Hanging on the Telephone

Here’s a final post in my short series on making connections with pro-dommes in the pre-internet era. This is a photograph of what I’m sure was the expectation/hope in every submissive’s mind when he plucked a card from a phonebox and got up the nerve to dial (quite literally) the number. A fabulous domme clad in full fetish gear, whip in hand, just waiting for his call. That’s very different to today of course, where the submissive assumes the domme will be checking her email, while clad in full fetish gear, whip in hand, just waiting for his message.

I’m afraid I don’t have any background on the image. I found it via this tweet by mrunderheel. I’d guess it’s from the late 70’s or early 80’s.

Phonebox Cards

Finding a pro-domme in the pre-internet days was a little trickier than doing a simple web search or browsing twitter. Advertising options were a lot more limited and everybody had to work harder to make contact. In London through the 80’s and 90’s, one common mechanism was to put advertising cards in phoneboxes. The image below is a collection of these cards from Mistress Electra Amore. They’re clearly from a mid to late 90’s era, as a few do have web site addresses on them.

If I’d been brave enough to go looking for someone back in my early 20’s then Mistress Cleopatra (or Cleo-Patra?) would certainly have caught my eye. Of course a blurry photograph on a small card is no guarantee of who you were eventually going to meet. These days most pro-dommes have dozens of professionally taken photographs on their sites, along with social media feeds packed with selfies and candid shots. I almost never hear of bait and switch tactics being employed. I’d guess they were a lot more common 20 or 30 years ago.

Stupid Dick

I have to admit that yesterday’s post ‘The Bug‘ was written from a personal perspective. I’m currently down in San Francisco enjoying some kinky fun. It was a trip I arranged in January, before the extent of the COVID-19 issue in the US was clear. I debated cancelling it, but I figured if I take proper precautions then staying on my own in a hotel room was really no different to staying on my own in my condo. So here I am, with very chapped and dried hands from the frequent washing.

I was very happy to start my trip by meeting up with Domina Yuki.  She’s an amazing domme who I’ve known for years and is always the first person I reach out to when returning to the Bay area. We had a fabulous session, with much tease, torment and predicament play. A couple of photographs were snapped, so hopefully I can share those in a future post.

One particularly interesting moment in the session occurred when we were playing with a Kali’s teeth device. I’ve experienced these devices before, although this one was narrower and tighter than I’m used to. The typical reaction to them goes in a cycle. They don’t hurt going on, but arousal leads to pain. That’s a hot thing for a masochist, so the excitement increases in a feedback loop until the pain peaks and becomes too much. That diminishes arousal, putting me into a slowly cycling equilibrium. Stimulus balances against pain, with the domme tilting the balance as she sees fit.

What was strange today is that we hit that hit that tipping point of pain, and my stupid dick just kept on going (and growing). It was like a chain reaction that was out of control. My brain was at the point of “OK. That really hurts. Not so hot anymore” and the dick was “Nu-huh. We’re keeping this party going.” It was genuinely weird. I’ve made plenty of jokes in the past about my dick having a mind of its own, but this was the first time it actually felt like that. It was also the first time I’ve actively tried to think unsexy thoughts during a session, which is frankly quite the challenge when Domina Yuki is in the same room.

This image of Domina Yuki from her website should give some idea of the challenge involved of unsexy thoughts when doing a session with her. You can follow her here on twitter or enjoy exclusive content via her AVN stars feed.

Rebecca Ferguson

A final image in my sequence of posts featuring smartly dressed people. The image below is Rebecca Ferguson from the Mission Impossible movie Rogue Nation. I’ve not actually seen the movie, but now I kind of want to. I was very tempted to feature this alternative shot of her beating people up while Tom Cruise is tied up. That looks like a fun scene.

I’ve done plenty of scenes with very smartly dressed dommes, but I don’t think I’ve ever done one with the domme in a suit and a tie. I might have to add that to my bucket list. It’s one of those looks that provokes an anticipatory shiver.

Anthony Vaccarello

Whenever I see a fashion editor going on about a ‘dominatrix look’ I brace myself for disappointment. It normally means one of the models wore a pair of boots or – even worse – a leather choker. However, I have to admit that this papermag article on the 2020 Saint Laurent collection by designer Anthony Vaccarello doesn’t get it wrong. It’s a pretty hot and kinky collection, with some serious dominatrix vibes. I particularly like the combination of pussybow blouses with shiny latex pants as shown in this linked image. That’s fetish meets old fashioned schoolmistress, a particularly fab combo in my eyes. I also love the latex dress in the image below. Impractical no doubt, but beautiful and sensual.

Pet Peeve – Contact Form Feedback

Time for another PPPP – Paltego Pet Peeve Post. This time it’s pro-domme contact forms for scheduling sessions. Specifically, the type of contact forms that give little to no feedback to the user. From my experience, that’s 9 out of 10 of them.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to explain. Rather than having submissives send random and badly structured emails, many pro-dommes have a contact form that elicits the specific information they require. This is a good thing. The problem comes when, after many rounds of editing and proofreading, you say a silent prayer and hit the submit button. At that point almost anything can happen. Maybe it’ll clear all the text and give you no clue if it worked or not. Maybe you’ll get some obscure error code or connection error. Maybe you’ll get a blank page. It’s impossible to predict.  Even if it gives a ‘Thanks for your submission’ type response, you’ve still no idea if it really worked or not. Did it email the info to the domme? Did it delete everything? Or did it just email all my contacts with the fact that I’m interested in exploring watersports, puppy play and like being called a dirty little boy?

What prompted me to talk about this was actually the rare example of a contact form done well. Domina Esme Crane’s – built on Jot Forms – actually emailed me back with all the information I’d just submitted. That not only let me know it’d worked, but also allowed me to see it had got all the relevant information. Genius!

If you follow any pro-dommes on social media you’ll often hear complaints about submissives who are too demanding and expect rapid responses to any communication. I’d suggest one way to reduce that is to remove ambiguity from communication. It you’re not sure if something worked properly or not, it’s always going to be tempting to assuming not and to try it again.

This is the aforementioned Domina Crane in an image from her twitter feed. She’s a San Francisco based pro-domme. Sadly, despite her well executed contact form, it doesn’t look like we’ll manage to intersect on my next visit to the Bay area. Hopefully I’ll be better organized for future visits.

A New Twist

It’s always fun to discover a new twist on a favorite activity. After years of kinky indulgence it’s rare for me to discover something totally new, but I’m often happily surprised by how different an activity can feel when approached from a new angle.

The specific example I have in mind is seated mummification, courtesy of Mistress Damiana Chi during my recent LA trip. I’ve been wrapped up many times before, but never in the seated position. We started with me standing in front of the chair while Mistress Damiana swaddled me in plastic wrap. Then, once I hopped back and eased myself down, she bound my mummified torso  into place using rope. It was a great setup because I felt incredibly immobilized, but I could also interact with the domme and observe the sadistic things she was doing to my genitals and nipples. With the traditional horizontal position it can often feel disconnected, with me staring at the ceiling while nasty things happen down south. With this setup we could make eye contact and I could see what was happening, while still having no ability to stop it. That sense of a shared intimate connection and total helplessness is a wonderful button pusher for me.

Unfortunately we didn’t capture any photographs of the chair bondage. However, we did get some good snaps of the second setup, which featured a beautiful red latex bodybag. That was complemented by multiple ropes and leather straps. You can see the resulting arrangement from three different angles here, here and here. Of course, bondage is never quite enough on its own, so Mistress Damiana added some piercing to the nipples and scrotum and then fired up her Electrastim device. This is shown in the two shots here and here.

Looking back on the images now, what catches my eye are the little touches I missed first time around. For example, the color match between the posture collar and the bag, or the extra rope added to expose the nipples properly. It was an amazing session and, as always, my thanks go to Mistress Damiana for creating such an intense yet enjoyable experience.

You can find Mistress Damiana’s main site for sessions here,  her site for her Dominatrix Academy here and her site for kink-knowledgeable life coaching here.  She also has a twitter feed available here.

Stinky Socks

After mentioning scentplay in my previous post, this seems an appropriate image to post as a followup. It’s tough to communicate a smell via a jpg, but I think this does a pretty good job.

It’s interesting how many kinks are associated with feet. There’s obviously your basic foot fetish, but there’s also kinks around high heels, boots, sandals, nylons and sweaty socks like this. Some foot fetishists can trace their kinks back to formative experiences as youngsters crawling or sitting near the feet of adults. Given the number of foot related kinks, it seems likely a lot of fetishists pick up their interests in similar ways, even if they can’t all remember it.

I’m think artist goes by the handle of pii (taromura). The woman’s look is a fashion trend known as Ganguro.

The Sport Report

America had a concert and ads showcase today, occasionally interrupted by a sporting event.

The game itself made me sad, as I’ve been a 49ers fan since I was a teenager watching Joe Montana and Jerry Rice play. On the plus side, the halftime show was a lot of fun with a surprising kinky vibe. Shakira had a hint of bondage going with her rope dance and then Jennifer Lopez came out in a leather outfit that had an awful lot more than a hint of BDSM about it. Not to mention the backing dancers sporting classic leather caps and dommey snarls.

As an added bonus, the sight of two talented Latino women dancing and singing in Spanish appears to have pissed off a lot of right wing troglodytes. So while my team may have lost, I’m always happy to find a silver lining.

Looking Back

As part of my ten year kinkyversary I thought it’d be interesting to look back and try to figure out exactly who I’d played with over that time. I keep all my emails, so in theory I should be able to come up with a pretty accurate list. Actual sessions are way too numerous to count, but as far as people are concerned, I think the total is 37 different pro-dommes. On one hand that seems like a lot, but on the other hand, this is over a decade and spread across 9 different cities.

I wrote last year about my relative success rate in terms of identifying dommes I think I’ll have good session chemistry with. Looking at this list supports the rough estimates I made back then. There were 14 dommes who I played with once and didn’t feel that we had suitable chemistry. At the other extreme, there have been 11 dommes I loved playing with and always reached out to any time our paths crossed. The remaining 12 are dommes I’d like to play more with, but so far time, geography and circumstances have conspired against us.

Two other things also pop out from the list. Firstly, I’m surprised how many dommes on it are now retired from the profession. So if there’s someone you’ve always wanted to play with then I’d encourage you to reach out sooner rather than later. You never know when they’ll decide to hang up their whip (at least from a professional perspective).

The other thing that strikes me is the amazing diversity in styles, techniques and personalities. After all, this isn’t a random list. These are all pro-dommes I researched and decided would be a good fit for my kinks and preferred dynamic. When you browse pro-domme sites and see repeated common lists of activities and equipment you might be tempted to think the variance in play would be small. After all, when you think of other professional services – lawyer, doctor, masseuse  – you don’t expect massive variation between different providers. Yet that’s exactly what you find in the dynamics of a pro-domme session. Even the more creative professions, like a chef or an actor, don’t compare. The best analogy I can think of is a fine artist. An artist will have a distinctive personal style that is common to all their work, but every artist is unique in their own approach.

This is Mistress Eleise De Lacy, someone who definitely falls into the category of people I’d love to play more with, should time and space not conspire against us. We intersected once in Vancouver back in 2013, but since then she has been based in Europe and the opportunity for further play hasn’t presented itself. Should you be similarly constrained, she does have an OnlyFans site you can join for a virtual experience.