Not the session, mind. The session was fascinating.
Getting there was the dangerous part. Up one bleak, warehouse-filled street and down the next, looking for Fulton Avenue and then 7407 Fulton, up and down horribly bleak streets that the typical citizen in his Mercedes-Benz sedan would avoid like the plague.
On a deserted windswept street, with ugly warehouses to the right and ugly warehouses to the left, there stands the Chateau. That's very poetic sounding, making it seem like there's a massive castle erected right in the middle of one of the ugliest parts of North Hollywood.
Alas, the reality doesn't live up to the image. The Chateau looks just like any other warehouse. Ugly. Boring. Inconspicuous. I paused at the door, getting up the courage to get in and risk the entire contents of my wallet.
I opened the door and entered a rather dull looking lobby, livened only slightly by a bunch of Bettie Page pictures. Well, that's wrong. It was livened considerably by a couple of very pretty girls in sexy costumes. I was greeted by Robin a pretty oriental girl in a lovely silky dress which exposed part of her small but pert looking tits. You could certainly tell the dress was meant for access, it was designed carefully so that a little slip would expose her nipple and let you put a nice fat clothespin on it.
She gave me a little tour, though rooms the size of large offices with all sorts of odd stuff, the extraordinary - suspension racks and examination chairs - mixed with ordinary props, an old school desk and a chalkboard. It was sort of a whirlwind tour, and I have to say it was done with a bit of casual disinterest; it was as though she gave thousands of them a day, but the number of people she'd take seriously was relatively minimal.
I asked if I could ask a few questions, and we went into a room. I sat on one of the punishment tables, and she stood and we talked. I explained that there was this neat girl who I knew in Pennsylvania, a submissive, and she might drop by for a visit, and I wanted to show her a good time while she was here. And, I explained, I knew nothing on how to dominate a woman at all. Could someone show me?
She told me the first and most important thing: This is a legitimate operation, the Chateau. There is no sex, and no fondling and no sexual touching. Pure S&M, nothing else. She then told me that, if I really wanted to learn how to dominate, I would have to select a switch, not a submissive. Switches can take both roles, so they are familiar with the equipment. To be a good dominant, you have to have seen what it's like to submit, and appreciate what feels nice and what doesn't and what's in between. As a result, she, being a submissive, couldn't help me out. I thought she was a touch arrogant about her submissiveness, like she would give herself fully and totally, but not to just anyone. I had to admit that I would have loved to have touched those nice pert tits through her dress and made her lift it up and submit to me, but I abandoned that fantasy. She suggested that she send in a few switches and have them answer my questions.
So a tall, leggy blonde came in, dressed in wicked black high heels and a black dress with a plungingly low neckline. Her name was Sadie. I told her my situation, and she immediately understood and had several constructive suggestions. The people of the Chateau are not dummies; I was impressed by the quickness with which she slipped into the role of teacher. I don't know if that's because they receive many requests like mine, or because they are natural fast thinkers, players of whatever role the customer wants. I suspect the latter, but I don't really know.
I asked her two rather embarassing questions:
First, were tips required, assuming I'm on a budget? The answer was interesting: Tips are a major portion of the girls' income, so giving tips is definitely strongly encouraged. However, not giving one is OK if you tell the girl up front that this is your intention. Also, tips in the $ 5-10 range are welcomed; it's not like the massage parlor system where you're trying to request a service the girl is not already committed to provide. I suspect that the submissive might be rather more so if you promised her extra tips, but alas, it really didn't look like sex with any of the girls would be possible. From what I could tell, the legal problems would just be too messy.
Second, I asked what would happen if I got addicted to going and dominating a girl? Alas, she had no answer to that question, not even the promotion of a "Frequent Visitor Plan"!
I probably would have sat there all night asking her questions, but she said that she had people waiting for her, and she'd really like to know if I'd do a session. I thought about the $ 80 it would cost me and figured it would be a neat experience - if nothing else, something intriguing for my web page! And, after all, how else could I learn to please Jennifer?
So I came with her, and she spent about 15 minutes preparing her various toys. There were three different kinds of floggers: One leather, with wide strips, one suede, with thinner strips, and the last string, with really thin strips. She got out the cuffs, for suspension, and the candles, for atmosphere and the generation of hot wax. And, most importantly from my perspective, the clothespins. Of all the S&M things I'd heard about, "titty torture" - clothespins on a girl's breasts and nipples - turns me on the most.
So I could see what it was like being a submissive, Sadie had me take that role first. Then, later, we would change roles and I'd use what I learned. She asked me if I had any objection to taking off my clothes, and I said no and did.
First, she said, your mistress will explore your body. She ran her hands all over my shoulders and tummy. She never touched a sexual part of my body, but I found it arousing and pleasant.
She then asked me to kneel on my knees and put my hands behind my back. This was Position One. Then she asked me to go on my hands and knees, like a dog. This was Position Two. Finally, she asked me to go on my hands and shoulders, ass up. This was Position Three, and clearly her favourite! I was given a whole bunch of different orders; obviously the idea was for me to mix them up and be punished. I ran through all of them flawlessly, so I didn't give her any excuse for a punishment.
I was always to look at my Mistress, I was told, and say "Thank you, Mistress" whenever she finished an action. She asked me my birthday, and I told her 1962. She told me to add those numbers and tell her the sum; I came up with 18. She told me that the number for the session was 18, and I was to be careful to remember it. And then she spanked me 18 times, telling me to count them for her. It felt ... well, like being spanked. It wasn't terribly pleasant, but it wasn't bad, either. (I'm sure she could have made it much worse if she'd wanted to!)
She then had me sit up and started pinching my nipples. At first it felt really nice, and then it started to hurt. And then she showed me the right and wrong way to put a clothespin on your nipples:
The right way is to pinch a large bit of your victim's breast, including a significant amount of skin that isn't part of the nipple. Then you put the clothespin over the whole bit of skin. She showed me how it felt when you pinched only the nipple versus the nipple plus some breast; it did indeed feel much more ouchy to do the whole nipple. She said it wouldn't hurt to keep it on, but then it would be painful when she took it off. I must say that I found it painful to keep it on for an extended period, and I asked her to take it off. So she showed me a delightful technique to reduce the pain: blow on the breast near the pin, and then remove it. She said it felt less ouchy then. I have to say that I didn't notice much difference, but now that I'm home and the session's long over, I notice that there is more residual pain in the breast that she didn't blow on. At the same time, there is a delightful warm tingling in both breasts which makes me mildly aroused.
Then it was time to tie me up. She had me sit in a chair, and she showed me a neat little trick: Double the rope up, slip it around your victim's arm, and put the rest of the rope between the two ends. It makes it a lot easier to restrain me, and it doesn't involve tight tying, which can be painful. Again, being tied up didn't do much for me sexually, but it was definitely an interesting experience.
A flogger is one of the most important devices you use on your submissive, and to her it was the most important thing for me to learn.
What's a flogger look like? I
know! I'll steal one from my friend Jennifer's page. There
it is! Basically, it has a grip, and attached to it there are about
10-15 strips of material. You hit your submissive with the strips.
If you let them fall softly on her body, they will feel very nice. If
you put some force into them, she will feel pain. And if you don't
use it in exactly the right way, she'll feel a lot of pain.
Sadie tried to show me exactly how to do the former without causing
the latter.
As Sadie was showing me the Flogger, I asked how much time we had left, because I wanted to spend at least part of the session playing with her. After a bit of disorganization as she tried to get the front office on the intercom, we found out: 20 seconds. I decided to extend the session by 15 minutes, which cost me $ 20 more, bringing the total up to $ 100. To put this in perspective, that's a little over $ 1 / minute. Seems like quite a deal, if you've noticed the $2.95 a minute phone sex ads; I sure would rather have a real life girl next to me than one cooing into a chilly phone receiver! The services of the Chateau represent far better value than one might expect, given all the setup and running costs, which are obviously substantial. Anyway, once I determined I could afford to continue the session a bit longer, I started trying out the flogger. So that I wouldn't damage Sadie unnecessarily, we started flogging one of the posts in the room. Getting it right wasn't easy. Basically, the trick is that you have to aim the flogger at her body, so that the ends of the material hit it and the rest of it flies into space. That way, she gets the impact of whatever force you used, without having it intensified by facing the whole flogger. This is the same reason the other devices she showed me have long handles but short business ends.
This needs really precise aiming, and I must say that I found it rather difficult. Mistress Sadie, I am sorry to say, said that I improved dramatically, but was still rather on the hopeless side when I left. She said I should buy one and get plenty of practice. I'm afraid it will take several more sessions before I can figure out the exact right way to handle the flogger. Whether I have money for several more sessions is an exercise best left to the reader. I have to say, though, that it looked to me like the Chateau was indeed a place where the workers - as well as the customers - fulfull their fantasies. That is, the workers picked this job because they're genuinely into S&M, not just because of the money they can make.
Eventually, I got good enough to give her bottom a few flogs. It was kinda fun; it would have been a lot more fun if I'd been good at it! (grin). No, I'm afraid many more lessons will be necessary before I can be entrusted with the lovely bare bottom of a slave.
Once we had finished for the time being with the Flogger, she suggested that she write down the things I learned during the session, so that I could keep them for reference. She wrote out a nice little shopping list that I could carry with me when I visited our local fetish emporium. She did suggest that I buy the flogger from them, since she said it was a genuinely good unit. I didn't want to, not because I wasn't willing to support them, but because I wanted Jennifer and I to go to the shop together and pick up what we jointly decided we wanted. She admitted that this seemed like a fun idea. :-)
When the buzzer rang, signaling the end, she said we could extend the session a little. So I said that I wanted to try putting clothespins on her breasts. She pushed down her top, showing a pair of small but delightfully shaped breasts, with beautiful pert nipples that looked like they were just begging for clothespins!
Just as she'd suggested, I started by using the horsehair to swish around her breasts, teasing but not touching them. It was a wonderful feeling to watch her lovely erect aroused nipples, ready for whatever I wanted to do to them! And then it was a lot of fun pinching her breasts to stick on the pins, and they looked truly delightful on those lovely nips. That was definitely the most exciting thing I did while I was there!
Yes, tit torture's definitely my thing BDSM-wise.
And then it was time to leave. The 45 minute session had gone like a 45 second session, or so I thought :-).
What's the bottom line on The Chateau? I must confess that I really, really would have liked to combine my domination experience with sex. At the same time, I've tried commercial sex a time or two, and stopped doing it because it's a rushed, impersonal and unfriendly experience, where the girl tries to do the least amount of "work" possible. Going to the Chateau wasn't like this. I felt like I was liked, I was respected, and that they valued me as a customer and looked forward to my eventual return.
Because of that, I probably will. Besides, I really have to learn how to use that flogger, and - if I could just attract a lovely lady from Pennsylvania - I'd have a real reason to learn.
Check out the shopping list and tips Sadie wrote down for me at the end of the session.
Note: Here is Sadie's web page; unfortunately, there's virtually no information on her at all. (In fact, if you look at the top, you'll see a rather interesting error!) I've sent her an email, but have not yet received a response, so I must assume she's not frightfully active on the net.
people have joined me at The Chateau.
Graphics, as you might have guessed, were all stolen from Jennifer, by her kind permission.