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Sergeant Major Interview

April 9, 2018 By kinkweekly 4 Comments

leather

Slave Bunny: In your own words, what does being leather/leather mean to you?  

 

Sergeant Major: To me, it’s about things such as loyalty and acceptance. It has to do with  brotherhood in a non-gender specific way. It has a lot do with traditions and honor. It has to do with remembering and honoring our history and those who really suffered because of the lifestyle. We can only be out because a bunch of drag queens got pissed at the New York Police Department and started beating them up.

Slave Bunny: You’re talking about Stonewall aren’t you?

 

Sergeant Major: Yes. That’s really the generation of us being out. Later on there was the March on Washington in 88 and so forth.  Leather is the foundation of which is now called the BDSM community.

 

Slave Bunny: So, in your opinion, not all Master/slave relationships are considered leather, correct?

 

Sergeant Major: In my experience, most people I’ve come in contact with who are in a Master/slave relationship have at least a leather underlay to what they do.

 

Slave Bunny: I also wanted to ask, what do you feel is the difference between between M/s and D/s relationships?

 

Sergeant Major: Master/slave is one nomenclature for relationships based on domination and submission. So there’s a wide variance there. A D/s relationship may not have as many protocols and as many closed dimensions as does a Master/slave relationship. I don’t operate on the assumption that a slave no longer has any rights or anything of that nature. I think for a Master/slave relationship you’re equals who’ve basically chosen a different role. But a D/s relationship is somewhat looser in regards to the way it’s structured for example.  And you know, unfortunately, some D/s relationships only exist in their sex lives. It’s D/s in the bedroom as opposed to a D/s relationship. I think Master/slave relationships probably have more protocols and we’re more involved in joint decision making than D/s relationships.

 

Slave Bunny: May I ask how you personally go about implementing protocols? Also, do you have a contract?

 

Sergeant Major:  First of all, let’s talk about contracts. A contract is simply an agreement in terms. It doesn’t have to be a written document. But one of the protocols that I have is you petition to enter my service. The first thing you’re going to do is write a draft contract because that’s going to tell me what you’re offering and what you’re saying you can’t offer. So, we’d go from there to negotiate a contract based on my needs and wants. As far as protocols are concerned, I use protocols and rituals almost interchangeably because the protocols that I have are rituals in the sense that rituals are designed to create a mindset. I have a daily affirmation ritual, which anyone petitioned to me makes a daily affirmation and I have a response to that. And so we reaffirm our relationship on a daily basis. I also have certain protocols I follow with regard to scenes. Now those protocols are in fact a ritual and they’re designed to create your mindset. Now if someone’s going to have a scene with me, whether they’re pledged to me or not, one of the first things I do is I hand them a scene collar because everybody that I’m topping who will have a scene with me will be wearing the scene collar. They will offer me that scene collar and I will put that on them. They offer it to me saying they are willing to have the scene with me and to bottom for me. So that’s the initiation of the power exchange there.

 

And then they simply sit there with the collar on until I have everything rigged and laid out. At that point, the next step in the ritual is to have them undress. The ritual for me is I strip to the waist at least. Sometimes even in public I will top totally nude. If you’re nude I expect to be nude. I’ll at minimum strip to the waist. When I do, then I gesture to the bottom to strip however far we’ve negotiated and then I hand them the cuffs I’m going to put on them and they hand them back to me and I put them on. Then I lead them to whatever piece of equipment I grabbed to use. The whole thing is to do this in a ritualistic manner in order to create a mental attitude. That scene continues until that scene collar comes off. So, that carries through aftercare and everything else. So what do I have for protocols? I have the protocol that if you’re pledged to me, you’re always on my left when we’re doing something, moving somewhere, going somewhere.

 

Other protocols we have are you don’t sit until I tell you to. In other words, I sit and then you sit. That’s more of a superior subordinate situation than a Master/slave situation. You’re always on my left because my background is military and the subordinate is always on my left.

 

All of my relationships in my household are based on the fact that we’re partners. I happen to be the senior partner with the final vote. But you have a voice. That’s another aspect of the way I do things.

 

Protocols are ways of doing things and to use a military term that’s called the standard operating procedures in the household. The thing is with protocols, if you quit using them, get rid of them.

 

Slave Bunny: What is the protocol for your slave to bring things to your attention?

 

Sergeant Major: Anywhere. Anytime. Except in public. In other words, if I say something or say we’re going to do something and you have objections to that, let’s talk about it because the key to any successful Master/slave relationship is communication and transparency. If you’re not transparent and you don’t have communication, your relationship is going to fail.

 

I spent 26 years in the military and I was a rather senior rank. One of the things they taught me early on is that when a subordinate comes to you with a problem or an issue, regardless of how trivial you may think it is, it’s the most critical thing on their mind at that moment. You have to deal with it on that basis- that it’s the most critical things that they have at that time. So, delaying it and not dealing with it is inappropriate because what you’re doing is putting them down.

 

I have to take it upon myself. If I’m immediately involved in something, I will say, “Can I finish what I’m doing?”

 

But other than that, I think it’s inappropriate to delay it. So my thought is if you have an issue bring it to me. The thing is you have to bring it to me because I’m the only one that can resolve it.

 

Slave Bunny: I also wanted to ask you, do you have anything to say about slave training and methods you use?

 

Sergeant Major: First of all, I don’t use the term training. I train animals.

 

I wrote this manual for lack of a better term and we actually do a lecture on the difference between training and teaching. Training is catechetical. Teaching is different. There’s a three part methodology they use in the military for teaching. I’m going to tell you how to do it. I’m going to show you how to do it, and then you’re going to do it under my supervision. I like to use some form of a written contract for training, just simply to codify what we’re doing.

 

Slave Bunny: I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about the difference between discipline, punishment, and correction. Could you give your own definition of these three terms?

 

Sergeant Major: Correction is me telling you what you did wrong and how to do it right. There is no penalty for that. If I feel something is appropriate, I will use deprivation rather than punishment.

 

Slave Bunny: Deprivation of what specifically, if you don’t mind me asking?

 

Sergeant Major: You can’t speak to me for two days. You can’t serve me for two days.Something of that nature. I take a way something from you that’s meaningful to you in the relationship. Corporal punishment is a waste of time because if you’re a masochist the penance will beget the sin. I don’t train a dog with corporal punishment. Why would I train you with corporal punishment?

 

Slave Bunny: So, when you correct, do you use verbal or physical correction?

 

Sergeant Major: Whatever is appropriate. Most of the time it’s verbal correction. In the military we call that a spot correction.

 

The first thing is if you fail to do something I want you to do, I have to make sure that I communicated exactly what I wanted you to do. I am the first response. Did I fail to give you proper guidance? Did I fail to communicate exactly what I wanted?

 

Rewards are much more successful than punishments.

 

Slave Bunny: So what types of things would have to occur to deprive your slave of something?

 

Sergeant Major: Deprivation is based on willful disobedience. If I told you I wanted you to do something in a certain way and you continued to not do it in a certain way, that’s willful because you know how I want it done. So if that continues, then I will use deprivation.

 

Now if there’s a continued pattern of willful disobedience, I do what Donnie Lil’ Hands does and say you’re fired.

 

If you’re being willfully disobedient, you’re not interested in being in my service.

 

Slave Bunny: What happens when you realize that you did do something wrong or maybe your expectations were too high? How would you go about dealing with that?

 

Sergeant Major: The only thing you can do is own your error. If I fuck up, I have to own it.

 

Slave Bunny: Do you believe D types/Masters should apologize for their errors?

 

Sergeant Major: If I own it then I’ve got to apologize when I fuck up. If I have a negative impact on you, I have to apologize. Being a Master does not negate my obligation to be a gentleman or to be a man.

 

Let me give you two things I’ve written. There’s The Dominant’s Creed. And that creed is cherish, respect, protect, lead and guide. It’s my obligation. And the creed for submissives is respect, trust, honor, serve, and obey. And those two things, if you look at them are progressive, each one leads into the next and you can’t put them in any different order.

 

Slave Bunny: In your house do you say those creeds to one another?

 

Sergeant Major: No, we live them.

 

Slave Bunny: Is there any other advice you can give concerning Master/slave relationships?

 

Sergeant Major: The key to me is communication and transparency.

 

To be submissive you have to be intelligent, independent, and capable. Without that, you offering to enter into my service is not meaningful because by being intelligent and capable, your desire to enter into my service indicates that you want to be with me, not that you have to be.

 

My obligation to you is to create an environment that makes you want to stay in my service.

 

Leadership is the ability to get people to willingly do that which they would not normally do.

 

That is my mantra.

 

You can only lead by example.

 

The way that I attract people to my service is by creating an environment that causes you to want to be in my service.

 

About Sergeant Major

A committed follower of the leather tradition paying forward to those who want to learn in order to repay those who took the time to teach him. Dedicated to preserving the traditions of honesty, trust and loyalty which are the hallmarks of the leather tradition into the 21st Century by sharing them with those who want to go beyond the gateway of the lifestyle. Serving his community as a teacher, mentor and worker and leading by example as a master.

Great Lakes Master 2006,
President, Leather Journey
Director, MAsT: Twin Cities
Member, NAL-I
Member, Titans of the Midwest
Associate Member, Atons of Minneapolis
Associate Member. Chicago Leather Club
Associate Member, Cornhaulers L&L
Past Member at Large, National Board NLA-I.

Sergeant Major’s slave, Riches, produces a submissives retreat weekend in September with this being the 5th year. The website for the retreat is www.SEEKMN.org.  His not for profit educational corporation Leather Journey is the sponsor.

Tagged With: interview, leather, Sergeant Major

anniebear Interviews Demonic Toys

September 12, 2017 By anniebear Leave a Comment

anniebear sat with SirBerus, owner of Demonic Toys to discuss his methods, materials, and why Demonic Toys is an up and coming contender in the BDSM toy market.

Owner and creator of Demonic Toys, SirBerus
Owner and creator of Demonic Toys, SirBerus

anniebear: SirBerus, owner of Demonic Toys- we’re always really excited to interview people that have really cool toys to play with in the scene.

SirBerus: Thank you so much for interviewing me! It’s great to be a part of Kink Weekly!

anniebear: Tell me about Demonic Toys. What type of toys do make? Do you use any specific materials?

SirBerus: Demonic Toys is all made from steel materials. The Devil’s Lollipops are made from circular saw blades either in 7 ¼, 10 , or 12 inches in diameter and then a solid steel handle that is attached through a steel stem. The handle itself is hallow to reduce weight. We also make theCandy Pain which is a solid steel rod cane. I was trying to come up with names and the first one I made had a candy cane stripe so the Candy Pain was created.

A Candy Pain
A Candy Pain

anniebear: Genius! (laughs)

SirBerus: Of all the things that we make the easiest one to name was The Devil’s Lollipop. I came up with it because of the little lollipops that are similar to SadiSticks, these just almost seemed like an over sized version except on steroids and a lot more aggressive. So the first thing that came to me was the Devil’s Lollipop. Everything Demonic Toys makes is all hand made out of steel, there’s nothing done with robotics or precut or pre-fabricated. Each one is unique. That has its pluses and minuses. The minuses being I can never duplicate them exactly. All my saw blades are recycled used blades. Trying to take things that people would normally throw away and re-purpose them and the problem with that is when a client says “I really like that specific saw blade”, well, it might be a blade style that I no longer have.

annibear: Being that you use actual saw blades for the toys do all of your toys have the potential to cut skin when you use them?

SirBerus: I make sure to grind the edges down before they’re painted. They still have enough of an edge to enhance sensation play. It’s a lot like knife play if you’ve dulled the blade a bit, this is the best way I can explain it. I try not to make them too sharp. The same way you wouldn’t want a knife to be razor sharp for knife play, you wouldn’t want one of my saw blades razor sharp either. You have the safety to run it along somebody’s skin even in a relatively sensitive area like the sides or thighs and not have to worry about barely touching them and cutting them.

Wry shows off his new Demonic Toys paddle at DomCon 2017
Wry shows off his new Demonic Toys paddle at DomCon 2017

anniebear: We were so happy to see you showing off your things at DomCon a few months ago. It looks like you had some pretty wicked stuff going on there with Demonic Toys. I know that you have a history and experience with metalworking, is that correct?

SirBerus: Yes, actually I am a welder and metal fabricator by trade. I got requested and told by a number of people including my submissive, Jenn, to try and make something unique and different out of metal. I thought about it for a while and if I made anything I wanted it to be more than a single use item; something that could be both impact and sensation or vice versa or have multiple uses. The first one I made I did as a joke and everyone seemed to go absolutely ballistic when I pulled it out. That was the very beginning.

anniebear: That’s great! It’s really fun when you can merge something you already know how to do into something that’s more fun like a hobby, so it sounds like a perfect marriage.

SirBerus: Absolutely! It definitely allows me to have the creativity to play around with metal work as well. I am far from a professional painter but it allows me to put that creativity into paint work for the designs and seeing people’s reactions and seeing the “oos and aahs” as well as “holy crap!” that comes from people seeing it for the first time. This always makes me smile.

anniebear: That’s wonderful, it sound very rewarding. So I saw a lot of your toys at DomCon. What would you say some of your favorite pieces are that you’ve created so far?

SirBerus: I’d have to say the original Devil’s Lollipopis still my favorite because it was the first one I made. I decided to put a whole lot of extra time into the paint job, just to see how far I could push myself. Because of that paint job plus the fact of it being the original prototype, that one is definitely my favorite. Other than that I’d have to say the Death Star paddle I made for a client was probably one of the hardest but most rewarding. Follow that up with one of the first custom sets I made. I made a Devil’s Lollipop and Candy Pain both in black and pink for Sir Pent. It was hard and took a lot of work but the reward that came from it was amazing.

Custom Death Star paddle by Demonic Toys
Custom Death Star paddle by Demonic Toys

anniebear: I was personally a big fan of the Death Star paddle. I saw it when you were just about finishing it up. It was impressive. How long do you think it took you to make that?

SirBerus: To make it took about four hours and the paint job took almost six total hours. So about ten hours of work!

anniebear: That’s amazing! It just shows how careful and meticulous you are with your work.

SirBerus: Yes, when it was first brought up to me as a custom job my first thought was, “There is no way that I’m making a Death Star from hand!” All of my stuff is one off. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t duplicate it 100%. So the concept of doing the Death Star was just mind blowing. (sentence removed) I decided to try and step it up and see if I could do it. A lot of friends suggested I just buy a vinyl sticker and stick it on there and clear coat it, but in my opinion it takes away from the company. I state that everything is done by hand and everything is a one off piece, anyone can stick a sticker on there. I wanted to step up to the challenge. It definitely was the most strenuous paint job I’ve done to date, but also the most rewarding.

Devil's Lollipop
Devil’s Lollipop

anniebear: On a more personal note how long have you been in the lifestyle?

SirBerus: I’ve actually been in the lifestyle and really embraced it for about a year and a half. I actually have to give a big shout out to my submissive Jenn because I always kind of had this feeling I was kinky and kind of felt off on my own island away from my friends when it came to this stuff but I didn’t know about the scene until we started dating. It was kind of overwhelming when we started dating and I became her Sir. It wasn’t until I truly embraced everything that the Demonic Toys idea took shape.

anniebear: That’s amazing, considering that you’re relatively new to the scene, to come out with this whole line of toys and torture implements is pretty incredible.

SirBerus: Absolutely. A lot of people have raised eyebrows when I actually tell them how long I’ve been in the scene. I’ve been told by people they thought I’d been in the scene anywhere from four to ten years, which kind of makes me laugh. Not laughing in a negative way, but I take it as a compliment, I wish I could say I’ve been in it that long. For how much it’s brought me off “the island”and allowed me to meet people that make me feel like the things I enjoy and the things I like aren’t weird and aren’t taboo is a great thing. So I want to find a way to have something new to contribute to the community. I think about how my submissive Jenn is so involved in the community and teaches and everything else, I want something to give back as well. I want something that nobody had seen before. There are so many toys that are great but they’re almost so similar between companies I want something that is really going to make your eyes pop, make you really take a step back and think about what you saw.

anniebear: That’s a really good motivation to start a company such as yours as a way to give back and still be creative at the same time.

SirBerus: It’s definitely been one of my favorite things. It’s been a huge motivator to see people’s reactions and partially to hear how nobody seems to take the same toy the same way. A lot of the time with a specific toy it’s either stingy or thuddy and everybody pretty much agrees. I can take the same Devil’s Lollipop and hit three different s-types and get three different reactions. One will say it’s stingy, one will say it’s thuddy, and one might say it’s a little of both! Then you add the fact that its got sensation play on the edges as well as conducts electricity. The Candy Pains do the same thing, but they’re deep tissue instead of what you think of a cane as giving a really sharp, stingy sensation. So I love seeing people’s reactions when they think it’sgoing to be the most viscous thing to hit their skin and then they try it and realize wow, I actually enjoy that and it wasn’t nearly as vicious as I thought. Obviously how the Top uses it will determine how vicious it can be.

anniebear: It sounds like a lot of fun. I imagine you had to maybe enlist the help of your submissive to try out some of these new toys before you started selling them.

SirBerus: Yes, she definitely got to try them out. Luckily,with people at her BDSM 101 class along with a few other people, I got to hand them off and get opinions from multiple different s-types and bottoms to get their opinion on them, along with Jenn’s. That’s really where I realized everyone feels it differently. Where she thought it was thuddy, someone else thought it was stingy. That personally made me smile because no one is going to say the same thing. This is just the beginning and I really truly hope people like all of the toys. There are a few more toys in the works that are soon to be rolled out to the public. I’m hoping that people see these and see it the same way that I do. That it’s a multiple use toy that is quite unique and they enjoy it for what it is and love using it.

Update: Demonic Toys has released two new toys since this interview was taken – the Devil’s Tongue and Lillith’s Lollipop. Check them out on DemonicToy’s profile on Fetlife!

Tagged With: Demonic Toys, impact play, interview, scene ideas, toys

Dexx Interviews Bella Bathory

May 29, 2017 By Desdemona 3 Comments

bella

Dexx: Bella Bathory, you’re a Pro-Domme and a lifestyle educator, well known in the Los Angeles scene and around the country.

Bella: Thank you.

Dexx: I want to start out by asking you, how you first discovered BDSM.

Bella: I came up in Chicago but I actually grew up in Vegas, which I call it akin to growing up in Disneyland. It’s a very surreal upbringing experience. But I started working as a model when I was 15 or 16. One of my first contract gigs was actually working for DeJavu Love boutique, so I was a lingerie model before I was 18. And I went to my first fetish and fantasy ball at 17 years old and was hooked. I was wearing this stupid white lace angel situation because half the girls were angels and half the girls were devils. I always tell this story because it stole my heart, but there was this woman who walked on stage, head to toe latex dressed like Cruella Deville and she had this giant drag queen wig and she had 3 men on either side of her, butt ass naked covered in dalmation polka dots and I was just like, that’s what I want to be when I grow up. I dove in from there.

Dexx: How did you go about diving in?

Bella: I went that weekend, I did everything that I could possibly do at Fetish and Fantasy, I was just going to the party to do modeling and then I was like, I’m going to do everything. I started finding local parties, munches, taking classes…

Dexx: This was in Vegas?

Bella: All in Vegas. My sexual proclivities have always been a little bit rougher, I knew from a really young age, that the sex I liked to have was really violent and being a woman, I was always bossy. For example, in 3rd grade, I got a bossy award. So, it was really connecting a lot of the dots for me like this is a community of people that behave in a way that I behave, but they do it in a very structured way, and that was really attractive.

Dexx: I’ve been to Vegas a few times and met with people in the scene there and it seems like it’s a difficult place to be in BDSM.

Bella: It is. Their legality is so weird, especially working as a professional, it is so heavily regulated because they do have prostitution legalized in the state, they crack down everywhere else. Strippers have to have Sheriffs ID cards. The thing with BDSM, especially working as a professional, what is considered sex is such a fine line that sticking a toe in a client’s mouth could be considered penetration and you could get popped for a prostitution charge. So it’s very underground and it’s a lot smaller. I dabbled a little bit in it when I was in Vegas but what really stole my heart was the Chicago BDSM scene.

Dexx: Tell me about that. I’ve been to Chicago, but never been to any of the BDSM related places.

Bella: Okay, so Chicago is where they hold Mr. International Rubber, Mr. International Leather. They have leather events throughout the year. They have Midsummer Night’s Fest, which is a gay event in Andersonville that can get kinky, but the great thing about Chicago is that it’s like old guard leather, and I came up with a lot older gay men that taught me protocol, they taught me the foundation of what I loved about leather, the trust and the communication and family aspect. The women there have been doing it for many years, so there’s one thing that I don’t see quite as much in Los Angeles is the lineage. If you come up in Chicago there’s a mistress that you train with. I never worked as a professional submissive. The mistress that I worked with, Von Livid who is still in the scene, she actually owns Latex Company, she trained me on how to do all of the things and she trained me on how to receive the physical aspects of it, but I was never working professionally as a submissive. She trained me and she has a dommy mommy and every mistress there has a lineage. They trained with this person, that’s where they got things from, or they come from a collective of a leather family, where I feel like in LA there are mistresses that appear out of nowhere.

Dexx: So, it seems like part of that old guard mentality is that in order to become a dominant, you must first be a submissive and to experience it from that side and it sounds like you did that a little bit.

Bella: I did it but not on a professional level. I don’t think you can truly understand what you are putting someone through unless you’ve experienced it both physically and psychologically. I would not be able to do that for money with a man. I just do not have the capacity to do that.

Dexx: In terms of people generally coming in to be dominatrixes?… dominatrices?

Bella: There is a lot of debate on that, what the plural is…Domini? (laughs)

Dexx: Do you think that is something they should generally be considering as a part of that?

Bella: Absolutely. There are some mistresses that don’t do that. Cybill Troy runs a house of just mistresses – they train you to be a mistress. And some of the women there are absolutely amazing. But then you see women like Snow Mercy who came up in the house of the Dominion and she’s been in the scene for 10 plus years and she is just so proficient in everything she does. My suggestion to younger Doms would be if you’re not comfortable experiencing the submissive side or the switch side for pay for with strangers, definitely find a mistress to practice with and come up that way. It’s just really important to feel those things before you put someone else through that.

Dexx: Okay, so on that subject, are you mentoring anybody yourself?

Bella: A bit. I feel like I mentor people all the time, I don’t have any current women that are training underneath me. I do look a the Domme Collective which is an amazing group of women and we all kind of train each other. Isabella Sinclair is the mistress and there are a couple other mistresses that are on her level because it’s a tiered system, so it’s myself, Anh Lee, Betty Bondage. I think those are all the senior dommes. So we all kind of pitch in and train the women.

Dexx: So, What brought you to Los Angeles from Chicago?

Bella: The weather. The weather did that. I love Chicago, I miss that city every day. I went back for Thanksgiving and almost didn’t come back to LA but the last time I was there, there was something called a polar vortex, which I’m not sure if you’ve heard of, but it was 50 below zero. The juices in my vagina froze and I was just like… it’s terrible when you get to a point when you know the juice in my eyeballs and nostrils freezing is normal, but when the juice in your labia starts to freeze, it’s like this is not livable. These are not livable human conditions.

Dexx: This was just last year you came out?

Bella: No, it was the winter of 2013/2014. I’ll never forget that.

Dexx: How have you found the scene in the lifestyle in Los Angeles since arriving here?

Bella: I think the best word I can use to describe it would be massive. There are so many dungeons and so many mistresses and so many BDSM clubs that are just lifestyle. There’s just so much to take in. Chicago’s definitely a smaller scene. It’s still quite a bit more underground. When I left a couple years ago, I think the only mistresses that were producing videos on a regular basis were the mistresses of the studio so Alexandria Sadista, Mistress Simone, and Maya Sinstress. And then when I moved here, it was like everyone has clips for sale, everyone was doing online videos and that just wasn’t a thing that we were doing as readily back in Chicago. But the good thing about LA is there is definitely something for everyone. I feel like there’s a munch every single day. The Chicago scene was a little bit harder to crack.

Dexx: And how did you get involved in Isabella Sinclaire and Ivy Manor?

Bella: Actually through Sir Nic, he introduced me. He’s like my annoying brother and we fight all the time, we both have prickly dog fights about things, but I was transitioning out of Sanctuary and it was suggested to me when I moved to Los Angeles the best way to really get to know a scene is to join a house and Mistress Cyan is pretty infamous for all of the things she does and I had seen her from DomCon, so I had started working at Sanctuary and realized that the traditional house life was not for me. I’m a little bit too busy to be in one place for that long, so I was not really sure what I wanted to do from there. And Nic introduced me to Isabella Sinclair who I had been following her videos and her everything for as long as I had been in the scene and I knew this is where I needed to be. It was like a little bit of a fangirl moment when I met her but she is so human, just a genuine authentic being.

Dexx: That’s great. So the Ivy Manor is a private dungeon but it’s also a collective, as you were saying? How does that work?

Bella: When I joined the Ivy Manor, it was definitely private. It was all private. When you rented the space, you got the entire space to yourself and there were maybe 6 other mistresses sessioning out of there. The things that Isabella Sinclaire is doing, is she just gets so many people who want her to mentor them all the time that she was like, why don’t I make this into almost a house, but it’s not traditional in that the women can kind of come and go as they please. There’s not a lot of sitting around the dungeon for multiple hours. Isabella does very hands on training, so with the newer trainees who are very green, she has them do 2 hour medical play, 2 hour bondage. There’s a really rigorous instruction period before they can even get the trainee status. But it’s independent mistresses working out of one space. The greatest thing about it for me is that we have somebody on call all the time who takes the phone calls and does the appointment booking, which is really helpful because I am so swamped I can’t get to emails as much as I would like.

Dexx: It seems like not only within your collective, but more broadly, at least in LA with pro-Dommes, there seems to be this real spirit of supporting each other as opposed to competing.

Bella: for the most part, yes. I think a lot of the girls that don’t have the mentorship, you know a lot of people get into this scene for money. They think it’s going to be easy money or they like that they get to be bitchy in certain aspects, but any Domme worth their salt, that’s what it’s about. It’s about empowering each other and building each other up.

Dexx: The clients that you have, are they typically regulars that will see you often or do they try it out and then you never see them again?

Belal: It’s a mix of both. I have regulars who I see either on a weekly or monthly basis. My issue is that I travel so often that I just don’t have time to see clients as regularly as they would like. So mine are mostly like once a month, or once every 2 month situations. But I do get a lot of first timers, I think because my aesthetic is very normal looking, very Stepford Housewife, very girl next door and they’re like, oh I can see her and she’ll be normal. So it’s a good entryway for people.

Dexx: Less scary perhaps?

Bella: Yeah, then they get in a session with me and..

Dexx: (Laughs) It’s a mistake.

Bella: Yeah, I definitely always start really easily and I’m very kind with first time clients, but I think people are mistaken by my bubbly demeanor and the blondeness that I’m not as insane as I am.

Dexx: So, when you get a new client, how much do you wait to do the things that you like to do and you specialize in versus the things they request and are looking for?

Bella: I think that is the biggest difference between lifestyle and professional. When I’m working with a client, they are paying for that hour and they are paying for an experience. I also don’t agree with doing things that I am not interested in. I have my specialties and my interests listed on my website. They can say, hey, I’m interested in XYZ and we try to involve things on mutual ground. I feel like if you do things where you’re just, “I’m not into this, this doesn’t get me off” I know mistresses that just don’t do medical play because they’re not into it. And I also know mistresses that do medical play but they hate it and I think that’s what’s going to kill your soul eventually and a client can tell. So definitely, with my professional sessions cater to mutual interest. I never cater to just theirs.bella2

Dexx: What are your main things that you focus on, is it bondage? Is it D/s? Is it pain?

Bella: D/s is mostly in my personal life. I definitely do D/s in sessions, but I don’t feel like there’s enough time in an hour long session to really implement the kind of power exchange and energy exchange that you need, it can be done, but I definitely like my D/s with a little bit more depth. I’m a sadist, in my heart of hearts, that’s what gets me off. Medical play, I love medical play. Sissification, the emasculation of men is just kind of what I’ve built my life around so being able to do that for someone, it just makes my heart pitter patter, so those are my things that I really love. Cock and ball torture is fun, anything where I can inflict pain, I adore, I adore that.

Dexx: I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there for whom they get reciprocal pleasure in equal amounts.

Bella: Yeah, there is no shortage of that in Los Angeles.

Dexx: it seems like bondage is something that gets less attention from pro Dommes that I’ve spoken to. They’ve seemed to be more into the things that you just described. Is that something that you think is underserved by the market?

Bella: I definitely think that bondage is a specific fetish. I personally love bondage, I like to have people in really uncomfortable positions. I love the beauty of bondage. My rope work is good, it’s not as great as I would like it to be, but I also love saran wrap. Saran wrap is one of my favorite things. I do think it is underserved though. Again, when you are looking at professionals who…sometimes when we have a client who wants a longer session, but when you have an hour long session and they have a full list of things that they’re like, hey I want to try this out, bondage can eat up, easily 40 minutes to do a comprehensive, good tie.

Dexx: I was talking to another pro Domme recently about the strange aspect of the lifestyle that you’re disconnected from many people’s “other life”, their family, their friends. So when somebody passes away, we sometimes don’t hear about it, we just don’t see them anymore.

Bella: Yes, they just kind of disappear into the ether. That’s been a hard thing for me. What we do is so intimate. I get the most intimate details of people’s lives. Things they aren’t telling their friends, they aren’t telling their wives, they’re not telling anyone else, especially clients you see long term, you have this really intense connection. There was this one client I saw at Sanctuary like clockwork. Every Wednesday at 11 am, he had this very specific session and he was much older and I was always worried in the session that one day his heart was going to give out and that was terrifying. When I left, he hadn’t been in there in a couple months and it was just this thought; no one’s going to call the mistress when they pass away. But I think that’s where the professional remove comes in and the difference with pro and lifestyle. When they walk out of my dungeon, they walk out of my space. Our energy exchange is over and that is why they’re seeing me as a professional and not as a partner or as a lifestyle type exchange. So having that professional remove and kind of having that compartmentalization is helpful in those situations, but it doesn’t ease the discomfort of the, “I don’t know if this person who I’ve had an intimate exchange with for a couple years is alive or not.” It feels unresolved.

Dexx: Yeah, that is unusual. So, you mentioned how intimate a relationship you can have with your clients and does the fact that you have these conversations that maybe not even their wives are aware of, does that bother you that these people are doing these things that are outside of their relationship, or does it not really concern you?

Bella: You know, I actually think that that’s part of the erotic nature of seeing a professional dominatrix, it’s that taboo that can be attractive. I also look at it from the perspective that a lot of these men may have children and they may have certain religious beliefs that make it not okay for them to explore in their personal lives and we get to provide something that no one else can. Especially when it comes to the really taboo stuff, like when you’re talking about race place, or really severe play like that, can you imagine how hard it would be for some vanilla dude to go to his wife and say, “hey, I want these really intense things, hey I want you to tell me how you’re going to make me suck another man’s cock.” And go back to being the man of the household afterward. It’s sometimes easier to do it with almost a virtual stranger and have that remove, have that confidentiality than it would be to have it with an intimate partner.

There’s so much stigma with BDSM still, things are changing a bit, we’re not in “the BDSM is a disorder,” any longer, kind of vaguely, they changed the wording, but still, there’s so much stigma and looking at case histories, I know somebody who’s really involved in the scene and is fighting for custody of his children, so he’s not able to go out in public without a mask on. He can’t be really out about a lot of the things that he loves and he’s it’s ingrained because his ex wife would take his children away. So when you look at things like that, you don’t know everyone’s stories, you don’t know the ins and outs and I don’t believe in shaming my clients for coming to see me, and I don’t have that moral high ground where it’s like, you should be exploring this with your wife because sometimes it’s just not possible.

Dexx: It seems like for a lot of your exposure to BDSM now is through professional interactions. Do you still get to any lifestyle public play parties and play for fun? Or is it all work for you now?

Bella: I play at home, I play at home for fun. My issue with the lifestyle public parties is that because I am so well recognized in the scene, and because I do it professionally, I have to be on all the time. They’re watching you as a professional, they’re watching you as a mistress from the Domme Collective, or a mistress from the Ivy Manor, and so many people would be demanding; can you spank me, can you do this, can you do that, and sometimes I just want to go home and beat the shit out of my girlfriend in private. So it’s harder to do it in public or at lifestyle events.

Dexx: I guess that’s the price of fame and success in the scene. (Laughs) In our little community, right? So, you’re a pre-med student?

Bella: Yes, I’m working on a Bachelor’s in Biological Sciences.

Dexx: How big of a focus is that for you with all of this other stuff you have going on?

Bella: In my tier of importance, it’s definitely the second most important thing in my life.

Dexx: Are you working toward eventually becoming a doctor?

Bella: Yes that’s the goal. After I finish this bachelor’s, which I have taken my time on, I’m not rushing my way through it because I want to live and enjoy life and I don’t want to be one of those people that turns everything off and then gets through school and is insane, so I’m taking my time with my bachelor’s because I know once med school starts, I’m not going to be able to be anything other than a med school student, but I’m planning on going into infectious diseases and working specifically in gay men’s health. That was one of the thigs with being so public and so out, is there’s a lot of places where I can no longer work. I probably couldn’t work with children. I’m probably not going to be able to work with any catholic teaching hospitals. I’m going to have to go to a public university like UCLA because there are just so many regulations on the code of ethics that they could call into question if I was ever outed, so I am working in gay men’s health, besides the fact that I love diseases, they’re my favorite thing ever, I love spill-over viruses and studying how those work, but working in gay men’s health, I can actually use my work as a dominatrix as a positive. There is a doctor in Los Angeles who is an ID doctor who was actually Mr. International Leather in 1988. He has that on his website.

Dexx: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anybody saying that they loved diseases before, so that is a first. So, apart from the difficulties you mentioned about certain places that might not want to hire you because of being kinky and out, do you think there’s any issue within the education system itself, or getting certified as a doctor that could be a problem?
Bella: I don’t think so. It’s touchy, with the Hippocratic oath, that whole “Do no harm” but I also feel like harm is something in the eye of the beholder, like if you can cut someone open with a scalpel to help them heal from some kind of malady or perform surgery then I’m not any different than me wielding a whip and me helping them work through something in a different way.

Dexx: There are obviously a lot more Pro Dommes than there are male Pro Doms, but there do seem to be a few male Pro Doms out there. What do you think is behind the disparity?

Bella: My theory on this is, I also identify as a bit of a misandrist, so it’s probably going to go into that territory, but I believe that men do a lot of thinking with their cock. Men don’t do a lot of follow through, they don’t do a lot of research, they don’t want the emotional investment, so when they’re like hey I want to have this need served, hey I want to be tied up, hey I want to be pissed on, hey I need this specific thing, they’re willing to pay for it. Whereas women are a little bit more nuanced, and if I were a woman and I were a submissive and I wanted to find someone to serve these needs, there are a plethora of men that would do that for free, so I don’t think there are as many women willing to pay for it.

Dexx: It’s interesting because conversely there are lifestyle events where women will do those things for free but perhaps you might argue that they’re not doing it in as skilled a manner?

Bella: There’s also the aesthetic to it, right? If you’re a male seeking this sort of service, you’re paying for a fantasy and a lot of the dommes I know hold themselves to a very certain aesthetic, like they’re nails are always done, their hair is always done, they’re always dressed in a very specific way, and then when you have a lifestyle situation, the amount of money it costs, I mean a $400 whip, a $300 latex dress, then you want them to wear Louboutins and Cuban-heeled stockings. Men are just so usually tied up in the visual and creating that fantasy that it’s hard for lifestyle women to reflect that at that level.

Dexx: Do you or any other Dommes you know ever have female clients?

Bella: I do. I love my female clients. A lot of the mistresses I know have female clients. They aren’t quiet as available as the male clients but when we get them, it’s definitely an amazing exchange. I have a female client that I see that, she’s had some sexual trauma in her past and didn’t feel comfortable exploring a lot of the things that she was interested in with a man for the first time, so for our session she had all these things she was willing to try and this is where my rule of, I’m only doing things I’m interested in kind of went out the window, because I was able to show her, “Here’s how you do this, here’s how you do this safely, here’s what this is supposed to feel like and so she was able to go back into her life and take that knowledge and do it more safely with other partners.

Dexx: I’m sure the female clients still appreciate the nails and the Louboutins and stockings.

Bella: Oh they do! And the great thing about female clients is I prefer women in every aspect of my life, but I get to tell them to wear heels and wear lingerie and get them all dressed up for me, so I get to enjoy that part of it too.

Dexx: I’m sure there must be some satisfaction in that.

Bella: Oh there is.

Dexx: So, you go to a lot of fetish events all around the country, what’s your favorite.

Bella: MIL. Mr. International Leather.

Dexx: In Chicago?

Bella: Yes. That’s where my heart is always. That is a room full of sweaty old leather men that just have been doing this for, some of them 40 plus years.

Dexx: So, to clarify, that’s a gay event?

Bella: It is. And the pageant is amazing. Their pageantry system is beautiful. Seeing the lineage and knowledge that these men have, I love the boot black competitions, they also have a puppy play area, but they have classes and workshops and men in sobriety that are part of the leather community and that’s the place that they go and this is what leather means to me.

Dexx: You must be somewhat in the minority being a woman there.

Bella; I am yes. I also relish that too. I am such an exhibitionist and borderline, medium narcissist that the mistress that trained me, Von Livid, her and I always come up with ridiculous matching outfits for MIL, we get our outfits together for the whole week and they’re just dying over us because she’s my height, we’re both 5’11” and both very Barbie-esque figures and we show up in matching pony gear, or matching ridiculous latex outfits or matching ballerina latex outfits. And the men are just fawning over us. But besides that, straight events, Dom Com is really great, I love the informative aspect of that. I’d never been to the Fetish Factory party, the big anniversary party because it’s always MIL weekend, and it always takes priority. I would love to check that out someday.

Dexx: So you touched on sobriety in the scene and I found this as well, there’s actaully a number of people who are alcoholics or drug addicts in recovery and are no longer doing those things, to be clear, but they’re in the BDSM scene and for many people this is a way of achieving some sort of release, or some sort of a rush that they can get through BDSM and it helps them, to deal with that.

Bella: I’m 6 and a half years sober, I’ve been in the program for a while. I think for a lot of people that are in the scene, it’s even less about the endorphin rush than it is about the spirituality aspect about it, that deep connection with another human being. And a lot of people that are working certain sobriety programs, the honesty and the open mindedness and the willingness, even the sponsorship aspects of recovery bleeds over a lot to BDSM. Like I was saying, at MIL they have meetings every hour on the hour and hearing these men and the way that they’ve gone through these really intense pain and experiences and the way that BDSM has carried them through a really rough spot in their lives, it’s an intense form of community having the BDSM and the sobriety in tandem. I also was brought up that you can’t play safe, sane and consensual when you’re inebriated and I don’t expect anyone else to get fully sober, it’s a thing that works for me, but I don’t think that playing when you’re drunk, you can’t consent. You don’t have full awareness of what’s happening and when you imbibe in anything, your inhibitions are lower, your ability to communicate and all that.

Dexx: How well do you think it’s adhered to by the community at large?

Bella: It’s not. It’s hard when you see someone, you know, it’s different when you see someone that’s a little bit messy and playing, but you can also see things go horribly wrong, you can see someone get hit in the kidneys or you can see someone agree to something they never would agreed to and psychological damage can ensue.

Dexx: You mentioned before that videos are a pretty big part of being a pro domme, if you want to become known. A lot of those are adult videos, do you consider yourself therefore, to be a porn star?

Bella: No, no I don’t. I was actually discussing this with someone last night. I think that, the scenes that I do, and all the video that I’ve done, I have directed either completely or been able to set the scene and choose who I’m working with. Also with being a fem dom, there’s not a lot of vulnerability on my end, like when I see the women that do porn, I commend them so much because I can’t imagine showing up to work one day having someone slated to work with and being able to have that kind of emotional exchange. I guess I’d be porn starlet because it’s just not as physically involved. I guess I’m getting pretty well known in the video scene, I just had my first cover come out for Severe Society’s Perversion and Punishment, which is pretty exciting, and I didn’t know it was going to video and it popped up on my twitter and I was like, there’s me and Cybill Troy on the cover just smashing some dude’s balls and then there were scenes from all the clips that I did which is pretty awesome. But that’s one of the best ways to market, with photoshop, I talk to a lot of my clients about what they look for when they’re seeing a pro dom, and they say if there’re no videos out there I can’t really trust it. You’ll get a photoshop photo of a girl that maybe was 10 years ago and you show up to a session and she looks nothing like that, or she describes herself to be one way and you get to the session and it’s not her demeanor, whereas my clients get to view my videos, see how I play, see how I sound, see how I interact and know that going into it, which is really great.

Dexx: It seems like, as you kind of mentioned, there’re a lot of pro dommes popping up, and some of those I think, are porn stars…

Bella: Yeah, doing the transition…

Dexx: Do you think there’s been a bit of a wild west of pro dommes that haven’t really been properly trained?
Bella: Yeah, you know it’s interesting. I’m dating this Suzy Q James, who is a porn star from San Francisco, and she works for the Free Speech Coalition and she’s super activist sex worker porn star and you know, I was actually talking to her after a panel that I did with Justine Cross, Natalie West, and Isabella Sinclaire, and we were talking about this, the new dommes that were coming up. There are some people that really crassly refer to the newer girls as a hooker with the whip, so they’re escorts who are just like, I’m going to start offering this service. My perspective on it was that my ego was bruised that these women were coming up and I’ve trained and I’ve earned this title and I’ve done all of this work to get the mistress status and there are these girls who are coming up out of the woodwork who are willing to work for less than what I’m charging because they don’t have the experience and it’s undercutting what I’m able to do and Suzie, my wonderful San Francisco girlfriend, pointed out that we’re supposed to be empowering each other and some women just don’t have the financial means to train the way we did. Some women don’t have an in to the community like I did. And you know, a lot of the classes that I took, I paid a lot of money for. I spend a lot of money yearly on classes, perfecting my class, and some women just can’t afford that. So, it’s hard to do this long term if you don’t have a vested interest in it and there are a lot of women coming out of the woodwork that don’t necessarily have the training. But if they stick around, they’ve obviously found some passion in it, so I try not to be judgmental about that because they’re just trying to do literally the best they can with what they have.

Dexx: That’s fair. What do you think that means for a perspective client that wants to find a mistress? How do they sort through that to find a true, properly trained mistress?

Bella: You know, the videos help, right? You can see a reputable mistress. Everyone knows who Isabella Sinclair is, everyone knows who Lady Hillary at the Dominian is, everyone knows who Mistress Cyan is. So you find women that train under that if you want something specific, but there are a lot of people that are like, I’m not really willing to pay for this, but I want it at the cheapest dollar amount possible. They’ll go to experience the session and it may not be what they wanted, and it may not be what they were looking for, and they do a little bit more research. It definitely muddles the pool of women and it’s harder to distinguish, I imagine, for potential clients, but if they’re willing to do the research and willing to put the time in, they’ll find what they’re looking for.

Dexx: Are you out to everybody in your life?

Bella: I am. My mom knows what I do. My dad knows what I do. I had a submissive for several years, but when I told my mom that she was living with me my mom was like, “you know, I don’t know a lot about this, but I have seen a lot of SVU, do you ever let her out of the basement?” I was like, she doesn’t live in the basement mom, but my parents get it, they’re just proud of whatever it is that I do and as long as I’m happy and I’m being safe that’s all they really care about.
Dexx: Are they aware that you’ve kind of risen to become pretty successful within this particular niche?
Bella: My mom is. She stalks me on the internet sometimes.I was actually on the cover of the Fight magazine, which is actually a local gay magazine and they chose me as one of the 5 people to represent the LGBTQ community and I sent her a copy of that and she kind of lost her mind, so she’s proud of me. She’s shocked sometimes but she’s just like whatever makes you happy.

Dexx: That’s fantastic.

Bella: Yeah, my dad, who I refer to as my father, is my stepdad and he’s wonderful. My biological side of the family is not…my biological father is not interested in anything that I do and we don’t have a lot of contact. A lot of that is because there’s a lot of judgement and a lot of religion.

Dexx: It doesn’t mix well with BDSM.

Bella: But growing up with it, gave me a wonderful religious play fetish, so there’s that.

Dexx: I’m sure you’ve got some nun outfits.

Bella: I do, yeah.

Dexx: Has your profession, your pro work, ever caused difficulties for you with romantic relationships?

Bella: You know it’s interesting, my last relationship, my last romantic relationship was with someone I met in a dungeon. She was working as a professional submissive and that’s sort of where our relationship was born. I don’t think I could have a relationship with someone who wasn’t in the scene in some capacity. I don’t think it would work. So, I haven’t personally had any problems with it, because I just keep in the pool of all this. It is hard though, and it’s not the scene specifically, but just the amount of play I have to do publicly, and the amount of traveling and being on all the time, it is hard sometimes to come home sometimes and be like, alright, I’ve been beating people for 12 hours and then want to have that interaction with your partner, so it’s good that my current partner Suzie, she’s also been in the sex work life and she gets it. She’s like, let me just make you some tea and we can cuddle, so that’s great too.
Dexx: Do you have any new projects that you’re working on at the moment?

Bella: What am I working on right now…It’s not a new project, but it’s a big part of my heart. The event that I do at Bar Sinister monthly, I host an event called FemDom Fatale, that event started when I was working at Sanctuary. I was a guest mistress in the upstairs in the purgatory, and that’s where a lot of people go for their first introduction to BDSM and they’re not really ready to go to a full on club, and they’re not really ready to book a full on session, and they just want to dip their toes in. Paul and Phoenix are amazing but I wanted to bring some female energy into there, and they liked me so much that they moved me from upstairs in the play area to the main stage and over the past few years it’s grown into an amazing, crazy, shit show of awesome and they do monthly themed events and we’ve done everything from Harry Potter to Alice in Wonderland. We do a circus themed show, we do military and medical, and the people get really dressed up, the crowd gets really into it and we do live stage play all night, which is really great, because they get to play with some of the best mistresses in the city. They do it for the tips, but they get to experience something publicly and safely which is great. And we also do performances, so all the mistresses I work with are all either burlesque or side show, some kind of weird performances, so at 12:30 and 1:30 we do like a big show, so it’s really cool to see that it’s gone from something little to this huge thing, and when we do the shows it’s standing room only, it’s one of the biggest shows at Bar Sinister.

Dexx: I noticed some other mistresses that also do kind of burlesque style performances and some belly dancing, some things like that. Do you think that there’s a contradiction between this sort of aesthetic objectification of that sort of work versus the image that you’re building as a Dominatrix?

Bella: You know, I think that’s where a lot of people get all fucked up in seeing being a dominant as an image. For me being a dominant means doing whatever the fuck I want to do when I want to do it. Whether I want to get naked on stage, whether I want to instruct one of my female submissives to fuck me, whatever I do, I do it in dominant fashion. And that’s where I think that the ego and dominant thing is confused. If I want to get butt ass naked on stage and cover myself in paint and climb into a balloon, I’m still doing that from my perspective, and I think that objectification and empowerment is just who is holding that and for me again, I’m a huge exhibitionist, when I walk on stage, often times my clients will be at the show, they also realize I would never get naked for them in a session. They’re never going to be able to touch me naked, so it’s also an extended tease and denial. I mean, that’s the thing with being a dominant is I can do whatever the fuck I want with my body. It’s not for anyone else, this is a thing I’m doing for me. And I just don’t care enough about the old guard…some mistresses are like oh you can’t do that, you can’t do that. And I’m just like, but I can. If I didn’t, that would be me submitting to your thoughts and your processes.

Dexx: I get that you like to travel internationally. Have you been anywhere interesting recently?

Bella: Let me see, last august I spent in Nepal with Snow Mercy, we were doing some really good work out there for an organization called All Hands, and that was no makeup, really gritty, but the last week we were there, we actually rode an elephant through the Chitwan Jungle, which was amazing. And then I went to Jamaica, Tokyo, I travel back and forth across the states, and then I’m actually headed to Bangkok at the end of January.

Dexx: I know some of the serious shibari guys around LA often go to Japan and learn from some of the masters there.

Bella: You know what’s interesting is Snow and I did not do anything super fetishy when we were in Japan, we just ate amazing food and we explored the town and went to a Goat Café and a Cat Café and the Hachiko Station. If I go back again, I’d like to experience it but we’re so blessed living in LA that we have masters in everything in this. When I go to another country, I really want to experience what that life is like.

Dexx: And maybe take a break from kink as well.

Bella: Right. I mean, Snow and I did do a Mistresses Without Borders project when we were in Nepal, and found some good uses for some Nepal rice spoons and things like that, but it’s so much a part of who I am I don’t need to seek that out in other countries. If I’m with a partner, we’ll play but I would love to go to Germany and do a fetish club there because that is a part of that culture. But I’m more about experiencing everything else. I am twat deep in kink all the time here, just everywhere.

Dexx: So, the Fifty Shades sequel came our recently. Any thoughts on that?

Bella: You know, I managed a sex toy store in Chicago called Taboo Taboo and I was working there when the first book came out and there were women coming in being like, I want these little silver balls that people can put in to spank me…I’m like kea gals? Like what the hell are you talking about. So we all had to actually read the books to see what the fuck they were talking about. I have just so many mixed feelings on that. I feel like it is a terrible representation of a D/s relationship. It is abusive and manipulative and I am so fucking tired of seeing straight white male doms portrayed in the media. I would love to just see a sane female domme in the media, once, maybe that’s not triggered by emotional abuse or inflicting emotional abuse, that’d be great. But what it has done is that I think it’s opened the door for a lot of people that wouldn’t have discussed it publicly. I definitely think there are couples in fucking Wichita, Kansas that watched the movie together and can now be like, “Hey, Billie, can I get a gang bang?” So I definitely think it’s opened doors in areas that wouldn’t have been opened previously. I think it had to be that super vanilla, cheesecake, stereotypical, hetero-fucking-normative situation with the rich dude and the virginal girl for it to be palatable, but now that that’s out there and those doors are opened, I think it’s going to give room for a lot more discussion and better actual art pieces to be done about it. But Sunny Megatron and Ken Burg are huge figures in the BDSM scene in Chicago and they’re the ones that taught me one of the biggest things that I carry into all of my scenes is that you don’t have to be serious all the time, I don’t have to wear head to toe black latex and leather. I can if I want to, but you can have fun with this. It’s supposed to be play. They also gave me my love for clown fetishes (laughs). Im actually world reknowned for my balloon bondage. Snow and I had a PlayboyTV special.

Dexx: Balloon Bondage…

Bella: Balloon Bondage, yeah, it was a PlayboyTV special. Snow and I teaching balloon bondage. But Sonny actually had a season of her show called sex with Sonny Megatron on Showtime. But it’s really great because she is, I’m not going to say an older woman, but she’s not a 21 year old woman who is real thin and looks a certain way. She’s gorgeous but she looks like a normal fucking human being and she has the greatest sex ever, so the show is all about her interviewing people about things like race play and bondage and she goes into these people’s lives and they sort of walk her through, or she’s helping them bring a fantasy to life. It was really cool to see something like that and see such intense fetishes portrayed on Showtime, so that’s a good thing, I’d recommend people checking it out.

Dexx: It’s getting to be more normalized. You reading anything good at the moment, or any good movies or shows that you like?

Bella: I just actually finished Jeanette Winterson’s Gut Symmetries, which was a beautiful book that one of my good friends suggested to me, which was just a medley of physics and words strung together like Chuck Palahniuk.
You know one of the things that feels like coming home to me is Chuck Palahniuk. His words just, if I were a book, that’s how I would read. So every time I try to read new novels, I end up hating them, but his books I end up reading over and over and over again. And shows, I’m a nerd, I do like Game of Thrones and Walking Dead. Fantastic Beasts just came out and that was awesome. Huge Harry Potter nerd.

Dexx: So, in terms of religious play, you would have liked the bit when the nasty nun finally got her comeuppance on GOT?

Bella: Oh my god, that was so funny. Because I was preparing for my last Fem Dom panel at Stockroom, I sent out this list of questions for the mistresses to be prepared with and Isabella Sinclaire was like, You know this is a little bit heavy. I do this because I like it. I do this because it feels good. It doesn’t need to have a big emotional cerebral…sometimes it just feels good. I’m like Isabella Sinclaire sounds like Cersei Lanister, this is great. This is great! And she wasn’t even doing it consciously, but it was just like that very, it feels good. It was amazing.

bella

Dexx: Cool, anything else that you’re working on?

Bella: I work with the Stockroom, I’m their offsite events coordinator, I travel with them, and do a lot of fetish events.

Dexx: So, tell me about how you got involved with Stockroom in the first place.

Bella: I actually worked with them during IML in Chicago, they would have a booth there, and this gentleman named Eddie Hibbs was running the store and when I moved to LA they offered me a job immediately, which was really great, and I worked in the retail boutique briefly, but I am not the greatest at customer service.

Dexx: The customer is not always right?

Bella: The customer is not always right, especially not in BDSM. You know, I love the knowledge of it, I love teaching, I love that aspect, but I moved up into this position where I get to travel and do things like Dom Com or Folsom and do off-site business.

Dexx: All on behalf of Stockroom?

Bella: Yeah, which is really fucking great, so I get to be a brand ambassador for them and travel to all these places. You know, Stockroom is still pretty widely known but a lot of people don’t see the full scope of what we have, so it’s fun to bring all of that to these events.

Dexx: They certainly seem to be kind of the giant of BDSM goods in the scene. They’re one of only a handful of brands that’s quite well known. The other dominant one, not in that space, but in the porn side, is Kink.com, of course.

Bella: I believe we’re actually working on a project with them, doing some custom stuff for the kink.com store. Which is really cool.

Dexx: So, Stockroom, I’ve covered them in a separate interview with Hudsy, but they seem to be doing really well, and generally founded by somebody who’s in the scene and does it because he loves it.

Bella: He really does. You know one of my favorite things about working in Stockroom is you get to see something from the inception of a design to completion and production, which is really amazing, so our lead designer, Joel, is like I want to do this thing with the neon wand, or I want too make this really awesome harness and let me get your feedback on it and here are the sketches and they travel and get the materials and you get to see it come to life. We also do a lot of studio services. We did the new X-men movie, we did a whole bunch of stuff with the Big Bang Theory. We designed the labcoats for West World. So it’s really cool to turn on the TV and be like, oh there’s our stuff, there’s our stuff again.

Dexx: It’s so funny that you designed the coats for West World because I was watching it and I thought that they looked a lot like the latex that we see in the scene.

Bella: You know office Christmas parties, how they’re jus the strangest? So we had our office Stockroom Christmas party last weekend and we had karaoke which was fascinating, so you get to see all of your favorite kinksters, like Joanna Angel was there, and Johnny White, and myself and Hudsy Hawn, and Betty Bondage, and everybody is drinking a little bit and singing karaoke and at one point, Hudsey Hawn is on stage and she’s singing and then she just stops. Have you watched the show? So she just stops moving and it’s just quiet. The sound stops. Joel comes out in full west world, I mean, he’s got the hat, he’s got the lab coat, he’s got the gloves, he’s got a clipboard and they did this whole shtick where Joel pulled Hudsy off stage while she was stationery, it was really fun and really silly. But you get to have moments like that which is amazing.

Dexx: Cool, so it seems like you’re pretty much living your dream life at the moment.

Bella: Yeah, I’m definitely living my best life.

Dexx: Congratulations on achieving everything that you have.

Bella: Thank you.

Bella Bathory is a lifestyle and professional Domme in Los Angeles. She hosts Femme Fatale at Bar Sinister once a month. She is a the Event Coordinator at Stockroom as well as an educator for Stockroom University.You can learn more and

Tagged With: bella bathory, interview, pro Domme

Dexx Interviews Mistress Cyan

May 15, 2017 By Desdemona 2 Comments

Cyan3

In honor of DomCon LA happening this weekend, we wanted to revisit this interview from last year’s DomCon issue. Mistress Cyan is the creator and visionary behind DomCon LA. You’ll get a glimpse of the history and importance of this annual event. Enjoy!

Dexx: You’re obviously a community leader, pioneer, and inspiration to a lot of the people in the BDSM community. I wanted to start at the beginning, when did you first come to realize you were kinky and have thoughts about BDSM?

Mistress Cyan: It actually goes back to when I was a kid, even just playing with friends; cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. When you’d get captured for some reason it was almost a turn on about the restraint-either tying somebody up or being tied up whatever it was I didn’t even know what any of this was about but I knew I was attracted to it. I can remember even before having any sexual type of inclinations about doing self-bondage and just loving the feel of it all. Even to the point that at my age I grew up when they had the old Batman series and some of my favorite were the two parters and at the end of part one they would always be caught and there would be some kind of predicament thing. I thought that was so exciting. It’s something I think I was wired with. My upbringing was very normal. I had a good family, tight knit family. So there was nothing going on that was traumatic or anything else. I’ve looked back on it if there was anything that would have influenced me. I just can remember from a young age being interested in it.

And certainly the same for me and many other people I’ve spoken to in the community. It just seems to be something we’re prewired with.

Yes and there’s nothing you can point to and go oooh maybe that spurred it. There were times when I first got into the community or lifestyle legitimately playing and I was interested in bondage but things like spanking or flogging, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I was at a play party and met some people and they wanted to do birthday spankings and my thought was no I don’t want to do this, I’m not into pain but they talked me into it and it turned out to be very erotic. It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be and it opened my mind up to eventually some flogging, etc. and all of it was bringing me to a subspace that I really enjoyed. Having been dominant in every area of my life and doing sports in school I felt that maybe this was like yin yang, that balance that you need, being submissive. So for years I was submissive, collared and everything. My Master at one point wanted to switch and I thought oh my god I don’t want to do this its not going to be any fun but we did and it just sparked something in me. This was really where I belong and identify as much as the subspace was really nice, this was what really resonates with me. But I think that has made me a much better dominant, being on that submissive side and collared.

So once you made the change to being a dominant, was it a case that you didn’t look back?

Exactly, that relationship changed that night. The collar came off that night and in the last eighteen or twenty years whenever we have played I’ve always topped him. The whole dynamic changed.

You don’t miss being on the submissive side at all?

You know I was a professional bondage model up until just recently before I got sick and that satisfied that subspace thing. I’ve always been into bondage and I was actually a semifinalist for bondage model of the year for four years in a row. That kind of satisfied that. I still loved that. It’s enough to surrender rather than be submissive. It gets those endorphins and subspace and energy going.

How did you come to discover and join the scene itself?

When I started there was no internet. I had read things like Penthouse Forum and there was always one or two letters about kinky stuff and were very very erotic and it just resonated with me. So one day I got the courage to go to an adult bookstore. I explored some more of it and the whole world opened up to me essentially. I found a magazine that was basically just contacts, so I started to write and it was back in the days where you put a code number on the envelope and put it into another envelope and you send it to the publisher and they forward it. So I actually opened up a couple of conversations via mail with people who were local who were in the scene.

One of them invited me to a party. She said its my birthday and she says its important that you don’t tell anybody this is the first time we met because the people that are going to be here are vetted and everyone knows each other, it’s a very tight knit thing. But we’ve talked on the phone and via mail and I feel very comfortable with it. So I went to this party and it started out just like a birthday party but as time went on it was less and less people and I was thinking everyone left early and realized I hadn’t seen people leave through the front door. And I asked where’d everybody go and she said they’re out in the playroom. She said come with me and we went out and their garage was converted to a dungeon. We walked in and opened the door and all these BDSM scenes are going on and one of the first ones I see is this woman who’s suspended upside down, they’re dropping candle wax between her legs, she’s screaming bloody murder and I’m thinking to myself oh my god I gotta get out of here! I was still working in the corporate world and thinking if I get arrested or if this gets raided and she put her hand on my shoulder and said everything is consensual, everything is safe here, and everything is legal. When I watched that seen and they let her down there was just this warm embrace and great aftercare. It touched me, that closeness. It opened me up to exploring a little bit more. From that point on they introduced me to other people. And play parties back then that I was invited to, they had no places like Sanctuary or Lair it was all at peoples’ homes. I was just in heaven for four years with being on the sub side of things and looked forward to it. They were very nurturing and caring, all about safety, protocol, what you see and what you hear stays here. I felt that for the first time I could disclose things to them that I couldn’t even tell my closest friends. Unfortunately these days I think it’s more like information today is ammunition tomorrow with the internet. There’s less sense of responsibility to each other. But it opened up a whole world to me not only in the kink aspect but ethically and how you live your life as far as respect goes. It taught me a lot of things about the submission part, self control, self discipline. There were a lot of life lessons to be learned just from getting involved in it. But again it all went back to contacting people and asking questions and then having them open their arms and accepting me.

I guess for me having just come into the scene a lot more recently, it still seems to me like there’s now this wonderful community of people that you can open up to and talk to about things you’d never be able to say to people and generally without any fear that its going to come back to get you even despite the whole internet age which has been really nice.

I think that BDSM and the leather community have been integrating a little bit more because the leather community is all trust honor respect and the Old Guard. That goes a long way in how you live your life. We used to say BDSM is what we do, leather is who we are. I think in the last five years I’ve seen the two communities integrate a little bit better. I think some of the BDSM communities are starting to realize some of the ethical and lifestyle things of the leather community.

You talked about how you discovered your dominant side and then was it some time after that that you then actually transitioned into being a Pro-Dominant?

Yes, it was years actually. There was a dungeon in Los Angeles called 665 and many years ago they used to have a play space down in east Hollywood across from a church. I would go there and play and I got to meet people. I got mentored on how to do some of the stuff I did. Eventually met more people in 1986 I believe and moved in with some friends in Riverside. They had a big five bedroom two story house on an acre and a half of land and there’d be a party every second week of the month. I started getting entrenched in the lifestyle part of it and one day in I think 1991 somebody invited me to participate in doing a scene with them. I did it and it was like wow this was great we get to play and do all this stuff and I can actually get paid too that’s amazing! This is great! But my thought of ever doing it professionally was not even in the picture.

My background coming out of college; I worked myself up from a low level position to a director of operations for a 3.4 billion dollar company. Then when at one point the company relocated to North Carolina I chose not to. I was also managing bands at the time, so I went to full time doing that for years, so being a pro was a past time for me. In 94’ I met someone at a party and she invited me over to her space to see it and asked me if I’d be interested in working with her and partnering on the dungeon. So we started this little dungeon in Glendale. And as I started going, the interest in the Domination did not wan. It seemed like it fueled it. I enjoyed meeting people and playing with new people. So I made the decision to stop managing bands and concentrate on Pro-Domming and that’s what I’ve done ever since.

And did you have any particular influences or mentors during that period that helped you?

Yes actually there was one Pro-Domme who’s actually now retired named Jennifer Antone. She was a big influence. When I was submissive she had been playing with me and then taught me. But there were people that were teaching at Society of Janus and TES in the east coast and those were some of my mentors. Not just technique but what you’re trying to accomplish from it and having experienced it I could understand it. I felt that I had really good mentoring and training. When I started to do it professionally, the clients that I had would come to me about how there was magic between us, how I could sense it. What I realized I had learned through my experiences as being a submissive and being mentored is that when I was playing with someone, their body would speak to me more than their words were. If I really paid attention their body would tell me how far to go. That made them want to come back and see me. That launched my career.

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In your time of both personal and professional play do you have any particular memorable or creative scenes that you’ve been involved in?

Actually for me almost all of my scenes are memorable in a way. I’ve had some pretty crazy ones. I had one guy come in and want to do an interrogation scene and he wanted it to be very intense, be threatened and shot-to actually be shot. I’m a pretty creative person. He said nobody would do this and I said ok I’ll do it. He was kind of shy and we planned a date. He came over and we started doing this whole interrogation scene and what I’d done was get a paint ball gun and red paint balls. We’re doing the whole scene wanting him to talk and him not wanting to talk so finally I drag him into the main room and put him up and pull out this gun and all of a sudden the fear of God is in his eyes. I start telling him I’m going to shoot him, but he has one more chance. He’s thinking as scary as this is I’m not really going to do it. He declines so I shot him with the paint ball gun. All of a sudden VOOM! the projectile hits him and the red splatters! He was just blown away with it and it was one of those scenes that was a roleplay that really took a life of its own and went there. What heightened it all for him was because he wasn’t expecting it to really happen. He was expecting it to be a toy or something. The effect of the paintball and visual of the red was very intense. It was just an amazing scene.

Did he talk!?

(Laughs) At that point he was talking more saying thank you mistress that was incredible!

So I know that the Sanctuary space used to be Passive Arts and that ended with a a particularly tragic incident and I guess I’m curious to know what impact that had on the LA community?

Severe. Severe. I was very close with John who owned Passive Arts and as a matter of fact I had done some of my fundraisers here. John was a really great person, he cared about the community, he cared about making people happy. So when the tragedy happened it was pretty devastating. A large part of the community felt a big loss. Not only the loss of John but this place was so big it held so many people this was like home to so many people. And the estate contacted me and said we’ve got a lot of people coming here with money and want to redo it but we don’t think any of them are doing it for the right reasons. It looks like it’s a financial investment that people want to make that think it’s a cash cow and we know you were close with John and you’ve got a good reputation and in a nutshell we would like to find out if you would be interested in taking the space over.

Up until then I thought there was no way I could ever do that. I don’t know if I could take it and feel good inside, benefiting from the loss of somebody else. They explained to me if there was anybody John would want to take it over it would be me. So I got a couple of investors together and we scraped up enough to get the thing open again. The community has been very supportive. My commitment to the estate was that Passive Arts was Passive Arts and it couldn’t be replaced so what my goal here at Sanctuary was to take what John had to the next level. I’d bring it to another stage of its evolution.

And do you feel that you’ve achieved that objective?

Yes I do. And I’ve gotten that from the community but its still a work in progress and every day, every month we’re doing something different. Where we wanted to be is still not there but despite what people might think this is not a cash cow, we don’t get rich here (laughs) and having been in the corporate world I understand about growth and if you grow too fast it can be bad. So we try to maintain our budget and grow slowly and put money back into the business that we can afford to. But we’d rather take baby steps to get to the big goal rather than do it all at once and stumble and have something happen where we have to close the doors.

Most dungeons seem either cater to lifestylers or professionals. But clearly here you cater to both. Why do you think other dungeons don’t do that and do you think that that’s presented any unique challenges to you?

Number one I cant say why people don’t do it I can only say for me since the year 2000 I’ve been actively promoting truth in this. Kind of like the story about how I started DomCon. I was in a Yahoo group, a BDSM group and one day I went to log on I couldn’t log on, it said I wasn’t allowed. I thought I’d forgotten the password. So I contacted the moderator and she responded and said well you’ve been banned because you’re a professional and this is a lifestyle group. And I said I’ve been doing lifestyle for ten years, I’m lifestyle before I’m professional I just happen to be able to choose a career that I happen to be able to live with and not have this as a job as a life. They said sorry there are no professionals. So I started setting my goals on trying to change that. That’s how I came up with the concept of DomCon because it’s professional and lifestyle.

But as far as the dungeon goes, there was no reason why the professional people and lifestyle people cant mingle. My philosophy if you’re going to be a successful professional it has to be something that you love. A kid can watch Kobe Bryant play basketball and find out he makes fifty million dollars and if he’s motivated by money and says oh I’m going to do that playing basketball, if he doesn’t like doing it he’s not going to be very successful with it. If he loves basketball he’s going to do well and succeed. The same thing with our business. If you don’t like what you’re doing or doing it for the money you don’t last. It was not a way to get rich quick. So most professionals are lifestyle people who came from the lifestyle. They didn’t just decide one day they’re going to wake up and be a pro. And those that have generally aren’t around. Some simple guidelines for my staff, my pros know that in our lifestyle parties its not about soliciting, its not about business, its about the lifestyle. If you come to the parties you’re here to play. You’re not here on business or anything like that. And during the day we treat it as a job, as work. So there’s a certain amount of separation even though the venue itself caters to professional, lifestyle, and also we’ve got promoters coming and doing men only parties so we have the gay and lesbian and pansexual communities, we’ve got classes and workshops so we’ve been able to use the facility because of its size to incorporate and try to do more of a community center of BDSM so we can bring people together.
You asked me about the complications there have been some. There are some people that say oh that’s a pro dungeon you don’t want to go there its just a pro dungeon or we keep trying to get categorized in one thing but we try to not be categorized. We’ve had weddings here. We’ve had memorials. As being the biggest dungeon in Los Angeles we feel we also have a responsibility to community. That’s one of the reasons why I think we try to do so much.

I guess my other question would be clearly almost all of the professionals you see are women, is there any demand for male pros?

Not very much. And the reason I think is that they –and there are exceptions-in general some of the fantasies that submissive guys have as far as seeing a master is sexual. And being a professional dominant in a professional field we cant cross sexual lines. There cant be oral/genital contact or penetration. And I’ve experienced the same thing even as transsexual. They seem to think that well if somebody hasn’t had their surgery they can? And that’s what’s attracting them. Most female dominants that they see they know there’s not going to be sex involved and they’re going for the BDSM part of it where if it’s a male or somebody who’s transgendered they assume there can be more to it and it can fulfill some other fantasies and when they found out they cant it’s the sexual fantasy rather than BDSM that attracts them so most men would do some sessions but there are very few out there that can make a career out of it.

You’ve suggested based on that answer that most clients are men is that true?

Yes.

So very few women would come through for pro sessions?

I would say that we’ve got about 85-90% men. We have some couples that come in who are exploring and because of movies like Fifty Shades and things like that that opens up a door of curiosity and they’ll come here and they can meet with a Domme and get walked through it or both experience a scene being flogged or bondage, those kind of things. Or if they’re dominants they can come and play with a submissive because they may not be able to find somebody.

Have you had some challenges from employing so many professional Dommes and subs under one roof?

(laughs) Yea, like herding cats sometimes. There can be drama. When you’ve got forty women working for you it can be challenging. And not everyone sees eye to eye as far as personalities. But generally, as a rule the challenges are minor. As I’ve said I come from a large corporation and I dealt with different challenges. Whatever it is you’re going to find it. Here its more of a sisterhood or family. New girls that come in get taken under our wings and taught technique. We work with them.

I’ve spoken with several different people in the community some of whom work for you, others who don’t who have mentioned you as a mentor. Is that something you think you’ve been drawn to?

Again this goes way back to the old way before the internet. When I first came into it you got in by meeting somebody and I was taught no body ever charged me. Nobody ever said yea I’ll show you how to flog if you schedule time with me. It was all about showing me. Back then there were no classes like there are today so it was impressed upon me, our community is going to grow because we pass on the knowledge and experience. So we’re investing our time in teaching you, we expect you to spend your time teaching somebody else and they’re going to teach somebody else. So I’ve always been in a mentoring capacity. In 2007 the LA Leather Coalition awarded me the mentor of the year. I was very honored two years ago LA weekly wrote an article on me calling me the most respected Dominatrix in Los Angeles. A lot of it is because it feels very rewarding to give back. And I love it when I see somebody who sees me florentine and says oh I can never do that and you’re working with them and they get it down and its just a pleasure to know you’ve helped them on a journey. Unfortunately I don’t have the time and energy to teach one on one as many people as I would like to. We do a lot of fundraising and charity events and that gives you a feeling inside that can’t be replaced just like teaching does. I’ve been a guest speaking at UCLA, Long Beach State, Occidental College, Northridge and I’m scheduled at a three day speaking engagement at Stanford later in the year. It’s very exciting because it seems like the colleges are opening up so that stigma of what we do is being put more in perspective and then understanding is coming and its not all about being sick. They’re trying to understand.

Do you run into any difficulties with local government or law enforcement?

No. One of the things here is we’ve been the only dungeon in LA and probably in the country that actually has our address running on our websites. We’re totally above board. We don’t do anything that crosses lines legally so we have the support of our landlord and neighbors. The sheriffs, when they get a new officer they bring them down for a tour. For our parties they drive by and wave. They really watch out for us.

I see the district attorney’s card up there. (In Mistress Cyan’s office)

Yes! They’ve been very supportive. As a matter of fact when I was out having my cancer treatment they did a fundraiser and a lot of people showed up to the point that the parking lot was full and people were parking down the street. We have a guy who watches the parking lot and walks people out to their cars. He volunteered to drive people parked far away. So he was driving people and on one of the trips he got the red light on him and the sheriffs pulled him over and he thought uh oh. And the sheriff came up to the window and said do you work at Sanctuary and he said yes and they said tell Mistress Cyan we’re pulling for her. It really warmed my heart and surprised me and it sent a message to the people that were there that they are aware of what we do, they’re supportive and they care. We are very respectful. The fire department comes in checking the fire extinguishers. We try to do everything on the up and up and not do anything to cause trouble. There was a commitment I made to myself back in 1999 that I wasn’t going to put time and energy and money into space where we had to hide it because if I had a landlord or police coming in and shut us down all that was gone. So it’d be much better to be open and disclose everything and if we’re going to have a problem have it early on and not later.

Do you think that the law generally is working for people who are in the BDSM lifestyle in California and elsewhere or do you think there are any laws that need to be changed?

Well, I think that there’re a number of laws that should be changed. But in California in Los Angeles technically what we do is illegal because of domestic violence laws. Most states have a law that says you cannot consent to being assaulted and they passed that because in domestic violence the wife would get beat up and then wouldn’t want to press charges. So they enacted these laws that say even if she doesn’t press charges, the state can press charges. So essentially if we’re spanking someone we could be arrested even if both people say its consensual. But in Los Angeles and society as a whole are growing to learn the difference. There are some places in California and the country that that’s not the case. Unfortunately depending on where our future goes with the government there are some people that would like to see us not be able to do anything. There are some people who understand it and feel that the law should be expanded. We don’t do strap on play because its penetration. There’re a lot of people that come from Europe other Dommes and they’re so surprised when they get here for DomCon and say “You cant do that here?!” There’s a feeling in a lot of the industry that there should be a difference or something that’s loosened up a little bit. But then you get into a whole sociological situation about what is prostitution. Right now pro domination has got a pretty clean cut line and we try as much as possible to maintain that image. But again the independents and there are people out there that do that and already do prostitution and will add BDSM so it tends to blur the line to some people who don’t know what we do.

I imagine its pretty hard to find a politician that will champion the loosening of BDSM laws when so many people who are into BDSM are unwilling to come out and say that publicly.

Yes. Again we have a mayor Gil Garcetti who is very open. We just finished the LA Leather week here. He’s been very supportive. He gave one of the gay leather bars The Bullet an accommodation for their service and commitment to the community for the last twenty two years. I’ve got something out here that I received back in 2007 from the City of West Hollywood, an accommodation for leadership and community support. There is a lot of them that are but for every one that is willing to champion the cause there’s a hundred who aren’t. In an election year you never know which way its going to go.

So lets talk about DomCon. You’ve been doing this for quite a while now?

Yes, this will be our thirteenth year. In LA and Atlanta.

You mentioned before about what inspired you to start it, wanting to create an event for both professionals and lifestylers.

Yes I wanted to bring it together because being from the lifestyle and being professional and knowing a lot of the other professionals who started in the lifestyle and trying to bring an understanding that if somebody is going to be a car mechanic, they don’t get up one day and decide they’re going to be a car mechanic. They go to school and learn. Instead of going to school for it we got involved in the lifestyle and we lived it kind of like on the job training. So it was very disturbing to feel that we were being not accepted by the lifestyle community. Also when I started I realized that some of the professionals were getting a little jaded after they had come out of the lifestyle and become professional feeling like maybe they were a little bit above the lifestyle people because lifestyle people do it once a week but we do this every day. So it was like lets try to bring something educational to bring people together to understand it. The first year or two it was a little challenging but when I first started I envisioned it as a nice LA event. I had no idea it was going to be this huge. But within three months it became a national event, it blossomed.

The very first one?

Yup! And we had people come from Europe and everything. One of the most satisfying things after we did the first one was the chatter online. The people talking about how they met some of the pros and we thought they were just all about the money but they’re real people, very polite and nice. And the professional community was talking about being really surprised. Some of the lifestlye people, the technique they had was amazing. So it kind of brought some of that together a little bit. It started out as just a Friday night meet and greet and then Saturday, Sunday convention and we expanded it out to four days and now its five.

Essentially DomCon was trying to have an educational event to bring people together, predominantly professional and lifestyle communities. Then start to integrate the other areas of alternative lifestyle; the leather community, gay/lesbian, anything that celebrates our commonality but respects our diversity. DomCon was never about trying to homogenize it. We’re not all one big happy family but we do share some things. Everybody fits in at Domcon

So DomCon must be some of the largest BDSM events in the country.

Yes. As a matter of fact we’re the largest professional and lifestyle Domination convention in the world. There’re some other fetish events that are much bigger but as far as what our niche is we are the biggest. This year we have people coming from Australia, Belgium, England, Mexico, all over.

DSC_0007

How many people are you expecting to attend?

Last year we had about 1500. This year I think this is going to be bigger because of the hotel rooms selling out much earlier. The buzz seems to be much greater this year.

You talked a little bit about some of the different subgroups within the BDSM community, do you think that now that we’re getting a lot of newcomers into the scene particularly in the last couple of years that there’s a clash of culture between some of the old guard and newer?

There was about two three years ago and what we noticed was that the times are changing and things are changing. Some of the more established Dommes have been doing this for ten or twenty years and are used to it a certain way and we started to realize that maybe there seems to be a bias between some of the newer Dommes that are calling themselves online Dommes. They get the comments that say they’re not real. How can you be Domme if it’s just an online thing. You know what, we cant allow our culture to fall into the same trap that it was twenty years ago when we started all of this. We started because there was a separation, there was inclusiveness. Just because there are things that are being done right now that weren’t done in the past, doesn’t mean they’re wrong or there should be judgment against them. Really what we should be doing is making sure that we embrace even though things are done differently now and there may be online domination or things that traditionally weren’t done. Doesn’t mean its wrong or not legitimate. I have an advisory board of ten pros and lifestyle people that are very experienced and we made a commitment; let’s not allow the convention or our professional community to walk into a judgmental thing. We embraced that. As a result some of the people that came to that are starting to teach some of the older pros who have been established about some of the online stuff and what can be done and they’re also learning now and going to class and learning techniques so instead of just doing virtual stuff they’re actually learning how to flog and about the safety and psychology.

So you touched on something which is interesting, online and financial domination. I guess from the outside it might appear to be something that is a scam. But in your experience is this a legitimate thing which some people are into and is satisfying to them?

Yes it is. One of the things we have to never forget is that with what we do both sides have to benefit. Whether it’s a personal relationship, D/s or BDSM. So if a Dominant is forcing you to give you their money that’s not going to last. The people who are into financial domination they for whatever reason are feeling some kind of fulfillment. I’m not in a position to judge why but they’re not being forced to do it. They’re doing it because they care about the person or its their way of submission or giving back. If financial domination exists and its an ongoing thing its because both parties are getting something out of it. It may very well be that the person who’s just sending money is having an online relationship. My experience is that financial domination isn’t about someone just writing a check and that’s it.

One criticism that is often made about BDSM is that it can be a haven for predators. Do you think there’s any truth in that?

I think there’s an element of truth in that. Again, the internet has opened us up to the world. When I was coming through it you had to walk in the footsteps of people. They taught you. These days, the internet teaches but its also opened a door to people who are predators and can go online and learn what you’re supposed to say and how to say it they can really lure somebody in. Our community the BDSM/fetish/leather is going to be like any other community. You’re going to have your good and your bad. You’re going to have some people that really care and others will be there to exploit. We’re not special. Just because we happen to be kinky doesn’t mean everyone has a halo and that’s why I’m a big advocate of doing classes. We have BDSM 101 classes here every Monday night for beginners. Just because someone calls themselves a Dom does not mean they’ve mastered the art of how to be a dominant person they’re just dominating someone. But realistically we’re just like any other community.

On more of a serious note I know you were diagnosed with cancer last year. How did that feel when you first heard that diagnosis, what was that experience like for you?

Very disturbing. Actually a little bit after DomCon I had a bit of a sore throat and I had a little lump in the side of my neck. I went to the doctor and they did a quick look, they checked for strep throat it wasn’t and the doctor said if it persists come back. So I waited about ten days and it wasn’t changing. I went back and a different doctor looked at me and said I see your right tonsil does not look good, its not normal. So they sent me to a specialist and they did a biopsy and a CAT scan and tests. They called and told me the biopsy came back as cancer. All of a sudden in a week’s worth of time, I’ve never had any health issues so I was disturbed and worried about it. My dad died of lung cancer, he smoked for forty years and I saw how he went and this is not the way I want to go. I’ve never smoked anything in my life, I live a healthy lifestyle and here I am being diagnosed with this. I immediately went online and researched what I was going to be going through. It was scary reading about chemo and radiation. I even went as far as to thinking if they tell me it’s really bad, I’m going to look into Oregon’s assisted suicide and have myself surrounded by friends and family and go peacefully on my own terms. Kaiser called and scheduled an appointment with a team of dentists and doctors and they told me it was a stage 4A and it was a slow cancer I’ve probably had over a year and didn’t know it. They said this was a type of cancer that responds well to treatment and rarely comes back. Their biggest concern was that I’m skinny and going through this treatment was really hard. If you don’t stay strong psychologically you’re going to give up. It was an experience, life changing. Last week I had my scan that confirmed I was cancer free, it’s all gone. The prognosis is that this cancer rarely returns. I’ll be sixty two next week and they expect me to live another twenty or thirty years and die of old age so it was a load off of my shoulders. I’m still working, I’m not 100% yet, I’m at about 75%.

You mentioned that the cancer impacted some of the projects you’ve had going on and amazingly you’ve carried on.

Well I’m surrounded by a lot of great people. All of the toy and food drives I do, everyone is always thanking me but if they didn’t come out to support then there wouldn’t be anything.

You mentioned before about the mental strength that helped get you through. Where do you think that comes from?

Well I think it’s realizing that people care and realizing that you contributed something to this world. There’re things that I’ve done over the years that have improved peoples’ lives or made their life better. Early on from the very beginning it’s about giving back. Nothing comes for free, you have to invest something. The investment I’ve made over time was about helping people and being there so when the time came that I needed help and support the people were there emotionally for me, people were there letting me know that I was missed that I meant something. It was knowing that all these years of helping people and giving to people, now I’m in a situation where I need their support and needed financial help. People told me they were pulling for me and I would be missed. That made me feel really good.

Or being a pioneer in the community itself and changing a lot of peoples’ lives and enabling them to come out and explore.

Yes, and I still think I can make more of a difference.

Mistress Cyan is a lifestyle and professional Dominatrix in Los Angeles. She is the owner of Sanctuary LAX, the largest dungeon in the greater Los Angeles area and the producer of DomCon LA and Atlanta. You can contact her here.

Tagged With: coming out, domcon, dominatrix, interview, Mistress Cyan

Dexx Interviews Nina Hartley

March 20, 2017 By Desdemona 3 Comments

You may have caught our three part interview with “Master of O” author Ernest Greene in previous issues of Kink Weekly. We were lucky enough to also interview his “better half” sex educator and adult actress Nina Hartley.

Nina Hartley
Nina Hartley

Dexx: So Nina, I gather that you are staunch advocate of porn and BDSM rights for people and sort of a spokesperson on those issues. What sort of lead to you feeling so passionately about those as a cause?

Nina: I come from a long line of social activists, going back to my mother’s father, who worked in civil rights in Alabama in the ‘30s and I grew up going to civil rights marches and anti war marches and women’s rights marches. That was in the San Francisco bay area in the ‘60s and ‘70s, ground zero for the human potential movement, black power, women’s power, earth day, anti-war and the Human Potential Movement. My father was blacklisted in the late ‘50s for being a communist, and I grew up in the aftermath of political persecution and seeing my parents pick up from the rubble and create another life for themselves. The idea of ongoing struggle for rights, for first amendment rights, and individual sexual rights was around me growing up. I’m the youngest by far and was exposed to my parent’s ongoing efforts to save their marriage. They did, in in no particular order, bio feedback, bio energetics, marriage counseling, group counseling, Reichian therapy, primal scream therapy, Tai-Chi, naked tai-chi and guided mescaline therapy. When I was 10 they discovered Zen Buddhism, where they stayed until they died, 46 years later. I understood from an early age that you could fight for the life you wanted, and it was honorable to also fight for the rights of others. Social activism was a thing for my whole family.

Ernest Greene: Why not the violin? (Laughs)

Nina: My dad said once, “Why sex, but not the violin?” and I just had to say that it was my Thing, the way Zen was his. He recalled that I came home from school one day and announced that I was an oddball. If I had been exclusively gay, I would probably have known that my “otherness” was about sex. I just knew I wasn’t like other kids. I never dreamt of *him*, I always dreamt of *them.* I never had Barbie and Ken weddings, I’d have Barbie orgies. From the age of 12, I had this idea of rooms full of naked people and soon thereafter determined to become competent and confident about sex. I’m a queer, bisexual, non-monogamous a top-heavy switch. I grew up with notion that I had the right to live my life the way I wanted and the responsibility to do it safely. When Roe vs. Wade was decided I was 14, and I knew at a bone deep level that unless a woman has control over fertility, she can never be equal to men. I’m happy to be a doting aunt and great-aunt.

If I wasn’t exhibitionistic or pretty enough for porn I would have been a midwife with a very kinky social life. I might still have met Ernest eventually at some party somewhere because while I wasn’t strictly BDSM oriented, I was into all kinds of sexual things. When I met BDSM I realized, “this is me too.” I would have found it sooner or later I think, even if I had not gotten into porn as a profession or met Ernest when I did.

I got into porn in Reagan’s America. HIV became big news around the time of the home video explosion. The silver lining of the HIV debacle was that we had to talk about sex in public. It simply had to be discussed as a public health crisis. I’m a nurse, so for me there’s no shame in desire, just responsibility in behavior. I don’t care what you want. I see a lot of people who are ashamed of their desires, but you want whatever you want. You can’t* do* whatever you want, but you can want whatever you want. As a sex worker I’ve declassed myself, and it’s been an eye-opener to put myself in the way of anti-sex-worker bigotry and ignorance. It’s clear to me that, no matter from which side of the ideological divide it comes, anti sex-worker energy feels exactly the same: angry, ignorant and fearful. In actual life it is discriminatory, judgmental, disrespectful and really, really mean spirited.

Dexx: And it seems like you’ve been in the forefront of publicly discussing your career in the industry.

Nina: I was the first woman in porn to say, “I’ll talk to the press, send them over to me!” I came to porn not just because that’s where the naked women were, but to study sex work from a place of practice, not theory. And porn’s full of naked ladies, so that was (and still is) a lot of fun. I call porn “all the fun of dating with none of the hassle.” I got willing partners without the burden of having to date and all the weird emotional stuff that goes with that. I didn’t want my desires to be a problem for other people, and up until I found my tribe of ethical non-monogamists, all my desires just upset the people I knew. As a board member of the Woodhull Freedom Alliance I affirm that sexual freedom is a fundamental human right.

Dexx: In the course of being so public about that, did you encounter some negativity from some places?

Nina: Oh certainly. I still do. I don’t look on the Internet for people to say mean things about me but I know they’re there. I know for every young woman who thinks I’m an amazing feminist and a great role model for her, a Gale Dines or Katherine McKinnon or Ariel Levy or Pamela Paul, will look at me as an apostate. I’ve been called names. I’ve been called a paid shill, and much worse. So, where’s my paycheck?

Ernest Greene: Where’s my check?!

Nina: (laughs) Women’s sexuality under an Abrahamic-based culture makes an out sex worker a lightning rod. I’ve often said that I make pornography because I’m too chicken shit to be a whore. Andrea Dworkin hated porn because she felt it showed all women as “whores by nature” and what I wanted to tell her was, not all women are whores by nature, “But some are” (she says while raising her hand). Women’s sexuality in cultures such as America’s is always political. We see it everyday. We see it in the fact that we still don’t have decriminalized sex work, we still see it in the way that abortion clinics are being taken out of existence and the way that sex workers are harassed, or worse.
Ernest Greene: If I can interrupt, that repressive attitude cuts across the logical lines. The position closest to the Republican party platform on sex work is that of the green party. Worth reading their platform to see what they have to say, but sex work – they don’t even like the term sex work, they still prefer “prostitution”.

Ernest Greene: They prefer “prostituted” because there’s no such thing as a “voluntary sex worker”. Or there’s such an insignificant part of it that they really don’t register, so most of them are prostituted women who are trafficked.

Nina: These women who absolutely would fight to the death for my right to have an abortion because I own my body are on the opposite side of the coin when it comes to my right to choose sex work. So wait, I can have an abortion, that’s my body, my right, and I’m not being brainwashed, but I can’t choose to be a sex worker because I’m brainwashed? It only goes to show that people’s resistance to individual sexual autonomy and freedom is not based on rationalities, it’s based on emotion. They make up stories and theories to make it okay for them to not check their own attitudes and prejudices, and while they get to stay in their prejudice and stay in their harmful attitudes, etc.

Dexx: So on the subject of non-monogamy it seems like that is something that is really on the rise. Certainly at least in terms of the people that we see. A lot more than it was 10 years ago.

Ernest Greene: It’s a thing.

Nina: He’s never had a non-dominant fantasy in his life, just as I’ve never had a monogamous fantasy in my life. I’ve always dreamt of other people. But more importantly, I always dreamt of it being okay with everybody. My first threesome was a complete, utter disaster. If I had a normal script, I would have said, “see, you don’t get to have that, you don’t get to have those fun things.” For me to have the life I wanted I had to get to the root of my jealousy and exorcise it because I wanted to make my fantasy life real. I wanted to live in a world where my desire for someone didn’t upset anyone else with whom I was sleeping. I wanted other people like me. I didn’t want to have to sit on my own desires and pretend to be normal because that proved to be a failure.

When Ernest and I started dating, besides the agreement to have a lot of hot BDSM sex together and for me to be his slave, we agreed we’d also be free to play with others. Once I had got free of my horrible exes I was sure I was so strange that I’d be single the rest of my life. Where was I going to find a het guy with great style, age- and culturally-appropriate, atheist, who was cool with my job, who wouldn’t slut shame me, whom I found sexy as fuck and who didn’t think he owned my sexuality, who was smart enough to seduce my mind as well as my body and who wouldn’t bore me sexually after three dates.

anniebear: That’s a lot of checkmarks.

Nina: That’s a lot of checks. You can see why I never thought I’d marry again.

anniebear: And the dungeon…

Nina: That was a bonus! Ernest is the only master I’ve ever had and the only lover who I’ve never tired of fucking. I know that the magic, ritual, respect, intentionality, romance and intimacy of BDSM sex is the secret to our relational success.That, plus the fact that we love to have threesomes with submissive women.

If anyone would like a glimpse of what sex at home might be like, check out Ernest’s book, “Master of O.” The sex is very explicit and I can tell you that all of it is taken from life. It’s a hot, fun read and the autographed, illustrated edition makes a great gift for any lover interested in BDSM sex.

Dexx: So, how did you first get into porn? Tell me about your first audition.

Nina: First, I discovered written pornography at the bedside of this Swingin’ 70s couple that I babysat for. Next to the (water) bed they had a small bookshelf with classics such as “Erotic Art of the Masters,” “The Pearl,” “Autobiography of a Flea,” “Fanny Hill,” “A Man and His Maid,” and stalwarts like “The Joy of Sex,” and “The Happy Hooker.” There was a used bookstore in Berkeley that had an erotic section I would come in and sit down and start reading the books, even though I was clearly underage. I paid attention to stories that interested me, and I didn’t understand at the time stories of corporal punishment and whipping. I knew I liked women’s bodies. Between school and home was an adult theatre in Berkley, and for the longest time there was a movie showing there called “Autobiography of a Flea.” I had read the book I wanted to see the movie. So one day I took it upon myself to walk into the theatre and see the movie, all by myself. I was 17. I sat in the middle of the theatre and in the middle of the first sex scene, my inner self said ‘me want do that.’ It was so primal I was surprised. I had barely kissed a boy at that age, I had never seen a naked boy. I’d seen very little hardcore pornography. I’d seen some underground comics that drew it, but never seen a photograph of an erection entering a vulva. And I just wanted to do that.

That was ’76. I met my first husband in ’81, went to nursing school. Ran into a friend who said she worked at the Sutter Street Cinema in San Francisco and I found out about this amateur night danced on stage with people watching. So I went, and I won, because I was clearly the only amateur. It was San Francisco, so I could do a penetration show. I won and I got a weekly job doing a girl/girl peep show, in a white room with a revolving bed. The mirrored peep windows had tip slots and I thought it was just awesome because I got to do girl/girl in room full of mirrors. I learned how to dance, how to present myself in an aesthetic way, but you could also look through and see guys masturbating, which was fantastic to me. I earned in a night what I’d get for a week of waitressing. I was going to school full-time so working just one night a week was optimal.

My then partner ran into Juliet Anderson at a nearby supermarket, recognized her, got her card, and we sent her pictures, and she put me in her one and only directorial effort called “Educating Nina.” So that was in ’84, and I graduated nursing school in ’85 and went into movies full time. My promise to myself was I’d never cut class to make a movie, and I never did. I knew that I was going to be talking about this and “Nina Hartley, RN,” has a lot more weight than “Nina Hartley. college drop out.” And of all the things I could have studied in college, nursing was the best thing to study, because it grounds you in basic biology and science, plus how to be effectively compassionate. I graduated nursing school in June of ’85 and I’ve been full time in adult entertainment ever since. I feature danced from ’87-2002, and then with Ernest I did the 40-volume educational series from Adam and Eve. From that we wrote the book “Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex”.

He and I have also done a twenty-volume series for Bizarre Video, “Nina Hartley’s Private Sessions.” As well, I helped him direct three movies for Adam&Eve based on the “Story of O” books: “O: The Power of Submission,” “The Surrender of O, “ and “The Truth about O.” All are beautifully shot, all are filled with hot kink-sex and lots of bondage with penetration (something Ernest made safe for porn).

I speak whenever I can to anybody over 18. In the beginning, with people on planes saying, “What do you do?” I’d always say pornography, because it’s always a great out about it. Now, when people say, ‘what do you do,’ I say I’m an adult sex educator. A little bit broader and I let them ask questions.

anniebear: A little polarizing to some.

Ernest Greene: She certainly has had her battles, there’s no doubt about it. And she’s not a combative person, unlike me, that’s hard for her.

Nina: I really, really, really, really believe in that. A person has a right to do with their body what they want. Period.

Nina and her husband Earnest Greene
Nina and her husband Earnest Greene

Dexx: So now, you produce your own material for Nina.com?

Nina: I do. The Internet has completely changed the production landscape, the monetary landscape, and the relationship between the performer and fans. Nowadays, performers mostly who work for themselves. These days I get hired very rarely to do a scene for a company. But my friends and I get together all the time and exchange content. I like that because we really get to do whatever it is we want.

I don’t know what’s going to happen but I do like being able to deal directly with the fans. The Internet does make it possible for any individual person to create a sexual community for themselves. Because all any performer needs to live is 100 people in the entire world to give them $50 a month each. There are many ways now for performers to interact with fans to do all kinds of not-in-person sex work in real time.

Dexx: It’s pretty interesting because you hear about free porn on the internet kind of cutting the revenues of the porn industry.

Nina: It cuts the revenue of the producers. Sex is about relationships, so porn is about relationships. so you are my fan. I’m in your bedroom with you, in your relationship with you, with you at your loneliest or horniest moment, and I’m happy to be there. Between porn performers and fans it’s personal. I have fans who are my fans because of my ass, certainly, but because I remind them of their first grade teacher, or their first crush, or a sister in law they used to want to fuck.

Ernest Greene: Really, what happened here, by no one’s intention, was that the means of production reverted to the workers when the big companies could no longer make profits on DVD sales, they all just kind of folded up. So now, they attract a different kind of performer.

Nina: More self motivated, more self organized. More educated.

Ernest Greene: It used to be in the 90s everyone wanted to be Jenna Jameson, but now I think it’s sort of kind of gotten filtered out to the hinterlands that there will not be another Jenna Jameson because there’s no company to support that kind of thing, but you can have that kind of interesting bohemian life out here.

Nina: You can be in an Indie porno, or some kind of alt-porno. So the individual person, who doesn’t mind being his or her own boss, it’s possible to carve out a portion of the landscape for your brand of sexy. It’s still a little harder for men to make their way here, because unless you don’t mind having a large gay following, it’s hard to have a pay site..

Dexx: So Nina, more recently you’ve been doing more BDSM oriented work?

Nina: I have been. Because I no longer have a partner who shames me out of it. Actually I would have been working with Ernest back in the 80s if my exes hadn’t shamed me out of it. I’m doing it more because, I’m kinky, and with women I really like topping. I really like being the good lover I wish I’d met when I was their age.

Dexx: You must have worked with lots and lots of BDSM porn actors and actresses?

Nina: More actresses. I’m strictly a top on camera. Except with Ernest.

Dexx: What makes a really great porn actress to work with?

Nina: The most important thing for me in a performer is her desire to be on camera.
Ernest Greene: You gotta like it.

Nina: It’s not just liking sex, but liking sex that other people are going to watch later. So most of the women I work with are like me, huge exhibitionists and really love the attention. They love the camera being on them. I love showing them attention. I love stoking their desire to be pretty and sexy and have all the attention, because I like girls and seeing girls happy and having orgasms at my help really works for me. So I never, never tire of a woman who is happy to be there. Or men, either, but particularly in BDSM movies. If I’m in it, I’ll be topping women, or co-topping. I just started recently doing FemDom on camera, mainly it’s woman and woman.

Dexx: With the prevalence of so much BDSM porn, do you think there are issues of some actresses being coerced into BDSM even though they’re not really into it?

Ernest Greene: In this country? No. In other parts of the world, I can’t say. But I think here, no.

Nina: In our community, very little. The women talk a lot to each other and the concept of consent is really quite out there in the world. A 20 year old these days has more information than a 20 year old in the ‘80s.

Ernest Greene: Let me also say as a director, that there’s been a real change in the attitude of porn performers over the years. They used to come in here pretty much expecting that they would do what they were told. Now they come in here expecting to do what they want to do. So, woe betide the foolish director who tried to get someone to do something they didn’t want to do. They’re likely to get their heads bitten off right at the shoulders, which is fine by me. I never had the problem because I always say what do you want to do and who do you want to do it with? Because that makes a hot scene. One of the things that directors do that’s stupid is say, well,I think these two people look good together so I’m going to put them together, but what you don’t know is they used to be an item but they broke up and hate each other’s guts. But they need the money so they agree to do the scene. Nah, you don’t want that scene. That’s a scene you don’t want to see.

Nina: Most of the time the directors who are sleezy that way, word does get around in a way it didn’t used to back in the studio system days. The director could threaten someone with the “you’ll never work in this town again” schtick and she couldn’t know that actually wasn’t possible.

Ernest Greene: It was never possible.

Nina: Now it’s impossible. You cannot prevent me from getting work from somewhere else. You may never hire me again, but you cannot prevent me from getting hired by somebody else.

Ernest Greene: The very fact that they won’t hire you might make the other person want to hire you.

Nina: So that part’s different.

Ernest Greene: There were things about the old system that I liked, from the production side, mainly the fact that we had enough money to do it… this is what’s sad about it. A lot of you have really good ideas but you don’t have 100 thousand dollars.

Nina: Or even 50K. We have donated labor and 5 hours.

Ernest: And one place, one room. Whereas, I used to have, as I said, 100 thousand dollars, houses, and things like that. I happen to like luxury porn.

Nina: If I won the lottery, I’m making bon bon porn till the day I die.

Dexx: Bon bon porn? (laughs)

Nina: Costumes, sex, script, rehearsals, music.

Ernest: Luxury porn is just not a thing at this point. Now someday there may be, it may come back.

Dexx: Funnily enough, there was a scene in Boogie Nights in which you had a role. (laughs)

Nina: Yeah.

Dexx: So how was it working on that movie?

Nina: It was honestly great. First, William H Macy is the world’s nicest man. He was a decent human being, treated me like a fellow professional, like a peer. Paul Thomas Anderson was a very good director, he knew exactly what he wanted. He never yelled, he was always very clear, and what really pissed me off though is that I had two big walking-talking scenes with Macy going to and from the party where I’m fucking in the driveway.

Dexx: I remember that.

Nina: I mean, we did a tracking shot, walking two-shot, 17 takes, each of them a little bit different and I thought, “oh wow he must really want this.” In the end all of the character building stuff was left out, which sucked. Making mainstream movies is like a porno shoot, only bigger. I was absolutely comfortable because a movie set is a movie set. During the last scene where I get shot with some squibs, I had to go to the make up trailer between takes. And all the time I had to remember, “Put on robe, put on robe, put on robe.” I mean, for me being naked is my work clothes. But for other people might perceive it as being challenging..

Paul Thomas Andersen hired me partly because he was a fan when he was in high school, but also because he wouldn’t have to close the set or worry about my emotional well-being.

anniebear: Have a discussion…

Nina: Have a discussion. So that part was great.

anniebear: That was kind of why they hired porn actresses for Game of Thrones recently.

Ernest: Yeah, sure, because they can get naked without worrying about it.

anniebear: Yeah, there’s a couple of them. And they’re great, and they look great, and they were good actresses. (laughs)

Nina: You know a lot of them are actually, we could be good actresses with a good director. I always have my ideas but I like being directed. If you want me to say it a different way, I’ll say it a different way.

Ernest: Absolutely. It can be good.

Dexx: There’s a pretty strong network of ProDommes in Southern California. Are you part of that world at all?

Nina: Oddly enough, I’ve never worked aa a ProDomme, but I should because I really like it.

anniebear: I think people in the LA scene think you are.

Nina: I do know if I guested at Sanctuary LAX I would probably talk to Mistress Cyan about it. I’m a sensual dominant. If you’re masochistic, I’ll hurt you as much as you want and 2 for me. I don’t need tears, I don’t need fear, I’m a good service top and I’m not afraid to hurt you. I clearly have a lot to learn, in terms of sessioning, because I don’t usually play with submissive men. And submissive women and submissive men are not the same.

Ernest: Right.

Nina: The gender thing makes a difference. And so when it comes to ProDoming, I’m a baby ProDom. I’m an experienced top, but I know nothing about rope. I’d like to develop that side of my skill set. What I’ve done so far has been fun so I’m not against doing it.

Ernest: It’s not out of the question.

Nina is still active in the porn industry as an actress and producer. You can see more at Nina.com.
Follow her on Twitter: @ninaland. Nina is a board member of the Woodhull Alliance. Find out more: woodhullfoundation.org

Tagged With: ernest greene, interview, Nina Hartley

Interview with Author Ernest Greene, Master of O

January 30, 2017 By Desdemona 7 Comments

I was fortunate along with anniebear to sit down with some BDSM legends, Ernest Greene and his wife Nina Hartley. I asked them about the history of BDSM, where it’s headed and also the rise of BDSM porn. I hope you enjoy part one of this three part interview. -Dexx

Ernest and His wife Nina
Ernest and His wife Nina

Dexx: Great to have both of you! Ernest Green, you’re known to many of our readers as the author of the hit BDSM novel Master of O, but I gather that you’ve been into kink for a lot longer than that. Maybe we can start with you telling us how you first discovered BDSM?

Ernest: It discovered me! I’m one of those for whom it’s a basic orientation in the way that being gay is for others. I’m hardwired for BDSM. I have never had a sexual fantasy that was not sado-erotic in some way. Starting with my very first girlfriend I did BDSM play and it’s been pretty much like that ever since. I’ve had one vanilla relationship in my entire life trying to prove a point in my early twenties that I could do it and I proved a point all right but that wasn’t the point I wanted to prove! I couldn’t do it! It wouldn’t work for me. It was a very long year and a half and when it was over I was really glad. That experiment was settled and I never tried it again. So I really think this is not true of everyone who’s interested in BDSM nor does it need to be but there are some for whom it really is part of them. There’s interesting anecdotal evidence, unsupported by any organized research because no one will fund it, that it’s heritable, in the way that being gay is heritable. There seems to be a kink gene that appears in families in different branches in different generations who were brought up widely apart and had no direct contact with each other. I had two uncles, one of whom was just the most normal guy on earth. Then there was my other uncle who clearly had the marker.

Nina Hartley: And his mother.

Ernest Greene: Yes exactly. As the completely normal uncle said to me near the end of his life, “You know your Uncle Mel, he had this weird streak of sexual cruelty to him.” Uncle Bernard was 86 at the time and when people are 86 they have no filter. They have no time for small talk. We were at a family dinner and all the air went out of the room. Then there was a brief sort of nodding off moment and then he looked at me and said, “And your mother she had that too.”

I came out to my parents when I was about 28 and I was very surprised at my mother’s response. She looked vaguely embarrassed and said, “Gee I hope it isn’t something I did.” I said “No I think it’s more like something that you are.” She nodded and agreed that could be true. (Laughs) We’ve always been open about it and I’ve always been this way. I do understand that it can just be recreational, spicing up sex more conventional sex, and I think it is for most people. And then there are those for whom this is it! Luckily I found someone whose kinks are a little different from mine but they overlap enough so that things work very nicely. I’ve been married to women who were wired too much like me and it was a problem. If two people’s wiring is too similar it really is difficult to make the adjustments necessary for a happy day to day life, because most of the time we’re a happy day to day couple. Around the house our protocol is pretty relaxed. Nina always wears her collar, for instance.

Nina: And I’m usually naked. (Laughs)

Ernest Greene: We’re not a 24/7 couple, we joke that we’re a 7 to midnight couple. When we have the time and there’s nothing else going on then we can indulge that fully. But we do not “live the lifestyle,” a term I don’t really like. This thing chooses you. Its not like you decide one morning to be a kinky person. One morning you wake up and realize you are one! You can fight it but if you’re like that will only cause frustration. It would also be a disservice to your partners to leave them wondering why it is that you don’t seem very interested in them if you choose someone who’s completely vanilla. Don’t choose a vanilla partner if you can’t be one yourself. I’m also against attempting to change anyone’s basic sexuality. There’s a lot of that going around at the moment. In one Facebook group I moderate that question comes up far too often. Anything that begins with “how can I get my partner to …” goes nowhere good. If the desire is already there and not yet awakened you can certainly offer it as a possibility. But for most people it’s a music they cant hear. I don’t think they can learn to hear it by trying even with the best of intentions. You’re either tuned to that frequency in whatever degree or you’re not.

Just a small selection of erotic art displayed in their home.
Just a small selection of erotic art displayed in their home.

Dexx: So in your formative years presumably there was not the same amount of BDSM porn available as there is now so what were your sources of inspiration or did you have any mentors who kind of taught you some of the things?

Ernest Greene: The world was so different back then it’s hard to describe. First of all yes there was always lots of BDSM erotica around, you just had to know where to look for it and believe me I found out. I made a point of it. An early inspiration for both of us was John Willy’s artwork. We loved it then, we love it now. There was a limited supply, compared to today, of BDSM oriented erotica, but it was mostly better because it was done by people who were not expecting to make money on it.

Dexx: Right.

Ernest Greene: Those who created this material never expected it to be seen. As a result they created their work in a sort of soulful, passionate, personal way that you don’t see too much of these days. But yes, yes I did hit puberty right around the time erotic books first became available in the US – to date myself very seriously—I read “Story of O” when it came out over here.

Nina: Right. (Laughs)

Ernest Greene: When I read it, even though I had no real experience of my own at that point, some of it seemed very vividly described. The level of visual detail was quite striking, but the emotions seemed all wrong. It wasn’t until some years later that I found out the person that wrote it did so as a present for a lover who was into it, and she wasn’t. She basically said, ‘Well, I can’t do the things you like to do, but I can write a book that you would like to read.’

Nina: She got the details right but no insight into why people engage in this behavior.

Ernest Greene: Except for O herself, the characters in the first book are very flat, especially the men. In her late life interviews Anne Desclos, who had started using her own name by then, admitted that she barely knew and didn’t much like the people around whom she built the story.

Nina: No wonder the characters in Ernest’s book “Master of O” are so well rounded.

Ernest Green: Because I know them. They’re all my friends—or at least I hope they’re still my friends.

Nina: They are.

Ernest Greene: At the beginning of my own explorations I looked around and there were, even in those days, the beginnings of small SM groups. The first one here in the U.S was…

Nina: In New York.

Ernest Greene: I went to my first meeting of The Eulenspiegel Society in NYC in 1972. I don’t know what I expected but it was all very light-hearted and good-natured. Happy to say that T.E.S. is still around—

Dexx: Sounds very German.

Ernest Greene: Indeed. Eulenspiegel, I guess, is meant to be some mischievous, imp character who’s curious about thing. and that’s what they named it after. When I moved out here I got involved with the Southern California Society of Janus, which had spun off from the original S.O.J. up in San Francisco. After some of the bickering typical of leather organizations ours changed its name to Threshold. I did six terms as coordinator of Threshold, which makes it sound a bit like doing a nickel in San Quentin, something it at times resembled.

Nina: Eighties?

Ernest Greene: Mid to late eighties. I joined in 1983. I was coordinator from 1986-1992 or some crazy thing like that. That is the heaviest session of all, being in one of those rooms during a business meeting, I’ll tell you that right now.

Nina: Heavy bottom session. (Laughs)

Ernest Greene: And you can’t mercy there. There is no safe word for it. The guy who handed that job over to me had had it for six terms and he did his best to warn me.

Ernest Greene: Because even though we only had 64 members, we had about 120 opinions about everything. I have noticed SM people tend to be opinionated. They also tend to be high-maintenance in groups. When Bill handed the sash off to me as coordinator, he said, ‘So did they tell you about the vow of celibacy?’ I said, ‘Vow of celibacy? I don’t remember anything about that.’ He just smiled and said, ‘You will.’ And sure enough, the very first party we gave in my first term was in the middle of summer. It was July, it was sweltering and the club we rented had a busted air conditioner. So I spent the entire night on the roof trying to fix it while the party went on. Actually it turned into a pretty great party because it was so hot in there everybody got naked. At one point, I looked down through the skylight and thought, ‘My God, a whole room full of naked people!’ They had all come fetished out and just couldn’t keep that stuff on.

There were some nice perks though. As a leather group leader, you were a member of the Leather Round Table, which gave you reciprocal membership privileges in every other group. I got to go to gay SM events, bi SM events, fetish-themed events and so on. I got to see all kinds of interesting people doing interesting things. I’d approach whoever was playing at the end of their scene and ask if they could show me how certain techniques were done. It wasn’t formal mentoring of the sort that’s been so inflated subsequently. There was zero snobbery attached to any of it because this was Mr. Regan’s America and everything we did was totally misunderstood and despised at the time. People were very forthcoming with the few who didn’t judge or reject them. ‘Oh you’re interested? You don’t think it’s disgusting and should be stomped out? Okay, cool! I’ll show you what I know.’ It was also a lot safer back then because everything was done by personal contact. The internet in my opinion, has been pretty much a disaster for the world of BDSM. Which isn’t to say we haven’t had some pleasant experiences out of it. We’ve met people online who’ve become friends. We’ve met some of our most compatible playmates that way. But overall the bar to entry is now very low. Anyone can represent themselves as anything on the internet. And enough new people who’ve come in since those books bad books we shall not name came out who just don’t know what is expected and what is permitted and what is okay and what is not. This has given rise to quite a rift between younger and older players because the older ones basically stick to the safe sane and consensual rule, or RACK which is some modernized variation thereof, but a lot of younger people are coming in saying, ‘Oh, that’s just that old guard bullshit, you people are just elitists and don’t know the way it really is.’

Nina: Just get off my lawn, people.

Ernest Greene: Yeah, we knew something about this before those books came out, so if that’s all you know about it, it’s possible we do possess some useful knowledge you don’t. But if you don’t want to hear it, you can piss on the electric fence and find out for yourself why it’s a bad idea.

There are a lot of predators out there that will simply say—‘Anyone who tells you anything different from anything I’m telling you is full of shit, a liar and just in it for the sex. There is one kind of SM that is correct, and it’s mine. Whatever my rules are, are the rules.’ When I see that their status is 19-years-old, male, straight, master, unparternered, I pretty much know what I’m dealing with there. I’m sorry if that offends anybody in the [The Next Gen] crowd, who overall, I think are great. We need new, young people to keep things going. I’m not sorry to see it expand, I’m sorry to see it explode. To get to the point where on Fetlife you’ve got a couple million people, you can expect in any city of a couple million people there are going to be bad guys. If you picture it as a virtual city with neighborhoods, some neighborhoods are going to be safer than others and that’s very much true when it comes to BDSM on the Internet. If you wander in with no prior knowledge and are completely naive and eager to give this a try, as far as you know, all dominant men are just like Christian Grey. They’re all kind of spooky, a little edgy, but they’re really poor injured little boys working off their mommy issues and all they need is the love of a good normal vanilla woman to straighten them out, fix them, and make them normal. That’s pretty far from the actual trajectory of a real BDSM person.

Dexx: So, you must have really seen the public dungeon community emerge from the shadows and flourish since the Society of Janus days?

Ernest Greene: We started out in the 60s. During my first term our group had 67 members. After 6 years, we were up to 700. And this was before the Internet. So it was already a dynamic idea that was beginning to roll. Now, there’s hardly a city of over 250,000 that doesn’t have a club. There are also a lot of posers and hacks as you would expect, but there are a lot of sincere people for whom it’s been a great discovery that they’re not alone. They come from some little town someplace where there aren’t any kinky people they know of and they manage to find this large community that offers both danger and opportunity. There are many more choices of things to do and people to meet, styles to explore, and there are also, occasionally, folks you would not want to meet. That’s why I think it’s important that there be some institutional memory preserved from how things were. In the old days the rule if you wanted to try some new technique, a new kind of whip or bondage, first, you watched somebody who was already an established expert at this demonstrate it. Then, if you had a partner who was willing to let you practice on them, you got to do it under the supervision of the person who knew how to do it. Then if you didn’t screw that up, you had a chance to do it yourself. Now, everybody just strolls through the door and goes at it, whether they know anything or not. Some bad things have happened as a result of that. To some extent the bad influences are counterbalanced by the availability of classes and workshops.

Nina: There’s still plenty of opportunity to learn about consent and safety, but there’s no enforceable requirement to do so.

Ernest Greene: In those days, if you didn’t do the course work, you didn’t get to graduate.

Nina: You didn’t do BDSM 101, you didn’t get to come to parties. Before you were welcome in a public space, there were orientations you had to attend.

Ernest Greene: I did those orientations for many years. I did them with my first wife. I did them with the late great Bob Flanagan. We subjected everyone to a true Salvation-Army-style ear banging on safe sane, consensual and confidential BDSM.

Dexx: On the subject of learning that you’re talking about, do you think that the community now can benefit from some sort of standardized certification or training?

Ernest Greene: I just don’t know how we’d make it work, because what people do in private, they do in private. The worst abuses, I think are, again, are classically committed by the kind of abusive personality that will try to separate their victim from everybody else. They’ll say: ‘Don’t go to munches. Stay away from organized BDSM groups because they’re all full of people who might tell you something other than what I’m telling you.’ I don’t see any way to certify people. What I do think is if you’re considering becoming involved either casually or seriously with a partner and you know anyone they know, you can get in touch with that person and ask what their experience was with this individual.’ So there’s a bit of informal watching of each other’s backs, but it’s nothing like it was in the old days. And again, you couldn’t just go to another city and start over after your bad reputation drove you out of your own community because even in different groups in different cities, your reputation would follow you. There was a small enough total number of BDSM players in the whole country you had to be kind of careful wherever you were. This is no longer the case.

Continue to Part Two.

Ernest Greene has been the Executive Editor of Hustler’s flagship BDSM magazine Taboo since 1999 and of Taboo Illustrated since . He has performed in, written, produced, or directed over 500 adult titles, including the Nina Hartley’s Guide series, starring his wife and producing partner, noted porn star and sex educator Nina Hartley. Master of O may be purchased here.

Tagged With: ernest greene, interview, master of o, Nina Hartley

anniebear Interviews Mistress Porcelain Midnight

November 7, 2016 By anniebear 2 Comments

mistressporcelain_001_web

anniebear: Mistress porcelain, you have quite an interesting life! You live down in San Diego?

Yes I do! I have been a Professional Dominatrix for over Ten years. I session from a dungeon in San Diego. I am currently working on building my own dungeon.

Wonderful! Also to be located in San Diego?

Yes! I am very excited about it. My dungeon will include a large private play space for me and my deserving subs/slaves. It has a plexiglass coffin, St Andrew crosses that rotate, suspension area, cages, toys, and anything else you could dream of! It will be full of fun surprises!

When you first started out in the lifestyle, did you begin as a Domme?

I have been a Domme my whole life. I started at a very young age telling boys what to do. I loved it! My first experience was when I was about 7, I made the neighbored boy brush his teeth in the gutter water out front of his house. I loved every minute of it. I soon learned that I really enjoyed the thrill and the rush of getting submissive boys and girls to do what I want!

Is there anything specific that you prefer when you play?

I enjoy many aspects of the art of S/m. My specialty is corporal punishment. I also enjoy CBT, impact play, role play, and quite a few others. For a complete list of activities I provide you can check out my website. I also cater to fetishes such as latex, leather, sissy play, strap play and other forms of training. My sessions are tailored for each individual client! But I very much do enjoy being a cruel Mistress!

Oh, lovely! So you can be really mean?

I can be! It depends on the client, session and how much they can handle before they say their safe word!

But of course people like it.

Of course! It’s consensual. I only play in safe, sane, and consensual BDSM activities. My number one concern is the mental and physical heath of my client. I am always checking in with him or her to make sure they are in a safe head space and are ok with the activities I am administering during our session. People come to me for many different reasons. I am here to provide a safe place where one can live out their BDSM fantasy in a place on non judgment.

Great and are you pretty “out” in your life? Do most of your friends and family know or is it more of an on the side kind of thing?

Some of my friends and family know. I keep parts of my personal life separate from my lifestyle and profession as a Professional Dominatrix.

Is there ever a day when you just don’t want to be a Dominatrix?

We all at one point of the day are just ready to go home. I love my chosen profession. Some days are very long when I have back to back sessions, but I don’t ever go into the dungeon and say, I don’t want to be a Dominatrix. I love what I do. I have learned a lot about my self and others through my profession. Some days I would rather stay in bed with my pets then put on latex and heels, but I genuinely love what I do.

And when you say pets you mean actual animals I assume?

I actually have real fur children. I rescue cats. I have five rescues and I have a little sheltie. I like to call my home “misfit cat island”. I take all of the cats that nobody wants. I have a one eyed cat, a cat with OCD, a cat with a missing tail. I take the ones that are the ones no one wants. They deserve love and a good home too.

Oh, I just love that! And sort of on the same token you said you liked critter play?

I do! I run the San Diego chapter of the Supreme Feline Club of San Diego. I love dressing up in my latex cat outfits and playing with other people that enjoy cat play. I recently did a performance at the Bondage Ball where I dressed up as a cat and had milk poured on me and did a burlesque show as a cat. It was very fun and very sexy!

To each there own right!

Exactly

It’s so interesting discussing the San Diego scene. I hear its pretty variable depending on what you’re looking for, that it can be kind of a difficult scene to navigate?

Every city has its own vibe and culture. I got introduced into the BDSM scene in San Diego through a couple of Mistresses. Mistress Ellen, she helped me navigate quite a bit through the BDSM/and Dominatrix scene in San Diego. With her being one of my mentors. I have Mistress Cyan in LA, Goddess Phoenix she’s in Atlanta, so I have not had any issues making it in San Diego. I love San Diego it’s a great place, great people. My philosophy is be nice to everybody. You don’t know who everybody knows. Everyone is so connected in so many ways, you don’t know who is connected and who is not. Generally it is my practice to be nice to everybody. We all need to be loved, we’re all humans, we all need to show and love and respect for one another.

And you’re pretty involved in the Los Angeles scene as well, right?

I am, very much so. I come up to Los Angeles when my schedule allows me too. I session from Sanctuary Studios in LAX. Mistress Cyan is the owner and she has built quite an amazing space in LA! I am alsoo one of the newest board members for DomCon also started by Mistress Cyan, so I’m really excited about that. Mistress Cyan really welcomed me into Sanctuary and DomCon so I could not be any more happier!

You have a full time slave with Vic?

Vic aka: Sharo is a little bit of everything to me. He’s my best friend, he’s a mentor, he’s a brother; he encompasses a lot of relationships all in one. He is very close to me, it’s a close relationship, but not a sexual relationship. We have a solid foundation built on trust and loyalty. We are very loyal and trust each other. And that’s one of the things I love about the BDSM community is being able to build relationships based on trust, communication, loyalty, and consent. Vic and I have done all of those things seamlessly and we have a great professional and friendship.

You can learn more about Mistress Porcelain below:

www.mistressporcelainmidnight.com
On Twitter: @DommePorcelain
Fetlife: DommePorcelain

Tagged With: interview, mistress porcelain, porcelain midnight, pro Domme, San Diego bdsm, san diego dominatrix

anniebear Interviews Arcane

February 29, 2016 By anniebear 2 Comments

crow academy

I sat down with Arcane and his slave Daphne on a sunny afternoon in Hollywood. As an educator and founder of the Crow Academy, Arcane has experience coaching couples on D/s relationships and BDSM techniques. We talked about all things kinky, his new book, and kink around the globe.

anniebear: So you have a really original life story. It seems like you’ve kind of been everywhere and seen everything.

Arcane: I haven’t been to Antarctica… yet.

Haha, some day! I wanted to start at the beginning. What is your origin story? How did you get into BDSM in the first place?

When I was five years old I was tying up all of the neighborhood girls. For some reason I just really, really liked that and enjoyed it a lot, and found that was how I always wanted the games to go. Then the ironic part was that because I was the only little boy on the street with the little girls, to evolve the story I had to play both the hero and the villain. So I’d start off the first half of our games playing the villain and I’d tie her up, and then switch half way through it and play the hero and rescue her. I noticed that I’d delay the switching to the rescue part. So my initial kink has been a part of me pretty much as long as I’ve been alive.

My first girlfriend, real girlfriend, was also my first bottom. She actually came out of the closet to me on prom night and asked me to tie her up and “treat her roughly.” And I looked up at the sky and I said thank you (laughs). So BDSM has been, you could safely say, a part of my entire adult life since my first girlfriend. The other thing that actually shaped me quite a bit is that my first girlfriend and I also began to explore Tantra together, so my entire adult BDSM life has also paralleled my entire adult Tantric pursuit. It kind of runs through everything.

So do you teach Tantra as well?

Only to my partners, although when I teach a BDSM class I’ll drop Tantra in there because I think it’s actually super important for people to learn. I wouldn’t teach a Tantra class by itself but I have written articles on how BDSM and Tantra overlap nicely. The whole fetish world is a perfect canvas for Tantra and the reason is because one of the principles of Tantra is to get you to engage all five senses, and we have all these extra things: the smell of leather, the look of the submissive in their bondage, the sounds they make, the sounds of the whip, the flavors you can bring in any way you want, and a lot of people play with specialized lighting… candles, light bulbs and all these things so it really is a perfect ground to practice Tantra and it makes the scenes better.

And everyone is more open anyway. You teach a lot of different things but you specifically seem particularly interested in D/s dynamics and relationships. We don’t have time to go way into it, since it is such a complex subject could you pick three key components that are most important to a D/s dynamic?

No problem. Well number one, absolute number one, if someone comes up to me and tells me they want to be a Dom, I will look them straight in the eye and I will say, “how comfortable are you with Capitol-R Responsibility for another human being’s well being?” And if they tell me that’s not what they thought it was about, that they just want to control someone and boss them around and have good sex… I tell them, “if you don’t want the responsibility for another person, then you don’t want to be a Dom. Go find a different hobby.”

Number two, D/s does have a lot of variety. I can talk all day and night about the Crow Academy system but it’s not the only good school of D/s in the world. There are other perfectly respectable D/s schools that are very different and in fact those Doms and I talk and we share ideas and my style evolves and their style evolves. D/s is absolutely an Art Form and it will evolve. It’s meant to be practiced like anything else. If you want to be a better painter then paint, and if you want to be a better Dom, practice your domination. Always pursue to get better, to grow, to become good at it.

Number three, one of the main things about the Crow Academy and the D/s style that I teach is that it’s very specifically about building a romantic D/s relationship, a connecting, bonding relationship between the Dom and the sub. There are people out there with perfectly good reasons for saying “oh well I don’t like to be romantically involved with my sub” and that’s fine, that’s just not what the Crow Academy is about. The Crow Academy style is really aimed at couples who want to have all the bondage, all the passion, all the BDSM, all the D/s alongside and parallel to building a really great relationship.

And beyond that do you teach classes on skills?

Yes, flogging, bondage, animal play… one of the things I really want to teach again soon is a class about constructing a scene. So when you do a scene, the way I teach it every scene needs to tell a story. It needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning, the light toys and tools, is kind of the introduction to the characters, which are the various sensations. The middle of the scene is the build up, and the up and down and the switching of sensations given. I’m a very strong believer in switching the sensations, except during Fire-play as that’s a pretty monotone sensation but even then we start off with some flogging to get the blood up to the surface of the skin and wake her body up and what not, and then in between some of the fire I still bring out the fur creating a dance of sensations. If you understand how skin is constructed with all of the different nerves for temperature, pressure, texture, and all of these different sensors, then if you really want to get a sub into her bliss you will want to get as many of those sensors activated as possible. So you can activate a pressure sensor with flogging and you can activate a texture sensor with rabbit fur. You can activate those but if you then get the temperature one to go way too high then the other ones will almost shut off because they become lesser, irrelevant information. And the hypothalamus part of the brain will say, “sorry the pressure and the texture doesn’t matter because right now all that matters is the temperature that is triggering an emergency-alarm’s level.” So really good S&M is about balancing all of these different sensations and doing it in such a way that, say by the end act two in a three act play, you’ve built a dance of all of these characters on stage going back and forth speaking their lines of sensation. The fur speaks its line and then the floggers speak their line and a little bit of knife play speaks and all of that is what makes her skin go crazy.

(to slave Daphne) You live a tough life I’m sure

Daphne: Yes it’s just so hard (laughs).

Arcane: And then in act three, when you go from act two to act three of your scene, you want to build and build to the hardest, heaviest, most intense sensations…. and then you start to land the scene, to bring it back home. This is where I think a lot of people really don’t get in there enough. You need to kind of land everything and gently bring it back down. You can’t just stop, unless of course you have a very good reason to do so, but you want to bring it back down and go back to lighter sensations… heavy to medium, medium to light, then super light and then the scene ends.

Yes, it can be very jarring to go from bam bam bam to we’re done. Times up, gotta go!

I just taught an enormous workshop series in Australia that was all about beginning, intermediate, and advanced D/s and a lot of safety. I emphasize safety because this is a person I love so her safety and well-being is going to be paramount.

And that tends to get glossed over for the sake of being more “Domly” I think.

In newbies. There’s a lot of good education going on right now. A lot of people have access to find out how to be better and understand these basic safety principles. Almost everybody knows what a safe-word is. If they don’t they have some studying to do.

You seem particularly interested in bondage. Probably your most favorite thing? What is it about bondage that kind of gets you going?

Because that’s where I started. When I was five years old.

It’s your roots.

Yes, my roots were bondage and role play. So I never get tired of role play. Daphne and I come up with the crazy roles plays all of the time. I’ll tell you about a fun one, this is really cool because this just happened. So we’re both Star Wars fans and for Christmas I got her these really sexy Boba Fett leggings and a little crop top. And she owns these really awesome spike heel boots and we put together this whole role play where she was a bounty hunter and I was working for Darth Vader and captured and kidnapped her. Here I am, I’m a grown man but I honestly have to tell you that I could not believe how turned on I was and how that role play filled my head. As far as I was concerned we were there on the Death Star.

And it was right here in your apartment?

Daphne: Oh yea!

Arcane: It was super hot. And my point being that it’s a hell of a lot of fun for me to just open my imagination and bring in all of the things that I love into our role plays. We’re both pretty active-imagination people.

(to Daphne) And what’s some of your favorite stuff?

Daphne: Because he’s got the long hair and beard and kind of looks like a pirate I love the pirate and duchesse role plays. It’s my favorite.

Arcane: We have ongoing role plays about it.

Daphne: We seriously do! Its like ok we stop and we’re done and then our next role play we pick it right back up and I feel like I’m on a ship.

Arcane: But also I do love fire play. I don’t even know why… it’s just like the generic little pyromaniac in me. It’s edge play because fire. But just watching her reactions and how the fire dances across her body and knowing that I have enough control and experience with the fire… and fire is fire. You talk to anybody who ever works with fire professionally. There’s a great movie with Robert DeNiro where he talks about fire as a beast and you have to know how the beast lives and works and breaths and its really true. So when I’m doing this – putting fire on her to guide it and dance it around her body – I seriously feel like an artist at a canvas. In all BDSM really I feel that way.

(to Daphne) And do you feel safe or scared?

Daphne: You know honestly you say edge play Master, but I trust him so much and it just feels good I just feel… he puts it as a hot feather gracing your skin. Sometimes there is a very slight burning sensation. It’s not enough to hurt but it’s enough to wake me up because sometimes the fire is very soft and you get all relaxed and then it kind of bites and then I’m back in my body again. So it’s incredible. I highly recommend it to those who know how to do it.

Arcane: That’s one thing that I definitely have to say – Only if you’re taught it. I had someone teach me how to use it. I’ve taught fire play workshops and at least 30% of the workshop is just safety and really understanding what it is. That’s kind of how it is with any edge play. You really have to be taught by somebody who knows how it works before you start messing around.

And it looks like you have a new book out? That’s exciting! Can you talk a little bit about that? Is it your first book?

Well I’ve done a lot of writing but this is my first fully formed completely crafted, designed book. Igniting the Fire is an Ebook right now, been out for about a year selling purely by word-of-mouth which makes me super happy, and we just got another 5-star review on Amazon. It’s designed to be a hardcopy coffee table book. Every single page is a colorful plate and when its published in its full hardback form it’s about 400 pages.

(Arcane has Daphne bring the hard copy prototype. It really is a gorgeous book!)

It’s a complete A-Z system of how to do the Crow Academy style. It’s the first in a series of books so this book is aimed at the submissive. I speak to the submissive but there’s so much stuff in there that any Dom can pick it up and use the technique and the protocols described. The voice that I use when describing a protocol is the Dom speaking to the sub but any Dom could try these and decide, “this is a cool protocol,” and add it to their personal repertoire. The mechanics are spelled out. It’s written for people of all levels, absolute beginners as well as people with a ton of experience and everyone in between.

It looks like you got Ken Marcus to do the photography.

Yes, Ken Marcus and Perry Gallagher both.

It’s divided into four sections. The first section is your basic physical protocols and slave positions, and the second section is more on understanding some of the psychological elements, commands and signals. The third section goes really into the headspace of the submissive. The fourth part delves into the traditions and where it all comes from. A lot of stuff has been written about BDSM, which is great, and a lot has passed down by word of mouth. I had people and information coming at me from all sides in my own evolution and so I took what I learned from them all, what I tried and tested that became the Crow Academy style, and put in a ton of modern, utilitarian emphasis to make it real, to make it contemporary and useful.

It’s a beautiful book. I like that its written geared towards the submissive. I think that doesn’t happen as often, for written text. There’s some but not a lot.

Book two, which is in outline form right now, is going to be the exact opposite. I’m going to speak to the Dom because one thing that’s happened in the course of the Crow Academy being around is that I get a lot of letters from submissives saying, “I met up with this man who said he was a Dom and this terrible thing happened and now I feel like dropping out of the scene but you seem like you know what you’re talking about so what do you suggest?” And if I was to summarize the greatest need that I would like to provide for the world is to make a ton of really good, smart Doms out there. I’m tired of getting those letters. I want to get letters from people who say, “oh my gosh I met this man I gave him your second book and now he’s become the Dom of my dreams.” That would make me extremely happy.

So I’m curious in your travels to different places and lands far and beyond, have you explored many of the kink scenes in other countries?

All over!

Which one is your favorite?

Well my first public community scene was in Amsterdam and when I stepped into my very first fetish club there was a very strict dress code. The entrance was like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. They had the big guy at the door and the sliding eye-slot thing and they look at you then open the door and say, “can I help you?” It was a blank building down by the ocean. And you’d say, “yea I’m here for the kinky club,” and if you weren’t dressed in fetish gear right there you’d better have a bag with you that had the fetish gear to change to show the doorman. Then they had a changing room and you weren’t supposed to be in the club unless you were in full fetish fashion. You’d pay your money and open another door and boom, you’re in the club. And the first word that popped into my head that day was, “Home.” And it’s been that way ever since. I was like, “oh my god I’m home.” It was like stepping into the Star Wars cantina, an intergalactic zoo of wonderful weirdness. Just so much stuff going on and everywhere I turned something new or different or bizarre and it absorbed me instantly.

I went on to start producing my own fetish club called “Iniquity” here in America, and Amsterdam had a big influence on me. London has always been fantastic. Different cities have a different emphasis. In London I was once told while I was there on vacation that I was one of twelve Doms in London, which I don’t think that’s true but the point was there were so many Fem-Dommes, it was overrun. San Francisco is very male Dom heavy. Los Angeles is pretty balanced. Obviously San Francisco has a huge gay leather scene, Chicago as well. Although I’m not personally gay myself, I attended IML (International Mister Leather) because one of my friends was the son of the owner of Mister S Leather so we all went. There was a small hetero group there and of course we all spotted each other across the convention floor in this gigantic BDSM toy market. The market was amazing, and my point being it doesn’t really matter if it’s your thing or not because there’s amazing stuff to be found everywhere. At one of the parties there at IML there was a needle play scene that was art. It was just art. It wasn’t the typical thing where they stick the needles and make a little pattern. They did it bi-laterally on the person’s whole body inside of this wooden frame that was a permanent structure at this dungeon and then they had fishing line going from each needle to the frame so each needle was being tugged microscopically in every imaginable direction. It was mind blowing, creating a visually stunning art piece. There’s something for everyone in the world.

You do some stuff with needles too?

Not really. I will use acupuncture needles moderately – its kind of fun and again it’s edge play. If you’re doing something like that where you break the skin then you have to know your STD status and your partner’s. If you’re doing it on a stranger you should wear rubber gloves… all this kind of stuff. An acupuncture needle put in the right spot… and I don’t suggest you experiment with this…

I’m good!

If you put in the right spot you can make it stop movement like rope and the person can’t move… if they move there is a little shoot of pain.

Ah!

No you don’t understand (laughs)… it’s so awesome. I did a scene on stage in Australia where the girl was tied to a St Andrews cross by her wrists and then I put the acupuncture needles on her so she really couldn’t move and then I did fire play.

You’re a mean man! (laughs)

No no no I’m a generous man! (laughs) She was very happy. The amount of endorphins you get through these situations… there is no purchasable drug on Earth that can compare.

Sure! I believe it. I’ll take your word for it (laughs). So the scene internationally do you favor Amsterdam mostly because that’s where you got your start?

It’s actually the variety you find around the world that is a lot of fun for me. In Australia right now one of my best friends, Master Thorn, an amazing Dom, is the center of the Brisbane BDSM scene. He teaches classes every week and has parties every week and it’s a younger crowd that are super enthusiastic. Now is it as sophisticated or polished as the London or Amsterdam scene? No, not even close, but the enthusiasm, the raw enthusiasm is fantastic. Also another example there in Brisbane is that they have an enormous emphasis, one of the best in the world, on pet play and animal play, hosted by the Sanguine Pack, and that’s exactly the point. The fact that all over the world you find these pockets where the kink goes a little this way or a little that way. That’s awesome! My goal with her (to Daphne) – she hasn’t been travelling around the world with me yet – would be to take her to some of these places to show her what its like in London and Brisbane.

How the other half lives.

The other tenths. (grin)

From your experience what do you think the biggest problem is affecting the community as a whole?

Fifty Shades of Gray! (laughs) Not really. When Fifty Shades of Gray was first written people were really split. Ok here’s a fun statistic for you… because of the number of books that are known to be sold plus the number of expected illegal downloads when it was an Ebook, it works out that approximately one out of every thirty seven literate adults in the world over the age of 18 has at least obtained a copy of this book. That’s crazy. And what that did is it helped open the conversation massively. You can talk about BDSM anywhere now. And people have some idea what you’re talking about. Now if people take Fifty Shades of Gray as a guidebook they’re in for a very rough, dangerous and probably destructive road. So that is really the problem. Well not so much a problem – and I was kind of joking when I gave my answer – it’s not really a huge problem with BDSM, its just that so many fresh minds are out there who want to learn and what I’m doing and what my friend in Australia is doing is just trying to get good information out there. So is that a problem or is it just a need that needs to be filled? Good information, we need a lot more good information

Better dissemination of information.

And funny you should ask this exact question. I literally just got done talking with one of my clients. I do training for couples and so one of my clients was telling me that she was in some shop and she told the person, “my Master…,” and the guy knew them by association and said, “he can’t be a Master because he hasn’t done it long enough… you can’t call him Master.” And she wrote me and asked is this true? And I said, no that’s nonsense. He’s your Master, you can call him anything you want. He can tell you what he wants to be called by you, Master, Sire, My Lord, whatever. Doesn’t matter. If he was to step into a room full of BDSM people and say “I’m a Master!” than yes they might expect him to have a ton of experience, but he is your Master and you are his slave and that’s beautiful and you should embrace that. So another possibility with this need for information is to correct bad information or overly politically-correct information, which is not always going to help the situation, or highly opinionated information. People who are in the scene long enough know that when someone starts saying, “my way is the only way and everybody else is wrong,” then you need to walk away. Outside of that, I think we’re in a time of incredible opportunity to educate the world.

Yea, Dexx always says we’re in a “BDSM Renaissance.”

Yes, but its really true! And there are enough people out there that really know.

Out of curiosity, have you ever bottomed?

Funny you should say that. I have a running joke that I’m only 99% Dominant. I’m 1% submissive to chiropractors, deep tissue massage, acupuncturists and myofascial-release which makes ordinary deep tissue massage look like you sneezed. It’s very intense. The running joke, as Daphne has been here one time when the lady was working on me, is the question of how few times will I scream the word “Fuck!”

Daphne: It’s pretty entertaining (laughs)

Arcane: But that’s about it. One time way back with my first bottom we tried switching and my brain was just like, “there is no point, this is doing nothing for me,” and she agreed that she also didn’t want to be in control or be mean (laughs).

(To Daphne) Have you ever topped

Daphne: Ummmm, no (laughs). I’m trying to think if I ever really did? There’s just something about being a submissive that’s just so freeing and relaxing that I don’t know if I could handle the responsibility of somebody else.

(to Arcane) What advice would you offer someone just starting out besides reading your website and book of course!

Just read and educate yourself. My first clubs were in Amsterdam and London, then I came back to America. Very soon thereafter I moved to the San Francisco bay area and joined the Society of Janus up there. Janus, like Threshold in Los Angeles, is very politically correct in their BDSM. And what they teach is going to be very almost white-bread BDSM. Nonetheless I joined Janus and I took every single workshop they taught for two years. I never missed one unless it was you know, how to feminize your slave or what not. And that’s huge to get in the community. I tell my clients, “come with us to a party because you need to see the way other people do it.” Not just to be amongst peers and get that peer acknowledgment and acceptance for being into it, which is important and easier now than it was ten years ago because of Fifty Shades of Gray and the openness its caused, but also because like I said at my first time in my very first club, you see these things and you think, “well I never thought about doing that,” and you learn something new.

Ask questions, obey club etiquette, don’t interrupt someone’s scene. Get educated. One of my first martial arts senseis was a generous man because a lot of the schools back in the day did the whole Karate Kid thing where they would say, “our school is the best school!” I was lucky enough to have a sensei who one day turned to the whole class and said, “ok I’m going to teach you a secret now. If you want to get good at martial arts then you will have to study many different styles.” That’s exactly what I would say. The Crow Academy style is very couple-oriented with romance, high protocol, high etiquette, and those are with traditions from hundreds years ago that we’re revamping. But if you’re attracted to someone else’s style, read their book, learn it. Learn about different ways of doing what others do in their BDSM style that might be just as good.

Be aware because you want to avoid many stereotypes that are two-dimensional. And this is why I take the ball and roll with the whole romance angle. Yes a Dom can love their slave, yes a Master/Mistress can love her sub. In both directions. Don’t ever think that this is just some random act devoid of emotion. I would say go the opposite direction. Put your emotions into it. Be an artist. It’s a creative process. Make it your own.

You can contact Arcane through The Crow Academy and read more advice and writings here. Follow Arcane @CrowAcademy as well as on Facebook. His new book Igniting the Fire is available now on Amazon.

Tagged With: bdsm, D/s, dominance, dynamic, education, interview, master, slave

anniebear Interviews Justin Sayne Leather

February 22, 2016 By anniebear 2 Comments

alligator cuffs

I sat down with Justin Sayne in his downtown loft during his last week in Los Angeles. He was in the midsts of packing up his shop and moving back to Arizona to continue his work.

anniebear: We’re here with Justin Sayne of Justin Sayne Leather-see what he did there (laughs). So you craft fine leather toys and accessories. You’re pretty well known for that because you use some interesting materials, that being the crocodile skin. Is that something you’ve always worked with or did you sort of happen upon that material?

alligator paddles

Justin: I came across that material a couple of years ago at a leather convention in Prescott, AZ of all places. I saw the tales from across the room and I’m like that’s a fetish toy. I wasn’t sure how and I wasn’t sure what, I mean it was thirty yards away and there was a table of them. From great big to small and I was thinking that’s brilliant, that’s the part of the animal that nature intended to be a whip-this is on! Coincidentally when I looked at it I realized I already made single tales in the same fashion out of latigo. Pretty much the stuff they make belts out of. A couple of other toys, little slappers were pretty much the same thing the only difference was the material and exactly what to do with the material. The parts we’re using it doesn’t really matter if its alligator or crocodile because the part is about the same on both animals at that point. I generally use farmed alligators because that’s what’s available a lot. But strangely enough we’ve gotten elephant, giraffe, the list is just so vast of what the exotics are right now and what’s coming. You’ve not seen anything unless you’ve seen an elephant trunk flogger.

Do you have one?

I sold it.

(Laughs) Was the elephant ill gotten?

No no no! They’re farming them and more than that we outlawed the import of trophies so the safari trade died. That’s where all the poaching material is going to anyway. Nobody told mom nature that we were going to quit taking animals. It’s not like we were hunting only the ones-there was still a controlled hunt in Africa. The poachers were taking too many. Well elephants and giraffes breed well. Rhinoceroses not so much, I can’t get rhino. But you tell mom nature that now you need the water and food and space not all of the animals that are but all of their offspring, their not going get knocked off they’re not going to be hunted and thinned out so you just don’t turn up mom nature. Now they’re to the point where the government is paying people to come and take them. On top of the farms. That’s what happened with the lion deal. There’re so many big animals out there this country says I can get more out of this used up lion by taking this animal the other males are going to push further and reproduce even harder.

So when I ran into the alligators, there’re tons of these, there’s plenty of them but not so many that everybody is going to be able to get their fingers on it.

Do you dye the leather yourself or do they come in those colors?

They come in so many colors. Seriously, this mix up in the Middle East has done weird stuff like they’ve been raising sheep and lambs over there for a long time, they still do it by hand. And we weren’t getting a lot of the import export trade out of the
Middle East for a long time so now we’re in a situation where all of these skins have hit the market and not only has it put the Asian, American, South American markets on alert because here’s a whole new continent putting out skin and not only the skin they’re producing now but the stuff that’s stacked up over so many years. So everyone is stepping up their game. The leather is just bitchin’ right now. I can get lambskin that look like a mirror.

A mirror?

Yes, you can see yourself in them.

Do you feel like the flogger and toy market has been more saturated because of that or has it kind of just stayed steady?

Well you’re seeing some of those materials in the custom market and strangely enough its giving us the leverage to compete with the “use it once throw it away” market. Before a guy with an idea and a cute little leather toy really kind of got chuckled at when he said he was going to make a living off of this. These days it may be beans and rice it may be very fancy beans and rice.

Do you work by yourself or do you have friends or colleagues?

Up to now I’ve worked with myself. I’m starting to add others and its kind of odd. There’s a lady from Indiana I met her here [in Los Angeles]. She’s actually looking at coming to Arizona to work full time as well, between the two of us I’ve got more shop space than both of our Los Angeles places combined. Another fella has been adding some support and he’s going to be around a while. So I mean people are starting to catch on and hang on you can kind of tell you’ve got something going when people start to show up.

Right, and support.

As opposed to “hey man high fives can I get a discount”?

So how long have you been working with leather in general?

I started, what is this 2016? I started in 09-10.

Quite awhile then. Self taught?

Yes and no. I had a really good mentor, Debbie and she actually hired me-it’s a long story. She hired me on a whim. I knew nothing about leather it wasn’t even to do with leather it happened to be her show season and when I was done with what she had me do she asked me if I could model a loin cloth. And I’m like what the fuck is a loin cloth. A couple of very uncomfortable pictures later she kind of figured I was a good sport and started showing me what I was doing. The fetish stuff actually came from-it started in her shop and being a single woman with a child in a small town and a quiet leather business she decided it was too much fan for her fire so she taught me everything she could at that time and mostly; 1. Don’t ever turn down a leather worker that really needs something ever. 2. Always teach someone that’s serious about cutting leather, never say no, no matter how much you don’t like them and, 3. Don’t ever make a mistake. Ever. If you break something lay it aside and see what its good for.

Like if you make a wrong cut on something because you can always parts of it later?

Well a mistake is something you didn’t mean to do that means that its different, that there’s potential there, its just not what you need today.

That’s a really good way of looking at stuff.

You see what I mean? It’s not like tearing a piece of paper, something had to die for that. So you make a bad cut you can’t throw it away but even on the floor I just sweep it up, the little tiny pieces in the nooks and crannies. I keep as much as I possibly can. I’ll find something for it. It’s something waiting to happen. Some of my best stuff as far as I’m concerned was junk that was lying around the shop that one day I happened to be straightening up and set them together and go GASP! It happened to me the other day.

My bandana was lying on the floor. I use these for shit. They’re fun. But girls especially are familiar with a nice soft cotton bandana. My stuff is expensive, I’m looking for stuff under $100, stuff under $100 made of leather-people don’t want it. They complain it’s too expensive. You hand them something that’s worth $100 for $50 and they’re like “but this $400 one is so nice.” So it’s a struggle. So I’m sitting here thinking what about blindfolds, what about gags. If you just fold these and sew them and maybe put a leather band around them, everybody knows how to use this as a blindfold, they know how to tie it, its comfortable. Do it a little further and you’ve got a ball gag. It’s beginner stuff, its cheap but they come in all colors. Point is, I’ve had a million of these. But the one that was laying on my table, I was like, look there’s my blindfold. It’s a mistake! I took my thing off and laid it on the table.

And then the idea!

That’s where it comes from. The bulk of what I’ve got that was cool either came from a mistake or trying to right a wrong or trying to fix something I broke. Even the leather convention I was at when I found the alligator was because I made the mistake of actually buying expensive leather. I needed something cheaper. I had to go digging that up. That was the last thing Debbie taught me. Make those mistakes home runs.

alligator whip

Switching gears a little, it seems like you’re pretty active in the LA scene.

I wouldn’t say I’m active. I appear.

You make appearances (laughs). So you hosted the slave auction and you’ll go to the market events with your leather. Do you really go to play parties much?

No. If I’m not working it, I don’t go.

How did you get into the stuff that you go to in the community? Did you just approach people and say hey can I host or did you already know people?

When I got to do the slave auction I was new in LA. I wasn’t even sure that I was staying. I was just lingering. My problem, the issue I had with moving here-there’s business and there’s pleasure and in my situation those too things massively overlap. So my thought was don’t go into a scene (into this scene) expecting to make the money and get the women and not give back. Because that’s really what it comes down to but that’s exactly how these people are going to see it. “Who is this guy? We’ve been building this scene forever. Now he’s going to come in here and earn off of us and get the girls and giggle?” No. That ain’t nice. So before I even busted out a toy or even told anybody who I was I went to the dungeon, I paid the cover I told them what I wanted.

First time I got toys out was in private with the boss. The first time I got a toy out in LA on this trip was out of request in private. That being said, I left those toys in that private room. Went to the club I paid to hang out in. That’s the way it was for the longest time. From those conversations actually I heard about the slave auction and went and begged for the opportunity. I had to straight out explain I’m a retired auctioneer. I’ve never done a slave auction. This was just great! What can I pay, I’ll donate stuff! And they asked me to come back indefinitely as far as I know. Its really just about giving before I expected anything. That’s how its supposed to be. I just got active by just trying to pay some respect before I expected anything and I don’t know if it worked but I tried. I’m sure I got my haters.

I haven’t heard of any haters!

Oh come on, at least one or two?

Nah.

Ok…I’ll try harder.

Justin working in his shop.
Justin working in his shop.

(Laughs) How long have you been kinky either actively or just knowing it was within yourself?

My mom bought a strip club when I was fourteen. And I got to work in there

When you were fourteen?

Yup.

You really got an education.

Yea, I wouldn’t have been able to define kinky when I started cutting leather. I really thought that I was just the naughty black sheep more than anything. I worked strip clubs my whole life. Gotten out of it, got back into it. Actually paid my way to auctioneer school from selling some stock and my tips from Christies. Everything that I did in life was from what I was making at the strip club. By the time I got cutting leather I’d gotten out of all that. My son was around full time, gotten a house in the middle of nowhere, little cottage. I was done. It was actually Debbie that said the market’s down I need for my RenFair material to turn black and have a line of toys so I can just double up easily. She just simply had this theory that the closest thing to RenFair material was bondage material and she would just simply cross over. She thought it would be seamless.

So I didn’t know what a flogger was. She sent me home to figure out a line of toys and I didn’t even know the definition of flogger. You could have shown that to me and I’d have been like oh that’s tickly! Now when I finally started going to parties I realized there’s something to this and where I’m from you don’t hit girls so that was a problem. And I kind of came out of the Phoenix scene and was extremely heavy handed. So you can see that from the toys, I mean they’re brutal. And I can’t say I always knew I was kinky but I do know that the journey when I figured out what kink was on accident, there was definitely a fit there, an outlet personally I had no idea I had an artistic bone in my body. You know the whole artists label is something that I try to shun. But people keep using that word and people could be wrong but I didn’t even know that existed much less creativity. I knew I could get through my life but some of the stuff I’ve seen come off my table I never dreamed of. I didn’t know I was kinky until in the essence of the word until I found a girlfriend that made me confortable. There I was dabbling, earning, designing, providing toys for people to be kinky providing stuff kinky had never seen before and there I was, “can you show me how to use this?”

This thingy I made?

No seriously, I had a string of Doms that would handle my shit and try it out because I had zero clue and had no problems saying so! And don’t want to, go on right ahead. I really didn’t know I was kinky until I was dating this fetish model that she sat down at my table and we made her a toy. And it was a slappy and stingy on one end and had a real thuddy handle and then it had a tickly tip on the other side. And that was what she wanted. She Wanted thuddy, tickly, and stingy. And we went through the whole entire process of custom making something just for her tender little needs. And by the time it was done I was dying to use it and it worked very well. (laughs)

alligator whip 2

I saw some of your stuff in The Black Room [a fetish leather store] in Vegas. That’s pretty awesome huh?

Yea I love those guys

How long has that been going on?

Franz [the owner] has been supporting me from the jump! That guy, that scratchy old German no matter how pissed off, busy, late, that guy has been a supporter from the beginning. As far as I’m concerned, there’ll be stuff in The Black Room until The Black Room Turns white.

Yes, we actually interviewed Tara while we were in Vegas but Franz couldn’t join us.

She is phenomenal, she works her ass off.

I know they’ve been having a hell of a time in Vegas with all of the drama with the dungeon. It’s a shame.

What’s worse than that, Tara took on that whole entire place so the globe would have an accessible dungeon to come and have and they could fly straight into Vegas. Her heart is in this. If the best place to put that would have been Berlin and she’d have had that opportunity she would have went there. The fact that it’s so easy to get into Vegas from every country on Earth, and just minutes from the airport in a place that size, the fact that she would take that on. The community should have busted their ass to make sure she succeeded, there should have been zero question.

It seems the local community there isn’t unified around any one thing.

I had a club in Phoenix, I don’t know what it is but it’s a real fractured community as well. Not as much now but it was then just like Las Vegas. Somebody new coming up now we’re gonna have a place to play. It’s not that it was up against the fifty others. Here’s a place you can buy a piece of leather you can get strapped to a cross, scream as loud as you want and oh yea if you get here before ten o’clock there was a Greek restaurant in the parking lot. I’d have free night and people wouldn’t show up. Now some nights the place was packed even if it was a twenty dollar bill to get in. When it came to hey lets make sure we maintain this space no matter who’s running it, nope not even a flicker and then everyone will complain that there’s no place to go. Not like in LA where if you don’t like where you’re hanging out there’s three others within driving distance. That has nothing to do with the house parties.

What advice would you give to someone brand new just starting out?

Take advice. We all give it, you should take it. You don’t have to take it and run with it but take notes. Maybe ask around. Take that advice to a munch or a party. Spread it out a little bit, asking will fill someone else’s ears that hadn’t heard it. I mean I could give “play safe” but nobody is going to listen to that. Take advice, We all have some. And as many Domly Doms that are out there that will chuck it out for free, suck it up, take it with a grain of salt if you have to. We’ve all had experiences. We’ve all fucked up, me first. We’ve all hurt people we didn’t mean to. Don’t hang your head and be like “I didn’t know.” We’re not all super Dom or super sub. Don’t be shy about stealing advice, dip into other people’s conversation. Butt in if you have to. I don’t think there’s anything better that can be said.

Tagged With: interview, Journey, justine sayne leather, Los Angeles, toys

anniebear Interviews Tara from The Black Room

February 15, 2016 By anniebear 1 Comment

On our recent trip to Las Vegas for the AVNs, we sat down with Tara, manager of The Black Room a fetish leather store in the area. We talked about all things Vegas, dating, and the BDSM scene abroad.

anniebear: Your store The Black Room is kind of a fixture here in Las Vegas and I know you get a lot of tourist traffic as well and you and Franz are local community/BDSM figureheads?

Tara: To a degree. Not as much as some people think. In the last few years we have made more in roads but sadly in Vegas its very divisive. And we have found that when you kind of get involved with one thing even if you’re doing it with the best of intentions another group will be upset with that so to make everyone happy we really do keep our distance. That’s why we don’t really affiliate with a single group here or there. It’s a very unique place Vegas. And the community as I said there’re all these little niches and you just try to make everyone happy. I found that that’s really hard to do because last year at this time I had a dungeon here in town. And sadly it closed and I’m not angry about it but I am disappointed about it but I really never had any local community support to keep it going, which I found very surprising. I really did. I really thought- I don’t want to say you build it they will come but I thought it would have had more local people than I did.

Dexx: That was Faust right? Can you tell us more about that?

The idea behind Faust was I always wanted a dungeon based on a European model. I’d been to many places in Germany and Holland and things like and what we wanted to do was give a place to play that people who were new to the scene or very much into it or very experienced could come to a place that was for fetish only. Faust was not a sex club. It wasn’t like a lot of the other places here. That’s fine that’s there thing but that’s not what we were about. We were about play. When we opened, we had a fantastic opening night I mean it was brilliant and we had an 8000 square foot place. I had a building that was 20,000 square feet and I had plans to expand if things had gone well and I really had this idea of doing it the way no one had ever done it before I mean it was much more than just having a cross here a flogging table there. I really had a lot of stuff planned. But I invested quite a bit of my own money, what I could afford. I had a partner from Belgium, Roger Muiller. Roger and I both had that same vision. And if you go on Faust on Facebook, I still have my site up and you can see photos of it. We had a really wonderful lounge area where people could just relax before they played or after just to get them in the mood or to wind down. In the lounge area no play was allowed-but it didn’t work here in town. I think part of it, like I said lack of community support and part is because I had to be very careful how I advertised. The city didn’t give me a hard time. But in this city you also have to be very careful how you do things. And if I’d have been like in your face kind of like a lot of the nightclubs are they would have shut me down quick. So I was trying to work under the radar but again metro knew about me metro came in on a number of occasions, never had a problem with it but it was a glorious failure as I’d like to say.

anniebear: I did visit the space it was beautiful.

You know I had some interesting nights. I wont deny it. I did have great memories but it just didn’t work.

anniebear: And how did The Black Room come about?

[The Black Room] owner Franz, he had this place in Irvine, CA. He was there for fifteen years and he had it in the back of a jewelry store his wife owned and was quite successful. But it was much more of a local community kind of little shop. His wife sadly passed from leukemia in 2010 and he came out here. He started in October 2010 here with basically all he had which was whatever he had placed in storage because he had closed the business to take care of his wife. So we had that and I came on about four months after he opened. And we just tried everything you can think of for advertising, we had some pieces that we brought in here that we thought would be great sellers, didn’t sell at all. Other things that we knocked heads about, sometimes he was right sometimes I was right. (laughs) For instance late last year we instituted a line of adult baby and it is flying off our website! We cannot keep stuff in fast enough. We get lots of hate letters from people who are waiting and we’re trying to get stuff in as fast as we can!

anniebear: I thought you were going say you get hate letters from people saying that they’re against the store (laughs)

Yes, they’re just in tears (laughs). Now I have nothing against infantile play, its great people love it but I didn’t think it was as popular as it is. And that surprised me, happily. That has really taken off for us, we I think have a good reputation on the quality of stuff that we sell. We try to bring in as much from Europe as possible. I won’t deny that we do have a little bit of what I would call inferior quality for beginners. Because obviously beginners don’t want to spend a lot of money but I still want to sell to them so I bring in the “fifty shades of gray” line, the stuff that’s very basic. You may get one or two uses out of it. You may buy a flogger that costs you $10 and the purist in me doesn’t want to sell it I hate it but business is business and it does sell. But for those who are more knowledgeable or have more experience they really do like our stuff and that makes me very happy. I am one of those people I won’t sell something to you if I just don’t think you’re ready for it. And I will tell people that straight to their face, you’re not ready for this. If you really really want it I’ll sell it to you but if you’re asking my opinion you’re not ready for that. And I think that has shown that we’re very honest with our customers.

I read things on Yelp and it’s usually nice things but somebody wrote one time that they said, “I came in there a stranger and I walked out a friend.” And that that makes me happy because those are customers which are going to come back. Even with tourists I won’t just sell something to a tourist thinging, “well I’ll never see them again.” And that have proved to be nice because we have had a lot of return people. I’ve had people from Australia, New Zealand, even Germany that will come here and will say we came to Vegas, yea we’re going to have the “Vegas experience” but our first stop was your store. That really makes me feel good because that tells me we’re doing something right.

Do we make mistakes of course, do we get people mad at us of course. That’s business. Its like I was trying to tell Franz one day the more you sell online the more you’re opening yourself up to criticism because he hates to see criticism but you have to roll with the punches. I say if you’re selling ten pieces and you get one complaint, it’s 10% of your business. If you’re selling 100 pieces and get 10 complains its still only 10%. So you have t look at it in that perspective.

Interior of The Black Room
Interior of The Black Room

anniebear: How did you meet Franz then?

It was funny, I had come back from Ireland. I’d come here in the early 2000’s got a little homesick and went home. Then the economy crashed in Ireland and I thought well there’s no way I want to stay here and live on the dole so I came back to Las Vegas, I have family here. And I was actually working in a sex club as a bartender. It was very funny because a sex club is not my personal kind of thing and I just stood behind the bar and it was just a meeting place. I always had people say they came in there just to come talk to me even if they never got lucky in the club they still had a good time because you know I have a talent, if you would for making people laugh.

anniebear: I’m sure you make a great bartender.

I met Franz, he came in one time. We got talking and then he had come in a few other times and we just hit it off. And he said to me “if you ever want to come work for me let me know and I’ll hire you on the spot.” And I said “yea ok thanks, etc.” I finally had gotten tired of the club it wasn’t me and it wears on you those places always do just like I always hear escorts say they can do it for so long and then just burn out. I was in this [BDSM] world myself as a player and I’d been a pro-Domme for more years than I care to admit but he found out I was no longer working there and I didn’t contact him or anything but he gave me a call one day and said do you want to come work for me and I said yes!

anniebear: And do you usually get along?

It’s funny because you know believe me we have some knock down drag outs but what’s really good is that we do leave it at business. Before he had his new fiancé, many times we would go out on a Saturday night after work and go to dinner and go do some karaoke or something. He’s like a big brother. And Franz is very knowledgeable, he has some really good contacts in Germany and because of that Franz gets his stuff direct and it eliminates a middle man which obviously gives us the ability to sell stuff at really what I consider reasonable prices. We have very much beginner stuff that’s very cheap and we have some really high end stuff and it can be expensive. But for the most part if you look at the pieces and the quality of it it’s reasonable.

tara 1

anniebear: Have you spent much time in Germany?

I have been there on a number of occasions but I’ve never lived there. The last time was in 2001. I had to visit the Kit Cat club and if you haven’t been go!

anniebear: When you were a professional Dominatrix, that was in Ireland?

No that was in Holland. I was very much my own enterprise. I never believed in working under other people like that because the more people that are about the more likely you’re going to get in trouble. Just like if I did it here I wouldn’t do it as a group or under anybody else or have a website because the police troll those things in Vegas. Even though no sex is involved, if they want to bust you they will. But I had very interesting clients in Holland. It was a little bit different, the late 80s early 90s, tastes changes just like styles change but I when I was doing it it was much more what people would call the run of the mill play. I never had anything really unusual, in my mind. I’m sure a lot of the stuff to vanilla people would seem unusual but it was –your basic floggings, whippings, anal play, CBT, piercings, things like that. I had basic clients, some people who were local politicians at the time. That was the biggest thing I always noticed. It always amazes me how many professional people are in this lifestyle, maybe because they’re more open minded or have more time or funds, I don’t really know. Most of the people that I knew in Holland were very much professional people.

anniebear: We’re always interested in hearing about what the scene is like in other cities and countries.

In Europe what surprises me too, Vegas is such a visual town when you go it’s “I’m in Vegas I’m going to do myself up,” it surprises me when I first came here you see that we [at The Black Room] are more about fashion and clothing than we are about equipment though we have been bringing that part of it too. It really surprises me about the number of people who are local that really don’t dress up and for us when you went to a dungeon or club that’s what it was all about. I mean yes everybody played but you saw the stereotype people, in corsets the men in suits, special rubber suits or leather or latex, masks. And you really don’t get that here. The most you seem to get is people who will wear a black t-shirt maybe biker boots and a vest as far as the men go. A lot of the women just get naked which is fine to each their own. But in Europe it was all about the image was part of the fantasy. Part of the atmosphere of the club that’s really lacking here.

anniebear: In LA I feel that people dress.

Dexx: It varies from event to event, but some people do.

anniebear: It seems like Vegas has a lot of old school players or people that have been in the scene for years and years and don’t really deviate much from those rules to the point of not being inclusive.

They do and people have a right to do and believe what they want. I don’t have any issue with that. What I don’t like and I’m just speaking for me personally, I’ve never sat there and called out anybody on this, what I don’t like is how many times I’ll hear the chatter online that if you don’t do it this way or that way you’re just dabbling your not really serious. Or you don’t know what lifestyle play is all about. Who anointed them the “S & M guardian.” To me if you’re thing is getting tied to the bed and getting spanked a few times before you engage in sexual play, if that’s your kink then that’s your kink and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I really don’t like when people do that. And I hear a lot of that. I don’t know if goes on like that in LA but I just saw so much criticism about the way people play. I get annoyed when I hear some club say we’re a male dominated society and our group is all about male dominance. Ok that’s fine I don’t have problem with that but for somebody who is new to the scene or doesn’t understand it when they come to their group, they’ll turn around and insult them, “oh you’re a switch or a male submissive get out of here.” That’s just rude, I’m sorry. I always thought we were about educating each other as much as the pubic at large and I hear a lot of that.

tara 2

anniebear : What advice would give to someone brand new starting out exploring the lifestyle?

Be careful. Ask loads of questions; don’t be afraid to ask questions. I also say that if there’s something you are interested in, try to find people that you first trust and who know a bit about what it is you’re interested in. And let’s say for instance you’re into electrical play, play with more than one person. If possible-I’m going from the aspect that you’re not attached to anybody. You find somebody you trust, you play. If you really like it fantastic. If it’s not what you thought it was don’t just discount it. Try somebody else and see how they do it because everyone is different in their techniques. So you may find, ok I like it but that first person just wasn’t good at it or you may try it with two or three different people and you just don’t like the experience. You say ok that’s not for me. Use your head, just be intelligent. I’d like to think that most people that get into this are fairly intelligent. Someone who’s willing to be submissive say, wouldn’t play with someone without asking questions. It’s a dangerous pastime if you don’t take your precautions. Just ask loads of questions and be smart and if something in your head says this isn’t right you stop, walk away. Don’t feel like you have to prove anything to anyone.

For somebody who is new I’m always leery of the people that say “I don’t do the munch thing because I find them to be ridiculous” that kind of red flags me. When people around these public sites say that. Not that you have to do a munch but the great thing about them is if you’re a regular attendee most people kind of know you and you know them so if you’re somebody new and you can meet them at a munch and ask around. It lays the ground work.

Dexx: What do you think it’ll take before Vegas could have another public dungeon again?

Well, Franz and I have talked about this and we have a plan in place if the cards fall properly. We would love to do something in the space next door to us. We would like to turn it into a weekend play space. I think what it takes is it’s hard –the most ideal way to do it in this city is in a private residence. But the trouble with most private residences is that if you want the perfect place it’s going to cost a ton of money to rent and the trouble is with most houses is the rooms are too small. And then there’s parking or upset the other residences. It’s tough. It’s a shame that Vegas is a little bit tight assed but they are. I always laugh and jokingly say this town loves the nickname but they don’t like the actuality. Yea we’re Sin City the adult playground of the world. Come spend your money but you can’t do that you cant do that.

Dexx: Keep your panties on there! (laughs)

Like the AVNs it’s a porn star thing or the Fetish and Fantasy Ball and everyone knows what its about and yet people get so bent out of shape when they see boobs, even if the nipples are covered, they see boobs; and oh my God! It’s what it’s about.

anniebear: It’s the American way to have that reaction.

You know Ireland is still a very conservative place and they say oh you have such freedom in Vegas you can do what you want and I’m like really? I can get in better trouble in Dublin than here. It is what it is.

anniebear: So, are you seeing anybody right now?

No I’m not and it’s hard for a number of reasons and you’re going to laugh at this. I just like regular run of the mill, straight fellas and I’m a post op so it’s hard to find regular straight fellas who are A) comfortable with my past, B) are at least interested in this lifestyle, or C) because they know I work here it scares the hell out of them. Its like oh I don’t think I could handle her. She’s gonna be too much or too wild for me.

anniebear: Are you a switch do you prefer domination?

To say I’m not would be a lie, I am a switch but the way I say that is I do pro Domme occasionally. I do have some clients that come into town a few times a year, not a ton. But for my own personal play I’m a bottom. I can do the Domme role, I’m good at it but I don’t get the excitement I get out of being a submissive.

Dexx: Are the Germans as kinky as their reputation would suggest?

Yes. It’s a good thing! Franz said this once to me and I don’t know if he was really joking about it or meant it-the Germans when they approach their business, the business days are very straight forward, very proper, all the T’s are crossed, everything is efficiency. So I think when they have their down time according to Franz he says that’s when we let our hair down and that does make sense because I do have loads of friends who are Germans and they’re kinkiest you’ve ever met. They don’t broadcast it but they don’t conceal it, where I have friends who are really kinky in Ireland, I mean Irish men are trust me the kinkiest things going but they all deny it.

Tagged With: bdsm, interview, las vegas, leather, toys

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