Dominatrix Next Door

As I like to do before I tackle a topic, especially one that’s going to piss people off, I searched to see whether someone had saved me the trouble. And in fact, Andrea Nemerson came very close.

Her take: if you think it’s an orgasm, and you’re both happy, good for you and who are we to tell you otherwise?

But when did perverts ever leave well enough alone? If you were satisfied by Andrea’s answer, go now and rejoice in your sanity. This chat is for everyone else. But mostly, for the fantasy object at hand: would-be-submissive women.

For once, I’m even light on the F/m literature. (Anyone? Anyone? Maymay?) I’ve heard of men having non-ejaculatory orgasms on command, and with my knowledge of the anatomy, far be it for me to say those aren’t real orgasms. But I want orgasms I can see! Squishy white wet orgasms! Besides, the idea of men coming on command has never done much for me. I mean, they pretty much already do.

The dominant men I’ve fucked have shared a fascination with conquering the female orgasm — maybe because it’s not always visible, not squishy and squirty and obvious. At the time I may have called this preoccupation “being an asshole”. Now I’d probably say “having an interest in orgasm control”. I do not need or want my orgasms controlled, but at the time, I put up with it because good submissives did. There was waiting, and doing it quickly and repeatedly, and asking for permission. I usually drew the line at masturbating for my partners. Yes, that’s a very common activity and lots of people enjoy it, but masturbation had always been non-insertive and for my pleasure, and I was not willing to do it in some contrived and inefficient fashion for Mr. Asshole’s pleasure, no, amusement. Not that I resent them or anything.

I met a few couples who claimed that the female submissive partner could come on command. In all cases the demonstration was pleasant: he had her kneel, or counted to ten, or whatever their ritual was, and she gasped and writhed prettily and gave sleepy doe-eyes after the fact.

I tried to give it credence. I probably look like that when I come. I’m constantly accused of faking: I guess I don’t come “right”. (Ironically, the first time I was asked to fake on film, I didn’t know how and the director had to coach me.) Mistress Matisse has a charming, if less charitable, take on the subject.

But back to making your submissive come on command — a submissive who is, surely, not me and who is, hopefully, not faking.

I’ve been there, I’ve done it. Or as Andrea suggests, a debate on the veracity of such a statement would leave us both none the wiser. Here are a couple scenarios:

You’re fucking like beasts and he’s got your hair balled in one hand and a hip in the other, and he says “Come for me,” and you do. I think we’ve all done that, even the not particularly submissive among us. At the time it just seems like a great idea. Is that an orgasm? Gee, thanks, I think I will have another.

Or when you grab the girl and throw her up against the wall, kick her legs apart and start slapping her suddenly-wet cunt, telling her she has sixty seconds to come or she’ll be punished. (I never know what to do in that sort of scenario. Both outcomes sound so good.)

Then there’s the hypnosis idea — or perhaps the Uber-Dominant Mastery Of All Things idea, sans any pretense of science — that one can train a woman to come on command, even in a non-sexual situation. Also the corrolary, that one could train a woman only to come by command, even in a sexual situation. I find this despicable, the height of possessiveness and jealousy embodied in a sexual fantasy. But then again, chastity is so not my kink, and kinks needn’t be politically correct.

The only trouble in any of these is when you try to enforce it. Fantasy doesn’t always translate to reality.

I hate the connotations of ownership in the “training” fantasies. Orgasms are something I do by and for myself. Can’t change biology — sorry! You can’t own them, as much as you would like to, and much as I might like to please you. (Not that I will, ’cause I’m selfish and cold-hearted.)

What’s more, it’s a dangerous delusion. If you think that you can control my orgasms, and I let you think I believe that, we are both gonna get fucked when you fail. What if you make coming on command a symbol of our relationship and the power therein? The first time I fail to come on command, it breaks everything — the structure, your dominance, my submission. I might come to dread those commands because I’m waiting for the time I can’t make it work. I might fake it rather than shatter your fantasy.

I’ve been there, too. I’m done. No more.

And how about “only on command”? The partner with whom I explored this the most had stories of his other partners, women who couldn’t come even years and partners later without his command. My psychic dick, this story said, is so big that no one else will ever be able to measure up. If I can’t have her, she can’t have pleasure.

That just seems icky to me.

Maybe there’s a better understanding to be had of this kink. But until then, you won’t see me exploring this too deeply — except, perhaps, in fantasy roleplay. I like my partners more than I like the idea of orgasm control. And besides, I have very reliable ways to make people come.

Phone girl: Whose pussy juice is this?  It’s on the table.

Me, alarmed: Um…

Phone girl: Seriously, whose? (waving styrofoam container) Lunch? Dinner? Snack?

Second girl: Eww. What is that?

Phone girl: Pussy juice!  That’s what the container says.

We all crowd around.  “Pussy juice!” is scrawled on it in indelible marker.

Me: Did you open it?

Phone girl: No.  Do you want to?

Me: I’m a little scared.

Second girl: It’s probably just leftovers, right?

Me: Around here, you never know.

As if I weren’t a cliche before (young, thin, white upper-middle-class girl tries sex work) I am officially a college co-ed.

Let the Google hits roll in, baby.  If only they made me money; I just spent $150 on a textbook.  And that’s peanuts to tuition.  I forsee many long nights at the dungeon, writing my essays.

By the way, I tracked down my whip!  I left it at a lover’s party when I went to the Fetish Fair Fleamarket in Boston, a couple of weeks ago.  It’s oddly comforting to me to imagine it coiled in its padded envelope, wending its way home.

“He tipped you,” she told me.

That’s not a tip; it’s a bribe. “He wants a handjob,” I said as I stuffed rope in my bag.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Every time a man has tipped me before the session started, it’s been with the expectation of special treatment.”

“Nooo. Really?” She thinks I’m a horrible cynic.

I once refused to take a hundred-dollar bill. Oh, how sweet of you! As much as I appreciate it — and you’ll certainly have a good time, yes, of course — I would hate for there to be any misunderstanding. So I’m going to set this on the table, all right? And I want you to hold onto it for me until the end of our session. That way, I can be sure that you really and truly appreciate all those delicious things I’m going to do to you.

That client left, and the money with him. Integrity is expensive, but taking the money and feigning ignorance feels dangerous. People like their agreements fulfilled. Men are large.

“If I come flying out of the room, you’ll know what’s up,” I called over my shoulder as I went in.

The client was even more hopeful than I had predicted. Several times during the session we repeated ourselves like well-rehearsed actors: plea, demurral, apology, pleasant assurance of offense not taken. But he never pressed the issue, and so I finished the session.

At the door, he thanked me and slipped a hundred-dollar bill into my hand.

I feel quite smugly righteous at the moment.

My signal whip is still missing, and I am getting nervous. It’s my favorite toy, the only one that makes me feel like an official, card-carrying dominatrix. Granted, I’ll never use it at work — very few masochistic clients — but it’s nice to be prepared. (Yes, I was a Girl Scout, why do you ask?)

I had never seen so many of the damn things in my life as last weekend at Floating World.

Here’s what a singletail looks like.

Okay, okay, here’s mine. And here’s a picture of my nylon one. They’re better pictures anyway because they don’t have the confusing tassel on the handle end.

As far as I can tell “singletail” is BDSM slang, short for single-tailed whip. We are the only ones who need to disambiguate from floggers, after all. It basically guarantees that if you want to merge your love of loud sounds into an interest in the circus arts, you will suffer from slips of the tongue. Singletails can be snake whips, stock whips, bullwhips & so on. The shortest I’ve seen is three feet.

There are a few reasons I like them:

1) Loud and showy. A whipcrack can stop an entire party. If you like being the center of attention, that’s fun.

2) Learned skill. Some people pick them up like an extension of their hand, but it took me weeks to stop hitting myself in the ear. I feel competent and official when I use one, which is a pleasant change.

3) It’s a versatile toy. You can tease, if you must. You can pick off clothespins with the tip. You can cut someone up like a steak. You can hammer them into the wall with the lead-weighted belly. You can hit them with the handle. Hell, you can even strangle them with it.

4) Incredible amounts of pain. INCREDIBLE.

5) Pain-to-effort ratio is huge. With a whip in my hands, despite my lack of size and strength, I can inflict more pain than most anyone can take. What a fucking trip!

6) The crack is iconic. Judicial whippings, anyone? And I’ll always have the hots for Indiana Jones.

Reasons to hate singletails:

1) Owners crack them, even in the absence of a victim. If other whip owners are in the crowd, they create the whip equivalent of a circle-jerk. (They’re all straight, though. Cracking whips at each other is an entirely nonsexual activity.)

2) Long whips are ill-suited for most indoor play. Insisting on them in a close space can make you dangerous, inconsiderate or just plain rude.

3) The cracking.

4) The screaming.

5) The blood. Call me a pansy, but it’s hard to watch sometimes.

6) The machismo. For some reason we singletail people include the snottiest, most stuck-up, swaggering assholes I’ve met.

Perhaps as an outgrowth of #6, I’ve heard more contradictions about how to use these whips than any other toy. Every throw comes recommended by someone, and criticized as dangerous by someone else. Same for cracking at all or on skin, laying in more of the whip, and wrapping it. I’ve been taught four different ways to hold the handle. I’m supposed to keep my whips soft and well-conditioned, break them in by hand and store them coiled, hang them straight, and keep them stiff and unoiled.

Oh, and I discovered at Floating World that nylon whips aren’t real whips. That amused me. Being whipped by a figment of Eileen’s imagination really hurts.

If you know the right way to do it, don’t tell me, okay? I’m going to stick with the things that feel good and don’t kill anyone. But if you see my whip, please, send it back.

Because I am a master procrastinator, I wrote this about Floating World before I attended, and never posted it.

Besides the sex, it seems a lot like other BDSM events I’ve attended. I had a rollicking good time at them all. The better the class list, the more conversation you can have while asking people about all the brilliant classes you missed while sleeping in. (Or is that just me?) Mostly I wander around with eyes like saucers, being introduced to people whose names I forget. Oh, and I play a lot in the dungeons. New York apartment walls are very thin, and screaming is nice.

(An aside: why do we always play in dungeons? I am into pain, not medieval re-enactments. On the flip side, they appear to be hosting a kinky Renfaire for the people who do want just that.)

But there’s never been sex. This disconnect is a pet topic of mine, so I think it’s well worth the (relatively low) fee just to see what happens. Will the dungeon be overrun by swingers? Will the sex room clear out when someone starts a particularly loud fisting scene? Will there be a sex room, or will they expect people to copulate standing up against the St. Andrews’ crosses? Will anyone touch the equipment after the Evil Penises have come out?

Snark aside, I’m really looking forward to it.

So, here’s my review.

Classes: Excellent. Although classroom space was prohibitively noisy.

Kinky Renfaire: Yeah, not so much.

Dungeons: Worked for me!

Sex: Less than I hoped for, about as much as I expected.

Besides one couple (my friends), I participated in all the sex that I saw. Good for me, I guess? There was actually a fisting scene, and far from scaring people off, we drew quite a crowd.

I helped out with four classes, which I have resolved never to do again, at least not out of the kindness of my heart. As much fun as I had, I missed other classes I wanted to go to.

I dressed up and dressed down, helped commit some bodily harm, and didn’t leave too marked up.

In short: can we do it again, please? I am looking at Black Rose right now.

I have nightmares sometimes where I’m covered in scars. I see my back in the mirror, crossed with white lash marks, and in the dream I feel incredibly ashamed.

When this came up in conversation yesterday, it sounded vain. I am vain in reality: I would be love to be covered in scars and tattoos. I just need to wait until my skin isn’t my most valuable possession. In the meantime, I worry about marks like some people worry about germs. Apparently I’m not over it.

What to say? Calico, enough, honey, sort it out already. You’re not unique in your pain — in fact, you’re really as lucky as they come.

I know this, since I’m certainly not coming up with any new questions. Are we right/wrong/going to burn in hell? How do we stop feeling guilty? Can he/she respect me? How do we learn to hurt the people we love? Are we feminists? Can people actually live this way?

Please! You’d think I’d never read a book. (Or attended a BDSM convention, like the one last weekend I’m procrastinating writing about.)

And it’s so stupid. I know all the right answers. I give them all the time.

I think this stuff must be like a second adolescence. You have to whine your way through it regardless of knowledge, and everyone else has to be patient with you.

(Disclaimer: I have nothing against China. Or Bitchy Jones. Colloquially, China is where one ends up when one digs a very deep hole.)

We’re past butterflies and tornados, in my land of kinky pseudo-sociology. Here in New York I fuck a guy in the ass for $200, and in China, a submissive man turns into a sissymaid with a penchant for pussy worship.

I have never been to China, so it could be even worse than I think. Maybe they’re into “full toilet” (or purple showers, or teal, or whatever the color of the week is) and I ought to start repenting before we’re all overrun by bodily fluids.

Today, God help me, we talk about how the pro-doms might not actually be ruining BDSM.

I take such complaints broadly, as “what’s wrong with sexual culture and commercialism”. (I have to — or my ears would shrivel.) The narrowest I’d take it is “what’s wrong with sex work”. (And if you think pro domination isn’t sex work, you can go shove it.)

My friends were concerned for me when I began doing porn. When you do things on film that you wouldn’t normally, they asked, don’t you worry that you’ll be held responsible for it?

And I probably said, Nope! If someone wants to sleep with me they’d better be prepared to ask what I like, and ask nicely.

Most people aren’t worried about how porn hurts the porn star. They’re worried about how porn hurts all the women whose partners watch it. If I can demand consideration and respect — the woman in that video, doing those acts — how much truer must that be for all the other women whose partners watch that video?

But when it comes to selling service topping, whose effects must be less widespread, I’m flabbergasted about the protest. If men aren’t mad that I’m charging for it (like such a service was ever available for free), women are mad that I’m destroying femdom with my pandering ways.

I was still under the impression we were moaning about pornography and prostitution and Sex In The City, misrepresenting our sexuality and appropriating our pleasure. Is that done? Have we moved on now? It’s all about the kink?

The criticism: I’ve messed up your partners. I’ve helped the people (the pornographers, or the advertisers, or the pop-culture-mongerers) who train our youth. I made all the people you want to fuck come out wrong. Like it’s a fucking conspiracy — like everyone started out good, and ended up ruined by deliberate agency.

I am not fucking it up for you. People are fucking it up for themselves by being too dumb. I can tell you exactly what I teach my clients, and it’s not kinky in the least. They have to ask specifically for what they want; they only get it when they pay for it; and they can pay for it from one person — me.

Whyever would I want paying clients to look to other women for sexual satisfaction?

But when a man says “I paid a woman to tell me this (bought a porn/saw an ad online), and so naturally I want it from all people everywhere all the time for free,” we still come with pitchforks and torches for the sex worker.

I understand that the world is confusing, whatever one’s gender, and society’s messages about sex are mixed. But if it were impossible to sort this shit out, we’d be spared this discussion.

I dislike this discussion. My sexuality is a happy place filled with (whipping posts in) fields of sunshine and flowers, and I don’t enjoy feeling cripplingly guilty. I have off-duty kinky sex, too. Except not, when my amorous endeavors create brown-nosed Chinese sissymaids. Mistress Frankenstein and the monster doesn’t do it for me.

There’s good sex. That’s what we’re all trying to have.

Then there’s bad sex. Not unsatisfactory (’cause God knows, no one got up in arms when I was having crappy sex) but politically wrong to have. I must keep high standards, especially as a woman: engaging in only the acts I feel moved to engage in, at the time I choose to engage in them, with an inspiring and compliant partner, and certainly never for monetary gain. Anything less is criminal.

If you go by this recent study, we’ve got a lot of criminals. We’ve replaced procreation with recreation as the only pardonable excuse.

This accusation — that what I do in private, for pleasure, hurts others — has always been too heavy a weight for my girlish shoulders. But rather than laboring under guilt, I think lately it may be the wrong interpretation.

Doing it for money is no different than doing it in any other condition. Which is to say, we all have choice — to do it once, or all the time, or not at all. And the same goes for all the aspects. The thigh-high boots. The heels. The strap-ons. The stupid riding crops.

Men have got to realize that. If they don’t, it’s their loss — and our problem, as the women who’d like to sleep with them — but not our fault.

Sure, it would be nice if sex work helped educate and enact social change (and on sunny days, I think it might) but I could say that of everything I do. People are always going to be selling sex, and people are always going to be buying it. And like it or not, humans are a bunch of kinky motherfuckers.

If you oppose pro-doms, how do you feel about other sex workers? The same? Different? Why?

Are you concerned with sex workers whose representations do not clash with your proclivities?

Despite frequent requests, I’ve never taken a wrestling session at work.

Not that it is beneath me as a “pro-domme” — please, I do peanut butter — but I am a little girl who knows nothing about wrestling. Also, how could I win against someone twice my size? I lose money for declining these sessions, but I don’t like to lose unfair games. Hurts my pride.  And other body parts.

I have “wrestled”, sort of, on one of Kink.com’s websites. And I used my modeling name. I remember the day I showed up to the dungeon with that name:

It’s not very name-like, said the owner. Can’t you pick something else?

I did. What was I going to say? I’m a porn star with visibility? Don’t hurt yourself laughing.

Somewhere out on the Internet, although I am not actively promoting such, people are still making the link between my pro-domme persona and my modeling/porn persona. I know: I can see my Google hits. And once every couple weeks I meet a client who recognizes me as Calico.

Then one of those clients came to see me at the dungeon. He was sweet. He asked (tentatively, perhaps scared he would offend me) if I’d appeared on the sites, as he thought, and I said yes.

“I want you to fuck me like you fuck those girls on Ultimate Surrender.”

Uh, twist my arm?

I put down the wrestling mats and did. Man, could he take it. The challenge brought out the competitive streak in me; I was damned if I’d give up first. By the time I finished there was sweat dripping off my breasts and down my flanks. But I made him beg.

He asked me for my autograph at the end, on a glossy print of myself. A print! Seriously! (My panties, too, but no way was I parting with one of my favorite pairs.)

I told this story a couple times because it was just so awesome and improbable. One friend thought it was great, but the other wasn’t so thrilled. Some guy, for whom this whole woman-demeaning, male-pandering porn-machine churns, gets his wank material fulfilled in the motherfucking flesh by the very same girl. Woohoo, right? You’ve seen it on TV — now see it for yourself!

Was that bad of me? Was I demeaned, cheapened and degraded? I have such a hard time telling when I’m having fun.

He was very happy. And men are people too.

I am not being productive here this week.

Last weekend I had excuses: a nude beach, a playparty, a tea party of sex bloggers. I got sick, and took Monday off work to let my tonsils fight amongst themselves. I worked Tuesday night (I never work nights), had a photoshoot Wednesday, worked Wednesday night (ugh! hate working nights!), and woke up groggy around noon today. Just in time to work another night!

I have about twenty snotty things I want to post, but they each refuse to become self-contained. An overview: Bad reasons to see a sex worker. Why I make the porn I do, and if my sexual motivations are dangerous — or necessary. The type of porn I wish existed (I think it only does in eastern Europe). The website I want to shoot for, and probably shouldn’t. A doubtless ill-advised little essay on why kinky folk hate pro-dommes so much when we do not turn equal venom toward other sex workers, like porn performers and prostitutes.

But for now, I’m just stuck.

Some upcoming events of note:

I will be attending the Boston Fetish Fair Fleamarket this weekend. The summer Flea is primarily a vending event, but I love to catch up with friends, as I used to live there.

Rita comes to TES on Tuesday and teaches lapdancing — as it relates to D/s and tease and denial!

And registration is closed, but I will also be at The Floating World the weekend after.