Mind Over Matter in the USA

(this post makes more sense if you read the previous one)

I wondered if I should perhaps cancel my trip to Fetishcon, but the idea of letting so many people down in one fell swoop felt impossibly horrible - I’d never be able to explain to every fan attending the event why I couldn’t come; they’d think I was a big flake. Also, the event had been extensively advertised and I felt it was probably a chance in a lifetime; I imagined that if I cancelled the trip at short notice I might not be re-invited.   Furthermore, I’d bought expensive peak rate flights to Los Angeles in order to work with West Coast producers while I was in the USA.  They were non-refundable so I felt as though I might as well go, and at least try to get through my professional commitments.

I warned the relevant producers that I wouldn’t be any use for long standing poses, or for kneeling down.  All but one of them said they were happy to go ahead regardless, knowing that I have limited opportunities to come to the USA. I was grateful that they were prepared to be flexible in light of my own lack of flexibility, and I was excited to see them again, most of them have become friends so I thought that even if all I could do was turn up and visit with them it’d still be worth doing.

So I packed my bags with modelling clothes and physio equipment.  And despite all my worries about getting through the trip, I felt excited to be setting off to the airport.  I still love international travel, the longer the journey, the better.

And something went right, rather surprisingly so.  When I got to the front of the check-in queue, the clerk checked my ticket and told me I could use the priority check in.  Puzzled,  I did so; my luggage was checked in and I was ushered through the priority security screening and straight into the British Airways business class lounge.  I was baffled; my ticket had been for ‘Economy Plus’; a normal economy seat with extra leg room.  Maybe the ‘Plus’ customers were allowed to use the lounge but I expected to be ushered out again at any moment.  In the meantime, I poured myself a pot of tea and helped myself to a bowl of lovely fruit salad.  I relaxed in a comfy seat, resting my sore knee and feeling sure that this peaceful start to my journey would help me endure the long and probably uncomfortable flight.

When the flight was called, I found that it had been no mistake, I really was flying business class.  My seat was in a gorgeous pod; it elongated to a totally flat bed when required, and screens came down to shield me in a private cocoon.  I very rarely drink, but accepted a glass of champagne since I decided it’d anesthetize me.   As I drank it, I toasted my mysterious benefactor if he or she existed - if you upgraded me and are reading this, then thank you thank you thank you.  The 8 hour flight was over too soon; I extended and retracted the seat as many times as possible, ate everything I was offered, watched a documentary about ballet dancers (and sympathised since naturally all of them had injuries) and had a go at living in the moment.  I’m awful at this.  

Once I arrived in Tampa, more fun was to come.  I’ve been corresponding with my friend Joe for several years, as well as exchanging Christmas presents.  But till this trip, I’d never had a chance to meet him.  We’d decided to have a go at converting our friendship to real life, and he’d come to the airport to meet me.  It was wonderful to see him; he’s just as thoughtful, kind and good natured as I’d guessed from his mails.  We went out to dinner (yum, American food.  I had a massive dessert with cream and pineapples) and then back to his neat condo.  And we did our physio exercises together - we both have the same foot problem and it was nice to exchange notes.  Joe lent me a helpful book about it.

I slept beautifully despite my sore knee, and when I woke up we went and bought two different flavours of cookie dough and then ate it raw, greedily, for breakfast.  We’d promised each other we’d do this some day, and it was great to do so in his sunny kitchen, whilst talking things over and finding out more about each other.

Then, via a quick lunch out, Joe took me back to Tampa airport to board a flight for Las Vegas, where I was working with VegasBondage.com and Tomiko. I was sorry to say goodbye to him so soon, and my anxiety about the shoots I had ahead of me started to rise again.  The plane was cramped, and changing flights in Atlanta involved a long walk across the terminal.  By the time I arrived in Las Vegas I was very, very sore, and worried about managing to do a good job as a model.

Actually, my day with Gerald Saunders of Vegasbondage was surprisingly manageable - I did stretching exercises between sets and think I did a reasonable job; he kindly had invited me to stay with him which made the whole thing more relaxing - we talked a lot between sets, which was lovely.  And he let me be tied up on the bed or sofa all the time, which helped loads.  The following day, I drove over to Tomiko’s beautiful house and had The Most Fun In The World being eaten by her giant pet worm, as well as dressing as a super heroine with her.  It was fantastic to meet her; she’s inspiring as a fetish model who’s built her own brand and fetish empire with a combination of beauty, talent and sheer hard work as far as I can see.  She’s a fantastic entrepreneur; she made me feel rather lazy.  I was happy to realise I’d be seeing her at Fetishcon the following week.

And once our shoot was over, I drove across the desert to Los Angeles.  I’d never done this on my own before and I loved it.  The desert looks magical to me, having grown up in the green, leafy and rainy England.  I wound the windows of my hire car down so I could feel the wind in my hair and smell the desert heat. I felt that the trip had been worth it now it even if I couldn’t do the rest of my shoots.

The next day I was scheduled to work with Joe Anton, for the first time in 4 years.  I was looking forward to catching up with him anyway, but I’d forgotten how much fun he is to work with; his damsel in distress storylines are often creepy and serious, and require proper concentration and a realistic performance.  He pulled, as always, appalled faces at most of the costumes I’d brought with me - I’d forgotten about this aspect of shooting with him.  I sort of enjoy introducing him to cardigans I’m particularly sure he’ll hate, it feels similar to being at home with Hywel.  And I appreciate his lack of apathy; he still appears to be interested in every element of his shoots, which makes his movies great, I think.

And this time, he’d also hired Tim Woodman, which was a marvelous treat because improvisation is a group effort and it’s much easier to do a good job if you’re working with someone who’s good at it himself.  I know this industry provides more opportunities for women than men but Tim’s a perfect example of why paying male actors makes sense - he’s properly highly skilled both with rigging and dialogue, as well as being such a warm, easy-to-get-on-with person that it’s really relaxing to work with him.  I do hope the videos we made will be successful, I feel as though they’ll deserve to be.  Here’s a picture of me, triumphant in a particularly gaudy sweater, with rope marks from our chloroform storyline.

Lovely Joe Anton then took me out for dinner, and since he offered me a choice, we went to Denny’s.  Which is one of my favourite things to do when I’m in the USA, I always make sure I go there at least once, and when I do I order pancakes.  I have no sophistication.  But it was a super evening for me so thank you Joe!

And then, off I went in my car for about 5 miles, and arrived at Jon Woods’ and Lorelei’s studio, where I was working the next day.  This blog is turning into a bit of a hyperbolic feast of sycophancy but I’m afraid that I have to go on, because I love Jon and Lorelei.  They were the first people I worked for in the fetish industry who called themselves ‘producers’ rather than ‘photographers’ as most people in the UK would say.  At the time it conveyed to me an idea of professionalism that appealed and it still does impress me, as does their large and lovely studio.  I like the way that in the USA, bondage video production is a well established industry and that people over there have been making a full time living from it for 20+ years - it means that things tend to run smoothly on shoots, and models (in my experience at least) get treated well.  Possibly that’s just Jon and Lorelei though, I do enjoy their company, and I was sorry to leave them when our shoot was over.  I particularly loved appearing in Lorelei’s Land Shark movie; this trip introduced me to a fetish I wasn’t aware of, and I desperately want to shoot more of it; it appeals to my desire to act in a thoroughly over-the-top, hammy style.

Before I flew back to Florida I also managed to squeeze in shoots with the fantastic Ikaras Jones (who had the most beautiful selection of knee-high boots for me to wear) and the always-glamorous Chelsea Pfeiffer who shot a couple of lovely spanking videos with me before I headed back to the airport; I loved catching up with her.  She’s so beautiful and a freakishly hard spanker given her delicate frame.  And shooting spanking is such a GREAT way to prepare for a long flight, I always think....

Urgh, I dreaded taking my first genuine ‘Red Eye’ flight back across the USA to Florida, especially given that my knee was still sore.  Everyone had been very careful and considerate through my shoots in California, but nevertheless, being active after my month off had stirred it up rather.  Actually the flight worked out more or less ok and I arrived back in Tampa to find my lovely new-to-real-life friend Joe waiting for me.  He took me back to his place for a few hours sleep before we headed to Downtown Tampa for my very first Fetishcon....

TBC

NB - Sorry to those of you confused by comments not appearing immediately.   Since someone posted a cerrrrazzzzy anti BDSM rant here last year, I've turned 'Comment Moderation' on so comments appear once I've read them.  I'm not keen on offering a platform to trolls.

Mind Over Matter

Well, I’ve been having an eventful time; let me tell you about it.  It’s a bit of a painful story with no neat ending to it so far, but it does involve a healthy portion of fun kinkiness somewhere in it. This will, true to form, probably be rather long, so I’m breaking it down into multiple posts that’ll appear here over the next couple of weeks.  Sorry the first installment is kind of downbeat.

First of all, I have to come out.  Some of you will know me from my mainstream work but for anyone visiting who doesn’t, I’m not a full time professional fetish model - I’m not sure anyone in the UK really is, given the limited number of employers in the genre.  So, when I’m not a fetish model, I work as an ordinary model.  Shocking isn’t it?  Now, anyone who works for long as a model will tend to start finding their career being shaped by the work they’ve already done.  Photographers tend to choose models for their new projects who already have a body of work in a similar style - it makes sense to book models with a proven track record in the genre.  For me, this genre has been dance.

Image Courtesy of the fantastic Orson Carter

I trained as a ballet dancer and gymnast throughout my childhood and teenage years.  An injury finished my hopes of turning professional and after picking up the pieces of my rather shattered hopes, I diversified into acting instead.  Later I became a model, and a photographer who knew I’d once danced bought me a pair of pointe shoes and photographed me dancing again.  It felt wonderful and I liked the images.  Armed with the pointe shoes, I started offering ballet-style modelling as one of my USPs.  It worked well, and gradually over the last decade I’ve been booked more and more frequently for ballet themed pictures.  It’s been great fun and very profitable, although it’s far more taxing on my body than any other style of work I do (including hard bondage).  My original back injury has flared up from time to time, and two years ago I sustained an upper back injury too, which rumbles on, never quite going away.  Then a year ago, after taking up running in an effort to make myself stronger for my dance work, I sustained first a foot and then an ankle injury.  It’s made all my shoots harder, painful and subsequently less fun, which has been sad because I love my job.

Dance modelling is most certainly kinder to your body than being a professional dancer, since you’re rarely required to actually dance continually for more than a few minutes at a time.  On the other hand, photographic studios can be much colder than dance spaces since they’re so often situated in poorly insulated industrial units.  And crucially, they almost always have concrete floors, which makes jumping uncomfortable and ultimately damaging.  That’s probably partially accounted for my failure to heal from my various niggling injuries, and the fairly relentless schedule I’ve set for myself has been a contributing factor too. Poor Hywel has done his best to suggest I take a gentler approach to my work but I’ve been grateful to have a dance-related career snatched back from the jaws of defeat after having come to terms with knowing I’d never be able to realise that particular dream, and it’s been hard to turn stuff down.  And I’ve been proud of being offered so much work; my schedule’s been booked around 6 months ahead for the last couple of years, and it’s allowed me to tour the UK, Europe and beyond.  Not bad when I remember the 18 year old I once was, in an orthopedic surgeon’s office being told I’d never dance again.  I’ve wanted to shout back  to her across the years that it’ll be ok.

And it has been, sort of.  But then in May this year, I felt a sudden twinge in my right knee while I was coming downstairs. 

I ignored it, I was about to shoot a contemporary dance movie for a director I respect very much, and I didn’t see a reason to cancel.  The shoot was painful and frightening, my knee flared warnings at me every time I knelt on it.  But I got through and hopefully delivered a useable performance;  the production stills look cool to me.

Images courtesy of BikeshedTV

The drive back down South was painful, my trip to the Isle of Wight for shoots the following day nearly unbearably so.  My doctor was able to give me some generic knee exercises but they seemed to make things worse if anything.  The following week I asked if The Kantakas would mind postponing a shoot, to allow me to get to a sports physiotherapist.  They kindly consented, but the sports massage didn’t help much, and over the next couple of days I found myself repeatedly apologising to photographers (including Chimera Bondage) that I couldn’t kneel down.  

I literally limped through the next couple of weeks.  A wonderful ballet themed shoot with in an empty mansion house in London produced beautiful images, but I got through the shoot by standing on my left leg whenever possible to spare the sore right one, and by taking the strongest painkillers I could find, which didn’t seem to do much.

Two days later I was booked for a day of bondage and dance work.  I awoke in pain, and driving to the studio helped matters not at all.  This time, painkillers seemed to do nothing and by mid afternoon, getting up from where I’d been seated on the floor sent a bolt of pain through my knee, making me gasp.  By taking a double dose of painkillers I got through the last bit of the shoot in what I now recall as a haze of unreality.  I drove myself the few miles to my hotel for the night and called Hywel. 

In a miserable conversation we agreed I should cancel all my bookings for July; a decision which cost me thousands of pounds in lost earnings and felt like tearing down all the carefully constructed business relationships and friendships I’d spent 10 years building up.  It was ghastly and I don’t know how I’d possibly have got through the last few weeks without Hywel, lucky me to have married a man who doesn’t require me to be a calm and perfect physical specimen at all times.  I am not.

After two days of emailing apologies to everyone and receiving their unfailingly kind responses to my cancellations, I was left with an empty month in my diary.  For the first time in a decade, I didn’t have anywhere to be.

And with utterly vile timing, Hywel was going to be away from home.  This never happens; I think I’ve spent 2 nights alone in the house during the whole of our cohabitation.  As webmasters reading this will know, running a pay site does tend to tie you to your office.  But Hywel was working as Director of Photography on a mainstream film, and I was very proud of him; without a question, he had to go.  I thought I’d be fine; I could walk, climb upstairs if I was careful, and I could work for Restrained Elegance in his absence.  Various lovely friends and family members offered to stay with me if I got lonely, but I thought I’d be fine - actually I thought it might even be fun once the pain started to lessen; I could bake, sew, book shoots for 2014, revamp my blog, publicise our Clips4Sale store.  I even had grandiose ideas of making self-shot clips on my own and writing an autobiography.

But what I actually did was to have a lot of physiotherapy and sports massage appointments but not feel any improvement.  Kind friends kept checking in, but I kept having to tell them that nothing had changed.  I swam, but it hurt too much to do more than 4 or 5 lengths.  I went to Pilates classes with old ladies who seemed in a better physical state than me.  I limped round supermarkets, picking up the minimum amounts of supplies before the pain got too much and I had to go home and use ice packs on my knee.

I sewed in the meantime; here's a kimono I made for a photographer who commissioned me. 

Let me know if you need anything outlandish made for you by the way, I think it might be my secondary career because I LOVE it :)

Hywel came home at the end of the week to check on me and my lack of progress.  Then he came home on the second Sunday, and things were still no better.  I started to get very scared.

In my third week at home I started feeling rather strange emotionally too.  Still in pain from my knee, but the stress of dealing with a possibly-career-ending injury began making me feel a bit divorced from reality.  Driving began to scare me, I felt as though I couldn’t concentrate.  I felt unhappy around strangers, and I didn’t want visitors either.  When the phone rang, the names of concerned members of my family and friends on my display made me feel anxious.  My best friend re-iterated her offer to come and stay with me, but it was the last thing I wanted although I always love her company.  Then, abruptly, my arms started aching too.  Typing suddenly became untenably painful, as did texting. I felt cut off; holding my phone up to my ear was painful; when Hywel called I’d prop the phone on the sofa, and lie over it to talk.  

Then I had a panic attack; I’d gone swimming, but my knee was too painful for me to achieve much.  I was overwhelmed by feelings of despair - my whole life, all it seemed to amount to was a dingy local authority swimming pool frequented by the elderly and infirm.  I hurried into my clothes and rushed out of the building; I took refuge in my car but still felt panicky - I realised I was crying and that taking in breath was suddenly very hard work.

Although I fervently wanted to get home, I didn’t make it out of the car park. I was crying too hard and I couldn’t see so I pulled over, blindly, to the side of the path. 

After some time, a knock on the window made me snatch in my breath and jump backwards in my seat.  A concerned lady had come out of the sports centre and seen me.  Unfortunately, even when I’d remembered how to wind down my window I found myself unable to speak to explain what was wrong.  She eventually retreated; courtesy is important to me and I felt ashamed not to be able to thank her for her kindness in trying to help me.  I’m hoping to recognise her one day so I’ll be able to explain and say thank you.  But by now a small crowd seemed to have gathered and I felt horribly exposed so I started my engine and drove home.  As I drove down the hill to our house I realised I was screaming, over and over again.  The sound scared me.

Talking to Hywel on the phone helped; he was going to be home again that weekend.  He said that I should probably look at cancelling my bookings through August and September too, and I couldn’t help but agree - I couldn’t imagine being able to stand up for long in heels, walk in hoof boots or kneel in a frogtie, let alone dance en pointe, or jump and land on my injured knee.  So I started burning more bridges (or at least that was how it felt) in a series of mails which were significantly shorter than the first ones I’d sent out - my arms were too painful to type much.

Then a second stupid panic attack came along ; I’d been planning to go to the local supermarket in preparation for Hywel coming home the following day, but somehow, I kept putting off the journey.  Finally, late in the afternoon, I realised that if I didn’t go soon the shop would be shut.  I only needed to grab a sweater and my shoes from upstairs before leaving the house, but that journey felt insurmountable.  I felt panic building in my chest again.  Then I was bent over double in the kitchen, screaming and screaming over again.  I couldn’t stop and I felt as though I’d gone crazy.  

Then I was curled at the bottom of the stairs with the telephone in my hand.  I telephoned the UK’s emergency medical advice line - I thought calling an ambulance was probably overkill since my arms and legs were all still attached to my body and because despite the feeling in my chest, I did appear to be breathing more or less effectively.

I’m suspicious that I probably sounded quite mad in the ensuing conversation.  The health professional I spoke to was very kind and helpful and suggested I take a taxi to the hospital.  I agreed, but once I’d disconnected the call I knew I wasn’t going to; the Emergency Room would be crowded with people and I couldn’t cope with that idea.  Furthermore, I didn’t want to get back into the car.

I waited for Hywel to come home and it was a great relief when he came back, all calm and resourceful and rational. Then when Monday came I made an appointment with my doctor.  She took blood tests to rule out any systemic condition that could be causing all the various symptoms I’d been having (I'm waiting for the results), and gave me anti-anxiety medication to hopefully arrest any further panic attacks in the short term.

And it was with this dreadful month only just behind me that I embarked upon my trip to the USA, to appear as a Guest of Honour at the fetish industry’s biggest annual event - Fetishcon in Tampa, Florida. 

Which I’ll blog about next time, and it’ll be cheerier.  Thanks for reading; I wondered whether this was appropriate to post really but hopefully it might help someone somehow one day, and I do like being honest about bad stuff as well as good stuff.

Thanks as always,

A/a

Homeless!

Hello dear lovely kinky everyone who visits my blog.  I'm writing this because the virtual ship my blog has been granted safe passage on may be sinking.  It seems that Google is becoming non-kink friendly and that my blog here is likely to be shut down.

Many people are writing more intelligently than me on the subject; all I'll say for now is that I'm alarmed and disappointed in corporate society's apparent prejudice towards sexual diversity.  I'm grateful that my blog has been granted free hosting space for all these years, but sad that it's being taken away for such a frightening
reason.  I'm not part of a separate dangerous species of person who expresses their sexuality online and damages all the normal people.  The people (like me) who do this are normal people too.  Between us all, kinky and vanilla, pornographers, dentists, politicians, nail technicians, astronauts or whoever; I think we create an internet that reflects our interests and needs.  Kinky blogs form part of that reflection.  Therefore, I feel they have the same rights to belong on the internet as a sci-fi appreciation forum, online sewing-bee or whatever.

Lawks.

In the meantime, Hywel's kindly exported my blog here;-

while I decide where future posts will go.  Bless you as always for visiting, the online kinky community has never seemed so precious to me as it does today.

What I've Been Up To

As always my blog post is starting with a tired apology; I'm not a good blogger.  All I can say in my defence is that as a model, I'm rather assiduous and prolific.  I wish those words could be used to describe my blogging, but at least I have insight into my condition and I know that they really, really can't be.

Nevertheless, I've been being busy and useful elsewhere, and this is what I've been up to;-

Lots and lots and LOTS of modelling. I've been in Scotland, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and all OVER England since I last blogged.  Lots of the work has been of a non-kink sort but in the bondage genre I've worked for Chimera PetandPonygirls Bondage Chronicles Bondage Bob Jack Bond Limited Audience and, naturally, Restrained Elegance That's only the ones I could think of off the top of my head by the way, I'm sure there were lots more than that but my diary's on another floor of the house so I can't be bothered to fetch it (bad blogger, you see)

For fans of spanking, I've also been busily shooting with all the best producers to make sure that the supply of ghastly Amelia's wickedness doesn't dry up.  Check out Spanked in Uniform SpankingSarah (who has the best picture of me ever on her masthead) www.northernspanking.com and Dreams of Spanking for lots of lovely updates with me in them.  Yep.

And whilst I've been doing all these shoots, I've also been finding my feet as a rigger.  Until last year, I'd only rigged for Restrained Elegance, and hadn't really regarded myself as a rigger at all - just a model who'd picked up enough knowledge to help out when no one else was around to do the rope work.  But then, a couple of studio owners who were aware of my bondage work asked me to come and do a bit of self bondage for some of the photographers who used their studios regularly and were interested in shooting fetish images.  That led to my actually teaching a couple of interested photographers the basics of western rope bondage, and I've gradually found myself adding bundles of rope into my modelling bags on more and more occasions.

Finally, when I was booked by a superb photographer Carl Grim for a full day of bondage rigging/modelling and I decided it was time to actually buy my own rope. This shows just how horrifically spoilt one can become as a model - I'm sure that for most people who want to learn rigging for photography, they have to start by buying their own rope, then pay to get some tuition, then do lots of unpaid practicing and then finally, maybe, get paid for their skill.  Naughty, lucky me, eventually buying some rope of my own made me feel that now I could maybe start calling myself a rigger in my own head.

A note of caution; I know most people reading this won't jump to conclusions, but please please, to those people who think this is a good opportunity to ask me to be their Domme, I'm still not dominant.  And in all honesty, I do find that repeated requests along these lines feel a bit bullying.  Sort of the same as being gay and being continually pestered by people who know you to 'just have a go at heterosexuality', and not to be such a stick-in-the-mud because you 'can't know what you're into until you try it'.  I'm not a Domme, just a rather tall sub with a fantastic new collection of gorgeous un-dyed cotton rope which I cut into lengths myself, all giddy with the freedom of choosing lengths that were convenient for me rather than for someone else's rigging style.

Anyway, so the Carl Grim shoot was fantastic fun for me; the responsibility of tying up a model who hadn't done much in the way of fetish work before weighed quite heavily on me but both she and Carl Grim were so energetic, thoughtful and talented that I got happily swept along with the whole thing and these pictures are the result;-

And I love them love them love them.  Thanks to Kayleigh and Carl for such a lovely day, which made me feel brave and hopeful about doing more of this in 2013.

And the very next week, I had the chance to try out my ropes again, this time as a result of the wonderfully experimental Pandora Blake who booked me for a joyous, 2 day shoot for Dreams of Spanking with Caroline Grey (yes, I loved her so much I'll go all hyperbolic if I try to count the ways) and my own lovely BDM Hywel Phillips .  Pandora had wanted to shoot a male bondage photoset and had booked male model Will Savage (can't find a link for him, if you have one let me know and I'll credit him properly).  I was kind of nervous about tying up a man for the first time because the bondage I'm used to doing for Restrained Elegance relies a lot upon the models' having a fair amount of flexibility, especially in the shoulders.  Indeed, it proved fairly challenging; positions that are sustainable for many female models proved painful for Will and it forced me to tie faster than I normally do.  The results, however, are beautiful and I'll most certainly hope to tie men up again in the future - I'm sure that if I think it through carefully I can find ties that will be comfortable for even the most musclebound chaps.  Anyway, here's a picture, courtesy of Dreams of Spanking and shot by Hywel .

I've got more rigging in my future and I'm very excited about it; modelling is my first love but I'm hoping that in 2013, ropework will be something I also concentrate at getting better at.  We've got a lot more shoots for Restrained Elegance planned over the next few months, and I'm going to see if I can do ropework that improves upon these examples;-

(thanks to Natalia Forrest Fawna Latrische Hannah Claydon and Scarlot Rose)

I've been so keen on my whole new rigging life, I've created a pictures-only blog here;-

I know that I need to be sensible about this venture; as a model its hard to injure people but as a rigger I need to take on responsibility for other peoples' safety and I want to take that seriously.  Modelling feels like a wonderful giddy, childish pursuit in contrast, which is making me love it even more than usual.

Thanks as always for reading my blog posts, I appreciate it very much.

And OMG, hysterical news flash, I've been invited to Fetishcon in Tampa this year! Do get in touch if you'll be there too; I'm a bit incoherent with excitement about it all and can't find a normal way to finish this sentence so......

Best wishes and Happy Easter everyone,

A/a

Wedded Joy Part Two

Here's a wedding-themed picture by our friend AP Sheep who made the metal dress!! He is brilliant.

In an unprecedented move, I'm blogging very soon after my last post.  I feel like a proper blogger, but obviously, never in the league of Pandora Blake .  I have hopes that one day I'll grow up and blog like her.  By the way, thank you so much to everyone who posted comments to my last post (especially Michael - that's a very interesting subject that you brought up, I'd like to blog about it some time).

Anyway, the reason I'm blogging is because everything was too darned exciting to not talk about over the last couple of weeks for me.  So I'm writing it all down (actually, I wrote this on honeymoon, so I'm just copy typing now, in the manner of a sexy 1950's secretary.  Except that I'm wearing a massive orange polar fleece and drinking hot Ribena.)

Right, here's the actual post. It's about my honeymoon with the BDM, who is now the HDM.  I wanted to drop the 'M' for master to give him the same initials as 'High Definition', but he wouldn't let me. Oh well.

'This is what happened after we got married;-

We went back to work for a couple of days.  I know this sounds odd, but we're in the middle of creating some new projects as well as improving our work on RE so we needed the time.  A lovely commentary ran through my head as I worked;-  'I'm just editing a video for my husband's website.'  'Mrs HDM is stopping work for a cup of tea with her husband.'  Awfully grandiose of me, but lovely one-off fun.

We held our reception on the Sunday three days after our wedding.  And it was really rather a kinky affair, at least according to the guest list.  A number of the people I think of as the British spanking aristocracy came (less than we'd have liked due to the small space we loved so much we chose it for the party) and the first one we saw that day was the tremendous Lucy the Matron of Northern Spanking along with her brilliant husband Paul Kennedy and lovely child.  Lucy had kindly volunteered to do my hair, and as is her multi-skilled way, she did a beautiful job of making me look all vintage-y and elegant.

Of the lovely kinkies we were able to fit onto the guest list were Amy Hunter of Northern Spanking fame, Stephen Lewis (also of Northern Spanking), my beloved friend Katy Cee from Restrained Elegance, brilliant Temptress Kate, RE's publicist, model and location photographer, RE photographer Steve and his lovely wife, RE model Sammie B, the wonderful Leigh and Zena from gorgeous boudoir photography service Mighty Aphrodite and my favourite non-gay best friend Ben Davies

In retrospective, it seems silly of me but before our wedding party I'd been a bit worried about how our vanilla and kinky guests would all get on.  Of course, the HDM and I had family members in attendance, and while they all know exactly what we do for a living, I wondered whether anyone would end up in awkward conversations.  But midway through the party, I looked round and saw Stephen Lewis and Paul Kennedy talking to my sister and her family, Lucy-the-Matron sitting with one of the HDM's university friends, and Temptress Kate and Katy Cee deep in conversation with my super-cool fashion writer friend and her husband.  I felt so happy, and so proud of our friends, the vanilla ones who are liberal enough to cope with people making unconventional career choices and having varied sexual identities, and the kinky friends who were able to understand that you don't need to dress in PVC and wield canes around at all times. All this seems very obvious now, but it was a lovely discovery nevertheless.

Since the HDM's not over-keen on public speaking, having possibly burnt out from his previous life as a lecturer, we decided the main speech would be my responsibility.  I'd been worried about it, but on the advice of a friend I decided to be honest rather than trying to be clever, so I mostly just thanked people.  My (our!) niece who'd decorated our wedding cake with a cascade of autumn leaves, Lucy for my lovely hair, the HDM's parents' for bringing up to have the confidence to abandon one career in favour of being a bondage photographer.  And Hywel himself, for everything, really.

Then we struggled home under the weight of all the cookbooks we'd asked for as wedding presents, stumbled to bed, and were awoken at 3.45am in order to go off on honeymoon.

I'd kept my beautiful wedding hair-style overnight - since it was a gift from Lucy, destroying it prematurely felt vile and wrong.  It wasn't until we were sitting in a lakeside cafe in Italy that afternoon that I realised the silver star-shaped hair ornament was still in my hair too.  It felt like a good omen or something (I've become very sentimental temporarily, do forgive me).

Our honeymoon (on Lake Maggiore - its beautiful in the extreme) has been mainly spent sleeping, eating enormous ice-creams, going on cable-cars, sharing pasta dishes (Like in Lady and the Tramp) and attempting to speak Italian.  And of course, there's been plenty of time for all sorts of splendid kinkiness.

Now we're about to go home again (I'm writing this from our hotel's lounge while Hywel sleeps next door) and launch into our lives as a married bondage producer couple.  I expect it'll be similar to before in lots of ways - I find myself reaching for something profound to say, but can come up with nothing.  Except that, as always, when I think about my life with Hywel, the chances we have to engage in activities we both thought we'd never get to do, and the way we don't have to sacrifice 'normal' romantic love in order to do so; I want to send a postcard back in time and tell my younger self that in 2012 everything turned out ok for me.'

We're back home now (sorry for the jumping around in time through this blogpost) and we just went out and shot a two part photo-set for Restrained Elegance as a thank you to our Members for joining the site, which allowed us to meet in the first place.  The first part of the set is in my wedding dress, the second part is at home without it on :)  Here's a sample shot - we're editing the second half now and it'll be live on Restrained Elegance tomorrow!

Thanks to you all as always for visiting, I'm very happy and hoping things are well with you all too.

You May Kiss The Bride!

Oh my goodness, I need to be a better writer than I am to tell you all the things I’m thinking and feeling today.  I’m writing this in the brief, 2 day gap between getting married to Hywel (the BDM is the HDM now) and holding our reception, which is a tea party for our family and closest friends.

Our wedding day was absolutely perfect for me (I don’t want to speak for Hywel, who I’m sure will blog about it himself, but he certainly seemed very happy too).  We just had our two witnesses there, since we really wanted the smallest wedding possible.  I’ve done a fair number of bridal shoots in my career as a model (and plenty of bridle ones, of course) and I didn’t want our wedding day to feel like a performance, or like a modelling job.  Hywel was in agreement, so we just had my lovely sister, and our wonderful friend Steve, who shoots for Restrained Elegance as well.

The wedding itself was extraordinarily lovely to me, but possibly a bit boring to read about so I’ll be brief.  I was barefoot at Hywel’s request (brilliant, I thought I’d be horrifically embarrassed but actually it felt perfectly natural), I wore a dress I’d made myself, and the vows were beautiful.  I cried a bit, but not in a horrific embarrassing manner, as far as I know.  Here’s a picture Steve took right after we signed the register. 

And once it was over, we headed to a gorgeous hotel that we eat at a lot but have never stayed in.  We’d booked a suite with a four poster bed and some fabulous, usefully shaped furniture in it.  And that’s all I have to say about that ;)

So now, I’m Mrs Phillips, and I’m stupidly, impossibly happy about it.  And it’s made me think back about how we first met, so I’m going to give you a brief history in pictures;-

Here’s a shot from our first set, at my first Restrained Elegance shoot.  I’d had to pester a bit in order to shoot for RE at all, and I was determined that Hywel would like me.  At the time, I’d only done a couple of bondage shoots, and had been modelling for less than a year; hence the schoolgirl hair and the minimal approach to makeup.  I was so sorry when the shoot was over (it had passed with me in a lather of excitement, trying not to show that the whole thing was hopelessly erotic for me) and so glad when Hywel re-booked me almost immediately...

After a year or so of working together, in which we got to know each other well enough for me to confess that I really was into BDSM (I don’t think it was a great surprise to Hywel) Hywel took me, Hannah, Sabrina and Temptress Kate to France for a week’s shoot.  The pleasure of modelling for Hywel every day for an extended period was absolute heaven for me; I remember rushing my hair and makeup dreadfully, in order to be the next model in line whenever Hywel was ready for one.  Consequently, he ended up with more sets of me than anyone else, which was a bad business move for me, since in theory it meant that he wouldn’t have to re-book me for ages.  But I couldn’t help it, just as I couldn’t help fantasising about him coming to my bedroom to tie me up and spank me at night.  He didn’t, he behaved like a consummate professional.  But by now, he’d become my absolute favourite person to work with.

Later that year, Hywel booked me to work with Chanta Rose as the rigger.

Which was interesting in many ways.  Chanta is very experienced, both as a professional and as a lifestyle player.  And she’s totally comfortable with talking frankly about BDSM.  Which meant that the shoot with her made me feel more relaxed talking about my fantasies in front of other people.  I think this is what led to Hywel and me deciding to do a series called ‘Restrained Elegance Nights’ in which we explored the harder side of BDSM, which I’d not actually experienced, but was desperate to try.  We shot our ‘Long Term Bondage’ project as a result, followed by ‘Bondage Driving Test’ by which point I was struggling to keep our relationship fully professional - basically I’d begun to tell Hywel all my fantasies, and we’d play them out in front of the cameras as a way to justify what we were doing since we hadn’t negotiated an actual relationship yet.  As a result, parts of those videos make me pretty embarrassed - they’re still available to watch on Restrained Elegance but I’m uncomfortable watching something that exposes my feelings so clearly.

And then Hywel invited me to be the model for his first bondage photography tutorial.  I flew back from New York and took a taxi straight to his studio (my flight had been delayed) but once I got there, the lack of sleep made no difference whatsoever to my excitement.  Here’s a shot from a set that Merlin (who we met that day for the first time, and who’s since become a very valued member of the RE crew) directed;-

And which Steve, who we also met for the first time that day shot.  I’m afraid I behaved in a rather sluttish manner that day; being tied up and photographed by 4 people while Hywel told me what to do, stepped in to gag me, and generally took control of the whole thing, was very sexy for me indeed!

And finally, after at least 3 years of shooting together (and probably more, my maths is hideous) we made the decision to play together as well as work together.  This picture’s from the first time we shot together after we’d made that decision.

Hmmm, I don’t think my facial expression was put on for the camera.  I’m rather ashamed to say that our new arrangement made for some rather excessively sexual photo sets...

And after playing together for a few months, neither of us were happy with the parameters we’d set for ourselves, and we became a proper, real-life couple.  

And photosets of me from around that time seem to me to have a pervasive sense of happiness!

We moved out of the studio, and into a house we bought together...

And things got better and better.  Of course, our lives aren’t magically charmed, and we’re as effected by ill health, work stress, and all the real life problems as any other couple.  But I’m so happy with Hywel, and being married to him feels so perfectly right.  

And of course, being married won’t stop me also being Hywel’s slavegirl.  That’s too important to lose - we’re in the middle of working out what our new rules will be and we’ll be figuring it all out properly on honeymoon.  I’m very excited about that - the rule Hywel’s already put in place for the new married me is perfect :)

Here’s a picture to finish with, of the dress I made as a practice wedding dress earlier this year, just in time for our shoot in Scotland.  We’ll be shooting a set for Restrained Elegance in my real wedding dress as soon as we’re properly back at work.

So for now, thank you to our friends and supporters, who joined RE and made it possible for us to meet in the first place.  I’m sorry this wasn’t a very edgy post, I’m just full of happiness and wanted to talk about it.  Thank you for reading!

What Ho, Producer Head On

Good heavens, I am indeed alive.  I actually have proof of this, having done a million things in the past 3 weeks. I think I'll tell you about some of them now :)

First of all, oh my goodness, I scripted and directed a bastinado movie.  Bastinado is something I have an uneasy, love/hate type relationship with.  I love the BDM .  He loves bastinado.  I, therefore, have experienced lots of it, with various implements.  Foot caning works beautifully for me, hooray, but I absolutely hate, hate, hate anything with leather straps involved. The BDM loves leather strap bastinado beyond all other things as a result.  BDSM's awfully complicated, isn't it?

So writing and directing my own bastinado movie seemed like a good opportunity for me to explore my feelings for and tolerance of bastinado.  With me as the lead actress, it was inevitable that I'd have to.  (I know this is horrifically Kevin Costner-esque but I don't know any other models who're keen to try foot torture). I hoped that, by writing a story that appealed to me, I'd give myself the best possible chance of making it through the painful scenes.

So that's what I did.  I've been exploring the 'visiting professional disciplinarian' idea in fantasy and play over the last couple of years and it appeals to me massively; I love the idea of an incredibly detached, disinterested professional being in charge of administering carefully calculated punishments, so that's the role I wrote for the BDM (I think it suits his scientific nature, so I had a good excuse for it).  His character appealed to me enough to help me through the most painful bits of the movie.

I'm not clever enough to be able to capture the peculiarly cumulative, inescapable fire-y pain of bastinado in words alone, but in my experience it can be far, far more all-encompassingly painful than any kind of spanking I've ever experienced.  If the potential success of a BDSM movie could be measured in the tears of pain shed during the shoot process, then we might have a blockbuster on our hands.

Here is a teaser trailer;-

(For a lovely big version, go directly here)

We shot a final scene today, and I'll be editing the whole thing myself over the next few weeks.  I've been editing videos for Restrained Elegance for the last 6 months, but a feature-length movie will be a fab new challenge.  It's particularly exciting because the BDM has upgraded all his equipment, so the whole project was shot on a super new camera called a RED which frankly I don't understand awfully well.  Except that;

a) its really easy to use, so I can operate it and get the shots I had in my head without feeling all sweaty and asthmatic.

b) it makes everything look absolutely beautiful, even suburbia in the rain.

c) it has a touch screen so you can pretend it's a phone.

Lordy, that was a lot of talk about only one of the things I was planning to talk about.  So I'll finish (I'm baking our wedding cake at the same time as blogging, and I don't want to burn it) by talking about last week, when Restrained Elegance kindly took me on a week-long location trip to a lovely (except for the strangely ill-equipped kitchen) old house in the English West Country.  And here are some frame grabs from the movie we started making there.

 The girls.  From left to right - Hannah, Sophia, Scarlot, and meeeeeeeeee.

 Scarlot is failing her slave-position test, and it's my job to tell Mistress Kate...

Here I am, considering whether I can face cleaning a customer's shoes without the use of my hands.

It's  all about slave training; I'm the 'resident slave' who belongs to the auction house, and it's my job to get the new girls ready for the sale.  We were joined by the luminous Sophia Smith, delicious Hannah Claydon, patrician Anita de Bauch, and ingenuous Scarlot Rose, who got the lead role of the uncertain newcomer into the hedonistic auction-house world... Hooray, Temptress Kate appeared too, as the icy-cool head slave-trainer!

It was a splendid week (punctuated by trying to prepare food with knives that'd probably be blunt enough to be sold at the Early Learning Centre ) and I've got high hopes that the videos we shot will be as fun to watch as they were to make.

Thanks as always for reading, and I'll update again within the next few weeks with news of various extra-fun projects I'm working on.

All the best,

A/a

PS Re-reading this post, I discover that I've forgotten how to write anything that makes sense.  And how did I end up writing such lonnnnnnnnnng sentences? I need some sort of strict tutor to help me with my grammar.  Mmmmmmmmmm.



.

Not Dead, Just Busy

'Ariel' from The Tempest. Courtesy of William Shakespeare, Dangerpics and Evie Wolfe

Hello everyone! I'm sorry that this'll very likely be a horrible dull post, because I'm freakily busy and my head is a bit buzzy and confused. So I'm probably going to write nonsense. But I didn't want to abandon my blog for too criminally long a period of time after everyone's lovely kind comments about being engaged to the BDM. So I'm writing to tell you that I'm alive, still being tied up and spanked a great deal, and enjoying making wedding dress prototypes.

I think I'm going to write about something that concerns me quite often. As my profile as a fetish model has grown (which I'm not complaining about in itself, nope, I'm very happy, thank you) and I've become busier and busier as a result, I frequently feel as though I'm almost drowning in busy-ness. I know this isn't unique to me, I think lots of people in the busiest period of their careers probably feel similar. But I do feel guilty that there are lots of things (both personal and work related) that I simply don't have time to do. Here's a list of the work-related ones (I'll never stop loving lists).

1) Link exchanges. Oh God. I know these are probably important, but it's too, too slow and boring...

2) Writing about recent shoots. Actually, I'd love to be able to write about pretty much every fetish shoot I have, since almost all of them are great experiences. And yet, I hardly ever have time, or by the time I do the shoot's so far in the past that it feels a bit mental. And I'm scared of insulting all the producers I haven't written about. So I'm abysmal at this.

3) Buying outfits. That really would be a lot of fun; searching eBay for fun clothes to wear at shoots is something I love doing, but I hardly ever have time. Fortunately for me, I've got a good wardrobe built up already and I do grab new clothes whenever I'm going through airports or have a few hours free between shoots, but I'd love to devote more time to it.

4) Writing scripts. I already do write scripts, most often for Restrained Elegance and for Firm Hand Spanking because both companies have a budget to pay for script-writing time. But when I started BDSM modelling, I used to contribute ideas and fantasies to many shoots during the pre-shoot process. I'd love to be more helpful, but increasingly I have to answer requests like that by saying 'I'll give you ideas on the day, honestly; but I don't have time to write anything now'. Which is absolutely true, but I don't feel great about it.

5) Doing interviews. I get asked for these a lot, and I've got nowhere near enough time to fulfill every request. I tend to choose to do them for people I have an existing relationship with, or people who've put the most effort into the questions they want me to answer. But ideally, I'd do every interview I was offered; it'd feel more polite and it's always nice to be asked.

6) Probably most importantly; socialising with the lovely people I've met through working in this industry. I count some of them amongst my closest friends, but it's rare to see them unless we're doing something work related. And it makes me feel very sad sometimes, that meeting the super, kinky people I now know as a result of my job is one of the best things that's come from being a BDSM model; but it seems to have come at the cost of not actually having time to see any of them regularly.

7) Oh GOD; emails. I feel like I'm drowning in them. And somehow Twitter, Facebook et al seem to have turned into extra inboxes for me. I dream about them.

At home, it's also tricky; the BDM is super, and I'm so happy to be marrying him. I just wish I saw more of him, and I wish that I could promise him I'll be home a lot more once we're married. I'm certainly trying; I'm cutting back on long trips abroad and I'm taking a day every couple of weeks to do admin so I don't have to catch up with it on on days off cos that feels rude and intolerable. Gosh, but wouldn't it be lovely to be an aristocrat or something? I feel as though I could fill a whole lifetime doing nice things with the BDM without getting anywhere near bored enough to need another form of entertainment. I'm sure lots of people would feel the same; when did we all start working so bloody hard, I wonder?

At present, these seem to be the things I do most;-

1) Answer emails. And many of them are to lovely people, discussing tremendously fun projects, but golly, it's hard work staying anywhere near up-to-date if you also want to get enough sleep.

2) Pack suitcases. Every job requires different clothing, and hours a week of my time are spent unpacking, laundering and packing again. I'm wondering about instituting a personal policy of permanent nudity, and not bringing any clothes to any of my shoots at all.

3) Drive. Actually, I love driving, which is a blessing. And audiobooks save my sanity. But it turns 8 hour shoot days into 14 hour marathons, quite often.

4) Book hotels. Like, every day. LOL, I'm sick of it, do any fetish models have managers, I wonder?

Ohhhhh Lordy, I sound like such a victim. I do apologise; bleating about relative success is a ridiculous thing to do and I do love my job. But finding the energy to do all the things associated with shooting is hard at the moment. And as a result, a lot of my fantasies are pet girl related. Very little responsibility sounds like just the thing.

Happy Easter everyone, am hoping that you're a bit less stressy than me at present. I'm wondering about how to simplify my life a bit in order to achieve a clearer head :)

Grownupness in 2012

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for your continued support of my blog. Throughout my life I've failed utterly at keeping a diary, and its only because people like you kindly visit and comment that I manage to stay interested in writing. Thank you for visiting!

In case this is your first visit, here is a very quick history of me, so you won't have to bore your way though previous postings.

I'm an English girl who trained originally as a ballet dancer, got a) too tall and b) a bit too injury-prone to continue and so trained in classical acting instead, at a drama school in London.

I'd had fantasies about being tied up, ill-treated and (still sort of hard to admit) spanked all my life, and didn't think anyone with similar interests existed. Then a poor Conservative MP in England was found dead in circumstances that suggested he'd been playing BDSM games which had gone wrong, and the teenage me thought 'Oh, bloody hell, there were maybe two of us, but now one of us is dead'.

So I went into good old denial, joined The Campaign Against Pornography and decided not to date anyone.

After drama school, I started working as an actress and was approached after a theatre show by a photographer who suggested I tried modelling. So I did, and loved it so much that I ended up doing far more modelling than acting.

Then I discovered that there was BDSM on the internet, and started being offered bondage photography bookings. I was very happy, realised I wasn't alone after all, and started having a splendid fun time.

One of the photographers I worked for was Hywel Phillips who ran a beautiful bondage site. Very gradually we became friends, and much later, we fell in love, moved in together and started running the site together too.

This Christmas was our third together in our house, and it was very lovely and peaceful. We opened our presents together, and my last one was from Hywel, a DVD of The Princess Bride which I've loved with a great passion for years and years, partly because I hoped someone would love me properly one day and marry me too (although I also kind of wanted to be held prisoner in a castle, in all honesty). I was very happy that Hywel had remembered how much I liked it, and thought Christmas was generally being a great success.

Then Hywel proposed to me.

And I cried all over him, thought I'd maybe misunderstood, cried more and then remembered I was supposed to say something.

So I said 'yes' and we're going to get married later this year.

And I really am thoroughly happy and grateful that something so lovely could happen. I wish I could go back in time to my worried teenage self and show her this blog post, with the picture below, which Hywel took to celebrate our engagement (he didn't want to be in it, even though I really, really tried). I'd love to explain to teenage-me that there ARE sane people who like playing at BDSM with the people they love, and that you don't have to make a choice between liking BDSM and having conventional romance in your life too. I'd like her to know that being submissive doesn't mean that you can't choose to be with people who'll respect you. And while I'm time-travelling, I'd like to visit the teenage Hywel and reassure him that he'll one day find a girl who thinks bastinado sounds like a good idea.

I know there no magic, happy ever-afters, and I don't expect 2012 to suddenly turn into a year of magical unalloyed joy, but I'm very happy to think that I'll end this year married to a kind, clever, generous man who happens to be a dominant sadist (they seem to actually exist, teenage-me) and I hope there can be lots of romantic happiness for lots of other lovely people this year, kinky or not. If you're reading, I hope one of them will be you :)