Apologies and Shoutout

Apologies for the lack of regular posting recently. There’s a bunch of topics I want to write about, but my back has been screwed up, which precludes me sitting at a computer for lengthy periods. It’s kind of funny (although not in a ha-ha way) that I can actually trace my back issues to a specific play session back in 2011. At the time I though I’d just strained some muscles. It turns out that thanks to a couple of decades hunched over keyboards, I’d managed to screw a couple of my lower discs up, and that session was the one that pushed them over the edge. It really hasn’t been the same since that night. Who’d have though that having hot sauce smeared on your genitals would lead to chronic back issues? The human body is a truly wonderful thing.

If you’re in your 20’s or 30’s and spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, I’d strongly urge you to take regular breaks, exercise whenever possible and consider taking up yoga. Although if you’re anything like me at that age, you probably think it’ll never happen to you, so I’m  wasting my time giving advice here.

Changing the subject entirely – if you’re in LA from the 23rd to the 25th, let me point you in the direction of Lady Hinako. I’ve featured her work in the past (here and here) and she’s visiting LA from Japan on those particular dates. Lady Chiaki (previously featured here) will also be in LA at the same time. If I hadn’t been in LA just a couple of weeks ago, I’d be considering a trip down in order to play with these talented dommes. As I type this, they still have time slots available to play.

Both these images are from Lady Hinako’s twitter feed.

What seems to be the problem, officer?

This image made me smile, although I suspect it may only be my British readers who have a similar response. Stern female police officers aren’t exactly rare in femdom imagery. However, they’re typically US uniforms, or some more generic European outfit with militaristic overtones. It’s rare to see a classic British outfit, complete with a white shirt, black jumper and elbow patches.

No offense to the two stars here – Mistress Baton and Leicester Governess – but this put me in mind of the movie Hot Fuzz. That takes a classic British Bobby setting and put a humorous spin on a modern US style action movie around it. I’m sure these two talented ladies can administer a sound thrashing to a guilty man, but I also suspect a hot cup of tea might be at the end of it.

Mistress Baton (who I’ve featured here previously) is normally based in Johannesburg, but I believe she’s currently touring and taking sessions in England. The Governess is based in Leicester and her professional site is here.

Kink with Homework

This article on Mistress Velvet is (deservedly) all over my social media feeds and inbox. The title, in classic Huffington Post fashion, encapsulates the story – “Meet The Dominatrix Who Requires The Men Who Hire Her To Read Black Feminist Theory.”

It’s a surprisingly well done article. It gives Mistress Velvet space to expand on the intellectual and emotional challenges of her job, while omitting a lot of the salacious detail that usually accompanies mainstream articles like this. Her relationship as a black domme  with her mostly white, cis and well off clients is obviously a complex one. I love the fact that she’s managed to structure her sessions as positive for both her and her clients, while also creating a platform to explore issues of race and privilege.

If I’m not only doing these physical things to them, but also saying, “Hey, my graduate education is also focused on BDSM as healing for black women, and I think about this all the time.” Then they’re like, “Whoa, yeah, she’s the real deal.” They kind of get terrified. But I think it makes it more real for them.

I don’t think I’ve ever been assigned homework by a domme, but I do understand the kind of dynamic she describes above. Submissives typically enjoy things that pull them mentally back into that D/s dynamic, even many days after playing. Something as simple as a bruise can remind them of the dommes presence and physicality. I’d imagine engaging with writing and arguments that she’s passionate about would have a similar ability to conjure a sense of her presence.

Mistress Velvet is based in Chicago. If you’d like to schedule a session, her contact information is here.

Say it with knives

I’ve always disliked Valentine’s Day. It seems designed to make singles feels lonely and couples feel like they aren’t romantic enough. Fortunately, I have friends who feel the same way, so I had dinner at their place this year,  playing many games of ‘tag you’re it’ with their children. Six year olds may be horribly cheaters when it comes to tag, but it was still better than being crammed into a restaurant and dealing with harried servers.

That said, being single at Valentines can sometimes work out. I remember visiting LA in February a few years back and being very puzzled how hard it was to get a dinner reservation. It wasn’t until I snagged one and arrived at the restaurant that I realized what day it was. I was the single solo male in sea of couples. The menu was 9 courses of shared plates, which the kitchen obviously couldn’t be bothered to re-portion for their one confused single. So they sent me what was literally dinner for two for half the price.  Then the next day I went and got my ass kicked by a fabulous domme. That turned out to be a pretty good Valentines.

This is from How to Kill Your Husband by Kathy Lette.

Legal Matters

I had to employ the services of a lawyer recently. It wasn’t a major legal entanglement. Just papers I wanted reviewed before I filed them. Her fee for the work was $250 per hour. Oddly enough, that’s around the average fee per hour for a pro-domme in Seattle. That fact got me thinking about the contrast between the work. Actually, if I’m honest, the fact she was attractive, forceful and wearing knee high brown leather boots got my mind initially moving in a certain direction. The hourly rate just sealed the deal.

My legal session was conducted in a standard office. No fancy equipment, sound proofing or leather wrapped furniture required. After I left, I’m pretty certain she didn’t have to spend time rubbing everything with alcohol wipes and autoclaving the pen I used. Nor did she have to invest a highly specialized wardrobe that she can only wear to work or to secret lawyer parties. Touching was limited to a couple of handshakes and, despite a very warm office, I kept all my clothes on.  At no point did she have to deal with a naked me in her personal space. Her only risk was paper cuts and possibly boredom from answering my dumb questions. Safewords weren’t required, and there was no chance of me asking her to undertake a dangerous legal maneuver that could have landed me in hospital and her in jail. I don’t know what her inbox looks like but I doubt it’s full of dick pics, badly written kinky fantasies or guys suggesting if she was a real lifestyle lawyer she’d work for free. Scheduling didn’t involve intricate planning to avoid clients bumping into each other and her firms web site didn’t require dozens of up to date professional photographs of her brandishing a pen and looking stern. Oh, and I could pay with a credit card, because banks don’t mind taking money from lawyers.

I could keep going, but I think my point is made. I’m not going to claim that visiting a professional domme is cheap, but it is good value. You get a hell of a lot for your money. Rates may be charged by the hour, but there’s an awful lot that happens both before and after to make those great moments in a session possible.

This is the actress Julianna Margulies who plays a lawyer in the series Canterbury Law.

Auntie

In my last post I was ragging on the New Jersey police for stopping a former domme from becoming a cop. I thought it only fair to balance that up with an organization that is a little less puritanical – the BBC. The journalist Nichi Hodgson spent some time working as a professional domme and is now employed as a journalist by the world’s biggest and oldest broadcasting organization. According to this recent article she actually made more money working as a domme than as a journalist, but I guess that’s what you get for working for a public service company.

In years gone by the BBC was famously straitlaced. Its nickname of ‘Auntie’ or ‘Auntie Beeb’ was derived from the idea of a prudish maiden Aunt who always knew what was best. Of course, for some people, a strict maiden Aunt who thinks she knows best, is a source of joy and pleasure. This is Juliana Granger in a shoot for Auntie’s House.

Miss Granger is a professional disciplinarian based in Sheffield UK.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

For those who have been following the Kristen Hyman saga I have bad news – she lost her fight to become a cop.

For those of you who have no idea who I’m talking about, let me provide some context. Kristen Hyman briefly worked as a pro-domme and produced some femdom movies under the title Domina Nyx. I even featured an image of hers back in 2012. After quitting that career, she went on to train as a police officer. She was just days away from graduating when somebody blabbed about her past life and she was suspended. There was the standard sensationalist coverage in the press, with their usual hypocrisy of stigmatizing sex workers while using their stories to make money. Now, after spending significant time and money to qualify as a policewoman, she is out of a job.

I hadn’t covered the story up to this point because I was hoping she get re-instated and I didn’t want to add to the publicity on her past life. Now, with her name plastered across hundreds of tabloid articles and immortalized online, that seems kind of moot.

The reason I mention it at all, is to highlight the challenges sex workers face and the sacrifices they make. Society disparages their profession, criticizes their decisions and forces them to operate without the proper protection the law should provide. Then, even when they move onto jobs deemed more ‘worthy’ by society, the sex work they did can still be used as a cudgel against them. And why? Because they gave sexual pleasure to others while earning money for themselves and their families? How fucked up is that? They should be handing out medals, not blocking them from worthwhile careers.

The artwork is of course by the incomparable Eric Stanton.

Catsuits in NYC

Humiliation types scenes in public spaces are pretty common in Femdom imagery. I’m sure you know the type of scene I mean. There’s a domme in sensible clothes leading around a submissive in slightly less sensible clothes, while random bystanders look on with varying degrees of amusement, shock and puzzlement. Something like this one.

It’s not really my kind of scene, so I was therefore pleased to see an alternative variation on a public scene in this post from Miss Ava Zhang. It features Miss Zhang and Domina Dia Dynasty cruising around NYC in shiny rubber suits. No humiliated submissives in sight. Just two dommes having fun in great outfits. Amusingly the only place they weren’t welcome was a kinky whip cracking meetup in Central Park, where apparently whip cracking and hot dommes in latex was just too much fun to have all in one public place.

You can see more images from their NYC adventures in the post here.

My inner feline

What’s better than playing with an awesome domme in LA? That would be playing in LA and then playing with the same awesome domme a week later in Seattle. Yes, God was good to me this week. Although technically it was more Mistress Iris and her travel schedule than God. They are at least similar in their ability to bring grown men to their knees.

I got to enjoy some amazing tease and denial, along with sensation play and some sounding thrown in for good measure. Most of my play partners would liken the noises I make in a session to a dog or a bear. There’s a fair amount of growling, snarling and barking that goes on. I think today might have been the first time I purred in a session. Clearly Mistress Iris is bringing out my inner feline. I didn’t even know I had one.

This is Mistress Iris with not me. I can only wish I rocked a garter belt and pair of stockings like that. This is from Mistress Iris’s twitter feed.