“But during?”
“During, I pretty much am waiting for it to be over. With those two anyway.”
“The way you have described it, it sounds more uncomfortable than that.”
“Yeah, it’s terrible. It didn’t used to be, though.”
“You are feeling more.”
“Yeah. I mean I felt things before, not like this. I felt strong. And sexy.”
“Feeling powerful made you feel sexy?”
“Yes! Of course it did. Everyone likes to feel powerful, don’t they? I mean, wouldn’t everyone like to feel more powerful?” My question was meant rhetorically.
“I don’t necessarily think so.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
33
WHEN I STOPPED COMPLETELY, I didn’t crave sessions the way I had drugs, but my subconscious remained obviously preoccupied with them. I dreamt about domming every night, the way I had about drugs when I first got clean. I craved sessions in dreams, and in dreams they were more vividly sexual and more grotesque than I remembered them. In my dreams, the dungeon’s gilded mirrors and wall sconces were replaced by soiled basements and condemned motel rooms, my shame translated into literal filth and disintegration.
Leaving the dungeon left a hole in my life. I struggled with the few sessions I still took and never intended to set foot in that place again, but I had gotten used to the experience of being wanted. Over my three years there, I had come to rely on the daily dose of male attention. Never in my life had I needed it less than when I worked at the dungeon—my craving to be desired was as close to satisfied as it had ever been, though it was an empty kind of full, a numb satisfaction. Getting hit on by men on the street didn’t quite compare to having them pay to be in the same room as me. I decided to join an online dating site. My profile was a finely cut gem. I honed exactly the right spectrum of authors (Cormac McCarthy to Daniel Clowes), musicians (Coltrane to Aesop Rock), and interests (writing to bondage). After the initial few dates, I realized how many I might need to go on before I met someone eligible. I learned to forgo the lengthy e-mail-courtship process in favor of a short interview over coffee. I began scheduling fifteen-minute “dates” between my other activities. After ten or so of these and a great many other correspondences that never made it to a coffee shop, I found someone who interested me.
He was attractive in enough pictures for it to not be a fluke of light and angling, employed by a worthy nonprofit, and had the right taste in all things. There was also some quality beyond the sum of these parts, difficult to pinpoint, that attracted me. He was good; my attraction to him didn’t have to do with my identity as it related to domming or to my drug history. He was a match for my self that existed apart from those things. I contacted him first—not my standard practice. After reading my immaculate profile, he backed away. “You’re into bondage?” he wrote. I explained that I was a dominatrix, sensing the need to downplay this fact. It was part-time, I said, I was really on my way out of the business. “You seem cool, but I just know I couldn’t deal with that,” he insisted. So I gave him my best lines on it, the ones that showcased my lack of desire and the pathetic nature of my clients. No, no, I assured him, it’s not like that. I’m not really into that stuff; it was just a job. “Sorry,” he said. “Not for me, nothing personal.” But nothing was more personal. He must not have understood, I told myself. I just didn’t explain it the right way. I found myself rehearsing explanations to him while walking down the street, telling him off in my head as I watched the city through taxi windows. His rejection clung to me, a shadow. That deeper part of me, who existed before and beneath Justine, desired someone who did not want Justine. What did that mean? I changed the wording of my profile, but the sting of his rejection kept me away from dating for a while.
. . .
“Why should I have a special interest in power, in feeling powerful?” I asked my therapist. “Isn’t it simply human to resent the basic powerlessness of our condition? It’s a scary thing! I mean, isn’t that why people want to believe in God, why faith is useful to us, because it allays the anxiety of our own powerlessness?”
“Sure, I think that’s part of it.”
“But no, you’re saying, I don’t just have this because I am a human being.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, when I was younger I felt more vulnerable or sensitive than other people did, but doesn’t every kid feel that way?”
“I don’t think every kid feels that way.”
“In any event, I don’t feel that way anymore, so sensitive. I mean, look at what I do! Nothing shocks me. Nothing has for a long time, before I ever worked at the dungeon. For all of my adult life I’ve felt pretty unshockable.” I sighed, scanning across the familiar objects on her desk. “Sometimes, when I am witnessing something I know should be shocking, or would be to someone else, I imagine showing a glimpse of it to my younger self.”
“How do you mean?”
“When I was a kid I used to wish that I could see what my life would be like in my twenties. I’d fantasize that I could flash forward to see what I’d look like, who my friends would be, what being a famous writer looked like.”
We both laugh.
“So you imagine showing her, that child you, what you see in sessions?”
“Well, not a child really, more of an adolescent.” Spoken aloud, this practice suddenly sounded bizarre. “I mean, not just sessions, necessarily. Anything spectacular and shocking in some way.”
“You want to shock her. That younger, more sensitive and vulnerable you.”
“No! I mean, I don’t know.” I frowned. “That sounds terrible.”
“Not terrible.”
“Then what does it sound like?”
“It sounds like someone who has been so shocked, or disempowered, that she is determined to never let it happen again. It sounds like someone who wants to destroy her innocence, who fears and feels contempt for her innocence.”
I sat with that, watching the morning sunlight soak into the rug between us. Her explanation resounded like a long lovely note expanding into the silence that follows it. Unexpected truth does this, and I recognized it immediately, even if I didn’t understand it.
“But why?” I heard the note of distress in my voice before I felt it in my chest.
“I’m not sure.”
“I know … I know that I have the pathology of someone who is, who has been … traumatized by something. I have known that for a long time. I used to wonder if I blocked out some abuse from my childhood or something. So many of the people I’ve become close to in my life have been traumatized. I’ve surrounded myself with addicts and sex workers, for God’s sake. Even my addiction itself! It all adds up like an equation, but the answer is wrong. I’m not like them! I wish I was; it would make more sense.”
“Not like whom?”
“The women I worked with at the dungeon, my clients, all the best friends I’ve ever had who confided their abuse and rape stories to me.”
“You feel you don’t deserve your own experiences, the domming and addiction, because they are a symptom of something you haven’t suffered?”
“God, that sounds so reductive. But yeah, I guess I do. The same way I used to feel that I didn’t deserve to be an addict—my childhood hadn’t been fucked up enough.”
“And you’ve never been traumatized?”
“Not the way I’m talking about, not the kind that alters the course of your life so drastically, that dictates all your future relationships, your self-esteem and everything. Real trauma is like a giant hunk of scar tissue that the rest of your life accommodates, grows around. It changes the shape of you, of everything that happens after it.”
“Some people say the same thing of love.”
“They do, don’t they? I guess love is a kind of trauma. It definitely reshapes you.”
“And you’ve had nothing like that?”
“What, my parents’ divorce? My
dad’s always going away on his ship? My neighbor who used to spit on me at the bus stop? Growing boobs before everyone else in fourth grade? Cry me a river. That’s just normal shit. Basically everyone I know is a child of divorce.”
“Maybe, but that’s relative. There was a time when divorce was rare and the children of divorced parents were hugely pitied for its effect on them.”
“So, just because something happens to everyone doesn’t mean it doesn’t traumatize everyone?”
“No. But I don’t like using the word ‘traumatize’; it connotes such a negative value. Because what does it really mean? Something painful and shocking that, as you said, alters the course of your life. It is something that changes you.”
“Well then, the whole course of human existence is like one endless series of traumas! I find American consumerism painful and shocking both to behold and to participate in, and the corruption of government, not to mention the meat industry!”
She laughed. “Well, all those things do form our lives and identities; we grow to accommodate them in one way or another, be it by conformation or defiance. But different things, and different combinations of things, affect people in different ways.”
“Right, as in some people who were molested go on to be serial killers and others just drink or don’t communicate well?”
“Sure.”
“So do you think I really was a uniquely sensitive and vulnerable kid?”
“Maybe, but that’s not what I am implying. I don’t think your experiences are comparable to the symptoms of an illness, or brokenness, or trauma as you refer to it—like an unrecoverable handicap.”
34
I HAD PLENTY OF REASONS for breaking up with Dylan that had nothing to do with my job. But all my choices during my years as a domme were influenced by it, by my need to protect it, including my choice of lovers.
In this way, I was at a loss in my search for a new partner. My primary criterion had been abolished, and I hadn’t yet replaced it. I no longer needed someone to cosign my work, to not ask questions or get jealous. I didn’t know what I needed. At first I resorted to the conventions of my adolescence—unavailability, in its various permutations. Thankfully, that didn’t last long. These men felt like clothes I’d outgrown: misfit, tight in the wrong places. There were a few brief swooning crushes, followed by disappointing sexual encounters. Winded and done with avoiding figuring out what I wanted, I went back online.
Hope sprang forth again with Brian, the architect. In pictures he was lovely, with angles odd enough to avoid too closely resembling a movie star. He spoke easily on the telephone—unlike 99 percent of the heterosexual men I’d known—and told me he’d booked a reservation; all I had to do was show up. The restaurant was perfect, as promised, and he was even more uncommonly beautiful in person. This is what dates are supposed to be like, I thought as he smiled admiringly at me across the candlelit table and explained the cheese menu. He gave compliments easily and perhaps I was rusty at judging, but they sounded sincere enough. As we bantered over olive oil– drenched bruschetta and tiny saucers of slippery, piquant olives, I thought of Rick. This was different in obvious ways, though I still noted the common denominators: older man, admiring looks, expensive salty food, and a sense of veiled negotiation. Obviously all dates are on some level a negotiation—based on a trade of information and potential interest. I’d known this before, but still it hadn’t seemed so calculated, the social mechanics so thinly veiled. Did it seem too careful to me because of my experience? Had the overt business of seduction undressed it of all mystery? Being a dominatrix had required that I examine the intuitive mechanics of seduction, dissect, refine, and execute them in the absence of desire. Had my perception so fundamentally changed, the way a surgeon must see the body differently—less miracle than mechanical? The date was thrilling, but there was an emptiness to it. Perhaps my expectations had been too high. Perhaps I had succeeded at annihilating my innocence in more ways than intended. Nonetheless, I was still hopeful.
We meandered through a dozen small courses for three hours—this being the sort of place whose prices justify any length of stay—our conversation winding easily through childhood, college, favorite books, and the constant evolution of New York, until we had steeped long enough in the tacit sexiness to graduate to more personal topics, such as former relationships, and thus the implication of other proclivities. He wasted no time.
“I believe in being forthright,” he said. “My last relationship began as a business arrangement, became a love affair, and graduated to great friendship. She was a professional dominatrix, though we shared that role pretty equally.” He gave an earnest smile across the table. “I am really a bottom at heart, though.” I bit off the end of a biscotti and smiled back, wondering if he’d still pay for my cab home if he wasn’t in it.
“Can you believe it?” I asked my therapist.
“You lost interest when he said that?”
“Of course!”
“Why ‘of course’? He doesn’t seem like an eligible partner for you?”
I gaped; did she mean to be obtuse?
“He became pathetic to you.”
“Yes, he was just another client, in disguise.”
“You felt he disguised himself? That the desire to be dominated negated all those positive qualities you’d first seen in him?”
“Yes, I guess so. That fact just overwhelmed everything else: his career, likes and dislikes, looks, intelligence. I mean, I suppose he didn’t exactly disguise it. He even said that he believed in being forthright before he told me.”
“So why did you suddenly find him pathetic?”
“Because I know how those desires are. They can consume you. My clients, some of my clients, had all that other stuff, too, the social assets, but that desire was the most important one—even if only I knew it—everything else was on some level a cover for that secret.”
“What if it wasn’t a secret?”
“I don’t know; it always was with them. I mean, let’s also not forget that these were grown men who wanted to talk in baby voices and wear diapers. It really is pathetic.”
“Why?”
“Why? I mean, grow up, man!” I laughed at the carpet. “Besides, isn’t there something essentially immature about imbalanced power dynamics? They mimic parent-child relationships, not adult-adult relationships.”
“Yes, but does that dynamic have to permeate every aspect of the relationship, for people who desire it sexually?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed, a little lost and suddenly tired.
“How did he even know to broach the subject?” she asked. “I mentioned it in my profile. As a precaution really. I said former dominatrix. To discourage people who would be too freaked out or turned on by it.”
She gave me the look that said she wasn’t buying my reasoning. “Maybe you wanted to alert potential suitors about something else.”
“What? That that’s my main skill set?”
“No.”
“Let me guess, you think I’ve internalized the demoralization of that role and I still think it’s all I have to offer. Is that it?”
She chuckled. “No.”
“Then what, what am I trying to tell them?” We stared at each other for a few seconds. “Are you suggesting that I’m actually into it?” I asked, in honest surprise. Her nod belied how patient she had been with me on this point.
Anyone who has ever had a good therapist knows the feeling when an obvious truth that you have been committed to not seeing is so neatly pointed out to you. You see, even after four consecutive years of participating in dominant and submissive sexual practices, whether for money or not, I was still telling myself that I wasn’t really into it. It was for the money. I did it for anthropological interests. I did it for the ego trip. I did it to feel desired, to be bad, to rebel. These reasons were true, but they were not my only reasons, and even if they had been, would they not qualify me as sufficiently interested, as into it? I still
badly needed to feel separate from my clients, to scapegoat them with my own shame and secrecy. It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.
Shame has rarely been a feeling that I’ve experienced consciously. My shame in my own desire to dominate and submit to men sexually (and otherwise) did not manifest as a dirty or guilty feeling but as a denial of it. I was not like them! And if my date thought I was like him, he was wrong and could therefore never know the real me, only the charade of the dominatrix. I was judging myself via him. I knew this now and felt the resistance drain from me, though I still argued.
“I don’t know. My subconscious waving a flag of surrender to my secret desires? On my online dating profile?”
“But why else even mention it?”
“I mean—it’s such a big part of who I am, who I’ve been.”
“Exactly.”
After therapy that day I walked through the Union Square farmers’ market with the particular lightness of step that I’ve come to associate with such hard-won revelations. Believing myself apart from the people I dealt with as a domme gave me a sense of safety; it protected me from parts of myself of which—despite my bravery in facing tangible unknowns—I was deeply afraid. Telling the truth to other people, about my job, my addiction, or anything I concealed, had had the same effect, had been followed by the same lightness of step. Honesty brought my double lives together and in doing so made the world a bigger place, in which I could move more freely.
I didn’t end up at the dungeon out of financial desperation, nor anthropological curiosity. I was not a tourist but a member of that world, with reasons for being there similar to those of everyone else: an obsession with power, having it and having it taken away from me. These existed long before I ever walked into the dungeon. My experiences at the dungeon were a result of my own desire and pathology, not the other way around. I had been looking, ironically, for a set of boundaries—someone who might give them to me. While I didn’t find that at the dungeon, I found a way to give myself permission to admit my own fantasies of powerlessness. Like all truths, it had been there all along, waiting to be seen. There were still questions. Would I continue to want what Larry had given me, in that form? Was its extremity caused by my inability to acknowledge the desire in lesser ways? What traumas had I suffered that led me there? I surmised that it didn’t really matter, just as it hadn’t mattered why I became an addict, or whether I was born one or not. It just was, and where it would lead now mattered more.
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