Down the Drain

The Dungeon is symbolic of empowerment. Julia gets a job as a dominatrix here when she is still a teenager attending high school. She pursues this line of work because she remembers being inspired by her friend Ella’s sister, Kat, who previously worked as a dominatrix. The job ushers Julia into a new phase of her life and gives her the income to take care of herself. For the first time in her life, Julia can provide for herself without stealing from others, using her dad’s credit card, or waiting for others to take pity on her desperate financial circumstances. With her savings, she secures her studio apartment for herself and Liana and learns how to fund the lifestyle that she wants.

Furthermore, Julia’s time at the Dungeon teaches her to be adaptive and resilient. She thrives off adopting new identities and unlocking new expressions of self for each of her clients’ needs and desires. The work helps her see how strong and determined she is. Working at the Dungeon thus gives Julia the essential life skills she needs to survive and fortifies her sense of self. However, Julia knows the job is temporary and can only remain there as long as it helps her. She leaves once she starts to grow disillusioned and recognizes that the work is beginning to hinder rather than empower her.

Julia’s art book represents autonomy and agency. Julia decides to write and publish the book after she’s bullied online about her past, specifically about her work at the Dungeon. She decides that the only way to combat these attacks against her reputation and name is to own the facets of her experience that others deem shameful. To create the book, she collects a series of artifacts from across the years including “Ace’s inmate ID tag, nude Polaroids [she] tried sending him while he was in prison, photos documenting the drugs and the bondage and the abuse” (229). She also includes her “missing person poster and various other newspaper clippings” featuring fragments of her story (229). The book is therefore Julia’s voluntary and autonomous self-exposé. She catalogs her life in this way to own every facet of her experience without shame. Thus, the art book manifests Julia’s newfound autonomy and her decision to exercise her agency through her creative endeavors. The book’s publication, however, has repercussions, as Julia starts to feel vulnerable and exposed once it’s published. The book forces her to accept the pain and difficulties of telling her story in her own words in a public manner.