Got This Far

Y’know, sometimes after a really intense scene, I’ll look around my studio at all the gear and equipment and just marvel that I’m here at all. I mean, I became a ProDomme so I could learn how to use a spreader bar. Seriously.

I’d been playing with this guy, Z, I’d met through a mutual friend. He was in a relationship, as was I, but we both knew we wanted to play. He showed me a website for Den of Iniquity and said that they’d rent a play room to us by the hour. There was a discount for pros, so I called and said I was a private prodomme named “Mistress Troy” and there we were.

Z liked being inspected, spanked, spat on, slapped. So I’d prance around him in my high heels and stick my finger in his mouth or ear, peering in as if he were a prisoner. Or a horse. I’d expectorate sprays of saliva onto his face. Slap him. Smack his ass with a cane or crop.

The whole time my legs would be trembling with fear and excitement. I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t believe he liked it. That I was doing it “right.” That this was what he really wanted.

Over time, Z started sharing more fantasies with me. “Brutally take me with a strapon,” he said. As he entered the dungeon, I threw a bag over his head and pushed him up against the wall. “I’m gonna fuck that slutty ass of yours,” I hissed in his ear, hoping he was intimidated and surprised enough that he couldn’t hear the astonishment in my own voice at my words.

“Suspend me by my wrists, spread my legs with the spreader bar, and singletail me,” he said.

Wait. What?!

I queried the girls in the DOI office. “What’s a single tail? How do I suspend someone by their wrists? And what the hell is a spreader bar?!?” They responded simply and a little impatiently. I went back to the room and tried the spreader bar. Still wasn’t sure I got it.

Z and I kinda got out of the habit of playing together shortly after that. I was impatient with the inspecting and spitting thing and just completely frustrated that I couldn’t get any of the girls to sit down and teach me how to do anything more. Plus, I just wasn’t comfortable pretending to know what I was doing so I could fulfill Z’s fantasies. Someone could get hurt.

So I stopped. For, like, months. Then I saw an ad on Craig’s List inviting women who “want to add an interesting chapter to your memoirs” to consider an apprenticeship with an experienced, professional dominatrix at her luxuriously appointed chambers in a private townhouse in Murray Hill.

That was Domina M.

I remember going to the interview and sitting across from her, thinking she looked like Stephanie March, the former Law and Order actress. M made sense to me, too. She explained what she was looking for in her Apprentices: intelligent, upscale, attractive young women with a genuine interest in BDSM. She said that our training would be extensive (unlike the other Houses I’d been exposed to where “training” consisted of sitting in on a couple of sessions by “more experienced” Mistresses).

It was late February, 2004. I had my then-annual, month-long trip to New Orleans planned for early April. “Great, I’ll stay for six weeks, figure out what this ‘spreader bar’ thing is, learn how to flog and some other stuff I’ll probably never use again. But, hey, at least I’ll know what I’m doing!” I thought to myself. I had a bunch of steady freelance gigs keeping me busy and a pretty Sex and the City life: why on Earth would I want to be a sex worker? I was “Carrie,” goddammit!

When it was time to leave for New Orleans, I told M that I wanted to take a break and that it was very possible I wouldn’t be back.

Yeah. That didn’t happen.

Four and a half years later though, well, I sure can say I know how to use a spreader bar.