My Private Life by Mistress Nan is somewhat liberating, somewhat deep and disturbing, and mostly fascinating. In dated episodes, like diary entries, starting in 1965, we read the intimate details of Mistress Nan's entry into her dominant life. From her Bible Belt upbringing, Nan takes us through the dark corridors of discovering, hiding, exploring, and pushing boundaries as the entries go from her cover-up marriage, to placing veiled ads (remember, in 1965 there is no BDSM movement and no internet), to finding a compatible mate, to slave-keeping, to her extreme, passionately kinky relationship with the remote and model-beautiful Alex.

I skipped around when I first started reading this book, and it was a mistake. In the preface, not only does Nan explain that all of the scenes are consensual and have been negotiated ahead of time (entries rarely included negotiations), but she also tells time spans between progressions. For example, when we first meet the beautiful Alex, she maintains control of everyone around her, hides behind sunglasses, and has a boundary of "no pain." Even being given the dates, it seems sudden when shortly we read about heavy 24-hour "hell"sessions in which Nan takes Alex to full body bondage, enema, sexual torture and force-feeding. In the preface, however, Nan explains that she had been seeing Alex for 4 years before she even gave her a spanking.

In this sense, the episodes are not primarily designed to document a real-time progression, or offer analysis of a domme; they're visions of creativity and glimpses into the wild energies behind raw, instinctive power exchange. The book's editor Joseph W. Bean points out in his preface that in this book "you run into the opportunity to truly wallow in a point of view you could never have invited yourself into." Nan has a distinct style, a unique set of drives and lusts, and she's unapologetic about it. She's bisexual and dominant, so her tales mostly feature scenes in which a dominant woman takes submissive men and women to task.

Naturally, few books will entirely address any one person's perversions. And players draw different boundaries on their kink. They may not like the idea of feeding a submissive marijuana brownies to increase her paranoia, or the idea of punishments that come out of anger. But really what Nan gives us is a rare opportunity to see real BDSM as it happens, impromptu, in the raw, and real. For Bean, as a gay male leathermaster, editing the book offered "not just a chance to see, but a compulsion to look, and to look carefully at another way of playing, another system for valuing SM." Like Bean, though elements of Nan's story were way out of my vision for BDSM, I found it eminently electric and enlightening, and certainly not to be dismissed.

Probably the secret of the book's power is Mistress Nan's motivation. She tells us in her no-nonsense way that the book contains "personal accounts of my adventures which I've written for my own pleasure."

In My Private Life, you'll be able to read the true account of a piano student who grew to expect OTK punishment when he failed to practice. You'll read about the shoe salesman Mistress Nan walks all over in her hotel room. And you'll read about the several episodes of breaking Alex that end in a large ritualistic birthday party where countless dominant experts get to have at her with their special tortures. And preferences aside, Mistress Nan gives us a gripping, enjoyable read, great for a Sunday afternoon when you're looking for a polar complement to your morning church services.