Can you Riverdance for me, honey?

At New York's fetish salons, it's all about fantasy -- some guys want to sniff you and others want to watch your feet move in clogs.

By Meera Atkinson

Apr 24, 2002 | Some businesses are immune to recession. The porn and sex industries powered through the 20th century and boomed into the new millennium as dot-coms went bust. But porn has its drawbacks: stigma, conservative crusaders and the heat of the law.

No sex/no nudity fetish salons represent a gray area in the tricky legalities of sex work. They are not, strictly speaking, against the law, but they could be interpreted as such, given a cop and the right situation.

When an insider first divulged that the application of lipstick was a popular fetish, I assumed he was joking. He told me to do an online search if I needed convincing: The search engine returned a generous smorgasbord of unexpected fetishes across a continuum of soft-core to hardcore. There were smoking-fetish sites featuring images of women sucking on Salems. There were pantyhose, uniform, jean, latex, boot, fur, gay-male-foot, black leg, upskirt (the glimpse up a woman's skirt as she's walking upstairs or sitting in a chair), lipstick- and makeup application, wet shoes, washing hair, and wearing-clothes-in-water fetishes.

Mistress Trina, an employee of the Leg Shoppe in Manhattan, says that her house specializes in legs and feet. "Some guys are into pointy shoes, patent leather shoes, bare feet, red toes, calves, thighs. They want to worship the feet, massage the feet, kiss the feet. Some just want to see your ankle moving. We also have cross-dressing sessions for guys who like to dress up in high heels."

The Leg Shoppe Web site also lists "slave training" and "sensuous domination" as available services. For foot fetishists, the mistress's prized feet can come in open-toe shoe, boot, or naked. Mistress Trina says the clientele are mostly businessmen: "Wall Street guys, bankers, lawyers, doctors." A one-hour session costs $175, and a half-hour $135.

So, how have they been doing in these tough times? "The first week it happened [the terrorist attacks] it was bad, but after that it was the same." I ask if the salon runs as an above-board business, if, for example, they pay tax. "We pay tax," she says. "It's a company."

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