Salon
by JILLIAN RICHARDSON
I was definitely at the right address. Tara Indiana, a professional dominatrix, emailed it to me earlier that day. Yet all I could see was the back entrance to a Japanese restaurant and some kitchen workers on their smoke break. There was no way that the sex dungeon I was looking for was in a sushi restaurant…right? Then again, what did I know about sex dungeons? I’d only started exploring kink two weeks earlier, and now here I was searching the back of a sushi restaurant for the sign of the class I’d signed up for, “Secrets of the World’s Greatest Dominatrix.”
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“You looking for Cyn Studios?” asked one of the men, startling me. I nodded, and felt my confidence increase just a tiny bit; if this stranger could possibly imagine me in a room filled with whips and floggers, maybe I wasn’t so lost after all.
The man directed me up eight flights of stairs, and as I began my ascent up I awkwardly sidled past another man who glanced at me quickly and then stared, hard, at the floor. Did he think that I was a dominatrix on my way to work? To my surprise, the way he looked at me, with utter submission, made me feel powerful. And sexy. When I arrived at the top of the stairs, I felt less shaken than I had on the street, albeit out of breath.
After a woman in a business-casual outfit signed me in at the front desk, I peered into one of the studio’s rooms. It was surprisingly classy, lavishly decorated in black leather and red velvet. If you forgot about all the men that had been tied up and whipped in there, the room could almost pass for a fancy hotel lobby.
I was led into a large, open room. Behind a pillar I could spot hidden toys that must be used in some of the dominatrices’ scenes: St. Andrew’s crosses, chains, and what looked like an operating table. (I would later learn that medical play is a fetish.) On a table in the front of the room were props that I tried to pretend I’d seen a million times before — spiky collars, leather cuffs, paddles and whips to name a few. Ever the diligent student, I sat on a hard folding chair in the front row and took a deep breath, ready to begin.
There were a few other women in the class. We all smiled awkwardly at each other and made small talk while we sat in folding chairs. We pretended we weren’t about to take a class that promised to teach the psychology of a submissive male, how to manage a stable of men, and, my personal favorite, how to harness your pussy power.
I was there to finally change the pattern of my love — and sex — life. …