 Tantra: Sex the Honest Way Last One to... The Spiritual Spanker Missionary? | by Katka Moore Next time you see a proper suited gentleman strolling the streets, consider what face he might wear behind his mask of civility. Mistress Yvonne doesn't need to imagine. The "other side" has been walking into her mirrored parlour for eight years, some wearing hot pink heels and most asking her to punish them for being bad boys. It's all part of the job of being a spanking therapist. "I find it interesting to be dealing with parts of people that they hide from the rest of the world," says Yvonne. The sexual games of master and servant are veritable national sports in England and China, where sexual repression reigns high. It's no great revelation that Ottawa, harbours a lucrative self-punishing trade being the capital of Canada and therefore, another bastion of state-inspired repression. This is where Mistress Yvonne plies her skills. "In this little conservative city - that isn't quite that conservative after all - I'm sure there are a lot of politicians that want to get spanked." Yvonne laughs. "Maybe they'd do a better job at running the country." Yvonne says straight sex isn't part of her repertoire and neither is the stereotypical dominatrix outlook. She abhors six-inch stilettos, avoids whipping and is trained in massage therapy and holistic body work. "I'm not this dom, leather-clad witch," protests Yvonne. "I enjoy providing a service that gives people happiness and comfort." The kind of service she doles out comes in the form of a mother's trusty wooden spoon lashing which she protests is sensual. "People have serious misconceptions that S&M is about getting beaten," she notes. "Instead, her clients prefer to ride the fine line between pleasure and pain where a half-hour beating with a shoe sends them into ecstasy. What is not sensual about pulling down one's trousers, hiking up one's dress and letting a stranger slap your hind quarters to a deep crimson while you watch the process quantified in several mirrored reflections? Yvonne's disciplinary implements range from the aforementioned wooden spoon to a Rubberella's cat o' nine tails and every style of ping pong paddle in between which she uses on her mostly male clientele. Yvonne says many women don't come her way, but that might be because women may not feel they have an excessive amount of power that they need to relinquish at the dominatrix's door. "If anything, submission is about letting go and releasing any type of decision-making. It's an escapism from the self; from having to act on the self images we have to deal with every day." The spanker is the '90s version of the bartender or an alternative to the confessional. She's someone who you spill her inner fantasies to. The difference is they play it out your whinings for you and the fee starts at $100 for a half-hour session. Yvonne says S&M is a game a lot of people toy with but they don't have a label for it. The mantra "no pain, no gain" becomes "no pain, no big o." It's an idea Madonna attempted to document in her surface-level Sex book but opted for safe, staged images instead. Yvonne seems to have tapped into something profitable as well. "For the longest time I thought I was doing it for the money. Then I saw I was having repeat clients and I realized I must be good at what I do." But that doesn't mean there aren't downers to her job. She doesn't like beating, but she's got the knack for it. Her brawny forearms are two job benefits. Men who are severely depressive and addicted show up in her parlour occasionally, but she turns away customers she feels are truly self-destructive. She turned down one customer because she felt she was contributing to his alcoholism and another because he was addicted to drugs. "I told him, 'You can't find comfort in coming to see me. All you're doing is filling an emptiness inside you.'" When Yvonne can, she mixes her two arts of punishing and holistic massage to personalize her service to maximum effect. "Sometimes I give them a neck rub to release their tension afterwards. That's really comforting to them." She's aware of the often troubled psyches of her clients which is why she says she doesn't like to abuse the or take advantage of them. "I don't set the trap for them. Their own trap is in their mind." And she has her own hypothesis on why they seek her out. "They say if you were hit a lot as a child, you grow to hate it. But there are some who were hit a lot as a child and they learn to accept it as a pleasurable experience. It's unfortunate." |
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