Sabine Tautou’s Guide to Surviving the NYC Heatwave
Words: Gina Tonic | Guide: Sabine Tautou
It’s hot. Unbearably hot. Across many major cities across the world, it’s been the hottest summer on record. Doesn’t a lovely ice cream cone sound ideal right now? Would you like to swim in a not too cold but just right, soothingly temperate lake as the sun sets? How about getting strapped to a lamp post on a busy junction and doused with buckets of milk from the sexiest woman you’ve ever seen?
In New York, professional dominatrix and performance artist has been taking her subs to the streets to help cool them off. When speaking to me about her newest series that is going viral across social media, Sabine Tautou tells me it’s been an especially aggressive summer in the city - “The weather is on a constant rotation between 95 degrees and that thick, wet, oppressive post rain air. And then there was that week of Canadian wildfire smog, which coincided beautifully with the arrival of the diarrhea parasite.” - and that moving her practice into the public domain was a natural next step.
As a conscientious dom, a practicing professional for the past thirteen years with a background in paralegal work, wants everyone to stay safe in these trying times. Below, we get Tautou’s tips and tricks for keeping cool.
Take Advantage of Indoor Time
Tautou takes five to eight hour walks every day and while the heat has made her take treks on the shorter end of that spectrum, she sings the praises of her inside time too.
“After that amount of time outside, I’ll usually lie down in my bedroom in complete darkness with the AC on, which has given my summer a slightly institutional quality.” She notes. “But for anyone else trying to have a cuter NYC day than that, I’d say stay inside at your favorite lunch spot and enjoy a cocktail with friends.
Help One Another
“Please keep your loved ones and subs cool this summer. I’d like to see everyone make it to September.” Tautou enthuses.
For a more specific example of how we can help each other keep cool, she reminisces, “Yesterday outside my subway stop, I saw a woman and her male partner each do vodka shooters. She then chugged some water, spit it directly in his face, and he said thank you. They looked like they were having a really nice day.”
Know The Public Have Already Seen Everything
“I feel comfortable doing my scenes in NYC. I’ve done them in other cities, but it’s not the same. NYC gives you the full range; indifference, voyeurism, excitement, anger. People here seem to feel very free to react, which is part of the work.” Tautou tells me, before expanding on how we need to be more accepting of seeing extremes IRL.
“There’s a long history of women using public performance to challenge what belongs in public space. Yayoi Kusama staged Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at MoMA in 1969, with nude performers in the museum’s fountain. So any hysteria around my scenes doesn’t particularly affect me.” She continues. “My goal is to expose gender hierarchies through these exaggerated, ritualistic scenes, and I hope people engage with that meaning rather than simply seeing a dominatrix in public and immediately treating the work as something inappropriate or offensive.”
Shower!
While Tautou has no sense of smell and never has, her advice on showering isn’t directly linked to stopping the stink - though we would recommend avoiding smelling badly in order to maintain public decency. Instead, Tautou recommends getting creative with the showers you can take to cool down.
“I have a few types of showers I give as rewards lol, but the very best clients get taken outside to be part of one of my public stunts and have some cold liquid or food poured over them.” She concludes.
