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.
Joey Comeau creates the web comic A Softer World with photographer Emily Horne. He also writes stories and novels, including Lockpick Pornography and We All Got it Coming (which are both available online) and the recently released One Bloody Thing After Another (available on Amazon). Joey writes funny letters and conducts interviews too. I’m Dan Copulsky, and Joey Comeau answered my questions in May 2010.
You’ve recently put online We All Got it Coming, a sequel to your novel Lockpick Pornography. You say that it’s a sequel in the sense that it’s about the same things even while it’s about different people. While both feature gay characters, sex, and some righteous anger, Lockpick Pornography seemed to have a lot more about gender and We All Got it Coming seems to have a lot more about jobs and sexual harassment and discrimination at work. What are the two books about to you?
I’m not sure what I mean when I say that they’re both about the same things, just in different ways, because, on the surface, they are about very different things. But they’re both about homophobia, and they’re both about violence. I mean, at the end of the day, you can put those two things together, can’t you? These are two books that are about violence. I don’t know if violence is ever acceptable. It is something that I get upset about.
These are two characters who feel very differently about violence. The guy in Lockpick is almost always being violent somehow, and the guy in We All Got it Coming would on the surface rather do anything than have to be violent.
It feels a bit simple to say these are both books about violence, though. We All Got it Coming is a book about Arthur and Clay being in love, primarily. It’s hard to describe what books are ABOUT. I mean, if they could be summed up in a few sentences they wouldn’t have to be whole books. I don’t sit down to make a book about violence. I sit down and think, “Oh man, I want to write a sex scene where rape-play is somehow the sweetest and gentlest thing ever.” Which to me makes sense, because you’re talking about two people who are in love. Of course it’s going to be sweet. But I guess I’ve never read a sex scene like that.
Your work frequently touches on sexual orientation and gender identity. How do you identify, who are you into, and what’s your relationship status?
I’m queer. That’s the easy part of the question. The other parts seem too personal to me. Also, I don’t know how useful they’d be to your interview. Who I’m into changes all the time. Also, what could I say here? Bookish types. Punks and queers. Sure! But not ONLY. I don’t think an exhaustive list is possible. I find the weirdest things sexy, and the most common things. My relationship status is way better when I don’t talk about it in a public forum.
Ideas and stories seem to reappear often in different pieces of your work. Something from a Softer World comic will show up in your fiction. One Overqualified letter will turn into a story and a bunch will become part of a novel. Do you return to the same things just because they continue to interest you? Do you come back to them because you have something new to add?
Sometimes I don’t use an idea as well as I could. Or I’ll think, “This old thing would be amazing as part of this other thing I am working on.” But I have rules I guess. Not absolute, but guidelines. I don’t really want to use something that’s already in print in another project. But if it’s an old thing that not many people have seen, and I really think it’ll work better in a new form, sure, why not? A good example of this is Halt!, a funny essay I wrote about being a security guard. I wrote this years ago and never really did anything particularly exciting with it. I printed a few zines. Put it up online. But when I was working on We All Got it Coming, it occurred to me that it’d be perfect for the character of Arthur. So it went in. And this way, instead of just being a bunch of funny one liners, it contributes to characterization, and the overall plot of a bigger story, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that more people will read it in this form.
It’s easy for someone to stop by a website each week to read a quick comic. It’s also easy to share comics with your friends. And once you know you like someone’s work, you might be willing to invest more time in reading it. How useful do you think doing a web comic has been building an audience for your other work?
Oh, yeah for sure. There’s not much to say about it that isn’t right there in the question, but people who love the comic are more likely to check out a novel by the same writer. That makes sense to me. It’s like that with everything. I bought Hugh Laurie’s novel, because I liked his acting. I bought Greg Rucka’s novels, because I love his comics. It makes perfect sense to me.
A while ago you posted a series of four interviews online. It was interesting that you didn’t follow a regular update schedule, included an interview with your brother, and were happy to spend substantial portions of the interviews doing the talking yourself. Do you think your way of doing interviews is better, or is it just the kind of interviews you wanted to do?
I’ve been working on new interviews for that series. It was something I wanted to do—talk to these people who were very important to me, but talk to them about things that were important to me too. I didn’t want to ask Helen DeWitt, “Where do you get your ideas?” because, well, for one I don’t care where she gets her ideas. That doesn’t affect me in any way. But her ideas themselves do. Her writing about suicide. I connected with it, and I wanted to know more. I wanted to talk to her about it, too, not just hear more. I wanted to have a conversation about it.
What’s an average day for you like? (Do you keep a regularly schedule for getting creative work done? What else do you do with you time?)
I don’t have really average days. I write the comic a few times a week, working with Emily, usually over MSN. When I am working on a book, I will work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I become obnoxious to talk to, because I don’t want to think about anything else. When I am not working on a project like that, I’ll do whatever seem the most fun that day. Chess has been a big part of my days lately. Video games. Watching Television (Criminal Minds lately. Dr. Reid! Dreamy! Hotch! Smoldering! How do they make a crime show that dreamboaty?). I love to go to the movies and read comic books. I like to hang out with friends. I try to have a pretty good time, is what I’m saying.
Joey’s New Book, One Bloody Thing After Another
Lockpick Pornography and We All Got it Coming
Joey’s Interviews
Joey’s Livejournal – untoward.livejournal.com
Also On Question Riot:
Mike Lecky, publisher of some of Joey’s books
Joey Alison Sayers recently stopped creating her weekly webcomic, Thingpart, but she’s still busy creating comics, as you’re about to read in the actual interview below. Joey was kind enough to answer Dan Copulsky’s questions (by email) in March 2010.
A few months ago you stopped doing your weekly webcomic, Thingpart, in order to work on other comics projects. Has stopping Thingpart given you more time and energy for other things? What have you been working on?
Quitting Thingpart was a really hard decision. I had been doing it for about four and a half years and in a lot of ways I still enjoyed it. But, yeah, it just took up so much of my available drawing time each week, and I had been wanting to focus on some other things. Mostly, I wanted to work on Just So You Know #2. JSYK is just a different kind of focus for me. It’s so much more personal and complicated than a four panel Thingpart. And I need more solid chunks of time to work on it. That said, I’m fairly certain I’ll do another weekly strip in the future. It’s a lot of fun. Hopefully newspapers will still be in business then!
You recently published Just So You Know #1, a collection of autobiographical comics about coming out as transsexual and transiting to living as a women. Those can often be some pretty personal subjects. Do you feel like putting them out there invites people to ask more about your experiences, or is writing things down a way to minimize how much energy you have to spend answering people’s questions?
Well, I really worried about putting out a comic that was so personal. It stressed me out and made me feel kind of vulnerable. Like people would know too much about me and want to push deeper into my personal life. But people typically don’t ask me more about my experiences than I feel comfortable sharing. Part of that might be because I’m a really open person and there isn’t a whole lot I won’t talk about with people. But part of it I think is because the book is already pretty personal and shares a lot about my trans experience. More than I think many trans people choose to talk about. One thing I’m hoping that this series does is help non-trans people learn a little bit more about what it’s like to be trans. Granted, I’m only one woman, and I don’t pretend to speak for every trans person out there. Hopefully, though, I can be part of peoples’ greater understanding about trans folks. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about us, and with virtually any emerging group of people, familiarity and understanding lead toward greater tolerance and acceptance.
Is Just So You Know #2 focused on a different theme or time period than #1, or does it just collect more assorted stories that weren’t covered in #1?
Just So You Know #2 does overlap somewhat with #1. Mostly it’s stories that happened after the first one was printed, but there are some pieces that do overlap. I also have a few short pieces that are from much earlier. So you can see what I was thinking when I was twelve. Number three (not to give anything away) will probably have an even bigger scope of time. Or less (honestly I don’t know, which is why I really can’t give anything away).
Before transitioning, the name on your work and website was Joey Sayers. Now it’s Joey Alison Sayers. I was curious about the choice to both keep Joey and add Alison. What are people calling you in person? Is keeping Joey motivated by making sure that people who know you by just Joey Sayers can still find your work?
Actually, I started doing comics as “Joe Sayers” and then moved to “Joey Sayers” and now “Joey Alison Sayers”. I’m never going to change it again, I swear. When I legally changed my name, deciding what it was going to be was a big choice. A big consideration for me was maintaining some continuity with my former self and my burgeoning comics career. I use all three names for comics, because it sounds the best. Say it out loud a few times. It’s gorgeous. But in person, people either call me Joey or Josephine. I like them both.
Religious characters and settings come up somewhat often in your comics. Is religion just a goldmine for comedy that you make good use of, or does your use come from something more particular, like your own religious beliefs, nonbeliefs, or religious upbringing?
I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Which, if you don’t know, is one of the most religiously and socially conservative places in the country. (At least it was when I was growing up. Maybe now it’s magically changed into a wonderland of civil rights and personal tolerance.) So growing up, I had a lot of exposure to that freaky ultra-right-wing Christian world. I used to go to a Baptist youth group with a friend of mine where they actually tried to convince us that dinosaur fossils were put in the ground by Satan to test our faith (because obviously the Earth is only a few thousand years old). Really ridiculous shit. Fortunately, even as a middle schooler, I was savvy enough to see through their lies. During this time I was actually a pretty devout Christian myself. But I was in a fairly open-minded Episcopalian church. They taught me to be a nice person who was tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs. But ultimately, religion didn’t have what I needed and I moved away from it. Now I like to make fun of certain aspects of it in my comics. But only the parts that I think deserve being made fun of. Like the idea of a capricious or vengeful god, or people who are blindly dogmatic, or that heaven is a bunch of clouds and harps and stuff. You know, the funny parts.
Nearly all (if not all) of your work is funny. Why are you drawn to humor? Do you have any interest in creating work with a different tone?
I’m not sure why I’m drawn to humor. I guess it’s just kind of my language. I like telling stories that are funny.
I tried doing some more serious stories when I first started drawing comics. But I was never really happy with those. Just So You Know has been my most recent experiment with telling some more serious stories. And even those are actually darkly humorous or bittersweet. I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing humor but I’ve been thinking about writing a story that is more serious. I want a comic that people will cry all over. That would make me laugh.
Joey’s Website – jsayers.com
Joey’s Livejournal – thingpart.livejournal.com