This soft-spoken, delicate-boned brunette has a domineering streak — and that’s just how her clients like it.
Seraph, The Delicate Domme
January Seraph, 29, travels the world designing kinky experiences for submissive minions. Today, she’s meeting a client at a boutique hotel in Manhattan. The pretty Californian is dressed conservatively in a sweater and leggings, but she’ll soon transform into a latex-clad, whip-wielding domme, and her room will morph into a makeshift kinkster playground equipped with floggers, nipple clamps, bondage rope, and an acrylic ball crusher.
Asked if she worries about other guests being disturbed by the noises that might punctuate a BDSM session, she says, “I’ve got ball gags. And pillows muffle sounds.”
In addition to thrilling subs with live sessions, Seraph is a fetish model, and an adult performer and producer. All her work has an underlying theme. “BDSM isn’t as scary as some people make it out to be,” she says. “It’s a way to engage, and it’s a way to have sexual gratification without actually having sex.” That’s as true for Seraph as it is for her clients. “I know that I’ve enjoyed lots of BDSM sessions that have nothing to do with sex, other than the fact that it’s erotic, it’s kinky, and there’s a lot of playful teasing,” she explains. “It’s the kind of stuff that I make myself orgasm to later.”
Seraph’s career began on a different track. She rode horses competitively while growing up in Northern California. “I decided not to do that professionally after about a year,” she says, laughing. “I hit my head too many times.” Instead, she started stripping in San Francisco to pay for college. Although a Jesuit education didn’t stem her eventual turn to atheism, it left her with a fascination for religious iconography, celebrated in the second half of her stage name: seraph, a type of angel. (January is her birth month.)
A natural performer, Seraph immediately took to stripping. “I went and did my first night at a strip club and I got totally wet,” she tells us. “I was super turned-on with the power of it. I loved having an audience full of men who were totally captivated by me. I hadn’t really considered myself a sexual being. I was very much a tomboy until that point.” Stripping gave Seraph a new perspective on herself. “I’d see myself mirrored in customers’ eyes and I thought it was really hot.”
After stripping for six years on the West Coast, Seraph moved to Florida and became a hostess for a swingers club. “It was a great way to meet people, fuck, be merry, and not have any of the drama associated with relationships,” says the brunette beauty, who had broken up with her boyfriend before the move. As that rare single, attractive bisexual girl who wanted to hook up with couples, she found herself in demand. “I was the unicorn of the swingers scene,” she says.
Her hosting duties took her to summer outings at Desire, a clothing-optional swingers resort in Cancun. “I was the activities coordinator,” she recalls. “The only thing I wore was a clipboard and a whistle.”
Swinging opened other erotic doors for Seraph. “One of the swingers asked me to go to a fetish party,” she says. “I said, ‘Sure. Why not? I’ll try anything once.’ There were all these people in these bizarre outfits; they were tying each other up, doing weird things. And they all looked really happy.” Seraph felt an instant bond with the guests: “As I was talking to people, they were super open-minded, and into telling me everything about their personal kinks and what they were into. I fell in love with that scene.”
Seraph eventually moved back to California, where she’s been doing private sessions for about four years now. “I see a fair number of really successful people, generally type A personalities who are really good at what they do,” she tells us. “They’re used to being in charge all the time, so when they come see me it’s sort of a vacation. Somebody else is telling them what to do for once, and they get to let go.”
New clients are especially fun for Seraph. “I love teaching them the protocol that works for me,” she says. “When you’re here playing with me, as long as you wear this collar you’re my property, which means you have to ask if you think you want to try to do anything.” Seraph adds, with a smile, “Except breathe. You can breathe on your own.”
Seraph recalls her hottest session, with an Italian couple. “She could have been a fashion model and he could have been an amazing actor,” says Seraph. “They were just that beautiful.” The pair came to indulge their love of latex and sensory deprivation. “They basically wanted someone to guide their session and just be an extra player in it,” she says. She set them up with vac beds, body-size latex envelopes attached to vacuums that suck out the air. Except for a small breath hole or head opening, one is totally encased and immobilized. “It’s sort of like being a sausage, but sexier,” says Seraph. “It’s suction bondage, and it’s really tactile.”
“We also used suspension bondage,” she continues. “I’ve got an amazing collection of toys, so part of the appeal for someone to come play with me is that they get to test them all.” After the session, Seraph gave the couple private time. “I set up a video camera so they could have a memento for home, and at the end they came out glowing.”
I know that I’ve enjoyed lots of BDSM sessions that have nothing to do with sex, other than the fact that it’s erotic, it’s kinky, and there’s a lot of playful teasing,
With other clients, Seraph employs the BDSM practice known as impact play. “Floggers, canes, whips — things like that,” explains Seraph. That’s a staple of Seraph’s Sadistic Sundays, in which she reserves sessions for her more masochistic clients. “I like a good masochist. I really like when someone takes the pain that I give them and turns it into pleasure.” She adds that it takes a special mind-set to convert hurt into bliss. “For a really good masochist who’s into it, there’s like a wire that switches inside their head. You hit them, they go, ‘Ahhh.’ It’s the sexiest sound.” Of course, Seraph limits her sadistic ministrations to “the meatier parts of the body. Never the bones. Never the kidneys.”
Spend time on her website, JanuarySeraph.com, and you’ll quickly notice it’s “dominated” by videos of Seraph lording it over other women. As she writes on the site, “I realized recently that I don’t have a single female friend who I don’t want to fuck on some level.” Describing a scene with submissive Cherry Torn, Seraph wrote, “I love the way her eyes dilate when she comes, and she gets all knock-kneed and wobbly when I make her continue to come for me!”
Seraph also recently shot a video with December 2007 Pet of the Month Adrienne Manning. The domme has this to say: “I love introducing hot, slutty girls to new things, especially a Penthouse babe like Adrienne. Adrienne was a latex virgin, a bondage newbie, and had only had a regular gyno exam. And I got to change all that. That kind of power play is what makes my panties sopping wet.”
But Seraph is no gay-for-pay poseur. About once a month, she goes to strip clubs to pick up dancers. “I’ve got really good gaydar,” she says. “I don’t always score. But it’s a fun game. Lately I’ve been really into slender blondes. Before that, curvy, voluptuous brunettes.”
Most of her relationships, however, are with men — men who share her love of kink. Seraph points out that many people mistakenly think kink doesn’t go together with relationships, arguing, “It’s a great way to reinvigorate a relationship that’s gotten a little bit stale.”
Seraph has plans to produce videos to educate audiences beyond die-hard kinksters about BDSM. “[The videos] aren’t about needles; they’re not about electricity,” she says. “They’re more about how to tie your lover to a chair in a sexy way. The tag line’s going to be, ‘Bring BDSM out of your basement and into your living room.’”
She’s also considering doing seminars to educate the public about BDSM. “I’d love to be the Tony Robbins of kink,” she says with a grin. That’s a tall order, but if anyone can do it, this driven, delicate domme can.
Some 10 years after the initial publication January Seraph has already left this plane of existence, sadly. For now, her Twitter account remains visible, but we will never (in this life at least) be able to fully watch her visions blossom.
