A Dubrovnik whore as a metaphor for Balkan politics 1

Posted on July 24, 2014 by jaime

I was in Sarajevo on the 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand. It’s a disconcerting experience, going past rakija bars at 8 in the morning, and listening to fat men in in their forties, in faded cammo gear, croaking out nationalist songs. That’s because you know that when they were singing those songs just 20 years ago, they were raping and torturing women and murdering men they’d put in cages so they couldn’t fight.

I spent much of the night talking with a woman about what it was like being a little girl in Sarajevo, with Serbs lobbing mortars at you and pouring sniper fire onto your school, when you’re five years old. Apparently it’s not scary at the time. It’s only when you’ve finished running, and you’re safely behind stone or out of range, that you start to feel the fear.

Kids shouldn’t know that sort of thing about fear. No-one should. But she told me this without any anger, which is one of the more amazing things about humanity.

Anyway, the next night I was in Dubrovnik, in Croatia. A little after midnight I was on the terrace bar at the Hotel Imperial, looking down over the Adriatic and the old city. The old city of Dubrovnik is a walled Medieval town (see my picture to the left of this text). It’s been very skilfully restored after the Serbs – again – pounded it with shelling for three years.

There was a working girl there, in her mid-twenties, pretty and mostly well dressed. The way her skirt didn’t come down far enough to cover her stocking tops was part of her badge of office, as was her bag, and the walk. She was extremely good-looking, and by local standards I’m sure her rates were high.

I’m not a potential customer for sex workers, but not because I disapprove of selling sex. I disapprove of the mistreatment of sex workers, which happens most and worst in countries where prostitution is illegal. But in countries where prostitution is legal, and working girls and boys can organise, buy or rent their own premises, and hire their own security, and don’t have to pay off the police and organised crime, I don’t have any ethical objection. It’s about decent working conditions.

But I can’t imagine having sex with someone who doesn’t know me, and I have no reason to think she particularly, let alone passionately, wants to have sex with me. The idea of a woman putting up with sex with me is completely cock-crinkling. If she’d just as soon not be there then I’d just as soon not be there either, no matter how pretty she might be.

Anyway, I’ll tell the rest of this story tomorrow.

Nailed it for the cameras

Posted on July 22, 2014 by jaime

I read in Fortean Times (“so it must be true”) that a few years back a group of those Philippine Christian worshippers who have themselves nailed to crosses at Easter time were pleased, at first, to see that they’d been joined by a young Japanese man.

Crucifixion season in the Phillippines. More painful than Civil War re-enactments?

Crucifixion season in the Phillippines. As painful as Civil War re-enactments?

He, like them, was dressed in a loincloth, and he had real nine-inch nails driven through his hands and feet to keep him up there. So they thought he was a Japanese Christian, and he, like them, was there to share an experience with the late Jesus, and thereby acquire some of his holiness.

They wondered a bit, though, about the make-up and the film crew. And they weren’t pleased at all when they discovered that he was a Japanese bondage film star, and he was shooting a porno.

Every action that they took, he took too. The only difference between them was the narrative inside their heads about the meaning of they were doing.

It’s a parable.

The scourge of the Hapsburgs

Posted on July 2, 2014 by jaime

Here’s the collection of the whips that Katherine Anna of Austria used on herself. She was a minor member of Austria’s royal family who lived in the 1600’s. Presumably she sat around someone’s palace doing needlework and whipping herself until she was married off to a minor prince somewhere. I haven’t been able to find out much about her: she didn’t trouble history, much.

Her collection of scourges, for whipping herself when she felt she was a bad girl, is kept in the Schatzkammer, or Imperial Treasury, in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

It’s not a very good photo, because the whips were behind glass in a darkened room, but I hope you can see enough to note that her whips were quite lovingly made. They have decorations, but they also have metal tips. Any of them would have hurt, and you’d have to be careful not to draw blood. I doubt if she was careful.

This is, I guess, one of the benefits of religion: it licences extreme states of consciousness and sensuality, while providing spiritual rhetoric as a framework. Katherine Anna is likely to have been “protected” from knowledge about sexual feelings in women, and at the same time told that women are the most licentious of all creatures, who have to keep their sexual urges firmly curbed.

Being a good and faithful believer, she’d reach for the scourges when her thoughts became troubled. Perhaps she thought about a servant in tight breeches, and the curve of his buttock and upper thigh. In any case, the scourge hurt for the first few lashes, as she swung it over her own shoulder to cut into her bare back. Then endorphins kicked in to cover the pain.

She can feel her mind ease, as the pain starts to recede and pleasurable feelings replace the pain. She is presumably staring up at a three-quarter likeness of a near-naked man, bound with nails to a post with a cross-bar. She looks into his wooden or marble eyes, and sometimes at the muscles of his belly and thighs. He seems to stare back at her, sharing her pain. She has partially bared her body for him, so that she can reach her bare back to apply the whip. She hardly dares wonder if he likes what he sees.

And then she feels a racking moment of great joy: her troubled thoughts, her pain, everything, recedes for a few seconds while her body shakes. Oddly, after that moment of sweet, spiritual reward, she feels no further sexual desire, for a while.

She puts the scourges away. She’ll need them again, soon enough.

Happily whipping Jesus

Posted on June 30, 2014 by jaime

This is a marble relief of the scourging of Jesus, made in the 17th century. It’s a photo I took in the Vienna Schatzkammer, or Imperial Treasury, in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

What’s interesting about it is the erotic depiction of Jesus, lying on his back, with his hands tied, and a slightly floaty, dreamy expression on his face while the man on the right whips him.

The spectator on the left is clearly enjoying the show. That seems to be an erection poking his robes up, and his hand hovers near his cock.

All four men in this image have happy expressions. The face of the man with the whip shows slightly ludicrous glee. I guess I’ve looked a bit like that too, when the flogging is proceeding well and the girl is in sub-space and all’s right with the world.

It’s interesting because it shows awareness of bdsm on the part of the anonymous artist. I’d have thought it was an anti-bdsm image, showing that men who respond sexually to causing pain are wicked, if it wasn’t that the face of the Jesus suggests that he’s in a blissful state himself.

There are medieval images of the scourging of Jesus that show that the men doing the whipping have erections, but those are less ambiguous in their condemnation of the minority sexual taste. In those images the guys with whips are depicted as barely human, almost demonic, while the Jesus figure is depicted with flecks of blood on his body and his face contorted in agony. In this one, they all seem to be happy participants, like the guys in the Spanner Case.

It’s also interesting, like some of the descriptions of religious flagellation in classical Greek and Latin texts, for showing the ways in which religion and bdsm can, er, bleed into each other. Both approve of extreme states of consciousness, and valorise willing subjection to physical pain, but religion provides a non-sexual framework that people can use to explain what they, or their saintly martyrs, are experiencing. Without talking about sexual pleasure.

Finally, it’s interesting that this image is far more “blasphemous” than anything like Andre Serrano’s Piss Christ, and yet it was accepted in its time as a sacred image.

An note on Piss Christ

I think Piss Christ is a beautiful image, which is different from it being a great work of art. A photo of Amanda Seyfried naked is likely to be beautiful too, but that doesn’t mean the photographer is a great artist.

However, it seems to me to be strongly pro-Christ in its message: that Christ, immersed in the human, is still radiant.

It isn’t blasphemous. As a non-believer with some active dislike for Christianity and Islam, in particular (also communism and fascism, for similar reasons), I like blasphemous art and wish there was more of it. And Piss Christ isn’t it.

But Christian art can be very moving as art even though the “message” doesn’t move me. I don’t let my dislike of Christianity as a worldview get in the way of admiring and responding to the St Matthew Passion, or the altarpieces of Tilman Riemanschneider.

Gams of Brixton 2

Posted on June 12, 2014 by jaime

Anyway, before I’d gone into the Brixton Electric, where the Public Enemy gig was, I’d bought a cocoanut drink from a stall. I’d held up the girl who worked the stall because I can’t figure out British coins. The size of the coin has no connection with its value, and they don’t always have numbers on them to tell you what they’re worth.

So I’d been a bit flustered and embarrassed because I was being slow while she was busy. I explained that I couldn’t sort the UK coins out at all, and finally just held out a palmful of shrapnel and let her pick out the ones that she liked.

But when I was in the Electric Brixton, when the lights came up again while Public Enemy’s crew set up, I felt someone poking me from behind. I turned around and it was the girl from the stall, still laughing at me. She said, “‘Ello, you”, in the South London voice.

Her face was shiny-black, her lips were plush and plump and the colour of ripe aubergine (egg-plant, to some people). And because she was laughing, her tongue and throat were shockingly pink, and her teeth blinding white.

I said, “ye gods, hello!” Because I try not to swear when I’m talking to women, until they’ve said fucking, or fuck’s sake or at least bloody, first. “Cold-drink-selling stall girl! Um, unless that’s not your name..? I’m Jaime. Hey, it’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Mollie-o. Hey, Jaime. I didn’t pick you for a Public Enemy fan.”

I looked around. There weren’t many white guys there, come to that. “Well, I’m in Brixton, Public Enemy are in Brixton. I just thought, what can I do? It was meant to be.”

Mollie-o laughed again. She was bouncing. She was wearing a low-cut top, like of lot of Brixton girls. Her breasts were about 35 centimetres from my eyes. They looked firm, dark, warm, and other good things. They wouldn’t keep still.

“You’re being stalked by Public Enemy, eh? Oh la, I should be so lucky.”

“I’m being stalked by Brixton drink-sellers. Believe me, that’s better.”

“Hey, Jaime, you mind if I smoke?”

I did mind, a bit. But I said what a man says when he’s talking to a girl who isn’t a submissive but who is prettier than ciggies are foul. So she lit up. “I couldn’t get over you holding out that handful of change,” she said. “I could have paid for my ticket out of that.”

“Ah, but you wouldn’t have done that. I could tell.”

“Oh, I’m a bad girl, me.” It means something different when a girl who isn’t a submissive says it, but it can’t help but focus my attention.

“Bad girls are the best kind, Mollie-o.”

“Ah la, I am the best kind.” She leaned forward. Her breasts were closer to my nose.

And then I remembered a girl back at home. I’d made a promise that I was going to keep my willie out of the girls I met, until I got back to her. So I didn’t say, “you’re clearly the best,” and put my hand on her side, so that her breast pressed against the inside of my wrist, and pull her in for a kiss.

Nor, to take things in a different direction, did I say, “I know a way of turning bad girls into good girls.”

Instead I only said, “Oh, you sure are.”

Mollie-o smiled, with brilliant teeth. “I love your accent. It’s … your voice is adorable.”

I said, “your voice is as cute as puppies.” The puppies came to mind because I wasn’t really thinking about her voice. Her breasts were irresistibly cute, they had a black circle at the tips – though I assumed that Mollio’s nipples wouldn’t actually be cold and wet. And above all, they wouldn’t keep still. “So are you.”

Mollie-o smiled and waited. I wanted to kiss her. It wouldn’t have been hard. I said, “Oh, you are a bad girl. But I’m going to have to go. It’s been lovely to meet you.”

Fortunately Mollie-o knew her value. It was my loss. “Hey, lovely to meet you too, Jaime. You have a good night.”

So there you are. I came to that town while I was spoken for. But I love Brixton.

Gams of Brixton

Posted on June 11, 2014 by jaime

I was at a Public Enemy gig in Brixton a few nights ago.

I’ve been staying with friends in Herne Hill, a town in Sarth Lonnin. Brixton’s the last stop on the Underground rail system on the way home, and I just fell in love with the place.

Brixton used to be famous for race riots, or inter-community tensions as we ex-parole officers say, as well as crime, hard stares and so on. But now the place is wonderful. It’s bursting with life. There’s lots of music being played on the street, also drumming if you count that as something different from music.

And pretty black girls walking three abreast down the street singing in harmony, not because it’s part of a show but because it’s a nice day and they feel like it.

And a guy who offers services like making people fall in love with you, or making people come to harm, or telling your fortune and curing all your diseases is standing outside the station handing out his business card, because this is, after all, the modern world.

Anyway, Public Enemy played the local hall, and I went along.

I gotta go now. I’ll tell what happened later.

Better to have loved and lost

Posted on April 17, 2014 by jaime

People say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I guess it’s true.

And I know that it’s an honour that Lican should think I’m the person who should teach her new dom how to manage and guide her.

But there’s loss, too. It means Lican will never again fly a thousand miles to see the local sights, I suppose, but mainly to get her ass smacked and fucked. I know that Lican and I were never a real possibility. We live far too far apart. My Spanish and her English were never good enough to let us truly relax together, except when we were doing sex.

Still and all and all, I can be philosophical about it, but it’s loss. I seem to have lost a lot, just a bit too much, lately. That’s probably about enough self-pity, for today. And the thing from yesterday, about the excellence of sex and love: that’s still true.

Light work

Posted on April 14, 2014 by jaime

I have a guest from Argentina. Her name is Lican, and I’ve mentioned her before. We had an adventure together, a couple of years ago now. I was hoping her friend Angelica would be coming too, but not this time.

I never did tell her story very effectively, but a lot of it can’t be told at all. So I’ll tell it later, but I’ll have to fictionalise it a lot more than I did with what I wrote while it was actually happening.

Anyway, this means I’ll be spending the next two days with her, so blogging will be light.

Bondage in the Ice Age: BSDM 20,000 BCE!

Posted on March 31, 2014 by jaime

About twenty-two thousand years ago a tribe of humans crunched across white grass in a frozen landscape that’s now called Russia. Somewhere near the Don river valley they left behind two little sculptures. That’s how we know that these people, whoever they were, passed that way. It’s also how we know something surprising about their sexual imagination.

Kostenski Venus figurine, with her wrists bound: 20,000 BCE

These two sculptures, each one about the size of your hand, are of women. Like other Paleolithic “Venus figures”, the women are naked, or nearly naked, with exaggerated sexual features: their breasts hang hugely, like great sacks of grain, and their bellies swell, pregnant and vastly fat, like a ship’s sails.

What’s unusual about them is that one of the two women is shown with her wrists cuffed and tied, while the other woman is shown wearing a sort of harness that both restricts her movements and emphasises her breasts. That’s all they are depicted as wearing, although these images were created in the middle of an Ice Age. These two little sculptures seem to be the oldest known bondage erotica.

That tribe moved on, their destination and fate unknown. Since their day humans have done and built a lot of things, but some things don’t change. For one thing, it can’t be said that Russia’s improved much.

For another, it’s still true that whenever a new medium appears, from carving rocks to 3D imaging, one of the first things people will do is use it to make sexual images and tell sexual stories. And shortly after the first nudes are produced, someone else will come along and use the new medium for more specific sexual desires.

So the cultural history of what people now mostly call “bdsm” began about 21,000 years ago.

Constanze Mozart: Mozart wrote to her, promising her a "thorough spanking on her dear little, kissable arse", when he got home. Di he deliver? The look in her eye says yes.

Constanze Mozart: Mozart wrote to her, promising her a “thorough spanking on your dear little, kissable arse”, when he got home. Did he deliver? The look in her eye says yes.

People who are interested in bdsm have built up a quite impressive pile of art-works and artefacts. There are bdsm references in Mozart’s operas, Christopher Marlowe’s plays, and Mapplethorpe’s photos, just to skim the Ms for a second.

As a Mortimer, I’m quite proud of my sculpture, “Caning Bench No 1, with Comfort Saddle and Hooks for attaching Cuffs”. If some archeologist finds it 21,000 years from now, I hope he or she puts it to good use.

But it’s odd that we – we people who do bdsm – have failed to celebrate our novelists, and our poets and painters and composers, and so on.

I’ll be doing to some of that celebration over the coming months.

Sweet dreams #7: How did you know?

Posted on September 30, 2013 by jaime

Her boyfriend turned up about then. He was in love with the world too, but not enough to want to hug me. He looked at me. He was twenty too.

He gave me a quizzical smile. He thought I was probably okay, but I was a complete stranger he’d first met with an armful of his girlfriend. Even young men in love and in love with the world are unlikely to be sure of that stranger.

I sort of disengaged his girl, gently and with compliments, and she headed back to him. I said, “It’s beautiful here. Have a great night, you two.”

“It is a very beautiful night. Where are you from?”

I told him, and said, “Take care. Take care of her. Eccies are great, aren’t they?”

The girl looked at me, open-mouthed. “How did you know I was on eccy?”

[The end. Back to the Probation Officer’s Tale tomorrow.]

Jerusalem Mortimer: Between the Lines

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