Pro-domme – Page 27 – Femdom Resource

Real estate woes

I was sad to read – via this post – that Vinyl Queen was closing her San Francisco studio. I’ve never played with Vinyl Queen herself (a failure on my part), but I have played in her space with Domina Yuki on several occasions. For example, this session took place there. It was a well equipped and well designed studio, located in walking distance of SF’s Union Square / SOMA / Financial district. There aren’t many (any?) of those left, so losing it is a great shame. Strangely, in the last couple of years, I was actually barred from playing there during business hours. Apparently the tech start-up next door didn’t appreciated the screams of noisy masochists. No doubt it interrupted them slapping together the latest random open source software in between foosball sessions.

On the plus side, I was happy to read this part of VQ’s post:

I also want to publicly thank Mistress Yuki for being the best renter a dungeon proprietor could ever ask for.

I’ve always found Mistress Yuki to be an amazing professional to deal with, and I’m happy to see I wasn’t the only one. If you’re in SF then you really can’t go wrong with Vinyl Queen (now playing out of the Black Thorn space) or Domina Yuki.

This is Vinyl Queen with some of the tools of her trade.

Lending a helping hand

This news article on a Hull based dominatrix helping to feed the homeless om Christmas day put a smile on my face for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s obviously a very very nice thing for Hull’s Mistress Dita to have done. From reading the article it’s also not her first efforts in this area, so she’s clearly someone to be applauded. The second thing I like was the way the article itself was written. The word dominatrix was used in much the same way you might say ‘local business owner’ or ‘entrepreneur’. It’s rare for the press to resit the urge to make stupid comments about kink or BDSM or sex work whenever the chance arises. To see it treated with such a neutral tone makes a pleasant change.

Mistress Dita If you’re looking for a pro-domme in the Hull area of the UK, then Mistres Dita certainly seems like a great person to connect with. Her site isn’t responding to me right now, but her twitter feed is very active and has contact info in it.

Observational bias

Jezebel has a fairly silly article on the increase in young tech workers visiting pro-dommes. Like a lot of similar articles it suffers from the problem of observational bias.

Pro-dommes are often the face of kink, as they’re easy to find and (in some cases) happy to advertise. Unfortunately they’re also expensive to visit. On the West coast that means $200 to $300 per hour, which is a lot for the average household. That means the clientele skews to the well off. And since well off men tend to be older, we end up with the cliche of the middle aged banker or lawyer who needs to blow off steam between doing million dollar deals. Now the booming tech economy in some parts of the US has landed a bunch of cash on a small number of software developers, and we get stories about them visiting pro-dommes. The key issue here isn’t kink or sexuality, it’s opportunity. I’m pretty certain if all pro-dommes universally reduced prices to $10 per hour, we’d be seeing articles on the incredibly variety of different people who visit them.

On the plus side, the article does give me an excuse to feature a photograph of one of the dommes interviewed – the lovely Mistress Morgana of San Francisco.

Harmonic Oscillation

I’ve a small triangular bruise on my cock. I’m not exactly sure who put it there. It showed up sometime during my weekend in San Francisco, and so was the work of either Domina Yuki or Domina Ai-Li. Whoever created it, the end result is the same, it makes me smile. Most people probably wouldn’t react that way to genital bruising, but I always like to see a temporary reminder of my recent activities.

It was fun to play again. Getting together with two familiar dommes was definitely the right move. My body seemed to mark up more than it usually does, and I had a few pre-session butterflies in my stomach that I don’t normally get, but emotionally I was in a good space. No lengthy negotiation necessary. No chemistry to figure out. Just a sense of a happy place to return to.

I also got to try something new – a suspended bed with a pendulum weight attached to the genitals. You can see the general set-up below and a close-up of the weight arrangement here. It might not be clear from the shots, but that frame that I’m lying down on is hanging on chains and can therefore easily swing. This meant that my entire body would move as Yuki hit me, and that would cause the pendulum below to swing. The two systems would then interact with each other as they moved, going in and out of phase and pulling me in painful but interesting ways. It felt like being part of a kinky science experiment, although I’m not strictly sure what hypothesis was being tested.

You can see another top down show here which shows some mild red marks from the beating. They would receive some significant additions a few days later from Domina Ai-Li’s whip. We also did some zipper play, which can be seen here. I’ve a video of this, which I may share, just as soon as I can overdub the embarrassing screaming and whimpering noises which somehow seem to have turned up on the audio track. Can’t imagine where they came from.

Slipping on the shackles once more

Regular and observant readers may have spotted that I haven’t written about my own play sessions for a while. I haven’t been hiding anything. Since Lydia retired I haven’t played at all. It’s the longest I’ve gone without getting my kinky itch scratched for many years.

I suspect part of the reason for that is that I’m still partially in denial about Lydia. While I played with other dommes when I traveled, I only ever played with Lydia in my home town. She was always my reference point. Going through the process of finding someone else and seeing them regularly to build that new relationship will be a very clear statement about moving on. At some level I’m still trying to come to terms with that. On an intellectual level that seems pretty crazy, but I’m OK with being a little crazy.

Fortunately, this coming week gives me a chance to dip a toe back into kinky waters, as I’m going to be down in San Francisco. That means a chance to visit Domina Yuki and Domina Ai-Li. I’ve played many times in the past with these two talented dommes (for example see here, here and here) and I’m really looking forward to seeing them again. It’ll give me a chance to relax and play without having to deal with a lot of extra baggage. For doing my first couple of sessions since Lydia, this seemed a great way to go. Hopefully when I return I’ll have my kinky fires lit and will start exploring the Seattle scene more.

I should have the time to keep blogging when I’m on vacation, but posts may be a little more erratic than usual. Apologies in advance for that. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a shot of Domina Yuki and Ai-Li in action

Negotiating directions

If you’ve never visited a pro-domme you might expect that setting up a first visit involves discussion around interests, activities and compatibility. You’d probably expect basic instructions on cost and session etiquette. And with a good pro-domme all those things do happen. However, what you might be surprised by is the level of detailed instruction you’ll receive on finding the play space. Often it’s a multi-step process like some sort of complicated blackmail pickup scheme. You have to go to a particular street corner, then call a particular number and await further instructions. Alternatively you’ll get a lengthy email detailing exactly where to park, how to approach the building, what to say if questioned and which doors you should and absolutely should not knock on. There’s one SF playspace that had several pages worth of instructions just on how to get in, and apparently I got the cut down version of it!

Although I’m poking fun here, I absolutely get why people do this. I’m sure most pro-dommes live in dread of idiotic clients pissing off their neighbors and attracting the attention of the law. Nobody needs a horny guy in a gimp suit wandering around the alley behind their house clutching a fistful of hundreds and prostrating themselves on random doorsteps.

If you want to know what can happen when neighbors take an unwelcome interest, just take a look at this story featuring Mistress Evilyne. By all accounts she’d done absolutely nothing wrong. The fact people are quoted as “concerned the children might be exposed to something that they shouldn’t see at their age” makes me instantly hate them. There’s nothing that denotes petty small mindedness more than an appeal to think of the children. However, whatever the rights or wrongs, that didn’t stop the press featuring her whiny neighbors in numerous stories, including one from a national paper I hate too much to link to. Happily most of the comments to this instance of the story, including one from Mistress Evilyne herself, suggest a generally unconcerned and broadminded British public.

The happy image above is taken from Mistress Evilyne’s site. She’s actually featured in a previous post of mine, at a particularly distinctive London location. If you’re in the Orpington region and would like to see her in person, then her site contains all you need to know. Just try not to slam your car door too loudly when you arrive or accidentally corrupt any of the local children.

Just hanging out

While browsing tumblr for a good strap-on picture for yesterday’s post I stumbled on the image below. It’s one of those shots that I love while being baffled by it.

There’s a very attractive lady, but she seems to be relaxing in a urban wasteland. There’s a big black strap-on, but nobody to fuck. There’s high heels and lingerie, next to a barbed wire fence and graffiti clad concrete.

Don’t get me wrong – I like the photograph. I just can’t help thinking about the 10 minutes before the shutter was pressed. How did they get here? And what was the conversation leading up to it? Did they originally set out to capture this particular shot? Did someone stumble across this setting and think to themselves – “Interesting gritty urban space. What would really work here is a half naked blonde lady sporting an enormous black strap-on.” ?

The attractive lady in question here is Mistress Adrienne. As you might guess from the skyline, she’s a NYC based pro-domme. If you’re interested in experience her large strap-on for yourself, you can find her session information here.

T & D

Mistress T has a nice post up on the joy of not fucking her. It’s all about the pleasure (from her perspective at least) of tease and denial. I like it because it’s a topic that pushes my buttons. I’m not a fan of the humiliation slant it can take (the ‘not worthy to fuck’) but I do like the teasing aspect (the ‘oh you’re so close’).

It got me thinking about why sexual denial and frustration can be so hot. Generally speaking I’m not someone known for his patience. As a kid reading instructions and getting the right tools was never a starting point for a project. That was something that happened later, once I’d already dived in and screwed everything up with my ignorant enthusiasm. Learning to delay gratification is a good thing. I just always thought the delay should be really really small.

I wonder if for me the delight in tease and denial came about as a process of transference. Maybe it started with trying to prolong pleasure. Stretching out the moment amplified the sensations. Do that often enough and the happy brain chemicals start being associated more with the build-up than the actual event itself. By trying to make the moment last, I trained my brain to link pleasure to the promise rather than the reward. And while a reward can sometimes be disappointing, a promise never can.

Cheap celebrities

Last month I featured a post on Taylor Swift and her recent fetishistic music video. I wasn’t surprised to read in a follow-up article that a lot of the outfits for the video came from the LA based Stockroom. What did astonish me was that they actually returned the majority of the items. Can you do actually do that? It’s not like they hadn’t been used. The evidence is right there in the video. And it was only $13,000 worth of stuff to start with. I’ve no idea what it cost to make that video, but I’d guess the wardrobe was a pretty small fraction of the total.

Personally if I ran the Stockroom I’d have had a special ‘as worn by someone famous’ sale running the moment the used goods came back in my direction. It’s not like they’re running a rental service over there.

Of course this topic does me the perfect excuse to feature someone looking lovely in something fetishistic. This is Ms Ava Zhang, an LA based pro-domme.

If you’re in the LA region and interested in seeing her latex collection in person, her etiquette page is here and her contact information here.

D is not an evolution of s

As I was writing yesterday’s post on La Domaine Esemar I had a nagging feeling it was a subject I’d covered before. Searching past posts didn’t find anything, but my bookmark list turned up this article from The Daily Beast. It’s an article I’d intended to post about but never got around to. It’s similar to the Cosmos article, giving background on the people and the Chateau, but provides a lot more detail and context. It’s certainly an interesting article, but there’s one really infuriating part in it.

This deep-seeded dedication to submission, and potential subsequent evolution into dominance, is one of the ways that La Domaine sets itself apart from the commercialized BDSM scene in New York City. People are encouraged to experience both sides, traditionally starting as a submissive and moving into a dominant role, to more fully understand the symbiotic nature of the lifestyle, whereas in other parts of the subculture people will adhere to one or the other for superficial reasons rather than trying, over time, to explore the inner-workings of their sexuality and come to a honest consensus about their true nature as a submissive or a dominant.

Firstly, dominance is not an evolution of submission. The two states are peers and partners. One is not a more advanced lifeform than the other. Secondly, the idea that it’s necessary to explore both sides to fully understand one’s true sexual nature is ludicrous. Are straight people superficial if they don’t first explore same sex relationships? Or have gay people not reached a honest consensus about themselves if they haven’t tried sleeping with someone of the opposite sex? If someone is curious or just uncertain then by all means explore. People’s desires can change and knowledge is a wonderful thing. D/s is not necessarily a binary choice, but some people know deep in their bones what works for them. The above quote smacks of ‘one true path’ bullshit and BDSM hierarchies, and that always drives me nuts.

The above image is Mistress Couple with a slave at La Domaine Esemar.