The moment someone knocked on the door of the hotel room, the play was afoot. A man in his late 20s entered the doorway, his eyes darting around furtively until they met mine. I was seated on a chair, hemmed in by the queen-sized bed and the wall.

The man waved and grinned at me, giving a slight nod that translated to, “What’s up, man.”

The smile instantly disappeared when the third individual in the room arose from the bed. Clad in a black vinyl bodysuit that hugged her slim frame, Mistress E slyly asked if the man had been a good boy. Meekly, he uttered “yes, mistress,” a phrase I’d hear multiple times over the course of the next hour. The lady ordered him to strip off all his clothes, and he did so, unbuttoning his blue shirt and pulling down his pants.

The man — let’s call him Blue — would have been stark naked if not for a plastic apparatus fastened to his groin. It was a “chastity cage” secured over his penis, bolted by a small padlock, to prevent him from getting hard. A slit at the bottom of the cage allowed him to urinate.

The cage, Mistress E told me with a laugh, had been attached for a week already.

The Mistress

A few days prior to the session, I had met Mistress E in a café — the outcome of winning her trust through dozens of email exchanges. Out of all the professional dominatrices I had contacted on a popular social media platform, she was the only one who responded agreeably. Which was great, because I was dying to know about a client pictured on her page with his tongue (allegedly) smeared with her feces.

Mistress E did not give the impression of someone who’d let a man eat her shit. She did, however, exude an aura of quiet confidence and an air of surreptitiousness, the kind that comes naturally to someone who’s living a double life.

In her mid-20s, she holds a day job that involves toiling away in a Raffles Place office, but her secret side hustle is being a dominatrix — a dominant woman who takes on the role of humiliating (willing) men as part of a BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism) erotic kink. In such relationships, the dominant person is referred to as the “dom,” while the person in the submissive slave role is referred to as the “sub.”

The Singapore Sling

When it comes to sexual liberty, let’s just say that mainstream society here isn’t exactly open to anything out of the ordinary — hell, we have a section in the Penal Code that still criminalizes sex between men. Though it’s not enforced, the fact that the government refuses to take it down says a lot about Singapore’s uptight attitude towards carnal matters.

But it’s 2018, and surely a new generation of young Singaporeans are no longer bound by conservative thoughts and conventional routines when it comes to bonking, or at least about getting off. BDSM sex toys here have been flying off the shelves since the phenomenon of Fifty Shades of Grey, while an actual festival about sexual wellness is taking place this weekend. So is kinky the new normal?

Relatively speaking, Mistress E is new to the professional BDSM scene. She only started charging for her dominatrix services four months ago. Having turned pro, she identifies herself as a “humiliatrix,” deriving pleasure from the psychological control of subjecting men to humiliating acts.

“Personally, I really like cock and ball torture,” she laughed. “I like that it’s highly uncomfortable for men to have their most cherished parts at my mercy.”

That would explain why her online page is filled with images of men’s penises and nutsacks painfully distressed. Her subs have had their dicks clipped by clothes pegs, bound in red rope, and roughed up with chopsticks. Yes, chopsticks.

She’s also very good with her feet, Mistress E claimed proudly, whipping off her snakeskin stilettos and showing off her well-pedicured toes. I’m no foot fetish guy, but she does have nicely-shaped feet, I suppose.

The Foot

“Where’s my tribute?” Mistress E asked Blue in a menacing manner. The man was now kneeling butt-naked in front of her on the cold linoleum floor. The safe word of the day had been given out.

The “tribute” refers to the offering the sub is expected to give the dom for her services — so yes, our friend Blue was paying good money to be treated like absolute scum. Mistress E’s rate goes for about $(redacted) an hour, and this amount was fished out. She showed him some mercy by letting him kiss her foot once every time he gave her a S$50 note.

Tossing the wad of cash aside, the dominatrix explained that she hadn’t washed her feet for a week, and how it’d be very nice if Blue cleaned them for her… with his mouth. And so he did, essentially making out with her feet, as your humble reporter shuddered respectfully in the shadows. This culminated with Mistress E shoving half her foot into Blue’s waiting mouth.

The Misconceptions

The reason why Mistress E agreed to let me be a one-man audience to her hidden world is this: She wants to show that BDSM is more than just the mainstream perception of bondage, pain, and leather. There’s a wider spectrum of emotions and intellect in the activity, she said, declaring that she is in no way a sadist.

“Contrary to what people may believe, it’s not all about pain or tying people up,” she mentioned. “Porn is a very bad representation.”

Other misconceptions, she says, include that BDSM necessarily involves sex (untrue most of the time); that BDSM is practiced by broken people (fetishists lead normal lives, she insists); and that BDSM is abusive (it is always consensual).

“The important difference between escorts and us is that we do not explicitly pleasure them — we are just catering to their erotic fetishes.”

We mull bringing up the fact that we just saw a man ejaculate in excitement when she placed her foot in his mouth, but it seems rude to mention at the time.

It’s like any other self-employed job, she says. “You have a skill set and there are clients who’ll approach you with their individual fantasies. My job is to utilize my skill set to craft a scene within the confines of their fetishes and limits.”

Again, she stressed that it is all consensual. “At any time they feel uncomfortable or want to stop, they can.”

Let’s hear it for safe words!

The Humiliation (Part 1)

Blue was made to lie down so the dominatrix could literally walk all over his body, laughing as she stood on his chest and prodded at his still-encased manhood. The small key for the chastity cage dangled temptingly near Blue’s face — it was tied around her right ankle.

“I beseech you mistress,” he wheezed. No really, he used the word “beseeched.”

The time came to free willy. She slapped his penis, calling it “small” and “useless.” Then she grabbed Blue by his throat and slammed his back against a wall, looking him in his eyes and verbally degrading him as she proceeded to knee his groin hard several times.

The Clientele

Prior to any session, Mistress E makes it clear to clients that no sex is involved, and intimate touching of her is not allowed.

The dominatrix describes her typical clientele. Singaporeans are generally softcore in their fantasies, she says, and most of the time they’ll want her to dress up as a typical office lady.

Munching on shit though? That’s definitely not our idea of soft-core. As mentioned earlier, one post on her site involves a picture of a half-naked sub with his tongue caked in what appears to be both feces and urine.

“Yes, I know it’s very extreme. Only a small number of people are into it, and I do cater to it,” she explained, stating that most of the other dominatrices in the Lion City don’t accommodate scatophilia. Logistically, it would be difficult — one has to both maintain a strict diet and be able to “perform” on command.

She declined to reveal further details about her other clients, citing that utmost privacy was important to them. Blue being the obvious exception. Speaking of Blue…

The Humiliation (Part 2)

Now with each of his nipples clipped with bells, Blue lay on the bed as the dominatrix used a red nylon rope to tie his hands together with his palms clasped firmly onto his erection.

She whipped out a latex glove and a tube of lube. “How many fingers are we doing today?” she pondered, snapping on a glove. “I hope I have enough lube for five fingers.” Oh snap, son.

The game here was that for every time she inserted her finger into his ass, he was allowed to stroke his penis. Eventually, she managed to fit in two fingers into Blue’s anus.

“Wow, two fingers, that’s a new achievement for you,” she exclaimed.

“You’d better not cum.”

The Society

Mistress E found that most men here aren’t into receiving too much physical pain — they don’t even want visible marks to be seen on their bodies beyond a session (something we can imagine could be problematic for a normal home life).

As to why Singaporeans could be drawn to BDSM, she attributes one possible reason to the recent mainstream popularity of 50 Shades of Grey — which she says portrays a wrong image of BDSM, mind you. “It’s just not so taboo anymore,” she said.

For his part, Blue said he believes that steep levels of stress and lofty expectations inherent in Asian societies make the sessions appealing.

“It pushes you to want to… release. (*ahem*) To let go and find an avenue. And this is my avenue.”

The Climax

And release, Blue did.

Mistress E by this point had moved on to the leather “flogger,” a fierce-looking thing I imagine could put an eye out. With the first crack of the whip, it grazed his thighs, uncomfortably close to his testicles, which retracted inward — a reaction that I vicariously felt a little.

Another thing I felt was 100 percent certain I’d made the right decision in turning down her invitation to personally undergo a session.

The dominatrix then stood on the bed, towering over the groaning man. Yanking at the rope to control his tied-up hands, she puppeteered Blue in stroking himself, all the while stepping on his face. After a couple of moments, he yelled in ecstasy as the, um … grand finale arrived.

Mistress E used her feet to wipe up the sperm that had landed on his body and commanded Blue to clean her sperm-stained foot.

With his tongue.

He was then allowed to hit the showers, and I was left to ponder exactly what I’d just witnessed.

The Zone

Having cleaned up, Blue told us his foray into BDSM got serious in his late teens — when he realized that he experienced sexual euphoria by playing a submissive role in the bedroom. Being a sub is only reserved for the bedroom, he clarifies, and he leads a pretty normal, confident life outside of that.

“What actually goes through your head during the process?” I enquired of the half-naked man who had just unashamedly been put through the ringer with a stranger watching it all unfold.

“I feel like I’m in this zone — I think the common term in the BDSM circles is a ‘sub space.” I just feel this euphoria where I just feel so submissive and in this zone where I want to please (Mistress E),” he revealed.

“I just want to do whatever she asks and hopefully get rewarded at the end of it.”

The New Norm?

Blue adjusts the towel wrapped around his waist in a bid to protect his modesty. “Why are you wearing the towel? He’s already seen it.” Mistress E laughed, checking her phone for notifications. “Eh, shy lah,” he remarked, before grabbing his clothes.

The vibe in the room was complex, both had been almost shockingly comfortable letting a stranger hover by the bedside and watch them play out their kinks.

Honestly, there seemed to be no awkwardness whatsoever on the part of the dom and the sub, which is much more than we can say for ourselves.

As I walked to the door, they even cheerfully waved goodbye as I exited the room, as though I’d just met a couple of old friends for coffee. And in truth, the two of them seemed perfectly content playing out their roles in the safety of their controlled environment.

Walking out into the bright sunlight, I wondered if Singaporeans really have been suppressing their inhibitions, whether there is some underlying streak of sexual liberty craving to break out, and how many other similar scenes are unfolding behind closed doors in our sometimes staid city.

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