Maybe you have a hard time getting along with people at work. You’re a bitch, or you act like one. You don’t have a filter between your brain and your mouth. You’d like to beat the crap out of your boss with a whip. So you think you could quit that job and become a dominatrix. After all, you like being mean to people, and you’d like to take a few of them down a peg. Or you’d just like a servant to wash and detail your car. Wait a minute, Mistress Impulsive; there are other things to consider.
First of all, do you live in an area that would support your business? If you live in a large city you may be able to find clients lining up to be humiliated by you. But if you live in Mayberry, people might be too afraid of getting caught using your services, and the ensuing embarassment at the hands of the church and the garden club. Not only that, some of the services you’d be providing might be illegal. You need to make sure there are enough wealthy, male, white collar executives to support your business and pay the prices you’ll be charging per hour. Yes, most clients are men, and most of them are powerful men in positions of authority. At the end of a long day, in order to relax all these guys sometimes want is to symbolically give up all that power and put themselves in the hands of someone else who is responsible for their fate. You would be serving lawyers, doctors and CEOs and you will be getting paid like one.
Secondly, you have to understand that just being mean is not enough. You also have to be creative. Most dominatrices, or dommes, don’t spend all their time standing in one place beating a guy with a cat o’ nine tails and calling him a worm. You will have to provide a variety of services, such as tying expert knots, tickling with a feather, spinning them on a Catherine wheel, playing mean doctor or nurse or schoolteacher, and making clients crawl on the floor naked and bark like dogs. You are actually still a service professional like a stylist or massage therapist, even though you are acting as if you are the one in charge. The client chooses what happens from a menu of services and is ultimately the one in charge of deciding when to make the torture stop. Although a mean streak helps, if you just feel like being mean to people for the sake of being mean, maybe you need therapy, not a new job.
Next, you have to learn to submit, to a mentor or a school, that is. The process of training may take from six months if you catch on quickly or as long as two years. During this time you will be paid a fraction of what you will be making once your apprenticeship has ended. Most dommes in this stage also have another job in order to pay the bills. Also, as part of your training, you may have to be tied up and tickled with a feather. Of course, if a client does this to you, you may also get a large tip in addition to your fee!
Most importantly, you must be able to rock a pair of thigh-high PVC boots with the confidence that suggests they are a part of you. Seriously, a domme is a brilliant actress above all and must be able to maintain the illusion of control just as a stripper maintains interest in conversations with drunken idiots or a waitress maintains the illusion of being friendly when her customers’ children are swinging from the ceiling fan.
Consider all this, do your research, and decide if being a domme is the right career move for you. Like any new job, it just might change your life for the better.
