Love to Hate

So it’s yet another hot New York City May when you’re still a teenager and nothing really matters except hooking up with cute boys and making sure your GPA is good. You are successful at both.

The boy you are sorta dating has a best friend, Tai, who lives in Long Island but has the hugest Brooklyn accent somehow. Anyway, he sells drugs, comes over to you and Chloe’s apartment. Tai and Chloe sniff k in the front room and you and Parker go in the bedroom and fool around or something. Talk usually. Philosophy and politics and how to save the world and what happens when you die.

Tai has so much money. Chloe does too. She’s hoing.

“Girls don’t sell drugs,” Chloe tells you, after she sends Tai and Parker to get rainbow Italian ices. After all, she’s been working sex, knowing inside out dirty New York City for what seems like forever, maybe even before she was legal, not like it’s ever really legal. You are worried about money. Chloe will cover the rent, but you need to pay her back. Or at least start paying rent. “Boys sell drugs. Girls sell sex.”

You think of the kids she calls for blow and k; not one of them female. Girls can’t defend themselves in a fight over thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs. Boys are for drugs. Girls are for…

Chloe says, “Why don’t you be a dominatrix. I know a dungeon manager. He needs a blonde. Last week he told me to dye my hair, but fuck that.” You’re blonde. You’re nineteen but could pass for younger or older. It seems too simple. You call him.

It’s not like you haven’t done stuff before with boys you haven’t known before. But this, this is different. Punishment and cruelty. Strangers who pay money. Not strangers you possibly want to form a relationship with.

You don’t tell anyone else at first about your future job possibility; that will make it real and you’re not even sure if you want it to be real.

In your mind you say you can just try it this once if you don’t like it you can quit never do it again. But you also know after you do it you already did it so you have that in your past you can never go back. Just like if you were a virgin and if you have sex just once you’re not a virgin anymore, so you might as well be sexually active. So you stick with it, go pro. How can you not?

Apply makeup. Cute clothes, in case a client wants street clothes. Take train up to 23rd street. Buzz dungeon, walk in, elevator to 12th floor. Wait. Wait. Read Vogue, Time Out New York, or Anna Karenina. Listen to the XX. Around clients, look pretty act cute fierce mean. Kick ass. Spank paddle sexify but not sexually. Confusing state of mind. Wait. Wait. Order from the diner, or walk to the deli over on 25th street and flirt with the clerks to get free Lindt chocolate. Wait. Complain. Bored. Need to make money. Leg worship. Golden shower. Talk. “No we don’t do that.” Wait. Wait. Count tips. Throw lit cigarettes off fire escape talking about our dreams. Way too fun. Give each other backrubs, new makeup looks. Wait. Bitch. Flirt with clients need to make money. Want to leave but stay in case client comes in. Go home 615am, the train two stops to home, seeing early commuters in suits and briefcases staring at mascara rings and smeared lipstick and the smell of latex. Streets are ghosts in early mornings.

But it’s okay. A dominatrix. At clubs, “Buy me a drink,” and yes, you’re glamorous. Chloe lies, says she’s one too because you can’t say you’re a ho and be respected by everyone. You don’t care, personally just can’t do fuck, though some people think it’s gross, horrible, but dominatrix is a turn-on. “Spank me baby.” A big laugh. Sexy. Wearing stilettos to the corner store. Free Gatorade. Why not, you’re a goddess?

It is understood sex work is only temporary but fun. It’s during school years only. Getting your feet rubbed for hours. Realizing the whole world is horny. Mr. Wall Street included. Hemingway after hot wax. Dostoevsky and discipline. Chocolates before canings. Tips. Tips. Money. Tax-free everything. But you need a set plan to get out, a goal.

“I love you mistress. I love you. You are my goddess.”

Selling drugs is stupid, you and Chloe decide. All Tai’s friends are getting in trouble. You and Parker barely talk now, with him living on the Island and all. And your “inflated ego.” “Goddess.” Whatever. Sex work is the way to go. Watch out for the NYPD and you’re golden. You know what to watch for, only do dildo with regulars. You know it all. Red toenail polish, pedicures paid for by clients. Confidence. Walk around your apartment with store front window in g-string. Think, I’m sexy.

You can only work for a place like Dynamite Dominas only so long. You’re getting to be more of a professional; reading Skin Two and being mentioned on Max Fisch and believing Armor All exists to shine your latex clothes and restricted corset breath is normal. You should work at a dungeon where worship is a bit more present, a more upscale, reputable dungeon where tipping is mandatory and a little more respect, please. After all, you’re a professional dominatrix.

Tight black pants and a little tank top to the interview at the best dungeon in NYC. Known worldwide, you’ll see businessmen on trips from LA, Australia, London, Japan. They need a blonde. Get first session in your street clothes, “God you’re so amazing I’d love to—“ “No we don’t do that.” You don’t. No. But still good. Clients covered by cigarette burns, marks, or just the lipstick type. A truly professional dungeon.

Six-hour photo shoots with stilettos, corsets, God, such a bore. Eating sushi with girls you know so well you know their bra size — but not their real name — and falling into a world so hard that you’re stuck before you can even think about getting out. Custom designed leather pants. Help me lace up this corset.

Chloe says, “Once you get in the life you can’t get out.” She understands. It’s 3am and we’re gossiping and eating and talking about bikini waxes while the rest of the world is sleeping. Georgette dancing in front of the mirror. Ariel riding her bike through the insanity of Manhattan to work, making clients lick the chain clean. Didi doing yoga in the lounge. Pepper convincing her regulars they have to bring a variety of Haagen-Dazs for all of us. Minx and her honesty. And the managers, making coffee and collecting money and gossiping and bitching about clients and girls and politics at the desk as if it were her throne, overseeing it all.

Chloe ends up making more, much more and it’s like why not do that if that’s all anyone wants you to do anyway. No, not for you. You’re too good for that, don’t even fuck on the first date, anything like that. At work, though, things start to get to you after a while. You could never imagine yourself in fuck. Groping hands. Trying to touch. You can’t breathe, go inside yourself and pull away from them—“mistress, may I—“

No.

Parker comes back into your life, fall in love. You move in together, over in Park Slope, the second floor of a big brownstone, perfect hardwood floors are your pride. You purchase curtains together. “How much longer you gonna keep this job?” You don’t know. How do you tell someone you love you’re addicted to a job that is ruining you?

It gets old after a while. Not the love, that only gets better. But how many times do you really want to tell some cokehead applying lipstick he’s such a trashy whore and how many times do you want some guy worshipping (read: rubbing and sloppy kissing and usually drooling) your legs to ask if he can have a peek under your clothes? Oh just a touch? How many times do you feel like vomiting after looking in the mirror when strapping on another dildo? And how many times do you want to whip and cane and spank sweaty ass, smelling foreign smells and wishing you were home? Oh please mistress.

But it really starts to get to you when the dungeon starts screwing you over: when they owe you nearly a grand in credit cards and are slow as shit about paying you; when you do a seven-hour photo shoot for the website, photos that are never even used on the website, photos that are lost in photo space, or perhaps displayed in some chic gallery somewhere, or probably published in some book or magazine; and then when you ask them to take your profile and pictures off the website because you are worried about your real-life reputation, the boss just forgets and when you remind her she says, “Why you care about that, girl, you make money offa them.”

You get a real job, a “day” job, but still can’t quit the dungeon, you’re addicted. Plucking your eyebrows is something you only do when Pepper is next to you applying and reapplying makeup until she’s satisfied. It’s not a day of work if you don’t have to spray your hands with alcohol and wash them with antibacterial soap every hour. And why would you want to wear sensible pumps and slacks from Lord & Taylor when you only look sexy in black stilettos with a whip in your hand?

You work the dungeon at night when your boyfriend is home, pacing, wondering. Parker cleans the house and buys you flowers while you’re stamping on somebody’s balls with your stilettos. Don’t tell him anything. Hands shaking after sessions, don’t want to think about them trying to touch you. I made it, I’m still alive. Coming home late at night, walking home fast from the train because you barely know how to defend yourself in the dungeon, much less the streets. Shower before you leave work, then again when you get home. Parker won’t kiss your feet or anything, says he doesn’t want to be like your clients, doesn’t want you to think of your clients, think of your love as work. But I would never. He doesn’t understand, he never could.

Clients, fights. They get pissed when you won’t fuck. Had a client start freaking and squeezing your arms, trying to get the fuck out of you and slip himself into you. You freaked and screamed and ran and had the manager throw him out. You didn’t get a tip. And the girls fight, like when Didi stole one of Ariel’s regulars (And this client spends a grand or more a week on her!), and Ariel punched Didi and Ariel was out of control drunk and the manager didn’t know what to do so she had a client tie Ariel up to a chair in the lounge and Ariel passed out and woke up with rope burns on her arms and legs. “You don’t even know how to fucking do bondage,” was the first thing she said.

You find yourself snapping at everything: the assholes who don’t get out of your way on the sidewalk; you tell the homeless guy you usually talk to at the 5th Ave E/M stop that just because he’s crazy doesn’t give him the right to talk to others; and Parker can barely stand you, says you’ve turned into a psychotic bitch and asks why you keep hurting him. You tell him how hot you looked in Pepper’s vinyl pants and say how you love fetish wear, not understanding how these clothes create images in his mind of your job, other men getting off on your image, to you, his girlfriend and true love. He says he can never get over it, that he will always remember this pain for the rest of his life, that he doesn’t understand how you can do this and still love him. “You’ve turned into a bitch, you’re such a mean person now.” If he’s crying, you laugh at how pathetic he is, you compare him to your clients. You spend all day bitching and screaming and demanding and dominating, it’s just inevitable. You’ve become what you hate, what your boyfriend hates. You don’t want to be demanding and controlling—after all, you’re a feminist, want equality not power. You’re too tired after work to have sex and don’t want to look in the mirror to see what you’ve truly become: a lifestyle mistress.

Beat spank scream yell scold insult be worshipped. Home on the train and expect the same. You are a bitch.

“This is sick to be like this. You are sick. Why don’t you quit?” But you can’t, you just can’t. It’s in your bones. As if you were meant to be this. Geminis are supposed to be very sexual. A friend tells you about rubbing cayenne pepper on dick before sex and Parker won’t do it, says it sounds too kinky, says he’s not into S&M, he doesn’t want to be your client. You don’t want to be a mistress of anything anymore, you just want to be submissive.

Try to forget what you’ve become but can’t go back, gone too far, way too far.

Can’t breathe. Need to get out. Sick of corset outlines, men rubbing legs. Need. To. Be. Free.