Claudia Summers is the quintessential downtown New York It Girl—the perfect blend of beauty, brains, style, nerve, and enough DGAF energy to set this town on fire and watch it burn. Hailing from St. Louis, she arrived in Manhattan by way of San Francisco during the 1970s, bridging the punk, disco, and no wave scenes. She got her start in sex work as a dancer working at mafia-owned strip clubs in Times Square before becoming one of the city’s most revered dominatrixes at a time in New York City history when the BDSM culture was deeply underground. Summers and a colleague opened their own place, designed their own furniture, and created their own equipment to use on men paying good money to submit to mistresses with a reputation for being hardcore.
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Muse of Marcus Leatherdale, Summers chose to pursue sex work at a time when few women did. She used her freedom and earnings to finance her dreams of becoming a rock star, playing synthesizer in the Andy Warhol-managed musical outfit Walter Steding and the Dragon People, and appearing as lead vocalist on the 1984 club hit “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight,” which was banned from commercial radio and MTV. All the while, Summers was working through her own trauma, trying to heal from an assault that changed her life forevermore while simultaneously managing a drug habit that made her a high functioning heroin addict for years. Summers, who is currently working on a novel of linked short stories, shares her journey, offering hard-won wisdom and insight for anyone aspiring to liberate themselves from the patriarchy.
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