3 DAYS IN A HOUSE OF DOMINATION
by Kathe Burkhart
DAY 1
Tasha calls. Do you want a job, she says, three days a week, doing bondage and discipline?
Yeah, okay, I said, through a fog of sleep. At least she was finally calling. We’d discussed my looking at the dungeon her boyfriend owned and operated when I’d last run into her. I’d been thinking about the prospects of moonlighting as a dominatrix.
We make a date for six that evening, which isn’t good for me because I have a dinner date at seven thirty. It’s fitting that we begin with an inconvenience.
Vodka and limeade. I don’t even like vodka, but Paul left it here. At this point in my life, why do I have to do this if it’s not just for fun? This house pays so badly- $70 a session plus tips. I guess I’ll have to consider it on-the-job training.
I can’t believe I’m going to do it, but I am. Jeannie, my go-go dancing girlfriend, says to me on the phone, “Just do it. After you do it the first few times, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before. You’ll use up all your negative energy about men while you’re at work.”
We’ll see about that, I thought. I have a lot to spare. But the main thing is I need money right now in the most desperate way. What the fuck else do I have that will sell?
What to wear for my first night at work was an issue. I finally selected my black and red merry widow, my black leather mini skirt with fishnets and patent spike heels. I jammed it all into a Canal Jean bag, and headed out the door.
On the subway into Manhattan, I realized it’s nearly the identical outfit I’d worn for Charlie when I stepped out of an airplane one July to save a rotting relationship. It died anyway; I couldn’t revive it by playing at being a slut. Nothing worked. That was bad for my ego.
Chelsea. I’m afraid I’m too contemptuous to sit around like this for hours, waiting to be chosen to dominate someone! Now, I begin to understand real-life submissives who work as dominants. It always used to puzzle me.
But now as I watch my young, beautiful co-workers in thigh high leather boots taking turns answering the house’s two phone lines, I realize that these mistresses are merely ladies-in-waiting. Many calls involve entertaining phone freaks, and sussing out the serious john who really wants an appointment. In between inquiries and sessions, they watch soap operas or Oprah Winfrey or maybe the news. Meanwhile, I look at all the mostly old B & D magazines they have. I’m pleased to find an article in Dominant Mystique that mentions a couple of my sadomasochistic friends from Los Angeles. I flip through the advertisement and mentally note the phone numbers of other houses I might work for in the city, if this place doesn’t pan out.
Business is real slow. Only three clients come in during the night shift. There are six girls working. I mean, waiting, ‘cause they’re not bein’ paid to sit.
‘Czara’, a nineteen year old anorexic bleached blonde, got all three sessions today. In between, she’d snort a few lines of coke. There’re a lot of girls in the business like her, who just get by on youth and looks. That’s what blows me away – the trips in this house.
So I sat on the lumpy couch all night, watching CNN report on the Russian coup. After a while, the drone of politics set my mind wandering.
I wonder if there are houses where women can go to buy submissive men. I don’t know of any in New York. A Japanese rubber fetishist I once met at a party in Amsterdam told me that there’s a place like that in Tokyo.
“They do anything you want,” he told me. “Anything. You like a young cute boy? They have a plenty to choose. You like-a to spank? Very cheap, under hundred dollars. They take golden, even brown, shower. No extra charge. Many rich wife of businessman go to houses.”
I glance over at Maxine’s watch. Midnight jerks me out of my reverie. My shift is over. I change into my street clothes and go outside. It’s pouring rain, some Hurricane Bob aftershocks.
Czara comes up to me on the street. I check her out. She’s wearing a white long-sleeved partly see-through midriff top with skintight blue-jeans and white boot shoes.
“I hear you’re an artist,” she says, in her squeaky nineteen year old voice. “That’s cool; I draw too. I went to FIT for a while.”
“You got a lot of work today,” I said, ignoring her attempts at bonding, still jealous of her moneymaking youth.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “It’s just like that. I’ve had plenty of days when I didn’t get a single session. But then you get days like I did today, when you make it all back.”
“Right,” I said, noticing that we were mercifully near the entrance to the Twenty Third Street subway station. “See you tomorrow. Bye.”
I went underground thinking that I radiate too much dominance in real life. That’s not what these johns are looking for. I’m not in visual sync with these teenage wasteland rock and roll babes. I’m older and weirder than that.
Because I wasn’t chosen, I hop the turnstile when I hear the train coming, and go home without a dime in my pocket.
DAY 2
I’m working the afternoon shift today. Mostly, I sit around learning about the girls’ lives. Sinthia, a (w)holesome yet sultry Southern belle, uses her free time to brush up on technical information about bulldogs. She breeds them in her spare time and would like to become a veterinarian someday.
Lorie is switchable, and does submissive sessions as well as dominant ones. Her crackhead boyfriend has just been sent up the river. She’s been working double shifts lately to try and scrape up money for his lawyer.
Maxine and Tanya are two beautiful garden-variety bisexuals. They live with their boyfriends, but they’re having an affair on the job. There’s so much dead time here that you have to find something to do. Still, it annoys me when they go into Room Two, probably the most intimate dungeon here, and ask not to be disturbed for a few hours unless a client calls.
While they’re in there, the local vice boys come by for a friendly visit. Serena entertains them with complimentary backrubs. She’s worked straight service before, and still has a few clients who she sees in her apartment. I ask her about that after the vice squad leaves.
“One of them,” she says, “is really sweet. We have a special routine. It’s always the same. When he comes over, he brings a video, a real movie – not porno, a cassette or CD of some music, and a bottle of wine. We have a glass of wine and listen to some music in the living room for about fifteen minutes. Then we go into the bedroom, where the TV and VCR are.
“We sort of snuggle up on the bed and watch about twenty minutes of the movie, while having more wine. Then, he’s ready to fuck.
“He has me take off my clothes and lay on my stomach on the bed. He climbs on top of me and sort of pretends to put it in me but he doesn’t, really. But I pretend too, while he jerks off and comes on my back.
“And that’s it! He gives me two hundred dollars, plus the videos and tapes, each time. I have a whole collection of great jazz recordings and really good movies.”
The TV continues to blare. One Life to Live threatens to take over. The phone’s still ringing incessantly. Finally, I’ve had it with the small talk, so I take Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personaeinto Room Three, where the din of girltalk, phones, and soap operas blur into a low, undifferentiated roar. It’s more peaceful in here with the equipment.
After reading about five pages, I’m interrupted by the piercing sound of the buzzer. This means a client’s here and I have to go back out into the waiting room so I can meet him, and he can decide who he wants to see.
‘Michael’, a blonde traveling salesman from the Midwest in his twenties, picks me and Tanya for a double session. Tanya is reputed to be the Bondage Queen, and as a testament to her skills, dispenses with fetish costuming and works in her street clothes. I am wearing a body stocking and leather miniskirt with the requisite spikes.
Tanya and I go into Room One, after the client has paid. He says he’s new at this, but he wants to be tied up. Tanya asks him if he’d like to be fucked. He says he’s never been, but he’d like to try. He doesn’t say he wants to come, but it’s fairly obvious.
Michael is laid out on some stainless steel resembling a medical examining table. The table is equipped with a ladder-like apparatus with removable posts, and studded with metal hooks that are used for suspension.
“Watch me,” Tanya says, knowing I’m new to the business, trying to be sisterly in her demonstration.
Not being totally inexperienced, I pick it up quickly. I even tie a few fastidious knots of my own to show my talent.
“That’s nice,” she observes. “Do the other side, too.”
I acknowledge her validation with a smile and take my time looping the rope through the hooks.
Next, Tanya takes some twine and ties up Michael’s nuts. He squirms around. I tie up his cock. It is small to medium-sized, and hard. He sports some precum, which horrifies me because I don’t have rubber gloves on. I bite my fingernails, so it’s not safe. It’s hard to tie up a cock with rubber gloves on through. They interfere with your dexterity. I pull my hand away quickly, and wipe the precum off on his belly. I go to get the cockwhip from the peg on the wall. I amuse myself with it while castigating him for his secretions.
Tanya remembers that he wants to come, so she throws his feet over his head. They’re attached to a dowel that we tie to the ladder. This provides easy access to his asshole. If you fuck them, they get off fast. This is not news to any woman.
Tanya rubs his prostate and puts an ungloved finger in his ass. She’d asked me before we went into the session if I’d do it, but it doesn’t seem to bother her now.
I whip him casually while she continues. Then she goes to the office for some dildoes.
While Tanya’s gone, I blindfold Michael. I don’t want to look at his ruddy, corn-fed Midwestern face. Tanya comes back with dildoes. I put a rubber glove on my hand and condoms on the dildoes. I fuck him with two of them; first, with the smallest size, then with the next size up. I observe that his ass is really shitty. What the fuck do these guys eat?! I’m afraid of germs, despite all the latex. My hands sweat in the rubber gloves. They feel covered by foreign fluids even though I’m only stewing in my own juices.
At last, the client comes. The session only lasted about forty minutes, even though he’s paid for the hour. He’s the happiest travelling salesman alive, and thanks us politely before leaving.
Does a priest feel the way I do now when a sinner departs his confessional?
DAY 3
Today, I have to play manager, because Angela’s out running errands. This basically consists of talking to phone freaks, taking appointments, receiving clients, and telling them to get ‘completely comfortable’, which means, in house parlance, to strip naked before they meet any mistresses or transact any cash.
After the client makes a decision, I collect the appropriate fee for the desired service, put the money in a locked metal box, and inform the lucky girl he’s chosen.
I’m wearing a blue velvet vintage dress with see-through net at the top, accessorized with the requisite leg-wear and spikes.
I can’t help but continue to observe the personal submission of my co-workers. I begin to understand the dilemma of the unwilling dominatrix, Wanda begging Leopold von Sacher Masoch to just leave her alone. Most of the clients’ fantasies seem to be about making a submissive woman act dominant in order for them to enact some sort of internal theater; a performance which in the end excludes the woman and reduces her role to a supporting actress.
Real female dominance is a hell of a lot scarier than that.
‘Bob’ comes in for his four-fifteen appointment and chooses Sinthia and me for a double. He’s obsessed with his small penis, a plain fact I couldn’t dispute. Since he was abjectly crawling around the floor, whining about being a worthless dog, I decided to spring on the canine metaphor. I collared and leashed Bob immediately. Then I ordered him into the human sized doghouse, Room One’s special feature, and certainly one of my favorite toys.
“Bad doggie!” I yelled, amusing myself by tossing him milk-bones. I enjoyed watching him chew them up. When he’d make a face, I’d admonish him “If you don’t eat all of your appetizers there, Fido, you’ll soon be dining on canned Alpo as an entree!”
This seemed to encourage him to be a bit more obedient. Still, routines get old fast, so I had Sinthia assist me in tying up the pup.
First, I put a gag in his mouth because I was sick of his whimpering. Then I proceeded to spank and flog him with a variety of riding crops and whips, taking care not to leave lasting marks, at his behest, for fear his wife might see them.
Sinthia began tying up his teensy cock with a rope much too large for that activity; especially considering his pitiful erection. This was a cause for concern, since it was in our best interests for it to be hard.
Then, we took turns dildoing him. It didn’t take long for him to stink up the windowless room with his shitty butt. This pissed me off; so we untied him and had him resume his proper position — on the floor — while we reconsidered his fate. Bob had requested to be allowed to give a little foot worship before the session began. I seated myself in the chair specially equipped for this purpose. It places the foot of the mistress at a properly elevated position for the kneeling slave to receive. Bob greedily sucked on my old thrift store patent leather spike, no doubt imagining himself sucking cock, or perchance a teat. Then he began shining my shoes with his tongue. He went a little bit too far, though when he tried putting the whole front of my shoe into his mouth. For this, he received a swift kick and a crack of the whip. He slavered on my shoe and muttered an answer I couldn’t quite hear. He looked up at me pitifully. I kicked him hard with my free foot.
“Your penis is so small that Mistress Sinthia and I can hardly find it,” I told Bob, as he started sucking voraciously again. “You fuck your wife with that pitiful thing? I feel really sorry for her; you’d be better off without it. What Mistress Sinthia and I found between your legs I wouldn’t even call a dick. What does that make you, Bob?”
“A eunuch, Mistress,” he stammered.
“That’s right, Bob, a eunuch! It’s a pity we don’t do castrations here, because if we did, we could turn you into a castrati. Then you could sing us a little song! Lie down over there,” I instructed him.
“Yes, mistress,” he groveled.
He crawled across the floor. We shackled his arms and legs to a wooden slab. Then Sinthia blindfolded him. She amused herself with cock torture while I whipped him and put alligator clips on his nipples.
“Mercy,” he mumbled through his gag. “Mercy, Mistress…” Then he came all over himself, the way they always do. What a mess.
We left the room so he could get dressed. He put a forty dollar tip on the side table.
“Thank you, Mistress,” he offered. “That was a very artistic presentation.”
If only he knew the extent of my training!
Kathe Burkhart is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her visual art has been widely exhibited, including the Venice Niennale, The Brooklyn Museum and the Neuberger Museum, PS1 in New York and Alexander Gray Associates. She is the author of three books of fiction; Between the Lines, Deux Poids, Deux Mesures (The Double Standard), and From Under the 8 Ball. She teaches art and critical theory at New York University. Kathe Burkhart: The Liz Taylor Series, a book about her signature series of Liz Taylor portraits was published by Regency in 2007.