If you read my last post you’ll understand that becoming a professional dominatrix back in the late ’90s wasn’t easy. There weren’t a bunch of pro-dommes offering their mentoring services like there are today. There were no how-to classes via Eventbrite. The internet was still in its inception phase. And so, the business was still extremely underground, and mostly, I was left to figure out domming on my own. Yes, I was lucky to be introduced to a mistress who would give me some training. But she only ended up providing one training session. Here’s the story of that session.
When I met Mistress A. again, it was two p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. The last time I’d visited her dungeon was at night. In the light of day, the place looked even less “dungeon-y.” Housed in a modest, single-family home near the 101 Freeway in Hollywood, no one would guess what went on inside its walls.
Mistress A. greeted me at the door wearing a tiny black dress and thigh-high boots with thick heels. I followed her inside the house. With the lights on, I saw how little she’d done with the decor. The interior of the house hardly looked like a dungeon either. The walls were painted a drab off-white with no prints or paintings to break the monotony. There were no sconces holding burning candles. A gray carpet covered the floor.
The only element that gave the place the appearance of a “dungeon” was the furniture. In the main room there was a throne made of carved wood and a bondage table painted black and upholstered with burgundy leather. Mistress A. took a seat on the throne. Crunched on the carpet below her was a figure. She rested her boots on top of it.
I couldn’t see the figure’s face, but the form wore a blond wig, a black satin dress with white lace around the collar, and white stockings with high heels. By contrast, hairy arms emerged from the frilly armholes of the dress.
Mistress A. explained that this was Betty. While known as Alan in everyday life, he transformed into Betty at the dungeon. Betty was a cross-dresser.
Mistress A. knocked the heel of her boot down a couple of times on Betty’s back. “Say hi to the new mistress,” she said. When Betty gave no response, she brought the chunky heel of her boot down as hard as she could onto Betty, who finally released a perturbed yelp. I decided this had to suffice for the more apropos: “Hi, nice to meet you.”
Without even reacting to Betty’s pained screech, Mistress A. rose from the throne and told me to follow her to the smaller “dungeon” room in the back of the house. On our way down the hallway, we passed another room where Mistress A. said the other dominatrixes who sometimes worked there hung out in between sessions. That was where you took calls from the clients. As this was 1997, cell phones weren’t ubiquitous like they are now. Much of the business was conducted via landlines.
The problem was all the “time-wasters.” Apparently, the phones rang constantly with men who weren’t actually serious about ever showing up for a session at the dungeon. These men just wanted to hear your voice so they could get a free phone session. They would ask what you were wearing and what you would do to them in person. She told me to hang up on them.
I tried to imagine myself sitting around in that room, fielding calls from “time-wasters” while waiting for sincere clients to show up to pay me to dominate them. It wasn’t very enticing. The room was cluttered and chaotic, the floor strewn with vinyl clothing and old takeout containers. I wasn’t excited about spending time there, but I was serious about pursuing this new career choice. If this was what it took, so be it.
We entered the other dungeon room that had a St. Andrew’s Cross: an “X” made of wood, securely attached to a wall, painted purple and upholstered with black leather. In the middle of the room there was also a road barrier-like piece of furniture, painted purple and covered with black leather. Mistress A. said it was a spanking bench.
A naked man leaned over the bench, his bare ass facing us. Mistress A. said she would teach me how to use the whip on him. She gave me a demonstration of her cat-o’-nine-tails on his behind. As she whipped him, she explained the technique. I was always to give a submissive a “warm-up” first. You didn’t just start whipping anyone hard right out the gate. Instead, you started slowly, only increasing the pace when the flesh of the buttocks literally felt “warm” to the touch. By the time the skin was warm like that, it was numbed a little. In that state, a person could endure much more pain.
Mistress A. also said to watch out for the sub’s kidneys, only to hit the fleshy part of his butt with the whip, not his lower back. There was also the issue of “wrapping.” She said not to let the strands of the whip wrap around the sides of his butt as this could leave serious marks. Above all, I must always ask the clients if they could have marks before whipping them. Many of them were married and couldn’t go home to their wives with bruises and welts. If they said “no marks,” I had to respect that.
She handed the whip to me and I gave it a try. The cat-o’-nine-tails felt much heavier in my hand than the paddle from the night of the party. I tried to start softly and gradually increased in pace. Again, it was strange to hit a man with a BDSM device and bizarre that he was letting me. It wasn’t sexually exciting for me, per se. Whipping this man felt like a challenge, like an experience to have. It also felt like something I could get good at if I practiced enough.
I was feeling confident about my abilities to master this craft when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked ridiculous—not sexy at all. At that point, I wasn’t comfortable in my skin and felt very disconnected from my body. The sight of myself whipping this guy just underlined how repressed I was, how I didn’t truly inhabit my form.
But my embarrassment about seeing myself carrying out this act wasn’t uncomfortable enough to make me want to stop. I was still on board with learning this craft. I just had to power through my unease. Besides, I wanted to explore. I wanted to make money.
Mistress A. told me we were going to try a new activity. She instructed the man to rise off the spanking bench and to move to the St. Andrew’s Cross, his front facing towards us. He obeyed, and she attached his wrists and ankles to each end of the “X” with cuffs.
It struck me that he hadn’t said a word to me the whole time. He hardly reacted when I whipped him. Now, that he was standing upright, facing me, I could clearly see what he looked like. It was a weird experience as he didn’t make eye contact with me. He didn’t even look in my direction. He looked down at the carpet. His passivity astounded me. Perhaps because of his lack of emotion, his face was inscrutable. I could hardly even make out any defining characteristics. He was truly a blank canvas.
Taking a thin piece of string that looked like a shoelace, Mistress A. tied it around the man’s testicles. She said this was called “testicular bondage.” She explained that to carry out this act, I was to start by wrapping the string around the upper part of the testicles, where the sack met the body. This caused the blood to become trapped in the scrotum flesh, making the skin more sensitive.
It also made the man feel more submissive, like his family jewels were literally in his domme’s possession. To complete the bondage, Mistress A. also lashed the string in between each teste, separating them. The man’s balls did look a bit like a gift now, all tied up with a bow. I was sure the whole process was humiliating for him as well, if not stimulating.
Mistress A. undid the bondage and told me to have a try. She offered me the string, but I froze. Just as I’d never seen a guy naked whom I wasn’t romantically involved with before the night at the party, I’d never touched a man’s genitalia with whom I wasn’t emotionally connected. Mistress A. offered this string to me for what felt like five beats. The tension was so much that I told myself, “Just take the piece of string and get on with it.”
I accepted the string from her and took my turn with “testicular bondage.” As I reached to wind the string around the man’s testicles, my hand rubbed against his flaccid penis. His limp phallus felt like a cold piece of meat, but it was also incredibly velvety. As I began to wind the string around his balls, I could feel the upraised pores on the skin’s surface, where the pubic hairs grew out. It was amazing to feel a man’s genitalia with this kind of medical distance. It was also stressful how the ball sack slipped around in my grasp as I tried to get the string around it, but I persevered.
The man’s eyes were closed the entire time I was busy. He was perfectly silent, seemingly asleep. I would come to understand that this was being in “subspace,” a type of trance-like mood that submissives experience in session, where they feel calm and detached from the world.
But it was also evident that this man was very much enjoying this. Though his penis was still limp, a long line of pre-cum drizzled out of it, hitting the floor. I’d never seen anything like that before.
We left the man cuffed to the St. Andrew’s Cross and returned to the main dungeon room to check on Betty. We found him lying back on the floor, masturbating. When Mistress A. saw this, she became enraged.
“I told you not to touch yourself!” she yelled. “Only with my permission!”
She demanded that Betty rise to his feet and go stand against the wall.
“Lift your dress. Let me see that little pinkie toe,” she growled.
Betty acquiesced, lifting his petticoat. His erect penis was far larger than a pinkie toe, though. Still, he stared at me, his face contorted in shame. Then I watched the sheer terror flash across his face as Mistress A. swung back her leg, then sent the toe of her boot right into his crotch. Betty screamed and fell to his knees. This was also my first encounter with a practice called “ball-busting,” the act of kicking a submissive in the testicles.
Though I felt shocked by this display of violence, it didn’t put me off. I would return to the dungeon the following day to wait around in that back bedroom, taking calls from all the “time-wasters.” After repeating this process for a few weeks, eventually I would receive a call from a man intent on actually submitting to me. Unfortunately, with only one practice experience under my garter belt, my first paid session was a disaster. I’ll send along that story soon.
Thanks for reading.