Daddy

by Madison Young

  I sat in my Castro studio apartment at my kitchen table, answering emails while my cats rubbed up against my legs. Bouncing back and forth from my Femina Potens emails to my Madison Young emails. Travel for work still kept me couch surfing and in and out of airports around two weeks out of the month.

  In contrast to my relationship with Gauge, travel actually created closeness and trust in my relationship with James. We were two independent people, madly in love, and we supported one another in our individual wellness and careers. James didn’t have the streak of jealousy that I was accustomed to with Gauge.

  James and I celebrated our one-year anniversary over that summer. He had moved to the Bay Area four months earlier to be closer to me and the freelance directing gigs he had developed at KINK, which had taken a liking to James when he was guest director of their female dominant/male submissive porn site. He was hesitant, at first, to direct for KINK, since his work is much more artistic than pornographic, and he expressed mixed feelings around the pornification and appropriation of the BDSM community for mass consumption and commercial gain. But his trips to San Francisco to visit me became so frequent that he needed a way to pay for all the travel involved. KINK became the solution. James’ eye for visual beauty and strong narratives won him an offer of full-time employment and to be able to live a life with a financial cushion, a savings, a retirement, seemed like the responsible thing for Daddy to do. Just like that, our lives were swept away by KINK, but I was holding Daddy’s hand in mine.

  That September Daddy was immersed in preparations for the launch of his new site with KINK, The Training of O. Engulfed in his new work life, his calls started to become infrequent, texts often went days unanswered, and I had begun to fear that my Daddy was leaving again. Had I done something to upset him?

  The doorbell rang and the cats scurried to the door. “Who is it?” I asked into the intercom.

  “It’s James.” I buzzed him into the building. It was the day of the Folsom Street Fair, the world’s largest leather event that celebrates everything kink. Once a year, the fair takes over approximately thirteen blocks in San Francisco’s SoMa District, attracting over 400,000 people and hundreds of BDSM-oriented vendors from around the globe.

  Mr. Mogul and I descended on the enormous crowd at Folsom Street Fair. The sidewalks and streets were filled with naked, hairy men that spanned in age from mid-twenties to sixties or older, some wearing nothing but big leather boots, leather chest harnesses, and leather cock rings. Women and men in British riding jackets rode in carriages pulled along by teams of human ponies who neigh from under their bridled mouths as their drivers whipped them with riding crops and ordered them to giddy up. A thick parade of debauchery, exhibitionism, and voyeurism, all sandwiched between city sidewalks. Young women hung, suspended by rope, from lampposts and men standing in windows above the fair made out with gay lovers, some jacked one another off as the crowd cheered for orgasms. Two men paraded down the street with butt plugs protruding from their anuses, the toys molded in black silicone and sculpted to look like a curled puppy tail. Each human puppy was collared and on leash, heeling at the high-heeled boots of their latex-clad, whip-wielding mistresses, whose sweat dripped from their faces and necks, falling into their corseted cleavage.

  James and I followed behind two human puppies, their tales bobbing up and down with each forward scamper, making our way to the KINK stage that was set up around 8th and Folsom. Lorelei Lee, a bombshell bondage model, sat smiling and sipping on a diet soda at the KINK booth beside the stage. She was wearing a white latex nurse’s outfit and signing autographs on black and white fetish photographs of herself stamped with the KINK logo. Peter Acworth beckoned to us over crowds of people: “James, Madison, this way!”

  We waded through nearly nude, sweaty bodies, slippery latex bottoms, ball-gagged submissives, and drooling creatures of every persuasion. A leggy brunette onstage—who was being pummeled erratically by a piston-powered dildo machine—captivated me. Her screams of pleasure echoed through the crowd as on-lookers cheered and applauded. Peter ushered James and I into the roped-off area designated for performers.

  I kissed James and took a seat next to Lorelei, where a stack of my photos sat in a tall pile, waiting to be autographed for eager fans. After four years of consistent work in the adult industry, I was becoming a familiar face to many viewers, and as a member of the KINK family, had developed a loyal fan base. Peter ushered James onto the KINK stage, and one of the production assistants on duty escorted a new model onto the elevated platform, Bobbi Starr. She was tall, with long chestnut-colored hair, a warm, beautiful smile, and optimistic, sunny eyes that seemed not yet jaded from working in the industry. She had a look of wonderment on her face as she gazed out at the sea of people and looked up at James, expectant and giggly.

  I felt an unexpected jolt of jealousy as his hands touched her hands and ran up and down her body, entwining her limbs in his rope and hoisting her off the ground. A secure chest harness compressed and accentuated her breasts, and James toyed with them, pinching her nipples and spinning her around in dizzying circles as the audience watched, captivated. They were flirting, I realized. There’s nothing wrong with flirting, we are in an open relationship, we can flirt or fuck whomever we want. Right? Suddenly the lines of polyamory felt blurry, confused by the complications of sex work.

  I sat at the booth next to Lorelei, trying not to pay attention to or care about what was going on with James and Bobbi on the stage. This is work. I flirted with the riggers that tied me up as well. It was innocent and compartmentalized…just work.

  I looked up to see who was standing next in line: a round man in leather pants a couple sizes too small and a leather vest that exposed snow-white chest hair grinned down at me.

  “Can you make this out to George?” he asked. “It’s my birthday! Can you put on there happy birthday?” He handed me a photograph he had printed from a site I modeled for called House of Gord. In the photo I am corseted, hooded, and stuffed with a stainless steel anal hook while I dangle, suspended from the ceiling, twenty feet in the air in a foyer, like a chandelier.

  “Of course, George! Happy birthday!” I signed the photograph with a silver marker and gave the photo a kiss, leaving a red lipstick mark.

  I grabbed a cold energy drink from the cooler and took a gulp of the sweet beverage. I needed the caffeine if I was going to put up with this amount of public interaction and still project the energetic, positive personality that the public expected from Madison Young.

  Lorelei is more than a kinky porn star, she’s a writer, and I often find myself in healthy competition with her. We are artists of different mediums—she is a quiet and humble star in the San Francisco literary community with a compelling luminescent energy that shines from her. When she speaks, she makes you want to listen. She would show up at Femina Potens open mics and for our monthly writers series to divulge sweet, subtle intimacies in a breathless voice. It felt romantic, and she seemed vulnerable in a brave and enticing way.

  Lorelei had leapt feet-first into the depressing landscape of the San Fernando Valley’s mainstream porn industry where she didn’t just get tied up or vibrated to orgasm, but where real pulsing condom-less cocks pounded in and out of her under bad lighting and cheesy narratives played out in come-stained porno mansions. I admired her for being able to bounce in and out of the sand-trap that was L.A. with such grace and ease and still fit snugly back into her San Francisco lifestyle, her pockets full of L.A. porn money. I had started to consider the possibility of shooting in L.A. myself. After all, I was now having sex with men, and James and I were in an open relationship. If I was shooting in L.A., rather than globe-trotting around the world chasing fetish producers, my life might be more streamlined and give me more time to spend at home with Daddy. Now that I had a Daddy, I didn’t want to lose him.

  “Hey Lorelei, who is your agent in L.A.?” I asked, smiling while a topless-except-for
-rope woman flashed a camera in my face.

  “Oh, I’m with Speigler. He’s pretty good. Are you thinking about doing some work in L.A.? You don’t do boy/girl scenes, do you?” She said, taking a quick sip of diet cola and signing a photograph for a human puppy who stood on his hind legs panting on the table. The puppy playfully swatted at Lorelei’s hand as she drew on the photograph. “Behave, Puppy,” she scolded, shaking her finger and returned the autographed photo to the puppy’s mouth.

  “I haven’t done any sex scenes with guys yet, but I’m open to it. I think it would be nice to not have to travel around so much for work. Just jet down to L.A., in and out, right?” Two other models relieved us from our duties and we walked over to the backstage area, where James was just finishing up.

  Lorelei unzipped her sweaty latex dress, “Well, I’d recommend Speigler. He’ll get you work. Some of the girls will tell you that he’s a bit controlling and has a Daddy complex, but I think he’s sweet. Good luck!” She toweled off and slipped on a simple blue sundress, pinning up her peroxide-blonde Monroe-like locks of hair, while I did the same, peeling off the latex panties and pearlescent top and toweling off my sticky flesh before slipping on a vintage silk green dress that looks like something an amorous June Cleaver might wear after tucking Beaver into bed.

  James took my hand in his and we broke through the crowd of perversion. “How’s my Little Girl?” Papa asked as we rode BART back to his Oakland penthouse apartment, his hand running up and down my thigh.

  “I’m good, Papa. Are you fucking Bobbi?”

  “What? No, I’m not fucking anyone but you right now, Maddie. What makes you say that?”

  “I saw the way you looked at her, Daddy.”

  “I was tying her up, baby. Bobbi was the girl I shot for Training of O last week. She’s just a model, that’s all. Understand? I’m your Daddy and only your Daddy. Got it?” I smiled, nodding my head in approval.

  We arrived home, a sixth floor penthouse loft with a back door that opened onto the rooftop overlooking downtown Oakland. We were the only residents in the building. During the day it was home to law offices, accountants, bookkeepers, and insurance companies. At night, after the offices emptied out and the nine-to-five office staff went home to make dinner for their families, my screams and moans couldn’t be heard by anyone but Daddy. That night it would be a cane—Mr. Mogul had a new toy, a rattan cane he would use like a switch against my bare bottom. I quickly shed the green dress.

  “Ass in the air my beautiful, beautiful slut.” He grabbed my ass and pulled it upward, smashing my face into the carpeted living room floor. Tendrils of strawberry blonde hair fell into my eyes, the cane came down hard on round mounds of flesh.

  “Thank you, Daddy.” I exhaled in gratitude, digging my fingernails into the carpet.

  The strike of the cane against my body stung, but it was a welcome sting, the sting of affection, like a bold, beautiful kiss from my lover. When the cane made impact with my body I winced for a moment as waves of pain melted into buttery pleasure and spread over me. Soon I stopped wincing, as my body relaxed, feeling fluid and welcoming to each loving stroke that I graciously received.

  Daddy teased me with multiple sweet light taps on my thighs that built anticipation for stronger impact. The thin reed cut through the air with a whistle before landing with a delicious, precise sting that felt not unlike the burn of jalapeños on my tongue. Daddy’s hands traced over raised, reddening welts, his mouth licking my flesh, kissing the fiery stripes that marked my thighs and ass. I inhaled deeply, opening my eyes and wondering if that was my kiss goodnight. No, of course not. That would be too tender. Daddy’s mouth opened and he spit on me before raining a thunderous storm of percussive beats in rapid succession on my eager ass. I was overwhelmed with intense sensation, and I squirmed both away from and toward the rainfall of strikes while screeching like a giddy schoolgirl, pleasure and pain releasing in one confusing, emotional purge. Daddy exhaled and tossed the cane aside, then pulled my naked body close to his. I was raw, red, and emotionally cleansed. I felt whole in his arms, and safe. Daddy pulled me into his bed and wrapped his arms and legs around me, and I feel his warm furry chest rise and fall with every breath. I was home.

  A hot, dry summer was in full effect on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend in L.A. I opened the door to the Bank of America and the arctic cold from the blasting air-conditioning was a welcome contrast to the stale, arid heat. I walked the two miles to the bank from my agent Mark Speigler’s apartment in Canoga Park.

  I was one of several girls staying at Speigler’s apartment that week being carted around by a driver to multiple shoots in “porn valley.” At Speigler’s, there were several options for places to sleep: a sectional couch in the living room that fit two girls, or two bedrooms, which Speigler rented out for a minimal price. There were girls constantly coming and going, either represented by Speigler or wanting to be represented by Speigler. I had been represented by Speigler for three months and was going on my second week on the sectional. Lorelei, who was also in town that week shooting, was my bunkmate.

  Speigler is short, unshaven, and grisly. His blemished, squinty eyes, and sloth-like unkempt round body give him the appearance of a rodent. His apartment perfectly reflected its caretaker, with random clutter piled up in every corner. The carpet smelled of cat litter, and framed photographs of different incarnations of the infamous Speigler Girls hung on the walls in cheap wooden frames. Models’ urine samples—Spiegler tested the girls for drugs—sat next to a defunct PC computer that had remained untouched nearly ten years. Stacks of unopened mail cluttered the dining table, buried under magazines like Hustler and Penthouse, which featured girls that he had represented. A copy of Los Angeles Magazine sat on the table, featuring an article on the newest starlet on his roster—a barely eighteen-year-old lithe and inquisitive girl, fascinated by architecture and the avant-garde—Sasha Grey. Dirty dishes often piled up in the kitchen and attracted bugs, reminding me of neglected university housing of my youth. The bathroom was always cluttered with trash of the trade: discarded enema bottles, cheap red lipstick, used disposable razors, douche bottles, and half-empty fruit-scented body wash.

  After working for two weeks without a day off, I finally had a reprieve. I walked to the bank to deposit my checks: $8,400 from seven companies with names like GF Films, DP Productions, JM Studios, and Mile High, Inc. I approached the counter and prepared to sign my real name, a name I hadn’t heard out loud in weeks. “Tina Butcher,” I mumbled, while filling out the deposit slip. It felt foreign, like a lie. Madison Young earned these checks, not Tina Butcher. She had no part in this. Regardless, it felt good to finally have money of my own. I knew as soon as the checks cleared, I would be able to pay for the remodel work on our new Castro gallery space.

  I signed a lease on the new gallery in my dream location only a month before. When I saw that the Image Leather storefront was empty and available for lease, I knew it would be a perfect home for Femina Potens.

  I felt like an impostor holding so much money all at once. It made me nervous. I held the checks close, nervously, I didn’t want anyone to see the names of the companies written on them. What if the tellers or patrons recognized these names? It felt like dirty whore money and the sooner it was out of my hands and used for something good, the better. I approached the teller, shaking and slightly afraid they wouldn’t believe a twenty-six-year-old girl was depositing $8,400. I was afraid if they asked me my name I might respond with Madison, instead of Tina. I felt like a sexual outlaw in a corporate system.

  A day off was a rare and appreciated gift, when you were a Speigler girl. Speigler wanted his girls to be available 24/7. Always available and willing to do anything, Speigler girls were a special breed. Many of us were into BDSM and rough sex, and Speigler liked to play Daddy (though I never thought of him that way). For me, it was more comfortable to be surrounded by other kinky women. The Speigler
girls tended to be smarter than other industry girls, more self reliant, responsible, and less likely to have the canned porn star look with fake tits, fake tan, and fake nails. Many of us were fair-skinned, natural, and curvy, and Speigler wasn’t afraid to represent women over the age of twenty-three. Other agencies hosted a continually rotating bevy of eighteen to twenty-one year olds who were in and out of the business before anyone ever knew their names. I was happy to be a Speigler girl, aligned with other women who shared my passions.

  In this industry, a day off can mean one of several things: it’s the holidays, you are “over shot” and the big companies want fresh faces, you have a bad reputation for being late or showing up too fucked up on drugs or liquor to perform, or you’ve contracted an STD. That day, I just happened to not have a booking. Earlier that month however, I had been forced to take what the girls refer to as an STD vacation. It’s a roll of the dice every time you step in front of the camera. Los Angeles porn companies, at that time, didn’t subscribe to the practice of using condoms on their cocks or their toys. Instead, we relied on a monthly STD screening for chlamydia and gonorrhea, and HIV tests were administered and kept on record at AIM, the Adult Industry Medical clinic and testing facility.

  “It’s the only time I ever get off work. Take advantage of it, you’re lucky. Last time I had an STD vacation, I went to Disneyland with my sister,” Adriana, another Speigler girl, said sardonically as we rode to the Burbank Airport in Speigler’s Mercedes. If I couldn’t work, I was flying home to be with Daddy. I didn’t feel lucky and I didn’t want an STD vacation. My private parts were swollen, itchy, red, and inflamed, and felt completely removed from the rest of my body.

  Only an hour earlier I was at the Van Nuys Urgent Care lying on a table with my feet in stirrups for an examination, the doctor probing with cotton swabs and a speculum, I felt like I was going to vomit. I had been vomiting all morning and was running a high temperature that left me sweaty and red, with a complexion so bad makeup couldn’t hide it.