If you are interested in who I am, and you would like to get to know me, you should read about the depth and diversity of my experiences in my true life story… with its shocking events and my huge life lessons! It’s all in my book, “Queen of Domination: My Secret Life“!
My next Blog is not going to be an excerpt from my book, I’m going to write about a different segment of my life. Many people don’t know I’m considered a social activist. It all started in 1983, but it continued for over 20 years.
PART I
After surviving the trauma and political combat of my five year legal battle from 1983-1988, I called the Witch-Hunt Battle which was fraught with corruption and hypocrisy by the State of Florida, I defied the system and challenged it once again. I couldn’t have done it any other way. I would do it all over again. The Judge had threatened me in 1985 in front of a packed courtroom saying, he better not see me in his courtroom again for practicing domination, or I would be facing years in prison! I was also told not to sell any books or he would violate my probation. I was scared to death at the time, who wouldn’t be? Facing huge threats from the powerful, unyielding Judicial system.
I was a woman, a woman alone, broken down, partially indigent and involuntarily raped by the system. My mind was racing, freaking out, thinking about what the system was ultimately capable of doing to me. I was living in an on-going nightmare for those years, and I couldn’t wake up. At times I wanted to give up, but that wasn’t an option, because only losers give up. I was too proud to ask anyone for financial assistance, so I went without, sometimes on twenty dollars a week for groceries and gas. Mistress Carla sneaked in a professional domination session on occasion, only when I felt safe enough to “get away with it”. After all, I couldn’t risk violating probation. I received a few phone calls and a few letters. But, I looked around. There was no one there. There was no one who offered to help……. I was alone again. I quickly remembered what alienation and rejection felt like. I was alone in my plight…
PART II
Back in the early 1980s, it was not a pretty picture for a woman to stand up alone with only her convictions as a shield against the male patriarchal law enforcement, legal system and prejudicial right wing protestors of the mainstream. But it was a war I had to fight, no matter what the consequences, and there would be many. I still had my spirit, my pride and my vision. My strength was “on hold” having been challenged to the max by a much stronger force, and the wind had been whipped out of me. I had been knocked down to my trembling knees and forced to submit to their brutal dominance. This was not the safe, sane and consensual domination I was used to orchestrating.
Shortly after my jail sentence and probation time was served, I was fortunate to meet a University Professor who wanted me to share my life’s experiences and lessons with his classes in Psychology and Human Sexuality. I slowly regained my strength and confidence speaking to his classes for two years. During those years, the urge gradually welled up inside me to forge ahead again. I knew my work wasn’t over. I felt a driving force inside me, pushing, pulling, pinching and shaking me up, screaming, “It’s time get this show on the road again, Mistress Carla! Get up and get back to business! People are waiting for you!” It was overwhelming, almost like I was in a trance or possessed, hearing things, or just addicted to proving what I was doing was okay. The saga of my dramatic life was going to continue. The Witch-Hunt battle, I had hoped would have been the beginning and the end of the war. It was the roughest, most devastating experience of my life. I took all the blows and paid the high price, but the war wasn’t over yet. But the wind was back in my sails! I started promoting BDSM Consultations in 1990. It worked!
Cutting to the chase, in 1992, it was time to license the first fantasy theater club in Florida in the same town and county I was raided and prosecuted in. I was told I was crazy to put my life and freedom on the line again, but that hadn’t changed my mind. I had just dusted off the deep wounds of my bloody knees and got up and out of my legal shackles just three years before. But, I was compelled to continue my mission. Folks in alternative lifestyles needed a meeting place and playground for “freedom of expression”, I called it. The people of South Florida and travelers around the country needed a place to share alternative sexual expression! Simple as that. Or was it? Little did I know what mine field I had just entered.
In 1993, phone calls with bomb threats and threats on my life, if I opened my business, became a weekly tradition. I knew which competitor it was, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn’t have a clue when it started that I would have to endure the fear tactics by phone and sick harassment pranks for almost five years, being the first few years of owning and operating my taboo, non-conventional business. Getting in my car to go anywhere when I turned the ignition key, felt like I was playing Russian Roulette with my life. I held my breath, it made me sick to my stomach, but the show must go on!
By 1994, I had made a huge impression with Command Performance on South Florida’s club scene by initiating a variety of events that had appealed to the kinky crowd and thrill-seekers. Several eager entrepreneurs and copycat competitors were anxious to had swiftly start riding in my wake of success. Retail stores opened to cater to fetish enthusiasts, B&D themes were used to spice up nightclub events and strip club dancers and hosting BDSM play-parties similar to mine became popular. Competition is supposed to be a good thing, but I had already experienced that some of it can be brutal, even dangerous. I had not expected that being the trail blazer and trendsetter for the kinky community would evoke such envy and hostility. I had seriously paid my dues for years to the judicial system, and once again I had found myself in a terrifying defense mode, enduring an on-going battle of bitter sabotage. In less than two years of my Command Performance, I realized that hostility could pop it’s ugly head up from all directions and the dirty, devastating war that had begun in 1983, was not over yet. I just had had enemy of a different color…. green! Green which stood for envy and greed for the mean green.
Starting in 1993, bomb threats before play-parties became frequent and threats on my life before we closed up at night were common. Answering my business phone had become more than a stressful proposition. Getting in my car every day and every night having to turn the key in the ignition was a super mind-fuck, never knowing if my car would explode like I saw in the movies. I felt I was living in a movie. A suspense, a drama and a nightmare all in one, every day, no exception. No one could have imagined how I felt, or what I was thinking; my mind always racing ahead of myself, speculating, anticipating and fearful of my fate. Much of the time, I was actually living in an out-of-body experience for self preservation and to maintain my sanity. I was hovering around myself, projecting my innate radar of perception and putting it to the maximum test because I had to decipher if each idol threat was a sick prank. There was no wiggle room for a human error on my part. I couldn’t make a mistake about something that could potentially jeopardize the safety and lives of others. I had to rely on my gut feeling every time.
Having to live on high alert from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep mentally exhausted. I had to be prepared for anything, to be willing to take more heavy blows and to carry the burden of pretending everything was ok, so I wouldn’t scare my patrons or my employees. This situation went on until 1997, but I will back track to 1994 to fill you in on more. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more complicated or stressful….. a Broward Sheriff rented a bay in my plaza… the bay next door to me! It was 1994.