Slutever Read online

  It wasn’t going so well. “So how do you guys know each other?” I asked.

  “Well, I suppose this is a date,” the woman said reluctantly, realizing she should probably work for her food. I then launched into a series of boring and never-ending anecdotes about how my boyfriend had just dumped me, how I was lonely, and how it was so nice to hang out with the two of them because they were such good listeners, and a bunch of other lies. And then, in what was probably a complete non sequitur, I was suggesting a threesome for the table. The woman looked me up and down, assessing my motives. “I mean…sure, I guess so,” she said, dead-eyed. For some reason my response was simply “Thank you.”

  Steve, blushing intensely, then launched into an awkward rant about the logistics of transportation to and from the threesome. “I’m happy to pay for your Ubers to my hotel,” he told us, unable to make eye contact. “But one of you might have to get your own Uber and then I’ll reimburse you. Ya know, I think Uber needs to launch ‘Uber Threesome,’ to enable you to order more than one car at once. How am I supposed to organize a threesome through Uber if I can only order one Uber at a time? It’s a flaw in the system.”

  After the woman left—presumably unknowing that she would later be ghosted—Steve was giddy. “She wanted you so badly,” he said. “She was so attracted to you.”

  “No,” I replied. “She is obviously just a prostitute and thinks she’s going to get paid. Didn’t you also pay her to have lunch?” Steve agreed this was a likely possibility, but still, there was pride in his eyes.

  Part of me liked that I never knew if I was going to be in on Steve’s joke or if I’d be the butt of it. Like one time, I went to meet him for lunch, but it turned out he’d scheduled lunch with both me and a twenty-year-old stripper, and then he just never showed up. When I texted him, saying that I didn’t want to have lunch with this random stripper, he replied, “But she’s a pageant queen! A former Teen Miss Northern Suburbs of Illinois! Impressive!” (I looked it up, and that pageant is somehow real.) I was annoyed, but then the waitress brought over a bottle of Champagne and a note from Steve saying he’d pick up the check. I have to give it to him—he does have a bizarre intuitive quality, because the lunch actually turned out to be kind of fun, and I ended up interviewing the girl about stripping for my website. But what could Steve have possibly gotten out of that? I liked the idea that he was just sitting home alone, jerking off to the thought of me and the budget pageant queen eating Cobb salads, comparing slutty notes.

  My best guess was that Steve was being half-willingly cuckolded by his wife, and in the absence of sex, he got his erotic kicks by freaking out girls from the internet, in order to exercise revenge on the female gender, which had tormented him for most of his life…or something? He was definitely deranged, but I really took a liking to him. After the games began, he and I would meet for lunches a couple of times a month, and he’d read aloud the explicit emails that his wife would send to her lover, which always centered around the prowess of this man’s supposedly “perfect pink cock.” He would read really loudly, making sure the people seated at nearby tables could hear him. (Remember, this is an extremely sweet-looking disabled man that we’re talking about.) “Can you believe the stuff my soon-to-be-ex-wife is sending her boyfriend?!” he’d shout at me across the table. “She met him on JDate! I found her profile, and she lies about her age! She also uses a photo of the two of us, with me cropped out! I paid for her boobs, and I never even get to see them—the irony!” He loved to play the victim.

  The fact that I knew Steve’s wife was a serial cheater was what absolved my feelings of would-be guilt for the time he paid me $300 to masturbate in their bed while she was out to dinner. “Make a mess” was his only instruction. He didn’t watch, but he was delighted at the thought of his wife coming home and getting into bed that night, oblivious to what had gone down. I reminded myself what Daisy had told me once: If you ever start feeling guilty about a client’s wife or partner, just remind yourself that if it wasn’t you, it would be someone else. As I sat there with my vibrator, I tried to imagine other women in this position. What type of woman ends up with this as her job description? I wondered. And more important: How did this end up being my job, and even weirder, why was I randomly so good at it?

  I realized quite quickly after entering the world of kink that whenever I encountered a new fetish or turn-on or perversion, I was instantly intrigued—I wanted to know everything about cash pigs or pee fetishes or whatever it was. But then as soon as something seemed old hat—as soon as I became desensitized to it, so to speak—I no longer cared. It was the same story with Steve. Steve’s puppeteering got old pretty fast. I think he suspected that I was losing interest, because he tried to up the ante. Soon after the marital-bed-discharge incident, I got an email from him that read as follows:

  I’ve lined up some entertainment for us. She’s a Russian giant—over 6 feet tall! She wanted to meet me at the cemetery last night—at midnight! Apparently, if she appears naked on her mother’s grave in front of two strangers, under a full moon, and the body is above 50 degrees (F), her mother will get out of purgatory and into heaven. So time is of the essence. I checked this assertion in the Russian Orthodox Bible and the Koran and it is true. So, I brought a meat thermometer (for roasts). While this is a bit macabre and bizarre even for me, time is of the essence. We only have a few more days to make this happen. Your thoughts?

  All relationships have an expiration date. For me and Steve, it was the moment when he asked me to stick a meat thermometer into the corpse of a Russian giant’s mother, while her daughter straddled her grave, naked. Again, I reminded myself: If not you, it will be someone else. This time, I was happy to admit that I was not the woman for the job.

  The Hostage

  It was the fall of 2011, and Daisy and I had been working together for about a year. I was feeling pretty confident in my knowledge of kink by this point—in fact, I was starting to get a little tired of BDSM altogether. I mean, how many times can you watch a Hasidic Jew lick his cum out of a dog bowl before you start to get bored? (Turns out it’s actually three times.) I needed to spice things up.

  This is why, when Daisy called to ask if I was interested in being one of her accomplices in a kidnapping she was orchestrating, I was immediately all in. This, Daisy assured me, would be by far the most intense D/s scene I’d done to date: the realization of an abduction fantasy. “This is a great opportunity for you,” Daisy told me. “I mean, how many times in a woman’s life does she get to play the rapist?” I laughed awkwardly, assuming that was intended as some sort of slutty feminist bonding moment.

  For most people, the idea of being abducted, held hostage, and tortured is obviously terrifying. But in the BDSM world, one person’s nightmare is another person’s mental masturbation reel. While working with Daisy, I’d heard her talk about kidnappings she’d organized in the past. She often boasted about the time she managed to kidnap a guy on a busy street in central London in broad daylight. Two of Daisy’s hired henchmen threw a bag onto the victim’s head as he walked out of his law firm on his lunch break and tossed him into the back of a van, without any witnesses attempting to stop them or call the police, simply because Daisy was standing nearby with a makeshift sign that read STUDENT FILMING IN PROGRESS. It’s pretty genius, really. When I asked Daisy if she had been nervous while the kidnapping was going down, she responded condescendingly, “I’ve literally buried someone alive.” For my own sanity, I assumed that it was a consensual burial—and that she dug them back up again.

  On a phone call, Daisy informed me that for our kidnapping the hostage would be an Indian-American banker in his early thirties, who was shy and with a slight build (“easy to throw around”). The cost of his kidnapping, which he had paid up front, was $3,000. He’d given Daisy information about where he worked, where he lived, and the route he generally took on his commute. He knew that he was going to be kidnapped at some point in the coming weeks, but didn’t know w
hen exactly it would happen. This is what Daisy was famously so good at: the element of surprise. She told me that I would be working with her and a third dominatrix, assisting in the kidnapping and ensuing torture. I was so excited that I forgot to ask for any specific details about how exactly we were going to execute this whole abduction situation. In hindsight, this was a major oversight on my part.

  Given that humans are freaks, it may not surprise you that abduction fantasies are actually pretty common. Studies show that between 30 and 60 percent of women, and a somewhat smaller percentage of men, report having had these types of fantasies—abduction, captivity, forced sex—at least once. (To reiterate, your rape fantasy doesn’t make you interesting, sorry.) For some, the desire to be abducted is about giving up control—about being able to say, “I didn’t want to suck all those dicks, someone made me do it, so it’s not my fault!” In our culture that represses sexuality, being forced to do something sexual absolves you of any potential guilt. And as perverse as this may sound, being the object of desire plays a big role in rape/abduction fantasies. If someone wants you so badly that they’re willing to break the law and all social norms in order to have you as their sex toy, then they must really want you. There’s also the fact that abduction scenes often incorporate elements of kink—submission, masochism, humiliation, forced sex, pain, fear play—so as a sub, you’re really getting your money’s worth.

  While it’s common to have fantasies of abduction and rape, it’s not common to make the effort to have these fantasies realized. Abduction scenes are not your everyday request as a domme, and these role plays are not for BDSM beginners. Far beyond the typical requests for spanking, bondage, and humiliation, abduction fantasies require intensive planning and rule making, and can play out over months of blackmail and harassment before the final abduction. Often up to four or five people are required to execute the actual kidnapping and subsequent torture. Basically, if you’re making your abduction fantasy a reality, it means that you really want it to happen. To an outsider, it might seem silly—or straight-up idiotic—to commit so much time and money just to be thrown into the trunk of a car and then hit with sticks by some bossy bitch and her slutty interns. But then again, think about how much money, effort, and time we put into other aspects of our lives—like birthday parties, backpacking around Europe, juice cleanses, a meticulously vegan diet…for your dog. It’s weird how we think it’s valid to spend so much time and money on those embarrassing things, but to devote equal resources to satisfy one’s sexual needs seems crazy. Who knows: Maybe if I spent less money on my personal trainer and more money on being locked in a closet by a stranger, I would be a happier, healthier person. Fortunately, I’m not brave enough to test that theory.

  But back to Daisy. I showed up at 5 p.m. at an apartment building in the Financial District, which was owned by Daisy’s dominatrix friend, who was acting as the third kidnapper. Daisy was wearing black leather pants with a black leather jacket and a black leather baseball cap and black leather gloves and looked literally insane. The other domme and I had been instructed by Daisy to dress like “civilians,” and were wearing jeans. Then there was a fourth woman, an old Asian lady who looked extremely out of place. She was introduced to me as the getaway driver.

  “Okay, so which one of you wants to carry the gun?” were the first words out of Daisy’s mouth. This, unsurprisingly, was when I started to panic. Daisy then pulled out an actual, real-life handgun from her bag and demonstrated that it wasn’t loaded by shooting a series of blanks at the floor. I, being the self-defined least insane person in the group, then launched into a tirade about all the reasons why carrying a gun on the streets of Manhattan a mere four blocks from the World Trade Center memorial was literally the stupidest thing a person could do. But Daisy just kept rolling her eyes and telling me not to be a baby. I looked to the other domme for help, but she just excitedly grabbed the gun and shoved it into the crotch of her pants. So that was that decision made.

  “No one is going to see the gun,” Daisy assured me. “And if anyone gives you any trouble, just say you’re shooting a student film.”

  “But we don’t have a camera,” I pointed out—an observation that everyone else seemed to think was irrelevant.

  The plan was to intercept the Hostage on his way home from work. The other domme and I would approach him with a subway map, pretending to be tourists in need of directions. As soon as we had his attention, my accomplice would pull out the gun “discreetly,” concealing it from passersby with her coat, and press it into the Hostage’s side. We’d then lead him down a nearby alley, where Daisy would be waiting in a doorway, ready to pull a bag over his head, put him in handcuffs, and shove him into the trunk of a car, which would be driven away by the Asian grandmother. She would drive him around the block a few times to disorient him, until we eventually brought him back to the apartment in which we were currently standing. My accomplice and I would be waiting outside, and when the getaway car pulled up we’d get the Hostage out of the trunk and lead him upstairs, where Daisy would be ready to commence the torture.

  “Just remember,” Daisy said, “it’s not illegal to pull someone out of the trunk of a car in Manhattan.”

  I told her that wasn’t at all reassuring, but no one was even listening to me anymore.

  Somehow, the abduction started off smoothly. My accomplice and I approached the Hostage and asked for directions to the 6 train. He was sort of cute, with slumped shoulders and a baby face full of zits that made him seem too young to be wearing a suit. As soon as he tried to point us in the right direction, the crazy domme pulled the gun out of her crotch and shoved it into his side. I then linked my arm with the Hostage’s, girlfriend-boyfriend style, and led him into the alley. As we walked, my body pressed against his, I could feel his heart pounding fast. Mine was pounding, too, but the fact that the gun-wielding moment had gone smoothly meant that my terror had subsided…at least slightly.

  Twenty minutes later, the grandma pulled up to the apartment. As soon as we stopped, my accomplice and I quickly began to yank the man out of the trunk. What happened next is exactly what you’d expect to happen when two people pull a man with a pillowcase over his head and his hands tied behind his back out of the trunk of a car four blocks from the World Trade Center: We were immediately ambushed by plainclothes police.

  I was tackled to the ground by one of the officers, while the other held back my accomplice, leaving the victim standing confused, screaming into his pillowcase. I then, as instructed, began shouting, “We’re making a student film!” over and over again. Somehow, despite our lack of cameras and the fact that my accomplice was like forty-five, this instantly calmed the officers down a bit. (That trick is amazing?) The cops, who were taking turns telling us to be quiet and to explain ourselves, then dragged us to the sidewalk, unbagged the Hostage, and began a mini interrogation, to the horror and amusement of the Wall Street bros passing by us. The officers asked the Hostage if the student film story was true, and thankfully he played along with the lie. When they asked us why we didn’t have a camera, he even ingeniously improvised that this was a rehearsal. The cops sort of seemed to buy it, but they still took down our names and information and reported the incident, so this is probably on my record somewhere. I, of course, was silently panicking, worried that the officers might discover the gun hidden in my accomplice’s vagina, but thankfully we weren’t searched. Instead, they just told us that we were really stupid for pulling someone out of a trunk in the Financial District at rush hour—student film or not—which is an assessment I fully agreed with.

  Eventually the cops let us go, after which my accomplice and I awkwardly brought the Hostage upstairs to her apartment. I then started yelling at Daisy about us nearly being shot and/or arrested, to which her response was simply “That’s crazy” followed by “Does anyone have to pee?” I sort of did have to go, actually, so we tied up the Hostage and put him in the bathtub, and then all of us peed on him at the same time. Then
I watched Daisy torture him for a while—including forcing him to send dick pics to his ex-girlfriend—which was admittedly pretty funny. However, while watching her hang half of the Hostage’s naked body out of a fifteenth-floor window, I had a moment of realization: This is fucking crazy. I left before I got the chance to feministly rape anybody. On the train ride home, I decided it was officially time to look for a new job.

  Okay, but why, though?

  After I first met Daisy, the following year of my life became pretty consumed by BDSM—learning the ropes (literally), making some money from it, and meeting and talking to people in the community to try to answer one essential question: “Why do you do this, and what do you get out of it?” Or more to the point: “What the fuck is going on inside your head?”

  I should probably admit that most of the practices that fall under the BDSM umbrella don’t really turn me on. While I’m definitely into sexual power dynamics—I’m a natural sub, and love being told what to do—it’s hard to separate BDSM from its aesthetics, and I’m just really not into all the props and the leather and the latex, or those ridiculous red velvet thrones that seem to be fucking everywhere. Kink parties felt too performative to me, and I just got sort of awkward whenever I was in a dungeon, like an actress who’d been thrown onstage without memorizing her lines.

  I know a lot of people disagree with me on this, but I can’t wrap my head around role play. It just hasn’t ever worked for me. Of course, I acknowledge that certain triggers—whether they be verbal or aesthetic or otherwise—can help to stimulate the sexual imagination, and add to a fantasy or sexual experience. Like, I lose it for a guy in a suit. It’s an aesthetic that’s representative of authority, which helps to heighten the power dynamic for me. I’ve also just recently realized that I’m one of those creeps who can get off on calling a guy “Daddy.” But all the fetish paraphernalia, the costumes, and the theatrics that are involved in most BDSM play just kill my boner, because I can’t get myself to buy into it.