Thanks John

Melissa Todd has a column in Metro where she describes how she got started as a dominatrix. She followed a path I know others have taken – stripping to spanking model to pro-domme. The part of the column I particularly enjoyed was about her first client and her description of that first session. Up until ‘John’ showed up, she’d only had a cushion to practice caning on.

In his seventies, just recovering from some scary operation with the whole of his torso tattooed with a jagged purple scar, he spent most of his hour giving me a tutorial on what tools and implements I desperately needed, the positions most often requested, the idiots best avoided – and he paid me for the privilege!

John let me practise my few pathetic implements on his backside, coaching throughout. ‘Bit to the left. Avoid the whip round. Accuracy before intensity. That’s it! Now try again, but harder…’ I couldn’t have been more thankful.

There’s a notorious kind of client that looks out for young and inexperienced dommes to session with. They seek them out as they know they can push boundaries and take liberties a seasoned pro would never permit. Most pro-dommes will have stories about them. It’s therefore nice to read a positive story about a client helping out a newbie domme and steering her in the right direction. Thanks John.

This is Melissa with a much larger collection of canes then she started out with. Sourced via her Bluesky feed.

Getting the Kinks Out

This has been a good week. I got to enjoy something that has become a relatively rare event for me – in person kinky fun. Savannah Sly is in town for a visit and she was kind of enough to take time out of her busy schedule to beat me up.

Top of the list of activities was what Savannah accurately describes as mean massage. Lots of pummeling, squeezing, pressuring and pounding. It’s a bit like being the chew toy of a giant sexy cat who happens to have a degree in human anatomy. There might also have been some staples in my dick towards the end, which isn’t an officially accredited procedure from any of the schools of mean massage, but is fun all the same.

The end result was a body like a limp noodle, a lot of lovely scratch marks and a blissed out brain. Like I said, a good week.

This shot of Savannah is from her Free Speech Coalition page, demonstrating she can look amazing in almost any setting. If you want to help support Sex Workers Rights then I’d encourage you to visit and support her New Moon Network. They do tons of fabulous things in the sex work community.

Text Based Playfulness

Most pro-dommes invest a bunch of time in brand management and marketing. It’s no good being a wizards with whips or looking lovely in leather if nobody know that. To that end they build websites, curate their social media, film clips, write articles, model fetishwear and generally put their dominant diva selves out there.

I thought I’d seen most ideas for domme brand building over the years – until I stumbled on this article on a domme’s bespoke typeface. London’s Jane Grey worked with WMH&I to create a custom typeface for her brand.

The brand’s distinctive asset is “binds”, strips of their bespoke typeface distorted to appear like ropes or leather, adding a subtly erotic edge to the campaign without nudity. The ability to suggest and entice is key in WMH&I’s arsenal of text based playfulness. “The ‘binds’ are a visual representation of Jane Grey’s psychological control,” says Mark. “Always taut, the binds emanate directly from Jane when present in the scene or act as her omnipresent control when she’s just off camera.” Aiming to disarm an audience of willing “subs”, this text-based experimentation dabbles in the dark arts of mind tricks and manipulation.

You can see the typeface in action via Jane’s website. I’m not sure how much it’ll help attractive submissives, but it is interesting to see the effort that can go into brand building.

This beautiful shot was sourced from one of Jane’s social media feeds.

Future Plans

After my previous post on the fancy toilet set-up at Studio Black Fun, I had a hunt around for the equipment source. I’m guessing it’s from another German site – Style Fetish. They’ve a great selection of fancy dungeon furniture include a variety of toilets with clear Perspex bowls.  That’s pretty unique and not something I’ve seen in any US playspace.

I’ve often thought about creating a playspace and equipping it with cool and unusual furniture. There are some good spaces in the US, but they all tend to have similar equipment. There are a few exceptions – Mistress Tess springs to mind – but they are few and far between. I plan to retire from the tech world in a year or two, so I’ll need some new projects.  Maybe building out a space with a lot of fancy bondage furniture is the answer.

Until that time I guess I’ll have to be content scouring the web for ideas. Here’s another shot of that set-up from Studio Black Fun, this time with Goddess Kara and Mistress Honey Punch.

Dirty Secrets

LA’s Miss Mae Ling recently gave us an entertaining episode of the Dirty Secrets Podcast with Kate Shelor. Although they did have a bit of a challenge discussing some activities while staying with the Apple and Spotify content guidelines. The text below is taken from the podcast transcript., see if you can guess what they were talking about…

KS: Are you sitting here and his head is here so you can kind of see his face
ML: Yeah.
KS: And where in your, yeah, go on, not like not on the chest.
ML: Some people.
KS: Do most people want it directly in their mind? We literally cannot post any of this on this platform.
ML: Like this whole entire thing is cut.
KS: Just chopped up. Sorry. It’s even like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
..snip..
ML: Okay. So most people want it directly in their mind?
ML: I mean, it’s like the lowest of low, right? Like that is the most gross could you possibly get? I don’t think anything really tops that.”

If you’re still unsure, then I’ll give you a hint and say that the words chocolate and texture also popped up in connection with this.

If that’s not your thing, it’s still worth checking out the rest of the conversation, as they cover a whole bunch of other topics and activities. It’s a great insight into the world of a top class pro-domme.

This is Miss Mae Ling in a shot from her website. If you’re in the LA area and interested in seeing her for a session – chocolatey or otherwise – then it has all her info and application form. If you’re further afield then she also has a clips4sale store.

Disconcerted

Writing my last post about BDSM professionals and switching made me think of my first domme – Lady Lydia McLane. That’s not because she was a switch. As far as I know, she was a stone cold top in private life. However, as a professionally hot and kinky person, she did do a bunch of modelling work in all sorts of roles. For example, kink.com has some scenes she shot for House of Gord. I’m therefore periodically disconcerted to stumble across an image of her in a sub role. Given how I knew her, it’s always pretty odd to see.

I was disconcerted in an entirely different way when I spotted the .gif below of Lydia on tumblr. My first thought was – “Is that me?” It’s not, but given I got spanked and caned exactly that way on that couch multiple times, it did give me pause for a moment. This was filmed in the entrance room to her Seattle Dungeon. I have so many happy memories of sitting on that couch and doing either pre-scene discussion or decompressing after an amazing session. Now it has all gone – razed the ground and replaced by condos. Such is life.

While this isn’t me, there a bunch of my scenes with Lydia documented in the early days of this blog. For example, here, here and here.

Kinky Career Arc

Delphine (of the Bay Area) has shared an interesting overview of her career in kink and sex work via this blog post. She started as a bondage model with Insex, which I’d imagine was a real trial by fire. From there she transitioned to the domme role and ultimately added full service work into the mix. Her latest evolution, and what seems to be the trigger for the post, is exploring bondage as a submissive again. Not as a replacement for her domme work, but as an adjunct to it.

It’s pretty rare to see people who domme professionally also talk about switching. I suspect there’s a fear it might impact their primary line of work. Or that they’ll have to deal with clients wanting to top them. One exception to this who comes to mind is another Bay Area domme – Elise Graves. She creates a lot of material as both top and bottom for her Bondage Liberation site. Bondage does seem to have a special appeal that brings out the switch in people. I’ve zero desire to ever be a top,  but I could imagine getting into rigging and rope if I had a partner who desired it.

This is a shot of Delphine from her website. If you’re in the Bay Area and would like her to tie you up, check out her site here.

Keeping It Real

One final medical themed post to finish off this short series of them. The last couple of posts were very much fantasy based, where this image depicts a far more realistic medical scene. It’s from Doctor Jill who plays out of The Cellar in Antwerp.

I think one of the fun things about medical scenes is how varied you can make them. You can go for over-the-top medical fantasies that are clearly very sexual, or you can shoot for something that looks straight out of a regular hospital. Doctor Jill clearly tends to the latter category, as you can see from some of the medical scenes on her site. While I personally lean to the more fantasy medical play, I do love seeing the skill and detail applied in scenes like this.

Plura

I’ve heard of a lot of unusual activities taking place in a dungeon space but never a ‘sound bath’. Apparently this is a ‘a meditative practice where participants are exposed to resonant sounds, like those from singing bowls, gongs, or other instruments, to create a sense of relaxation and deep relaxation.’ It’s a regular thing at LAs Dungeon East.

I gained this new information via this mashable article on Plura. That’s a new dating/meet-up/event app for people into polyamorous, kinky and generally non-traditional relationships. I’ve covered similar apps before – I think the last was FeelId – but they’ve never quite broken through to the mainstream. Hopefully, Plura will have better luck.

Mentioning Dungeon East does give me an excuse to feature it’s fabulous owner – Justine Cross. This is from her Bluesky account and is obviously shot in the aforementioned Dungeon.

On the Ladder

This original bondage set-up comes courtesy of Domina Dia Dynasty. I’ve not  seen a ladder used quite like that before.

The vulnerability of the position is appealing, but I think I’d struggle with the stress position and predicament aspect of it. Be tough to relax into the bondage without a lot more rope in support.

You can find more from Dia Dynasty on her professional site and her Bluesky account.