Human Chess: A journey to the playful side of Dominance

The sisters were known as “the cure for the common bully.” Rough and tumble, they were large-boned baby Valkyries. Not yet stifled by puberty, they weren’t cruel or malicious; they wanted to play and play hard. Like the boys.

Perhaps they’d known ugly boys, bullies, but they weren’t sure. All manner of insults could be thrown in their direction. Nothing stuck. What did it matter what anyone said when you came from love? When your household was peaceful? When there were rules and boundaries to be followed, but ultimately, you knew you were wanted?

Without the sisters’ consent, doe-eyed petites would hide in their shadows. If a boy was being mean, he got shoved in the dirt. Sat on. Threatened with a glance they’d learned from their father, who had been to war. It was a look that said, “I’m not playing. Hurt her again, I will break you.”

It wasn’t their business, but some injustices are inconceivable. You do not hurt something weaker than you. You protect it. You care for it. Back then, there was no such thing as empty promises.

That’s where she started — my alter ego, Scarlett.

There’s a niche for me somewhere. I’m a terrible stripper. Escorting reminds me of high school. Faking an orgasm on camera is beyond insulting. Leather-covered women with whips, chains, and snarls? That’s a bit dramatic.

What else exists in the sex industry for someone who doesn’t fit a stereotypical mold? A sessionist.

Directed by Q and R —, I was to post a personal ad on wb270.com, an online female wrestler list. Founded by an anonymous lover of dominant women, the site is ancient and effective. There’s no fancy logos, no embedded 3D cartoons, no flash video showing the hint of girls gone wild. On the masthead, there’s a drawing of Diana the Valkyrie and an idea, this world is a lot simpler when there aren’t spaces to fill with advertisements.

The session wrestlers post their measurements, weight, height, foot size, and skill set, along with the types of sessions they offer: scissors, fantasy, role-play, semi-competitive wrestling, competitive wrestling, arm wrestling, smothering, asphyxiation, trampling, bondage, lift and carry, crushing/VOR, belly punching, sparring, beatdowns, ball-busting, humiliation, tickling, you get the idea.

If you can fantasize about it, you can pay someone to enact the scenario.

The first time I saw the wb270, I said no way. I’m not a bodybuilder. I’m not a black belt. I like power and control and sensuality because I hate having them taken away. But I was running out of options. There had to be a way to make money without poisoning my heart, and thereby teaching my daughter she could not trust me, men, intuition, or the backbone of our belief system: The Universe is wildly in love with us.

The sex industry didn’t exactly echo this divine expression of consent. I knew there were good men, kind men, smart men, strange men, playful men, all wanting something more from their sexual encounters. But did they pay for providers? Did they treat them with honor and want to play as equals? No idea. Then I read a line from the wb270’s homepage:

The women listed here are athletes. It is not an escort or dating site — do not expect to find girlfriends or women offering sex. There is risk of injury inherent in wrestling and some risk in contacting and meeting strangers. Remember also that the women on this list are people, who deserve courtesy and consideration, and who may have to deal with some rather unpleasant customers at times.

I resisted it, god knows I did. To this day, I’m not sure if it chose me, or I chose it. All I know, posting an ad to become a sessionist was the beginning of a long game of human chess.

A sessionist is a cross between a dominatrix, childhood girlfriend, therapist, and sensual goddess. Her specialty is physical dominance while maintaining an aura of athletic playfulness.

Most of the fantasies she’s asked to personify spring from childhood memories.

A boy is young, pre-pubescent. He encounters the other, a being so foreign and laden with feminine mystique, he can only call her alien. His world isn’t very large to begin with, just a collection of thoughts and images, so when she comes along and puts her foot, hand, butt, boobs — essentially her dominant presence — in his tiny basecamp, the ripples and shockwaves penetrate the furthest edges of his expanding mind.

When put like this, every fantasy makes sense.

The land of physical domination is different than your run-of-the-mill dominatrix encounter. The majority don’t want an untouchable, hardcore, pain-inflicting sadist. They don’t want pain at all, at least not the kind felt stubbing a toe or hitting a funny bone. They want the girl(s) from their childhood but magically transformed into glorified and villainized action figures.

This is a woman who owns her sensuality, feels comfortable in her own body, knows that body’s limitations, trains her weaknesses, and can choke a motherf — out should he become erratic or threatening.

She is often athletic in some sense of the word. Maybe not bulging with muscle — we’ll get to muscle worship soon enough — within her cellular DNA exists a magnetic attraction for physicality. If challenged by a male, she doesn’t shrink or run. She may be afraid but her nervous system switches into fight mode. Fighting takes on all manner of symbology: flirting, trash talk, swapping jokes and horror stories, barbed insults, questioning the man’s virility, etc.

If it comes to blows, there’s hand-to-hand combat, sex, and wrestling. Each action lives on a scale of intensity, or as Jordan Peterson has been known to talk about, The Hierarchy of Dominance.

For the purposes of this artful ramble, we’re not talking about social and asocial violence. You say shit like this to a normal man looking for distraction, and you’ve completely popped his fantasy bubble.

The world we live in is inundated with masculine stink. If you are a female who is not afraid of men physically, mentally, or emotionally, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s sort of a buffet of potential play toys, and while those toys don’t smell like roses, at least they don’t smell like plastic.

Suffice it to say, somewhere in the female’s childhood, she learned males were just as fragile, if not more so, than females.

If you’re such a female and can figure out what a man wants (i.e. what’s missing from his life that leaves him searching for erotic, clandestine, and meaningful encounters validating his existence) you have power over him.

The secret to anyone’s power lives in their fantasies.

Kermit the Frog said it best, “It’s not easy being green.”

I fucking loved that song as a kid. It hit all the sad pressure points and twanged the heartstrings. Here was Kermit, a mini-master of stand-up comedians, confidence, and pig-attracting masculine dominance, bearing his heart without excuses, victimization, or hate-filled rallying calls.

He was strong enough to be vulnerable, to sing about loneliness and being different. On any given Wednesday, an artist, man, woman, trans, gay, child, asexual, nerd, jock, black, white, purple, and impaired could relate to Kermit the Frog’s feeling of dissonance.

Maybe Jim Hensons’ fantasies reflected his childhood experience of being an artistic outcast, I don’t know, but he was smart enough to empower a puppet.

When a man has a fantasy and it’s secretly running his life, he empowers a puppet in the form of a female provider. Risking rejection, disgust, and possible exposure, he puts his heart on a silver platter and presents it to The Goddess.

He tells himself, “I want her to want it. Hug it, squeeze it, and call it George. Shoot, if she wants to eat, I’m down for that too, so long as it takes me out of this monotonous doldrum of being.”

The man pays for her expertise and specific physical attributes, fingers crossed she won’t turn out to be a flake, narcissist, or man-hater.

They meet. Two human beings, strangers with like-minded intent on being the dominant or the submissive, touch each other. They tangle, grapple, slip and slide, exchanging pheromones, sweat, and the holiest of communions, breath.

Everything leading up to this point — the fantasy, the search, setting up a meeting, agreeing to a price — it’s fluff to get to a place where time stops.

This is where the real fun begins.

Up next, Part Two is when the bodies hit the mats, like Queen of Gambits imaginary chess pieces but without the psychosomatic drugs.

This article was originally posted on Medium.com in "1001 Nights in Las Vegas #47"