CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
2003 - Sugar Babies
Being on the outside was fucking amazing.
Washington Heights was unlike anywhere I’d ever lived before in my life. The food was great, the guys were fine and the music was loud as fuck. And it was everywhere. My life was like a music video again!
My new roommates, Maria and Daniela (or Mistress Marisol and Mistress Donya, as they were known professionally) were pretty chill.
Around my age or maybe a little older, both had started out as cocktail waitresses in the after-hours salsa club scene in the Bronx and then, on the advice of an older and wiser colleague, had transitioned into apprenticing in one of that area’s underground S&M clubs. The money was better and patrons were required to be respectful to the girls, which was a refreshing change from the coked-up assholes they’d gotten used to dealing with.
Eventually, another, younger, sex-work mentor hipped Marisol and Donya to the magical world of financial domination and its younger, sexier cousin, sugaring. At that point, they ponied up resources, got the apartment on 180th street and founded their own in-house BDSM dungeon.
When I first moved in, there was no assumption that I would join their business- I’m sure Carmencita had mentioned in passing that I had some experience in their line of work, but only in passing. However, once I was in residence, it came up pretty quickly that I’d trained at a relatively corporate dungeon located on the West side, near Penn Station and that, up until the day my bail was revoked, I’d always maintained a small stable of private out-call clients- just to keep my hand in the game. No further mention was made after that, but it felt like all three of us filed that info away for future use.
I was very clear with the girls that I’d never really been a “financial” domme. That woulda been too much of a head game for my doped up ass to manage. My specialties were more your run of the mill, “vanilla” new wave domme shit- foot fetishes, gender role play and light shibari[1].
I really loved shibari. I always used to say that if Future Eula ever won the lottery or wound up as the bored wife of an old, rich man, she’d go to Japan and take lessons from a Nawashi. I’d actually done some research and had one in mind. But I’d never taken it seriously, as something I might be able to actually go ahead and do one day.
But a girl could always dream…
[1] Shibari is a Japanese style of rope bondage. “Light shibari” usually means ornamental or sensual tying—meant to tease, not restrain.
