I met Rafaela in January 2005. That was before she became SensOtheque. She blogged as Bitterzoet [1], a very personal blog about here sexual encounters, fantasies, likes and dislikes. It featured some of the best writing in the Belgian blogosphere at that moment.Since then, Rafaela has become a name in the world of Belgian erotomania, she launched SensOtheque; a website dedicated to eroticism, was featured in Feeling and De Morgen, and contributed to the most recent issue of TicKL Magazine [2] [3], a Belgian magazine launched by carmendevos [4].

I remember quite clearly what I liked about Rafaela. She managed to physically visualize a space hitherto primarily mental. She fleshed out this pornotopia as Le Château d’O[5].

“The Château d’O features erotically decorated bedrooms with luxury bathrooms, but also houses common lounge spaces with a cinematheque, a print cabinet, a sens’Othèque where one can use sex toys, a well-furnished library and a atmospheric bar and restaurant, a bathhouse with sauna and a BDSM attic.” [6]

Later, after she’d launched the SensOtheque “a guide to refined Literotica, Cinerotica & Bedroom Arts” [7], she incorporated these early comments into her mission statement.

“The sensOtheque is a dream that comes true, an empire of kinky chic, with an air of boudoir romanticism, of the voluptuous and the sumptuous. The sensOtheque represents a passion for far-off, more glorious days: the times of the courtesans and the distinguished geishas, the red velvet atmosphere of The Story of O and Venus in Furs, the decadent world of the 18th century Salons, where women were educated in the field of sexual pleasure.”

TicKL 2 can be ordered here. It includes the only and very short piece of fiction I have ever written, called “Brahms II“, version homme, inspired by Brahms I, by Rafaela.

This post is the first of a new series on blogs from Belgium