A clear Melbourne winter day

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For some reason the last few months have seen lots of bookings for me in Melbourne.  It’s nice to come down here, even in winter.

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It’s been a fun weekend, with a variety of Melbourne weather as one would expect.  I came prepared though and have remained warm and dry.

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I had forgotten just how beautiful Albert Park can be!  It’s a lovely spot.  I used to cycle around Albert Park with a cycling group when I lived in Prahran once upon a time.  It’s hard to forget the crisp Melbourne mornings.

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The things you see from up high!  The office building beside my hotel was in the process of being smashed apart, very slowly.  It’s strange to see buildings that seem perfectly useful being demolished.  It’s a similar situation around Olympic Park where I live – the office buildings being slowly bought up and then knocked down to build apartment blocks.

20160709_131533If I had a dollar for every time I have peered down a tram line trying to decide if that dot is actually a tram…  I miss Melbourne trams.  They really are part of the culture.  And so much more civilised than buses.

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It was a crisp sunny morning in Melbourne, the trees bare, and a cold breeze, but the sun keeping things warm!

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An excellent chance for a trip to the National Gallery of Victoria!  I haven’t been in years.

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The water wall at the entrance of the NGV is one of my favourite pieces of architecture.  It really is compelling.
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And this is why you should never sneak up on a Volkswagen Beetle!  Needless to say it’s not good for your resale value…
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I really have to say it’s a fabulous piece of art!

Next I spent some time walking through the Asian art collection.  I love seeing functional objects that are also made beautiful.  Asian cultures seem especially adept at this.

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Then we have the…

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I found the preponderance of religious iconography, heavy guilt frames, and sheer weight of oil rather oppressive and claustrophobic.

There were some gems though, including a Turner seascape,

20160709_142331this Monet,

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And some rather handsome marble busts.  I never cease to be amazed by what a capable sculptor can do with marble and some tools.

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If you have been following the news in NSW, then you will know that grey hound racing is being banned due to the appalling training practices of some owners, and the high number of dogs who die simply because they are too slow to race.  This detail (of a much larger painting) encapsulates why I agree with the ban.  Domesticated dogs can’t help but love humans.  They do whatever they can to please us.  So that puts the responsibility on us to make sure that their loyalty and love isn’t abused.  So if you are thinking about a dog, why not adopt a grey hound?

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The NGV has some rather nice restaurants these days.  I had a lovely lunch with a view of my favourite window!

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The Yarra River may have a poor reputation, but it’s a lot cleaner these days and you can’t deny that it’s beautiful on a crisp sunny morning!

I love this stretch particularly beside the boat sheds where I used to row.

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The old…

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And the new…

And with that, I am heading home!  It’s nice to visit Melbourne, but there’s no place like home and I am ready for my own space and most of all, my own bed!  So good bye Melbourne.  I will be back in September!  If you would like to book, please contact me, or keep an eye on this site for my travel dates.

John.

The sex bots are coming (again)

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It seems every year or two we see one of these articles: “THE SEX ROBOTS ARE COMING!” shout the headlines. Read the article though and it’s usually about one or two people working in the industry of robotics, or robotic research talking up the technology or spruking their products.  See here:

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/how-sex-robots-could-revolutionise-bedtime-20160609-gpfy6b.html

The story is changing though, gradually. As per this article (complete with smiling women smooching very plastic looking sci-fi robots) there are interesting and disturbing nuggets of information. for instance…

“Companion devices such as the Pepper robot are increasingly being used to provide company to elderly people, particularly in Asian countries such as Japan”

and…

“Prof Sharkey said there was evidence that companion devices were also being use by parents to keep their children company. Research from California indicated young children had emotionally bonded with the machines”

Now, it’s a vast leap to go from companion devices for the elderly to a robot who rocks your world in bed, but if you grow up as a child with ever more sophisticated companion devices (robots), then perhaps you will grow up to be an adult who is more comfortable with machines and machine sex than dealing with the messy, complicated, often painful world of sex with other humans. It could well happen. In fact I expect that it likely will happen.

But all of this – in my opinion – misses the point. Click bait headlines aside, it makes me ask the question: “what do we want from sex?” and ultimately “what does it mean to be human?”

I am regularly contacted by women who have difficulty in reaching orgasm, or difficulty being “in the moment” and enjoying sex. Our consumer society responds to that by saying that the solution is a new vibrator, or a more powerful vibrator, or an AI vibrator! And that may actually work for some time. Powerful stimulation that simply CANNOT be ignored may get you there for a while. But it’s really only a band-aid, over-riding the basic problem, and potentially causing more of it’s own (as your body decreases clitoral sensitivity in response to the very strong stimulation).

So my response is that if we can’t be “in the moment” for sex, if we can’t reach orgasm easily, then the answer lies not outside of us, but in our heads. We need to go back to basics – work out what is causing the problem in the first place: too busy and stressed with work? Unhappy in our relationship? Tired and stressed by family and commitments?

We need to either change our lives to reduce of remove the cause, or we need to learn how to be at peace anyway. A combination of both is, in my opinion, ideal.

So where does that leave sex robots? Honestly I’m not sure. Until such time as robots are intellectually and emotionally equivalent to humans, I can’t see how a robot can ever be a substitute for the sexual arousal that comes from the close physical and mental stimulation of another person. But if we reach that stage, then what really is the difference besides a synthetic body?

So basically we come full circle. If you want a healthy, satisfying sex life (with a human or a robot) then you are probably going to have to sort out your own head first. A task that I am always happy to help people with in the pursuit of better sex.

John.

Politics of the bra

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As a man I will never need to worry about bras – proper fitting, discomfort, and – most of all – the politics of wearing or not wearing one. This article:

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/why-is-my-choice-not-to-wear-a-bra-still-taboo-20160304-gnawq5.html

Was a surprise to me, but I guess I have to say, not too much of a surprise. After all, we are all human and people will always find a reason to be uncomfortable with other individuals around them. It’s sad that when a woman chooses not to wear a bra (which is a medically sound decision) she will be subject to public critiscism, by other women.

Just reading this article highlighted the complexity of the way human psychology works. Most of us, most of the time, don’t make decisions that are rational. We are for the most part reflexive creatures. Acting on our instincts before we even realise it, then creating justifications to defend our actions.

We can see it in the people who attack sex work as an industry. They have a problem with commercial sex and they try to hide it behind rhetoric about “saving” sex workers. We can also see it in people who attack, or denigrate the idea of a woman seeing a sex worker. Most of my clients are very selective about who they tell that they have or are going to see a sex worker like me.

There is always the fear that friends and relatives will disapprove and they will suffer from social stigmatisation as a result. It’s a very difficult situation.

In the years that I have been working in this industry I have seen it change – a lot. A big part of that change has been because of positive media attention, in this country. Articles published a few years ago about women buying sex transformed many people’s views. As a result, the industry grew significantly and many women started thinking about and making choices about their sex life that included being able to pay for sex and have it on their terms.

Women are choosing the see sex workers like me to have sex for the first time, to rediscover their bodies and their sexuality, to fill a need that the pressures of life and work prevent them from doing in traditional relationships – or just because they want to!

At the end of the day we can find all of the good reasons under the sun as to why a woman should be able to choose to pay a sex worker for their time and skills, but much like choosing to wear a bra, or not, it should be her choice, free of stigma. Free of judgment. And supported as her right.

John.

A study into women who buy sex – please help!

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In recent times the global battle over peoples’ right to sell and buy sex has come to the shores of Australia. It’s been a difficult time for sex workers (male, female, and trans alike) in Australia. The media has mostly ignored us, preferring to print splashy pieces about “sex trafficking” and abuse from a vocal minority, rather than having an adult conversation about the realities of sex work, why we workers do it, why clients buy it, and what the harms and benefits are.

A big part of the picture of sew work that is missing is the story of women who buy sex (or might want to buy sex). The moral panic is always framed as “abusive men using womens’ bodies” – an untruth of it’s own – but it also (ironically) silences the voices of women who buy sex.

Part of the battle to debunk the moral outrage being spread in Australia by organisations like Collective Shout (who are vehemently opposed to sex work in any form) is hard data. To this end, if you have ever paid for sex, I would invite you to participate in this University of New South Wales study into women who buy sex. You can find more information and a link to participate here:

https://csrh.arts.unsw.edu.au/research/join-a-study/

Or you can email Hillary Caldwell directly: h.caldwell@student.unsw.edu.au

The only way to make good decisions about our society is to have good science, based on real data – something that this study will help provide.

As a sex worker who loves and values his job and – more importantly – sees the value of sex work to both provider and client, I would like to request anyone visiting here who buys sex to take part in this study. Yes it’s an imposition and it’s personal. But it’s necessary!

There is a high likelihood that NSW, one of only two places in the world where sex work is fully decriminalised will introduce a system of licensing in the near future as was done in Victoria and Queensland. And that’s a slipper slope, because the people who oppose us want sex work abolished, not regulated, or licensed, abolished entirely.

If you value being able to freely and legally buy the services of me and my colleagues, then we need – as a community – to take action to protect sex work from people who set their morality and opinions about sex and sex work above the truth, the evidence, and the greater good.

John.

The future is brighter than you imagine

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Many women come to me in their forties and fifties, recently separated from a partner, or husband of many years.  They are looking for an experience to let them know that they can still have sex.  Can still enjoy it.  Can still engage with their bodies and feel pleasure and passion.

I have talked about these issues before, but at the end of the day my words are just that – a promise only – much better to hear from a woman who has traveled this path, had a date with me, then gone on to reshape her life and her sexuality in the form that she wants it.

I will let her words speak for themselves.

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What I do isn’t magic. But compassion and intimacy can allow us all to get back in touch with the person who we want to be, and to reawaken our sexuality.

If that is something that you would like to experience, then feel free to send me an email, or text, any time.

John.

April in Melbourne – part one

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I have just flown back to Sydney, having been in Melbourne for only two days – it felt like a lot longer though thanks to interesting people, a vibrant city, and catching up with family and friends.
I tweeted a lot of the trip because I was excited to be back in Melbourne and feeling a connection with it.  So I thought I would share those tweets…

I flew out of Sydney eventually, but only after Jetstar cancelled my flight and moved me to a qantas flight instead.  More aggravation than I needed and it left me lucky that my Monday afternoon booking had cancelled! Continue reading →

A little art

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There are some neat pieces of software out there on the Internet.  There are image processing versions of Google’s Deep Dream engine (Google created it for machine anaysis of images).  Also a site called Linify that reproduces images using coloured lines.

I picked a photo that I took a while ago and ran it through both systems and I thought I would share it here.

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My feathered friends

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How Deep Dream sees them after three iterations of the engine

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How Linify sees them

John.

Data mining and learning new tricks

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Mastercard have been mining the data and come to a disturbing conclusion: people are buying memorable experiences, rather than goods in the post GFC world.

By Leandro Neumann Ciuffo from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Mina da passagemUploaded by Markos90, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19967318

By Leandro Neumann Ciuffo from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Mina da passagemUploaded by Markos90, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19967318

Aside: whenever someone talks about corporations data mining, it makes me think of this – thank you Scott Adams!

Anyway, that’s great if you are in the “memorable experience” business like me, but I guess that it sucks if you sell things for a living, or are part of the supply chain for making and selling things. As a one time industrial designer, I am feeling just a little bit smug about my career change!

It does however make me just a little bit hopeful for humanity to hear this news from Mastercard. Checking off “See the Eiffel Tower” on one’s bucket list may not lead to enlightenment exactly, but it’s definitely better than just buying more “things” to fill up the cupboards with.

At the end of the day, it is experiences that make our lives rich and open our eyes to possibilities that we would not otherwise have considered. This is especially true of our sexuality. Even my society spend a lot of time and effort trying to prevent people from having and enjoying sex. But, I know absolutely that it’s never too late to learn. Be it mathematics, cooking, music, or sex. We all have the ability to make ourselves better. It just takes the right moment and the right teacher. And as adults, we have a lifetime of experience and maturity behind us to make good use of the things we learn.

If you have never had an orgasm. Or you have difficulty reaching orgasm reliably. If you want to broaden your understanding of sex and what it can be. Or perhaps explore your kinky side. Then drop me an email, or a text and tell me what you would like to learn. It would be my pleasure to be your teacher.

John.

Burnt

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I watched the movie Burnt (staring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller) recently. If you love food, cooking, restaurants, and drama, then this is a fabulous movie. It’s witty, with a great script and cast, it’s also beautifully directed, with outstanding production values, and a great score (including some excellent John Lee Hooker).

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For whatever reason, this movie scored very badly with critics, but it really touched me. Perhaps because for me (having run a bakery and loving good food and cooking), I can absolutely understand the passion, the intensity, the need to create and to astound with fabulous food. I also understand the lifestyle that people who work in the food industry live, the long and horrible hours, the poor pay, the work done because you love what you are doing, even though no one else will ever get it in the same way – even as they adore your food.

And then there are the egos. Many chefs truly are like psychotic rock stars. Their staff living in fear of the next outburst, the thrown pots and pan, the broken crockery. Cooper had experience growing up working in kitchens, and he then took that to the next level studying for the part at Gordon Ramsey’s three Michelin Star restaurant in London – as did all of the cast. It really was a movie that took the job of authenticity seriously. You can read more about that here and see what Gordon Ramsey himself had to say here.

It’s a great film – regardless of what the critics say (plebes).

If you love food you should watch this movie.  If you also love sex, then come and watch this movie with me and we can have great sex afterwards ;-)

John.