It’s a humid, starry Saturday night in a small apartment in Homestead not far from Krome Avenue. A bright LED ring light is in the center of the room, facing the star of the show as she puts on her black latex gloves, tight gothic bodysuit, and blood-red lipstick.
Mistress Esmerelda, as she calls herself, is a 21-year-old dominatrix, sensual and intense. Her job is dominating vulnerable and thrill-seeking men over the internet. Her clients, she says, send her money and buy her things like purses, Airpods and pretty much whatever she wants.
“This is a side of me no one knows about,” says Esmeralda, who asked that SFMN not reveal her real name. “It is something that I keep private between myself and my submissives. It makes me feel empowered and sexy like I can do anything.”
A dominatrix in this community provides submissives with attention when given money or gifts. In this relationship, submissives can give away complete control over their finances. Despite the growing number of sex workers, the act of exchanging money for sex is still considered illegal. However, virtual services like the ones Esmerelda provides on sites such as OnlyFans are rarely prosecuted.
A recent story in the “New York Times” described the business this way:
“The concept is simple, even if the allure is not immediately self-evident: ‘finsubs’ (short for “financial submissives”) send monetary “tributes” to a financial dominatrix, who could be any gender, in exchange for being humiliated and degraded.”
Esmeralda was born in Overtown but has lived in Homestead most of her life. She attended Miami Dade college back in 2018 and is now completing her bachelor’s degree in Engineering at FIU. She came across the findom community (short for financial domination) her freshman year of college and grew a deep interest in it.
“I still get butterflies in my stomach when I power on all my equipment. The ritual has yet to evolve into a routine.” She added, “I got into the findom community as an online dominatrix back in early 2018, which showed me a different side of the BDSM community I didn’t know about.”
Esmeralda was introduced to the industry by a man who also declines to give his real name but calls himself “Antonio Santos.” He is a seasoned veteran in the sex industry who runs a successful OnlyFans site that offers his subscribers access to photos and videos. He has 110,000 followers on Twitter and claims to earn $8,000 to $10,000 per month.
He says it started as a part-time job, but it became his full-time career when the pandemic hit.
“When I lost my job during the pandemic, I really started putting effort into it and I saw that people were receptive and that it was lucrative,” said Santos. “I have been able to pay for school, my first car, and have been fortunate enough to help my mom with paying her bills as well.”
Since the start of this year, Esmeralda has made $500 to $1,000 from selling custom video clips and pictures.
Esmeralda says her self-esteem has improved since starting her line of work. However, she still harbors reservations about disclosing her clandestine life behind the camera. Esmeralda chooses to go under an alias to keep that part of herself private from friends and family.
It’s been several years since the findom community has experienced a cultural renaissance in the modern era. The advent of social media has broken the levees and allowed a deluge of curious patrons into the riverbank of sexual expression; this being said, her newfound illumination into the catacombs of dominance and all things kinky has allowed Esmeralda to unshackle herself from the mental bondage of her conservative upbringing in a Catholic home.
Esmeralda says she considers herself a tomboy but uses her nights as a dominatrix to feel feminine. Due to her strict Catholic upbringing, she has always worn modest clothing and has been careful not to expose too much skin. As a dominatrix, she says, the anonymity allows her to express her sexual side without a filter.
“I’ve always wanted to explore my body without worrying if God was watching, and if he wasn’t [watching], then I was scared maybe my parents were.”
