Emsony Seton Interview

Emsony Seton spent a summer working as a professional dominatrix in a BDSM dungeon. She was kind enough to tell me (Dan Copulsky) all about it. We talked by email in June 2010.

How did you decide you wanted to work in a dungeon, and how did you get a job doing it?

I‘ve been interested in BDSM for a long time (I was playing around with tying myself and friends up in elementary school), but had only managed to incorporate light elements into my personal relationships. Stuff like fooling around with handcuffs, riding crops, ball gags, and light bondage. I’ve generally been more of a submissive with partners, and I was interested in trying domination. I worked at the dungeon for a summer and left, reluctantly, when offered a position that I could put on my resume.

I found the dungeon through a Craigslist ad. After I sent an inquiry and a picture they called me back and we set up an interview. As a security measure, the manager wouldn’t give me the address of the dungeon until she could see me on the street with the security camera, so she gave me a time and a corner near a subway stop. I called her from there, and she told me the address once she saw me and figured out that I probably wasn’t a cop.

How did working at the dungeon work? What were your hours, how did you get sessions, and how much did you get paid?

There were usually anywhere from 7 to 12 girls on a given shift. When we weren’t in session there were three rooms we could hang out in, two common rooms and a kitchen/ laundry room. While on shift we weren’t allowed to leave the building, and there was no guarantee of booking a session. When clients came they would meet with the manager and describe the kinds of activities they were interested in and what kind of mistress they were looking for (i.e., skinny girl for sensual domination, solid girl for heavy spanking, etc). Once the manager figured out what the client wanted there would be a “meet” in which whoever was interested in the session would meet with the client one-on-one for five minutes to introduce themselves and figure out what he wanted.

Once he chose one of us and negotiated the activities of the session the client would pay the manager $160 for an hour long session, of which we were paid $80. I worked three days a week, twice on the night shift (5:30pm-1:30am), and one day on the day early shift (10:30am-6:30pm). The amount of money I made in a week varied quite a bit, but I usually averaged about $460 plus tips.

What was the scope of activities included in the job, and how much room did you have to choose which clients to work with or negotiate what you’d do with them?

There was a pretty broad range of activities that went on. Intercourse and oral sex were quite decidedly not permitted—hand jobs were more of a gray area. Some clients expected a “happy ending,” particularly during a sensual domination session, and others would offer to tip extra. Sensual domination was popular, and usually involved humiliation, cock and ball torture, maybe some bondage, and light spanking, caning, or whipping. There was role play (think babysitter, nurse, therapist, schoolgirl, horse or puppy trainer), medical play (enemas, catheters, rectal exams, general sexually inappropriate nurse shenanigans), watersports, scat, sub sessions, electric play, latex, wrestling, face sitting. We also had some more eccentric fetish sessions. My first session was with “Smoking Charlie.” He was interested in being forced to smoke, and came regularly with a special tube that he fitted over his mouth. In his session I would inhale from the cigarette, then expel the smoke down his throat.

Some managers would pressure us to take on a session if a client seemed to be considering leaving the dungeon without booking a session. But we could always refuse to meet with a client, or make it clear in the meet that we weren’t interested. We had a lot of freedom to establish our own limits—some mistresses wouldn’t do any sub sessions. One of the veteran mistresses who gave training sessions to new girls said that when she started she carved out a niche for herself by focusing on enemas. Reading up on different fluids to use, perfecting her technique, and just generally expressing a whole lot of enema enthusiasm.

Who was your favorite client?

Man, it’s hard to choose just one. I had three regulars who were a lot of fun. One guy, “Walter,” was into skinny girls with prominent hipbones and ribs. He would bring his own mini spotlights to illuminate my body, along with a skimpy shirt for me to wear and black fabric to drape in for a slow unveiling. He also brought other mistresses into session. We would lick each other’s bodies, suck on nipples, and caress each other with ice cubes. Incidentally, these sessions were my first sexual experiences with women. Walter came every week, and he even brought me a card and a dozen roses on my birthday.

“Bill” was also great. He was into face sitting, golden showers, wearing nipple clamps, and body worship. The best thing about him was that he was just terribly earnest and excited. He seemed genuinely happy to be there, not ashamed of his interests. He would huff Rush throughout the session and say things like “Oh, this is so kinky! You turn me so on” in his thick German accent. Often he would book a half hour session and come within 10 minutes.

But my absolute favorites were wrestling sessions. I had one client, “Trent,” who wanted to wrestle until one of us tapped out. He ultimately wanted to lose (sessions would end with him lying on the floor jerking off while I stood with a foot on his chest or spit in his mouth) but he fought hard during the hour. There were rumors that he had broken people’s ribs and injured shoulders in past sessions, but the most damage I experienced with him was having the wind knocked out of me.

What about your least favorite?

In general, the most unpleasant clients were the ones who were struggling with guilt about their kinks or about visiting a sex worker. Those sessions always left me feeling sad and uncomfortable, and those clients were usually disrespectful and poor tippers.

My least favorite session was with “Pussy George.” My impression is that he was a kind of initiation for new girls, and most mistresses wouldn’t session with him more than once. He wasn’t entirely clear about what he wanted from the session when we met. I knew he wanted pseudo-medical plus pussy worship, but what he really wanted was a hand job and to go down on the mistress. I wasn’t comfortable with oral-genital contact with clients, and when I refused to let him perform oral sex on me he got crabby and compared the session to being promised a steak supper and receiving only a hamburger (hamburger being, I assume, looking at me rather than sticking his tongue in me).

Could you describe the physical space of the dungeon? How was it laid out and what sort of equipment was there?

The entrance to the dungeon was a really innocuous looking unmarked doorway in the fashion district. Clients and mistresses had to be buzzed in at the main entrance, then again at the door upstairs. There were three main dungeon rooms; the blue, red, and black dungeons. The black room, my favorite, had an attached bathroom, a king sized leather bed with attached suspension straps, a St. Andrew’s cross, and a suspension cage. All the rooms had pain-inflicting instruments along the walls, but a lot of that was more for show. We had drawers and racks of whips, riding crops, canes, dildos, and other equipment in the office.

There was a sound system that was controlled in the office. We could plug mp3 players in and play it throughout the dungeon and common areas. After Michael Jackson died there was a lot of punishment inflicted to the beat of “Thriller” and “Billie Jean,” but my personal favorite session music was The Velvet Underground, Nick Cave, and World/Inferno Friendship Society.

What were your coworkers and bosses like, and what was the social atmosphere of the dungeon? Were your coworkers doing the job for different reasons than you?

Some of the clients seemed to think that only the truly desperate would choose to work at a dungeon, but I don’t think that was the case. For most of us working there it was our first foray into sex work. A lot of us were college students or recent college graduates, although there was a core group of women who had been there for years and practiced power play and BDSM more as a lifestyle than a job or recreation. They mostly kept to themselves and were dismissive of new girls.

Some of my coworkers had a history of addiction or used prescription medication and alcohol to self-medicate, but it wasn’t as though we were all uneducated or incapable of any other sort of work. One of the managers went to Harvard. Another girl was leaving to attend Yale on scholarship. One girl came in only on Sundays and worked as an accountant during the week. For some it was an income supplement, for some it was a career, for others it was mostly for pleasure. Like me, a lot of the girls had played with submission in their personal lives and wanted to explore domination.

There was some workplace drama and cattiness, but no more than what I’ve experienced in more traditional work environments. In between sessions we spent a lot of time talking, reading, smoking, eating take-out food, and dabbling around on the internet.

We had four different managers, two of whom were former mistresses, and “the Man” who they answered to. He would stop by on occasion, and had a habit of assigning somewhat arbitrary fines for things like lateness, eating outside of the kitchen, or leaving locker doors open. His English was passable but not quite proficient, and he would post signs in our common rooms saying things like: “NO CLICKS (sic) IN THE DUNGEON,” “I KNOW SOME GIRLS WILL THINK IF YOU WANT VACATIONS THIS IS GOOD IDEA TO EAT IN THE ROOMS,” and “FREE DRUGS FREE GOSSIP” (meaning, presumably, that the space was to be drug and gossip free).

Do you think your experiences working in a dungeon will affect your future relationships?

I think that my experience in the dungeon made me more sensitive to power dynamics in everyday life, as well as more sexually assertive and open to trying new things. I realized that before working in the dungeon my definition of “sex” had been quite narrow—mostly just penetration or oral-genital contact. Before working as a dominatrix I thought that I was pretty exclusively heterosexual. While I think that’s still my primary orientation, there’s more ambiguity now—there are plenty of sexual activities that don’t require an erect penis that can also be a turn on for me.

I was afraid that having worked sexually with so many men in a professional context would mess with my own experience of sex, that maybe I would end up jaded or desensitized, or would always feel like a service provider with romantic partners. So far that hasn’t been the case.

I imagine that my having been a sex worker, however briefly, will scare off some potential partners. I think that’s probably a good thing. It’s a litmus test of sorts—anyone who can’t accept my interest in sex and kink, or demands a clean past, would likely not be a good match for me.

Are there things you’d only do if you were getting paid for them? Are there things you’d only do with a partner you weren’t working with professionally?

It’s hard for me to imagine engaging in infantilism role play without being paid for it. I had some sessions in which I diapered, powdered, spanked, and verbally humiliated clients who acted like infants for the hour. It just really isn’t a turn on for me, and everyone I did infantilism role play with seemed ashamed and unhappy about it. So I think that’s something I would pretty much only do if I were getting paid for it.

During my first weeks I had a lot of sessions in which I was the submissive. They seemed easier because I could jump right in without constructing a mistress persona or mastering technical skills. But they were also more dangerous, and it felt a bit disingenuous—I can’t sub to someone I don’t respect or trust, and I think that clients could sense my resistance. Once I gained a bit of experience I tried to avoid sub sessions and stick to domination.

I won’t exchange fluids in session (or, okay, I won’t receive fluids in session—I’ve done golden showers and spat in people’s mouth). I also wouldn’t have intercourse or oral sex with a client, cuddle with them, or fall asleep next to them. And, although some sessions were definitely an adrenaline rush, I actually tried to prevent myself from becoming sexually aroused in session. Because desire and arousal involve a loss of control that I’m not willing to mess around with in session.