Flashbacks: Woman punished for being a dominatrix, Gloucester’s heroin problem, and Kafka on housebreaking a cat

MASSAGE HERESY
10 years ago
April 3, 1998 | Sarah McNaught looked into why a local massage student was expelled from the Muscular Therapy Institute upon divulging that she was a professional dominatrix.
“Sheila, however, says there is nothing dangerous about her work, which involves various forms of erotic pain or domination. And she is adamant that she does not have sex with her clients.

“ ‘The idea is for me to establish my dominance over them in different ways,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes, for instance, putting a collar on them is enough to give them the sense of submission they seek.’ Whether the scenario involves forced cross-dressing or foot worship, she says, her profession relies on acting out other people’s fantasies. ‘Some people enjoy humiliation and being under my control as a way to escape their everyday lives for an hour,’ she says.

“But from [MTI’s executive director Mary Ann] DiRoberts’s point of view, what Sheila does is not so harmless. DiRoberts believes that potential clients’ opinion of massage therapy will suffer if the public finds out that MTI counts sex workers among its students. The consequence, she says, will be a decrease in clientele for the profession as a whole.”
 
SMACK ATTACK
20 years ago
April 1, 1988 | Ric Kahn reported on Gloucester’s serious heroin problem, finding that one out of 125 Gloucester residents was a junkie.
“Gloucester—Sir Smack blew in from Boston back in ’68...

“He was electric, charming the pants off both the guys and girlies. They’d lie and steal just to spend some time with him, their demigod, for he could stifle their pain. The outnumbered cops tried to bust up the all-night party, kick him out of their seafaring city. But he was hard to keep down. In waterfront barrooms, down on the boulevard near the famous bronze Man at the Wheel, in the bathrooms and basements of turn-of-the-century-double-deckers — he was being introduced all over town. Buddy to buddy, cousin to cousin, husband and wife, brother to sister, generation to generation, his influence spread from Gloucester and its industrial-strength family ties. The former big-city stranger became a downright Gloucester guy, a regular Jones.” Read Full Article

MEAN STREET
25 years ago
April 5, 1983 | William Bennett talked to the New England Athletics Congress chairman for “race walking” Steve Vaitones about his peculiar sport and those who heckle him for it.
“Even more discouraging than automobiles are their drivers — at least for a race walker. Race walkers do look odd, and drivers don’t let them forget it. Vaitones, who is currently spending three hours a day practicing his arm-swinging, straight-legged lope, has plenty of opportunity to collect insults. One of the standard routines goes like this; driver puts beer can in right hand, cranks down window with left. ‘Whatsa matta — your jockstrap too tight?’ Swigs. Guns accelerator.

“Occasionally, though, Vaitones overhears an onlooker reprimand a heckler: ‘Hey that’s hard work. I read about it in an airline magazine.’ “

COMING TO LIGHT
30 years ago
April 4, 1978 | Howard Litwak sifted through Franz Kafka’s Letters To Friends, Family, And Editors.
“Had Franz Kafka’s wishes been carried out, this volume of his letters would never have been published. Kafka asked Max Brod, his longtime friend...to burn his correspondence...after his death. Fortunately for us, Brod chose to ignore those instructions...

“The letters...reveal other aspects of his personality: his forthright and perceptive criticism of the works-in-progress of his friends,... his dissatisfaction with his own writing (to Brod: ‘I am not enclosing the novels (referring to The Trial and Amerika.) Why stir up the old struggles? Only because I haven’t burned them yet?’), his self-loathing (to Klopstock: ‘Must you always be reproving me? Don’t I do that enough myself?’ and later ‘You must simply keep in mind that you are writing to a wretched little person possessed by all sorts of evil spirits.’) Yet he never lost the biting wit also evident in his works. Writing to Brod of trying to housebreak a cat:
 
“How hard it is to arrive at an understanding with an animal on this question. There seem to be only misunderstandings, for the cat knows, through blows and other explanation, that there is something undesirable about taking care of her needs of nature, and that the place for it has to be carefully chosen. So what does she do? Well, for example she chooses a spot that is dark, that will in addition show me her affection...But from the human side this spot happens to be inside my bedroom slipper.”