Mistress Ruby Ties It Together: A Dominatrix Takes On Sex, Power, and the Secret Lives of Upstanding Citizens

by Robin Shamburg

Equal parts memoir, how-to and social satire, Mistress Ruby Ties it Together is a guided tour through New York's S underworld, where the author worked as a professional dominatrix to subsidize her writing career.  As Mistress Ruby, this former Catholic school girl took confessions from some of the country's most powerful men.  Within the sanctity of the dungeon, they revealed to her their darkest lusts, fears and frailties -- as well as their sincere desire to connect with the opposite sex.  Each of these provocative essays provides an insider's view of human deviation; together, they present a startling portrait of our everyday selves.

Mistress Ruby is a striking, candid, and humorous look behind the dungeon doors to a darker -- and often unexplored -- side of human nature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, BDSM

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Jill]

This was such an entertaining book. I highly recommend it

[Ellen]

This is nothing more and nothing less than the collected stories of a journalist/writer who spent two years also working as a Dominatrix, not because of any personal interest in the lifestyle but because of the pay. It's a prurient dive into what a dungeon look(s?)/looked like Back In The Day.

Reading this was a little bit like watching Billie Piper in "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," only with less sex-- but just as much of the sexual/other people's secrets storytelling by a sex worker, plus some armchair psychoanalysis, and the conclusion that most people are "30% weirder than you think they are."

It's a fun read, with some interesting reflections on dual identities, on assholes (the human sort), on lying to your grandmother, and on who comes to a dungeon on Christmas.

[Cadillacrazy]

Memoirs of a young Woman who becomes a dominatrix and what she learns about life and people through it.

[Alyssa]

Booooooooring!