Your Kinky Friend: January Seraph the Upbeat Dominatrix

It would be unfair to say that all fetish/BDSM performers bring a little more thoughtfulness to the table than their commercial porn counterparts; after all, some people would submit to anything without paying any mind to the idea that submission is sacred in most religions. But longtime model, director, and fetish performer January Seraph, owner of the newly-minted Seraph Omnimedia, wants to put her finger in your mind hole.

“I’m an experimenter,” she says. “I’ll try anything twice. It took a long time for me to see where the roads of Erotic and Endorphins diverged. I know that now. And that is why this is the year to meet me.”

Seraph isn’t kidding when she says she’s tried everything, but that doesn’t mean she’s liked everything she’s tried.

“Pinkberry is a good example,” she says. “I hated that at first. But I was a lousy submissive, and I tried that for too long a time. I think submission is a gift you give someone, but I found through a lot of searching that I am a dominant.”

Seraph doesn’t use the word “soul” in regard to her searching, because she’s an atheist.

“I went to the University of San Francisco, which is a Jesuit school,” she says, “and I had some incredible teachers; incredible in many ways for what they didn’t try to convince me. Once I made it clear that I was an atheist, one of my professors—a nun—would cater part of what she was saying to the non-believers in the room and suggested we understand books like the Bible as a code, which it is. I ended up leaving there with a real respect for faith and for people who have faith, even if I stand apart from that.”

Seraph never saw the intellect or faith as separate from sexual experiences. When she was 11, she convinced her mother that she didn’t want to go to Episcopal services anymore because they made her feel “alone” and unconnected. Later (and, of course, as a legal adult), when she hosted swinger parties or danced in clubs, she saw rooms full of strangers simply as people seeking to make connection by whatever means necessary.

(“But I’m not saying all those connections were healthy,” she says.)

Part of Seraph’s journey included time spent in rehab for drug addiction.

“Drugs weren’t part of the search for me,” she says. “But they were there along the way, and it’s easy to confuse an altered mind for an evolution of your perspective. Anyway, to think about the rush of feeling you get from being in certain sexual situations—the endorphins—versus the feeling of control, or the erotic, is part of the distinctions I learned to make when figuring out who I am.”

[I’ll pause Ms. Seraph’s story at this point to say that, the very morning of her interview, I talked with a businesslike 19-year-old who said, “I can’t stand sex, but I like video games. Fucking for me is like turning my mind off.” There is a chance you know this AVN award-winning performer. It underlines the fact that more people come to porn with wholly different motives on board than you might think.]

And Seraph experimented with different types of porn, too, describing her “descent” from glamor modeling as a “slippery slope.” But she points out that the difference between submission as a gift and mindless submission is discretion.

“For example,” she says, “I think [the fetish known as] Diaper Play is gross. Might work for some people, but not for me.”

“Is that what the Jesuits taught you?” I ask.

“They might not have used the exact words Diaper Play.”

Seraph credits being on the straight and narrow with expanding sexual possibilities in her own life, both as a performer and as a dominatrix.

“Sometimes you can see on camera when someone is learning something new,” she says. “And you can see their discomfort with it. I never learn anything new on video. I always try it first.”

Among some of the fetishes Seraph has helped customers with in her work as a dominatrix are medical sounds [I knew about that one], watches {“I have a client who’s really into watches,” she says. “The type of band—thin, thick, leather, plastic— is very important to him. And if I have a bunch of watches up and down my arm and he’s got watches around his penis, he really likes it”] and saline inflation.

“You can inject saline into someone’s balls and they’ll get really big,” she says. “I’ve even experimented with different dyes so they change color. You have to do it right, of course, but the saline gets reabsorbed into your body within 24 hours or so.”

Or so.

It turns out that I also know and like many people Seraph holds dear, like Aiden Starr, Ryan Keely, and former porn performer and current comic book artist Satine Phoenix. They all share the same deadly serious demeanor that, depending on the company, erupts into gleefulness.

For example:

When Seraph walked into my office, which smells like incense and chalk dust, she smelled like she had just got out of the shower, even though she had just returned from the airport.

“You smell good,” I say. “I taste good, too,” she says.

And:

“Me and Aiden Starr and Isis Love are going to be a team of Dominatrix Superheroes called The League of Unreasonable Bitches,” she says.

One of the appeals of porn to me is that there is an accessibility both in body and of mind. Not only that, but in many cases porn attracts people in progress, whether from one decision to another or from a private to a public self, which takes into account all the previous forms of selfhood. Seraph is trying to become transparent.

On her blog, Seraph writes about her choice of porn name:

My understanding of the seraphim, the plural from of seraph, is that they are a lower class of angels. With one foot firmly planted in humanity’s flaws, and access to the upper echelons of the celestial world. Never quite ascended like the cherubs despite their lofty aspirations, but not truly rooted in the flaws of humanity, although they were more in touch with the essence of humanity than their superiors. Fiery angels with six wings and a sense of vengeance and love. And I saw myself in that image of a seraph.

So Seraph, a positive thinking atheist dominatrix who took her name from a lower class of angel, might seem like a contradiction in latex.

“Yeah, there’s even a part of the BDSM community that rejects people like Aiden [Starr] and me for doing porn, because their understanding is so rigid. But I think the contradictions are only there if you’re not thinking. Like I’m really into aftercare in any kinky situation; I just did something horrific to you—let me give you a hug. I don’t fucking care if that’s a contradiction, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

WATCH: My interview with January Seraph on Top Drop, Domme Cushions, And Bath Products:

[hdplay id=8 ]

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Artporn elite remember DAC with wine, cheese, castration; The Littlest Bitch Queen; “Porn & Philosophy” or The Myth of the Gape
See also: January Seraph, Seraph Omnimedia