A New Short Story From Pat Powers: "So This Is My Life Now ..."

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I have started outlining my novels, though the outline tends to get fairly worked over by my subconscious as I write. But when I write novellas and short stories, I'm still a seat-of-the-pants writer, which means that often, I have no idea WHAT the fuck I'm doing. I just sit down with an idea, start banging things out, and see what happens.

The amazing thing is, I think my subconscious is a better writer than my conscious mind is, and it has PLANS. Plans I have no idea of!

Take my latest story, “So This Is My Life Now ...” It was inspired by porn. Really. It was inspired by this particular porn video. The idea was to use a striking bondage image to create a story. And I looked at it, and my mind did as it sometimes does when it sees a striking bondage image, and it created a backstory for this video (which is, in full, about a cop who gets the tables turned on her and becomes a lesbian mistress' slavegirl).

The Mistress' outfit looks kinda like a uniform, so I immediately had an idea: the Mistress is a rebel warrior and the submissive is the cop who got the tables turned, just like the video. I had a vision of the Mistress fucking the slavegirl on the table as in the video, smirking merrily, with people walking by, making the submissive feel so humiliated, with her huge tits squished against the table and her round ass hanging over the edge, tied down and gagged … oh, it was nice.

So then I start writing, and I start writing about a skinny corporate executive buying an implant that gives you dreams that are experienced like real life, from a snarky, class-conscious, non-sentient salesbot.

What the fuck? Where the hell did that come from? I have no idea. But I keep writing because I kinda wanna know. And because, while on a few occasions when something like this happens, it's gone nowhere, most of the time I come up with a better story than I anticipated.

And damned if this wasn't what happened here, because this story turned out to ask the question, “What if your fantasies were better than real life in every respect?” It dealt with the nature of dreams and reality, how they are experienced and how they affect you. The story got into the erotica very fast, in fact, almost all of this story is erotica, with tons of lesbian domination and submission and public sex, nudity, bondage and humiliation – all the good stuff. Stuff that's better than real life ...

Check out the blurb below:

June Jetson was just an ordinary executive, single and married to her job in a time when jobs were becoming increasingly scarce. Head of a corporate human relations department, she discovers that many of her company's lower tier employees are unaccountably happy. They shouldn't be happy: her corporation, like most, is cutting wages and extending hours for the ever-shrinking pool of employees it hasn't yet fired. 

So what makes these wretches so happy? A bit of research leads June to discover that her happier employees are all customers of companies like Your Fantasies Unlimited. June decides to conduct some personal research, and life gets very strange when she discovers Mistress Suzy, a Lesbian Janissary of the Thongan Resistance, a dominant warrior woman who knows exactly how to make submissive June bend to her every whim.

What will happen to June? Can she cling to her rung on the ever more precarious corporate ladder when she discovers an erotic fantasy world that is so much better, so much more fulfilling, more thrilling, and just as real, as her “real life?”

“So This Is My Life Now” is mostly erotica. But it's also science fiction. And it's social commentary. All bundled into one juicy story that will grab you by the genitals and fling you in to the future!

“So This Is My Life Now” is also just over  10,000 words long and part of the Basic universe. Enjoy!

the pic that inspired me to write the story: It's a vidcap from a NSFW bondage video featuring Carissa Montgomery for the BorntobeBound website.

TedX Hates Porn

So, TedX hates porn. It has to be said. Do a Google search on TedX and porn and you will be inundated with videos about porn and how horrible it is, most of them with a little disclaimer that say "This video contains assertions that are not supported by academically respected studies."

That means the video is bullshit, basically. I've watched several of them, they are almost invariably bullshit. They generally use porn to excite the audience, but by coupling it with a "safe" message that porn is bad, very bad, very very bad and boy isn't there a lot of it?

There are a couple of TedX videos about porn that aren't out and out attacks on porn, but they tend to be corrective in nature, things like "It's time for porn to change."

What this tells me is that there's money in attacking porn. I'm not surprised.  Our culture is really, profoundly weird about sex. It creates porn, and antiporn, and everything in between, as well as bizarre phenomena like the Epstein case, with multi-millionaires and powerful politicos sharing out harems of underaged women like sex toys.

But really, people are paying lots of money to watch these stupid videos. As our president would say, "Sad."

Eat your fucking heart out, TedX

Image source: Kink.com shoot 22824, "Operation Americana" starring Christina Carter and Riley Rey. Riley Rey is seen here giving blowjob.

Let's NOT Appreciate David Attenborough

I recently ran across a thread on Reddit that asked this question: “Can we all appreciate David Attenborough for making great documentaries for over than half a century while he is still with us?”

I'm a fan of David Attenborough. I've enjoyed his documentaries, and his narration style in particular. The tone of hushed excitement he can generate over the mating dance of some bird in southeast Asia is sheer artistry.

But the question pissed me off, because it's based on a lie. It implies that Attenborough has seen little or no recognition in his life. This is bullshit. His life is just chock full of adulation and appreciation. He's famous and wealthy and successful. He doesn't fucking NEED another drop of appreciation.

Meanwhile, all over the world are artists, writers, musicians, scientists and engineers who are doing original, groundbreaking and creative work who, outside a small coterie of fans, NOBODY HAD EVER HEARD OF. They've had BUPKIS of appreciation.

What people like the OP who created the David Attenborough thread (who apparently have appreciation to spare) should really do is find one of those unknown creators and ask for appreciation on their behalf. They need our recognition. Attenborough needs zip from us.

(And yes, I'm one of those writers who is totally unknown outside his tiny little niche of kinky humorous science fiction erotica writers, a niche so small it should actually be called a “dimple on a golf ball.” But I have hope, and faith. Someday I'll have far more recognition than I deserve, and people will actually want to give me more extra appreciation, even if it means depriving other writers and artists who are a lot less well known any appreciation at all. But if this never happens, despite my disappointment I shall remains strong, because what I really want is lots of money.)

Even in porn, there are actresses whose faces aren't seen ...

Image source: Kink.com video 42344 starring Penny Pax and Carissa Montgomery. Those are Penny's eyes and that's Carissa's ass.

Feminism's Big Tent

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Feminism Made Sexual Bondage As We Know It Possible

"Thanks, feminism!"

Image source: Kink.com shoot 44000, starring Angela White and The Pope.

Kind of an interesting coincidence, the way sexual bondage took off in American culture in the 50s and 60s via Betty Page and Movie Star News, after long being a part of culture generally, but not widely recognized. Then it really got established in the 80s

Kinda like feminism, which took off in the sixties after long being part of American culture, then became established in the 80s. The timing isn't exact, but it's close.

But I don't think it's a coincidence.

Here's the thing. One of the key points in feminism is that “No means no.” I'm down with that. Women have the right to refuse sexual roles, experiences, whatever, that don't work for them.

But the obverse is also true. “Yes” means “Yes.” Women have a right to their choices, and the ability to say “No” and have it mean something also implies the ability to say “Yes” and have it mean something.

And for sexual bondage to be possible, women have to be able to say “no” and “yes” and it has to mean something (or whatever the safeword happens to be). The personal and cultural freedom that feminism has created for women is what allows them to participate in sexual bondage.

This is why feminism is essential to sexual bondage play. I'm sure there have been exceptional women throughout history, who could do the sexual bondage play and understand it as play even in a society where women are second class citizens with great limitations on their choices, but that's what they were – exceptions.

There is a tendency on the part of people who don't understand sexual roleplay that if it's maledom/femsub play, that the participants must not be aligned with feminism. They're acting out their social/political agenda in the bedroom. There probably are people out there doing that somewhere. I just don't know if you can call it “sexual roleplay” under those circumstances, because it doesn't sound much like play.

So bondage fans owe a lot to feminism. The feminists may not have been intentionally working to ensure that women have the freedom to participate in bondage play and have it be actual play, but that's what they did. And good for them!

Feminism Made Sexual Bondage As We Know It Possible

Kind of an interesting coincidence, the way sexual bondage took off in American culture in the 50s and 60s via Betty Page and Movie Star News, after long being a part of culture generally, but not widely recognized. Then it really got established in the 80s

Kinda like feminism, which took off in the sixties after long being part of American culture, then became established in the 80s. The timing isn't exact, but it's close.

But I don't think it's a coincidence.

Here's the thing. One of the key points in feminism is that “No means no.” I'm down with that. Women have the right to refuse sexual roles, experiences, whatever, that don't work for them.

But the obverse is also true. “Yes” means “Yes.” Women have a right to their choices, and the ability to say “No” and have it mean something also implies the ability to say “Yes” and have it mean something.

And for sexual bondage to be possible, women have to be able to say “no” and “yes” and it has to mean something (or whatever the safeword happens to be). The personal and cultural freedom that feminism has created for women is what allows them to participate in sexual bondage.

This is why feminism is essential to sexual bondage play. I'm sure there have been exceptional women throughout history, who could do the sexual bondage play and understand it as play even in a society where women are second class citizens with great limitations on their choices, but that's what they were – exceptions.

There is a tendency on the part of people who don't understand sexual roleplay that if it's maledom/femsub play, that the participants must not be aligned with feminism. They're acting out their social/political agenda in the bedroom. There probably are people out there doing that somewhere. I just don't know if you can call it “sexual roleplay” under those circumstances, because it doesn't sound much like play.

So bondage fans owe a lot to feminism. The feminists may not have been intentionally working to ensure that women have the freedom to participate in bondage play and have it be actual play, but that's what they did. And good for them!


“Thanks, feminism!”

Re-Evaluating Old Skinamax Films And My Naivete In the Modern Age

A few years ago I wrote a reviews of two Skinamax movies, Passion Network and Vicious Circles. I was interested in the movies because they used a plot device that's common in Internet bondage fantasies: a shadowy network of wealthy, kinky types get beautiful young women into their network and try to make them into bondage slaves, either unwillingly or reluctantly.

But “Passion Network” and "Vicious Circles” are a step up on most Internet bondage stories, because the sexual performers in both films do it for money rather than out of fear of being killed or maimed, or because they're being  physically imprisoned and have no choice.

This makes so much sense! Why would a wealthy person risk going to prison for years by kidnapping or physically harming women when he could get plenty of women to be in his harem by offering them what amounted to chump change for him? True, prostitution is illegal, but not on the level that kidnapping and harming women is illegal. And it's very rare that the purchases of sex services gets prosecuted at all. It's almost always the prostitute or her pimp, if anyone.

So these Skinamax films got it right. Of course wealthy men who craved kinky sex would just pay women to play the role of kinky sex slaves. Everybody wins, right?

I praised those movies because they're set against a backdrop of so many kinky stories where rich men use all kinds of power games and illegal violence and threats of violence to make women do their bidding.

I think some of you may see where this is going. Because … I was wrong. So wrong. And you know who proved me wrong? Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, and quite a few others if the prosecutors have the balls to go after all of Epstein's clients, and not just Epstein (not holding my breath).

These are rich, powerful men who had sex with Epstein's harem of underaged women. I have read accounts that Epstein and his cronies used force and intimidation against some of the young girls they victimized, threatening them and their family member with death. Some of the girls they may have just paid off, I don't know. What I do know is that Epstein and his buddies victimized underage girls – even getting them to have sex by offering them lots of money is illegal, because they were not old enough to knowingly give consent.

Epstein and friends COULD have hired adult women who are small and/or look young to pretend they were very young and inexperienced, just like most producers of the pornographic “Barely 18” videos do. But Epstein and friends didn't, they wanted the REAL THING. And they got it.

Just like those wealthy men in all those Internet fantasies did. They didn't want pretendy slavegirls, they wanted the real thing, and they were willing to risk jail to get it.

I think I got this wrong because I didn't understand just how little fear the wealthy in our society have of being jailed for ANY reason. The Internet bondage fantasies about women forced into sex slavery were what was closest to the truth, not “Passion Network” and “Vicious Circles.” Jeffrey Epstein and Company proved that.

And the saddest part is, I wouldn't be surprised if these real-world bad guys totally get away with it … unlike the Internet fantasy bad guys.

I have to say, I liked the world a lot better when I thought the Internet fantasies of women forced into sex slavery were just horny, harebrained fantasies instead of prosaic reality.

Ben Gazzara enjoys a quiet nap, watched over by two pay-for-play sex slaves, in "Vicious Circles." Ah, the good ol' days.