The document is an interview with a 26-year-old woman who has worked as a dominatrix for a few years. She got into the profession after studying topics like criminology and women's studies in college. She now works at two dungeons in New York City, learning psychological and practical techniques to help clients explore their desires. While some sessions can be dull, she finds the job rewarding when she is able to help clients learn more about themselves. Her goal is to become a well-known dominatrix and be able to specialize in the types of sessions she prefers.

1. A Severa, Real Life Dominatrix Interview By John Bowe

2. I'm twenty-six. I've been a dominatrix for a couple of years now. I got into it for a variety of reasons. I studied criminology, sociology and women's studies, and had some pretty leftist professors, and they influenced me in that I realized, hey, if society is gonna make things like drugs and prostitution and gambling illegal, and create false scarcities and make the prices go up, why not take advantage of it if you can?

3. When I first came to New York, I showed up with just a backpack to be on the Maury Povitch show, some episode about how opposites attract. I lied and said I was really attracted to short men just as an excuse to get flown in. And I loved it here and so I looked in the help wanted section for social workers and it was retarded--like $17,000 a year. It's absolutely retarded the number of people who do stuff they hate. Two weeks paid vacation and all. It's a joke.

4. So I looked in the Yellow Pages under "domination" or something like that. I contacted Ava Norman, who's very big. She loved me right away. So I got work through her. And then I started working for another dungeon as well.

5. There's lots of vocational training for this. They don't just send you in not knowing anything. There's practical training--learning the things to do. They're very interesting, the things that you can do, things you wouldn't think of. You have to learn how to do them. It's just like any other job: you have to know how to do it. It would be insane not to know how to do it.

6. You also have to read books on the psychology of it. That's actually the most important thing. The psychological training is ninety percent of it--and it's the part that interests me most. It's not like you just come in and get beaten. The psychological part of it is about reaching into someone's mind to do something that they may feel ashamed or nervous about. Finding out what they really want but aren't able to say. It's about why a person wants something. You have to be empathetic.

7. The two dungeons where I work are private places in business offices. On the outside, they'd probably look the same to you as any corporate office. And on the inside, I'm making about the same per hour as a good attorney. The house takes a good portion of the money, but they also handle the collection. Money never passes our hands, because if it's an undercover police officer, we can't have our fingerprints on the bills.

8. The dungeons have decorated rooms. Very private and fully equipped. Both places have the typical hard-core rooms, all done up in black, and then the other Martha Stewart-ish rooms. They're both about equally popular.

9. It's not a sex service. They're perfectly free to release themselves, but I'm not there for their direct sexual satisfaction.

10. All my customers are men. Women can be naturally dominated by men at any time. They just have to go to a bar and they can find a guy who will dominate them. I see a lot of men. I call them clients. Or patients. Like we're the therapists. Sometimes I definitely feel like I'm a counselor.