Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I like feeling like a beginner again

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Beginner BDSM, Bondage, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Communication, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Erotica and pornography, Fantasy, Femdom, Fetish, Male sexuality, Masturbation, Relationship, Sexual teasing and control, Training/Conditioning, Vanilla life, Writing and blogging

Things have been a little bit busy in my life lately, and for once the busyness has not been solely professionally-driven. Though I am working on a number of very exciting things, my days have been excitingly full because after I work hard, I come home to Eileen and we play hard. The play, however, hasn’t been the same sort of stuff we used to do. I think isolation from our friends and community and our efforts in our respective professional lives have actually helped us enjoy our time together.

As we usually do, when we reconnect like this, we talk. A lot. Recently, though I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, the huge blocks of time I’ve set aside to work on writing about web development professionally have also yielded some time to write erotica on the side again. (As an aside, that, and crossing paths with the intriguing Ranat has led to some renewed interest in my hypertextual porn experiments.) I actually have the beginnings of a very promising short story based on a more-or-less off-handed remark that Kink in Exile made, which I found really sexy.

Anyway, one thing led to another and in the conversations Eileen and I have been having, the fact that I find it ridiculously hard to speak about my fantasies came out. It may be surprising to some of you, but it’s true: verbalizing my fantasies out loud is unusually difficult for me. Writing about them is for some reason relatively easy. Making my mouth move (which I can do) so that sounds come out of it and form words that describe my fantasies (which I rarely do) is inexplicably hard, even when I’m alone with her. I often literally just lose my breath. This clearly poses a few challenges to discussing such things, and it’s something both Eileen and I would like to see me be more comfortable with.

On a largely unrelated note (no, really), tonight’s also my 31st day denied an orgasm, which is the longest I’ve ever gone since, well, since I was 9 or 10 and began masturbating. This is significant not due to the time span, but rather because it happened thanks to an increasingly apparent shift in Eileen’s attitude and comfort level with my being denied. As she put it, “I simply no longer have any sense of guilt about denying you.” Then she paused for a moment with a thoughtful look on her face before casually adding, “You should probably be scared about that, by the way.” That was the comment that has hatched a swarm of butterflies in my stomach, which—since last night—has yet to dissipate.

There’s quite a bit more to say about this that I’ll be saving for later. In the mean time, suffice it to say that I was given a few tasks today, one of which was to write and then read a short fantasy “snapshot” (a brief moment or vignette) to her. Coming up with what to write was unsurprisingly easy, but reading it aloud at dinner tonight was actually very, very challenging. This is what I wrote and then, yes, read to her.

The thin rope tasted dry and scratchy in my parched mouth. I opened my mouth wider and extended my tongue as far as I could just so I could feel the cool air. Some of my muscles felt cramped, the cause of which was not the immobilizing bondage I was in but my own exertion. Although she was quiet now, her earlier words still sounded deafening. “Be good, my beautiful toy. Hush and hold out until I want you to come,” she had told me in her kind, almost charitable voice, for what she was doing to me now was indeed generous.

For the first time in longer than I care to recount, one of her hands had spent a pleasurable eternity slickly caressing, gripping, pulling, stroking, and pumping my cock. Her other hand alternated between doing the same to my balls, thighs, and perineum. Occasionally, when she would tire of her manual ministrations, she played with the remote controls of the large, self-propelling vibrating prostate massager she had inserted into my ass and I could hear her giggling with enjoyment as she varied its intensity. Eventually, she would always find a combination of settings for the machine that she seemed happy with and resumed stimulating my penis, complete with a fresh dollop of lubricant. The only indication I had as to how long she’d been playing with me was provided by the increasing wetness dripping onto my thighs and torso, and my own growing incoherence after each frustrating edge, as I had lost all sense of time early on.

After a while, I could no longer decide if her actions were merciful or torturous since for ages even prior to this she hadn’t given me any indication whether some sort of relief was in sight. I couldn’t see through the opaque bondage tape that covered my eyes, but somehow I could tell she was smiling. She loved watching me struggle—and suffer—and so she would make games out of tantalizing me more and more. This was her most satisfying form of amusement and I am, after all, one of her favorite toys.

There’s no doubt that intense control, teasing, and orgasm denial are on my mind of late. (I mean, hell, it has been over four weeks now!) The fact of the matter is that since this particular kink is a fetish of mine—orgasm control is an integral part of my understanding of my own sexuality—for me, when we play with such things and when Eileen actively takes control of my sexual pleasure to choose when and how I get it, it’s a wonderful tool for catalyzing lots of other possibilities.

Now, I look forward to a cozy night of cuddling, snugly locked in my chastity device. If only I had checked that store’s hours earlier in the day, I might have had other things to look forward to, as well….

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Sunday, December 16, 2007

Rope bondage video of the day

Category labels: BDSM in the media, Bondage, Chastity/Orgasm denial, Femdom, Humor

This video has everything. Bondage, begging, a super hot blonde dominatrix, and cookies! :) When I shared this find with Rona everyone over at her blog got a real kick out of it, so I thought I’d share it here, too.

All the begging totally put the idea of Cookie Monster orgasm denial porn in my head. “Make a choice, Cookie Monster, do you want this delicious cookie or an orgasm?” Tee, hee, hee!

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

On kinky competence

Category labels: BDSM psychology, BDSM safety, BDSM techniques, Bondage, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Myths and misconceptions, Stupid dominants, Stupid submissives

With a little observation, the very first thing you will notice about kink in the public communities these days is that it’s all about what you can do or have done to you. It’s about skills, abilities, and stamina. It’s a sport when played in public. And, just like sports, there are winners and there are losers.

How do you win at the sport of kink? What do you have to do to get the prizes? Your two options are very straightforward: become very competent at the requisite skills, or make people think you are very competent at these skills. They both work, even though I think one is abhorrent.

In point of fact, there’s very little I think is wrong about the necessity of competence. Competence is a good thing. It is so necessary a thing, in fact, that it’s probably the main reason why I have so relatively few play partners—more common a reason than the supposed Femdom Demographic Issue or submissive-male-phobia, for instance. I judge most of the people I meet to be incompetent, and I have very little interest in playing with people who don’t prove their skills to me.

I’m a competence snob, but I think I should be. I think everyone should be, and it should be (at least partly) obvious why: I don’t want to be harmed, physically, legally, or emotionally—regardless of whether I am bottoming or topping. I think of myself as too important to me to risk my well-being in acts of recklessness or irresponsibility even as I strongly desire to be hurt and to suffer. I feel as though this is obvious; I would need but to hold up a mirror to you to show you why such an attitude might be important.

I wish competence were recognized by people as being one of the most important factors in choosing a partner for a scene, or for a relationship. (They recognize the importance when choosing a doctor, yet when it comes to sex and education otherwise smart people behave in very dumb ways.) It’s clear that being competent makes you attractive because it gives you some value that you can provide to your partners. However, it’s also clear that most people are constantly fumbling about trying to discern what this value they are seeking actually is. They don’t know what it looks like or how to find it. I don’t think most of them are even aware of their own search for it in the first place (at least not concretely).

Classes and workshops present so thin a slice of the big picture with such frequent repetition that after attending them for a while you may quickly assume you have seen all there is to see. A Martian (or a naive young newbie) using such resources to learn about BDSM might assume all there is to kinky sex is ropes, chains, whips, and sharp objects, with the occasional actual sex act thrown into the mix. In such an atmosphere, it’s no wonder that the skills deemed most necessary to win this sport are those such as how accurately you throw your singletail whip, how securely and prettily you can tie a bottom up in ropes, or how much attention you pay to the safety best practices during a needle-play scene.

Yet not everyone attends classes and workshops. Those who don’t typically engage in kinky sex blissfully unaware of their own ignorance. Few “bedroom kinky” people I have heard of have ever shown a concerted effort to pick up an anatomy book with a mind towards safer rougher sex—though it’s obvious, even to them, why they might want to consider it. These are the kinds of people I have never found attractive. They never take the time to analyze their own successes or their failures, and consequently sentence themselves to lives of mediocre experiences at best or, more commonly, continuous bewildered failure.

I am very specific about what I consider to be factors of competence, and about how I value these various things. I am also utterly ruthless in my appraisal of the things I see. I have a similar reaction to badly executed rope bondage as I do to bad web sites. It thus behooves me to say that I find consistently executed safety best practices, exceptionally functional and simultaneously aesthetically pleasing rope-work, and accurately administered whippings all to be valid and useful earmarks of competence, and I use such criteria as part of a standard barometer for a certain kind of competence all the time.

Similarly, it also behooves me to make explicit mention of the fact that it is one thing to preach these things and quite another to practice them. I find nothing impressive about intentions alone; intentions can not be competent.

It is for that reason why I have never been interested in listening to such sermons as the proper disposal of bloodied needles given by people who keep no sharps container in sight when they play. They are only proving themselves charlatans to me, because I know how to spot such a fraud. If I did not know how to do this, as was the case for me and for everyone else at one point in life, then I have always been better served by withholding final judgement as well as trust until I became better educated in the skill and the person both.

In other words, to trust without knowing shows me your ineptness. That’s one way I evaluate the competency of other bottoms. Incompetent bottoms act before they think; little wonder so many of them end up in situations they later regret.

It bugs me, viscerally, when I see people who are clearly not skilled (or not any more skilled than an average fellow is, anyway) being misrepresented or, worse, misrepresenting themselves as having a level of competence that they clearly do not have. What bugs me most of all, however, is that this sort of false aggrandizement is something that is accepted, unquestioningly, when dominants do it (by either dominant female asshats or dominant male assholes) and is allowed to proceed unabated, but is instantly recognized and rightfully shot down when submissive people do the same.

I know of more than a handful of male tops who have a quite sizable number of (typically young, usually naive, almost always seriously troubled) groupies for reasons I can not even begin to fathom. These men are almost always significantly older than their groupies, and though not necessarily ill-intentioned or malicious, they are so unremarkable to me that I would blithely ignore their existence for the most part. They have no great skills as far as I can tell, they are not strikingly physically attractive, they speak of no rare or enthralling things, and I can find no particular intelligence, empathic ability, or other quality that makes them deserving of such long-lasting attention.

What seems most unusual to me is that, had these people not been dominants or tops, everyone else would and does think of these people the way I just described that I do. The submissive or bottom men—the older, not necessarily ill-intentioned or malicious, remarkably unremarkable men—are blithely ignored, by pretty much everyone. I imagine, with no experiencial evidence, that the same is true for women in complimentary roles, though finding evidence one way or another would certainly prove additionally enlightening.

I can’t help but find this odd, and my theories as to why this is so center around my observations of the simplistic notion most people have about competence. Most bluntly, that competence is something to be admired without analysis, that it’s something only tops have, and that it can be displayed merely with intention. How ignorant, and dangerous, I find this to be.

Competency is gained through experience, practice, and questioning. It’s something that’s acquired not through some spontaneous or uncontrollable happenstance of luck and fate but by very deliberate efforts. In other words, you have to care about having it, or you won’t.

In this entire discussion I have tried to refrain from using examples or language that were orientation-specific. That’s because competence is not a one-way street. I have seen just as many, if not more, incompetent bottoms as I have seen incompetent tops. This is possibly because as a bottom it’s far easier to get away with being woefully incompetent at just about everything you do than it is for a top. Alternately, perhaps this is because of the unfortunate misconception that bottoming is inherently a passive act and that the entirety of a valid kinky encounter involves a purely active top and a purely receptive bottom.

In some competencies, this makes obvious sense. When you’re on the tail end of the whip as opposed to the handle, you don’t need the dexterity to be able to throw the whip perfectly. But you do need to understand what is happening. You should know how to breathe, how to move, how to scream (if it’s good), and how to communicate what you need, if you need something. Your top is not a mindreader. (And they probably like the screaming.)

The point is clear: competence in bottoms is just as attractive as it is in tops, and vice versa. Competence is sexy. What does a competent bottom look like? I think competent bottoms are self-reliant, emotionally hardy individuals who have a discerning eye, and have the presence of mind to act responsibly—to be willing to get things wrong and make things right again—and to act with empathy and generosity towards their partners. In other words, the same exact qualities that competent tops share. Try that on for size.

Thanks to the wonderful comments, I’ve since expanded on this quite a bit in an epilogue to this post.

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Friday, August 31, 2007

Flying, the kinky sex orgasm, and the lack thereof

Category labels: Altered States and Headspaces, BDSM terminology, Bondage, Emotions, Humor, Personal experience

People often draw analogies between things in kink sex and vanilla sex. They do this sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of a desire to avoid the overhead of defining every term they use, but mostly they do it (as I’m about to do) because it’s something they’ve heard done before.

I’ve never “flown” in a scene. That is to say, I’ve never “checked out” or “seen my body from outside itself” or “felt like the pain was sexually pleasurable,” or many of the other things lots of people who do what I do and claim similar labels as I claim have often told me about their experiences. Typically, they call this experience flying, and I’ve usually heard it discussed as though it was the BDSM version of an orgasm.

Well, if flying is the BDSM version of an orgasm and scenes are the BDSM version of sex, then I’ve never come.

Of course we all know that different people play differently and for different reasons and different goals and it’s all good no matter who you are or what you’re into or whatever, but whenever this subject gets brought up it makes me feel a little anorgasmic in regards to kinky things.

A part of me is always wondering if I’m just too technically-minded, too focused on comparing experiences with descriptions that I’ve missed the boat already in the same way vanilla people sometimes seem to me to be so concerned with orgasms and ejaculations that even when they experience them they sometimes didn’t know that they had. And then part of me says to myself that it must be practically impossible not to notice something like an orgasm (”oh, you’ll know!”), so a kinky scene orgasm should be similarly impossible not to notice, and since I’ve never noticed one I’ve probably never had one.

A lot of people talk about flying by talking about how pain, when experienced at a certain intensity, rhythm, and circumstance, makes the rest of their existence kind of fade out and brings into focus only the lovely sensations of the moment. I can understand that very viscerally; one of the reasons I love BDSM (and kinky sex, and sensual experiences in general) is because they help me get out of my head and into my body, for lack of a better description at the moment.

However, these same people tell me that the pain is sexually exciting. That’s not something I can relate to. Friends have told me stories about whippings and beatings that have left them wet or hard and rutting in place, making their very thought processes change somewhat dramatically. I wonder what that sort of an experience would be like. It honestly doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, because as I’ve said before, pain doesn’t turn me on.

As a perfect and somewhat humorous example, take a very sexy takedown scene that happened recently. Having been pulled away from Eileen for purposes completely unbeknownst to me at the time, I got worried about her when a friend said they had ended their scene because Eileen seemed “a little ADD at the end.” Strange, I thought, Eileen only gets that way when something is wrong. I should go check on her.

I quickly turned around and started walking back toward her when several more friends appeared and stopped me. No, hang on, I told them, I need to check on Eileen and make sure she’s okay. Then, when they pulled a hood over my face and quickly grabbed me by my limbs, you want to know what my first thought was? It was:

Oh, this is a takedown. Eileen’s probably fine.

This was no surprise to Eileen, who later remarked, I knew your brain would keep working. It did. My second thought was, “In takedowns, the victim gets to struggle. I’d enjoy doing that!” So of course I struggled as much as I could while staying (as) careful (as I could) not to inadvertently kick the wrong person in the genitals.

This illustrates a very typical experience that I have when I play: I’m very often completely conscious of what’s going on and very aware of the reality of a situation. When Eileen and I play with knives, I’m not scared that she’ll purposefully cut my throat, or gouge my eye out, I’m scared that she’ll do it accidentally. (The risk is what’s appealing.) When she whips me, I’m often adjusting my position and I’m motivated to do so by the conscious awareness that my back is no longer straight after that last stroke and that it should be made straight again, or that the sound of the whip and the feel of the air it pushed toward me means the whip is approximately four inches in that direction so I should turn appropriately.

Really, and I’d hate to destroy people’s illusions of my kinky sex if they have any, but I’m actually extremely unsexy in my head when I play. Rational thought processes are not really that sexy no matter how you try to dress them up. Everything sexy is entirely about emotion.

Getting beaten with a nightstick is just that; a stick and a body. It’s all very mechanical and not very hot. However, with some feeling in there, like being forced to the ground and invited to violently show the emotional aspects of aggression by fighting back, then physically losing and giving in to overwhelming force, now that’s sexy.

It’s very, very hard to get me out of my head. The only two things that have ever succeeded in doing so have been intense pain and intense pleasure (not necessarily orgasmic pleasure), and even these things don’t manage to do it for very long stretches at a time. The way lots of people describe flying, it seems as though they experience some kind of emotional or spiritual climax too abstract for words. This is all wonderful, but is far too abstract for me.

I don’t deal very well with abstracts. I’m a rather technical person, obviously, so I like things that make sense and which are grounded in rational thought. When people try to explain things to me that they say are based on “auras” or “energies,” I usually just smile and nod. I have no problem with these things, most recently evidenced by a sudden interest in my social group with tantric practices, but I’d prefer to keep a critical eye pinned consistently in that direction.

So when I think about flying, in all the experiences I’ve had the one that comes closest to it has been getting suspended in rope bondage. Because that’s when I was in the air, swinging around, and that’s what flying means to me.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Fox News reports: Bondage may make men happier

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM psychology, Bondage

I recently attended a bondage class by the excellent, and incredibly knowledgeable Lee “Bridgett” Harrington on Speed Bondage. I learned a few great new tricks, a couple of extra ties, and a super-quick rope bondage chest harness. And, god, it reminds me how much I absolutely love bondage.

How appropriate then, that Lady Julia recently linked this article from Fox News stating that bondage may make men happier. The good things from the report:

…says Dr. Richters, men into BDSM scored significantly better on a scale of psychological wellbeing than other men.

“This seems to imply that these men are actually happier as a result of their behaviour, though we’re not sure why,” she said.

“It might just be that they’re more in harmony with themselves because they’re into something unusual and are comfortable with that.

“There’s a lot to be said for accepting who you are.”

At the other end of the spectrum – least happy – were men who reported being attracted to men but had never acted on their desire and didn’t regard themselves as gay.

Researchers said the study helps break down the reigning stereotype that people into bondage and discipline were damaged as children and were therefore “dysfunctional”.

“We really found that BDSM is simply a sexual interest or subculture attractive to a minority, not a pathological symptom of past abuse or difficulty with ‘normal’ sex,” Dr. Richters said.

“They’ve just got a broader and more unusual sexual repertoire than most.”

I have very little to add to this except for yay, a positive portrayal of BDSM in an extremely right-wing, conservative media outlet! That has to be good, right?

Yet there is still a huge misunderstanding of what BDSM is or is not, and the incredible amount of misinformation out there can be damaging. Case in point, from the same article:

“There will definitely be more men and women who have sexual tastes in this direction but won’t call it this,” said Dr. Juliet Richters, of the University of New South Wales.

“They might not like sex magazines but they just happen to like being tied up and spanked as part of foreplay.

“Ask them if they’re into BDSM they’ll say ‘Yuck, no’.”

Bound to Be Free: The Sm Experience “Yuck no” to being tied up, but “bondage may make men happier” in the same vein? This is misinformation and misunderstanding at its best. Such hipocracy is an earmark of social stigmas. One very good book that I enjoyed a few years back was Bound to Be Free: The S&M Experience by Dr. Charles Moser and JJ Madeson (a 20-year veteran of the San Francisco BDSM scene). They talk about this issue at point-blank range, and is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in some more personal viewpoints.

Naturally, the best attacks on stigmas and misinformation is quality information. Now more than ever, the Information Age is best poised to tackle these issues. That’s why this next point is completely unsurprising:

In women, BDSM was most popular among under 20-year-olds…

I am encouraged by reports like this. They validate to the rest of the world what I already feel every time I kneel in front of my girlfriend; that I am stronger through my self expression than I could ever otherwise be.

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Thursday, February 22, 2007

Stream of consciousness on BDSM 101

Category labels: BDSM terminology, Beginner BDSM, Bondage

At one of the BDSM organizations I attend, I volunteered myself to participate at an “introduction to kink” panel presentation for another discussion group that had invited us to speak. When I heard back from the group, I was asked to speak on two things: definition of terms and bondage. Yay! Both topics that I truly love. :)

What follows is the notes I put together in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way over the last half hour or so. They’re obviously not very refined or comprehensive because, keep in mind, I kind of wrote them as if I was speaking to the audience and this is supposed to be a mile wide, inch deep overview of what BDSM is about.

Feedback is always welcome.

Definition of Terms

Vanilla isn’t so much a definition as an anti-definition. Technically, “vanilla” means not kinky. However, this is actually a complex issue because the effective meaning of that definition depends on the definition of what is (and what is not) “kinky.”

For example, do you consider spanking to be kinky? I would consider that as an activity within the broader set of sexual activities called impact play, which we’ll cover a tad more in a little bit, but a lot of very so-called “vanilla” couples engage in spanking all the time. So, you can see how much of this terminology will need to be interpreted as you see fit, by what feels right to you. Suffice it to say for now that when I say vanilla, what I mean is “not as kinky as me.”

If you didn’t notice, I also introduced another term there surreptitiously: play. What is play? This one’s easy because it’s exactly what it sounds like: play is having fun doing something that you enjoy. In BDSM parlance, playing means “engaging in a BDSM activity” such as spanking or flogging or sexual teasing or role-playing, or whatever is of interest to you.

When two people are playing together, what they are doing is called a scene. A scene in this context is similar to a scene in a live-action play (see the fun we have with terms!), where people get together, interact with each other, and then the activity stops. A scene marks the time period from when the play begins to when the activity (though not necessarily the playing) ends.

Defining the beginning and ending of a scene is difficult because scenes can involve more than one kind of play. It’s a little bit like the geometry statement “a square is not a rectangle, but a rectangle is a square.” A scene is not play, but playing is a scene. Most people seem to use emotional peaks and valleys to mark the beginnings and endings of scenes; when the emotion or activity has taken on a high intensity, that’s part of a scene, and when it has subsided significantly, that’s the end. Other people use time as the distinguishing factor; one block of time spent doing one activity is one scene, another block is another.

Then, of course, there’s the actors involved in the scene. Typically, there are at least two, and one is dominant (the partner doing the dominating) while the other is submissive (the partner doing the submitting). Alternate terms that have less emotional context attached to them are a top and a bottom, respectively.

Finally, there’s a concept called polyamory, which literally means “many love.” Polyamory is not strictly a fetish or BDSM term, but actually a relationship paradigm that is in many ways the opposite of monogamy. In fact, there are entire communities centered around practicing and learning about polyamory that are completely separate from the BDSM world. Where monogamy is committing to be with one romantic and/or sexual partner at a time, polyamory is, for lack of a better word, different. In essence, it means being open to more than one love at any given time.

It’s important to note that polyamory is not polygamy, nor is it noncommittal, carelessly promiscuous, or emotionally insensitive. Interestingly, the ideals of polyamory have little to do with the number of sexual partners you may have (or want), but rather focus on the quality of your relationships, a fluid definition of what a successful relationship is, and encourages honesty, communication, negotiation, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence.

Bondage and bondage safety in the blink of an eye

Bondage is a huge subject, and there’s no way in hell anyone can cover all the really important bits in five minutes, but I’ll give it a shot. As always, if there any questions about this or anything we’ve spoken about today, please don’t hesitate to ask me or anyone else about them. Also, I’ll provide a list of resources that you can check out on your own time on my web site (at the bottom of this page).

Bondage is all about physically restricting someone’s movement or ability to act. This covers everything from handcuffs, ropes, shackles, gags, straightjackets, to cages, and even corsetry in a way. Anything that can be used to aid in the goal of restraining someone is fair play for bondage enthusiasts, so this also means standard clothing, scarves, belts, plastic wrap, bed sheets, and a host of other objects can be used.

There are three primary (but many more secondary and tertiary) ways you can categorize bondage. These are:

  • what object you’re binding or being bound with,

  • what interpersonal dynamic you’ve engaged in while being bound and

  • what position you’re being restrained in.

As I mentioned, many objects can be used for bondage. However, many people have a preference for a specific type of object. Personally, I’m in love with rope and extremely heavy metal shackles, but everyone has an individual preference.

Similarly, everyone’s preference for how they like to be tied is different, too. Some people prefer to try and avoid being tied up by fighting against the efforts of their binder, or forcefully capturing and restraining a partner who is acting reluctant. This is often a major facet to scenes like rape and kidnapping fantasies for a lot of bondage lovers. There are many techniques and even martial arts that are specifically designed to teach you how to take someone down and tie them up such as hojujitsu, or Japanese prisoner bondage.

Others see bondage as a means to relax and enjoy a cozy sensation of snugness, or to focus on creating the perfect rope harness or to find the most creative position they can get their partner stuck in. For such people, bondage is as relaxing as a warm, hot bath after a stressful day. Yet others see bondage as a means to some other end. Once you’ve got your partner bound, that’s when the fun can really begin! So bondage really is, to a very large degree, what you make of it.

However, regardless of why do you it or what you do it with, there’s some general safety information you absolutely must know. Keep in mind that despite the seemingly benign nature of the play, bondage is one of the more dangerous, more physically stressful and demanding forms of play you can engage in. Yes, it’s okay to take a scarf and tie your lovers hands to the headboard, but you really ought to know what you’re doing if you get into more serious positions like hog-ties or suspension.

So the first rule of bondage safety is this: never leave a bound person alone. Just don’t do it. You never know when an emergency will pop up.

The second rule of bondage safety is always have a fast way to release the bound person available to you. My girlfriend and I always keep EMT safety scissors right with our rope, so they’re never far away. Also, if you’re doing that, be sure to actually test the scissors to make sure they cut the rope you’re going to use before you start playing, for obvious reasons.

Thirdly, be careful of how tight and how long you are keeping someone bound. Essentially, you want to achieve a snug fit that does not cut off circulation to your partner’s extremities or cut off their breathing. (And if you’re worried about cutting off their breathing that means you’ve got neck bondage happening, which is one of those things you should never do until you’re feeling really comfortable in your ability.)

Good things to remember when you’re tying someone up is that you want to be able to slide one or two fingers comfortably underneath their bonds. If you can’t, it’s too tight. One way to tell that circulation is being cut off is if the bound person’s skin feels very cold. A little bit of coolness is okay, as is some tingling, but if your partner reports either of those sensations or you can feel that their body part is getting cold, you need to keep a strict eye on the clock from then on out. Don’t leave them tied that tightly for too much longer.

Furthermore, try to avoid tying knots that press directly into veins or arteries or joints, such as on the wrists, elbows, and the back of the knees. These are often uncomfortable for the bottom and indicate a sloppy knot on the top’s part. I won’t go into knots here because it’d take too long, but there’s a ton of information about this stuff in books and on the Internet. Just search or “how to do erotic bondage” and you’ll hit a plethora of tutorials.

Finally, but certainly not least, use common sense to avoid accidental injury. In other words, do remember to do things like have your partner holding on to something or lying down if you’re tying their ankles together. Especially if they’re arms are already bound, you don’t want them falling down and breaking their nose by accident. If you want that on purpose, that’s one thing, but an accident is just not sexy.

Before I hand it over, I just want to reiterate one last time that this is absolutely, positively, not an all-inclusive guide to bondage or bondage safety. If you’re interested in this stuff, come talk to me and do your due diligence. It will probably make the experience a hundred times better, and it may just save you an embarrassing (and costly) trip to the hospital.

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