The Red Room

I

I am 39. My legs are strong, thick, and muscular. Over my fishnets, I wear a black spandex thong and a lacy black and fuschia teddy. I am protected and exposed. I am in control. 

They don’t care what I’m wearing. They come to kneel in front of me, their foreheads to the tips of my boots. The balls of my feet ache, but I think about the money.  

They come in all forms. Your average guy in business casual, khakis and loafers. Construction workers in boots, tech guys in polos, college students, rabbis, doctors, lawyers, husbands, and fathers. There is no profile of a sub; a submissive. Only when they’re stripped down, they are similar, like toddlers. They come to be condescended to, humiliated, demanded of, hit, spanked, flogged, whipped, caned, chained, stepped on, spit on. They come to grovel, beg, whimper, be silenced. They come because their wives, girlfriends, lovers won’t or can’t, or because they’ve never found the words to ask for what they want. Sometimes they can barely admit it to themselves. 

They come to the windowless dungeon in midtown Manhattan. They pay me to treat them in ways they wouldn’t accept in everyday life. Their deep insides turned out, guts splayed for me. Yes, Mistress. I do this easily, like the flick of the wrist required for a caning that leaves sharp red lines on their skin. Words tumble from my mouth as if from a script I don’t remember writing, always there waiting for me. I understand, intellectually, the need for pain, visceral and ancient. 

Afterwards they are always relieved, like I’ve lifted a heavy burden. 

Afterwards I wonder what I’ve done.

II

There's a black metal floor-to-ceiling locker full of weapons the Doms use, implements of punishment and restraint. Whoever is working the shift goes to meet the client in a revolving door-style interview. Enter, make your appeal, banter with the client, exit, and wait for a decision. Once a client selects you and tells you his specific needs, you choose the tools you need to arm yourself for the session. Methods of torture most frequently requested: spanking, caning, horse switching, whipping, tying up, and choking. I specialize in verbal humiliation, it’s my most popular request.

Men pay a lot of money to have me step on their penis and tell them they are worthless. They crawl and beg me to let them fuck me. They pay me to deny them. 

It always ends the same way: the sub shudders and announces “I am coming.” He is usually on his knees and ejaculates by his own hand onto the laminate floor. He thanks me, tips me, and gets dressed. The worst part of the job is cleaning up. Latex gloves and a spray bottle of disinfectant, on my knees wiping gluey puddles. 

The work is incredibly physical. My muscles are tired and my bones ache from the high heeled boots and the strength it takes to stand in them confidently. In the beginning, I tell myself I’m out of shape and will soon be able to afford a gym membership. I tell myself I’m buying my freedom. I am afraid it’s something else. I go to work in jeans and bring a bag of clothes and makeup to change into, riding the subway with my secret.

No one outside of work asks me why I do it. They seem to understand. Friends say “that’s so cool,” and leave it at that. Maybe they’re afraid of the answer. Sometimes I think, Maybe you are afraid to give them what they want. Maybe you are afraid of their need to have their power taken away. Maybe you are afraid of your own power. But instead I just say, “yeah, it’s pretty cool.”

I soon realize I am not just doing this for the money or the feeling of power. I am doing this because it’s a turn on for me. Sex is a language in which I am proficient, a country in which I am well traveled. Sex is not just fucking. It is a head game. A theater where I can be an actor practicing within a method. A place I can be in control and out of control.

III

When I call the Craigslist ad under Gigs that reads: WANTED: ROLEPLAY ACTRESS, Rebecca of Rebecca’s Hidden Chamber herself answers. After a few minutes of conversation about my experience as an actress, she says in her Long Island accent, “You sound sane, come in.” I’m not so sure. I’m happy she thinks so. 

The next evening, she hires me on the spot after sizing me up. “I have a feeling you’ll be good at this work.” She smiles her glossy lips at me, almost maternally. Maybe she can be a mentor to me and show me how to amass a fortune? Rebecca: small-boned in high-end all black attire and hand-painted blonde hair. Me: still working off the last of my postpartum belly, reminding myself to sit up straight in my tight office pencil skirt and polyester blouse. She’s direct and dramatic, whisking away a stray lock of hair with a manicured hand, her gumball-sized diamond ring catching the LED spotlight overhead.

Rebecca is right. I’m a natural. My first day on the job, I train with Nikki, a Dom about 25 and no more than 100 pounds. She’s been there the longest and makes the most money. I’ve never practiced BDSM before and as a newbie, I don’t know how to use all the fancy equipment. Nikki doesn’t seem keen on showing me. She invites me into her session, called a scene, where she instructs me to, “You know, stand there and look pretty.”

A man in his underwear sits on a folding chair in the middle of the Blue Room. Whips, floggers, and paddles line the walls. His hands are folded in his lap and his head is bowed towards his thin, bare chest. Rebecca had given me a tour but nothing prepared me for being face to face with a man waiting to be dominated. 

I stand against the wall and try to look tough but attractive. I practice a kind of inquisitive facial expression, cat-like, haughty, judgmental. 

“You’re getting a two-for-one today, sub,” Nikki says, unhooking a billy club that hangs from a belt at her hips.

“Thank you, Mistress,” the man says without looking up.

“Say it again. On your knees.” Nikki states flatly, eyes steady on him. He drops to the floor with that single sentence. I’m smitten with this idea in action. It’s easier than I’d imagined. Nikki walks behind him and binds his thin arms behind his back in leather cuffs. She proceeds to walk around him slapping the billy club in her hand, whispering insults in his ear, “You little shit, you make me sick.” His request upon booking the session was to be humiliated and beg to be beaten. 

I watch Nikki paddle, flog, then whip the man in a variety of positions, each one more shocking than the one before. On his knees, bent over her knees. Now, she has him shackled to the St. Andrew’s cross, spread eagle up against the wall, only speaking upon her command. He’s blonde, no more than 30 with skin that looks tanned from a recent vacation. 

He looks up, his blue eyes land on me and I notice a slight smirk on his face. He’s a former frat boy. I know the type. Instantly I’m flooded with the need to hurt him. His smirk held all his white male power and privilege. Power I imagine he has over me, who is working here, 39 and about to be evicted with two children. I imagine he owns the building I live in. I imagine interviewing for a job at his company. I imagine him in high school, a boy who’d easily call me a slut for rejecting him. I imagine the frat hazing sessions and the beatings from his father. He hates his white collar job but he’ll never leave it. I feel compassion for him too, his desperate need to have it all, his privilege taken away. Nikki nods to me with her chin as if to say, You have any ideas? 

It’s as if I have downloaded a blueprint of this man and know exactly what to do. I’ve been watching his buttocks redden and sweat drip off his forehead, mesmerized by it and also somewhat horrified. Then, like an animal, I smell his weakness, a metallic odor of fear-sweat. 

“Get on your hands and knees!” I shout in a voice that is larger than me. Nikki cracks a smile at me and unfastens the man from the cross so he can assume all fours. I take a caning switch from the metal mop bucket on the floor and hold it high, come down fast, whacking him across his ass. An electric shock runs through me like lightning. I look down at the new diagonal red line marking the man’s buttocks. 

I’m elated, high. You wiped that smirk off his face. The man looks changed, some tightness has left him. He thanks us, exhaling a deep breath, tips us both very well. A wad of cash in my palm, I understand something: I am the person granting a wish, a wicked fairy godmother. The pleasure I bestow is a two way street.

Doms experience the state of flow when they are in a scene, a psychology term I’d learned as an undergrad. Similarly, the sub enters something called sub space, complete absorption resulting in a loss of space and time. The first time I tell a client he’s a piece of shit, a flock of birds take off from my chest. The first time I whip a guy’s ass with a riding crop, I avenge heartbreak, a betrayal. The first time I paddle someone's legs, step on a man’s naked balls, smack someone across the face, I set the record straight with my father, my uncle, so many men in my life. Am I healing old pain or do I just enjoy being mean?            

IV

When I enter my first session alone, my client waits, stripped down to his white briefs and dress socks, standing with his hands held in front of his penis. The Blue Room is furnished with a bondage bed, cuffs, shackles, and metal restraints. Whips and floggers hang on the wall and I immediately choose a horse whip when I see him.

This one is built like a swimmer: tan, strong, and muscular. It appears he’s waxed his upper body. His shoulders slump forward and when I enter, he adjusts his hands, holding his wrist behind his back like a soldier. Is he already in character? Was he supposed to start without me? Am I ready to take control? 

"I've been really bad, Mistress. Really bad…" he says looking at his feet, peeking up for a second to eye me. I giggle, it sounds like bad porn, but I catch myself and transform it, so a rolling cackle tumbles from my lips.

"Obviously, or you wouldn't be standing like that, would you? Stand up straight! Tell me what you've done." The voice feels giant. I struggle not to shrink from the enormity of this Mistress being born.

“I can’t please you, Mistress and I want to so badly.” His voice is almost monotone and I wonder if he’s actually rehearsed this. It pisses me off that he might see me as some generic Dom. I want to make him say things off his stupid script, things that make him see me as his only Mistress.

“You think you can please me, sub?” I walk toward him slowly and lift his chin with the handle of my whip. “Don’t you dare lay your filthy eyes on me unless I tell you to.” His head ricochets back into a bow. “Now crawl, sub. Show me how you can crawl.” He drops to all fours like a stringless puppet. I take a minute to breathe, suck in this new air of power, gather my Mistress self. 

V

The middle of my third month at the Dungeon, the title Dom starts to tarnish, losing its diamond shine to a dull glow of sea glass. I’m tired and my muscles constantly ache. I pull my body around like a laundry sack. The fairy dust has worn off. 

I’m working the day shift, always a gamble, boom or bust. Some days we’ll get a rush of business guys needing to get beaten on their lunch break and other days, like today, it’s dead. Days like this, I don’t feel like a powerful Dom, I feel like an old miserable whore waiting for her next john. 

I watch the girls lay with their legs over another on the beat up pleather couch watching TV with a kind of ease in their bodies I don’t understand. I sit on my chosen metal fold-out chair, my body tense and alert, filled with a longing to become part of something I could not yet name.

VI

The next night at work, Rebecca pulls me aside. "I have a special request," she says. “A very special client who wants a switch, a sub. Do you think you are ready for that? It can be heavy. If you aren't ready just say so, it's fine. I just have a feeling you could handle this."

The other Doms find out that I'm about to sub and gather around me.

"You don't have to do this," one Dom says softly in my ear.

"Rebecca shouldn't have asked you, you're too new!" Nikki shouts.  

"Listen, I'm here for you if you want to talk afterwards." Another Dom looks into my eyes.

This is more attention than I’ve ever gotten in the dungeon. Their nervous energy scares me. Can I handle this?

When I enter the Red Room, the first thing I notice is his smell. Expensive cologne has a palate, like fine wine. I’m immediately concerned as I breathe him in. I am attracted to him. I expected someone large and brutish, thick neck and hands, but he is fit and refined, greying at his temples and wearing cashmere and nice shoes. His hands move with tender elegance. His Brooks Brothers shirt is still crisp at the end of the day. His eyes are dark, wild blue, soft but penetrating. 

He explains calmly, in an even, pleasant tone of voice, what will happen. “I’d like you to lay across my lap and I want to spank you. That's all.” He explains he’d like it to go on for a while, but that he will stop whenever I say so. “My request is that you try your best to endure it. You may be quite surprised by the results.” 

I agree to his terms but I feel on the edge of leaving. The other part of me is doing math: he is paying more than double. Nearly half my rent in one session. You can stop at any time. I can stop at any time. 

The first few hits are mild. How silly I was to worry about this. It’s not so bad. The rhythm of his hand smacking my ass smack-pause-smack-pause-smack becomes a kind of tunnel, a vibrating tunnel, somewhat like a massage but different. I am not sure I am conscious. Yes I am, I am here, and there is a man spanking me but these are words and I am not in words, I am in feeling. Feeling this rhythm, like dance, I am the dancer, music of sensation. 

The sensation becomes stronger, a magnetic force drawing me to it. I move towards it like a snake on its belly, slithering towards prey with a hungry mouth. There is safety here. Safety. I am safe here. Over his knee, I never want to leave. He becomes home, and I catch the smell of his cologne and the soft leather scent of his shoes and I am brought back to reality for a moment. 

He will take care of me. Smack-pause-smack-pause-smack. The linoleum floor is there when I open my eyes over his knee but then I swing out again into the tunnel of dark towards light. I go deeper in, submerge. I become aware the insides of my thighs are alive and the sensation is wrapping them like fingers reaching towards my cunt and the mouth of my cunt is aware of itself and extends like a tongue to my vulva and clit, like tiny flames now, licking at me and I hear myself making sounds, short breaths ,and uhhhahhh and force myself to be quiet because I am at work. 

I am at work. I am a Dominatrix. But I’m drawn back into the force of his smack-pause-smack-pause to my ass. I grip his leg like a child that wants to beg him to stop but I don’t. No, no, no, no. My entire body tenses, sensation climbs into my inner thighs, reaches up into my sex, my womb, belly, and shoots straight around to the base of my skull. I grind my teeth. The muscles of my sex contract and I feel the warm, wet walls touch themselves, pulse, and start to melt. Hot, sweating, inside the flames of what becomes a full-body orgasm.

Photo by Design Ecologist