I don’t have anything serious ready for this week, so I thought I’d just tell you a funny story. Someone brought this up the other day and said I should put it on the blog. Since I don’t believe I’ve ever told the story here, I figured I might as well.
I tend to only talk about my own experiences as a way to give examples of situations, since this blog isn’t really about my personal life. It’s more about helping people learn about the D/s lifestyle and BDSM– and occasionally reminding people that I make my living from my books.
But I do have some fun stories from my time in the kink world and this is one that always makes me laugh when I think about it.
Years ago, I used to go to a club in Chicago called The Leather Rose two or three times a year. It was a decent place. Sadly, it’s closed now. But it had lots of space with two floors and another building in back.
They also had a store, which is pretty common with BDSM clubs, since they help pay the bills.
Most of these clubs are not run for profit. They aren’t fancy. They don’t have designer furniture. They charge membership dues, have fundraisers, and sometimes have an attached store just to keep the doors open.
Aside from that, this place even had some Bed & Bondage style rooms you could rent for the weekend, which was pretty unusual back then. But the store is the important part here.
So, I was looking around the store one night and saw a rack of BDSM magazines. And right there among them was one with my art on the cover—which was always a huge thrill for me.
For those of you who don’t know, I started out as a Fetish illustrator, mostly working for CF Publications. They offered me the job of drawing spankings and obviously I wasn’t going to turn that down. Get paid to do what I loved? Duh.
I had been working for a few of their magazines for a couple of months when the editor, Barbie, told me she loved one of my pieces, but she didn’t have a story to go with it. She’d read some of my ‘for fun’ stories and suggested I might want to write a story to go with the picture and she’d use both.
That was my first published story. After that they purchased both stories and art from me and I ended up with weekly deadlines for them. Eventually, I even worked my way up to running most of the magazines, but that was years later. This was when I was still very new to having people publish my pictures.
But with kink material there weren’t a lot of places to sell them. This was pre-Amazon. Most people ordered them online and got them through the mail. It wasn’t like a mainstream magazine where you could find a copy anywhere.
So the number of times where I actually got to see my work in the wild was rare. Kinematics in NYC had a whole shelf of them, and I still remember the squeal I made when I saw them. They asked me to sign a couple and that was… the most amazing thing. It made my whole year.
But the only other time was in the store at the Leather Rose. It was a copy of Just Us Girls, I believe. I excitedly pointed to it and said “That’s mine! That’s my work!” to a stranger who was next to me, and it turned out to be the owner, Hans. (I think.)
He was delighted. I felt ridiculous and suddenly had a massive wave of imposter syndrome because he immediately asked if I wanted to do an art show there. He even offered to let me stay for the weekend in one of their B&B rental rooms.
When I say I about died on the spot… I babbled something. I’m not sure what. And I never followed up on the art show because honestly, I never felt like I was good enough for something like that.
Do I regret it? Kind of… but I’m a lot more confident about my writing than I ever was about my illustrations.
Anyway, the art show never happened, but he also invited me to bring some prints to hang in the store and sell. And that I could manage because I didn’t have to be there for it. So the next time I came to town, I brought a stack of spanking and bondage art pictures– mostly F/F pieces, and they hung them all over the store, and a few in the club itself.
I never did sell many. And I didn’t have any expectations that I would, because I never felt like my illustrations were great, and even the print quality was low. Now and then I would come in and they’d have some money for me, but it was just a little ego boost to see my art there.
But one night there was a collision of events.
I happened to be in the club, playing. I was in restraints on a St. Andrew’s Cross, naked or pretty close to it. (I may have had a thong on.) And I was being flogged. I was also in a complete daze of endorphins, so everything was a bit fuzzy.
Basically someone asked about a print in the store. And they mentioned I was actually there in the club that night, which they knew because I always checked in to see if any had sold. So, this person bought the print and went off to find me so I could hand sign it.
Well, they found me, as I said, naked(ish) on the cross, with my hands tied over my head. I don’t think they intended to interrupt the scene, but I heard my name mentioned and turned my head to see someone holding one of my prints.
I said something. They said something. I insisted on signing it right then and there. I think maybe I was afraid they’d get tired of waiting and just leave.
So that was how I ended up having one hand uncuffed, so I could give someone my autograph on a spanking print in a BDSM club. I remember being very upset because I was pretty sure I’d accidentally spelled my name wrong.
And I remember them laughing and saying it was fine, just over all amused about everything. And the person who was flogging me was laughing, but probably also a little annoyed because they said something like, “So… are we done, or what?”
We did not stop. My hand got cuffed back into place and the scene continued. I went back into happy endorphin land.
Everything after that is a blank and I remember sort of becoming suddenly aware of what had happened afterward, while I was pulling my clothes on. Just stopping with a, “Wait… did I…” I was assured that yes, I did stop the scene to sign some random stranger’s five-dollar print.
There was more laughter. I was laughing too, but awkwardly. I find it funny now, but at the time it was very Ahhhhh!!!!!
Anyway, that is my naked autograph story. Hope you enjoyed a cringy moment from my past! I console myself with the fact that my handwriting was probably so bad they couldn’t tell it was misspelled anyway.
Musings of a Chaotic Mind 