Beauty and the Beast

At a quick glance I thought this image belonged to the genre: “Hot domme in fetish gears hangs out in gritty urban environment to create interesting study in contrasts.” It’s not a major kinky genre, but there are a few examples around. For example, this one from the late great Mistress Adrienne.

However, on looking more closely, there’s a pretty clear sign it’s not your average urban environment. That hooded naked man locked away in the pen for one. There’s something particularly sexy about over the top bondage. Adding extra control when it’s not needed makes it so much hotter. In this case to go along with the bars on the door there’s the thick chain hooked outside, the leather hood and the locked hands in mittens. Lovely.

The hot domme in question here is Mistress Trinity accompanied by Heavy, sourced via this tweet. Unfortunately, the space is at Studio Avalon, which AFAIK closed in 2020.

Updated thanks to a helpful comment: The space is probably Residenz Avalon, rather than the studio. Unfortunately, it’s also no longer around. You can see a video from what used to be here.

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.

Lots of Leather

One of things I’ve really missed this year is travelling to NYC and playing with Troy Orleans and Mistress Tess. As well as both being fabulous dommes, they’re also voracious collectors of equipment and fetish gear. I’ve had some really intense experiences with them and their collections over the years. For example, this scene and this with Mistress Tess. This scene and this with Troy.

While stuck at home I’ve had to get my kink equipment kicks second hand and online. One of the best sources for that is Mistress Hinako, who has some amazing gear. She recently shared the image below (via this tweet), after a new delivery of leather toys. I don’t particularly have a leather fetish, but I do love this setup. Harsh, immobilizing but also richly sensual. Just the kind of freaky fun I’m craving right now.

If you’d like to see more from Mistress Hinako, she has an OnlyFans here. You can find her twitter here and her professional site here.

On Her Way to Work

Just a regular morning start for your typical busy dominatrix. On her way to work clutching her trusty single tail. Those slaves aren’t going to whip themselves.

I suspect the identity of this leather clad lady has been lost to history. All the references I could find simply say generic things like ‘vintage dominatrix’.  If you can help me attribute it then please leave me a comment. I’d love to rescue her from anonymity.

Short can be Sexy

I’m returning to the subject of gloves for my next couple of posts. A few days ago I asked why long gloves are sexier than short ones. That generated some interesting comments I’ll share in my next post.

However, I’d hate to leave anyone with the impression that only long gloves can be sexy. That’s very much not true. For example, here’s Mistress Audrey Fatale looking particularly fabulous in short black leather gloves.  Admittedly, most of the fabulousness comes from Mistress Fatale herself, but the glove is definitely adding a certain something to the shot.

Mistress Audrey Fatale is a Melbourne based pro-domme who offers both virtual and in-person sessions. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here.

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. 

Checklists

Writing yesterday’s post about bucket lists reminded me of another type of list – the BDSM checklist. If you’re not familiar with the concept it’s basically a quick and easy way to build a list of activities that you’re interested in exploring or absolutely want to avoid. Typically they’re used as an aid to negotiating a scene, but I also like them to give me new ideas or reminders of things I haven’t tried for a while.

Back in the day – when kinksters had to get up half an hour before they went to bed and pay mill owner for privilege to come to work – you’d actually print out a list and mark off interests. These days you can build and share a profile online, no dead trees or leaky pens needed. For example, somebody recently sent me a link to the Kinkomatic site, which seems to have a pretty comprehensive list of activities, as well as a fairly slick interface for creating, sharing and finding lists. You can read more about it via their FAQ. Alternatively, if you’d rather go with an old school approach, there are plenty of  basic activities lists online you can search for (e.g. this one has 256 entries).

Talking of old school – this magazine cover would certainly qualify. Presumably this gentleman ticked 36 (chains), 40 (choking) and 134 (leather clothing) from this list. However, I don’t see any options for ‘wearing hideous y-fronts’ or ‘roleplaying being a really bad actor’.  No matter how long the list, it seems there are always a few popular kinks that get left off.

It’s all in the Mind

The NYT has a short but informative article  on the complex relationship between brain and body when it comes to pain. It’s tempting to think of the body as the source of all physical pain and the brain simply reporting on the signals it receives but, as the article explains, it’s a lot more complicated than that. As every masochist already knows, and doctors are learning, pain is contextual, and the reprocessing that happens in the brain can make a big difference to the perception of the sensation.

I also found it interesting that the article draws a connection with itching. Ever since I got involved in kink, I’ve been fascinated by how that phenomena can be modified by my situation. In normal circumstances I find it almost impossible to not scratch a bad itch. The more I resist doing so, the greater the intensity and the compulsion to resolve it. I can’t think of anything else. Yet once in bondage, itches fade away. It’s almost like my brain has a switch it can flip – if I physically can’t fix the itch then no point bugging me about it. I’ve never had to stop play to get an itch scratched. But when the ropes or straps come off, any irritation immediately returns.

This lady is about to administer a two for one deal – pain and itching combined, thanks to a big bundle of stinging nettles. This is obviously originally from Femme Fatale Films.

Side effects

Weird question of the week for my readers: Has anyone done a flogging or whipping scene that left their skin incredibly itchy?

Playing in LA last week, I did a scene featuring a fairly heavy flogging and a moderate whipping. It left me with some beautiful marks on my upper back, but it also left that whole area very rough and itchy. Given its inaccessible location for scratching, that makes it particularly frustrating. I’m guessing the skin was dry from the LA heat, and then damaged enough by the heavy flogger to trigger the wound healing itch reaction. It’s kind of odd however, as I’ve never had this kind of reaction before, and certainly nothing that lasts this long. Really hoping I’m not suddenly developing an allergy to leather. That would really cramp my play options.

Given the topic of leather and whips, this striking photograph of Mistress Adrienne of NYC seems an appropriate one to feature. Whatever I was hit with, it was nothing as fearsome as that particular single tail.

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.