Today on Facebook I was reading the comments that some of my friends had written under the status that I wrote on my wall: "Larry was just invited to a nude dinner party this Saturday evening. As Sarah Palin would say, 'Thanks, but no thanks'".
One of my friends commented that she had had a strange invitation recently, too. Someone had asked her if she wanted a job as a dominatrix. She turned the job offer down. I told her it was probably a good move, or lack of a move, on her part. Here's why:
When I lived in NYC, I was in a play, and in this play was an actress who worked as a dominatrix to pay the bills. We used to hang out backstage, and I would ask her about her job, because I was fascinated by the idea that one would do that for a living.
She told me that most of her clients were Wall Street bankers-- conservative men in suits who came to her to be degraded, who longed for degradation...
She said (and I'm paraphrasing, but it is almost word-for-word what she said), "You have no idea how exhausting it is to humiliate and abuse a man for 2 hours, to have to perceive what kind of humiliation and abuse arouses him, and to have to keep coming up with new ways to abuse him. After a half hour, you get so fatigued doing it, and after an hour, you begin to physically torture him, just because you hope it'll drive him to finally say the safe-word so that the damned session will be over"
That got me to thinking... I've never been someone who fantasizes about humiliating, degrading and abusing people (not that my actress friend has either--it was just a job for her), so I never contemplated what it entails, and the amount of imagination that must go into it being a dominatrix (or dominatOR...?... is that the word for the male version? dominator? I've never heard it said). It especially must be difficult if you have no personal sexual attraction to being cruel. I mean, if you're just doing it as a job and not a real hobby, you must use your imagination more to humiliate well.
Well, one night I closed my eyes and imagined it.... other than making them crawl on their knees, lick my boots, act like a dog or a pig, being insulted, take the whip... I couldn't come up with anything else. All those things I imagined couldn't have taken up more than 45 minutes. So the next time I saw her, I asked her what she does besides what I had imagined.
After complaining again about how greuling it is to come up with new ways as the session drags on, she then listed lots of pain 'n humiliation techniques, but the one that has stuck with me is that....
...she would brush their hair in a very harsh manner. That always turned them on, she said. She'd use a bristle brush, and brush very hard, with each vicious stroke of the brush saying,
"YOU'VE... (brush) ...BEEN... (brush) ...A... (brush) ...VERY.... (brush) ...BAD... (brush) ...PIG...
She'd brush them until their scalps were fire engine RED. She said that that always gave the men great pleasure, great release and relief.
That "hairbrush technique" stuck with me... it made me think of what a mysterious thing human sexuality is. I mean, I know there are kinky ways to have sex, I'm no innocent, I know that raunch can be hot. But getting your hair brushed with savage, plowing strokes until your scalp is burning red? WTF? How can that be sexually fulfilling? Do these men subconsciously feel the need to be punished for working as bankers? For making good money? For being venture capitalists? For voting Republican?
Who knows. Psychoanalyzing it is a useless endeavor. Human sexuality is a very mysterious thing. I'll just leave it at that.
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