In the last two weeks I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing 'Mistress Vanisha – The Beginning' Part 1 & Part 2 for this site. They are great films with the focus on the erotic nature of power-play.

Something I get asked a lot is whether being on stage stripping in front of a room full of men is a power trip. I don’t experience it quite like that – I’m creating an erotic experience with the audience, they’re contributing too, it’s not just me exercising power over them.

Lapdancing is a different matter though. When I can touch the guy but he can’t touch me – it’s like bondage without the ropes, which makes it even more exciting. Some men literally have to sit on their hands to stop themselves trying to touch. I love the power that come with being able to move my breasts inches from their face, gyrate my bum in their lap, run my fingernails down the back of their neck and gently pinch their nipples, while they can’t do a single thing to me. Seeing and feeling them getting turned-on as a result, hearing breathing get faster, seeing pupils dilate, and knowing I’ve created that – yes that’s a delicious power trip. There’s hardly a single one who hasn’t at least once asked to touch, or involuntarily brought their hands towards me, or been able to resist moving their hips in rhythm as I sit on their lap, but they’re quickly told off, and have to do as I say and stick to the rules or the dance is over.

One of my favourite lapdance pubs is The Victoria on North Hyde Road in Hayes, West London, where you’ll get the most up-close-and-personal lapdance in a private booth. There’s no CCTV in the booth and customers often try to touch or ask whether they can (they can’t).

One of my favourite customers there is a good-looking young guy who has total, infuriating self-control. I can brush a nipple across his mouth and his lips don’t even twitch. I can lean back against him and stretch my arms above my head, leaving my mid-section defenseless – the natural response to which from the guy is to try to bring his hands up to my waist – and his hands don’t so much as twitch. He gets very turned on, but no matter how much I try to tempt him into breaking the rules (unfair of me, really, as I’d have to tell him off straight away), he resolutely behaves himself. He’s one of the rare few who have managed to turn the power-play tables – he has the power through his total self-control. And it is SUCH a turn-on.

Even with stage dancing there is a degree of control though. At its most basic there is the fundamental that those men are paying money to watch you take your clothes off – that you have something they are willing to pay for. There isn’t security in many of the pubs, and although a strip pub is not generally a rough environment (guys don’t go to a strip pub to fight – the unifying factor of wanting to watch girls take their clothes off mean it’s more like they’re all supporting the same football team and that team is winning), sometimes they can get very rowdy. If any tensions do develop, it’s up to the girls to soothe and smooth things over.

One of the oldest and roughest pubs in London, near Kings Cross station, has a high stage in the back – the girls are literally in a corner. Surveying the pissed-up crowd on a Saturday before they got their trains back up north after football matches could sometimes be an intimidating experience, particularly if their teams had lost or there were rival team’s fans in attendance. The dancers do have to exercise a huge degree of control and power – it’s like being in a dangerous dogs rescue home with the cages open. You have to be permanently cheerful, not tolerate even the beginnings of any crap from anyone, and not show any fear.

A consequence of all this is that, while we strippers can play the dominatrix to great effect, for many of us the ultimate turn-on in our private life is to be submissive. We have to be in control of a situation with men day-in day-out in our work, so in our private lives, to give control to a man gives the biggest thrill. I’d like to see a Mistress Vanisha-type film but with a Master…