A most perfect night: dinner, laughter, kink and good sex. Sweet and affectionate, she gently tugged my arm when we were out, caressed my neck on the couch and self-lubricated freely while in bed. When it was over, as I was enjoying the afterglow, she said she was not that attracted to me and maybe I should look for someone else.

Changes in the Air

I have a long history of attracting only submissive women. If I want to play with a Dominant woman, I have to pay her, otherwise it’s not happening. Why this is so has always confused and at times frustrated me. And most times, the manifestations with submissive women have been incomplete: my first wife could only get off if fucked in the ass…but of course reciprocating and fucking ME in the ass would have been unspeakably dirty…and she thought fetish clothing, which I love, was only for prostitutes. I don’t miss her. My second wife was all Dommy in vanilla life, but in the bedroom wanted to be treated like an eight year old girl. I actually got her to top me now and again, before her Catholic upbringing prevailed and she dismissed our altogether infrequent explorations in kink as “disgusting”. I don’t miss her either.

About a year ago, I attracted the interest of an extremely beautiful woman, 23 years my junior. I met her at work, but I don’t work with her. Long story that is frankly none of your business. But anyway, after my express weight loss show last year (losing 50+ pounds in 5 months - and keeping it off, baby) her interest really ratcheted up. She told me on at least 7 occasions that she only dates older men. Oh great, my love, thanks for sharing that with me. See, I was so traumatized by the events of the previous three years, which included at least two shocking vanilla experiences - one of them a major calamity that only now I’m escaping from – that I’ve only recently felt 'whole' enough to consider being in any kind of relationship. Well, this woman subtly worked me, and over time I had the chance to spend a bit of time with her, and I thought, “shit, what’s wrong with me? This cute, smart, funny woman wants to know me better…for my own mental health I really should consider this”. Even if she is vanilla.

So in the middle of February, on a fateful Saturday night, she suggested we have a drink after I finished work. My friend is an internationally known artist (sorry, not telling) and at the first bar we went to, a haunt of other artists, she was fawned and drooled over by her admirers, which got very old in a hurry. Sensing my impatience, she suggested we go somewhere else, which we did, and after a drink there suggested we go back to her loft for a nightcap. Well, certainly I knew where this was headed, the whole time telling myself “this is good, you need a bit of vanilla action…you’ve been getting all squirrelly lately”.

Now we’re up in her very beautiful loft, and she’s slowly preparing a snack for us. Then we snuggled on the couch as we checked out some of her publicity pieces on her laptop, along with the new photos she is considering using in future pieces. Suddenly, she asked if I would like to see a photo of her at a topless demonstration. Sure, I said. Needless to say, she looked fabulous. She then told me she attended this event with a friend who designs fetish toys. Hmmm….

“Um, what kind of fetish toys?”, I asked matter-of-factly.


“Well….. the kind of fetish toys one brings to a fetish party….ya know?”


Fuck. You’re kidding me.


“Well, uh, have you ever been to a fetish party?”


Her, totally amused: “Where do you think you dropped me off at last Friday, dummy?”


“And you didn’t invite me to join you? How fucking rude!”, said with a huge smile on my face.


“Well, I had no idea you’d be interested”, says she, skeptically. “Have you ever been to a fetish party?”


“Sure: Suspension, Impact, Smack…



“Oh my God! I can’t believe we’ve never seen each other out!…but I’m really glad we’re having this conversation first!”


After much kissing and laughing, she told me she that along with her well known public life, she is a professional bottom and complete pain slut. I can’t dominate and own you, if that’s what you need, she told me (it’s not), but I can certainly work with you to make sure you get off. She also firmly explained to me that she’s poly, and that will never change, but she also made it clear that she’s looking for someone for position #1. Well, we sealed the deal with 7 hours of (extremely hot) mostly vanilla sex. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed vanilla sex so much. Since then, we’ve experimented with all sorts of stuff, and lo and behold I cannot believe how hard my dick get when I’m hurting her. I mean, who knew? Describing her as a pain slut does not do justice to my new love. I kind of thought I had decent pain tolerance…but next to her I am the biggest sissy in the world. Pathetic.

Well, hell, I’m very happy. I cannot believe how much fun this is. I think I’ve been back to my apartment two or three times in the last month and a half, mostly to pick up clothes. I love being with this girl so much! She’s concerned that I am not always getting what I need, but I keep asking her if it looks like I’m not happy. I’ve always been tricky as a sub anyway. Not many people can inspire me to submit, and no one has thusly inspired me in quite a while. But I’m sure it will happen again, and this time instead of sneaking around, I’ll be bringing my new girl with me!

Time to Get Real

Most New Year’s resolutions are laughable; forgotten and ignored before the Superbowl is played. But my primary resolution of 2010 has not only endured but has reaped real results. Quite simply, I resolved to lead a more reality-based life.

Let me give you a specific example. I had been grossly overweight for some time. Some of the weight slowly accumulated in the many years I worked in sales and marketing and traveled constantly. For a six year period I managed our company’s business in Canada and lived in various Intercontinental Hotels, mostly in Toronto, for 10-15 days per month, with all the attendant room service breakfasts and client entertaining that includes. Then, in 2007, after a brief brush with cancer, I had a total thyroidectomy – including the four lymph nodes in my neck. It’s quite sobering to have body parts removed and not be replaced with anything! (Anyone interested in knowing more about this episode can email me, and if I know you, I will be happy to give you the link to my “medical blog”). But while the operation, recovery and subsequent cancer treatments all went in stride, I had a very hard time adjusting to my new regime of daily doses of T4 thyroid hormones – necessary to replace the hormones normally created by the thyroid gland. As a result, my whole metabolic system went haywire -- it took a full 18 months for the correct T4 dosage to be found and for my body to fully adjust to it. I blew up like a balloon in those 18 months. Really scary. When the dust finally settled, I made several half-hearted and thoroughly unsuccessful attempts at losing weight, all the while fantasizing about being thinner. Well, my new credo in 2010 is to recognize the reality of a given problem and then do something real – with intent – to effectuate change. As a result, I have lost over 50 pounds this year and am still losing at a rate of about 6-8 pounds a month as I slowly settle into my ideal weight. As I reflect on this success, I’m still stunned at how easy it was to do. All it required was a real recognition of the problem and the intent (and correct methodology) to do something about it.

I have applied this same reality-based thinking to all of my personal relationships as well. Many of you know that I have enjoyed a very complicated and rewarding personal friendship with a well-known NYC ProDomme. I began seeing her for monthly sessions several years ago, and after a couple of years of increasingly intense and enjoyable sessions, she asked me to meet her at a downtown bar for a drink The occasion was her impending trip to Europe and my impending trip to the operating table. Starting with this sweet good luck clink, our relationship slowly transformed from a strictly professional provider/client acquaintance to…well, something else. What that something else was could never be properly defined. She had no interest in collaring me (which I would have readily accepted) but yet held me in higher esteem than a regular client and was willing to spend considerable amounts of personal time with me. She frequently joked that I was so unique that I was in my own category. And while I craved a closer relationship with her, I understood why that was not the case and considered myself very, very lucky and proud to have the wonderful friendship that we did have. Over time this friendship took many dips and turns and last year sometime, without warning or announcement, I was seemingly put into the proverbial ice box. I really thought I had done something wrong, and my timid inquiries were rebuffed as inappropriate requests for personal information, which they weren’t; I was just trying to figure out where I stood. Well, I’m a little slow sometimes, and at long last it finally dawned on me that where I stood was nowhere, that the closeness she once shared with me was absent and was replaced with...nothing. I had to take a hard look at this. The reality was that I was pretending to be collared by her. And for a while I think we both enjoyed this pretending: she got the occasional benefits of having an additional collared subject without ever having to do the deed and without dealing with any of the messy shit that normally come with the territory. But as time passed, sadly, there was less and less of that, and I became acutely aware that my diminished status with her was making me unhappy. The cold truth of the situation is that I am no longer an important person in her life, and that is something I just had to come to grips with. So after much discussion, some of it heated, we recently agreed - as she put it so well - that neither of us was being the kind of friend that the other person wants or needs right now. That about sums it up. For her, I‘m quite certain she has not wasted even 5 minutes of thought on it, but for me it was a difficult and painful process. Ultimately, it was all about accepting reality and behaving accordingly. I am sad beyond words at what has happened, and in fact my shrink is worried that I have cavalierly thrown away something precious and important, but for better or worse, my personal development required moving off the dime, and I saw no other way that movement was going to occur. But this is my head speaking; I have a ball-gag on my heart at the moment…

I would be remiss if I did not reflect for a moment on that wonderful friendship we once had. At play, she tapped into a vein that very few Dommes ever found, and once she found it she was able to go back to it at will almost every time we got together in session. Nobody else in my long experience has been capable of such a thing. I’ve been playing for over 30 years. The thought that I may never have anything like this again – a real possibility - is truly terrifying. But the fact is, I have not sessioned in over 6 months precisely because I felt too vulnerable to play with her anymore. Sometimes it’s tough to keep it all compartmentalized when your heart is always in your hand…. Finally, I’ll also miss the amazing level of communications we maintained over the years. Being two writers, our best mode was always the written form, and some of our email exchanges are truly classic; the most intense disagreement giving way to new learning and understanding. I will miss that, too. More than I can express.

I Have a New Domme

My personal trainer, that is.

When I decided this winter to get very serious about shedding weight, I realized I was going to need professional assistance. As it turns out, there is a very nice (and very private) specialty gym a block from where I work and the owner, Doreen, was willing to work with my very tight schedule (basically I can only take off from 3:30 - 4:30 in the afternoon). Originally I wanted to take yoga classes, but Doreen immediately told me that for the time being I was too stiff and out of shape to join any class. Instead, I work alone with her three days a week – very expensive, but worth it.

Some of what we do is pretty hilarious. My tight hamstrings have been a life-long problem, and to loosen them up we do a stretching regimen that includes her tying me down to a…well, there’s no other way of putting it…a bondage bed. She always apologizes profusely…meanwhile I’m working like crazy, making sure my dick doesn’t get hard. I mean, that would be embarrassing. The sessions always start with her walking on me to “break up” the muscles, and, well, I have always loved getting walked on.

Last week she determined that my IV bands (long thin muscles that span from the knee to the hip) were too tight and needed to be broken up. Seems a lifetime that included playing ice hockey, baseball (in a catchers crouch for hours on end), skiing and fencing managed to get my musculature all out of kilter. This work on the IV bands (shit, sounds like an audio / visual thing) is being accomplished by awkwardly rolling my side over a foam roller - repeatedly. Hurts like hell! OMG. Last Friday she forced me to do it for 15 minutes. When the session was over, I was a walking endorphin machine. I mean high as a fucking kite. Just like after my very best BDSM sessions.

Well damn, who knew?

Question for a heterosexual man

My buddy Serverman asked the men in MaxFisch how they would feel about another man participating in their play. This was my response:

Serverman, Great question! I have several thoughts swirling in my head, so sorry if my answer seems disjointed. Many years ago at Club O (how's that for dating myself? ) I was put into suspension by a Mistress friend of mine, and while she was chatting with someone else, a male Dom simply decided it was OK for him to start whipping me. Whoa, I lost my hard-on in a nanosecond and finally got him to understand that he was violating my boundaries (he did have the class to apologize profusely afterward). Perhaps because of this incident, or maybe not, I have a visceral reaction to male Doms, and the reaction is not a good one. To keep my post positive, I won't elaborate further.

Secondly, I have had several experiences with Dommes topping me and another (or several) males. Sometimes this has been a fun experience, other times not so much. Just recently I was in a lifestyle situation with a Domme and one of her regular play partners. For some reason I was on edge the whole time and did not allow myself to enjoy what should have been an amazing experience. She and I talked about it at length later and agreed that there were several factors involved, including the fact that a man whom I just met earlier in the day was participating (there was no direct interaction between him and myself).

Finally, I'll divulge something a little more personal. There are several gay people in my family. While I have always considered myself purely hetero, in fact that is not totally true. I have always recognized that there is a bit of me on the other side, but it is something that I categorize like a piece of art on a museum shelf: periodically I'll take it down, admire it, say it's not for me, and put it back. Lately, however, there has been a slight change. While I'm fairly certain it will never happen, recently I have contemplated being in a bi scene with two people I know. Well, it takes three to tango, and there is zero interest from my friends, but still in a weird way I take some pride in having this thought. In a sense, I feel like a cherry has been broken, not because I have done something new, but because I have given myself the freedom to say, "yes, if by some miracle that situation presented itself, I would go there with no hesitation." So in fact, nothing has changed, I have done nothing new, but having this mindset makes me feel like some transformative experience has taken place. The interesting thing is that I have absolutely no desire to go there with anyone else. Thus, one could argue that it's all bullshit: I am allowing myself to contemplate something that has no shot of ever happening - a rather safe fantasy.

Who's the Dom(me) now?

I’m the Dom almost all the time. Except when I choose not to be. It’s almost always been like this, but is now especially pronounced since I have returned to my former (real) profession and am bossing people around almost every waking moment. Waitresses stop talking, freeze up and say through shaky smiles, “hi Chef, how are you today?” when I pass by. Wherever I go in the establishment, if there are other people there, they clear a path and ask what they can do to please me. My word is final, and everyone accepts that.

You would think all of this would make my dick hard, but it doesn’t. I do take satisfaction that everyone respects me and never sneers, grumbles or back-talks. That’s nice. And some of them actually fear me, which I find stupidly amusing. (My shrink, appalled that I would find projecting fear amusing, says I’m channeling my late father and continuing his tradition of toxicity. A little unfair, me thinks.) But if these people actually knew what made my dick hard, they’d faint.

Having it all

Is it possible to have it all?

Well, of course it is. We all know people who have it all. What do I mean by “having it all”? I’m talking about having relationships that satisfy both our BDSM joneses as well as our other, various human desires. All at the same time. So that you feel like a whole person, you know?

This topic has been on my mind since I enjoyed a dinner out with a ProDomme friend of mine a couple weeks ago (and, no, all you junior detectives, it was not with either my Mistress nor with any of her close associates, so give it a rest). My friend “Helene” was telling me that her successful BDSM practice satisfied 80% or more of her urges, but then there was the small matter of watching a movie with someone without it becoming a big deal; spending holidays with that someone; and , yes, getting a hug when it’s really needed. So just how do you fill in this “missing” 20%? Being dense and somewhat self-centered, I had never really appreciated that fact that ProDommes are frequently in the same dilemma as their clients. For the client with the wherewithal to session twice a month and attend fetish events once or twice a month, he too is 80% there. On paper it would seem to be an easy hole to plug (sorry). After all, we’re not looking to take someone out of their comfort zone and ask them to do things they probably consider weird; we’ve got that piece covered! So this will be easy! Well, not really. You see, any candidate willing to fill in the missing 20% is in fact going to want more than that, and rightly so. And, chances are excellent that when s/he figures out what is fueling the 80% part, your ‘wonderful’ friendship will come to a screeching halt.

I want to tell you a related story. A true story. For such a smart guy, sometimes I can be so thick it’s breathtaking. Stating it very briefly, I used to regularly see a ProDomme who is now retired. She was very famous, drop-dead gorgeous, brilliant and funny. By any measure one of the world’s most beautiful and charming women. I am fortunate enough to say that she adored me as a client and made every session seem extra special. She also had a list of dos and don’ts on her website that took a measure of concentration for the reader to get through -- in other words, she was highly ethical. Well, one fine day, without any prior warning that I recognized at the time (but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I see very clearly now) she began “forcing” me to perform vanilla sex acts while in session. Damn! I loved it in the moment, but later the thought of it weirded me out just a bit. Does she do this with everyone? (She tearfully protested that I was the “only one.”) And I was married at the time…this was not really what I was seeking when coming to the studio space she rented. Some 4+ years later, I get it. Finally. She was looking to plug the empty 20%. She told me that she attended many high-end formal events on the arm of this or that gentleman, but having sex with a slave who was tied up in a compromising and stressful position was something she could not do. Except with me, a client she decided was cool enough trust with the task. I really puzzled over this for a long time. This was a woman who should have been capable of reeling in any man she wanted “on command”. But there is always the untold story. I was one of the few who knew her well enough to know that her day job was as an executive VP at a major corporation. Ooooh, that 20% can be really hard to fulfill!

So circling back to my friend Helene, I’m not sure what the answer is. Her partial response seems to be to have her especially moneyed clients take her to very expensive restaurants for polite banter. I guess that fills the gap at least partly. As for myself, against my better judgment I have been seeing a vanilla girl who I know will cut off all contact with me when she hears about BDSM. She has somehow not noticed my decorative cutting or the hole where my cock piercing is (phew, I manage to get it out in time before any action starts. It might be fulfilling a need, but it still sucks. I hate being so dishonest with someone close to me. It makes me feel like a fucking criminal. And all this with a very beautiful younger woman who knows all my present and former business associates. Literally, a time bomb waiting to go off. Well, I’d love to search for a new “business” model, but I’m not sure how to go about that. Let’s see, seeing a ProDomme who is into totally different things, so “play” never becomes an issue, meanwhile we understand each other in a very organic sense. Hmmm. Actually, that sounds a bit like Helene and me, although she has made it clear that she deeply resents the fact that I have no desire to play with her. Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good. Or maybe I should try a polyamorous household…but that sounds so messy. Or serving a Mistress who maintains a stable of different subjects, each utilized for different moods. Feh. Than that leaves other gaps to fill.

When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.