Rope gives meaning to my pain

Photo by A-Nicolas

I sometimes wonder, or get asked, why do I like to get tied. It is a difficult question to answer because I like it with different people for different reasons. I like to be under the power of dominant men and suffering in their ropes is a way to express my devotion to them. I like to feel helpless and abused and rope is a great tool for my partners to make me feel this way. I like to serve, to please people with my being. I like it when people enjoy me. 

I could go on and on about it. The reasons why I enjoy rope are ever-changing but they are always strong. Without a strong reason to be in ropes, I could not show up for my partners and this is one of the worst things, I believe, a model can do. To not show up for the scene. 

There is one reason, however, that is the strongest, deepest and most personal of all. It is so deeply ingrained in my being that I believe that, in some way, it always shows up, even if my partners use it in different ways. 

Rope bondage is my laboratory for investigating vulnerability. It is a place where I research my openness and where I look at how it behaves in case I get rejected, toyed with or when my vulnerability is used against me. Can I stay with my partner regardless? Can I bear it and keep on giving? 

It is quite easy to be open and vulnerable with the people who you know care about you. In the face of deep and honest love our hearts almost automatically open up. But what if you give yourself to someone and they take your gift, throw it to the ground and crush it with their feet? Will you retreat into yourself to start licking your wounds? Will you close yourself up to them? Or will you stay with your perpetrator, blood soaking from the wounds they gave you, but you still loving them with your entire aching heart? 

There are two ways in which one can approach hurting other people. One can hurt them because one stops seeing humans in them like it is in the case of torturers or soldiers during the war¹. They are trained to see the people they torture and kill as objects, as a means to a goal, a necessary damage. They don’t feel with those they hurt. They don’t empathize with them. They don’t feel the pain of their victims. One can also hurt someone while feeling with them. One can acknowledge they are in pain caused by oneself. One can see their pain, go through it with them and let it transform one as well. Akira Naka sensei once said that he is not a sadist, that when he hurts the model he feels with her, he feels her pain. I believe him and at the same time, I would not necessarily say that it means that he is not a sadist. I believe that many kinky sadists feel with the people they hurt. Just like masochists can be transformed through their own pain, sadists can be transformed through the pain of the other, the one who is suffering for them. But to be able to go through that, they need to see humans in the people they hurt.

When I am being hurt, I want to stay human for the one who gives me pain. I want to stay when they rage. I want to stay when they torture me. I don’t want to escape what they are doing to me. I don’t want to leave my body and go with my mind somewhere else. I want to stay for them just where they’ve put me. I want to hold space for them. I want to withstand their storm and meet them at the other end with my arms wide open. I want both of us to be transformed by what I am going through. They are making all that effort to hurt me, I don’t want it to be wasted on me hiding away. 

I can imagine that hurting people is not an easy thing to do. It must not be easy to allow oneself to act upon the dark urges that hide within oneself, to acknowledge them and let them be expressed. I appreciate it when my partners do. I appreciate their bravery in revealing who they are to me. And I want to show it to them by staying open to their actions, staying open to whatever process hurting me triggers in them, allowing them to explore the dark corners of their psyche, knowing that I am there with them, that I am receiving everything they have to give me and I will not leave them behind in their dark night. We will see the light at the end together. 

I have a history of being hurt by people whom I loved. I have been hurt by them over and over again and I was always coming back. Back then, because I didn’t have a choice. I had nowhere to go. But at the same time, I also didn’t want to leave them. I could see they were hurting as well. I could see how lost they were, unable to behave any different. I accepted that and I kept on loving them despite everything they did to me. Because the possibility of closing off and leaving them felt even more painful than whatever they were doing to me. 

Rope provides me with a contained ritual in which I can relieve those situations from my past. You could see it as unhealthy. You could say that I should learn how to get out of my unhealthy patterns and take better care of myself. But I think that its exactly what I am doing. In ropes, and in kink in general, I meet the most vulnerable, the most hidden parts of myself and I give them a voice so that I can finally see the beauty that hides inside of them. I can finally see the beauty that is in my pain. 

Kinbaku is a space where, instead of turning away from my uncomfortable experiences, I meet them with my attention and curiosity. Where I ‘see’ them and allow them to ‘play out’ without any censorship. So that I can learn how they operate. So that the most hidden aspects of me can finally see the daylight and become integrated into the image I have of myself. So that there is no part of me that I feel ashamed of.  A rope scene is a space where I meet my demons and where they invite the demons of my partners to dance. Through my pain. Through my suffering. Through my challenge, we both find peace with who we are. 

I could be bitter about the fact that it is always me who is hurt but I am not because it makes perfect sense. I’ve spent so much time in my life experiencing pain, investigating it, toying with it and turning it around that I am ideally positioned to be its receiver. Pain is my old friend. 

You could say that I am doomed but I would rather say that I am blessed. I get to explore the parts of human experience that not many people have entered and left sane. I get to be the gate for my partners to places they would never otherwise have reached. 

I am a necessary piece of a puzzle. A rarely visited but wildly beautiful garden. It might be scary to enter at first but I will guide through it the ones who have dared to visit it. Finally, there is meaning in my pain. 

¹ Scarry, Ellain. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of The World. Oxford UP, 1987.

Mindsets in which I love to receive pain

I think that I am a weird masochist. If I can be called one at all (to hell with the labels anyway).

I haven’t always been like that. In general, what I like a function of what my partners enjoy. Recently, however, I began to realize that I do also have my own taste for certain things.

My first kinky experience was quite painful and violent and the fact that I enjoyed it left me deeply disturbed and confused (a ‘decent’ girl should not enjoy being spanked and fucked until her ass turns completely blue and she can’t sit for a week). Then, my first dominant boyfriend was all about humiliation and degradation and we didn’t explore physical pain much. I didn’t feel the need to, either. Enough was going on already. After that, I entered the kink scene and that was the first time when someone pointed out to me that I am masochistic. And it was true, I enjoyed physical pain enormously at that point in time. It was a way of easy release and achieving the intensity that I craved for without investing much emotionally.

That fountain dried up for me though when I started discovering how much pleasure emotional suffering gives me. When I realized the depth, complexity, intensity and ease with which the emotional pain can be given to me by some people, my interest in physical pain deteriorated significantly. I even felt like I am not masochistic anymore. A bruised butt or other parts of my body lost their appeal to me. A bruised soul was what I was looking for.

Recently, I began to appreciate physical pain again, only not in the way that I used to. I am not so much interested in the pure sensual experience of pain anymore, but what its combination with emotional suffering can bring. The circumstances that I enjoy when being hurt are the ones that take away any possible physical pleasure that I could be experiencing from it. They take away the context of pain being a different tool of giving pleasure to a masochist and interchange it with actually being physically and mentally hurt.

Being an object

Receiving pain when you are objectified has a special flavour to it because you can be sure that it is not about you. There are coldness and carelessness to it. You're hurting, but it's not relevant. You could as well not be. Your pain doesn't matter. You're just a toy and you're used for someone's amusement, but your pain is not part of the amusement. It is just your body that is being used for someone else's purposes as if you were a puppet. And if it hurts then too bad for you. Do puppets even feel anyways?

Somehow I love this state because it makes me let go of my own experiences. Let go of myself. Yes, I am being hurt and yes I am in pain, but there is no way to prevent it, as the person who is hurting me doesn't even seem to see what I am experiencing. So better stop fighting against it and just accept it.

I love the mental challenge that accepting it requires of me. Since I don't have the usual supporting power of doing it for my partner to help me go through it, I really have to use all my resources to carry on. Being able to cope with pain like that is a very powerful experience.

A punishment

Punishment is another situation in which pain is not pleasurable to me. The same strokes of the whip can feel very different when they're purely sadistic entertainment and when they are a source of punishment.
When I'm being punished, my head automatically tries to help the person who is punishing me by putting me in a mindset of atonement, making everything more painful and reminding me with every stroke that what I am currently experiencing is an expression of someone's disappointment. And being a disappointment is one of the worst crimes in my eyes.

Since I always want to please, being punished is a painful experience in itself for me. Adding pain to it only intensifies it. That's because at that moment all I dream of is being forgiven and embraced and told that everything is fine and they're not going to leave me behind because of what I did. Receiving pain, when you're waiting to be told that everything is going to be ok, can be quite devastating.

Being not cared about

Pain can also be an expression of someone not caring about me. And I love to feel not being cared about. There are little things hurt more than that.

Being objectified can also be a sign of not caring, but that's not what I'm talking about here. Here, I want my partners to see and recognize what I feel, but not care about it. For example, when they beat me way harder than I might find enjoyable, just because they feel like it, knowing that they are causing me a lot of pain and showing me that their entertainment is more important than my suffering. Again, it's a sign that what they're doing to me is not about me, which is exactly what I want.

Outside of kink the fact that someone gives another pain is often a sign of them not caring about the other person unless it is a necessary evil for your own good. Within the realm of kink, this reasoning is twisted as giving pain to a masochist can actually be a sign of love, of recognizing and catering to someone's needs. But since for me, the last thing that I want from my partners is for my needs to be recognized and catered for (at least in play), I often bring myself to the 'real world' mindset, where I don't want to experience pain and the fact that they are still giving it to me is a sign of not caring, of doing what they want without considering how I feel about it. At least, I want to believe that this is the case.

Being a recipient of anger

Being hurt by someone who appears to be angry is yet another flavour that I love. It makes one feel so panicky and abused. There is some carelessness there, but it's mixed with fear and violence. They might be careless, but not because they don't care whether they hurt you or how you feel. Here they actually actively want to hurt you. Their carelessness comes from a deliberate loss of control (or at least it looks like it).

I love how terrified it makes me feel to think that not only am I out of control but my torturer as well. It gives me a feeling of being in the power of an uncontrolled natural force, unstoppable and deadly. It awakens lots of primal fears and makes me freeze with terror.

An additional aspect is added to it if the person who is angry and violent with me is someone who I care about. Someone who I wish would be kind and loving but instead is using me as their punching bag. It makes me feel lost, confused, and hurt, and wishing it all to stop. It gives me a feeling of betrayal because I thought that I knew them but I find out that they are not who I thought they were (especially when it's something unexpected and played really well).

Humiliation

Physical pain can also be a great tool for humiliation. In general, if you are equal to someone, they will not cross the boundary of physically hurting you (in normal circumstances I mean, not in kink). If someone feels entitled to hurt you and you let them do that, it might be a sign of lowering your status. Especially if it is done in a humiliating way.

To me for example, being spanked with a bare hand or beaten with a belt is somewhat humiliating, as it makes me feel like an insubordinate child. In such a case, the humiliation is often bigger than the pain. Especially if other people are watching it. Having my nipples twisted is also often an act of humiliation to me. It makes me feel so vulnerable and exposed. Another obvious painful form of humiliation is face slapping.

I love the combination of pain and humiliation because the pain somewhat intensifies the humiliation (and to me usually is absorbed by it). It always makes me think about the fact that I am so subdued to the person doing it that I'll allow them to do anything to me. I'll go as low as they want me to. Pain makes me realize that and at the same time makes me feel more helpless in it.

Denial of loving touch

This is a circumstance that I love to go to in my head. Even a slight sign of denial (conscious one and not because of carelessness) of touch or softness makes my mind tremble from a feeling of lack. I start to desperately want what I can't get. Longing for the thing that they're denying me more and more, showing them how much I want it. And giving them more opportunities to deny it even more painfully.

And when someone makes you hungry for their kindness and care and love and then feed you with pain… It hurts. On so many levels. When you long for their touch and the only touch you get is mixed with pain. It makes you so confused and helpless and trapped. You become their prisoner. You begin to long for the pain that they are giving you because it's the only way that you can be close to them. And despite the hurt, you want to be close to them. It is so tragically romantic that I can't get enough of it.

Bein in someone else’s control

Finally, I love when someone is using pain to show me how much I am under their control. Not as a tool of gaining control (in general when I play with people I am under their control already), but rather of executing it. Of showing me how much they can do to me and that I am not going to stop them.

I am not a fighting kind of person, you don't need to use force to overpower me. If I'm there playing with you, I'm already yours. The fact that even though that is the case, you will still hurt me just because you can, makes me truly feel the power that you have over me. It makes me realize that you know exactly how much I have given up and that you are going to use it.

It's both exciting and terrifying. On the one hand, you're fulfilling my desires. Being entirely under the control of someone else is one of the states that I long for. On the other hand though, knowing how much I'm letting my guard down and seeing someone who might actually use it to the limit is scary. Can I really take as much as I think I can?

Being hurt by someone who has complete power over me is so thrilling, again, because the pain that they are giving me is not about me. They are hurting me because that's the experience that they want to give me. And I know that because it's for them, I will suck it up and go way further than I find pleasurable. I won't say stop when it gets hard to take. I will let them bring me just on the brink of breaking. And that's the place where I love to be.

So I guess that what I actually want is to be hurt in a way that my partners want to hurt me and not on my terms. I don't want them to use the pain for my pleasure. I want them to really use it to hurt me. I can also recognize how much physical pain can enhance and alter emotional suffering. How it can add to the intensity and bring me to a state of terror or nervous breakdown that is hard to achieve otherwise.

So please, do hurt me. Use the pain against me. Just don't make me feel for a moment that what you are doing is about me.

Maybe submission is not cool but embracing it, is

Anyone who has seen me play can tell that there is nothing more natural to me than to submit. The moment that I feel that someone has the power to take over and dominate me, I lean into it immediately. There is no struggle in me to let go. Nobody has to earn my submission. It's right under the surface the entire time, just waiting to be discovered. You don't even have to do much. It’s enough if you just scratch it and I'm already yours, staring at you with my puppy eyes and longing for more.

What is so tempting in submission for me?

I love to feel owned. And I love the feeling of losing control, the feeling that nothing that is happening right now depends on me. I guess that a part of me thinks that this is what I deserve. That I shouldn't be taken into account. That I shouldn't matter. And if someone shows me that they can see this, they earn my respect and admiration. Finally, someone who doesn’t fall for my bullshit and sees me for who I am. Only when you are ruthless to me, I can believe your words. Because I am ruthless to myself and any opinion that is milder than that should not matter. If you can be harsher with me than I am, I can finally relax and let you lead me. And that is liberating.

Also, when the hardship comes from the outside, at some point it makes you see that there actually is a limit to how much you can take. When someone is degrading you, there is a moment when you say, that is enough, I won’t take anymore. And that moment shows me that there are some shreds of pride and self-love in me. Without it, those shreds can sometimes be hard to find for me.

Another thing that I enjoy a lot is attention. If you are owned by someone, if you are used for their pleasure, you get all their attention. I love the attention. But I hate asking for it. The nice thing about being treated like an object is that you do not have to (and should not) express yourself. You can let someone else use you in whatever way suits them and enjoy their presence, without having to explicitly ask for it. On the one hand you make yourself extremely vulnerable because you give all the power over yourself to someone else, but on the other hand, you are shielded because you do not have to reveal your wishes and needs.

That works particularly great for me, because most of the time, I am kind of afraid of my deepest wants and needs. I am a masochist in many ways, emotional masochist more than a physical one I think. I love to suffer and I love to be hurt. And what I enjoy the most is when someone is truly cruel to me. When they find ways to really get to me. And somewhere deep inside I hope that one day they will find a way to break me.

If you have these kinds of urges, it is hard to act on them on your own accord. It feels wrong on so many levels that it is really hard to express it, let alone do it to yourself. So you just wait and wish that someday you meet someone who will be willing to do these things to you. Someone who will take you on this journey that you’ve dreamt about for so long, but you were afraid to go on alone. And you wish that they will understand you without words.

There are not many people who can make me truly suffer

As much as I lean into submission easily, because being dominated is what I crave for so deeply, I don’t often feel truly under control. At least not to the level that is interesting to me.

I feel like I make it extremely easy to be dominated. I am very expressive and I give a lot of clues on how to gain control over me. I want to be toyed with. I put myself in the spotlight with all the controls out in the open and the instruction lying aside. And still, not many people see that. Or maybe they do, but they don’t want to go where I want to be taken.

Because the places that I want to go to are scary and hard to navigate. The things that I want to be done to me are things that not everyone is willing to and interested in experimenting with. And you don’t only have to willing. You also need to be confident in leading me there. And you have to truly want it as well and understand it.

So even though it looks like I am giving up control easily, what I mostly give up is a layer that's so loose, it almost peels off by itself. I want to be dominated. I want to give up control. You don't need to be extremely skilled to get that from me. Or at least it might seem like it. Where it gets interesting is when you start uncovering parts of me that I don't want to be uncovered. When you make me dive so deep into submission that I almost lose my breath trying to come back to the surface. The lack of breath is what I crave for. Being stripped down from my layers is what I am looking for.

So what makes it not cool?

Deep inside I don't feel like submission is something that I should be ashamed of. It's such an inherent part of me and it gives both me and my partners so much pleasure and fulfilment that I can't believe that there might be anything wrong with it. How can something that feels so natural and that causes so much enjoyment, without harming anyone, be wrong?

This certainty is shaken though when I display my submission in public. Because then it's not only the opinion of my partner that I care about but also the impression that people watching might have of me. And that makes things way more complicated because while I carefully chose my partner, knowing their preferences and limits, I didn't choose the audience. And while I can ask my partner after play for reassurance and validation, I can't do the same with the audience.

And I probably shouldn't as I might not like what I hear. Sometimes they might have opinions about me that are not positive. And it's their right, they didn't enter the scene with me directly and they didn't make any promises. In its essence, kinky play goes against the mainstream understanding of morality and normality. I know that a lot of people don’t understand how what I am doing can be pleasurable to me. And usually, when people see things that they don’t understand, they judge them. Negatively. It is natural.

The solution to this situation is not to get aftercare from everyone who has seen me play. The solution is to care less about what other people think about my play. Of course, I should take other people into account when I play publicly in the sense of trying not to invade each other’s space. But I tend to care way more than that. I tend to care way too much about other people's opinion of me. And the funny thing is that it is not even their actual opinion, it is the opinion that I think that society has about submissive behaviour, which is that it is weak. So every time when I show a deep level of submission towards someone in public, instead of seeing it’s depth and beauty, I see an act that some people might consider as being weak.

I don’t think it is though. I think that being able to be so vulnerable towards someone and to trust so much is an act of bravery and strength and beauty.

Where is beauty?

The beauty is in the power exchange, in the dance of two minds and bodies, in being part of the spectacle of human experiences.

In the end, all art is created to evoke emotions and D/s power exchange is one of the rawest and direct, but at the same time intricate ways to achieve that. I love to be touched by literature or film or other forms of art. For me, a D/s scene is an escalated form of that experience. And I think that it is beautiful.

I think that it is beautiful that two people can strip themselves down so much in front of one another, that they are able to show each other their deepest and darkest desires. And I think that it is beautiful that there are people whose deepest desires are exactly complimenting mine.

It is amazing how vulnerable and bleeding open a D/s scene leaves us. How much we can learn about each other from it. How much trust the dominant needs to have in me to be able to do all these terrible things to me and believe that after that I will still be there with him. That I won’t turn away from him.

I love to be the vessel into which the dominant can pour the darkness that is in him. I love receiving it. I love letting him show to me that hidden side of him. I love to give him pleasure through my suffering. I think it is one of the most intimate things to do between two people. Accepting and taking in each other’s darkness.

I guess that what I am trying to say is that even though I was ranting a while ago about how being a submissive is making me feel not cool, I am over it now. I love being submissive and I love the emotions and intensities that it lets me experience. I love the connection that it allows me to have with my partners. And I love the strength and resilience in me that it is a sign of.

I am really happy that I am this way and I hope that I won’t doubt myself anymore when showing this side of myself to other people, but I will be proud of being able to offer myself so deeply to another person. Isn’t it one of the most beautiful gifts than one can offer?

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.

There is duality to me that I can’t quite explain

I've been participating in quite a lot of intense scenes lately. Actually, it's hard for me to recall a scene that I took part in and that wasn't intense in some way. Most of the time I am loving it. I love to scream and beg and cry and moan. Especially with a small crowd of spectators around. Only until I don't.

There is this part of me that wants always to be the loudest, the most sexual and the most intense player. And that utterly enjoys being teased and listening to comments of others about it. But there is also this other part that wants it to stop. The part that wants to just blend in and stop drawing attention. The part that wants some quiet space. I'm usually not listening to it because I think it's weak and boring. And I can't accept myself being either. They don't fit into the stories that I tell myself about who I am.

I've recently grown to realize that being a masochist is such an integral part of my personality that it penetrates every aspect of my life. It's funny because a year ago I wasn’t even aware that I enjoy pain so much and right now I identify myself with the masochist label more than any other in kink. Although I embrace it fully, taking pleasure in acting against yourself can sometimes make things difficult. Especially, when you're trying to grow to become a healthy, independent and loving yourself individual.

Like that time when I was my partner playing with someone else the entire evening without giving me any attention. Instead of doing what a healthy loving person would do, communicating about how I felt and finding a solution that would work for us, I decided to silently go on a rampage. Throughout the evening I participated in one intense scene after another, interlaced with emotionally distancing myself from everyone else and telling myself how unloved, unimportant and useless I am to him. Doesn't sound like a good idea, does it? But a part of me was sure as hell enjoying it.

Or when I pack my agenda with work, tying, dancing, dating, meeting friends, travelling, learning and one hundred other activities to the point where I have literally no time for myself. And I continue doing so until I snap and get sick and just need to get rest, because otherwise I will not be able to function efficiently again. A rational and self-caring human being would rest at least one day a week in order to regenerate and take care of their needs. But not me. I enjoy pushing myself to the edge and over it way too much to spoil it with self-care.

There are also situations, when being a masochist helps. It helped me achieve many goals and push myself far out of my comfort zone. When there is something difficult ahead of me, an exam, a job change, moving to another country, going to therapy, I jump right in, because I know that suffering is waiting for me there. It makes challenges easier to endure, not only because of the improvements that they bring me, but also because of the pain that I experience on the way.

I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that the duality that I mentioned earlier is an inevitable part of being a masochist. When you crave pain, you want something that rationally thinking you shouldn't. So you are experiencing simultaneously dual needs of wanting the pain to continue and to stop at the same time. It's similar with the humiliation play, which I see basically as intense emotional masochism. When you are degraded by someone you love, you actually do want him to stop, say that it's all a lie and that he loves you. But you also want him to keep going and make it feel real, to convince you that you're worthless to him, because that's what gives you pleasure. All these contradictory feelings make me question my sanity at times. While in play it's hot and it's exactly what I want. In real life it's often something that I would rather avoid. But I don’t always can.

So I guess what I'm trying to tell myself is that it's OK to be this dual person who wants two opposite things at the same time. Who wants both to be loud and watched and for everyone to turn their heads away and not pay attention. This person who wants to be loved and cared for but also put down and ignored. This person who is unapologetic and free in expressing herself and at the same time takes other people's opinions way too seriously. Because no matter how irrational and impossible it seems, this is me. And if there is one thing I know, is that logic is not something that my feelings have heard of. And I think they should stay that way.