Wake up and smell the latex, New Yorkers.
It’s the worst-kept secret since the invention of the open-palm spanking. Throughout this city, from luxurious salons to dingy dungeons, someone is getting smacked around. And likes it.
Who knew? The novel “Fifty Shades of Grey’’ opened eyes to the joy of rubber, role-playing and a stern talking-to. But last week, we learned that the urge to hurt can turn a perfectly pleasant lady into a fire-breathing lunatic.
Frankie Santiago, a 27-year-old submissive “slave’’ known at underground bondage parties as “Althea Lyn,” allegedly went nuts on her live-in “master’’ — investment banker Edward Sonderling, 53, a guy who maintains the body of a 30-year-old. Law-enforcement sources say tiny Santiago shattered the windshield of Sonderling’s car and texted threats. She’s charged with stalking, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment.
Santiago dished out more pain than she ever received during her regular morning whippings at the couple’s East 57th Street flat, cops allege. This was for the oldest of reasons: She did not want to be replaced by another, hotter, tied-up-and-kicked-around gal.
This is not about sex.
Santiago, a fashion student, told The Post, “I like leather and latex.’’
She added, “I don’t give a f–k about the other women. He’s a very successful man. He’s going to have a lot of women.’’ But the idea of Sonderling beating the backside of another woman sent her into spasms.
In the perfectly legal world of discipline, where worshipping a loved one’s (hopefully washed) feet is considered more gratifying than an expert Lewinsky, pain purveyors were aflutter.
Mistress Domina, who manages one of the city’s leading dungeons — “We accept all major credit cards’’ — was appalled. Not that Sonderling was allegedly stalked after administering his regular morning spanking. But that he spanked at all; most men prefer to be pushed around.
“Ninety-five percent or more [of men] are submissive,’’ said Domina, who doesn’t want her business’ name revealed because clients freak out at publicity. She charges upward of $200 for an hour in one of seven “fetish fantasy rooms’’ in which a dominatrix tends to a client’s fetishistic fantasies, using “ropes, whips, canes, masks. Saran Wrap for mummification.’’
This is a little too much information.
For reasons known only in the boardroom or bedroom, some hyper-successful masters of the universe like to don a little girl’s short, plaid skirt.
“These men are powerful in their jobs. They want to give up control and be dominated,’’ said the owner of The Dungeons of Mistress Elizabeth on East 38th Street, who didn’t want his name printed. Anything goes. Except “we don’t do sex.’’
Celebs turned this kind of perversion from twisted to hip. Before she was a UN ambassador and mom of six, Angelina Jolie appeared in photographs wearing a dog collar and little else. In interviews, she overshared about having had a beau with whom she was into whips and chains.
Madonna appeared in leather bondage gear in her 1992 coffee-table book, “Sex.’’ Wearing red bikini underwear and draped in an American flag, Madge was seen in a 1990 “Rock the Vote’’ TV commercial warning viewers, “If you don’t vote, you’ll get a spankee.’’
Beauty is not a prerequisite. During his 1997 sexual-assault trial in which he pleaded guilty, toupee-wearing sportscaster Marv Albert was humiliated sexually in court. It came out that he enjoyed dressing up in white, ladies’ undies and playing submissive to a dominant female.
Mistress Domina’s clients run the gamut. Cops? “Of course!’’
How about the butt of many a Woody Allen joke — Hasidic Jews?
“You bet,’’ she laughed.
Are we seeing a surge in emotionally stunted adults who got no love as children? Or, is S&M the hobby of well-heeled men and women who haven’t a clue how to relate to others without pain?
Santiago was surprised when her “Eddo’’ went to cops, knowing his lifestyle would be revealed to clients. But then, some clients are likely flexing their spanking arms, too.
Get into therapy, Sonderling. Take Santiago with you. A libertine life won’t make you happy and sane.
It will only leave marks.
Mike milking moms of their rights
Nanny Bloomberg didn’t expect the women of this city to rise up and say, keep your hands off our bodies!
The mayor’s Draconian plot to increase nursing is a dud, with 56 percent of city dwellers objecting to forced breast-feeding, and just 24 percent approving of the plan, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Staring next month, formula is to be dispensed at city hospitals from under lock and key, like a drug. Women who can’t, or won’t, nurse would receive a shaming lecture about their selfishness.
Also unpopular was Bloomy’s plan to ban Big Gulps — 54-42 percent. New Yorkers are not docile sheep.
This ‘suits’ the Times
Behaving like a hormone-crazed teen, The New York Times printed these loopy lines:
“The man from Janesville, Wis., was hoisted onto the love pedestal, a nerd suddenly out of his loafers and into the sex dreams of Republicans, who apparently, unlike Democrats, need this kind of thing.’’
That account about GOP vice-presidential pick Paul Ryan was scribbled by Cathy Horyn, who also pined for a better look at Ryan’s abs, complaining that the candidate’s suit jackets are too big.
“So much for his lethal six-pack,’’ she panted. “He was swimming in his coat, like Tom Hanks in ‘Big’ when he becomes a kid again.’’
How does The Times try to emasculate a Republican? It makes him look sexy — and badly dressed.
Atheists hellbent on banning beam
Caught in New Jersey traffic last year, David Silverman, president of the American Atheists, lost it.
“God damn it!’’ he shrieked into his cellphone.
His godless group is fighting in court to keep a steel beam shaped like a cross — an artifact that survived the World Trade Center attacks — out of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Atheists say that including the cross would amount to state-sponsored Christianity.
Hogwash, the museum responds in court papers, arguing that the beam is a cultural icon because it comforted many Ground Zero workers.
When faced with a vehicular crisis, I guess even hypocritical atheists find religion. Pray the lawsuit dies.
Ashley upgrading from Client No. 9
Ashley Dupre is seven months’ pregnant and engaged to her baby daddy, Jersey businessman Thomas “TJ’’ Earle, Page Six reports.
Mazeltov!
A girl needs a break after enduring the affections of Client No. 9, the love gov Eliot Spitzer, who brought Ashley to Washington via Amtrak for an illicit romp. TJ bought her a massive diamond ring. You ask me, Eliot’s wife, Silda, got the raw deal.