Wednesday, March 30, 2005

A gentleman named Si asked me this interesting question:

"Does your kinky community support skilled people within its ranks? Do you use kinky plumbers, accountants etc. for preference since you know you won’t have to deal with (in your charming phrase) ‘banjo eyes’ if they have to deal with receipts from Kinkfest, or unexpectedly unearth a flogger from beneath the water heater."


Well, I certainly do. Sometimes I do it out of loyalty to "my community" as much as for my own convenience. A car mechanic, for example. I could just as easily go to a vanilla person, but given a otherwise-equal choice, I'd opt for a kinkster, just because, you know – one of us.

And other times it's simply a necessity. My housecleaner really must be kink-friendly, and it helps a lot that my bookkeeper is too. The plumber for the toilet in the dungeon? Gotta be a pervy person. And yes, that's because I don't really want to deal with a weirded-out vanilla contractor. Some BDSM people have no problem "squicking the mundanes", as my friends and I call it. But not only is that often inefficient in terms of getting the proper professional service, I think it's kind of rude.

As a sidebar… I often have innocent newbies assume that I have a ton of slaves who do all my housework and errands and such for me. For free.
To that I say: Hah. I'd have better luck waiting for the Easter Bunny to hop into my kitchen and do the dishes. Sometimes I think having a slave* is something like having a yacht or a private plane. They are lots of fun, and yes, they are sometimes quite convenient. But while they might occasionally save you time in some areas, it will be equaled, and often exceeded, by the time and energy you spend doing the maintenance on them. Because in my experience, slaves are high-maintenance creatures. That's why I don't have a personal (meaning: not a client) slave. I enjoy thrashing people a great deal, and I'll do scenes where I role-play a Mistress/slave relationship for an hour or two. But a 24/7 Mistress/slave relationship – no, that's not for me right now. I just don't have the time.

(*Note: I am using the word "slave" in a very non-specific way, and in this case it includes bottoms, submissives, et cetera.)

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