A deluge of dominatrix interviews have been popping up all over the internet since 50 Shades of Grey hit shelves back in 2011, acquainting us with what the “D” in the four letter acronym BDSM stands for. But what about the three other letters? And all of those who don’t practice BDSM professionally? I set out to dispel the mysteries behind fetishes by interviewing regular people from around the country — who happen to like getting pegged, giving spankings, and keeping live-in slaves.
*Jake is a 27-year-old straight male working toward his masters degree in economics in NYC. He is a self described switch in bed and met to talk about his interest in and practice of BDSM. Here, he recounts a sexual encounter he had with a girl from OkCupid.
How would you describe your current involvement in BDSM?
Like anyone else my age, I want to date. Sometimes there’s mutual sexual attraction and it’s normal, and sometimes it’s a little more interesting. And sometimes you explore those things, sometimes you don’t. It’s like tennis; some people don’t like tennis, so you don’t play tennis with them. Some people are interested in tennis, but they’ve never played before. And some people are really, really good at tennis, and they want to play.
Are you seeing anyone regularly? Or have you seen anyone lately?
Last night. Nice girl, she’s younger than me. She’s 21, I’m 27. She’s been exploring BDSM with a partner she’s been seeing rather consistently. When she met me, she was actually the one who brought it up first. We met on OkCupid. There was a question on my profile that asked, “Do you like kinky sex?” And I answered, yes I do.
So we met up, and she was the one who said it first. The minute she said it everything changed: all of my mannerisms, the way I spoke to her. Then she started telling me what she was into. And then I shifted my chair around, like, okay — now we’re talking about that, and I started calling her a slut–because she was into that; she had told me she was into degradation. I would have apologized if I wasn’t getting good vibes. But I was, so I continued to sort of degrade her — in a very, very happy way. (I was smiling the whole time.) Like, “just kidding!” But not really. I was getting the sort of response I wanted.
So then I put my hand on her leg (a little bit as an ownership thing). And if she swatted my hand away, I would have said sorry. But she didn’t. And I started feeling her, feeling up, up, and just with my pinky, I began feeling in between her legs, directly on it.
This is still at the bar?
Yes. I think the combination of me degrading her, and taking ownership of her a little bit, started to make her feel very turned on. And then at some point I stopped. I stopped very suddenly to give the impression that, “I did that and you were enjoying it, and I stopped and now you miss it, haha. Gotcha.” Power play. Power play, power play, power play. And then we pretty much went back to normal conversation. At some point I started to get a lot more physical, like scratching her neck. (She really liked that.) And I started grabbing different parts of her body and giving her a pinch, and then we’d just go back to normal conversation. It was in waves.
When we got to her place, I go back to degrading her, making fun of her for her sexual lifestyle. Because you know, she’s got this partner, and she’s got that partner, and she’s tried this with that person — and that’s fine. In the real world, there’s nothing wrong with that. But in this context: she’s submissive, she’s a slut, she should be spanked, she should be punished. And that’s exactly what I said.
I grabbed her hair and pulled a little bit. I pulled her over my knee, put my hand on her ass, and continued to berate her about her sexual lifestyle. I got her to confirm that she deserved to be punished. Like, “Do you think that’s good behavior? How do you feel about that?” [imitates her:] “Oh, it’s very bad, it’s very bad.” And then I started wailing on her, spanking and stuff. Slowly at first, and then I accelerated, and I accelerated, more and more. I was really hitting her pretty hard too. She was taking it like a champ. I don’t think there’s any way that she had not done that before. And then I pulled down her pants, and I did it with her pants off, and she liked it even more. Then I started pinching her: on the legs, on the ass, and on the thighs. There’s a lot of meat there, and you can’t really cause any injuries.
It was at that point that I stood up and put my dick in her mouth.
And then she stood up and said, “I can’t do this.” I was like, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” And she’s like, “No, let me just tell you what’s going on. I’ve been seeing this guy,” and “we’re not serious,” and “it feels weird,” and “I’m confused,” and “I’m having this moral dilemma.”
She’s having issues, whatever. And she keeps commenting on how I’m masturbating. I’m like, “I can stop, if you want.” And she’s like, “no, I don’t really care.” And that was when the dynamic shifted: I still wanted it, but she suddenly didn’t want it as much. So she begins objectifying me. Which I am into — totally into. And that’s when she came at me, got in my face, got very dominant.
I had a split second where I thought, am I feeling this right now? Because there are options. Option one: Come–over. Option two: Put on my pants–over. Or, I can see how deep down the rabbit hole we’ll go.
So I’m sitting against the wall masturbating for her viewing pleasure. She starts to verbally dominate me. I was tempted to say, “What about that moral dilemma?” But I didn’t want to shatter her dominant status. I was into it. I wanted her to keep it.
And she teased me: [imitates her:] “You want to touch my tit? Here, touch my tit. Did you ask permission for that?” That sort of thing. Giving me rules, and commands.
She ended up using the tip of my dick to get her off–on her clitoris. She was over me gyrating on it. There was no penetration. There were a couple of fun things going on there: objectification, using me as a tool — I was not getting off from it, but she was. Meanwhile, I was still manually pleasuring myself.
At one point, I was like, “you’re so beautiful.” And her deadpan reaction was, “don’t call me beautiful.” I was like, “Okay…” So tonight I’ve called you a slut, I’ve called you a whore, I’ve called you all sorts of names, but beautiful is where you draw the line.
[laughs]
Unacceptable. I was just trying to be submissive! I’m sorry.
After an experiment with an experienced male Dominant goes awry, *June realizes she perhaps isn’t fit to be a sexual submissive. Not so long later, she realizes she is far more fit to dominate than submit.
At what point did BDSM become a part of your sexual exploration?
I moved to the U.S. when I was 24. I’ve always been really, really sexual. I’ve had lots of sex with lots of partners. But none of that was BDSM. Certainly not where I came from. There was still no knowledge, no culture, or subculture around that. So when I came to the U.S., I was really open.
How aware were you that BDSM existed as a facet of sexuality prior to participating?
I knew that world was out there. I was like, “I stumbled upon it, great.” So I made an appointment to meet with this dominant guy. He knew it was going to be my first experience, so I asked him to craft me a nice scene. And he did.
He organized it from the very beginning, where I was supposed to come to the neighborhood, and he was going to text me where to find the key[to his apartment]. I was to go to the apartment, go inside, take my clothes off. There was a chair in the middle of the room I was supposed to handcuff myself to and blindfold myself before that. I think he said to pee first and then for me to lock myself there.
Because, apparently, he had the intention of making me wait for a really long time, which pissed me off to no end. That was not a good start to the evening. I was okay waiting like fifteen minutes or something, ten minutes. I hate waiting. It’s a waste of time. I was really, really aroused when I first arrived. And after that I was like, this is just stupid. Total buzz kill. Not cool. By the time he showed up, any wetness in my pussy was gone. Long gone.
How long did he make you wait?
I think an hour.
If you weren’t handcuffed would you have considered leaving?
I actually didn’t handcuff myself the entire way. I wanted to be free just in case that happened.
So only one hand?
Yeah. I was sitting and waiting, so when he showed up…
You could do both of them.
Yeah. I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to give this experience a try.
Was that the first thing you said to him when he did arrive?
I was like, “What the fuck?”
How did he react to that?
He played it cool, like that was part of the plan. He said, “you’re mine for the next couple of hours to do whatever I want.”
I remember the kinds of things I liked and what I didn’t like about it. There was definitely some spanking and some caning and flogging. He wrote slut somewhere on my body.
With what?
Just a marker. Or whore. I can’t remember. There were some nipple clamps involved. It took me a little bit to get my arousal back up after being so pissed for so long. But I did eventually. I realized that when I’m aroused, I can kind of get into some level of pain, which is cool. What I couldn’t really deal with was the submission element. I would be fine with him causing pain to my body. He wanted me not to talk unless asked to. That was not fine. That was just impossible.
You spoke anyway?
Yeah.
Did he punish you?
Yeah. He gagged me. I didn’t like the gag, so I asked him to take it off.
How did you communicate to him that you didn’t like the gag in your mouth?
He kept checking in on me. He went easy on me when I said I didn’t like something. So I went like this [gestures toward her mouth]. The whole experience was funny. It was entertaining. I’m a terrible sub. Unless I was topping from the bottom…there were just certain things that I didn’t want happening to me. The not talking did not work at all. It was certainly an interesting experiment.
What made you decide to do it again?
Soon after that, I went back to school. A few months later I met this 19-year-old boy who was a sophomore. I was a 26-year-old grad student. He just asked me if I was into BDSM, and if I was a Domme.
Where do you think that question came from?
I have a very dominant personality in general. He turned out to be this pretty submissive kid looking for someone to top him. He had a bag full of toys that he had collected over the years. He had restraints: leather cuffs and clips. Everything was so new to him. He came in all sorts of ways. He was just so, so happy that he found me.
At that point being a full on Domme was pretty new to you as well?
Oh yes.
But you took on that role with confidence?
Yeah. I had no idea what I was doing, really. And he actually did teach me a lot of things. He actually hog tied me once to show me how you can do that.
[A few semesters later], he expressed that he wanted to go a lot deeper and do a 24/7 kind of thing and be owned by someone and be completely controlled and have no ego and no sort of, personality outside of who I was and who I wanted to be. And that was so new and so weird that I wanted to give it a try.
He was graduating by this point, and he had no real plans of what he wanted to do. So I was like, how about you come and stay with me and live in our house and sort of try being my slave 24/7 and basically take care of me and the house until I’m done with school? And he said okay. And we did that for a year and a half.
*Brendan is a submissive male who enjoys being the recipient of pegging, or being anally penetrated. Here, he talks about being attracted to dominant women and the correlation between his ethical views and sexual preferences.
So you think that your interest in BDSM possibly has a moral and ethical crossover with how you think about women and men in relationships?
Absolutely. I had two great parents, but my dad was kind of the fun parent. I was mostly raised by mother. I was taught to respect women. You hear all of these horror stories of the way men treat women and the way men take control of everything. I don’t want to do that. I guess that’s part of why I’m into it [being submissive]. I guess it goes all the way back to middle school. I was made fun of a lot. They called me gay because I was really into the arts and didn’t play sports and stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but I hate it when someone says “he has feminine qualities,” or, “she has masculine qualities.” Can we just get rid of those terms please? I’m me. Let me be me. And I think that part of my stigma about not wanting to open up about this is because society doesn’t seem ready to accept more feminine males.
When you find a girl attractive, is that directly related to her taking initiative in life or is that just a trait you like?
Definitely related. My last girlfriend took a lot of initiative in real life but ended up being really submissive in the bedroom. She’s intelligent, a go-getter, all that. I found all of that attractive. It was really funny that it was the complete reverse in the bedroom.
Honestly I don’t mean to challenge someone’s morals or ethics, but I think that one of the things that really made me go on a downhill slope with her was when she told me to choke her, slap her, and I asked, “how did you get into this?” She was like, “Oh they’re just things that guys have done to me in the bedroom and I realized I liked it.” I said, “Wait, these guys slapped you and choked you without asking limits? Without asking if you were into that? That’s border line rapey. Thank god you were into it.” I just couldn’t believe things could be done like that without a discussion. Especially within the kink scene. I hate guys like that. And I hate using the word hate, but I don’t think that’s right.
You don’t want to be that guy in or out of the bedroom or anywhere.
Right. And even when I am asked to do stuff like that to someone, I still ask. “You want to be choked?” or, “you want to be caned?”
Would you take more than you’re willing to give, pain-wise or as far as aggression is concerned?
Yes. For the most part. I mean, it depends. If we had a discussion beforehand and you said you wanted that, as a service-oriented bottom, I’d definitely do it. But there are certain things that don’t feel comfortable. Choking is fine, cuffs are fine, but for some reason slapping, or just striking; I could never strike a woman. It’s funny, I tried it once with my ex. And I just did not do it right. She was like, “yeah, don’t do it again.” And I was like, “fine by me!”
Do you consider yourself service-oriented in real life too? Outside the bedroom?
No. I’m actually more of a go-getter, a leader. I’m really independent. I separate the two. I think that’s why it’s hard to admit that other personality. Would I still be respected? I’m definitely a respected person when I’m in charge. I don’t mean to sound like I’m some sort of an asshole boss or anything. But I’m in control of my life. I don’t like being told what to do in my professional life. I really like being in control of my own actions.
Can you talk about your relationship with your ex who was into pegging?
I was cuffed to the bedposts and she would either peg me or she’d spank me, stuff like that. One time when she was pegging me I was on top and I came on her chest and she made me lick it off. That only happened once. It was a total turn on. It was something that I’d done before. Like, I’d done it on webcam and stuff.
What did that strap-on look like?
7 inches and kind of thick. It’s pink and has some ribs on it. I also have my own toy as well. It’s about the same length, a little bit smaller in diameter, and it’s a vibrator. It’s smooth and purple. I have a standard black harness for it.
How long has it been since you last used it?
Almost a year. I don’t want to be embarrassed about it. With an ex, I brought up the idea of pegging. I just mentioned, “Oh, she wanted to peg me. Almost did it.” I wanted to see if she would be more curious about it. But she wasn’t. So I was like, okay she’s definitely not into this. Even the girl that did do that with me wasn’t really too dominant.
So I guess I have never really been with someone who’s been completely dominant. Which is okay, I’m not really into always being chained to the bed, I like things to be about pleasure for each other. But I still would want to be choked, or slapped around a little bit. I’ve never been with someone who really wants to take that initiative. And I’ve always wanted to be with people who do.
*Asterisk denotes name change for privacy.
Zoë is a freelance writer working on a collection of stories about BDSM, based off of interviews such as these. For more info on her project, visit her website and follow her on Twitter.
