David Masterson: We are going to go back to 1997 to your Spectator magazine interview with Doctor Henkin

Fetish Diva Midori: Wow that is old.

D: It was on sexuality.org, what are some of the major events that happened in your life since then?

FDM: I was a Pro Domme for a while and I left the business. I am devoting myself to writing and teaching about kink and sexuality, which is pretty big, a major career transition.

D: It is. What was the turning point?

FDM: I had given myself a time limit to do the Pro Doming, only 5 years. It ended up being a year and a half longer than I had planned, but you know that was about figuring out what I was going to do next. So I put a cap on the duration of the profession.

D: How is teaching going so far?

FDM: Oh the teaching has been fabulous, I have really enjoyed it; it really challenges me and pushes me. It’s nice doing something I love and being good at it. Sure the validation from friends is nice but what is really nice are “the light bulb moments” from the students. For example, after the erotic humiliation class folks telling me they got some type of epiphany or an insight or validation even. That means a lot and that I must be doing something right.

D: I find that when you teach you do seem to give a lot of yourself personally. And afterwards not totally physically drained but emotionally as well especially with the dynamics behind what you are doing… Are there any specific projects that have kept you busy?

FDM: As of late, I am doing beautybound.com and that is definitely keeping me quite busy. That’s been a lot of fun, in my teaching and writing I get to exercise my verbal creativity. I think I have always wanted to be an artist but then didn’t have the medium to so. So now I use flesh.

D: Bondage?

FDM: Bondage, beautiful women bound in elegant erotic ways, yeah. It’s a real turn-on, its a turn-on as an artist, it’s a turn-on in bondage eroticism. I am also trying to challenge the general concept of art and crossing over from bondage smut. Yeah, I also call it smut but I also have an ulterior motive of bringing an artistic angle to it and challenging the notion of art erotica and sensuality.

D: How do you think your ideas about art is going to be perceived or accepted by people and then if you look at the long term, do you think it will be more accepted?

FDM: I don’t know if it will be more acceptable but I would like to provoke. I would like to provoke a reaction or a thought and ideally broadening someone’s scope on what could be art, and that there might be some not all, but some that might see that and say “wow this is beautiful.” So I don’t expect acceptance, but I might be able to affect change.

D: Kind of like Cubism?

FDM: (laughs) Yeah that’s it.

D: It’s also been over a year now since the release of your book The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, how do you think over all community has received it?

FDM: Oh my god I didn’t think it was going to be that good. In a period of something like eight months it was sold out. It’s in the 2nd printing and people love it. I love the photo you sent me of your friends learning from my book. Oh it was so cute, so cute. People love it and I think I made a right decision in having it be my first big book out. I’ve really enjoyed using different age, body, color and orientation. Everyone in there is a community member.

D: Yeah I recognized a lot of people that were in there.

FDM: That was so much fun. It has been really really well received and I hope that I get to do a volume two sometime.

D: I hope so too, speaking of which, what type of subject matter would that cover? Would it be more advanced that techniques that would focus on suspension or would it focus on more intricate rope bondage?

FDM: I haven’t decided yet. I would love to hear what people want me to write about. You know I am open to it. In the meantime, I am actually working on an erotic science fiction short story collection. It’s all my short stories. I am really happy that I got asked by Circulet Press to write a collection of short stories and it’s all set in a future Tokyo. Just like Blade Runner and William Gibson on triple x steroids.

D: Wow, so is it ultra violence or ultra eroticized?

FDM: Lots of nasty sex.

D: Smut

FDM: Yeah lots of nasty sex. There’s this kind of looser guy who visits a robotic brothel. There’s a wistful romantic bit about a lesbian yakuza revenge sex piece. Where a femme, who is the daughter of a yakuza member, has to go avenge her family against her ex-lover.

D: OK, that’s going to be really interesting.

FDM: Lots of sex in it.

D: Now as far as your views on art, do you consider your writing art as well?

FDM: mmm I don’t know if I would consider my writing art but it is certainly an outlet for my desire to be creative. I don’t know if it merits art. I like my social commentary. My social commentary is definitely not art. I do write frightfully hokey poetry that I don’t expose to the whole world and my fiction is purely pornography. Art no, wank, yeah.

D: Back to your book. I did enjoy it and was waiting for it for quite some time considering that there was nothing out there in the United States that was accessible especially Japanese style bondage was very difficult. Do you see that there is a growing community especially with Japanese rope bondage or is it just bondage overall?

FDM: I think there is a growing interest in bondage but within that even a faster growing community to rope bondage and Japanese rope bondage. Part of it is eroticisation of things Asian. This, if approached with an attitude of imperialistic eroticisation it makes me quite uncomfortable. On the other hand, if approached with genuine fascination, pleasure and interest in it, that is void of two dimensional worship of what they think Asian is, if it doesn’t have that element and its from genuine interest, I am totally ok with it.

D: As long as its not being

FDM: Exploitative, yes.

D: Well I think that just comes with the territory especially with some people, and their understanding of different cultures. I think that is just a given. I think overall especially when you are dealing with this. The people I have noticed would say initially yeah but when they start researching it they are sincere.

FDM: It’s been a part of my work to shed a very realistic light upon Japanese bondage. That it is not some ancient oriental secret that will bring you instant enlightenment and lots of babes. If you can get laid a lot from this, great, more power to you. But you know its not some secret mystical spiritual path.

D: It’s kind of like the perception of Old Guard. I thought that was interesting. Speaking of which, are there any interesting stereotypes about Japanese rope bondage that stands out?

FDM: Lets see, someone told my editor that it couldn’t be Japanese bondage because I am half Japanese. So the authenticity was not relevant because of my ethnic background. Never mind that I was born and raised in Japan and that I am certainly fully acculturated Japanese. In this nation of cultural patchwork that argument looses steam. Julia Child is doing French cooking. She’s not French. It must not be authentic French cooking. How silly would that be?

D: This is true. As far as bondage and its commercialization compared to 6 years ago there has been an explosion of bondage sites in general. Do you think it is just a passing fad?

FDM: Is bondage a passing fad or not is the question right? I think my perspective is highly skewed. I would want to argue that no, it’s simply that people are getting what it’s really about and exploring and expanding the horizons.

D: Or is it just S&M in general… Has it been very commercialized considering the media attention, most of it being negative?

FDM: I actually think it gets positive attention in the fashion industry. Oh my god Ralph Lauren introduced corsets for this fall. In the world of music video, oh my god, hip hop videos are full of fetish wear, it is hot, and they don’t pretend for it to be S&M, they think its hot fetish clothing. So the images are out there. I think some of it may possiblyy be negative. I think people are getting less scandalized by it and less likely to make a immediate snap judgment about the symbolism of an image. So maybe I am an optimist. Maybe the situation of the world is ready for a reasonable, even keeled approach. It’s much like piercings back in the 80’s. Back then, having an eyebrow piercing or have a lip ring or a nose ring, or a visible tattoo, how awful was that? That meant that you were socially marginalized, had been in prison or at least some sort of a criminal criminal. In this day you see someone with a visible tattoo they could be a criminal, they could be an art student, they could a biker, a rock n roller, a mom, a lawyer; I think the whole idea of what the object symbolized has lost most of its potency. That’s unfortunate for us who are invested in the potency of they symbol, but it’s also good in that it is less likely that we are going to be judged in a simplified way resulting in our complexity being denied.

D: Yeah, that is true but if its that accessible as well do you think that people who are in it for the thrill of it will just walk away from it and look for the next thrill??

FDM: Yeah, well if it is all about the excitement they will leave and we will still be here. Some of them will stay. In Guy’s (Baldwin) speech he was talking about people like the club kids. You know what? That is where I came out. I came out in the Goth and industrial club with the music blaring and pounding. I learned how to flog from a 7 ft tall drag queen in a punk outfit. I came from the nightclubs. I didn’t come from the leather bars. I didn’t come from the leather clubs. I didn’t come from the motorcycle clubs. I came from the fetish industrial nightclub running around with Goth kids and punks and a tranny freaks and weird "ren fair" people and freaky people wearing collars and leathers and stuff. That’s where I came out and yeah a lot of my buddies from back in those days got houses in the suburbs and are poppin out kids and all that. Some of us stayed. Some who stayed also live in the suburbs and pop out kids.

D: That’s interesting, in Guy’s speech, you are one of the 15% that gets in there and wants to get in with anybody just not your own crowd per say. What’s that like as far as your own experience? The experience of coming in from a different community and then coming into the leather community or bdsm community?

FDM: That’s a good question and no one has actually ever asked me that question. So thanks. I am really out about being having come from a club kid, because I think a lot of the club kids, the punks and the Goths are really looked down on. You know what, if you’re going to look down on them then you can look down on me. I dare ya. That’s my roots but you know I started off at old Goth industrial punk clubs and then I found a pansexual sex party. I was invited to that, and then I met Trannies and then I met drag queens. I got all dressed up as faux a girl dressed as a man dressed as a woman and hung out Tranny bars disguised as a Tranny. And then I discovered leather fags and high femmes with open toe sandals and a corset and walked into leather bars and ended up meeting radical fairies with the Black Leather Wings and playing with queer men and women who were not afraid of each other. Then I also ended up in the Society of Janus with a slightly older crowd, more affluent and tend to be more white, and straightish. I now consider The Exiles to be my home club.. that’s the San Francisco’s women’s club. So I ended up all over the place and sometimes I would get a sense of “ageist” superiority. It bugged me, but I am Japanese and I am polite. I know when to keep my mouth shut and I just kind of shrugged my shoulder and went on. Now I can present to leather men, dykes, hets and pans and trannies, and university kids. Yeah my experience with lots of other people absolutely essential and did I meet with resistance? Sometimes. Did I meet with curiosity? Sometimes. Did I meet with open arms? Yeah. The first time I ever walked into the Chicago Eagle all femmed up I was with Joe Bean, that was credentials and that helped me. The way Cynthia Slater got people into guys’ leather bars. The likes of Joe Bean and Lolita, who else was with me… I want to say Michael Horowitz, but it may or may not be him. Or maybe it was Frank Strona. The first time I went to the Lure. I was with Lolita and to walk in open toe high-heeled sandals to the Lure and to be let in. The door person looked at me and looked at my shoes and looked at Lolita and looked at the leatherman with us and then noticed that my shoes matched my corset and let me in. The queen factor ruled. That mixing of communities has really helped.

D: I think that as far as the mixing goes, it has came a long way.

FDM: I have never played online. While I am pretty net savvy that is my main means of communicating long distance such as with you and various points of contacts for organizing classes. I don’t cruise online. Unless I can see the dilation of the eyes and the sweat on the brow and I can smell the arousal and the fear and the hunger it doesn’t mean anything to me. Its just dots on the screen.

D: I can understand that completely.

FDM: So my online presence I use that as a means of communication between people I know and taking care of business. I wouldn’t be cruising with my fax machine. Communicating with my friends and making business arrangements with my fax machine. So I don’t know maybe I am missing a potential but I’ve got to smell the chemistry.

D: I completely understand. As far as your ideas about play as far as my research has taken me 1985 was the turning point maybe before you have seen the ideas of SM play change compared to 1985 have you noticed any significant changes?

FDM: In 1985 I was getting out of high school.

D: Oh really?

FDM: Yeah

D: 1987 – 89

FDM: I am still a punk in the community so in terms of historical perspective, I think my early years were consumed with self-absorption and self-discovery. So honestly whatever reporting I would make in terms of my first 6 to 8 years would be about my own discovery and I wouldn’t be able to accurately be able to report about what was going on around me.

D: Ok.

FDM: Because everything was so new to me. What I can say is that the Internet has made a huge difference, good and bad. I think for a while there we were suffering from “seminaritis.” Which is funny because I am a seminar presenter. “Seminaritis” where people were going to seminars and trying to find the “right way.” And there was a while there, in terms of education, there was kind of sense an absolutism on how to play as opposed to having people think for themselves. Now a days I think we got people who used to teach 101 classes are getting frustrated, because sensible ideas are taken as gospel and we are sick of it. So I think now the 101 presenters are now upping the ante…(i.e. now you have learned the alphabet lets learn how to express ourselves freely.)

D: Isn’t that kind of difficult, because if you are getting people who are thinking in black and white how are you going to get them to think outside of the box?

FDM: Now you have learned the rule, now you break them. Yeah it’s very difficult and there are some people that are very dogmatic and limited and require rules to live by, but there are always going to be people like that and they will only learn so much. It’s when they start to be the arbiters, the judges, and the police of our community that’s when it is dangerous. However, I think what we have now is the understanding that there are those that require rigidity of thought, but there are more people who do think more freely. There is more to it than the notion of simply using RACK instead of using SSC. I think that’s an indication of that. I remember a few years ago when I started talking about Safe, Sane, and Consensual and how we don’t play that way. I could hear a pin drop, because I was speaking heresy. Eventually, I would make a point and they would go “ok yeah I understand what you mean” but I was still speaking heresy.

D: But then again, a lot of the things we do would be considered heresy, because its apart of what we do in private and to be brave enough go outside in the open and say this is what I see, its really, I don’t want to say dangerous, but its very risky considering that the overall community especially as a whole may not agree.

FDM: I think that there is enough slow building momentum towards questioning orthodoxy that people seem to be more capable of looking at subjectivity of experience and the whole gray area and that its not all black and white. I think that people know that they have gotten the concepts are able to go to the next level. The next level I don’t necessarily mean technical prowess or intensity, rather the next level in understanding the complexity of the human condition and erotic drive.

D: How would that affect the overall community? Would they be more accepting of new things say if there was a new type of play that came along?

FDM: You know what’s going to happen; first there isn’t going to be acceptance, there is going to be controversy and talk and that’s all part of the change. The first time I taught the humiliation class people were turned on and revolted. They went away and thought about it and came back a year later. The same people that were there a year ago were in the class today. Seeing a whole new cognitive structure of the world and expanding their views. Even if they don’t agree with it or they don’t practice it. So yeah, initially it’s going to be met with reaction and discomfort and then a little bit of settling.

D: So what do you think the future is going to hold for you as far as teaching?

FDM: I want to write more and I want to teach more. I actually want to take my teaching skills to a bigger audience outside the kink community. I will always be family but this has been a good place to nurture my skills and it has given me an opportunity to think about a very complicated thing called human desire and to take them to a bigger audience. Maybe it’s in the ways of visual art. I have some art projects I want to get out there. I also want to write … you know what…I want to… I want to continue to give people permission.

D: Actually, as far as the humiliation class was concerned I think that is what I had to do personally last year.

FDM: I know that was a very hard class for you last year.

D: Very hard.

FDM: I know you couldn’t even look at me after class. I remembered that. I was thinking, oh I hope he is ok.

D: I was ok. I just had to be ok with myself so I had to think about it and talk to a lot of people. Talk to my mentor and think about it some more. Now I am ready to actually accept it and I did give myself permission to actually accept it and like it.

FDM: Yeah, and I was very happy to see you in the class. I was thinking, “all right, yay right on!”

D: I think in the past three years you have taught me a lot.

FDM: Oh thanks. I want to go out and do more work about giving people permission to think more flexible to open their eyes to understand their own desire and capability and to stop fearing their own demons. Because they aren’t there; they just think those demons are there, but they aren’t there.

D: That is true especially if its emotional, but then there is a point where there is a psychological trigger, but that’s a different thing.

FDM: Yeah. I meant demon in terms of someone that thinks they are going to go overboard. It’s a fear of their own shadow that is keeping them from understanding the entirety of their emotional terrain.

D: Speaking of which, it took me a long time before I would even “go there” and just deal with my personal monster, but as far as other people, when you are teaching other people or other people are communicating that experience to you doesn’t it seem kind of scary. Because it seems that it could be misunderstood. I can see it in two ways, because I am scared when I talk to people about it but I am afraid that it could be misunderstood for being ok to do something that could be mistaken as wanting to brutalize someone.

FDM: What I try to do over time period is to try to get people to understand that if you are here in a class, you care and if you care you have a limit. Its those that don’t care enough to learn that don’t have limits that are dangerous.

D: That is true. I have seen a lot of examples of that.

FDM: And if someone cares enough to want to do it the right way while doing something scary its like any other dangerous sports like white water kayaking. Well if I thought it was cool and strapped myself into a kayak and go down the rapids, then I am going to be dead soon. However, if I take all the right precautions because I understand the consequence, I take classes and then I push myself. Understanding the consequences. Someone understands the consequences and accepts risk and prepares for that, I think they are fine. Of course some people would say I am giving too much benefit of the doubt to level of maturity and intelligence but I have general hope for people. People who come to leather events are people who want to continue to learn and connect.

D: I think generally you are able to tell those people and you’re right, they aren’t the ones who would be interested in coming to an event.

FDM: They are also not the ones who would say I am scared I am going to go overboard. The ones who say ‘I am scared of being out of control’ have a sense of the potential but are mistaking acquisition of variety for something that could overwhelm them.

D: That is interesting concept using the word variety especially when you are talking about something inside yourself or realizing something inside yourself. Could you expand on that?

FDM: Yeah the notion of reality for some people is that are afraid if they go down the merry path of kink, SM and edge play that will become their whole self and it will take over like some big demon. Whereas there’s the notion that intensity is one of many flavors of what you like that may be inside of you. You may like really intense heavy scene edge scene humiliation. But you know, you might also like snuggling under the blanket and watching a movie.

D: So it’s kind of like a duality.

FDM: It’s understanding that there’s a greater range of what you are capable of and that one element of yourself is not going to take over everything else but it becomes, simply, one color in the crayon box. One flavor in the ice cream cone. Just because chocolate chip ice cream is really intense doesn’t mean that its going bleed over into the other 32 flavors.

D: That’s a great way to think of it.

FDM: Although when you first discover the chocolate chip ice cream that is all you're going to eat. Then you are going to get tired of it and your going to put it down for awhile and go to the other flavors and then you’re going to come back and have a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream instead of a gallon.

D: Yeah that is true, especially the tastes I tend to like.

FDM: You tend to indulge heavily and then pace it out.

D: What do you do to relax? What’s your polyester day like?

FDM: Polyester day, that’s funny. You know what, I love snowboarding. I love white water kayaking, I love going to museums. I love taking my laser pointer and driving my cat crazy. Making my cat chase the laser pointer. I love that. I go to the opera.

Going to the Opera in San Francisco is great. And I go in fetish wear! Talk about mixing my worlds. Once I strapped my friend who is a fabulous masochist to a cock and ball device with a sound activated Eros Tec and went to the opera and I turned it on during Puccini’s Tosca. During intermission, I turned it off but during the opera I had it on. Of course he has to be quiet. You have to be quiet at the opera.

D: Ok where were you sitting?

FDM: By the orchestra. Center Orchestra near isle.

D: Ok that’s where the strings are.

FDM: Yeah. It was a well-balanced sound area. So I do things like that. So I do mix my kink. I also indulge in my kink in places that are not traditional kink. Respecting other peoples limits of course. If I wear fetish wear to the Opera, I wear beautiful gowns like a long green latex gown with pearls and nothing that is body part revealing. All very tasteful. It just happens to be made from leather or latex. It looks like any other gown. If I am doing something like hidden SM play no one else is going to be exposed to it. It’s just going to be our little secret. So that’s fun.

D: That does sound fun.

FDM: It is. Its gives you a new appreciation for classical music.