“One of Them” is all about you. More community than column, this space is where we’ll be speaking to friends and idols, history-makers of the past and present, and those who inspire us, challenge us, and dare us to ask for more from this world. It is where we can be together. Read more here.
Venus Cuffs has a special way of enticing someone to divulge their most intimate secrets. At the midpoint of each nightlife event she hosts, Cuffs takes the mic and asks for volunteers to join them on stage and tell us your dirty confessions. Whoever delivers the most salacious story, determined via cheers from the audience, wins a sex toy. It’s a testament to their skill as an MC that people feel comfortable confessing at all, especially in front of crowds that regularly number in the hundreds.
Cuffs, who describes themself as in their “late 20s, early 30s,” is all about creating space for people to be vulnerable, including themself. As an unhoused teenager, they practically lived at Manhattan’s Hetrick-Martin Institute, walking face as a member of the kiki ball scene. Initially, it was for money, but eventually, Cuffs says, she found family and community.
This kind of evolution also characterized their journey as a sex worker. They trained as a dominatrix in Los Angeles as a young adult; although their dungeon typically mandated that sex workers start as professional submissives before “upgrading” to domination, the owners quickly realized that they weren’t going to make any money off of her that way. Cuffs has always had a natural inclination toward power. She had fun making great tips, spanking ass and getting her boots licked, but by the time they were a college senior, however, they wanted out of sex work for good.
Back in New York, Cuffs took a position at a tattoo shop. But when that job proved just as exploitative and toxic as any other, Cuffs decided that they were never going to work for anyone else ever again.
Between 2011 and 2019, Cuffs made a name for herself as one one the city’s most respected independent dominatrixes, eventually buying her own dungeon.
Now a retired pro-domme, Cuffs is still heavily invested in those at the margins of the already-marginalized sex work community, even when that commitment comes at the expense of her reputation as a nightlife figure. Though the pandemic has led them to question what community really means, it’s clear that everything Cuffs does is driven by love for their people, past and present — damn the rest.