On his hands and knees a man grovels, begging to lick the dirt from the shiny, patent-leather boots of a woman he refers to as “Goddess.” Seen only from the waist down, she nudges her boot closer to his face, tracing his jaw with the heel of her stiletto. “You call that begging? Such a worthless loser,” she says. Trembling, his gaze darts toward the lower stairwell and the door marked “Exit.” His Goddess notices and threatens to take his money without giving him the satisfaction of pleasing her—as punishment, she says, for failing to think only of his Goddess and nothing else. As she takes the wallet he’s fished from his pocket, he begs for her forgiveness, and is rewarded with the task of licking her boots clean.
This is not the beginning of a porn scene—it’s one of many real-life encounters gaining in popularity and generated by the #CashMeet and #CashMeets hashtags on social media, primarily Twitter.
After an impromptu social-media exchange, these two strangers met for the first time at an agreed location (in this case a poorly lit stairwell). Though there’s video of the encounter—the woman filmed it on her cell phone POV-style as part of the humiliation service the man was paying for—it was only the two of them; anything could have happened during that five-minute exchange. The woman has never been a sex worker and is fairly new to the world of financial domination, but picked it up quickly. She does not show her face and films her encounters to protect herself, she says. Outside of these random cash-meets, she has a real job and a family to support.
When first approached by The Daily Beast, she claimed not to do cash-meets (despite advertising her services on social media and posting videos of it), for fear of losing her anonymity. She feels posting publicly on social media is a means of doing business, but to be named in an article would bring the attention of more than just her clients. That was attention she didn’t want. A number of cash-meet providers had similar feelings.
Cash-meet clients seem to be almost exclusively men, whereas both men and women offer provider services.
A young woman, who calls herself Keke, has been offering cash-meets since November and had no qualms about speaking openly. She’s also been a dominatrix for nearly two years, though most of Keke’s interactions with clients are online.
“I had a friend who knew about cash-meets but was too nervous to do it. She brought it up to me when I was struggling and in between jobs,” says Keke. “I was like, ‘I can give it a try,’ and it took off from there.”
One of her first cash-meets was with a client who wanted her old worn shoes. “We met up at one of the malls around me, I got to meet him, said hello, and dropped off the shoes in exchange for cash. It was quick,” recalls Keke.
To set up cash-meets, Keke uses her Twitter account to find clients and arrange the details. “I use my Twitter and make a post about any cash-meets and location and then tag my area,” says Keke. “I’ll get a response either in the comments or in my DMs. People message me and say, ‘Yes I want this now,’ and then we set it up and go right then and there.”
While it’s about capitalizing on that impulsive moment, there’s still a profit-maximizing formula. For example, Monday mornings are typically slow for cash-meet providers, assuming the clientele cannot escape their day-to-day lives without notice. “I try to do cash-meets on Friday afternoons, Saturdays, and weekends when I know people will be active,” says Keke. “A lot of the people that do this have wives, girlfriends or significant others at home who don’t know about it.”
Most of the interactions are brief, says Keke, but that also depends on the type of client and exchange. Ball-busting seems to be a fairly common request and one Keke has plenty of experience with. “I’ve had people who want me to kick them in the balls when we meet up,” says Keke. “And they pay me $50 each time I kick them in the balls.”
Safety is a concern, even when the clients are paying to be subservient. Due to the nature of cash-meets, the precautions one can take are fairly limited. One of the methods Keke employs is to demand a “tribute” upfront—in other words, the client-to-be has to pay in order to arrange the cash-meet, where they pay in person. “When I say ‘tribute-before pay’ it scares them away and they run off, so normally if they pay and nothing seems sketchy after chatting with them I show up,” says Keke.
That said, following the recent murder of a woman rumored to be a cash-meet provider, Keke has added an additional layer of security.
“One of the goddesses passed away because she was murdered, so I stepped up my security with cash-meets,” says Keke. “I let them know I will be bringing one person with me to film and another person as backup… because it is just meeting up with strangers and you have to trust them.”