Lady Eva. Profession: dominatrix
Closeness, warmth and rough tenderness are the realm of Lady Eva. The black-haired dominatrix talks about experiences at the boundary between pleasure and pain and entices two journalists to try it out for themselves.
‘Actually, I tell stories,’ says Lady Eva.
She is a dominatrix. Her stories are not written, told or sung. The stories that Lady Eva creates are lived. She sits on a bench on which she straps her guests – Lady Eva has no clients and certainly no punters, only guests – and makes them suffer a little. She says that the trestle is her throne, and she doesn't want to appear delicate.
The black-haired woman with the bright red lipstick dominates the room. She is the one who sets the tone here. Not through violence or the threat of it. When talking, she maintains eye contact when she talks about her work as a dominatrix. Her gaze makes you forget everything else. There is nothing in the universe except Lady Eva, the dominatrix, and her submissive guest, the sub.
Loss of control
Lady Eva does not see herself as a sexual service provider. Through eye contact and attention – both given and received – she creates a world that has nothing in common with the reality outside the front door. A safe space with its own story, pain, satisfaction and eroticism.
‘My work is about completely different things, even if it clearly has a sexual component.’
She sees herself as a liberator, liberated and therapist. She gives her guests a kind of release, she says, the satisfaction of a need that they cannot satisfy anywhere else. A release that lies on the fine line between stimulation and pain. It's about letting go, trusting and relaxing.
The woman in black leggings and black peep-toe shoes with unreal high heels, who almost floats as she walks, and the blue police hat, talks about the practice. About men, in whom she can almost insert her entire arm. Of needles in scrotums and of bound men who have to wait on the bench while she demonstratively goes to get a coffee.
‘No two sessions with a guest should be the same,’ she says. She always comes up with something new. New stimulation, new stimuli, new words. She keeps telling her story and only asks about her sub's preferences once.
She shows dildos of all sizes, metal rods that are inserted into the penis, chains, handcuffs and spurs. Here, the question-and-answer game takes on a different form, one that video producer Stephanie Tresch and I have no control over.
Dance
Just half an hour ago, Lady Eva looked quite different. She is wrapped up in a black winter coat. cap on her head, lined boots.
‘The weather really is shit today,’ she says as she enters the House of Formation at Zentralstrasse 64 in Zurich, the studio where the unassuming Italian becomes a dominatrix. She is then no longer called Eva. Lady is a title, Eve is a stage name. She quickly drinks a coffee, then disappears into the back room to change. She will be receiving guests shortly, but takes time for a video producer and a journalist who have questions about her world. The last part of the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ series is coming up and the two of them know from the media that the sex in the film has nothing to do with reality.
‘I just like being the bad girl,’ says Lady Eva. She enjoys being dominant. In a love relationship, she is more the submissive. While she talks about her private life, Lady Eva is a completely different person. Gone is the eye contact that makes the world disappear. Gone is the broad-shouldered pose and the playful game with the nine-tailed cat. Her voice becomes a little quieter, she looks at a candle in the corner of the room.
When Lady Eva is not introducing fists into men or leaving dotted lines on the skin of her guests with spurs, she is a dancer. It all started with ballet.
‘I just have to move,’ says the woman who proudly calls herself a dancehall queen. She dances all over the world, from the dance halls of Jamaica to the clubs of Canada, whether as a stripper or as a dancer in a freak show. She speaks at least three languages fluently and has a command of Jamaican patois, a type of English dialect. She gives dance classes in Milan and London.
She doesn't even want to imagine how the people around her would react to her second job as a dominatrix.
‘Many would probably disown me,’ she says. She is thinking in particular of her acquaintances from the dancehall scene, where women still have a clearly assigned role as the submissive. The globetrotter enjoys her work as a dominatrix, loves it and even needs it, but keeps it secret from her friends and acquaintances. That's easy, says Eva, who lives in London and Milan. Because in Switzerland she is an unknown and no one from her hometowns would think of visiting a dungeon in Zurich.
Her shoulders go back again. There's eye contact.
A borderline experience
Lady Eva picks up the cat-o'-nine-tails. She compares it to a rod.
‘I like the cat better. At least I leave marks on the skin with that.’
She wants her guests to remember her even after the session has ended. Looking back, it is at this point that journalists become participants, because a spiked wheel moves over my arm. Twice. Once gently to let me feel what's coming, once with pressure. Hours later, I can still feel the spots where the needles pricked me.
‘Where am I dripping wax on your back now?’ asks Lady Eva. When a dominatrix asks, it has little to do with a question. Even simple questions like ‘How are you?’ are not just platitudes. A dominatrix demands the truth through her behaviour alone. She sees through lies and reacts to the smallest impulses. Because the fine line between borderline experience and pain must be maintained. Too far below the border: the session is not fulfilling. Above the border: the effect of the borderline experience gives way to pain and the session becomes torture.
Stephanie and I both volunteer. We seek understanding. We seek the experience. We hope not to be mere spectators in the world of the dominatrix, but participants.
‘Ready?’
The domina's question is not one. The wax on my back is inevitable. Crouching naked on the bench, I have no choice. At the moment the hot wax drips onto my back, I feel a brief moment of hot pain, which quickly gives way to a pleasant warmth and then forms a hard layer on my spine. I think I understand something.
I give this woman, who I have known for about an hour, power over me and my integrity. She inflicts pain on me, tests my limits, but without putting me in serious danger. That is her job. Her attention is on me, as mine is on her. For once, I don't notice Stephanie behind the camera.
‘It's no different for asphyxiation games,’ says Lady Eva later. When she deliberately pulls a plastic bag over a guest's head and chokes them, she can't afford to be distracted for even a tenth of a second. Otherwise, her guest is in serious danger, if not death.
Lady Eva dares to take another step. She takes the nine-tailed cat and hits me on my bottom. Although I am still wearing jeans, I am aware of the force behind the blow. On the third stroke, it misses my waistband and hits bare skin. A flash of pain twitches in my head, but I don't panic or feel afraid. I know that Lady Eva knows what she is doing. I trust her.
Now Stephanie is holding out. She is only wearing a bra and jeans. That worried her.
‘But the terrible pain that was announced really worried me,’ says the video producer. She had remembered the worst pain of her life and hoped that the wax would not be so bad. She controlled her breathing. Inhale. Exhale. But after the first drop, the fear had gone.
‘A slight burning sensation on the skin, then I thought, ‘What a shame, it's already over’.’
But the nine-tailed cat is new to her.
‘I know the pain of a slap on the backside,’ she says. From friends. The cat does hit her on a wider area than she is used to. The burning pain is pleasant and tickles her skin. Stephanie notices how her skin is slowly getting hot. I suggest that Lady Eva whip the other cheek for the camera. Stephanie doesn't complain, but as a precaution, she takes the camera cover out of the back pocket of her jeans.
Minutes later, we leave the House of Formation. Fifty Shades of Grey are forgotten, as what is done on screen has absolutely nothing to do with Lady Eva's work. Our emotions are running high. We are silent. The story of the Italian woman who dances and sometimes tells stories by inserting metal rods into penises ends. For now. The world outside the studio feels different. Harsher, colder, harder and more dishonest. Because we have experienced moments of closeness, intimacy and understanding that cannot be found anywhere else.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.