I'd Choose a Side Gig as a Domme Over Being a Wine Consultant Any Day
My side hustle as a wine consultant royally sucked.
In my last newsletter, I may have given the impression that I take an almost dismissive attitude towards my past career as a pro-domme. I emphasized that there was an “accidental” nature to my staying in this job for as long as I did. I also brought into focus that I viewed it as a side hustle.
However, I don’t want to lead you to believe that this was a job that I just picked up and dropped as I pleased. It wasn’t something that I could show up for, complete quickly, get paid, and then forget about.
From the get-go, this job had a way of becoming a full-time career. That’s because, if you’re going to have any success at it, you have to treat it as a real job.
It’s not just the time it takes to comprehend the Mistress/slave dynamic and complexities of the various client profiles while managing sessions that cater to their unique interests. It’s also about mastering the diverse activities that make up the entire BDSM repertoire. Plenty of these activities are dangerous and you really need to know what you’re doing before you carry them out in session. An untrained domme can seriously harm a sub both psychologically and emotionally if she’s not careful. Domming is not low-skilled labor.
So, even if I sometimes did approach this job as a side hustle, that was never really an option. It was a craft I had to dedicate myself fully to if I was ever going to have any success.
And there were many reasons to do that, positives to be gleaned. To understand some of the great things about my career as a dominatrix, I need only point out the story of another job I once had, which really was a side hustle. This was my job as a wine consultant.
I had a side gig as a wine consultant after my divorce.
In the aftermath of my divorce, I took on a job as a part-time wine consultant. Initially, this job seemed like a perfect fit for my situation. I was now essentially supporting two kids alone, which seriously limited my availability for a traditional 9-to-5 job.
I needed to stay close to home, as my children were still quite young, and I didn't want them spending hours in some daycare facility. I had pretty much 90% custody of them at the time. Luckily, my ex was available to “babysit” the kids in the evenings and on weekends, precisely when my wine-consulting services were in demand.
I could drop the kids off with him and then go to work. That made this job very attractive to me. Sure, the pay was far from impressive. However, after being a stay-at-home mom for years, I was desperate for any job, especially one that fit with my schedule.
However, this isn’t to say that there weren’t red flags about it from the very beginning. First, the company required me to purchase the tools for the job out of my own pocket. I had to buy my own folding table, a white tablecloth, and a stainless-steel wine bucket. None of these items were very expensive. But if I was working for the company, shouldn’t they provide me with these items to use?
The gig also had me driving all over my “region,” which meant spending long hours in gridlocked traffic. (I live in L.A., after all.) I wasn’t compensated for that time, for the gas I used, or for the wear and tear on my vehicle.
Then there was the work itself. I only earned twenty bucks an hour as a wine consultant. Each job lasted three hours, then I’d be back in my car, heading through more traffic to another location. For a three-hour shift that had sucked up an additional three hours of commute time on top of it, I only earned $60. Yeah, as I said, the money was terrible.
But money was money at that point. I needed all the cash I could get my hands on. I hadn’t held down a full-time job in years, and I was extremely lost, emotionally depleted from years in an unhappy marriage, and now struggling as the sole breadwinner of my family.
This situation only heightened my reliance on my job as a wine consultant. Maybe my boss sensed I was vulnerable as a newly divorced single mother; he could tell that I was strapped for cash, so I was easy to take advantage of.
He was never satisfied with my sales at the end of a shift. He yelled at me constantly. I thought I was doing well, but I was never doing well enough for him.
I didn’t complain because I was desperate for the work. One day, though, my boss pushed me too far.
On the day in question, I had to hire a babysitter to look after my children so I could get to my jobs. Though it was a Saturday, my kids’ father had another obligation and wasn’t available. The sitter’s rate was $20 an hour — the same rate I earned as a wine consultant. Not wanting to call in sick and wanting to keep my boss happy, I swallowed the costs.
However, this meant I also had to pay the babysitter for the hours I was commuting to the job, which I didn’t get compensated for. But like I said, I was still trying to do well at the gig, so I absorbed the cost, viewing it as an investment. My boss had led me to believe there was an opportunity for growth within the ranks of the company. The idea was to get promoted and then finally earn a higher wage.
When I reached the first event where I was to be “wine consulting,” I realized the organizers had forgotten to include our products in their brochure. There were no prices for our bottles noted anywhere. Our company’s name wasn’t even listed in the pamphlet.
Instead of calling my boss, I took charge of the situation, writing down the prices for interested customers and answering everybody’s questions about our wine. I felt that I demonstrated that I could take control of a problematic situation instead of asking my boss to “save” me. I didn’t want to call him to help me deal with every issue I encountered on location. I wanted to take charge myself and I thought I did an excellent job of doing just that. My boss had a different opinion though.
When he phoned me near the end of the event, I explained what had happened. That’s when he blew up. I mean he really went ballistic it. He screamed at me through the phone. He could not believe that I had not called him to tell him about this issue, and he threatened not to pay me for my shift.
When he said that, after I’d already driven miles to get to this event and had left my children in the care of a babysitter, whom I was paying even more than what I earned, I lost it, too.
I quit wine consulting at that very moment. I never made it to the next gig.
Going back to domming.
I knew immediately that I would return to domming. I had worked as a dominatrix before I got married. Though I hadn’t foreseen going back to that line of work, I knew then that domming was better than wine consulting.
I dug up all my old domme clothes from the closet, called around and found a dungeon that I could rent, and the following day, I posted an ad advertising my services. I had my first session a few nights later.
I met the client at his hotel. We had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant located on the ground floor. The hotel was a luxurious four-star establishment, and I enjoyed a delectable meal, which, as expected, my client graciously covered.
After that, we went back to his room for the session. He had a foot fetish, and his request was quite simple. He wanted me to wear black stockings, and he would massage my feet first in the nylons, and then we would remove the stockings, and he would worship my feet.
For this job, which also lasted three hours, I was paid $600. Yeah, compare that to the $60 I would’ve earned for a three-hour shift as a wine consultant.
The client had Ubered me to his hotel so I didn’t have to pay for gas or use my car. No stressing out as I sat in traffic. No wear and tear on my vehicle.
What’s more, at the session’s end, he tipped me. I could easily afford to pay a sitter while doing sessions as a dominatrix, something that just wasn’t sustainable as a wine consultant. It was a completely different experience compared to my time as a wine consultant. I felt genuinely cared for, and perhaps even more importantly, I felt respected.
On the contrary, as a wine consultant, I had felt underappreciated and at the continual mercy of my boss. I had felt ripped off and used. To make matters worse, my boss even had the power to decide if he was going to pay me or not. He had been able to yell at me whenever he wanted and I had to sit there and take it.
I would never put up with that behavior from one of my clients as a dominatrix. With the first whiff of difficulty from a client, I was gone. However, we usually didn’t get to that point because I vetted so well. I decided who I wanted to session with and who I refused to see.
I blocked potential clients with incredible frequency. I didn’t want their money if they were going to treat me with disrespect. Because I was working for myself, I could always just find new clients.
In addition, as a domme, I got to work when I wanted. You’d be amazed, how many clients wanted to see me on weekday mornings, while my kids were at school. I could book appointments and these wouldn’t disrupt my schedule as a mom.
That, and I got to charge whatever I wanted. Of course, there is a market rate as a dominatrix. But still, being able to do this made me feel more empowered than having a company dictate how much money they were going to pay me. No more chasing the proverbial carrot dangled in front of me for some distant promotion that required hard work and enduring abuse from a boss who could change their mind about me at any moment.
So you see, there was a lot to like about my job as a dominatrix. Yes, keeping it a secret was stressful. That the work is stigmatized wore hard on me. Not every client is a great guy either. Even submissive men can be entitled jerks. Trust me, I’ll be sharing some stories about that type of client in the near-distant future.
And yet, if done right, the job carries many advantages. So I don’t want to make it seem like if I could’ve done something else, I would have. That’s not necessarily the case.
I hope I’ve been able to clarify my perspective on this matter. No, I’m not a lifestyle dominant. No, I’m no longer working in that profession. But that doesn’t imply that I was miserable during my time in it and gained nothing from the experience. Quite the contrary, I most certainly did.
Be on the lookout for the story detailing my introduction to domming coming very soon to your inbox.