Tease as the Core

The Porte-à-Vie site has published an insightful interview with Mistress Iris. It covers topics such as the definition of a dominatrix, the relationship between kink and daily life, the attraction of BDSM, etc. What really caught my eye was when Mistress Iris addressed the subject of her specialty…

Tease is at the core of my sexuality. What electrifies me is the exquisite expression of pure desperation. The moment a person can no longer compose their facade any longer– when their dignity, their sense of self goes out of the window and they begin to beg and plead– that’s when I have the most power over them. It’s orgasmic.

As someone lucky enough to have played with Mistress Iris in the past (for example here and here), I can attest to her skill at teasing. I think a lot of dommes treat tease as a path to intense physical activities. It’s a way to get the blood pumping and the endorphins flowing before the nipple clamps and needles come out. Mistress Iris makes tease an end in itself and, as I wrote recently, I think tease and denial can be just as psychologically intense as any masochistic session.

When done expertly, teasing and edging can feel more out of control than simple pain. After all, one can always safeword out of pain. There’s no shame in stopping a heavy beating when you reach a limit. But how can you safeword out of not getting something? The whole point is that maybe, just maybe, if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded (but probably not). Stopping doesn’t help you. Continuing makes it worse. It’s a truly beautiful dilemma.

This is from the twitter feed of Mistress Iris. You can find her professional site here.

Workplace Peril

This story of an injury claim for workplace compensation caught my eye recently. It features a French man who unfortunately died of a heart attack after having sex. What made it news was that he was travelling on business at the time, and a French court held that it was a workplace related injury and his employer was liable for it. Their logic was that sex is a normal part of life and companies are liable for things that go wrong when they’re compelling you to travel on their behalf. It’s not a ruling you can imagine many US courts making.

It did get me wondering what would have happened if he’d died as a result of a kinky activity. Would that have also been classed as a normal part of life? My company sadly doesn’t send me anywhere, so all my travel is on my own dime and at my own risk. But I know a lot of men use business trips as an opportunity to get their kink on and visit a pro-domme. Could a domme find herself in court testifying about a ‘work related’ buttplug injury for a travelling businessman? Would an insurance company payout for bruised testicles sustained in a hotel room during lunch break from the annual conference for certified public accountants? I await the next European test case in this area eagerly.

I’m not sure what injury this gentleman has sustained, but judging by all the equipment, it must have have been a severe one. Fortunately for him, Mistress Inka is on the case. I’m sure she’ll have him on his feet in no time. You can see more of her at work via her twitter feed.

Needles and Threads

I’ve done a lot of scenes with needles that I’d classify as art. This scene as a tailors dummy and this scene that left me with a series of beads stitched across my chest spring to mind. However, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything quite as visually striking as this beautiful shot from Pitt Prickel and Mistress Madita. I’m not sure if it’s best described as sexy art, or sex as art, or arts and crafts (with a good dose of sex).

Image is from this tweet.

Not like it said on the Package

Last night, with Ms Savannah Sly, I had the pleasure of experiencing the cinnamon challenge. This is not, I hasten to add, the silly idea of eating a spoonful of ground cinnamon. That’s a crazy thing to do. This was instead the new and updated cinnamon challenge, where you shove a cinnamon flavored Listerine breathstrip down the urethra. That’s obviously far more sensible.

If you’d like to try this at home then I’d suggest you start by tying your submissive down. He will want to jump around a lot. Then take a sterilized metal sound and, using a touch of lube, wrap the breathstrip around the shaft. This is best done while wearing sterile disposable gloves. Then gently slide the sound into the urethra and wiggle it slightly. You will not need to ask if he can feel it. He will let you know that very clearly and loudly. For the sake of your neighbors, some sort of sound muffling device may be required if you wish to slide the sound further into the penis. Be sure to allow the submissive a few minutes to really enjoy the experience before you deploy the next strip.

I should add, before everyone rushes off to raid their bathroom cabinet, this it not an experience you can safeword out of. Once the breathstrip is in, there’s nothing to do but lie back and enjoy the ride. That means a deep and intense burning sensation for a few minutes, with various spikes and prickles coming and going as the metal sound moves. It eventually subsides to a steady background tingle, which lasts for several hours.

I’ve experienced this before with the mint strips, but they were considerably milder. If you’re at all curious, then I’d suggest starting there before upgrading to the cinnamon variety.

Here’s the lovely Ms Savannah with the actual metal sound we used. This is from this tweet posted to her twitter feed just after our session. If you’d like to see more content from her then you can follow her OnlyFans here.

The Session Mixtape

My previous post on music in sessions was written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. However, all humor aside, there is an underlying truth behind it. Background music is universally used in sessions and it has a significant affect on their atmosphere and energy. Yet it’s never a part of the pre-scene negotiation. At best it’s music the domme likes to listen to and at worst it’s an afterthought to cover the screams. From the professional domme perspective, isn’t there an opportunity for differentiation or even monetization here?

I’m not going to go as far as suggesting that submissives simply be allowed to bring along their own playlists. That’d most likely end up with the wrong person in the room being tortured. Instead maybe a domme could offer a selection of session playlists of her choosing. Or offer regular clients a chance to curate a playlist within her defined parameters. Or, for an extra $100, allow the submissive to choose a Pandora station that’s acceptable to her.

One could of course argue that the domme is supposed to be the one in charge, so why is the submissive getting any say? I understand that perspective when talking about the energy and direction of how a scene unfolds, but the broader context for a scene is something that is very much a shared discussion. Roleplays, activities, limits, interests and even outfits are all fair game for pre-scene negotiation.  So why not music? Whether it’s an upsell to make money or an opportunity to reward regular clients, it seems like an opportunity going begging.

This artwork is by the American artist Robert E. McGinnis.

Breaking the Taboo

This post risks making a lot of pro-dommes very mad. I’m going to go out on a limb for my readers here and talk about a very taboo session activity. Something that almost all professionals will say absolutely never happens with any of their clients. Yet I’m here to tell you that just sometimes, if the mood and dynamic is right, if the right level of trust is established, it can happen. The submissive might actually be allowed to pick the playlist for the session music.

I know this to be true because – in the immortal words of the Penthouse readers letters page – I never thought it would happen to me, until a mysterious but very attractive lady propositioned me with it sometime last year. I say mysterious because I’m definitely not going to say who it was. I may be crazy enough to risk the general wrath of pro-dommes with this post, but I’m not going to risk the very specific wrath of someone who I may session with in the future. I’d hate for this to come back and haunt me when I’m naked, bound and she has me quite literally by the balls.

For those readers who have never done a session with a pro-domme, I should make clear that background music is the one true constant of sessions. More so than black dungeon walls, leather cuffs and incomprehensible controls on janky showers. I don’t think I’ve ever done a session without some sort of music. And given that pro-dommes are inevitably younger and hipper than I am, rarely have I any idea what’s being played. Typically it’s a grab bag of electronic, ambient, dance, industrial and obscure indie. Good for drowning out screams, but not exactly my kind of jams.

With the domme in question – who I should make clear is still very much younger and hipper than me – we actually share some  musical interests. Which is how I came to get my ass beaten to some choice selections from the early oeuvre of Iron Maiden. Personally I think the energy and tempo changes in Phantom of the Opera make for great session music, but I’m not going to hold my breath for it to catch on more widely.

This image of a puppet pianist comes from the photographer Konrad Bak.

The Maths Checks Out

Last week I wrote a post claiming that London was probably ground zero for kinky submissives seeking pro-dommes. You can obviously have a fabulous time in any part of the world, but for a location with the greatest accessibility to the largest number of dommes, it is hard to beat London.

I thought about doing some maths to back up the theory, but ran into a seemingly insurmountable problem. Specifically the problem of me being lazy and that analysis requiring work. Fortunately, a very helpful comment from sobrinoir, pointed me at this post, which provides a list of countries ranked by the number of pro-dommes per capita.  As I suspected, the UK ranks right at the top, with 1 pro-domme per 105,000 people, significantly ahead of countries like Germany and the US.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that the science behind the ranking is more than a little shaky. It’s based on pro-domme counts just a single source – Domina Guide – and a casual inspection of their links show a lot that are dead or outdated. It’s also badly skewed towards Western countries. I find it hard to believe that Japan has just 14 pro-dommes, as the guide appears to claim. Yet despite those issues, I think it is interesting data. The fact that the UK has a roughly comparable number of pro-dommes listed as the US does, while being one sixth the size in population is kind of amazing.

This is the London based Mistress Miranda, with an image from her twitter feed. She’s an expert in bondage and heavy medical play, and her feed features images from some wonderfully intense looking scenes.

50 Shades of Lavender

Literally seconds after I read this Vice article on a new trend for cute BDSM toys and pastel colored fetish gear, the image below showed up in my twitter feed (via this tweet). I think that’s enough evidence to make it official. 2019 is the year of lavender whips, pink cuffs and beige harnesses. Anyone still going old school with black and red is like totally out of date. Until next month anyway.

In all seriousness, fashion designers often seem do a terrible job of adapting BDSM attire into their clothes. This outfit by Dion Lee, and the others featured in Lady Grace’s tweet, are a rather excellent exception. Elegant, with beautiful clean lines, but still retaining the BDSM aesthetic. They were created in collaboration with Fleet Ilya.

The Wrong Kind of Frustration

It’s hard to find good cuckolding imagery. Which is a shame, as I think its mix of tease, denial and humiliation can be a hot dynamic. I’ve written before about unintentionally funny cuckold expressions in porn. The other issue is of course the frequent combination of race play with cuckolding. That always kills a scene for me.

The discussion around cuckolding is often very strange. The frequent racial elements are problematic for people, yet the fundamental dynamic itself is clearly not a racial one. It’s a basic kink that’s been infused (or perverted) by American cultural issues with race. You’d therefore think that there’d be discussion around how best to untangle it from that mess. Or at least an effort to critique it in a selective way. Yet more often people will insist the two are irrevocably tied together, muddying the conversation and creating more problems.

This silly Daily Dot article is a good case in point. It was triggered by a now infamous Oh Joy Sex Toy cartoon on cuckolding that took a lot of online flack when it was released. The cartoon definitely has problems, but I think its fundamental premise is sound. Three people can enjoy a cuckolding dynamic. Full stop. If the cartoon was addressing the history of cuckolding, or the cuckolding genre in porn, or the genesis of the political ‘cuck’ insult, then yes, exploring the racial element would be important. But that’s clearly not its purpose.

Given cuckolding as a kink clearly isn’t going to go away, shouldn’t we promote a point of view that tries to distinguish between the problematic and non-problematic parts? How does tangling it altogether, as the Daily Dot article does, help the discussion?