Alice and Zoey in the living room of their apartment.
Photo: Alice Xandra Thirteen
Alice and Zoey share a one-bedroom apartment in Downtown Brooklyn. Sometimes they sleep in the same bed, and sometimes they don’t. Alice, 38, and Zoey, who is 16 years younger, are used to questions about their relationship. “People want to know if we have sex, but they won’t ask because it’s not polite,” said Alice. “I’ll let them squirm for a bit before answering because I like to provoke people,” she added with a grin.
The two have been roommates since April, but they say their relationship is best defined by their BDSM roles. Alice is Zoey’s domme — the dominant partner in the relationship — and Zoey is the sub, or submissive. On occasion, this involves sexual scenarios, but they say sex doesn’t define their relationship the way it does with the people they see romantically and sexually. The best way they’ve come to describe their relationship is by calling Zoey Alice’s pet. “The dynamic is similar to how I felt about my cats growing up,” said Zoey. “They’re beneath you in some sense, but there’s a lot of mutual respect and trust.”
Alice and Zoey first met online on a Discord server for trans women. Alice noticed Zoey when she posted a piece she wrote about her most embarrassing orgasms of the past year. “Part of my love of BDSM is blowing open taboos about sex, so when she shared that, I thought to myself, ‘I like this person,’” said Alice. Shortly after, she sent Zoey a DM responding to her request to the group for help posing for photos. At first, Zoey interpreted the offer as professional. But when Alice prompted her to pose more suggestively on her knees, Zoey realized Alice was flirting, and she was into it.
They messaged like this for the next couple of months, sharing their sexual and BDSM fantasies and also just getting to know each other. Zoey, who was living in Milwaukee, told Alice she wanted to quit her pharmaceutical job and move out of the Midwest someday, and Alice talked to Zoey about the messy separation she was going through with her wife after her transition and her subsequent openness to new relationships within the BDSM community. Soon, it felt like more than just the light flirting Alice had done with other people in the Discord server. “Sharing personal things with Zoey made our texting and BDSM stuff more intimate,” said Alice.
In February, Alice and Zoey decided to finally meet in person. Zoey booked them a long weekend at the Roxy in lower Manhattan, a longtime dream of Alice’s. In return, Alice planned three days of “scenes” for Zoey, structured BDSM situations where they could perform their respective roles. There were scenes in the subway, in a movie theater, and some in the hotel room, all involving Zoey serving or submitting to Alice. Though Zoey had been interested in submission for a while, she had been uncomfortable trying anything earlier in her transition, but now she was open to it. “I couldn’t imagine myself doing things for someone else or belonging to someone in my previous body,” she said. With Alice, who was already experienced with kink, she found a partner she felt comfortable enough to experiment with.
Alice testing the shibari suspension point, which is installed into a guillotine structure above the living room.
Photo: Alice Xandra Thirteen
Zoey suspended during a ritual presentation for Alice’s domme.
Photo: Alice Xandra Thirteen
On the last day of their trip, Alice gave Zoey a tour of her apartment. Zoey immediately loved it. She liked that Alice had painted the entire apartment a dark shade of red, and she wasn’t put off by the horror-movie posters in the hallway or the red lighting in the bedroom. But her favorite feature was the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room overlooking Downtown Brooklyn. “It feels like you’re right in the middle of everything that’s happening,” she said.
Alice had just renewed a two-year lease but couldn’t afford the $3,200 rent by herself. She assumed she would have to give the place up when her soon-to-be ex-wife moved out in a couple of months. But after their weekend together, Alice impulsively asked Zoey if she wanted to move in. Zoey had been planning to leave Milwaukee in March and told Alice that her dream was to move to the city someday. But Alice needed a roommate by April 1. “I told her, ‘I don’t have the liberty to do this slowly. If you want in, you’re going to have to do something kind of extreme with me,’” said Alice. A month later, Zoey sold all her furniture and moved to New York with just a backpack, a duffel bag, and a suitcase filled mostly with clothing.
After Zoey moved in, they decided to lean into their domme-sub roles at home. “In a BDSM scene, you negotiate what you’re going to do with another person, what you like and don’t like and hope to achieve together. We treat our whole life like that,” said Alice. Take cleaning, for example. In the past, Zoey was frustrated if a roommate didn’t take out the trash or pick up staples like toilet paper or eggs, but now she sees these as opportunities to please Alice. Alice, in turn, sets up scenes to make tasks more structured and enjoyable for both, like a recurring cleaning task on Sunday night (before her domme comes over the following day) or by making detailed shopping lists she leaves for Zoey. “She’s looking for things to do to feel useful and like a good girl, so if I think of something we need in the house, I’ll tell her immediately,” said Alice. While they do share chores on an ad hoc basis, Zoey often does extra work, but she doesn’t mind. “I struggle to do things for myself, but when I feel like I’m doing it for someone else, I find it fulfilling,” said Zoey.
From left: Alice relaxes in the bedroom after filming a kink performance. Zoey embraces her from the foot of the bed. Photo: Alice Xandra ThirteenZoey during her daily check-in with Alice. Photo: Alice Xandra Thirteen
From top: Alice relaxes in the bedroom after filming a kink performance. Zoey embraces her from the foot of the bed. Photo: Alice Xandra ThirteenZoey …
From top: Alice relaxes in the bedroom after filming a kink performance. Zoey embraces her from the foot of the bed. Photo: Alice Xandra ThirteenZoey during her daily check-in with Alice. Photo: Alice Xandra Thirteen
Their dynamic also extends to how they sleep. Alice always sleeps in the full-size bed in the middle of their sparsely decorated bedroom. Sometimes Zoey joins her, curling up in her preferred location at the foot of the bed, but her favorite place to sleep is on the floor next to the bed with a blanket. “It would be embarrassing for a lot of people to say they sleep on the floor, but I take some pride in it,” she said. “I get the comfort of being near my person but still have my own space.” When Alice has someone else over, like her girlfriend or domme, Zoey might sleep on the couch or in an armchair in the living room. Occasionally, Alice tells Zoey to sleep somewhere else for the night, which Zoey tries to oblige — and when she can’t find a spot, she tells Alice. Zoey, on the other hand, meets her partners at their homes.
But when it comes to expenses, they split them equally. Before moving in together, Zoey drew a hard line at financial dominance. “When it comes to money, I like to be equal and not feel like people owe me anything,” she said. Alice is also a “50/50 split person,” so they split rent, utilities, and other expenses for the house, like appliances and furniture. Their primary concern about money is simply about having enough. Since both work in the film industry, their income is irregular; that insecurity, they pointed out, is a common challenge many trans people face.
So far, the two haven’t had any major disagreements. This might be, in part, because their relationship gives them many openings to discuss their needs, including during a daily check-in. If Alice asks Zoey to do a task, like finding them a ropes class, and she doesn’t, Alice will ask her if she needs a different one. “If she’s not feeling it or it’s too challenging for her, then she hits a wall and starts to feel the opposite of what I’m trying to give her,” said Alice (in the case of the ropes class, the search was overwhelming Zoey, a ropes beginner, so Alice took over).
Occasionally, they flip the script. Once in a while, Zoey makes decisions for Alice, like what kinds of food to eat when she’s sick, and Alice credits Zoey with something fundamental. “Zoey really saved my life because I had no options before we became roommates,” said Alice. “Now that we have survival kind of taken care of, we have a friendship too, and we want to make living good for each other.”
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