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"It's Ironic That You Have To Be Bound To Be Free"
TIME speaks to Asia's bondage matchmaker
She is 100% black leather, from the points of her high-collared vest to the toes of her knee-high boots. He is all doughy hairy skin as he lies prostate on the dungeon floor, except for a tight, black patent-leather thong that squeezes rolling hills from his plump hips. She leans over the man's rump, rubs a furry cheek for aim, cocks her hand a good meter back and delivers a thunderclap wallop. Then she slings a high-heeled boot over his back and, straddling his haunches, spanks and rubs in rapid succession: hot sting, warm caress, hot sting again. Without missing a stroke, she looks up at a visitor and explains with a broad smile: "This is his ideal lunchtime."
Midday is prime time at Fetish Fashion, a masochist's mecca in central Hong Kong, where businessmen take a breather from busy schedules to be spanked, kicked, flogged, sodomized, spat on, stretched on the rack, locked in cages, manacled to crosses, hung upside down in body bags and generally treated like the pigs they are. And they pay big money for it.
The store window, set along an outdoor escalator that snakes up Hong Kong's busy Central district, turns heads all day long as people crane to get a better look at the riding crops and kangaroo-hide whips on display. If they looked closer, they would notice an intriguing sign in the window: "Play Rooms Available." For $115 an hour, customers can rent one of two dungeons to indulge any of their bondage, dominance and sadomasochism (BDSM) proclivities. "People come from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, China—all over the world," says Decima, the store's 54-year-old British owner and the central matchmaker in a burgeoning community of Asian bondage seekers.
Of course, bondage as recreation and even an art form isn't new in Asia. Nawashibari, erotic rope binding, has its origins in 17th century feudal Japan, when samurai's servants took great care weaving hemp cords in intricate patterns to restrain, transport and torture suspected criminals. Today the art is practiced for aesthetic reasons: some people admire the designs that binds leave on the skin.
Decima's dungeons are deliberately dark and creepy, but she runs her business in a clean, illuminated manner. "I bought the store and decided to build a community. I wanted it bright and open with nothing to hide." Composed and articulate, Decima sits with the rigid posture of a school-mistress, a remnant of her last job as a high-school drama teacher. Decima is, of course, a nom de guerre: she got into BDSM with her husband and, in her personal time, likes to be both dominant and submissive. But Decima will only be tied up by her spouse. "Giving up power for a certain period, if you're with the right person," she explains, "is a huge freedom."
That's the prevailing philosophy, and the vast majority of Decima's clients are powerful men wanting to be manhandled by women. Psychiatry professor Ng Men-lun of the University of Hong Kong says that the desire to be submissive is not uncommon among bigwigs. "Sometimes a person has this need," he explains, "because he has dominated other people so much, he or she is bored and wants to be dominated." Remorse can be a factor too. "There may be a lot of things someone has done in a position of power that he or she feels guilty about and wants punishment for."
Fetish Fashion has no dominatrices on staff, but the store does keep a list of "mistresses" for hire, who charge around $400 per hour. Robert, a 48-year-old financier in Hong Kong, found his current mistress during a chance meeting in the shop. Robert got into being dominated when he found he was bored with ordinary sex. "BDSM is not just about sex, it's more than that," he says. "There is never any sex between a professional dominatrix and a submissive. BDSM happens here." Robert points to his temple.
Mistress Sandy, 25, has been a successful dominatrix for two years. She has a spate of regular customers—70% of them Chinese, like her—and a reputation as a fierce mistress who will kick and spit you into submission. Raised in Hong Kong, her family doesn't know her occupation. Nor do her three roommates or her boyfriend. "He's traditional Chinese. He wouldn't understand," she says. After high school, she got a job as a secretary at a Hong Kong bank but didn't like it. "I wasn't good at that. I'm good at this." She does it full-time now, and with five customers a week, she pockets about $7,000 a month.
A skilled dominatrix choreographs the entire session deploying a war chest of music, scents and lighting to create a scene with a beginning, middle and end, along with well-placed crescendos. Former drama-coach Decima says the mistress must be the one to begin each scene, and must be in character from the start.
This is not the first time for the man in the black patent-leather thong: he has been coming to the shop to be tied up, whipped, spanked and ordered around for more than two years. Before his spanking begins, the organ of a John Rutter requiem eases along at a people-finding-their-pews pace, and three candles glow calmly in the corner. He kneels in the middle of the room. Ignoring him, the dominatrix works at a table laying out a fan, a piece of possum fur, a prickly teaser made of yarn, a hemp rope, a deerskin flogger and kangaroo-hide cat-o'-nine-tails. Finished with her preparations, the mistress turns, walks over to the submissive and grabs the skin at the back of his neck, as a mama cat might lift a kitten. "Stand for me," she commands.
Soon, his hands are in leather manacles above his head, and he can do nothing as she twists his nipple. Hard. As she counts down from 10, the man's lips are pursed, failing to hold in a squeal. "He makes a lot of noise. Like a little pussy—like a little puppy dog." She releases him, and he gasps. Now it's time for the whip. "I must be careful," she says, "since he has had surgery on his back." She alternates the lashes with nuzzles from a soft fur. She steps back and takes aim, this time hitting his upper back with six strokes. "His skin reddens easily. I know it very well."
Most of the paraphernalia in the room conjures images of kidnap, persecution and torture. A leather body bag crumples in the corner; block and tackle dangle overhead. A lonely stainless-steel dog bowl sits inside a cage just big enough for an adult human. But Decima insists it's all for fun. "I find the idea of one person hitting another absolutely abhorrent—unless it is part of a consensual, adult experience," she says. Decima always makes sure customers have a prearranged "safe word" that will stop the scene if it goes too far. She goes out of her way to assure anxious newcomers that they're not alone and that others share the same desires, "My thing is to make one at peace with oneself. I think I'm a social worker of a kind."
In the dungeon, the candles are low and the requiem has run its course. "How much have you needed this?" the mistress asks. "Very much," groans the man in the thong, and they laugh together like friends. They are obviously close. "We've had sessions when we've cried at the end," the dominatrix recalls.
The gentleman emerges from the changing room in a suit and power tie. "At work all day there are people to manage, people I am responsible for," he begins, at last speaking in full sentences. "I come here and for an hour I am taken care of. I am told exactly what to do. I have no responsibility." The man picks up his leather briefcase and wanders out of the shop joining the crowds on the escalator to head back into the financial heart of Hong Kong—back to his big deals, back to playing the boss-man, back to being in control.
