Slave Bruce: What is the most extreme thing You did to someone?
Sophia: Sorry, can't answer that. Next question.
Slave Bruce: Why can't you answer?
Sophia: Because although I did agree to use a pseudonym, I haven't tried very hard at all to hide my identity. It's only a matter of time before someone who knows me in my daily life happens upon Toxic Treat. Alternatively, Toxic Treat may at some point achieve a level of notoriety (in the art world or the publishing world or the kink world or what have you) that my life actually becomes substantially intertwined with it. If, for example, I were to distill the best parts of my site down to an installation piece for a Bach of Fine Arts or a Masters of Fine Arts degree, then obviously, I would be directly responsible for introducing people I know personally to the things I've said on Toxic Treat. I, of course, am generally at peace with that, it was a possibility if not a probability before I ever posted the first movie that inspired me. And the possibility that my "daily life" would intersect with Toxic Treat certainly occurred to me when I made the decision to put images of myself up on the site.
I reached a level of self-confidence where I am comfortable walking about in the world, all the while, knowing there is a small but definite chance that Toxic Treat has been viewed by the guy I pass on the sidewalk, or the girl who sits down next to me in class, or the professor who grades my tests and gives me an A+ on a paper I put little effort into and thought was only worth a B. I rather enjoy the possibility. It makes a boring day a little more interesting. BUT, when you ask me something like "What is the most extreme thing", it's not something I can just answer in public. The things I do to people probably never stray beyond the bounds of legality, but they certainly break any normal sense of morality.
I've made the decision that I'm going to speak openly about my activities in so far as they are "Safe, Sane, and Consensual", to use a popular phrase. But the truth is, some of the things I love most just aren't safe, they're very dangerous, emotionally and sometimes physically. I never seek out the clinically insane, but the things I do to people often cause them to question their own sanity, to seek mental help, or otherwise to dance back and forth across the boundary of sanity. And though I never, never delve into anything TRULY non-consensual, the level of control I have over others routinely causes me to question whether "weak" people even have a free will of their own or not. For example, one REALLY extreme thing, once, when I was a senior in high school, I decided to find a guy and, oh wait, I can't tell you. :)
Slave Bruce: Okay, well, without talking about the really extreme ones, could you please tell me about some of the slaves You have toyed with? What were some memorable things that happened?
Sophia: This is something I intend to do more of, as Toxic Treat grows. I intend the try to write down, in full detail, many of my more appealing memories. I may also get Josh to scan in the relevant pages of middle/high school diaries (along with some "decoding" keys so that they are understandable to readers of Toxic Treat). For the moment, I'm just going to rattle off some of my favorite memories. "Raindrops on Roses" and "Whiskers on Kittens" are all well and good, but things that make me really happy are some memories of my greatest works of art. Such as:
* The fact that after the first month of 9th grade, I never again did a single Geometry or Algebra II homework assignment. And the male who did it still doesn't consciously admit he's in love with me.
* The boy who, on less than 18-hours-notice, booked a transatlantic flight for a chance to have a single cup of coffee with me, only to have me tell him he just wasn't attractive enough.
* The woman who I made sob uncontrollably as she had an orgasm.
* It's trite, but I don't think any dominant woman ever forgets the first straight guys she made perform homosexual acts for her amusement.
* I also know I'll never forget the first woman who truly, sincerely wasn't bi, until I decided to make her bi.
* I'm also proud of the 100% heterosexual male who I decided to make gay. He truly became gay, he didn't just go through the motions, he actually BECAME gay and all to make me happy.
* The woman who, though completely non-kinky prior to meeting me, asked me out. On our first date, I called her a cow, out of the blue, she sobbed uncontrollably, but despite her pain, it was less than an hour before she was eating off the floor and "moo"ing for me.
* The complete stranger in Prague who didn't speak English but gave my friend and I his car for the week.
* The male who wanted me to visit him in the mental hospital.
* The girl who let me live at her house one summer because she and her dad both had crushes on me, and how I ultimately made her dad pick me over her.
* The small-time sculptor who finally got a piece accepted to a "big" show, but the night after the opening, he personally smashed his own work right in the middle of the gallery because I told him to.
* Stretching back really far, the time in elementary school that I personally "beat up" a kid pretty badly by using a group of boys.Those are just some "for examples" off the top of my head. You can't actually ask someone to just rattle off a list their favorite memories, any more than you could ask a devoted epicure to instantly compile a list of the best dishes they've ever consumed. Pulling out a few "favorites" isn't a simple task. All the same, I expect that the sampling I mentioned above will more than suffice to fascinate and enthral your readers. Slave
Bruce: What is the purpose of Your fabulous website?
Sophia: Well, perhaps it would be wise to start off by listing some things that are not purposes of the website. Most notably, I am not a professional dominatrix; I'm not even sure if the term "dominatrix" applies to me or not. I am what I am. But I'm most certainly not a professional dominatrix. I say that forcefully not because there is anything negative about being a professional dominatrix, it's a thoroughly laudable profession; Taking a guy's money in exchange for treating him like crap is certainly admirable, especially when you contrast it with the sort of power structures most "traditional" jobs offer their employees. But, I myself am not a professional dominatrix. You cannot hire me, I do not do scenes, there is no exchange rate to convert dollars into changes in my behavior. Also important, my site is not a pay site, nor is it really a "for profit" site (although, I suppose I should mention it's obviously not a "not-for-profit" site EITHER). Again, nothing wrong with the many fine sites that do seek to make a living through the exploration of female dominance, it's just not what my motivation is.
Slave Bruce: So, what are the motivations behind your website?
Sophia: Partially it's a catharsis, I enjoy speaking having a platform where I can speak openly and honestly about my desires and my experiences. As hard as it may be to believe, I've only shared this side of myself with a limited number of people. There's an incredible thrill to just sharing this with the entire world, since ANYONE I meet could now, conceivably, know me and know what I do. I've enjoyed learning about other people who are, insofar as possible, vaguely similar to me in interests. The site has a number of Domme Interviews on it, and it's fascinating to see how many different styles of domination there are out there. I'm never been part of the sadomasochism "scene". I've never been to the bondage clubs, etc. Again, nothing against that subculture, it's just that most of the aspects of sadomasochism don't appeal to me: bondage bores me, if I want someone to not move their arms from behind their head, I'll just tell them to, no ropes are as strong as my words.
Physical sadism doesn't grab me much, it's fun if the victim doesn't see it coming and doesn't interpret it as pleasurable, but giving a pain addict a thorough spanking just isn't my cup of tea. The leather and the vinyl and the chains just aren't my style, and bulldog collars look adorable on bulldogs, but they aren't so appealing on boys. Because my interests are so specifically focused on psychological abuse, emotional pain, and "life destruction", I don't have much interest in traditional sadomasochism. But, all the same, even if I'm not a "dominatrix" per se, I'm certainly a close cousin, and I've met some very interesting people through the site who have some similarities with my own unique orientation.
Lastly, I hope to take Toxic Treat in a direction that is somewhat unique and unlike the other female-dominant-themed sites on the Internet. I do not want it to be just about one dominant woman, nor do I want it to be exclusively a site where horny ugly weak men go to be titillated by reading humiliation stories or viewing femdom captions. It is those things, but it is not JUST those things. I want Toxic Treat to be a forum for the exploration of this thing, this thing with no name, that I do to people. I want to explore it, I want to demonstrate it, I want to show it off, I want to brag about it. I want to explore the roots of it, both psychological and cultural. I want it to find its place in art. I want to communicate with people I respect and admire and elicit their participation in the discourse and dialogues. I want it to amaze and to educate. And also, I want it to be the site I wished I could have read when I was younger and had never met anyone who liked to do the horrible things I do. Because somewhere out there in internet land, there are young women like me who have similar desires and I want this to be a place where someone can come and say "Ah-ha, this is why I like to give a guy blue-balls," or "So, this is why I love it when I break a guy's heart and I watch him cry over me and it love the experience." And lastly, honestly, I want to scare the hell out of people who have no idea that women like me even exist. I want their palms to sweat, I want them to feel sick to their stomach as they read what I can do. I want them to be scared of me, and I want them to pray that their husband or their son (or their wife or their daughter) never, EVER, meets someone like me.
Slave Bruce: I understand most of Your experiences have been in real time. What is Your impression of the internet?
Sophia: I don't want to suggest that I'm some grandmotherlyesque person who just "got online", my parents got internet when I was in fifth grade and I've been using it ever since. I have done lots of socializing online, the big shift is that within the past year I created Toxic Treat in which I speak openly about my somewhat aberrant interests, and since having done so, I am daily beseeched by requests for communication with complete strangers.
Obviously, sheer numbers mean the majority of these kinds of requests get ignored, but I have explored talking to these people a little, and it's very different, negatively so. For one thing, both participants in a chat conversation are both blind and deaf, which not only robs me of the sights and sounds of using the weak, but also needlessly handicaps me by being unable to use my body and my voice in the process of mind-games. Another difference is that these people who contact me realistically know they are not ever going to be part of my life. This is a major loss to me, as the theoretical potential to bestow my presence upon people's lives is a major factor in my interacting with people.
The possibility of being part of my life is the ante in the games I play; It is the million dollar prize I offer, the prize that inspires people to stab their closest friends in the back, as if they were contestants on a reality show where one lucky person will get to be abused by me. And it's a prize I can dangle in front of anyone in real life, ever-present in the subtext of my real life. When I make eye contact with a total stranger in a department store, within a split second, some layer of his mind hopes I could be his soul mate who could rescue him from his loneliness, bring passion into his emptiness, fulfill his desires and banish all his nightmares. It's there behind his eyes, and it only takes the slightest attention to elicit that hope.
But online, people know, just through the logic of geography, it's probably not going to happen. They hope desperately to talk to me, but they don't sincerely let themselves hope that I'll become a partner in their lives. This takes much of the fun out of online interaction with total strangers. However, the largest difference between online people and real life people is more subtle. The people who contact me through Toxic Treat do so with their eyes open. They know who and what I am. They know I enjoy hurting people. They know I enjoy using people. They know I toy with people's hearts, they know I toy with people's minds, they know I live to control other human beings' minds and bodies.
On one level, this is uninspiring, because such individuals actually enjoy being hurt and used. Now, admittedly, everyone I interact with normally develops a net "enjoyment" of interacting with me. For example, there was one guy who asked me out. Dinner went quite well, but during desert I bluntly asked him to name the the most attractive man he knows, and then I instructed him to give me that guy's number. Despite that humiliation, the truth is, my poor dining companion still enjoyed the interaction. As usual, he asked if he could see me again.
He still wanted to see me again, even though I had just told him, to his face, I didn't find him particular handsome. All the same, like clockwork, at the end of the evening, right on cue, he still eagerly asked when could he see me again. Being on a date with me was so exciting that the minor bruises to his ego were nothing compared to the joy he felt at being near me. And in time, maybe even the bruises started to feel good too. Guys find it so easy to get confused about the multitude of sensation and emotion that assault their minds, after a while it's hard for them to keep straight what they're supposed to enjoy and what they're supposed to find hurtful. But one of the most exciting things about my usual "love life" is that the people I interact with are not, inherently, kinky in the slightest. Or at least, they aren't until I choose to make them so.
Internet people, the people who contact me after seeing Toxic Treat, are a very different species entirely. They are "pre-messed up". By the time I meet them, they are very, very far gone, like someone I have messed with for years. They have completely made the transition to being aroused by the abuse. Or perhaps, there never was any transition, perhaps they were always that way. In any case, people who contact me based on Toxic Treat are usually desperate for abuse and they genuinely want the abuse. They aren't subtly willing to endure abuse for a chance to be with me, they sincerely want the abuse, they want it right away, and they are like little junkies pleading to find where they can score some abuse.
A tiny few are usable, and so I interact with them in a platonic way, being careful to ever so gently dole out insults in the tiniest of dosages, keeping them hanging on my every word and perpetually needing more. But the rest are mostly useless to my purposes, they lack the artistic vision to contribute to my project, they aren't someone I would care to interact with socially, and they have nothing that I want. These are fun too, for they routinely go through a certain cycle all by themselves, like little wind up toys or cuckoo clocks that have simple little responses. Initially, they are highly complimentary, infinitely pleasant. They usually proceed to transparently try to steer things in a sexualized direction.
They try to bribe me, some with presents, some with straightforward offers of cash. When that doesn't work, some drop off, but some throw tantrums, lashing out at the thing they want so much but can't have. Most immediately apologize and repeat the cycle. It's quite entertaining to watch, although I usually don't keep track of who is where at any given time. I still have found substantial sources of amusement in this new, virtually limitless, population of online freaks. Some, as I say, contribute to Toxic Treat by improving the site, while the bulk of the site is still maintained by people I know in person (and have that extra level of control over), some online freaks have "joined the team", as it were, and I've entrusted them with some of the more mundane aspects of the site.
While I roundly reject all offers of cash and presents, I have accepted some special gifts, and a steady stream of painting and sculptures of me have been trickling in since the site went up. If Toxic Treat ever is manifested as an installation piece in a museum, these tokens will be nice reminders of the kind of passion I was capable of inspiring. At least one musical track was inspired by Toxic Treat and produced by an obscure band which has signed with a major record label, and I accepted a copy of that, as well.
And, I do indulge myself in a limited amount of online mind games, usually as a way of showing off to friends. For example, I once read that during the middle ages, there was a syrian cult leader who used to impress foreign dignitaries by randomly choosing one of his followers and instructing them to take a suicidal leap to their death. They would do so, gladly. That is a great analog to the things you can do with the online freaks. I can hop on Yahoo messenger and accept a webcam chat with the first stranger to message me, always someone who has seen my website and wants to submit to me. It only takes seconds to receive such a request. I then introduce the stranger to whomever is sharing my room with me, and then, we instruct the complete stranger to do whatever I feel like. These people need no prep time, no "getting to know their buttons" time, they come ready to obey.
And, it's quite a little thrill to instantly have a complete stranger do whatever you want. When I'm using this technique to impress a female companion, I invariably let them start first, and they gingerly suggest very light thing, make a funny face, stick out your tongue, do the hokey pokey. They howl with laughter as the guys obey. Eventually, I take over and demonstrate that these guys really will do ANYTHING. Dump cartons of milk on their own head? No problem. Pour soda on their own laptop, done. Push over a bookcase that has an expensive LCD tv on it? Gladly. Take the wedding photo out of the frame and burn it, instantly. Give us the telephone number of your parents so we can call and tell them their son is a freak? 20 seconds later a mother, sounding in her late 50s, answers a phone and is told that her son gave us her number because it turns him on to have two women call up his own mother and tell her the sick things he does (and these are all actual examples of things we've done to online strangers). So, the internet freaks are just very different from the kind of person I "naturally" interact with, but they still can serve as a source of entertainment.
Slave Bruce: How do you ever find time to answer questions with this level of detail?
Sophia: Ha! Ha! You'd be surprised how often I've been asked that. There are a couple of things at play here. The first and foremost, I love to write. I write like I breathe. The experience of writing is like a comfy chair with a warm blanket. I adore writing the way some people enjoy watching television. It relaxes me, it's how I decompress.
The average American spends 25 hours a week watching television, some spend far more. Other people meditate or practice music performance. Some people do crafts. As for me, what centers me is writing. I've been an avid journal writer going back to childhood. It's just what I do. A second "fun fact" about me is that I never sleep. Everybody who knows me knows, I never sleep. I say that all the time. Actually, right after I graduated, I had been in various parts of Europe for about five months and I flew home to celebrate the holidays.
A bunch of friends who I hadn't seen since just after high school graduation and I went to see The Ring, which features a creepy unworldly girl named "Samara" who mysteriously "never sleeps". Everyone looked at me during the scenes when this aspect was cited. And in fact, for this very reason, "Samara" made the short list of aliases when I was considering which name to pick to use on my website.
Ultimately, "Sophia" won out though, because my wisdom is a far more important facet of my personality than my sleep habits. Of course, when I say I never sleep, I'm exaggerating. I do sleep every night, I just need a ridiculously tiny amount of sleep. Usually, 4 hours and I'm good. Even if I stay out all night, I'm still going to wake up before sun up. I do own an alarm clock, but I can't recall the last time it actually was what woke me up. I've always been this way going back to fourth grade or so. So, just having so much awake time means I generally have plenty of time to read, write, attend school, and still find time to play mind games with the weak and socialize to the wee hours of the morning.
Lastly, to give credit where credit is due, I am indebted to the fact that I am enrolled in a "required" class which is a lecture class in a very large lecture hall with a very boring professor where attendance is required but any level of actual intelligence guarantees an "A". Being stranded here with my laptop for multiple hours a week for several weeks on end has given me ample time to craft such verbose answers to this interview. :)
Slave Bruce: What types of people are You currently accepting slave applications from?
Sophia: In real life, when it comes to the sorts of interactions that give me the greatest pleasure, you can't apply. I pick you. Sometimes out of a crowd, sometimes through friends. Sometimes I pick you because you're hot, sometimes I pick you because you're ugly. But you don't ask to be my playmate or my victim, being chosen by me is like being struck by lightning, it just happens, suddenly and unexpectedly, usually through no fault of your own.
Online, I'm far more pragmatic. Here, it's almost always a given that I am not going to enjoy interacting with you in any substantive way, we're not going to start "dating", we're not going to "go steady", I'm not going to "fall in love with you", and I'm not going to let you fly out to let me fulfill all your sexual fantasies. If I talk to you online, it is because I can use you and you are low-maintenance. If you are willing to utterly humiliate yourself on camera for my amusement with a minimum of prep-time or "getting to know you" time, I might use you.
If you are willing to work to improve the ongoing interactive collaborative art project that is Toxic Treat, I may interact with you to help guide you in that process. If have computer skills, or graphics skills, or musical skills or artistic skills, and are willing to sacrifice your time in order to benefit me, I'll consider providing you with some instructions on how you can best satisfy me. If you are very kink-literate and want to find things that would fit well on Toxic Treat but are currently lacking, I may accept your gifts.
Most of all, if you want to be destroyed and want that destruction to be broadcast for all the world to see, in glorious Technicolor, then perhaps I will guide you in how to start sabotaging yourself in the way that will amuse me most. And, if you don't have the ability to enrich my life, I'll quickly add you to the block list and bid you adieu. Submissive's are a dime a dozen, there are always a thousand losers desperately competing for every moment of attention-- if you don't instantly begin meeting my needs, I'll quickly detect you're just looking for wank-inspiration, and I'll quickly banish you back into the sad and empty loneliness of your own life.
See more of Sophia at Toxic Treat.com
