PSA: from the Desk of a Professional Dominant

People are stressed out and experiencing a lot of fear and uncertainty right now. These days communications are going haywire more easily than usual—even for simple things it seems. People are behaving in erratic ways and doing things that don’t make much rational nor pragmatic sense… Many people’s coping mechanisms inform them to “look out for number one” (perhaps a bit too intensely) first, rather than considering the needs of community, neighbors, clients, employees, etc.

The worst parts of who we are lives in the mentality of a starvation economy.

If we’re going to make it through this pandemic with lesser stress rather than levels that go through the roof; that is, if we don’t want to make things worse for ourselves and everyone around us—we need to invest in something other than fear. Everyone is put out by the changes in our present situation, but everyone is not effected to the same degree. If you have resources, savings, a job that will pay you to work remotely or hasn’t asked you to take time off, consider your privilege and relative stability in this crisis.

We need to invest in one another literally and figuratively. Start by slowing down, by listening to the people around you, by hearing people when they speak, and by asking questions. Rather than making assumptions, being reactionary, throwing knee-jerk responses at one another, or escalating situations, we can opt to create space, deciding to keep distance from those edges—strategy toward a better end for all. In order to do so, we must be aware of whether our response to conflict intentionally or unintentionally pulls rank on others.

If power plays are an effect of the decisions we make (especially in these moments of stress and crisis), then we need to be more intentional than we’ve ever been before with the decisions we make, our processes for decision making, and how we communicate. Power plays in this climate can easily become exponentially debilitating and problematic to those with less room for survival. When dealing with people who are already afraid, already at a loss in one way or another, or those who are sitting in the unpalatable space of real concerns for their future and present selves’ functionality, it’s of utmost importance to consider the effects of the decisions we make. My Mother always taught me to ask myself, “if I do this, what will happen?”. That lesson, applied by all, will literally save lives in today’s crisis climate (not to mention untold oceans of angst).

We are not going to make it out of this mess completely unscathed, so the best we can be is good to one another and share the burden.

To my mind, best practices include checking in, asking questions instead of jumping to conclusions or making blanket decisions that effect others without proper consultation or conversation. This moment is one we can use to strengthen our muscles of compassion, and to figure out what’s going on underneath the panic of a situation. If we know what emotions and fears are driving us as individuals, we are much better armed to work problems out—creatively even. In fact, I’d say creativity is one of humanity’s best assets right now. At the very least, when we make decisions or respond to one another, we should be considerate and thoughtful about the impact our decisions and responses have on others.

I truly believe that by helping one another in the ways we are thoughtfully able to, we are better situated to help ourselves more deeply and meaningfully in the long run. I’d love it if we could get through this considerable moment of global strife with kindness and compassion as our first thought in any quandary. If we are able to, we’ll prove stronger as an entire human society when it passes.

Much love to y’all. Stay healthy, and please reach out if you’re afraid or in need of help. There are resources out there, and there are people who excel at funneling them to those in need. We’ll get done what has to be done, and we’ll complete it the only way we actually can: together.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

My writing takes time, research, and consideration: it is my art.
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The Spell of a New Experience

“Medusa” played by Creature Karin Webb at Pulqueria Los Insurgentes en Cuidad de México as a part of The Scarlet Tongue Project. Photo by Juan Carlos Ruiz Vargas

If I knew everything I wouldn’t need to be alive. The act of discovery is seductive — new relationship energy, romance with the unknown, seeing a part of yourself through someone else’s eyes… Thursday evening I performed as Medusa en Ciudad de México for “The Scarlet Tongue Project“, and it was everything. The room was small, and each performer stirred the cauldron we were in. Our audience was not there just to watch, they lived with us, breathed with us, shared our emotions, stories, expressions, and creations. The audience felt powerful to me, very alive. I am new here, late to the game of meeting the heart that beats in this country. I’m grateful at 40 years old to be walking new paths and still falling in love.

For a while now I have been working my way into a performance which directly challenges the audience member to participate and co-create a thing that is vulnerable, honest, and new. While I regularly interact with my audience and (usually non-verbally) instruct them how to connect with me during performance, Medusa was my first time without an action-centered script, inviting a room of people into my space to co-create and play. It went incredibly well. I felt as though I was in a temple being visited by believers. Our interactions held joy, fear, tears, laughter, tenderness, love, playfulness, intoxication, timidity, release…

“Listen, No Speaking, Touch”. This is the name of the performance I will create this coming Thursday at a different venue en Ciudad de México, a theater this time rather than a club. Last week’s “Medusa” was a workshop of the concept. Will it hold up the same when I’m not putting on a specific character, or within a theatrical space rather than a club situation? I don’t know. I’m looking forward to finding out.

This performance is about interpersonal communication and what it looks like and feels like to non-verbally engage one another, navigating through layers of intimacy and consent. Is it possible to feel one another and have an experience both outside of your complete control and also — positive and negative alike — accept and learn from the experience you have? In today’s world I feel we’re losing our connection to one another on emotional and physical planes, yet the physical and emotional parts of us are huge factors within our humanity and experience as living animals. I hope to do a series of these performances over time and explore the impact different venues, situations, and energies have on this form of communication. I feel lucky to be starting my journey here in Mexico.

I would not have been able to acheive this level of articulation within my performance art without working, as I have been for a while now, within BDSM communities and as a sex worker. As a professional Dominant my ability to understand and hold my own boundaries (and therefore recognize other people’s boundaries) has been tried, become clearer and explored more and more thoroughly, and grown sturdier over time. As a BDSM practitioner — top and bottom, Dominant and submissive — I have practiced my ability to read non-verbal body language when it comes to physical and emotional interactions, and energy exchange. As a lifelong character actor and observer of motivation I am much more comfortable with a wide range of reactions coming from different people as reaction to stimulus. This is work I love to do. This is work I want to build on and create a career from.

This work is optimistic. Like Medusa I was punished after my first negative sexual experience. This work is about remaining faithful in humanity. Medusa sprouted pegasus wings after her beheading, and there is something in this artistic meditation about growing into adulthood and navigating the subjects which have negatively been wired in my brain and body since too young an age, on my own terms. It’s time to change the story, allow myself to be affected by others, positive and negative, and take wing.

A gift from an audience member, addressed to my character, Medusa.

Without faith in humanity, how do I remain a believer in peace? Without drawing out and exploring the good in individuals how do I maintain my own faith that connection is our salvation and the opposite of war is not peace, but creation, love, conversation, complexity, and growth? My art is directly connected to my internal anger at being sexually victimized and forced, at various times in my life, to choose between my own physical/emotional/psychological sanctity and connection, curiosity, or pleasure. It is antidote to rape culture and the damaging societal belief that we must play roles with one another, rather than vulnerably come together to find what we have to share which could make each of us feel more whole.

Art is the spell of new experience — comfortable and uncomfortable. We pleasure, revel, need, seek out, and find solace in its forms because life is not so finite, so programmable, so by the rules, so safe, or so black and white.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

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~This blog takes time, research, and consideration. It is also my art. Thank you.

Sex vs. Kink

I was recently asked what the difference between “kink” and “sex” are. It’s a good question, which people will vary wildly in their opinions about. Following is my take on the subject. I encourage others to disagree and to articulate for themselves differently than I do here — one of the most important things we get from talking about sexuality is an evolving and broadening scope of understanding about how things function differently for others. These varied articulations can, in turn, help us understand ourselves more deeply, or in new ways. I am all for that.

I will start by stating that “sexuality” is something separate from “sex”. Sexuality is a general blanket term which describes the factors surrounding how someone likes to (or does) get off, or feel turned on. Peoples sexualities can be identified (sexual identity) in multiple ways and within different categories such as: kinky, vanilla, queer, straight, gay, bi/pan/omnisexual, asexual, leather, fetishistic, Top/bottom/Versatile, D/s, switch, Sadistic, masochistic, hedonistic, primal, so on and so forth, etc… Sexualities evolve, grow, change, are discovered and rediscovered, and emerge throughout one’s life as one has new experiences, is exposed to new concepts, and generally learns more, and accepts or rejects more about what they find. One’s sexuality is influenced by one’s behaviors, though frequently sexual behavior and sexual identity do not go hand in hand (more on this later).

“Sex” is a word which encompasses a series of activities that one can engage in (or not), and which contribute to a person’s view of their sexuality. What is and is not (what “counts” for) sex is defined differently by different people. For the sake of ease I usually define sex as “anything ending in the word sex or job”. By this definition I would include sexual intercourse (PIV intercourse, genital or anal penetration with toys, all types of fingering, hand jobs, fisting, anal sex), also oral sex (cunnilingus, blow jobs, rimming), scissoring, frottage, masturbation, mutual masturbation, and generally anything which includes the rubbing, sucking, or licking of genitals for the intention of getting someone turned on and/or in an orgasmic state, to be “sex”.

Sex is not just about activities though. How we feel about the activities we engage in, and what we want to believe “counts” accounts for what people label as sex as well. “Energetic fucking” can be as much (if not moreso) sexually satisfying, sexy, and pleasurable as plain old vanilla intercourse is. So is energetic fucking sex? Some would say it is, others would say it is not. The same goes for a lot of activities including some of the ones I have labelled specifically as sex above.

Did you have sex if PIV intercourse only happened for a second with someone you wish you hadn’t hooked up with? What about if it was someone you desperately wanted to fuck? It turns out that we’ll label what counts and what doesn’t count as sex differently depending on how we felt about the situation. People often also say things to the effect of “we sorta kinda had sex not really” in situations where they feel grey about consummation. Is it sex if no one orgasms? What about if only one person involved in the equation does? I don’t believe there is any hard and fast rule to completely defining what is sex and what is not sex. There are a lot of “sexual activities” though, and some of them sometimes seem to count more than others to the general population. It is absolutely possible to believe you have had sex with someone who does not consider the time you spent together sex at all.

Moving in the direction of our next subject for definition, I personally would consider all of the activities I outlined above as examples of “vanilla sex”. I am sure a lot of people would consider at least some of them to be “kinky” though.

A “kink” is a bend or an irregularity in the system. What is kinky and what is not kinky resides entirely in the realm of speculation and personal definition too. The first question one must ask when deciphering whether an activity is “bent” must be: whose system are we evaluating for kinks? Fact: what’s kinky to you may be completely vanilla to me. Things that were defined as kinky to me in the past, may now be viewed as mainstream and vanilla as I’ve gained understanding or experience of the activity in a new way. For instance, consider activities such as spanking and oral sex. Some people consider both of these things to be kinky, some consider both of these things to be vanilla, and people also believe all the variables in between. There is no hard and fast definition about what’s kinky until a person who wants to define it for themselves does so as such. Lines in the sand, all.

What’s the point of defining something as vanilla or kinky to begin with? Well, I think like all perfectly imperfect language useage, it’s shorthand to find others who might be into what you’re into. We take a general idea (rather than our stringent personal definitions) of what’s “normal” behavior and label ourselves on one side of the divide in hopes to attract or repel people who we believe may identify similarly or differently than ourselves. The follow up questions are the important ones to anyone you wish to engage sexually or kinkliy with: ok, so you’re [vanilla/kinky], what types of things do you like to do? What feels good? What drives you wild? What should I do/not do to turn you on?

Now let’s revisit that idea from earlier about “Identity vs. Behavior”. Someone may not identify as kinky, but may also get really turned on by, let’s say… being tied up. Their behavior, when they decide to get turned on by going out and getting tied up a bunch, may be viewed by others as kinky. So is that person kinky? To much of their community, the answer may be yes. Does it matter? No. It matters to the person identifying the way they identify why they choose the identity they choose. Even if they are enjoying categorically “kinky” activities on the regular, if that person identifies as vanilla, they are vanilla. We don’t know all there is to know about that person or their reasons for choosing one identity over another. A person’s identity is their right to define as they choose for their own reasons in whatever moment they are sharing it with others. It’s important that we trust and respect people and their processes of uncovering and defining their own lives. This doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions or have a great conversation about how we view the definitions of these words differently, and we can also discuss the finer points of growing and discovering or rejecting new facets of identity over time. This also doesn’t mean we should deliberately hurt or mislead others by being opaque to the meaning of our behaviors and the expectations we set up when we use certain words exclusively to people we’re sharing our identities and sexualities with either… At the end of the day, we are all works in progress for better and for worse. We are all responsible for meaningful clarity and reasonable transparency about our interactions with others. We do not all agree about where these gray definitions land, hence the need for multiple ongoing conversations about our needs, wants, and expectations from the people we’re sexual and sensual with.

How you feel about these subjects is important. How you feel about them helps you figure out your own personal boundaries and articulate yourself more clearly than if you only thought in black and white dictionary definitions about what “should” or “shouldn’t” make you feel turned on, sexual, or sensual with another person. Also, as important as it is to respect people’s differences, community standards exist and account for some degree of safety and general information dissemination for reasons. The young person who believes oral or anal sex “isn’t sex” may be more vulnerable to STIs because they believe they are still “a virgin” and therefore invulnerable to the consequences of engaging in sexual activity. Here we see that differing community standards can contribute to education and/or potential harm through an unexamined ignorance of all the contributing factors which play into behavioral reality. Does it matter that you’re [gay/kinky/monogamous/heteroflexible…]? Only to the extent that responsible conversations with the people you are engaging with sexually/sensually/kinkily/romantically with are able to happen relatively transparently.

So go to it! It’s the most natural thing in the world to be turned on. Let’s talk about sexuality, sex, kink, behavior, and identity…

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

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~Thank you.

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