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.

Girl: My last guy proposed marriage but didn’t tip.  Didn’t he have a good time?

Me: Makes sense to me. You pay your whore; you don’t tip your wife.

Lovers of smart sex-work talk should check out Kitty, a formerly-SF-now-UK sex worker. Her baby blog PurrVersatility has two fabulous posts recently, one on forced feminization and one on threesomes. Too many people bog down in jokes and ostentatiously sexy bits; I’m liking her clear, light and incisive prose. Add her to your feed reader.

Today’s question: Does knowing who’s reading change the appropriateness of what I write? I’m not a “male apologist” any more than I’m an “angry feminist”, but I’m not here to be nasty to anyone.

If you are or might be a client: please understand that my frustrations are not personal. Let the more caustic bits here be tempered by the humor and good will with which I intend them.

Those of you who’ve found me through here have surprised and delighted me. I never expected to meet clients through blogging. Sessions with you have been some of my favorites. You restore my faith in this job, and for that, thank you.

Daytime jobs in sex work are a rarity. When I have mine, I love it.

I can’t understand why people despise their “9 to 5″s. Maybe they hate their suits, their ties, their corporate constraints or their Dilbert-esque lives. My Monday to Friday schedule was fabulous. I could plan more than a week ahead. I could join the rest of the world in dating and drinking. I saw sunlight in the mornings and elbowed blithely through the commuter rush to get home. I never felt (on the account of my schedule, at least) like I was living an underworld life.

But schedules come and go. So the second night in a row last week found me here, on my laptop, cuddling my Pinkberry frozen yogurt like a life preserver.

Around six or seven a worknight begins in earnest, and I feel disconnected. Not lonely, precisely; there are eight of us before clients, and the after-work time bustles. But Out There I know everyone’s painting the town or snug in their living rooms, and I’m locked away from it all.

The halls fill up: girls shimmying from room to room, trailing rope and nipple clamps and covering their bare breasts. It’s a madhouse overflowing with our flung lingerie and trashy magazines. The men passing from the elevator duck their heads as if the laughter might trail them out the door.

Around ten it quiets, and I start to cruise the fridge compulsively. Nights, I eat a lot. Whether I’m hungry, bored or stressed I can never tell. It’s the smoker’s time of night — eleven, eleven-thirty. The doors don’t close right, and we all start to sink into a greyish secondhand haze.

An hour. No calls. No one to meet.

I am well acquainted with the notion of self-worth. In sex work you quickly decide that what you are worth, and what your sexual services are worth on the market, are two entirely separate concepts. The former, unalterable, innate; the latter, measurable, but yours to control or abolish. You decide if, and when, and to who, and for what price, you choose to sell.

On such a night these exactitudes give way to generalities. You are selling and no one’s buying. Value requires two symbiotic creatures: an offer, and a sale. “Without set value” is not the same as “worthless”. But on still late nights, the two snuggle together conspiratorially. They share a drink, and invite you to have one too, and by eleven or twelve things are fuzzy enough that you’ll be damned if you can tell the difference.

When evenings drag closed, I wonder. If I were only thinner, prettier, younger, more talented, would I be making money? If my hair were straight or blonde or longer, would I be getting picked? If my nails were red instead of bare, if I wore eyeshadow and lined my lips, if I shaved my legs with the regularity of a bedtime prayer, would things be good again?

Chelsea Girl has written eloquently about the enchantments, the rituals, the highs and lows of stripping. I too go through stages of disenchantment (and giddy highs of good fortune) and most of the time, they pass.

The subway runs slower past midnight. I know I won’t be able to sleep. I’m too newly peeled from my stockings, buzzed on the smoke and shadows and muffled yelps of this place I work.  I’ll make a call, and catch a different train, one headed away from home.

At dinner on Saturday, a friend asked me if I would pay for sex. I said, Yes, of course! I’m amazed, and dismayed, that I never have.

We posited that intrinsic difficulty prevented me. The research, the selection, the call, the appointment, the wait, the interview, the paying, the shuffling between rooms, more waiting, the undressing. Somewhere in there my libido would quail, and I would flee in cowardice.

Perhaps I had never wanted it badly enough. To that I said: Oh no, oh God, I have. The depth and depravity of my want could swallow small middle-American towns. I merely sought out other outlets.

Now, I am here to wonder why paying $200 seemed like a less viable plan than the various stupid, desperate, unsafe, ill-advised, or unsatisfactory choices I’ve consummated over the past few years. I assure you, much of the time, it would have been better to pay.

Why have I not paid? Am I just a pussy and a hypocrite? Here are a few of my theories.

1. My primary sexual orientation is men. The only providers available are women.

   While there might be male sex workers I could hire, I do not know where to find them. There’s no TER or MaxFisch, no client review boards. I’d have to be as worried about getting beaten up and raped as if I were selling it. (Now that’s a shocking concept for all the people who ask me, “Aren’t you scared you’ll get attacked?” Assault isn’t about selling sex — hell, I could be selling real estate. It’s about violence and isolation.)

2. There is little social precedent for women buying sex.

   I really don’t know how to go about it. Just as a man would, I know — but in no other aspect of my life do I seek to do something “just like a man”. Clients are Johns. Clients are Marks. Alans, not Alenas. The client role feels heavily gendered, and not in a hot transgressive way.

3. Female providers are accustomed to serving men. I worry that were I to buy from a woman, I would discomfit her.

   In a dungeon she wouldn’t know the level of sexual interaction I expect from her. I even fear she might be insulted or confused if I didn’t want any — i.e., as if she were a stopgap fetish fulfilment when I really wanted a man. (Actually I think my strap-on serves as fetish fulfilment for some men who want men, and it’s not insulting, just bemusing — but still. I worry.)

   How would she feel about penetrating me with a toy? Making me come with a vibrator? How would I feel? It’s a bit legally sketchy.

4. I have enjoyed an outlet in video experiences, where I picked my jobs and played with experienced tops.

   See also #1. Competence and experience is important to me. With no review board, I might have to appear naked on the Internet to get my experience, but at least I know what they do and that they’re safe. And I kind of get off on the “you have to do it for the site, whether you like it or not” aspect.

   On the plus side, those people pay me.

5. I am hung up on reciprocity.

   This is one of my least favorite admissions. Many people say “I couldn’t pay a whore: I need to know she’s enjoying it!” I say: You’re paying her, that’s what she enjoys. At least this way you don’t have to wonder if she’s coming. You know she likes the money!

   Additionally, I find it frustrating when I hear it from clients. “It’s all about you, Mistress. I want this to be about your pleasure.” It is always my “pleasure” to do it — or I wouldn’t do it. I know you want maximum value for your fantasy, and you think my orgasm would be proof, but it’s not for sale. I am not going to get off in session — I’m just not. Leave my intent alone and accept your experience at face value. It’s better for us both.

   As a client, I think I’d break this rule. Selfishly, I must want to be wanted. Otherwise I wouldn’t care so much if my provider’s sexual orientation matched mine. I don’t like that desire: having sex for affirmation is more than vaguely creepy. I’d rather fuck for orgasms, thanks! Paid sex is not a place to look for affirmation.

6. My kinks are not the sort of thing I could pay for.

   My second least favorite hypothesis, below only #5. Sounds snobby. Like all of you enjoying your whores have proletarian tastes, but my rarefied desires require morsels that can only be obtained from the tropics at great trouble and expense? Yeah, bullshit. I ain’t that special.

   As a submissive, I would want to be the object of a partner’s sadism. In other words, to be hurt because it gets my partner off. Again, there’s proof-of-wanting in it — ugh — but there’s also a suspiciously martyr-like thread of “it’s not about me”. Double ugh!

   As a provider I rail against these concepts. They are fantasy. Wanting them honestly and earnestly doesn’t make them buyable. Sadism and desire exist only nebulously, as intent, not the provable meat-world realm of nouns and verbs that we can purchase.
   
   How to get around this? I suspect I could tell my provider exactly how to act, and try to focus on my experience, rather than dwelling like an obnoxious prat on her intent. (See the client advice in #4, above.) Whoring is the reality TV of sex. While it’s a contrived situation, the experiences can be real. When turned on we’re all easy to roll. Besides — pain is great at bringing immediacy to a fantasy.

   Alternately, I could go for the “I’m so pathetic, you’re only paying attention because I’m paying you” shtick. But it’s not really my thing.

7. I’ve been lucky enough to get mine for free.

   Maybe I am privileged. Maybe it’s because of my irresistable personality. Maybe because of my socialization as a woman to “give” and be “fluid”, I’ve been willing to compromise and perform more than those who have chosen to pay. Who knows? Maybe I’m not actually having more sex than other people. Certainly the choice to pay for sex does not correlate with partners and their quality, or the lack thereof.

   But my partners do take the edge off. These days, if I find myself tying myself up in the covers and attempting to hump the subway bench dividers, I just make a call and get on the train.

I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask in the questioning process: why do you have sex (or “non-sex” kink)? I don’t know if there are good reasons and bad reasons to have sex, but some are better recommendations to a provider than others. (Romantic connection = not so good. Getting off = great!)

Someday I would like to pay. And yes, I want it to be a man, and a top. If the submissive is really in control, that’s me you’ll see, gleefully fucking the paradigm up the ass with my big rubber femdom cock.

I’m sad Spitzer resigned so fast! It took all the fun out of my fantasy.

I’d begun to collect the various arguments I’ve dispensed across the Internet the past couple of days, when I realized that Glenn Greenwald had done it for me, without all the cursing and impotent frustration.

If you read one thing on the Spitzer sex scandal, let it be this. You have to sit through a couple seconds of the Salon ad, but trust me, it’s worth it.

Link via Mistress Matisse.