by Sacchi Green
These pages aren’t going to show me the cutie next door with her top off. They’ll show the vamp, the bad girl, the cruel mistress and her trembling princess. Every issue is a black-and-white dream world of girls in corsets and stilettos, girls shackled in dungeons and menaced by strong women.
“Yep.” Then he adds casually, as he gives me my change, “You know, this photographer Red Bosworth is doing movies too. There’s one right next door at the Elysium Theatre.”
It seems too incredible, the idea of my bondage girls coming to life. “Thank you.”
Back on the street, the Elysium Theater entrance waits like an open, grinning mouth. Cat Fight Confidential! the marquee promises. Pyromania! The Elysium is one of the sleaziest theaters on the Deuce, crawling with hustlers and their scores in the balcony and plainclothes vice prowling the rows of seats. Supposedly a man got mugged in the restroom last week. But that doesn’t stop me from handing my money to the girl behind the ticket-booth glass.
I settle in near the back. A black-and-white film set on a beach is playing, what they call a low-budget roughie. But just a few minutes later, a new film starts—these seem to be mostly brief film clips—and a flickering, black-and-white screen spells out Cat Fight Confidential.
This film has no dialogue, just a merry instrumental tune. A blonde society girl is brushing her hair at the mirror. A maid sweeps in and they argue. The hairbrush is snatched back and forth a few times, and then the girls are pushing each other and wrestling all over the floor.
I lean forward in my seat, scarcely able to breathe. The girls tumble energetically around the room until the maid gets fed up and pins the society girl on the bed, pulling off her dress while the society girls kicks and screams. I wait for them to grind against each other, for the maid to strip her naked. But she only brings the blonde down to the floor and pulls off her slip. The society girl twists and pouts in her bra and panties.
The door flies open and a tall black-haired woman strolls into the scene. She moves with a swagger, a jungle cat with a menacing smile. She scolds them both with much finger wagging, then holds up a length of clothesline. I cross my legs, flushed and excited. She’s going to strip them naked and tie them up. All my life I’ve burned with dreams like this, secret shameful fever dreams of naked girls in bondage, and women who knew how to take charge.
But the tall black-haired actress doesn’t pull off their clothes. Instead she swiftly bends the maid over the table—still in her uniform—and ties her hands to its legs, so the maid is stuck with her bottom sticking out. She ties the society girl to the other end of the table in the same position, then takes the hairbrush and begins spanking both of them with a smirk.
A shivery thrill snakes down my spine. She’s so dominant. So authoritative. My cunt feels hot and wet and swollen under my skirt.
The film cuts off and switches to a cowboy movie.
I can’t get home fast enough. And my new issue of Strange Ways doesn’t disappoint; there’s a curvaceous blonde facedown in a leather swing, her hands roped behind her. On the opposite page, a black-haired girl is painting her toenails on the back of a bound and gagged woman. She appears two pages later in stiletto heels with a whip in her hand.
But the film. I can’t stop thinking about it. About a different film clip, maybe, a girl in chains wiggling underneath me. Actually wearing those stiletto heels myself while that tall black-haired woman swaggers in and overpowers me, like a masterful owner who’s going to fuck me good and hard no matter how much I pretend to struggle.
In the back of Strange Ways is the studio address.
“Welcome to the snake pit, Cynthia,” says Red Bosworth the next week when I appear for my first scheduled shoot. Red, the photographer and filmmaker, is a woman, my first surprise. She’s all business as she explains the rules of what she calls “fighting girl films,” as if she films office supplies instead of partially undressed women getting paddled.
The movies are silent 8mm and 16mm black-and-white loops. Red runs me through the basics, which I’ve already gleaned: women in lingerie, latex and high heels performing in a variety of scenarios. The actresses dance, train slaves, lace each other into corsets and chain each other into bondage contraptions. No nudity; that’s the rule. No sex acts either. Two pairs of panties must be worn, to block all pubic hair.
I don’t understand why burlesque queens can bare their nipples onstage and cheesecake magazines can show topless girls, but filming two girls wrestling in their underwear is risqué.
“I mostly do a mail-order business, which means I send these materials across state lines,” Red says. “If this fits the definition of pornography, I could get brought up on obscenity charges. We have to be careful. Oh, here’s Kathy.”
The other actress is a little younger than me, maybe nineteen to my twenty-four—that’s by design. She’s the ingenue I’m here to tame in the film. With big dark eyes and dark bobbed hair, she could be Natalie Wood’s naughty little sister. We run through the scene. She’s making something in the kitchen and spills it. I come out, hands on hips, and express dismay. Her hands fly to her cheeks—Don’t punish me, no, not that! —and then I have her over the kitchen table, ruffly checked skirt up to show her panties, and she kicks and squirms while I dole out twenty pretend whacks on her upturned ass.
She bends over the table so agilely. Her breasts are spilling out of her low-cut dress and her thighs under her skirt are soft, firm, flawless. I keep her pressed down with one hand on the small of her back. This is the first time I’ve touched a woman in months. I try to look unrattled, calm, as Red instructs us.
“Let’s get started.”
Once the cameras are rolling, my lust evaporates. The film lights are hot, hotter than stage lights. I’m nervous as I focus on making the right expressions and spanking Kathy without hurting her. But as she fake-struggles beneath me, as if I’m really restraining her instead of just lightly resting my hand on her, my blood comes alive. All I can think of is a naked girl writhing underneath me in real life.
“Cynthia, you’re a burlesque girl, right?” Red asks when we finish the scene. “How about some dancing?”
I strip down to the bare minimum allowed on camera and then slowly get dressed. Sitting on an elegant dining chair, I ease black nylons up my legs, caressing my calves and thighs. Next comes the garter belt, the spike heels, the gloves.
“Keep stroking yourself,” Red directs. “They like to see that. Just keep it clean.” Finally, after I’ve smoothed and admired myself everywhere, Kathy puts on a McGuire Sisters record and I stand up and begin to dance.
“Good job,” Red says as she pays me in cash. “You’ve got good stagecraft. Just make sure you keep your expressions exaggerated. Lots of visual communication.”
Walking home under the streetlights, I think of my ex, Dee, seeing one of these films. I want her to see them; want her to watch the black-and-white ghost of me and realize the real me will never be hers again.
Over the spring, I work in Red’s studio quite often. Sometimes I do films and sometimes pictorials for Strange Ways. Hogtied in a bikini, looking pleadingly over my shoulder; tied to a dancer’s barre, helpless as a head ballerina looms over me. In one film I’m tied to a bondage table and hit with soft switches. It’s ticklish but I toss my head back and forth and grimace as if fighting great pain.
One night in June, I arrive at a quiet studio. Red is in the back, reviewing a Strange Ways layout. I’m putting on the extra-scarlet lipstick required to show up on film when a confident Amazon strides in.
Her black hair is piled up high and matches her black cigarette pants and tight shirt. Heavy eye makeup gives her an imposing look. My stomach clenches as I realize she’s the woman from the Cat Fight Confidential film I saw at the Elysium Theatre.
She smiles a cool smile. “I’m Anita but you can call me A.J.”
“I’m Cynthia.” My voice sounds nervous.
Her eyes rake me. “You’re new to this, Red said. I hope you know
how to put on a show, kid.”
“She knows what to do, A.J.,” Red says, emerging from the back. “Cynthia is a burlesque dancer. She’s been a real quick learner.”
We run through the paces. “Okay, A.J., you’ll be tying up Cynthia with this rope. Hands behind her back, then she’s across your lap. Cynthia, you’re kicking and yelling. A.J. spanks you—”
“Through my underwear?”
A.J. smirks.
“Of course,” Red says, shocked. “She can’t do it bare—what else is there?”
I change into a leopard-print bra and panties, covered by a navy dress that looks normal but is fastened in the back in a way that’s easy to tear off. Walking out of the changing room, I feel unusually vulnerable.
A.J. stops me. “Stockings too,” she says. “I’m going to rip them off you and gag you with them.”
Her green eyes hold mine mercilessly. But Red looks pleased so I go back and put the stockings and garter belts on.
I walk out and the cameras are rolling. A.J. looms up with that menacing smile and I instinctively step back. She grabs my wrist and pulls me forward, her smile deepening, and then I’m on the couch, fighting her as she rips the dress off, pretending to struggle more with it than she really does.
But it feels real. The weight of her, this strong woman pinning me against the cushions and pulling at my clothes. I’m already flushed under the lights. The dress comes off and I feel utterly naked, as if the leopard print underwear will dissolve at any moment.
A.J. undoes my stockings next. I try to cling to them out of instinct but she prevails and then she yanks me to my feet, winding one sheer black stocking around my wrists and stuffing another in my mouth, until I’m gagged and bound and at her mercy.
A.J. drops onto the couch and pulls me over her lap. Wham, goes her hand on my bottom. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it feels undignified. This doesn’t feel like acting, it feels like a real usurpation of power. She tugs my thighs open and leaves one hand between my legs as she spanks me, her fingertips lightly—accidentally—brushing the crotch of my panties.
I struggle. I rock my hips back and forth, as much to urge her on as to fight her. I’m writhing, physically begging her to touch me. Then, holding me by the neck, she moves me onto the sofa on my knees. We didn’t rehearse this. But Red keeps filming as A.J. pushes my face into the cushions, hands still tied behind my back, and my ass in the air. Both pairs of my underwear have ridden up my crack but A.J. keeps spanking me. The hand holding my thigh keeps brushing my clit as I struggle, driving me closer and closer to orgasm.
“Wrap it up,” Red says. A.J. finishes the spanking with a flourish, ending with one stiletto heel on my back to indicate her complete dominion.
“That looked good,” Red says, shutting down the lights. “You two work well together. Next time we’ll use the pulleys.”
I’m so wet that my underwear is soaked. I feel almost stupified with longing as Red leaves us to change and lock up. Between the humid June night and the earlier lights, the studio is sweltering but I can’t get off the couch.
The silence settling over us is profoundly loud. After untying my wrists and yanking out the gag, A.J. goes to the refrigerator in the tiny kitchenette and takes out two cold bottles of beer. “Your burlesque background is obvious,” she says and hands me a bottle.
I stiffen. “What’s wrong with that?”
She shrugs. “You play it safe. There’s no heat. No risk.”
That’s a ridiculous thing to say after the scene we just filmed. “It’s a movie about a woman getting a spanking.”
Her eyes hold mine. “It’s a movie intended to give someone a perverted, throbbing orgasm.”
I lose the stare-off.
“You’re going to need training if we put you in the pulleys,” she says. “There’s a difference between how something feels and how it looks. You have to express your pleasure to the viewer.” She puts down her beer. “Come on. Let’s rehearse.”
I’ve avoided the pulleys until now. They’re a complicated-looking structure of support beams, suspension cables and chains used for suspending models. To me they represent the utter loss of control. Other than having my wrists and ankles tied, I’ve not been restrained in the films. The idea of surrendering that level of control on film—being hiked up spread-eagled and taunted and spanked—is too close to my more shameful fantasies. The protesting, struggling and fighting are an acting job, no different from my burlesque performances. But actually living out my dream of being bound and controlled by a commanding woman on camera makes me panic.
“Come on, kid,” A.J. says impatiently. “You heard Red—this is what we’re shooting next time.”
I walk across the studio, every step rooting me to the floor. My underwear is clinging to my pussy. My hair is tousled out of its careful style. I feel as vulnerable as a small monkey going to a jungle predator.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say.
“Just stand still.”
She attaches black leather cuffs to my ankles. Their cool smoothness sliding around my skin feels sexier than the clothesline we normally tie each other up with. Two chains rattle across the floor as she links one to each cuff. I feel like her captive.
“Arms up.”
My wrists are locked into similar black cuffs and chains. A.J. disappears behind me and then the rattle of the chains begins, the slack disappearing. Then it’s happening, I’m being lifted off the ground. Suspended and spread, my ankles opening wider and wider.
A.J. stands before me and regards her handiwork. “You look stiff as a board. That’s not what viewers want to see—they want to see you pout and look scared, but your body has to be fluid.”
“How can I feel fluid when I’m stretched open and completely bound?” I can barely get the words out, I’m so nervous.
“I’ll loosen you up.”
She vanishes into the supply cabinet, and then emerges with an instrument I’ve never seen—strips of soft leather emerging from a firm handle.
She smiles when she sees my panic. “It’s just a flogger. Don’t worry, I’ll play nice.”
She trails the leather strips up and down my back. It feels sexy. Then there’s a snap and a sting rockets through my skin.
The flogger goes down over my thighs. She flicks it so the leather strips dance over my skin, flailing it back and forth between my inner thighs until I shiver, tickling me until I’m biting my lip. The second snap of the flogger catches me off guard. But now the sting is almost pleasurable, like the bite of a dangerous woman. The toy dances up and down my back, the leather strips brushing my skin. Then A.J. pulls my underwear down, both pairs, and the flogger catches my exposed cheeks.
I cry out. It’s different on my ass, not painful exactly but more significant. A statement of control, of ownership. At least the spread of my thighs stops her from pulling my underwear all the way off, a guarantee of both protection and frustration.
Suddenly her mouth is near my ear as she says, “The reason you’re resisting is because you’re still dressed.”
Resisting? My body feels like hot, melting taffy. But A.J. rips my underwear off like she’s stripped a thousand women before.
Having my pussy on display is a first in the studio. A.J. eyes me with a cagey smile, then undoes my bra and pushes it up, exposing my tits.
“What a shame not to get these on film.” She flicks the leather ever so lightly on my bare breasts until my nipples are so stiff they ache. My tits feel bigger, warmer, prickling with heat. If only she would suck my nipples into her mouth. Instead she abruptly gives my wet and throbbing cunt the same treatment with the flogger. The leather skims my clit.
She laughs. “You are so wet.” She tosses it behind me.
Her fingers move over my clit. For as expertly and forcefully as she handled me earlier, she’s taking her time now and it is taking all of my self-control not to beg her to fuck me.
“So wet,” she murmurs, as if to herself, and slide
s two fingers inside me. I groan, I can’t help it, but she only fucks me a little, my cunt clinging to her fingers, before withdrawing and rubbing my own wetness all over my pussy. She’s using her knuckles, her palm, to rub me up and down. No woman has ever used her hands on me like this, turning my pussy into a molten, thrumming pool of bliss.
She lightly bites each breast, sending an electric jolt of sensation through me. But then she slides around behind me and I almost groan with disappointment.
The flogger presses up against my sopping wet cunt again. She’s not whipping me with it, though, but rubbing it back and forth, parting my lips, pressing against my clit, the soft leather feeling like an extension of her own skin.
A.J. bites the back of my neck. “You’re made for this life,” she whispers. Then something solid is pushing inside my lips: the flogger handle. She works it inside me, the unfamiliar thrust filling my skin with electricity. Her other hand slides around and covers my clit, toying with me and fucking me relentlessly in conflicting sensations that push me up into a crescendo of fire—and then I’m coming, my pussy clenching hard around the handle as I surrender in wave after wave of intense joy.
“Oh god. Oh my god.”
My face is streaked with tears. A.J. lowers, unchains and unlocks me. I hang on to the pulley poles, exhausted and shaking, while she disposes of my torn underwear and cleans the flogger. I feel utterly dismantled. But I get dressed and we go down the rickety four flights of stairs in silence, me feeling naked beneath my skirt.
Out on the street it’s another New York summer night. A diner glows across the street. I muster the courage to ask if she’s hungry.
But A.J. smiles her crooked smile and says only, “Nice working with you, kid.” She vanishes down the sidewalk, under the streetlights.
I never worked with her again. I made thirteen more films— pillow-fighting, wrestling, dancing in a black bikini, taking baths—before Red was charged with indecency that fall. Spooked, I quit the burlesque and Times Square forever. On New Year’s Day, 1956, I headed to the Greyhound station on 34th Street and caught a bus west to California to start a new life.