The dominatrix class that unchained me – Salon

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.

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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.

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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.

* * *

Growing up, my sister was six years older than me and as many times cooler. She dated Calvin Klein underwear models and went on free trips to the Hamptons with handsome men. Meanwhile, I wore blue cummerbunds and ruffled white shirts in choir and quoted Harry Potter like it was my job. My sister had to deal with the “stress” of three men vying for her attention at once, while I desperately hoped that someone would ask me out.

My first kiss came painfully late, at sixteen. I didn’t even like him. He enjoyed storm chasing, football, and dirt bikes — everything that I couldn’t care less about. But I went out with him anyway because I didn’t know when another boy would show interest in me. Later in high school I asked Andrew, a boy I’d liked for over a year, to a dance. He said yes, only to back out the next day because he was hoping that somebody better would ask him. Two years later, I would fill Tim’s locker with his favorite candy to ask him to Sadie Hawkins — and be rejected again.

My freshman year of college, I lost my virginity to one of the school’s coveted a cappella stars. We got dinner together and I visited him at work. The only catch was, he didn’t really like me. A week after my deflowering — which was at a party where I had been drinking — I saw him kissing a girl at another party that he had invited me to. The worst part was, I never stood up for myself. I never told men how much they hurt me. I got stepped on, and I never said anything because I thought that was the best I could get.

And the bad luck continued in college: There was the depressive actor who was great in bed but could only talk about how much he hated himself; the sexy Australian composer who conveniently forgot to tell me that he had a girlfriend; the game designer in London who I trusted and told my secrets to, and never heard from again after I slept with him; the filmmaker who pushed me to be more creative, and happened to live with his mom who has the same name as me. There was the sports lover whom I had nothing in common with, who published a series of love letters to me after I told him we shouldn’t see each other; the singer from my writing class who held and kissed me in the street, then pretended I didn’t exist the following day; and the friend who got drunk and told me he was in love with me, only to ignore me the following day.

By the time I was twenty, I had no confidence in my romantic life. I thought no one would stay with me. When it came to men, I was broken. I was sure that the universe was going to keep throwing damaging relationships at me, no matter how hard I tried to avoid them.

That’s how I ended up sitting on a folding chair in a dungeon, hoping to find my pussy power and my inner domme. I’d met some women within the BDSM community in New York City, including professional dominatrices, and was blown away by their self-confidence. Heads turned when they walked into a room, but they didn’t care. These women didn’t need the approval of others to tell them they were amazing and desirable. They knew it, and had made a career out of it. I was hoping to get an inkling of that sense of self-love. I wanted to feel dominant and powerful, not just sexually, but in my life.

In front of me stood Tara Indiana, a woman who looked innocuous in her jeans and t-shirt, though my earlier Google search proved otherwise. On Fetlife, the online community for fetishes, she has over 950 followers. An excerpt from her profile reads:

“Have no doubt in your mind – you will be My human hand puppet and you will learn to like it… ALL play is EARNED. And it will be earned through domestic service and or financial exploitation. If you don’t know Who I am, it is a RARE honor and opportunity.”

If you look at her porn, you’ll see her using people as human ashtrays, binding their bodies with rope, spanking them, flogging them, and caning them. She even owns her own dungeon and mentors dominatrices. In short, she is a true sadist.

And there she was, in person, standing in front of a whiteboard.

As I waited for the other women to arrive, I noticed an obese cat that sat, perched above me, on a stool. I looked at the furry blob, and it stared back with a “Bitch, what you know?” kind of look. I laughed. “I can only imagine the things this cat has seen,” I said out loud. To my surprise, Tara laughed, too. I started to relax.

And then the class began. We talked about the difference between pro and lifestyle dommes, how to be irresistible, and the importance of seeing yourself as a goddess. I’d seen talk shows and magazines encourage women to find their “inner goddess,” but never knew how exactly I was supposed to go about that. Take a Zumba class? Get a facial? Eat some kale salads? As much as I would like to think that a personal transformation is that simple, it isn’t. That’s bullshit. For me, true change came from learning from a community of people, both online and off, who decide to honor their true desires. For some men, that comes in the form of a submission that is often frowned upon because it’s deemed un-masculine. For some women, that means finding the dominance within them that society has worked so hard to crush.

The psychology element of the class was great, but I was still curious about how dommes do their job behind closed doors. As we were wrapping up, Tara pulled me aside and told me that there would be a slave-training class immediately afterwards, and that there would be a particular man in attendance who she thought would be the perfect match for me.