Monday, January 30, 2012

In the lair of the dominatrix

At age 69 I don’t often brag anymore. I don’t try to drive macho with my 2007 Malibu (even though it can accelerate like a bat out of hell with its V-6 engine). I may have had the mumps in middle age but my two wonderful daughters are proof of my procreating powers even though unlike Charlie Chaplin or Anthony Quinn I do not see any more offspring in my future.

But I will brag here that his man spent some four hours today in the lair (on the 25th floor of a condo on Pacific) of a professional dominatrix. Not only that but she pulled out a pair of very long soft leather boots with very glossy red Chinese lacquer finish soles and asked me, “Have you ever seen $3000 boots?”

My intentions where all above board and my wife Rosemary knew where I was. I was there to continue on my ongoing project, Me&My which are portraits of my friends from different professions all posing with my mother’s antique red Mexican shawl. I was also there to shoot new versions of women in bed that I featured in a blog here.

Yuliya and I had a long chat over large mugs of herbal tea. We have known each other for something like 10 years. We met at Focal Point where she was working as a model. She soon became one of my favourite models for my classes.

In my former studio on Robson Street

One time she appeared in a strange but striking outfit. One of my students, a pleasant young man, asked her what the outfit was for. Yuliya’s answer, "I sit on men's faces with it," led him to exit the class, never to return.
Yuliya is not easy to work with. She has her own ideas and like me she doesn’t smile a lot. On a desert island with her it would soon become a contest on who would commit suicide or murder the other first.

But many of these ideas of hers have resulted in some of my best pictures and I have learned a plenty about women from her.

I will have to learn quickly as much as I can from her as she is abandoning her lucrative business to study yoga and plans to become a Buddhist somewhere in the sunny state of Arizona.

While I have never understood fetish and all its ramifications I remember some years ago when I was at the Railway Club with some friends. One of them said something in connection with shoe fetish. A woman at our table, a prominent Vancouver poet, removed her shoe, a tall pump with a sharp heel and banged it on the table and told my friend, “Men, come to me and pay me good money to walk on their backs with these.” My friend was in shock while I tried to look as nonchalant as I could.

Fetish and romance seem to be connected I must admit. With all her in-your-face attitude Yuliya seems to believe in romance and love. All this reminds me of a male friend I had in Mexico who had picked up an American blonde at a café but was having a hell of time getting to first base with her in his apartment. The woman told him, “Raúl, try me with some Ahmad Jamal.”

In the Robson Street Studio

In these politically correct times when actors can be of both sexes and chairs are men or women of power it is nice to note that there are two words in the English language that are here to stay, dominatrix and aviatrix. The second one is one of the most beautiful sounding words of the language while the other makes me think that there is no way anybody will ever walk on my back with a pair of Laboutin boots even if its pro bono and served up with herbal tea.