Tag: Pro-domme

Command and Control

A few week ago Mistress Troy Orleans posted an interesting twitter thread on her approach to play and the difficulty of finding appropriate labels for it. I liked a lot of things about, particularly this sexy as hell digression, but I wanted to pick up on the following section in particular…

During a scene, I’m undeniably in control, but if something’s not working, I’ll adjust. My ego’s not attached to the action.

I think that’s an important point for people on both sides of the D/s equation. BDSM is complicated, particularly when doing heavy bondage or intense play. No matter how skilled the participants are – and Troy Orleans is very highly skilled – not everything will work out exactly as expected.

I’ve played with a small number of dommes who did tend to get frustrated or annoyed when a particular setup wasn’t working out as they’d imagined. Those were typically one off visits, because that reaction really kills the dynamic for me. I’m looking for someone in control, which means of themselves as well as of me. Control is about remaining in command of the situation when things don’t work, not trying to make the impossible possible. Plus, watching dommes creatively problem solve and experiment on me in realtime is hot AF.

On the flipside of the coin, from the submissive perspective, I think there can be a danger of treating play as a form of theater, with the domme as the actor and the submissive as both audience and props. That feeds into the bad idea of a scene as crafted narrative that needs to be executed for it to be successful. In reality it’s a highly collaborative process, where the end goal is a creation of a particular energy. Adjusting to something not work out should be viewed as part of building that energy, not a failure of the process. Variation and adaption are what make each experience unique.

Here’s a shot from Mistress Troy Orlean’s twitter feed of a man under her very tight control. You can see more media from her via her OnlyFans.

Floaty

A short post tonight. I’m still floating from Savannah Sly sticking a bunch of needles into me and calling me ‘a good boy’. Clothespins, electricity and breathplay may also have been involved. I’ve now got the kind of post session buzz going where I periodically pause whatever I’m doing, reflect on the night and smile to myself.

I’ll also add that while I’ve played with a lot of fancy BDSM furniture over the years, there’s something to be said for a simple padded table with a heated pad on it. It makes for a nice contrast to have one side of the body toasty, warm and comfortable while terribly painful things are happening to the other side. One might as well be comfortable while one is tortured.

This very sexy shot of Savannah is from her twitter feed. If you’d like to see more from her, she also has an OnlyFans you can follow.

A Schooling via Twitter

This twitter thread – featuring a man complaining to Dan Savage about the prices charged by pro-dommes – blew up big on my feed. Unsurprisingly a lot of dommes were unimpressed with his suggestion that they drop their rates to suit him. Dan summarized a collection of the responses in his column.

I’m not going to rehash the primary question. I think the answer to that was covered pretty extensively in the thread. I will say that I love his subconscious thought process that led to it. Presumably it went something like this: I want to be dominated. I can’t afford a pro-domme. That fact can’t possibly be my fault. It’s therefore a problem with the pro-dommes in my area. They obviously don’t understand how to run their business. Amazing that all of them are making the same mistake. I shall now write to the world to tell everyone of my insight!

Ironically, if it’s true that all the professional in his area are charging $250 an hour, then he’s actually getting a bit of a bargain. That was the average rate when I started playing almost a decade ago. These days it’s usually $300 and up, rising to $400+ in expensive areas like Manhattan or San Francisco.

In an effort to produce something positive from his letter, and aid anyone thinking of seeing a pro-domme for the first time, it might be worth clarifying the subject of tribute. He seems somewhat confused by the word. Possibly due to hanging out on social media with too many fin dommes.

Tribute is simply the fancy industry term for an hourly rate. If you’re playing with an independent domme, then you simply tribute for the length of session you desire. A small number of dommes do charge extra for certain equipment (e.g. single use medical supplies) or for certain activities (e.g. full toilet), but that’s relatively rare and those extras should all be announced and agreed upfront. Tips and gifts are obviously gratefully received, but never required *.

In the very unlikely event that you find yourself in a situation where fees are being negotiated mid-session, or you’re being upsold activities after starting play, or there’s not a clear understanding ahead of time of the total cost, then don’t walk away. Run as fast as possible. I’ve never had this happen to me. No competent professional will ever do it. But I have heard of it happening, particularly when dealing with escorts who offer domination services, and it’s a big red flag **.

I found this Tribute inspired T-Shirt available for sale here.

* This applies to independent dommes. For playing at a house dungeon, where the domme works as an independent contractor for the commerical dungeon, then you should always tip the domme.

** This applies to conventional BDSM sessions. If you’re mixing financial domination into your play, then obviously different rules may apply.

More Chicago Hijinks

As I’ve written in the past, I like to mix up my kinky play when travelling. I want to play with people I know to continue to build a rapport, but also play with people I’ve not met before to explore new dynamics and expand my kinky horizons. It’s not an algorithm that scales all that well, but it is fun to try.

For my recent Chicago trip, in the former category was Mistress Mara Mayhem, who I’ve known since 2016. In the latter category I was lucky enough to get some time with Olivia Black. She has an outstanding reputation as a talented and creative domme. After doing just one session with her, I can say that it’s thoroughly deserved.

We did a nice mix of caning, bondage and torturing my delicate parts (TDP), all delivered with the kind of caring sensual sadism that really pushes my buttons. I particularly enjoyed the trick of leaning in for a hug after attaching clothespins to my chest. There’s something attractively devilish about using a moment of closeness and contact to spike the pain levels by dragging against the pins. It’s a heady mix of pain and pleasure, where the boundaries between the two become very blurred.

This is Olivia Black shot by photographer Alejandra Gguerrero. If you’re in the Chicago area and interested in scheduling a session, you can find Olivia’s professional site here.  Her instagram is available here.

Home Again

Apologies for the lack of posts in recent days. My Chicago hotel, whilst excellent in many aspects, was sadly lacking in terms of a reliable internet connection. They had zero connectivity for 3+ days and I didn’t have the time to schlep my laptop to a coffee shop to blog. I’m now back in Seattle, so normal service should be resumed.

Although I had some good kinky fun in Chicago, I sadly didn’t get any photographs to share. I had two great sessions with Mistress Mara Mayhem, who made me growl with nipple clamps, moan with clothespins and laugh a lot with an ice cube. I think an unexpected shock of cold to the nape of my nape provoked a stronger reaction than a needle through the nipple did.

I don’t get to see Mistress Mara as often I’d like, but it’s always a pleasure when our paths cross and we can renew our play together. Although we’re both serious about kink, that doesn’t mean sessions have to entirely serious, and it’s nice to intersperse laughter between the moans and yells. It is called ‘play’ after all.

This is Mistress Mara looking serious in an image from her professional site. You can find links to her OnlyFans, NiteFlirt and Clips Store here, or follow her on twitter.

A Session with Empress Wu

My final kinky experience of my NYC trip was a session with Empress Wu. We had not played together before, so this was a getting to know each other exploratory scene. I’m always a fan of easing into new dynamics rather than trying to bounce off limits in the first hour or two. I’d rather leave buzzed, floaty and imaging how we could evolve in the future, rather than staggering out shell-shocked and wandering what the hell just happened.

One of the nice things about being somewhat omnivorous in my kinky appetites, and being lucky enough to play with different dommes, is the opportunity to do different types of scenes. I always try to skew towards activities dommes call out as favorites, and in Empress Wu’s case this gave us a really fun scene heavy in spitting, pissing, scentplay, breathplay, gagging and CBT. As a general rule, letting a domme riff on some of her preferred activities is never bad way to do a first scene, and that was certainly true here. It was a great scene and an ideal way to end my NYC trip.

One particularly interesting aspect was the breathplay we did. There was some of the ‘regular kind’ featuring smothering, hand to face and a plastic bag over the head. However, Empress Wu also did some breathing exercises that I’d typically associate more with yoga or meditation. She talked me through breathing patterns, allowing me just to sit and be in the moment, following her voice. That’s really unusually in a pro-domme session – a first for me – and it was a really interesting dynamic. I was floaty from the more intense physical play we’d done, still in a D/s mindset, and it was almost hypnotic to follow her voice and try to let my thoughts go.

We didn’t shoot too many photographs, but I did think this was a fun one featuring a bit gag and some nipple clamps. Bit gags are always good for drooling and the chain pulling the head down just enhances that.

This rather striking selfie shot was from Empress Wu’s twitter feed. If you’re in the New York area and would like to schedule a professional session, then her site is here. For anyone further afield, then you can subscribe to her OnlyFans here.

A Session with Mistress Troy Orleans

One of the pleasurable things about returning home from vacation is the opportunity to sort through holiday snaps and reminisce about the fun times you had.  In my case that normally means less in the way of shots of beaches and cute bistros discovered down side streets, and rather more in the way of leather, steel, pain and oh my! Visiting NYC resulted in lots of photographs from that second category, and the first I’m featuring here come from a really great session I did with Mistress Troy Orleans.

We started with some bondage using a post and a harness to put me in a vertical but semi-seated position. You can see photos of that in this side view, this front view and this back view. The boots I’m wearing are particularly fearsome. They hold the foot fully extended inline with the leg and grip everything very tightly. I think they’d be impossible to walk on, but in this position I can use them to take some of my weight. I love the combination of the fetishistic look of the boots and the sleeves together with the degree of control they apply. You can see a nice close-up of the locks and metal clips on the sleeves here. It’s not shown clearly in the images, but I should also point out that my throat and head are also fixed in place against the post.

Of course bondage alone is never enough. Troy always likes to throw some pain into the mix, as you can see from this shot. The nipple clamps were a little painful, but the real killer was the nasal clamp that’s holding the chain up. Nipples go numb over time, but the septum never seems to. Every time the chain moved it felt like someone sticking a needle into the inside of my nose. Even when Troy took forever some time to shoot selfies (one shown below) she left that damn nose clamp in place, creating an extended series of cries and moans of pain from me.

After this vertical bondage we moved onto a slightly more meditative horizontal position. Inspired by Savannah Sly’s writing on my chest, Troy decided to put her initials (MTO – Mistress Troy Orleans) on my back. This was also done with cupping, but where Savannah had cups with a manual pump, Troy used the fire cupping technique. The application of the hot cups created a relaxing and floaty headspace for me, but considerably upped the challenge in terms of writing anything. The suction effect is nowhere near as strong with fire cups and it’s hard to accurately place and moved them with breaking the seal. As you can see from this shot of my back, she did manage to get a pretty clear ‘MTO’, but it wasn’t as vividly defined as the ‘Sly’ from the pumped cups.

Finally, we moved onto a suspended bondage scene, using Troy’s amazing metal frame and spring set-up. You can see a side and front shot of that here and here. I’m in a leather body bag, with a tongue depressor gag and a pair of ear mufflers for some added sensor deprivation. Moving from the back writing scene to this worked really well, as it kept me a lovely spacey floaty zone that allowed me to just drift in the moment. The gag was just enough to remove the idea of talking, without being so uncomfortable it kept dragging my attention to it. Attention to small details like that really make the difference in these kind of scenes.

As is always the case when I play with Mistress Troy Orleans, it was a great session and I’m really glad I got the holidays snaps to remember it by. Although I probably will not be passing them around in the family album the next time friends drop in.

If you’re interested is seeing more of Mistress Troy’s creative work then she has an OnlyFans account here.

A Call to Perverts

As a complementary article to yesterday’s post on the failed UK porn verification system, may I direct your attention to this article – Perverts, It’s Time For Unity. It was written by Eris Martinet back in 2017 when the bill was originally being proposed. Obviously in some aspects it’s a little out of date, but its basic point is a good one.

When a man buys femdom from the big companies, he is eventually paying men. When he watches on PornHub for free, he is supporting a corporation ran by men.

Mindgeek is the company behind sites like Pornhub, RedTube and YouPorn. It was founded and run by a bunch of guys who have stolen and profited from the work of female performers. They’re a parasite on the adult industry and every click you give them makes them fatter.

Obviously I’m not saying you should be able to trace the production history of every porn clip and image you consume. There’s inevitably a wide variety of people involved between the production set and your laptop screen. But if you regularly consume femdom porn, then it’s very easy to find a lot of quality content being sold by the women who created it. Just search for a domme or producer you like and follow their site or social media links to their clips. You don’t have to buy everything you watch, but at least buy or subscribe to something. Be a net positive to the femdom creators out there.

This is Eris Martinet, taken from her twitter feed. I’d like to think this disapproving look is for everyone who doesn’t contribute back to Femdom content creators. You can find her own clips for sale here and here.

A Brief Burst of Sense

I had a wonderful time with Troy Orleans this weekend. Much bondage was involved. Pictures were taken, but I don’t have my hands on them just yet, so a proper post about the session will have to wait a couple of days.

In other news, a brief and increasingly rare burst of sanity occurred in the British political system last week – the government dropped their plans for an online porn verification system. Admittedly, feeling good about this is the equivalent of feeling good about being unsuccessfully mugged by an incompetent mugger. Good to get away with, but better if it had never happened at all. However,  I’ll take what I can get right now.

The systems introduction had been repeatedly delayed and they’ve now given up on it entirely. There’s a pretty good twitter thread on why it was a dumb idea here. In the meantime let’s hope the population of the UK will be able to persevere and not be turned into sex crazed rutting beasts by continued exposure to images like this one. This is by the London pro-domme Sir Claire Black (from this tweet).

Swing and a Miss

The kinky segment of my NYC trip hasn’t gotten off to the smoothest of starts sadly. I was due to play with someone new (to me) today, but unfortunately something cropped up and she couldn’t make it. These things happen occasionally, so c’est la vie. Hopefully our paths will cross again in the future and it’ll be my only unexpected hiccup on this trip.

On the plus side, we’re into the fall season (aka Autumn), which is the prime season for wearing boots. That is a look I can totally get behind, and NYC is a great and fashionable place to appreciate it. Here’s Mistress Iris modelling a particularly striking pair (from this tweet).

This is taken in Fernando Boots in Berlin. If you’d like to see more great shots of Mistress Iris, her very regularly updated patreon is here.