By Carrie Cohen

Men pay me to beat, humiliate, tease, and torture them.  They beg to be kicked in the balls while I wear stilettos or black, pleather fuck me boots.  They want to be whipped with a riding crop or hit with a ruler until their asses turn the shade of a fire engine or a well broiled lobster.   They rarely use “safe” words — VANILLA, RED or the more obvious MERCY and STOP.

Some men want “small penis humiliation” and to hear I have written with implements more impressive than their peckers.  Perhaps they should consider gender re-assignment surgery?  After all it’s easier to, “dig a hole” than, “build a pole.” I ask a fellow member of the tribe whether his, “Moil made a mistake?” and cut off more than his foreskin.  For providing these services, they place lovely crisp bills from the ATM in my all too eager hands.

I had discovered my inner dominatrix while working bachelor parties.  My favorite part of the night had been spanking the bachelor and best man.  I could have whaled on those interchangeable assholes all night.  The pimp who ran the stripping service had christened me Allie but when I was “hired” at the dungeon, which involved no more than showing up so the owner Madame Medusa, a Jamaican immigrant, could see I really looked as good as my pictures, I decided I needed a new name and settled on Summer.  I like the irony of being called a sweet, whimsical name in a dark, smoky place where men pay to be and urinated on and suspended from the ceiling.   I’ve always been drawn to pseudonyms and the magic and mystery of being someone else.  So at Starbucks Alice orders tall skim lattes.  She is tired of tea parties.  Anna loves her Strawberry Surf Riders with immunity boosts at Jamba Juice; her angst about Vronsky isn’t going anywhere.

Geographically, the dungeon is only a couple blocks from the World Trade Center.   I find it impossible not to think about 9/11 when walking the streets of the financial district.  I imagine the pandemonium of that day — people running every which way in a panic as airplanes flew into the buildings trapping employees inside.  Those unable to escape exposed to smoke curling all around them. No exit.  Trapped on the 20th and 30th floors.   Standing on ledges and jumping to their deaths.  The long weary, walks the survivors took uptown and across the Brooklyn bridge, women holding their heels, going barefoot and the way the blue sky went gray with ash that stayed for days and days.  Nearly a decade later the chaotic construction site aftermath, which tourists come to gawk at and photograph.

Floating around in a dissociative state, my body is present, my mind shut off.  The majority of the time I am detached; barely aware of the events unfolding around me.    From time to time, truly shocking moments yank me back.  A filthy man meanders in; wanting his nipples pinched with clothes pins while he wears one of the adult diapers the dungeon stores in a black bin labeled Infantilism.  He rubs himself frantically, his hardness straining the Depends.  Or the one who looks homeless and shows up with a cage full of vermin.  I wonder whether he caught the rats himself (lots lurked around the Liberty stop on the C train) but before I have the opportunity to ask he releases them.  One dashes dangerously close to my red stilettos.  I scream and jump up on the futon.  In moments like these I wonder, What the hell happened to my life?  I am a Jewish girl from Westchester.  I had a Batmitzvah!   I have an Ivy League education.  This is so fucking fucked up!  What the fuck?!

Working in the dungeon is like a meat market crossed with a sorority house.  When not playing dress up, the mistresses sit around, chain smoking cigarettes, eating take-out, e-mailing potential customers, and watching DVDs for 7, 8, 9, even 10 hours. Madame Medusa loosely enforces her no drinking or smoking up during business hours policy being she is the in-house dealer and she has an affinity for her own product.  I have little interest in weed and prefer the seemingly never-ending supply of Adderal Mistress Harmony procures from Slave Scott, a podiatrist with a foot fetish.

You could leave with $600 or with nothing.  All sessions paid the same whether it was foot worship, which is easy and only entails letting some pathetic schmuck rub your feet and maybe kiss them, or whether it involved fantasy wrestling with Octavio who wants his head pressed firmly between your thighs in a “scissor” hold. Since Medusa takes a 60/40 cut of every session, in her favor, I contemplate starting a freelancer’s union for dommes in which we would be entitled to benefits, a 401K, and an hourly wage.  Sometimes I wonder what Medusa does when tax time comes ‘round.  It’s no secret she doesn’t report her income.  None of us do.  I have elaborate daydreams about ratting her out to the Feds and INS and watching as she is lead away in her own handcuffs to a detention center or internment camp.

When I do get money, it doesn’t stay there long what with the need for rent, my cell phone, Fancy Feast and Fresh Step.  Forget the student loans.  They’re on permanent deferral.

In my mind, sex currency is superior to a check earned at a straight job be it Walmart or some truly heinous vocation like a meter maid.  There is more risk involved in sex work, the revealing of oneself, removing clothes, and standing exposed before a stranger.  Setting boundaries without a uniform- an ID badge or green barista’s apron is a unique challenge.   Pretending to like him, playing the seductress who never seduces.  Endeavoring to empty a wallet without penetration.

You tell them, “Show me how you touch yourself.  Show me what feels good.”

You want and wait for one moment to give way to the next, for the hour to fast forward and be done, done, done.  To finger the bills- twenties, fifties, sometimes hundreds.  You tell yourself this money is all that matters and you marvel each time you escape unscathed.

At the dungeon there is often live entertainment as each mistress vies to be the center of attention.  The place is a magnet for bitches with Axis II diagnoses.  Marsha Linehan should come and run DBT groups in between sessions.  9 out of 10 don’t give a any thought to having photos, face shots, no less, on Medusa’s web site.   They lavish in the attention and posing sexily for the camera.  When my turn comes, I cover my face with a heart shaped black paddle, my hair, or have Mistress Harmony zoom in and snap at my legs and ass.

Medusa snarls when she sees the shots and shakes her heads of thick, spirally dreads. In her thick accent she says, “Them guys go on the site to see girls who show their faces.  They gonna think yours is fucked up.  Girl, you won’t make no money.” Meaning she wouldn’t make any money.  It was a risk I was willing to take.

Much like on-line dating, everyone lies on their profile.  Mistress Sophia claims she is a “cute college co-ed studying nursing,” her proof the white nurse’s outfit she scored at a day after Halloween sale.  The dark haired, multi-pierced “student” is functionally illiterate and closer to 30 than 20.  Several times a week, she takes out the collection of dildos and strap-ons from their plastic container beneath the futon and runs around the room wildly waving them in everyone’s face finally pretending to fuck Mistress Ophelia, a sub, with one.

We are technically not allowed to use strap-ons in session.  It is against the law and considered prostitution.  Dungeons have been busted for it.  However we are told to do it for “regulars”  like Cuddly Bear Brian an extremely overweight white guy who stinks and likes to cuddle after taking it in the ass.

The laws are fascinating.  Although it’s legal to participate in and film a pornographic film, it’s illegal to have sex in exchange for money.  Or in this case put a dildo in someone’s ass for money.  But you can do “dildo worship” wherein you wear a strap-on and the man kneels down and appreciates the visual of a chick with a dick.  He is also welcome to insert objects into his own ass.  This is legit.  But where’s the fun in it?

We wait around for a degenerate to arrive and Madame Medusa to settle him in a session room.  We quickly spray on perfume and slip on heels to parade in one at a time for a meet and greet.

Madame Medusa tells us, “Two minutes tops.  You don’t be giving him no freebie.   You be in and out.” The trick is to make him choose you, to stand out, when he is at times meeting as many as 10 other girls.

The pedophiles always go for Katie, a strawberry blond who is only an A cup.  At 21, with no hips or ass, Katie looks closer to 12.  In tight, short black leather dresses and platforms she could be a poster child for efforts to stop child sex trafficking.  She sleeps at the dungeon most nights since her boyfriend held her at gun point.  Several black and Asian girls are usually available and no amount of red lipstick can defeat them if he wants to be beaten by a Nubian or has a Chinese foot binding fantasy.  Also stiff competition is Mistress Scarlet owing to the mammoth breasts she has to tame and squeeze into a corset.  Well versed in contemporary literature, she favors Camus and Nabokov, and also enjoys reading about “children kept in captivity” on Wikipedia, particularly the Elizabeth Fritzl case.  When she masturbates to porn she gets off by fantasizing the actors are related. She says it makes her orgasms much more intense if she envisions a brother and sister doing the deed.

Unlike most of the mistresses I do not sub or switch.  I shudder at the thought of some perv tying me up, having a ½ hour or an hour to put his hands on me, while I wait for salvation in a “5 minute knock.” While I enjoy “tease and denial”– me tying them up and flaunting my body — the pink pussy they will never have, I will not make myself vulnerable.  At one of the monthly fetish parties I had gotten pulled into a “group” session where some guy in his 60s or 70s wanted to play a song called “Funky, funky butt cheeks.” I was happy to dance and pretend to be into his stupid song.  But when I felt his hand smack my ass, my mouth froze, and I wanted to scream.

In order to feed myself and my cat, I post ads about “Jewish girls gone wild — you bring the horseradish and I’ll crack the whip!” and “Confess your secrets to a sexy school girl” on Craig’s List and the Village Voice’s Backpage.com.  When my ads aren’t getting flagged, going through the responses is tedious.  While the XYers are all looking for free sex, to me sex work means no sex and minimal work for an obscenely large sum of money.   I find myself coming up against my and the men’s difference in definitions time and again, a seemingly insurmountable wall.  My comfort with the sex business only goes so far as creating the illusion of sex and yet words do not describe my desire for tax free dollars.  If only I can reconcile the exchange of green for a man’s carnal pleasure.

The e-mail responses are endless and arrive at all hours.  I learn the BDSM community is an international one with members as close as ten blocks away and as far as Kolkata, India where Rajiv, who is dying to be my “toilet slave,” resides.  If only I would accept him he could move in with me in only “3 moths.”   Another cyber stranger wants to be objectified and treated like, “complete property, transformed into a sissy maid, a rubber doll, a piece of furniture, a pony or a dog.” A man in Staten Island asks for “financial domination” and wants a woman to add to the deed to his house then threaten to take it away.  He balks when I say I need to consult my attorney first.  Ted from Wisconsin sends his travel itinerary, along with dates, hotels where he will be staying, and references, names and phone numbers of previous women he has been with who will most likely remember him for his, “oral and salsa dancing skills.”  Despite the statistic that 85% of people have HPV, everyone claims to be “D&D free.” All the men are “in great shape” and “very stable and normal outside the bedroom.”

At some point I develop an unhealthy obsession with Christian Loubotins and finding a man with a foot fetish to buy the $900 shoes for me.  I wonder if prior to the recession this might have been easier.  I learn Collarme.com is not a place to earn revenue but reserved for Lifestyle BSDMers.  I am told of a club called Paddles where Lifestylers often go to get naked and spank one another.  In a way I am like a drug dealer who doesn’t use her own product.  And yet there is certainly sadism in me.  I am prone to fantasies about maiming and torturing ex-boyfriends, setting them on fire.  I envision acid burning the face of the ex-fiancé.  Since I am not intent on bringing my ideation to fruition I seek male substitutes to punish and take me on endless shopping sprees- handing me credit cards with no limits.  I am limitless inside and cannot actually be fulfilled.   No amount of shoes are likely to do it, no Louis Vuiton bag.  It’s doubtful I could ever feel satisfied but I’d sure like to try.

Medusa bursts into our little area barking, “There be a guy in 10 minutes.” She looks at us, lying around; listless, lazy girls and shakes her head.  She needs us to be mean, money making machines.  “Get up.  It be The Tooth.”

Mistress Sophia groans, “Not that fucker, again.”

“He comes here, too?” Mistress Oksana asks her blue eyes widening with what looks like concern… and is that fear?  It’s her first day at Medusa’s but she says she’s been in the scene for awhile and worked at The Underground Playground and Salome’s Salon before it got busted for using strap-ons.

“Relax, he likes to session with newbies,” Mistress Scarlett says knowingly.  “I’m not even getting dressed.  Tell me, Medusa, did he not ask who’s new here?”

Medusa lights up a Newport.  The air is already so thick with smoke my eyes are tearing. “He wanna meet Summer.”

Suddenly all eyes are on me.  You’d think I had been bestowed some honor like captain of the cheerleading squad or nominated for Prom Queen.  Katie, who’s been quite vocal she is saving up for her own place, looks particularly annoyed and I know they will be talking about me as soon as I leave the room.  Mistress Mona Lisa, who hails from South Africa, had tipped me off, earlier in the week.  “Summer,” she’d said, “If I were you I would watch my back.”  While I appreciate her looking out for me, I’m not intimidated by Katie who’s lost countless phones in the time I’ve known her and will go out for cigarettes and not return for days.  She is the type of girl who would be late to her own cat fight or forget about it altogether.  The others aren’t any better.

Ignoring Katie and her comrades’ glares, I head to the bathroom where I re-apply my signature red lipstick and extenuate my eyes with black liner and mascara.  I manipulate a black push-up bra and silky red corset to give the appearance I have way more cleavage than I actually do, re-fasten my black garter belt to the fishnet thigh-highs I’m already wearing and step into and zip up my boots.  I look in the mirror and am pleased with my appearance.  I look hot!  I’d want to session with me!  I consider for a second why they call him The Tooth and hope he isn’t into some crazy vampire fetish; I’m well aware HIV can be transmitted through biting and neither want to bite or be bitten by one of these disgusting creeps.

I follow Medusa to the session room where he is waiting.  “You know the drill, go in, meet him, and come back out.”

I nod obediently and knock on the door.  I tell myself he can’t be as bad as that cop who asked to have his own taser used on him.

“Come in,” a voice says and I step inside.  She has put him in the largest of the session rooms.  The velvet curtains are drawn and a single candle has been lit.

“Hi,” I say, “I’m Mistress Summer.”

He is younger and slimmer than most of the men who come in.  If he had the right haircut and wore a Brooks Brothers button-down he could pass himself off as one of the finance clones who roam Wall St. in packs, clutching fresh copies of The Economist, sucking on cigarettes and boasting loudly about their bonuses.  However he lacks their bravado.  I notice he is trembling.

He takes me in.  “You are very beautiful Mistress.”

“Thank you,” I respond.

“How long have you been working here?” he asks.

“About a month,” I say.

“Are you a student?”

“Yes,” I say.  It’s obviously what he wants to hear.

“What are you studying?” he asks and I become nervous, painfully aware of the time, wanting to sneak a peek at my wristwatch and wondering if I can do so without him noticing.

Medusa knocks on the door and opens it simultaneously.  “You want her?” she asks.  “Mistress Summer make you real happy. She meet your needs.”

Usually she seals the deal without us in the room but she’s particularly aggressive around the first of the month when rent is due.

“Summer,” she barks, “Go on and get a pair of them rubber gloves. And a bucket.”

A bucket?  I groan inwardly and pray Tooth isn’t an anal guy or looking for an enema.  Unfortunately the dungeon offers “medical play.”  My first session had been with Oliver, a tall, aging Asian. A chance encounter in the school nurse’s office thirty-something years earlier with high school cheerleaders Blair and Clair had changed his life forever.  Oliver had asked that I examine his “boy parts” much like the girls had done, all the while, giggling, and ridiculing him.  His finale had been inserting a thermometer into the shaft of his penis.

I retrieve a pair of yellow surgical gloves from the supply closet and a bucket from under the sink and tell myself The Tooth can’t be as bad as Oliver.

When I return Tooth is naked, his clothes neatly hanging in the closet.  I must look surprised because he says, “I don’t want to get blood on them.”

Blood?!  He unzips a red and black New York Sports Club gym bag and begins withdrawing all the dental tools of my nightmares- silver instruments with pointy ends, one with a small, shiny mirror attached to it, and several that look like pliers a plumber might use to repair a leaky faucet.

I am six years old, again, and awaking from general anesthesia in the pediatric dentist’s chair.  There is a green mask covering my nose and mouth.  I am all alone and I begin to cry.  My mother appears and I hear muffled words being exchanged.

The dentist in his sterile scrubs saying, “She’s too young.  I can’t give her anymore.”  He needs to finish the procedure with me wide awake.  An hour had lapsed owing to a patient in the waiting room having a heart attack and the dentist tending to him.  I’d slept through the cardiac arrest, the attempts to resuscitate him, and the ambulance which had arrived to whisk him off.

The drill began whirling loudly.  It smelled like burning metal and I screamed.  I heard my mother lie and make pleading promises, “I’ll let you get your ears pierced if you just stop crying!”  I wouldn’t have to wait to the previously agreed upon age of 13 when I would be batmitzvahed.

I reach up, now, to touch the diamond studs in my ears.  Re-assured, they are still there; I ask The Tooth, “What do you want?”

He opens his mouth, using his fingers to stretch the sides as wide as they will go.  Like a jack lantern, he is missing numerous teeth on the top and bottom.  He uses his right index finger to point out what I believe is called a canine tooth.  “You’re going to extract this one.”

“Like hell I am!”

He walks over to the closet, reaches into the pocket of his blue jeans and pulls out a few fifties.  He turns and tries to hand them to me but I am not expecting it and simply watch as the bills flutter to the floor.  My gaze goes back and forth between the money and the tools, unsure what to do.  I remember retrieving dollar bills from under my pillow and how the accompanying notes from the Tooth Fairy congratulating me on my lost baby teeth were scripted in handwriting suspiciously similar to the Hanukah Fairy.

“You’re not the Tooth Fairy,” I point out.  I realize I sound like a little kid telling the Santa Claus at the mall he’s not the real Santa Claus.  I clarify, “I mean you can’t just go around paying people to pull your teeth out.  I mean you pay dentists for that and it gets billed to insurance if you have it but like the whole reason you go to a dentist is because you actually need to have a tooth pulled cause it’s infected or whatever but usually they do a root canal first, right?  Have you been to a dentist?”

He looks annoyed.  “I don’t need a dentist.”

“Maybe you do,” I say.  “They have that number on t.v.  1-800-Dentist.  I’ve never called it but you could try.  And if you have insurance you could ask them for a list of providers.  I just can’t imagine you wouldn’t need antibiotics if you have a tooth pulled without anesthesia.  Didn’t you get an infection last time?”

He smiles and I feel slightly ill when I see the missing teeth.  “Today you are my dentist, Mistress Summer.”

“I don’t think so,” I mutter under my breath.  I wonder why he can’t have a “normal” fetish and want a spanking or ball busting like our other clientele.   I mean who the hell does this guy think he is coming in here with these dental tools expecting me to pull his teeth out?

I’ve learned a lot of the guys were abused as children by family members or religious figures- priests or rabbis.  Perhaps he was molested by the family dentist?  I wonder where he got the dental tools and if they are available for purchase on-line or if he broke into a dentist’s office to steal them?  I wonder whether he will want a release after the tooth is pulled.  Is this going to excite and turn him on him?

He picks the fifties up off the floor and adds an additional hundred dollar bill.  He holds the money out to me.  I sigh and I take it.  I guess everyone has their price and at the moment mine is $300.

He retrieves a thin plastic tube and a bottle of mouthwash from the gym bag. It’s the whitening kind and the bottle brags its contents “prevent tooth decay” along with, “strengthening and restoring enamel.”  I cannot fathom what difference it makes if his are yellowing and stained or the picture perfect, porcelain variety you’d find in an advertisement for veneers.  My mother saved all my baby teeth. I wonder what he does with his.

The Tooth expertly puts one end of the tube in his mouth and lets the other end hang into the bucket.  He lies down on the couch, like a therapy patient, and hands me a pair of pliers.  He tilts his head back and opens his mouth widely, gesturing to the one he wants taken out.  I can feel my heart racing as I pull on the rubber gloves.

I grip the tooth with the pliers.  I have little upper arm strength to begin with and my destitution has made a gym membership and the prospect of lifting weights rather unrealistic.

I try to wiggle the tooth but it is firmly implanted in his mouth.  How the hell am I supposed to get this sucker out?  I haven’t had any proper training.  I didn’t go to dental school.  I try pretending he is an ex.  This usually works when I am paddling a guy’s behind but it is harder now with his face so close, his eyes anxiously searching mine.  I’m beginning to get a headache.  A couple Excedrin and a tumbler of scotch on the rocks would do the trick.  Some Valium would also be nice and I make a mental note to ask Harmony if she can convince Slave Scott to write a script.

“Do it harder!” he attempts to yell but his words slur; it sounds like he has a speech impediment.

He gestures with his fist a pulling action reminiscent of my fourth grade class putting on “Excalibur.” I remember the terrible acting of my peers grunting and straining as they attempted to cajole an aluminum foil sword from a paper mache stone until finally Ross Rosenblatt, who had been cast as Young Arthur, effortlessly withdrew it and our parents and teachers cheered.  Somehow I doubted a secret  
lineage would be revealed to me should I succeed in pulling out this fool’s tooth.  It was highly unlikely I would take my rightful place in the monarchy and marry Prince William or at least his renegade red headed younger brother.

“Why do you want this?” I ask in a voice so soft I am unsure if I’ve spoken aloud until I realize I’ve upset him.

“Don’t ask me that!  You’re not a therapist!” The Tooth roars sitting up.

The door swings open and Madame Medusa enters.  Her eyes are bloodshot, her movements languid.  I’m fairly certain she’s been into her Ganga supply, again.  “What be the problem, here?”

“She!” The Tooth points at me, “Is NOT meeting my needs!”

“So sorry Mister!  Summer, she be one the newest girls and I don’t think she be working out so good.  Me so real sorry.  Me know you like them new girls but last time you was here you had your session with Mistress Scarlett and you was real happy with her.  The one with the big titties!”  She holds out her hands to her bosom and squeezes, motioning and gesturing wildly. “Me send her in.  She make you real happy!”

The Tooth pretends to think it over a moment before finally nodding.  “I suppose that would be all right.”

I follow Medusa out of the room.  “I’m going to get Scarlett.  Get your things, you leave, and don’t you never come back here.”

“Are you paying me for the session?” I ask.

“Hell no I ain’t!  You don’t do your job, you don’t get paid.  That’s the way it works in America.  Now get out of here.  Me done looking at you.”  The way she pronounces the you sounds like an “oo” as if she is actually in pain from the mere sight of me.

I am being fired by an illegal immigrant from a job at a dungeon where I am seldom paid.  There will be no severance wages, no exit interview, and no COBRA.  I finger the $300 and am annoyed about the session money Medusa will now be giving to Scarlett who will saunter in to take my place.  I imagine her cooing and exclaiming how good it is to see The Tooth, again.  She will meet his needs.