Tag: Hood

More of a good thing

What’s the one thing you typically want after a vacation? In my case it’s normally another vacation. This year, courtesy of some friends heading to San Francisco, that’s exactly what I’m about to enjoy. After relaxing at home over Christmas and New Year I’m going to take a long weekend in the Bay Area. Of course this is only putting off the inevitable return to work, but putting off the inevitable is pretty much what life is all about.

Kinky shenanigans may well be on the agenda. Hopefully I’ll fit in some blogging around them. In the meantime, given that I’m feeling pretty happy about the idea of vacation2, I’ll finish with a happy image. Regular readers may recognize Mistress T and Mistress Sidonia in this shot. I’m afraid I don’t know the name of the smiling gentleman in the hood.

Happy TrioI found this on the Happy BDSM tumblr.

Kicks but no licks

I’m safely back from San Francisco after a very enjoyable weekend. Kinky fun was had, and potentially will be blogged about, but I did miss the major kinky event of the weekend – the Dore Alley Fair (AKA the Up Your Alley Fair). I hadn’t realized it was on until a friend who lives in the area mentioned it. He’s not kinky (as far as I know), and doesn’t know about my kinks, so I was amused to here the hushed tones he used to describe it. He made it sound like a cross between Caligula’s court and 120 Days of Sodom, and felt that I’d risk being traumatized should I inadvertently stumble into it.

I was less amused to read this guest post by Denali Winter on Kitty Stryker’s blog about some new rules in place for the fair.

Volunteers and cops alike informed Denali that “no touch that might provoke ejaculation” was allowed, but that they could kick or punch their submissive in the balls as much as they liked.

Even touching a penis in a chastity device was banned, which seems particularly odd given they’re specifically designed to prevent ejaculation. So anyone likely to be traumatized by sucking or fucking is now safe to attend Dore Alley, but those sensitive to people being kicked and beaten should continue to steer clear. It’s a strange set of rules, particularly for a San Francisco street fair, but sadly I’m not all that surprised.

DoreAlleyThe image above is from the fair itself. It features the post writer, Denali Winter (attempting to shoot material for her site Petplay Palace), along with Mistress Alice, Mistress Clair and her submissive Beau. If you’re at all into pet play you might want to check out the site.

Can’t get no respect

Miss Pearl has written some wise words on when it’s appropriate to block and ignore a submissive. Her post is primarily targeted at dommes communicating online and the warning signs they should look out for. However, it strikes me that the underlying sentiment behind most of her points applies to all genders and kinky persuasions, and both lifestyle and professional.

For example, any pro-domme who immediately emphasizes her dominant role or my submissive one in our initial communication is a red flag for me. Similarly, if she can’t be bothered to pay attention to what I’ve written, doesn’t respect my time, or if she appears to be stereotyping me into some pre-defined submissive roles, then those are also troubling signs. I’ve never yet had a good experience where I got a bad initial feeling, but went ahead with it anyway.

I believe one of the key themes here is mutual respect. That’s respect for each other as a person and individual, not simply a D or an s or any other letter of the alphabet. It’s respect for each others time and energy. Respect for personal safety and the social situation. A lot of the issues I’ve seen have flowed from a lack of respect on one side or the other.

Of course showing someone respect doesn’t also mean you can’t do terribly evil things to them. Like make them sleep on the floor, naked, hooded and in chains and chastity. That’s cruel, but she’ll still respect him in the morning.

Sleeping on the floor at the English Mansion

This is of course from the English Mansion site, and I believe the sleeping beauty is Mistress Sidonia. I originally found the image on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Manipulations and modifications

I’m continuing the Photoshop theme from yesterday’s post with this image. It’s another example of a well done modification that sort of works but also clearly looks a little off.

The original image, with it’s chained goat and serious looking Evangelia Randou has a disquieting erotic aspect all of its own. Somehow that high necked dress is sexier than a lot of the crazy fetish wear I regularly see. I don’t think dropping in the hooded guy really improves the shot, but the original is so strange, it almost survives the change. I wonder if the man in the mask is also the manipulator of the image?

Manipulated image of man in a mask

No pain, no gain

Are you a male submissive? Do you want to get fit, but hate going to the gym? Do you live in anywhere near Woolloomooloo in Sydney Australia? For the two readers I have left at this point – good news! There’s a Forced Fitness Fetish Boot Camp run by a Mistress Anna that sounds perfect for you. As the article describes it combines kink and fitness into an intriguing bundle.

During the class I push their limits as I demand them to work harder. I make them kiss my boots while they perform push-ups, sit on their laps while they tricep dip, sit on them while they plank for core stability, and I smack their bottom with a paddle if the job isn’t up to my expectations and so on. It is fun, entertaining, and we are keeping fit.

If you’re interested and conveniently geographically located then Mistress Anna’s website is here. I’ll finish with a photograph of what lucky trainees may have in store.

Update: Thanks to the comments of The Half Heard I can also point you towards a lengthy clip from an Australian TV show that shows Mistress Anna and the fitness camp in action.

Mistress Anna and her Forced Fitness Fetish Bootcamp

Enjoying the sights

My solution to easy blogging while on vacation is to shamelessly steal promote other great blogs. In this case it’s the work of photographer Natasha Gornik.

This setting should be recognizable to anyone who has visited Central Park in NYC. The horse drawn carriages are the more famous means of viewing the park (and have drawn the ire of the new mayor), but this looks like one of the pedicabs. Typically they carry tourists, but in this case it’s Mistress Alex and Keith who are enjoying the sights.

I love the contrast between the formal and the fetish in the shot. You can read Natasha’s take on shooting it, along with other images from the scene, in her original post.

Mistress Alex and Keith in Central Park

A pinch in a cage

Plan A for today’s post was to write up my experiences with Mistresses Yuki and Ai-Li from last weekend. Unfortunately I invested too much time in the creation of competitive interactive multimedia experiences (i.e. playing videogames on my couch) and it’s now too late for that. So Plan B became find something interesting on tumblr and post that.

I picked a few tumblrs completely at random, and followed a few links at random, and within a few minutes I spotted a post with the beautiful shots below. I loved the severity of the cage and the hood combined with the tenderness of the pinch and hand on the head. Something about the space seemed familiar however, as did the dominant. Could that actually be Yuki? Sure enough, a quick check on her tumblr showed that it was. Millions of erotic tumblr images floating around and that’s the one I stumble across to post. I’ve actually played in that space, and I think it’s the same cage that’s behind me in this shot. Small, small world.

YukiAndCage1
YukiAndCage2

Perversity (of the wrong kind)

Most of my posts tend to the positive and upbeat. This one might be a bit more of a rant. Let’s put a nicer spin on it, and call it constructive feedback. It’s aimed squarely at dominants and centers on something that has happened to me too many times to be a coincidence.

Here’s my rant feedback: When you’re playing with someone fairly new, and that person has outlined a few limits (hard or soft) to stay away from, then stay the hell away from those limits. Don’t try and figure out exactly where the line is drawn. Don’t try and determine exactly what about the activity makes it a limit. Don’t toy with anything vaguely related. Just avoid, avoid, avoid.

I’m not a submissive with a lot of limits. When I look at a typical list of play activities, it’s quicker for me to list what I will not do rather than what I will. I’ve a soft limit with hoods and claustrophobia, I’ve a hard limit on humiliation, and I’ve a slightly screwed up lower back that makes extreme bondage positions tricky. That’s about it. Not a lot to remember. Yet multiple times in the last couple of years I’ve played with new dommes who, having been given this list, proceeded to flirt with activities that ran awfully close to these problem areas.

The last time it happened was a couple of months ago. It was my first time I’d played with this particular dominant. Not fifteen minutes into the session, and after my standard limits discussion, she pulled out a hood and asked if it’d be OK because it had both mouth and eye holes. Suddenly I’m thrown out of my happy subby mindset and into evaluation mode. How scary does it look? Can I handle it? Is it an integral part of the scene she wants to try? It would have been fine to show the hood pre-scene to get my opinion, but why bother suggesting it after we started to play? I ended up refusing and it made absolutely no difference to how the scene unfolded.

A similar thing happened towards the end of last year. It was again someone fairly new to me and, after mentioning my screwy back, she proceeded to try for a really awkward bondage position. She had me on my back on the floor, knees pulled up towards my shoulders and my arms pulled down towards where my feet would normally be. After pointing out that this wasn’t a great position for me she gave up on the plan, but it seemed so unnecessary to attempt it at all. Maybe we could have got it to work given time, but I estimate there are around three million and seven safe positions to tie me into, so why try for the tricky number three million and eight?

None of the examples (and I have multiple others) felt like deliberate attempts to break a boundary. It just seemed the limits discussion planted ideas, and that saying “Heavy X is a limit” somehow translated into “… but let’s do light X!”. This seems perverse to me, and not in the good way. Assessing intensity or risk is very hard with someone you don’t know. Much better to stay as far away as possible from potential minefields. Just because someone has handed you a map, doesn’t mean you need to go up to the minefield boundary and start jumping up and down. There’s no shortage of other interesting places to explore.

Artwork by Shohei Yamashiro

This artwork by Shohei Yamashiro manages to capture both hoods and an awkward position to bend a slave into. Now if you can just imagine she’s calling him a worthless fool, it’ll have nailed 3 of my personal limits.