Mistress Odette is an Austin based dominatrix, full time sex worker, and owner of a medical dungeon. In an interview with Beth Schindler, Mistress Odette discusses the abilities to explore desires that can exist outside of a romantic partnership, how to broaden access to sex work beyond capitalistic exchanges, and making boot licking as normal as a massage.
Beth: Can you talk about what you do and who you are in this world?
Mistress Odette: So, I am a full time sex worker. That is my one job. It’s all I do. I mean, it’s not all I do, but it is the thing that I do monetarily. And I have a dungeon space that I run and I work with a lot of different clients in different ways. I do a lot of trades for folks especially within my community, or actually exclusively for people in my community, on top of doing tributed sessions for folks that are not within my community, if that makes sense.
Beth: Thank the goddess for amazing sex workers like you. It’s been great to witness how you have made sex work so inclusive and accessible to our community, which I think is a really underserved concept. The idea that sex work is something that we can participate in, since we are not rich straight white men (isn’t a given). It’s always felt like a thing that was for others. You’ve opened the door for some of us that don’t fit into those parameters and opened our eyes to then think, “Oh no, I can actually be a customer, these services are not exclusive.” These are for all of us. These are things that we can all do to support each other in pleasure, in healing, in closeness and touch; I think it’s really beautiful. And one of the ways that I first witnessed this was your dungeon space. And your dungeon space is really incredible… I mean, it’s like out of a movie.
Mistress Odette: It’s hard to conceptualize because I feel there’s not enough words for these things. And the concept of sex work is so much broader than how it is represented, especially when people hear the word or what they think is associated, like what you were saying that you have to be a rich old white man to have access to this amazing space because for me, sex work is… it’s a really beautiful compartmentalized space for play and exploration that has lower stakes than a romantic relationship.
That’s what I love about it, that it requires a little bit of solicitation. I think in my professional sessions it’s important that I am being paid. And so, I am taken care of in a certain way that allows me to be open with my knowledge, with my experience, with my ability to put someone into a certain space and have them not be concerned about my needs, because my needs have been met monetarily. But I’ve been working with that structure in ways that are less financially dependent and less capitalistic, especially with my community, because I don’t love the fact that this space is created by money.
Beth: Mm-hmm.
Mistress Odette: And so, I’ve been working with and thinking about ways to make it less dependent on that specific exchange and more dependent on other kinds of exchanges. I have people who I work with in the community who our exchange… It’s still an exchange, but it’s not financial, it’s service or favors or different kinds of less-
Beth: A wheel of cheese.
Mistress Odette: Right. Exactly. Exactly. It’s just more barter based, because I really do think that it’s a really special thing and that it’s not a relationship. It is a relationship, but it’s not like a romantic relationship that is constantly needing to be negotiated in terms of needs. I like there to be really specific exchanges, that allow for this freedom of like, “Okay. I have met your demands. I have brought you a wheel of cheese. Now I can feel entitled to my own pleasure.”
And I think that’s really important to open up that entitlement to pleasure and that you can meet someone’s needs and they will do stuff for you, willingly and gladly. And you don’t have to worry about like, “Oh shit! I’m having a great orgasm right now.” But in the back of my mind, I’m thinking about how I need to reciprocate an orgasm to this person and you really don’t. I would not like that. I receive my wheel of cheese and I’m good.
Beth: And lesbian sex takes forever. Oh my God. When one of you is down there then you have to do the other one it’s like, oh we’ve fucked so many times. I get what you’re saying.
Mistress Odette: Mm-hmm. It’s exhausting.
Beth: We just work so hard.
Mistress Odette: It also can be difficult to feel really experimental and free within the confines. Not necessarily confines, but within a relationship. You want to try something out that’s super weird. It might have some weird effects on you that you don’t necessarily want to share with your nested partner. It makes a lot of sense to go and figure it out with someone else. Gauge your reaction and see if that’s something you want to incorporate into your life.
Beth: Yeah. That’s powerful because there’s this way in queer communities where we have all of these ideas and expectations around how kinky we’re supposed to be or how un-vanilla, because we’re like, “We’re not heteronormative, we’re all sex freaks.” Maybe you are, maybe you’re not, but what an amazing opportunity to be able to figure that out in a safe way, as opposed to… As an example, someone asked to get choked one time when boning in high school and they fucking hated it and forever that’s the last thing I want to do. And this is a way to practice that stuff or just play around, what a gift.
Mistress Odette: I have clients who are married and they think, “Whoa! I’m doing this and is it wrong or bad?” And I say, “It’s fine. I don’t think that you’re being a bad person for not involving your wife in your diaper fetish.” When you’re engaging in something really intense and really cathartic, sometimes you don’t want to see the person who did that thing to you after. You don’t want to be standing next to the person who just like pissed in your mouth doing dishes, right? That’s fine. I think that’s healthy.
Beth: Yeah. I’m going to take my wheel of cheese and I’m fucking out of here. I’ll finish the dishes-
Mistress Odette: I think that polyamory and non-monogamy are great. I don’t have a huge amount of emotional capacity. And so, I don’t love polyamory in terms of having to maintain emotional relationships. It’s not something I can do, but I do love how sex work is an explicit and clear occurrence; you can achieve and get what you want without having to be emotionally beholden to another person which, to a lot of people is overwhelming and-
Beth: Oh my God, yes-
Mistress Odette: … unnecessary.
Beth: Imagine you want to go do XYZ with whoever, well here’s a wheel of cheese, now go take it to Mistress Odette and get that thing that you need. We don’t have to navigate polyamory for a minute. Oh my God, yeah.
Mistress Odette: I feel there’s a lot less landmines in terms of whatever poly drama means to you, whether it’s, “My partner’s going to feel weird about this”. I think having clear needs exchanges, which is sort of the whole basis of sex work is, “Hey, I would like to be compensated. You would like to cum. I feel we can come to an agreement,” it’s very… I don’t know. I’ve been conceptualizing about how to have those kinds of exchanges in a more community context rather than in a capitalistic context. I haven’t quite figured everything out, but I’ll let you know when I do.
Beth: Please keep me posted because taking that component out makes it so much queerer. The hard stuff for all of us to navigate is our fucking capitalist society that’s set the foundation for all of the things that we do. To be able to take that piece of it out, it opens the pit up to anything that’s in there.
Mistress Odette: Yeah. But it’s exciting.
Beth: That is exciting. Do you have any ideas about how you want to do that?
Mistress Odette: It’s hard because the way money works is that it’s a placeholder for so many things. And so I’m like, “Oh, if someone gives me money, I can choose how to figure out what to do with it in a bunch of different ways.” Whereas with other barters or rates of exchange, I kind of have to think about what I need in a much more active way.
Beth: I really like the idea of expanding accessibility but the normalizing of it too, you were talking about getting a massage in exchange for this work, how nice it would be for a friend to be like, “I’m going to give you a gift certificate for one hour of boot licking with Mistress Odette because what you need to fucking lick some boots, there you go. Merry Christmas”.
Mistress Odette: Happy birthday, whatever. Its a moment that’s like, “Oh! Yes you need a massage. Everyone needs a massage and everyone needs a hand job,” or whatever it is, right? Everybody needs… Whatever they’re up to and to be able to work together in that way, it’s really liberating. And I feel really excited about the future in that regard because the healing that it has potential to spread around could really make a huge difference. I mean, queers have a lot of stories. We have a lot of experiences. And we’re really horny.
Beth: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we want to support our friends who are doing amazing work so…that’s a buy one get one free, if you ask me.
Mistress Odette: Yeah, it does seem like such a upper middle class to straight up super wealth class (notion) to be like, “I can hire someone to engage in my sexuality and make me feel good and execute my fantasies.” But really it’s like, “No. We all deserve that.” And as someone who performs that for people, it’s the best feeling. Last night, me and three of my friends kidnapped someone consensually from the side of the road and gang banged them, basically.
And it was great. And he had such a good time. He has been texting me nonstop. I was talking to my friend who helped me do it and she told me, “Wow! It feels so good to know that that person had such a good time and I helped somebody into this space of being at their most ecstatic, one of the best experiences that they will experience.”
Later the client asked me, “You do that all the time?” And I said, “Yeah I do that multiple times a week.” I assist people to experience their best sexual level and that’s something that should be so much more accessible and easier for regular folks and especially queer folks to achieve.
Beth: What are some of the teaching things that you’re up to?
Mistress Odette: My main focus is medical domination, so I do weird nurse/doctor type role plays. And that’s the thing I do that’s different from other folks in my field. I teach how to do medical domination, how to do the procedures and what not and it’s fun. I mean, I have done so many interesting weird kinky doctor things with queer and especially transgender folks that are definitely bizarre. I recently just did a scene with a friend who just had her bottom surgery and the scene was basically me doing the dilation, but dressed as a doctor and it was really fun and very cold and clinical, but she was super into experiencing that in a fun, sexy way instead of a traumatic medical way.
Beth: You’re a fucking witch healing babe, I’m so smitten. No joke, I had created these fake gift certificates for time in your dungeon right before COVID. One of the first things my friend said to me when she got her vaccine was, “So is gift certificate for time at the dungeon still a thing?” So, just know … it’s all waiting for you whenever you’re ready.
Mistress Odette: Hell yeah-
Beth: Well, thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it.
Mistress Odette: So good to talk to you and someday we will dance together again.
Beth: Yeah. And I’ll slip you a little slice of cheese in your pocket.
Mistress Odette: Yay. Cheese.
