Lessons on pain, suffering and humiliation from Soptik and EisEve

Last weekend, Soptik and EisEve gave a performance followed by a 2-day intensive workshop at Ellipsis in Rotterdam. I attended both with high hopes and was not disappointed. In fact, I've learned way more than I expected.

The performance

Their performance left me speechless. I’ve heard that Soptik is a real sadist and I was prepared for an hour of enjoyment mixed with embarrassment while watching EisEve being tortured in his ropes. What I have seen was nothing like what I have expected. True, she was suffering for most of the performance, but mostly it was a spectacle of humiliation and objectification and a show of an intense D/s dynamic. And it was beautiful.

He started strongly by cutting open EisEve clothes and putting her in a partial involving only a neck rope, causing her to tiptoe and struggle for her life while he was tying a TK. He then put her in a series of transitions, each one slightly more difficult and exposing than the previous. She took them all gracefully. What was amazing to me was how intensely Soptik was focused on his model. He barely watched his ropes. His eyes were almost constantly fixated on her. And he was taking his time. He wasn’t hurrying from one position to another. Each position was a feast on its own and he was delighting in every little drop of EisEve suffering.

And she does suffer beautifully. From the first till the last moment of the performance, she was completely surrendered to him. You could feel that she would let him do anything to her. She was there at his disposal, surrendering completely to his ropes, with her eyes closed and her body relaxed. At the same time, she wasn’t lifeless. She was truly present and you could feel the intense emotions that she is going through.

At some point of the performance, Soptik gagged her with her own panties, which he previously cut open, and tied a white cloth around her mouth and eyes. Then he proceeded to draw a smile and a pair of eyes on the fabric. This was a powerful message of objectification. For me, it was like saying ‘Look at her, she is all mine. She will let me do anything to her. And I will execute this power.’ That really touched me. I rarely see such expressions of submission in rope performances, and at the same time, they are something that I really look for in kinbaku.

On top of everything, Soptik is an extremely skilled rigger. His moves were confident and fluent and each position that he put his model in was executed with great care and seemed simple, but was actually very complex. He was deliberate in creating shapes from EisEve body. And the shapes that he was creating were not always making his model beautiful. She was a material that he was forming according to his desires. And his desires were often to expose and objectify her. He ended the performance with a single point TK suspension, which was a very dramatic position, making the model resemble a hanged person. Another powerful message.

For me, the entire performance was comparable to that of Bingo, that I’ve seen in Paris, in terms of the intensity, skill and the qualities of kinbaku and D/s that it displayed. It left me extremely excited for the workshop.

The workshop

And the workshop didn’t disappoint. There was lots of pain and suffering, but most necessary, it was not without a reason. I think that the most important lesson that I have learned from it is that as a model you want to suffer in ropes for someone. If you see your rigger paying attention to you and enjoying what he is creating, it really makes it worthwhile to go through all the pain and discomfort.

Soptik kept repeating that for him every moment of the scene is important and that he wants to enjoy the model in his ropes as much as possible. Therefore, it is really crucial to pay attention to your model by learning how to minimize the amount of time that you look at your ropes when tying. You want to enjoy the model and the feelings that you evoke in her and for that, you need to pay attention to her, not the ropes that are on her body. They are just an object, they don’t have feelings. But your model does. And that is what you are after.

For me, it really does make a difference, because I treat my scenes as an emotional journey. I go through a spectrum of emotions when being tied and if the rigger does not appreciate them then I miss the point of doing it. I know that there are different reasons why people tie and this is not the only ultimate one, but it is for me. That’s why Soptik teaching resonated so much with me.

Another thing is that as a model, once I decide to tie with someone, I should be willing to suffer for them. That also means that I should try to overcome small nuisances, like a pinching rope, as long as they are not dangerous. In that way, I make sure that we can enjoy the scene and its flow with minimal disturbances. I learned that any time that I communicate to the rigger, I take us out of our headspace and we have to make a big effort afterwards to get back in. Therefore, it makes for a way better scene if I suffer through small discomforts, even unintentional, and only communicate things that I really important.

Finally, watching Soptik tie and interact with EisEve completely changed my views on D/s relationships. Throughout the workshop, he kept exposing and humiliating her, by for example casually exposing her breasts and crotch. Not for a moment though it made me think of her as weak or less a person than he is. (And that is how I usually feel when someone does something like that to me.) On the contrary, I thought that she is very strong and brave for being so vulnerable to him in front of us. I could also see how much she means to him and how much he appreciates her and I understood that even though there is a power imbalance in their relation, it does not mean that either of them is less valuable.

Some of you might say, ‘Duh...’, but for me, it was quite an eye-opener. So far, I’ve rather seen myself as showing weakness when expressing my submission to my boyfriend in front of other people. And now, when I saw how it might look from the outside, I don’t think of it as appearing weak anymore. I think that it is touching and beautiful. And both sides show strength by expressing it.

Our scene

As a culmination of this weekend, I experienced Soptik’s tying myself. And it was again both different and better than I expected. He asked me to tie because he really liked my expressions of suffering in ropes and I agreed because I could see that we have many common kinks and I expected that he would put me through an amazing journey. And he did.

I think that I have never experienced so much pain and humiliation at once given with so much intention and enjoyment. Especially by someone who I barely know. The way he was hurting me and the emotions that he was able to evoke in me by giving me pain made me re-evaluate how I see myself as a masochist. For a while now I have thought that I prefer emotional masochism over the physical one. And partially it is still true. Soptik made me realize what you can achieve when you combine the two. A mind-blowing experience.

I guess that there are not so many things that can make one as panicky and vulnerable as experiencing pain from which there is no escape. I am a masochist and I like pain, but only to a certain degree, and I am not even sure if my pain tolerance is that high. I can take quite a bit, but not without strong reactions and I only experience mild levels of very specific kinds of pain as pleasurable. The pain that he was giving me was definitely above my limits. But he overpowered me mentally and physically and made me feel like there is nowhere to go from it. He made me submit to the pain and to him and accept whatever he is giving to me. And that really changed my perception.

At some point, I started enjoying way more than I usually do. It seemed like because there was no escape, my mind decided that it is better for me to think that it is what I truly want. And then, for a submissive, there is something really special about letting someone torture your body and seeing them enjoying it. And he definitely was enjoying torturing me. It made me very confused because, on the one hand, I wanted the pain to stop, but on the other, you wanted to keep pleasing him. Also, he kept humiliating me. He twisted my body and exposed me. He tied my face and made me drool on myself and then smeared the saliva over my face. He slapped me and beat me and stepped on me. At some point, it turned me into a needy wimp and I just wanted him to be nice to me and caress me, but he kept only hurting and degrading me. That made me only more miserable and more submissive.

I was truly amazed by how much I can take from a complete stranger. He was my teacher for two days, I have seen him tie and we talked a bit, but there was not much more that I knew about him. I have always thought that degradation and humiliation are something that I can only do with someone that I have a deep relation with. But it turns out that it is not necessarily the case. I think that because I could see very clearly that it is something that he enjoys, I felt safe to enjoy it as well. To show my real self to him and let him take us on this journey.

At the same time, it was very different from what I experience with my partners that I have a deeper relationship with. I think that there was not so much emotional depth behind it and because of that, it was less (emotionally) dangerous. It was a very strong and pure D/s power exchange, but at the same time did not have the emotional loading of humiliation play that I have with my boyfriend for example. Having a deep relationship with someone definitely changes the angle of play, because he can hit you in more emotionally vulnerable places. And that requires way more aftercare that I felt like I need after this scene.

Here, I felt like a victim, first caught and overpowered and then slowly, by means of torture, turned into an obedient pet. It was really amazing and intense and at the same time very contained within the scene. I feel like rope is a great tool to create this kind of emotions. It makes you powerless and vulnerable and can cause a lot of pain. At the same time, it's not like cuffs or straps that only immobilize you. Your partner keeps on making you move, reminding you of the power that he has and at the same time putting you in a kind of trance. It's also very theatrical in a way which for me works great in putting my mind on an emotional journey. Since it is a non-verbal tool, the flow of energy is in a way purer and therefore might be stronger than when you use words, even though the exchange might be less intricate, as I feel like only more basic dynamics can be expressed without verbal communication. Still, you can achieve the intensity and experience emotional journey that is really special and hard to come across otherwise with such minimal tools.

My lessons

I can already see my boyfriend laughing at this one, but I think that I can safely say that this weekend was a life-changing experience for me. Or at least, it changed the way I look at many things.

First of all, I strengthened my conviction that what I am looking for and want to experience in rope is an intense D/s dynamic. I want to see suffering and submission. I want to see humiliation and eroticism. And finally, I want to see simplicity and beauty created by using the model as a canvas. And that is exactly what Soptik and EisEve showed in their performance.

Secondly, I’ve learned that the intention of both the rigger and the model can make or break the scene. On the rigger side, it is extremely important that he enjoys what he is doing to the model. And for that, he needs to pay attention to her. He should maximize the time that he looks and reads the model and minimize the time that his attention is on the rope. From the model side, she needs to have the intention to suffer for the rigger, to give herself to him for his enjoyment. That also means that she should try to not break the scene with every little pinch of rope on her skin. Sometimes it might be better to suffer through the discomfort, also unintentional, and see where the scene goes than to break the flow.

Thirdly, I learned to appreciate and respect the submissive role way more. I realized that it requires strength and vulnerability to be able to submit, but that the same goes for the dominant. Even though there is a power imbalance in a D/s relation, there is no value assigned to either of the sides. They are both equally strong and brave and beautiful. And there is something truly magnetic in observing a couple with a strong D/s dynamic. Like watching two elements both fighting and needing each other to exist.

Finally, I’ve learned that rope is a perfect tool for creating intense and complex D/s scenes, even between people who don’t know each other that well. You can degrade, scare, torture, humiliate, give and take hope, caress and evoke many more feelings, using only rope. At the same time, the dynamic is very contained within the context of the scene and the strong power exchange that you experience does not have to exist outside of it. This made me appreciate rope even more and it might have made me more open to tie with new people.

Thank you Soptik and EisEve for teaching me so much about rope, D/s and myself. It was a truly deep experience and I can’t wait to learn from you again.