Karl

Mistress Hadid, many thanks for your kind words! BlindGoat, in further reflecting on my own first time, I remembered something else -- the factor that finally prompted me to make the call. I had been going back and forth in my mind about whether to do it. After a long period of dithering, I finally decided that doing one session, as an experiment, couldn't possibly be worse than continued dithering. Based on your post, I'm guessing that you're in a similar situation. Your first post here was in 2018. You'll soon complete your fifth year of agonizing about a possible Fortress session. This indecision is obviously a source of unhappiness to you (as it was to me). So what you're doing now isn't working for you. If you visit the Fortress and decide that it's not your thing, you'll still be better off, because at least you'll know.

I agree, nothing to have shame about... but BlindGoat grew up in a society that thinks otherwise, and he can't completely escape that conditioning. BlindGoat, many of us subs have this problem. As a result, responsible BDSM practitioners understand the need for confidentiality. You can be completely confident that you won't be embarrassed by any disclosure of your fetish to anyone outside the Fortress. The Puritanical critics, telling you that you should be embarrassed, are in your own head. Tell them to get lost. For your session, you'll be in a room with a Mistress. It will be just the two of you there. Whatever the two of you enjoy is fine, regardless of what those other busybodies might say. You have a right to explore your own enjoyment. I was where you are. After years of jerking off to BDSM fantasies, I moved to New York. It took me a while to take advantage of my new reality: Never mind fantasy, there were real live women within a few miles of me who were ready, willing and able to make this a reality. At first, actually doing it just seemed inconceivable. Then I kept losing my nerve, as you describe. When I finally booked a session, I was a bundle of nerves. The good news that, within ten minutes after kneeling before her, I realized that waiting so long had been a mistake. I hope you have the same experience!

I have a suggestion for a first-timer, based on my own experience: Start a diary. After the session, write down (paper or keyboard) the basics -- Mistress name(s), session date and location, and a summary of what happened (including how you felt afterward). The summary might be a sentence or a full-fledged session review. Continue for every subsequent session. As you left the Fortress, you probably thought that you would always remember such an impactful event. It's true that a first session is memorable; I still remember my first session very vividly. Some that are more recent, however, have gotten a little blurry. I really wish I had kept the kind of record I suggest. My first session was pre-Internet. These days, you could also download a photo of each Mistress. I hope you had fun!

My earliest hint was a dream. I had probably just gone through puberty. In the dream, a beautiful woman was pissing on me while she laughingly said to me, “And you like it!” What really surprised me (when awake) was that, in the dream, I *had* liked it. In the dream I felt embarrassment about being pissed on, embarrassment about enjoying it, and (most of all) embarrassment that she knew I was enjoying it. Awake, I was mainly surprised: Where did THAT come from? I don’t think I had yet seen any BDSM porn, and certainly none with golden. I had no idea why being pissed on – objectively, a very degrading thing -- had been so enjoyable to my dreaming self. I was even more confused about why, despite my lingering embarrassment, I was remembering the dream with pleasure instead of horror or disgust. In retrospect, I remember one other thing, from a few years earlier. It didn’t seem like a hint at the time. Like most Boomer kids, I didn’t get good sex education. My fantasy was that, in our class, there would be a session for everyone of one sex, in which one classmate of the opposite sex would serve as the instructional model. The model would be naked, lying in a box, with shielding from the neck up so no one would know who it was. The teacher would explain anatomical details by pointing them out. I was curious (and ill-informed) about the girls, but what I really dwelt on, in this fantasy, was my being the model. I’d be lying there, naked, exposed to all the girls, for their edification and enjoyment. To myself, I rationalized this plan as being a good way for everyone, boys and girls, to gain valuable knowledge. I didn’t admit to the submissiveness aspect. I don’t know what causes people to be variously dominant, submissive, switch, or vanilla. My limited experience suggests that, at least in some cases, it’s much more nature than nurture. I can’t think of anything in my childhood that explains why I’ve had women at the Fortress to dominate me.

I agree. Golden with consumption is at the edge of my limits -- I've done it occasionally but other times I've felt that it was just too extreme. During those times it's strictly a jerk-off fantasy. Possibly ultimate for me: golden with consumption with a third person present. Even more degrading than being a human toilet is for someone else to SEE me being a human toilet. I've been regretting that my last Double Domination session at the Fortress came during one of those periods when I couldn't handle being a waste receptacle. I wimped out on a chance to push my limits.

As compared with most other dungeons, the Fortress has a smaller and more select group of Mistresses. Turnover at some of the other places is rapid. More than once I've looked at a website and found that someone I sessioned with fairly recently is no longer there. The Fortress hires fewer people and invests the time in carefully training them, after which they stick around a while. (My thanks to Mistresses Kang and Ang for letting me provide practice flesh for the latter's training!)

I can relate to your hesitation. I had seen BDSM porn before moving to NYC, and it took a while to sink in that some of the women advertising in the scene magazines (this was pre-Internet) were real live people within a couple miles of me, and that I could do this in real life. Maybe the obstacle, for guys like us, is that it's such a departure from anything we've done before. Anyway, I continued to do nothing more than think about it. Finally, I asked myself "What's the worst that could happen." I called a couple numbers and asked some stupid newbie questions. All were answered patiently. (So one specific bit of advice: Don't be afraid of looking stupid by asking basic questions. You can't possibly ask a question that's so stupid or so basic that it's new to them.) With a better idea of what was involved, I made an appointment. About 20 minutes into my first session, I was filled with regret. The regret was that I hadn't done it much sooner. You posted a couple weeks ago. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who'd love to hear an update from you. If you took the plunge, what was it like? If you're still hesitating, where are you on your journey?

I remember having occasional BDSM fantasies in adolescence. Later, when I bought porn magazines in the sleazy shops near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I found myself gravitating more toward the femdom material. That was when I was just passing through New York and took a moment to go shopping. That continued for a while even after I'd moved to the city. Intellectually, I knew that some of the mistresses pictured in the ads were just a mile or two from me. At first, though, I just continued in my established pattern of jerking off to images. Eventually, it sank in that I could, with minimal effort, actually meet a dominatrix and live out a fantasy. It took me some time to work up the courage, but eventually I did. In my first pro session, one whole wall of the room was a mirror. One of my most vivid memories, all these years later, is this image: A naked slave is on all fours, wearing a collar, while a beautiful woman in dominatrix garb holds the leash that's attached to his collar. It was like one of the scenes from my familiar magazines, but the slave was ME! One strong reaction I had was that I had waited too long to do it.

I've never been into cross-dressing or strap-on play. My mindset is that the male is submitting to and worshiping the female, so it's just not a turn-on for me to wear feminine clothing (to which I'm not entitled) or for her to take the penetrative role (which is a step down for her). In session, I've tried each of these once, to indulge the mistress. The experiences confirmed my predisposition that neither was for me. Foot worship, on the other hand, is something I'm happy to do. The only confusion for me is that, in my vanilla relationships, I often please my partner with foot massage. Even non-domme women enjoy it! So, when I massage a mistress's foot in session, it doesn't unequivocally tell me that I'm her slave. Kneeling before her and kissing her feet gets me more into subspace.

GS with consumption is very humiliating for me -- so much so that it's sometimes a hard limit and sometimes not. I had one unusual humiliating experience. I had a session (not at the Fortress, sorry) which the mistress conducted while wearing typical leather fetish gear. Afterward, we were talking while I dressed. She was planning to leave the dungeon. As part of her changing into street clothes, she casually removed her top. She had not been bare-breasted during the session. Normally, a woman would think nothing of exposing her breasts to another woman (changing after a swim at the Y or whatever). She would not do so in front of a man except deliberately, as in vanilla sex, or in session with the clear context of domme and sub. This mistress sent me the message that, as far as she was concerned, I was NOT a man. Therefore, she could change in front of me without it meaning anything. It was more humiliating than anything she'd done during the hour that I'd paid for.

Mistress Koi, one definition of "monster" in en.wiktionary.org is: (informal) A prodigy; someone very talented in a specific domain. That dude playing guitar is a monster. So they're just saying that you're very talented in the specific domain of nipple torture.