Whip Smart: A Memoir

by Melissa Febos

  As a teenager I had had needles stuck through my nose, lip, navel, and ears; I had stuck needles in my veins fairly recently, and I pierced slaves at the dungeon all the time. This was different. Session piercings were usually superficial; they only punctured the topmost layers of skin and never bled much. Regular piercings hurt like hell for about three seconds. This woman was hung by deep-sea fishing hooks, as thick as my thumb. They had to pierce through enough flesh to support her entire body weight, to avoid ripping through her. They pulled handfuls of her back into two symmetrical tents of flesh.

  At that point I was hard to shock; in fact, I had been for a long time. As if I had a lost gag reflex, there wasn’t much that made me gasp or cringe. I stared at the blood-encrusted holes in her back, her glassy eyes, and the shimmering light her spangles threw across all the upturned faces and I wasn’t shocked or disgusted or scared, but there was something. Skye once said to me in the dressing room that she considered herself an artist and that she was her own work of art. I thought of this as I stared up at her. She was magnificent, in a way. The idea of doing it myself was frightening, un-appealing, but I understood the impulse and her limp satisfaction, and maybe that is what disturbed me.

  On my way down the stairs, I paused. Squeezing my eyes shut for a few seconds, I asked myself what if I could have seen this as a younger me, a glimpse of my future life. I had always wondered what I would be like at the age of eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-three. It was an impulse that reminded me of my childhood fantasy games, when I would lie in the woods, close my eyes, and open them as someone just born, someone from another planet, to see everything so new and strange. Now I opened them on a writhing ballroom, strobes from the cathedral ceiling bathing everything in purple light: half-naked men and women led on leashes by towering she-males and dommes with cinched waists and rubber catsuits; a fire-breathing, Hula-Hooping troupe clad only in body paint and piercings; slaves in masks crouched over and used as stools by women at the bar; and behind me a woman hung by hooks with razor wire in her hair. Someone down on the floor called my name: “Justine!” I blinked, reached into my cleavage for a stack of business cards, and descended the stairs.

  26

  IN THE BEGINNING, $75 had seemed like a lot of money. After a few years, it no longer did, not when I knew it could be more. For the small minority of dommes who stayed in the business longer than a year, mine was a common trajectory. After a time, you stopped focusing on the fact that you made $75 an hour and started thinking more about how you were getting $75 out of the $200 that your client was paying. Then you started talking to independent dommes who set their own rates, paid for their own space, booked their own appointments, built their own Web sites, and set up retirement funds. Then you figured out that that’s what the most senior dommes at your own dungeon were segueing into; they didn’t work fewer days only because they booked so many sessions but also because they were doing sessions elsewhere and harvesting new clients from the house. I wasn’t interested in getting a lease in Manhattan and investing in all my own equipment; I couldn’t afford it and believed that I might spontaneously quit any day now. But so long as I was still in it, more money and privacy were necessary. So I had my business cards made, and I started slipping them to clients who tipped well and whose sessions interested me. I could charge what I wanted in private sessions; it was a sliding scale based on what I thought a client would be willing to pay. Most sessions ended up at around $300 an hour, four times what I made at Mistress X’s.

  My first was with Tony. He constantly said things in sessions like, “Doesn’t Mommy want to take Baby to the ATM and make him give her money?” As promising as that might have sounded, I never took him up on it. Primarily, I hesitated because it would have looked suspicious, me going downstairs in the elevator with him. I also figured he was bullshitting. The man didn’t bother to tip in session. But while he wasn’t a favorite, he was familiar and benign. I didn’t know if he was bluffing about the ATM, but I did feel certain that he posed no physical threat to me, and that was my first criterion for taking sessions “outside,” as we called it.

  I hated the phone part of it. What the managers at Mistress X’s spared me from I didn’t know until I started booking my own sessions. It was so awkward. Not to them, I don’t think; my affectation over the phone remained as seamless as in person, but to me it was harder. It discomfited me to hear those voices while wearing my street clothes, in the midst of my “regular” affairs, to talk into the same phone I spoke to my mother on. In effect, I was Melissa, not Justine, during those conversations. I missed the transitional elements: the dungeon, the clothes, and the darkness; without them it was jarring, and it took time for me to be able to slip in and out of character that quickly.

  Autumn told me about a hotel in the Meatpacking District, right on the West Side Highway. It was cheap (for Manhattan), not too filthy, and rented rooms by the hour. Tony agreed when I suggested it but asked if we could meet at a bank ATM a few blocks away.

  “Perfect,” I told him.

  We met just after dark on a Friday evening, a mistake I wouldn’t make again. I was early and made my way west from the Eighth Avenue subway station. West of Ninth Avenue the crowds thin and the shops, while still chic, are farther apart. The blocks go from quaint to industrial, all loading docks and the locked grates of galleries. I stepped carefully in my heels across the cobblestones and was glad, then, for the early clubgoers who straggled past me on otherwise deserted streets. Even with the glowing ATM and a nearby gas station, our meeting place was desolate. I smoked outside the glass doors and fiddled with my phone until he arrived. It was odd, waiting there with my suitcase of dildos and rope. I felt both vulnerable and excited by the nearness of my two lives. It seemed so brazen. His familiar stride and shining head bobbed toward me under the streetlights.

  “Hello, Mommy.”

  I felt a wave of embarrassment, hearing that voice outside the muffled walls of the dungeon. Like sudden nausea, I suppressed it and smiled. “How is Mommy’s baby?”

  “I’m very good, Mommy. Does Mommy want to go into the ATM?”

  “How did you know? You’re so good at pleasing Mommy, aren’t you?” At the dungeon I had become used to this kind of talk; I did it automatically, unselfconsciously. Here, though—hanging in the air over the cobblestones, the river of traffic behind us and the Hudson shining beyond that—the words rang false. In the open air they sounded phony, the way they had during my first session. It seemed the world was too honest for them, as if the river and the sky and the street were too real to suffer our falsity. We could only get away with it in an environment as contrived. I was struck with sudden fear: What if I saw someone I knew? What if my suitcase fell open on the sidewalk, dildos rolling into the street? What if Tony and I were arrested for some reason? What if I couldn’t do it? What if this was the moment when it all stopped? Tony clearly did not notice or share my discomfort.

  Unlocking the door with his card, he opened it. I followed him into the glass cubicle, turning to squint at the street behind us for signs of life as he settled himself in front of a machine. There were only a couple of cars at the gas station on the next block, too far away to see us in detail. Joining Tony, I saw that he still had his card out and was smiling at me expectantly. Before I could think of what to say, he reached for the zipper of his coat and pulled it down slowly. Watching this towering man sensuously lower his parka zipper, coy as a burlesque dancer, would have been funny if Autumn were there. Knowing this only made me more alone, made our scene in this fishbowl more lurid and sad. The jacket covered him to mid-thigh, and when he unzipped I saw that the zipper of his jeans was also down, though the waist buttoned. His semi-erect penis was threaded through the hole, clasped lightly in the teeth of the open zipper. He must have arranged this before even leaving his apartment, titillated by the concealed transgression as he walked here through the Friday crowds, perhaps even brushing against anonymous hips with his hidden member. He disgusted me, and
his perversion acquired a kind of menace here, where I could not meet its enthusiasm. The disconcerting parallel was not lost on me: both of us with our secrets, precious and thrilling.

  He smiled down at me and reached into his pants’ hole, fishing around for a second before retrieving a knotted white string, about six inches long. He reached down for my hand and pressed the string into my palm. Closing his fist around mine, he jerked it toward me. His penis jiggled against the leg of his jeans, and I could see that the string was tied around its base.

  “Is Mommy going to make me take money out of the money machine for her? Mommy knows how she controls the Baby.”

  Not meeting his eyes, I tugged stiffly on the string (something I had done hundreds of times in the dungeon). “Oooooooh, Mommy, look what you do to me!” I tugged more violently. “Look-whatyoudotomelookwhatyoudotomelookwhatyoudotomelookwhatyoudotome!”

  “Now put your little card into that little hole,” I said.

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  After he punched his code I pushed his hand aside and selected “Withdrawal from checking.” I withdrew $500 from his account and folded it into my coat pocket.

  “Now let’s go,” I said, dropping the string so that he could tuck himself back into his pants, or at least zip his coat back up.

  He did neither. Instead, he lifted the string toward me again and cooed, “But Baby doesn’t know where Mommy is taking him. Doesn’t Mommy want to lead the Baby there like a good little doggy?”

  How could he not have known how little I wanted to do such a thing? My eyes said as much, I know. His eyes reminded me of the money in my pocket. We stared at each other for a long breath before I picked up the string and pushed the glass door open.

  I was petrified the whole way that I would see someone I knew, that we would see anyone at all. I felt like a dog pulling on a leash, pretending that I didn’t get my dinner from the other end of it. “Why so fast, Mommy?” he whined. At one point, a couple passed by us on the other side of the street. My heartbeat matched the hurried click of the woman’s heels against the street as they neared. Wrenching on the string, I pulled him up beside me, between the building’s façade and my body, hoping to hide him in shadow. They looked at us as Tony took advantage of the close range and reached for my face, prompting me to dodge him awkwardly. I doubt they saw anything lewd, but my whole body burned with humiliation anyway.

  We made it to the block of the hotel without further incident. I stopped at the corner, from which we could see people smoking outside the lobby doors.

  “Close it up,” I said, and he did.

  It being Friday, there was a wait for a room. This might have been the worst part. We sat silently together on cheaply upholstered chairs by the checkout desk, which was protected by a bulletproof glass window, like those in taxis. After a drunk man with an overly made-up woman in a wig tossed his key through the opening in the desk window, I paid for an hour. The clerk avoided my eyes and only looked directly at me for a brief moment, but in that moment I knew he saw a prostitute. Maybe he noted that I was more sober or cleaner than most, but maybe he didn’t see anything beyond an image of me having sex with the big bald man behind me for money. I wanted to protest that image but was helpless. I felt trespassed, the clerk’s glance a subjugation much worse than any client’s appraisal. I elected to be seen as a sex object at the dungeon; the clients paid to see me this way. I had an absurd urge to show the assuming concierge my college diploma, to use vocabulary that he wouldn’t understand, to explain that I was a dominatrix, not a whore. He wouldn’t have cared. He wasn’t even smug; there was no spite in his assessment of me, only casual certainty and dismissal.

  The room was hideous, with a mirrored ceiling and bony mattress. I turned the sound up on the television and did my best to avoid the mirrors. It was the usual exercise in withstanding. Afterward, I sent Tony away and took a shower in the yellowed stall, scrubbing my body with a tiny bar of soap. I sat on the closed toilet seat wrapped in a nubbly towel and waited to stop feeling like a whore, waited for the swell of accomplishment. It came, albeit slowly, and not quite until I emerged from those lobby doors, the shame seeping away like soft steam from the cracks in that room.

  27

  THERE WERE A FEW MORE sessions in that hotel and then never again. From then on I stuck to Miss K’s place: a small loft on the line between SoHo and the West Village. She had a massive industrial loft out in Brooklyn and maintained this one just for work. There was a tiny kitchen and lofted bed, both of which she had outfitted with black curtains that could be pulled to hide them, leaving only the main area, about twenty square feet. Its theme was hot pink, with lots of black and Lucite accents, mostly made by her. Along the walls she had installed rows of silver hooks for paddles, floggers, crops, and every thickness of rope. The opposite wall shelved an impressive (and mostly pink) dildo collection. There were drawers of gloves, condoms, clamps, needles, cotton balls, alcohol wipes, and lube, whose use was included in her hourly rental rate of $75. She made me my own set of keys, and I started sessioning there weekly with a select group of regulars.

  There was Tony, whom I hated but whose session was usually short and the money good. After his sessions, I would tell myself that it was the last time, and so it was, until I needed money or wanted to call in sick to Mistress X’s. Then I’d give in and schedule him again. Thirty minutes of hell with him often seemed easier than a whole day in the windowless dungeon. Our ATM charade became a miserable routine.

  There was Albert, the Englishman who lived in France and worked in fashion. Albert was a round, scruffy beaver of a man, with ruddy cheeks, a man purse, and a full-length fur coat. He had the body of a stodgy British businessman and the fashion sense of a Parisian fag. He liked switch sessions, and when I saw him he dommed me for an hour, then I him. We went out for dinners beforehand, and he always brought me a bottle of perfume.

  There was Billy, the blue-eyed stockbroker, dubbed Hairless Billy at the dungeon, as he shaved everything but his legs and armpits with a razor. Occasionally shaving would be incorporated into his sessions. Once I got over the fear of accidentally slicing his balls open, it was something I looked forward to, a session consisting of mindless grooming and chitchat. But mostly he wanted his extraordinarily small penis tied up with string and pulled on while I laughed at him. At the dungeon a few times, we played jump rope this way. Being filthy rich and dumb as wood, Billy scheduled a lot of sessions and never tired of the same scene, the same lines. Sometimes I would blindfold him just so that I didn’t have to make all the facial expressions. Once in a while, he would let me mummify him with latex ribbon or put him in a body bag, but he wasn’t into sensory deprivation, so those parts never lasted long.

  And then there was Jacob. Jacob was different. We sessioned once at a Holiday Inn in Queens and every time after that at his apartment. I had seen him for a couple of years at the dungeon, but he was Autumn’s client first. We all passed clients between us, after we got sick of them or they got sick of us. Jacob was a kind of ideal client, at least to me. First, he was young. Usually sessions with younger men, men my own age, or even within ten years of my age, were uncomfortable. The likelihood of our social spheres overlapping was too great. I don’t mean that we might have friends in common (though that did happen once), but that we might be able to put each other into a realistic context.

  But it wasn’t awkward with Jacob. It was fun. With other young men, they were too close but also too different and our sessions felt like trying to fit two slightly mismatched puzzle pieces together. I was always afraid of what they’d glimpse, how they would interpret me, what they would assume. With old men, I was a chess pawn and they were a checker; I just played their game and they never knew the difference. Jacob and I were alike enough to escape un-ease. We actually fit. His session didn’t turn me on sexually, but it was wildly fun. Sometimes we used a specific fantasy; schoolyard bully was a favorite. I would taunt him, imitate the lisp that he actually had as a child
, and there was always a lot of spitting and face slapping. I didn’t know why those were my favorite things; I’m not sure he did, either. They were the pinnacle not of pain but of humiliation. Even now, I can think of few things more offensive than spitting in someone’s face. You have to look into their eyes to do it.

  Jacob was short, clean, cute in a blue-eyed bashful way, and funny. Sessions were always so dead serious; that was part of what made them exhausting; there was no room for the actual absurdity of what happened in them, only a manufactured mocking. That’s why I loved doing sessions with other mistresses, Autumn especially. A witness lessened the pressure, allowed for the humor in the ridiculous. Jacob did this, too. I often laughed genuinely in his sessions. He could allow his own objectivity to slip in and consciously self-deprecate, acknowledging that he could see the humor as well. These were the least lonely sessions I ever had. In order to enjoy sessions, I had to enter the world of my client’s fantasy. But, until Jacob, I always had to bear the truth alone, to carry the full weight of objectivity.

  Jacob had a girlfriend and a studio apartment in Astoria, a sweet residential neighborhood in Queens. He would drive his Saab to Williamsburg to pick me up and take me back to his place to session. I loved getting into his car in jeans and a T-shirt, no lipstick. With him, the overlap of the “real” me and Justine didn’t feel awkward or false; it felt like a kind of freedom. I knew that I was a fantasy to him beyond our sessions and that he was a little bit in love with me from the very beginning.

  28

  RICK WAS A REGULAR of mine. He was a nice, clean, single guy who made good money tutoring rich Westchester brats for the SAT and ran the marathon every year, and it took him years to work up the courage to walk through the door of Mistress X’s. I was the first domme he had ever seen, and after his inaugural session he came back every second Thursday for a year straight. Occasionally we did a stock medical scene, but usually I impersonated his tutoring clients, donning my schoolgirl outfit and pigtails. I had begun wanting to apply to graduate school around this time and considered offering to trade sessions with him for GRE tutoring but never did. I had the books to make our sessions authentic, at least. It was a switch session that began with him making lecherous advances on me, his student, lifting my pleated skirt to spank me when I didn’t finish my practice tests. This part I always tried to prolong.