My day at the Porn Palace

S/M media giant Kink.com stirred up controversy by announcing plans to move its headquarters into San Francisco's Mission District. But for Kink's performers, sex is all in a day's work.

By Stephen Elliott

Read more: Pornography, Media, Movies, San Francisco, S/M, Life

Feb. 7, 2007 | Next to a double mirror surrounded by large round bulbs sit Tupperware boxes stacked two and three high, each with its contents marked on white stickers: eyelashes, hair accessories, brushes, empty enema bottles (of which there are two). This is the dressing room for the Kink.com building, also known as the Porn Palace, in downtown San Francisco. This is where people get ready to be filmed for the Web sites Men in Pain, Wired Pussy, Hogtied, Water Bondage, Ultimate Surrender, Fucking Machines, Sex and Submission, and Whipped Ass.

I'm spending the day on Wired Pussy. It's a Wednesday. I know the people who run Kink.com and I thought it would be an interesting thing to do.

I'm with Satine Phoenix, a model who flew in for the day from Los Angeles. The makeup woman called in sick, so Satine is doing her own makeup. She has skin the color of sand and long, thick black hair. She's exotic, extraordinarily beautiful. She's excited to be here, excited that I'm writing about her, excited about life and filled with manic energy.

We're on the second floor of the three-story building. There are 50 full-time employees at Kink, plus contractors and talent. A profile in 7x7 magazine said Kink.com made $18 million last year. The office is clean and well-lit with an air of efficiency. It if resembles anything it's a design studio with all the high-end Macs and LCD panels. Except on most screens there's some kind of porn being edited -- women with their legs forcibly spread, mouths held open with steel clamps. Nobody seems to notice.

But Kink will be leaving this building soon. The company recently purchased the Armory in San Francisco's Mission District. The Armory is a giant building that has sat empty for the past 35 years. Neighborhood activists have been trying to block the move. They say families live in the Mission. But, of course, families live everywhere. Others say the space should be used for affordable housing, but nobody has made a proposal on the space in years. Peter Acworth, the owner of Kink, points out that the Armory was originally a place where men were trained how to kill. What Kink plans to do there is far less obscene.

Today's shoot is in the warehouse, a smaller studio off Kink's main offices. The warehouse is intentionally weathered but the equipment is all first-rate, lights, rigs and scrims comparable with anything in Hollywood. There are 11 studios in the Porn Palace, including a barn, a dungeon, a jail cell, a bar (where they also have parties every Friday night) and a hot tub.

Satine works all the time, at least four shoots a week, which should translate to $200,000 annually, though I don't have the guts to ask. Mostly she does mainstream porn, guy on girl, girl on girl, but she really likes fetish. She also does performance art, body painting, a bondage burlesque and a weekly radio show on KSEXradio.com. I ask if she's saving for something. "I'm just paying off bills," she says. "I was an alcoholic. My skin was fucked up all the time because of alcohol and coke. I haven't had a drink in a year and a half."

Satine has been doing porn for a year now. Before that she was a stripper in San Francisco. She made her first film in San Jose and immediately moved to Los Angeles to work full time. Kink.com flies her back to the Bay Area once or twice a month.

In the dressing room with us is Princess Donna, the Web mistress for Wired Pussy. Donna is effortlessly beautiful. She has long legs and thick black hair and big eyes that soak in her surroundings. She runs the site and acts as a dominant in most of the shoots. There are four to six updates a month, and 6,000 subscribers pay an average of $30 each. A model from Water Bondage comes into the dressing room. She looks 15, though she's actually 23, and the wardrobe coordinator helps her into a two-piece latex outfit. Donna advises the Water Bondage model to wear color-stay lipstick and eyeliner that won't run when they dunk her.

"I can't wait for what you're going to do to me," Satine says to Donna.

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In Donna's office there's a large flat-panel monitor. On the screen is a still from a recent shoot -- Donna on a roof in New York, wearing leopard-print tights and heels. Her foot is on another woman's head. The woman's hands are tied behind her back and Donna's hand is in the woman's ass. I can see the straining tendons in the woman's leg, her knees bound, panties around her thighs, surrounded by Word documents and spreadsheet files.

Donna was just finishing undergraduate work at New York University when she interviewed for the position of Web mistress at Wired Pussy. She had already worked two years doing bondage porn and was a high-end stripper before that.

She remembers her first bondage porn shoot. She was tied in a box with another woman, the other woman's foot tied forcibly in Donna's mouth.

"I love this job," Donna says.

Donna asks, "Are you nervous, excited?"

Satine: "Yes. I'm excited."

Donna: "What have you done since your last shoot with us?"

Satine: "I've played a lot in my personal life. Flogging. Rope bondage."

Donna: "What do you like?"

Satine: "I like duct tape. I love hair pulling and I like being face-slapped."

Donna: "You do?"

There is one woman on the camera and another shooting stills. That makes four women and me. Donna sits offstage on a wooden crate. She's wearing a polka-dot dress, a red belt, black heels. Satine sits on a chair, fully clothed, addressing the camera. Every video begins like this, with the talent reassuring the viewers (and regulators) that this a consensual scene. At some point Donna enters, grabs Satine by her hair and pulls her to the floor.

I take my shoes off, sit near the equipment rack. The people are nice, creative, interesting. But I wonder what I am seeing here that I wouldn't see just watching the video. The food cart full of Luna bars and Odwalla, the camera girls scurrying around the action? Here is one of the obvious questions: Would you let someone do something to you that you enjoyed, for a fair amount of money, on camera? Why not?

When I was 21 and dancing between films at a gay porn theater in Chicago called the Bijou, I was offered a part in a bisexual porn video. The money wasn't great, only $300. Men don't make nearly as much as women performers. I backed out at the last minute. I was afraid it would negatively affect me later on. Now I realize it wouldn't have. Now I realize nobody would have cared that much. I wish I had done it, just to have had the experience.

Next page: "My vagina," Satine jokes with a Russian accent. "She is broken"