Tag: Bondage

Puppy Dog Eyes

I’ve remarked before that a strong love of animals seems to be a common trait among pro-dommes. I suspect it’s actually a common trait for sex workers in general, but my personal experience obviously skews towards dommes.

It’s therefore a smart move for the submissive here – who I think is Deviant Kade – to deploy the puppy dog eyes in a search for sympathy. It doesn’t appear to be working all that well, but you’ve got to give him full marks for the effort.

This is obviously from the Captive Male site.

Strange Comfort

I’ve been in a bondage frame of mind recently. I think it’s the cold weather. There’s something comforting and relaxing about certain types of bondage. Almost like being gently hugged. That sense of relaxing into an embrace, with no further thought being necessary. Some people like to avoid the chill by cuddling in front of a roaring fire. Others tilt towards layers of rope, tight leather straps and isolation hoods. I think my dream scenario would be to combine the two, with heavy bondage and cuddling in front of a roaring fire. I really need to make that happen someday.

This image is by the artist Harry B, sourced via this tweet.

Unexpected Juxtaposition

I had one of those odd moments today where my kinky world and my regular world briefly crossed streams. I was waiting for my afternoon coffee while flipping through mainstream sites on my phone and totally not prepared for Mistress An Li to pop up in an opinion piece on a videogame site. 

The article in question is this one, and it’s a well written piece on the sexiness of the 2019 game Control. Sexiness in videogames is obviously nothing new, but in this case it’s less about the appearance of the protagonist and more about her confidence, power and mastery of her environment. That leads the writer into a BDSM connection and in turn to interviewing and quoting Mistress An Li (someone I sessioned with last year). I think the article does a great job of connecting all the dots together in a meaningful way, and not simply using a pro-domme or BDSM as clickbait. I was left surprised, impressed and with a desire to go play the game.

This image is from Mistress An Li’s instagram. You can also find her here on twitter and visit her professional site here. 

SMpedia

Fans of Japanese BDSM may want to check out SMpedia. Based on a machine translation of their front page it’s ‘a non-profit database established to accurately convey the process of the birth and development of post-war Japanese SM culture to future generations.’ I have absolutely zero ability to read Japanese, but the modern browser translate tools seem to do a pretty good job to convey the gist of its pages. There is an English language version known as Nawapedia, but there’s a lot less content and it doesn’t appear to be being updated.

The artwork below is from the site and by 小悪征夫, which Google translate as Yukio Koaku.

There is also a twitter feed for the site, which is where I spotted this image.

Santa

It’s that time of year again. If you celebrate Christmas then I hope you have a good one. If you don’t, then I apologize for all the nonsense around it. If the holiday time is tough for you then I empathize and commiserate. Thankfully we’ll all be past it soon.

I found this article on the origin of Santa and Father Christmas interesting. I hadn’t realized that there were two separate figures involved and that Saint Nicholas was the patron saint of sex workers. On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve also enjoyed the #duvetknowitschristmas tag on twitter, which reminds me why I like staying at home over Christmas and not dealing with weird family arrangements.

Finally, here’s a nice bondage image from Thee Domasan to finish the post. What a well placed Santa hat.

Heading Towards the Light

For anyone fed up with dark winter nights and holiday festivities, there is good news. In the Northern Hemisphere we just passed the Winter Solstice. That means we’ve turned the corner and are heading back towards lighter times. In just a few days all the holiday nonsense will be over and the days will slowly start getting longer.

Mistress Fox and her submissive marked the Solstice with this beautiful bondage scene. As you might guess, the petals were then beaten off him.

Mistress Fox is a NYC based pro-domme. I can’t find a website for her, but her twitter bio contains contact details for anyone interested in arranging a session.

Use Your Words (revisited)

My safeword post from last week generated a number of thoughtful comments. The general consensus seemed to be that simple open communication was a good way to go and that safewords didn’t need to be particularly original.

poe2600 raised the interesting point that most submissives are very resistant to using safewords, even when they probably should. I think there’s a good deal of truth in that, although there always exceptions. I remember one pro-domme telling me about a client who she call the traffic light guy. He thought he should accompany their entire session with a constant stream of  ‘green… green… yellow… green… yellow… red! red!… yellow.’ Needless to say that wasn’t exactly conducive to a good D/s dynamic. Exceptions aside, I think it is true that there’s a natural inclination to try and avoid breaking the flow of play with a safeword. Which makes for another good reason to use your words and communicate in a more graduated and subtle way than a simple go/stop approach.

The trickiest situations for me are those where I see a possible problem arising later in the session and have to make a judgement call on when or if to call it out earlier. Typically this is when complex bondage and layered sensations are involved. For example, playing in NYC earlier this year I had a situation involving some particularly painful nipple clamps, a straitjacket and a lot of leather straps. Nipple clamps are usually painful going on and off, but become numb when on. These were not reacting like that. The pain was high and not diminishing, but it wasn’t yet at my stop point. However, the domme was about to tighten the straitjacket over them and I could see a lot of leather straps ready to go around it. Adjusting the clamps when they were hidden under all those layers would be a significant undertaking.

My solution in these situations is always the same – given the domme the information and leave the decision to her. I might be misreading her plan and adjusting later will be easier than I expect. Or she might prefer to push on and deal with any adjustments if it becomes necessary. In this case I told her that they were intense and bearable for a short period, but possibly not something I could handle over an extended period. She then elected to swap them for a different pair before pulling all the bondage into place. The remainder of the session then unfolded flawlessly.

These situations are always tricky because they’re not a simple binary choice. I also don’t want to be another traffic light guy and overload the domme with feedback. It’s ultimately a judgement call based on the the likelihood of needing to adjust something and how difficult it looks like that adjustment will become.

I’m fairly certain this shot of bondage and nipple torture is of Domina Yuki. That’s not me in the photo, but I’ve done a very similar scene in that space.

Use Your Words

Cosmo has an article out on picking and using a safeword. I’m going to go ahead and say that if you need help to pick a safeword, then BDSM probably isn’t for you. It’s only going to get a lot more complicated from that point onward. Maybe start with a good therapist to address your chronic indecisiveness and/or lack of imagination before getting the rope and whips out.

I also think it’s strange how all these articles assume beginners are starting off with heavy consensual non-consent scenes or  elaborate roleplay scenarios.

The minute you’re starting to feel uncomfy is the exact moment when you should go ahead and holler whatever safe word you and your partner chose to go with.

Obviously you could do that, but how about using your words? I’ve done hundreds of scenes, some of them pretty intense, and I don’t think I’ve used a safeword a single time. That has never stopped me communicating a wide variety of issues. In fact I think it’s quicker to say something like “I’m feeling faint” than it would be yell a safeword and then explain what’s going on.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a safeword. It’s good to have a single unambiguous stop button that brings everything immediate to a halt. But that’s not necessary for most scenes and most problems. Common issues that make people uncomfortable are pinching bondage, awkward positions, tingly fingers, anxiety, a bad fantasy headspace or just too much intensity in the sensations. It’s a lot easier to adjust for these as the scene progresses by communicating as you go rather than by simply stopping everything. Plus, it saves your safeword for those times when something is seriously awry and you want that to be communicated entirely unambiguously.

Let’s hope that these two negotiated a non-verbal safeword before starting this scene. He’s not going to be able to yell ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ with that funnel in place.

Artwork is of course by the famous Jim.

Command and Control

A few week ago Mistress Troy Orleans posted an interesting twitter thread on her approach to play and the difficulty of finding appropriate labels for it. I liked a lot of things about, particularly this sexy as hell digression, but I wanted to pick up on the following section in particular…

During a scene, I’m undeniably in control, but if something’s not working, I’ll adjust. My ego’s not attached to the action.

I think that’s an important point for people on both sides of the D/s equation. BDSM is complicated, particularly when doing heavy bondage or intense play. No matter how skilled the participants are – and Troy Orleans is very highly skilled – not everything will work out exactly as expected.

I’ve played with a small number of dommes who did tend to get frustrated or annoyed when a particular setup wasn’t working out as they’d imagined. Those were typically one off visits, because that reaction really kills the dynamic for me. I’m looking for someone in control, which means of themselves as well as of me. Control is about remaining in command of the situation when things don’t work, not trying to make the impossible possible. Plus, watching dommes creatively problem solve and experiment on me in realtime is hot AF.

On the flipside of the coin, from the submissive perspective, I think there can be a danger of treating play as a form of theater, with the domme as the actor and the submissive as both audience and props. That feeds into the bad idea of a scene as crafted narrative that needs to be executed for it to be successful. In reality it’s a highly collaborative process, where the end goal is a creation of a particular energy. Adjusting to something not work out should be viewed as part of building that energy, not a failure of the process. Variation and adaption are what make each experience unique.

Here’s a shot from Mistress Troy Orlean’s twitter feed of a man under her very tight control. You can see more media from her via her OnlyFans.