Tag: Photograph

The Boss

There’s something about combining smart conventional outfits and kink. It’s hot in a way I find hard to identify. Maybe it’s the contrast of the implication of strict social norms and then the trangressive element of kink. Maybe it’s a uniform thing, where the costume comes loaded with a history social rules and authority. Maybe it’s because I live on the west coast, where the typical business outfit is jeans and a polo shirt, so seeing anyone dressed in a smart suit is automatically a big improvement.

This is from a short film that Mistress Iris is shooting, with this particular image coming via a tweet by Mistress Eva. If you’re not  a member of Mistress Iris’ Patreon and like her content, then now might be a good time to subscribe. I suspect more hotness from this scene is in the pipeline.

 

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.

Louboutin

If there’s one shoe designer who is widely known across all genders and sexualities, it’d be Christian Louboutin. I have a very straight non-kinky male friend who has minimal interest in fashion, yet he still managed to spot and identify a pair of Louboutin’s that flashed past us in a restaurant one night recently. I’m sure it was the stylish lady sporting them that first caught his eye, but he still managed to pick up on that little flash of red from her shoes.

I’d always assumed, given how sexy and fetishistic his work can be, that he was at least a little bit kinky. However, according to this recent NY Times article, that’s probably not the case.

I remember Helmut Newton, the photographer, telling me one day — he had looked at some of my shoes — “I’m going to give you the best address for dominatrixes in New York.” And I said, “Helmut, I’m just not interested in that.” He was surprised. This is a suggestion from my work to a projection of his own mind. Me, when I think leather and spikes, I’m thinking Haute Époque, 17th century.
Christian Louboutin in the NY Times.

While he might not be interested in ‘that’, but I do know a lot of dommes and submissives who love his high heels and boots. If you’re in the Paris area then there’s an exhibition of his work running over the next few months at the Palais de la Porte Dorée. For those of us not in that area, the NY Times also has a multimedia piece with him talking about his work and his inspirations.

This boot is called the Corset d’Amour and is featured at the start of the NYT media piece.

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 Stroppy Server

Apologies if you tried and failed to access the site in the last day or so. All the tiny electronic wizards that carry my wise words down to your phones and computers went on strike. I did file a ticket with my hosting company, but I guess that one of their customers sites being totally offline doesn’t rate as an important issue. Presumably I’d need my server to actually explode and burn down their data center to get a timely response on a weekend. I finally managed to get the tiny wizards back into line by rebooting everything, so we’ll see how long that lasts.

Talking of frustrating and annoying situations – it’s tax season in the US. Even a masochist like myself struggles to eroticize that kind of pain. However, I was happy to see this article in the NY Times about Mistress Lori the Tax Domme. She specializes in tax preparation for anyone in the adult industry. While the US government might do everything it can to make life difficult for sex workers, that’s still not going to stop them demanding a share of their earnings. They really should change the motto on the dollar bill from ‘In God We Trust’ to ‘Fuck you. That’s why.’

Oddly enough, while I don’t use Mistress Lori for my tax returns, I do use an accountant recommended to me by a pro-domme. I figured if they could handle her complicated returns, they should have no problem with mine. So far that logic seems to have worked out pretty well. I just wish I could figure out a way to write off my session tributes. Medical expenses maybe? They do feature a lot of needles, sutures, electroshock and prostate exams.

I’ve never actually met my accountants, as everything is handled over email, but this is definitely how I picture them when I send in my paperwork. Given my horrible financial organization, this look of scorn, pity and disappointment would not be unwarranted.

This is from Femme Fatale Films, featuring Mistress Eleise and Mistress Miranda. It’s from a scene called ‘Not Good Enough.‘

Cosmo Fail

Mocking Cosmo articles on sex and BDSM is a long running tradition around here. There has been the good, the bad and the highly humorous. Unfortunately, their latest example would fall under the categories of dangerous and highly irresponsible.

The article in question is ‘What you need to know about breath play in BDSM‘ and right there, that title alone is pretty problematic. The answer to that should simply be ‘More than we can possibly cover in a Cosmo article. Don’t even think about it till you’ve done some proper research.’

Unfortunately the article itself is not so succinct. It does at least start with a warning about how dangerous it can be, but that message is then rather undercut by the remaining text talking about amazing orgasms and describing how to do it. It reminds me of the South Park scene where Kenny dies of autoerotic asphyxiation.

My biggest problem with the article is that it seems to to cover the two extremes of breath play and almost entirely omits the safer and fun middle areas. It talks about voluntarily holding your breath and mindful breathing, which are fine, but probably not all that hot for most people. The rest of it talks about various ways to put hands around neck and squeeze (or not), which seems very dangerous advice. There’s a long running debate in the BDSM community around whether breath play done like that can ever be safe – with a lot of experts saying it can’t – but I’m sure 100% of the community would agree that beginners doing it based on a short Cosmos article is a terrible idea. The reader is therefore left with an unsatisfying approach and a really dangerous one.

I actually love breath play and do it a lot, but never with anything near the windpipe or arteries in my neck. A simple hand across the mouth and nose is enough to block breathing and push my buttons around being controlled, while being way less risky. Even better than a hand is an ass. Face sitting, which can be clothed or unclothed, is both fun, sexy and a good way to limit air. Even an armpit can work, although it can be tricky to get a proper seal. It seems ridiculous to me that Cosmos barely touches on these much better approaches. For more advanced scenes I’ve played with using plastic wrap and gasmasks. I don’t think either of those would be great starting point for beginners, but they’d still be better than anything involving gripping around the neck.

I’m afraid I don’t have an attribution for this particular breath play shot.

Giggles

I enjoyed this story about a woman who breaks into uncontrollable laughter after she orgasms. Apparently the sex with her boyfriend is so good that it tickles her in all the right places.

I can relate, as I often find after heavy kinky play my post-orgasm reaction is laughter. Partly it’s the sense of absurdity that follows from surveying the scene of kinky carnage. There’ll be ropes and straps and odd toys and spiky things and two slightly sweaty bodies relaxing in the post scene glow. It’s inherently absurd in the best possible way.

I suspect the laughter is also a natural reaction to the release of high tension. I personally don’t get that reaction with regular sex, as that’s fun but not intense for me. Add pain and control and long drawn out teasing into the mix, and suddenly the contrast in the post-orgasm come down is so much stronger. It’s the difference between gently stretching and releasing a rubber band or stretching it till it snaps.

We laugh at jokes because they play with our expectations and contrast reality with the twist the punchline delivers. The incongruity of a joke makes it funny, as does the release in tension from the initial set-up.  I find much same thing logic applies to a kinky scene.

Of course, while I may laugh at the end of a session, the domme typically gets to laugh all the way through it. This is Lady Pim, who plays out of the Ritual Chamber in Toronto. You can find her professional site here.

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.

Contrasts with Natsukiss

There’s something quite beautiful about the contrasts in the image below. The dark background against the pale flesh and simple white stage. The extreme intensity of the bondage position against the simplicity of the setting. The taut body of the helpless submissive with the poised and comfortable position of the dominant. It’s a lovely shot of Mistress Natsukiss in action. Although, if I’m honest, I really prefer this less explicit but more intimate shot. Both are taken from the same twitter post.

Playing with Mistress Lucy

Before leaving LA I was fortunate enough to spend time with Mistress Lucy Khan. We had a lengthy and very enjoyable session featuring a smorgasbord of different activities all wrapped in a fun roleplay dynamic. Some things on the menu included cupping, piercing, scentplay, breathplay, tease, denial and general sadism to my delicate bits.

I particularly enjoyed the rope spiderweb that Mistress Lucy wove around me towards the end of the session. You can see it in this photograph. It was one of those arrangements that didn’t make much sense to me as it was being constructed, as it didn’t feel like it’d hold me properly. Then Mistress Lucy pulled hard on the bottom two ropes and everything tightened and magically fell into place. I particularly liked the way she tied it off around my big toes. There’s always an interesting sense of vulnerability that comes with toe bondage, given how sensitive the soles of the feet are.

Reflecting on the session later that evening, still floating on buzz created, it struck me that one sign of a world class professional domme is the commitment and intensity she can bring to a session with someone she rarely sees. It had been around 9 months since we’d last got together, yet it didn’t feel like that. Mistress Lucy created and held a bubble that made it very easy for me to relax into subspace and exist with her in the moment.

This image is from Mistress Lucy’s twitter feed. That’s not me in the image, but we did indulge in some similar play.