Fetish Noir Mentor Program Review

This blog post is a review of the past 3 months I have spent in the Fetish Noir mentor/mentee program, working with Luke Jayden.

I started exploring BDSM at the start of 2010. I was ignorant of everything but the knowledge that this was something I wanted to try, and was lucky enough to stumble into Fetish Noir early on. After a couple meetings I became a mentee to Luke-Jayden, and have been working with him just over three months as I've figured out what attracts me to the LA bondage world.

I was very unsure of what to expect from working with Luke. I knew that he'd been involved in BDSM for over 8 years and was well regarded by the small circle of friends I had made. Our early meetings consisted of my telling him what I was interested in, where I was coming from, and what I was looking to gain. He mostly just listened, laying out basic safety guidelines and restrictions. He explained that his goal with mentoring was to give people a positive introduction to BDSM, helping them avoid early crashes caused by easy to avoid mistakes, as well as sniffing out mentees to make sure they had healthy motivations.

I expected my time with Luke to involve a lot of training in technique, theory, safety, and the assorted practicalities of craft. I was surprised (and sometimes frustrated) that these things rarely came up. Instead Luke's role was to provide a guide, to act as sounding board for the numerous questions that came up, to introduce me to members of the LA community, occasionally give me the necessary push to get involved in scenes, and I suspect to keep a watch on me to make sure that I wasn't risking myself and others.

Due to our mutually busy schedules I would sometimes barely talk to Luke for a week or two at a time, but it was still enormously helpful to know that there was a dedicated mentor available to answer questions, to update with my progress, and to use as a resource. Other times we'd be in frequent contact as Luke would question me on what I had been learning, planning, and seeking. He advised on relationships I was forming and play that I was participating in, and warned me of common traps and dangers that I might be heading into.

Going into the relationship I had an image of a mentor as more of a trainer, but found Luke instead to take the role of a good and wise friend. Looking back I see now that training in technique is not what I needed at so early a stage, nor what I was ready for as I formed basic relationships and learned about what it is that I want out of BDSM. With Luke's help I'm entering a state where I'm ready for more hands on practice, and so am enormously thankful to have had Fetish Noir's mentor program during my first step.

The Joys of Aftercare

Late this April's eve, as I shake the ice in my glass that's now empty of spirits; I have a flash of memory. To a younger (and stupider) Xeno. I had just stumbled and fell to my knees. My eyes wouldn't focus on anything. My whole body was just shaking, twitching and wouldn't respond to any command. Up was down, down was out and I didn't know if I was silent or screaming bloody murder at the world.

(Did I love it? Hmmm well if you don't know the answer to that than you must have stumbled onto this page)

As I laid there (...well memory is still a little fuzzy. I still can't remember if I was lying down, standing up or even standing on my head.) Anyways, as I...existed there, I was wondering, where was my Mistress? I was fighting/riding waves of wonderful colors of pain and sensation and insanity. While in the meanwhile, reality was slipping away through my teeth and there was nothing to latch on to. No body to hold, no voice to grasp. There was no one to help ease me out of this strange and wonderful kaleidoscope of sensation. And so, poor younger Xeno had to deal with his subspace many a times by himself as his....misguided (see I'm being nice!) mistress either watched or did her own thing

So what is the value of aftercare? I mean why not let your beautiful submissive know that as they have their brains leaking out through their pores, that their wonderful sir/ma'am is taking care of them. Making sure that there is someone to latch onto in case that sensation (also known as the "oh gods") gets a bit too real, to intense. Isn't it a wonderful feeling to know that there's someone to help guide you back into rationality instead having to fight your way back to the real world.

To me, Aftercare (note the capital)shows all the love and affection the dominate/sir/ma'am/master/mistress has for their precious submissives/pets/toys/servant/slaves. Not only is it in the words that are said but in the actions that are taken that determines what kind of dominatrix a person is going to be.

In that moment a submissive person is most trusting, most sensitive to anything that happens to them. It's like a form of hypnotism in what can be imprinted during those moments. Whatever words spoken or actions performed in that moment while affect them deeply and truly.

Unfortunately it's a very easy way to screw your submissive up. So my advice to a sub, you got to trust that whoever is going to put you in that moment is going to do good by you. And to a dom, remember that whatever energy you put out into the universe gets returned to you three fold.

With Love and Lust,
From the man of a thousand Kinks,
The Delightfully Decadent Xeno

The Tools of the Trade, Respect them.

Leather, chains, paddles, canes, ropes, floggers, whips, candles, blades and even electric wands. These are but some of the many tools that are available to use on our lovely submissives. So what are the requirements needed in order to use said tools. A license,a group of our peers signing a bill allowing the use? Nope, usually it's just obtaining the funds and whatever you plan on doing not being outside your submissive's hard limit.

But wait...in a perfect world all submissives are honest about their hard limits and since the rivers aren't flowing with gold it's obviously not a perfect world. So it would do some good to make sure your sub isn't grandstanding. In this imperfect beautiful world, the same tools that professionally trained dominants use to create such delicious agony can be put in the hands of (dramatic pause) someone who has no clue how to use them. You can gasp now.

So now wait a moment people say. You are being unfair they say. Everyone starts out not having a clue how to use our tools and everyone has a moment where they whacked themselves in the head with. (I'll stop for a moment so the reader can flashback....and done) My point is there are two types.

There are those who eventually learn how to use them right through practice, getting shown the proper usage (Thank you mentor doms) or just getting tired of hitting themselves in the head (sigh). And sadly, there are those who just believe that they can pick up a bullwhip and use it to perfection the first time. Please don't laugh at them.

Remember the tools we use are designed to hurt people in a whole multitude of ways. Respect what you work with, learn how to keep them clean and working at one hundred percent. That way any pain you cause is because you wanted to cause it. After all it's all fun and games until someone loses a nipple.

Love and Lust
The Man with a Thousand Kinks
The Delightfully Decadent Xeno