Playing with Domina Sophie Agenoux required me to do something I rarely do these days: Introduce myself.
When I visit a city I typically play with people I already know. For example, Tess and Troy in NYC and Domina Yuki in SF. Setting up a session there just requires an email exchange to figure out dates and times. For someone new there’s the dance of references, describing interests, figuring out the appropriate dynamic, getting location information, setting limits, etc.
I have to say that Domina Sophie’s process was one of the best I’ve been through. Not only was it well organized and efficient, her session form (sent after the initial reference process) was detailed and asked all the right questions. That was a relief because it sometimes can be a painful interaction. And I don’t mean that in the fun, ouchy way.
One type of problem that comes up is very open ended information gathering. You’re just expected to send an email giving all your session information. I can do this now because I’ve done it many times before. I know what is needed and the right level of detail. But as a newbie that kind of introduction terrified me. You don’t want to be the guy with the equivalent of ‘Hey, what’s up? You avail?’ But you also don’t want to be lumped into the group sending 15 pages of session fanfic written with one hand.
The other problem I’ve seen is when there are specific questions but they’re very opened ended with potentially complex answers. For example – ‘Describe your ideal session’. Or – ‘What does BDSM mean to you?’ I’m sure some people can dash off a sentence or for these kind of questions but, for an over-analyzer like myself, I can get stuck on them for hours. I’ve got 15 years and 300+ posts here on what BDSM means to me. That could be tricky to summarize.
I think one of the really smart things Domina Sophie did was to provide example answers alongside her session questions. For example, a question like ‘How do you want to be treated in a session?’ seems initially tricky to answer. But once you’re given some examples – servant, slave, toy, object, slut, patient – then it suddenly becomes a lot clearer exactly what kind of information is being elicited.
I think a good process not only help the submissive but it’s going to create more business for the domme. I remember how nervous I was when I reached out to a domme for the first time (Lady Lydia back in 2010). A big part of why I picked her out from a lot of Seattle dommes was how straightforward her booking process was. There were tick boxes to pick activities, a low/medium/high option for experience with each and a few simple questions that were easy to answer. If it’d been more complex I might never have taken that initial scary jump. What a tragedy that would have been. I might never have got to experience amazing dommes like Lydia or Domina Sophie.
This post is another perfect excuse to share one of the images from Domina Sophie’s Bluesky feed. You can find her professional site here.