The Kink of Billions – Chuck

**There will be explicit sexual concepts discussed below**

(Proceed only if you’re OK with that!)

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Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”-Oscar Wilde

The Billions opening scene is unorthodox and memorable. We find Chuck Rhoades lying on the floor, bound, being tormented by a beautiful brunette whose identity is not revealed. She singes him with her cigarette and then, to soothe the burn, she pisses on him. We learn at the end of the episode that Wendy, Chuck’s wife, is the dominatrix who taunted and tortured Chuck.

It was this unexpected approach to kink that cemented my enthusiasm for the show. During my misspent twenties, a girlfriend of mine had much in common with Mistress Troy (the gorgeous professional dominatrix depicted in the show). Sometimes, my friend would let me watch or even assist in her scenes. I’m an engineer and a scientist, so an anthropological sort of voyeurism came to me very naturally. I was rapt by the exchange of power between the dominatrix and her submissive. I saw quite a few “Chucks” on their knees or hog-tied, because her playmates hewed professional and powerful. It seemed like these men adored the opportunity to check their tendencies towards command and control, preferring instead to submit and serve.

Many years later, that fascination led to my being cast as a domme in the FOX show Gotham (an extraordinary day which got me a line and an IMDB credit). I’d taken some improv classes that led to costume work as a background actor. In September 2015, I wound up working as an extra in fetishwear, in the scene in the first season where Chuck visits a kinky club in Iowa. Once again, I had the opportunity to observe experts at work. It was a kick to perform opposite Paul Giamatti (in a scene that was cut), and it was a thrill to be directed by Neil LaBute. And as I stood in the fake fetish club listening to the script, I flashed back to those days in my girlfriend’s dungeon. I was astonished by the sophistication of the scene, and tickled to see the character of a male submissive portrayed by someone with as much personal power and charisma as Paul Giamatti.

Chuck:

Usually, when a prominent character with an important job is introduced, there’s a more heroic edit. In the Billions premiere, we don’t see Chuck sitting in his paneled office or in court, taking down a bad guy. Instead, we see him at his most vulnerable. Abject. His only request, not to leave marks, goes unheeded.

What we’re also seeing is that this is part of a very close and loving relationship. The trust and care between Chuck and Wendy are not depicted in a conventional way, but this is a couple who understands one another, and they are willing to get freaky together. Deviance is integral to their domestic bliss.

As the show progresses, we learn how deep-rooted Chuck’s kinks are. When he discovers that he’s been followed and photographed going in to the BDSM club (BDSM is an acronym that includes most flavors of kinky sex – bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism) he doesn’t curtail his activities. He also finds other outlets for his fetishes, when Wendy balks at playing. At the end of Season 4, he takes a punch to the gut from a new domme, Cassie (he isn’t sure what to call her, if she’s “mistress” or “goddess”, she’s that unfamiliar), even as he has a political future to consider. When Wendy finds him in the bathroom afterwards, applying cream to some of the visible welts and marks criss-crossing his bare torso, he’s apologetic, “It got a little out of hand. It’ll be OK. Barely hurts.” Wendy replies immediately, “I’m not worried about that. People are going to think I did this to you.” Chuck replies, “I’ll tell them I took up jiu jitsu again…Wendy, what I did tonight, I can’t live without. And I won’t.

While he would prefer to play with his wife Wendy, over the sophisticated Troy or the cruel Cassie, Chuck’s passions and paraphilias are hard-wired in. In Season 2, he can’t take his eyes off of the campaign consultant his father has hired. We can’t help but wonder if the character, George Minchack, knew about his fetish for feet and high heeled shoes before she arrived, because when she takes off her stilettos while interrogating Chuck about any dark secrets that might preclude his becoming governor, he can barely tear his eyes away. That the actress Mary Louise Parker bears a strong resemblance to Maggie Siff was surely not a casting accident.

George Minchak and Wendy Rhoades bear a striking resemblance to one another.

Chuck’s Humiliation:

In the first episode of Season 3, we meet Troy again. She and Wendy are in an elaborate dungeon, where they are tormenting Chuck together. There’s verbal humiliation – Troy calls him a “dog,” and she suggests to Wendy they run off together. Troy then suggests Wendy stay behind, and give Chuck his required correction. Of course, Wendy volunteers to remain with her husband.

Mistress Troy and Wendy punishing Chuck

Once Troy has left, Wendy asks Chuck, “Have you missed this?” He nods. Then he asks her if she’s missed it as well, and if so, maybe she’d found other outlets while they were apart. Wendy hits him with a leather strap. “How dare you question me. I can take care of my own needs.” He presses, to see if she’s explored other fantasies, like being with other men. She caresses him, as he’s fastened to a cage. “That’s your fantasy. You’re that pathetic, aren’t you?” The combination of the physical kindness of the caress, juxtaposed with the humiliation of the word “pathetic,” makes the moment even more perverse.

Chuck wonders about this other man, and appears to be alluding to Craig Heidecker. “Would he be handsome, rich?” And then he hits some of the classic tropes of the cuckold fantasy, as he considers this other man’s appearance, mentioning his “washboard abs” (i.e., the kinds of abs Chuck does not possess). Wendy pauses, incredulous. She asks, “That’s how you want to be punished.” Chuck’s face is twisted with anguish but eager to proceed. “Yes. It’s the most excruciating thing that I can think of. I want to know what he does to you. What you do to him.” In this scene, Chuck pursues a form of emotional masochism, in addition to the physical kind that usually turns him on.

Wendy returns to role, and obliquely references her hotel adventure with Craig Heidecker, where we saw the hotel’s white sheets thrown around them. Wendy beats Chuck with the strap some more, and then whispers in his ear, “And I give myself to him, and let him do whatever he wants,” implying there was a breadth of activity, perhaps some kink – possibly even her own submission. Chuck wants to know if it’s good. “No, it’s fucking amazing. He understands me. He knows exactly what I need.” This, of course, was a lie. Craig, like Chuck, wanted more from Wendy than she cared to offer.

Wendy performs a cuckold fantasy for her husband, producing genuine distress in him. Chuck fixates on the physical elements of Wendy’s lover, with his youth and astonishing physique; a way of distancing the lover from himself and indulging his emotional masochism in a way that offers up a carefully calibrated dose of shame and anguish. Wendy, however, in emphasizing this lover’s brilliance, signals that she’s sharing and embellishing actual details from her hotel encounter with Craig, and pointing out characteristics Craig shares with Chuck. This would heighten Chuck’s sense of diminishment and his suffering, and Wendy knows it.

The scene was a fascinating depiction of Chuck’s need to feel the pain of humiliation and a dose of rejection. However, the scene plays out with his knowledge that Wendy is there, cooperating with his request and performing for him, even as she regales him with this tale of sexual underperformance and cuckoldry.

The submissive is really in charge:

If it’s not clear who is in charge during the sessions where Chuck submits, it’s Chuck. While Wendy and Troy and Cassie all call the shots moment to moment during their BDSM scenes, Chuck initiates play, and he also stops it. This is typical in the BDSM community, where the submissive actually wields considerable control and power. It’s often called “topping from below.”

For example, Chuck is unafraid of using his safeword. He cries out “red” when Troy is running metal talons across his nipples while he is fastened to a cross. Troy immediately removes the bondage, and assumes she’s done something wrong, asking him if she didn’t judge his body language correctly, or if she’d messed up. Chuck then reveals that he didn’t have Wendy’s permission to play with her. What’s implied, however, is that Wendy’s permission had been given in the past. All three of them had played together before, where Troy had given Chuck and Wendy a workshop to help Wendy nurture her skills. Chuck also stops things with Wendy in Season 1, Episode 3. He’s tied to the bed, while Wendy slithers up to him ready to play. He can’t get into the scene, and when Wendy leaves the room, he unfastens himself and begins to read. He also calls a halt to things when Cassie has him in suspension in Season 4. She’s winching him up, and he stops the action and leaves.

Mistress Cassie

We can also see Chuck’s influence in the women he chooses and how the women dress. The ladies are all tall, slim brunettes with striking, attractive features. And when they’re dressed in fetish attire, Wendy, Troy and Cassie all wear basically the same thing. They all sport a sexy corset or body suit. They wear exotic stockings, usually held up by garters, and stiletto heeled boots. They display an elegant kind of debauchery. This consistency and specificity of attire doesn’t happen by accident. The writers and costume designers are telling us that Chuck is asking the ladies to dress a certain way, and that the women are complying, which is a common practice for fetishists. Their turn-ons are so specific, that they engineer encounters to hit all the necessary buttons.

Chuck may be sexually submissive, but he is not passive about his kinky pursuits. If Chuck can’t get a woman to punish him, he will do it to himself. In the 4th season, when Wendy and Chuck are sleeping apart, Chuck goes into the bedroom to get a pair of pajamas. He deliberately undresses in the bedroom, and positions himself so that Wendy will see that his upper thigh has been mauled, via rubber bands he has snapped against the skin in a form of self-discipline, reminiscent of the cilice worn by certain religious penitents. Wendy asks, “Chuck, did you do that to yourself?” He shrugs. “OK, Jesus.” He’d asked for permission to play with professional dommes, and viewing the aftermath of his self-harm, Wendy relents. As usual, Chuck succeeds in getting what he wants.

Power is sexy:

Chuck is drawn to power. It’s been bred into him by his father. It’s not an accident that he has eroticized power and control, as well. Chuck Sr, however, in addition to being a control freak is an emotional sadist. The story of how he berated and abused his wife over pancakes reveals the depth of his cruelty and indifference towards his family. This lesson was internalized by his son and turned upside down.

Chuck prefers brunettes who are strong, while Chuck Sr. generally prefers blondes he can manipulate. Chuck is turned on by power, but in the bedroom, he’s the one who adopts the role of the powerless. He gets aroused when Wendy refers to the submissive being beaten at the Iowa BDSM club as “pathetic” and being “like a worm.” Being on his hands and knees, looking up in adoration at a powerful woman, is exciting to him. And the prospect of being subject to erotic pain and punishment is incredibly arousing. It may even be a response to the bullying he received in prep school – a way of transforming a trauma and a feeling of helplessness into something pleasurable. Instead of mean boys taunting and belittling him, it’s hot women, doing so to get him off. He’s profoundly damaged, but he’s figured out a way to make it work for him, at least in one very specific way.

Chuck is a lousy submissive:

On the matter of consent, a key aspect of the BDSM scene, Chuck’s behavior is marginal to rotten. He goes to visit Troy, despite the fact he had not obtained prior permission from Wendy — a rule he was supposed to follow. He got pretty far into things before he  balks mid-scene and leaves.

Chuck also steals Troy’s laptop, to give to his campaign consultant (George Minchack) so that she has the dirt on him for opposition research, and not some outsider. The laptop is given over, almost like a tribute to a strong woman. Chuck tells Minchack, “My biggest vulnerability. And now it’s in your hands.” Part of the thrill for Chuck is to make himself profoundly vulnerable to powerful women, in a way that tests their commitment to his safety and well-being. Troy,  however, did not consent to being used in this way. Troy, unaware that it was Chuck who had arranged to have her laptop stolen, shows her concern for Chuck and informs him that his privacy might be in jeopardy.

He also ignored Wendy’s request that he keep his kinks private. When Chuck needed a Hail Mary for his political campaign, he came forward with a speech where he owns up to being a sexual submissive. Chuck’s speech, an example of art imitating life, echoes Jack Ryan’s withdrawal from the Illinois senate race in 2004, after it was revealed Ryan had gone to swing clubs with his wife.

At the press conference in Season 4, Episode 4, to John Mellencamp’s song, “I am a Troubled Man,” Chuck tosses his prepared comments and instead reveals himself. In a remarkable monologue, the slave becomes emancipated:

“It’s high time for truth, for openness, for unburdening. I’m not here as most politicians, to ask you to trust me. Instead, I am asking if I may trust you with my deepest fear. Which is that you might know me. Who I really am. The job of the prosecutor is to expose that which is hidden away. That evil, the dirty, the crooked, the untruthful, to shine light and reveal what’s under all that darkness. And I have come to realize that in order to do it right, that I must shine light on my own dark parts…I, in my private life, in the confines of my happy marriage with my consenting wife, practice sadomasochism…Bondage, dominance, all the rest. Masks, binds, ropes, fire, wow…even just saying it like that, I can feel my shoulders loosen for the first time in decades. I am a masochist. In order to experience sexual gratification I need to be tied up, punched, pinched, whipped, kicked or otherwise tortured, by my loving wife. And here’s the bigger truth. All of us need something. Right? I don’t know what you do in your bedroom, with your loved one, but I do know this, you’re probably a little embarrassed about it. You probably don’t want the rest of us looking at you while you do it, unless that’s your thing. And if so, great. But wouldn’t we be better off if we didn’t let shame win…if we didn’t have to hide what moves us?”

While Chuck was talking at the televised press conference, Wendy was at Axe Capital, watching with her colleagues. She is appalled, because her privacy has been violated. Chuck’s emancipation comes at her expense, and against her wishes. Everybody who knows them is now privy to their BDSM adventures. In a later episode, Rebecca Cantu tells Wendy that “Most people are self-absorbed narcissistic assholes, so they might revel in your shit for a minute, because it distracts them from theirs, but after that minute, they’re going to forget about you and go back to their own shit pile.” And while Rebecca may be correct in the long run, Wendy worries — correctly — that she is no longer a blank slate (a useful device for a therapist) in the eyes of her colleagues and clients. Chuck’s affinity for humiliation (did he really need to go into such excruciating detail about his kinks at the press conference?), and the collateral damage he knew would follow, has shaken their marriage to the core.

Further posts will touch on the kinks of other Billions characters, and the attention to kinky detail exhibited by the Billions writers and producers.

Author: Jane Boon

I'm an MIT graduate in technology and policy; a Ph.D. engineer turned novelist. My favorite stories lie at the intersection of wealth and deviancy, which is why I'm a huge fan of BILLIONS, and which is also the territory I cover in my novel EDGE PLAY, from Regan Arts. If you look closely at the scene where Chuck Rhoades visits the S&M club in the first season, you can spot me wearing a corset and standing by the bar. When I'm not playing dress-up, I divide my time between Los Angeles (my husband edits the LA Times), and NYC, where we have an apartment in Wall-Street-adjacent Tribeca. Follow me on Twitter: @JaneEBoon

11 thoughts on “The Kink of Billions – Chuck”

  1. What a fun and interesting first post there Jane! You didn’t waste any time cracking the whip and getting down to business! (Sorry, had to – 🙂

    Actual serious question here – do you think someone like Chuck would do all of the manifestations of BDSM that they have shown (so far)? I have found that when TV shows show off a facet of culture that people aren’t as aware of, they will assign every nuance of that to the one focal point, even though it is more likely that someone would be more selective in their particular pleasures. Or is that true? Would a person be into bondage in all its forms as well as what we see to open the show?

    And wow – this blog has experts in all sorts of fields!!

    1. Great question! So, Chuck’s particular kinks didn’t seem all that extraordinary to me. If I had to guess at his backstory, he started out fantasizing about sexual submission as a teenager (which is super common, btw), and then in his 20s and 30s, Chuck would have discovered kinky porn. The stuff he likes is right down the center of the pervy spectrum….The black leather/lingerie aesthetic, the thigh high boots, the sexy women wielding implements of torture, the elaborate, equipment-driven bondage. What distinguishes Chuck is the intensity of his yearning, and the fact that he has resources (and permission) to pursue his kinks. He’s basically a connoisseur. He wants quality, and he pays for it.

  2. Sorry – just noticed that my reply didn’t identify me. The response to the question about the manifestation of Chuck’s kinks was from me! And I’m happy to share more thoughts on this, if anyone has something specific they’ve always wondered about….from the psychology of this stuff, to the tools of the trade.

    1. Maybe Showtime will add some of those ‘tools of the trade’ to the Billions merchandise site!

      1. Wouldn’t that be fun – a Billions logo on a paddle! Maybe embossed, so you could leave a mark looking like the logo!

  3. Fantastic piece – thank you so much for writing this series. We wrote on sop many aspects of the show, from character analysis to the food and the music and the financial jargon, we never talked about the kinks of billions – which is a fascinating component of the show. And of course it is also a character analysis! And I love it that it is not there in the show just to shock the audience but add to the story about the characters.

    It is very interesting isn’t it that Chuck, who is very ambitious for his career, takes the risk for so many years knowing that they may follow him, take photographs, threaten him to ruin his career. I was all for Chuck when he revealed his kinky sex life because I don’t think anyone should live under an ongoing threat – especially if it is something about a mutually consensual relationship that does not hurt anyone. If it were me, I would urge my husband to go and reveal it to the world because we would never live under a looming threat – it would ruin our life. But I also understand Wendy and I are two different people. She is a reserved person and she believes – as you argue, rightly, that this would change her position with her patients. And it is incomprehensible to me that Chuck is like a spoiled child that wants to play his favorite game all the time in bed and does not give anything to Wendy. And then he claims he loves her. So as much as I favor him in bravely fighting Foley, I think he is a selfish partner.

    I am so looking forward to Part II!

    1. Hi! Yes – Chuck’s behavior, especially in light of the nature of his work and all the attention he elicits, is shockingly reckless. He really is, as you note, like a spoiled child. The world revolves around him, and he just needs to figure out how to get what he wants with a minimum of consequences to him, personally. –So what if revealing his pervy inclinations undermines the tenuous relationship with his wife? So what if doing so means his kids are going to get mocked at school? He *wants* and then he gets. Chuck’s inability to keep his kinks at the level of a quiet hobby, rather than as something he pursues despite obvious threat, is indicative of someone obsessed and also, apparently, quite compulsive. He’s like the golfer who keeps on playing, even after he’s had back surgery and his orthopedist has warned him not to.

  4. Well I have said or thought it many times, Chuck is 1)savage, 2) evil, 3) so, so, so bad 4) so childish and arrogant and just plain stupid and 5) so right for Wendy.
    I do believe just like I believe that Lara is Axe’s kryptonite, Chucks and Wendy’s are each other’s and I certainly hope that Wendy does not move forward with her using of Axe’s emotions to hurt Chuck (season 4, the bedroom scene with Axe) because now she will lose this loyalty which will be worst than losing anything because we all know how Axe feels about her and loyalty. But since Wendy is hurt and humiliated, well she wants to lash and use all that she can and have at her resources all that she can to hurt back, and that’s why she and Chuck are the same and a match made in heaven.
    They are made for each other and if they are no longer together, well now Billions definitely need to be cancelled.

    1. Honestly I always thought Chuck and Wendy had a stronger marriage than Bobby and Lara. Because Chuck and Wendy talked while Bobby and Lara didn’t – Bobby told Lara only what he wanted her to know.

  5. Ms.Joon,

    Assuming that you are using your real name and photo, it appears that you are flirting with the fictional character Chuck Rhoades’ fictional penchant for fictional risk. Interesting. I can certainly see why you gave up the staid world of academia. Personally, the kink aspect of the show feels forced to me.-very TMI. Its my least favorite aspect of the show. I stick with Billions because of the very fine acting and Bobby Axelrod’s fascinating character.

  6. The problem with the Femdom sequences in Billions is that, in most cases, Chuck is topping from the bottom. He certainly is the one in control and manipulating the situation in many of the Wendy and Chuck Mistress / sub scenarios. The only scenes I can think of where he is was not in control was in the cafe with Troy and when Cassie slapped his face.

    Even the suspension scenes with Cassie he was in control. That is a big problem with the Billions take on BDSM and Femdomme.

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