What I want to experience in rope is You

I tie with different riggers who have very different styles, but there is a conviction amongst the people who know me that my prefered style of being tied in, is the more traditional Japanese rope bondage, let’s call it kinbaku (I realize that it is a vague term, but I think that most of the people reading this post will have some idea of what I mean). Therefore, often when I say that I enjoyed tying with someone who doesn’t fit into that box, I get very surprised reactions.

“What?! How come you enjoy tying with that person? They are totally not your style!”.

And I do understand their surprise partially. It is true that the aesthetics and emotional landscape of semenawa and kinbaku fit me like a glove and I love to be tied by people who practice those ways. It doesn’t mean, though, that this is the only way in which I want to be tied. It doesn’t even mean that this is my prefered way of being tied.

To me tying with people is not an à la carte menu choice where I pick the dishes that I like the most. Rather, what I want is an omakase experience. I want the rigger to show me what he or she has to offer. I want to experience them and not use them to experience what I have in mind. I come to each scene with openness and curiosity and not with a set of expectations or guidelines on what I want them to give me.

And because of that, the people that I like to tie with the most are the people who are true to themselves in tying, the people who have something to say, the people who are expressing themselves in rope and not trying to copy something that they’ve seen in somebody else.

That is not to say that you have to be extremely original in what you are doing for me to enjoy tying with you. Some styles fit some people perfectly and some classic ties are just a pure perfection that does not need any improvements. For me, it is not really about what you are tying but about how you are doing it.

Are you in the experience or is your mind elsewhere? Are you tying me because you want to connect with me or are you trying to prove something to someone (that someone possibly also being yourself)? Do you enjoy what you are doing to me? Do you do what you do because you truly want it or are trying to please me? Do you recognize that you are interacting with a person and that your actions have an effect on me? Are you enjoying and exploring that effect? Is what you are creating with me beautiful (in whatever sense of that word)?

These are some of the questions that I am asking myself (even unconsciously) to evaluate whether I enjoyed tying with someone and whether I want to explore our rope relationship further. No matter what style you tie in, the answers to these might be positive or negative.

Because the thing about rope for me (or any other form of D/s activity for that matter) is that it is a joint exploration. If I am stepping into those murky waters with you, it is because you made me interested enough about your personality to want to see what will come out of joining it with mine. It is not because I’ve seen you tie someone up and I want the exact same experience. I know that it is not possible, because I am not that person. And why would I want that anyway?

It happens sometimes that I observe someone tying and think “This is an interesting person to be tied by”, but it is not about the exact thing that they did to someone and it doesn't lead to my expectations of what he or she would do to me. My thinking is more in lines of ”Interesting that they did that to him/her. I am curious what would they do to me.”

It is not even about the fact that I am a different person so they wouldn't do the same thing to me as they did to someone else. Even if they did something to their partner that I enjoy with other people, I have no idea if I would enjoy it with them. I am different with different people and my limits and sources of pleasure also change depending on the partner. The only way to find out is to try.

So if I ever get to tie with you, it is not because you do Naka or Kanna or Yoroi style, not because you can execute one or another crazy transition and not because you tied that or another person. It is because there is something about you that makes me want to experience the things that you might have in mind for me. Or rather because I feel that you might have something in mind for me. It's because you made me curious about the taste of the mixture of our personalities. Because I think that it might be a taste that I've never had before. And you haven't either. And I'm dying to see if we are going to like it.