Yes, Yes, YES!!

After attending the Butchmann's Experience this summer, I went on a reading bender unlike anything I've done since my first six months in the scene. I began with the two books that are suggested reading for MTTA, which I hope to attend in November, finances permitting.  Early on in My erotic life, I started with, what else? Erotica, specifically English literature. The Pearl. The Oyster. Diary of a Flea. These were a good start and after reading every book I could find repeatedly, I even flirted with going for a Master's degree in English literature, focusing on 19th century erotica.  I even had an idea for a research thesis, something to do with how social outcasts such as deaf-mutes, dwarfs and other freaks are consistently well endowed. But I suspected job opportunities would be scarce and at 21, I certainly had no idea how to explain this idea to the parents.

Eventually I got a job in the bookstore and was assigned to manage the social sciences section, including the sexuality and erotica section. Maybe they intuited I was comfortable with the topic?  I could never get the chain to understand that shelving Erotica right next to Death and Dying was a bad idea.  It might seem like Death and La Petite Mort are closely related, but really, not.  Soon I was completely up to speed on every mainstream erotica and sex self-help book,  I could even spot customers who had come to the store to buy the glossy lipstick red book, put out by a religious publishing house, called something like How To Make Love To A Woman And Make Her Beg For More. I was also reading My way at slow cash register shifts through related literature like men's studies, though our selection there was pretty thin.  It was at this time I discovered the Beauty books, which made a huge impression and by the time I met My first subby male, I was full of ideas and clued in to My desire to penetrate beautiful male bottoms.  Once I reached the big city, I sought out gay bookstores for the male nude photography of  Robert Maplethorpe and later Tom Bianchi.

Slowly, I tapped into femdom books. One of My first was a velo-spiral bound, seemingly self-published The Sexually Dominant Woman: A Workbook for Nervous Beginners. Soon I had read my way into a comprehensive collection. But I kept coming back to the Beauty books.

When I came out into the public scene, I read a number of books on M/s, heavy on protocol contract-writing, for some reason, which was wildly premature. I came away from them with glazed eyes and unable to picture ever wanting, much less using, either significant protocol or a slave contract. I was still getting to know Myself as a top and possibly a Domme, I really had no business dabbling in M/s, but I was with someone who wanted to be collared, so we gave it the old college try. I heard references to "the Old Guard" and "high protocol" but I had picked up the idea there wasn't much in the gay leather literature for Me as a straight, female, not-leather Domme. And from there, I went into books about specific skills, techniques, and types of play. Too bad!  This summer, as I grow into recognizing myself as Master, I finally started reading some of the more classic gay leather literature and damn-Sam, I've been reinventing the wheel this whole time!  What an eye-opener to see problems for which I have lacked language all along -- recent problems that I am actively wrestling with -- described for the first time, accurately, and to find myself reading and saying aloud, "Yes, Yes, YES!!!"