The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

plethora of clamps and accompanying weights that are used for stretching the more tender parts of the body. Below that she identifies a set of familiar-looking utensils as “escargot tongs.”
    â€œThese are wonderful for [genital] torture,” she beams, picking up the tongs fondly and snapping them in the air like some metallic lobster. “And besides, when somebody eats those snails again, they always think of me.” (Reader warning: 25th Parallel recommends that you do not try this at home, or at Joe’s Stone Crab for that matter.)
    Below that are 30 or so rubber, leather and metal hoops ranging in size from one to four inches in diameter. Apparently, these were invented by the Chinese to promote sexual endurance. I think they look like pirate earrings myself, but hey, what does an average-sex-life-with-a-little-Jell-O-on-holidays kinda guy like me know?
    Farther down, she shows me a small leather and chain parachute. It looks like something for a child’s action figure; I can imagine it now—authentic bondage accessory for Teenage Pervert Ninja Turtles. She explains that this device is used to “stretch the genitals.” I don’t think you will find this one at Toys “R” Us.
    Stranger still, there is a magnifying glass below the Freudian-nightmare-paratrooper gear. She pulls it from its peg and quips, “This is so the males I deal with can get a good look at [what] they have and they can see with their eyes how they view it mentally .”
    Stashed at the bottom of the wall are a collection of spiked slave collars, leather bras, masks, gags and nipple/penis tassels. She picks up the latter and points out, “I make the men dance with these on and the tassels all have to swing in the same direction.” In addition to that treasury of ribald playthings there is also a horse’s tail (complete with fastening “butt plug” for the Mr. Ed aficionado) and a real ball and chain which she claims to have purchased at a garage sale.
    Across the room, on the other wall, is where Mistress Barbara keeps her more dangerous weapons, so to speak. Of course, there is a slew of chains as well as an English birch cane, several paddles (wicker, oak, rubber, leather and plastic), a yardstick, a ruler, a Dutch Boy paint stirrer, a medieval spiked flail that she has nicknamed “ball breaker,” a few cat-o’-nine-tails and enough whips to make Indiana Jones salivate uncontrollably. Furthermore, the drawers that line the floorboard contain things like electronic muscle stimulators, disposable enemas, candles, rubber gloves, condoms (she uses both Traditional Dry and Naturalube Trojans), fake blood, plaster of Paris, Saran Wrap, a soldering iron, plastic garbage ties, Icy Hot, feathers, furs, brushes, baby powder, vitamin E lotion, Vaseline, an entire drawer full of marital aids (in various colors, shapes and sizes), more lingerie than Victoria’s Secret and Frederick’s of Hollywood combined, and a box of sparklers. Being the naïve layman that I am, I ask what the sparklers are used for—I wish I hadn’t.
    â€œOn birthdays and the Fourth of July I put one of these in the end of their penis and light it,” she confesses without a hint of sarcasm. “Most of these things are props but most men love to dress up like women. They come here to be feminine.”
    Carefully, I find a seat on the black fur comforter that covers her full-size platform bed. Below it, where most normal folks might stash, oh say, a Monopoly game or maybe even their KISS dolls, I notice a caged sleeping cell.
    Although Mistress Barbara has only been practicing bondage and discipline commercially (that’s not commercial as we know it; this practice is very illegal) for three years, she has been doing it privately for 45 of her 57 years. Her introduction to the whip-me-beat-me-jab-safety-pins-through-my-sex-organ world of B and D came at the ripe and uncertain age of 12.
    â€œI was living in California and there was a man who was 21 that came to my house all the time,” she recalls, lighting a cigarette. “One day he was teasing me with his bullwhip and he made me mad. So, I took the bullwhip from him and made him take off his clothes and drive back to town naked.”
    From that day on, she has been abusing men for their pleasure. However, she never actually lost her virginity until she was 16. Thereafter she continued to practice her trade