Facials - The Savage Lovecast Project - TESS MATTRAW COSTUME CRAFTS

Facials - The Savage Lovecast Project
A series of masks for a gallery show based on calls from Dan Savage's sex and relationship advice podcast "The Savage Lovecast."

"So, I have a question, I've been thinking about it for a while. Um....I am...hm, a 23 year-old girl in a series of monogamous slash non-monogamous relationships, and have always had, um, kind of submissive tendencies, uhh, leaning towards kind of rape fantasies. So I was in a relationship for about two years where that played out just dandy until it became horribly aggressively abusive and he actually raped me, like, against my will, held me down, screaming, crying, that whole sorta thing, after we had broken up. So that was, you know, traumatising and abusive and um it's been a long time getting over it. Except for now, where I've found myself fantasizing about it again. And now I'm in a relationship, going on about a year, where I've found myself going back to those sort of submissive uhhhh...tendencies, and I wonder whether it's okay to approach this boyfriend who's been very supportive, very caring, with this whole scenario. Um, he doesn't know the extent of the abuse in my previous relationship, and uhh...I kinda feel like if I approached him with both at once, that might be a little overwhelming for him, so how do I get off, while I'm still trying to....you know, help him help me?"

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"My name is Caitlin, I'm a 26 year-old poly lady in Brooklyn. Um, I'm gonna do my relationship tetris first and then sort of get into my doom and gloom question. I have been with my primary partner for five months, but we've been romantically and sexually involved for about six years now, um, and I've been with my secondary for a year and a half, he was my primary before um things went official with my...(see, this is the tetris) with my current primary and I was dating his wife as well for about seven months and consider her my significant other, uh, even though we're sort of in a more friendship relationship right now. So for the doom and gloom, my dad was diagnosed this week with a very rapidly progressing neurological condition that is untreatable, um, he has about three to eight weeks left, and we're home and we're together, and we're there as a family, and we've had, you know, I've been very fortunate to have both of my partners be very supportive in their different ways while both at the same time recognising that they're people and they have their own schedules and their own emotions that they're going through with this right now. Um, so my question is really about poly funeral etiquette, and I don't really know where, who else I can ask. Um, you know, obviously both my partners are gonna want to be there, and I would like for them to both be there, but my mom and my brother are not super aware of the situation. They know my primary, and they know about my secondary and his wife, I've went on vacation with them, they're very obviously like a huge presence in my life, um, and so it wouldn't be entirely peculiar for them to be there, but I just wanna....I don't wanna add any stress to my family right now, as this is, you know, a horrific pile of shit that we're going through, so I don't, you know, I don't know if I should tell my mom before the funeral, um, you know, what the nature of my relationship is, or if I should just be a little more careful how I behave when they're there, um, so I'm all ears, um, this is really crappy, this is a really really terrible thing that's happening to my family, and I just don't wanna do anything to make it worse when we're sort of already in a hell hole. Uh, but I do know that, you know, within the next two months this is gonna be a reality and I kinda wanna know what you think I should do about it. "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"I am with a fantastic girl, we've been together for six months, I love her to death, I...I have one problem, and my problem is, is that I for some reason have a weird mental block about going down on, going down on her. And she has a fantastically beautiful vagina. It's fantastic. I love it. It's gorgeous. I can't say any, any more good things about it. I just have a, I have a terrible mental block. I've tried it once, and, and I was doing it fine and I could go on forever and just for some reason the, the mental part of it all just pulled me back and I couldn't get into it anymore. I hate making excuses about it because there is no excuse, it's a, it's a man-up deal, just do it, just get down there and do it, but I...I don't know what to do. I, I, I wanna try and I keep, I keep telling her I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna fix what's wrong with me, 'cause it's, there's obviously something that, that, that's wrong in the whole mental sphere of things. I, physically, you know, I can pump myself up and just be like "Okay, we're gonna do this, it's gonna be easy as hell," because it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be a difficult thing! And the, you know, the, the times that I do it, she says are, you know, are hittin' the right spots, so I, you know, I should feel good! I should feel fantastic! Uh, but I don't know what to do. I...you know, I-I-I I've had, I have had bad oral experiences in the past with girls I was with, with one girl, that, best as I can tell you, has the grodiest vagina I've ever, ever seen in my life. It's, just, it's, it was a mess and then a couple years later I found out down the line she never went to the gynecologist and it was just an infested, infected, mnyyyeeeeer I, I'm getting flashbacks and it's painful. But that's not here, that's not the problem, that's not the issue. I don't, you know, it's not an excuse of whether or not I've had bad experiences because bad experiences are not a....are not an excuse. So, please, please please, help me out. "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"I have a couple minutes just to tell you what my story is. I met a woman who is a former uh plus-size model on a website for plus-size uh women, she is absolutely gorgeous, uh we've been out a couple-a times, and we've had sex once, she has the largest breasts I've ever seen in my life, or felt, or sucked on, uuuuuuhhhm or fucked, she's a h-cup, and she's only 5'3", weighs about a hundred fifty pounds. Anyway, I don't know how the relationship is goin, because uh we've kind of stopped calling and texting each other, but I did hear from her recently, and she does wanna get together again, and she was interested in having sex again, and I just have a feeling that it might be our last time together. I don't know why I feel that way, but I just think that I might not see her again, so my question is if I have sex with her, could I videotape the sex, you know, without her knowledge, because other men have tried to get naked pictures from her and she's said no, and this way I would have it, not to extort money from her, not to put it on the internet or to threaten her, just for my own personal use so I could like jerk off to it and then when I'm 90 and I'm in the nursing home I could show other people like how hot she was. I'm a total boob man, and this woman has the biggest breasts - I don't even know how she goes to work every day. She is just totally hot and gorgeous and I'd just like to get it on video, again, not to extort her, or to um....put it on the internet or anything, just for my own personal use. "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"This is a 23 year-old straight female, and, um, you said something along the lines of "there are two types of kinky people: people who met and had partners later in life who could kinda introduce them to kinkiness and they really liked it and continued with it, or people that, um, did kinky stuff when they were little kids and didn't understand it" and the reason, um, that I was really interested in this statement was because when I was a kid I developed an early interest in bondage. I remember seeing a comic book at the barber shop when I was there with my family that had a picture of a woman tied up to a pole, like, covered in honey and about to be eaten by a bear in the Roman colosseum and Conan comes and rescues her, but I just remember being fascinated by this image of this woman tied up, and, you know, her clothes are torn and...I've just always been really interested and turned on, but I guess I didn't really understand that I was turned on because I was so young, and this progressed to me tying myself up to the foot of my bedpost or tying up my barbie dolls. One time I even went for a sleepover at my friend's house, I was probably nine or ten, and I tied her up inside of this, um, Disney princess tent that she had in her living room. And after that experience, she, I guess, told everyone in school that I was weird, that I had done something to her that was not okay, and I didn't understand, but, um, basically I end up being very outcast, uh, in middle school, high school, uh...I didn't know how to talk to any adults about it because I really didn't understand, I was afraid that they were going to think that I was weird too, that they were going to ostracize me in the same way, so I didn't talk to anybody about it. I guess I just kind of wonder, wondered how to, uh, just how to get over the shame that I've felt for the better part of 20 years. "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"I'm a married lady living in Florida. We've been having problems. He's a depressed person who doesn't treat his depression, and um, he also has a kink, he would love to be submissive and would very much like me to dominate him. I'm not a domme by nature, but obviously I would like to do anything to make my husband happy. The problem is, when are we gonna do this, because you know, a lot of people, they know that you're supposed to, you know, make, make a date to do this, and um, my husband doesn't like me to make a date to do it, especially when I've not done it in such a very very long time. But the thing is, is that, because of his depression, he, um, sometimes snaps at me and what happens is I end up getting angry inside and trying to find outlets for it, whatever, cuz even if, in a very mild tone, you know I wanna say "hey, don't pee on the toilet seat" or "hey, um, I'd really appreciate it if your alarm didn't go off, you know, again" or, you know, those little annoying things, you know, anything, "here let me do that" he's, he, he takes it very personally, it, to me he's not a very good candidate for being dominated. But today we've just hit a bad point in just that, um, I've been holding back some of my anger and I was just starting to feel better today, and, um, feeling in a, in more of a happy place, and came in and noticed he was reading his porn and, um, about being, um, cuckolded and dominated by a hot wife and I was in the middle of doing errands and not in that space. In the course of the afternoon he came up with rope tied around his scrotum and wanted me to pull, and we started to have a conversation about our lack of, um, kinky sex, and, um, and I said "well, I don't think we're supposed to do it when I'm angry" and so then we started talking about me being angry, and then of course he got angry, because it looked like I was trying to get out of being a domme, again, and so I said "okay, well let's just see" and I had him pull down his pants and I got out my riding crop and I gave him three really hard smacks to the butt, and it hurt him, and now I'm appalled and ashamed, and so now I'm the bad guy and...I know, I've read the books, he hasn't read the books, but I've read the books, he just reads porn where it's all perfect all the time, but in the books it explains, you know, you should really have safewords and do it when everybody's happy and ready for it and excited about doing it, um, not when you have problems, um, and now I have a bigger problem and I don't know what to do. "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"I'm a 31 year-old married straight female, living in a large east coast city. And you always say "well, when a man says that he doesn't have any fantasies, he's lying, or" (I mean, not that he's lying, but) "he's, he's saying that he doesn't have any fantasies because he's hiding something big and scary." And so I jokingly said that to my husband today, and he was like, "Weeellll..." and, it, so we started talking about that and I was like, "really, I feel like you should be able to trust me and talk to me about your fantasies" and it turns out that he does have fantasies, surprise surprise, and they're pretty...dark, um, I would call them sadistic, uh, he is interested in bloodplay, um, violence, bondage, sadism, um, kidnapping, rape, uh, some pretty dark stuff. I mean, nothing that, nothing that scares me, I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm intrigued, and I think, I'm just sort of struggling with a couple of things. One is that we've been together for a while and I've been asking him this question for a while, we've been married for four years and he's just telling me this now? And that feels super hurtful, it feels like he just doesn't trust me, and then of course I'm sort of, in the back of my mind, thinking well does this mean that he's never been satisfied by this very vanilla sex that we've been having for all these years, and of course, you know, I asked him that and he said that wasn't the case. So, um...so there's that. I'm sort of trying to process my emotional response to it. I'm not really freaked out about fantasies, um, I mean, they're a little freaky and they're definitely varsity level, olympic level kinks, things that I, you know, we'd have to take lots and lots of little baby steps to even realise them, he's not even sure he wants to realise them, they sort of freak him out, but he says that, you know, seventy percent of the time that he's masturbating, this is what's going through his head, this sort of, he sort of analogised it to Dexter kind of stuff (I've never seen that show). Um, so partly I'm freaked out by my emotional response, feeling betrayed, feeling hurt, and then partly I'm a little bit freaked out about, you know, bloodplay, and edge play, and cutting, and, um, is that stuff that I should be willing to do? I, I feel like I am willing to do it, so I was hoping maybe you could point me to some resources, books or websites, um, um, I'm game, I'm interested in exploring his fantasies, I am interested in talking more about them, but, um, I think I could just use some, some help. "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"Uh, for some reason when I was in my mid-twenties, I decided to do a little experiment with myself, uhhhm, I just decided that I would stop, I was, I was, I wasn't, I didn't have a partner, I, uh, I decided that I would stop masturbating for as long as I could, just to see how it would, uh, how it went, how it felt, uh, what it was like when I started again. Uhhh, so I guess, uh, I think I got up to about two weeks before I gave in, but, um, about halfway through I made the mistake of getting into a bit of a, a session, um, kind of bringing myself to the edge, not letting myself cum or anything, but, uh, getting extremely extremely hard and just keeping myself on the edge like that for, I don't know, twenty, thirty minutes, whatever it was. And when I stopped doing this, I was in quite a bit of pain, I, I, I remember actually sticking my, uh, my cock into a, like a big cup of cold water or something like that to try and, uh, soothe it, aaaaaaand, uh, anyway, it really felt like I had done something bad, and then I, like I said, I managed to last another week or a few days or whatever it was without, uh, without masturbating. When I finally started again, I didn't seem to be as good, uh, as I was before. Anyway um, before, before that, I think I probably came an average amount uh, like, uh, amount of ejaculate, and, you know, the pressure was usually pretty good, I could shoot a nice little stream out and it was quite satisfying, uh, but after this incident, um, you know, orgasms, orgasms were still pretty good, and uh, I don't think the quantity changed too much, but it's like I maybe damaged a muscle, damaged my pc muscle or something, I don't know. Ever since then I really haven't, except for, you know, the occasional good shot, my uh, my pressure just isn't what it used to be before that little experiment. Um, I'm just wondering if you've ever heard of something so crazy? "

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz

"I'm a 29 year old bisexual female and I have a bdsm question. So, I tried getting into some bondage stuff with a guy that I date sometimes, and we discussed that we both wanted to try some bondage, so he came to our next playdate very equipt, and there's two things that I need to tell you: he had a bag of goodies and I didn't know what was going to be in it, um, but that was okay, that was kind of a part of the excitement, and two, we really didn't kinda talk about anything ahead of time as far as limits or safewords or anything like that, um...I don't know, that really might just be dumb, but I really didn't know and I still don't know what my limits are, so I didn't...I don't know. So, okay, yeah. Um, hm, so I have my hands behind my back, my legs were restrained, and he attached a spreader bar to them, and we fucked like that for a while, and then he added the rope and he connected my feet to my neck, well, the rope around my neck connecting it to my feet so I'm on my stomach in kind of a bowed arched, just, like...my feet are near my head. I'm flexible, so that's fine too. So, all of this was good. All of this was fine. I was fine with the restraints, even the rope, I wasn't choking, it was all...actually really hot. So, I was not scared, I wasn't worried when we started, everything he did seemed fine and mentally my mind was just...screaming how awesome it was. So he was fulfilling a lot of my fantasies, and some I hadn't even told him about. Okay. All of a sudden, it's like somebody flipped a switch. And, like...somebody was trying to shove me out of my body. I just...disassociated, it stopped feeling good, and it was all of a sudden weird numbing horrible feeling. My mind was freaking out and I didn't wanna be tied, and I didn't wanna be touched, and I just wanted him to let me out of it. So, he did, um, he freed me, and I basically just went and freaked out in the bathroom for like ten minutes while he knocked on the door. So when I came out we didn't talk about much, I basically just told him that I freaked out, and he apologised and, you know, whatever, so that was that. Okay. So, I have read some stuff about sub safe, how, um, you can go somewhere or something like that, um, was this my body trying to protect me, or my mind maybe, or was I just scared, is this normal, did we move too fast without enough communication? Again, it all started out gangbusters, super ready, super excited, and then just all of a sudden freak out. So, what can I do next time to stop that from happening or if it does happen, how do I, how can I calm myself down or react in a better way?"

Photo by Damian Charkiewicz