Surviving Master Joshua: The BDSM Memoir Of An Unfaithful Wife

By Karma Said and Cat Orme

This is a true story.

Master Joshua is a pansexual, polyamorous pro-Dom (the term for a male Dominatrix, or a man who Dominates others for money). He leads a BDSM tribe and, when we met,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carnal Culture Publishing
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985679403

Book preview

PART 1

SAVAGE’S GARDEN

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One week before

Her name, let’s say, is Natalie. Natalie Savage. It’s a pseudo, but the real one is just as flashy. Natalie runs a photography studio in midtown Manhattan, specializing in boudoir photos, primarily of orthodox Jewish women. That’s her day job. Come night, she and her partner convert the studio into a makeshift dungeon, where they host BDSM parties. Let's call her partner Joshua - Joshua Domingo, Joshua Ramirez, whatever. In the kink scene he’s known as Master Joshua.

Over the phone, I tell Natalie that I write for a conservative news outlet, and that I’m researching for a color piece on people who are religious and kinky. She quickly lays out a feast for me, heavy on the red meat: Sikhs in diapers, clergymen in kennels, Chasids getting fucked up the ass with bottles of kosher wine. She started out as a house photographer for a Jewish-orthodox-owned swing club, and in the fifteen years since has seen it all. And yes, she still has everyone’s phone numbers.

This stuff might be a tad too racy for my own publication, I caution. "But if they don't take it, I’ll pitch it to Vice News. If Vice doesn’t bite, then Salon will, or the Daily Beast, Slate, Bustle… kink and religion are an easy sell. All we need are the right subjects."

Natalie perks with the mention of Vice. Once a month, before the party, the couple holds a BDSM Roundtable; she offers to dedicate the upcoming discussion to my topic. I’ll get your subjects, I know who to call. You just write.

Fantastic.

It’s a private event, she continues, attendance is by RSVP only. To RSVP I’ll have to create an account on Fetlife. It’s like Facebook for kinky people, she explains, though from what I see, profile pictures feature everything but the face. You should stay for the party after, she adds. "If you are going to write about BDSM, you should at least see the real deal first."

We hang up, promising to touch base tomorrow. But, scrolling through the avatars on the list of attendees — an unsavory collage of inch-by-inch asses, tits, cunts, cocks, and combinations thereof — an unease sweeps over me. I do not want to place my own new, empty thumbnail alongside them. I actually recoil at the thought of being in the same room. It’s visceral, the repulsion, as if I’ve bitten into an apple only to see worms wriggling in it. I heed the feeling and leave the office with the invite unanswered.

I’ll get back to it later, I think, on the subway home. If I want to. I made no commitment, I didn’t even pitch the story yet, it’s just a possibility… one I might be better off without. It’s with a sense of relief that I turn my attention from it to the completed, beautifully realized project in my hand. It’s a book - a Valentine’s gift for my husband, David, to read out loud to our children. It tells of how, many years ago, their mother left her home and family in a faraway continent to search the world for something — or someone — that she was missing. In New York she met their father and became his other half, but the two halves did not make a whole. Something, or someone, was still missing. So they came together and made a boy called Nathan, followed by a girl named May. And now, if either of them feels like something — or someone — is still missing, all they have to do is look around them, at their wonderful boy Nathan and their delightful baby May, to know that no: nothing is missing anymore. Everyone is here, the book concludes. The End.

I flip through my creation, skimming through pictures of the four of us in parks, zoos, beaches, and birthday parties, tracing the curve of baby May’s cheek with my fingertip. These moments weren’t all easy — many were downright torturous — but looking at it from this distance, well, this is what happiness looks like. The sweetness of it fills me up, carrying me right through the toils of dinner and bath time to the threshold of the kids’ bedroom, where I place the book in my husband’s hands.

Happy Valentine’s Day, David.

What’s this?

A book. About us. To read to the kids. Go ahead, look!

He turns the pages, brushing the pictures with his fingertips just as I did, but his expression actually darkens as he reads. Page after page I watch the frown lines in his brow deepen. Then the book in his hands is closed once more, as closed off as he is, and a long, long, awkward silence prevails.

The kids will like it, he finally offers. Stiffly, almost resentfully, he adds, Thank you, before walking into their room and shutting the door behind him.

I don't know why he didn't like it. Maybe he just had a long day. Maybe because he hates Valentine’s Day, the pressure of it. Or maybe he too senses that that big, happy The End is more wishful thinking than truth. Something is still missing, very much so. Does he know? Did he reject my gift because he knows what I've been researching? Or about the kinky novels, movies, porn I've been consuming? Does he know that the article is just an excuse, a way in? How could he, when I'm just realizing it myself?

That’s not it, I determine, as I walk through the house, picking up discarded clothes and toys and dinner leftovers. Even if David noticed my fascination with smut, every marriage deserves that much legroom. No, his reaction probably has more to do with the way things are between us. We don't address it, but we're both disappointed. Him about his neglected aspirations, me about my neglected emotions, that and so many other things that we want but can't seem to get from each other. We don't fight anymore: we just keep it moving, keep the peace. And peace has been good enough, for the most part. But if my husband can’t at least fake enthusiasm for our love story — well then, neither can I.

It’s past 10pm when the kids’ bedroom door clicks open. I hear David shuffling around the house, picking up whatever detritus I apparently missed. At the entrance to our own bedroom, he pauses, perhaps wary of some emotional drama awaiting him inside. He shouldn't be. I just want to sleep.

Nathan loves the book, he says, lying beside me on the bed. He had me read it to him three times over.

Nice, I yawn, glad to hear.

It’s a sweet gift. Thank you.

You’re very welcome. And oh, by the way, I say, curling up against him, next week I’m covering a BDSM party.

---

The day of

Top: In the context of BDSM, a top is the term given to the individual who assumes the controlling or dominant role over a submissive participant or bottom.

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Scene: A BSDM scene is a pre-planned space where BDSM activities take place. It also includes the participation of BDSM related activities.

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Aftercare: In BDSM, aftercare is the period of time after a scene in which partners attend to one another's physical, emotional, and psychological needs. Typically, the dominant partner in the scene will be the one caring for the submissive partner or partners. BDSM scenes are often very intense, and can often be emotionally and psychologically draining. Physical injuries are also not uncommon during these scenes.

Source: kinkly.com

Iarrive ten minutes late to discover they’re all waiting for me. Finally. I’ll let them know you’re here, huffs a petite, middle-aged woman in a bulky winter coat. Seeing my blank expression, she adds: I’m Natalie. It’s the first time we meet in person. She looks plainer than her Fetlife photos, but I do recognize her now. I start apologizing, but she’s already ushering me down the hall. A door opens and I’m in a room full of people, all of whom turn to look at me expectantly.

Great, now that everyone’s here, we can begin, says the man in the center of the semicircle of chairs, with a nod my way.

Him I recognize immediately from his pictures — Natalie’s partner, Joshua. Small, muscular, Hispanic-looking, easy on the eyes. A tell-tale leather harness is strapped around his shoulders over a buttoned-up shirt. He is laying out tonight’s discussion topic with much pomp. On his Fetlife profile, Joshua introduced himself as a pro-Dom, which, I learned, is a term for a man who earns money by working as a professional dominant as part of the sex industry (kinkly.com). He definitely carries himself like a professional alpha, chest all puffed, a rooster in a henhouse. I’m amused by this, until he turns his gaze on me. Come, tell us about your article, he gestures.

Mortified, I stand before the semicircle to haltingly deliver my premise: What are the spiritual underpinnings of BDSM? In regard to ritual, worship, the urge to surrender to a higher power, are there crossovers between it and religion? For the observant participants, how do their kink and religious identities intersect? Do they conflict, do they complement each other? I finish with an awkward bow and scurry back to the sofa, to find that my seat has been taken. I sit on the floor.

Safe once again behind my pen and notebook, I’m free to observe my surroundings. Natalie’s photography studio is neon-lit, spacious, and bare, holding only the semicircle of chairs, a black leather sofa, a coat rack, and an improvised bar. The guests, about twenty in attendance, are mostly couples, aged over forty or under thirty, with the majority of the unattached being females. Most are average-looking, a few attractive, a few decidedly not. Above all, the gathering looks normal, with just a sprinkling of leather — half hidden bodices, straps, collars — hinting at the true nature of the event.

People speak. A once-devout Catholic couple tells of how their faith brought them together, then suffocated them as they plodded for decades down the straight and narrow. Things changed last year, when their teenage child came out as queer.

Our church rejected our child, so we rejected it, said the husband, glancing at me.

Jesse, a young, smug, reform Jew, eloquently traces the similarities between his religious and kink communities. It’s all about the need to come together around a powerful common denominator, he states.

Victoria, an overweight, middle-aged Dominatrix with goth makeup, tells of how BDSM offered an escape from her fanatically adherent family. An Irish Roman-catholic in his fifties speaks of kink as a counter to the guilt he was raised upon. Most relate to their conflict with dogma, others to surprising crossovers between their kinky and spiritual lives. One beautiful Asian youth shyly tells of how BDSM has become a transcendental pursuit. She is sitting at the feet of an equally good-looking man, glancing up at him worshipfully.

I’m barely keeping up with my notes. This is real stuff, core stuff. I can interview people for an hour about their projects/art/careers/aspirations and come out feeling I still know nothing meaningful about them; here, I hear two or three sentences and somehow feel like I know these people, I know what they’re about.

Then the talking is over and the chairs are replaced with spanking benches and a Saint Andrew's cross and other implements that I don't recognize, which register only as a sinister jumble of metal and leather. The lights are turned down low and a guttural beat fills the room. The exterior of normality is abruptly stripped away as people leave the room and return half-naked, in lingerie, in latex and stilettos, in crotchless underwear, on all fours in collars and dog masks, on leashes. Their transformation is shocking. It’s hard to reconcile these freaks with the parents and company men I listened to earlier.

Intimidated but mesmerized, I inch my way to the leather sofa, which is now facing a bench. On it, Jesse is spanking a curvy redhead with a perfect, plump little ass. Party guests squeeze in beside me to watch it turn a rosy shade of pink. It takes some courage to detach myself from the audience and wander alone to the front of the bench, where I can see the couple's faces. Jesse's smile is cruel, but his eyes, when he leans to whisper something in her ear, are tender. She nods and he lands a barrage of quick, angled slaps on her already welting backside. Her mouth opens and her eyes close and tears roll down her beautifully flushed cheeks, but her cries sound more like ecstasy than like pain.

That’s Camilla. She’s an ultra-orthodox Jew. Her husband died a year ago and she started coming here, though I’m pretty sure she’s not ‘out’ in her community. You should talk to her, Natalie says, coming up from behind me. She is also transformed, her shapely breasts and narrow waist now highlighted in a bodice dress. Thank you so much for inviting me. Sorry for being late, I lower my head. Mollified, Natalie points out the guests I should talk to, handing out juicy tidbits about each. And if there is anything more you want to know about me, she adds, I’m an open book.

She is waiting for me to ask her more about herself, I can see that, but the interactions taking place all around me are far more interesting. I suggest a follow-up interview and break away.

On the Saint Andrew's Cross, the Catholic guy is beating his wife with a variety of implements, switching from paddle to flogger to riding crop. Each makes a different sound when it hits her, eliciting a different type of moan, gasp, sob. He is electric, moving with a barely contained rage, as if he's about to throw his head back and howl; his spouse is half squirming, half swaying to the music. Across from them, Joshua, stripped down to a pair of shorts, is handling a full-figured woman in a latex corset. I can see now that the man is more tattoos than skin, a mean-looking tapestry of skulls and spiders. I don't see what he's doing though, because the woman’s cries are so loud and explicit-sounding that I’m ashamed to look. Instead, I watch a middle-aged Latina woman run a lit fire-wand along the body of a naked twenty-something female, grinning wickedly as she taps the youth's nipples with the naked flame. The beautiful Asian girl, now down to nothing but a tiny thong, moans and whines as her handsome partner flogs her ass from behind, while in front another man squeezes her pretty, pint-sized breasts, flicking the nipples over and over till they are dark and painfully hard. I’m surprised by my own urge to take them into my mouth.

I slump back onto the sofa, suddenly overwhelmed. I feel drugged, nauseated, elated, simultaneously turned-on and repulsed. I’ve never witnessed people interact on such an elemental level. It's not beautiful — if anything it's grotesque — but have I ever shared something as raw and as real as this myself? While giving birth, maybe. That's it. It makes me sad to think of all the life I’ve missed.

Joshua has finished with the screamer, and for the past half hour or so — I can’t tell, time is moving strangely — has been working a muscular, nearly naked man into a state of semi-stupor. Taller than Joshua by at least a head and of thicker build, the man’s wrists are suspended in leather cuffs, hanging from a metal ring in the ceiling. Earlier his feet were planted firmly on the ground, but now he’s held up by his chains. He seems to have caved into himself to the rhythm of Joshua’s flogging, gradually and peacefully, like a flower closing. Joshua too seems enclosed in his own private trance, breathing hard as he throws his entire body into the motion. For some time, we — Joshua, his partner, and myself, at the moment nothing more than an attentive speck of dust in the air — hang suspended in that placid, dreamlike trance. The rhythmic thwack, thwack, thwack of the flogger and the man’s barely audible grunts are all there is.

Joshua grips the man’s throat. A minute passes, and another. His partner’s head lolls, his knees suddenly giving way. Joshua wraps his arms around the broad chest, releases the bound wrists and lowers his partner gently to the ground. Being considerably smaller, Joshua ends up lying on the floor, buried under his bottom’s large, limp body. It is the oddest thing: how this semi-conscious giant curls around his abuser, snaking an arm around Joshua’s waist and resting his head, child-like, in Joshua’s lap, drawing obvious comfort from the man who just broke him. Joshua shifts them both into a more comfortable position, sitting up and cradling the man to his chest. They stay that way longer than I expect, like a leather-clad version of Michelangelo's Pieta, carved in flesh.

My reverie is ruptured by a stab of envy. I want this, I realize. I want to be the one broken open, reduced to that perfect note of surrender. I want to be the one gently lowered to the ground, once I earned it, once I can no longer stand on my own feet. I don’t wonder why I want this: I’m just furious that it’s not me, can’t be me. I don't want to watch anymore. I stand up and walk away.

In the hallway, on my way out, I bump into Joshua. So how was it? he asks. He looks different to me now, enhanced somehow.

Really, really interesting, I reply.

I could tell, he nods.

How so?

I was watching you watch me… your body language wasn’t repulsed or disinterested. You're curious: I could see that.

Yes, well, I’ve never seen anything like this.

As we speak, I too am watching him watch me. Staring directly into his pupils, I drink him in, soak up the contours of every individual eyelash and pore, because this is as close as I can get to someone like him, and the entire world he represents. What are you, I demand, silently, and he is looking right back at me and appears to be asking the same.

---

David is sleeping when I arrive at home. The house, dimly lit, smells of cooking. I open the fridge and see that,