To get over a breakup with his actress girlfriend, a playwright goes on holiday to a lakeside resort, where he meets a strangely mismatched couple, a man and his much younger wife. He and the wife begin an affair, during which she introduces him to some of the darker aspects of romance.

Myron Breckinridge flies to Europe to get a sex-change operation and is transformed into the beautiful Myra. She travels to Hollywood, meets up with her rich Uncle Buck and, claiming to be Myron's widow, demands money. Instead, Buck gives Myra a job in his acting school. There, Myra meets aspiring actor Rusty and his girlfriend, Mary Ann. With Myra as catalyst, the trio begin to outrageously expand their sexual horizons.

Nick Broomfield and a documentary crew visit Pandora's Box, an up-scale house of bondage on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, where clients pay $175 an hour to be subservient to mistresses. Mistresses talk about their craft; a few clients, usually masked, are interviewed as well. Then, the camera watches sessions organized around fetishes: rubber, wrestling, corporal punishment, masochism, and infantilism. Mistress Raven, the owner of Pandora's Box, explains that pain need not be part of the subservient experience: it is, at its root, a transfer of power. After their session has ended, clients talk about how drained, relaxed, relieved, and at peace they are.

Sael Farás takes advantage of his position as Mexican Ambassador in South Africa to smuggle diamonds. He also has a secret affaire with a dominatrix. When Sael suddenly dies, a detective is assigned to the case.

A couple is kidnapped while driving and sent to the training house where Queen Mary Aoi lives. They are trained in unimaginable SM techniques with the woman becoming a true masochist and the man a true sadist, and both becoming full-fledged SM instructors.

After ending a six year relationship, a well-behaved, Jewish, OBGYN decides to turn her brain off and her body on by exploring BDSM; instances of which are popping up in the most unusual places.