While there seem to be few upsides for a nonceleb to sign an NDA before a one-night stand or romantic relationship, one woman I spoke to named Mistress Kye said she welcomes NDAs from her clients. She’s a professional dominant in Philadelphia who counts celebrities among her clients and advertises herself as NDA-friendly.

“I think they’re wonderful because the whole goal of what I do is to help people tap their vulnerabilities,” she said. She added that NDAs are tools that allow her to “get to a place of trust,” which is one of the main components of kink and BDSM along with communication and consent. “If it’s an NDA to make that person feel safe and feel secure so they can access those parts of themselves, I’m a proponent of it.” She told me she’s seen an uptick in customers requesting NDAs in the past 20 years, “with the advent of the internet and social media, and information being exploited.”

Most of the clients who request them are high-profile people and celebrities. She told me she usually signs them, but not always. “It’s not usually because of the documents. It’s because of the person that I picked up a vibe, or I saw a red flag,” she said. She also won’t sign if it’s “a regular Joe” who says he wants an NDA so his wife doesn’t find out. “That I’m going to scoff at because that’s not cool. You got to have at least enough trust in me,” she said.

Before she signs an NDA, she reads it very carefully, and she said she would go to an attorney for clarification if there was anything she didn’t understand. Still, according to one of the attorneys I spoke to, the NDAs Mistress Kye signs may not actually be enforceable because she’s a sex worker, and sex work is illegal in the US aside from four counties in Nevada.

While NDAs may help a celebrity client become more comfortable during a BDSM session, they also serve a practical goal: protecting the celeb’s financial interests. Perez said NDAs are necessary “even for a one-night stand if a woman is really kinky, and maybe she doesn’t want that to get out because she’s got a career and brand that requires her to be wholesome.”

A Canadian sex worker I spoke to said she is also willing to sign NDAs, particularly if they protect her as well. She said some of her clients think that sex workers have nothing to lose by having their identities revealed. “We have everything to lose,” she told me.

But in the legal brothels in Nevada, NDAs for high-profile clients are unusual, according to Jeremy Lemur, who worked in marketing for brothels from 2012 to 2019. “I personally find the idea of a nondisclosure agreement for a sex worker kind of abhorrent because by the nature of even asking that, you’re saying, ‘I don’t trust you,’” he said. “A sex worker doesn’t reveal her clients because she is a professional. And she acts professionally, just as all professionals, just like your doctor, your clergy, your attorney, your therapist doesn’t reveal information, because it is part of the code of ethics of that particular field. I would definitely trust any sex worker I know before I would trust a Catholic priest with my innermost secrets.”

It’s not just ethics that may compel sex workers to keep their clients’ identities and proclivities a secret — there are also practical considerations. If a sex worker or a brothel revealed this information, “their reputation would be tarnished for eternity,” Lemur said. Yet their code of secrecy doesn’t stop people from inquiring. “People’s wives have called brothels, asking for their husbands. And we do not reveal that information,” he said.

While some people thought sex workers outed Lamar Odom for patronizing Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch in 2015, Lemur said that wasn’t the case. Sex workers actually appear to have saved his life. Two sex workers at the ranch found him face down on the bed in his VIP suite. Someone at the brothel called 911 and told the dispatcher that Odom was frothing at the mouth and unconscious. He was driven to a hospital where he was induced into a coma and found to have cocaine in his system. (Odom claimed he was drugged.) The AP reported that Odom “had asked about a dozen women working there on Sunday to sign confidentiality agreements barring them from speaking about his visit.” Hof claimed that sex workers sign an agreement with the brothel to not speak publicly about clients.

Comedian Carrot Top has been open about his visits to Hof’s ranch, and in 2005, its website used his quote, “The Bunnies Love Carrot Sticks.” Many celebs, however, prefer their sex lives to be kept private. And even though NDAs may not hold up in court, they do seem to provide a false sense of security for celebs. However, some of the ordinary people signing them feel differently.

Cassie, for instance, said she still feels uncomfortable about it. “I thought [the NDA] was really creepy,” Cassie told me. “If he’s asking for that, like, how much more weird could it get? … I’m a normal person, and I thought he was hot, but I also thought, ‘How weird would it be to date somebody like that?‘”

NDAs might make sense for a celebrity visiting a pro dom, but the bottom line for the rest of us: You probably shouldn’t sign one. Allred offers this simple advice: “Do not go into a party where they take your phone and they make you sign an NDA. It’s dangerous. You may think it’s exciting: Generally, it’s not a risk worth taking.” ●