Saturday, August 20, 2005

As has been noted, the Stranger column is now up...
And life is good today. The bank balance is high, the scale is low, and I've got two parties to go to tonight. A good day to be me.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Okay, I have no idea why my column isn't on The Stranger website yet. It's in the paper version, so I know it's not an editorial statement of any kind. As soon as I see that it is up - or if I get any new information - I'll post a link. But for now, I'm as clue-free as you guys.

In other news... Interesting note from a reader.

Dear Mistress Matisse,
I am a 32 year old butch top girl whose had lots of sex with women. I love to dominate, take charge, and "service" a woman for hours… For me, the intentionality, the planning, is wonderfully creative and incredibly sexy. These encounters have been beautiful and hot--and always safe, in that delicious, slightly dangerous way. (I swear I was programmed for this when I saw American Gigolo in my teens---remember how hard Richard Gere worked to make that one woman come?). My question to you: if I can figure out a way to provide this service professionally without running afoul of the law, do you think there are enough women (gay or straight) out there with the desire and the money to spend on it? My impression, from my years of unscientific research, is that lots of women fantasize about being dominated, but haven't found the right person to bring them there. I love being that person.


Dear Butch Top,

Short answer: No. Sorry.

Now, the longer version is: sure, try it, you might get a client once every couple of months. If you can put up a free web page somewhere and you have access to a dungeon, then why not? But don't invest any serious money in it, and definitely don't quit your day job.

Here are the problems. Number one: while I personally quite like butch women, it's not a taste that's shared by every woman in the world - or even most of them. Nearly all of those women who do like butches are lesbians.

Now, from that already-small group, subtract all the vanilla lesbians. The pool just got a lot smaller. What you have left: kinky lesbians (and the occasional kinky straight/bi girl who can appreciate butches) who aren't finding what they need in non-commercial settings and who are open to the idea of seeking out a sex worker to gratify those desires. My call would be: that's actually a pretty teensy group.

Then there's the money issue. Lesbians as a group spend very little money on sex workers. Some lesbians just don't have the money, period, but even more prosperous dykes don't do this in any measurable numbers. And straight girls do not pursue sex workers, of any gender or any variety, the same way men do, either. I recently wrote a column about gigolos, and a lot of it would apply just as much to you as it does to men.

So: a very small potential client base, who don't spend much money. That's not a recipe for success.

Then there are the potential clients themselves. I have played with many, many women in my personal life, and I have had three long-term female submissives, and that's all been pretty great.

But my experience with seeing female clients has been almost all bad - in some cases, really bad. Out of about twenty, I have had exactly one female client who was cool. The rest of them ranged from disquieting to downright whacko. I wrote about my experiences here,and also on this blog here and here.

So I've been stalked by women clients, I've been dissed, and I've had a lot of weird, unsatisfying scenes that didn't make me feel good about myself professionally. Thus, I will no longer see female clients. If you decide you want 'em, you can sure have mine.

(Aside to blog readers: the no-female-clients policy has been discussed extensively here, so please read through all of the columns, posts and comments before you post a question/remarks about my policy, because chances are it’s already been answered/explained.)

BTW, if you have any kind of sexual contact with your would-be clients, you'll be breaking the law. Your chances of getting busted are quite slim, but still, it would be a possibility.

Hope that answers your questions. If you try it and get tons of clients, drop me a note and tell me I was wrong. I'd be pleased to be mistaken about this, as I truly love the idea of a butch pro domme.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Thought-provoking dinner with Miss K last night. She tried to explain to me why so many people seem to really want there to be a right and wrong way to be kinky.

I don’t mean the people who try to insist that everyone should do BDSM their way and only their way because it is The Only Right Way. That’s clearly ego and insecurity. We call those folks “One True Wayers” - or OTWs for short.

No, I mean all the people who write to me urgently asking what are the Proper BDSM Rules about how to kneel down/blow their nose/write a love letter/shave their genitals/whatever while in the presence of a dominant/submissive. Not my presence personally, you understand, just a random kinky person.

Is it okay to wear blue jeans while you do a scene, or do I have to dress up? Should I always address my top as "Master", even though he said I can call him Bob? Is it permissable to wear a collar even if you don't currently have a mistress?

What the heck? I’ve been saying for years “You get to do this however you (and your partner) want to.” Come one, people, do you really think there’s some great rule book in the sky dictating every single little activity in kink? Do you think you can look up “dominant nose blowing” and get some kind of spec sheet for that? Forget it. When it comes to configuring our kink, we’re making up most of this as we go along, both as individuals and as a culture. That, to me, is one of the coolest things about the BDSM community. I have never understood why some folks seemed to be begging to exchange one set of restrictive rules of behavior (vanilla culture) for another.

Miss K and I were talking about this and she said, “Look, the thing is, people are convinced that there must be rules, somewhere, and they just want to know what they are so they don’t break them and get in trouble. You try to tell them that they get to invent this, but they don’t trust that. It’s because somewhere, they broke a rule they didn’t know about and caught hell for it."

“Besides,” she went on, “there are rules in BDSM. Like, you don’t touch people.”

"That’s different. That’s etiquette towards people you don’t know well. That’s not about what you do with your partner.”

“I know you understand the difference, but not everyone does. You see having no rules as freedom, but for some people, it’s scary and hard to trust. What if we do it wrong? How will we know if what we’re doing is really BDSM?”

“What the hell else would it be if you put nipple clamps on someone and spanked them?"(I love that I can just rant with Miss K and she know how to take me.)

So I’m thinking about this. The reason that OTWs can convince people that there is a Real and True Way is because the idea that there are no rules scares them. Interesting…

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

This 'n That...

This is all very entertaining, and possibly helpful for CBT newbies... Except for number fifteen. The Mistress says: Do not twist a ballsack, ever. Pull, yes. Twist, no. You can damage the little tubes that carry sperm if you do that. (And no, it’s not really an effective birth-control method, either.)

Oh my God, do I so want to be his intern.

I thought I had weirdo phone calls. At least no one has ever tried to mail-order me.

Good communication is so important in poly. Or at least good timing. But I would have gladly paid 126 dollars to get out of some of my past relationships this easily. (Hell, I'd of had the triple-bypass operation.)

Monday, August 15, 2005

A snapshot from the party at the Abbey Saturday night. (No, no one else was allowed to take pictures, but, hey, I’m special. Plus it was really late and hardly anyone was still there.)



The picture looks a little weird because I had to turn the brightness way up high in Photoshop. But I kind of like the grainy, gritty look of the image. And the Abbey is an industrial space, so I think it conveys a sense of that.

That’s my sweetheart, Max, getting ready to suspend a sweet young thing, who can identify herself if she wants to. The girl in blue hanging out next to him was a certain bratty young lady who was bold enough to swat Max on the butt, and look what happened to her. Poor thing. We all felt so sorry for her. Not!

Max likes to play at parties, and he and I are frequently among the last to leave if he's on a roll, as he was Saturday night. I think he suspended four different women. They don't call my honey "the Death Star of evil" for nothing.

Other party tidbits: I ran into an old pal of mine, Danielle, who’s been living in Japan for the last few years and who was just in town for a visit. It was cool to catch up with her, and she mentioned that she has a friend there, a boy named Tim, who likes to read my blog. (I think she said he’s a university student?) It’s sort of wild to think of people in Japan reading me, but I like it. So: Hi, Tim! Thanks for reading.

Gord, of House Of Gord, showed up with a truckload of kinky machinery and gave us some dampness-inspiring demos of his nefarious bondage devices. In my fantasy world, I have Gord locked in a laboratory/workshop where he does nothing except invent new toys for me to play with.

The folks from TheThrillHammer.com brought over two really lovely fucking machines, which several women were persuaded to try out, much to our collective delight. I like my fucking machine that Mike made me, but now I think I may need another one.

You can read a few other accounts of the event here, here and I'm guessing there will soon be some remarks about it here as well… I have a few more photos but I’m waiting to get a green light from the people in them before I post.

It was a great party - thanks to Monk and Tambo for throwing it. And thanks a bunch to all the people, many of them blog readers, who volunteered their help to make it happen.