I was having a typical Monday.

My foot-worship client had been late, which meant I was running behind for an appointment with a new client.

Sometimes new clients gave the Desk Mistress an idea of what kind of session they’re looking for, but with this one I was walking in blind. He could want me to be anything from an Amazonian warrior to a schoolteacher. I should probably have been more stressed, but it’s just so hard to work up an appropriate level of anxiety after getting paid to have a foot massage. Every woman should have a foot slave.

“You must be Mark,” I said reassuringly to the uncomfortable but good-looking man sitting in a chair in the lobby.

We sat down across from each other in the interview room where scenes were negotiated and long-buried fantasies were finally laid on the table. It was a complex social situation: In the space of a few minutes, I had to be confessor, therapist, and temptress while negotiating a business transaction, anticipating what boundaries needed to be established, and reading the subtext of a client’s fetishes.

I once ended up with a sobbing puppy-play client because I failed to ascertain that he was supposed to always be a well-behaved dog. The instant “Bad dog!” left my lips, I knew I’d made a horrible mistake. He reacted the same way a frightened puppy would: He peed his pants and dissolved into a shivering, whimpering heap. It’s all about nuances.

Mark was incredibly nervous during his interview. His was one of the less bizarre, easier to understand fetishes, yet he was deeply insecure about it. As a child he had been beaten up by a girl on the playground who squeezed his head between her thighs, and then ignored his muffled pleas for help and humiliated tears. Evidently Mark was held between that girl’s thighs for so long that he genuinely thought he was going to die, and somehow the intensity of the memory had become a sexual fixation for him.

Instead of roleplaying as children, he wanted us to pretend to be adult neighbors to see if the fantasy would still work. I guess it was like me trying to masturbate with my left hand. It should work in theory, but it’s just a little off, which might be enough to prevent it from happening.

In this fantasy, I had been playing my music obnoxiously loud, night after night. Even though deep down he was a pansy, on this night Mark had decided to man up and say something. He was going to march over to my house and make me turn it down. And I was going to summarily destroy his manhood. Sounded like a good time to me!

Having established the narrative of the scene along with boundaries, rules, and expectations, we were ready to head upstairs and get things started. I didn’t give Mark any more time to get nervous or overthink things. We assumed our respective positions in the room.

Mark walked over to my “house” and knocked on the wall forcefully.

“What the fuck do you want?” He was taken aback by my abruptness.

“If you don’t turn your music down I’m going to have to… have to… umm, call the cops!”

I once ended up with a sobbing puppy-play client because I failed to ascertain he was supposed to be a well-behaved dog.

“Just try calling the cops, you pathetic little rodent. Tell them how much of a pussy you are. I bet you’re such a wimp that I could beat you up.”

My hand shot out and snatched his balls in a punishing grip. I could actually see all coherent thought flee his mind in that instant. I spun him around in a circle, leading him by the balls, and slammed him into the wall.

Fantasy wrestling could be hard because it had to be forceful enough to be believable, but in most cases the clients didn’t want to leave with stitches. I found that I was small enough that using almost full force worked just fine. I always went for it, and if it was too much, they were quick to let me know.

When Mark was off-balance, I knocked him to the ground and sat down heavily on his chest.

“What are you gonna do now, pussy boy? Call the cops? Tell them you got your ass kicked by a girl?”

“No, no! I won’t call anyone! Just let me go home!”

“But I’m not finished with you yet,” I pouted.

I decided to improvise and start with a classic face-sitting move. I squatted over his face, pressed my thighs together, and sat down, effectively cutting off his air supply and smashing his face with my cloth-covered lady bits.

For most guys who are into smothering, this is a major part of the appeal. It isn’t so much that they’re being smothered as it is that they’re being smothered by the ass, pussy, and thighs of a woman they are attracted to. A pillow generally doesn’t have the same effect.

Mark squirmed under me, but a boner check told me he was rather enjoying this new addition to his fantasy. I lifted up occasionally to let him catch snatches of air, before moving on to the head scissors.

I slid up and to the side, pushing one thigh under his head and wrapping the other up and over his throat, bringing my knees together to meet. We had agreed in the interview that if the pressure got to be too much, he would tap me twice and I would loosen my grip.

Without releasing any tension between my thighs, I shifted around to get comfortable. I was going to be here for a while. After several minutes, Mark tried to pry my legs apart, writhing and moaning between them. He was whimpering barely audible pleas for help.

“Please… I can’t breathe!” he hissed with difficulty.

“Shhh!” I slapped him in the face and turned away pointedly.

Mark started to cry, wetting my thighs with his effeminate tears. Between the intensity of the moment and the tears rolling across my thighs, I was incredibly aroused. The power was a rush — but not just the physical power of having him at my mercy. It was that he was surrendering himself to me, allowing me to push him and take him to this crazy place. Trust is such a turn-on. So are tears.

“Please!” he sobbed desperately. I chuckled quietly in response.

Something about my total lack of concern while Mark thought he was going to die pushed him to the next level. His tears flowed freely, but he was palming his erection under his pants. I wanted to make him use his tears as lube, but that wasn’t for this scene.

“Please! I’m going to die!” he whispered.

When I kept ignoring him, he sobbed in earnest, but his stroking motions were getting frantic under his sweatpants. I squeezed a little bit harder to match his heightened intensity, but I had to be careful not to unintentionally knock him out in the heat of the moment. As I heard him alternately pant and hold his breath, I knew he was getting close. He groaned and came, shuddering in waves beneath me.

I got Mark a towel, handing it to him as he sat up.

“That was seriously perfect. I loved the part where you sat on my face. I’ve never tried that before.”

“Great. I’m really glad!”

“Man, you must think I’m a total weirdo for being into this shit,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” I told him. “Your fantasy is really hot. There’s no reason to feel ashamed of anything when you’re here. As long as it’s safe, sane, and consensual, there’s probably someone here who’s down.”

Inside the walls of the Dungeon, it was easy to forget that the outside world even existed. There were no feelings of guilt or shame there, no preconceived notion of normal. It was a place where pleasure and fantasy were sacred.

From The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an L.A. Dungeon by Jenny Nordbak. Copyright (c) 2017 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.