Dominatrix Story

Also see
How to be a Dominatrix - Dominatrix Etiquette Tips and
How can I be a good Dominatrix?

The Dominatrix Story

Mistress Dakota first appeared in NY Rock when they covered the annual SMack Party in 1998. They featured a striking portrait of her by photographer Misa Martin. Dakota stood with cross-bow in hand and angel-wings majestically framing her back shoulders, while Sean from the Toilet Boys lay supine between her legs.

According to NY Rock, as a professional dominatrix, Mistress Dakota quite possibly has the sexiest voice in New York City. The velvet purr of her vocal chords and the slenderness of her petite frame shouldn’t fool one, however. She’d be glad to strap, chain or encase you in one of the many handy devices (such as the bondage table, the horse or the leather cage) featured in her private dungeon, and beat you senseless. Provided, of course, you pay the fee (which she chose not to disclose) and follow the house rules (such as keeping rather quiet while passing through the vestibule of her East 23rd Street apartment house).

Below is an excerpt of an interview, telling stories about this dominatrix.

QUESTION:
Do you enjoy your work?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Yeahhh! (laughs) It's even better than it looks. It's more fun than it appears. There's more possibilities, more scenarios than most people would imagine.

QUESTION:
Is domination a full-time job or do you have other professional activities?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
No. This is it. People always ask the question, Are you a lifestyle dominatrix? What they mean is, Are you only in it for the money? And nobody in their right mind would get into all this for money. Because it takes so long to build up a clientele. You could be a stripper making 10 times the money, and buy a new house by the time a new dominatrix has a clientele built up.

QUESTION:
What's this thing [referring to an apparatus dangling from the ceiling] with all the leather straps attached to steel rings?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
That's a cage. The person's own weight holds their arms against their body.

QUESTION:
How long does somebody stay in something like that?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Five minutes to a day.

QUESTION:
A day! Don't they have to take care of certain things during that period of time?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Yep.

QUESTION:
You've got some very heavy chains over here. Do you ever use them on people?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Everything in here is used.

QUESTION:
Tell me a little about your background.

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
I've been in New York just long enough not to know what's going on anywhere else in the world. Probably about three years. I moved here from Atlanta, and before that, Littleton, Colorado. I've always hung around rock & roll bars. My partner was managing a bar in Atlanta called Masquerade. And they started to have a fetish night about six years ago. When I was younger, a teenager, I was in this S&M group. That's where I learned this safety stuff.

QUESTION:
By safety, do you mean giving your clients a safeword to use when they've had enough?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
I don't give them a safeword. The problem with safewords is that a lot of times people are afraid to use them when they should. I think it's better to pay attention to them. They might be trying to take as much as they can for you. To me, it doesn't matter how much pain they're feeling. I don't feel it. I'm more interested in how well they're responding. Now, if there's someone who can use an endorphin rush, and they keep stopping before they feel enough pain to get that rush, occasionally I'll push them over that edge. But pain is not the biggest part of what we do. Taking control is. Being active, being dominant is.

QUESTION:
Does S&M extend to your personal relationships?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Yes, but not in the same form. Obviously, in a personal relationship somebody has to take care of me when I'm sick. It's a different situation. I'm obviously not going to dominate someone in the same way. Besides it's not just dominance for me – I'm a sadistic pervert. I like anything fetishy or perverted. But I'm not attracted to being acted upon. I'm attracted to the sadistic or the active role.

QUESTION:
Can the S&M experience possibly live up to people's fantasies of what it will be like?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
It depends on the person. Some people are never satisfied. Some people are thrilled to be in an environment where they can show their vulnerability or their tameness. And it's easy enough to see why I prefer the latter. But I enjoy a challenge too. If I never had a challenge, I would be bored.

QUESTION:
Some dominatrices tend to downplay the sexuality of S&M. How about you?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
I get into the sexuality of it. You can do this any way you want. No matter what you're into, you'll find clients that are into it too. I like the sexual element. And by that, I mean getting clients aroused. Some dommes don't like it when customers are aroused, and they punish them for it. Then again, some people like being punished for being aroused. It takes them back to that excitement of being young, like really young, and not being allowed to be aroused. In our society, people want children to be asexual. They don't want kids to think about sex or have sexual feelings, which, of course, they do. Now, this doesn't mean we should be having sex with them – let me clarify. Just because they're horny doesn't mean they should be getting any.

QUESTION:
A lot of people associate S&M with psychotherapy.

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
People refer to us as therapists but, in a way, we're more like entertainers, doing an ad-lib, self-indulgent performance. We're reacting to an audience of one. Psychotherapy is intended to cure a neurosis. We intend to make the neurosis functional and fun. Which isn't to say that all our clients are neurotic, because they're not. But everybody has neurosis. And I think that it can be therapeutic to learn to enjoy things that most people fear. And to have someone there encouraging you and participating with you. Every time I talk to psychologists about their theories on S&M, they either base everything on their own fetishes or they try to generalize. But the whole point of a fetish is that other people don't get it. That's practically the definition of a fetish. That one person responds to something that most people don't.

QUESTION:
Is your customer base generally male or do you have female clients?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Usually, I only see female clients when they're part of a couple. A lot of times a woman will bring in her husband as a treat for him. Usually a dominant woman. Or a man will bring in his female partner as a treat for her. Actually, I would like to see more gay clients. Male or female, I don't care. Because I don't get too many. I want everything I don't have.

QUESTION:
What separates a good slave from a bad one?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
One who doesn't try to define dominance. A bad slave tells what should happen. A good slave just waits to find out.

QUESTION:
I see a lot of religious elements associated with S&M – candles, crucifixes and such. Could you comment on this?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
Well, a lot of people call us goddesses. But the word "goddess" has different meanings. They say they want to worship us, but that has different connotations. If someone says they want to worship my feet that means they want to kiss my feet. That doesn't mean they want to sit there and say, Oh, your feet are God's gift to the world. There are screen goddesses and Greek goddesses. It means different things. It depends on the individual. A lot of people would assume that dominatrices are pampered. That people are paying to rub our feet, clean our floors, bring us food and stuff. The fact is, it's never convenient to have someone do that. There are chemistry and scheduling problems.

QUESTION:
Could you give me a little insight into the S&M culture?

DOMINATRIX DAKOTA:
It's an unbelievably small world. Everybody who's involved in fetish is really into it. So they're putting out their own magazines. They're teaching classes or they're making equipment. They're doing photography or whatever. Fetish looks like it's a huge thing, but it has a much bigger media presence than it has in terms of population. Which doesn't mean I know every perv in the world – just every one in the media world. As far as pervs that aren't in the media, they probably outnumber the normals.

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