When I was in 6th grade, I went to the Museum of Natural History on one of many, many field trips. But this time, I bought something cool. It was called a Resurrection Plant. They are also known as The Rose of Jericho.

It was a weird, brown ball and on the card stapled to the top of the dusty packaging, it said that this was actually a living plant. I was dubious, but I absolutely trusted the AMONH, and knew they wouldn’t steer me wrong. And if they did, I sure as fuck would be back on the bus and demanding my money back!

I gave it to my Mother, and we put it into a dish with water, as indicated in the instructions. within a few hours, the spiky desiccated ball had relaxed a bit…cautiously, unfurling its stems and plumping its roots and soaking up the water, which we kept fresh as it disappeared into the now mossy lump.

Between that afternoon and the next morning, it opened so much it was kind of creepy.

I was impressed by the action of something that seemed so dead doing its thing so quickly, with just a little water. (more…)

I’m on the morning of the last of my performances of the revival of 69Stories. Interestingly, this revival is a format somewhat different than previous iterations. More interactive. More real-time. Riskier-feeling for me, but it seems to work well.

The riskiness I experience is this: when I tell the stories, a part of me is there. I don’t mean that in some kinda actingy way. I mean I rewind to how that felt, and pick up where that left off. I have the capacity to do total physical and emotional recall, and this is a lot cooler and a lot more fucked-up than it sounds.

Especially when you’re recalling something that you…want.  And won’t ever have again.

I don’t mean this in some kinda sad-sack, bust out weeping violins way, I mean it in a grounded, realistic fashion. No experience is cell-for-cell repeatable.

For better and for worse.

When I tell the story of the first time I understood that submission wasn’t about brute force, that you could get there just from the whispered words of the right person? I won’t ever have precisely that experience again. But I can stand there, night after night, and replay that braintape. Down to what my feet felt like. Down to the light sheen of sweat on the small of my back. Down to the inexplicable (well, not really but at the time, sure.) arousal and physical manifestation of the same that I experiences, making me slippery and dazed for a long, long time afterward.

You’d think this is kind of cool, and it is. Don’t get me wrong. But there is a price to be paid, and when you unpack that shit, it sometimes doesn’t want to go back into the place you packed it. It comes out, stretches, yawns, looks you in the eye grinning toothily and says

OK, you invoked me. Here we are. How do I look to you now? Have I changed in the years since we danced in chronological “realtime?” Have you distorted me? AM I really real? Slippery mercurial memory…catch me if you can, baby…

I’ve been doing some unpacking and I can’t pretend it does not have resonance outside of a couple of hours onstage, because it does.

When I share about the events, people, sights and sounds that all add up to who I am today, and I have to look at it, objectively even, I feel an odd affection and detachment.  My life = entertainment and What The Fuck is THAT about?

I know it isn’t ONLY that. I know I am not only here to amuse and sing and dance.

At least I think I know that.

Sometimes I wonder, though. Is it REALLY better to have loved and lost than to never have loved? Because if you have never had that crazy-ass roller-coaster ride, you can’t know how it is, right? And then you won’t know how brutal the landing can be. And then you won’t have to see how the taproots into your id won’t ever ever be fully excisable.

Maybe that blissful ignorance at which I sneer, which I reject in favor of the beauty of The Experience, in fact carries its own intrinsic value?

Maybe. Maybe…but there is no story in that. And above all, I am here to tell.  To tell on and about myself.

To tell stories…to be the kinky griotte for those whose stories are rarely told.

SO yeah, it is better. And worse. And I’ll take it, thank you.

Thank you to my friend Pinky, for IMsL2010 Barbie!

It has been a month since the International Ms Leather contest. One month ago today, I was in a dazed haze, worrying about the opening number, freaking out about the interview, praying I wouldn’t completely melt down before the weekend was over.

Thanks to Glenda, tomo, Ms. Rhonda and Levi for pulling together a stellar group of people to make this event happen.

Thanks to my friend Tee, for pulling it (and me) all together.

Thank you, Patti for anchoring me backstage.

Endless thanks to everyone who donated to help IMsL’s silent auction.

Thanks to Lamalani and Pony, for setting the stage and showing us how that shit is DONE. (more…)

Red-eye yeti.

I am learning to write in mid-air. I used to never be interested in doing so. I think it is good to have this desire blossoming. I have many flights in my future, and don’t foresee that slowing down any time soon. So…we write.

I’m in first class tonight. And this is awesome. I took a bump to a later flight and ta da…comfort and a voucher for a future flight.

The woman sitting next to me is drinking something…possibly a Cape Codder. And it stinks. That’s less awesome.

I don’t have, at present, any residual desire for alcohol. I am often amazed at how so many other alcoholics describe their hunger for booze. Right now, I hate it. I have since I got sober, the smell of it on someone’s breath is often enough to sicken me. I don’t like bars…I never really did, because I didn’t want anyone else to really see the way I really drank. And today, unless I’m in a bar / restaurant, the focus on and smell of booze in bars fills me with a back-stumbling awkwardness and nausea. Flashbacks of terrible shit I would love to forget and refuse to forget.

Ever.

I don’t want to ever, ever forget. (more…)

Dear Jim…

It is HIGHLY unlikely you’ll ever read this,

I’m writing it anyway.

Who the fuck am I kidding.

Honestly? Frankly? The “You” to whom I’m writing only lives in my heart and mind. The “You” you are today is years and miles away from the man who upended my life, careened me into new and previously unknown realms, and left me shaking and alone, but ready to be who I needed to be. This exercise in writing “You” a letter isn’t about writing a letter to the actual James.

No, the “You” to whom I’m writing is a kaleidoscopic doppelganger of emotional glassbits that tumble through the scratched lens of my mind’s eye.

It is the “You” I first saw in Barney’s Beanery in December of 1993 in Los Angeles.

It is the “You” who opened up a channel to my future from which spoke a voice alerting me to the unfathomable changes that you’d unleash in my life.

It is the “You” whose gorgeous, simple, heated coarse brutality shocked and completed me so totally, it obliterated every thought of ever desiring anyone but you, ever and ever forever and ever, amen

It is the “You” I adored so completely that I spent hundreds of dollars a month, money I didn’t have, to keep your voice and laughter and despicable beautiful lusts in my head even though we were a continent and an ocean apart.

It is the “You ”that, no matter how fleeting our subsequent borrowed times together were, they were enough to sustain me through the years…even through the other relationships…because “I knew in my heart of hearts!” that I was yours, and yours alone, and that some day you would hold this knowledge as surely as I did and you would permit me to love you and yourself to love me the way that Fate intended.

It is the “You” for whom I still struggled to make space, even though I knew it was futile. Some ambertrapped part of me knew…knew…that you would remember who we were.

Today that “You”…those iterations, all of them and more beside…all joined me at once. As I ate my fucking bleu cheeseburger and tried to hold my shit together.

See, today was a rough day. Closing out a convention that had been a bit of a roller-coaster for me. My weekend had been fraught, hormonal issues didn’t help any, and one of the bits of my life that I’d hoped had settled, thereby relieving me of a substantial amount of stress had come undone and I was kind of back to square one.

Today it really hit me in a whole new way, how strange and loopy my life is become. I realized that the next 2 weeks of my life were leading up to some Pretty Big Shit and I wasn’t at all sure how I was going to hold up.

And I was lonely…so lonely.

You know how this is.

The crowd, the people telling you how awesome you are, and still it is so hard…so hard to absorb. I remember how tough it was for you before you gained the degree of notoriety you have today to hang in there when your situation was so discouraging…struggling like so many artists do. I remember one night in Islington as we scraped together pence and pounds to get supper and fags you telling me how you were so grateful and happy that I was there with you, through that rough time. I remember a lot more…but that is for my memory and yours alone.

So it is painful and awful to have so much of these memories blurred and torqued into something less than effulgently fulfilling as I remember the other “You.”

The “You” who reminded me, with a shockingly callus emotional brutality, that my feelings for you weren’t important in light of your “real girlfriends” feelings.

It is the “You” who, after a decade, of my foolish naive hopes, explained that I was not nor would I be, yours.

The “You” who berated me for writing, with pride and passion, about our affair, and how transformational it was.

The “You” who, when his “people” discovered that we were easily linked by a couple of savvy Google searches, called me to insist that it was all inappropriate, and that it should be removed immediately.

It speaks to the still extant desire to please you that coiled, latent, around my heart that my first reaction to this shocking demand was…shame. Shame and sadness and the impulse to say “You’re right, and I am sorry…sorry I spoke. Sorry I wrote. Sorry I am who I am. Sorry that I took this stunning secret me that you unearthed and I polished it and refined it and set it out for all to see and share.

Sorry I am who I am.” (more…)

photo courtesy of @Viviane212

So often one wonders how they wind up who they are. At least I do. I will be in a moment, living, thinking, doing whatever it is I’m doing and then part of my consciousness will pull back for a moment and say to the rest of my consciousness “Whoah. Really? Is this really happening? ‘Cause…well…you know. That’s pretty….wow. Just, yeah.”

I am just back from a multi-stage trip that took me to Chicago for SINSations In Leather and then to New York for …well, for so much more than I have even been able to process. For those who are unaware, life’s been hurtling along in many ways, some good, some a bit scary…but good.  I’m no longer an employee of Penthouse Inc by way of serving as Sr. Editor for Bondage and ALT. Thank Ganesha I’m out of debt, in a rent-controlled flat, and able to collect Unemployment Insurance. I hardly had time to soak up this life shift but I was off to Chicago and home to New York. (more…)

I love perverted sex. In fact, some of the perverted sex I love the most is considered too fucked up for public consumption by other kinky people.

I love kinky people. The community, warts and all, is a home for me.  And like any extended weird family, we have our disagreements.

I know for a fact that there will be people reading this who are on the other side of this discussion. But when it comes to talking shit about people who don’t do sex the way we do, I have strong opinions.

When I’m in a room full of kinky people and someone says “I feel so sorry for the poor vanillas. I just don’t get how they could be so lame!” and goes on to expand on how kinky sex is the best way to have intimate relations, that “they” will “never understand” how much “better” our sex is, and I see the majority of people in the room nodding or clucking their tongues sympathetically, I realize something.

We become that which we reject when we paint people who don’t fuck the same way that we do with a broad brush.

The two best lovers I have ever had weren’t “kinky.” According to them. They were sadistic, deliciously sick, fucked up sex maniacs. They slapped me around, said all sorts of horrible shit to me, fucked my brains out, and still felt pretty good about themselves.

Neither one of them had ever taken a Kink class, set foot into a play party,  or could tell SSC from WTF.

Now you “Enlightened” perverts can pooh-pooh that and wink knowingly and say “Oh, yeah, they were kinky. They just didn’t know it yet.”

But who the fuck are you to tell people how they should identify?

Kinky sex is NOT, by default, better sex. It is for YOU if you are kinky. People who don’t do BDSM are not all  ignorant or unenlightened. (more…)

I have a demo coming up this weekend for the Madtown Kinkfest. I really love the folks there, and I’m looking forward to it. I have a somewhat unique situation in that, because of popular demand, (believe me, it sounds even weirder to me than it does to you) I’m tracked on my own session so that there aren’t any other courses running concurrent with mine.

So, no pressure…

But something’s been bugging me a bit. (more…)

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I’m always a little “!!!?!?!?!?” when people mention, quote or talk about me in their writings.  But it makes all the gut-wrenching puling moaning and late night Waaaaaaaaaambulance calls worth it, if someone else can share in it with me.

My entree to sex was awesome: I was 15, he was 18, we fucked all the time, eventually became a triad for a while, had kinky sex games….win.  My entree into BDSM was awesome. I had a love-at-first-sight star-studded multi-city romance with a sexy musician who changed my perception and I eventually came out kinky in to the bosom of the crème de la crème of the BDSM community.

Not all stories are like mine. (more…)

I need approval.

Someone patting me on the head and giving me that “Good Girl.” Can melt away the thickest glacier of self-loathing and dissolve the greasiest oil-slick of self-imposed reflexive hatred. I clearly recall, with fondness, having resentment, anger, self-pity, even rage, wiped away by my dominant telling me how good job I was doing, how proud they were of me.

It doesn’t take much, really.

I recently realized that I set myself up for fail by blaming myself for having needs. Oh yeah, when I first became involved in the BDSM community I was carefully groomed to prepare to shed ego, desire, personal needs and, ultimately, to find my complete fulfillment in service to another.

I believed that the only way to be truly in service (in the Highest form of service, of course, because who wants to be less than the BEST….?) The HIGHEST form of service was to become the Empty Vessel, into which the dominant or owner may pour their will, creating with you a perfect and beautiful servant. An agent of their whims and desires and needs.

That was, of course, what I wanted. To be the purest awesomest, the best.

But I have, since then, discovered a few problems with this ideal. (more…)