Sushimasochism

| 17 Feb 2015 | 01:50

    TOMOE SUSHI 172 THOMPSON ST. (BETW. BLEECKER & HOUSTON STS.), 212-777-9346 DOMME DARIA AND I went to Tomoe Sushi at just the right time. It's a small, popular neighborhood place, and sometimes the line goes three buildings down. The only time I've had carte blanche at quality sushi places seems to be when a sex worker is treating. This is the ideal circumstance, luxurious and far less work than forcing conversation with a bad blind date-there's no shortage of things to talk about with a high-class dominatrix like Daria.

    I left the ordering to her, and for the first time I sampled the heaven that is kampachi, baby yellow tail and buri arani, which is cooked yellow tail in sweet soy sauce; it's sweet with a light texture. The sauce reminded us of smoked fish, but sweeter, and Daria wasn't crazy about the skin. Tomoe is known for high-quality fish.

    "I like this place because everything is really fresh," Daria said. "In some places, it's been sitting around. You couldn't tell the yellow tail from the sashimi, and that's just wrong. The fish smell the same as the restaurant-that's really bad. In this place, each piece of fish tastes different from the other."

    Reading through the copious reviews of this low-key spot, I found that some sushi snobs believe the cut of the fish is not quite perfect. Whatever. Some of us are just happy to have figured out that we like California rolls but not eel, and that Ikura is just like biting into the ocean. It's true, however, that the iceberg-lettuce salad didn't work for me.

    Daria recounted a friend's s&m sushi experience in Shiboya. "At places of business in Japan, the managers pull out sake bottles and everybody has some, even the sushi chefs while they're working. This chef looked at my friend sadistically, filleted the fish while it was still alive, maintaining eye contact the whole time, and then threw the fish back in the tank, still living-but with less flesh."

    She finds a similarity between the dominatrixes like her, and the now nearly extinct geishas (though you can still see a few middle-aged ones shuffling around in Kyoto or Osaka's red light district).

    "Their dress is important, the attention to detail. The art of pouring tea, while showing just a little bit of skin. They'd tell their clients stories, tease them, reel them in and get them really drunk. Tease and denial-they never slept with men, and dominatrixes don't either. A proper domme would not even get undressed in front of a man who's naked and shivering on the floor, naked and vulnerable, while the domme is in her armor. I have the power. They hold on with one little safe word, something embarrassing to say, like 'fruity fruity coco puffs.' There's the tease; they might be able to see a little of the thigh above my stocking and beneath the skirt, but they never get to see me naked, because that would make me vulnerable; that would make me a slave, and I'm not a slave."

    I looked at her across our tiny table in a restaurant filled with unassuming types. She does, of course, deserve to be worshipped. She is both hard and soft, self-taught upper-class and charmingly lower-class at the same time, slipping around the class registers of the English language with fluidity.

    That, and she's gorgeous.

    "I feel so bad for the little fish," she said sweetly, taking a sumptuous bite of deep-fried soft shell crab. "I say a little prayer of gratitude before I eat them." Daria was in fact a vegan before emerging from a serious bout of pneumonia, and saying to herself: "Okay, some things have got to change. I want fish, and I want cheese!"

    Being that rare thing-a natural and sincere dominant-Daria gets the best class of clients. "I grew up in Queens, where we lived in darkness and fear. I'd play house as a child. I'd say 'I'll play house, but I want a dog.' I'd make a boy roll around, bark, and then I'd ride him around. I used to stick my used gum in their mouths. Oh, I was funny!"

    I tried working in a dungeon once. I was dead broke, but lacked the ability to tap into the attendant psychodrama and gadgetry. That's why I have great respect for the successful dominatrix.

    "Lots of people complained about Giuliani shutting down the strip clubs, because they thought there'd be too many strippers coming in to the dungeons, with their big boobs? That never worried me, because it's a really specialized service. If you're looking for extreme sensory deprivation with tight bondage, and you go to a person who's been shaking her ass for the last five years, it's not going to work."

    I did meet one person during my dungeon apprenticeship, a guy who'd drive me and my band around. He worked for a dentist, and would lavish me with mouthwash and mini toothpastes, hoping for some kind of trade I wasn't prepared to give-especially not for a free toothbrush. Daria knows, too.

    "His deal is, 'I'll do all these things for you, and then you'll put me in a body bag for five or six hours.' He had a device put in his house, so by remote control I could change the sounds he heard while I was walking around-thunder, rain, people having sex and my favorite, the heartbeat. He's a nice guy, but he tries to get pros to do stuff for free, and that's not in our nature. We're in it for the money."

    Thank god for that. If it weren't for Domme Daria, I never would've learned what baby yellow-tail sashimi tastes like.