It's an evening not long after she's been released for keeps from Tent City, and everything is going pretty well for her.
As she slaves over a hot stove in the kitchen of her apartment, Seven's friends chat glowingly about her.
Tony Blei
Mistress Seven
Mistress Seven, when she was Amber Landin, age 9.
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"She's got the biggest heart you'll ever see once she decides that she can trust you," says one of her roommates, Nelly, an affable former Air Force enlistee from Kentucky who aspires to a career in real estate. "She's also just about the hottest girl in Phoenix."
The other friends include another roommate (a young man who hopes to go to Iraq after re-enlisting this summer), an artist whom Seven met while working (which means strutting her stuff) at a biker show, a lesbian jet airplane mechanic, whom Seven met years ago while stripping at a local club, and a woman who also works as a mistress at the dungeon and goes by the handle Switchable Jessica (the switchable part refers to her ability to play either the dominant or subservient role).
The crew disperses after downing Seven's delicious (and healthful) meal of chicken, salad, and steamed vegetables.
Seven settles on the couch to further discuss her life, her time at Tent City and her future.
Her cat, Jubilee, who's been about the most consistent thing in her life for the past nine years, cozies up to her.
Seven says she struggled mightily with the same old issues when she moved back to Phoenix. She lived some of the time with her mom, which saved her money.
But, ever strapped for cash, she worked for long stretches as a stripper at various Valley clubs.
"I hate stripping," she says. "You give nothing of yourself and get nothing in return, the opposite of my current job."
Then came her latest brush with death in Williams in early 2005. That case wasn't resolved until earlier this year, when the Coconino County judge ordered Seven to jail.
Well before she was sentenced, Seven says, she knew she deserved incarceration and that a sea change was necessary if she expected to live much longer.
Last year, she unofficially changed her name to Seven as part of her latest self-imposed fresh start.
"The number seven represents the seven sins, and it's a really positive number, a real lucky number," she says. "I wanted to get rid of Amber — that weakling, that drunk, that hurtful person."
Seven says she was determined, as her jail term neared, to make the best of being locked up.
"I wanted to make something good out of the time I had to myself there," she says. "I had a lot of time to myself there, and I got to face myself and how I've done such bad things to a lot of people. It actually was a good experience, everything considered."
Seven says she generally coexisted with other inmates, though she had to exercise "self-discipline" at times or risk the wrath of Arpaio's lurking troops.
"I didn't get in trouble fighting or anything like that," she says. "I laid low, 'cause I didn't want to get rolled to the Hole. And I mostly got along with the other women. A lot of them just wanted to discuss my boobs, their size. If I had been bi, I could have had a field day in there."
Seven says her stay behind bars (or at least behind the barbed-wire fence that surrounds Tent City) also provided her with time to mull over the naughty-girl Web site she had long envisioned for herself.
Safe to say, this jail stint didn't end with Seven intending to do any more "selling out" for God.
"I love to shock 'em, offend 'em, and turn 'em on," she says . "What's wrong with that? That's just what I plan to do with my extreme, extreme Web site."
To prove her point, Seven fetches a DVD of a fetish porn she did for money last year with a rather elderly gentleman from Phoenix. She puts it in the machine, and settles in to watch it, ostensibly for the first time.
After a moment of perfunctory dialogue, she ties up the guy on a living-room floor, hikes up her miniskirt and backs down onto his face with her bare butt, rendering him unable to breathe.
After about 30 excruciatingly long seconds, Seven lifts herself up, as the old boy gasps for air, red-faced.
Soon as he's able to catch his breath, she again drops down onto him, subjecting her willing foil to another disturbing bout with enforced breathlessness.
"Yeah!" Seven says, watching herself suffocate the guy. "The 'smothering people' go crazy watching this video! I heard this one is big over in Italy and Europe."
After about 10 minutes, the dom pronounces that she's tired of staring at her behind, and shuts off the television set.
"Thank God there are these outlets in my personal and professional lives for [a] fucked-up [person] like myself," she says. "I'm not bottling myself up anymore. I just love my perversions!"
