In the gritty and dingy streets of NYC, in the middle of the busy life of Midtown, lives a hidden dungeon right by Port Authority. It’s in an abandoning building with graffiti-covered walls and the traces of junkies using it as shelter.
Although it’s daylight out, the light in the building is dim and red. The smell of urine doesn’t make me run for fresh air. Instead, I go up the cracking wooden stairs to the 2nd floor. I ring the doorbell that has a red X on it, and hear a woman with a raspy voice asks for the “code”, and then buzzes the door open.
Her name is Mistress Veronika. Her next session isn’t until later, she says and asks me if I’d like some coffee. I kindly decline and watch her plant herself across from me. I take my voice recorder out, while she lights herself a Marlboro red. I finally ask her “So…Mistress V. please share with me your weirdest experience while working as a dom!”
She takes a deep breath, smirks, and replies: “The weirdest was having to piss on a client with my boss watching me do it. Very strange. I was a bit self-conscious but I knew she was testing me to see if I was going to verbally abuse him correctly as I piss in his mouth. She was also paid to watch me humiliate him. He had a little toilet seat wrapped around his head. With a garbage bag underneath him, protecting the floor.”
I must look shocked and in disgust but shook the thought off, like horses do with flies. “Wow!” I said and continued with my second question if Mistress V. ever felt in danger. She pauses for a moment and seems to be deeply in thought while puffing on her cigarette.
She finally looks me in the eyes and says: ” No not really. But I knew other women who got stalked at first and then went missing or even worse, got killed by their obsessive clients and slaves.” She adds: “Nobody would mess with me!”
She laughs with a hint of nervosity. I observe her appearance and I understand Mistress V. is a powerful woman. A woman with a not so pretty past or upbringing. She wears shiny, black, laced up, latex boots, that matches her tight leather corset and fishnets. Around her neck dangles a rosary.
When I ask her if she was a Catholic, she replies: “Not anymore, after I got molested by a Catholic Priest from the Church my family would go to. You know… I was sixteen and still a virgin.” She shares with me. “I wear it more so as protection or when I dress up as a nun for role plays”.
I wonder if it’s a common stigma for women who got sexually abused as a child, or teenager to seek careers in the sex industry. I ask Mistress V. if she sees men differently now that she works as a dom and after her horrific experience as a teenager.
While having a moment of silence, deeply in thoughts, she lights herself another cigarette and replies: “Being a sex worker definitely has opened my eyes to how men really are deep down inside. The fetishes they never let their wives know or their girlfriends. It’s sad more for them than us, because it’s supply and demand.”
Mistress V. takes another puff and continues: “If it wasn’t for their dysfunction, we wouldn’t exist as a service to them. We are actually the healers, more than just a service of sex. We sexually, mentally, physically temporarily heal them, unfortunately, most don’t see it as that, they see it as only a service serving men, but it’s hard work, and not always easy money.”
“Anything you’ve learned from being a pro dom?” I ask her. She gets up to get more coffee, fills her mug half way and replies: “That there are better ways to make money. Even in the sex industry are other jobs that make you more money without draining your mental energy.”
She takes a deep breath and sadly looks down: “But for me, this is where I’m gonna be. At this shithole of a dungeon. It’s my life. This is what I’m good at. I have a high-end clientele now, anything from politicians to baseball players. They pay me great money, to physically and verbally abuse them. It is kinda pathetic.” She laughs. “But I’m used to it.”
I asked her if she can give me a tour of her dungeon and she agrees. “What was the most disturbing thing you experienced?” I question her. Her face turns serious and she replies: “Mind games. Some clients can turn out to be stalkers or just too obsessive.” Scary, I thought. “What do you enjoy the most?” I can’t think of anything, except the fact you can let your anger out on someone when you are having a bad day.
Her face lights up for a second and with excitement she continues: “That I have control of certain things but not really. When you understand the relationship of master and slave, the one who gets paid to be the master to her slave, is really the slave. Because you had to service their fetishes as they requested, not as you would like. Although, I do have a certain style, a way of verbally abusing them, kinda like the Joan Crawford type of woman, I don’t always feel in control. That’s the part I don’t like. It is actually a very mentally exhausting kind of job, more than physically.“
We wrap it up and I leave her dungeon with mixed feelings. Empathy for a strong, but vulnerable woman, respect for her choice of occupation, but also confusion. I wonder if I had the guts to be a dominatrix for a day? And jump on the subway going to my home, sweet home; Brooklyn.
