Sex Work, Submission and Survival: A Diary
Bondage, the Bible, and Me My first job of the day has involved locking police handcuffs and shackles onto my wrists and ankles, before filming myself rolling around on my hotel room floor for the ten minutes my customer has specified, while complaining about how tight the restraints are. Actually, they’re not especially tight, today. When I’m filming on my own, I keep them loose so that I can slip out of them without the key. Getting trapped in metal bondage is one of the things I worry about. I have a universal handcuff key on my keyring, and a pair of bolt cutters in the boot of my car. I’ve been working as a bondage model for twenty four years, and so far, have only been trapped in handcuffs twice. The key and the bolt cutters solved everything beautifully. I have to be careful because the bondage production industry is small, so safety standards have to be self-imposed, and not every producer I work with is as cautious as I’d like them to be. Despite the risks, this is my perfect job. I’m in Detroit this month, making bondage films with some of my favourite producers. Later today I’ll be in a fake prison cell wearing transport chains and an orange jumpsuit. Tomorrow, I’m starring in a spanking movie which is also scheduled to involve a great deal of belt-whipping and face slapping — two of my favourite activities. I wish I could go back in time and tell my teenage self that one day, I’ll get to enact all of my sexual fantasies, and I’ll get paid for it. Because I didn’t expect to grow up to have a job at all, let alone a rather naked job that’s made me a millionaire. The first bondage image I ever saw was of Jesus. My family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, which meant attending a minimum of four church meetings a week, where we’d sit and listen to the Jehovah’s Witness leaders telling us about how the world was going to end in Armageddon soon. The meetings were dull, and my parents used to let me look through the JW children’s book of Bible stories. In my book, there was a lurid picture of Jesus, tied to a stake and being whipped. It fascinated me — I pondered how it would feel. On one hand, I could see that it would be agonising. But on the other hand, I found the Roman soldiers doing the whipping rather exciting. It was confusing — my book of Bible stories featured a lot of violence. My favourite was an image of the Old Testament giants, the Nephilim. In the picture, one of them, an enormous bearded man, was picking a lady up by the throat. I felt guilty about how much I enjoyed the idea. I didn’t feel so bad about fancying Captain Hook. He was every bit as villainous as the Roman soldiers who tortured Jesus, but I knew he wasn’t real. I knew we were meant to be on Peter Pan and Wendy’s side, but I was thrilled by the idea of being tied to the mast of Captain Hook’s ship, and maybe being made to walk the plank. I was sorry when Wendy were rescued from Hook’s clutches. Everyone else’s happy ending felt like an anticlimax. I wanted to know more about the villains. We didn’t have a television, so my access to popular culture was limited, but whenever I read a book or saw a film, I always liked the wrong characters. Captain von Trapp seemed far more interesting to me at the start of The Sound of Music, when he's a strict disciplinarian, than after he falls in love with Maria and becomes gushy and soft. Yul Brynner was marvellous in The King and I when he was flouncing around telling everyone that no one’s head should be higher than his, and threatening to whip people, but by the end of the film he’d had a change of heart, and I was disappointed. Similarly, the Joker in Batman was a great deal more exciting than Batman himself. But no one else seemed to share my preferences. I sensed that this might mean something was wrong with me, and I decided to keep it secret. My family escaped the Jehovah’s Witnesses when I was thirteen. Confusingly, I discovered that the world actually wasn’t about to end after all, and that I’d be growing up and needing a job soon. The only thing I really liked doing was playing imaginative games with my older sister, and thinking about what it would be liked to be captured by pirates, or sent to a reformatory, or, you know, crucified (but only a little bit, and without the actual nails). I thought being an actress might be fun. So I went to drama school in London, graduated three years later, and began performing in touring Shakespeare productions. I was hideously poor, living in one shared room, and taking secretarial jobs in between acting assignments to cover my rent. Then, I began being approached by photographers offering me modelling work. I took one of them up on it, and put a portfolio of my pictures up on a model networking site. I started getting paid bookings, and to my flabbergasted delight, some of the photographers who contacted me were shooting bondage images. There was an entire industry devoted to making the sort of pictures I’d had in my head for my whole life. After two years of working as a bondage model, I felt brave enough to book some spanking shoots too. Spanking fans tend to prefer video content to stills, and spanking is interactive, so you need a co-performer. There weren’t many people I wanted to be spanked by — not many spanking performers looked as good to me as the Roman soldiers from my early fantasies. In order to do the work I really wanted to, I’d need to travel. I went to Los Angeles, Germany, Australia — anywhere I might find the experiences I wanted. I found them, and more. I’ve been happily married to my bondage producer husband for fourteen years, and I make a living from enacting my fantasies. Growing up without any expectation of having a job at all, I remain a little startled to have stumbled across such a well paid one. It should be well paid, of course — it’s rather dangerous and often leaves me bruised. I earn about £250K per year, but I’d make more if I wanted to be a dominatrix instead of a submissive. I’d rather do what I love, though. One page of my Jehovah’s Witness book showed Jezebel, being thrown out of a window to her death, by a couple of stern bearded men who I found very attractive. The warning against being a sexually provocative woman was heavy-handed . But I’ve discovered that being Jezebel is delightful, and no one has yet thrown me out of a window for it, though they sometimes say mean things to me on social media, I find I can bear this perfectly well, when I look at my diary, full of BDSM shoots that people pay me for. I don’t believe in God any more, but this fact does seem miraculous.
DIRTY, A Diary of Sex Work, Submission and Survival by Ariel Anderssen