Kassie Parisi
News Editor
theaspnews@gmail.com
When the petit and pretty Miss Couple asked her boyfriend to spank her on her 24th birthday, he panicked.
“I can’t do it! I can’t hit you,” he protested. So Miss Couple, who had gotten her makeup and hair done professionally for the occasion, left that night feeling disappointed. Determined to be spanked, she went with a friend to a party at La Domaine Esemar, a BDSM chateau half an hour away from Albany. She had no idea that she was about to experience something that would change her life completely for the better.
“I walked into this house, having never experienced BDSM, having never watched porn before basically. I walked in and there were naked slaves sitting in front of the fire place in the living room, surrounded by masters and mistresses in sexy attire and whips and chains and everything else,” she reminisced.
While Miss Couple sat wide-eyed on the couch, people continually approached her to make sure she felt okay, and to ensure she was comfortable and was having a good time. She realized that, among all of these whip-yielding people dressed in latex, she was indeed having a good time. That night, Miss Couple fulfilled her spanking fetish when she allowed herself to be tied down and spanked 25 times by everyone at the party. After that, she was sold. She remained at the chateau and is now the headmistress of that close-knit family that values protection, emotional connection and devotion just as much as tying up lovers.
Latex. Ropes. Pain. These are the usual things that come to mind when one thinks of BDSM. Our culture says that BDSM is acceptable when Rihanna sings about how much she enjoys chains and whips, but not in real life because BDSM is creepy. People who enjoy the kinkier practices of BDSM are condemned to keeping it in the bedroom as a taboo secret. But Miss Couple, who is now a seasoned veteran of the BDSM lifestyle, reassured her audience on Tuesday night at the BDSM and Kink Culture event hosted by the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center that “S&M” by Rihanna and “50 Shades of Grey” has no place in the true BDSM world.
She assured people that even though she might cause pain to a client with a whip, her ultimate goal is not to hurt people.
“It’s not about how much you can take. It’s about how much you can give. It’s an exchange between the two of us. The point is the energy exchanged between two people,” she said.
La Domaine is the world’s oldest BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadomasochism) training chaetau. It was brought to life by sweater and glasses wearing Master R.
Master R informed the audience that La Domaine has had clients from all over the world who come to learn about BDSM. They have seen over 400 couples. Some were looking for help with repairing their relationships, and others were just trying to find new ways to have fun. Miss Couple mentioned that it was very common for couples to come to La Domaine while trying to come to terms with differences in their own sexualities.
“I would say that the most typical thing that we see with couples are where the man has a cross-dressing fetish and the woman is trying to come to terms with that and be supportive and wants to learn about that or on the flip-side, a woman who really wants her partner to be rough with her or beat her and having a man who has been told his whole life to never touch a woman that way understand that this is something that will bring his partner pleasure, and to help them come to terms with that and grow together,” she said.
Master R believes that the desire to take part in the submissive and dominant practices that are prevalent in BDSM are deeply rooted in every person.
“We all come, in one form or the other, from nearly 30,000 years, of societies based on dominance and submission. Pharaohs and slaves. Everywhere on the globe. That’s in everyone. We have people who come to us and say, ‘Well I’m only dominant. I don’t have a submissive bone in my body’ and we don’t accept that, because that genetic makeup, that 30,000 years, is in everyone. What do we do that we are now no longer in a society, or at least trying to escape a society of the type of bondage of pharaohs and slaves. Where does it go? What I think is happening right now, we really want to see equality. As a race. In our hearts,” he explained.
He also addressed the existence of slaves in the BDSM lifestyle as they tie into why people submit themselves to this type of submissive behavior.
“Slavery before 1776 meant involuntary servitude. Today, and this is a democratizing process, it means voluntary submission. In 260 years we’ve gone from involuntary servitude to voluntary submission. We are left with this enormous residual depository of dominance and submission in every sociological way that you can imagine, psychological way, genetic way, and now we’re at a point where this massive social movement is going on. And it’s happened at a time when we are really striving for equality. And in BDSM, as strange as this would have sounded 300 years ago, I want my slave to be my equal. Why would I want to dominate an inferior? Where’s that at? You know? So, I really think part of what it comes from is this deep down, ancient, part that we all share. And why it’s happening now, at this extent, is in the most bizarre way, an un-democratizing process. Because we have all this residual stuff, lets make it fun, let’s make it good sex, let’s make it incredibly interesting, and let’s subconsciously make it something that equalizes us and addresses an ancient issue,” he said.
La Domaine is a training chateau based on respect and trust. That’s not to say wild things don’t occur there. Master R and Miss Couple told a story about a client who had a fetish where he wanted to be roasted on a spit.
“The fetish is called ‘schwanandreher.’ The word is from the German ‘schwan’, which is swan. Dreher was the person who turns the swan on the spit. We have done three of these. It is a very deeply ingrained human fetish, let me tell you,” Master R said, chuckling.
Miss Couple talked about the process of helping the client realize his fetish, and the massive amount of trust and bravery he displayed.
“This guy came to us from London. He had actually tried to realize this fantasy six years ago in London and the people he was doing it with weren’t as experienced as Master R and were using flames underneath and he ended up becoming severely burned and injured. He went to the hospital, he had to have skin grafts, his skin became septic, he was out of work for four months and was just truly scarred by the experience and he told us that he hadn’t engaged in any BDSM, hadn’t had any sex, hadn’t gone on any dates since then because he had just completely lost trust. But he was driven by this fetish. It was something he had been fantasizing about since really early in life, and when you ask where this comes from, he said his schwanandreher fetish was completely historical. That, in doing historical research about the inquisition, he saw that people were roasted on a spit and started fantasizing about it. He was so drawn to this fetish that he searched online for years and he finally heard that La Domaine could pull it off safely and successfully, so he contacted us to do it. So I named him London Broil and he flew in from London just for the weekend to complete strangers to try and realize this fetish. The bravery that it took from this man…he said he had stayed awake the entire night beforehand because it was raining and he didn’t know if we would be able to do it and about at 5:30 in the morning he heard the rain stop and he started to realize that this was really going to happen. So he came to La Domaine. We spent the whole day preparing. When he stepped onto that spit this guy was shaking, literally convulsing. He was so scared that he was going to face this personal demon, this monster of his. By the end of it, he was strapped down but it looked like he was floating six feet above the Schwanendreher spit. His aura was huge and glowing throughout the whole backyard of La Domaine and once we got him down and showered we sent him inside with one of our slaves who showered him and made him feel good and cozy and wrapped him up on our couch and he sat there for the rest of the night with a dazed giant grin on his face, just totally blissed out. It was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Miss Couple said.
Miss Couple insisted that clients like London Broil do not enter the BDSM world to be whipped and humiliated by a dominatrix dressed in leather and high heels. Though she takes a lot of pleasure from electricity play, needle play, and even human furniture, which she says is nice because it’s hot to have a couch underneath you that responds to you as opposed to kissing a pillow, she believes that people who practice BDSM deserve as much love, respect, and sensitivity as people who only partake in “normal” sex.
“I had someone come see me for a session who had seen tons of mistresses in New York City and all over the country. He was really surprised in my session when I told him that I wanted to have an exchange with him, and that I wanted him to get aroused and get me aroused. He’s used to mistresses beating on him and humiliating him. It’s become in pop culture, this idea that that’s what a mistress or a dominatrix is. A bitchy woman with a whip and leather or latex who humiliates you into giving her all your money. Don’t fall for it, because you all deserve a lot more than that,” she said.
Miss Couple worked for a dance company before becoming headmistress at La Domaine.
While she was there, she realized that it wasn’t fair for her bosses to take advantage of her. It wasn’t fair that she had to work overtime and not get paid. She found La Domaine and with it found a lifestyle that is frequently misjudged. She found a family that is built on trust, support, openness, and honesty. She found that she could help people fight personal demons and fulfill sexual fetishes and by extension make their everyday lives happier. She found a place where love is the main objective with some whipping thrown in.
“Through BDSM I realized that my boss doesn’t get to abuse me. What the hell is that? I want someone to abuse me in a way that is loving and sexy and hot! So I quit my job and became the headmistress of La Domaine. I mean what else can you do?” she shrugged, smiling.
