They Meet Online

"Jodi"

In 1998, "Jodi," a Wisconsin woman, met a man in an Internet chat room who went by the moniker, GMYourGod. Jodi was about to embark on a long, sordid journey that would end in the U.S. Supreme Court; her dramatic and salacious case would be one of the weirdest the Supreme Court has ever seen. The chatroom was dedicated to sadomasochism, and GMYourGod, in reality one Glenn Marcus, would soon become her "master."

Jodi had dabbled in two prior sadomasochist relationships before she met Marcus, but Marcus operated on an entirely different level. Marcus had a reputation as a hardcore master.

For one thing, he didn't use safe words — something the mainstream bondage, dominance and sadomasochistic (BDSM) community generally uses. In a dominant-submissive relationship, safe words are a code for an activity — flogging, for example — to stop. They are the primary means by which the submissive partner could communicate that the activity was no longer consensual.

He referred to his submissives as slaves and referred to himself as master.

In October 1998, Jodi left on a trip from the Midwest to Baltimore to meet Marcus. As she would for years, she kept a diary for readers of Marcus' website, Slavespace.com:

She wrote: "I have felt, am feeling, so many different things, millions of different things that I have never felt before.

"Mostly right now though, it is just total excitement! I am also very scared. The fear though, has changed over the weeks, and right now everything that I am afraid of boils down to being afraid that I will not please Sir."

"Sir" was the name she and the other slaves called Marcus.

Jodi's nickname became Poochie or, simply, Pooch.

In her first diary entry, reflecting on how she had felt before her first meeting, she wrote at length about her conflicting feelings of fear and excitement, which mingled and seemed to create a greater anticipation for her:

"There was a point a few weeks ago, when I just started to think, 'What is wrong with me?' This did not last long! But it surprised, and even scared me a little. I just started thinking, how could I need this? What is wrong with me? I want to give EVERYTHING to Sir. I want Him to own me, all of me, everything."

She ended her diary entry: "This is everything."