Thoughts on my approach to rope modelling after my first ever public rope performance
Photo by anonymus.
I can't even express how privileged I feel to have given my first rope performance as a model of amazing Soptik in the School of rope run by Kirigami and Tenshiko in Milan. It was a small and intimate show, intended for the audience to experience a real session that could happen between the two of us in private. Around 40 people were allowed to have a peek into our dynamic (almost) without a filter. And I believe that for some it was an intense experience. Maybe even as intense as it was for me.
I expected my limits to be pushed and to suffer. I expected to be exposed and ashamed. I expected pain and I expected desperation. It was all there. What I didn’t expect, though, was the amount of emotional courage and vulnerability that it takes to give a performance like that. I didn’t expect how emotionally exposed will I feel afterwards. How fragile, and weak, and defenceless.
After the show, people came to us, and between praising the skills of Soptik they also praised how strong and beautiful I was. Hearing that made me weirdly confused. It completely didn’t match the way I felt during the performance. I did feel that I showed and gave a lot. I did feel that they could see a big part of me bare in the open. But I didn’t feel that my strength or beauty was on display that night. Rather the opposite.
This dissonance made me think of my mindset in rope and how it affects the experiences that I have.
Preparation
The first thing that I realized was that this entire show was a sacrifice for my rigger. From the moment that we entered the School of rope, I was readying myself for it. Even though, a few hours before the show I was slightly nervous, the moment we arrived at the school, I quietened. My mind became calm and still. The mental preparation for taking what was waiting for me at the hands of Soptik began.
I wanted to be ready for him. I wanted to be empty. To feel everything that he wants me to feel and let his actions flow through me. I didn’t even do it consciously. It just happened. Only afterwards when I was reflecting on the experience, I realized the reason for my quiet. I also realized that I do it often before tying, even if not to that degree. Before the scene, I usually do everything to avoid talking and to have a moment of silence and preparation. I like to just sit quietly in seiza with my head down and wait for the rigger to start tying me. To be ready for him when the tying begins.
Sacrifice
No matter how much it seems like I enjoy rope, being tied is always a sacrifice for me at some level. I don't think that I have ever had a scene which I've done for my own pleasure. My mindset in rope (and when I bottom in general) is always the one of giving and not the one of taking. I enjoy rope but not in a straightforward manner. My pleasure comes by proxy from the pleasure of the rigger.
All I want is to please my rigger. If he wants me to be beautiful, I will try to be beautiful. If he wants me to be disgusting and twisted, I will be. I will go through anything for the sake of the pleasure of the other if they are willing to accept my sacrifice. And I like that feeling of sacrifice. It gives me a strange satisfaction and makes my offering more valuable. If I would be doing something that I deeply enjoy then what is there to be of value in it for the other? I would be doing it for myself and not for him.
Paradoxically, not many people are good at accepting such sacrifice. Often they want the model to enjoy themselves at some level as well. They don't want to have a feeling like it's all about them. They don't want to feel like they are forcing me into something that I don't want. Soptik is one of the most graceful takers that I know. He really is perfectly comfortable with accepting any kind of sacrifice, no matter how big it is. He takes it with appreciation, but without a feeling of obligation to repay. That makes me feel very relaxed in my giving. I know that with him I don't need to pretend that I want what he wants. I know that he will just take it from me no matter what my feelings about it are. And somehow that is very freeing. I can purely focus on him and let go of myself completely.
Violation
Another feeling that ropes often cause in me is being violated. Partly, because that's what ropes do, they take away one’s freedom and restrict one’s body. Often in a painful manner. Partly though, I feel violated because that is how I want to feel and I'm especially looking for signs of it in every moment of the scene. In my head, I amplify the violence and inhibit tenderness or pleasure.
I don't think that how I feel about being in ropes is universal. I've spoken to many models and basically each one of them had different ways of experiencing the ropes. For some it was a pleasure, for some it was an expression of love and devotion, for some it was a challenge and for others a means of torture. I think that I am the closest to the tortured ones, although it's not exactly that. Being in ropes makes me feel like a prisoner. Captured and helpless. It makes me feel completely without control. The violation is more that of my personal freedom and expression than of my body. I feel violated, because it feels like rope grabs all the emotions that are inside me and rips them out of me, to the outside world.
And even though I surrender to it, it's rarely a peaceful surrender. It doesn’t go without an inner fight. At some level, it always feels forceful and against my will. And that is another thing that Soptik doesn't find disturbing, while many do. That's why with him I don't feel like I need to soften my feelings and bring myself to enjoy what is happening to me. I can simply relax into the violence that is inflicted upon me and observe what it does to me.
Expression
Ropes make me feel a lot. I go through countless emotional states in one scene. From resignation to denial, to desperation, to devotion, to disagreement and finally, surrender. I can go through cycles of the same emotions repeating over and over or uncover a new and surprising emotional landscape unfolding in front of me as I go deeper and deeper.
And, somehow, I don't want to have these experiences alone. I don't want to go through them silently, buried deep inside of myself. Because it's my rigger who ignites these experiences in me and I want him to know what he is causing. I want him to know what I am going through. I want to move him like I am moved. That is why I let my body express what I feel. I want him to see and hear what's inside me. I want to talk to him with my moans and my silences. I express physically what can't be expressed with words.
Sometimes my expression is loud, sometimes it is subtle. There are things that are obvious and some that you can only understand if you are a very avid listener. It is always directed to my rigger, though. Somehow I have a deep need to be seen and understood by him. I think that that is what drives my need for outward expression. A need to be seen and understood.
In a rope performance, however, it is not only the rigger who reads you. It is also the audience. Contrary to what I expected, though, it didn't change much in my expression. I was, still, mainly trying to communicate with him and not with the audience. I wanted him and not the audience to see me. Not in the sense that I would rather be somewhere else, where the audience couldn’t see us. But in the sense that I didn’t think of the audience as a recipient of my message. They were not my target. He was.
That was during the performance. Afterwards, however, I realized how vulnerable such open communication and expression made me feel because it was in front of an audience. They had access to something very private and personal. They could see an expression of what is buried very deep inside of me. They could see the expressions of my emotions and feelings that I don’t necessarily want people to know about. Even if most of them, only Soptik could read.
I am not saying it as a bad thing. I don’t regret showing anything on the stage. What I am trying to say is that I was surprised how much it affected me. How much it costs to be so honest. I will keep expressing myself like that because I think that it is beautiful and it lets me experience something very profound in some ways. I will strive to stay honest in my expression because there is nothing else that is worth showing in my opinion. No matter what are the costs involved. But now I am more aware that there are costs.
Perversion and shame
One of the reasons why it makes me feel so vulnerable when people watch me in ropes is that I find my needs perverse. It's not that I don't accept them. I don’t wish that I was different. I don’t wish that I was not masochistic or not submissive. I think that both are beautiful and poetic and romantic and let me experience things that I could never experience not being like that. But I still don’t find it normal. I think that I am not normal. And showing it to other people, no matter how open-minded they are, hell, even showing it to my Dominant, makes me feel very vulnerable and in some way ashamed of myself.
I am not a proud pervert. A happy one, yes, but not proud. The lack of pride is definitely related to my kinks, which are, among others, shame, humiliation, degradation and abandonment. Feeling like what I am doing is sick enhances these feelings and adds to the experience. It is like with the Forbidden fruit, it tastes better when you are not allowed to eat it. I want to feel like it is not allowed to do what I do and then do it anyway. I don’t want to feel accepted. I want to feel like I am at the margin of society. I want to feel different and cast out.
Recently, I’ve participated in another great workshop from @Wildties, on what the Spirit of kinbaku is for him. One of the things that he mentioned about the Japanese models, is that for them ropes are deeply perverted. Even porn actresses, for which being stuffed with dildos, getting enemas and having the most twisted sex are their daily bread, in ropes feel like a ’fallen woman’. They often even use rope sessions as a way to punish themselves for what they do in their daily lives. They don’t do ropes to feel cool. They don’t brag about the scenes they’ve had. They keep it in the realm of true perversion, better not to be talked about.
I feel quite similar about doing ropes or my other kinks. Maybe not to that level, also because in an environment where I am, what I do is much more accepted. However, even within an open kink community I rather go for the less accepted and more risky types of play, like emotional masochism and deep and intense D/s dynamics, degradation and objectification. Because I always want to feel that thrill of being slightly sick. I don’t want to feel like what I do is acceptable and normal. I want to feel out of the ordinary and in some ways shocking.
That is also why it was so difficult for me to show it to people. Even though it wasn’t the first time when people have seen me being tied, also not by Soptik, but the fact that the spotlight was on us and that this time my perversion was clearly on display was very powerful.
The fact that Soptik could do anything to me and that I was willingly letting him do it, was to me on some level shameful. It is not what society teaches us to do. We are taught to be independent and self-sufficient and fight for ourselves. There was no fight in me. I was allowing it to happen to me willingly. I was openly admitting how twisted I am. And it didn’t make me feel proud. It didn’t make me feel strong either. No matter how it looked on the outside, on the inside being in rope for me is my moment of greatest weakness. It is my moment of giving myself to the other person entirely. It is my moment of dropping all my boundaries, of a total loss of control. And the fact that I enjoy being so weak and miserable makes me feel perverted.
This performance made me realize a lot of things about myself and my approach to ropes and also made me realize better what is and isn’t me when it comes to rope bottoming. The same way as there are many styles of rope bondage, there are also many styles of rope bottoming. What I do is just one of the ways but I am happy to be able to see more and more clearly what my way is. In some ways how I approach rope is darker than for many others, I think. There is a lot of submission and masochism in it that are not necessarily essential to being a rope bottom. I also tend to go very deep and look for the emotional experiences much more than the physical ones. To me, that is where the true beauty of kinbaku comes from.
I don’t need everyone to accept or understand who I am, but I am happy that there are people who do and who can also appreciate my darkness. I hope that that performance was a glimpse into what I can be if paired with a rigger who can see and use my traits in the right way. To me, it was a spectacle of who I am as a model and who I am with Soptik and I am grateful to be able to show it to others. Even if I didn’t seem to be proud of it.
This song will always evoke memories of this performance in me:
