Worse still, there are fewer and fewer outlets for the tech journalist's true-life stories of boom gone bust as the tech rags and Web sites that grew bloated from the trickle down of venture capital billions shrink or disappear right along with the subject they cover.

But one San Francisco freelance tech writer has found a way to stand tall in the midst of the fading market for her articles. She has taken up the whip, cane and flogger to supplement her income from the keyboard as a dominatrix.

Natasha (not her real name) had been a full-time freelancer for six years before she became a "domme" last December, and has since recruited three of her laid-off dot-com friends to her new profession. Maybe Natasha's career trajectory from flush techie freelancer to mistress is a sign that the old San Francisco is coming back -- the city that was proud of its every decadent perversion before the dot-com explosion transformed it into a money-grubbing bedroom community for Silicon Valley.

What's your freelance story?

Work fell in my lap for years and years and years. I'd been turning away work. This winter is the first time in six years that I had to start talking to my editors, saying, "You got any stories for me?"

About November it started to get a lot harder. Publications were shutting down; Web sites I worked for were suddenly gone. I used to write for Chickclick, and now there's no more budget for freelancers there. I worked a lot for the Industry Standard last year. They, for the most part, have stopped using freelancers, because they have a big staff and of course they dump the freelancers first. I'd done a bunch of work for iCAST, an entertainment site, but that left months and months and months ago. I worked a lot for TechTV, but the show I'd been working on for the Web site went away.

It's sort of tragic.

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How'd you decide to become a dominatrix?

When it started to get really shitty, I thought, OK, if I want to keep doing this type of reporting on technology, I'm going to have to push a lot harder to do it. And you know, I don't really love it that much, so why am I gonna push like crazy to do something that doesn't really fill me with joy?

I made a list of my skills. I could be some type of manager, because I'm very good at being a big, bossy, pain-in-the-ass bitch, or I could be a great teacher, a good public speaker, a stand-up comedian.

Dominatrix popped up to the top of the list because I have friends who have done that work, and I always thought I'd be good at it.

How did you go from tech writer to dominatrix?

I saw this ad in an adult newspaper: "Female Actresses Wanted: Dommes and Femmes." I was like, OK, why not just call? I've spent half my career on the telephone interviewing people, figuring out what the deal is, what the 411 is.

I called the guy, and he didn't want to tell me anything on the phone, so I went to meet him. And, Jesus Christ, I was nervous. Of course I arranged to meet him a restaurant, but you don't know who the hell is going to be waiting on the other side. Is it my dad? Is it somebody I used to work for? Is it going to be some horrible ogre?

I was terrified, but I went to the restaurant. I met him and we had steaks, awesome steaks.

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