Episode 8: All the Way In

I stood in the middle of the non-gendered locker room, opened my bag and stared at my bathing suit.

Around me, people were changing as casually as if we were at the YMCA. Except some were slipping into lingerie, some were completely naked, and there were bodies of every shape, size and gender expression.

And there I was, holding my bathing suit, contemplating a question I had not anticipated having that evening:

Was I really considering going completely naked?

At a sex club?

For the first time?

Apparently, yes.

But I should probably rewind.

As I'd begun researching the possibility of becoming a professional Dominatrix, the algorithm did what the algorithm does. Suddenly my feeds were full of kink education, professional Dommes, terminology, workshops and events. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I saw an announcement for a presentation being given by two professional Dominatrices.

At a local sex club.

Well.

I'd always wondered what happened inside those places. Now I had an educational reason to find out.

Research, really.

Professional development.

A few days before my adventure, I happened to hear from the man who lived in the church. When I told him where I was going, he offered to join me.

This was getting interesting.

As had become standard practice in this new life of mine, we established the ground rules before we ever set foot inside. I wasn't interested in sharing him or group sex. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have sex with him that night. I wanted to see the presentation, explore the club and let the night unfold without expectations.

And if anything did happen, I didn't want him engaging with anyone except me.

Essentially, I needed an emotional-support sex-club partner.

He agreed.

Which brings us back to the locker room.

I looked at the bathing suit again.

No one was requiring me to be naked. No one even seemed particularly interested in whether I was naked.

So I asked myself a question that was becoming increasingly familiar:

Do I not want to do this, or am I just afraid to do it?

I wanted to.

So I dropped the bathing suit back into my bag, took off everything else and closed the locker.

All the way in.

My holy guide and I headed out.

I remember the first walk down the stairs because my heart was absolutely hammering. There is a particular vulnerability in being naked around strangers that has nothing to do with sex. No strategic jeans. No bra doing God's work. No outfit communicating who you are before you have to.

It's just you.

Having the man from the church beside me helped considerably. I'm not sure I would have had the nerve to do it alone.

Although almost immediately, I decided that someday I wanted to.

The first thing I noticed was how completely wrong I'd been about what a sex club would look like.

I'd pictured darkness. Red velvet. Black walls. Shadowy corners with shadowy things happening inside them.

Instead, it was bright.

People were talking, laughing, walking around. Yes, sexual things were happening, but I'd expected seediness. Creepy men lurking. A general sense that you needed to keep your guard up.

That judgment, it turned out, belonged mostly to me.

What I noticed instead was consent.

People asking.

People respecting space.

People seemingly understanding that another person's naked body wasn't automatically an invitation.

I'd assumed fewer clothes would mean fewer boundaries.

Instead, boundaries seemed to matter even more.

We headed toward the pool, which appeared to be the central meeting place.

I looked at the water.

Then at all the naked people in it.

Then back at the water.

Human sex stew.

I wish I had something more evolved to offer here, but I don't.

Still, I'd committed.

So in we went.

And somewhere over the course of the night, something strange happened.

I forgot I was naked.

The thing that had felt monumental in the locker room became almost irrelevant. There were just bodies. Big bodies. Small bodies. Soft bodies. Scarred bodies. Bodies of all kinds.

After a while, nakedness became strangely neutral.

Being there with someone I trusted made it easier. His care, the quiet check-ins and the fact that he never assumed agreeing to one thing meant agreeing to the next was an enormous turn-on.

Eventually, we did have sex.

Not because we'd planned to.

Not because we were at a sex club and therefore obligated to make good use of the facilities.

Because we wanted to.

I have no idea whether anyone watched.

I genuinely didn't care.

I was too busy being there.

And I was proud of myself.

I'd done it.

Sex club: crossed off the sexual bucket list.

Although, technically, I'd come for a lecture.

The presentation by the two professional Dominatrices was good, but as I listened, something unexpected happened.

I knew a lot of this already.

Consent. Communication. Negotiation. Boundaries. Aftercare. Paying attention to another person's responses.

Then they started asking the audience questions.

And I knew the answers.

My hand went up, all the while still very much naked - in this lecture room.

I answered.

I was right.

Another question.

I knew that one too.

There was this little voice inside me going:

Wait.

Could I actually be good at this?

I'd arrived expecting these women to introduce me to some mysterious world of dominance.

Instead, they were describing things I was already beginning to understand.

It wasn't simply about control.

It was about care.

Attention.

Trust.

Responsibility.

I'd imagined a Dominatrix as someone completely different from me. Intimidating. Severe. Untouchable. A woman who walked into every room already knowing exactly what she wanted.

Basically, a woman I'd invented.

But maybe I didn't need to become her.

Maybe the parts of myself I already possessed the ability to read people, to care deeply, to notice details, to make someone feel safe enough to let go weren't obstacles to becoming a Dominant.

Maybe they were exactly what could make me good at it.

I'd walked into that club carrying a whole collection of assumptions about what happened inside places like this.

Most of them were wrong.

And as I got dressed again that night, I started wondering whether I'd been just as wrong about what a professional Dominatrix was supposed to be.

For the first time, becoming one didn't feel like an outrageous fantasy I'd Googled my way into.

It felt possible.

Now I just had to figure out what the hell I was going to do about it.