In Service, and to Success

This month has been an incredible one. I’ve made a lot of art, I’ve vacationed with important chosen family with whom I share cross-sections of identity with (that I don’t share with many others in my life). I’ve networked, showcased, performed, premiered, attended trainings, and kept up with the day job gigs, I’ve made time to visit friends, and was accepted into an herbal training internship starting in a couple weeks! It’s also been a brutal month emotionally—a long time since I’ve felt as depressed as I consistently struggled feeling over the past 4 weeks. I don’t know that there’s a way to reach peak highs without also accepting and struggling through peak lows. Would I trade this emotional reality for another? I don’t know…

I’m in an interesting place right now. My roommate is leaving very soon to tour the country and find eventual housing in warmer climate (jealous!). I’m overjoyed for them. Also change is hard. It’s difficult to envision keeping my place and paying twice the rent and utilities, considering I struggle to make ends meet already. My home is a smaller one, perfect for a couple, or people who are already close and communicate well. It’s a much harder space to negotiate between strangers. My values are also communal, and I want my home to be a safe and welcoming place for people who need to be with me for a time, for those who seek training in safety and BDSM skills, and for those who want to collaborate and make art together. I don’t know what equation will work in the end, but something will have to pick up for me to continue on as I have been.

I’m considering offering a skill share meet-up regularly at my place. I’m musing on the possibility to rent out one of the bedrooms in my place as a space for subs-in-training to use intermittently. I’d like to build some bookshelves in the living room, and set that area up for consulting.

This morning I had a session with a client I wrestle and role play with. Every time I meet with this person I’m reminded why I love the Dom work I do. Playtime is important—and that doesn’t lessen in adulthood. If anything, the moments we have to play games that we love, to feel the things we desire to feel, to have playmates who will listen to us and give of themselves for our benefit and needs, become even more important with age. I am passionate about this. My client remarked that one of the things he loves about seeing me is that, while I completely get what he’s looking for and bullseye the character and scenario, I’m also just a good person and that makes him feel good about our time together as well. Not everyone will be a perfect fit for my style as a Dominant, teacher, or service provider but I can say that the one thing I look for in my clients is this same thing too. I want to work with people who are sincere about their needs, and who value our transaction and my abilities.

To a steady and resounding YES to growth and opportunity within my own self and my industries. To an ever expanding understanding within the public about the differences between getting one’s needs met respectfully and getting them met opportunistically. We’re at an interesting moment in time where public discourse about who we are as individuals, what we need, and who has control over our bodies and the labor we pursue or deny with our bodies, is shifting and becoming less repressive and more autonomous. Women, people of color, queer and trans people, immigrants, and other marginalized people are beginning to be heard over an elite who have been in control of policy for a long time. As the middle class effectively realizes it has disappeared into the ranks of the working poor, we are reexamining the system itself which has always held some people up demographically over others, and has generationally kept itself in business. I’m excited to see how we’ll shift, and how we’ll band together for effective change.

I’m an artist. It’s my job to hold a mirror to society. I am a queer person, working poor, visibly trans, a sex educator, consultant, and professional. It is my job and desire to help free those who are oppressed (in the ways I am able to aid) whether because of personal repression, family, or society. We have one body in this lifetime and through better and worse it is the one thing we have at our command, and the one thing we have in service to others. I want to succeed for myself (of course), but even moreso I want to succeed in order to create opportunity for freedom around me.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
Please visit my Patreon, offer one time Support or email me for other options. Thank you.

The Many Faces of Bondage

The first book I have work published in!

Tonight I will be performing in Troy, NY at the Berlin, 7-9pm, for the book release party of “The Ultimate Guide to Bondage” by Mistress Couple (Cleis Press). I’m really excited to participate in this event and celebrate my friend’s first book. It is also the first book a contribution of mine has been published in! I’ll probably buy a bunch of copies to sell, so if you’re interested in getting one directly from me, let me know and I’ll put an order in.

What I love about this book is that it’s not only (or even primarily) about rope. Mistress Couple takes the reader on a trip through history, various cultures, and different modes of bondage to explore and celebrate the theme. “The Ultimate Guide to Bondage” offers tutorials in each subject, and includes a number of stories shared by BDSM practitioners about their own experiences with each type of “B” in BDSM. The story I authored is a retelling of my first time in predicament bondage. It was fun, nerve wracking, it tested my limits, and ultimately led to a better understanding of myself… I’ll leave it there for now. You’ll have to pick the book up to read the rest.

Bondage is rope, bondage is relational, bondage is fashion, bondage is a personal challenge, bondage is a choice, an agreement, a sexual preference, even spiritually awakening. Bondage is so much more than the act of doing “the rope and handcuff thing”. It is pleasure, pain, and the angst we continue to get mired in, learn from, and struggle against as we grow. Bondage is life. “The Ultimate guide to Bondage” brings dimension to the scope and variety of ways one can explore their interest in this deep, ultimately primal, subject.

I hope you check the book out, and please do contact me if you’d like to buy a copy directly. I’ll even sign it if you wish.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
Please visit my Patreon, offer one time Support or email me for other options. Thanks.

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