The beauty of dominant women
I don’t normally like to feature images with big watermarks across the middle of them. However, I’m going to make an exception in this case, because the bondage is just so cool. I’m not exactly sure how it was achieved, but I’d love to try it out. It’s dramatic, aesthetically pleasing and hot in its level of objectification.
This is very clearly by Mistress Chiaki found via this tweet.
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.
The big news story of the day is the new strain of coronavirus that has been spreading around the world. With people dying and the economy tanking, it seems somewhat silly to talk about its affect on kink and sex. However, those are the primary subjects of this blog and you get what you pay for, so here we go.
The key question for anyone with either casual play partners or when doing professional sessions is: What level of precaution makes sense? Do you keep going as normal? Stop until we’re told the pandemic has passed? Only do scenes involving full body prophylactics or bullwhips with a reach of longer than 6 feet?
It gets even more complicated for pro-dommes and other sex workers. On one hand getting sick from close interaction is a major risk. On the other, a stream of cancellations and clients being afraid to book means no income. I’ve already seen a lot of social media commentary on this, with a wide variety of emphasis on risk avoidance versus lost opportunities. Some professionals are temporarily relaxing their cancellation penalties to discourage playing while sick. I even saw one suggestion of only seeing clients from certain ‘safe’ areas, both to reduce risk and to reassure clients from those areas that sessions would be low risk.
For those without specific government rules around quarantine, I think everyone has to draw their own lines in the sand. Guidance around washing hands and not touching your face aren’t much help when it comes to deciding on the safety of say genital torture versus smothering. Although I would love to have the Surgeon Generals opinion on that.
The one piece of advice I’d give would be to be as transparent as possible with your play partners. Consent is about making an informed decision, and information is obviously a very necessary part of that. If I have any minor thing pop up in the days before I play, I’ll always email my prospective play partner to let them know. That gives them plenty of time to assess the risk and decide if they want to cancel, reschedule or wait to see how it develops. If I end up too sick to play, they at least they got an early heads-up. Obviously nobody should ever be playing with others if they think they have the new strain of coronavirus, but for other bugs I’ve been surprised at the variety of reactions. Some pro-dommes are OK as long as I can stagger to their playspace, where others have strict rules around staying away until fully healthy.
So share your health information and share it early. If it’s a regular seasonal cold then both parties need to make an informed decision. If it might be COVID-19 then get tested and stay in quarantine if necessary.
This medical themed image is from Domina Contessa Cara. She is based in Essen and her professional site is available here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.‘
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.
