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Like other kids’ parents, undoubtedly, Darla Kincaid’s told her not to play with electricity.
Apparently the message failed to sink in. Today Kincaid is one of Manhattan’s most in-demand dominatrices. One of her specialties is electric play.
For those who aren’t part of the BD/SM scene, or, come to think of it, those who just enjoy having sex the old-fashioned way — and that includes masturbation — electric play involves turning one of Mother Nature’s most abundant, if potentially tricky, natural resources into a sex toy.
Here’s how it works: You stick a plug into an electrical outlet. Attached to the plug is a control panel with a dial that regulates the flow of current. Attached to the control panel can be a Pandora’s box of accessories, anything from catheters and nipple clamps to cock rings and butt plugs.
“It can go from mild to wild,” coos the captivating Kincaid when she offers me a free demonstration at Mistress Jasmine’s, the well-heeled Manhattan dungeon where she practices her craft (www. mistressjasmine.com). For the record, Kincaid wasn’t wearing a lab coat with goggles, a haz-mat suit, or even the dom’s obligatory catsuit; she wore a vintage designer dress and high heels, sacrificing, I might add, not an ounce (or is it an amp?) of her stern authority. “What makes it such a useful tool,” she tells me, “is you can con-trol your submissive with just the flick of a switch.”
I got interested in high voltage as a sex toy at a performance a few years back at some dank nightclub in New York City’s East Village. Onstage was a fellow wrapped in aluminum foil. His partner was shocking him with something that looked like a cattle prod, the device sending lovely purple sparks off into the night. Since I don’t recall the sound of sirens, I believe the fellow survived the experience and may have even enjoyed it. The demonstration didn’t make me want to stick my hand in the nearest light socket, but it did make me give some thought to folks who would risk electrocution to enhance their sex lives, especially since I can still get tossed into a trance state by something as simple as a woman’s well-turned calf.
“Electricity is something we’re told from an early age to stay away from,” Kincaid notes as she produces an ominous-looking black attaché case made by a company called Erostech. “A lot of submissives have a wariness about it. That’s why it can be such a powerful tool for the dominant. It’s really useful in interrogation scenes.”
Then she pops open her luggage. The case contains a veritable Frankenstein’s lab worth of devices with dials and meters and wires. “There are two broad groups of electric stimulation,” she continues, sounding like a high school science teacher, and a hard grader at that. “First there’s static electricity.” By that she means the kind that you get from walking across a carpet. Toys in her treasure chest that produce that effect include one of those “eye of the storm”-type lightning balls that you find in novelty stores.
I don’t know how we get from there to my manhood, but the next thing I know, Kincaid is discussing immolating it. “It’s called fire play,” she says. “That includes putting a layer of rubbing alcohol on the skin and lighting it. It can be very shocking for the person receiving it to see their penis on fire. This is something you should advise your readers not to try at home.” (Consider yourselves so advised.) I guess the toys produce sparks, and the sparks set the alcohol on fire. In any case, my inferior brain can only wrap itself around one force of nature at a time.
“And what’s the second kind of electrical stimulation?” I ask.
“A circuit,” Kincaid says. “There needs to be two points of connection. The kit comes with a variety of attachments created for external and internal use. There are devices designed for insertion into the penis. It’s an exquisite sensation, from what I hear. The benefit of working in a [dungeon] is that I have access to such phenomenal equipment.”
I suggest we stick to the external add-ons. “There are nipple attachments which are specially made,” she says. “But the general rule in electric play is, you don’t go above the waist because it can interfere with your heart. That’s something you definitely want to avoid.” I nod vigorously.
“What’s so exciting about [electrici-ty] is that it’s a very different sensation from a vibrator,” the dominatrix continues. “One can set it to all different frequencies and wavelengths. It stimulates the nerve endings in a way that is far more subtle and complex than a vibrator.”
Despite my utter confidence in Kincaid’s expertise, I’m still not ready to bend over and submit to a butt plug, and certainly not to those scary nipple clamps. However, I do agree to let the minx touch me with one of her electric toys. I honestly can’t remember the name or even the description of the attachment. (I’d dropped my reporter’s notebook by that point.) But the sensation was indeed intriguing. It felt sort of like a kitten’s sandpaper tongue, producing a mild tingling sensation, and offered hints of the ecstasy that could be in store if one were to place the device where nerve endings are more abundant.
“The most common problem,” Kincaid says, “is that someone will attach something to somebody without making sure the knobs are turned down to zero.”
She adds, “It really goes a long way in establishing trust, which is the fundamental core of what we do.”
My inclination at that moment is to ask the gorgeous, and obviously extremely responsible, young vixen for a date, though preferably someplace where she doesn’t have access to electricity — perhaps the park. Instead, struggling to maintain my professionalism, I ask her for an example of how she might employ volts and amps in a scene.
“One thing I really like to do is mummification and sensory deprivation,” she says. “If you put these units in place” — she’s back to those damn nipple clamps and butt plug — “and have someone completely mummified, it heightens the sensitivity. It could be as extreme as plaster casting or as simple as Saran Wrap or rolls of latex. The units would have to be in place before they were put in bondage.”
The cost of a two-hour session is $500. (Kincaid can be reached via her Website, www.theenglishdungeon.com.) “I wouldn’t recommend any less time than that,” she says. “By the time you put them in, you have to take them out.” Not that I’m counting my pennies or lobbying for an editorial discount, mind you. As much as I admire the dom and her professionalism, my foreplay fantasies have never involved breathing through a blowhole while my dick is wired to an electrical outlet — though Kincaid can be awfully persuasive: “Because you’re manipulating people’s muscles, you can induce orgasm beyond someone’s control. Prostate milking is a whole other scenario. You can certainly produce more copious amounts of ejaculate. But that’s another article.”
And I hope to write it. In the meantime, and since I’m in the neighborhood, I decide to pay a visit to Purple Passion, New York’s answer to Wal-Mart, at least when it comes to satisfying fetish needs. Indeed, the first thing
I spot when I walk into the store — besides Mistress Athenais, but more about her in a moment — is a cabinet filled with an assortment of gift baskets. Unlike the Martha Stewart jelly-and-jam variety, these are filled with inflatable vibrating butt plugs, medium triple-ripple plugs, and something called a Bronco butt plug. (If you want details on these various plugs, check out www.purplepassion.com.)
But back to Mistress Athenais. She has an absolutely extraordinary chest that happens to be busting out of a fire-engine-red latex catsuit. She’s in fact a customer, not a saleswoman, and she’s on the phone with a submissive who is buying the catsuit for her. “They’re the kind you wanted,” she whispers, referring to the matching stiletto boots. “They have seven-inch heels. The catsuit is $425.”
Then the dom cups her hand over the phone. “Can I have a discount?” she asks.
“I gave you the pro discount,” the cashier responds.
As it turns out, Mistress Athenais (www.mistressathenais.com) also is an expert in electric play, though her attitude toward it seems far more freewheeling than Kincaid’s. “I like to surprise them,” she confides of her subs. “I start on low and move the voltage up. They just love it, the jolt. I speak really softly to them so they don’t know when I do it. I don’t tell them.”
The mistress offers to put me in touch with her submissive sugar daddy, the guy who’s ponying up the bucks for her catsuit, and, she assures me, a true aficionado of electric play. As promised, he phones two days later. (One disobeys Mistress Athenais at one’s own peril, I sense. She told me, “I can take a six-foot-four-inch guy and have him hanging over my doorway in less than a minute.”)
Her sub’s name is George. George has a wife and kids, a distinguished British accent, and a whole box of electrified sex toys that he keeps in his closet at work. He claims that electric play is almost as much fun to do alone as with others. “It causes all the muscles in your arse to contract,” he says of one of his many devices. “Remote-control sex always had an appeal to me. When you use the butt plug, it’s almost like screwing yourself.”
As awesome as that sounds, I’m more interested in George’s sessions with Mistress Athenais, specifically how she employs those amazing breasts in a session. “She’s big but not fat,” George tells me. “She’s got a great look about her. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Your partner needs to know how to read you,” he adds, turning serious. “It’s not like you give somebody a spanking and they can feel it.
“We did a scene where she wrapped me in Saran Wrap top to bottom, with holes for my nipples. She attached the nipple clamps, and a leather parachute to my balls. I wasn’t able to move at all. Her hands were then free to do anything else she wanted to do. It was like having two or three people working on me at the same time.”
But, I wonder, wouldn’t being immobilized defeat the purpose of having someone of Mistress Athenais’s pulchritude at your command, or you at hers? If you’ve already spent $425 on your dom’s clothing, not to mention the cost of the session, don’t you want to touch her? Don’t you at the very least want the full use of your appendages, not to mention your mouth? Isn’t lying there helplessly as Mistress Athenais hovers above you incredibly frustrating?
“It’s a mind trip, not a physical trip,” says George. “You’re essentially being used as a workbench. Very often you’re blindfolded. So you don’t even see them.”
I felt like warning George about the inherent dangers of electricity and nipple play. But I got the feeling that the submissive was well aware of the risks and had long ago decided that the rewards were well worth the occasional shock, or maybe even a heart attack.
