Tag: Pro-domme

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).

Delicious!

At first glance this seems like a perfectly ordinary photograph. Just an attractive masked lady drinking a can of La Croix in a kitchen while a naked man with strange headgear cooks in the background. I’m sure that counts as any Tuesday in Domina Yuki’s world. However, if you look closely, very closely, at the can in the original fullsized image, there is an subtle hidden message. For anyone whose device doesn’t let them zoom effectively, I’ve done the work for you here. There’s absolutely no danger of ever having a shortage of that particular product.

From this tweet in Domina Yuki’s twitter feed.