Robin Shamburg - Mistress Ruby Ties It Together: A Dominatrix Takes On Sex, Power, and the Secret Lives of Upstanding Citizens

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Websites in Mistress Ruby Ties ItTogether

Access Place Frank Sinatra resource page

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Some of Robin Shamburg's Favorite Websites

Dr. Ducky DooLittle: The Site of SexualCuriosities

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King of All Media.com: Home of the Original HowardStern Superfan Site

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The London Evening Standard Crossword PuzzlePage

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Weird N.J. travel guide

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Contents

ROBIN SHAMBURG

MISTRESS RUBY TIES IT TOGETHER

A Dominatrix Takes On Sex, Power, and the SecretLives of Upstanding Citizens

NEW YORK

PART III

THE COOLDOWN

LEAVING THE PLANTATION

I'd made it maybe halfway through my second year ofmistressing when things started going seriously downhill. It wasthe classic sophomore slump: I was losing interest in my studies,and yet saw no end in sight. Also, there were certain extenuatingcircumstances.

Lady Leona, our not-so-esteemed boss, had been out oftownand out of our hairfor months and months. She'dfallen in love with a guy twelve years her junior, the heir to asugarcane fortune, a white-suited South African lad who bore astartling resemblance to Simon Le Bon, the lead singer of DuranDuran. We called him Plantation Boy.

The sole focus of P-Boy's life seemed to be lettingLeona support him while they waited for his crops to come in.Meanwhile, on Leona's dime, they hopped from cruise ship to cruiseship, taking care of important plantation business in places suchas Puerto Rico, Barbados, andthis I found tellingtheCayman Islands.

I don't know much about growing seasons or sugarcanefutures, but I sure know the sickly sweet aroma of a scam when Ismell it. Soon enoughand too soon for everyone'stasteLeona was back in our midst. She was far too proud totell us what had really happened, and somehow this steel-willeddignity made her unusually sympathetic.

So we listened politely and cheered her on as shespun tale after tale of living high on Plantation Boy's fortune,clucking our tongues in grim understanding when she told us thateven though he spoiled her rotten and treated her like a queen, inthe final analysis, she was too much woman for him to handle.Apparently, she'd needed a Plantation Man.

But our sisterhood was short-lived. Powered by thetwin turbines of heartache and humiliationand probablydeeply in debtLeona threw herself into running the dungeon.To help expand the business, Leona hired a consultantnot amanagerial whiz or an asset analyst, but a Santeria priestess withpsychic abilities.

This woman made two prophecies: First, there was druguse on the premises; second, girls were stealing clients away fromthe dungeon and seeing them privately, to avoid paying the househalf to Leona.

Of course you didn't need a psychic friend to makethat prediction about almost any dungeon anywhere. But Leona's"seer" did provide details so stunningly accurate that we began tosuspect the phone in the mistress lounge was tapped.

To recoup her divined loss, Leona started to enforcea strict schedule of fines (lateness, $20; out of uniform, $30;forgetting to bring condoms, $25) and treated us all to a 10percent pay cut. She claimed that this was the only way she couldafford to keep the Reformatory open. Naturally, this only causedthe stealing to intensifyproof that no matter what yourmilieu, people will always live down to the expectations set forthem.

Up until this point, Leona's attitude toward me hadbeen strictly hands-off; I made her plenty of money with a minimumof drama, and she was pragmatic enough not to fuck with theformula. But then she took me aside and told me that because Iearned outside income from my columnand since many of mycolumns were inspired by her establishment, though she'd neveractually read themshe felt that I should contribute agreater percentage than the other girls.

Now, asking us to dig into our pockets was one thing;helping the business, from which we'd already stolen so much,seemed within the realm of reason. And it was easy enough tocircumvent the sanctions, so no one really cared. But the sheersuggestion that I dig into my own life on her behalfthat wassomething I wouldn't even dignify with a refusal. I held my tongue;I calmly accepted the signsit was time to start gettingout.

But I didn't just pack my bagsthat would havebeen hasty and unwise. Nor did I openly challenge Leonathatwould only have made her more determined to shake me down. Instead,I just let her forget about it, something I knew would happen assoon as some easier mark presented itself.

I didn't intend to give up mistressing; I just didn'twant to let so much of my income be dependent upon Leona'sdungeonand whims. So I decided to see my departure not as anincident, but as a process. A process by which I gradually luredsome of my wealthiest, most trustworthy clients out of Leona'splace and into the fifth-floor walkup I shared with my best friend,Desi. Meanwhile, I'd maintain a modest presence at Leona'sitwas a great place to cultivate new clients.

For weeks, Desi and I had been talking about settingup shop, and she was more than agreeable. For one thing, she wasrarely homeher boyfriend owned a luxury loft in SoHo. Also,it was an easy way for her to make some no-obligation mistressingmoney; every so often, I'd hire her to sit in on a session when oneof my clients asked for an inexperienced participant. Fortunatelyfor both of us, my most loyal follower happened to be thatconnoisseur of innocence, that gourmand of green, Chester theMolester.

CHESTER SAVES THE DAYSORT OF

I've never exchanged sex for moneynot in thetraditional sense, anywayand it's not because I've never hadthe opportunity. Nor do I have any problem with the idea; in thecourse of the day, we all hand over pieces of ourselves far moreprecious than a few minutes' worth of friction, things you canhardly price. There are worse things you can sell someone than anorgasm.

No, there's a more practical reason I've never donethe deed. See, I understand that when you fuck for bucks, it's notreally the john that you're having sex with. You're actually makinglove to the security, comfort, and ease that the money will bringyou. You're making love to that which will save you fromdesperation and ruin and the thwarting of your dreams. In my case,the stakes have simply never been that high, and so I've never meta lover I couldn't resist.

But that's not to say I've never been tempted. Inparticular, there was that tricky transition in the beginning ofthe year, when I was halfway between working at Leona's andstriking out on my own. One of the clients I'd stolen from Leona'swas Chester the Molesterthe wealthy cradle robber who likedto corrupt the post-teenybopper set. At twenty-five, I was about as"post" as it gets, but it was a lucrative gig and he bought my act,so I figured that as long as he didn't cut me in half and count myrings, everything would be okay.