San Francisco/Los Angeles Tour 2025

This will be my fourth consecutive September that I’d be spending it in San Francisco.

Growing up queer, gay, and kinky in Singapore, I rarely felt I belonged. The murmurs from every corner of society - family dinners, school corridors, local politics and national policies - made it painfully clear how narrow the boundaries of “acceptable” deviation were. Soft enough to pretend they weren’t there, but loud enough that you couldn’t ignore them. And so I learned to carry that knowledge and my identity, to live within a space that never fully made room for me.

I first visited San Francisco in 2022, when post-pandemic travel finally became possible again, and I found myself falling in love with the city and her people. But what was it? What about San Francisco? It was the pride flag unfurling over Castro, a banner of defiance and hope that Harvey Milk and George Moscone gave their lives for. It was the unapologetic joy of the Folsom Street Fair - unjudging, endlessly welcoming to all identities. It was the tea lady in a Chinatown dim sum parlour who rattled off in Cantonese without a second thought, treating me not as a guai lou but as someone of her kind - even if, truth be told, my non-Cantonese roots meant I barely caught what she said. It was my local Dominatrix friend who put me up at her place and drove me to sessions. And it was the House Mistresses and Proprietresses who opened their spaces to a travelling Dominatrix, offering not just a space to work out of, but a sense of community and kinship.

I’ve worked out of La Maison and Black Thorn a handful of times, and each return feels like stepping into a memory I’ve lived a thousand times: the faint echo of laughter down the hall, the soft hum of anticipation in the air, the quiet peace that settles in my chest as I set down my bag. It’s a déjà vu that isn’t about repetition, but about recognition - the kind that whispers about belonging, a quiet sense of calm as if I was home.