Ms Paige has instituted a new way for all of us to get to know what she calls “the Mind behind the Mistress.”

She calls it Flix and Lit:

This is for those of us who have a stack of books next to our beds, and who rent more movies than they go out to see. Now be honest- don’t fudge! Copy and paste to your blog, and let’s have a slice of the Mind Behind the Mistress. Or slave. Slaves can post too! Just remember to leave your link in my comments so we can all go look! This week, what is on your bedside table? What movies did you rent?

I think this is a smashing idea, so here’s my Flix and Lit for this week:

As some of you know, I’ve recently moved, so most of my books are still in boxes. But here a few that I’ve recently unpacked and set aside for bedtime reading:

• Spiritual Bathing: Healing Rituals and Traditions from Around the World, by Rosita Arvigo and Nadine Epstein
• Aural Thrills and Oral Skills by Miranda Austin
• The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, by Murray Bookchin
• The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice, by Margaret Rosenthal (this was gifted to me by a very special man, and I am looking quite forward to devouring this book!)

My Netflix choices this week:

• None! I’ve been way too busy. But lately, I’ve got a hankerin’ to watch Henry and June. For like the 10th time.

Image: Woman Reading, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Mark your calendars and get your credit cards ready! This is the first marathon I will be participating in, and I want you to make it good for me! Very good.

I will be available on Saturday, May 19, from Midnight till Noon. Email me or IM in advance to arrange a call.

A new initiate of mine asked several very good questions of me in our initial interview. And because my answers to him ended up including many “about Ms Veronica” statements, I thought I would expand upon my conversation with him and share my answers here.

What do you mean by: “ A demon with a lust for the succulent taste of the male soul?”

I believe sex is the most direct way to the soul. And so, I seek to conquer men sexually because to do so is to stand at the threshold of the soul. Some people get to this point only to turn back out of fear. But I am not afraid to stand at that threshold, and at those times when it is proper to do so, to cross over it and partake of the secret feast that waits there.

And because I know that such a feast awaits, I long to conquer, to take possession, to own this boundaryland of a man’s soul. And on occasion, to even devastate, violate, desecrate it… but NOT destroy, never destroy.

Destruction of this boundary inevitably leads to loss of will, loss of succulence, the death of a man’s lust. And a man made barren in this way would leave me nothing on which to feed. So you see, my choice to avoid destruction is not motivated by a half-assed desire to be humane, but by a calmly conscious, absolutely selfish hunger.

As I’ve already said, it does no good to ruin a man simply for the sake of doing it. However, destroying the boundaries of a man’s soul is very different than breaking his will. When it has become clear to me that a man needs to be broken, I will not hesitate to break, but I will do it because the time has come to break him open; the time has come for him to be more alive, not less so.

So, what do I mean when I describe myself as, “a demon with a lust for the succulent taste of the male soul?”

It means that I am not the woman you were taught to want. I am a woman preternaturally aware of her dark ancestry, her feral beginnings, her true amoral nature… I am a hungry woman… a woman you can do nothing about.

Like the beautifully hideous thing from which you cannot turn away… I simply AM. Lusciously young. Disturbingly ancient. Waiting…. unavoidable… just ahead of you on the path to yourself.

Read part one and two