and immobilized separately. The bondage and the gentle swaying movement of the suspended board was quite relaxing, which is more than can be said for the CBT devices deployed.

The metal ring around the cock (show in this close-up) is a Kali’s teeth type device. I think the general idea is to prevent erections by creating pain as the cock swells. That’s clearly a flawed design when masochists get involved. Pain = Exciting = Engorging = Pain. It’s basically the self-sustaining fusion reaction scientists have been searching for all the years, just with the output being endless whimpering rather than clean energy. Fortunately, the spiked vice on the balls was uncomfortable enough to damp down the effect, and prevent a runaway reaction and a critical penis mass. Nobody wants to deal with that kind of fallout.

This photograph of Mistress Damiana Chi is from her site. You can also follow here on twitter here.

Sliding into the zone

My LA trip got off to a wonderful start yesterday thanks to a session with Mistress Iris.  Although we’ve played together a number of times in the past, this was the first time we’d actually used a professional playspace. That gave Mistress Iris the chance to show off some of her excellent rope skills and lash me to a wall.

One thing I particularly enjoy about playing with her is the way she eases in and out of the kinky bubble. She’s a genius at creating a relaxed comfortable environment, while at the same time building tension and anticipation. That seems like it should be contradictory, yet somehow it works.

When I first started with kink I was all about getting freaky at maximum speed. Minute one was ‘hello’ and minute two was all about nipple clamps and sticking some needles in my genitals. Now I’m a little more chill. No need to go from 0 to 200 mph in just a few seconds. To continue that analogy, playing with Mistress Iris is like being on a racetrack with an expert driver. It starts off easy, and the speed builds gradually, but before you know it you’re sliding sideways around a bend at some crazy velocity, hanging on for dear life with your adrenaline spiking though the roof. And then she’ll glance across at you, casually controlling everything with one hand on the wheel, and laugh.

This image is from her gallery page. Mistress Iris is typically based in LA, but regular travels. You can keep up with her travel plans here and via her twitter feed.

Baby Bird

This 1970’s Japanese Femdom image comes courtesy of Bacchus at ErosBlog. In his original post he mentions the prevalence of spitting in modern porn and how it’s often used to add a note of humiliation into a scene. That’s certainly true, and it’s not a kink that does much for me. However, I think that spitting can be a surprisingly flexible act. Much like a golden shower scene, it can work as humiliation, reward or intimacy at a distance.  It just depends where you direct it.

One spitting technique that’s particularly fun is ‘baby bird’. That’s where the domme carefully drops her spit into the open mouth of the submissive. Done with a snarl it could of course be humiliating, but its typically more an offering dynamic. It’s an intimate act, a reward, but with a sense of control and distance from the domme. Where tease and denial meets kissing. A neat variation on it is for the domme to take a swig of water and then trickle it into the mouth of the submissive. This pushes much the same buttons, but has the added advantage of being able to hydrate a submissive in the middle of a scene when he’s still tied up. I will add, from personal experience, that throwing an open mouth gag into the mix makes this kind of scene particularly hot.

Cutting Edge Research

I’ve often heard people say that they need a vacation to recover from their  vacation. Unfortunately, while that idea is common, I rarely see it put into practice. I therefore felt it was my duty to test the theory and, having returned from the East coast, I’ve now departed for a trip down the West coast. So far it seems like an excellent idea. The only issue I can see is an infinite series of vacations, each needed to recover from the previous vacation, may not be entirely popular with my employer. However, I’m not going to let a narrow minded approach to niggly details like work hours and employment contracts interfere with my cutting edge research. I owe the world this data.

Specifically, I’m in LA for a week of kink, food and hanging  out with friends. Posts on the kinky parts will no doubt be forthcoming here in the coming days, although I doubt any of my vacation pictures will look quite like this.

The lady enjoyed her human chair is Mistress Ezada Sinn. You can follow her on twitter here.

The most evil thing…

I was sad to learn that Mistress Cynthia Stone has decided to retire. She was a fabulous domme, and someone I did many interesting sessions with. That included things like casting, piercing all over the body, a unique birthday card and one of the best double sessions I’ve ever had (with Inga Larsson). She also takes the credit for what I think is the most evil thing a domme ever did to me.

Anyone who has ever played with me knows I’m pretty ticklish. It’s not a kink of mine, just a fact of life. While I don’t particularly get off on being tickled, I do enjoy the glee some dommes get from tickling me. It tends to generate a lot of involuntary movements and vocal responses, which as far as I can tell is the equivalent of domme catnip. In the scene in question, I was flat on my back, tied in some places, but with my legs and feet free. Cynthia was moving around me, poking and prodding in various painful ways, and ended up at my feet with a surgical scalpel in her hand. She slipped the blade into the gap between my big and index toes, holding it against the taut skin so I could feel it, and told me I better keep still if I didn’t want to get cut. Then she tickled my feet.

Ahead of time, I would have sworn it was absolutely impossible for me to be tickled like that and not jerk my feet. It turns out that what’s possible is just a matter of the right incentives. All those ‘involuntary’ movements were magically suppressed and my foot moved not a single fraction of an inch. Mind over matter.

Later, after I’d had chance to think about it, I said “That was just a mindfuck, right? You turned the blade so it was the blunt side down. You weren’t really going to cut between my toes were you?” She looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently it had always been sharp side down.

I’ve done plenty of scenes that were a lot more painful than that one, but I can’t think of any individual activity that was quite as creatively evil as that scalpel move. So good luck Cynthia with whatever life brings you in the future. I’ll miss your sadistic creativity and devilish imagination. Thanks for all the great sessions.

When it comes to predicament bondage and ticking, there’s one artist who immediately springs to mind – Augustine. This particular work is from his tumblr.

Floating and Floaty

I couldn’t finish a trio of posts on bondage and its related equipment without featuring two renowned experts of both the tools and the art – Elise Graves and Troy Orleans. These two shots feature some beautiful leather bondage and a very cool suspended table. I also like the very simple clean space that they’re playing in. For me it always feels a lot more intense and serious to play in a ‘normal’ looking studio space than it does to play in all black dungeon with chains and whips hanging off the walls.

I know from experience that heavy bondage can create a floaty headspace. In this case it also looks like he’s floating in space.

I found this via a tweet on Elise Graves’ twitter feed. It’s obviously from her Bondage Liberation site, which contains all sorts of interesting intense bondage shots.

What’s in the box?

While I’m on the subject of unusual dungeon equipment, here’s an interesting bondage box from the English Mansion. I’ve never seen anything similar in any playspace I’ve visited, which, now I think about it, seems kind of surprising. I imagine it’d be quite a head trip and it doesn’t look too hard to manufacture. Although maybe it would be tricky to use? You couldn’t really wrap someone in place, so you’d have to wrap them first, and then somehow get them into the box. Of course you could always use a leather body bag with it rather than mummification, combined with packing material to pad for different body shapes.

I love the objectification element of it, although I’m not sure how my mild claustrophobia would cope. From the clasps on the side, I assume there’s a lid that would go on. That’s simultaneously hot and scary.

The lady on the other end of the nipple lamps is of course Mistress T.

Corner Time

This is a pretty clever design for a restraint system. It reminds me of a bondage chair, which is always one of my favorite things to be strapped to in a dungeon. They create a great sense of vulnerability, while also allowing the submissive to see the dominant and know exactly what she’s about to do to him.

In this case hanging the submissive on the walls not only removes the need for an extra piece of furniture, but also adds a touch of objectification. It’s not very clear, but I assume there’s some sort of shelf that he’s perched on, so all the weight doesn’t fall on the limbs. Just perfect for some CBT and nipple torture.

This particular piece of dungeon apparatus is located at the Sub Rosa space in Portland Oregon. This image came courtesy of Mistress Viola’s twitter feed.

Kitty O’Neil

Welcome to another post in my occasional series on women who were awesome without necessarily being dominant in the BDSM sense. In the past this series has included motorcycle racers, resistance fighters, film stars and aristocratic swashbucklers. The newest entrant into this series is all around daredevil and badass Kitty O’Neil, who died recently aged 72.

You might not know the name, but the odds are you’ve seen her in action at some point. She was the stuntwoman for the original Wonder Woman TV series, as well as movies like the Blues Brothers and Smokey and the Bandit. She also set water speed records (275 mph), water skiing records (105 mph), land speed records (512 mph average, peaking at 621 mph) and participated in tough off road races like the Baja 500 and Mint 400. If all that wasn’t enough, she did it after overcoming spinal meningitis in her teens and two bouts of cancer  in her 20’s. Oh, and she was also deaf, thanks to a childhood combo of measles, mumps and smallpox. What an amazing woman.

This is Kitty performing a 127 foot dive from a hotel balcony for the Wonder Woman TV show.