I have always been kinky, but it wasn't until my ex-Master that I became aware of The Scene. An old friend from school (and the first boy that I ever French kissed), he looked me up in the Spring of 1995 because he felt that I was the only woman he trusted enough to talk with about his kinks who might also be interested in them. I had a wonderful time with him, but quickly started expressing my desire to be dominant.
At that time, I was separated and getting divorced. I was already attending Pagan events, but also started exploring and attending other different alternative lifestyle events. In January 1996, a couple that I had become close to flew me up to Boston for a SciFi con called Arisia, telling me how kinky and fun it would be. I was planning to spend the weekend with them, and took all the leather and toys that I had at that time with me.
However, things didn't quite turn out as planned: She was wasn't feeling well and stayed in the room all weekend, while her boy keep disappearing to go game. Fortunately, she introduced me to another submissive that she knew, and basically loaned him to me for the weekend. That was my first time really being served by a true,
trained service sub, and we had an absolutely wonderful time. While he lived in the Boston area and was still in college at the time, he would fly down to visit and serve me during breaks (pic above left).
Over the next several years, I attended lots of local munches, play parties and classes, as well as national events. I also became part of a local Leather Family-by-Choice, most of whom were furry, kinky, gay men. I had known the Daddy, first online and then in person, since before I was married and had watched him grow up. He and his boy lived nearby, and I would often go over for dinner and spend the evening there with other friends and Family.
I had several local submissives with whom I played and attended events, but it was through my Family-by-Choice, that I met my ex-subpuppy (right). We had a wonderful time when he visited the Family here, but we didn't completely click until my first trip to the SF Bay Area, where he was living then. He attended the second day of a polyamory conference in Oakland with me, and then a certain Leather Daddy there took us to The Power Exchange that night. We never made it back to the conference, but I didn't care! After that, I would fly out to SFO/SJC to visit him, and we would attend events there together, including Folsom Street Fair (multiple times), the Janus 25th Anniversary event, SM Odyssey, etc. My collared submissive lover, he also came here for visits or would meet me in other cities for events. We saw each other in person, spending anywhere from a long weekend to a week together at a time, at least once every three months - sometimes more.
I was interested in becoming a Pro Domme, so took classes in everything that I thought I should know, from Needle Play and Suspension Bondage to How to Give an Enema! (My event pins from that time are shown above.)
However, I quickly found that I absolutely can
not do something, or play with someone, unless I enjoy it, regardless of the money. And, if I do enjoy it, I start getting
FAR too attached!
I did have one client fly in to see me a couple times, but the next thing I knew I was taking him with me to see Pagan friends and introducing him to my Leather Family! He even formally applied to be my next submissive boyfriend later, in early 2001, after my subpuppy and I broke up. (right)
I also took Pro classes with
Sybil Holiday and
Cléo Dubois around early 2003, when I lived in SF, but when it came to actually working in a dungeon there, I once again found that I simply couldn't do it.
I naturally tend toward
D/s relationships with submissive or switch
lovers. This is why I primarily define myself as a Lifestyle Domme and do
not see clients in person.
I have always been out with my real friends about my spirituality and my kinks. Somewhere in the middle of all this, a mostly-vanilla girlfriend of mine told me about something she had done when she was younger to earn some extra money. She trained subs through the mail: Yes, the postal mail!
She put me in touch with her best ex-boy, "D", who was also an ex-lover of hers. I started training him long distance. He also pointed me toward publications, from regional newsletters to
DDI, where I could place ads. In fact, one of the first assignments that I had him do was to send me copies of his favorite publications with Post-It Notes marking the stories, ads and images that caught his eye. He was required to include explanations of what attracted him to them, both for my business purposes and so that I could better get to know him and his kinks. This is still referred to as the "Post-It Note Assignment", but with the growth of the internet, my use of it has gone the way of the dinosaurs.
Other boys would come and go, but "D" was always my best
Mail Service boy. I would send him a written assignment, and he would return proof of the assignment (Polaroid pics, receipts, etc.) with a report and a small gift, which I learned was called a "tribute" or "token" - as in "a token of affection", to thank me for my time. He would also send me small surprises "just because". I absolutely
loved going to my PO Box and finding an envelope there with a sweet note and a few bills, a silk scarf or a pair of earrings inside. That was when I wrote my original Valentine's and St. Patrick's Day assignments, as well as many others, including my first Puppy Play ones.
D's day job involved going from client site to client site, and at one point, he sent me a micro-cassette recorder so that he could record his reports while he was driving and send them to them on tape. He also included extra tapes and pre-addressed stamped envelopes so that I could record his assignments if I found it easier. I remember how surprised he was after he received my first tape. He had thought my friend had just created a new persona and stepped up her game with her new assignments. It was only when he heard my voice that he realized that I was not her! My friend didn't actually give me any of her assignments to use, so I had just started thinking of things that I could easily instruct a boy to do long distance, and he would do them, often with suggestions of how to make them better or extra credit work. I didn't know that what my friend had primarily written before were fantasies which the boys would just imagine and then write back about.
Eventually D had to focus on other things, and I stopped bothering with the ads and occasional responses. I moved, went to grad school, moved again.
Other aspects of life happened and time moved forward. I was in and out of the scene, and had both vanilla and long-term D/s relationships, including my ex-Daddy, the switch-I-would-have-married and the pantyboy (right).
At one point, I decided to start offering assignments on Niteflirt, and even developed
an entire series of new and updated Puppy Play ones while training my European puppy, mutt. I started emailing out my old assignments and developing new ones to send subs that I was meeting online.
I had the idea of turning them into a series of books and was considering self-publishing via Lulu or CreateSpace. I decided on the name "Male Service", because everything that I do is F/m focused, and I loved the pun on "Mail Service", which is really how it all began.
I set up this Male Service blog in December 2009, and started "building my brand" here and on Twitter. In 2010, I committed to updating or developing a holiday assignment for every month, emailing them out to interested subs. A couple months, June and January, fell flat with very little interest. They are more suited to ongoing D/s relationships so I'm considering either reworking them or only including them in the complete book of all 12 assignments.
Speaking of which, while I had plenty of published articles under other names, I still kept getting bogged down in how to put everything together into a series of books, or even just my first book. It all seemed too big and scary, and honestly, I'd often rather spend my free time with my subs than formatting pages.
As ebooks became more and more popular, and Amazon made it more and more easy, I started thinking about publishing them electronically. I soon realized that with ebooks, there was no longer a required minimum number of pages, and that other writers were self-publishing everything from scholarly articles to individual short stories. I decided I would simply publish each assignment separately and then compile them, along with selected assignment reports, later. My first self-published Male Service assignment book was my Valentine's Assignment, which
went live two years ago in January 2012.
Since then, I have published several more, all of which you can find at:
http://www.amazon.com/Mistress-Magick/e/B006WU232K
They are reviewed annually, and updated as needed. Obviously all I need to to do now is get off my duff and publish more of them!
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