Midori is still in the shower when I arrive in the sunny midtown loft she rents when she visits New York City. Our mutual friend Viviane, who I know from Lesbian Sex Mafia, brings me tea.

I survey a room stacked high with coiled bundles of rope.

Tonight is the opening of ForteFemme, a weekend-long intensive during which women learn to elevate their “authentic inner femme power.” A display of books written by Midori sits just inside the door: Master Han’s Daughter: Tales from Depraved NeoTokyo; The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage; The Toybag Guide to Foot and Shoe Worship; Wild Side Sex: The Book of Kink: Educational, Sensual, And Entertaining Essays. Those titles alone should begin to explain why Midori is a doyen of kinky sex discourse, and why I was so excited to podcast with her about female dominance.

LISTEN UP:

• 50: Midori: Female Dominance Pt1 | Why Are People Into That?! 

• 50B: Midori: Female Dominance Pt2 | Why Are People Into That?! 

Wild Side Sex in particular once had a profound effect on my concept of my sexual self. It reminds me vividly of my early twenties living in the Bay Area, where I would hungrily seek out the sexuality section in any bookstore from Dog Eared Books in the Mission to City Lights in North Beach. It was there I found the yellowing paperbacks and fetish art books that would transform my world, emboldening me to pursue a career exploring transgressive sex.

In the essay “Mirror Mirror: Finding the Power Femme,” I first encountered Midori’s exercise for getting in touch with your own personal feminine icons. She prompts you to make a list of characters from pop culture, public figures like politicians, even historical personalities. From there you explore what you need in order to embody everything these archetypes represent: how to bring the outside in and the inside out, as Midori puts it. It’s the kind of assignment she has developed for intensives like ForteFemme, Making Hot Play Happen, and Rope Dojo.

Initially, I found this process really difficult. I have always had a hard time getting in touch with my feminine energy. My heroes had always been men, because I associated the qualities I wanted to embody with masculinity. But when I decided I wanted to become a dominatrix, I needed to learn what aspects of femininity I could project. The Power Femme exercise helped me to realize the qualities I already possessed, and to identify those I wanted to practice.

I distinctly remember writing two names down in my notebook at the time: Tina Turner and Audrey Horne. Tina for her high-energy sequin-shimmering rock performance, her raw defiance of the patriarchy; Ms. Horne, from Twin Peaks, for her coy, lusty, seductive power.

Together, these role models taught me to embody qualities I never thought I could, in a distinctly feminine way. Channeling Tina Turner made me more confident moving quickly in spike heels and mini dresses; it taught me I could smile wide and toss my hair and treat every room like a stage. And any time I wanted to display a girlie precociousness (the kind I had never actually allowed myself to explore as a teenager) I just closed my eyes and thought of Audrey Horne, swaying to her own jukebox dreams.

And obviously, I took the exercise seriously enough to rename myself after my power femme icons.

By the time Midori emerges from the shower, fresh-faced and ready to podcast, I’m already in awe reflecting on everything she’s done for me. Midori was born in Japan, and has lived in San Francisco since the early 90s’ heydey of sex positivity and HIV activism. She is a woman of tremendous grace and gravity, even in comfortable daytime clothes. As we sit in front of my microphones, I find myself uncharacteristically quick to blush as she describes, in evocative detail, how she loves “a long flirtation stroking the crevices of the mind and the back alleys of the imagination.”

Midori is quick to clarify that she isn’t teaching people how to be Femme Dommes, a porn trope that she enjoys, but we can all agree isn’t very realistic on a daily basis. Femme Dommes in fetish porn are extreme exaggerations of what it might mean to be a powerful sexual woman.

They are hips bulging in latex pants, impossibly cinched corsets, lashes like alien wildflowers. They are waves and curls and claws and gloss. They are the juice of women compressed and expressed. They look like they smell: like a gourmet vanilla birthday cake, ripe for gorging, on a pedestal behind glass.

No, what Midori teaches is “topping from a femme space.” Everyday female dominance may manifest in workplace assertiveness, creative boldness, or community advocacy.

Of course, ForteFemme teaches skills to use “from the bedroom to the boardroom,” so sexual empowerment is certainly part of her pedagogy. Midori is a world-class expert in everything from bondage to fetish attire, dirty talk to flogging. In her own words, she is best known for teaching the “motivation and psychology to improve one’s quality of play.”

Female dominance might also be expressed as vulnerability. An orgasm, for example, represents pure exposure: when “your neurotransmitters are squirting all over the place,” as she colorfully puts it, you cannot protect yourself. So it takes real strength to cum with someone else.

“I choose vulnerability,” Midori intones. “You will be graced by that gift, and awed by it.”

Now can you see why I stayed so flustered?

The Establishment is the proud home of sex, gender, love, kink, and what-the-hell-is-that-all-about podcast “Why Are People Into That?!” hosted by educator, activist, and media maven Tina Horn. (Listen to previous episodes on the kinky pleasure of getting inked, the glory of bodily fluids with Jenny Zhang, and the leather-studded world of BDSM with dominatrix Troy Orleans!)

In this episode and accompanying essay, you’ll hear from kinky porn power couple Maitresse Madeline Marlowe and Will Havoc discussing the technical, romantic, artistic, and queer potential of creating the bodily wonder that is gang bang porn.

— LISTEN TO PART 1 OF THE PODCAST —

— LISTEN TO PART 2 OF THE PODCAST —

In February of this year, I traveled to San Francisco to stay at the Kink.com Armory and report on the final week of porn production there. During a break from observing and interviewing, I had brunch with two of my oldest friends from Oakland—Dylan and Isobelle—whose band Vvd Wndws makes the moody disco theme music for Why Are People Into That?!.

Over scrambled eggs and black coffee, I told them about the shoot I would be attending the next day; it was for the site Hard Core Gang Bang. Directed by Maitresse Madeline Marlowe, the sex scene would feature five male performers topping one female performer, Amber Ivy. She would be sucking all of their dicks, then having vaginal and anal sex with each of the men, sometimes all at once in various configurations. There would be bondage and verbal degradation, double penetration, and facial cum shots.

The site’s entire conceit is based on the real sexual fantasy of the women involved. Amber’s fantasy was to play the role of Audrey Horne in a surreal Twin Peaks parody.

Gang bangs are some of the trickiest sex performances to choreograph; the result is a frenzied cacophony of limbs and genitals designed to overstimulate the viewer. It also happens to be my favorite kind of porn to watch while masturbating.

Seeing a woman accept all that stimulation, all that flesh, fills me with arousing wonder. It’s like the old joke about the reason straight men like girl-on-girl porn: “I agree with both of them.” When I watch a gang bang I agree with the woman who wants all the dicks in her mouth, her cunt, and her ass; and, I agree with the men who find this beautiful woman irresistible.

Gang bangs are some of the trickiest sex performances to choreograph.
Click To Tweet

Dylan and Isobelle were curious about the work I was doing, but Isobelle told me she was very disturbed by the concept of a gang bang. I was surprised by her reaction. I have grown to have a very positive association with the term. This is partially to do with coming up in a community of sex workers, who might commonly say, “I’ve gotta get some sleep, guys, I have an early call for a gang bang tomorrow!”

A good friend of mine recently exorcised some post-divorce emotional demons by staging a Satanic wedding gang bang. But it’s also from running with leather pervert crowds, where clubs like the Gang Bang Girls will arrange group sex scenarios with the same careful attention to detail of friends planning a surprise birthday party. When I think gang bang, I think of sporting envelope-pushing fun with friends.

To Isobelle though, and probably to many others, gang bang is not a pleasant term. It evokes violation, humiliation, and assault. A non-porn, non-kinky gang bang means rape. Rape as conspiracy, rape as ritual, rape as social camaraderie, rape as a bonding experience for rapists. The fear of masculine power is a very real fear many of us live with every day. The truth, which can be uncomfortable, is that fear and arousal are inextricably linked.

The scenes depicted on Hard Core Gang Bang are not rape. They are defined by the “magic key” of consent, as Rush Limbaugh recent put it. He meant it sarcastically, but actually provided a tidy guide to group sex ethics: “If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine.”

The night before her Twin Peaks scene, I asked Amber if she was nervous about shooting her first gang bang. For her, there was an appealing promise of being the center of all the erotic attention.

“I love group sex,” she said. “Everyone is on their own level, but you can meet someone where they’re at and experience another person and another feeling. I think being the focal point is the charm of it all. I like men swooning over me.”

Maitresse Madeline shoots gang bangs for a living, and she says she loves the dance of a special group of people collaborating with their bodies. One of the men she works with most often is her real-life partner Will Havoc. The morning after the shoot, we met to record a podcast episode about their art and livelihood.

Asked what she likes about facilitating these fantasies for female performers, Madeline says:

“I love seeing the woman going from pristine and on a pedestal to the end when she’s just destroyed, covered in cum like a toaster strudel, hair a mess, eye makeup running down, clothes ripped off, adrenaline pumping. I look at her in that moment and I see the huge smile on her face. Her power is thick in the air.”

Madeline is one of the most creative pornographers I’ve ever met. She takes time to get the art direction details right. She writes scripts, requiring porn stars to memorize actual lines and get into actual character. Sitting behind the lights to watch her direct Amber, Will, and four other experienced bangers, I knew I was in the presence of a great conductor.

And for those who may think gang bang porn literally recreates the subjugation of women, Will has a different perspective:

“Sure it’s macho sometimes, and that can be fun,” he tells me. However, not all male porn stars will do this kind of scene, and he suspects it’s because it’s more than a little homoerotic.

“We have a female performer friend,” Will says, “who once told me she likes to rub the dicks together just a little extra in her mouth.”

I’ve been in a lot of dungeons, but never one quite like Salon d’Orleans. Located in a mysterious midtown Manhattan building, the studio of dominatrix Troy Orleans is ordered and calming. Like yoga centers or other sacred spaces, it’s one of those NYC locales that has been meticulously designed to make you feel like you’ve crossed a threshold into a place of different possibility. As I looked around, I got an inkling of why people who come here might feel they were contained by something that can help them dive within.

Some BDSM spaces are too over-designed for my taste, too obvious. In Troy’s dungeon, every single object has a deliberate purpose. From our seats in the corner where we sipped gin and tonics and ate popcorn, I could see man-sized wrought iron cages, rows of leather suspension cuffs, and wooden cabinets with glass doors revealing seemingly endless implements of torture. This might have been what Prince described when he sang of Darling Nikki’s castle, which “had so many devices, everything that money could buy.” Troy’s gear is obviously rare and customized — yes, it’s the result of years of investment in serious professional play — but it’s not flashy for the sake of surface flash or petty intimidation. Every object here has a meaning, a potential, and a history.

Actually, one object doesn’t have a history, not yet. The enormous rubber straitjacket that Troy just picked up from the post office. She lays it out for me like a successful musician showing me an exciting new fuzz pedal. I don’t know what kind of pitch modulation this toy can create, but I know that Troy knows, and that she can’t wait to play with it.

Orleans herself is not quite as severe as her gear. She is well-spoken and measured, although she often cracks wise. She has been working as a professional dominatrix in Manhattan for over a decade. As we discussed the appeal of bondage, something I have quite a lot of experience in, I felt like someone who has been to some yoga classes talking with someone who facilitates week-long meditation retreats. I have a sense of what the depths look like from the surface, but she’s been down there in it.

So why do people want Troy to put them in bondage? Troy and I discussed several possibilities. She spoke of the difference between constriction and restriction: Some people want to feel the pressure of something pressing into them, holding them, while others want something to prevent them from moving.

I told her that one thing I like about bondage is just having something to struggle against, something to hold me in place. I also confessed I was turned on by the abdication of responsibility. When I’m in bondage, I know I’m right where my partner wants me. All I have to do is accept their desire. I like being physically controlled because it makes me feel like I’m pleasing my partner.

“It doesn’t matter how much you want something; you can’t have it. You do what the bondage wants,” she says, with the rapturous tone of someone discussing their great passion.

Troy and I spoke for over an hour for episode 42 of Why Are People Into That?!. She told me about how she went from a relatively unkinky person to one of the best-known intense bondage dominatrixes in NYC, if not the world. She elaborated on the experience of being a woman of color who is professionally in control of men as well as her own agency and desire.

“My desire doesn’t even begin until the man is in the bodybag,” she smirks.

She describes the experience of putting clients in immobilizing bondage as a kind of conscious-altering experience. Her toys for sensory deprivation, from blindfolds to hoods to mitts, take you away from an overstimulated world and into one where you can just . . . float.

As I left Troy’s studio and descended into the subway, I looked around me at everyone who has their own struggle. I thought about how they would all react to being put in bondage, and realized bondage is something we can all relate to. Erotic bondage may be the best way for us to feel immersed in the experience of struggling against our restraints, and it may be the best way to recognize how to be truly free.

All photos courtesy of Troy Orleans.

A five-shots-of-anything-for-$10 deal, a young Tom Selleck lookalike, a swollen ankle, a cop car, a lost cab, and bumfuck Brooklyn . . . “Guys We Fucked” co-host Krystyna Hutchinson opens up about a New Year’s Eve to remember (and regret).

LISTEN UP RIGHT HERE.

Have your own sordid tale of an evening gone wrong to share? Email getestablished@theestablishment.co and include “Worst Night Ever” in the subject line.