THIS ENTRY WAS POSTED ON August 27, 2024 BY Lucy Khan.
This piece is excerpted from ProMomme: A Sex Workers’ Guide to Parenting, which features essays, poems, interviews, and art by sixteen parents and sex workers to reveal how their dual roles as “providers” overlap in complex ways. ProMomme was created in collaboration with Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA) and can be purchased via publisher websites Sming Sming Books and Cash Machine.
While some BDSM professionals bring their private pleasures into the paid arena, my trajectory was the reverse. My on-the-job training as a Pro-Domme developed my interest in the body’s functions, malfunctions, and misuses into a full-blown appreciation of the wild diversity of desire. Not only does every part of the body have the potential to be sexualized, but even the materials that cover our fleshy folds, nooks, and crannies have cult followings. The scent of leather, the smoothness of latex, the peek of a white ankle sock out the top of a stinky tennis shoe–each can exert a magnetic pull on those attuned to their erotic potential.
I describe this period of BDSM discovery as my “second puberty.” The concepts I developed during adolescence of what was sexy or sexual broadened, and the libido that had been anchored to my privates leached into my bloodstream, spread throughout my body, and crossed the blood-brain barrier. With synapses aroused and senses heightened, I saw my environment cast in a different light. From the items that stocked the aisles of Home Depot, to white wine on a restaurant's menu, everyday features of life became triggers for play.
Just as one moves through puberty in a certain number of years, so did I through my second puberty. Gradually, I stopped giggling with my civilian friends over new fetishes I encountered. Without consciously knowing it, kinky dynamics became integrated into how I experienced my own sexuality. I drank the Kool-aid, and I liked the taste. I met my husband through the scene, and we have two small children together who are 3 years old and 6 months old as of this writing. To say I became disoriented when our first child was born is an understatement. The feeling was like falling up a spiral staircase–I had traveled a long distance over the last 13 years only to realize that I had been orbiting the vanilla world all along.
Suddenly, I was a pleb in the empire of Mainstream. I attended new mom meet-ups, where there was much lamenting about the relentless monotony of our days. My experiences were not unique, I was not special, and none of this was out of the ordinary. From a Goddess to be worshiped and pampered during pregnancy, I was demoted to a grunt, toiling in the trenches after the boy was born. I realized I have a master now.
While my tiny master did not know what he wanted, he nonetheless wanted very strongly. I felt crazed and clueless, and my partner’s urge to “Be confident!” did not, unsurprisingly, increase my confidence. Feeling enslaved by my own choice to become a parent, I reminded myself: This is what you wanted, this is what you wanted, this is what you wanted. When I was trying to get pregnant, I remember thinking that I could not possibly go on the rest of my life dealing with just me. There was an urge to level up/blow it up–and I realized that this desire for ego death is something I have in common with many of my subs. Embodying the submissive is one way to counteract the oppression of one’s own reign. In courting humiliation, dehumanization, and pain among other things–my subs probe the question, How much can I take? But I think what they’re really asking is, Who (or what) can I be? Having connected these dots from within the dungeon wall, I consciously decided to unleash my switchy side. I submit.
As I surrendered to parenthood, infant became baby, became toddler. The memories of the dark, desperate struggles of postpartum faded. In time, I was able to “be confident!” I recently began seeing subs again, and moving back and forth between my roles as Domme and Mom has allowed me to see how they relate to and inform one another. While life with 2 kids is like working an understaffed party where no slaves want to interact with each other, I now see how my kinky past has prepared me for my current 24/7 TPE lifestyle! From this snapshot in time, here are 5 lessons I learned as a Pro-Domme that apply to my life as a toddler mom.
Don’t pooh-pooh the doo doo
Most Dommes I know are clean freaks. We have at least 3 different cleaning solutions on rotation in our dungeons, and it’s no wonder because we deal with real dirty shit (no pun intended). No matter how well a play partner prepares, accidents happen when you participate in ass-letics, it’s just part of the playing field! Depending on the scene, sometimes we get to shame the dirty slut in its mess, but most of the time, it’s our job to nonchalantly sweep the dirt between the puppy pad like a magician, disappearing a dove with a flick of the wrist.
In these scenes, bodily viscera is discretely ushered away like a party crasher. In other scenes, what the body oozes is the guest of honor! Golden showers, brown showers, ruby showers, Roman showers, crystal showers, bukkake scenes, and ABDL fetishists have made the presence of our “grossest” fluids just another part of the workday. After purposely conjuring adult-sized loads for shits and giggles, I laugh in the face of baby turds and bed wettings. With tight cleaning protocols for bodily products, and a backstock of puppy pads already in place, I rarely experience panic when encountering unexpected blowouts and spitups. Inspired by my playmates’ eager acceptance of my bodily products, My puckered lips have sucked the snot straight out of my baby’s nostrils. Even if this matter-of-fact attitude isn’t accessible to you, dear reader, I would argue that disgust is a part of the human experience worthy of your curiosity.
Progress the scene naturally
When I first began my career in BDSM, the head Mistress commented on my time management skills, impressed that clients who paid for a 60-minute session indeed came out of the room and into the bathroom close to the hour mark. Inside the room, I puzzled over how I was supposed to fill the entire hour (which at that time seemed like an eternity) with a single activity, or conversely, how I was supposed to incorporate such distinct activities into a single cohesive scene. When being paid to create an experience, it’s shoddy craftsmanship to use segments of time to progress from one activity to the next: “OK that’s 15 minutes of caning, time to move on to the worship my feet section of the session now!”, “Oh, five minutes left? Ok, it’s time to shoot it off, wrap it up, and get out of here–bye!” This ain’t no HIIT class, or physical education where the clock delineates exertion and rest. No. One has to create a narrative arc that progresses things in a way that does not denote “clock watching”. A pejorative used by hobbyists, a “clockwatcher” is perceived to be doing just that, watching the clock instead of being consumed by the very throes of eroticism and passion that we are paid to conjure. To be a good top-for-hire is to be present in the interpersonal while preserving a meta-awareness of where we came from and where we are going. When cajoling toddlers to cooperate with the day's schedule, a hurried approach of “we’re going to be late!” never works. Similar to coaxing a client off the bondage bed and into the glory hole, parenting a toddler requires setting the scene early. You start by talking about what is going to happen, and how they will feel when it does happen. You make it seem like their idea, and when protests emerge, you must resist the urge to take it at face value. My 3-year-old goes from no to yes to back again within 60 seconds, so it behooves me to have a delayed response. I don’t even register the “no” at first, I maintain forward momentum and check in again in a few minutes. More times than not, they do a 180. For example:
“Do you want to eat this _____?” “No!” *silent gaze* or *slowly turn away and do something else*“I want _______!” “Oh, you want_____?”“YES! I want it!”“Are you sure?”“YES, GIVE ME _____ NOW!”
Tada, and there you have it!
Never take it personally
Clients approach me as a Pro-Domme because I fit a fetishized archetype or because I possess some quality that hits a tender spot in their personal history. Meeting through online ads, there is nothing special about “me” beyond the boxes I can tick for them. Even when I inhabit the role of a Goddess, it is Me–not me–who is the object of their devotion. It is this boundary between fantasy and reality that facilitates the erotic charge between us—my opacity, my unknowableness, keeps them coming back. But sometimes they don’t come back. Sometimes you have a beautiful scene, an electric connection, and the client disappears into the ether. But this too is not personal. Maybe they moved or got in a monogamous relationship, or lost their job, or maybe this was something they just wanted to try once. In any case, it has little to do with me. Similarly, as a visibly pregnant person, people approached me to comment on my belly and the purported sex of the baby within it. While the attention flowed my way, my body was just a trigger for their own emotions and memories.
Once baby was born, it became even less personal. Breastfeeding is often represented in idyllic, bonding-with-baby-under-golden-light portrayals. The reality I walked into had more of a new-heifer-at-the-dairy-farm-struggling-to-meet-her-quota vibes. In baby’s first 90 days, I was breastfeeding (or trying to) for an average of 8 hours a day. My breasts were a public utility, something that just functioned for the greater good. I am but a humble drinking fountain at the local playground–sometimes I work, sometimes I don’t! I found this objectification–this depersonalization–strangely comforting. Baby crying? Baby not eating? Baby is going through something. It means nothing about me because there was no me-ness at stake.
Mama, mommy, mom, mother, whatever you call it, it’s a heavily scrutinized role. If you identify with it too closely, you'll begin to ask, Am I a good mom, or a bad mom? Am I nurturing my kids, or screwing them up? The suggestion that actually, none of this is about me brought grief at first, but closely after came relief. These days, my toddler’s favorite refrain is “No!” or more specifically “No, mama!” while extending a stiff arm, warding me off. In these moments, I can’t help but laugh at myself how I laugh at clients in scene, when I make them dance in full sissy gear to Britney Spears. To rear a toddler is to be a clown subject to constant berating, emphatic rejection, and public embarrassment. But I keep coming back because the cracks they put in my ego are what allow me to expand.
Use words that cast spells
They tell new parents to talk to the baby. Just narrate what you’re doing out loud! Initially, this felt unnatural until I realized I already do this with clients–just around very different activities. In the dungeon, one hard-earned skill I developed was the ability to monologue on the fly. This type of impromptu narration reinforces the power dynamic of me as Goddess speaking the world into being. By simply describing what I’m doing, what they’re doing, where we’re doing it, and what it means to do it, my words become actors that fill the space with drama. When I run the dirty talk on loop, I call it my “porno motormouth” and it can rev the sub up into a kind of sexual frenzy. This works especially well when their mouth is gagged or otherwise occupied. That way there’s no threat of interruption or critique!
Similarly, babies do not talk back. Using only my voice, I can self-soothe with coach-like affirmations, We’re doing great! or entertain myself narrating the latest diaper change in the style of a David Attenborough. When it’s time to sleep, my words encourage baby to slip into a trance-like state, the sing-songy syllables encircling the darkened room like manta rays. Between the dungeon and the nursery, the words are different but the principles of good verbal remain the same: short phrases with rhythmic delivery and slight variation work best (i.e. good girl, who’s a good girl, that’s my good girl).
On the other hand, toddlers do nothing but talk back. During this combative phase of refutations and demands, I found that words can still do magic. Just as one can play out a sexual fantasy by talking about it, one can use a similar tactic of pretend play with PG desires. En route to preschool one day, it was demanded that we, Go to the airport, NOW! Instead of saying, “No honey, we’re going to school, not the airport” like a total buzzkill, I suggested that we go to the airport in our imaginations. The rest of the drive was spent talking in circles about what we were going to bring (luggage!), who was coming with (Grandma!) and what else was at the airport (buses!) instead of screaming and crying about the injustice of it all. Repetition is powerful and language, when used cyclically, can cast a spell that winds you up or down.
Say no more
On the other hand, language has its limits and one has to know when to STFU and zip that lip. As adults, we take the authority of logic to be a given, but logic is no match for the primal force of a small body thrown to the ground, thrashing and kicking so ferociously that it resembles a cartoon dust cloud fight of one. When the meltdown’s momentum takes over, you might as well be trying to reason with a tornado. In instances like this, words fall short because they’re attempting to contact a part of the brain that’s unable to come to the phone right now. Here, silence, space, and touch are your friends.
During these toddler tantrums, I used to ask my kid if he wanted a hug. To which he would howl “NOOOOOO!!!!” and flop about even more aggressively in response. I was reminded of a certain client who requested not to be asked any questions during our sessions. Not even rhetorical questions like “Are you a good boy?” or “Who do you think you are?” He said that fielding requests turned on the analytical part of his brain, which was exactly what he was seeking solace from with me. Our times together were textural, with vocalizations taking the form of low mutterings, grunts, whimpers, and moans.
Language is front and center in most human interactions. The emphasis on affirmative consent (i.e. “Yes, you may hug me”) highlights our reliance on it. While this type of consent is necessary, it assumes that our desires are transparent to us in the first place. It does not account for those situations in which a hug sounds like shit but is exactly what you need to co-regulate and calm down. These situations arise with small children often (since their prefrontal cortexes are still developing) and with play partners on occasion (when particularly intense scenes unleash waves of emotion or adrenaline). Withholding language makes space for the animal, the spiritual, and the cellular, and allows these primal forces to emanate between bodies.
While it sounds simple, shutting up is not easy. When we get nervous, or panicky we sometimes sputter–attempting to piece together just the right combination of words to cast that spell (see #4 above). To communicate beyond language requires us to resist the urge to rationalize ourselves out of the situation, and ground ourselves in it. To hold space in this way requires both self-regulation (deep breath!) and acting skills. With physical touch, there is an art of timing. One must patiently watch for an opening to make contact. Sometimes I get it wrong and am swatted away, but other times a backscratch or hair stroke makes the difference between being at odds and being dawgs. In these cases, silence is beyond golden. Considering that adults pay handsomely for physical connection—it’s unsurprising that it’s valuable for children too.
Though kink and parenthood are rarely spoken of together, it is not completely surprising that lessons from one arena can apply to the other. Enter Sigmund Freud, who is possibly the single person most responsible for bringing Mommy Issues to our collective attention with his Oedipus Complex banger. Less well-known, but more relevant to the current topic is his concept of polymorphous perversity which describes the sexuality of babies and children not as genital-based, but as a libidinal force that can orient itself towards any object or direction. From the Wikipedia article on the subject, "Perversity” in this context refers to “the amorphous and changeable nature of the libido prior to being shaped in the processes of socialization and psycho-sexual development”. It is only through maturation–much of which takes place during puberty–that our sexuality becomes embedded in our groins and chests and asses–informed by cultural depictions and definitions.
So while my first puberty narrowed the focus of my libidnal drive, shaping it into an MTV Spring Break motif of desirability, my second puberty fractured this monolith to reveal the kinkiness embedded within our social morays. (Aren’t abstinence and monogamy just different forms of mutual chastity training?) The etymology of “kink” stems from the Dutch word for rope that is twisted or knotted. Like a rope made of many separate strands, the roles I embody as Mama, Ma’am, Mistress, and Mrs. twirl together to form a cordage many times more durable than any single moniker. I wonder How much can I take? Who (or what) can I be? The fact that kid #1 is still alive has given me faith in the process, so connecting with my inner masochist, I returned for more just as the sting from the first child hitting my life began to fade. Thank you, may I have another?
Lucy Khan is a conceptual artist, writer, and organizer who has worked professionally as a dominatrix since 2011. She specializes in toilet play, was named one of Los Angeles’ Top Dominatrixes by Timeout LA, and has been nominated for the XBIZ FemDom Award. As a writer, her work has been published by Petit Mort magazine, the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Working Girls Press. She is currently working on Pro-Momme, a publication by and for parents who do sex work to be released in August 2024. Her projects have been funded by the California Arts Council (USA), Foundation for Contemporary Art (USA), Mellon Foundation (USA), The Australia Council for the Arts (Australia), and countless subs, slaves, and human commodes. She is the co-director of SWOPLA (Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles) and currently resides in Los Angeles with her subby hubby, their two tiny overlords, and Tía Sonya.
Website: Lucythemistress.com
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Photo credit: Calethia DeConto