I Did Work Experience with a Dominatrix for a Day

A man lies on his back on a black bondage table. He’s completely naked, apart from the cloth covering his face and the cuffs locking his neck, wrists and ankles to the table’s base. Oh, and the two clamps on his nipples, which are linked by a silver chain.

Countess Diamond – a dominatrix dressed in thigh-high stiletto boots – kneels between his legs. She takes the man’s dick in her left hand. In her right hand is a thin wooden palette. She brings it down sharply on the head of the man’s penis. “Do you love me,” Countess Diamond asks, a grin playing around the corners of her lips. “Yes,” the man whispers from underneath his face covering.

“How much do you love me?”

“Too much.”

It’s safe to say this isn’t how I usually spend my Wednesday afternoons. But BDSM is as popular a pastime as climbing these days, right? A bit of light spanking simply doesn’t cut it in the Feeld era – now, it’s pegging and erotic rope bondage or bust. Yet despite people throwing around the words “dom” and “sub” with abandon, not many actually know what a professional domme’s work life entails. So, today I’m here as an observer, watching how a dominatrix like Countess Diamond works, with the full agreement of her and a client. Call it work experience; a shadowing day, if you like.

Roughly two hours earlier, just after 1PM, I’d arrived in North London and made my way to a block of studios near a retail park. The urban anonymity makes sense, given the nature of a dominatrix’s working day, but it also means that I almost end up in a woodworking studio after taking a wrong turn. Eventually, I find an unremarkable corridor and am welcomed into the dungeon by Diamond’s assistant, Eilidh. Actually, first there’s the entrance room, which is lined with sofas and plants, and has a makeup station, a bookcase and a tea zone. It’s calm and, dare I say it, cosy.

Diamond is in the adjoining room getting ready. This space doesn’t conform to what most people’s expectations of a dungeon might be, either – aside from the BDSM furniture and the whips and paddles hung on the walls. The skylights let the pale afternoon sun in and there are lush plants here, too. A candle gives the whole room a floral, lightly musky scent. Sure, there’s a photo of a woman in a gimp mask on the wall, but the space feels light, airy – even girly.

It all suits Diamond, who looks appropriately intimidating in her corset and thick-rimmed glasses. She gives me a little tour, pointing out the St Andrew’s Cross, the spanking bench and a mediaeval-looking contraption even Diamond isn’t sure the name of. It’s basically a leather body cage, she explains, which can be winched upwards, leaving the person inside dangling. “Maybe we can put him in there later,” Diamond laughs. I can’t help thinking that the whole room is sort of like an adult playground. “Of course, a good domme doesn’t need to use anything at all,” Diamond says, a glint in her eye.

The client, who I’ll call “John”, arrives at 3PM. He’s handsome, in a decidedly normal way: Trim, grey-haired, and dressed in a collared shirt and jumper like any stereotypical middle-aged manager. He’s brought Diamond a coffee, clearly remembering her usual order. Eilidh tells me this is something John always does – bring small gifts, like coffees or candles. This is his third session with her, and each time they’ve been out for dinner afterwards. They’ve decided to mix things up a bit today though, Eilidh says: Instead of dinner, they’re going to play crazy golf.

I can sense a nervousness underneath John’s cool exterior. I put some of this down to my presence, but, of course, he also doesn’t know exactly what Diamond has in store for him. “How are you feeling about our session?” Diamond asks. They’re both sitting on the bondage table where, in only an hour or so’s time, his dick will be whacked with a stick. “Slightly nervous, as always, but excited, is probably the overall feeling,” he says. She takes sips of her coffee and speaks very softly: “How are you in yourself? How are you feeling? Like, Christmas was tough, and life is tough, but how is it?”

The note of tenderness in Diamond’s voice makes me self-conscious. I was expecting to feel like a voyeur during the session – that’s essentially my whole role here, after all – but not beforehand. “Yeah, I’m alright. It’s alright,” John replies softly. “Go through the ups and downs but generally I’m alright.”

“Is there anything that you are desperate to do today?”

“No,” John says a little hesitantly, “I’m in your hands.”

“And you want me to push you as far as I can?”

John’s face flashes back to something like nervousness. “Part of the reason I’m here is to push my limit, or my preconceptions, and push my sexual boundaries. You saying ‘push as far as you can take it’ makes me nervous, because I know that would be quite far.”

“But that’s why it’s so important that we communicate really well,” Diamond says. “Because I do want you to go far, and so do you when you’re in the moment, so I have to keep an eye on that and check in with you.” A lighter note enters her voice. “The safe word today is going to be ‘French 75’, and that’s simply because the last time we went out I couldn’t get one at the bar and I got pissed off, so today is all about getting me a French 75.” This is clever, I think – using a small personal detail as a safe word. John seems to think similar, because he grins.

Diamond asks about any aches and pains and when he last got an STI check, and then starts to direct John towards the small bathroom at the side of the room, before she stops herself: “I would normally ask a submissive to go into the bathroom and undress, but I think I’d prefer to undress John myself.”

I take this as my cue to leave. We’ve agreed that Diamond will invite me into the three-hour session at certain intervals, when John’s in the right headspace. So I settle myself next door, near a space heater, and wait.

Through the wall, I can hear Diamond’s boots hitting the wooden floor, and then the sound of various kinds of impact. Diamond’s voice occasionally filters through, and I catch snippets like “Call you a puppy?” and “Heel!” Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” plays: “I heard that you like the bad girls, honey, is that true?” 

After about 20 minutes, Diamond opens the door and beckons me in. John is face down on the spanking bench. Diamond brings a black leather flogger down across his pale back, which immediately glows pink. She does it again, her face a picture of concentration. “If it hurts, I want to hear it John,” Diamond calls out, and John offers up a groan. 

Diamond keeps going, bringing the leather down over and over, across John’s buttocks and back. Then suddenly, she stops and leans over John. She whispers in his ear, and reaches her hand down to his, stroking his fingers, which are still clenched in a fist. Again, I’m struck by how tender the gesture is – this moment of stillness, gentleness and care. I listen as John’s breathing slows.

An hour later, John is getting kicked in the dick. “You don’t think very well on your feet, do you,” Diamond teases. John is blindfolded, holding his arms out straight in front of him. Resting on his outstretched wrists is a metal pole. “If you drop anything…” Diamond threatens, and then whacks her foot back into John’s junk. 

“Everyone says ‘no limits’,” Eilidh says when I’m back next door, telling me about the questionnaires filled out by Diamond’s potential clients. We’re whispering to each other, even though I doubt John or Diamond would hear us over the sound of whips, sticks, groans and Lana del Rey still emanating from their room. “There’s watersports, blood play, torture – real, proper torture,” Eilidh continues. “Saying ‘no limits’, really it’s a lack of imagination.” 

I have to say I have some sympathy with the unimaginative subs out there. Even though I’ve only been here for one afternoon, I already feel like my imagination has been broadened. Certainly, my eyes have been opened to some of the ways a domme can carefully inflict doses of pain to keep a sub riding waves of adrenaline. 

“Drained, is probably the word that I would use,” John says, settling in next to me once the session is over. “At peace, in a lot of ways.”

“You’re probably still very much coming down,” Diamond says, from her cross-legged position on the floor at his feet. She’s pulled a jumper on and is drinking from a large water bottle. She looks a little drained, too. 

“During the session, you have times when the adrenaline hits and then goes away and then hits again,” John muses, “so although my mind’s at peace, my body is still dealing with some of the adrenaline and some of the processes it’s been through. Maybe it’s been trained to look for the next hit, or take the next hit.” All his sensations must still be pretty heightened too, right? “I mean, this environment is quite calm,” he says, “but I was just imagining myself going out onto the main road, where there’s so much going on… I’m perhaps not quite ready for that.”

Diamond cuts in: “There’s no way I’d send you out onto the street right now. You need to calm.”

John nods. “Right here I’m okay, because it’s calm, peaceful… cold.” He laughs, looking pointedly at the deeply unsexy space heaters Eilidh and I have surrounded ourselves with. Diamond has a question for him: “When you come out of a session, do you feel like, ‘everyone knows my dirty secret?’”

John pauses. “No,” he says slowly. “There’s a question of, is there something to tell on my face? But then you rationalise it,” he explains. “You just think, ‘They don’t know me from anyone else.’ And it feels – nice isn’t quite the right word,” he smiles, “but nice to have that secret. It’s my day, my secret. I take that with me.”

John does look at peace. The nervous undercurrent that was present when he arrived has disappeared. “It feels – again probably not the right word – but it feels cosy,” he explains. “I don’t feel the need to run out and tell the world what I’ve been doing. It’s my experience – I do it for me.”

I leave Diamond and John for their evening of crazy golf, and head back towards the train station. On the tube, everyone else stares down at books or their phones. When I get home, I make pasta and catch up on Traitors. I feel drained too, even though I was only watching someone’s body take a beating. For a BDSM work experience day, it was a gentle one. I’m not sure I’m ready to take much of it up in my personal or work life though – throughout the afternoon what I was most struck by was how much of a pro Diamond is. Kicking guys in the balls might sound like fun, but controlling every physical and emotional reaction someone has over the course of three hours is less of a walk in the park.

Despite only being a voyeur though, I think I know what John means about taking the experience with him – that feeling of re-entering the everyday world with a secret, charging things with a certain glow and bringing the world into sharper focus. “Nice” and “cosy” might not be quite the right words, but, as “Born to Die” loops inside my head, I think of how special it must feel to have such sustained attention paid to you. Sure, it might be a painful kind of attention, but today I’ve learned it’s also surprisingly intimate.