Best Sex Writing 2006

“I want to be your dirty whore,” the middle-aged white man screams, kneeling on all fours atop the black-carpeted floor. Hanging on the bright red wall in the shape of a giant X is an ornately crafted Saint Andrew’s cross; a few feet away is a leather bed with restraints and a steel dog cage big enough for a man.

A latex-suited seductress eases her stiletto heel into his soft belly as the chill of the air-conditioned dungeon raises goose pimples on the man’s pale skin. Reaching for the suede flogger she’d recently purchased from Purple Passion, the cocoa-colored mistress forces her whimpering slave to understand what king of kink Marquis de Sade meant when he scribbled: Pleasure does not exist without pain. Pain and pleasure are the same emotion.

Hours afterward, the same gentleman, a prominent Park Avenue lawyer, will trade corporate war stories at ‘21’ with his boardroom buddies and their blonde brides. Though his booty is sore from being “a bad girl,” it’s a secret that his Metro-North associates and their Scarsdale spouses might never understand. Of course, how does one explain paying two hundred dollars an hour to be dressed up like a Times Square hooker (raven-hued wig, crotchless panties, high-heeled boots) while a beautiful black goddess named Mistress Sonya humiliates him in a midtown lair.

Four months later, as weary holiday shoppers bustle down a Brooklyn Heights boulevard, twenty-seven year-old graduate student Sonya is still amused by the decadent memory of that summer evening. “I made him dance like a stripper, beat him with a riding crop, and then I strapped on my big black dildo,” she says, giggling. She is dressed in simple jeans and button-down blouse. Sonya’s voice is hypnotically musical, with her sweet Caribbean accent. “His only complaint was that the tight boots were killing his feet.”

Coming from the West Indies, Sonya was raised in Brooklyn and was an honor student. “Ever since I was a teenager I’ve enjoyed inflicting pain and humiliating men,” she confesses. “I didn’t have many willing participants in high school. The term BDSM” (for bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/ masochism) “wasn’t a part of my vocabulary; back then, I didn’t even know there was a name for my particular tastes.”

Though no stranger myself to New York City’s hedonic underground, I stare wide-eyed at this lovely contradiction of a soul sister and wonder how many other honey-voiced/bad-ass women of color are swaggering down Broadway with handcuffs stashed in their Louis Vuitton bags.

As we relax inside a Thai restaurant, I gaze at Sonya’s face, with its aura of brown—skinned innocence, and find it impossible to recognize that I’m in the presence of a premier dominatrix.

A professional mistress since 2001, Sonya drifted into this taboo territory after quitting her job at the Bank of New York. “I was bored with having a ‘vanilla’ profession,” Sonya says. “One day I was looking at the classified ads in the Village Voice, and I noticed one that read ‘Will Train to Be a Dominatrix. No Sex Involved.’ That’s how I made my decision.” Learning and perfecting her craft at the notorious Den of Iniquity, Sonya later decided to strike out on her own. “Most houses take half of the mistress fee per customer,” Sonya says. “But I can rent a dungeon in midtown for fifty dollars and not be stressed.”

Still, one of the unwritten prejudices in the sex trade, from apartment-house call girls to strippers on stage, is that black girls often get paid less. “There are some guys who try to negotiate the price, but that’s out of the question,” Sonya says. “I’ve felt some slight racism when I worked in one dungeon. The mistress refused to put my picture in any of the print ads, and then when Fetish World magazine expressed an interest in putting me on the cover, she turned them down.”

Sonya’s disarming attitude dispels the myth that doms are total, ego-driven bitches 24/7. “Most of my customers are high-powered white men,” she explains. Admittedly, while Sonya is down for whatever, there are certain lines she doesn’t cross. “I won’t do age play, which is mommy and baby stuff. I just don’t want to change a grown man’s diaper while he calls me Mama. It’s a shame, really, because there are some really rich men who are into that.”

While there has been debate among lawmakers about whether a domina’s services—which could include foot worship (while being slapped), CBT (cock and ball torture), golden showers, and various other forms of “play”—constitute prostitution, Sonya sees little ambiguity. “If I jump in a car and slap a man for five dollars, do you think a cop would arrest me for that?”

“I do have a couple,” she says, sipping from a glass of Thai iced tea. “One likes to be treated like a dog, so I take him to parties on a leash. There are many more women of color on the scene than men. Black men like to say they’re freaks, but they’re really not.” Grabbing her crotch as though wearing a strap-on, Sonya laughs and says, “If they were, they would come over here and suck my dick. Though blacks are seen by society as sexually liberated ‘animals,’ nothing could be further from the truth. Black people tend to be further behind in terms of sexual freedoms.”

Still, one can’t help but wonder about the role race plays in measuring levels of humiliation. “I do find it easier to degrade white guys than brothers,” Sonya confesses. “With black guys, I find myself holding back. There was one black guy I slapped around till his mouth started bleeding, but after seeing the blood it was hard to continue. If it had been a white guy, I would have finished.”

Yet, how far is too far when it comes to the brothers? “There are a few into being fisted, others who like to be doubly penetrated. The most extreme is one guy who asked for a brown shower,” Sonya recalls. “And this dude ingested every last piece. A lot of mistresses won’t do them, but if I’m comfortable with the guy, it’s no problem.”

Although Sonya works as a pro dom, she emphasizes that there has to be a bond and a level of trust beyond the dollar sign. In addition to her private sessions, she also enjoys attending the weekly Ulterior Motives parties. “Some mistresses think you shouldn’t have to pay to play, so they look down on the profession. I love what I do,” she says. “A true domina is a person who is respectful, sets limits, and is constantly growing. Being a dom is not a secret life, it’s who I am.”

One of Mistress Sonya’s “pets,” Gregory McKnight (pseudonym) has served countless black dominatrices over the years. Lounging in his book-cluttered Bronx apartment, the thirty-seven year-old can still remember the exact moment when his kink kicked in.

“I was a seventeen–year-old buying comic books when I saw the cover of an adult magazine that had a picture of a man on all fours wearing a dog collar and a gorgeous woman was holding his leash,” McKnight recalls. “Something inside of me clicked. I wanted to be that guy.”

In the mid-1980s, when Manhattan was considered a madcap metropolis of debauchery, Gregory began to check out spots with names like Paddles, Hellfire, and the Vault. “I was a voyeur on the scene long before I became an active submissive.” Raised as a Baptist, he says, “In the beginning I felt guilt before, during, and after. Society would say that submission equals weakness, especially as a black man. So, I had much inner conflict between the natural aggressiveness of my ‘vanilla’ life and my desire to be submissive.”

Unlike Mistress Sonya, whose participation in BDSM is both business and pleasure, Gregory is forced to play by different rules. “It’s not like I can be late for work, and say I was doing a task for my mistress. This is my chosen lifestyle, but it’s still frowned on by society.”

For Greg, dating is another sexual land mine he tries to negotiate, though it usually blows up in his face. “I’ve tried to educate a few black women, but they’ve never understood. They hear me talk about being submissive, and they think I’m a doormat, or it’s too just ‘nasty’ for them.”

After twenty years on the scene, where Gregory has been trained to be an obedient dog (in his mind, a Labrador retriever), he still meets few other black men. “Even today, it’s rare to find other submissive black men,” Gregory says. “I’m submissive by nature, and if I hate anything, it’s a weak woman, and women of color are some of the strongest on the planet. Their desires are my desires.”

The imagery of S/M has long been a part of our popular culture landscape. I grew up enthralled by the risqué fashion portraits of Helmut Newton in ’70s Vogue magazines and lusting after whip-wielding Jennifer Tilly in Bound (the debut feature directed by the Wachowski Brothers, makers of the BDSM favorite The Matrix). However, with the exception of dominant blaxploitation screen queens Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones) and Pam Grier (Jackie Brown), bondage-accessible Ohio Players album covers, and a few porn emporium magazines (Black Mistress Review, Black Amazon Digest), the thrashed booty of ebony BDSM was rarely shown.

Growing up in Harlem during the ’70 and ’80s, I clearly remember a time when brothers and sisters didn’t admit to oral sex, let alone anything wilder. Yet, as each generation rejects the taboos of its elders (as my mom likes to say, “These kids are just nasty”), that once-forbidden subject has crept into black pop culture via music, video, and films.

Today, as witnessed by Lil’ Kim’s trash-talking on Dreams (“Babyface can pay the rent and cook me five meals/mama’s got the whip appeal”), Janet Jackson strapping a stranger to a chair while performing “Rope Burn” on the Velvet Room tour, raptress Eve christening her clothing line Fetish, and Halle Berry in Cat-woman crawling across the rooftops of Gotham City looking as if her final destination should be New York’s annual Black and Blue Ball, folks of color are beginning to explore their inner freak.

“But why do we have to be considered freaks?” Mistress Heart, a leading West Coast goddess and activist, argues. Even when slightly perturbed, her telephone voice is soothing as the sea. Introduced to the scene five years ago by a former boyfriend, Mistress Heart has become the primary voice for BDSM women of color in the Bay Area.

“The people involved in this community come from all walks of life,” Heart says, “but the one thing we share is a willingness to explore sexuality outside our own ‘vanilla’ worlds. Does that make us some kind of fiends?”

Wide awake at six A.M. California time, Miss Heart is preparing lessons for a workshop she teaches curious novices around the Bay Area. “I’m finding that there are more black people who are attracted to BDSM, but there is more to being a domina than simply snapping a whip. I suggest my students check out websites like Dark Connections and Black Beats, as well as reading SM 101, by Jay Wiseman. There are mistresses who are into the scene simply for the clothes, but to be a good domina one should be trained and educated.”

Rejecting the traditional BDSM garb, Mistress Heart dresses in a more elegant manner that includes evening gowns and flow—ing robes. Conducting her sessions anywhere from community dungeons in Oakland to renovated Victorian houses in San Francisco, she says, “Whether one is being dominant or submissive, it’s important to discover your niche and what kind of play your partner likes.”

As the aural Valium of Enigma’s “Smell of Desire” plays in the background, Miss Heart sighs. “Everything is not for everybody. Personally, I’m not interested in jumping on a man’s chest and drawing blood with my heels—no matter how much he begs.”

Along with Bay Area photographer Andrew Morgan, Mistress Heart founded the Women of Color Photo Project, whose mission is to teach diversity by getting the images circulated in the community. “Why is it that when I am out in the community, the images I see on BDSM websites and in printed media do not include very many people like me? I know that the wealth of ethnic diversity this area has to offer is quite outstanding, so where are all those people in our BDSM world?”

Talking to other women of color in the Bay Area, Ms. Heart found that there is “a higher level of discomfort that has to be overcome before feeling safe in being out. If people feel that they are the only one, then it takes a lot more courage to overcome that. If the majority of what we see isn’t like us, then it takes a lot more to convince us to come out to play.”

“Much of the guilt comes from moral-dilemmas issues connected to religion,” Miss Heart says. “There are others who have deep-seated issues that they haven’t dealt with in therapy and they feel a sense of shame. There are also issues of what slavery represents in the minds of black people. I rather say dominant or submissive than slave. I never use the word, because it feels like [I’m referring to] someone who doesn’t have a choice. In our world, choice is everything.”