Mistress Sadie
Sessions House or ProDom Venue {Article from MMP Library) |
Picture of Mistress Sadie
(from Ray Engel's party in Los Angeles)
Mistress Sadie & The Leather Castle
Cruel! Bitchy! Vicious! Merciless!
Only in Los Angeles would you believe an ad for an "Air-Conditioned Medieval Dungeon."
That is exactly where Mistress Sadie and Master Charles maintain their renowned dungeon. It's a one-of-a-kind place . . . at least, since the Tower of London shut down.
A walk down the rear stairs of a bookstore-massage parlor takes you into the perfect atmosphere for B&D delights. The outer room, painted to recreate ancient stonemasonry, sets the tone, and the medieval weaponry on the walls heightens the effect. The inner dungeon is roomy, subtly lit, and scary, replete with the torture table, whipping stool, and pulled hoist of a proper chamber of horrors. Besides an outsized St. Christopher's cross, the dungeon features an "X"-shaped St. Anthony's on which you can be strapped right side up, upside down, or any which way. Whips, straps, chains, canes, and all manner of implements of pain and restraint line the walls of this unusually, well-equipped facility.
Of course, it's the personality of the dominatrix more than the paraphernalia that makes or breaks a house of B&D, and this is the dungeon's strong suit.
"Bewitching Sadie," her reputation fast-spreading from L.A. to New York, boasts the ability to appraise a client on the spot, fulfill his every fantasy, satisfy his every craving.
Out front she's as charming as any suburban housewife (which she is), but in the dungeon ... a holy terror! She knows the importance of sizing a man up.
"It takes a long time to learn to psych the guys," she told me, "able to read the guy when he walks into the room. You have to know just when to quit when he's had enough. And whether or not he wants the bruises, whether or not he even wants the discipline."
Another problem is locating the breaking point. Some men relish screaming for release long before it's reached, while others can't say "uncle" till way past their limit. "You get hung up into a pride thing," Master Charles pointed out. Sadie's method is to give each client a key word-something like his hometown, say New York. "If she had you strung up on the cross," Charles explained, "and you couldn't bring yourself to say, 'Stop! Don't do anymore,' you might bring yourself to say, 'I haven't done anything like this since I was in New York.' And when you say New York, automatically she knows this is it. Either back off or stop. And so what she does immediately is stop, and then she sizes up the situation and then maybe begins again. And then if she hears New7 York again, she knows it's over."
It's this personalized service that brings Sadie both reputation and pride in her work. She sees each client as special, different, and makes the effort to find out "what it is," what "gets him there." For this reason, there's no "set session" at the dungeon, no established routine. In effect, each visitor creates his own program. "Most of these guys," she said, "you can't just walk into a room and start whaling on them because they say they want to be whaled on. You have to find out what's in the back of it, you know? I act kind of like a psychiatrist, 'cause I've learned to psych a guy out and find out just what his problem is and why he enjoys this type of thing.
"I've seen guys come in from other places mangled from one end to the other. The ones that want the real heavy discipline, it's very small. It's mostly bondage and the humiliation of it. Some of them want to be spanked, but. they don't want the bruises. Very few guys want bruises."
Sometimes, before she can explain this, a newcomer panics at the sight of all the dungeon's hardware. Many of the torture items are designed by Sadie herself, custom-made to her specifications. Heavy leather restraint devices are a specialty. She has plenty of authentic and hard-to-find numbers, a twenty-six-foot bullwhip, metal-studded wooden torture shoes, a carnival cane for connoisseurs. TVs who lack a wardrobe find a nice selection of undies, nylons, and feminine goodies.
If the accouterments of the dungeon are not sufficient to put the client in the mood, inspiring action can be seen on the house projector. Watching dominance films in session is just another customer consideration at the Dungeon. The idea is to please all types, to cater to the widest variety of B&D tastes. Sadie herself is usually enough to put the dominant devotee into the right frame of mind. She looks the part. Leather-booted to the knee, corseted and masked, black-garbed and black-haired, she exemplifies the classic dominatrix. Then there's that aggressive personality.
"I'm into it. for a psychic reason too," she readily admitted. "I'm into it mostly because it helps me. I've got a hell of a temper, and this helps keep my temper down. And that way I don't take things out on my husband or my kids or anything else."
Master Charles is a lot like her, a dominant himself. This comes in handy when clients ask for a male master.
"We do get guys that want to be spanked by a male dominant," Sadie pointed out. "It's the father-image type thing. There's no sex involved. Most aren't even gay. One of Chuck's regulars is a guy that doesn't undress, doesn't do anything. He just wants an old-fashioned belt spanking. That's all.
And when he leaves he's perfectly satisfied. He talks to me, you know. He just doesn't want to. it is done by me. There's no sexual fantasy in it with him."
"He just gets a spanking from Daddy," Charles interjected. "He comes once a month, maybe twice." For some clients though, sexual release is the rule. "Most of these guys, as soon as they're tied up real tight, it releases them," Sadie observed. "They don't even have to touch themselves."
Sexual contact is taboo. "I have no sex up here whatsoever," Sadie assured me. The popular misconception of the massage parlor leads some men into thinking there's more in store for them at the Dungeon than they can actually get. Charles and Sadie are quick to dispel such notions.
The Dungeon also features three attractive, young girls: Dusirce, Cathy, and Mary, respectively redhead, blonde, and brunette. All three have masseuse licenses and double in the parlor above but here is the twist: the girls are submissives, another novelty claimed by the Dungeon.
"A good portion of our business," said Charles, "is the submissive females. We have guys that strip down in the nude to spank the girl, and we have guys who stay fully clothed. We have guys who have no sexual excitement over this. They get no erection. They take no clothes off. They simply rent. the girl and spank them for half an hour, shake her hand, give her a tip and leave.
"No two people are alike, and this is the thing we have to offer that's different from everybody else. We're not a production-line ripoff type business. We relate intellectually and emotionally to the people we serve, and we use as much discretion as possible. We use good taste." It may be this discreet atmosphere that brings women clients to the Dungeon. True, they're outnumbered fifty to one by male clients, but they do come, and more are expected as the idea of dominance parlors become better established in society.
"Every woman," Charles noted, "without exception that has gotten into, even just into bondage, has dug it." Aside from women, the clientele of the Dungeon is remarkable enough. Perhaps it's just Sadie. "I deal mostly with upper-class people," she said. "My clientele is mostly lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, airplane pilots, people who make a good deal of money. People drive from San Diego, San Francisco, from way up north, Massachusetts, Canada, New York. Hawaii. We've got one guy that flies in from Hawaii, goes into D.C., and on his way over he will stop over here. Chuck picks him up at the airport brings him here. He does his five-hour session here. Chuck takes him back to the airport and he flies on.
"I could give you a list a mile long of people you would know of, that have been in the newspapers." "We have quite a few celebrated people," Charles added. "People that are prominent, know each other. We had one very wealthy man here one night and, as he was leaving, another very wealthy man who happens to live in the very same neighborhood-a very exclusive neighborhood-came up the stairs, and as one went down the stairs he said, 'Hi,' and the other said, 'Hi,' and one of them said he'd have to send a bottle of Chivas Regal over to the other one so he wouldn't mention it to his wife because she had a big mouth. He was laughing about it. Neither was nonplussed about seeing the other here."
"You could never get the names out of us," put in Sadie. Confidentiality. She went on to explain how they protect their book of clients, using an elaborate code originated by a former army cryptologist (another client). The rates at. the Dungeon help establish exclusivity. Charles and Sadie will not cut rates, nor advertise specials to bring in customers.
Any form of domination at Sadie's hands costs $30 a half-hour, $50 an hour. Sessions with submissive girls cost $50 a half-hour, $80 for a full sixty minutes. Tips of five and ten dollars are customary. The Dungeon doesn't offer a special low rate for enemas only. Taken as part of a half-hour session, of course, most enemas are available. "The type of enemas I give," Sadie said, "have a blow-up catheter type of thing. And this puts pressure on the prostate which excites them. Every man has a prostate. It's almost the same thing as using the dildoes, except. with the enemas, it's a sexual fantasy type thing. When the water is sent. in, it increases the pressure. Blows their cookies.
"Most of these things are from the time they were young. Something happened from the time they were a child. Either they were in the hospital and they got several enemas, and it excited them. Or maybe their parents gave them enemas once a week or something like that. And it just. excited them.
And now that they don't, have their mothers around to give them enemas anymore, they come to me. It's just the way they are."
Humiliation is another major service, as important as bondage, discipline, fetishism, TV, and enemas. "Domination is a humiliation of the male ego," Sadie explained. "But when you get right down into the realm of humiliation itself, it's things like dressing the guy up as a female and humiliating him in front of people, making him serve you as a maid. We have guys who get. down on their hands and knees and scrub my floors, or sweep it with hairbrushes and things like that. Humiliation is a lot of different. things." Perhaps more than any service at the Dungeon, humiliation must be tailored to the needs of the individual. Sadie prides herself on being able to find the key to the satisfaction of any client.. . . without crossing the line into illegality.
"That's mostly what I'm noted for," she said. "The fact that I'm dominant, that I can fulfill anybody's fantasy. I can tease them. I can do anything I want to them. There's no sex involved, and yet they're satisfied."
Sympathy with their clients sometimes turns into genuine compassion, and it's this feeling that underlies the work done at the Dungeon by both Charles and Sadie. The special needs and problems of their clientele are ever on their minds.
"We both feel that this is the last real minority here," Charles said. "And people have a right to do whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn't harm society. And so we simply supply them the service. Actually, it's turning out to be not such a small percentage of people. A full ten percent. At least." "Both men and women," added Sadie.
"When you do a session," said Charles, "there's a relationship between you and the one you're doing the session on, that is much more than what you would have with a doctor or a dentist or something like that. There's an emotional relationship that lasts for this half-hour or this hour. And we make very good friends with some of the people who come here for sessions, And if they don't come for a session each week, at least they stop by to visit."
"Most. dominants are girls that are into it for the money," said Sadie. "They're not in it for the caring end of it."
"They don't bother to equip themselves or develop techniques," Charles added. "We figure that to be in it just for the money is a little too gauche." For both Charles and Sadie, dominance is more than a business, They are into a private club for B&D devotees. The organization is a growing one, going nationwide, with plans now for a full-service center for members in the L.A. area. In time, Charles and Sadie hope to see the whole dominance scene emerge from its current underground position.
Of course, they also expect the Dungeon to retain its status as a place where every dominance pleasure can be achieved . . . with a personal touch.
A Personal Note from Robin
Mistress Sadie, Charles, and I attempted to open a branch of BackDrop in the Los Angeles area (circa 1975).
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