Friday, December 07, 2007

Ring ring!

I look at the phone. I shouldn’t answer it. Frankly, I almost never answer the phone anymore. I’m debating taking the number out of the ads in The Stranger and The Weekly, and just leaving the URL. Because I can’t recall the last time I booked a session with an unknown person who just saw my number in an ad, picked up the phone and called me, without doing any research or thinking about what might be involved. And most of the time when I answer the phone, it’s clear that’s exactly what’s happened. It’s my hope that having to punch up my website and look through a couple of pages to get to my number would make people understand that you’re not going to call me up and get in a room with me within the hour, because that is obviously what a lot of them think. I can’t truly blame them – there are definitely ladies who work that way. I don’t, however.

Ring ring!

Okay, well, as it happens, I’m stuck in slow-moving traffic and I'm bored. (Yes, yes, I talk on the phone in the car. I know that makes me the Anti-Christ. Frankly, if I didn’t talk while I was driving I doubt I’d talk on the phone much at all. But I do not text while driving, so there.)

Me: hello?

Caller: Yeah, hi.

(Silence…)

Me: Can I help you?

Caller: Yeah, you sure can. You can definitely help me, heh.

(Silence…)

Why do people do this? What do they think am I, Mistress Marvolo the Mind Reader? You called me, Mr. Fake-Sexy-Voice, you know who I am. Talk! Say something! We’re burning my minutes here.

Me: Excuse me, are you there?

Caller: Yeah, yeah, I’m just, you know, saying hey.

Obviously I’m going to have to ask the questions that he needs to ask, and then answer them, and then get him off the phone, because all this guy can do is throw out what he thinks are sexy lines. So nice to have to supply both halves of the conversation. Gee, if he came to see me, would he want me to be both the top and the bottom for the scene while he just sat there?

I’m not feeling particularly sweet today. Let’s get blunt.

Me: Why did you call me?

Caller: I want to see you.

Me: What are you looking for in a professional dominance session?

Not that I would see this guy even if he said his fetish was stuffing hundred-dollar bills between my toes with his tongue. Well - all right, I suppose that might get me. But he sounds like a teenage boy, frankly, and what I bet he’s going to say is something like…

Caller: I dunno, just curious.

Thank you for saying the perfectly wrong thing. I take his trick and say nothing.

Caller: So, you gonna see me or what?

A line from a very old movie pops into my head.

Me: I think you fall into the "or what" category*. Goodbye.

Click. I hang up.

*Name the movie/actor! No fair Googling it.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Give Me Money

Well, not me exactly. Every year for the last however many years, I’ve been donating my time to The Stranger’s annual charity auction. It’s a really cool fund raiser - they get donations of interesting and unusual gifts, services, and opportunities, bundle them together, auction them off on eBay, and donate all the proceeds to charity.

All the packages have themes: Here is this year’s Strangercrombie kinky gift package. The online description of it is oddly vague, although the print version gives more detail. However, it includes an hour-long session with me, a whole bunch of rope and a gift certificate from Monk. Plus various other little kinky do-dads. The retail value of all this would be quite high, and it’s all going to charity, so bid us up, people.

Last year some of my pals wound up bidding against each other right up until the end, and Jet won. It was really very sweet and I was pleased that he did that. And hey, if you ever wanted to pay for time with me with a credit card, now is your chance. It’s charity, right? It might even be tax-deductible, I’m not sure. But it’s a good thing to do, regardless. And if you don't want the kinky package, there are a lot of other super-cool things to bid on, so go!

If you want to donate to another local charity, and get a completely ridiculous picture of yourself to use on your holiday card, Monk and I are appearing together at a fund raiser Friday night – “Pictures With Santa!” It’s a long-running annual event put on by the Seattle Men In Leather, with all proceeds benefiting Lambert House. It's at the Cuff, from 8pm to midnight. (Google map link.)



From the SML site: “Seattle Men in Leather brings in hunky Santas (and sometimes Ms. Santas), scantily-clad elves, holiday decor, and a photographer, charging $5 per photo (delivered at the event.)” So Monk will be Friday’s hunky Santa and I will be Mistress Santa. Just because you’re a kinky grown-up doesn’t mean you can’t still come see Santa. Come sit on our laps and get your picture taken. We’ll decide if you’re naughty or nice, and just what exactly we think we should do about that….

Monk is also performing at a fund raiser for the Wet Spot tonight. There is no rest for the wicked, you know. I have heard about what he’s going to do, and wow, it sounds awesome. So definitely go by and see his show.

We are all so the community-supporting kids lately...

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

So, the amazingly cool event of last week? I got an email from someone saying she liked my columns. I do get some of those kinds of emails from people I’ve never met, and it’s always extremely nice to hear. But this was a bit different.

It was from Susie Bright.

Yeah, Susie fucking Bright! I’m not kidding.

Now, some of ya’ll may actually not know who Susie Bright is, and I feel sorry for you. You should immediately go subscribe to her blog and buy all her books, and then you’ll understand. Only you won’t really understand, unless like me, you were once a lonely, isolated teenager in a small, sex-negative Southern town, before the internet existed, and writers like Ms. Bright were the only, only hope you had in the world that somewhere, there were other people like you. Let me snip from Wiki here:
Susie Bright co-founded and edited the first women's sex magazine, On Our Backs, "entertainment for the adventurous lesbian," from 1984 to 1991. She founded the first women's erotica book series, Herotica and edited the first three volumes. She started The Best American Erotica series in 1993, which is still being published. She was the choreographer/consultant for the Wachowski Brothers film, Bound (in which she also had a cameo appearance). Bright also appeared as herself in an episode of the HBO series Six Feet Under.
Bright taught the first university class on the subject of the aesthetics and politics of pornography at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1986, and became well-known for her scholarship in sexual representation through her courses on the subject at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Bright was the first female critic of the X-Rated Critics Organization in 1986, and wrote feminist reviews of erotic films for Penthouse Forum from 1986-1989. Her film reviews of mainstream movies are widely published, and her comments on gay film history are featured in the documentary film The Celluloid Closet.

Yeah. So, as you may infer, me getting a note from Susie Bright is like a parish priest getting a note from the Pope saying, “Hey kid, nice Mass.” I know I'm gushing like a schoolgirl here, but truly, this was A Big Deal to me. I would not be the writer that I am without people like Susie Bright, and she was a huge influence on me as a budding young kinky and not-heterosexual woman. I just hope I can do as much for other people as she did for me.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Snippets from a social occasion...
***
Monk and I were talking together, with some passion and intensity, about business strategies. After watching us for a little while, a man sitting nearby said, “You guys sound like you’re mad.”
Monk and I looked at each other, surprised at his interpretation. I shrugged. “It’s not that. But business is war, baby,” I said.
Your business sounds like war,” he replied.
Monk shook his head. “All business is war.”
“What do you do?” I asked him curiously.
“I work at Microsoft.”

***
Scott Paul gave me the upgraded version of the prototype toy. He’s calling it the Cruel Condom. I also got two other prototype toys to test out, from the guy who makes Monk's metal gear, so that should be big fun. Photos when they happen. I’m so digging this kinky product-tester thing.
***
S showed us her ruffled panties. Then L showed us her panties, which have her boyfriend’s sports team logo on them. (As in, not the one he roots for, but the one he plays for.) I remarked that I thought I was the only one who had her partner’s logo on her underwear. Looks like a trend to me. Mistress Matisse panties, anyone?
***
I was asked, “Why do you hate snow so much?” Because I was ranting like a madwoman on Saturday about the !@#$%^&*!!!! snow. I said, “I hate snow because I can’t drive in it, and both my home and my workspace are surrounded by hills, so when it snows, either I can’t get to my dungeon or my clients can’t get to me, so I lose all that income.”
“Yeah,” Monk remarked. “For the self-employed, snow can be a disaster.” He knows.
Not to mention that although I live just three miles from downtown Seattle, the power goes out here whenever there’s a stiff breeze. There’s just something wonky about our neighborhood. We lost power for about five hours Saturday, and I was absolutely convinced it was going be out for a week, just like last year. So I could not drive anywhere, and I had no electricity. I was extremely not happy. Extremely.
Thus, I would rather listen to fingernails on a blackboard than listen to people chirp about how pretty the snow is. You like snow? Move to the North Pole. Snow does not belong here. Snow does not belong anywhere I am. Maybe I’ll go buy a Hummer just to hurry this global warming thing along. In the meantime, I want a permanent backup generator.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

The Doughnut Files

Notes from the weekend: Monk and I did indeed go record some more podcasts Friday night. We were at a professional sound studio – because that’s just how we roll, you know. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Afterwards we went into the booth, and the tech guy flipped a switch and it was like: oh, there’s my voice, talking. But, wait, I’m not talking. Oh, no - it’s the recording. I was really almost startled. It’s kind of wild to hear your own voice played back to you, crystal clear and super-high quality. One gets used to hearing it distorted by voicemails, speakerphones, etc. But I thought yes, that’s what my voice really sounds like. I’m guessing ya’ll won’t hear it like that. It’ll be compressed and sent through this crazy series of tubes that is tha intraweb. I do wish I sounded a little more like Kathleen Turner. But hey, I’m not too Jennifer Tilly.

Then we went to The Frontier Room and ate a lot of protein. Yum. We virtuously declined dessert. But then, as we drove back down 1st Ave, we passed the yawning maw of Atkins hell: Krispy Kreme.

Now, I have a history with Krispy Kreme doughnuts. A certain boy loves to tease me by bringing Krispy Kremes to my parties. I have threatened him about this, but apparently it’s going to take some serious personal violence to persuade him to refrain. Not that Krispy Kreme doughnuts don’t go great with Veuve Clicquot champagne, because I happen to know that they do. But I’d like to try and make healthier choices. You know, like maybe heroin?

So I’ve gotten better at pretending they aren’t there. At our last party, I was able to stay away from that green and white box long enough for all the other guests to scarf them up. It only took about twenty minutes. Seems I’m not the only one with a wee Krispy Kreme addiction.

But Friday night, they had that Hot Doughnuts Now sign lit up, and what could I do? I was powerless. And I led Monk astray. Remember my remarks about how anything worth doing is worth overdoing? Yeah. That’s how we wound up naked in bed, with a dozen little frosted rings of heaven. We both knew we’d have to pay dearly at the gym, but to hell with it. I have sworn never to publish The Doughnut Pictures, but I must say, I’ll never look at those crème-filled ones quite the same way again.

However, that night of sugar debauchery is over, and I'm back on the wagon. So if you turn up at my door with doughnuts, I will consider that your way of saying, “Use your stun gun on my balls, please, Ma’am.”