I am not your normal, everyday dominatrix. I don’t stalk into the dungeon at midnight, don thigh-high leather boots, and beat a white, middle-aged CEO to a bloody pulp while screaming, “Worthless Pig!” Nope, I am the shy neighbor next door. I could be sitting next to you on the subway smirking at the New Yorker cartoons or cycling past you in the park on my racing bike. I love dogs, swimming in the ocean, long walks on moonlit nights, and well, I happen to like to hurt people.

On a typical day, I ride my bike down to my private studio in the financial district of Manhattan by 9 in the morning. Once there, I move through a few yoga salutations and burn sage. After checking emails and voice messages, I change into a three-piece Armani suit to greet the first client, who could be a musician, a policeman, or a Yale professor. In my regular client pool, I have many female clients, some gay, some straight. I also see a lot of couples. Sometimes I teach one partner how to dominate the other. Sometimes I dominate both partners. I even have a handful of gay, male masters who come to submit to me. But the truth still remains that the majority of my clients (and all sex industry clientele) are straight men (straight men who secretly want to suck cock, that is).

I sit down with each client for 10 to 15 minutes. I offer them a glass of water and listen to them talk about their expectations and absolute limits. I ask them about health issues that I should be concerned about (such as diabetes, asthma, bad knees) and about their past experience in BDSM. I want to know what led them into the realm of Bondage, Discipline, and Sado-Masochism and also, why they are specifically seeing me. This tells me a lot about the person I am about to deal with. Many of these questions have already been discussed by email before I have agreed to see them. But I like to watch the person tell me about him or herself. They are inevitably nervous. As they should be.

I screen clients rigorously. Most email requests are deleted by the time I read the first line (“goddess, can i lik ur boots”–bad grammar and spelling! DELETE!) and I am extremely discriminating regarding tone of voice and language. A client once called and passed all my tests until he closed with, “I’ll see you soon, baby.” I canceled the meeting. I may be a snob, but this is an intimate interaction I engage in—I must genuinely like the person I am binding and hurting. I have a rule: If I feel that I cannot have a respectable conversation with the client, then I shouldn’t take them on. This shuts my doors to Asian fetishists, guilty married men and inner misogynists who disguise resentment with worship. I also don’t take on foot worship or verbal humiliation scenes. I get too bored and too ticklish with hour-long foot worship; I don’t have it in me to curse someone out unless they’ve really pissed me off.

Once I’ve extracted enough information from a client and earned his trust, I bring him to “The Pit,” a small room that is painted entirely black with only one floor light illuminating the hooks and bondage rack that line the walls. I tell clients to ready themselves by placing their clothes neatly in the closet and to wait on their knees until I come to fetch them. The next two hours (minimum) of session, they are mine.

My sessions range from strict disciplinarian training and heavy bondage to shamanistic ritual work. I have a solid rep in the industry of being a severe sadist and skilled Shibari (rope bondage) expert. I want to write that I am laid-back and easy-going, but I’m not casual about my career. I love the protocol, the pain, the taboo.

The main room of my studio is called “The Dojo” and it looks like one. Clean white walls, enormous mirrors, and a steel suspension beams run along the fourteen-foot ceilings. My hemp ropes are meticulously wound, color-coordinated, and hung in a row. Red rope is 50 feet. Black rope is 25 feet. The whips hang separately from the paddles. The latex is always set apart from leather. (Leather eventually eats away at rubber—you can just imagine the symbolism here regarding primal and man-made powers). At my studio, I am a perfectionist, a control-freak. Of course.

I like to think that I push people beyond the obvious. I encourage clients to focus on the strength and honor within them to reach a mental state of openness and vulnerability. I remind the sub (submissive) to breathe deeply and steadily, teaching tantric techniques to use the endorphins from the pain to push into a state of natural high. In another kind of session, I might shove my rubber-gloved fist in the sub’s anus and call a client a slut (one of the highest terms of endearment in this industry because it implies ownership), but I would never call him or her stupid or worthless. They’d better be worthy, damn it, if I’m going to spend my time training them.

I am Mistress Y. I am hiding my identity here for obvious reasons of discretion, not so much for myself but for my clients. Most dominatrices feel the need to hide their scene-identities from their vanilla world. That is one of the reasons they take on names like “Venus” and “Pandora.” Perhaps it is to emulate a goddess mentality, to step up from being just another downtown deviant with cool tattoos to being a diva for a few hours. But another valid reason is to allot mental separation from their full personality to the role that they take on in sessions. Going into sessions for many is like playacting a part that they’ve always yearned to star in—for both clients and dominatrix. I don’t change my name for my profession (just shorten it for this diary). I am not playing a role. I have always enjoyed pain.

I’ve been a professional dominatrix for seven years. I’ve wanted to be a dominatrix since I was a 16-year-old Goth chick. I remember buying my first crop and cat-mask at The Leather Man. My high school girlfriend and I had spent a sweltering summer day reveling in the glory of the Gay Pride March. With her hair dyed purple and mine, a shaved blue, we felt like the lollipop kids dancing alongside the grand trannys of Oz. We began skipping hand-in-hand down Christopher Street, rainbow flags swirling around us, and there it was—my first Leather Daddy—a buff, hugely packed mannequin dressed in leather chaps and officer’s cap—demanding that I get on my knees and crawl into the store to find my calling. I pulled Daniella into the store with me. Suddenly all my pride drained and I was trembling in a shop that smelled like power—primal and ecstatic. Black leather gear and heavy steel instruments hung in rows. Toned, beautiful men turned their eyes on us with curiosity, then turned away, some sneering, some indifferent. But one, sweet leather-fag reached out his Glenda-esque hand and asked me if I needed help (“Sir, yes please, sir”). And that’s how I found home.

That evening, after we returned to New Jersey from the long day of stomping around the Village and trying to cop weed in Washington Square, I fastened on my mask, pulled out my crop, and proceeded to strike Daniella’s cute, teenage ass. She yelped and threw her boot at my head. I lunged at her and grabbed her throat before forcing my lips on hers. I didn’t know about negotiations or safe words then.

I soon learned a lot about safe words and other key elements of the craft in SM 101, Jay Wiseman’s great handbook for the novice. I raged through my teenage and early twenties with lots of brutal sex: slapping, spitting, choking my girlfriend or boyfriend while Perry Farrell wailed affirmation in the background, “Sex is Violence!” Somehow, my childish flirtations of biting kids on the playground turned into: If I like you, I’ll tie you down and cut you…or myself. I was also a mad cutter, slicing myself to feel the brilliant despair of teen woes. I was my own voodoo doll of bruises and scars, trying to work the magic of love.

During my college years, while I was interning at the Whitney Museum and making only enough cash to eat Cheerios three times a day, I set out to interview at several Houses of Domination in New York City. I laced myself into a corset, painted on my eyebrows, and trotted on patent heels into the office of one very well-known establishment. I instantly fell in love with the dark red, velvet walls and gold painted columns that surrounded the reception area. I refused to care that the burning incense still didn’t cover a strange, underlying, bodily-secretion smell. I admired the fancy, gilt chandelier and kept from looking at the trash can that was overflowing with used condoms and mottled paper towels. I stood with perfect posture as the icy receptionist told me in a combination of European accents that they already had a Japanese Mistress working for them (I am of Chinese descent). At the time, there were only token minorities to fill race-fetish slots. “We only need one oriental girl for now and Mistress Ju-ki,” the receptionist lowered her eyes to my waistline, “fits the style more.” I assumed that she meant that Ju-ki was waif-thin, the stereotypical, chopstick body that Asian girls are known for, but I reached to tighten my corset anyhow. As I left, she casually suggested, “You should try sniffing cocaine.”

At another New York House, where the office and dungeon area were fit into the same dark room, a tall, German Dominatrix, who claimed to be the Head Mistress, leaned over the desk, moving aside a heavy pile of chains with her even heavier hands, looked down at me from her six-inch platform stilettos, and spat, “You’re too short.”

I was devastated. I was told that I was short and fat—humiliated! And I wasn’t even a client! Regardless of the insults, I was distraught that I couldn’t get hired as a dominatrix. I was attending one of the country’s most prestigious universities. I was on the Dean’s list. I was 5’7” and 125 pounds. And I was mean, damn it, or at least I wanted to be! I craved digging my fingers into my lover’s nipples. I was thrilled by tying and tethering and feeling them struggle beneath my thighs. I had a string of lovers with my signature permanently marked somewhere on their body. My predatory ego was not dissuaded. I needed to be a Dominatrix.

I needed this job, or else I’d really hurt someone.

Up Next: Learning the Ropes