I hate the term, “Comedy Nerd”. It is an insipid, bandwagon jumping bullshit phrase that I reject. I immediately assume anyone who calls themselves such knows very little about comedy, and it’s been proven true time and time again in conversation. If you don’t know who Greg Giraldo or Bill Hicks were, I can’t. Also, somehow, it’s become a cool thing like liking comic books (barf) and being super into Korean pop culture (I’m not 12, so no thanks).

Since I’ve been in pretty intense school for the last four years (doctorate if you’ve been under a rock), my interests have been focused elsewhere and so I’m not really up to date on the latest “hot” comics. I was never really interested in those types of people anyway, but I understand there are a lot of legitimately funny people coming up now that I mean to listen to.

That said, I don’t have Netflix, but have been hearing and reading about Dave Chappelle’s new special which is supposed to be a spit in the face of PC culture and the #MeToo movement. You know, movements where marginalized people are trying to speak up and fight back. He presents a well-worn argument about #MeToo going too far, and transpeople being overly sensitive, and also goes so far as to say the Jackson accusers were lying. I don’t know if you saw Leaving Neverland, but all of their supposed chicanery aside– these men are not lying. It never ceases to amaze me how much skepticism is shown to people who come forward regarding rape and incest. Anyhow, Chappelle defends Louis CK too, his friend. I think that some of you reading this will find his retort to the PC movement refreshing, but I am hoping to help you see why that is fucked up.

Do we want to be able to say what we please with out consequence? Yes. This is a free country, right? Yes. Well, sort of. However, when the marginalized and dispossessed come forward and say, this hurt me, or I could get killed going in to the wrong bathroom– as cis gendered people we should listen. And I think that’s what pissed me off so fucking much about Chappelle, is that he is just resting on his laurels talking about marginalized people and not doing his research. He talked to one trans person who called him out, and that’s it. If he had actually made an effort to do some research and reach out to people, I bet his routine would be different. Instead he chose to be defensive because he is no longer at the vanguard of new thinking about cultural difference. I really think that’s what it is. He used to be the guy everyone went to for the subtleties of race and racism, but now he’s on the outside looking in and it makes him uncomfortable. This attitude is indicative of people on the right and the left. I admit I am more inclined to agree with people on the left, as they are generally better educated and willing to listen to marginalized populations, but a huge problem is that neither side will listen to each other. It is a heartbreakingly simple solution because the right and the left both essentially want the same thing– the pursuit of happiness and all that garbage. They just have different ways of going about it. Instead, people are happy to spew rhetoric at each other and point fingers. Which is where we are today.

Getting back– the fact that Chappelle defends Louis CK, Aziz Ansari, R. Kelly, and Michael Jackson is absurd and possibly a hack attempt at being a shock comedian. But not a shock comedian for the sake of shocking, but simply an angry old out of touch guy shock comedian. Of course the #MeToo movement slashed and burned the careers of a few men, but they are millionaires (like Chappelle), so excuse me if I am holding the smallest fucking violin in the world that they are going to have trouble with their careers from here on in.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a comedy loving jerk, I adored Louis CK. I adored Chappelle. I enjoyed listening to MJ. Trapped In The Closet (R. Kelly) gave me hours of bewildered hipster joy. But now, perhaps because I’m a decent person? I am just disinterested. Not hateful, not doing it out of spite, but just disappointed and a bit bored. If I do get the urge to listen to MJ or Chappelle or Louis again, I will donate a dollar or two to the #MeToo movement or an organization that helps victims of sexual abuse or gender-based violence. I think that’s a good compromise.

July 17th, 2019

I haven’t posted in a long time, and for that I truly apologize (well, not really).  I haven’t been in session for a long time either, not at the rate I was formally at least, because I was busy getting my doctorate.  Yes, it’s true.  Unfortunately, not in Love, but something far less interesting (but far more useful than love, ha ha).  I was informed a few days ago that my diploma is in the mail, so it’s official (although I will need it in my hand in order to believe it).  For those who know me, you know it has been a long and arduous road, as it should be.  Getting an advanced degree shouldn’t be a walk in the park.  God, that is such a trite expression, but it fits.  

Right now, I have some free time whether it is for sessions, dinner, or shooting the shit.  I don’t imagine this little break will last for long, so schedule before the summer is out.  For the lazy:  mistressveronicanyc@gmail.com  

Be well and talk soon!

xoxo.

Yes, it is indeed a very Merry Kwanza for you, as I am gifting you photos!  If you’ve been to my Twitter page you’ve already seen them, but they are officially in my Gallery and also here for your viewing pleasure:

Enjoy your holiday!

I got on Niteflirt today for the first time in a long while.  Suffice to say, I spoke with a few people and was struck by the sheer depth of secrecy and shame surrounding their predilections.  It made me think of my new situation being in school, and even though BDSM and fetish has been removed from the DSM V, if I told anyone what I did for a living for ten years, they would flip their tops.  And not in the sexy way. Needless to say, I am open about being a kinky person, and have had to qualify that on a few occasions. People don’t know how to place that either, but I really don’t give a shit.

For years I and my colleagues have had discussions (at domme-only parties!  there were pillows and leather and high heels– and you missed it!) about how the BDSM community is about where the LGBTQ movement was in the 90’s.  It’s exploited in the media as a joke or a fantasy for chubby housewives, but if anyone talks about it in their personal lives, you can practically hear the needle screeching off the record. That is not true for everyone, but it seems to be the majority.

This is why I think it is time to take a page from the LGBTQ movement and create our own parade.  We need to have visibility, and we need to have a voice.  Not the media speaking for us, not psychiatrists attempting to deconstruct our desires– just us.  If that sounds cheesy, fine.  But there are way more of us out there than people realize, and it needs to be shown.

Carefully stepping from the soap box.  Now for something completely different…

New York, I goddamned miss you so goddamned much.  So like a lover I am trying to win back, here are a bunch of songs that remind me of you.   No Sinatra, sorry.

xoxo.

This is a phrase that people love to use to disparage women who they feel are troubled or don’t act as they should in certain situations, especially those involving heterosexual relations.  It is also used to indicate that a woman is “good” at sex, re: all the crazy ones are, right?  

So few of us are given the privilege of having a good dad, let alone *two* good parents, so I find this dismissive phrase problematic.  If someone had a terrible parent, why do we not sympathize with them? Why do people choose derision in place of empathy?

My dad was a cop, so was never around when I was a kid.  When he was around, he screamed at us mostly.  There were good times.  He was not an alcoholic.  He did not have an addiction.  But he was in an abusive job and had suffered (I learned later) physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as a child.  That he managed to only scream at us is nothing short of a miracle.

Hence, as a child, I was in a relationship with a monster.  I loved him dearly, affectionately– but then he would scream and terrify me.  As a teenager, any affection I had for him died and my fear turned into anger.  I avoided him at all costs.  But by then the tendency toward love/fear, love/hate, or shall we say- extremes(?) in relationships was deeply ingrained.  Now he’s old, and I can see him with affection again. He is a terrifically flawed, annoying bastard.  But he’s my dad.

I’m not talking about this because I want sympathy or anything.  I just want people to realize that the next time they dismissively say about a woman– “oh, daddy issues”– that there might be a good reason. That the ability to hold conflicting feelings of hate, fear, and love for one person is something that is learned and profoundly confusing to a young child.  And something that a lot of adults have to grapple with.

More recently, I see having Daddy Issues as a badge of pride.  Yeah, I’m fucking great in bed.  Fuck yeah, I’m pretty crazy.

But who the fuck isn’t?

Keeping on the shitty AWESOME 80’s movie soundtrack song theme, another favorite is Joe Esposito’s, “You’re The Best, Around”.   Focus, power, deliver, balance, make good fight.  It’s on repeat whenever I go into a tournament…  And pretty much in my head nonstop.  Also, Daniel gets KICKED IN THE FACE, gets right back up and delivers a side kick right to the ribs.  Enjoy:

There are a lot of good songs on The Karate Kid soundtrack, but I will show some restraint and save my Karate Kid post for another day. This is technically a song from a soundtrack, although not the exact version…  No disrespect to the late great Whitney Houston, but this version of I Will Always Love You was recorded right after Dolly wrote it, so holds a particular poignancy.  That, and Dolly is magic.  (If you’re confused, the song was the hit from The Bodyguard soundtrack)

Queen came out with this song rather late in their career right before they found out Freddie was sick. Along with his groundbreaking performance at Live Aid, it helped to resurrect their careers in America after they were banned from MTV due to a video they made in which all of them wore women’s clothing (I Want To Break Free).  In Britain, everyone could tell that it was a sly send-up of a popular television show, however, Americans, being the myopic literal-minded dolts that we are, were offended. I haven’t seen Iron Eagle since I was like seven, but this song never gets old (also, it’s got balls):

Peter was blonde and my age and had an older brother who was a bruiser.  We rode our bikes through sun showers and stomped through pine needles at sunset and played with Transformer action figures in his room when it was too hot outside.  We never had the audacity to kiss, but it didn’t matter as we were 10.

One time, I remember his mother called him in from outside.  He did not come back out.  She’d punished him with a belt. He had to lean himself over the living room couch with his brother next to him, and they both took the beatings.  That time it was especially brutal and also he was grounded for a week.  He could not come to the door, he could not go outside.

I needed to know exactly what happened and why…   The ritual of it was what I wanted to extract. How was this time different than the others?  How was it more harsh? How painful was it, exactly?  I played with the idea of asking to see his bruises but didn’t dare.  The complete and utter cruelty! How could it happen?  I obsessed over it, thinking at the time it was because he was my friend and I was concerned.

I now know of course that I was titillated.

I don’t know what he did to warrant such a beating and don’t remember his last name.  I know she was a single mother and a nurse, with two unruly boys on the brink of serious teenage-hood.  It was one summer and I never saw him again because they moved away.

It is strange to write about someone you didn’t know.  Especially someone who you probably know people who he knew, or to admire someone who is dead or someone who is dead and relatively obscure.  It feels like someone else should be writing this, but I don’t think anyone IS writing about it, and in the wake of all this 50 Shades FUCK ALL bullshit, Bob Flanagan should be remembered. Someone who took his body to extremes, cut his teeth on the edges of BDSM, elevated it to an art form, and did it twenty years ago.  This, when hardly anyone other than Ava Taurel (someone I’ve also written about) was coming out of the closet. Flanagan prostrated himself in public without a second thought about what it meant politically or whether it was provocative.  He was just doing what he did, like any great artist.

He was anomalous not only for being the quintessential “supermasochist”, but doing it before the age of the internet.  Born with a disease called cystic fibrosis, his childhood was spent being prodded and probed, tied to his bed, and even sealed in a plastic bag.  Flanagan, like a lot of masochists, found a coping mechanism through touching his penis to offset the trauma. (Before we go pathologizing too much, let me say that Bob admitted that his kinks were probably triggered by these experiences, but not necessarily indicative that formative experiences are what makes all kinky people kinky.  It was simply his experience.)  Cystic fibrosis is a disease in which the body does not have a proper mechanism for dispelling mucous, so it collects in the person’s lungs.  Most people die when they are in their early 20’s or 30’s, but Flanagan held on until he was 43.  One of the longest survivors of the disease, he attributed it partly to the endurance he acquired through practicing BDSM.

Someone was kind enough to send me a copy of the documentary, SICK, about his life and art, and I have since read a few of his books.  I highly recommend that documentary, and a short-lived magazine by the name of ReSearch Volume I, which features a lengthy set of interviews with him over a period of a few months. He also wrote The Pain Journal (in which he documents the last stages of his disease up until his last few days), and the Fuck Journal, which recounts every sexual encounter he had with his long time mistress, Sheree Rose.

It is not only admirable that he had the discipline to nail his scrotum to a board or hang himself upside down as a symbolic sort of inverted crucifixion, but that he knew exactly what he was doing and why.  Without being too precious about his “art”, he could articulate the reasons and the drive.

From ReSearch:

On the inherent strength in submission:

Bob (referring to a kinky event):  “They put me in stocks and caned me and spanked me and it was pretty intense– it went on for awhile.  Afterwards, there were guys sitting around naked drinking beer, and one of them said [bass voice], ‘Well, he’s got more balls than I do!’ So there’s a certain cockiness to this– right, I do have more balls than you! There’s a certain pride in the fact that you have the guts to live out your fantasies.  In this situation I didn’t plan it, I just had to think fast and cooperate.”

On SM and the idea that it is related to childhood abuse:

“I’ve heard that from people into SM, and I’ve also heard that from people who are completely turned off to SM because they were abused as children.  People process information and experiences differently; someone who’s imprinted with nylons and bras when they’re a kid may want to dress up in those after they grow up.  People have all sorts of strange imprinting– I think the bondage aspect of my situation (being a prisoner to other forces) was sexualized so I could survive it.  In order not to be terrified by it, I sexualized it…  

Maybe role-playing as a slave is just a milder, healthier form of having multiple personalities to escape difficulty.  Saying this, I hear a million voices in my head of people who swear that nothing happened in their childhood; they just, in their adult life, heard about this and got involved, like Sheree– she heard about this scene and it “clicked” in a certain part of her.  She can’t rationalize or explain it by any kind of imprinting.  For me it’s much deeper.”

On religion and pain:

“In Catholicism, torture was considered something beautiful and spiritual:  something to rise above and change your life.  And as kids those influences stuck with us…  we never shirked from torture or pain because of the church.  So it’s not a reaction against, it’s a reaction to.  The Catholics teach the Stations of the Cross, where whipping and scourges ending up in crucifixion– death by torture. Jesus always has this great smile on his face and this expression of release when it’s all over.”

There is also a small interview with Sheree Rose, whom they asked about Bob’s art and its relevance to contemporary society:

“Linda Kaufman…  wrote a brilliant piece about Bob’s work– the idea being that violence is part of the human condition, and that everybody gets off on violence in one way or another.  SM has been disparaged and shunted aside as something horrible, but it is a very positive way of channeling those violent impulses… I don’t know how SM could evolve toward being socially accepted, but there has to be a way to deal with this violence which is now out of control.”

If you are someone who thinks about BDSM as much as I do, none of these statements are especially revelatory, however, they are when you think of them in the context of their time.  Flanagan is in a sense a product of his generation in that not all kink, but masochism in particular, is probably the result of a combination of a genetic misfiring of pain and pleasure receptors coupled with a fair amount of physical pain endured during childhood.  I know I said I didn’t want to pathologize, but being a sexual sadist, one of my fears is that masochism as an integral part of one’s sexuality (and not just something someone reluctantly agrees to) will become extinct.  No one beats their kids anymore!  I mean, what the FUCK?  Ha ha, just kidding.  Kind of.  No really, I don’t condone beating kids.  Unless it becomes socially acceptable again.  No, no, just kidding.

In SICK, they include a few songs Bob wrote regarding the intersection of his predilections and his illness and also a bit about being a SAM (smart-assed masochist) which are hilarious, and also a poem he wrote, called, “Why?”  I’ve included all of them below because they are just so entertaining and, well, true.  Also, although he liked to write songs, they were not considered his fine art.  You have to go to The New Museum website to see that stuff.

Tee hee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVz4lTQF2bg

xoxo.

V

Today I got an inquiry from a novice, which reminded me that even though someone has a fetish that makes them a dangerous fucking idiot, perhaps they are not fully aware they are being a dangerous fucking idiot.  Hence, this exchange:

From “D” (Name has been changed to protect the stupid):

Dear Mistress Veronica,

I wanted to know your availability for a scissor session where you ignore tap outs, and try to make me pass out in them. A lot of women have tried, and they have failed, and I find that kind of session enjoyable, I hope you do as well. I encourage you to please go after the arteries. 😛

Sincerely,
D

Isn’t it funny he described the women as having “failed”?  Ha ha!  Idiot.  My response:

Hi D,

Your fetish is very dangerous, and frankly, I do not blame the women you sessioned with who “failed”.  There is no way of knowing whether someone is passed out or in fact really in need of medical assistance, hence, no sane Domme will want that issue on their conscience (or their dungeon floor).  I suggest you try to satisfy yourself in the lifestyle community and find someone who really cares about you and is willing to go to that extreme.  

Since you are a beginner, it is possible that you are experiencing “sub drop” after your sessions, which is not a function of how well it went, but a cognitive dissonance from what you are imagining your “perfect” session to be and what is actually really consensually available from another person who is not a sociopath.

V

 P.S. By “lifestyle community” I mean find an experienced Domme by way of The Eulenspiegel Society or another organization which promotes RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) or SSC (Safe, Sane, Consensual) play.

“The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus.

Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”

-Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice)

(Here is the Stevie version which I actually think is better. Stevie transitioning out of being Little Stevie.)

Speaking of Stevie, and it is easy to get me started, here is a wonderful, wonderful live performance on a German Bandstand-y type of show from the 70’s called Musikladen (also called Beat Club?).  He is fully in control of the band, seamlessly guiding them in and through and around his songs.  My favorite part of the set is when he takes it down and just bursts into a song he wrote for Roberta Flack.  Fast forward to 14:19 (I’ve never been able to find a version of it anywhere but on Youtube). Of course I recommend that you watch the entire thing, as it is super groovy, holmes.

Going back to The Stones, another band who is credited as sounding like them but who never got ANY airplay are The Flamin Groovies.  They went through a few hardships and the band members couldn’t really agree on a sound (or much else), which may have detracted from their success. Nonetheless, they are still touring and still sound fucking great.  The Stones even admit that their version of Jumpin Jack Flash is superior.  Won over yet?  No?  Listen (make sure you have it turned up to eleven).  You can find their live album Slow Death, on Spotify, which has their version of Jumpin Jack Flash.

Keeping in the same time period, everyone knows Ike and Tina, but THIS.  I wish there was a live version somewhere.

Oh, so you’ve heard everything by Otis Redding?  Really?  Okay…

Anyone who’s sessioned with me knows I love to play Prince.  I found this and had to put it here because he changed the lyrics of the girl asking him whether he’s gay from, “No, are you?!” to “No, is YO MOMMA?!?”

I put this on Twitter the other day, but I’m putting it here too, because it’s fucking great.  And come on, it’s Soul Train.

I think UFO eventually turned into some Tangerine Dream kind of prog rock band, but in the early 70’s, they fucking shredded.  Even shirtless.  And yes I said shredded.

I find The Who to be especially polarizing.  Personally, I don’t care for them, but before they reincarnated themselves as The Who(fucking cares) they were The High Numbers- a little mod band who sang a lot of covers of blues numbers in people’s basements.  Also, they were awesome. Check it:

Whenever I talk to someone about this band they’re like, oh no, you mean The Faces– with Rod Stewart– and I’m like, NO, the Small Faces.  They eventually turned into The Faces though.  The video is edited weird, but you get the idea.

Finally, Esquerita taught Little Richard to play piano and if you listen to it, a few other things. Allegedly they were lovers for a time and he was also drag queen.  Hands down, one of the most interesting rock personalities that ever existed.  This is a good one:

xoxox.