Since I couldn’t sleep last night, I got some things fixed around here.  Most notable is probably the header.

You’ll notice “where to find me” and “where to see me” on the sidebar; tags and archives have been tidied for easier access; and my sidebar’s been reorganized in a more logical fashion.

Everything is subject to change in the next few days, so please pardon the mess.  I am neither a coder nor a graphic designer, so I’ll happily take your suggestions and constructive criticism, whether in comments or by email: blognextdoor (at) gmail (dot) com.

Is there a word for “fainting at the sight of blood”?

I don’t. No, really, I don’t. But for a moment today I thought I’d developed it. After a long day shooting video with Mistress Trish, we were pulling a dozen needles out of our lucky submissive’s genitals. Blood was everywhere. Each time I’d twist the needle around, eliciting moans, before uncorking it and sliding it out.

Having never done genital piercing before, I was fiercely focused on the task at hand. All of sudden I felt the heat of the video lights on my neck: waves of heat, crackling up my spine and roaring in my ears. I started doing deep breathing to fight back the sparkles in my vision. Remembering admonitions in high school choir not to lock my knees, I shifted in my heels. It wasn’t working. Blood was coursing out of his cock in little spurts with his heartbeat, he was whimpering, it was all so hot — too hot — oh God, I was really going to faint, wasn’t I?

How fucking embarrassing.

I dropped to the couch and stuck my head between my knees. The world tunneled. A second attempt to stand only made it spin more wildly. Defeated, I watched Trish fingerpaint with the blood for a few minutes.

I do not mean to attach value to a tolerance for blood; in other words, my pride and reputation was not at stake. But I was confused as fuck. I wasn’t distressed, except to be missing out. The fainting made no sense.

As I drank my third mug of water, it came to me through a pounding headache. Heat exhaustion — but what horrible timing! It’s not uncommon for a photographer or videographer to become ill on a shoot from the hot lights and exertion. Today I’d been beating up boys under those lights for eight hours, wearing latex, on naught but a couple glasses of orange juice. I ran through the symptoms. Yup.

Some pizza and soda later, I’m good as new. I did get to leave bloody handprints on him. And his penis is fine! I know you were worried.

Appropriately enough, I came home to find my breasts (with play piercings) on ModBlog. Shannon even edited my pictures all pretty and stuff! I had completely forgotten about submitting these photos to BME — I sent them in months ago to get a membership to BME/Hard while I was considering a triangle piercing. Thanks to Lolita for alerting me.

I think I’m almost more chuffed about this than getting Fleshbotted again last month. That’s a tough call, though.

1. A timeline. I often save posts for many weeks or months.

2. Representative of my sexual preferences, in any given situation.

3. An accurate retelling of sexual encounters. “Artistic license” doesn’t begin to describe my clipping, mish-mashing, ornamentation and disregard for detail.

4. An accurate record of how much sex I have, with who, or what kind.

5. A cry for help or counselling. What would I write about if not my sexual issues? Conversely, if my sexual issues pose a problem to my health, I have better recourse than blogging (therapy & health insurance; trusted friends; alcohol).

6. A plea for dates, sex, or either for cash.

7. Sanctioned by anyone who’s ever paid me.

8. Making me any money.

9. Most likely, about you.

He’s got a new whip, he says. Second time using it, he says.

My sympathy for his nerves is limited. Being hit feels new every time.

His aim is impeccable, but I’m trying hard to let him hit me at all. When I drive, I’m the girl in the passenger seat who can’t help but check both ways before the driver turns. I don’t think I’m giving him shit but he gags me anyway. S’pose privilege means not needing an excuse.

The rubber tastes chemical, and a river of drool flows: down my neck, down my chest, soaking the towel on the bench. The last time this happened it was September and it was for money. My blush doesn’t subside until he unbuckles it and I wipe the saliva from my chin.

“You can hit me more,” I say hopefully, “if you want.”

He has the good grace not to roll his eyes. When he picks the whip back up and lays into my back, it’s more of a rip than a bite. I squeal and grab on to the bench to keep from falling.

“Pretty boy’s got a vicious streak!”

“Secretly,” he says, “I’m a sadist.” Crack! “And secretly“ — crack! — “you like it.“

“Secretly?”

He’s hitting me harder, and I can’t help but cry out.

“Yeah?” Maybe he thinks it was a sound of pleasure — he strikes me again, just as hard, another and another on the heels of the last. It is not what I would have asked for, but it’s what I need. This moment is what I live for: when I forget to breathe, when the white-hot hurt is like the static edging my vision when I come, when pain etches itself into my limbic system and calls itself pleasure.

His hands touch my back, bringing me to. I’ve fallen forward onto the bench and find myself clutching it as if I expect it to move. Slowly, I climb off. The muscles in my legs jump; even my teeth are chattering. “I’m shaking,” I marvel. Then when he asks, “You should take me back to your room and hurt me and fuck me.”  He has the good grace not to make me beg.

The hotel bed’s sheets are whiter than white, and there’s a handful of clothespins on them. He clamps a few clothespins on my breasts, my nipples behind the rings, but I can barely feel them after the beating. The idea distresses me much more than the sensation. He straddles my chest, and I open my mouth and try to catch the head of his cock between my lips. He thrusts his hips, gently, letting the underside of his cock glide along the flat of my tongue, across my eager mouth.

“You don’t take it in your mouth until I tell you,” he says.

The frustration doesn’t help my shaking. I turn my cheek to his muscular thigh and think of the times I’ve held down a lover’s hands to tease him this way. Payback’s a bitch.

The damn clothespins are in the way of his thighs. He pulls them off. It startles me, but again it really doesn’t hurt. I want him to cover my breasts with them, feel them click together as I crawl to him and take his cock deep into my throat. Of course, I don’t have the presence of mind to say so. I can’t even sit up. Maybe this is how to learn humility — finding yourself stupid and weak and bereft of words. If I could suck his cock I’d study for that class.

He kisses me hard. “Good girl,” he says when I come the first time. Something in my chest knots to hear him say it, then again when I get caught looking at his eyes — green, with a smudge of eyeliner. Submission ain’t coming easy. I’m rusty and rebellious. How fucking dare you? I think. God, I barely know you.

How dare you make me like it?

Blaurgh, home from class and I am so tired. Why did I go out last night? Oh, right, the sodomy.

I used to be crazy about anal sex — receptive, that is. For a long time I didn’t take it, then I got nervous about it, and then I felt like a hypocrite fucking guys in the ass while thinking “Christ! How can he take that?”. So it’s always nice to get fucked and not have the world end.

For all those hot stories about getting fucked with no lube, I just can’t condone stinting on it. Maybe it’s a guy thing? I love lube; it makes everything, not just anal sex, better. Most guys seem to view lube as a tool of last resort.

At work we use KY, and it seems to work pretty well. People who say “KY? It’s not slippery!” are not using enough. Though come to think of it, I’ve never been fucked in the ass with it myself, which will probably bring on some sort of karmic punishment… (What could this be? Would it really be so bad?)

I used to say not to worry about mess, that I’d never encountered anything to give me pause. I rescind that. It’s been a year at my job now, and I have to say, only my sympathetic soul prevents me from elaborating on how much mess there can be. Oh. God, I think I’m getting the shudders just now. It was just the one incident, but I’ve never brought myself to describe it — to anyone. The heart quails.

The odds are still in your favor. But if you know beforehand, why not have an enema (or as the little Fleet things are properly called, an anal douche)? So little effort. So much peace of mind.

The other thing I guiltily suggest: if you know your partner, and you and your partner talk, and you’ve had sex before, have a drink. Have two! It’s not PC, but I maintain that a man who will try to fuck me in the ass before buying me a drink doesn’t love me. (Huh. I guess I do fuck a lot of men who don’t love me.)

Of course, if you are seeing a professional, for the love of God do NOT show up drunk. No exceptions. I can take it in the ass sober and so can you.

I spent bits of last weekend at a sex party. I also spent bits of it at Arisia seeing friends. This would’ve been enough of a stretch, but then I spent other bits of it in the hospital seeing a terminally ill relative. My general sense of the weekend was one of frustration: that I had to sleep, that I wasn’t getting enough of anything, and that I was greedy for wanting everything when my relative was dying.

I was scared I’d use the sex party as escapism, and so I was reluctant to play, especially by the end of the weekend. Thankfully I didn’t. On the other hand, the drinks I just went out for…

This party was my very first sex party two years ago, and it’s still one of my favorites. Not only is there hot BDSM play and lots of sex, in a way that coexist comfortably, but the people are just fabulous. Bright and creative and wonderful, people I forget to proposition because I’m having too much fun talking with them. Too often I think I cultivate friends with whom I share little but sexual interests.

This weekend I found I’m still quite shy. When it comes to public sex and play I’m increasingly unselfconscious, but asking someone for it? Hooboy.

I decided it’s tacky to pursue one’s ex’s friends. My reluctant sex party rule was, if you have to ask, you shouldn’t go there. Even if you really, really like their boots.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can watch my friend (of Kink In Exile) bottom without wanting to drag the man in question off and shoot him. Possibly that point is when I watch her top May and realize I’m restraining my protective impulse toward him.

I owe so many thanks to Cos for shuttling me between parties, to his girlfriends for tolerating me, and to my ride home on Monday morning. And most of all to the hosts of the party, who deserve more thanks than I can give here!

More later. Unfortunately it’s hidden behind my backlog of posts on “important” topics, and when it comes to blogging, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

May’s comment was so perfect, I’m reposting it.

Not that this is news to you, Calico, but I think it deserves articulation here:

Declining an offer of sex is also something that many people do not [do] out of repulsion for the person making the proposal, but because of some other reason that has very little to do with the offer itself and much more to do with their own, internal workings.

Furthermore, men and male-identified people should be able to say “no” and not be considered to be “not right in the head” because you can’t say “yes” if you can’t also say “no.” And we should all know that by now. But clearly we don’t.

Thank you! This is exactly what I meant. Look, I had a fleeting moment of insecurity, and I also had the possibility of getting turned down. Two unrelated things. His rejection would NOT have caused my silliness.

Conversely, this separation — of sex appeal and self-worth — is also a really good thing to keep in mind if you’re a woman in sex work. There, you have the opposite problem. You’re being bombarded with requests for sex. Knowing that these requests have little to do with you can help you deal with them.

From Hobo Stripper:

You also need to understand that wanting to have sex with you isn’t a predatory thing, it’s just a want. If you feel like you’ve been assaulted every time someone wants to have sex with you you are going to be totally traumatised by dancing. (Stripping 102)

Boundaries are not what happen when you say no. Boundaries are your own knowledge of yourself, of where you end and other people begin. In a strip club you have total control, if you take it and even if you don’t. If you do something that traumatizes you, you are the only person you have to blame. Don’t abuse your own sexuality. (Stripping 103)

Between Hobo Stripper and Vespa Vagabond, I not only want to take the summer off, I want to go haring off across the country.

I really wanted to write an anecdote in screenplay format. Tact prevents me from writing it at all. However, dear reader, if you have an encounter with multiple men, I encourage you to write about it in screenplay format, that you may write MAN in capital letters as many times as possible. (And send it to me.)

On Friday night, I turned to a man and said, “Will you fuck me?”

Then unexpectedly, I thought: God, I hope he’s not disgusted by having watched me have sex with another man. I wonder if he even wants to touch me right now.

I try not to trouble myself with nonsense. These were thoughts I had no business thinking, thoughts that if the genders were reversed it would not even occur to me to think. For example, had I just been fucking a girl? I would expect all the men in a 40-block radius to be crawling toward me, begging to lick the ambrosia from my face.

I know that I am not made dirty or disgusting by sex. Yet this is why I avoid humiliation: it’s hot in fantasy, and in reality, not yet so much. I’ll be a filthy slut for you the day I can don and doff that personality at will. I don’t trust that I always have that choice in my partners’ eyes.

Still, I was surprised that asking made me feel so vulnerable. If he had declined, I think I could have enjoyed the moment for what it was (pretty f’ing awesome) and taken up my nonsense, like responsible people do, on my own time.

But he didn’t say no. And more to the good, that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Appropriately enough for a non-public-play event, one of the first things to come back from my weekend are fashion show pictures.

Ian X (of blood-dolls.com) shot these stills. I’m sure he was frustrated all to hell with the conditions, but I love these shots!

No, Molly and I did not theme our outfits on purpose.

Check out the rest of the gallery on his Deviantart page. I’ll post more pictures as they come.

The black-and-white corset is the same I wore last year, from Curious Couture. Everything else I am wearing (dress, jacket and gloves) I sewed the night before in a fit of inspiration. I blame the three cups of coffee I had during a midday chat with Jefferson. Consequently, on the ride up to Providence with Ace of Hearts and Viviane, I was too sleepy to talk much. I sat in the back stitching a rolled hem, and listened to opera and the rain.

Edit: More cute Flea photos on Viviane’s Flickr.  Thanks, Viviane!

or, Why Kink Should Have Me On Salary.

Mona left a comment on a previous post of mine, The Internet Is For (Sharing) Porn. My reply got lengthy, so rather than reply in comments, I wanted to post it here.

Mona writes:

Calico,

The stuff on kink.com disturbs me to no end. I understand that sex work need not always be grounded in abuse or desperation, but can rather be a conscious life-style choice; however, there are gray areas of every shade in between.

I stumbled over your blog when I was researching exactly these gray areas. Now your scenes were not abusive, you clearly state so in the blog. On the other hand, a simple pat on the back of the head can be very demeaning and, in a sexual context, therefore abuse.

I cannot imagine that the short interview in the trailer was the whole negotiation for the heavy stuff you did. With whom did you negotiate? Only with the dom, director, or with both? Did one of the parties reject a proposal of the other parties? How detailed were these heavy scenes negotiated? Any surprises left open? Any negotiations between cuts? While you were tied up?

Hi Mona,

I hope my blog helps you clear up some of those “grey areas” in sex work. I assume you mean where sex work is not a choice made with free will. I’m afraid I’m not in one of those situations, and couldn’t tell you anything about trafficking or coercion I haven’t heard secondhand or read from a book. I’ve never been abused or desperate. To my coworkers and I, sex work isn’t a “life-style choice”; it’s just another job. We picked it for its benefits and if we leave, we try to give two week’s notice.

Asking me about sex workers in abusive situations … you might as well ask me about hate crime, or child labor. I am concerned about it, but I don’t have personal experience. I suggest asking the lovely people at the New York Sex Worker Project. Trafficking is horrid, not because it’s sex work, but because it’s immoral to force disadvantaged people to do things against their will.

No one talked me into porn. There are many prettier, curvier and more nubile women than me trying to get into it! Without exception, I have solicited my work. I’ve usually taken time off a full-time job to shoot it.

But back to the topic at hand. You know my scenes were not abusive, so perhaps I can elucidate without belaboring.

Often when people question that consensuality of BDSM, they’re expressing disbelief that anyone could like and ask for it. I say unto you: tastes vary. I have been doing sex work for about three years now and I have gotten unguarded glimpses into hundreds of bedrooms across the world. Sex does not look like you think it does. Deviance is a cultural creation. Whatever evokes a strong feeling is bound to be someone’s heated fantasy. The odd, the whimsical, the offbeat and the bizarre are all to someone wildly erotic. Of course I used to think I was strange, but now I realize that even if I were not one of thousands with similar tastes, I’d still have a healthy sexuality.

Likewise, when people hear “negotiation” used in BDSM, they assume it’s a cut-throat bargaining process, where one party tries to trick the unwilling into sordid and objectionable deeds. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Keep in mind, I picked these companies to work with because their work represents the sort of sex I enjoy! I’m eager to do everything they’ll let me, and some they can’t show on camera. “Negotiation” is a conversation about the technicalities. You ate breakfast, would you like a snack or a drink before makeup? What size ball gag can we comfortably use? Do your elbows touch? Would you rather leave your nipple piercings in, or take them out? We’ll chat about our respective likes and dislikes. Perhaps we’ll lay out the toys while we discuss the different ties and scenarios.

When I’m eager and willing, there’s nothing they could want that I’m not happy to give. (Conversely, if I weren’t truly happy to give it, they wouldn’t want it of me.) It would be useless, nay, silly to trick or surprise me. The sorts of things they ask when I’m tied are “Are you all right?” “Five more minutes?” “Can you feel your hands?” BDSM isn’t coercive or evil. It’s just meant to look that way on film because we find that sort of role-play hot.

I can stop the action or walk out at any time. But I went to all this trouble to get paid for fantastic sex — why would I want to be anywhere else? When I had a cold once and couldn’t breathe, I used my safeword, and my top jumped to without hesitation. All the rest of the apparent suffering is what I love to hate.

In short, what you see on Kink is a fantasy presentation.

I hope that helps answer your questions, Mona.

all the best,

Calico