Screw Everyone

by Ophira Eisenberg

  I turned my attention to Dorothy, a fifty-year-old woman who reminded me of my elementary school lunch-lady. Trying to get my article back on track, I asked, “Um, does everyone change out of their street clothes before we head to the club?”

  “Oh no, dear, most people wear what they already have on.”

  Even the Planet Hollywood sweatshirt? I was expecting eye candy: Girls dressed up in velvet gowns and nurse’s outfits, guys resembling Roman gladiators or mad scientists. Instead, it was a bunch of middle-aged folks dressed by Target. Dorothy pointed to a large man who looked like he worked at The Sopranos theme park. “Except for him. Wait until you see what he changes into!”

  We were about to walk to the club when my friend David texted that he was at a nearby bar. I was starving to talk to someone who knew my real name. I asked Dorothy if she could give me the address of the club, and I’d catch up with them a little later. There was no real address. I was told to look for a door painted black at one end of a parking lot on 27th Street. The Nancy Drew in me smiled.

  Peeling off from the group, I practically sprinted to the gay dive bar where David was drinking, and justified my own presence by thinking, It’s cool—I’m just nervous and could use a couple of drinks to loosen up. I didn’t want to seem like an irresponsible journalist, so I ordered a double Grey Goose because vodka doesn’t make your breath smell.

  Then I ordered another.

  And another.

  As the liquor took hold, I made the mistake of admitting to David’s friends that I was going to an S&M club later, and my outfit was stashed in my bag. Of course they demanded that I put it on for them.

  I was plastered drunk in the cubicle bathroom, literally bouncing off the walls of the stall while pulling on my fishnets. When I finally emerged in my vinyl outfit and high heels, it was like I was hitting a red carpet. Everyone started screaming and catcalling. Cell phone cameras were flashing, strobe lights were flickering, gay guys were touching me . . . I felt like Cher, Christina, and Lady Gaga all at once. My heels were about as high as my blood alcohol level, and I could barely manage either. But it was getting late and I had to get to the club. Noticing my friend David was looking rather dapper in his pinstripe denims, I grabbed him by his red tie and slurred in his ear, “You have no choice. You’re coming to a sex club with me right now!”

  He nonchalantly replied, “Ah . . . okay. Let me say ’bye to a few people.”

  As we sped downtown in a cab, I took stock of what I was doing. Did I have any boundaries tonight? How much of this was for the article? I made the decision right there and then that, whatever happens in the dungeon stays buried in the dungeon. This was my one night to let loose with abandon and do whatever I wanted. I wouldn’t hold back.

  The small painted-black entrance at the far end of the parking lot was easy to spot, although I never would have noticed it otherwise. We opened the unmarked metal door and passed through a curtain of plastic vinyl strips, like giant hanging flypaper, and started our descent four flights down.

  I was getting a contact high of excitement off David as he practically skipped down the stairs with glee. We drew back a heavy maroon curtain, and there we were: midnight on a Saturday in New York City’s premier S&M club! And the place was . . . empty. There were about seven people wandering around bored in leashes. This did not bode well for my one night of freedom. Maybe there was a secret room with a bunch of people somewhere else? I paid for both our cover charges but was too embarrassed to ask for a receipt for my expense report.

  The place was massive, like a two-story Sam’s Club, but underground. We walked down a hallway filled with torture equipment: a medical bench, a dog cage, a spanking bench, and lots of other apparatuses that resembled gym equipment, the kind that could be wiped down easily. Finally, I saw something I could relate to: the bar, adorably called the Whips and Licks Café.

  Here I discovered something more torturous than the most extreme S&M scene: They didn’t serve alcohol—only soda, water, and coffee. While I couldn’t imagine spending a second there sober, most of the patrons couldn’t imagine using anything that might numb the pain. It wouldn’t be practical or cost effective.

  From the corner of my eye I spotted the Sopranos guy from the munch. He had definitely changed. He was wearing a turquoise baby-doll dress and white tights, ruffled socks, Mary Janes, and a curly wig. He reminded me of a doll that I had when I was a kid called Tiny Tears. It cried real tears. Tiny Tears had a twin brother called Timmy Tears. If you dressed Timmy Tears in Tiny Tears’s dress, added forty years and a hundred pounds, you’d get this guy, and I was pretty sure he wanted to cry.

  I turned to share my joke with David, but instead almost kicked a middle-aged shirtless man with a shaved head on all fours at my feet. In a loud whisper he said, “I am at your service, Mistress, if you so wish.”

  I didn’t know what to say. But I had to say something. I didn’t want to disappoint the man, but I wasn’t ready yet. It was all coming at me too fast.

  But he was waiting. With all my inner-domme strength, I responded in a low register, “Not now! Maybe later!”

  “Thank you, Mistress,” he mumbled, and scuttled away, leaving me shaking in my stilettos. My inner monologue resumed, Drink your root beer. You’re going to be great at this.

  David was doing his own exploring and giddily waved to me from the second level, a red-carpeted room with a hangman structure, a star with shackles, and the stocks. David was the type of gay man who loved Renaissance fairs, and he begged me to help him get into the stocks. His giggling and unabashed enthusiasm relaxed me. Why was I taking all of this so seriously? I lifted up the heavy top part so he could get in, then lowered it down. His head and hands dropped out of the wooden holes. He looked ridiculous.

  “Okay, now spank me!” he said with a grin.

  I thought it was sort of funny, so I smacked him lightly over his jeans with my hand, and out of nowhere a small crowd gathered to watch.

  Worried, I whispered, “David, get into character. It’s showtime!”

  I started spanking him harder for the benefit of my audience, shouting, “It’s for your own good! You should learn to take your punishment with a smile! Yeah! You are very bad!” and then muttered under my breath, “Are you okay?” David gave me a thumbs-up.

  I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and spun around to find a mustached man in black leather. He handed me a wooden ruler and introduced himself as Bill. He was one of the owners and wanted to welcome me and offer some pointers. He instructed me to whack the ruler around on David’s butt. As soon as I did, an image appeared in my head: Now I was an evil schoolteacher and David was a bad speller!

  Bill stood by and threw out instructions. “Aim more for the bottom, fleshy area. Now alternate hitting with rubbing in small circles. Good! Good! Try paddling his inner thighs. Look at that! You’re a natural!”

  I was concentrating so hard on being Bill’s star pupil that I didn’t notice that I was beating the shit out of David, until I heard “. . . soy chai latte . . . soy chai latte! SOY CHAI LATTE!”

  That was our safe word.

  I helped David out of the stocks. He genuinely seemed pleased, but I had no time to register what had just happened as men lined up to get punished. It was time to put in my hours.

  I started with the bald man who approached me earlier. After all, he was first.

  Bill handed me a leather riding crop—very stylish. I started on baldy and tried to talk the talk but could only come up with uninspired dialogue. “You’re bad! So bad! You know it!” I was basically reciting Michael Jackson lyrics, so I tried to switch it up. “Tell me. Why are you bad? Huh? Why are you bad? Yeah. Tell me! Why are you bad?”

  And then he answered. “Because I’ve been thinking of younger and younger girls all the time.”

  There was a hush in the dungeon.

  Note to self: Never, ever, ever, ever ask someone why they are bad. Just assume while we were in the dungeon, we’re all bad.


  Part of me wanted to turn to the crowd like an expert showman and say, “It’s okay, everyone! I know this guy admitted to being a latent pedophile, but I’m going to smack him a few more times, because that’s why we’re here, right? And then we can all go home and hope for the best. Is there a therapist in the house? No, for me.”

  But he sensed my hesitation and whispered, “That’s enough,” and like a bad dog crawled away.

  My feet hurt, and I didn’t feel sexy. I felt desired but in a way that didn’t turn me on. I liked the theater of it but had no emotional connection to administering punishment. The majority of the people there—at least six out of the seven—had a deep, unflinching desire they needed to fulfill, an itch to be scratched. I wasn’t sure if I was too fucked-up or not fucked-up enough to get it. Or just fucked-up enough to question the whole domme/sub thing, which is a problem only found in the first world.

  Bill brought me back to the sub reality by introducing me to a guy who wanted to be trampled. He was in his forties and possibly Jewish. Hadn’t our people suffered enough? Apparently not. I wanted to go home, but everyone was so eager to play with me that I felt bad and didn’t want to let them down. I was the most popular girl in the dungeon. And coincidentally, the only one.

  Bill hoisted me on top of this poor guy, and he screamed in pain that my heels were too intense. He asked politely if I could take off my shoes. I wanted to check in with Bill on the rules—is he allowed to tell me what to do?—but he was busy strapping someone to a bench, so I tossed off my heels and hopped on the stranger’s chest with my fishnetted feet. I watched pain creep onto his face, like a kaleidoscope turning. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, and his expression became devilish, dark, and almost beastly. A carnal voice from within him suddenly screamed, “Mercy!”

  I jumped off, and his normal expression returned. He thanked me and asked if I’d like another root beer. I was completely envious. It must be so nice to know specifically what you like in life.

  A guy named Rich, wearing a dog collar and black yoga pants, reminded me he was next. While taking off his pants, he told me he could really take pain. Bill searched through his bag, and with a glint in his eye, handed me an electric bug zapper. It looked like a small squash racket with fine silver mesh, and when I tested it by lightly touching it to my palm, a shivering zap that both stung and burned ran through my arms and legs.

  Rich said he could take five of them. With every touch, his body flinched and crumbled. On the fourth swing, I missed his butt completely and instead tagged his defenseless balls.

  Horrified, I cried out, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” Then I turned a shade of red slightly brighter than his ass and instinctively embraced his fallen body in an awkward spoon-like hug.

  Rich turned around and gave me a puzzled look and then laughed. It was clear he was laughing at me. Bill joined in, and between giggles, pulled me off the ground, put his arm around me, and proclaimed that I was the “cheeriest domme” he’d ever met. Not exactly the quality you look for in a top.

  I was totally disappointed. I’d hoped to have a sort of epiphany; understand my own sexual appetite in a deeper, more profound way; and get it on. Instead, it reinforced that I was nice—a people pleaser who was not at all dangerous—and painfully middle-class. If anything, I was the submissive. I’d let everyone tell me what to do: Bill, the pedophile, Jewey McCrazy Eyes, Richie Balls, even the editor at the magazine. The only person who was my approximate equal throughout the whole process was Jonathan, who’d texted me, How’s it going Mistress O? Ha!

  The whole scene was so cut-and-dry. Where was the flirtation? The sushi rolls? The torture in not being sure if you can close the deal? But the men didn’t seem to care that I was going through a mid-dominatrix crisis.

  As I gathered up David to leave, Richie Balls and Jewey McCrazy Eyes called out, “Thank you, Mistress! Thank you, Mistress! Please come back, Mistress.”

  One thing was certain: A cheery mistress was better than no mistress at all. As I shook Bill’s hand and thanked him for his instruction, one last hopeful notion ran through my head: I wondered if any of these guys would like to come to a comedy show. But I guess we weren’t exactly exchanging business cards here.

  Back at our apartment, Jonathan was fast asleep and the television was rolling credits for The Matrix Revolutions. My outfit must have inspired him. I woke him and asked if he had a deep, burning desire to be spanked, flogged, trampled, or otherwise humiliated. He sleepily responded, “God, no! Life’s too hard! I like a strong massage though.”

  It made me smile.

  I called my editor the next day to come clean. “Listen, I really tried, but it turns out I don’t get it. I was terrible at the whole thing. I got an intense triceps workout, but I don’t think I’ll be bringing any of the principles I learned in S&M into my own relationship.”

  The editor seemed unmoved. “Okay—so you’re a Vanilla Mistress.”

  I laughed, but was confused by her use of words. “A what?”

  “A Vanilla Mistress. You know—like vanilla ice cream. Plain.”

  I wanted to correct her that no, the people in the dungeon were plain. They liked one thing and one thing only. I, on the other hand, was very complicated. Neopolitan-mixed-with-mint-in-a-chai-latte complicated.

  “You’re just not into the whole S&M thing. It’s okay. We’ve had about seven writers pitch us this same article before, but no one seems to be able to actually write it. Keep the outfit though. It’s on us.”

  I should have gone for the latex.

  CHAPTER 20

  KNOW WHEN TO FOLD ’EM

  The Peter Pan bus carrying me home from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, finally pulled into Port Authority Bus Station. I looked rumpled, felt beaten down, and had the sniffles. I don’t care how on top of the world you are when boarding a bus; an hour into the trip you’ll be braiding a noose out of your own hair. Added to this was my most recent injury: dying on stage in front of a room full of Christian lesbian alcoholics in recovery—which is a long way of saying, “Not my crowd.”

  The funniest thing about the whole gig was that I got booked to do it. They’d originally secured a prominent gay female comedian, but she canceled at the last minute, so in a panic the event organizer did some creative googling. With the combination of “queer,” “comedy,” and “female,” she found that I’d once played a lesbian in an episode of Queer as Folk and figured that was enough to qualify me to entertain her crowd. I would think hiring someone who played a lesbian for ten minutes on TV would be the exact opposite of a person who would appeal to an audience of actual gay women. Her flawed logic only exposed how much pressure she was under to find a replacement fast. I, in turn, was desperate for any paying gig, so we were all good! I was sure I could handle the crowd.

  Wrong.

  The organizer also failed to mention the “in recovery” part over the phone and chose to deliver that information backstage, fifteen minutes before the show. At the time, my set list covered two major themes: drinking and dating. For this show, I had prepared by removing all the pronouns from my relationship jokes to make them sound more universal: “You know when you’re on a first date and that person doesn’t pick up the bill? And you think, do I still have to pleasure you orally?” But could I water down my alcohol-related material to make it work? “Who here still plays cold medicine games? Ever throw up after a long night of Advil and St. John’s wort and think to yourself, ‘Wow—that was expensive!’” I looked blankly at my notebook, hoping that if I stared at it long enough, the perfect jokes would materialize. If only I had a joke about field hockey or Melissa Etheridge.

  Clenching my jaw, I gave myself a little pep talk. The upside of not working with a manager was that at least I didn’t have to report back to anyone. The downside was that I had to talk myself into the game. The only way to make it through was to talk to the crowd. Hopefully, they’d be fun.

  Wrong.

  But in all fairness to this cro
wd, they were getting the raw deal. These women were not just saddled with religious guilt, they’d also relinquished the pleasures of drugs and alcohol. All they did was repent. Talk about Hell. And now they had to listen to me. Maybe empathy would get me through this gig.

  It didn’t help that the setup of the room was comedy death: A wireless microphone balanced on a stool in the middle of a massive dance floor with folding chairs set up along the edges, as if they were expecting a basketball team. That might not sound like a big deal, but trust me, the less a space looks like the standard comedy club—low lighting, low ceilings, and people crammed close together toward the front of the stage—the less successful the show is going to be. There I was, under a gigantic disco ball, stranded miles of parquet away from an audience of painfully sober women, with not one joke that they could relate to.

  But there comes a point in every show that regardless of the shitty setup, the last-minute information, the mismatch of audience to performer, you have to put that all aside and get out there. It’s too late. You have to take a step toward the stage, whisper to yourself whatever motivational saying works for you, and hope for the best. I always say, “They can all go fuck themselves.” It’s my mantra.

  Since we were in the heart of Amish country, I told them that I wasn’t “really a comedian—this was my Rumspringa.” Then I made fun of the room, claiming that my contract states that I only perform in the “eye of the room,” and that I felt a little like Diana Ross, alone under an enormous disco ball. “But don’t worry, there ain’t no dance floor large enough to contain my comedy.” Then I sang a couple of bars of Dancing with Myself and moved gracelessly around the floor to an imaginary beat. They actually laughed at that. It was far from groundbreaking material—it wasn’t even good—but it was goofy enough to create some warmth in the room and suspend harsh judgment for a few minutes. I foolishly believed that it might be possible to walk away unscathed.