What do you think of when you hear the term pro-domme?

Do you conjure images of leather-clad supermodels wielding riding crops and severe expressions? Do you think about lazy women who exploit men instead of getting “real jobs?” Or conversely, broken women with low self-esteem and Daddy issues being exploited by men? Do you imagine regal, refined queens lounging on leather chaises, wearing corsets, surrounded by a dozen half-naked men serving their every beck and call?

The reality, while quite a lot of fun, is nowhere near as interesting.

Pro-Domming, when boiled down to its simplest, is a service provided for a fee. Like the people who come and clean your house, or do your taxes, or serve your food. Although yes, it is slightly more interesting than most other services provided to the general public.

Where to start

I don’t think anyone ever plans to be a Pro-Domme. Little girls don’t imagine growing up to beat strangers for money (well, most don’t). When I was a little girl, I imagined beating and degrading men, but the doing-it-for-money part wasn’t there.

[clickToTweet tweet="Little girls don’t imagine growing up to beat strangers for money" quote="Little girls don’t imagine growing up to beat strangers for money"]

I’ve been a lifestyle Domme ever since I can remember. I became a Dominant when I discovered that BDSM existed. The vast majority of my relationships were D/s, with clear and total exchanges of power. It’s something I love doing, and something I’m very, very good at.

But it was never anything I considered making money doing.

When I found myself working 60+ hours a week and still not making ends meet, I needed something else.

What’s a poor girl to do?

Going pro

Ever since the dawn of time, I’d seen all these ads for Pro-Dommes on fetish websites. I’d heard about women who live that glamorous lifestyle, doing nothing but hurting and humiliating men all day. To me, it was an idea that held the same sort of appeal as someone who gets paid to play video games all day; a supremely attractive fantasy, but completely unrealistic.

Desperation and poverty have the unique ability to make one rethink what is actually realistic. I saw these ads and thought to myself, “Hey, I’m pretty good at Dominating men. I like doing it. Why shouldn’t I make some money at it?”

[clickToTweet tweet="I like doing it. Why shouldn’t I make some money at it?" quote="I like doing it. Why shouldn’t I make some money at it?"]

I did some research, decided that $200 for a two-hour session was fair and competitive, and created separate Fetlife and Collarspace profiles to advertise who I was and what I was offering.

Within hours, my inbox was full.

With that, I entered the wonderful world of professional sex work, and I very quickly learned some things.

First of all, it’s not nearly as glamorous as I thought it would be. Sure, some women who make a career out of this may eventually buy a separate space, but I didn’t have that luxury. I was just starting out, after all, and was only trying to earn a supplemental income in my spare time. The sessions were done in the bedroom of my apartment.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, ProDomming is very, very different than being a lifestyle Dominant. And sometimes, it was hard to suspend my disbelief.

You must understand, in my relationships, the control is mine. The sub is mine, the decisions are mine, the activities done are at my discretion. There’s no question, I am in charge.

Not the case when you are a pro-domme

Because, after all, I was trying to earn a steady income. It was a business. A business catered to a very specific clientele, with very specific preferences. And the goal of any business owner is to create repeat customers.

[clickToTweet tweet="the goal of any business owner is to create repeat customers" quote="the goal of any business owner is to create repeat customers"]

The customer is always right or so they say.

I was not a Dominant to these men. I was Topping them, sure, but I didn’t feel Dominant. I was performing a service, to the specifications of the paying customer. Outside of the rules I laid out (such as no kissing, no penetration of any of my orifices, etc), they were the ones in control.

They told me what they wanted, they told me what they were looking for, and I created a scenario to give them their desires. I gave them what they wanted and made sure they left satisfied. But I had very little control. Most of the time I felt more submissive than Dominant, as strange as that may sound.

Being a pro-domme has its ups and downs

But don’t misunderstand, it wasn’t bad. Sometimes, of course, there were clients that bored me to tears, and the two-hour sessions dragged on and on, and the seconds ticked by agonizingly slowly, and I couldn’t wait to hear the timer that meant the session was over, and I could get rid of them. Sometimes, I had to pretend to care about kinks and fetishes I had no interest in.

But sometimes, I had clients whose kinks lined up with mine enough that I could really sort of do whatever I wanted. I could feel more myself. I could have fun. Occasionally, I’d be surprised and bummed to hear the timer go off, and realize that the session was over.

I suppose it’s lucky that I had more or less broken up with my live-in sub at the time. The breakup was amicable, and we still had a few months left on the lease, so we lived together, with a third male roommate, in a nice apartment in a good part of town. But while I was working as a Pro, I didn’t have a lifestyle submissive. That turned out to be a good thing.

It can be really hard

It was hard to get excited about lifestyle sessions when I’d already done two that afternoon, with people I may or may not have wanted to see, engaging in activities I may or may not have been super enthusiastic about engaging in.

It’s important to point out that this is not the kind of job you can put a half-assed kind of effort into. Too much goes into a session in my personal brand of BDSM, particularly when the session is with a stranger, who may have never engaged in this sort of thing before.

I had to keep track of where his head was, I had to make sure he wasn’t getting too overwhelmed, I had to learn and interpret his body language, in case he forgot to use a safe word (which is quite common even among experienced submissives in particularly intense sessions). I had to keep him happy, keep him in a positive headspace, and keep the session going smoothly.

I’m very good at what I do, and my customers were always taken care of, whether I enjoyed spending time with them or not. It’s not something I could put only a part of myself into. It’s something I had to put effort into. It’s something I had to throw myself into, the same way I would with any sub I own.

Scary and Exhausting

It was exhausting. There were times I felt burned out. Had I owned a lifestyle sub during that time, it’s almost guaranteed he would’ve been largely neglected. I doubt a relationship would’ve been able to survive that. And I began to understand why some of the other successful Pros I’d spoken to were actually submissive in their daily lives.

[clickToTweet tweet="It was exhausting" quote="It was exhausting"]

There were parts of it that got a bit scary, too, particularly since the sessions were at my home, and I was grateful to have two large, intimidating men as my roommates.

My brand of BDSM is unique in that much of it is mental, and I’m very good at manipulating that mental ride. The sessions were intense, and bred some very intense feelings in the men I served.

More than once, I had to gently let down a man who forgot that he was paying me for a service, and became too attached. More than once, I had persistent customers show up unannounced at my home.

It was for this reason that the idea of a separate play space was particularly attractive, and for this reason I was grateful for my physically intimidating roommates. They had to learn how to chase off the persistent customers who convinced themselves they could change my mind.

Amazing fun

In a very few rare cases, the feeling of attachment was reciprocated. Two men in particular tugged at my heart. One of which, I’m still in contact with, and see every few months, six years later. There were plenty that I was fond of and looked forward to seeing.

There were plenty I considered taking on as my own sub. The intensity and intimacy of the sessions make emotional attachment both a blessing and a significant obstacle. It’s not a job for the faint of heart. I knew I couldn’t go and collar every customer I liked. And that was sometimes a very difficult urge to resist.

[clickToTweet tweet="It’s not a job for the faint of heart" quote="It’s not a job for the faint of heart"]

In the end, I worked for a little over a year before deciding it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to make a career out of. Being a Dominant is who I am, not what I do, and trying to make a career out of the only relationship dynamic that ever worked for me ended up negatively impacting my ability to have successful lifestyle relationships.

But on the whole, I enjoyed it. Aside from boring customers or fetishes I simply didn’t care about, it was fun. I’d say I enjoyed myself a good 75% of the time. After all, how many people can say they enjoy their job 75% of the time?

In the end, I’m happy for the experience, I’m glad I did it, and I’m grateful for the people it brought into my life.

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