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Sensuous Sadie Interview, 2002

SCENEprofiles Interview with Sybil Holiday AKA M. Cybelle Holiday, Professional Domina, certified sex educator, certified clinical hypnotherapist, certified energy worker, and author. 

SENSUOUS SADIE: “You do a lot of work with Tantra, an “ancient form of Yoga that uses breath, energy and energy awareness, sound, motion/stillness, visualization, and eroticism to connect with Spirit. Tantric SM combines these elements with the judicious application of pain, allowing the bottom to process the intense sensations more efficiently and fully so that s/he can go to a deeper level.” Can you describe how a Tantric SM scene might actually unfold?’ 

SYBIL HOLIDAY: “Of course there are many ways that a Tantric scene might go, the following is only one. Having said that, the first thing I almost always do, after collaring a person which is a hypnotic ritual in and 
of itself, is teach them a few breathing techniques. I use many different methods drawn from various sources; Tantra, Wicca, Native American, Jungian psychology and archetypes, hypnosis and NLP practices are the main ones, and almost all of them incorporate breathing techniques.

“The first is simply learning to breathe together with me as the leader of the inhale and exhale. The second is learning deep belly breathing. Most people, when told to take a deep breath, will take a big breath into the upper chest only, and then let out a short exhale.  They will fill the chest rather than the belly. This is actually shallow breathing and does have a place, but its not a good technique to relax or to process pain! 

“The third technique, which builds on deep belly breathing and is extremely useful for processing pain, is slow, deep, controlled belly breathing with the exhale usually being twice longer than the inhale: a count of 4 on the inhale and 8 on the exhale, or 3/6, 5/10, or, for the really adventurous, 6/12. This breath technique is to be used whenever there’s pain. I also teach them that if a difficult sensation is administered while they are breathing in, they are to immediately blow out as if blowing out a candle. 

“And the fourth, if I wish to get even emotionally closer, is for the person to breathe in as I breathe out and to breathe out as I breathe in, and as we are close physically at this time we are sharing air. This can become extremely intimate. 

“The eye contact is also very important. I know certain Dom/mes require that their submissives always keep their eyes down and never make eye contact. That is absolutely counter-productive to what I want, so I eliminated that early on. Left eye to left eye gazing, not looking away but staying with the person past that difficult moment of awkward vulnerability, is how I first engage them with my eyes. And I tell them what I’m doing and ask that they follow and learn. The left eye is the portal to the right side of the brain, which is the home of the subconscious; the spontaneous, non-judgmental, creative, spiritual side of the brain. 

“Then, we might get more physical.  I am a big fan of nipple/breast/chest work, which can access the heart chakra. So I like to start by slapping, flogging, or paddling the entire upper chest, especially the area in between the nipples, with a my hand/fist or thuddy instrument. I don’t want sting here, I want deep, opening-up thud.  Please DO NOT, however, punch the left area of the chest where the heart is located!  The person may be still kneeling at this time, and when I wish to get more serious I will have them stand and I may use my suspension spreader bar to restrain them while I flog the upper chest and upper back., or I may have them lean against my rack. 

“At this time I wish people to not shake, wiggle, etc., as it dilutes the energy release later. This is the time to build and store the energy, which will be moved, directed, and released later. If they feel the need to release at this time I encourage them to release the energy through the eyes to me, and to also soften their gaze, allowing the energy to gently flow from their eyes. 

“I receive their energy through my eyes, and give it back to them through my hands and the pain my hands and toys are creating. It’s a never-ending cycle of sensation, energy, and awareness. I never keep their energy, but always share it back with them, building, building, and building. 

“Then I concentrate on the nipples and the sensation becomes more intense and focused. And I then spread that sensation out into the breast/chest area, so that the entire upper chest is inflamed in a broad band of heat. 

“I might teach them about chakras (chakra is a Sanskrit term meaning wheel, and refers to one of seven major bio-energy vortexes that begin at the base of the spine, and go up to the crown of the head...emanating as an energy wheel or band around the spinal column. Each holds a different aspect of the psyche [psyche in ancient Greek means soul]), or I might not. I might simply ask them to concentrate on the warmth spreading from their nipples/chest area, and send it to an area just above the genitals, creating a triangle of fire. I might use clothespins or other clips/clamps to create this triangle, placing one on each nipple and one directly above the genitals on the mons, and perhaps then ‘fill in the gaps.’ 

“All the time I’m physically and emotionally close to the person, encouraging them and appreciating the energies that are being built – the energy inside them, the corresponding energy inside me that is responding to their masochism/submission, and the energy that is being built between the two of us. 

“I might connect my chakras with theirs, this is called cording, to facilitate the union.  At the end, I de-cord.  It’s very important to understand that at the end of the scene all personal energies are returned, ‘What’s mine come with me, what’s not go where you belong.’ 

“The removal of the clips is the time to release that energy which has been building inside the person, and perhaps inside me. Where that energy is sent is up to me and the person, and may have been decided on beforehand. To send it to my crotch, my heart, send it to a friend who is sick, send it to a part of the person’s body that needs healing, send it to The Divine in thanks, all of this and more is a possibility. Where is it to be sent at that intense moment?  How I remove the clips depends on the intent and the person. It might be slow, fast, all at once as in a zipper, or wiggling each one, building the energy up even more before removing it. Many variations on a theme.” 

Sadie: “You also do "Tantric flogging." What is this? What is the key thing that differentiates this from regular flogging? 

Sybil: “There are two key elements that differentiate Tantric Flogging from ‘regular’ flogging – what I’m doing and, most importantly, what the person is doing during the whipping.  The person’s breathing is essential -- that deep belly breathing -- with a count of  (usually) 4/8. The second thing I teach them to do is drawn from my experience described below. I teach them to become a clear, flexible tube, with their personality guided to the sides of that tube. 

“Meanwhile, my job is to very steadily and hypnotically flog them in a rhythmic manner, moving from my deerskin flogger to a heavier cowhide flogger.  I’m not doing this to gratify my sadistic needs.  That happens during other kinds of scenes!  The purpose of the increasing pain, just at the person’s limits, is to provide an opportunity for the person to engage with and move down through the trap door described below, for it’s by moving through the pain and energetic blocks that can one fly. 

“My other job is when the person starts undulating on the table -- “dolphining” is my nickname for the movement -- sometimes I can sense the person’s own energy that is stuck at a certain place and I will use my hands -- not touching them but hovering about 8-12 inches away from the body -- to draw the stuck energy up and out.  I don’t tell them I’m doing this.  It wasn’t until I was giving a class on Tantric Flogging that my girl, who was the demo model, learned about it. Someone asked during Q and A what the “hand waving” was all about, and after I explained, she looked at me in amazement.  She then told me she never knew I was doing anything, but had experienced times during floggings when she felt blocked and then, woops! for ‘no reason’ the energy would shift.” 

Sadie: “In describing an early whipping experience you wrote that, "As he whipped me, I started to see something like a drawbridge in reverse, a trap-door, in my mind's eye. I knew that if I took a deep breath, opened up the back of my throat and lowered my voice, breathed deeply and pushed my awareness down, the trap door would open up and I would drop down through it, and I could allow the pain." Was this a spiritual experience for you?”   

Sybil: “It most certainly was a spiritual experience. After a number of these ‘trap-door’ experiences, much to my amazement I became a tube: my personality, identity, had been pushed to the side of the tube and I was empty, a conduit for the most profound energy coursing through me, up through my feet, through my body, and up out the top of my head. I was ecstatically happy. At one point I remember shouting, ‘Yes Sir!  THANK YOU SIR!’ and the room became still. As I had a blindfold on I couldn’t tell why. When I asked Sir he smiled and said that I had shouted so loud and happily that everyone – approximately 100 people – heard it over the music and turned to look. 

“My body began to undulate on the bondage table like a dolphin. I thought, ‘What the…?’ and quickly realized that any thought took me out of the experience and into my head. I went back to my breathing and being a tube, the undulations increased and I began to shudder all over in waves from the bottom of my feet up through my body and out the top of my head, much like the energy that was coursing through me. 

“It was like an orgasm, but it made the very best orgasm I’d had up till then feel like a pleasant sneeze.  And I’d had some big, juicy, long-lasting multiple orgasms!  This was different, and REALLY, NO KIDDING BIG. It wasn’t sexual in that my genitals weren’t the focus, and it was extremely erotic in that I was turned on all over my entire body, including my genitals, and I felt more totally alive than ever before.  This was the scene that deeply intensified my desire to learn about SM.  I wanted more of that experience and I wanted to be able to take others to that place.” 

Sadie: “How do you know when a "regular" SM experience moves into the spiritual realm?” 

Sybil: “What is ‘spiritual?’  That can mean so many things to so many people, or even the same person!  To me, it is when ‘Spirit’ becomes involved, my spirit and the others’ spirit, and the scene is not about my or the other’s sexual orgasm but something bigger. In Tantra, the sexual union is very spiritual. The focus is not on orgasm, especially the male orgasm, but on union, dissolving the barrier between us till we are one.  So that is my focus when I play in this way. To unite in some way with the other, to merge.” 

Sadie: “You teach about trances, and the difference between a trance and a hypnotic state. How are they different, and how does this affect BDSM play?” 

Sybil: “Both are highly focused states of awareness, combined with a relaxing of the conscious mind so that the subconscious mind is foremost.  Hypnosis is a trance with the added element of suggestibility. Of course, that’s not so if it’s something like ‘highway hypnosis’ which I would classify as more of a trance. 

“It has been my experience that in bdsm play we, the bottom and the Top, can go into a trance together. Other words for this might be ‘bottom space’ and ‘Top space.’  When a bottom is relaxed -- excited, but relaxed – and is in rapport, in synch with the Top, the barriers go down and the bottom becomes more open, vulnerable, trusting, and thus, more suggestible. And as this happens the Top also goes deeper into a corresponding trance, that of Top space.  I’ve watched many bottoms go into trance, or hypnosis, and not know it. But when the scene is over and the collar is off, quite often one might look around, shake his head, laugh a bit self-consciously and say, ‘Wow, I feel like I’m coming out of a trance!’ And so they are and so am I.” 

Sadie: “You have learned to orgasm without touching yourself, which you describe as a Tantric technique. Why did you teach yourself to do this?” 

Sybil: “I was 25 and in a vanilla relationship with a very sexy guy. When we had sex, I was very aroused, and came quite a few times. And at the end, his orgasm was so pleasurable to him that it turned me on tremendously. Unfortunately, he was one of those men who, once he ejaculated, fell almost immediately into a sleep for about 20 minutes. So there I’d be, aroused again, with a somnambulistic partner!  So, I would masturbate. But I did so secretly, because I knew if he ‘caught’ me, he would be upset. 

“And I was right. One night, he woke up faster than usual, noticed what I was doing, and accused me of faking my orgasms. I tried to explain that it was his orgasm that had so aroused me, but he didn’t believe me. 

“So, the next time this happened, I did some Kegels, hoping for some ‘secret’ relief. I didn’t orgasm the first time, or the 3^rd, or even the 20^th, but I began to get very proficient at arousing myself using only my PC muscles. And then one night as I was squeezing my muscles, I noticed that my cunt was almost squeezing itself. It was pulsing with a life of it’s own. (I feel like I’m beginning to write porn). And my clitoris was also throbbing with a life of it’s own, too. So I stopped trying so hard, and just let the sensations happen on their own, following them with my mind’s…eye? finger?  Tracing the pleasure, noticing where it felt better and better, and concentrating on building that pleasure, and surrendering to it. 

“As I was lying in bed doing this erotic meditation, the pleasure took off and slow waves of bliss began to spread from my clitoris outward, encompassing my entire vulva, inner thighs, buttocks, expanding to include my entire lower body from my abdomen to my lower thighs. 

“Wow!  Let’s do this again! And again!  I began to give my cunt complete control over where and when it could come alive. Soon I found I could become aroused to the point of orgasm anywhere, anytime. Waiting for the bus became much more pleasurable. So did riding on the bus!” 

Sadie: “You describe yourself as a "Neo-Pagan Goddess worshipper with Tantric Buddhist leanings." Could you explain this in lay terms?  How does this actually translate to your everyday life?” 

Sybil: “I say Neo-Pagan, in that today no one really knows exactly how the ancient pagans worshipped, what their rituals were, etc. We have some idea, but much was lost in the ‘Burning Times.’   So what Pagans do today is ‘Neo,’ new, in that is has been re-created anew.  

“My spirituality has been a long search to find what works for me. As early as 8 years old, every night I was starting my evening prayers with something like, ‘Oh dear Jesus, you know you’re not the One for me. I don’t know who is, but I bet you all know each other up there, so would you please pass this along to who is the One for me?  I know you’re not a messenger boy or anything like that, but I don’t know who to send this too, so would you please help me?’ 

“My own spirituality was rather eclectic, drawn from a deep love for nature, divination, tarot cards, astrology, and a belief in reincarnation. But in 1983, I heard someone say, ‘Goddess bless you’ in response to a sneeze. Odd, isn’t it, how awakenings come about! ‘Goddess?’ I thought. Hmmm. I researched the notion of a Female Divine Principle, came across Starhawk’s ‘Dreaming The Dark’ and discovered that my spirituality, that which I had thought was my own creation, was really a re-creation of Wicca. 

“And around that time there was this scene I did with a smart, hot butch dyke who liked to get fisted. While we were playing, I began to receive images in my head, like mental snapshots, of us in a cave with wolves. I was an elder priestess, and was initiating her in some ancient ritual. She was seated with her legs opened very wide and outstretched, with unrefined lit candles all along both her thighs. I was pinning her inner vaginal lips back with crude needles, exposing her completely. 

“These snapshots kept appearing after she left, and I found myself wandering about my large Victorian flat in a trance, picking up various objects, a candle holder here, an incense burner there, some items of both my maternal and paternal Grandmothers, and putting them all into a cedar box onto the chest in the entrance area of my flat. 

“I realized I had created my first, formal altar. I say formal, because I also realized that night that there were little altars all over my house!  Areas where small groupings had sprung up, with candles, incense, photos, and assorted other objects dedicated to various people, concepts, issues, etc. 

“I studied many books on Wicca and various forms of Paganism, and came to the understanding that I am and have been a moon priestess for many lifetimes. The cycle of Nature was and still is very important to me as a guide for my life’s path. The cycle of the new moon, full moon, and waning moon represent many cycles; life, death, and rebirth; the maiden, mother, and crone; beginnings, middles, and endings are but a few. And I love how, no matter when or where you stand on Earth, we all share the same moon. 

“The “Tantric Buddhist” part came in about ten years back.  A favorite author of mine is Ken Wilber.  While reading his book, “One Taste,” which is a diary of a year of his life, I realized that I no longer really thought of the Divine as Female, Male, or any gender, and that Goddess worship  didn’t really express what I currently believed/felt.  I saw that Buddhist teachings were (and they still are) the closest to my beliefs.  So Paganism isn’t how I think of the Divine any more, but it is more than a lovely metaphor. It is a beautiful, artful form of worship, and I do still deeply revere the Earth as an expression of the Divine to be honored, taken care of – a stewardship, if you will – and something for which to be deeply grateful. 

“Tantra – a form of spirituality that originated in India that regards sexual energy as a path to spiritual wisdom – continues to educate and elevate my life.  By the way, sexuality is only about 30% of Tantric teachings.  However, it’s a really important 30%!  In Tantra  when we meet or depart we say, ‘Namaste,’ which means ‘The Divine in me salutes the Divine in you.’ 

“How does this manifest in every day life?  The short answer is that I am so happy, truly ecstatic, to be alive, no matter what happens.” 

Sadie: “How long have you been involved in the BDSM scene? Please tell me a little bit about your background and experience.”

Sybil: “Well, I’m a convert. I got involved in the scene in 1979 when a new roommate of mine wanted to put ringbolts in the beautiful woodwork of my Victorian flat!  I had no fantasies of spanking or dominance at the time; I was strictly into sexual sensation. I thought of myself as very knowledgeable – after all, I’d been in the adult entertainment Industry since I was 18 and I was then 30, I’d known for a long time that I was bi-sexual, had been to many swinger parties, owned at least 4 vibrators, and was multi and g-spot orgasmic.

“But I was shocked, shocked I tell you, when she told me the reason she wished to desecrate her bedroom woodwork was so her boyfriend could tie her up and spank her!  As she and I had been having big power struggles from the day she moved in, I thought, ‘Oh God, now I’ve got a sicko living in my home – what DO I do?’

“As I’d known her since 1975 I didn’t immediately toss her out but listened, when after a month of attending The Society of Janus meetings she came to me and apologized for being non-consensually dominant with me. She told me she only wanted to do power-play with those who wanted to do it with her and only in her sex life, and that SM wasn’t what I thought it was, so would I please go to a Janus meeting and learn?

“I thought, ‘Hmm. If there’s something about sex that I don’t know about that’s good and fun, where do I sign up?’ So one night I attended a SOJ meeting with her. I was so scared – would I meet some sex-crazed nut job?  Would some psycho follow me home and…?  That night I had going through my head every misconception, myth, and fear an uninformed person could have about SM.

“And of when I got there, who did I meet?  Why, people like you and me, of course. I met the treasurer at the time, a sweet 75-year-old accountant into bondage. I met the orientation directors, a poet and a thrift store manager.  And I listened as people described how things worked and what they did when they didn’t work, and I came away amazed.

“I had truly thought of myself as sexually sophisticated, and I was to an extent. But I’d not found, in the adult entertainment industry or the swingers community, people who were having such unapologetic, detailed, refreshingly upfront conversations about – not just sex -- but bondage, spanking, piss, dominance, oh my head was in a swirl!  I knew I had to go back. I didn’t know if I was top or bottom, I didn’t even know what those words meant but I knew there was something there for me.

“So I joined Janus and went to every program they presented. Two programs a month and this was the only thing going on at the time, no nightclubs, fetish balls, and certainly no Internet. 

“The rest, as they say, is history” 

Sadie: “There are probably a lot of misconceptions about being a Professional Domina, the most common being that Professional Dominants are prostitutes. Can you give me a quick explanation about how these two careers differ, and how that affects you as a professional?” 

Sybil: “For me, the main difference, other than there is no direct sexual contact and nothing illegal, is that I really am in charge of what’s going to happen, to whom, and how. That just doesn’t happen in the world of prostitution. The man believes he’s bought something, the use of the female body, and has the right to determine how he is going to use it. I did try prostitution briefly in my late teens. For me it was a form of unacknowledged, unconscious, and nonconsensual sexual submission. I didn’t last long, not even a month.

“I also briefly worked in a massage parlor. This was closer to my style as I was wearing a really sexy uniform and they were naked, I was standing up while they were lying down, and I controlled the proceedings!  But it still wasn’t what I wanted to do.

“In 1969 I became a Go-Go dancer on Broadway in San Francisco. Now THAT was fun, and I became quite an accomplished striptease artist, traveling halfway around the world, and all across and up and down the USA.

“In 1983 I quit the world of striptease and entered into a one and a half year of training as a  Mistress, and in 1985 opened up a Dungeon with my former roommate!”

Sadie: “How do you manage clients who do want sexual contact? Is this a common expectation, or do most people "get it" from reading the website?”

Sybil: “It’s very simple. I tell them ‘no.’ Most do understand by reading my site, but I advertise in many places and I don’t put ‘no sex’ in my paper ads as I’ve heard from many prospective clients that they take to mean it’s not erotic at all. I explain to them when they first contact me that a sexual release, orgasm, is a privilege to be earned, not a right, and if I do permit it, I will not provide it but I will control their actions. And I also explain that there are many different kinds of releases: emotional, psychological, energetic, and physical ones that are not genitally based.

“For the person who absolutely insists upon direct sex, I tell him to contact a kinky prostitute. He may or may not be dominated, but he will get what he insists upon.”

Sadie: “What is it that you think draws so many people to a Professional Domina? What are the most common fantasies that they are unable to fulfill with other partners?”

Sybil: “Some of the men I’ve seen simply want to not have to make all the erotic decisions. Many of them aren’t into pain or bondage, they want role reversal. Many women today still are not in touch with their ‘Alpha’ side when it comes to sex and romantic relationships. They can be tough in the boardroom, but not in the bedroom.

“It is also difficult for many women to administer pain to a loved one if they don’t share that desire.  They have a very hard time getting away from the feeling/thought that they are damaging their partner. They don’t understand that pain can simply be a very intense sensation.  And of course if they are doing it only to please their partner, it’s hard if not impossible for the bottom to truly submit to that!

“And then there are those clients whose fetish is not understood very well; the sissy, for example. Most of those men are afraid of being perceived as vulnerable in a bad way, and some think of themselves like that as well. My job here is to teach them about what I call ‘sissy power’  Be a sexy sissy!  Turn me on with your cute, sissy-ish ways!”

Sadie: “Do you also work with women?”

Sybil: “Absolutely, although it seems that women still do not, for the most part, think of procuring an erotic adventure for themselves. As a professional dominant I have seen 8 women since 1983, not counting the people who come to me to learn. Almost all of them came from the BDSM community. One was a lesbian who wanted a ‘real’ whipping,’ but didn’t want it to be in the context of a relationship. She appreciated the ‘container’ that a professional scene can provide with it’s beginning, middle, and end. Another was a heterosexual woman who wanted a baby scene with me as Mommy. She was not in any erotic community. Another was a lesbian who wanted to be my domestic servant. And another was a submissive lesbian MTF transsexual who know me before I was interested in SM. She had had the surgery a year ago, and wanted a scene in which her new genitals were explored so she could see how they worked, again without having to be in a relationship.

“At this time most of the women I see are interested in learning how to develop their dominant archetypes as well as learning BDSM techniques.  It is so exciting for them to learn about new parts of themselves!”

Sadie: “I may just be ignorant here, but I haven't heard of any professional male dominants. If you know of any, how does their practice differ from yours? If you don't, how do you account for this gender difference?”

Sybil: “The male professionals I know of are either gay, or bi with mostly male clientele. I say mostly, because on a very rare occasion a woman will call one of them asking to be dominated. As to my opinion regarding the gender difference, see the above question. I also wonder if a woman who wishes to be dominated by a man might have some fears about letting a stranger do so!  And there are some submissive women in the BDSM community who have said that being a woman in a vanilla relationship with an Alpha male can give you plenty of nonconsensual dominance, which is why they came to the community, but they also felt that most women don’t realize they could that.”

Sadie: “How do you separate your work as a Professional Domina from your personal life? Do you find that your personal relationships are of a similar, or a much different flavor than your work?”

Sybil: “My personal relationships are very different from my professional relationships. I never do anything I don’t want to do, for money or not for money.  That is what I call prostitution, and it has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with ‘selling out,’ compromising your principles for gain.  Many "prostitutes" have the same attitude!  But I do see people I wouldn’t play with in my private life. Not because they are bad or anything like that, but because I offer what I call a dominant ‘service.’  I see people who won’t or can’t get involved in the bdsm community; people who are married; who have limited social skills, or who are deeply embarrassed about their needs. Being a professional has given me the opportunity to try all kinds of activities I wouldn’t have if I just played privately, and that is so great!

“However,  when I play privately, I’m very specific. At times it is so ‘all about ME!’  And other times, I’m much more generous.  But it almost always involves some sort of Tantric SM, ritual, submission, and service.  It almost never involves physical bondage such as ropes or cuffs. But quite often it will involve what I call ‘psychic bondage,’ stand exactly the way I want you to; turn, kneel, present, etc. I’m also very fond of Golden Showers as a reward and an intimate connection. In Tantra female ejaculate is known as ‘Amrita’ and is regarded by some as a holy nectar.  Some people feel the same about receiving a Golden Shower.”

Sadie: “How would you describe your orientation as it pertains to the BDSM lifestyle? Are you Dominant, Submissive, Switch?”

Sybil: “I erotically identify as a pansexual dominant that occasionally gets flogged, caned, or pierced.  There are certain, rare times when I love intense sensations.  I also love to do spiritual pain rituals with Cleo Dubois and Fakir Musafar like the Ball Dance or Hook Pull.” 

Sadie: “You said in an interview once that "I learned how to use my mind, my voice, and my hands" first. Considering the emphasis on toys and equipment, how did this training give you a unique twist?” 

Sybil: “Oh, I am so glad Mistress Corona, my first (and only) trainer and Mistress, insisted on this!  I can dominate anywhere, naked in a hot tub, it doesn’t matter. They say ‘clothes make the man.’  That certainly has not been my experience. Clothes can bring out what is already there, and for a new Domina unsure of her power, it can definitely help. But I have seen many become what I call ‘Dungeon Dependant,’ relying on all the trappings instead of developing true inner power. And if you don’t have it, or haven’t learned to access and develop it, all the expensive fetish clothing in the world can’t create it.” 

Sadie: “Do you have any particular areas of education or specialization that you would like to educate our readers about?” 

Sybil: “Yes!  I’m thrilled to be involved, once again, with my former roommate!  Her name happens to be Cleo Dubois, and I am joining her in offering The Cleo Dubois Academy of SM Arts Erotic Dominance Intensives for Women.  These are intimate 4-day weekend workshops for 6-8 women only.  The second series is this summer/fall, in August for private players and in October for professional dominants. Interested people can learn more by visiting Cleo’s site at www.sm-arts.com and by contacting Cleo at CleoDubois@sm-arts.com

“And as for me by myself, I continue to move into the realm of counseling, hypnotherapy, and energy work/healing.  I’m still doing Pro Domme sessions, of course.  I don't know if I'll ever stop there, as it brings me into contact with a vast group of people who I wouldn't meet if I just focused on counseling.  

"Although it was always a part of my Pro Domme sessions where appropriate, now I am concentrating even more on being a facilitator and a guide for growth and healing.”

Sadie: “Thank you for speaking with me!”

Back to Top

Spectator Interview, 1996

Layne Winklebleck: We go back a long way together.

Mst. Cybelle: We certainly do.  The first time I met you was in the Dominant Women’s Workshop that you and Kat gave in 1983.  That’s just before I started to work as a professional dominant, and I thought I’d better get every bit of information I could.  Actually, I went to work as a Mistress in training.  I belong to the Old School, which states that the best Tops start at the bottom.

LW: You trained with Carmen?

Mst. C: Yes.  For a year and a half I was submissive to her and, under her instruction, dominant over the male clients.  In other words, I was a "middle."

LW: She was a good teacher.

Mst. C: She was a very good teacher.  She taught me something I’ve never heard anybody else say, which was that she would not teach me how to use a whip or a pair of nipple clamps or any other tool until I learned how to use my mind, my voice, and my hands.  She gave me three months. She said, "If in three months you can learn how to use those three tools, I’ll teach you how to use others."  I was very fortunate in that at the same time I was also working as a dominant in the phone sex industry.  You don’t have any tools there except your mind and your voice.   And, of course, your imagination. I got plenty of practice!

LW: Now what are the tools you find most important?

Mst. C:[laughing] My mind and my voice and my hands.  I think that’s very true, it’s very, very true.  But if you want to know who Mistress Cybelle is you have to look at the entire person and you have to take into account the concept of personas.  I’m a woman of many parts.  I’m not just a sexually dominant woman.  First, I’m a human being.  Then I’m a woman.   Then I’m a Priestess. Then I’m a sex educator.  Then I’m a sex worker.  I’m also a person who has an aged Siamese cat, loves stained glass windows, and is looking for the perfect  low-fat basil pesto. [laughter] I have a lot of interests.  But sexually I am a dominant woman: that has not changed since I started having sex.  It’s matured of course but it hasn’t changed.  I just didn’t know what it was called then.

LW: How did it show itself?

Mst. C: I was a prick tease. [laughing] I was into tease and denial.  And I was a stripper from age eighteen to age thirty.  What a perfect venue for a prick tease!   Then in the late ’70s I met someone who became my roommate and who was very interested in S/M at that time.  I knew nothing about S/M.  I thought it was abusive behavior, and that the urge to do it came from growing up in a dysfunctional family.  I believed many of the myths and stereotypes that a lot of people have before they learn about S/M and DS.  When I went to my first Janus meeting [The Society of Janus, San Francisco’s pansexual BDSM support group, I realized that the world of S/M is not full of ax murderers and sickos.  I found nice people above average in intelligence and creativity, who were talking about very complex and forbidden subjects that I’d never heard anybody else talk about anywhere.  I joined this organization and here we are today.  If you want to know more about how I got into the scene you can read about it in my book!

LW: What's it called?

Mst. C: Consensual Sadomasochism: How To Talk About It And How To Do It Safely.   William Henkin and I (as Sybil Holiday) wrote it together as a companion volume to any of the number of instruction manuals out today.  They tell you what to do; our emphasis is more on what not to do.  It contains an extensive and thoroughly researched safety guide, plus a glossary, an annotated bibliography, chapters on communication, spirituality, and personas, and more!  It’s being published by Daedalus Publishing Company, coming out in September and there will be a book signing at Good Vibrations in October. [Published 1996]

You know, how I got into S/M is intriguing, but why I stayed is actually more interesting to me.  I stayed because of the power, and because of the energy.  See, I’ve been exploring and playing with power, energy and spirituality since I was a small child.  And when I became sexual in my late teens, all four of them came together for me.  Actually I was not into S/M in my teens but I was into power and control.

LW: Describe for me what form that power took when you were young.

Mst. C: I gave my first spanking when I was five.  She was four and a half. [laughing] It wasn’t about the pain, it was about the fact that she was a brat and I wanted to control her.  My second exploration of power was intellectual power.   I was not a beautiful child.  I was not Brooke Shields. When I was twelve years old, I was 5 foot 8.  I had the full figured body of a woman.  I had a rash. I had braces.  I had curly hair when Cher’s straight hair was in style.   I wore glasses.  My mother dressed me funny.  The power that I had was intellectual power.  I was smart.  I went to Girls’ Latin, which is a college prep high school in Boston; I went to college, and I used my brain for control. Then, when I was 18, I went to New York, to the Lower East Side, and hung out with the East Coast Hells Angels.

LW: Whoa!

Mst. C:[laughing] There I learned a lot about physical power.  I learned how to beat up other girls.  I learned to wear a bra so I’d have a place to carry my switchblade.  And I did get pretty carried away with it.

LW: Was it erotic, some of these things that you did?

Mst. C: Not really, but it was satisfying. It held a sense of raw power and a sense of exhilaration. It wasn’t genitally erotic but it was full-body eroticism, like some S/M, like the exhilarating high one can get from being whipped or whipping somebody.   Your genitals aren’t necessarily turned on but you’re turned on all over.

LW: The reason I ask is because, as you know from some conversations that we’ve had together, I’m fascinated with nonconsensual, dark fantasies and real life power.   I often wonder what would have happened to serial killer Ted Bundy and other such people if they had had an outlet like the S/M community?

Mst. C: I think Ted Bundy was too crazy.  I do know some people who have been able to channel such very severe tendencies into the S/M community and found healing there, but they are few and far between.

LW: But maybe I’ve sidetracked us.  What I’m wondering specifically is how you would compare some of your experiences as a biker with your S/M experiences.

Mst. C: Oh, well, I can very easily tell you.  When my roommate told me she was into S/M, immediately what I thought about was my experiences on the East Coast with the black leather jackets.  First I was kidnapped, and then I was sold for ten hits of acid and ten dollars, okay?  But this was no play-party auction, no pre-negotiated scene.  That world wasn’t and isn’t conscious of consensual power dynamics, and there was definitely no safeword, except to leave.

LW: How did you feel about it at the time?

Mst. C: I had mixed feelings.  I didn’t really like the person who kidnapped me, and I liked the person who bought me.  The concept of being sold annoyed me, but I was in New York doing the biker thing, and I wanted to see it through.  I was on a mission. [laughing] I was breaking away from the intellectual, reserved Boston world I grew up in.  When the hippie era hit, I went from being a wallflower to queen of the hippies in about three weeks.  I told you I was tall, I had glasses and curly hair, and my mother dressed me funny.  But then all of a sudden having glasses, curly hair and funny clothes was in style.  It was like the world caught up with me.

So moving to New York was the first step of breaking away, and getting involved in the bikers was the next step.  How I felt about being kidnapped was not so important as how I felt about the exhilaration of this wild, dark, on-the-edge lifestyle.  My best girlfriend at the time was the girlfriend, the "mama" of the vice- president of the club.  She was half American Indian and half Italian.  She was stunningly beautiful and she was crazy in a beautiful way.  She would do things like put a razor blade stuck in chewing gum inside the boot of her old man because she was pissed at him. And of course he’d find it, cut his foot and he’d beat her up.  But later on, he would brag about it. "My old lady’s so crazy, so bad, you know what she did?"

So she and I panhandled money, and when we got  enough she bought me.  I was owned by a woman, which was fine with me.  And since she was the craziest person in the club, nobody was going to mess with her, therefore nobody was going to mess with me.   I had instant freedom, lots of power, and I didn’t have to answer to anybody.   We ruled the roost until her boyfriend got scared [laughing] at the combination of the two of us and insisted that she sell me again, at which point I bought myself out of the whole situation by hitchhiking to San Francisco.  It had stopped being fun.

LW: But you saw it through. Are you on the edge like that now?

Mst. C: I have been throughout my entire life.  But there are many different kinds of edges.  I recently came off a very intense edge of six years duration.   Around Hallowe'en 1989 I got very sick.  I had a calcified, herniated disk that was misdiagnosed for ten months.  I was in excruciating pain.  I lost a lot of energy then, and therefore I lost a lot of power.  I’d been in the adult sex industry since I was seventeen, and all of a sudden in my late thirties I lose my sex drive.  So I lost my identity.  Who are you when you don’t have energy, you don’t have your sex drive, you don’t have power and you don’t have your identity?  You talk about being on the edge?  I mentioned that I am a Priestess.   My life partner says I bottomed to the Goddess, and I think that’s true, because during those years I felt as if I was in an unrelenting scene with a very harsh taskmistress.  In a sense I had to create a new person to be.  And I did.

LW: Tell me about the new person.

Mst. C: The new person is still interested in the things that I was interested in before, because my energy and sex drive returned.  But when those powers I’d always taken for granted were temporarily taken away from me, I became more interested in my psychic abilities.  And I became more involved in tantra; not just tantric sex, but the whole world of tantra, which is about energy, breath and the life force.

LW: Talk about tantric energy and S/M.

Mst. C: When I used to play S/M, I didn’t focus on my breath or your breath or on my energy or your energy. I focused on how intensely my hand or implement impacted your skin: it was all about sensation, from light to very heavy. Well, I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think that what makes me a good whip mistress is that I teach people something about breathing and I teach people how to use their energy. I teach people how to ground, and I do it while we’re playing. I’ve often taken people farther in S/M than they had ever gone, and they sometimes ask me how I did that. It’s simple. I taught them something about how to breathe.

LW: Readers are going to roll their eyes at this, you know. "How to breathe" sounds pretty New Agey.

Mst. C: When people who haven’t learned about breathing techniques are in pain they hold their breath. When you stub your toe, you grab your toe, you tighten up, and you hold your breath.

LW: Okay, go on.

Mst.. C: This is like a fight or flight response.

LW: Physical tension.

Mst. C: Exactly. But if you breathe deeply when you stub your toe or experience any other kind of pain, you can relax and the pain is dispersed.  By breathing deeply I mean filling up your lungs and filling up your belly on the inner breath, and on the exhale, pulling your belly in towards your spine and exhaling fully.  In on a count of four, out on a count of eight.  This is one of many ways.  In S/M, this allows you to go farther, get higher on endorphins, and go deeper into submission.

LW: When I am teaching a submissive everything is about relaxation.  But I don’t think of it in terms of breathing. I want to see that the submissive’s body is relaxed.  If her body tenses up, I just do something to get her...

Mst. C: ... relaxed again.  Exactly.

LW: So that’s all breathing is, a relaxation technique.

Mst. C: That’s not all it is, but it is a relaxation technique, yes.   There’s really nothing hokey or airy-fairy about it.  It’s very practical. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t practical.

LW: Relaxation is the path to the trance.

Mst. C: One path, yes.

LW: And the path to the ecstasy.

Mst. C: Yes. Which is what I love.  That’s what kept me and continues to keep me involved in S/M. Initially, the quality of the people kept me there.  But I didn’t have S/M fantasies.  I didn’t have dominant fantasies.  I didn’t know where I fit into.  It took me about two years to figure out I was a top.  I could figure that out because I knew I liked to run the show.  But I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  Janus was the only thing that was happening back then so I started going to every Janus meeting.  I still couldn’t really relate to S/M until I went to a party where I was supposed to meet someone, and he chickened out.  I found myself without a date.  I was talking with this man I’d been watching whip other people – and it was very sexy – and much to my surprise I found myself saying, "Well, if you’d like to whip me, you could."

LW: Who was this?

Mst. C: David Lourea.  He’s no longer with us.  And he said okay.  Now you have to understand I was in full Mistress regalia wearing a corset and I really had no intention of getting undressed.  And all of a sudden I had to get undressed.  I started to undo my clothing, and he said, "Ah! No, no, you don’t do anything."  I said, "But you don’t know how this is all put together."  He said, "Do you think I’m so stupid I’ve never seen a corset before?"  And I shut up.  And he got me nude and put a blindfold on me, and restrained me on a table, and began whipping me. T his was the first time I had ever been whipped.

But this is about more than being whipped. This is about tantra and why I stayed in the scene. I didn’t know anything about chakras or running energy or anything like that at the time, in the early ’80s.  I’d heard the word chakra, but I didn’t know what it meant.  But as he was whipping me – and he was very sensuous and did a beautiful warm-up – there was a point where it started to get more intense.  As he whipped me, I started to see something like a drawbridge, a trap-door, in my mind’s eye.  I knew that if I took a deep breath, lowered my voice, breathed deeply and pushed my awareness down, the drawbridge would drop down, and I could allow the pain.  I don’t know how I knew this, but I did know it.   And I did that, each time we’d drop down to another level.  It would get really intense, and whoosh, I’d go down through the drawbridge.  I kept doing that until all of a sudden, with the last drawbridge – I don’t know how to say it – my personality disappeared.  I stopped thinking, and there was this enormous energy rushing up through me.

LW: What I was calling a trance.

Mst. C: Very much a trance. Reichian body workers would say that I was "streaming." I felt like I was flying.  A lot of people talk about flying when they’re getting whipped and that was exactly my experience.  Yes, being whipped still hurt.  However, I was also laughing.  I was very high from the endorphins, but more than that: my mind had stopped chattering.  There was this enormous energy running through me, and I just wanted to keep this ongoing forever and ever and ever.  I was so happy I started screaming, "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!"  I couldn’t see, but I heard all the noise in the room stop for about [finger snap] that long, about two heartbeats, and then start up again. Later on he told me that everybody in the room turned around to look at me because I had yelled so loud, they heard me over the music!  I wanted more of that.  I wanted to know how to do that, to take others there as well.  I didn’t realize that it was about energy and about chakras.  Nobody had told me, and there wasn’t any conversation about that at that time.

LW: Talk about chakras.

Mst. C: Chakra means "wheel" in Sanskrit and they are usually described as disks or vortexes of energy that can open and close.  Chakras exist in the metaphysical body, so although I speak about them as they correspond to parts of the physical body, they do not exist there in any sense. There are many systems.  This one of 11 Chakras works best for my purposes.  All 11 Chakras are connected to an energy channel which runs behind and parallel with the spine.  There are seven principal and four secondary chakras.  These chakras can be opened or closed at will.

The first is located at the base of the spine in men, between the ovaries in women, and is the only chakra whose location is sex-differentiated.  It’s called the "root" chakra, is about survival, and is also where the earth’s energy can enter the body.

The second one is located above the genital area, below the navel.  It's focus is sex, emotions, money, relationships, and where and how we connect to society.

The third, located around the navel near the solar plexus, is the chakra of personal power.  It’s also the chakra of divine power and although higher than the navel, is the chakra you focus on when "contemplating your navel."

The fourth, located between the nipples is the "heart" chakra.  It’s about compassion, affinity, and love.  All kinds of love: unconditional love, true self-love, love for another, family, earth, pets, or love for all and everything.

The fifth chakra, located at the base of the throat, is the chakra of communication, both intra- and interpersonal communication.

The sixth, located in the center of the forehead, is the "third eye," and is the chakra of psychic ability, and intuition.

The seventh or "crown" chakra is located at the top of the head.  It concerns "knowingness," or pure intuition.  It’s also the chakra of teaching, learning, and access to one’s higher power, where cosmic energy can enter the body, and is the access to The Divine.

Then there are the four secondary chakras.  Two are located in the palms of the hands.  They come into play whenever we make or do something, and they concern creativity and hands-on healing. The two feet chakras are located in the arches of the feet, and help maintain a person’s connection with the Earth, and help a person be grounded and move forward in life.

LW: All right. What do they have to do with the drawbridge?

Mst. C: Although I didn’t know it at the time, when I visualized each drawbridge, I was going down through each chakra.  Now when I get whipped, I should say that it’s not about punishment, it's about intensity.  I enjoy getting whipped.    Just because I’m dominant doesn’t mean I’m going to deny myself luscious sensation.  Please.  So now when I get whipped, I still visualize that drawbridge.  But now I know what I’m doing.  At each stage I go farther down to a deeper level, into a deeper trance.  And at the bottom one, all my energies are clear, all blocks are gone.  Free energy, soaring through me, for me to release or direct.

Now, as an erotic Priestess I facilitate moving energy: Chi, prana, libido, Life Force Energy; your energy, my energy, our energy, Divine energy.  I enjoy raising my own energy by using nipple clamps on myself.  It’s not about dominance and submission, it’s about energy and intensity. Building it, storing it, directing it.   And when it’s released, I guide people to be conscious about where it’s going – helping them act with knowledge and purpose.  Is the energy for sexual union and joy?  Healing?  World Peace?  What’s it for? [laughter] You know, you and Kat talked about something like this in your workshop, only you called it telepathy.  Do you remember that?

LW: Yes, of course I do.

Mst. C.: Of course you do. [laughing] That’s exactly what I think you were talking about: that intimate, erotic energy connection where something happens.  You haven’t said anything about chakras, all you’ve done is spark someone, but there’s a spark that goes from one human being to another.  According to most sources, "tantra" in Sanskrit means "union." Union with self, union with other(s), union with The Divine.  The chakras are open and the blocks to intimacy are gone.

But this is not guaranteed.  Energy has to be flowing before there’s that spark.  I’ve played with some people when there’s not been any spark.  I won’t let anybody whip me if I don’t feel we’ll have
that connection.  But as a professional I see all manner of people come through my door, and I can teach them about breathing, but some people are not open to this sort of connection.  It’s just not what they want to do, and that’s their right.

LW: Well, it’s perhaps not part of their belief system.

Mst. C: Belief system?  Oh no.  I don’t talk about chakras.   My way is more experiential than didactic.  And I have seen this work when people emphatically didn’t believe in it.  I have a friend who’s an atheist, who also does not believe in chakras or energy or anything else metaphysical. But when I whip him he oozes energy.  He says he just has a good personality. [laughing] Okay. Whatever.

LW: I find it fascinating that as you described the drawbridge or chakras you talk about a journey down.  This is the opposite direction from what the "white light" types talk about.  They talk about going up through the chakras.

Mst. C: Oh, Energy goes both ways.  I like to move my energy down for one reason and up for another.  When you give a massage, if you start at the feet and move to the head, you’ll wake someone up.  If you start at the head and move to the feet, you’ll put them to sleep. So if I want to energize myself, I run my energy upward.   If I want to relax, I run it down.

LW: If you think of S/M energies as being dark, animal energies then could you imagine the movement down through the chakras as a movement toward animal and away from the spiritual?

Mst. C: Oh yes, but you see, I think animals are very spiritual.  They are part of Nature.  I think they’re much more spiritual than human beings.   They’re fully in touch with Spirit.

LW: So down is a movement towards the spiritual as well.

Mst. C: Yes. Towards Mother Earth.  Besides, I don’t think there’s anything bad about the dark side.  I embrace the dark side.  I think that when you reject the dark side, you don’t ever get rid of it.  You just shove it under the rug from where it comes up in the middle of the night or it appears when you least want it to and runs your life.

LW: You lose control.

Mst. C: You lose control.  You don’t voluntarily give it up as in D/S or S/M , you lose it.  You say the wrong thing at the wrong time because there’s this thing that you haven’t dealt with, because you say, "Oh, that’s not me.   That’s bad.  That’s not a part of me."  And you shove it over there.  But if you don’t ever deal with it, it’ll come up and ruin your life, you’ll really lose control, and you’ll make an idiot of yourself.   Whereas if you embrace it, you can say, "Okay, I like being a bully.   Where can I find a safe, conscious, consensual place for me to be a bully?   Where I can find someone who wants to be a victim, find someone who really enjoys giving up control and power, who really enjoys suffering, rather than being unconscious and going out and being a Ted Bundy."  That’s healthy to me.  I believe that ignoring one’s dark side is very unhealthy. You probably know that I deal in "personas."  And I teach about personas.  The many sides of ourselves, dark and light.

LW: Teach us about personas now for a moment.

Mst. C: Personas are not roles that one tries on, like a dress.  Rather they are parts of ourselves. You’ve heard of the inner child John Bradshaw made so popular?   If one can have an inner child, why not an inner woman if you’re a man?   Why not have an inner slave?  An inner victim?  An inner tyrant?  An inner animal?

LW: Why not have an inner prick tease?

Mst. C: Why not? [laughing] The power of being a prick tease served me very well.   I made a career out of that power on stage as a stripper for twelve years.   But I learned that it was a fleeting power, a power I outgrew.  Youth and beauty fade.  And the power of being an attractive woman is enormous and thus deceptive to its user.  I mean, we are visual creatures, right?  Did you know that the eye heals faster than any other organ in your body?  I learned this because I had eye surgery.  But I thought that was very interesting.  That’s how important our eyes are.  That’s how important visual information is.

LW: Especially to men, sexually.

Mst. C: I would say that sexually most men don’t care about words.  Give them images and they’ll be happy.  This is a generalization, of course, but does that mean a woman must be beautiful to have sexual power?  Does that mean that every woman who isn’t beautiful has no power?  I can’t buy that.  Does that mean that a woman in a wheelchair has no power?  Or that an older woman has no sexual power?  Does that mean that an average-looking woman who isn’t a sex worker has no power?  No, she has power.

LW: Her power can be fully recognized in the S/M community where there is a different awareness of the nature of erotic energy and power.

Mst. C: We do know something about that.  When I went into the S/M community I was amazed to see that there were a number of women who did not look like Sharon Stone and they had lots of play partners.  I was very intrigued.  I had learned something when I started work as a phone dominant.  The power of the voice.  The power of the mind.  And here I was seeing this power in many woman!

LW: You were talking about personas.

Mst. C: This concerns personas because the process of discovering and developing a persona is something I’ve experienced first hand.  As a stripper my name was Holiday O’Hara.  Holiday had the power of a prick-tease down pat, but she wasn’t comfortable with S/M, with deliberately administering pain.  I did some soul searching and realized my developing sexually dominant self needed a new name, a new persona.  I kept Holiday as my last name (I wasn’t about to get rid of her power!) and chose Sybil as my first name, after the Greek oracles, the Sibyls; the woman Sybil with sixteen different personalities; and the witch/priestess Sybil Leek.  She is who now plays, writes, and teaches in the S/M community and elsewhere.  As a professional dominant I decided on the name Cybelle for two reasons.  One, it has a similar sound to Sybil, and two, it acknowledges the ancient Magna Mater Hittite Goddess Cybele, whose priests wore female clothing and castrated themselves in her honor.  She seemed a fitting role model if I was going to create a Temple for Female Domination.

But, believe it or not, I'm not one of those dominants that likes to terrorize you.   Currently, part of the work I do is to make it safe for you. to bring out the secret, hidden part of you.  What is sexy for me, is to make you feel so safe that you’re willing to do something that scares you.  That I like.  For example, if you have a fear of being pierced, but you trust me and you want to surrender to me so much that you’re willing to let me pierce you, that’s sexy.  That’s intimate. And that’s power.  And  it’s also about trust.  I think there’s an enormous amount of power in being so safe that somebody will trust you to do something they’re scared shitless of.  This also has to do with personas, in that the task for one of my personas is to make you feel that safe.  There’s part of me that really does tap into mother energy, not just mommy energy like with adult babies, but with the great sacred mother energy that makes it so safe for you to do whatever it is you want to do.  To bring out the dark side, to bring out the victim, for example.

LW: The mommy and the babies, infantilism, has been a part of your practice as well.   Could you talk about that for a minute?

Mst. C: I enjoy playing along the entire continuum of Age Play, from adult babies to naughty school boys.  But infantilism is a specialty all its own.  Before I explored phone domination I didn’t know that I had an interest in infantilism.   I’m a woman who does not fantasize, so role-play did not come automatically to me.  I don’t have any sexual fantasies, I never did.  When I have sex or masturbate, it’s about sensation and what’s happening between me and my partner, or me and me.  If I fantasize, it takes me away from that experience, and I lose it.  So I’d never had a fantasy about being a mommy.  But when I was doing phone sex in the early ’80s, somebody asked me to be a mommy and I was enormously turned on.  I thought, "I can do this.  This is easy for me and this is fun."  I’ve never had a child and yet I have all this nurturing energy.  I used to be very sad when I went to baby department stores, because it was hard for me to see the babies.  Then all of a sudden I had an outlet for all this nurturing energy.  There’s also something really wild about taking an adult, putting him in diapers and telling him to wet and mess.  It’s also a safe way to play with all those fluids that you’re not supposed to play with.  All those icky body fluids are not icky to me.  I grew up partly on a farm so I’m shit positive. [laughing] All those cow plops.

Most of the babies are very sweet but they are not that submissive, of course, any more than real babies are submissive.  They may be passive, they may be vulnerable, but they’re not that submissive. They’re do-me queens.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s important for us to have a clear understanding.   Sometimes I have to teach babies that I’m not a submissive mommy! And they learn.  What I like best about working with infantilists is that it is a place for nurturing. There are times, I kid you not, when I’m holding and nurturing an adult and we enter into a nurturing trance, where we are both nurtured.  I become a channel for unconditional love.  It’s a very gentle, heartfelt place where the two of us are blissed out.  What is also interesting and very
different is when it’s not so pure; when a baby wants me to be a Nazi mommy.   That pushes a lot of buttons.  Tie me up, nurture me, and torture me at the same time.

LW: There’s where S/M and infantilism come together?

Mst. C: Well, spanking is one thing, real torture is another.  This is not that common but it does occur.  By the way, I don’t spank babies when they mess their diapers, because I think babies are supposed to mess their diapers.  I’m not about to reinforce shame for your trip!  I spank them when they don’t mess them when I want them to [laughter].  I do enjoy golden showers, so it’s fun to pee on baby sometimes.  Or pee in their diapers before putting them on the baby [laughing].   This is really about bringing up to the surface the "other," the taboo.   Men especially are told don’t cry, don’t be weak, don’t be vulnerable.  It is forbidden for an adult to seem to be fragile.  It’s like working with male cross-dressers.  A man is not supposed to enjoy wearing a pink
frilly dress.

LW: You work with cross-dressers also?

Mst. C: Yes, and again it can be bringing out another persona, the inner woman.   Some crossdressers are only interested in panties or being a decorated sex object while others enjoy a full transformation.  I like to find out what kind of woman you are.  Are you the girl next door?  Are you a teenager?  Are you a virgin?   Are you a slut?  Are you a teenage virgin slut?  Sometimes I get PTA matrons, too, very ladylike.  What does this woman or girl want to express?  I rarely give them a feminine name.  If they don’t know what their feminine name is I ask them to look to literature, to history, to entertainment, to movies and TV, to mythology and to see what kind of women appeal to them so they can find their own name.  For example, I know one cross-dresser who decided to be called Athena after the Goddess of wisdom because he believed that his inner woman was very wise, and she knew more about him than he did.  I know one person who chose the name Diane, because he felt that Diane Sawyer was beautiful and strong.  And I know one person who wanted to be Cindy, for Cindy Crawford.
[laughter] We get a lot of Cindys and Christys. But that’s all right. Cindy Crawford’s not bad.

LW: You could do a lot worse.

Mst. C: Quite often what is readily identifiable is not the name but the image: high-fashion model, little girl, fetish slut, etc. I’ve many costumes, from fashion to fantasy to fetish, plus heels, wigs, make-up and accessories.  When we can see who we are on the outside we can then begin to see who we are on the inside.

LW: Clothes make the woman?

Mst. C: No, but if she’s there they can help bring her out.

LW: You mentioned earlier that you’ve been teaching and counseling more.

Mst. C: Yes.  I have been a California Certified Safe Sex Educator since 1988, and a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist since 1997.  As a sexuality educator my specialty is teaching about various kinds of alternative/radical sexuality.  I offer consultations, demonstrations, private lessons, presentations, and playshops in SM, D/s, relationship, gender exploration, Tantra & Energy Exchange, age play, and using trance and hypnosis in scenes.  I’m available to individuals, couples, and small groups of all orientations, genders, and levels of experience.

Hands-on SM technique instruction sessions are available without a play partner, as well as for couples who wish to learn on someone else.  Alone in my dungeon, or with one of my trained male or female submissives/switches, I teach spanking, whipping, and other flagellation skills, the use of clips and clamps, and bondage methods.  I do slave training including teaching Tops how to give orders and what to do when those orders are not carried out – a spanking is not always the most productive response!

I offer male cross-dressers a full curriculum regarding femininity through Sybil Holiday’s FemAcademy: Training in the Feminine Arts.  These classes are one-on-one, non-sexual, and concern make-up and appearance, wardrobe selection, wigs, hair, nail, and skin care, appearance, movement and mannerisms, female etiquette, female sexuality, female politics, and female spirituality. Here I see myself as a cross between a big sister and a theatre coach.  I also offer hypnosis to develop the inner woman, self-esteem, and self-image.

As a hypnotherapist I specialize in four areas: Sexuality, Inner Family Process, Behavior Management, and Spiritual Counseling.  I work with sexual concerns such as orgasm control, performance anxiety, and issues of abuse.  The Inner Family process is similar to getting to know your inner child, except we’ve found that there can be many more "inner personas" than just the child, and they can be any age or gender.   The inner guide, critic, saboteur, and protector are just a few of the personas people have discovered. Identifying and getting to know them can be a treasure trove of information and healing.  Behavior management is just what it sounds
like: learning to manage an unwanted behavior, whether that be smoking or a phobia.   Spiritual counseling can take the form of a conversation about life’s process regarding grief, loss, death and dying, or life and living.  Or it might be an exploration of a past or future life, a shamanic journey, or an inquiry into your soul or life’s purpose.

Although I’ve trained quite a few professional dominant women, many of my female clients are interested in exploring D/s and SM only in their private lives.  They wish to learn how to be real sexually dominant women, not women who just act dominant in order to fulfill their partners’ fantasies.  They have found that pretending to be dominant – acting dominant instead of being dominant – can be frustrating and unfulfilling for both people.

As a sadistic dominant – not the other way around – I love slave training and teaching couples how to make it work: how to turn the fantasy of a 24/7 (24 hours a day, seven days a week) Mistress/slave relationship into reality; how to have a full life with children, two jobs, parents, and the rest, and still be a slave or a Mistress/Master; how to be "in role" and still go to the PTA meeting, for example [laughing].  In other words, I teach how to maintain erotic control in the face of "real life."

LW: Tell me about erotic control.  Paint a picture.

Mst. C: When my slave, my life’s partner, initially stayed over at my house for a weekend we played erotically throughout the first entire day.  I was dressed, he was nude most of the time, and of course he had a hard-on that came and went throughout the day and evening.  When it came time to go to bed that night he knew what was going to happen: When a man and woman go to bed at the end of a day they have sex, and he was going to cooome!  And he was wrooong! [laughter] We had sex.  I did some CBT (cock and ball torture).  He ate my pussy. [laughter]  I came several times, put him in chains, and said, "Good niiight."  And the next day we cleaned house. [laughter] We had a great time.  That’s the Royal We.

LW: The Royal We!

Mst. C: Well, I’m somewhat of a Queen Mother, you see.  And "we" did clean house.  He cleaned, and I told him what to do.  And erotically teased him throughout the day. [laughter]  And then the next night, he thought he would come for sure.  Well, I teased and tormented him, he ate my pussy, and … good night.   That happened the third night, too, and then I sent him home with a hard-on.   He learned that just because he had done housework for me he wasn’t automatically
entitled to come.

Now, I wasn’t doing this to be capricious or mean.  He said at the end of three days he would have done anything for me, and he was certainly very attentive and solicitous.  He was also enjoying being in a highly aroused state all the time, as when you don’t come as often as the body wants, one of the results can be that you wind up being horny all the time in this very delicious erotic trance.  People don’t really need to come as often as the body wants.   It’s not a biological necessity – you won’t die or explode, I promise!  I also don’t come as often as my body wants, because I like to store my energy that way, too.  I mean, there were many times during that day when he and I were doing housework when I could have come.  And as I have learned to orgasm without touching myself – a tantric technique – it is very easy for me to do so any time, any place.  But I find it much more satisfying to direct my energy in any of a number of different ways for various purposes.  These are only two of the many excellent tools a sexually dominant woman can use to consensually control her man.

There is much to explore in the world of sexuality that we are now just learning or rediscovering: multiple male orgasms, tantric sex, personas, gender play, age play, D/s and SM are just for starters.  If society had its way, we’d all be John Wayne and Doris Day – how boring!  But we’re not, and it can be hard on us when we pretend we are.  We all have sexual secrets.  When I worked in nightclubs as a stripper, I used to sit with the men in the audience after my sets and talk with them. They all had their secrets.  Sometimes they were very simple secrets, like "I want oral sex" or "I want to have sex with two women at once," but there was always something hidden.  Now the secrets I hear are more forbidden and more complex but it is all the same.  What I really liked doing back then, and like doing now even more, is providing a safe, knowledgeable place for people to experience and express all of their sexual selves and secrets.  Simply giving them permission can be very healing and lots of fun!   That’s what I’m about.

You asked me earlier what tools I now find most important.  I’d like to amend my answer.  The tools I now find most important are my mind, my voice, my hands ... and my heart.

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Different Loving Interview, 1991

This interview was taken from the Power chapter of Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission. It was written in 1991.

S/M has affected and expanded my life in a very positive manner.  I'm a convert to D&S
and S/M from being a bisexual, multi-orgasmic, fun-loving gal who thought S/M was sick.
In the late 70's I had a successful career as a burlesque artist.  It was a very different
business then.  The idea was to entertain--not to get people off, but to tease.   Men brought
their wives, it was quite erotic and fun.  I was sexually sophisticated but misinformed
about S/M: all I knew about it came from bad pornography.

But then in 1979 a new roommate moved in with me.  I found her extremely domineering and bossy, and when she told me she was getting into S/M, I thought, "No wonder she's so aggressive--she's into that sick stuff of abusing and humiliating people!"  As I said, all I knew about S/M was from inaccurate pornography: the dominant woman is a man-hating bitch and the submissive man has no self-esteem, never stops crawling on the floor like a worm.  I love men and didn't understand that submission is a consensual giving up of power.   My objections to S/M were not political; they were on a purely heart-felt basis.

Then my roommate joined the Society of Janus.  After only two meetings she said, "I'm
sorry for being non-consensually dominant.  I only want to do power games in the
bedroom, and then with people who want to do them with me.  S/M is not what you think
it is."  I was amazed by the change in her and became intrigued because if something
was happening sexually that was good that I didn't know about, well...where do I sign
up?  I went to a Janus orientation and was astonished: people were committed to
talking about the forbidden and about safety.   They were working on communicating,
on negotiating.  I'm an EST graduate, and I've been in a lot of groups, but I had never
seen this level of conversation.  Most people don't even talk about straight sex!

The people at Janus were talking about what worked and what didn't and why, and
how to negotiate what you want and don't want when you do S/M.  I was fascinated by
the level of honesty.  Janus has a rule which is that if you don't have an interest in S/M,
you're not allowed to join.  This keeps out the people who are just curious, journalists,
and therapists who want to study us like bugs under a microscope.

I wanted to join so I was very frank.  I said, "This is all new to me and my erotic interests are mainly costume, sexual theatre, and masturbation.  I enjoy sex with people, and I'm very multi-orgasmic when I masturbate. I don't know if I qualify, but I'm seriously interested in joining."   They decided that my interest in costume and sexual theatre could be considered a fetish, and they felt I would be a good addition.

I appreciated that.  I attended almost every program they had because I quickly realized that I didn't know anything.  I was full of misinformation.  I went to programs on piercing, bondage, sensory deprivation, gender, fetishes, whipping, you name it.  I didn't know where I fit in, but it was erotic, informative, and fun.  I didn't know if I was a top, bottom, switch, sideways, whatever!  I don't fantasize when I have sex or when I masturbate.   I never have.  I'm very much into what I see and hear and smell and feel and taste.  So, when a young man approached me at a Janus meeting and said, "I'd like to be at your service, anything you want,"  I wasn't able to tell him a thing, I didn't have any kinky fantasies to put into practice.  I didn't know how to get the dynamic started.  But I kept going to meetings, I kept talking to people, and I kept listening and asking questions.

I couldn't seem to find my niche, yet I knew that there was a higher drama than what I was experiencing.  One reason I was into masturbation is that no matter how much I loved somebody, after a while, the sex was predictable.  My mind would wander. I thought, "Why can't I stay focused? Am I afraid of intimacy?"  The truth is that I need high drama, or intensity.  After the first flush of infatuation wears off, the drama's gone.  In
S/M this drama can be very intimate and very personal; it's not phony drama.  It's also difficult to let the mind wander if you're truly involved in a D&S or S/M scene.   More than just the genitals are involved.  When the purpose of the interaction is not just orgasm but another kind of release as well, one moves to a deeper level of relationship that is more sophisticated and requires more thought, communication, and safety awareness.

In 1983, I went to work for a phone sex company.  Within 2 weeks, my dominant persona emerged.  Boom! I think prior to that time I'd been afraid to take power.  I remember that when I was nine--my parents were separated when I was four--my mother and I had a big argument I won and she was reduced to a helpless, hysterical quivering pile of tears.  I had this enormous rush of power like, "TA DA!! I'm in charge!" followed by my hysteria, because, if at 9 years old I was in charge, we were in big trouble!  So later in life it was hard for me to start scenes in person because I was scared about what was going to happen next. 

But on the phone, it's so distant; and most of the people I was dealing with at the time didn't really want to submit.  They wanted somebody to play out a fantasy.  The fantasy aspect made it safe for me to act the role and ease my way into true dominance.  Pretty quickly pretending to be dominant became boring and a little frustrating.  I began to ask the client if he would be willing to try genuinely being dominated over the phone.

Some agreed and I started to explore the actual world of D&S.  This has never been boring, professionally or personally.   I've found it to be challenging, rewarding and a true path of self-awareness.

Once I started truly playing with power in an erotic context I became aware of its uses and abuses in the rest of the world.  I became a better communicator and negotiator--not only did I know about power games, I had played them out in a safe, fun, erotic way.

I went to work as a mistress-in-training for a professional mistress in late 1983.  I was submissive to her and--under her instruction--dominant over the clients.  I learned how to start a scene, what to do in the middle, and how to wrap it up.  I found a framework upon which to hang my own interests.  After a few months I put an ad in the local adult paper.

In 1985 my roommate moved out so that we could turn her bedroom into a dungeon, and she and I began working together.  I opened my own place and I created it mostly by slave labor.  I got a phone call from a young man who was a painter and plasterer interested in exploring BDSM.  We had a satisfying relationship on both sides, and he replastered and repainted my entire apartment.

I'm very involved in the S/M community in San Francisco now.  I teach in it, I play in it, most of my friends are S/M people: not all, but most.  I can be all of who I am in that world.

When I go into a community that is not S/M-positive, sometimes I just tell them that I'm a sex educator.  I can be who I am, but not completely, because there's a part of me that may not be fully respected and accepted in that world.  In my community I feel loved and accepted.  When I got sick and was hospitalized with a herniated disc, all my money went towards paying bills.  But the community raised money for me, did my shopping, cleaned my house; people came and bathed me at the hospital.  Six months later people still called, asking, "What can I do?"  I have an experience of being part of a tribe that appreciates its elders--I mean, I'm not that old, but I'm appreciated for what I know, what I give, and how I learn and teach.

Professionally I specialize in gender play, infantilism, and slave training with a pleasure/pain dynamic.  Each situation has different emotional, physical, psychological, sexual, and spiritual intents.  My erotic interests are extensive and varied both privately and professionally.  This is important professionally because unless you're remarkably skilled it's difficult to make a living with only one interest, such as bondage or S/M.   So I
do a wide range of activities including fetishism, such as shoe/boot/foot worship, or various psychodrama scenarios.

I don't do anything illegal.  I don't do degradation scenes.  That's a limit I have.  I have a hard time both privately and professionally doing something that I believe could encourage or reinforce low self-esteem.  For me humiliation and degradation are two very different activities on a large continuum, starting with mild embarrassment and ending with extreme self-abasement and degradation.  In the middle could fall teasing,
mockery, humiliation, and the stripping away of false pride.  I believe it's possible to do degradation scenes safely but that it's very tricky and requires follow-up aftercare by the top.

I don't do anything unsafe in terms of S/M or health.  There's no oral sex, anal sex, intercourse, or masturbation by me for legal reasons.  The second reason I don't do anything directly sexual is that I like keeping something for my life partner.  As a sex worker, I feel it's very important to have activities that are only for my personal relationships.  I have an agreement with my life partner that neither one of us will engage in any directly sexual activities outside our relationship without first discussing them. He is not always submissive!  In the everyday world he's dominant and he also has dominant erotic fantasies.  We both are free to play D&S and S/M games with other people, always respecting each other's time and previous agreements.

I interview by phone clients who respond to my ads.  I ask what prior experience they've had, who they have seen before, how long they have been playing and how often they play, and other questions.  Then I ask if he has any questions and I give him some information.

I tell him what I won't do, I let him know that I will take his fantasy and do it my way, respecting his limits.  Professional dominance is a service occupation, but I am not  a submissive Mistress!  The client is paying for my time and skill, not for me to do exactly what he says.  It's inherent that if a person wishes to be really submissive I not do everything he asks for exactly in the way he wants, so that he has a true experience of not being in charge.   If we seem to be compatible we make an appointment.

When we meet we cover an extensive array of health questions.  I don't want somebody to have an asthma attack in my playroom and not know where his inhaler is!  This is also the time for last minute questions and information.  After the scene has started is not the time for negotiation!

Most of my clients are not from the Leather Community although some have joined since I told them about the Society of Janus.  I also run an S/M education and counseling ad; that clientele is more mixed.  New dominant women enjoy having an S/M coach/womanfriend they can confide in who will guide them.  Since 1983, I've only seen four women professionally for BDSM scenes.  I believe that's because women do not think of procuring an erotic encounter.  Two women wanted adult baby experiences.   One woman wanted a heavy whipping in a controlled setting and without a close committed relationship.   The fourth woman wanted to be a housemaid.

One group of clients I see are people who are interested in giving up power in a manner that is not competitive or rebellious.  I do a lot of slave training and mental control. Usually such a person is someone who is in control a great deal in his life.  He is looking for a place to relax and safely put all his power.  Mental control alone is not always sufficient.  Pain can be an aphrodisiac, but it also can be a very powerful
reminder to someone that he is right here right now and not in charge.  It's difficult to let your mind wander when your body is experiencing a very intense physical sensation. I use some bondage so that people have the experience of being unable to get away, or so that their bodies are altered in some manner.  It's an experience that is separate from the rest of their lives.  It's an experiential process not an analytical one.

Being told how to stand, sit, kneel, lie, where to look, how to address me, how to serve me food or drink, how to be there just for me, can be very freeing.  To put someone else's desires ahead of one's own, to receive pleasure solely from pleasing someone else can be very good for the soul.  I've heard slaves say that they feel most free inside when they're enslaved.  When you affect the body--whether with ropes, clothes, sensation, diapers, or other control--you affect the mind.

The intense sensation of S/M is a tool to access both the energy of the body and the bottom's will.  There's a phenomenon called sensory-transference in which the more you're aroused, the more stimuli that would otherwise seem painful begin to seem pleasurable.

For example, when you scratch your fingernails down your partner's back at the beginning of the sex act, it's too intense.  But at the height of passion it fits right in. This continues to happen along the pain-pleasure continuum: the more you're turned on, the more intense sensation feels pleasurable, until extreme sensations can become ecstasy.  When squeezing a nipple, I can feel the energy in the person's body.   Once he or she starts releasing energy, I can absorb it.  Then I feed it back and the person gives it
back to me.  As this energy cycle builds it becomes deeply erotic.

There are many games and many different styles.  What's a turn-on for me may be a turn-off for another dominant and vice-versa.  One of the most exciting experiences for me both professionally and in my private life, is to be with someone who wants to please, serve and submit.  Resistance games are fun but I don't find it erotic to have my power repeatedly challenged.  My friend does; she works perfectly with this dynamic and
so I refer those clients to her.  I like to lead someone down an intense road of submission, service, and S/M.  I'm strict and sadistic, yet gentle and compassionate.   I want a person to get outside of himself and his desires, needs, and especially his ego.   Pain and bondage are means to this end.  I love to look at complicated bondage but it seems to me that the person usually goes on an inner journey.  This is a profound journey but I'm not this type of guide.

I'm a Neo-Pagan Goddess worshipper with Buddhist leanings, and I believe that in every human being there is a spiritual source.  Some people call it a higher power; for me it's the higher power within and without.  I like to be worshipped and adored, but I'm clear that it's not the ego-inflated human but a greater power within that's being adored.  There's a woman named Starhawk who wrote a book called Dreaming the Dark.  She's a feminist Pagan witch. She talks about power from within as opposed to power over.

It is the exchange of power and energy that's important to me, not whether I'm top or bottom.  I'm top most of the time because that's the way my sexuality is wired, not because I think it's better.  The intensity and intimacy of this exchange, whether it be the endorphin rush of an S/M scene or the emotional involvement of a D&S scene, are what have kept me participating.  The personal growth, both intellectually and spiritually, is what has me so committed to this lifestyle.

I don't think S/M folk are better than others.  We're different.  Some people just don't have the desire to be as sexually intense as S/M people.  And there can be unhealthy S/M.   I think we have a great deal to work out, but I think we can model some behavior for other people.  What I love about the Leather Community is that it's more willing than most to talk about difficult issues and to push its own limits.  I think people should take the opportunity to question their beliefs; to ask where their information comes from and not to take everything that we've been taught at face value.  S/M can encourage you to think for yourself.  That's one of the reasons I'm passionately involved in it.  I don't find this level of dialogue about power, control, intensity, negotiation, spirituality, psychology, and sexuality anywhere else.

415-863-7326

My regular business days and hours are Monday through Thursday from 12:00 noon to 7:00pm PST, and I do see clients on Friday by special arrangement. 

The best time to call for information or to schedule an appointment is Monday through Thursday from 12:00 noon to 1:30pm. 

My first appointment starts at 1:00pm, my last ends at 7:00pm, and schedule permitting, I do answer the phone in-between appointments so you can try till about 6:30pm. 

Although I do enjoy email my schedule precludes extensive correspondence. 

A phone call is an absolute necessity and the next step if you wish to make an appointment.