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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Abby Ehmann, editrix in chief of Extreme Fetish magazine, is also a feminist, a champion of free expression and "just really normal."
Jun 26, 2000 | Abby Ehmann, a redhead who stands nearly 6 feet tall, surveys the basement area of Club Mother in Manhattan's meatpacking district. Pushed against the wall is a balding man with glasses having clothespins clipped to his bare chest by a sneering woman in a black latex bodysuit. He cries out in pain, and she slaps him into submission.
Across the small room dimly lighted with red light bulbs, a crowd gathers in silence around two dominatrixes as they bind the hands and feet of a willing clubgoer and hang him by his wrists to a wooden post. Everything is in order, says Ehmann, who pledges to meet the tastes of fetishists and spectators who come to her regular Saturday night party, Click + Drag, at Club Mother. (The club closes Thursday, so Click + Drag is seeking another venue in Manhattan.)
"I'm the kink controller here at Click + Drag, which means I have to keep people in line," says the 40-year-old Ehmann. "I make sure that nothing gets out of control -- just kinky."
She soon flexes her kink-control muscle. Making her way through the main dance floor upstairs in her thigh-high latex platform boots, she spots a young man jumping about with his penis dangling from an open zipper. She grabs him and says, "For the last time, put it away or I will cut it off." The man complies.
"I had to tell that guy three times to put it back in his pants," Ehmann says. "No one wants to get hit with a stranger's penis while they're dancing! We have rules here -- no bare genitals. You can show your ass and your breasts, so people think they can expose it all. But we don't intend to get closed down by [Mayor Rudy] Giuliani."
Ehmann has many titles in addition to kink controller. She is the "editrix" of Extreme Fetish magazine -- dubbed "The best alternative sex publication in New York" by TimeOut magazine. She is on the board of directors of Feminists for Free Expression, an organization that fights restrictions on free speech, and she is a writer and a performer. But for all her roles, Ehmann has only one mission: to satisfy the appetites of New Yorkers who are not sated by polite and sterile living.
Her goal is not an easy one. This night has been particularly arduous for Ehmann. Earlier, while watching the door, she wrangled with two drunken tourists with thick Southern accents who insisted on entering the club and hurled obscenities at her when she refused them entry. Towering over them, with her hands on her hips, Ehmann told the boys, "We have a strict dress code here. Absolutely no denim, khakis or mundane clothing. You cannot come in."
The theme at Click + Drag tonight is "Circus Sideshow." All are encouraged to come dressed in circus couture and freak fashion. Ehmann, as "mistress of ceremonies," wears a black top hat, red coattails and a thinly penciled-in mustache that curls at her cheeks.
"We have to turn away people all the time because of the dress code," says Ehmann. "If they are not dressed to theme then they must follow the fashion guidelines. Otherwise access denied." She explains that the code adds to the atmosphere of Club Mother and keeps away the "bridge and tunnel crowd."
The dress code, posted on Club Mother's Web site and clearly stated on its voice mail is: "Cyberslut, fetish, rubber, latex, Sexy Robot, Vampyre, Anime, Trekkie, Cyberpunk, Genderhacker and at a very minimum, creative black."
Ehmann has been presiding over Click + Drag since 1996 with Club Mother owner Chi Chi Valenti, media artist Rob Roth and designer Kitty Boots. The idea behind the party was to meld sex, fetish and technology. The monthly themes and performances add spice.
The music fades, which is Ehmann's cue to get onstage. She moves quickly, heading behind the red velvet curtain. The room is nearly silent. The curtain parts to a techno beat, and Ehmann steps forward. She tips her top hat, and the throng of fetishists, club kids and clowns applauds. Someone screams, "Abby, we love you!" She smiles and opens her arms as if to hug the entire crowd.
Ehmann introduces "the Reverend" Deacon Frost, a performer who eats glass and sticks pins through his body. She glides off the stage, then watches the crowd grimace and moan at the site of a chewed light bulb. Frost sticks a large needle through his cheek, taunts the audience a bit by wiggling it out his mouth, then pushes it through the other cheek. Ehmann smiles. She has offered an alternative to the "sanitized night life" of Giuliani's New York.
When the crowd finally dissipates around 3:30 a.m., she goes to her East Village apartment, peels off the latex boots, scrubs off the mustache and climbs into a pair of old pajamas.
Her husband of five years, Eric Danville, is waiting with their dog, Zoe. Ehmann crawls into their four-poster bed draped with feather boas and wigs and gets some much-needed rest. She has a lot of work ahead of her. She must finalize the next issue of Extreme Fetish, review porn films, answer letters from readers and requests for her used panties, go to the gym, call her parents, walk the dog and clean the apartment.
"I'm just really normal," says Ehmann. She enjoys sitting in front of the TV in sweat pants with her husband, a pornographer, and spending time on the phone talking to her sister and her young niece. Ehmann says she has a great relationship with her parents as well, who are "cool" about her lifestyle.
