Allure: What is it like in the dungeon? Like any business, I assume there are logistics.
EO: Essentially, it’s like a shift job: You’re an independent contractor and you’ve got [to] work job to job. The house gets 40 percent of whatever the fee’s going to be, and you get 60 percent. [The house] would handle the booking; they would handle the person coming in off the street. They would handle some scheduling, [determining] the price for you and, if [working] at a dungeon, all the facilities and equipment were at my disposal. It was all quite easy.
Photo: Getty Images / Design: Bella Geraci
Allure: You mentioned getting to the dungeon and working with people who simply walked in. How would you know what they wanted, and how a session would go?
EO: At the very beginning, when people would walk through the doors, I had no idea who they were. They were just fresh off the street. They also had no idea what they wanted, so I would just ask a lot of questions and gauge their reaction.
Allure: What kinds of questions?
EO: [Questions like,] What kind of porn do you watch? What about that was interesting for you? And is there anything in particular that maybe spoke to you in terms of a feeling more like an object, like a shoe or a moment or a look? I also ask them to tell me their desires. Like even their vanilla self, you know like non-kink stuff.
Allure: Can you tell us more of what happens during a session? If you can share more with us, that is.
EO: Oh, I disclose a lot of details on my podcast — but I won’t mention any names. I would say that everybody is so different. The commonality is that they want to feel like you understand them and that you accept them and that you don’t judge them.
First and foremost, I introduce them to the concept of a safe word. Then, I’ll slowly walk them through maybe a little bit of bondage, maybe a little bit of sensation playing. Playing with the concept of maybe a tiny bit of pain. It could just be nails going against the chest and just drawing them in. But how I work is going to be different to the next person — and, if you want to have a successful session, you have to respond to them.