Back posts continued…

One of my coworkers told a story about her fiancee. All her boyfriends, she said, started skeptical about dominant women, but ended up playing with her sooner or later. And as soon as they tried it, they enjoyed it. “If it sucked, they wouldn’t do it!” she concluded, hands spread in a shrug.

Why not? It’s just sex — weird, sadomasochistic, kinky sex, but sex nonetheless. It won’t ruin you as a man (or a woman.) And sex generally doesn’t suck.

I’ve never understood the idea that submitting or bottoming or what-have-you is so indescribably unpleasant you’d only do it for a sadist. Fuck that shit. I know a ton of people who just do it “for their master/for Jesus/to uphold traditional marriage” and they’re all liars. I also know a ton of clients who do it because they just want to please me, and unless they can acknowledge the fantasy, they’re all liars, too.

(ooh! shit! I am temporarily out of pro-domming, but man, I don’t need to burn all my bridges.)

Clients come to me; I do not collar them forcibly off the street. Perhaps the desire-to-suffer-for-a-sadist (submission?) is different than the desire to suffer (masochism?) but they are both selfish at their root.

And no one suggests that topping is so unpleasant you’d only do it for a masochist! (Oh wait, they do, but lest I lose my already protuberant nose, I’ll keep it out of Bitchy’s territory.)

I think I should know. I play both sides, personally and professionally. I am a switch.

My advice to a new sex worker would be: You will always fall short of perfection; and it is not your fault. Or, rephrased more kindly, you have the right to offer whatever services you do, in whatever form they come. Unless you claim to be all things to all people and then you’re just a delusional jerk.

My clients always want a “really dominant” mistress. (Unless they want a “really submissive” mistress for a switch session, which I find laughable, since that assumes we’re pulling one over on all the men who want a “really dominant” mistress. And would confess that deep, dark secret right then and there.) They don’t mean “really dominant”; they mean “lacking in all other capacities”. They mean “reduced to the shell of my fantasy”. What they mean, in short, is one who never bottoms. Not just to them, but to anyone. Ever.

Maybe they think it’s contagious? You might have one strain of sexual submissiveness, but God forbid, you could still catch the other 99. Then you’d break out in bumps and everyone would know your shame!

I wish I could tell them that sexuality is fluid and personal and sometimes, just doesn’t fit under a pair of panties. I mean… What if reality is not sexy? I can’t fix my reality. I don’t want to feel compelled to try.

When I was new at the dungeon, I would come in with occasional bruises and bitemarks. I have an unfortunate habit of biting nearby objects when I come: pillows, partners, my arms. Seeing them, my boss would cluck at me and say, Alena, you’ve got to take it easy. That’s not good.

My clients have had a lot to say about my bruises. You’re such a beautiful girl, no one should treat you like that. That’s not healthy, you shouldn’t do that. Did you know it was going to be like that?

Maybe it’s because I’m female. In our culture, henpecked husbands are funny; abused women aren’t. But I always think it’s hypocritical when people in the industry get concerned that I bottom. They hurt men for a living, yet when I go down, it must be pathological.

My boss means well; she is running a business. And my clients meant — well, I don’t know what they mean. But would my boss tell her clients to knock off a sexual compulsion that already costs them hundreds of dollars and jeopardizes marriages and careers? Would my clients volunteer to just stop seeing providers if I thought their kink was unnecessary or inconvenient? Hardly.

For fuck’s sake, let’s try to leave my kinks alone. I am not going to stop topping. Hello? It’s called being a switch.

Switching is not a new concept. Gay leather, for example. From what I know about the Old Guard, men started as submissives and only later became dominant. I like the theory because it includes some form of switching, but it implies that submission/masochism is a) lesser; b) a phase from which to graduate; and c) not an independent sexual kink.

Who knows, maybe folks do think I should grow out of it. I do too, sometimes. It’s inconvenient.

But nowhere are narrowminded attitudes so prevalent as among clients. They are terrified. They legitimize their own desires by villifying everyone else’s. It’s about as useful as pro-dommes playing each other against strippers and prostitutes.

Always, my clients: “I’m not into any of that freaky stuff.” I came to work at a dungeon so I could be the freak, all right.

I go through phases with it: I’m going to stop switching, I say. I’m done with it. No more videos, no more boys: I’ll just not. I’ll go a month, or two, or four and when I do, it’s like a fucking relapse. I start to think I’m an addict craving a fix. How did I get shut out from the same kink I enable every day? I respect my clients mightily. Clearly, they do not all feel the same, either about me or themselves.

Sometimes with the bruises at work I feel like Trixie, showing up on her camshows with a tampon in, or menstrual blood freely flowing. She likes to challenge people with her porn, and I love to hear her talk about it. (Read her write about it?) Except I don’t do it to challenge people, I just do it because I like to get off. When I read Trixie’s stories she seems so ballsy, always up for a scrap, and I’m just defensive-to-apologetic — hey, man, I’m sorry about your perfect wank fantasy, but that’s the way my thighs come today.

Still, I can’t “should” on what turns people on. And I know I should take my own advice; I need to be at peace with my kinks for other people to follow suit.

Marks are much less of a problem now that I do little modeling, but it’s been years and still no solution. This is possibly my most enduring frustration with the sex industry. Sometimes I think it’s only my body for the 14 hours I’m not at work. My body belongs to the industry, and I am the one renting by the hour.

I had hoped to make it to the MaxFisch meetup at Paddles last night, but at the last minute veered off to a post-HC reunion of sorts. God, it was good to see those girls! I drank too much, smoked too many cigarettes, and had to take four trains to get home at 5am. It was well worth it to be able to hug everyone. What a night of confessions, too: all the hookups, the secrets, old drama that’s better appreciated in retrospect.  Turns out, my coworkers are even more awesome than I gave them credit for! Besides being smart and gorgeous, they’re activists, writers, musicians, crafters and artists. And I’ve only found out now that I don’t work with them anymore.

The camaraderie and community that came out of that place amazes me. For all that could be said about a business, it was a safe and much-beloved place. I’m going to miss the Hidden Chamber.

Don’t write off the girls, though. You haven’t heard the last of us.

Me, I’m officially going independent. Look for a website and full info in the next few weeks. While I have a lot of options I’m exploring, I am currently renting from a few places in Manhattan. And yes, I’m taking bookings now — as a dom and (gasp!) as a submissive.

Incidentally, this leads to another exciting development: I no longer have to maintain two names. If you know me as Alena, that’s fine (I also answer to “Hey you”, “Red”, and all permutations of my twin sister’s name).  But for the rest of you, I’m Calico.

Why are people scared of the uncircumcised penis?

I’m a few weeks behind the curve on posting this — first there was all the sex I’m having, and then the HC debacle. But I will always love penises! Penises are timeless. So I bring you this via Jezebel, where two posters on Jewcy take on both sides of the debate: pro-foreskin and anti-foreskin.

I fit right in here in New York, purely by virtue of my nose. But I’m an oblivious, uneducated, non-practicing, only-by-accident-of-birth Jew. It took me an entire semester at a Jewish college for me to remember that circumcision was a Jewish thing. I’d never realized religious preference would be problematic if one preferred a certain type of penis. Or really, that one would.

Reading those Jewcy posts made me feel like I was reading about another world: a frightening world, located on the basement floor of a Jewish girls’ college dorm. Imagine feeling like your partner would prefer your cock if it was de-foreskinned! That makes me think of the way I’d feel if my partner asked me to have my labia trimmed. (For reference: hurt, mortified, and raging mad.)

In the United States foreskins are practically endangered, but I’ve encountered my share of them. Yeah, the first time, there was an uncanny resemblance to one of those water-filled children’s toys that slips through your fingers when you try to hold it. (Notice how, unlike those oh-so-hip Jewcy editors, I’m not posting an illustrative picture of such.) But I didn’t take long to figure out that these were different. For one, they tend to thrust back into my fingers when they slip out. If they remind me of toys, they are the best toys ever.

Uncircumcised cocks look the same when they’re hard, participate in all the same activities, and function the same with condoms. Hell, if the lights are off you might not even notice. Why do we care so much what they look like, as long as they work?

The first time you saw a penis or a vulva, you were damn well prepared to be excited by whatever it was you saw. You’d been excited for years, merely knowing that such things existed. You had intentions on it that preceded any familiarity with shape or form.

It probably looked funny. (They all do.) You got over it. (Like you do.) Eventually, you grew to be excited by the mere sight of it. Perhaps you even came to find it beautiful, and to establish it as a standard for such. And then (da-da-DUM!) you came upon a different one.

I like the idea of backtracking the logic to that so-often-romanticized first moment of discovery. Why can’t this be magic, too?

Those of you wishing to argue the functionality or ethics of circumcision, take a number and stand in line, but that’s outside the scope of today’s argument.

Miss Victoria X, who I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, posted a pretty comprehensive rundown of relevant case law. There’s also some vigorous case law research happening in the comments to my last post.

Playing armchair lawyer is all well and good, but in my understanding, it’s a moot point. The girls were charged with a specific offense (sexual intercourse for money) that no one at that house ever performed or offered. You read that right: It’s not about domination. So we can drop the debates about whether a technicality got them in trouble. This is about being female and politically unpalatable.

As angry as I am, it’s useless — I’m just a bystander here. All I’ve lost is a job.

Since I posted, I’ve been getting privately a lot of offers of support. That’s sweet and it warms my heart. I’ve also noticed a surprising dearth of aspersions, at least within the community: surprising, considering how much we’d all rather believe that the girls screwed up than that the police would arrest innocent women on patently false pretenses. No one wants to believe that she can be arrested for being female in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I will try to pass on your support, but please understand that except for a few phone numbers and email addresses, we’re not a community and there isn’t any plan of action.

If you need to do something RIGHT NOW, please consider donating to the Sex Worker Project and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. And again, keep the rumors down.

If you are a sex worker thinking of taking the jump to independent, this looks like a good time! I’ve been recommended Arena Studios and Pandora’s Box for session rentals, and will review them if I try them.

Police raided the Hidden Chamber on Thursday night and arrested all six women there on charges of prostitution. Everyone is out of jail and safe.

I was not there. In fact, I showed up all unwitting the next morning to find the place empty and things strewn about, one lonely pair of red shoes abandoned in a corner.

Come on! I wished I could say to the police. This is ridiculous; this is unfounded; this is nothing more than harassment. At least dignify it with some nitpicking interpretation of a service we actually offer. No one offered you “sexual intercourse”. These girls didn’t deserve to spend the night in jail. They aren’t guilty of what they are charged.

It’s been eighteen months of working with these marvelous girls, of sharing pizza and Pinkberry and buying each other coffee, of splitting bottles of cheap Champagne late at night, smoking each other’s cigarettes; of hearing about boyfriends and girlfriends and roommates and lovers; of going in on their sessions, teaching them, training them, meeting their clients and talking about their others. Eighteen months I’ve had to befriend them and gain their trust. You’d think I’d have noticed if they were fucking.

Many things I have seen these girls do, but hooking? Not so much.

I’d have at least an inkling, right? I’d be suspicious. I’d have seen an errant hand, a little sneaky masturbation, an abandoned condom, maybe a footjob here and there. But nothing. You’d almost think we were telling the truth and it was all on the up-and-up.

I mean, for fuck’s sake! I have been to brothels, and they have beds. Where would we fuck, on the loveseats? Would we snuggle up on the PVC-covered bondage tables? This is Manhattan; we’d have to wear earplugs to maintain that level of ignorance. Please.

For a year and a half I thought I had found a safe and cozy sex-work haven. We were doing legal activities, and that meant we’d be left alone, or so I thought. I guess I am still pretty naive.

If you want to help for now, please keep the gossip down. Ignore the daily rags; they’re printing lies. And refrain from linking to anything with the women’s names, as I feel it’s a massive intrusion of privacy.

It all started because I couldn’t wait for him to get off the computer. My attempts to distract him from a standing position weren’t working, so I slid down between his legs and knelt there, nibbling playfully at his cock through the jeans. He made a low growl in his throat and leaned down to kiss me. His hands slid around my throat.

He stared down into my eyes, his lips lifted off his perfect teeth in a half-snarl, and I gazed back with wide eyes. His hands tightened. I could feel pressure mounting, my ears roaring with it, face tingling, stars at the edges of my vision. I didn’t struggle. It seemed like a question, or a dare: How much do you trust me? And oh, I wanted to know.

Suddenly he was slapping me in the face lightly. I didn’t know why. I felt euphoric, amazing, my body a tingling haze of static and butterflies. Still, I was vaguely embarrassed, like I’d been caught daydreaming in class. My mind must’ve drifted in conversation, but so far as to lose myself entirely?

“There you are,” he said, half-smiling at me. “Isn’t it nice to have someone to catch you?”

“I don’t understand.” Maybe I had fainted, like the other day in the shower. “What happened?”

“I choked you out,” he said. “Just for a second. You lifted your hands up, and then they fell. When you came around, you made little snorting sounds. It was kind of cute.”

I made a face, tentative in my confusion.

“Your eyes didn’t even have time to close.”

“That’s a little creepy.”

“You were smiling.” He’s teasing me. “Maybe that’s just because I was slapping you.”

“No,” I said slowly, “it’s because it was so good.” Imagine waking from a dream you can’t remember — only that it was indescribably pleasurable — and you’d be close.

Later he picked me up bodily and perched me on the edge of the bed, so our faces were the same height, and throttled me while I clung to his forearms, looking up at the fuck-mask of his handsome face. His brow creased and his eyebrows drew together, and his teeth drew off his lips in a snarl, and whether his eyes were intent on me or half-closed, I knew their purpose was to hurt me. I could never remember the color, whether they were green, or brown, or gold. Wolf eyes.

When I realized I had gone and come to that split-second later, every nerve ending in my body fluttering with the vicious joy of being alive, I said: “Oh, God, that’s dangerous. I can’t even describe how good it feels, coming out of it. I want you to choke me out while we’re having sex, and come to with you fucking me.”

My body would have none of it. He tried, though. At this angle his weight was on the airway, making me cough and choke. Tears ran down my face. I panicked and fought him, tried to pull his death-grip off my neck and shove him off with my knees. He ignored me utterly. My struggles didn’t even pause him in his fucking. With his weight pinning me, his hips pounding between my thighs, I could not have stopped him short of sticking a thumb in his eye. He always let me go just short of the peak of my desperation.

My makeup ran in dark circles. I gasped for air. He growled in frustration as the condom slipped, and pulled out to check it; a second’s reprieve, then he spat on my cunt and plunged back in. When he registered my shock, he spat in my face. I flinched, feeling it thick in my eyes, on my slapped and stinging cheeks.

When he came, arched over my pinned body, it was with such ferocity that saliva dripped from his mouth onto my breasts. He made inhuman noises, lips peeled back from his teeth. He growled and thrust and snapped at the air. I shook and stared at his face, at the vein pulsing in his crimson forehead, and thought in awe: my God. This is what it’s like to be fucked by a beast. Or a demon.

When we first got together, I described the sex as apocalyptic. I’m sticking with it. I know what it’s like to feel that if the world ended, I wouldn’t mind.

After TES last night (excellent class by the way), I buttoned my cardigan all the way up and beat a hasty retreat. It was Awkward Encounters, Inc. in there. When I tell kinky men I’m a pro-domme, their reaction’s often “Lost another one!”. Or “Of course you are, the good ones are all pros!”

They mean it as a compliment. I think. It’s awfully backhanded. Maybe I read too much into everything it, but here are the assumptions I hear:

1. Quality. They don’t know me, but they want a chance with me. In my opinion, being young, pretty and thin is only a recommendation of worth if your tastes run that way and you want a passive partner. But even then, I have to talk sometimes.

2. Availability. They don’t know me, but they had a chance with me. If you think women lack agency and desire, any woman with a compatible sexual orientation is available, if you can only convince her.

3. Exclusivity. They lost that chance they wanted. If women aren’t interested in sex for its own sake, I never have sex I’m not paid for.

I’d go on and work myself into a froth, but I have weeks of back posts to get to. So I’m going to throw out some answerless, and not-entirely-related-to-the-preceding, questions:

Are there male fantasies (namely the ones served by pro-dommes) that are largely/entirely unreciprocated by women? Why? (Are there female fantasies no men want — or why not?) Are there male fantasies that ought to remain unreciprocated? I.e., is there such a thing as a fantasy that is always and unavoidably degrading to women, one you shouldn’t even be able to pay for?

There are things I don’t touch at work and things I’d rather not, but in all cases I find myself thinking about it from their perspective. I know, it’s not a popular thing to think about, but if I were the one with the shit fetish (or Nazis, or toenail clippings, or armpit hair) I hope to God someone would be willing to take my $400 and take pity on me. Think about your favorite thing to do — what if it were forever-and-always denied to you?

For this reason among so many others, I do think sex work should exist.

For a little balance, I want to include this genius quote from Andrea’s Sex Geek where she talks about The Mistress Manual. I too have read the Mistress Manual, because it was floating around at work when I got the job (where else?). Actually, I read about half the Mistress Manual before it burnt my eyeballs. I really wanted to be great at my job, I did, but if that involves improper capitalization I will accept mediocrity.

… I’m not sure I understand how all the things Lorelei describes in her book are supposed to be empowering to women when her entire concept of female dominance, and the entire book as a result, is structured around the five archetypal fantasies of the male submissive and how women can best embody them. Sure, she takes the time to say how if this stuff doesn’t turn you on, don’t do it; you are the dominant after all. In fact I really like how she phrases it:

“It is scarcely my intention to oppress Women with yet another duty owed to males. If, after listening to my suggestions and giving the fantasy a reasonable trial, you find that you do not enjoy Female Domination, don’t do it! If your male still insists, dump him. No one has the right to force you into sexual acts that make you feel uncomfortable.”

But there is no chapter on “figuring out what pleases you as a dominant,” or “choosing the fantasy role that best suits your personality independent of what others’ expectations might be,” or “serious questions to ask yourself about what attracts you to a dominant role and what you want to get out of it.” She does do an excellent breakdown, in chapter 2, of the reasons why a woman might be freaked out about the idea of taking command – in fact, had I read it a few years back, it might have helped me through a few of my own dilemmas at the time. But when she goes on to the nitty-gritty, the how-to of female domination, she focuses entirely on a framework defined by the desires of the male partner. As a female dominant myself, while there are certainly elements here and there in her descriptions that fit with how I do things, I don’t find any draw to the archetypes as models for dominance, let alone a draw to embodying some guy’s fantasy right down to his preferred scripts and costumes. I’ve tried it and it has just felt completely contrary to the experience of taking up actual dominance. And it irks me that there’s theoretically room in her paradigm for women like me to depart from the guidelines and make our own path, but zero information about or validation of what those departures might look like, why they’d happen, and how the idea of dressing up and acting nasty to please your man exactly as he desires might not resonate with a genuinely powerful woman. Of course, if you’re a powerful gal and something in these five fantasies works for you, well, you go, girl. But what about the rest of us?

Ba-ding! There’s a big difference between learning to be a good pro-domme — something Mistress Lorelei might be able to teach you — and learning about your own dominance. They are not always interchangeable. This is why I think the pro-domme adulation in the scene is misplaced.

To put it another way: would you ask a prostitute to write the book on sexuality? Not that a prostitute couldn’t be the self-actualized sex guru of choice (please, we are certainly not crippled in that regard; if anything we have a head start, and a lot of insight and experience) but if being good at getting paid for sex was her only qualification, it would be a little weird. You’d end up with a book on how to have sex for money really well, not how to have sex. And (surprise!) it would probably be about how to embody various male fantasies. Which, while it might coincide with someone’s sexuality, and might not be an objectionable role to play, is not What It’s Like to be a sexual woman.

Just some thoughts while I’m inside at the dungeon on this lovely, warm evening.

Oft-asked annoying questions: Why do dominant women date dominant men? Why might dominant women prefer the challenge of forcing non-submissive men to submit? I’m sure Axe, our favorite New York City submissive looking for love, has posted a few times on these topics.

I sigh a bit at both questions. My New Years resolution was twofold: to stop dating dominant men and start eating more vegetables. I’ve been falling down on both counts. This is how I know beating someone who has to be talked into it is not better. It’s just frustrating.

I can’t speculate why dominant women do anything, in part because there’s always some new reason for me to be excluded from both categories proper, but also because I can’t speculate why women, or dominants, do anything. We’re people, right? We do many different things for many different motivations. We need to be taken individually rather than sorted by the often-irrelevant categories of gender and sexual orientation.

Also, there’s the conflation of “sexually dominant” with a certain personality. We should know by now that sexual proclivities aren’t visible or predictable. Freaks don’t exactly fluoresce under blacklight, or have black-PVC-colored auras.

So I can’t answer anything starting with “why do dominant women…”? In the list of Stupid Games People Play, I categorize these somewhere between questions like “Why do women like assholes instead of nice guys?” and “What’s the secret to picking up women?”*

Currently I’m seeing a not-yet-pseudonymic man of many sexual talents. He’s disturbingly handsome — like a cross between Sylar and Dexter — and fucks like a man possessed. He never asks me to wear high heels. He listens when I babble on about sex work and my feminist issues. He’s selflessly dedicated to correcting the karmic imbalance I create by strapping on at work. See … lots to love.

But the not-yet-pseudonymic man wanted to borrow a whip from me, and I wasn’t too keen on participating in my own demise. I agreed to bring it over if he would let me show him what it felt like.

He agreed on the condition that I’d dress up for him. Jesus. Maybe this is the difference in beating dominant men: you pay them for the privilege.

Eventually I remembered to bring the whip on Friday night. And as agreed, he stripped off his shirt, leaned his hands on the wall, and turned his well-muscled back to me.

Guh! Words! I fail.

Somehow in two months of sex with this man, this is not a sight I had been presented. I don’t know how to describe my reaction except in fetishistic terms. Jeans, BDUs, and/or tight white boxerbriefs are optional in this scenario — but highly recommended. That pose is just iconic. It makes me hyperventilate the way someone else might get woogly about men on their knees.

Remember the whipping scene from Starship Troopers? Yeah, yeah, laugh all you like, but that scene was fucking hot.

Cautiously I started to snap the whip. (My aim is decent, but to share a secret, I am significantly vision-impaired. I have to use physical cheats to gauge distance. Those warm-up strokes? Not for you.)

There, it was brushing his skin. Thin red welts began to rise across his beautiful back.

“God, you mark up pretty,” I said. Then, remembering myself: “How does that feel?”

He replied, noncommittal.

I hit him harder. Sadly, he didn’t so much as grunt, but that was what I had expected. Men tend to be disappointingly stoic; ones who style themselves as not-submissive, more so. And pain is much less distressing than fear and anticipation.

I’m reminded of the one time a certain scary video top found me playing with his singletail on set and asked me to hit him. That was distressing, all right — to ME.

The welts multiplied. Now there were dark streaks, purpling in their centers. I took my satisfaction knowing that he was bound and determined to dislike it.

And then all too soon it was over. “Give me that,” he said. He pushed me up against the wall. Because I had dressed up for him, I cried black tears; they crept down my cheeks like cartoonist’s ink.

The next morning he pulled up his shirt in the mirror, and said, “Want to see the marks?”

I ran to the bathroom to see. There were still six or eight of them, where I had laid in the whip: livid red welts crossing his back. I kissed them. He laughed at me. Later, we had an impromptu picnic in Riverside Park, and I dug into cut fruit and rotisserie chicken with the gusto of someone who’d had a lot of sex.

“It’s such a shame you don’t actually switch,” I said, swallowing my piece of fresh mango.

“Why,” he asked, “do you want payback?”

“No,” I said wistfully, “because you look so good with your shirt off and whip marks on your back. It’s a loss to the dominant women of the world.”

*Via Figleaf. Hi again, Figleaf! Some days I think I should just mirror Figleaf’s blog and be done with this blogging thing entirely.

Enough of this angelic bullshit!

Submissive clients: What’s with the eating pussy?

Look, I like a side of rough sex with my domination as much as the next girl, but in commercial-land that’s straight up illegal. I’m not trying to perpetuate an unhealthy paradigm where dominant women are too good to be touched and they never get fucked. Sex-free domination is, as far as I can tell, an unfortunate product of the United States legal system. (And then a lot of stupid people bought into it.)

I know eating pussy is great. I have done some in my time. While I’m no great devotee of receiving, I’ve appreciated quite a fair bit more. But for money? It’s abso-fucking-lutely illegal.

I’d like to say whores are more honest than pro-doms, but in the whisper-quick scope of my experience with whoring, I did not let people eat my pussy. (I’m a big fan of safe sex; nothing gets me enthusiastic about the thought of sucking commercial cock like latex.) Even if I were whoring, it turns out, you’d be out of luck.

If you consider that not all whores will engage in something as intimate as unprotected oral sex, the request seems even crazier. I’m going to engage in it on the spur of the moment? Here? With you?

While I’m on the topic, I’ll reiterate: we cannot have oral sex of any kind. “God, I wish you could suck my dick!” exclaimed a client the other day.

That’ll bypass my usual politesse. “Not gonna happen,” I retorted.

“Not a question of money, huh?” The implication being it was a matter of morality.

“No, it’s not.” Though not morality, either.

You see, it doesn’t matter how close we are, or how much I like you. It doesn’t matter how many hours you buy with me or how many gifts you give me. You are not going to eat my pussy for cash. It’s not a reflection of your usefulness, your devotion, your submission, or my desire. It is something new and entirely unrelated: your face in my cunt. None of these reasons matter. Not past the part where I’ve told you “no”.

Least likely method to change my mind: calling it slyly. “Mistress, I’ll do absolutely anything you want, no matter what it is. I want to be forced to worship you totally. I would love to give you pleasure, Goddess! This is all about your orgasms, not mine.”

Great plan! Trick me into agreeing to something illegal and unsafe, then expect me to go through with it, while pretending it was all my idea. Yeah, that’ll work.

I do not like being treated like I’m stupid, which is what these ploys boil down to. Knowing what you know, it’s downright fucking rude. And don’t ruin oral sex for me, either. “Intimate body worship”? Yeccch.

The best refutation of the femdom-canon pussy-eating I have ever read remains Bitchy Jones’ “Here, Kitty, Kitty“. Even if Bitchy makes you cry a little inside (like she does me) here she is magic.

Cunnilingus-seekers: employ a whore. Perhaps consider retaining a mistress if STD tests are of concern to you. From her you can get all the things you lack when you employ me as a pro-domme. Expecting sex and begging for it leaves us both mightily dissatisfied. In a good session I can do the things you want; in a frustrating one, I can’t. I don’t appreciate the implication that I’m a bad (distant, prudish, frigid) provider, and it cheats me of satisfaction from things I do offer and enjoy.

Please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop asking! There are better ways to get me to say “no”.

Twice today I took off my clothes: once at the dungeon, and once in a painting studio.

Near the end of the evening’s painting class, I strolled the room in my robe and looked from easel to easel. My favorites are the short gesture studies — they capture movement. I love seeing my poses turned each into a glorious squiggle of ink. If my body could talk, these symbols are what it would say. Each would be a new punctuation mark, its own variety of exclamation point, encompassing its own world of meanings.

A couple of the women came up to me to tell me how brave I was, how beautiful, and to apologize for not “doing me justice” in their paintings. None of the men said anything.

It was well-meant, and appreciated as such, but perhaps misinformed. I thought the women were projecting. All sorts of people do art modeling, people of all ages and shapes and from all walks of life. At an art class I never expect my shape (besides some presence thereof) to be commented upon. The affirmation was downright weird. You must be scared, it said to me; let me reassure you.

Being naked on its own doesn’t make me feel vulnerable. My deepest fear is the humiliation of nodding off during a 45-minute pose — no joke, if you know the soporific effect of quiet and warm lights. Though I suppose there’s also the willingness to self-deprecation required to invent and strike a bunch of idiotic theatrical poses.

Bravery? That’s every time you are alone in a room with a man. Odds are that he is larger than you, and it matters very little who’s dominant, or whether you plan to fuck him, or how: your safety is still, in a very real way, in his oversized hands.

Bravery is when you hear your mother’s voice saying “I told you not to!” and instead you listen to the voice of reason saying, “No one asks to be raped.” And you go out there, dressed like that, and you drink and you laugh and stay out til then, and let yourself fucking live.

Bravery is handing over your physical safety, trusting your top to do terrifying and painful things with your body, but not ever to harm you.

Bravery is telling a complete stranger that it’ll be a thousand dollars to fuck you for the hour, never knowing how he’ll react.

Bravery is fucking, or dancing for, or playing with someone you don’t really like — with compassion and kindness and respect.

Bravery is hearing strangers’ opinions about you every day — your appearance, your intelligence, your life choices, your education — taking none of it to heart, thanking them all graciously, and trying to mean it.

Bravery is being good to the people who don’t deserve it, as well as the people who do. It’s sharing intimate things: your body, your caring, your closeness.

Bravery is assuming that everyone deserves it. It stops before foolhardiness by amending, “as you reasonably can”. Definitions of reasonable will, of course, vary.

It would be so easy to be cruel to these men. They always assume I will be (which stings, but what can you do?); sometimes they even ask for it, to call them pathetic and make fun of their kinks. I can’t. That kind of bitterness lingers, even if it was summoned in play, and it eats at the soul.

Maybe it would be easier, when they are cruel to me, if I could hate them. When clients ask if I’m “lifestyle” I always say yes and cringe on the inside, knowing they hear something entirely absent from my definition. Being a perv doesn’t make me bigger and badder and meaner. I’m crippled in cruelty by my own desires. Like them, I want this — more than they’ll ever know.

Bravery is acting on the extraordinary, radical proposition that people are people. In the face of their own insufferability, of sex-work stigma, of fear, of feminist criticism — to treat clients like people takes balls.

Taking off my clothes to be an art model? Not even fucking close.

That’s just being naked.