Tag: Photograph

Strange Reaction

I’ve experienced a strange emotional response in recent weeks. People hitting me has made me angry. That’s obviously not unusual for most people but for me, in the context of kink, it’s very strange. Corporal play was one of my primary fantasies for many years and a staple of my scenes. Yet recently it has generated less of an “Ooohhh, yeah….” and more of a “Hey! That hurts goddamn it!”

I have no idea why this is. Other painful things like needles, electricity, clamps and miscellaneous spiky things still get me buzzed and into that submissive floaty space. I can lean into their pain and relax under the dominants control. Yet corporal play had triggered the bad kind of ‘fight or flight’ response where I just want to make it stop.

I’m really hoping it’s a temporary thing. Maybe it’s to do with external stress or me being general angry at the state of the world. I’m not conscious of that kind of mental shift, but clearly something is awry. I’ve never met a domme yet who didn’t enjoy some form of corporal play, and I’d hate to lose such an important part of my kinky repertoire. Anyone else find they’ve had a favorite activity suddenly twist on them like this?

While my physical response might be screwed up, my visual response to corporal is still working just fine. I love this action shot from the Glasgow based Mistress Scarlet (found on her twitter feed).

Finding the Edge

The Daily Dot has published an interesting article on Edge Play. One of the questions it raises is what exactly is edge play? Before reading the article I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure.

I think there are three basic definitions you can come up with. They key question is what line is being played up to?

  1. Is it the edge of the submissive’s comfort zone?
  2. Is it the edge of mainstream BDSM activities?
  3. Is it the edge of life itself?

I’ve personally always assumed the definition was (2). That means things like scat, branding or very intense corporal play that draws blood would count as edge play. I’ve also known some professional kinksters who use the definition of (3), limiting it to activities involving knifes, guns, choking, etc. In that case edge play is the kind of thing that might land you not just in the emergency room but ultimately in the morgue.

What this article suggests is that (1) is actually the correct definition of edge play. Which seems kind of odd to me. Everyone has limits and a comfort zone, and that’s going to be in a different place for each submissive. So with that definition it almost becomes a meaningless term. Normally I’d just assume it was an article from a journalist who didn’t really understand the subject, but if features quotes from genuine experts in the field.

What constitutes edge play is different for everyone. I consider edge play to be play that occurs at the edge of what one can bear. Play where there is enough trust to push past what is comfortable creates the possibility of a new outcome.
Mistress Blunt

The article also goes on to list a 24/7 dynamic as another example of edge play, which is something that I’d suggest exists on an entirely different dimension to specific BDSM activities. So where exactly is the edge correctly drawn? Is it just one of those things that is always defined with respect to the person involved? Is my edge just someone else’s light warm-up?

Here’s the aforementioned Mistress Blunt exploring an activity that I guess could be an edge play candidate – mummification. This is from this tweet.

The Thrill of the Tease

My Los Angles trip got off to a fabulous start playing with Mistress Iris. It had been a while since we’d played together and it was lovely to catch up with her again.

I’m always fascinated by the different ways sadism and masochism can manifest. There’s the obvious physical and emotional varieties which I regularly blog about here. Mistress Iris specializes in the rarer kind that manifests at the fine edge of frustrated pleasure and the unsatisfied ache of desire. If you can maintain the necessary balance it’s a wonderfully fine edge to slide along. It’s rare to get me growling unless physical pain is involved, but I was definitely doing my best angry puppy impression in our session today.

This is Mistress Iris deploying her tease talents on some virgin catholic boys with Liara Roux. This is taken from this tweet, via Mistress Iris’s twitter feed.

Heading South

Much as I love the Pacific Northwest, the first few months of the year can be pretty depressing. It’s damp, cold and grey. That means it’s therefore time for paltego to head south and catch some Californian sun and kink. I’m going to be in Los Angeles for the next few days, sitting by the pool and meeting up with some great LA dommes. Posting may be a touch more erratic than usual, depending how heavily I hit the cocktail bars.

While I’m trying to find my suitcase, I’ll leave you with this image from Brazilian photographer Fabio DaMotta. I found it via this Vice article on him. I personally love this combination of art, decoration and bondage. It’s both beautiful and objectifying in the best possible way.

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.

Kinkyversary

Today is a significant date for me. It’s exactly 10 years to the day from my very first session with a pro-domme. Which means it’s exactly 10 years from my first shared kinky experience and my first physical exploration of BDSM.

I wrote about the causative event for this a few weeks back. Despite the fact I made a decision to see a pro-domme before Christmas 2009, the anal retentive researcher that shares my brain took several weeks to figure out exactly who that should be. The final recommendation from my internal librarian was Lady Lydia McLane. I think a big part of that was the easy contact form she had on her website that simply allowed me to tick activity boxes rather than writing scary words in an email. The fact she was a stunningly attractive redhead might also have played a small part in the process. It turned out to be an inspired choice. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to guide me on the start of my kinky journey.

Lady Lydia has been retired for some years now. Her playspace, where I experienced so many of my kinky firsts, was razed and turned into condos. Such is the story of Seattle over the last decade. However, it did seem appropriate that I celebrated my kinkyversary tonight with another amazing Seattle domme – Savannah Sly. I hadn’t particularly planned to session on this specific date, but it ended up feeling appropriate that I did so. Particularly because we were playing in the same neighborhood, and I parked in almost exactly the same spot I did back on January 28th 2010.

My first session consisted mostly of a simple caning. Tonight’s also featured the heavy use of a cane, but Savannah also added paddles, staples, needles, electricity and breathplay into the mix. My kinky appetites have expanded somewhat over the last decade. What hasn’t changed is the joy each session brings me and the gratitude I feel to the dommes involved. They’ve literally changed my life.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on my kinky journey to share in subsequent posts. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a shot of Lady Lydia that captures the essence of her play. Astonishingly beautiful, intensely sadistic and so happy in the moment.

This is Lady Lydia shooting for kink.com with EuroSex back in 2007.

Chained Hogtie

I typically group chains with handcuffs when it comes to bondage. They’ve got striking visual appeal, they sound great when you ratchet them tight or clink them against each other, but they’re not all that practical. If they’re tight then they’re uncomfortable and if they’re loose then they’re irrelevant.

However, I might have to make an exception for this hogtie set-up by Daddy An Li. The combination of leather and metal is smart, as you get the tight comfortable grip of the leather with the visual and psychological appeal of the chains. Plus, using chains with a hogtie creates the striking juxtaposition of his bent soft body against the tight unyielding metal. It’s a tough bondage position at the best of times and this really up the perceived intensity.

You can see more like this from Daddy An Li on her twitter feed and her Stars AVN site.

Vintage Breathplay

It’s rare to see this activity in a vintage shot. Corporal punishment and bondage is fairly common in older shots, and medical play not unheard of, but I can’t recall seeing breathplay before.

It makes me smile, as it’s an activity I love. I particularly like the eye contact they are making, as that’s a key part of any breathplay scene for me. People talk about power exchange as an abstract D/s concept, but breathplay creates a focus that crystallizes that exchange. The power over someone’s breath is literally life and death. If I’m giving that up then I want that other person to be very much in that moment with me.

I found this image via this tweet.

Medical Myths

The story of how the vibrator was invented by Victorian doctors to cure women of hysteria is a well known one. There are plenty of online articles that refer to it. I’ve even referenced it in past posts. It has an obvious appeal. Who doesn’t like the idea of a Victorian lady telling her staid husband that she feels a burst of hysteria coming on and she needs to schedule a trip to Dr. NimbleFingers to relieve the tension?

Unfortunately – and you can probably guess where this was going – it turns out not to be true. As this NYTimes article by Hallie Lieberman makes clear, it was invented as a general device for health. Doctors did know there was a risk of sexual excitement, but were very keen to steer away from that usage. It was only thanks to women recognizing its potential that the vibrator gained its sexual usage and benefits.

I particularly enjoyed Hallie Lieberman’s gender swapped example of how unbelievable the hysteria story is.

Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems; that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.

While that doesn’t sound likely, it does sound like a great scenario for a femdom roleplay. I would happily be a hysterical Victorian man who needs to be restrained  by nurses  and cured via mechanically assisted means. Obviously it’d all be done for my own good.

This is Lady Annisa and Mistress Miranda, two pro-dommes from the UK who are both brilliant at medical scenes. I’m sure that they’d be up for adding a historical twist to them.