This week I visited a sex dungeon... oh and I'm writing a book!
Welcome to my book-writing world
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*The gorgeous Miss May in her @E1darkroom
I started this week cycling to a sex dungeon in Limehouse where I interviewed a dominatrix called Miss May. Dressed head to toe in black, with hair to match and lips painted bright red, she bears a strong resemblance to Morticia Addams, if only Morticia was a sadist who took pleasure in making submissives suffer, all while achieving their wildest sexual fantasies. Sitting in her leather throne surrounded by whips and chains and intimidating leather hoods, Miss May explained to me how varied is her client base, which ranges in age, ethnicity, gender and profession. Yes she has the stereotypical high-powered CEO client who seeks respite from the demanding nature of their day-to-day by being submissive for an evening, locked in a cage and told to drink pee, but that only makes up a fraction of her visitors. “Everyone has fantasies,” she told me, “Just not everyone has the courage or space to explore it.” Those who do might book in for a session, or several, in order to explore the limits of their bodies, their boundaries and their minds.
“People come to me to be the truest form of themselves,” Miss May told me. “Maybe because they have to hide it day-to-day. Kink gives you that space as it allows you to delve deep into your primal fantasies… It's a release for people. I am here to make people feel safe in their suffering.” How can she tolerate watching people suffer, I wonder? “Emma,” she said, “I'm a sadist. I love seeing people suffer and give themselves up to me, making them feel pain and different sensations.” But you seem so nice, I responded somewhat lamely. She laughed. “I am a nice person. I will just laugh if you fall and hurt yourself a little. And then I'll help you up.”
I went to see Miss May as part of some research I’m doing into what we can all learn from the kink community when it comes to communication and consent. For any of you who follow me on Instagram you’ll have gathered that I’m in the midst of writing my first book, hence why I’ve been pretty quiet on here of late. The premise of the book explores how women have historically been disconnected from their bodies and hence their sexuality, and how we reconnect through pleasure.
Never one to do things by half measures, I have spent the past few months (verging on a year now?!) in a book-writing lockdown doing little else but field research, library time and a whole tonne of reading. The process has been a rollercoaster and has taken me to a porn set in Barcelona (twice), to a sexual healer, a sex dungeon and a fetish archive, all while enabling me to speak to a range of fascinating people working in this space. Just last week I hopped on a call with Jessica Stoya, former porn performer and author of Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn. Having now left the porn world and become a sex and intimacy coach instead, her perspective on the industry was interesting, and so too was her retelling of how exactly she got into porn in the first place. In a few day’s time I’ve got a coffee date with another dominatrix. Is there anything more interesting to probe than the taboo? No. Certainly not. I am relishing learning about the intricacies of so many people’s sexual lives.
While I am still quite far from the finish line, I now have over 80,000 words on the page, thereby proving to myself that yes I can do this and yes I will get it done. This has been a liberating realisation because when I first started out last year I doubted both of those things. It was not so much the blank stare of the empty page that proved so intimidating, although invariably that didn’t help, but more the sheer quantity of ideas and topics I wanted to explore that felt so very overwhelming. Where to start when the entire history of sexuality is ripe for exploration?
With the main body of the book now down, I wanted to return here and revive my newsletter writing, in part because I am in such a writing flow at the moment I don’t want to stop, and also because I want to bring you all in on this wild ride that is writing a book. Despite having so many author friends, there is still so much I didn’t know about publishing and so much I anticipate I’ll have to learn over the coming months, as I hack away at edit-after-edit and then eventually prepare for publication. You best believe I am cooking up plans for a Sex Talks tour too. I cannot fucking wait.
In the process of book writing, a time in which even my dreams have been populated by interviews and floating thoughts of ‘does desire shape porn or porn shape desire’ (imagine!) I have also started a new relationship. It has been a somewhat surreal and unexpected experience, writing about sex and pleasure and the tyranny of the romantic fallacy, all while falling for a man in the mundanity of the day-to-day. Where I have spent years (years!) chasing romantic high after romantic high, all in the name of the motherfucking PLOT, this relationship has unfolded with ease and without drama (well, mostly).
As it turns out, the plot was juicy but the fruits it bore were ultimately unsatisfying. My heart needed some respite from the blender into which I’d flung it so carelessly, so constantly, and respite it got. But now in this new chapter I am figuring out what it looks like to navigate an adult relationship: the compromises, the negotiations, the need for consistent, clear communication. I don’t say any of this negatively — it is joyful, my heart is bursting, he is filling my already overspilling cup — but more as an observation that it’s true what they say: relationships take work. And they demand that you show your full self to another, even when you’re inclined to try and hide all the bad bits as much from yourself (denial!) as from them. Talking about the power of vulnerability was, it turns out, far easier than practicing it. Quelle surprise.
Over the coming weeks and months I plan to start sending out this newsletter more consistently again, and sharing with you as much as I can (am permitted? I don’t know the rules!) about the book writing process as possible. From the supine vantage point of my pillow-strewn bed I am imagining regaling to you details of the publishing process, snippets from juicy interviews, some recommendations from the MOUNTAINS of reading I am still doing as research — there are so many brilliant books I want to tell you about. Maybe I’ll sprinkle some learning-on-the-job relationship thoughts in here too. Maybe not. But you tell me. What would you enjoy reading here? I am already relishing the depth and the intimacy of a format that isn’t video-first social media, the cacophony of that particular town square having grown so loud I now feel deaf.
Have a delicious rest of your weekend.
Emma xxx
P.s. I have started to listen to more articles as I walk, so have recorded an audio version of this too. Is that helpful? Or superfluous and indulgent? I spend a lot of time at my writing desk now, it’s quite nice to have an excuse to speak into the void.
P.P.S. I also want to share lists of recommendations that extend beyond books here too. I have been sent some incredible products recently and I want to highlight the good’uns. From skincare to clothing, would you be interested in any round ups? I’ll only ever share things I genuinely LOVE here, nothing just for the sake of promoting a brand or anything as that would be dull and phoney baloney bs. OK time for bed.
