Don’t Go Dark

I’ve one final comment on the topic of ending a relationship with a pro-domme: If you’re of advancing years and/or have health issues, then I’d say always try and let a domme know if you decide to stop or take a break from regular sessions with her.

I say this because I’ve lost count of the number of worried tweets and comments I’ve seen from dommes with regulars who fitted this profile and who suddenly stopped showing up. As Simon commented previously on this exact topic, dommes when outside the dungeon and when they’re not hitting people with sticks, are typically very compassionate people. If you’ve any doubt about that I’d point you to this very moving post by Dana Kane.

If some random middle aged guy ghosts then they’ll put it down to one of those things. If an older regular suddenly vanishes then they’re likely to be a lot more concerned. You don’t want to leave them fearing the worst, no matter how good they might look in black.

I believe this is an image created by the photographer Lado Alexi.

What do we owe each other?

I pose the question in the post’s title based on this thread by Dia Dynasty. She writes about a long term slave who abruptly ended their relationship via email. A fact which hurt and deeply disappointed her. It’s a sad situation, but one which I think raises the general question: What do we owe each other in that kind of relationship?

I’m specifically referring to a professional relationship which – thanks to its length and close nature – has developed beyond just a simple transaction. Obviously, in a non-professional context a kinky relationship is no different to breaking-up in any relationship. At least in terms of the need for compassion, understanding and respect. But how does the presence of a transactional element change things?

I don’t have a glib or easy answer. I just thought it was an interesting question to ponder. Maybe, for the little they’ll be worth, I’ll share some musings in a follow-up post.

This is Dia Dynasty, a wholistic femdom practitioner, based out of NYC. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here. She’s also the Matriarch of the Femdom Farm.

Eva’s Peasants

My subby fantasies were tickled by this news story on Eva Green. Apparently she had a falling out with the producers of a project she was working on and told them exactly what she thought. This included insults such as ‘peasants’, ‘arseholes’ and ‘fucking morons’. I’ve no idea if these barbs were justified or not, but I do have to agree with the article writer when he says…

She’s haughty and imperious. She knows exactly where she stands in the world, and she would rather die than hang around with the likes of us. Her contempt is tangible and, really, isn’t that exactly what we want in a movie star?

His conclusion is that we’d all like to aspire to this level of free expression. That might be true for the majority, but some of us would rather be on the receiving end of Ms Green’s acid tongue. Haughty and imperious are sexy attributes whatever someone’s profession. It also struck me that if she ever puts her face to a perfume then ‘Tangible Contempt’ would be an excellent name for it.

This is a shot of Eva from ‘A Dame To Die For‘, the follow-up to Sin City.

Fashion or Fetish? Part III

Here’s the third and final part of my fetish or fashion game. This time it’s a two-for-one deal, with an image from each category. But which one is from the world of fashion and which from the world of fetish? I suspect regular readers may find it a little easy given who is featured, but it’s an image I couldn’t resist.

If you guessed the first was fashion and the second was fetish then congratulations. Have a gold star. Or maybe, more appropriately, a shiny leather one. The first image is Carmen Electra, shot by  Josef Jasso for Nylon magazine. You can see more images from the shoot here. The second one is, as I’m sure many readers might have recognized, the incomparable Mistress Iris. This was from her twitter feed.

Fashion or Fetish? Part II

Here’s a follow-up entry in the fashion or fetish guessing game. Was this snaffled from a recent Vogue shoot? Or is someone who can expertly crack a single tail? Couture or consensual cruelty?

Answer: In this case it’s the latter option – fetish. This is Lady Mephista from a recent tweet. You can see more on her OnlyFans site and arrange in person sessions via her professional site.

Hot Advice

I’m always a fan of mainstream magazines running positive articles on BDSM and ideas for kinky play. Getting more people to explore their sexual interests is great. However, the media have a tendency to lead with the high risk stuff, which is pretty much the last thing new kinksters should be trying in their bedroom.

Take for example this Vice article on temperature play. It’s titled a beginners guide, but in the first half dives into topics like making fire torches with alcohol and dropping flammable propane bubbles on people’s skin. Admittedly they add a bunch of caveats about not trying it without training, but why start there in a beginners guide? There’s a ton of fun temperature stuff you can do with hot wax and ice cubes that isn’t likely to land you in the ER. Pretty much by definition, if you’re learning about temperature play for the first time from a Vice article, there’s nothing you should be doing in the nude with flammable gases or liquids. Leave it to the professionals.

This is the striking Lady Lola, someone who is very much a professional. She is a London based pro-domme who lists fire play as one of her specialties. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here.

Pleasing Aubrey

One of my longstanding celebrity crushes has been Aubrey Plaza. She has – at least in her public persona – a fun mix of intensity and playfulness. Not to mention the obvious hotness. I’m crushing all the more having seen this video comparing Jessica Chastain and Aubrey’s reactions to ‘thirst tweets.‘ Ms Chastain seems somewhat horrified, while Ms Plaza leans into it hard. Totally worth a watch or ten.

If you’d like to see more of her then I’d recommend the show Legion (currently on Hulu). The first season is excellent and, while the next two seasons aren’t as strong, I never grow bored of watching Ms Plaza tear up a scene. You can see the kind of thing I mean in this Season 3 trailer.

This shot of Aubrey Plaza as Lenny is from Season 1 of Legion.

You’re Late

This interview with Margaret Cho contains a lovely anecdote that gave my heart a momentary pitter pat.

Once I was with my friend, the late director John Schlesinger, when suddenly he panicked. Without explaining, we sprinted to a gay bar. A tall woman slowly spun around on a stool, as John grovelled. “You are late,” she drawled. It was Lauren Bacall. She was mad, and I was starstruck.

I’m not sure if this counts as found femdom, but it’s certainly an image to treasure. John Schlesinger – an Oscar winner for Midnight Cowboy – certainly knew who was calling the shots.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Lauren Bacall. She was obviously beautiful and glamorous, like a lot of her contemporary stars, but she had a style and attitude that I think few matched. If you image search for her, almost any of the shots wouldn’t look at of place on a femdom blog, but I’m a particular fond of this one. Oh, and this one.

If you’d like to see more of her amazing style, then this Cut article has a good collection of images.

Happy 2023!

Another circuit of the Sun is completed. Well done everyone. We couldn’t have done it without you. I wish all my readers a fabulous 2023. Hopefully it’ll be filled with much kinky fun.

If one of your New Year goals concerns working on yourself with therapy – and after the craziness of the last few years, that’s probably a popular resolution – then I’d direct my readers to this post by Katherine Control. It gives a lot of really great advice on finding a sex positive therapist and how to screen to ensure you’ve got a good one. While therapy can be an invaluable tool for mental health, not all therapists are created equal – as this thread makes clear. Katherine’s advice will hopefully minimize your chances on posting to future versions of that thread.

This lovely shot of Katherine is sourced from her twitter feed. She’s a Seattle based pro-domme whose professional site can be found here.

The Hits Keep on Coming

Last week Germany’s Studio Avalon announced it was closing after nearly 23 years. I’ve featured the space in past posts and visiting it was high on my kinky bucket list. Sadly for me and kinksters all over the world, it seems our opportunity has gone.

This week it’s the turn of NYC’s Parthenon. Queen Ariana Chevalier has announced that it’ll be closing at the end of the year. It has been a fixture of the BDSM scene in NYC for 17 years. I think the comments on the twitter thread and posts like this one from Vinyl Queen testify how widely used and appreciated the space was. I played their just once, visiting last year with Empress Wu, and would have loved to return.

I covered a fundraiser back in June for the Parthenon. Given its location in Manhattan, home to some of the richest people in the world, I find its closure particularly depressing. How many wealthy Wall St. types have had the balls crushed or backsides blistered inside that space? With the markets hitting record highs, could none of them step up to help out until the Covid vaccines come through next year? We’re going to return to ‘normal’ in 2021 and discover it’s going to take years to rebuild we lost in 2020.

This is Mistress Ariana Chevalier in an image sourced via this tweet.