--Anonymous
Mistress Cathryn Curtis emerges as the archetypal dominatrix: zaftig, milky-hued, clad in an all-black ensemble of elbow-length latex gloves, patent leather spike-heeled boots and a gossamer pinafore that reveals a G-string teddy underneath. Her glossed lips perpetually pout, and shoulder-length blond hair alluringly covers a good third of her face.
Under certain light, her gray eyes turn olive; eyes that, during conversation, can fasten a disarming and cogent glare. It's a stare that doubtlessly doubles as one of numerous tools she applies when pulling rank on her submissives.
Her persona varies little from villain femmes fatales in old spy movies, or Catwoman. The cultural craze for sadomasochism has infused the pop mainstream with fetish influence. International couture runways are rife with models in latex and leather; scores of MTV videos--such as Busta Rhymes with Janet Jackson and TLC--adopt the S&M mien as their own; and legions of naive Marilyn Manson kids mix Goth pretensions with corsets and harnesses.
"It's all over television, movies," Curtis says of her dominatrix image. "Everybody is wearing rubber and leather and doing the whole look. And I'm really happy about it. It makes it easier for me. When I meet people, it's easier to digest. They'll say, 'Oh, you're a dominatrix, what goes on? Do you really do that? Wow.'"
Curtis' apartment is like any other up-to-the-moment, upscale complex in Phoenix, with gated driveway, well-kept grounds and security. But her clean, wall-to-wall carpeted dig has a twist--a bedroom that doubles as a dungeon.
The "dungeon" sports the decor of any practicing BDSM (bondage, domination/discipline, sadism and masochism) buff, complete with a wall-size St. Andrew's cross, a padded bondage exam table, cage, spanking horse and adjustable lighting. The walls are lined with an array of touchy accouterments including bondage straps, posture and slave collars, neoprene and wood paddles, slappers, floggers, crops, quirts, spanking rulers, ball gags with head harnesses, a gas mask, head and face muzzles, a wig and bondage mittens. Neatly arranged on racks and shelves are multisized dildos (one measuring in at two feet in length, as big around as a softball), butt plugs, handcuffs, polished ob/gyn gear (including speculums and urethral sounds), rope, cock-and-ball and tit torture devices, various harnesses, and nipple clamps with sundry weights.
A bathroom off the dungeon provides a makeshift frolic room for water sports, complete with enema and colonic irrigation tubing and paraphernalia.
"I don't do anything that is unsafe," Curtis says while showing me the water-sports bathroom. "I don't do any kind of overt sexual acts with people I'm playing with, because I play with a lot of different people. I won't do things that personally repulse me, like scat."
"Scat" is a euphemism for an obsessive interest in feces. The scientific name is coprophilia.
Curtis is an Arizona native in her 30s who grew up in Cave Creek and was bused to high school in Phoenix. She says she became sexually active in high school.
"After two boys, I started playing with girls. And that was in my sophomore year. I'm bi, I'm just in boy mode right now."
Dan Reyes is Curtis' current boy gewgaw. He's a lissome musician sporting a shaved head and a subdued and inconspicuous presence. Nary a sound comes out of his mouth; Reyes mostly just nods his head. It is obvious who's boss in this household.
Reyes is also developing a tolerance for pain, and Curtis orders him to strip down to shorts before tying him to the St. Andrew's cross for New Times' camera.
"He's my boy," Curtis says lasciviously while roping him down. "We met at a party. We met at the Company Store in the art scene. And I was at this party, and I was really bored. I had just quit drinking, and everybody was drinking. I came home and I put on this mask, this leather muzzle. So I got my head all strapped up, and I got taken back to the party on a leash.
"I don't like to date and make out and get naked and roll around in bed, it's much too clumsy. I much prefer to meet a man, know that I am attracted to him, and want to play with him, put him into bondage and then play with him. And it doesn't have to be about getting hit and pain. It's just that erotic power exchange.
"With Dan, we had a couple dates and then he allowed me to do that. And that is very rare that I'll meet somebody like that. He turned me on a lot, so I had to go for it."
Does Mistress Cathryn sense a common personality thread running through or connecting those who enjoy being dominated?
"It varies so much. I mean, like, look at Dan. He's 22 years old, and he had no idea that he was gonna start dating a dominatrix. And he's loving it."
"Switch" is a term used when doms flip to the submissive, when throwing and receiving are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
"I sure do," laughs Curtis when asked if she switches. She points to Dan and says, "He's the only one I switch with. I think that in my case, I could just be classified as a pure sadomasochist. I enjoy giving it, and I enjoy getting it."
Domination is about pleasure, a mutual pleasure. And any dom will describe her metier as purely consensual. What makes a truly erotic, captivating dominant woman is her attitude and thrill of the game.
Curtis has plenty of attitude and thrill to spare.
"One of my favorite activities is bondage, making somebody totally, completely helpless; immobilizing bondage. And I like to take senses away. I like to blind them, gag them, hood them, so that they are totally aware of nothing but what is happening to their body. They're not thinking about their job, they're not thinking about paying bills. They are not thinking of anything except what is and isn't happening."
Does that do something for her?
"Oh, yeah, it arouses me, that's why I do all this. But I'm not geared to having a climax every time I play with somebody. I can just have the enjoyment of playing with somebody. I can have a climax without being touched if the energy is right. That's what happens with Dan."
What is her threshold for pain?
"That depends on who is doing what to me. In some instances, I have been whipped to blood with a bullwhip. And most people couldn't go that far. I've seen other people go so much further, and it amazes me. So every time I think I have a limitation, there comes a point in my life when I need to push that."
In a recent issue of Hustler magazine, Dr. Susan Block, a sex therapist and host of a nationally syndicated radio show, said, "A lot of these fetishes, spanking, whipping, humiliation--are a variation of some sort of childhood experience. Perhaps the submissive player in a domination scene was often sick as a child; thus he associates all loving acts with pain, because when he felt pain, nurses or his mother took care of him. On the other hand, wanting to dominate sexually may be a desire to get control over something in your life or over a person who may seem unattainable. It's a universal feeling, the desire to have power over someone."
When Curtis met her first submissive, her idea of having a slave had little to do with S&M and more to do with being in charge.
"When he broke out his toy bag and showed me all his implements of torture that he had collected over the years, I was appalled. It was like, 'This is weird.' But I was really drawn to it, and I found that I could do just about anything I wanted to him. I could stick needles in his dick. I could stick things inside his urethra. I could put him into just extremely restrictive bondage. And he was just lovin' it.
"Every time I met somebody new, there would always be something that they wanted me to do that would blow me away. I might have resisted in the beginning. Eventually I would love it. Now nothing can shock me.
"The one aspect of S&M I haven't gotten into is infantilism. I told one person flat-out that, 'Sorry, I can't dress you up like a baby, put diapers on you and be your mommy.' That was just too much for me."
According to Curtis, fem doms don't have it out for men, and domination is really all about mutual gratification and personalizing desires. Just good old pure objectification.
"Those kind of women [who genuinely hate men] don't last in the scene, because they are just mean. And you can't be mean in this kind of scene. I wouldn't do anything to anyone that they didn't want. I'm a friendly, happy dom."
Curtis says she earns her living by writing on the subject of fetishism, and she scribes a monthly column on domination in Arizona's Playtime Magazine. She says she is also a performance artist.
"I have a job, and all this kinky shit is for fun," she says.
The most peculiar thing Curtis says still amazes her after eight years as a dominatrix is anal fisting on males.
"It's just hard to comprehend that you can get your whole hand in somebody. And I've done that, and I've done it a lot. It never ceases to amaze me that I can get my whole hand in somebody's booty." She pauses, and then she adds laughing, "I can get my whole hand inside a man.
"I get people who want me to castrate them, people with fantasies of being castrated. People who want to be totally ruled and dominated in their life. I've even had people want me to make them into financial slaves, where they'll fork over their assets and their income to me to control. But those kinds of people, the ones who would give me all their holdings, I steer clear from. They're whacked out.
"I had a personal request from a gentleman in California who has a fantasy about being dominated, and he is in a wheelchair. He is paralyzed, so his fantasy goes from the neck up. And in his fantasy, he wants to see a dominant woman torture a boy in bondage by smoking and blowing smoke in his face. Dan was acting out the part of the boy. Poor Dan, I had to blow all this smoke in his face.
"One time, years ago, this older gentleman who was a trucker wanted to move me into his house so he could be my dog. I went over to his house and had lunch. And I got him undressed and he had on little tiny pink panties--you know, little girlie, frilly panties. And not only that, he had little tiny ribbons tied into bows into his pubic hair, like maybe 10 little ribbons all tied into his crotch. This is, you know, a big truck driver with a cap and the flannel shirt and the jeans and the boots. . . . His fantasy was for me to feed him oatmeal that I pissed in! He wanted to watch me piss in it first. I didn't do it. I just got a real weird vibe off of him, and I didn't play with him at all."
Curtis says she plans to celebrate her imminent birthday with Reyes in a body ritual. The ritual, to be overseen by the grandfather of body modification art, Fakir Musafar, involves the sewing of weights into their chest, arms and backs. When the tailoring is concluded, they'll dance.
Later, Curtis says, she'll have a party, during which sounds will be inserted into her urethra.
