Note: This is the first of what I plan will be a long series of short episodes in the training and career of one Jim Woodruff, a modern American geisho or pleasure-boy and professional submissive. In this role, he will become the servant and sidekick of a Dominatrix with whom he has a 24/7 relationship. I mean to use Jim and his eventual 'owner' to write about Dominance/submission as a lifestyle (more than a sexy game), and about the skills and values at point both at the bottom and Top of such a relationship.
I have an axe to grind. Too many BDSM stories portray the submissive as a needy, dependent creature with overwhelming desires, but little strength or intelligence of his own. This creates a prejudice against the male submissive, and is false in its representation of real-life D/s couples for whom sex and orgasms, however important, are not the whole of life. I write about a male sub with a female Domme because that's my own inclination, but most of what I have to say should apply to real-life relationships with other gender combinations.
It's only fair to warn that the reader interested solely in the sexual dimension of D/s and BDSM will do better elsewhere. Voluntary power-exchange fascinates me on intellectual, as well as purely erotic grounds. Lifestyle D/s coupling has necessities and possibilities beyond the specifically sexual. I hope that those who find this work will be interested to explore these possibilities with me as they read the chapters that follow.
Clients often ask me how I became a geisho. Some are just curious. Others think that I will feel humiliated when I answer them, and seek to enjoy my shame as I do so. Rather than disappoint them, I pretend to be embarrassed when I tell my story; but actually, I feel nothing of the sort. I'm rather proud of my profession. There's still too much puritanism in North America to give simple pleasure - pleasure without enhancing drugs, and for its own sake - the respect that it deserves.
The modern, Westernized geisho or geisha may or may not have actual sex with clients. As in old Japan, that is a personal choice. Like our Japanese forebears, we may sing or dance or just facilitate conversation. But the essence of what we do these days is more physical and sexual than it used to be. Today, among much else, we teach the arts of pleasuring a partner, and of pleasuring oneself. We teach the uses of mouth and anus, as well as penis and vagina as sex organs and, above all, we teach our clients to play with their imaginations. We help them to understand that sex is more than mutual fun, but basically a power game about taking and being taken - about the weakness of desire and conquest, about the power of submission and surrender.
In this way, we regard BDSM not as a kink or perversion, but as a prime dimension of authentic sexuality. Then we go on to explore its paradoxes: the dialectic of pain and pleasure, of shame and pride, of bondage and freedom. We use punishment, restraint, exposure and sensory deprivation for their erotic, psychosexual qualities. We work with clients one-on-one, and also teach the rudiments of our skills in 'workshops,' to couples and small groups.
Some of us work in luxury hotels. Others at spas, saunas, or public baths, at beauty salons or at their masculine equivalent. Others again just provide escort services - exclusively at public events, restaurants and other spaces. Some of us - taking security precautions - visit our clients homes. Some of us function as facilitators at business conventions and special group events. Some, like the courtesans of France or Venice, attach themselves to a single wealthy patron. Some, like my mother, eventually retire, settle down and raise a family. In fact, there is no one way to be a modern geisho or geisha. We have our talents, specialties and reputations.
My own career as a pleasure-boy originated with a sarcastic remark from my father - at the dinner table one November evening, when he asked me what I planned to study (at the prestigious university in New York City to which I'd just been admitted. I had just turned 18, and was in my senior year of high school. When I told him that I wished to major in history, hoping to go on to grad school and an academic career, he asked angrily if I expected him to pay my tuition and living expenses while I did so. If that's your plan he said, you'd better become a geisho like your mother and work your way through college. "I intend for you to inherit my business, and to run it on your own some day. I will pay your way to study something practical," he said, "like business or medicine or law. But if your ambition is just to rummage in the past, you're on your own."
I knew better than to argue with him when he was in that hard-assed mood; so I said nothing. But, catching my mother's expression as she heard this, I knew I had to speak with her in private. She had been a successful geisha herself. My dad had been her client, and in a sense, I felt, he still was. He had married her, giving her status and a family, but it was her professional skill at pleasing him always, and guiding him on occasion, that made their marriage work.
