US News

THE GUY BEHIND MASK

The kinky clubgoer who almost choked to death at a Midtown masochism mecca is a married, retired math professor from Montreal, The Post has learned.

Richard Benjamin, 67, who was rushed unconscious to St. Vincent’s Hospital, awoke from his ordeal yesterday and identified himself to cops, law-enforcement sources said.

Benjamin, who had been on a respirator, is married and has children.

He retired three years ago after teaching for 30 years at Vanier College, a two-year junior college in the Ville St. Laurent section of Montreal, said the school’s math-department coordinator, Fred Mayer.

His wife, who declined to give her first name, said, “I thank God that my husband is still alive.”

She asked a reporter to tell her the full story, and when it was finished, she said, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe this.”

Benjamin was taken to the hospital at 1:25 a.m. Friday after he choked and turned blue while wearing a hood and being trussed up in an S&M contraption called “the wheel” at the Nutcracker Suite, a pain palace on East 33rd Street.

The ex-prof, whose hands were bound behind him, had a leather collar around his neck that was attached to a rope secured to a hook on the ceiling.

He was wearing nipple clamps, and his feet were in women’s high heels.

Cops said Benjamin began choking when one of his feet slipped out of the tall shoe.

The club’s manager, Clifford Weiss, called 911.

“I heard he was feeling better and may have identified himself,” Weiss said yesterday.

Then he hung up.

When Benjamin arrived at St. Vincent’s, it was feared he had suffered brain damage.

In keeping with the secretive nature of the S&M world, Benjamin was carrying only his MetroCard, and no ID, when he signed in at the club’s guest registry as “Roger.”

Sources said he was a regular.

They said Benjamin’s particular fetish was to have himself trussed up and left alone.

Mayer said he only knew his former co-worker as a well-respected and well-liked teacher.

“He was very sensitive to the needs of students, and that made him popular,” Mayer told The Post. “He always made them work. I think they appreciated that.”

The dominatrix with whom Benjamin was working, Taki Noriko, 30, of Williamsburg, said that she elevated him just enough to cause discomfort but that his feet were still in the shoes.

She said she checked on him every 20 minutes. The first time he was OK. The second time, one of his feet had slipped out of the shoe and he was turning blue, she said.

The club, in a suite in an office building near the Empire State Building, has operated for more than a decade.

jamie.schram@nypost.com