Why Do We Care Whether Trump Is Into Pee? A Sex Workers Roundtable

Trump is very unfit to run this country, but we don’t need stories about prostitutes or sexual deviance to tell us that.

There’s no doubt we have bigger things to wonder about right now than whether or not Donald Trump gets off on watching sex workers urinate on the hotel beds upon which his enemies once slept.

Yet on January 10, when Buzzfeed released a dossier which detailed, among other things, a sordid tale of the then-PEOTUS’s “perversions,” I saw this “news” through an unusual lens of clarity. Sex workers—especially those who play with fantasy and fetish—have a rare intuition for the way desire can both warp reality and reveal us the unadulterated truth.

As a retired dominatrix who loves being pissed on and pissing on people, this particular ring of the media circus intrigued me. There were myriad questions flying about. Did it really happen in the way it was described? If it was true, what did that imply? That Donald Trump is a piss play voyeur (which is totally different from enjoying golden showers, which I would define as involving some part of the body being pissed upon)? That Trump has hired sex workers, which (although I fully endorse the global decriminalization of consensual sex work) is not legal in Russia or America? That Trump has no respect for foreign hoteliers or their housekeeping employees? (Not surprising, I’ll grant you, but despicable nevertheless.) That even in 2013, Trump would desecrate a symbol of America’s first black president in his free time?

Would Trump desecrate a symbol of America’s first black president in his free time?

Trump’s vindictiveness would be one of his key motivators, but even for him this is pretty warped. To others it may be just one more controversy, but as a kinky person covering fetish culture, I thought there might be something more to uncover here.

So I talked to other sex workers about piss play, wealthy clients, and the relationship between shame and conservatism. The results of our conversation may surprise you.

Our panel:

Cyd St Vincent, Director, Bonus Hole Boys. Escort in the Bay Area and beyond.

Princess Kali, author of Enough to Make You Blush and owner of KinkAcademy.com.

Nikki Darling, BDSM/Adult Model, Pro-Domme.

Matthew Lawrence, Editor at Headmaster Magazine.

TINA HORN: WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO GOLDEN SHOWERS?

In your experience, why do people love to be pissed on, or to play with piss?

CYD:

People love piss play for lots of different reasons. Some people are just really into fluids and immersing themselves in anything that can come from the body of a sexual partner. It can be a way of developing intimacy. Pee play can often feel vulnerable, so it can be a way of playing with anxiety around trust and comfort. Often it’s used as a way to experience submission or dominance — engaging with the taboo of humiliation — “I can’t believe I’d let you pee on me/you’d let me pee on you!” Of course in this scenario urine is being used as a way to defile something deigned sacred, a take on religious fetishism as it were.

KALI:

Golden showers and playing with other bodily fluids for sexual purposes are often about confronting taboo. But really, like all kink, it’s a very personal experience and the emotional headspace that happens during piss play isn’t always what’s expected. Piss play is probably most often used in erotic humiliation scenes, as a way of lowering the status of the “human toilet.” But I’ve also known kinksters who enjoyed peeing on each other as a sensual and intimate expression with no humiliation involved at all. If we didn’t have social mores around urination, it wouldn’t be such a powerful taboo to play with.

NIKKI:

Some people really enjoy the primal symbolism behind it all. The idea that their Dom/Domme is “marking her territory.” Also I think people enjoy doing acts that society would consider “unsavory.” It’s a tremendous act of worship and dedication on the part of your sub who is willing and joyfully wanting to consume or be submerged in your fluid, which is seen by others in society to be “dirty.” It’s an act of subservience or humility, or a symbol of ownership.

MATTHEW:

So, coming at this from a gay male perspective, I was introduced to watersports through a (non-client) encounter in my early twenties with a guy who, halfway through sex, said “Hey I gotta pee.” That segued very quickly from “Wanna watch?” into “Hey can I pee on you” and then “Hey could you try drinking it?” I thought it was amazing. The gay appeal, I think, is that it’s vaguely like a cumshot that goes on and on and on. Also if you’re a beer drinker (hi) it’s easily performed and requires no special equipment. But I also get the power dynamics of watersports, even if you’re taking turns with your partner (or partners).

Some people are just really into fluids and immersing themselves in anything that can come from the body of a sexual partner. It can be a way of developing intimacy.

TINA HORN: Do you think when Trump called himself a germaphobe that he was being whorephobic about sex workers or kink phobic about piss play? Both?

(“Does anyone really believe that story?,” Trump asked at a news conference at Trump Tower in New York City. “I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way,” he said. “Believe me.”)

NIKKI:

I don’t really think he was coming off as whorephobic or kink phobic necessarily. I think the two are pretty unrelated. The funny thing is that most people who are into these kinds of activities usually are A-type personalities. Maybe not always considered germaphobic, but very particular about their cleanliness or hygiene. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised finding out certain peoples’ kinks or fetishes after knowing them outside of the scene. In many ways BDSM interests that individuals have or engage in function as an antithesis to how they are in their everyday lives. That’s the awesome thing about BDSM; it’s generally a great outlet for all involved to safely delve into activities that they wouldn’t usually do, free of societal judgment.

MATTHEW:

The man is allegedly terrified of shaking hands, so I’m not convinced he’s just frightened of humans as a species in general. And I don’t know whether he himself is whorephobic or kink phobic. But he obviously knew his audience would laugh at the joke — hookers are dirty, Russians are dirty, Russian hooker urine is SUPER dirty, ha ha! — and he shouldn’t get a pass for that.

TINA HORN: LET’S TALK ABOUT VOYEURISM.

Have you ever been paid to piss on something other than a person while the person paying watched?

CYD:

It wasn’t really his idea, but I peed on a client’s boxers while he watched tied to the bed. After the session I had him take photos to prove he went to the grocery store with the dampness soaking through his suit. I laughed thinking about him getting confronted and explaining that he hadn’t pissed himself, that someone else had done it for him.

NIKKI:

The closest thing I’ve come to was pissing in a cup for the client to drink.

MATTHEW:

I did have a client who liked to play doctor and he’d have me piss in a specimen cup (which he had brought along in his old-timey little doctor’s bag), but all of my other watersports/sex work experience has been either on someone or on myself. (I should mention that I never advertised myself as super kinky because I never knew how to ride that line — the ratio of turn-ons to turn-offs when you mention a specific kink.)

TINA HORN: JUST WHO THE HELL WOULD MAKE UP SUCH A STORY?

If the story is made up, what do you think that says about the person who made it up? In terms of what they think of sex work, piss play, Trump, the Obamas, and American sexuality?

CYD:

If it’s a fictitious story, honestly I feel like the motivation to put it out there is as likely to be a derailment tactic by his supporters as a muck-racking attempt by detractors. There are so many things we can and should be talking about with Trump — if we wanted to talk about sexual misconduct, we could be talking about the dozens of allegations of sexual assault he is facing — but instead we’re focusing on this cartoonish and kind of frivolous feeling news story.

It’s juicy for sure, and in this reality TV politics era it makes for some good entertainment — but honestly more than anything it stands out as an indictment of the power of Trump’s unwavering privilege in the world. Can you imagine if such a rumor had come out against Obama? Whereas in a way this swirl of scandal — real and fabricated — only serves to bolster Trump’s power, since none of it seems to be able to take him down. My concern is that while we embroil ourselves in talking about a tryst with sex workers, he’s playing Russian roulette with nuclear weapons. I don’t really care if he paid some women to pee on a bed; I already know of his vindictiveness and emotional immaturity. It makes me scared to be a person living in the United States today.

KALI:

I know it’s unconfirmed, but for me, this story rings so true exactly because it wasn’t about Trump being peed on. That would have been less believable for me. But if it was made up, it was an interesting angle to take, that Trump would be humiliated by a story about him insulting the Obamas simply because there was urination involved. I doubt it fazed him at all. But if they had said that HE was the one getting pissed on, that would’ve been more effective because that would’ve been about diminishing HIS status rather than that of the Obamas. The fact that any of it is considered scandalous (other than it being a childish act of impotent petulance) shows exactly what society continues to think of sex work and piss play, which is that association with either is something to avoid. But like all of his scandals, we’ve seen this one get mopped up and ignored.

NIKKI:

I think it goes without saying that this country is very sexually oppressed. There is an ever-growing laundry list of what Trump has done in his past and present that is unsavory and morally horrid. Him paying Russian prostitutes to piss on a bed the Obamas slept on is petty, but not ethically wrong, like oh, say, building a wall, blocking immigrants from this country, trying to reboot DAPL, stripping women of their reproductive rights, forgiving assault as “locker-room talk,” and not paying taxes, just to name a few. I do think there is some subtle symbolism of reclaiming what many white supremacists would say is “rightfully theirs”; This idea that people “not deserving of running this country took this from us, so we’re taking it back!” Van Jones stated it perfectly as a “white-lash” the day of the election.

I think this person in many ways is saying—though in a sexually shameful way—that Trump is very unfit to run this country and is doing so for the wrong reasons. The issue is that we don’t need stories about prostitutes or sexual deviance to tell us that. Just look at the news and look what this man has tried to dismantle and harm in a week’s time.

Paying Russian prostitutes to piss on a bed the Obamas slept on is petty, but not ethically wrong, like oh, say, building a wall or blocking immigrants from this country.

MATTHEW:

I’ve never stayed in a presidential suite, but I can’t imagine hiring someone to pee on a bed as some sort of revenge fantasy for someone who stayed there one time four years previously. (Lost in this: Obama actually canceled a planned Moscow visit in 2013, a few months before the Miss Universe pageant, over the whole Edward Snowden business.) But François Hollande, Xi Jinping, Mahmoud Abbas…So many world leaders went to Moscow in 2013, and for all we know they could have all slept in that bed in the meantime.

The story sounds like it was made up by a tenth-grader, if you ask me, but then so did the controversy around Obama’s birth certificate, and look who spent a year obsessing over that one. Whoever made this up probably doesn’t value sex workers very much, I’m guessing, except as a punchline. Totally guessing, here, but I guess they’re totally into piss play but they’re afraid to actually try it. Politically it’s hard to say…nihilist, maybe?