At 28, I walked away from the woman I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with, the woman I thought I was going to marry. For a decade, I was a loyal foot soldier for the u-haul lesbian community. I swore myself to a life of serial monogamy, swearing to my friends this time is different, desperately hoping if my relationship was traditional enough I would be accepted.

I suspected if I did tie the knot, I’d have some devastatingly empty seats on my side of the aisle due to some family members unable to accept my queerness, so I compensated by insisting on incorporating a high level of camp into my wedding fantasies. My best friend, a drag queen, would sashay down the aisle wearing a massive wedding gown with me hidden in the skirt. I would emerge only when the officiant theatrically asked if anyone had objections, stepping into the light to declare my vows. It was perfect. My girlfriend hated it.

We did not make it to the altar.

Cue: shedding all the pieces of myself that centered my relationship, the terrifying realization of how little I had left, and accepting that my desire for a queer white picket fence life wasn’t authentic to me. It was what I thought would make me more digestible to other people.

At the same time as this internal journey, externally, it felt like the world is ending. Politics, the economy, Lydia Butthole Kollins having to send Kori King home on RuPauls Drag Race. Everything felt bad, and I hit a breaking point. I had no idea how to fight back against these forces, but I figured giving up the fantasy of being good enough was a good place to start.

It was time for my villain arc.

I gave myself to survival — not the prepper variety but a post-romantic rebirth centering myself. I enrolled in jiu-jitsu. At the Glove and Crown Gym in West LA, I worked with Coach Jo, an esteemed female MMA fighter who showed me that I could use my body as a weapon. I learned the difference between a blood choke and a pain choke. I learned how to control a body that didn’t want to be controlled. I learned how to break free from someone who wanted to break me down. I got strong, and my muscles felt like a physical representation of my growth; my bruises were proof I would do the hard stuff over and over again until it was easy. Especially when it hurt. I was no longer orbiting a relationship. I found power not in rage, but in my rhythm, breath, and presence.  Over time, I started seeing bits of the power and confidence I admired so much in my coach reflecting in me.  She didn’t just train me to fight, she helped me remember who I was.

But combat was just the beginning.

In parallel, I pursued another kind of power: professional domination. Leather. Rope. Ritual. I studied the delicacies of control and consent, how to turn a man in a thousand-dollar suit into a footstool. I learned how to tie balls so they were easier to access — ripe, vulnerable, at my mercy. I practiced the art of degradation that tickles the erotic. I am a student of fear and trust, in the language of limits and the immense responsibility of power exchange.

Beneath the latex and leather is sacred work. My mentor Mistress Damiana Chi says we are light workers who play in the dark. I don’t just beat people up. I unburden them.

Let’s talk about the men. The ones propelled by shame. Shame for liking lace, for wanting to be small, for dreaming of femininity but being told to hate those parts of themselves. In sissy play, I become both mirror and priestess, drawing out the tender, hungry girl they have inside. They call me Mistress. I experience gender euphoria when I brush their hair and put them in pretty dresses. I am some kind of mother to these girls. They are desperate for a safe space to play.

More than just a place to explore shame and social constructs, a dungeon is a place of second chances for people who’ve been through hell: trauma survivors, people whose bodies became foreign after assault, after health scares, after heartbreak, people who were born in a body that feels wrong to them and are forced to live as the person others perceive them to be. Outside, they’re the businessman, the butch lesbian, the tough as nails military guy, the sweet domestic wife who has it all under control.

Here, they can return to their skin without the pressure to be healed, perfect, or even coherent. I interact with them as a pet, a doll, a slave, whatever they need. This is who they are to me. In that submission, they find freedom. It’s something that anyone who’s done this dominatrix work understands: The deeper the surrender, the more powerful the transformation.

When I left my last relationship, I left behind the fantasy of being loved for being good. Now, I get to create a safer and more honest fantasy for my submissives. I nurture their darkest desires and most shameful secrets. I hear their confessions and tell them I still want them at my feet. Their responsibilities are reduced to a singular one: be mine.

I used to feel like the world was ending, but I think it’s just shedding its skin. And queer femme bodies like mine — long dismissed, domesticated, sexualized and commodified — are finding new mythologies. We aren’t all here to be wives. Some of us are here to be gods.

This isn’t a glow-up. It’s a reckoning. I’ve never felt more alive. More queer. More dangerous. The apocalypse isn’t coming. It’s already here. And I’ll be damned if I’m not dressed for it.

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