Videos of people being tortured with electrical stimulation are boring. Unlike most other BDSM treatments, you can’t see what’s happening. You can see someone responding to something, but the electricity itself – and thus the intensity of the treatment – is invisible. Usually, you can’t even see how the dominant is twiddling the knobs on the machine.   In contrast, real-life sessions including e-stim can be truly exciting. They are quite difficult for the domme handling the knobs and dials to judge, and I recall a session with Phoenix in which we couldn’t get the level right – it was either too little or too much, and she was rather frustrated with me. Generally, though, as I get more and more turned on, I need, and can take, more electricity. It is difficult for the domme to keep pace with that. And of course one’s capacity to cope with the current will vary from session to session.   Unless you request otherwise, the domme will start with the current at a low setting...

One of the many delights of masochism is the turning of social conventions on their head. My whole approach to masochism is based on the concept that the disgust reflex is suppressed when one is turned on: something that, in the vanilla world, enables one to enjoy things like French kissing or oral sex with one's beloved. French kissing involves plenty of sharing of saliva, and another way to share saliva is through the "insult" of spitting on someone. Even in non-pandemic times, spitting at people is deemed off-limits, and so perhaps it is no surprise that masochism makes use of the combination of the humiliation of spitting at someone to express "contempt", and the lowering of the disgust reflex so that one welcomes the mistress's saliva. I love being spat at, on and into by my mistress. In the past, I have asked for it as a leaving gift: then I can feel the saliva drying on my face after I have left the studio to go home. And it's fu...

Can a submissive person take pride in their submission?     According to Roy Baumeister, who wrote what I believe was the first truly insightful psychological study of masochism, “Masochism and the Self”, this is not the case. “It would be absurd,"  he asserts, "to hear a masochist boast of having licked the boots of dozens of mistresses. […] Masochistic submission is simply not something that one boasts about, for it has no ego-boosting properties.” (p. 131)   I believe he is wrong on that point. Let me quote from a very different source: In an article in a Times Magazine (25 July 2020, a supplement to the British newspaper The Times), Jason Fox, a former Royal Marines and  SAS (Special Air Service - an elite British army unit) hard man, talks about having “two types of fun. The first is drinking or meeting up with women. The second is ‘something that, when you’re doing it, isn’t fun; it’s horrendous, gruelling. And then the minute it finishes you’re ...

Hands up! It’s a traditional position of submission – who hasn’t seen images of captured soldiers with their arms raised above their heads? And anyone who’s visited a BDSM studio will have spotted plenty of equipment which can be used to immobilise a slave’s arms above their head. Beams and bars suspended from the ceiling, carabiner clips, and the iconic piece of furniture everyone associates with sadomasochism: the X of the St Andrew’s Cross. Before I ever entered a studio, I fantasised frequently about being spreadeagled at my mistress's mercy on one of those crosses. Over the years of SM play, I have indeed been strung up many a time – for example for a memorable ballbusting session, legs spread, arms raised. Strangely, though, it isn’t my favourite posture in which to receive pain. In fact, I prefer my arms in pretty much any other position. The reason is very simple: keeping one’s arms above one’s head means that the arms tire quickly. At least, mine do. Notwithstandin...

I am an exhibitionist. Not in the German sense of the word, which means “flasher”, but in the sense that I love to be naked in public – as long as it doesn’t offend anyone. I love going to the FKK (= nudist) beach, and can’t imagine why anyone would want to wear bathers when swimming (and especially not the baggy Bermuda shorts that men are expected to have flopping awkwardly around their midriff and legs). I love sitting naked on my partner’s balcony for a post-coital lunch – anyone can look up from the street and see me, but no-one ever does. I love the German attitude to nudity, so much more open than the prudishness of my home country. I feel very much at home as a “vanilla nudist” in Berlin and Germany. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that I have fantasies about being publicly displayed and humiliated. I mentioned in a previous post that I once tried it for myself, driving to a session at Avalon without trousers on, wearing bright red panties. But that didn'...

I recall a session many years ago in which I said (perhaps unwisely boasting a bit) during the pre-session chat that I could cope with some fairly extreme things, and the domme said “How about needles?” and I shuddered and had to concede that there were limits to what I thought I could handle. As I’m the sort of wimp who looks away when the doctor or nurse takes a blood sample or vaccinates me, I was unlikely to consent to the use of needles in a session.   So I was a little apprehensive when, four or five years ago, the amazing Lady Phoenix (this was before Phoenix recommended me to Mistress Bella) unexpectedly introduced needles into our game. “I’m going to put some needles through your nipples,” she said, and I said, “Er, OK.” (In retrospect, perhaps the correct response would have been “Thank you, Mistress.”). In fact, she knew exactly what she was doing: the needling was perfectly OK, and I found I could even watch her doing it. It was interesting, rather than painful, fe...

Whilst the hour of an SM session may be good value at €250, there will inevitably be a limited amount of time in which the session has to be completed – even if the domme doesn’t have to move straight on to her next guest.   If you are worried about the financial side, perhaps it might help to place the cash in an envelope beforehand, so that you don’t see the banknotes on the day. The worst thing you can do is to calculate that 250 euros divided by 60 minutes equals more than €4 a minute, or that one euro gets you less than 15 seconds – that is guaranteed to kill off any pleasure. It is far better to think that €250 is the price of an amazing experience, and not to worry about time, leaving the pacing of the session in the capable hands of the mistress.   One problem is that a session can involve a fair bit of preparation – not only beforehand, which doesn’t count towards the hour – but also during the session. Tying a slave up, getting someone into a complex position, relaxi...