My mentor, Goddess Sophia, rejoins our table and I slip away, shaking with adrenaline. In the bathroom I let out a little scream. I'm laughing out loud as I stare at my eyes in the mirror; pupils dilated, breathing fast. I am wild with excitement at what I've just done. I am also slightly pissed. During my prolonged bout of unemployment, Sophia called and suggested I give Dominatrix-ing a try.
Now here we are in a restaurant in the West End, having an expensive and boozy lunch with one of her regular clients. Sophia's been doing this for ten years, and she's known me since we were 13 β we were in church choir together β so she's the perfect person to teach me.
I'm giving orders to a wealthy man in his 50s, who calls me Mistress. I am completely addicted to this power, the knowledge that I can impose myself on this stranger. Later an elderly man will bend over the iron bed frame as I cane him. I hardly mark him at all, and am relieved to hand over to Sophia and let her show me how it's done. When he's gone, I'm frustrated; I want to try again β artly to improve β but also, I find I want to hurt him.
In my own sex life I'm submissive and slightly masochistic, so it's a shock to find I enjoy causing someone pain. My desire is to do with freedom, a wild will to test boundaries, to find the limits of what we can get away with together. It's also a craving I didn't know I possessed: to overcome the other person, affect them, to impress myself on to their behaviour and their skin.
I don't feel morally conflicted by it; this is something he wants and for which he is willing to pay a lot of money. Sophia doesn't consider herself a sex worker, but many of the men who come here it is overwhelmingly men finish their session by masturbating to orgasm. To me, that makes it unmistakably sexual. But there is a significant difference between this and stripping or prostitution, where the dynamic is based on the illusion of intimacy and attraction between the client and the worker.
