Den of the Dominatrix

A former Catholic schoolgirl from the South finds her calling in the big city, fulfilling one fetishistic fantasy after another.

Photos by Elizabeth D. Herman

“Yesterday, a middle-school math teacher asked me to castrate him, and last week an engineer asked me to hang him with a noose,” Mistress Josie says.

It’s a crisp July day, and Mistress Josie is sitting in the back garden of a quaint vegan café tucked on an East Village side street. Under a canopy of bamboo trees with a large statue of Buddha to our left, she talks about her relatively new job as an independent high-end dominatrix. A striking young woman, she is lean and muscular, with long legs that give the illusion of her being taller than 5’ 9”. Her demeanor is laid back, a kind of California cool, but she exudes a visceral sexual energy that belies her manner, an energy that compels people to stop and look. The waitress, the busboy, the wiry haired woman at the table next to us - all at some point pause to stare. If Josie notices, she does not let on or she does not care. At the moment, in her skinny cotton pants, ballerina flats and gauzy top, it is h…