Gala Vanting

It’s been a busy June, so blogging efforts have been channelled toward my Scarlet Blue quota this month!  Hope to be back at it in July.  I’ll be spending the entire month in Melbourne, so for those who’ve been waiting to see me there, you’re in luck!

As many of you know, I do a lot of anal play in my sessions, so I’ve dedicated my first June SB post to the joys of buttsex.  The average SB audience tends to be a little on the vanilla side, so I didn’t even go into fisting…didn’t wanna scare them away too much!

Enjoy, and I’ll be sure to share my second post when it’s live!

For those who lap up every word I drop behind me, you’ll be please do know that I’m now guest blogging fortnightly on Scarlet Blue, Australia’s classiest web directory of independent escorts, fetish workers, and sexual service providers.  My first post is already live, and is directed towards those who don’t quite ‘get’ the whole kink thing…yet.

You’ll also find regular posts by my dear friend and co-conspirator Miss Roxy.  Add it to your bookmarks!  I always recommend that people hear as many sex worker voices as they can – it’s a much better way of really understanding what’s going on for them than the mainstream media.

I recently participated in a video project aimed at introducing its viewers to shibari (Japanese rope bondage).  The process of production was a lot less professional than the finished product, but I think it conveys a few of the key points that characterise my approach to rope bondage (plus, pretty pictures) so I’d like to share it here, and take the opportunity to talk a bit about how rope features in my BDSM practice.

I’ve been studying shibari in Melbourne intermittently over the last couple of years.  The Dojo brings together a few different styles of rope, and occasionally hosts master classes and workshops with some of its most respected teachers from Japan.  There are a number of different styles of shibari, some of which resonate with me more than others.  But I’m always interested in learning from someone new and attempting to integrate their stylistic and theoretical perspectives.

People tend to think of rope bondage primarily as a utilitarian and aesthetic pursuit.  You tie people up so that you can do something else to them; it’s a means to an end.  You’re tying them to fuck them, to take a photo of them, to hit them, etc.  To symbolize your power, to restrain them, to actualize your will.

I like this type of rope.  As a top, I enjoy using rope as a tool among many, and most of my playmates will have experienced at least a little bit of rope bondage in session.  It can be an effective and purposeful tool for restraint – I’ve had a few would-be Houdinis challenge me to put them into rope they couldn’t get out of, and have yet to see one of them manage an escape.  It also helps me to restrain grabby hands from intruding where they haven’t been invited.  So I certainly do appreciate its more pragmatic uses.

For me, though, rope is a lot more.  For someone whose primary intention in play is to connect and to communicate, rope is a perfect medium.  Used simply, rope stimulates conversation between bodies and energies, and is a fantastic way to connect with someone new.  Rope has voice, pace, flow.  It can be dramatic, tense, it can take us by surprise.  It can also whisper, it can create stillness, it can warp time.  And in a single session, it can move in between these tones mulitple times.  Rope tells a story, which is writing itself in each moment.  It can be a poetic and also brutish way to play.

Rope also allows a physical closeness that many other types of play don’t.  The first thing I do at the beginning of any rope session is to find the breath – that of my partner and also my own.  I start to listen.  I’m focussing in on our sense of one another.  Our proximity, both physically and energetically.  The rope is an extension of my body, and often its path travels not far behind or in front of that of my touch.  It allows for a sort of embrace that just simply doesn’t happen in spaces like impact play or needleplay.  You come to know the other person’s scent, the sound of their breath and movement, the texture of their skin.  And this can travel in a million directions, manifesting as eroticism, nurturance, downregulation and relaxation, as its own form of SM (I like to call it ‘mean rope’), and so on.

I am often asked about my favourite types of play, and while these can definitely vary over time, rope is something that I find consistently fresh, engaging, and satsifying.  For those willing to briefly suspend the itemized list of play requests in favour of a session that dives deeply into a single activity, I would highly recommend treating yourself to a session of connective rope.

The concept of ASMR was first brought to my attention by a regular playmate who included it in his suggestions for play for our upcoming session.  Any session inquiry that forces me to Google terms is one that I want to at least consider.  I ended up spending the next few hours in a YouTube k-hole, because ASMR is much easier experienced than explained.  If you’ve never heard of it, I suggest you do the same.  I can’t describe what it feels like to listen to an African American man taste-test different flavours of Oreos on repeat, or to have a pretty girl softly read the pop-up Alice in Wonderland to you.  You’ll have to experience it for yourself.

In short, ASMR is a mental or physical state produced through certain sensory triggers.  Many people who experience ASMR describe its use as a de-stressor or anti-depressant.  For others it’s just an incidentally- or purposefully-created nice feeling.  It’s one of those things that you don’t realise is a Thing until you find out that others experience it.

As soon as I saw a few videos, I noticed something that seemed to be going on with ASMR, which co/incidentally is the same thing that I think is going on with BDSM: intimacy.  And maybe some other stuff, like alternate realities, the use of the physical to transcend or to ground, escape from or return to self, etc.  While ASMR triggers can vary in form, most often they engage closely and unconventionally with one or more of the physical senses.  A few minutes on an ASMR YouTube channel will find for you the setup of a sonic ASMR experience, which is perhaps the most obvious example of this quality of intimacy that I’ve noticed.  Sonic ASMR triggers are often soft in volume if not in quality, and are generally made close to a microphone.  The quality of the recording seems to be a key factor in the acuity of the ASMR experience.  Often you feel as though you’re there with the person who is creating the sound.  Words are whispered, breath is aspirated, and sounds you might not notice with the naked ear are amplified to be experienced much more viscerally.

I also noticed a focus on intricacy.  A person narrating an experience for you might describe the circumstances or setting in great detail.  Whole words are constructed and explored.  The differences between things are pronounced: textures, sounds, movements.  Time is spent on each physical or imaginary element, to sometimes-hypnotic effect.  Some people describe a sort of ‘going-under’ or trance-like state when they’re affected by ASMR.

If you’re kinky, and especially if you’re given to certain types of play, some of this might sound familiar.  It certainly does to me.  And there is a vulnerability to it which I can’t help but see as an interesting opportunity in play, particularly as a top.  There are ways in which ASMR and BDSM seem to run parallel to one another, and others in which they intersect.  The opportunities I’ve had to bring them together have resulted in some of my favourite sessions, which have allowed me to bring sensory, sonic (verbal and non-verbal), and kinesthetic cues together in a way that allows me to thoroughly control another person’s physical and mental trajectory.  Which, obviously, I dig.

If you’re having a hard time visualising exactly how one might incorporate ASMR into a kink session, that’s probably better experienced than explained as well, but I’ll try to offer a few possibilities from my own experiences.  When I first learned about ASMR it actually seemed like a really natural extension of the play I already conduct in my sessions, which often features a focus on one’s breath – its rhythm, quality, depth, etc – and on ‘dropping in’ to sensory awareness.  One of my favourite tools for triggering ASMR is a wire head-massager (I often hear it described as an ‘orgasmatron’) – it’s a really direct physical route to that down-regulated yet hypersensitive state that is characteristic of ASMR.  This featured prominently in a session I recently conducted with apprentice Esther in Sydney, with a highly-sensitive bottom from whom I should really collect a testimonial – throughout the session he just kept repeating ‘I’ve never felt this good before’!

ASMR also couples well with sensory deprivation of all sorts, and can deepen the response from the person receiving sensory input.  It can also be used as a sort of erotic hypnosis (which is itself a separate type of play that I will be seeking some training in soon), including within roleplay as a way of transitioning into and out of the relevant role or as a component of a power dynamic (why wouldn’t I take advantage of you if I knew you wouldn’t be ‘conscious’ of it?).

There’s something just that dances with the erotic / orgasmic about many of the ASMR experiences I hear about, and in this sense it can also add dimension to someone’s sense of their own orgasmic-ness.  ASMR seems like just another type of arousal to me, taking the same sorts of neurochemical journeys that things like pain, sexual arousal, emotion, and entheogens can take.  Consider going there with me, even just as an experiment – it might just lead you into some new states of sensory awareness.

I recently acquired a new set of sounds, which I’d been meaning get my hands on for awhile.  Back when I was a naive apprentice at The Correction Centre, Mistress Tova introduced me to sounding as a mode of CBT.  And while they can be quite delightfully tortuous, and truly activitating of the sadist in me, I think my favourite way of using sounds is as a mode of sensation play.

Slick, Solid, Stainless Steel Sounds

For those who don’t know, sounds are metal rods of various shapes and sizes which are inserted into the urethra, and have medical, body modification, and of course kinky uses.

Sounding is something that can be done in quite a curious and power-neutral way.  It’s one of those intricate, invasive, and attention-demanding forms of play – one requiring a very steady hand, sterile lubricant and the sharp scent of alcohol swabs – that really lends itself to a meditative state for both people involved.  I can really lose myself in the concentration it takes to truly listen to what’s happening in the body, using the sound as a conduit between myself and my play partner.  A subtle change in pressure, depth, or the speed of motion can feel like a massive shift, so stillness and silence tend to be the key to allowing this type of play to progress and deepen.

For a receiver, sounding is really about acceptance and allowance.  The intention and sensation of allowing one’s urethra to open up, to increase its diameter, and to welcome in this extension of my body can be quite a curious one, and one that requires total presence.  This is why I so enjoy giving this and many other types of physically-invasive play.  We concentrate our entire awareness on a single point, allowing our bodies to meet there, and we attempt to communicate with one another through this highly-calibrated locus of sensation.  And perhaps, from there, that sensation begins to resonate and reference out through the rest of the body.  And that, my pretties, is why I always, always play with awareness on the breath!

The first to test-drive these smooth, slick sounds was a new playmate – we’ll call him James.  This was his first experience with sounding, and his cock welcomed them in such that we were able to move up several sizes in a short period of time.  Eventually I found him bucking his hips towards the metal rod, as though he were fucking the sound itself.  Exquisite.  And such a wonderful headfuck – to see a cock both fucking and being fucked simultaneously.  I think we were both equally pleased with the experience, and I daresay he’s a soundslut in the making.

I look forward to converting a few more of them during the long life of my new toys.  Curious?  Let’s discuss.

It’s only March and this year I’ve hit Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane – some multiple times!

As many of you know, I have decided to move from working primarily in Melbourne to becoming a touring Domina and switch, both within Australia and internationally.  And as soon as I made the decision, it was as good as done!  I’ve been on the road almost constantly since mid-January and thoroughly enjoying it.  I’ve got a fascination with liminal spaces and am a sucker for frequent-flyer schemes, so spending as much time as I have in airports and on planes has been more enjoyable than I feel comfortable admitting.

Touring is ideal for me.  I session best when I’m on a roll, and wished that I’d had a Post-Session-Cam that captured my expression after I closed the door behind each of my clients.  Fist-pumps and smiles all round.  Feeling great about the work I do is absolutely paramount to me, and I find that the momentum built during a 4- or 5-day stint in an unfamiliar place really tends to offer me that feeling on repeat.  I began to notice this when touring to London in July and October of last year, and have continued to ride that wave here in Australia.

My first-ever visit to Brisbane has just taken place, and I’m just astonished by the sheer enthusiasm shown to a Brisbane Mistress and switch by so many of the local kinksters.  There seems to be a very small but rather vibrant scene there, and one that I’ll definitely be taking part in again.  A few of my tour highlights were:

• Breaking in my brand-new sounds on a particularly hungry urethra.  It turns out that I was also breaking in the urethra – its owner had never experienced sounding before, and while it’s certainly not for everyone, I definitely think it was for him.  I was very impressed with his ability to stretch and receive several size gradients in a single session!
• Sharing several spanking / domestic discipline sessions, including one with a particularly beautiful soul whose interest in spanking and corporal punishment seems to be flourishing into a bona-fide fetish.  What a delight to witness someone following their kinks down the rabbit hole!
• Closing out my tour with a session that grounded, calmed, and satisfied the connective sadist in me.  I love the diverse ways in which people process sensation, particularly pain, and the ways in which it moves in and through their bodies.  This lovely creature had such poetics of movement, particularly in concert with the flogger and the cane.
• Heaps of excellent coffee!  I am very impressed with Brisbane’s game on coffee and craft beer.

Needless to say, I’ll be back to Brisbane as soon as it’ll have me!  Apologies to everyone who I wasn’t able to fit in on this trip.  Next time I’ll need to stay a few extra days I suspect – you all kept me run off my Fluevogs!

Mistress and Switch Gala Vanting getting a taste for Brisbane kink