The Lo Zone

One of the people Wachowski met that night was among L.A.'s highest-profile dominatrixes, a tall, imposing blonde with a traffic-stopping figure who used the nom de kink Ilsa Strix. Inflicting extreme pain seemed to be Strix's specialty: "My greatest accomplishment in some ways," she once said, "[was] putting 333 needles into a single penis." Strix cracked a bullwhip on her slaves like no other. She ran the Dungeon with her handsome and strapping partner Buck Angel, a partial female-to-male transsexual known today in the porn world as "The Dude With a Pussy."

In the weeks following their first encounter, Larry Wachowski returned to the Dungeon to see Mistress Strix. Boundaries fell swiftly, stunning the Los Angeles bondage community, which prides itself on the fact that mistresses keep their submissives at arm's length. The relationship between Larry and Ilsa, both in their thirties, would eventually destroy two marriages and possibly alter the creative course of one of the most influential movie trilogies of the past quarter-century, co-created with his brother, Andy: the original Matrix, released in 1999, and its two inferior sequels, which both hit theaters, six months apart, in 2003. Once hailed as the kings of geek-chic Hollywood, the Wachowski brothers disappeared from the scene, becoming virtual recluses. Both turned down interview requests for this story.