BDSM RTV MEDIA NEWS!!!!



22 feb 2010



Queen of pain: My life as Midtown dominatrix



Source: www.nypost.com  - New York Post  - USA


NEW YORK--Melissa Febos teetered in borrowed 7-inch stilettos, towering over the body of a naked middle-aged man.

She adjusted her garter, rearranged her Bettie Page-esque black bob, licked her cherry-red 99-cent lip gloss and struggled to breathe in a corset that cinched her waist down 6 inches. She frantically searched for the right words. How does one start this? She was so nervous, she burped.


"Yes, Mistress? Are you all right?" asked the slave.

She felt his breath on her fishnet stockings and fought the urge to run away. It was the 21-year-old's first time alone in the room with a client -- just days after applying for work as a dominatrix in Midtown's Mistress X dungeon.

Instead, she found her calling.
"Yes, of course I'm all right. PIG!" she snapped, hardly recognizing her own voice. "Stop breathing on my legs, you crust of scum!"

Her client scampered away on all fours, waiting for the torture to begin.
Febos, whose dungeon name was "Mistress Justine" (after the Marquis de Sade's submissive heroine), began her S&M double life in 2002.

By day, she was a top-earning dominatrix; by night, an English major at the Village's New School with a 3.9 GPA.

"I didn't end up at the dungeon out of financial desperation," writes Febos in her memoir "Whip Smart" (St. Martin's Press), out March 2. "I was not a tourist but a member of that world, with reasons for being there similar to those of everyone else: an obsession with power."

Febos unshackles the secrets of her four years in the dungeon, which is hidden in plain sight in an office building off Herald Square. She made a few hundred dollars a day humiliating, whipping and torturing all kinds of men, from stockbrokers to rabbis, tourists to millionaire record executives.

She tells The Post that, contrary to stereotypes, she had a "unique and loving" childhood in rural Cape Cod. The daughter of a psychotherapist and a sea captain, Febos was preternaturally mature, deciding at 15 to drop out of high school, get her GED and move to Boston, where she took night classes at Harvard and waitressed during the day.

To pursue her dreams of becoming a writer, she moved to the Big Apple, started college classes and took internships in publishing. Two years later, after moving from Chelsea to a fourth-floor walkup in Bedford-Stuyvesant, she met a woman who would forever change her world.

"She's a professional dominatrix," Febos' roommate whispered about the law student next door.

Febos was intrigued, so she knocked on her door one afternoon. After an awkward introduction, Febos blurted out, "Is the money good?" She could use the cash to pay for air conditioning -- and she hated taking money from her parents.

"Yes," the woman said cautiously. "Once you pay your dues. I mean, relatively good. Not compared to other sex-industry work . . . Domming isn't for everyone."

Inspired by her brief encounter, she spotted an ad in a weekly paper: "Attractive young woman wanted for nurse role-play and domination. NO experience necessary. Good $$. No sex."

FEBOS soon found herself outside a nondescript gray- cement Midtown office building, pushed the third floor's unmarked buzzer and rode up in the elevator, wearing black slacks, a button-up shirt and a cardigan.

The elevator opened to an ordinary vestibule surrounded by several doors that were all magnetically sealed from the inside. Once inside, she entered a lobby with oriental rugs, red walls and mirrors, leading to hallways with almost a dozen different doors.

"It was like a movie set -- an atmosphere truly designed for fantasy -- more lush than I had even remotely imagined. It occupied a full floor, comprised of a maze of dark hallways," Febos writes. "Think David Lynch."

Mistress X's manager, Fiona, gave her the full tour, meandering through 12 rooms, some as large as 700 square feet, with dungeon themes, medical-office scenes and rooms with overflowing closets for male cross-dressers.

The Red Room had a bondage table with a life-size Catherine wheel, straight-jacketed dummy, a human cage, candles, clamps, economy-size lubricant and a leather-upholstered bed.

"The top is a lid that opens," Fiona said, pointing to the bed.
"For storage?" Febos asked.

"For slaves. It doubles as a coffin."

The "med" rooms were a perfect replication of sterile medical offices with examination tables, stethoscopes, syringes, thermometers and tongue depressors.

The cross-dressing rooms were outfitted with stylish leather couches, vanity tables and a wardrobe, complete with man-size stilettos and French-maid costumes.

Fiona told her that she would make $75 per hour out of the $200 clients paid to the dungeon. Mistresses kept all tips, which ranged from $5 to $500. She told her to arrive wearing "dungeon-appropriate" attire the next day: "a black slip for domination sessions, a white one for medical and a pair of heels."

Her shift was similar to the business people's in the area, starting at 10:30 a.m. and going to 5:30 p.m. Around noon, the lunchtime rush would begin, with businessmen streaming in for their midday spankings.

There were many different kinds of dominatrixes -- rebellious coeds not yet out of college, ex-strippers, girls from Harlem and The Bronx -- but none lasted long. Those who were in it for years were "lifestyle dommes," who lived and breathed their dungeon work, taking slaves home, planning S&M parties and running seminars.

She found that all S&M sessions were not created equal: Inexperienced dommes started with easier, sensual sessions, characterized by a simulation of romance, teasing and gentle bondage. But the real dominatrix art was in the corporal sessions -- with its precise beatings, whippings, slapping, spanking and paddling.

After several sensual beginner sessions, she soon discovered she was a natural at corporal sessions, becoming one of the most sought-after mistresses. At the height of her powers, she made one slave cry by dunking his head into a bucket of ice-cold water after he confessed he was terrified of drowning.

Febos' client list "consisted of stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors, rabbis, grandpas, bus drivers, restaurateurs and retirees," she writes. She quickly retained regulars, who scheduled "whippings the way they scheduled business luncheons. En route to the dungeon they dropped off their dry cleaning, or their wives at Macys."

Many of her clients insisted that she hurt them -- but not leave any marks. "Many of them were married. I learned that a cane is going to leave a mark much quicker than a paddle and that electrical torture doesn't leave marks," Febos said.

ONE such regular was a blue-eyed stockbroker dubbed Hairless Billy -- so named because he shaved everything except his legs and armpits. Sometimes shaving was incorporated into their sessions, where she laughed and pointed at him.

Hoping to move on with a more "normal" life, Febos dropped out of the dominatrix world after she graduated with honors from the New School. She even started working as a temp for $12 an hour.
She lasted four days.

Instead, she decided to start cherry-picking customers from the dungeon and arranging meetings at hotels, private dungeons or, if they were longtime customers, at their homes.

"Once you do it, it's hard to imagine doing anything else," she says. "It starts to infiltrate your sense of self."

Now she was making at least $200 -- and sometimes $1,500 -- an hour.
"In the end, I think that a lot of desires and the way that they manifest in people's lives can be very specific and shocking, but the motives behind it are universal," Febos says.

"I learned that these successful men want to be stripped of power. There is a very primal part of us that wants to be taken care of."

Some clients wanted part of both worlds -- to dominate and be dominated. Rick, who worked as an SAT tutor for rich Westchester kids, paid her to impersonate his students. She donned a schoolgirl outfit and allowed him to spank her when she failed to "complete her practice tests." Her real-life GRE study books came in handy as props. But in the same "switch" sessions, she played the mean mommy and berated him.
Her most lucrative client was Jeremiah, a millionaire record executive, who asked her to pretend to be a lesbian interested in his wife. For an hour with his wife, he paid her handsomely, upward of $1,500.

Her final client was Tony, who met her outside a Meatpacking District hotel with a bizarre request.

He had attached a string to his nether regions. He insisted that she grab the string and lead him to an ATM down the street, where he withdrew the $500 for their session.

When she dropped the string, he cooed, "But Baby doesn't know where Mommy is taking him. Doesn't Mommy want to lead the baby there like a good doggy?"

Febos knew she was done. "I was petrified the whole way that I would see someone I knew, that we would see anyone at all."

The money "just wasn't worth the humiliation in the end," she says. "I think it just came so clear with him -- all of the exhilaration, all of the glamour was completely gone. It was gross, and I didn't feel empowered anymore."

So she went on to complete her master's in fine arts at Sarah Lawrence College, and now teaches classes at SUNY-Purchase, The Gotham Writer's Workshop and New York University.

As for her own dating life, she has hung up the whips and chains for good.

"By the end of the experience, I was much more aware of the power dynamics in my relationships," Febos says. "My secret desire is to be able to trust another person."