From my earliest days as a fledgling dominatrix, I was well aware that the human body was never designed to be strapped in any one position for long. The dangers of cramp, of restricting blood supply and even, in extreme cases, of thrombosis are all too real. I have always made it a strict rule to regularly demand a change of position to avoid any interruptions to my games. In this case that meant that retrieving the key from my underwear in the most teasing way possible and then unlocking the handcuffs still securing his left arm to the headrail. I am sure you are already ahead of me in knowing what happened next. I should say in advance that I am never one for swearing where it can possibly be avoided – but sometimes, as in the opening scenes of Four Weddings and a Funeral, only oft-repeated swear words will do.
‘Oh, fucking hell, the key’s snapped,’ I cried.
‘Oh, fucking hell, it’s what!?’ he responded.
‘The fucking key, it’s broken off in the fucking lock. I can’t get the fucking cuffs unlocked.’
‘What do you mean, it’s fucking broken? Let me out for Christ’s sake!’
‘I’m fucking trying, but I don’t know what to do.’
I will leave the rest of this increasingly offensive conversation to your own imagination. I honestly cannot quite remember the next five minutes in any detail as the full horror of the situation struck home. I tried grasping the broken stump of the key with my fingernails in a vain attempt to make it turn; Brian tried shouting (a lot) and banging his hand on the bed; I tried calm reasoning to work out a potential solution; Brian tried screaming, shouting and weeping with frustration.
‘What in God’s name am I going to do?’ he pleaded. ‘My wife’s coming home. How can I possibly explain what I’m doing like this?’
I have to confess that I was somewhat at a loss to offer him any positive answers. My customer was not just naked and handcuffed to the bed, but what I did not want to remind him of at that precise moment was that I had wrapped almost an entire roll of brown packing tape tightly around his testicles. Normally he would have had plenty of time to peel the tape off and dispose of it before his wife returned; now time was a luxury we no longer enjoyed. The pvc packing tape had softened slightly in the heat of his groin and his luxuriant growth of pubic hair appeared to be firmly stuck in the warm adhesive. He was literally ‘caught by the short and curlies’.
I tried a gentle tug at the end of the tape.
‘Aaargh, what the fuck are you doing? You’re pulling my bollocks off.’
‘I’m trying to help.’
‘Well, don’t.’
There was another issue which Brian seemed momentarily too distracted to consider but which was literally staring me in the face as he writhed on the bed in front of me. Purely to make him happy and increase his humiliation I had earlier taken a black marker pen and written a few choice endearments across his naked skin. The large handwritten words spelled out some of the obscenities with which he had wanted to be described. I remember he had the word SLUT in perfectly crafted capital letters across his chest, WHORE across his abdomen, TEENY COCK precisely where it had seemed appropriate and – although he didn’t know it then – an arrow pointing sharply downwards across his back with the instructions FUCK HERE clearly printed across the top of his bum cheeks. Being the kind Mistress that I am, I had chosen a non-permanent ink and I knew from experience that a painful half-hour with a soapy scrubbing brush would have erased it completely. Unfortunately, that might now be 30 minutes too long.
Amid scenes approaching mad panic, I wondered if there was a hacksaw in the house but Brian was convinced his toolkit did not run to such luxuries. Then, I had a brainwave. The handcuffs had come with a spare key. The problem was, it was at my home, and that was almost a 30 minutes’ drive away. My client protested vociferously at the idea of me leaving him alone in the house but there was nothing else to do. As I left the bedroom he was frantically – and one-handedly – attempting to pluck adhesive and hairs from his taped nether regions. He had clearly decided that having his genitalia resembling a partially plucked turkey was going to be the least of his problems.
I drove as fast I could to the flat where I was temporarily staying with a friend in the course of my nomadic existence at the time. Running in, I grabbed the key, jumped back in the car and sped back to Brian’s home. Disaster! Whatever I did, the new key could not be inserted into the lock because of the broken stump firmly stuck in the mechanism. I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. I am going to have to find a hacksaw.’ So I had to leave him again to look for a local hardware shop – even though by this time it was getting late. There was a B&Q store near me that shut at nine o’clock and I managed to drive there, buy a hacksaw and drive back yet again.
By this time Brian understandably seemed to have lapsed into a state of shock and deep panic and was pleading, ‘Oh my God. My wife… my wife… my wife is going to be home soon. You have to help me, please!’
Well at least we now had a hacksaw and so I started sawing away at the metal band around his wrist. But these were police-quality handcuffs, not cheap rubbish (I have always prided myself on buying the best-possible equipment) and I soon had to admit defeat.
‘I honestly don’t think I can get through this. The only answer is I to get somebody in. I’ll call the guy who sometimes drives me to come over and help.’
That idea seemed merely to send him deeper into panic-mode: ‘No, no you can’t do that!’
‘Please, Brian, let me get my driver because I cannot do this one my own. I can cover you with the duvet so he never even sees your face; you will just have your hand exposed, nothing else. I can’t cut through this myself.’
But Brian refused to countenance the idea and so I kept on sawing, sawing, sawing, making little headway. Then I concentrated on the smaller links in the chain. My arm was aching and I seemed to have been cutting for hours. Bear in mind that I had arrived about 7pm and by now it was approaching ten o’clock – and his wife due home within the hour. Eventually, even though I could not cut through the wrist band, I did manage to sever the links between the two handcuffs and release him from the bed, leaving him with half a handcuff dangling from one wrist, and the other half still attached to the bedhead.
I exited the house as fast as I could because I knew I might bump into the wife coming home. I later heard from Brian that he had virtually demolished the bedhead to get the other handcuff band removed and had then fled to the sanctuary of his brother’s home to cut the bracelet off his wrist, for packing tape removal, obscenity graffiti scrubbing, and to compose himself before returning to domestic bliss.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ I said. ‘One day we’ll laugh at this.’
Brian did not seem to appreciate the joke.
A long time afterwards, I read in The Times that the London fire brigade was dealing with an increasing number of calls to domestic incidents in which people had locked themselves to the bed with handcuffs and then lost the key. The spokesman put this down to the ‘50 Shades effect’ and the consequent rise in amateur bondage games. Nothing new under the sun, I thought.
The only person in real danger in the aforementioned unfortunate incident was the client himself. But it did make me realise that working alone was both awkward and potentially highly dangerous if anything went wrong. From that point onwards I started using minicabs for my outcalls. It added greatly to my costs but brought a huge bonus in terms of personal safety. I always carried a walkie-talkie radio and let the client know that I was staying in contact with my driver outside until my checks were complete. Then, assuming I had found nothing untoward, I would check the money, start unpacking my little suitcase of BDSM goodies, and let the driver know how long I would be. Literally two minutes before the hour or half-hour was up he would call and say ‘Time’ and then, if I did not reply, would knock on the door.
My anally retentive attitude to my safety did succeed in keeping me out of harm’s way until, that is, one night when a visit to a charming and harmless
client turned into a nightmare, with a carving knife being waved in my face as I desperately tried to get out of the door.
CHAPTER 17
‘YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE…’
The situation could hardly have been worse. It was late at night in a strange house and I was being held hostage by an out-of-control, knife-wielding teenager furiously demanding to know what I was doing in his home.
In the background were a screaming, crying woman and her tearful, shame-faced husband. I was terrified and lost for words and, on the other side of the locked front door, was my driver, pounding with his fists in a vain attempt to come to my rescue. Welcome to the quiet and peaceful working world of the professional travelling dominatrix.
The evening had started so differently. I had taken a call from a client who had seen me before, had always paid me by cheque, and who had never been a moment’s trouble. He was a pleasant, middle-aged, softly-spoken Asian guy; a family man, living in a quiet residential road in West London. He wanted an hour-long appointment. He wanted to worship my feet. What on earth could possibly go wrong?
Even though I had met the guy before I still went through the basics of my safety routine, making sure that we were alone in the house, warning my driver how long I would be, and safely tucking the client’s cheque into my bag. Then I led him up to a bedroom and ordered him to strip completely before laying down on the floor. I wanted his excitement to build gradually as I walked slowly up and down in my black leather, thigh-high boots. I insisted that he keep his head down on the carpet as I paused, teasingly, with the toe of my boot just inches from his face and summoned up my strictest voice:
‘Oh, my boots seem to be dirty. Just touch your lips on the leather gently; they are going to need cleaning. When I tell you, and not before, I want you tongue-worshipping and licking every inch of these heels.’
The harsher my voice became, and the more insistent I was that he follow my instructions precisely with no hint of dissent or free will, the more excited my client became. I allowed him to run his tongue slowly across the toe of each boot before lifting my leg slightly and demanding that he take the whole of the high heel deep into his mouth. He loved the humiliation of sucking each heel, particularly when I added to his shame by complaining how dirty my boots had become whilst walking to his home. ‘I don’t want a speck of dirt left on these. Get working… harder. That’s pathetic, your tongue is useless. Look, you’ve even managed to miss a bit.’
Although my footwear was now so clean that you could have eaten your dinner off the leather, I continued finding imaginary fault, making him twist and turn on the floor beneath me as I pointed out the awkward areas his tongue could not easily reach. It was important in order to give him the maximum satisfaction for his money that I make him wait a while for his ultimate reward: the touch and the taste of my bare feet.
In due course, I made him sit back on his haunches whilst I slowly unzipped and removed my thigh-high footwear and peeled off my stockings. His excitement was by now obvious and I knew he had earned his reward. Sitting back on the edge of the bed, I presented my feet for his inspection. ‘You can smell them from there, can’t you? Get really close but no touching. Now, you can lick them clean. Do not forget to clean in between my toes.’ Now, I am the first to admit that licking my toes at the end of a long working day may not be to everybody’s taste but it certainly worked for my client that night. He finally lost control of himself when I first pushed my whole foot into his mouth, stretching his lips apart just enough to cause a little distress and discomfort. A job well done, another satisfied customer and the chance for a friendly chat as he got dressed again and I slipped my worn stockings into my bag and popped my feet back into my boots. With his passion for feet now fulfilled, my client was happy, smiling, more self-confident and chatting away nineteen to the dozen. I could hardly get a word in edgeways as he talked about work, his family and…
That was the point at which we heard the front door opening downstairs.
A woman’s voice called out: ‘Harvir, we’re home.’
Perhaps not surprisingly, from the tens of thousands of clients I have met over nearly two decades, Harvir’s name has stuck in my memory. As I hurried out onto the upstairs landing I found ‘Mrs Harvir’ (as I have always thought of her since) standing on the stairs looking at me in amazement. Far more worryingly was her strapping teenage son, immediately behind her and already looking angry.
‘Stay there, don’t move. What are you doing in my house,’ the son demanded, not even pausing for an answer before disappearing into the kitchen and returning armed with a kitchen knife the size of a machete. ‘Who are you, what are you doing here, where is my father?’
I looked around to see that his father had by now appeared behind me. I was thinking, ‘Oh my fucking God…’ but trying to keep calm and saying: ‘Don’t ask me what I’m doing here, ask him.’ But my client had tears in his eyes and unsurprisingly had nothing to say for himself. It seemed as though the son’s questioning went on for ages but in reality it was just a few repeated demands for an explanation of my presence. I did not want to tell him the truth: that his naked father had just been sucking my toes; I thought it might inflame him further. Yet my refusal to say anything was also making him angry. As I stonewalled his questions I lifted the walkie-talkie to my lips and called for help.
‘Who are you talking to? What are you doing? Why are you here? What have you taken?’
‘I’ve not taken anything. Ask him who I am. I’m going now. I’m leaving.’
‘You’re not going anywhere till you tell me who you are,’ the son said threateningly, moving closer still, with the blade clearly showing in his hand.
At that moment there was a thunderous knocking on the door. My driver was earning his fee that night by all but beating the door down in an attempt to reach me. I could hear him shouting: ‘Miranda! Miranda! Are you OK?’
I have to admit I was so frightened that the next few moments are something of a blur. My client was mumbling incoherently, his wife was bawling and bawling, the son was screaming at me, and my driver was shouting my name. Then somebody opened the door, the son was distracted, I fled downstairs and pushed past into the garden. My driver and I ran to the car and drove off with furious shouts still ringing out after us. We were safe but I was shaking – and then a horrible thought came over me. The client had paid me by cheque and the chances of that cheque clearing had just diminished substantially. That ordeal may well have all been for nothing.
The next day I had a phone call from a woman who asked to speak to ‘Miranda’. I hardly ever admit who I am to a cold caller on the telephone; too many callers just want to try and get a cheap thrill out of playing with themselves while they talk to me. So, I came out with my stock reply: ‘I’m her receptionist, how can I help?’
‘Oh I don’t know if you know this,’ she replied, ‘but yesterday Miranda came to my house to see my husband.’
‘No I don’t know anything about that; she would never tell me that sort of detail anyway, I just take her bookings.’
‘I’ve been up all night and I just need to know the truth. Can you please ask if Miranda did anything with my husband?’
‘Well obviously I don’t know the answer to that,’ I said, ‘and Miranda’s busy but if you call back in an hour I’ll try to get hold of her and get an answer for you.’
So I got off the phone and I was thinking, ‘Oh my God. What do I do now?’
Then the woman phoned back and I took a guess at what it was she wanted to hear: ‘Yes, I’ve spoken to Miranda and she said that she had literally just arrived.’
‘Thank God, that’s what my husband said as well.’
‘Yeah, Miranda says that nothing happened at all, she had just got there and then you both turned up.’
‘Thank you, thank you, he told me that but I didn’t believe him.’
A few days later the cheque he had paid me cleared through my bank. A good result all round I felt: I
got my fee and, as far as I know, his marriage was saved… and possibly, if he ever got the courage to discuss his desires with his wife, even improved.
The incident did make me think for a while about the morality of the work I was doing; not immediately because I was too busy thinking, ‘Oh my God, I hope I don’t get stabbed’, but later when the danger was passed. I concluded that I wasn’t in any position to consider the moral rights and wrongs of the married men who booked me because I just didn’t have any knowledge at all about their lives or the state of the relationships. Equally, and for much the same reason, nobody had any right to make a moral judgment about me. I could see nothing wrong with what I was doing and I didn’t feel then – and I don’t feel now – any guilt whatsoever. I am glad, however, that by pure chance I picked the excuse that his wife had been hoping to hear when she called. I was glad to help dispel her worries. And he had seemed like a nice guy; a decent man who was just unlucky to be caught.
Night-time shenanigans apart, my burgeoning dominatrix career seemed to be going well. The money was keeping the wolf from the door; I was losing my inhibitions, collecting new equipment and getting better at my job all the time.
Suddenly having more money rolling in was a double-edged sword. Working into the early hours of the morning meant that I started to oversleep and miss a few lectures; but on the other hand I was able to buy a small motorbike which made travelling to university vastly easier, until I wrote it off in a silly accident in which, thankfully, nobody except me got hurt. I was still in touch with my grandparents and I was paranoid about them finding out about my new source of sudden wealth. I pretended to them that I’d taken a night job in a taxi office, manning the radio dispatch desk. That one lie served two valuable functions: explaining how I had money and what I was doing at night.
Fifty Shades of Domination - My True Story Page 13