A hint of vanilla

The post title sounds like it’d be more suitable to Martha Stewart’s blog, but instead I’m going to talk about a (relatively) recent post from Mistress Rex. Specifically there are two sections in her post I wanted to pick up on, one negatively and one positively.

The negative is more of a quibble than anything, triggered by a certain phrasing in the post.

There are endless complaints by Dommes on various social media platforms regarding contact from clients who don’t “get it” – men who don’t know their place and compose emails that in no way defer to the addressee;
Mistress Rex

It often strikes me that some pro-dommes want to have it both ways. They’re understandably insistent that session play doesn’t carry across to the real world. The D/s dynamic is very much a timed and negotiated agreement, lasting just while the session does. They don’t want to have to deal with guys acting submissively and trying to force them into a mistress role when communicating outside of a session. Yet at the same time, some of them often seem happy to carry across D/s elements when it turns out to be useful to them.

I should emphasize at this point that I’m not referring to Mistress Rex herself (who I’ve sadly never interacted with professionally), or any of the dommes I’ve named and written about on this blog in the past (who all behaved entirely professionally). But the word ‘defer’ in that quote, along with the bit about ‘know their place’, sat uncomfortably with me and put me in mind of some on-line behavior I’ve seen and experienced. For example, a domme claiming she can’t be bothered to check email to often, so slaves should be prepared to email her several times and not get impatient if she doesn’t respond with a week. Or domme’s using stupid capitalization rules to put me into a specific role when we’re only just making initial email contact. Or domme’s expecting some sort of different or special allowances when sessions have to be cancelled or re-arranged.

Outside a session a domme will get respect, politeness and consideration from me, but not deference. And I’ll expect exactly the same thing back from her in return. Bleeding the D/s dynamics across that divide is only OK if that’s part of an ongoing and agreed relationship, and not if it’s simply a double standard at work.

That minor quibble aside, the positive part of the post that really spoke to me is quoted below.

…I like inviting vanilla into sessions rather than leaving it at the door, because I like there to be a perceivable exchange of power right there between the two of us. I don’t want to keep vanilla at a safe distance, outside the walls of the dungeon where it can be preserved and slipped back into unaltered; I want it right there in the room where it can be mutilated, transformed.

This is what I reckon is the problem with many commercial sessions: you can’t make it real until it gets real. You can’t force it; the organic exchange does not occur by walking through a door.
Mistress Rex

One of the things that put me off going to see a pro-domme for the longest time was the idea of the transition. On one hand I had this mental picture of a cliched pro-domme session (naked guy, on all fours, leashed, getting whipped) and on the other hand I had me. Normal, boring me, standing in a room with a woman I’d never met before. Somehow it seemed impossible to see how one vision could transition to the other. I didn’t want to fake it or act out a role that wasn’t me. This was supposed to be BDSM, not the local amateur dramatics society .

Fortunately, when I did finally arrange a session, I was lucky enough to find a pro-domme in Lady Lydia who really understood what Mistress Rex is talking about here. When we play there isn’t a hard transition point. We don’t suddenly go from friendly chatting into full D/s mode. There are jokes. A little two way teasing and perhaps some prodding of old fading marks. Then slowly, a little edge slips in. She’s still has a smile, but now there’s a sadistic glint in it. The pain levels go up and my options go down. Over the next fifteen or twenty minutes the balance and interaction between us may shift back and forth, but there’s only one general direction, and that’s into our respective top/bottom headspaces that lie at the heart of the session. Without any force or artificiality she takes the sensible plain vanilla me that walked in the door and mutates him into a far more interesting flavor.

I wasn’t exactly sure what image was best fitted to illustrate this post, so I just went into my folder of general images I like. This one is from the Femdom Proper tumblr site and caught my eye for her quirky smile.

Getting a good grip with a nice smile

Helping out in the kitchen

Washing and drying dishes is always a very dull task. Endless scraping and rinsing with the constant risk of chipping something expensive. Mindful of this, it looks like Mistress Juri has kindly decided to help out with some distracting torments. It’s unclear just how grateful her slave is for this additional entertainment, but at least she looks like she’s enjoying it.

That second image actually shows one of my favourite activities – a mistress pushing against clips or clamps with her body. There’s something very erotic about taking what should be a simple sensual pleasure, two bodies rubbing against each other, and adding a sharp twist of pain to it. I remember a session where, after a lot of painful torture and the application of many sharp clips, the mistress (Lady Lydia) gently hugged me. At first this was very relaxing and calming, a tender moment after a lot of pain. But then she slowly began to slide against me, dragging the clips along, and I screamed in her arms. I still get happy masochist shivers thinking about that moment. This shot isn’t quite as intense as that was but, then again, I wasn’t dealing with tableware at the time.

Mistress Juri in kitchen with slave

Mistress Juri in kitchen with slave
The images come from Mistress Juri’s blog. I believe she works as a pro-domme out of the Mistress Club in Ginza (although I’m relying on google translate for that). Bizarrely when I look at what I assume is her professional information page via google translate, it appears she’s grouped her interests into “Play fighting”, “Slut play”, “Soft play” and “White men can’t jump.” What is up with that final translation? The first three make sense, but I can’t imagine what the original phrase was that google translate decided was best represented by a Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson movie.

I know why the caged slave sings

It’s because someone is shocking his genitals with an ErosTek unit.

Readers will be happy to know that this is the last of my “What I did on my holidays” posts. That was always the first school essay assigned for the fall term when I was child. In those days it always ended up being about sandcastles and ice-cream on the beach. These days it’s more about whips, electroshock and being pissed on. But I guess spanking and screaming are still common elements, so not everything has changed.

The shots below were taken during my double domme session with Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li. The quality isn’t great, as they were snapped quickly with an iPhone mid-session, but given then inventive nature of the set-up I thought it was worth sharing (click images to enlarge).

Our session space had a narrow free standing cage I was told to climb into. Once the door was locked they started attaching vicious little clips all over my body and tying them off to the cage bars. Very quickly they built up a web of tense twine and painful clamps. The last image on the right shows a good close-up of that. With dozens of clips pulling tightly in all directions it made any slight movement very painful. Swaying forward to reduce the strain on the nipples and cock would pull the clips attached my back and lower legs, and vice-versa. Of course that’s when the ErosTek unit and its remote control fob came into play. It’s quite hard to stand still when your genitals are being shocked with a very large number of volts. And amazingly that wasn’t the worst part. Standing still while Mistress Yuki zapped my cock was tricky, standing still while Mistress Ai-Li tickled the sides of my feet was impossible. That was a sneaky trick and resulted in much screaming.

Caged with clips and electrostim Caged with clips and electrostim Clips on chest

A little slap and tickle

Some dommes seem to naturally project a sadistic aura. I don’t mean that as a necessarily good or bad thing (although I do kind of like it), but simply as an observation on the visual impression they make. Some people, a minority, just naturally throw off a certain vibe. Much as some actors seem born to play certain types of character, some dommes seem to naturally embody certain characteristics, whether it’s playfulness, seriousness, superiority or sadism.

Mistress Simone Kross is one of those dommes who possesses that sadistic aura. I’ve not yet had chance to session with her (unfortunately), so I’ve no idea if my impression aligns with her natural personality. I’m sure like all good dommes she can adapt as necessary, and play in many different ways. But every image I see of her (and she’s featured before on this blog here and here) gives me a pleasant shiver of masochistic delight.

Take the shot below as an example. She just has a few feathers and a little wooden paddle. In any other situation that might look like a prelude to some light spanking and a little sensual tickling. Gentle BDSM foreplay for the kinky beginner perhaps. But somehow, in her hands, it looks like all she’d need to bring the most hardened masochist to his knees.

Simone Kross with paddle and feathersMistress Simone Kross is a professional dominatrix based out of Nashville. Her website contains this contact page should you wish to arrange a session.

Dine and Domme Tour 2011 – SF Leg

Planning a vacation is always tricky. With finite time available there’s always a lot of trade-offs that have to be made. My recent trip was no different, and some intriguing places and people had to be deferred until another time. However, there was always one constant that was never in danger of getting cut – session time with Mistress Yuki in San Francisco.

I last saw her back in May (posted here) and knew at some point I’d have to pay a return visit. Like last time I divided our play over a couple of sessions. The first session was three hours of CBT, NT, corporal, slapping, smothering and many other wonderful things. One particularly stand out moment was the forced consumption of her golden liquid. I’ve done a number of golden shower scenes in the past, and typically there’s a lot of spray, with liquid going everywhere. They’re fun in a splashy sense, but I’m often too busy coughing and spluttering to appreciate the D/s dynamic. This was very different. Controlled. Forceful. Deliberate. Not a drop was wasted. Each swallow was on command. I get a little spacey even just thinking back on it, almost a week later.

For our second day we arranged something a little different. I knew Mistress Yuki enjoyed playing with her friend Mistress Ai-Li, so this seemed like an ideal opportunity to try my first double domme session. As you might expect it was a pretty memorable experience. There are some obvious advantages to having two beautiful women simultaneously beating you up. There are more hands available to wield implements. It’s easier to overlay and overload contrasting sensations. Scene transitions can flow more quickly. They can play mind games, one offering comfort while the other swings the cane. And of course, when you’re lying on the ground up at two pairs of long gorgeous legs, the visual stimulation is pretty amazing as well!

Outside of these obvious benefits of a two domme session, I was also struck by the change in the dynamic it created. I suspect this is something peculiar to my weird brain, but it somehow seemed to make the situation more serious. To give it greater purpose and intent. I have difficulty getting my head around why this is so, let alone articulating it, so I apologize if I ramble a little here. Thinking about this aspect over dinner later, I decided it was something to do with the greater discontinuity from my everyday experience.  Now admittedly getting tied up and tormented by a single domme isn’t exactly a normal everyday occurrence for most people. But a man and a woman playing together in a sexual way, albeit with an unusual definition of ‘sexual’, seems almost like an extension of a more traditional interaction. A 1:1 dynamic is something we’re all very attuned to dealing with in relationships. Adding a third person into this mix breaks that, at least for me. It makes my subconscious hunt around for a new model to understand the interaction, and it comes up with something far more functional and workmanlike. This isn’t two people playing together. It’s two people getting together to hurt a third person in the most effective and efficient way they can. They’re working together to achieve a goal, rather than each of them interacting separately with the submissive.

Don’t get me wrong. I like that! I just find it interesting that adding an extra person doesn’t simply change the obvious things. It also (for me at least) flips some internal switches in how I perceive the D/s dynamic. It actually becomes more objectifying, even when doing exactly the same activities I might do with a single domme.

Anyway, my odd ramblings aside, the bottom line is that double domme sessions are a lot of fun. If you get chance to do one with Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-Li, or even just a chance to play with either of them individually, then grasp that opportunity with both hands.

Only having three days in San Francisco and doing sessions on two of them meant I didn’t get a lot of chance to do much else vacation-wise. It’s a city I know well, so that wasn’t a major issue. For the dining part of the trip, SF was less successful overall than LA. I ate at Bar Agricole (great anchovies and cocktails, rest of the food was just OK), Atelier Crenn (some astonishing food but very pretentious) and Quince (surprisingly disappointing).

Mistress Yuki and Mistress Ai-LiImage shows Mistress Ai-Li (left) and Mistress Yuki (right). Both are pro-dommes based in San Francisco. Click their respective links for session scheduling information.

Dine and Domme Tour 2011 – LA Leg

As I mentioned in a prior post I took a few days vacation recently. My plan was to get away from work, and spend a few relaxing and fun filled days in Los Angeles followed by San Francisco.

My original itinerary for the LA leg of the trip was to do some shopping, catch some sun in Santa Monica or Malibu and eat in some really good restaurants. There are many excellent dommes in LA (Ms Justine Cross, Lady V, Lexi Sindel, etc.) but I already had plans to session twice in San Francisco, and there’s only so many beatings a week my body can take. However, I was lurking on The Hang and spotted a Mistress Lexine commenting that she loved doing scent based play. I’ve posted here in the past about how much I appreciate a woman’s natural scent, but oddly it’s a type of session I rarely indulge in. I always seem to end up focusing on the bondage and pain activities. This therefore seemed like an excellent opportunity to put that right.

The session itself turned out to be a lot of fun. I’ve posted a full review over at The Hang, so I won’t bother to rehash the details here. It definitely made me want to try more of a similar type. It’s interesting how it changed the ‘normal’ (for me) focus of attention in a session. With intense pain play the focus can often be inwards. It becomes so hard to think that I’m aware of nothing but the sensation of pain, what I’m feeling at that exact moment. Bondage and lower levels of pain can move the focus outwards more, allowing me to appreciate the D/s dynamic, but it’s still not a focus centered on the domme. Instead the focus moves, balanced between myself, the domme and the intangible thing between us. In contrast, a worship and scent session puts the domme very much at the center of attention. All I’m aware of is her. I’m not distracted by pain or restrictions on my body. Instead my senses are filled with her scent and her body. It makes for a very different but enjoyable experience.

As for the other parts of the LA trip, the shopping was good, the sun was hot and the restaurants (mostly) kicked ass. I’m sure nobody comes to this blog for food reviews, but just in case anyone does have fine dining plans in LA, I’ll briefly note my thoughts. I ate at Spago (superb, but make sure you get the tasting menu), Jose Andres SAAM (amazing individual flavors, but didn’t come together as a meal), The Royce at The Langham (more traditional tasting menu, but extremely well executed) and Hatfield’s Restaurant (disappointing).

Mistress LexineImage is of Mistress Lexine, a pro-domme based in LA. Her website for scheduling sessions is here.

Emotional Masochism

HMP over at Her Majesty’s Plaything pointed me at an interesting thread over on Max Fisch’s forum. The initial posting by Miss Darcy was mainly about submissives over-committing and going too far in trying to please. But it then evolved into a discussion about drama, emotional involvement and boundary management with Miss Darcy, Irene Boss and alx. The relevant posts are here, then here, then here, and…well you can probably figure the rest out.

HMP’s original post quoted at length from the thread, and I don’t want to simply repeat his post. Instead I want to pick out a particular aspect of the play they’re talking about.

Moths to the flame, they will be attracted to the scenes that upset them the most. It’s just the nature of things when emotional masochism is part of a person’s psycho sexual makeup. Unfortunately if you are going to practice within the extremes you can expect this behavior to continue
Irene Boss

…..forced bi, cuckolding, and full toilet are three of my favorite things. With my emphasis on humiliation and mind control I seem to both attract and be attracted to the delicate, fascinating psyches of slaves, some of whom inevitably gravitate towards emotional masochism. It is the psychological play that grips me, and in some ways I think that is the most dangerous kinky activity out there.
Miss Darcy

It seems strange, but I realized as I was reading this, that I’d never really thought about emotional masochism. I’d only ever thought about it as a physical concept. This is no doubt because that’s the way I’m wired. Any anger, insults or humiliation in a scene really kills the mood for me. Cruelty and objectification are great, but being insulted quickly pulls me out of submissive mode and into ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ mode. However, regardless of my personal wiring, in hindsight it seems pretty odd that in years of thinking about femdom I’d never really pondered emotional masochism.

Now I do come to think about, I realize how incredibly difficult it must be to explore, on both side of the D/s equation. When I play the thing I’m trying to ultimately optimize, my emotional state, is not the thing that’s being directly messed with. A great session might be very cathartic and leave me emotionally on a high, but it’s not always necessary to get there. I can just have a good session and end up feeling happy and lightly buzzed. In contrast emotional play seems far more risky and volatile. It could be fantastic if you have a cathartic breakthrough, but terrible if you don’t reach that tipping point. To use a slightly odd but apt analogy, it seems a little like flying from an aircraft carrier. Once you commit to it there’s either going to be a plane in the air or a big expensive splash. There’s no middle ground.

The other thing that struck me was how differently the same activities can be viewed. For example, Miss Darcy talks about cuckolding as an example of emotional masochism. I find cuckolding an intriguing idea, although I’ve not had the chance to experience it. But if I was to do it, I’d always think about it in the context of tease and denial. A case of – “He gets to enjoy the greatest pleasure while you’re frustrated.” I could never do it as – “You’re not enough of a man so I need this guy to satisfy me.” That would just be annoying, and life is already too full of annoying things.

Similarly any forced-bi play would have to be in the context of a hot sexual scene enabling her pleasure. Doing it as a kind of punishment or humiliation would just seem weird to me.

I guess I can be grateful that, through no skill of my own, I got lucky in the nature/nurture dice game that molds our kinks. Physical masochism just leaves me with some odd marks to explain. I don’t have to risk an emotional rollercoaster or a nervous breakdown each time I play.

– Image removed on request – 

Needles with Lady Lydia

This is one of those occasional posts where I post some original content, in the form of images from one of my own scenes. Some of the past examples of this have included butterfly boarding, suturing and saline injections.

Like those previous scenes, this one was done with the wonderful Lady Lydia McLane, and contains activities some might consider edge play. There are images of piercings and of some blood smeared on skin. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to see, I advise you not to click through the link below.

I feel I should also point out that I don’t only play in this fashion. I’m a bit of a kinky omnivore, and regularly enjoy a very wide variety of activities. However, I think there are enough shots on the web of people getting caned, bound, smothered, flogged, etc. The world probably doesn’t need more from me, and so I don’t tend to try and capture those kind of scenes for posterity.

All that said, for anyone who hasn’t already moved onto the next post at this point, and wants to see what you get when you mix a great domme with a skinny British guy and a selection of needles, feel free to click through to the images and scene description.

Haute Cuisine

The images below come to you courtesy of Mistress Troy Orleans, a pro-domme based out of NYC. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing with her, but by all accounts she’s one of the most skillful and talented dommes around. Not to mention very well equipped. The first image shows her bed/cage combo, along with a selection of her leather gear in action. The second image is something I’ve never seen before – a bondage suspension system using springs. I’d imagine heavy bondage combined with that kind of loose floating sensation would create an intense headspace. Particularly when it has been accessorized with the drip feed shown here.

I know in some kinky circles there’s a strong reaction to this kind of expensive custom equipment and leather gear. You don’t need all that stuff to create an intense scene or be a true domme is the cry. And of course they’re right. You don’t need it. In fact on a daily basis it’d no doubt become quickly tiresome. Nobody wants to get home from work each day and immediately jump straight into a suspended leather bodybag. But I look on these kind of images as a child might stare at a poster for Disneyland. I wouldn’t want to live there, but my God, it looks like it’d be fun to try out occasionally. Great femdom doesn’t have to feature expensive equipment and clothes, in the same way great cooking doesn’t have to use expensive ingredients. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to splurge on an out of this world experience when the mood takes you.

Mistress Troy Orleans and bed/cage combo

Mistress Troy Orleans spring suspension system

What do you want from me, blood?

Warning: This post contains discussion of blood play, so if that’s not something you want to read about, I suggest skipping to the next one.

After yesterday’s post on pretentious art with a kinky theme, I thought in this post it’d be good to look at some kinky artwork that I actually liked. The work in question is by Ms Sade Ami and was created by using drips of blood from a masochists cock to paint onto a large canvas. You can see the general setup from the first two images below, and the final completed work in the right-hand image (click to enlarge). A full gallery showing the whole process in a lot more detail (along with a video clip) is available here.

Painting with bodily fluids is nothing new. Andre Serrano is probably most famous for it, but lots of modern artists have dabbled with their own (and others) internal juices. It was even the theme of one of the very early splatter movies, made by Hershell G Lewis back in the 1960’s, featuring a crazy artist searching for just the perfect shade of red.

Ms Sade’s outfit reminds me a little of a horror movie. The mask and the apron are imposing and just a little scary. But I like the final work and the process that went into creating it. I often find there’s a lot of creative energy that gets channeled into a session, and this looks like a fascinating way to direct that into something tangible.

Ms Sade preparing to paintMs Sade finished painting'She is going to be mean' by Ms Sade