This one time at Orchestra Practice

Writing the previous post on a minor wardrobe malfunction reminded me of a far more traumatic event many years back.

I was a teenager and attending school orchestra practice for my first and – with hindsight – only time. My given instrument was the cello, which I played really, really badly. However, the music teacher must have been particularly desperate for warm bodies and had invited me to join. I was surprised and intimidated to discover that the majority of the orchestra members were girls, mostly from the year or two above mine. This was not a crowd I was used to hanging with.

As I lurked around the edge of the music room I began to wonder if this could be an exciting new world for me. I was shy and terribly nervous about approaching girls. Was orchestra was the way in? Maybe if I actually started practicing, rather than trying to jam a week’s worth of work into the hour before each lesson, I could make a place for myself here. Could the hated cello turn out to be my path to romantic bliss?

As I contemplated these new possibilities a tall older girl detached herself from her group of friends and walked over to me.

“Tell me,” she said, loud enough for all to hear. “Do you often walk around with your trousers undone?”

Glancing down I realized that my zip had chosen the perfect moment to fail. My trousers were agape and my briefs on display to the school’s brass and string sections. Romantic bliss suddenly looked very unlikely. I fled to the washroom to effect some repairs and somehow made it through the practice. A few days later I had stroke of luck – I broke my arm. That wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it got me out of playing the cello, the orchestra and my scene of shame. Every cloud has a silver lining.

That all  happened 30+ years ago and I still die inside when I think about it now. It sadly never transmuted itself into a kink. At least not for humiliation. If anyone wants to pull on a school uniform and beat me up, well that might be a different story.

Image is from Team Rinryu, the folks behind the Yapoo Market series.

Never A Kink Around When You Need One

I’m surprised I’ve never developed a humiliation kink. God knows, I’ve given myself enough opportunities.

My latest non-consensual attempt happened in my building’s elevator. I was heading out to get coffee, wrapped up warm against the chill of Seattle in April. A rather attractive younger woman got on, smiled at me and said hello. She kept glancing across at me, asking how my day was going and made some cheerful small talk about the weather. I wasn’t delusional enough to think she was flirting, but it’s always nice to have a positive interaction with neighbors. I walked up to my coffee shop in a cheerful mood. It wasn’t until I’d arrived and taken off my  black woolen hat that I realized that I’d put it on inside out. The white care label was sticking straight up on the top, like a giant surrender flag of lost dignity. No wonder she kept looking back at me. It’s not often you see a 50 year old man who still hasn’t figured out how to dress himself properly.

Here’s once answer to the problem of errant clothing – an official uniform and a domme who inspects every aspect of it extremely closely. That’d certainly help focus the mind of a morning. The drawing is – of course – by the brilliant Sardax.

More Hood

A lot of shots featuring hoods look terrible because they’re obviously just being used to conceal the submissive’s face. I get the logic of that but it typically ruins the image for me. It’s hard to enjoy  a kinky scene if one of the participants is embarrassed to be seen doing it.

This lovely image from Natalie Noir shows how a hood can be used whilst still making the shot work aesthetically and erotically. There’s a cohesive design to it that makes sense of the hood. I particularly love the little locks on the chin strap.

Natalie Noir is a Zurich based pro-domme. You can find her professional site here and her twitter feed here.

Hood Heaven

I love the idea and aesthetics of hoods, while also being a total wuss when it comes to wearing them. A domme can do all sorts of heinous things to my delicate bits and I’ll be fine, but stick a bit of material over my face and it’s freak-out city. Claustrophobia sucks.

Anyway, for those that do share my love of the fantasy, here’s some fun artwork by Miss Domme. Pick your favorite.

You can find more from Miss Domme at her Patreon,  DeviantArt and Twitter, amongst others.

Making Plans

I’m planning a trip for later this year. That can mean only one thing: Endlessly scrolling though my social media feeds to remember/locate the pro-dommes I wanted to see in that city. If there was a definitive pro-domme directory then this wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately there isn’t and I’m stuck clicking through Twitter bio’s trying to figure out who is based where.

One other thing I’ve noticed about my planning process these days – I’m a lot more selective. Not that I did sessions with just anyone in the past. As I’ve written previously, I think my hit rate (ahem) in sessions with new domme’s is pretty good. But now I finding myself eliminating possibilities based on wacky capitalization or how high protocol someone seems to be. Makes me wonder if I’m increasing my chance of session success at the risk of missing interesting new experiences.

The image is Contessa Klaudia Keys, a pro-domme based in Montreal. Sadly, that’s nowhere near where I’m going. I think she’d be a fabulous person to play with.

Image was sourced via Contessa Keys Twitter feed.

A Murder of Dommes

I thought I was done with art themed posts for the moment, but then this popped up on my twitter feed and I couldn’t resist. Technically, it’s not a painting and it’s not hanging in a gallery, but it really should be. It has a lovely rich baroque feel to it.

You may recognize some of the domme’s involved. Based on the twitter comments I believe the primary instigator was Dia Dynasty, who stands center left. Other famous domme faces include Domina Yuki, Lucy Sweetkill, Neena De Ville, Goddess Aviva, Mistress Shayla Lange, Mistress Amalia Valentine, Mistress Victoria Robinson and Julia Flowerbomb.

I stole the post title from Domina Yuki’s retweet of the image. Although she also added that it include ‘one little goblin’, which I assume refers to Pain Puppy. Photograph was taken by Adrian Buckmaster.

Potent Female

One final post on the theme of British museums and collections. This time it’s from the Tate Modern that’s running an exhibition entitled Women in Revolt! It covers Art and Activism from 1970 to 1990 and based on the reviews, seems well worth a visit.

Unfortunately, the part most relevant for this blog has already been and gone. Earlier this month they ran a panel titled ‘Let’s talk about the Erotic Self‘, covering topics like ‘power dynamics, authorship, and the commodification of pleasure.’

The image was the cover image for the panel. It’s by Jill Westwood and titled ‘Potent Female.’ According to this Guardian article it was based on the famous painting by Whistler of his mother.

Westwood had first started making wearable latex sculptures as an art student and later explored the transgressive power of “dom” personas and London’s rubber fetish scene. This photo mimics the pose of James McNeill Whistler’s painting Whistler’s Mother, and was staged at home, which was “a shared short-life housing co-op with other artists”, she explains.

More from the Fetish Archive

Technically I’ve no idea if this particular image is actually in the UK’s Leather and Fetish Archive. It’s by the photographer Natasha Gornik, who has contributed an archived collection to them. If it’s not part of that collection then they’re missing out, as it’s a lovely image. It really captures the mood of playful afternoon session.

I believe the domme is NYC’s Mistress Blunt. If you’d like to see more of Natasha Gornik’s fabulous photographs – with lots of the NYC kink scene – they’re available at her site. In particularly check out Good Soup and Community. It’s fun spotting a lot of well known NYC faces (or hands in some cases), a good number of whom have now retired.

Fetish Archive

Dazed magazine has a nice article on the UK Leather and Fetish Archive. Housed in London, it has over 70 different donated collections, covering a variety of kinks and sexualities from the last hundred or so years. I’d love to get chance to browse it, but unfortunately you need to be in London to do so. Maybe I should donate an archive of this site when I finally decide to shut it down?

One of the collections was donated by Eva Oh and includes this illustration of her by Sardax.