In the Beginning
January 10th, 2005
I am ready to begin from the end as I have already ended at the beginning. I am nineteen-years-old, but I tell people that I am eighteen because the younger you are in New York, the more people seem to let you get away with. It has been a full semester since the fall of the World Trade Center and having havoc in Manhattan seems as natural as anything to me.
Each time I look back it seems just as natural I would end up here, doing what I would end up doing. A natural progression, one movement as fluid as the next where my character would predict exactly each next move.
Her name was Molly. Her earlobes were stretched out with fat plugs the size of quarters, long blond dreadlocks and little diamond studs pierced in each nostril, as well as the labret with a matching diamond stud. She had a tiny black treasure trail growing below her belly button and stubble on her legs. “They don’t care” she explained to me as she told me about being a Mistress. “Everybody is so different; the clients get to pick what they like.” I don’t remember how the conversation started. It was also natural, the way she mentioned it, probably nonchalant and bored with me. I was transfixed. We sat on the balcony of the sixteenth floor of the Willoughby street dormitories and drank some awful malt liquor cocktails. It was late fall and people were inside and rowdy. I berated her with questions.
What did she do?
How much did she work?
What was the most disturbing thing…?
She told me about a client begging for verbal humiliation about his small penis. It sounded outrageous at the time.
Molly liked cocaine. She didn’t drink or smoke, and I never saw her touch alcohol, but she always had a few grahams of cocaine on her. They loaded a joint with it at her boyfriend’s apartment and I remember being uncomfortable. I remember her boyfriend had a creepy smile and that we all hung out a few times in the apartment where somebody got their purse stolen but Molly’s cocaine magically remained untouched. I remember asking her if there was a dungeon in Manhattan and what they were called. She told me about Arena Blaze and Pandora’s Box. The following day I called 411, a phone service I used all throughout freshman year for everything. It was 5 cents a call and I used it every day to ask the most arbitrary things for addresses I had written down a hundred times and lost on various scraps of paper and napkin corners. It was my source for everything, conveniently punching the keys in my phone, on autopilot. It seemed only logical that I would call that same directory for an established dungeon in New York City. I liked the ring of Pandora’s Box as a name and decided that I was familiar with the Greek myth and I would at least call and learn more. I had to step into another room because I was nervous. I looked up several S&M related things online, most of them no longer existent. I came across detailed descriptions of exuberantly submissive men feeding chocolate bon bons to beautiful women while massaging their feet. The women icily glared at them from velvet thrones and marble pedestals. In retrospect, it is a cliché fantasy, descriptions torn from the pages of a romance novel. At the time, I considered it clever and elegant and imagined myself as the proud recipient of champagne and foot massages. When I called Pandora’s Box, a heavy dense Russian accent permeated through the telephone line. The woman introduced herself to me. I instantly imagined she had red hair. She asked me what I looked like. Actually, she asked me if I was busty or petite. “Because if you are very busty, we are not hiring,” she yelled it into the phone. She seemed pleased that I sounded young and small and she told me to come in the next day. I had a difficult time imagining the place and I remember telling everybody in my dorm room about it.
It was seven in the evening and I was trying to get dressed, having just bought a new red suede pig skin coat. It had a big fur collar and brass grommets in the trim. I pulled my hair back into a too tight ponytail, the kind that gives an instant face life and a killer headache. I put on what I thought to be too much make up. I was wearing ugly thick soled boots and flared black pants. I was nervous as hell on the train ride over, exiting at 23rd street and 8th Avenue. Walked down the three blocks to 26th street and turned right at the corner. It was dark by then, Manhattan lights aglow with the neon Duane Reade light flashing and it was beginning to rain. Up one set of stairs, green door with tiny letters PB in white and the two sets of buzzers. “Who is thees?” asked the aggressive Russian voice on the other side. I coughed up my name and the door buzzed open, inviting me down the stairs that spiraled into a basement. Walls painted teal, dim track lighting glowing onto me and then another door at the very bottom. A petite woman with crystal blue eyes and pallid skin answered the door, her face with a tired expression. She led me through the door almost without acknowledging me. The woman’s hair was perfectly straight and expression cool and glassy.
The hall opened up into an anteroom with decadent dark colors everywhere, Asian inspired antique furniture like the kind I would see in ABC Carpet and Home, chandeliers with glass bead work, dark oak tables and a tiny security video monitor behind. A single three-legged stool stood at the foot of the desk and the woman behind the desk finally introduced herself to me as the same woman that spoke to me on the phone. The one with the heavy accent. She was much larger than I expected and had a beautiful, warm face. She had red hair, just like I imagined. She escorted me out of the ante room into a tiny waiting room down the hall. There was a giant cushioned armchair next to a small table with a dim lamp illuminating two paintings hanging just above it. One of the paintings showed a woman in a beaded head dress holding a candle delicately between her fingers. The portrait had the kind of eyes that felt like they would follow you when you moved around the room. The second painting was of a black cat. I stared at the paintings for a while, finding her icy expression symbolic and mesmerizing. The woman with the accent asked if I have ever been “involved in SM” I answer honestly that I have not. The she handed me a piece of paper and asked for me to write down what I would be interested in doing and what I could or could not do. I wrote things down like “I am a fast and capable learner” and “I am punctual and enthusiastic!!” I wrote down qualities of a good worker. I used several exclamation points in my impromptu resume. I also made sure to mention that I would not be willing to be hurt or put myself in hazardous situations. She took the paper, smiled and led me out to continue the tour. “This is Ming Palace” she explained as she opened the first door. “It is for sensual domination.” It looked like a harem quarters or what I imagined to be a Persian palace. There was tall gold painted columns and shackles attacked to the inside with an elementary looking pully system. A giant black gong stood in the corner. All of it was orange and red and dimly lit, the room buried with dense remnants of incense and cigarette smoke.
We continued down the hallway into the other rooms, a Chinese torture chamber with black leather bondage beds and a more complicated looking suspension system. Followed by a nineteenth century designed school room with chalkboards and tiny tables. On the wall a poster of anatomy of an earth worm. Next door was a darkly painted executive office strewn with dictionaries and fake marble busts. Around the corner was a medically themed room. All walls mirrored, heavy examination beds in the center and a series of glass cabinets filled with stainless steel equipment. Across the hall was a tiny room painted in shades of pink, magenta and lavender. Giant white-faced Geishas with feathered fans created a narrative wrapping around the inside of the walls. A tiny black coffee table with a glass top stood in the middle of that room on top of dusty rose carpeting. Several foam busts graced the corners of the room covered by various colored wigs. Crusty lipstick tubes stacked in piles on a vanity table. Behind that, a closet overflowing with women’s clothing, lingerie, stockings. The mirror made the figure flattering, elongating the reflection to be taller and thinner. What appeared to be hundreds of pairs of lady’s heels in all sizes were aligned at the bottom of the closet. “This is our cross-dresser’s room,” announced the woman. The final room that she showed me was called the sanctum and it was decorated with grey gargoyles coming out of the walls, a St. Catherine’s wheel, another throne and a dark closet that could be locked up from the outside. The room was distinctly cold and created a strong echo. It felt like the most forgotten room and the one I was most uncomfortable with.
In the Beginning
January 10th, 2005
I am ready to begin from the end as I have already ended at the beginning. I am nineteen-years-old, but I tell people that I am eighteen because the younger you are in New York, the more people seem to let you get away with. It has been a full semester since the fall of the World Trade Center and having havoc in Manhattan seems as natural as anything to me.
Each time I look back it seems just as natural I would end up here, doing what I would end up doing. A natural progression, one movement as fluid as the next where my character would predict exactly each next move.
Her name was Molly. Her earlobes were stretched out with fat plugs the size of quarters, long blond dreadlocks and little diamond studs pierced in each nostril, as well as the labret with a matching diamond stud. She had a tiny black treasure trail growing below her belly button and stubble on her legs. “They don’t care” she explained to me as she told me about being a Mistress. “Everybody is so different; the clients get to pick what they like.” I don’t remember how the conversation started. It was also natural, the way she mentioned it, probably nonchalant and bored with me. I was transfixed. We sat on the balcony of the sixteenth floor of the Willoughby street dormitories and drank some awful malt liquor cocktails. It was late fall and people were inside and rowdy. I berated her with questions.
What did she do?
How much did she work?
What was the most disturbing thing…?
She told me about a client begging for verbal humiliation about his small penis. It sounded outrageous at the time.
Molly liked cocaine. She didn’t drink or smoke, and I never saw her touch alcohol, but she always had a few grahams of cocaine on her. They loaded a joint with it at her boyfriend’s apartment and I remember being uncomfortable. I remember her boyfriend had a creepy smile and that we all hung out a few times in the apartment where somebody got their purse stolen but Molly’s cocaine magically remained untouched. I remember asking her if there was a dungeon in Manhattan and what they were called. She told me about Arena Blaze and Pandora’s Box. The following day I called 411, a phone service I used all throughout freshman year for everything. It was 5 cents a call and I used it every day to ask the most arbitrary things for addresses I had written down a hundred times and lost on various scraps of paper and napkin corners. It was my source for everything, conveniently punching the keys in my phone, on autopilot. It seemed only logical that I would call that same directory for an established dungeon in New York City. I liked the ring of Pandora’s Box as a name and decided that I was familiar with the Greek myth and I would at least call and learn more. I had to step into another room because I was nervous. I looked up several S&M related things online, most of them no longer existent. I came across detailed descriptions of exuberantly submissive men feeding chocolate bon bons to beautiful women while massaging their feet. The women icily glared at them from velvet thrones and marble pedestals. In retrospect, it is a cliché fantasy, descriptions torn from the pages of a romance novel. At the time, I considered it clever and elegant and imagined myself as the proud recipient of champagne and foot massages. When I called Pandora’s Box, a heavy dense Russian accent permeated through the telephone line. The woman introduced herself to me. I instantly imagined she had red hair. She asked me what I looked like. Actually, she asked me if I was busty or petite. “Because if you are very busty, we are not hiring,” she yelled it into the phone. She seemed pleased that I sounded young and small and she told me to come in the next day. I had a difficult time imagining the place and I remember telling everybody in my dorm room about it.
It was seven in the evening and I was trying to get dressed, having just bought a new red suede pig skin coat. It had a big fur collar and brass grommets in the trim. I pulled my hair back into a too tight ponytail, the kind that gives an instant face life and a killer headache. I put on what I thought to be too much make up. I was wearing ugly thick soled boots and flared black pants. I was nervous as hell on the train ride over, exiting at 23rd street and 8th Avenue. Walked down the three blocks to 26th street and turned right at the corner. It was dark by then, Manhattan lights aglow with the neon Duane Reade light flashing and it was beginning to rain. Up one set of stairs, green door with tiny letters PB in white and the two sets of buzzers. “Who is thees?” asked the aggressive Russian voice on the other side. I coughed up my name and the door buzzed open, inviting me down the stairs that spiraled into a basement. Walls painted teal, dim track lighting glowing onto me and then another door at the very bottom. A petite woman with crystal blue eyes and pallid skin answered the door, her face with a tired expression. She led me through the door almost without acknowledging me. The woman’s hair was perfectly straight and expression cool and glassy.
The hall opened up into an anteroom with decadent dark colors everywhere, Asian inspired antique furniture like the kind I would see in ABC Carpet and Home, chandeliers with glass bead work, dark oak tables and a tiny security video monitor behind. A single three-legged stool stood at the foot of the desk and the woman behind the desk finally introduced herself to me as the same woman that spoke to me on the phone. The one with the heavy accent. She was much larger than I expected and had a beautiful, warm face. She had red hair, just like I imagined. She escorted me out of the ante room into a tiny waiting room down the hall. There was a giant cushioned armchair next to a small table with a dim lamp illuminating two paintings hanging just above it. One of the paintings showed a woman in a beaded head dress holding a candle delicately between her fingers. The portrait had the kind of eyes that felt like they would follow you when you moved around the room. The second painting was of a black cat. I stared at the paintings for a while, finding her icy expression symbolic and mesmerizing. The woman with the accent asked if I have ever been “involved in SM” I answer honestly that I have not. The she handed me a piece of paper and asked for me to write down what I would be interested in doing and what I could or could not do. I wrote things down like “I am a fast and capable learner” and “I am punctual and enthusiastic!!” I wrote down qualities of a good worker. I used several exclamation points in my impromptu resume. I also made sure to mention that I would not be willing to be hurt or put myself in hazardous situations. She took the paper, smiled and led me out to continue the tour. “This is Ming Palace” she explained as she opened the first door. “It is for sensual domination.” It looked like a harem quarters or what I imagined to be a Persian palace. There was tall gold painted columns and shackles attacked to the inside with an elementary looking pully system. A giant black gong stood in the corner. All of it was orange and red and dimly lit, the room buried with dense remnants of incense and cigarette smoke.
We continued down the hallway into the other rooms, a Chinese torture chamber with black leather bondage beds and a more complicated looking suspension system. Followed by a nineteenth century designed school room with chalkboards and tiny tables. On the wall a poster of anatomy of an earth worm. Next door was a darkly painted executive office strewn with dictionaries and fake marble busts. Around the corner was a medically themed room. All walls mirrored, heavy examination beds in the center and a series of glass cabinets filled with stainless steel equipment. Across the hall was a tiny room painted in shades of pink, magenta and lavender. Giant white-faced Geishas with feathered fans created a narrative wrapping around the inside of the walls. A tiny black coffee table with a glass top stood in the middle of that room on top of dusty rose carpeting. Several foam busts graced the corners of the room covered by various colored wigs. Crusty lipstick tubes stacked in piles on a vanity table. Behind that, a closet overflowing with women’s clothing, lingerie, stockings. The mirror made the figure flattering, elongating the reflection to be taller and thinner. What appeared to be hundreds of pairs of lady’s heels in all sizes were aligned at the bottom of the closet. “This is our cross-dresser’s room,” announced the woman. The final room that she showed me was called the sanctum and it was decorated with grey gargoyles coming out of the walls, a St. Catherine’s wheel, another throne and a dark closet that could be locked up from the outside. The room was distinctly cold and created a strong echo. It felt like the most forgotten room and the one I was most uncomfortable with.
Elise
Elise began her journey down the rabbit hole in 2001, exploring the world of professional BDSM in one of NYC’s preeminent dungeons. Since then, she has continued to explore sugaring and fetish modeling while traveling internationally. After over a decade of carefully documenting her experiences, she is pursuing completing her memoir titled Nesting Dolls slated for release in 2021.