The iconic professional BDSM house Salon Kittys will be closing it's doors for the last time at the end of this week. It was certainly a sad day when I heard the news – after 27 years of groundbreaking professional BDSM Mistress Amanda has decided to turn her attention to other things and take a break from the responsibility of owning and running such an incredible place.
When she first started as a professional Mistress back in the 1980s BDSM and other forms of sex-work were still subject to an array of laws. Amanda Dwyer was instrumental in ensuring that professional BDSM was included in the decriminalization of sex-work. She's been an amazing mentor to so many people over the 27 years she's been practicing and of course has given so many of us a start in the fantastic world of Professional Domination. Together with her partner David behind the scenes making equipment and managing websites – they created an amazing space and more so a standard of excellence in professional practice.
There are so many people in the Australian and International BDSM community who first explored inside those walls and we all have a lot to thank Amanda David for. I just want to extend my personal thanks for taking me onboard as an Apprentice Mistress back 12 or 13 years ago and wish them both well for the future. I'm sure our paths will cross again!
Of course it's put me in a very contemplative mood – by total chance the day after the closure was announced I had a lunch date with my good friend Mistress Serena and we spent lots of time reminiscing. I actually wrote about Mistress Serena and my first professional engagement at Salon Kittys a couple of years ago when I was discussing my first latex dress…
I wore the dress to my first ever professional Domme engagement – 10 years ago! Mistress Amanda from Salon Kittys advertised on a mailing list I was on, looking for experienced Mistresses to join Salon Kittys. I had recently left working in an international PR consultancy to take one of the accounts (which they were resigning due to a conflict of interest with a much bigger fish) with me… small business cash flow and all that I decided to email her and see if I'd be of interest to SK's.
Anyway – I told Mistress Amanda that I was an experienced Top as I'd been playing in my personal life for some time – but I wasn't an experienced Mistress as I knew that to be a ProDomme is a very different thing… Which by total chance on my part was just the right tone to take 😉 as there tend to be a lot of lifestyle ladies who think they know a lot – but can often come adrift at having a breadth of knowledge in a professional context….
So she gave me an interview – which I treated like any other interview and attended wearing a beautiful navy Yohji Yamamoto suit with an ankle length skirt. I think I might have just come from a meeting in North Sydney beforehand. Mistress Amanda agreed to give me a trial as an apprentice Mistress… and my very first experience was attending one of the famous Salon Kitty's Mistress parties!
I turned up in the floor length latex gown – and immediately found a friend – as Mistress Serena took me under her wing. She asked a poor helpless sub if he took discipline – and in the face of the two of us he happily complied and was the recipient of my first professional caning! Lucky that was my original favourite activities I'd been doing in my personal life so I acquitted myself admirably 😉 and proceeded to have one of the most fun nights of my life with an array of subs lined up for me to play with! Mistress Serena is still one of my best friends in all the world and even though she doesn't take sessions at the moment – I see her often and yes – she's still totally glamorous and into her fabulous rubber!
Mistress Amanda must have had a good report on me – as she got me to come in the next week to start my shifts as a new apprentice Mistress – though I was considered to already be up to SK standard on discipline 😉 and just had to focus on learning all the other activities; bondage, cbt, crossdressing etc etc… though the most important thing of all is the one you never see a class on – how to structure and run a session!
I nearly fell over with shock when the receptionist gave me an envelope with my "party money" – it made the crazy concept really sink home for me – I can play and have fun and there are wonderful people who'll subsidise this for me 😉
though in the years prior when I was purely "lifestyle" I didn't get to have nearly as much fun – or acquire a tiny percentage of the outfits and toys that I now totally take for granted!
So farewell and plain sailing to Amanda and David – I'm certain that the future will hold a lot of wonderful things.