Kendra Grant Malone: Poet, Dominatrix

Photo by Julian Gilbert

We've all wanted to beat the shit out of a poet before, but how would you feel about a poet kicking your ass and calling you a faggot? Kendra Grant Malone would gladly do that for you. For a fee. She was nice enough to meet with me over some gin and tonics the other night to discuss poetry, BDSM, vampire gloves, and bloody diapers. She kind of makes Rimbaud look like a wuss. Here's what went down.

VICE: What is your occupation?
Kendra Grant Malone: I am a professional dominatrix.

You’re also a writer. When did you start writing?
I started writing about five or six years ago, when I moved to New York.

What about domming?
Four years ago.

What made you start writing?
Being really bored and lonely. I really hated my job. I was working in reality TV, and whenever my boss wasn’t looking I started soothing myself by writing little poems or flash fictions (though I didn’t know they were called flash fictions). I never studied literature or anything. Then I had a blog and met some authors who encouraged me to get those little things published. Once I started getting good responses, I began to take it more seriously.

How did you start domming?
In 2008 I got laid off from the job I moved to New York from Minnesota for. I had some savings, but I kind of had a drinking problem at the time and drank through that money in like two months. I’d never worked as a waitress and drug dealing is too dangerous for a woman. I had some friends who were sex workers, but if I was going to do it, I wanted to keep it legal. So my choices were being a dom or stripping. And I am not graceful, so domming it was. I interviewed at a few dungeons, and some of them wanted me to do creepier stuff than I had planned. I finally found an all-female run dungeon and had such fun my first week that I decided to keep it up.

So you just dialed up some dungeons and were all, “Will you pay me to kick men’s asses for you?” and they hired you?
Basically.

So what do you do, exactly?
Well, infantilism is kind of my specialty. Adult-baby role-play. I love adult-baby work. I find it soothing, relaxing. I’m usually the mommy, but I’ve done like double-baby stuff, where I am a baby, too.

Oh cool. Is there like a crib and shit?
Sure, people bring in collapsible cribs or we set up a playpen. A lot of times I am just holding them, but often babies like corporal punishment. More than you’d think. Babies often just want to be destroyed. My favorite client goes by “Flower” and I’ve been seeing him for four years now. He also goes by “Bloodbath Baby” because he likes to be whipped, paddled, flogged, slapped, and hit with the vampire glove (a leather glove with pins in it) until there is blood on the walls and his diaper is covered with it. In between the beatings, I bottle feed him. He likes to be beat and treated like a baby, and that has kind of become my niche.

Jesus.
But I also dress in leather and use a whip like most dominatrixes.

Cool. You recently came out to your father about your dominatrix work. Why?
Living a double life is hard. A lot of women have been sex workers at some point in their lives, and most of the ones I’ve met keep it a closely guarded secret. It gets difficult upholding the lie, and I’m really close to my father. He’s my best friend, and I really trust him. I was sick of lying to him about “being a waitress.” I also didn’t want him to think he had done anything wrong. When you’re doing something “closeted” you kind of have this irrational fear that people won't like you if they find out what you're doing. I’d already talked with him about BDSM in general, like how I go to fetish parties where we play beat-up games, and he was fine with that. So it started to seem like it would be OK to tell him. He doesn’t love that I do it and has his concerns, but he’s morally supportive.

Does your dad read your poetry? Was showing him your book similar at all to telling him you’re a sex worker?
Actually, yeah. I really didn’t want to give him my book at first. A lot of my family members still don’t have it. I just keep avoiding giving it to them. My dad had read some things online years ago, like when I was more blog-centric. So he read something I’d written about masturbation and it kind of upset him. We ended up making a deal that I would email him the things I wanted him to read, and that they would be dad-friendly. But then my book came out and it’s very confessional so I had to warn him.

So, you’re basically saying that everything you write in your poetry is true.
Well, it’s not like concreteness. One thing I like about poetry is that even though you’re writing linear sentences, it’s still not memoir. There’s so much room for interpretation. Like there’s this poem in my book that is really about a play-partner but people think it’s about my brother eating food off my back. Just from how it was phrased. It was intentionally left open.

Are you always the dom, or do you submit sometimes?
I have one client who I am submissive to.

What’s a dungeon like? Does it have to be in a basement? Is there always someone nearby in case things get weird?
A dungeon is just like any other office. There’s a waiting area where us girls hang out and then there are the rooms where we work. The size of the girls' lounge area definitely affects whether I will work there or not. Some NYC dungeons are big and some are small, but there is a lot of hanging out in the lounges because a lot of days all you do is sit around. A dungeon does not have to be in a basement, but some definitely are. And yes, there is always a man in the dungeon within yelling distance in case things get weird. I’m lucky that nothing weird has really happened to me, but I’m also really safe. I don’t do outcalls—I only work in dungeons and I screen my clients very carefully. I don’t see that many different people, and only have a solid group of like eight clients.

How do you choose your clients? How do you know who is not going to get weird or dangerous on you?
I get them from other girls who recommend them. Because what I do is so niche, they’ve usually been with a girl I know who will vouch for them.

Do you ever write about work?
Not much. I’ve been working on some short fiction that involves work, but it’s more about the other doms I work with, not my clients. I don’t know, I feel like that’s already been overdone.

By who? Like are there many sex worker/writers who are actually any good and aren’t just writers because they are sex workers?
Well, the first person to come to mind is Mary Gaitskill. She was not a dom, though. She was just a stripper, I think. Which is very different but it still falls under the blanket of sex work. She wrote Bad Behavior. I love her work. I don’t like to shit talk, but there was a book that came out last year called Whipsmart, by Melissa Febos, which was a memoir about an upscale dominatrix in NYC. It was exploitative of the industry after she had already left it. Because a lot of women in her dungeon did handjobs, she claimed that this went on in all of them, which is so untrue. There is no sex involved in my work. She knows very well that the police raid dungeons all the time and she just kind of put everyone in the industry on their toes and under a microscope after she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. It frustrated me and most of the girls in the industry. Just a dick move.

Why do you call it “sex work” if there is no sex?
I’m not entirely sure. It’s kind of frustrating because the term scares people. I mean, a stripper is a sex worker, a porn actress is a sex worker, webcam girls are sex workers, escorts and doms too—the blanket is really huge. Most sex workers do not have sexual intercourse, or even physical contact with genitalia, but it is the adult industry and is done for the purpose of arousal. Most of my clients do this for mental or physical arousal. They aren’t going to have any release with me. But they will get aroused. I mean it’s basically another service industry. Doing what I do is a lot like being a waitress.

Do you promote yourself or do the dungeons do that for you? Like do you throw your own ads up on Craigslist?
I used to—Craigslist and Back Page. But those places have been inundated with escorts posing as doms. They are also filled with untrained doms, which is very dangerous. There are definitely some things you need to know about the human body before you do this. Like how and where to whip and flog, and where the femoral artery is.

What’s the femoral artery?
It’s on the back of your leg. If you burst it, the person could faint. Most BDSM clients will want to be whipped from their butt and down their thighs.

So were you trained?
Yeah, for about a month at my first dungeon. And I am always looking to learn more. You have to practice all the time. You have to know how to throw a whip and you can always improve upon your skills. A weekly, if not daily, practice should happen outside of your clients. I have bad depth perception so I prefer to keep on top of it so that I never hurt anyone.

Have you ever developed any attachments to your clients?
Yes. I am always the dom, except with one client with whom I take the submissive role. I’ve known him since I first started, and he has become one of my closer friends. He is an older gentleman. He knows my real name, he comes to my readings, he’s a big supporter of my work, he knows my boyfriend, and he’s met my friends. He’s just a big part of my life. Like last year I realized my drugs and drinking were getting a little out of control. I was always sick and fucked up so I called him for help and he gave me advice.

What kind of drugs?
God, all of them. Just too much of everything. Mostly alcohol, but you know. He helped me take a three-month sobriety, and then I just started taking it easy and making better decisions. And he always checks in on me. I also have a strong attachment with Flower.

You mean the Bloodbath Baby?
Yes, he is very special to me. He always calls me Mommy. Basically anyone I see regularly, I care about.

Does writing and domming come from the same place inside of you?
Absolutely. For me, as a dom and a writer, there is an emotional space I have in a session. When I am dominating someone, it comes from a source of empathy that is really moving to me and demands my constant attention. I pay attention to how fast or slow someone is breathing, or if they flinch or don’t flinch, the micro-expressions on their face, and the micro-movements of their body. I have to think of how that would feel to me and keep them in the high of sado-masochism. I have to tap into how I feel when I am in their position. I try to do the same thing with writing.

Do you ever write with the reader as your submissive in mind?
I think the reader is more like the dom in that instance. I mean, as soon as they have your work they can shred you to pieces and attack you. The criticism is strong. Once your work is in the readers’ hands, you are in a very submissive place.

Yeah, no shit. I write for VICE. I feel that every week in the comments section.
God, I know, I’ve read the comments on that site. They’re so mean. I’m kind of worried.

Oh, I’m sure no one will be mean to you, they’ll just direct their hate at me (right, guys?). Thank you, Kendra.

GIANCARLO DITRAPANO

Kendra Grant Malone is the author of Everything is Quiet (Scrambler) and the forthcoming Morocco written with Matthew Savoca (Dark Sky).