On handling rejection in rope

Photo by Dark Path.

Disclaimer: This post is oozing positivity at times and to people who know me personally might sound a bit surprising. It is not dishonest on my side. The attitudes that I describe here are the ones that I cultivate in myself and I try to live by these rules. Being as critical as I am, it works better at some points than others. I do believe in what I say here, though, even if it is not always how I feel about things. Feelings can be irrational and uncontrollable at times, values are constant and much easier to control. The latter is what I focus on in this post. 
Disclaimer 2: I'm a rope bottom and I write from the position of being tied, but most of the things that I talk about here apply equally to both roles.

Some time ago Riccardo Wildties shared a very honest and important video on the right of tops to say ‘no’. I was very happy that someone has gotten to this topic and has done it so eloquently. I think that it is a very important reminder to all of us. We all should have the right to say ‘no’ when it comes to rope, with no strings attached and no hard feelings.

Listening to him was like a déjà vu from my time in the tango community. I don’t have a lot of experience with rejection in rope as I am not in the community for that long and I've been very fortunate to tie with amazing riggers right from the start and don’t often look for new partners. But I do have a lot of experience with rejection in tango because the specifics of this dance and the social norms surrounding it are basically built around the notion of rejection. I think that my experience from tango can be really well translated into rope reality and can be helpful to some people. It certainly has been for me as I think that it is one of the reasons why I can quite often avoid rejection altogether and I handle it pretty well if it happens. 

Before you ask

First, I want to share some thoughts that help me minimize the risk of having to deal with rejection in the first place. They are mostly strategies and mindsets that I’ve learned over the years that helped me avoid rejection and be successful in my advances, but at the same time also prepare the ground for when it eventually happens.

Try to get a feeling about the interest of the other person

I tend to be rather reluctant to ask people to tie me. I take quite a lot of time before I make up my mind whether I want to ask someone or not. Part of it is my rather sensitive and cautious nature. I want to avoid the pain of being rejected as much as possible so I only ask once I'm almost absolutely sure that they will say ‘yes’. This approach is very personal and I don't necessarily recommend it. However, another reason why I take my time is that I learned to be patient and to give myself as well as the other person time to figure out what we want.

In tango, there is a notion of a 'cabeceo', which is a non-verbal invitation to dance based upon a prolonged eye-contact followed by a nod from both parties indicating the willingness to dance. It's created in order to avoid painful verbal rejection. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but what it certainly taught me is the skill of observing others and getting a feeling for whether they might be interested in me or not. It has also taught me how to show interest from a distance without being too explicit about it. In tango the actual ‘cabeceo’ is the final step and having your nod unreturned can also hurt, so you only try it once you are rather certain that it will be returned. Therefore, you try to figure out as much as possible beforehand if the person might be truly interested in dancing with you or not. If you’ve learned that, you minimise the risk of your ‘cabeceo’ being rejected.

Be patient

In tango, the assessment of whether someone might be interested in dancing with you or not usually happens in the course of one evening or one weekend. In rope, however, it might stretch over months or even years. That is because there are much fewer opportunities to tie with someone in (a) rope event(s) than there are in a tango event, but also because a rope session is way more intimate than sharing a tanda for most of the people. 

Being in someone’s ropes or tying someone is an intimate thing. Therefore, before I decide whether I want to be tied by someone, I usually take my time. It can sometimes be difficult because, especially at rope festivals, you often have a feeling of urgency and that everyone is experiencing more than you do, so you have to catch up and get tied by more people. I resist this urge strongly because I know that it leads to, at best empty scenes, and at worst bad experiences.

Rope world is not that big and sooner or later you will meet that person again. Take your time to get to know them before you decide to tie with them. Talk to them, get to know what kind of person they are before you let them take control over you. It doesn’t only make for safer scenes, but also more rewarding and natural ones since by getting to know each other through a conversation, you can learn about each other's preferences in an organic way. In this way, you minimize the need for extensive negotiations, which (at least for me) often kill the mood and limit the scene. You have all the time to get tied by them, so don’t rush into anything. 

Trust your intuition

I can usually sense whether someone is interested in me or not and I believe that most people can as it seems like an evolutionarily very useful skill to have. Our intuition is often silenced by our mind, though, and we should learn to listen to it more.

When it comes to someone being attracted to you (which is necessary, in some way, if they should want to tie you, it doesn’t need to be sexual attraction, though), they will usually look at you a bit longer than necessary, they will look for opportunities to talk to you, they will smile at you when you look at them. All these things are small and not very noticeable, but our brains register them. I often have this unexplainable feeling about whether that person might want to tie me or not without them saying anything. And I usually trust it. Not to the point of asking right away, but when I sense interest and it is mutual, I start to focus my attention on gathering more data in a more directed way. I test whether my intuition was right and only when I am pretty certain, I ask. 

On the other hand, when I sense a lack of interest or when I am uncertain, I do not ask. I wait and try to get more contact with that person to see if my feelings were correct or whether it was just a matter of not knowing me enough. I also try to remember the signs that led to a successful encounter to learn how to better recognise an interest in the future and to be able to trust my intuition even more.

Don’t ask for the wrong reasons

At the beginning of my tango career, I used to get quite frustrated when I would feel that someone that I wanted to dance with would not notice me. I would come to an event and want to dance with all the best and most popular leaders but they would not look at me. It was making me angry and frustrated until I realised that them not noticing me means that they are not interested in me, and even if we would dance together, the dance would not be good because they would not be into it. So instead of trying to force a leader into dancing with me, I began working on making them interested in me in the long run. And not only making them interested in me but also making sure that I actually want to dance with them and I am not just blindly following the opinion of the rest of the tango crowd.

I think that in rope it is even more important. Sure, it is great to tie with the best and most famous riggers, but do you really want to get tied by them or do you want the experience of one of the people who got to be tied by them? Do you know them well enough to tell? Do you know what kind of people they are or are your reasons simply that they are good at what they do? 

Asking someone to tie you just because they are well known rarely leads to a good experience. From the rigger’s side, they can sense whether you are genuinely interested in them or simply want the experience. I can imagine that the latter often leads to a rejection straight away. It’s impolite and painful for the rigger to be used like that. And even if they don’t reject you, are you sure that you want to give control over your body and mind to someone just because you’ve seen that they can do really cool suspensions? Don’t you want to make sure that they actually are worth giving yourself to them before you allow them to bind you? 

Don’t go above your league

In the tango world, there is a breed of followers who would always hang around the table of ‘masteros’ for the entire duration of the festival, wearing their best dresses and hoping that they will get asked to dance by one of them. And they often succeed, especially when they are young and pretty. I’ve never had the ambition to dance with the teachers because I’ve never felt good enough in my dancing to be able to offer them an enjoyable experience. If they would ask me because I would make such effort as those girls, I would probably have felt like they are doing it out of pity and not because they truly value my dancing skills. And I didn’t want that. Of course, I would love to dance with my favourite maestro, but only if I would be sure that I have something to offer to them. That they truly want to dance with me and that I can offer them valuable experience. To me, the same holds for rope. 

In rope, the matter of bottoming technique is not so prominent as tango technique. You do not need to have amazing ‘bottoming skills’ to have a great scene with someone. But it is important to ask yourself if you are not wanting to be tied for the wrong reasons. Therefore, I always try to ask myself, do I really want to offer myself to that person? Looking at the way they tie, do I think that I can offer them an interesting experience? Am I willing to open myself enough to that person for us to live through something meaningful? I think that it is important to answer these questions to yourself honestly before you ask someone to tie you and I only ask if I feel like I do have something meaningful and authentic to offer to the rigger. 

Don’t rely on others for validation

One of the cases when being rejected is very painful is when you treat your interactions with other people as ways to validate yourself. It is a trap that many people fall into. They don’t value themselves enough internally, but they look for validation externally. They reason that if a certain person agrees to tie them/being tied by them it will be proof that they are of some value.

It is a short-lived strategy that leads to pain in the long term. It feeds on your insecurities instead of helping you to get over them, which does not only hinders you but also makes you less attractive. By having that attitude you become needy and self-centred, assessing people on the basis on how much increase in the feeling of self-worth they can bring you instead of what kind of interesting encounter you could have with them. This kind of attitude is objectifying and drives the confident and secure people away. They will not want your meeting in ropes to be a transaction of exchanging momentary increase of self-worth, which you make out of it when you treat them like that. They will want to meet the real you in ropes, which you will not be able to give them if you seek validation because you will be too occupied with trying to meet their expectations to allow yourself to show the real you. 

So instead of looking to other people to validate you, think about what things of value do you bring to each tie. Recognise and cherish what you have to offer. Learn yourself in ropes and stand by your true personality that ropes bring out. That will allow you to enter bondage scenes with confidence and feeling of worth and presence that is hard to beat in terms of attractiveness. It will also allow you to see rejections as a result of some kind of mismatch and not as an indication that you are not good enough. 

It feels very different when you are secure about what you have to offer and that offer gets rejected from when you are not sure about the value of your offering and other people reject it. The first, makes you feel like they must not see the value in what you see value in, which is perfectly fine since people are different and it is probably a proof that you would not be a good match in ropes anyways, so it is better this way. The second makes you doubt your worth and makes you want to change to align with what their wishes about you might be. It makes you question the attractiveness of your personality and makes you feel inadequate, which is not only painful but also brings you further away from being your honest and true self. 

Don’t let your expectations spoil your mood

Another thing that applies especially to bigger rope events is managing your expectations. Usually, they are the thing that makes you miserable and takes all the joy from the event even if you’ve had a lot of interesting encounters. Unmet expectations usually disappoint more than the met ones bring happiness. Too many expectations (or any expectations for that matter) are a route to disaster and a ruined mood because at least one of them will always not come true and it will spoil all the joy from the good things that you’ve experienced. 

For that reason, I try not to expect anything from rope events. I usually go there with hope for one memorable scene (that is not so difficult to achieve) or one good workshop or something like that. Then after that had happened, I tell myself, “So now it happened, it was worth coming here, all the rest is a bonus” and that is what I live until the end of the event, reminding myself of all the great moments of the event each time I feel like I am not getting enough out of it and repeating to myself that I already got more than what I came for. It really allows me to enjoy more and stress less. Also, it makes me appreciate what I experience instead of hopping from one scene to the other, ticking the boxes on my checklist of people to tie with in the meantime. 

If you reject

Rejecting people is not easy and there are good and bad ways to do it. During my tango years, I’ve had to reject quite a lot of people and below are the guidelines that I try to follow whenever I need to do that. 

Be concise and don’t lie

I try not to come up with excuses when I reject someone and simply tell them the truth that I am not interested in dancing/tying with them at the moment. At the same time, I don’t become too elaborate on my reasons. Simple “No, thank you” should be enough to indicate my lack of interest. I don’t need and don’t want to explain myself. Unless they really insist, then I tell them the (sometimes uncomfortable) truth, which is usually much worse than a simple ‘no’ and which I hope will teach them not to use this manipulative technique on others in the future (some people cornered with a ‘why?’ question will back off and change their mind in their unwillingness to tell the truth, and that is why many people ask ‘why?’ I find it very manipulative).

Be firm

I try my rejections to be firm. Another reason why a simple “No, thank you” usually works best. I don’t want to give the rejected any reason to think that I might be hesitant in my decision. I also don't want to give them false hopes. If I am certain about my rejection then I simply say 'no'. If it's just situational and I would be interested in tying with that person in the future, I'll say that. But only if it's really the case. Otherwise, I try to be straightforward and clear in not having an intention to get tied by them. I feel like I owe it to the rejected person to be clear and honest with them. I don’t want to mislead them in any way. That is what I appreciate when someone is rejecting me and I try to apply it when I am on the other side.

Respect your boundaries

One of the worst things that you could do to yourself and to your partner in ropes is engaging in a bondage scene that you are not enthusiastic about. Nobody wants to tie or get tied out of pity. If you let someone tie you only because you didn't know how to say 'no', you will probably both feel miserable afterwards.

Especially as a rope bottom, if you let someone bind you without really wanting it, you violate yourself. And you learn to be in ropes with a tint that is really hard to get rid off later. I can't imagine that you can enjoy getting tied by someone without trusting them and I can't imagine that trust being there if you actually don't want to be in their ropes. By forcing yourself to live an experience like that you make a disservice to both yourself and to the top. 

Unless they were only experience-seeking, they were expecting to get to tie you and experience your willing surrender to them when they’ve asked to tie you. If you allow them to do it out of pity or reluctance to say ‘no’, you don’t give them your honest presence in ropes. You don’t give them the experience that you’ve promised. They will feel your lack of trust through ropes and unless they are extremely insensitive, it will not lead to a good experience for them either. Sparing both of you by stating clearly your boundaries is a favour that you owe to yourself and to them, even if it might seem painful and frustrating for the one rejected. 

If you get rejected

Getting rejected is uncomfortable and it hurts. There is no way around it. There are certain realizations, though, that can make it easier to get through and maybe even learn from it. 

Don’t kick yourself while you’re down

Unless you know the person really well and are absolutely sure that it is ok to do, don’t ask why they’ve rejected you. If they would have a reason that would not be painful to share, they would have probably done it. If they didn’t then it most probably means that you don’t want to hear their reasons and it will be less painful to just accept the ‘no’ and move on. 

Of course, in many situations, especially when it comes to relationships, it helps to hear people’s reasons for their decisions. But I think that it holds only when those reasons are in some way rational. When they can offer you a logical, or at least understandable explanation. In the case of rope, those reasons are driven by the laws of attraction, which are rarely logical and are often not explainable at all. 

I think that it is a great practice for rope bottoms to ask your riggers the ‘why’ when they said ‘yes’ to tying you. Hearing how other people see you in ropes and what are their reasons for wanting to tie you is great for recognizing your value and learning about yourself (you might be surprised sometimes). It is not very constructive, though, to hear the reasons for the ‘no’ because rope is extremely personal and it is really hard to be honest in such situation with a stranger (or almost a stranger). I think that it is better to just accept the rejection and not force them to either make it more painful or come up with some false excuses.

Appreciate what you have

Another thing that is very helpful to remind yourself when you got rejected is all the amazing opportunities and experiences that you have or have had. Maybe this person doesn’t want to tie you but think about all the awesome people who do. Or maybe they don’t want to tie you at this moment, but you’ve had some great scenes together in the past. Cherish what you have instead of focusing on what you don’t. 

In tango, I took it to a really high level and when someone would ignore my attempts to get to dance with them, I would think about the fact that not dancing at this moment gives me more energy to have great dances later on. I would appreciate the opportunity to rest a little bit or use that time to connect with friends instead of focusing on the fact that I am missing this amazing song and possibly amazing dance with my favourite leader. Because getting too much of a good thing can also take away its charm.

Maybe for me, it is easier to think this way because rejection and denial are my strong kinks. But it is not only because I find it hot to be denied something or rejected that I see value in it. It is also because experiencing it in kink, I learned the value of delayed gratification. I learned how much painful anticipation can increase the pleasure when you do finally get what you desired. I learned how much more valuable things become when you have to wait or work for them. And being rejected allows you to experience it if you only want to look at it this way.

Use rejection as a motivator

How you see the reality is your choice. Not everything that happens to you is pleasant and not everything will go according to your plan. There are many factors weighing into the outcomes that you get and most of them are not dependent on you that much. Especially, when other people are involved, the results become really complex and hard to predict. I like to remind myself that at times so that I don’t fall into the trap of believing that I can fully control my life and all that happens to me depends on my actions. At the same time, I also like to realise that although I can’t control the outcomes fully, I do have an impact on increasing my chances to get what I want. And even more so, my personal attitude towards the things that happen to me in life is entirely my responsibility. 

So when I get rejected by someone, instead of focusing on how insensitive and frustrating it is and how pitiful human being I must be if they don’t want to tie me (the latter I sometimes still indulge in, though, just for my pure masochistic pleasure), I think about the things that I could have done to increase my chances. Maybe I could have been more honest in expressing my intentions? Maybe I could have done something better to make them aware of what I have to offer? Maybe I could have picked a better time to ask? Maybe I could have waited a bit longer to make sure that the interest is mutual? Maybe there is some way to develop myself more in order to be seen by them and catch their interest at a later point in time? 

If not, then it is also ok. Sometimes people just don’t match in ropes and it is also fine. I always try to see if there are some learning opportunities in the rejection, though, as it helps me to get over it and not treat it like an absolute failure, but rather a point on my journey.

Don’t take it personally

As I mentioned already, tying your personal value to external factors (especially people-related) is a really bad idea. When I get rejected by someone, I try not to take it personally. I try to remember that there are a million reasons why it might have happened. Maybe they are tired? Maybe I haven’t been visible enough for them? Maybe they have a jealous partner? Maybe they feel too insecure to tie me? Maybe there is someone else that they really want to tie in this moment and they are not interested in anyone else? Many of these reasons are objective and not related to me personally. I like to remind that to myself when I get on a route of self-blame and feeling not good enough. 

And even if it is related to me personally, it doesn’t mean that there is anything that I could do about it. It doesn’t mean that I should change anything in myself. Maybe they see better than I do our lack of compatibility? Maybe I only think that the scene that we would have would be amazing, looking at them with their other partners, but they are aware that it wouldn’t work with someone else?

Again, I like to take what I can learn from this kind of situations, but I also don’t stress too much about what I could have done to change the outcome as I realize that it is way too complex to comprehend. I take what I can for the future, but I don’t overthink the past. Instead of being bitter and withdrawn, I try to open up more and be more welcoming. It is not easy, but it is the only way to make sure that people around me can see me. And the only person that I should be interested in being tied by is someone who sees and wants to tie me. 

I realize that this post is way way way too long. I am truly amazed if you got this far reading it. Maybe for some people, the things that I write about here are obvious. I do think, however, that they are much easier said than done. I really (try to) live by these rules, not only write about them and it really helps. It is not only empty words. The kind of attitudes that I describe is not easy, but they really paid off for me and I think that they are worth cultivating. 

I wish that handling rejection would become easier for more people. I think that it would help both sides in being honest and asserting their boundaries. I wish that it would become less uncomfortable for people to both hear and say ‘no’, that we would become more authentic in our choices without the fear of being judged for it. I really think that it would help our community and it would lead to (maybe less but) more positive rope experiences for everyone. And isn’t that what we all want? 

To me, rope is about losing control

Photo by Dolph Vex.

I started bottoming in a community where the presence of active power bottoms was very prominent. I was surrounded by the notions of exercising for rope, stretching, managing your body in ropes and co-creating the ties with the rigger. In the beginning, I was trying to become like those models as they were the only role models that I’ve had. However, after some attempts, I started feeling like there is something in their approach that did not fit my personality and the reasons why I loved rope. The deeper I was going into rope bondage, the more certain I was becoming that this way of bottoming is not how I see myself in ropes. It was leaving too much control in the hands of the model (at least seemingly) and that was the opposite of what I wanted. 

At the same time, I did not see any alternatives for myself. I ended up feeling inadequate and like a failure. I felt like my approach was inferior to the other models and as if I didn’t contribute to the tying as much as the ‘active’ models did. I am very ambitious, therefore I could not stand feeling this way. At the same time, I had a strong conviction that I don't want to give up my (what I felt) real self in ropes for the sake of living up to the expectations and being among the ‘cool and enlightened models’.

As a side note, I have to make it clear that what I say here is extremely subjective and written from the perspective of how I felt about these things and not how my environment saw me. In fact, I have no idea how other people looked at it. I’ve mostly heard positive things from people around me about myself in ropes, but I think that because it seemed to me like all the most popular models are different from me, and because I could not find any voice that would resonate with me, I felt like my approach must be inferior. 
That was when I attended my first kinbaku and semenawa-centred workshop by Riccardo Wildties and WykD Dave and I’ve met their amazing models RedSabbath and Clover. Getting to know them really changed my perspective and I felt like I finally found successful models whose reasons for doing ropes seemed to be more aligned with mine and whose words and approaches were really inspiring to me. It seemed like, the same as myself, what they were looking for in ropes was to lose control. Ropes for them were inseparable from D/s, they were actually a tool to play out their D/s dynamic. They were not looking for the physical challenge as much as they were looking for a mental one. And that was in many ways how I felt about rope bondage as well. So maybe, in the end, I was not completely insane?

I don’t want to create a huge divide between the two approaches. Actually, I don’t even think that there are only two. I believe that there are many more, probably as many as there are rope bottoms. There are many flavours of bottoming and even I, as a single person, am not always the same in the way that I bottom. It very much depends on who I tie with and how. However, there are certain dividing factors between approaches to bottoming, the same way as there are dividing factors between different styles of tying. It doesn't mean that you always need to apply only one, the same way as, as a rigger, you don't always need to tie in the same style and mood. Riggers apply different techniques depending on their current goals in bondage. I believe that the same holds for the models.

Depending on why you do rope or simply what you want to get out of a scene, different skills/attitudes will help you to get where you want to be. I don’t think that there are some universal skills that a rope bottom should posses. I think that it is extremely dependent on what you want to achieve in ropes and what your motivations are. 

Recently, I’ve been discovering what my motivations are (at least for the bigger part of my bondage). I already wrote about ropes being a tool for me to challenge myself mentally and what I do in order to help the rigger in bringing me to my limits. Another thing that is quite crucial for me is how I see the power relation between myself in ropes and the rigger and how that affects my attitude in bondage. And that is what I want to talk about here.

I don’t feel empowered in rope

One of the important realizations for me recently was that I don’t do rope to feel empowered, but rather to explore my weaknesses. My goal of being in ropes in never to feel strong and I don’t feel as such when I am bound. It seems to be in contrast to many models that I’ve spoken to in the European communities. I often hear from models (both the physically active ones and the ones that have a more receiving kinbaku attitude) that doing rope makes them feel strong and beautiful. That they feel empowered when sustaining the hardship of bondage. That being able to meet the challenge gives them some kind of inner strength. I, on the other hand, usually feel miserable and violated in ropes, both physically and mentally. I feel bare and exposed. I feel vulnerable. And that is also what I am looking for. 

I think that this different mindset changes my attitude in ropes a lot. For me, being in ropes is one of those rare moments when I allow myself to feel weak and disempowered, to let my guard down and hand over the power over my faith to another person for once. 

I feel like if I would want to maintain a feeling of strength and empowerment in rope, it would require a constant fight against the circumstances. I would need to put my energy into making myself feel strong despite what is happening to me. It’s a bit of a mindset of standing still in the midst of the thunderstorm. It is a very noble and respectable one and I can imagine that it can make one feel good. It's not what I am doing, though. I rather let the thunderstorm sweep me away.

I feel like most of my life I am trying to stand still in the midst of a thunderstorm. I am fighting to maintain an image of a strong and capable person, to protect my dignity and to gain the respect of people. And as much as it feels good to succeed in it, it can also be very tiring.

Especially for me, since I am also strongly drawn to the feeling of being down, of dropping low in the ranks of society, of shedding off all the social and personal expectations and simply exist at the bottom of the chain, bondage is a means to explore those situations without hindering my day to day life. It’s my sandbox to explore the feelings of lowliness and disgrace. It's a moment for me to finally let go and just be. At that moment I find freedom.

And, paradoxically, being able to explore those dark places can have a very empowering effect in the sense of realizing one’s own resilience. When you get as low as is humanly possible, when you bare yourself so much that the audience can see your insides spilling out of you and you come out of it alive, that's a powerful experience. And it can lead to a feeling of empowerment.

You are like an insect that has just shed its carapace. At first, your outside is still very soft and vulnerable, but when it hardens it becomes even more invincible than the one you've just shed. 

You need to first go low in order to get to that point, however. You need to dare to be vulnerable and weak if you want to feel the kind of aftermath strength that I am talking about here. And you have to bear in mind that that feeling of strength might only come much much later or not come at all. That is because it is only a possible side effect of your experience, but not its direct result. Therefore, it should not be your goal per se.

I want to lose control

One of the most desired and pleasurable states for me is being truly out of control. Out of control over my body and, which I desire even more, out of control over my mind. And rope bondage is a perfect tool to achieve it as, whether we want to admit it or not, being bound means having our control taken away. 

People often talk about the model being actually the one who is in control in ropes because they are the ones who can stop the scene at any time. But is it really the case? Only, if we assume that the rigger will adhere to the social norms and let them out when they demand it. So the model can only maintain some level of control if the rigger allows them for it. Therefore, we (should) tie with people whom we trust that they will give us back our power when we request it. Because in the moment of being in their ropes, we are at their mercy. I wouldn’t really call it being in control.

I think that sometimes we lie to ourselves a bit, trying to make out of bondage something that it wasn’t made for and then being surprised when its true nature reveals itself to us in an unexpected moment.

Because as much as you want to feel powerful and in control in ropes, as much as you want to make a dance and a mutual exchange out of bondage, the truth is that by letting someone bind you, you hand the power over to them. Trying to deny it or to not seeing it might lead to painful disillusions later on.

Of course, I can imagine the kind of decorative bondage where the model maintains all the control over their body and the rope does not restrict them in any way. In that case, I admit that my words will not hold anymore. But in most styles of bondage, some form of restriction does take place, and therefore the model gives away some of their power to the rigger.

In a way, I do believe that most of the models are looking for that loss of control at some level, otherwise, they wouldn’t be intrigued by bondage. Being powerless is at the core of rope bondage and I think that it usually is the core of the activity that people are attracted to, even if they don’t dare to immerse themselves fully in it and only tread around it in their practice. I do, however, understand why one wouldn’t want to go for it all the way. It is one thing to be intrigued or attracted to something and another to truly experience it.

During an amazing lecture of Bergborg on Akechi Denki that I attended recently at the Prague Shibari Festival, he showed us a video where the Master says that “a woman who lets you tie herself is like a diamond and one should treasure her”. Hearing it in contemporary Europe one might think that the world has truly changed and it is not the case anymore. Because there seems to be a lot of models who want to be tied, a lot of people are interested in being a rope model. Finding a person who wants to be in ropes is not such a difficult endeavour nowadays. 

The question is though, are they really interested in all that it entails? Do they truly want to hand over the control over their bodies and their minds, and possibly lives to another person? Do they understand what they are signing up for? Or are they just up for a thrill, interested in what it feels like to be tied, but without the real understanding of what it might lead to and what it means to be bound?

I think that a model who is ready to truly give themselves to the rigger, who wants to go all the way, who realizes the potential that rope bondage has and still wants to explore it, is still a real treasure. Because handing over your body (and mind) for someone else to toy with is not a small thing. Having one's physical and (even more importantly) mental limits pushed is not a small thing. Being broken and rebuilt in captivity requires courage and a strong spirit. A responsible rigger will only go as far with someone who they trust will be able to withstand it. And I think that finding such someone is not a common thing.

I guess that it is quite obvious that I have a preference for rope that is dark and strongly rooted in D/s and SM. I am fascinated by the potential of rope bondage to challenge me physically and mentally. I realize that it is not the case for everyone and I don’t think that it should be. I do not try to convince everyone to follow my footsteps. I am happy that different people enjoy rope in their own ways. It's such a versatile and multifaceted activity that it can meet many different needs of different people, be it a physical challenge, creating art, exploring a D/s dynamic or simply having some fun.

I do have a feeling, however, that if you want to get to the core of rope bondage if you want to explore its full potential, if you want to squeeze out of your practice everything there is to squeeze then you will end up in a similar place to where I am at the moment. Because, if you think about it, the act of being bound has always been both a symbol and an enactment of losing control and giving up the power.

In old Japan, hojojutsu was used either as a martial art or as a symbol of defeat and being held in captivity. Afterwards, when the act of binding became aestheticized and eroticized in art, it was still an act of disempowerment and lack of control of the bound person that was a subject of the aesthetic and erotic pleasure (and the torment of being in such situation). And if disempowerment was at the core of rope bondage from its origin, I can’t imagine practising it truly without that part included (at least if you still want to call it kinbaku).

Of course, you can use rope for many other things, for connection, for sensory experience, for a feeling of flow, for the beauty of the form. I do feel, however, that doing so is a bit like taming a beast by knocking out its teeth. Sure, the result is that it won’t bite you anymore and you might even domesticate it, but that newly acquired pet will not be as wild, beautiful and mysterious as it was when you’ve seen it for the first time and became fascinated by it. 

And I am truly fascinated by the beast. I am drawn to the dark corners of human experience that rope bondage allows me to explore. I appreciate the environment which being in ropes provides me for exploring myself at my weakest and most helpless. I appreciate that it offers me the possibility to, for once, be different than society tells me to be, to stop fighting for my power, to let go of control, to allow someone else to decide my faith, to express everything that I should not express. 

To me, being in ropes is the moment when I stop playing by the rules. When I can finally get to explore the parts of my psyche that I was told I should not explore. I would not say that it is the moment when I finally become myself, but rather that it is the moment when I can try out the versions of myself that I haven’t been allowed to explore in normal life. I don't say that it is easy. I don't say that it is for everyone. I don't say that it is all fun. But to me, what I describe here is what draws me to rope bondage. That glimpse of freedom that you gain only when you finally have nothing more to lose.

To me, rope is about exploring the limits of the mind

I am currently trying to define what drives me in rope bondage so that I can understand better where I stand in the realm of rope bottoming and (hopefully) make it easier for people who hear my thoughts on it to interpret them and find a place for them within their own definitions. 

By no means is what I write about here set in stone. I am ever-evolving and it might be that in half a year my thoughts on the topic will change completely. Also, it is not an exhaustive definition of who I am in ropes. I only touch upon some aspects of my modelling here. Some others I talk about in my other posts and there might be more to come on things that I've realised recently and haven’t shared yet. Also, it is not that I am living what I describe here at all times. Some things that I talk about are more prominent in my modelling than others, but still, I am sure that there are scenes in which nothing of what I write about in this post applies to me. 

I do think, however, that what I am touching upon are some of the driving forces that drew me towards, and keep me with, rope and kinbaku. What I describe is like a compass that steers my rope journey. I don’t always follow the route that it indicates, but in the end, I always come back to it. It is what inspires me and partly what makes me in rope me. I am writing about it as a way for me to make sense out of it, but also to possibly inspire other people to think differently about their bondage. I am not trying to convince anyone that this is the way to do it (even if I sound like it at times), so please refrain from asking me to put disclaimers that it is a personal account and not a prescription on rope bottoming in general.

Disclaimer: This is a personal account and not a prescription on rope bottoming in general.

These are some of my reasons for doing rope bondage and my personal approach to it. I hope that you will have some pleasure from reading it and take from it what you feel like.

I want to explore my mental limits, but not cross them

The intensity of the experience in ropes for me often comes from dancing on the verge of my limits. And the limits that I'm talking about here are psychological rather than physical. I think that the difference between mental and physical limits is that the first ones are way more fluid and situation dependent. Also, for me, the latter is often driven by the former. I can only push myself so far for the sake of a physical challenge, but when pleasing my Dominant comes into play, or simply suffering without any control over it, I turn out to be capable of way more than I thought I am. 

Pushing one’s mental limits is a very delicate matter. It is quite easy to realise that you’ve damaged yourself physically, but when it comes to psychological damage, things get murkier and much more complex. That is why for this kind of exploration you need to be able to feel very well what is happening within you and you need to be able to communicate it to your rigger so that they know what they are doing.

Going slow and constant communication is the key if you want your rigger to be aware of how much they can push you at all times. If you act tough for the bigger part of the scene and push away the psychological reactions that they are causing in you, there is a big risk that once you finally react, you will already be too far, because your reaction will be a result of passing your limits and things spilling out of you uncontrollably. And that is what you want to avoid. If you both go slow, however, and if you are both attuned to each other, you can get to really amazing places without using extreme tools for that. Sometimes less is more and the deeper you both are immersed in the scene, the less you need to do externally to make the other feel. It is more a matter of depth of immersion than the strength of the act itself.

I often observe riggers in workshops going very far very quick with their models. For example, in Soptik’s and mine recent workshop on Humiliation during the Prague Shibari Festival, there was a simple exercise of tying an upper chest harness that had a humiliating aspect to it. That was all that Soptik did on me (tied the chest harness), and because of his clear intention and small details in his behaviour, my reaction to the tie was quite strong. When the participants’ turn came, they went (as Wildties would say) byzantine. They started tying models faces, hanging things on them, exposing them and going into verbal humiliation. All because they wanted to get a reaction. However, the reactions of most of the models were not as strong as mine.

In my opinion, the reason for that was twofold. First, the models did not allow their feelings to flow through them freely. They were blocking the feelings of humiliation or were simply distracted, waiting for the rigger to do something that will put them in the right mindset. Secondly, the riggers were doing too much without the right intention. Sometimes, doing less and slowing down is a much better tool for making the model tuned in than overwhelming them with experiences. It is like with tenderising the meat (My partner, Asiana likes to use that comparison when she talks about semenawa), if you progress slowly, it’s like marinating the model. You don’t need much to make her ‘tender’ (read: get a reaction) if you prepared her well. If you haven’t prepared her beforehand, though, you need to strike really hard to get the same result, additionally substantially increasing the risk of causing damage in the process. 

As a model, I can’t do anything about the intentionality and intensity of what my rigger is giving me. I can, however, work on my own mindset to make it easier for them to work with me. Therefore, in a rope scene, I am usually trying to give the rigger all the information possible for them to be able to push me in the right way.

For that, I first focus on receiving the information from within myself, sensitizing myself to be able to read it and then I try to communicate what I am feeling to the rigger. Of course, I don’t only do these things to make the life of the rigger easier. For the bigger part, I do it because it allows me to reach the states that I am looking for. 

First and foremost, I want to feel

The most important reason for me to do rope is that it makes me feel. And the feelings that it can elicit are exactly the ones that I am looking for in BDSM: misery, helplessness, lack of control, surrender, submission, resignation, arousal, humiliation, objectification, fear. A skilled rigger can make me feel all these in a rope scene. And much more. 

I have an impression that because the progression in a rope scene is much slower than, for example, in an impact play scene, and there are many times when I am in a way left to myself, there is a lot of time for my mind to process what is happening to me and build its own story around it. I believe that that is the reason why I can get to as complex emotions with rope as I do with verbal play (which I really really love exactly for the level of emotional complexity one can achieve with it). In rope, instead of my partner enchanting me with their words, my head is doing it for them, manipulating my emotions and creating complex scenarios based on the actions of the rigger. So far, I haven’t found any other form of play that would allow for such emotional complexity as these two.

I want to feel as intensely as possible in my play. And the way to achieve the intensity for me is either by the level of the emotion itself (as in, intense fear or intense pleasure) or by its complexity. The latter often being more interesting for me. And because I am specifically looking for feelings and emotions, I try to make myself especially sensitive to anything that might elicit them. During a scene, I tune in into my bodily sensations and my feelings, all my attention focused on reading and interpreting what the rigger is doing to me and how it affects me. It happens not in the sense of actively analysing it in my head, but rather letting their actions affect my body and through that speak subconsciously to my mind and my heart. 

Finally, I don’t only want to feel strong emotions, I am not waiting for the fireworks. I want to experience everything there is to experience. I want to squeeze all the possible feelings that I might out of the scene. I don't only want to experience the end state, but the entire process that brings me there. I want to feel every little crack in my surface.

Also for that, I sensitize myself. Again, I tune in into my body so that I don’t miss any possible shift that might provide me with a new reason to feel, however small it is. I don't push away any emotion, I let them all in. The good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the overwhelming and the subtle. 

I let my feelings out

I tend to be very expressive and I think that there are a couple of reasons for it. One is that because I'm so focused on receiving and interpreting, all my attention and energy goes there and I have no energy left to hide what is happening inside of me. All of it is consciously directed somewhere else. Also, when you feel so much without pushing it away, it becomes in a way natural to also express it. If you open up so much to what you are feeling, it can be overwhelming at times and sometimes the only way to stay sane within this experience is to let it out. Otherwise, you'll end up like a pot that's about to boil over. It's better to lift the lead up early on and let the steam out gradually, as it comes. 

During the Prague Shibari Festival, I listened to a great lecture of Bergborg about Akechi Denki in which he mentioned an article that Akechi' s model, Katsuragi Ayano, wrote after performing with the Master in the Netherlands. In the article, you can read how surprised she was about the European virtue of stoicism in models. She commented on the model in a show preceding theirs taking a heavy whipping without any reaction, and how the audience seemed to appreciate it, while after their performance where she was screaming and crying, the organiser had to calm down the public and remind them that what they’ve seen was consensual. I think that things haven't changed that much since then. Stoicism and even a certain kind of serenity in ropes are still very appreciated in Europe. We value people who can take difficulties calmly and with composure. We value quiet models who endure silently.

Unfortunately, I am not like that. I let out everything that I feel inside of me. I tend to be very expressive. When something hurts me, I scream, when I'm aroused, I moan and when I'm desperate, I wail. And for that, I have been criticised in different communities. That I am too loud, too dramatic or that I invade other people's spaces at rope jams with my expression. 

I understand the critique. I definitely stand out often and my reactions are frequently not compatible with what other people around me are looking for in ropes. The thing is, though, that what I do is simply not overwriting my natural reactions with politically correct ones. Being in ropes (especially in a suspension) is an extreme experience. You put your body in a state of heavy distress, sometimes even terror. I don't want to shut down my feelings to appear more graceful or more strong. I am not going to diminish my natural reactions in order for my rigger and the audience to be comfortable with pushing me further. I want to feel what I feel and I want the rigger to be able to witness what they are doing to me. I don't look for pride in swallowing my reactions and in appearing tough. In fact, I don’t look for pride in bondage at all. My goal is to be moved, to feel as deeply as possible, the expression of it being just a side effect.

Finally, I want my rigger to be able to understand what they are doing to me. We are playing a delicate and risky game and I don’t want to mislead them in anything. Even though it seems like they are the culprit and I am the victim, to me it is more as if we are partners in crime. We both want to bring me to my limits and we both want me to experience intense emotions. In order to do it in a conscious and informed way, I want to cooperate with them. 

I think that if one looks at modelling qualities, the context is extremely important. While there might be some general objectively desired skills that every rigger should have (being able to tie with the right even tension, having muscle memory of certain ties or at least some passages of a tie etc.), I recently grow more and more convinced that for models it’s not the case (with the exception maybe of being able to monitor the most basic safety indicators). However, it doesn’t mean that the models have no input in rope bondage. Quite the contrary. 

In my opinion, I have an enormous impact on the scene as a model (and if some riggers would like to challenge me in this statement, please bring it on). Depending on what I want to get out of the tie, I can facilitate myself in it or make it more difficult for myself and for the rigger. That is not to say that I direct my rope scenes in any way (I think that the people who have seen me being tied would agree that trying to direct my rigger in any way is the last thing that I do), rather I try to remove all the obstacles from my side that might hinder the rigger in bringing me to where I want to be (and where they want me to be). 

And because for me the mental challenge and the emotional aspects of rope bondage are very important, I do everything in order to make it easier for the rigger to give them to me. I do my part and I hope that they will do their part as well. What I do doesn’t necessarily make sense in absolute terms, but it certainly does in the context of what I am looking for. 

Because if you want to feel, you should let yourself feel. If you want to share your emotions with someone else, you need to let them in and allow them to witness you. And finally, if you want to explore your limits, doing so gradually and with awareness is the way to go if you don't want to get hurt (too much) in the process.

On the merit of patience in rope models

Photo by Michal Neoral.

I haven’t always been a patient model. In fact, I used to be a very impatient and annoying one. I used to be a model that would always want to be played with and entertained and couldn’t stand rope tops practising things on her.

I've been very fortunate because basically from the moment that I discovered rope, I've only been tied by riggers who are fluent in using it. I've never tied with a complete beginner. Every partner of mine was able to give me an experience of a scene with the flow, and because of my strong reactiveness to rope and being 'fun to play with', that's what I always ended up doing with people. It seemed like I am an extremely skilled model and I was doing great right from the start of my 'rope career'. I thought that there is nothing that I needed to work on, that I was simply born for it. Until I modelled for a first technique-oriented workshop on a TK.

There hadn’t been even an inch of play in that workshop. It was all about rope technicalities: the knots, the frictions, the tension. Additionally, the pressure on the rope tops was high because at the end of the workshop they were supposed to tie the TK perfectly in a limited amount of time. Therefore, my partner was all focused on the execution of the tie and not on how it affected me. There was no room for it and it wasn't the point of the workshop either.

During the workshop, I was really dreadful. I was restless and I kept giving my partner the impression of how bored I was. Plus, I was trying to get the attention of everyone around. I kept complaining and at some point, I even started yawning. I felt entitled to it since that wasn't the rope experience that I signed up for.
Even writing about my attitude makes me cringe.

After the workshop, I got feedback from the other participants and also the teacher (who was my friend and partner, Asiana) and they all agreed that my behaviour was terrible and really not acceptable. I thought that I was providing entertainment to the others, but it turned out that I wasn't, quite the opposite. Since so many people whom I respected were of exactly the same opinion and since when I'd heard how it felt from the outside, I totally agreed with them, I decided to change.

And I did. I became a very patient and obedient model. Nowadays, I can model for technical workshops for hours and not complain even once. I model for teachers, and being a model of someone who is giving a workshop can be even more demanding because their focus is never on you during the workshop. Not when they're tying, because then they are explaining things, and also not after since then they need to help the participants and give them feedback. So you are either used as a prop to demonstrate a tie on or you have to wait until you will be used as a prop again with a minimal in-between connection or attention from your rigger. I take it all patiently and gracefully.

It's not because I learned how to shut my mouth and suffer the boredom and lack of attention in silence. I don't think that it would take me far. Sooner or later my feelings would show up one way or another.
Rather, my mindset and attitude towards this kind of rope activities have truly changed. The fact is that currently, I enjoy riggers practising things on me as well as modelling for technical workshops, and I'm not bored being tied without feelings or having the same pattern applied to me over and over again. I found a way to appreciate it and not treat it as a necessary evil.

I would like to share here the realizations that brought me to that mindset, as I do think that patience is one of the most important qualities for creating beautiful kinbaku that a model can have and that it doesn't only benefit the riggers but also the models themselves.

Not all of the things that I mention here have to apply to everyone. I think that they can be practised independently and each one of them can be beneficial on its own. I do hope that reading about it might inspire more models to find their own patience within and will help them and their riggers in their rope development as much as it is helping me.

You are only as bored as you want to be

There are millions of things that you can do as your own practice when the rope top is perfecting their technique. You can focus on your bodily sensations in the tie. You can focus on feeling the emotions that are inside you. You can meditate. You can practice maintaining proper posture (there is an art in sitting and standing in a proper manner), just to name a few.

Think for yourself what you can do and what you find the most interesting. I often alternate between the above during workshops and practice times. The possibilities of your mind, your body and the connection between them to develop and entertain you are endless if you let them. It's all about maintaining an attitude of curiosity and engagement.

Surviving boredom can prepare you for surviving the suffering later on

What I also discovered recently, is that training your mind to be able to sustain long periods of bodily inactivity is very similar to training it to withstand long periods of physical distress. Especially when the distress is partly about being immobilized, as it is in case of bondage.

So, while it might seem like you are not doing anything when your partner is using your body to practice, you might actually be practising the mindset that is extremely important later on when you will progress to more demanding ties, and when a strong mind and an ability to withstand distress for extended periods of time will be very important.

Enjoy the objectification of being a practice prop

To me, a huge benefit of being a practice prop for my riggers is the experience of objectification that it provides me with. I realize that it's not everyone's kink, but if it is yours, try to relax into the space of being an object next time when your rigger is practising their technique on you. Let yourself to become quiet and your mind to be emptied from thoughts. Enjoy your usefulness to them and the possibility to let go and just be whatever they need you to be in this moment.

By allowing the rigger to properly practice, you build the ground for better scenes in the future

This one is pretty straightforward, yet it took me some time to realize it. How are all those great riggers with whom I want to have amazing scenes expected to emerge if there is nobody that they can practice their technique on? And if there are people willing to do that, but I am not one of them, why should I deserve to get the benefits of their sacrifices?

Rope is not all fun and play and declining participation in the less fun parts of it means that, as a model, you either push it on to other models or you prevent your riggers from growing. Neither is desirable. Additionally, even if you don't care about pushing the responsibility on the other models and ripping only the benefits being unethical, having the rigger practice particularly on you has also direct benefits. Because each model's body is different, practising on your body increases not only rigger's skills in general but also their skills in tying you. They learn to fit the ties to your body and to be fluent in tying especially you. You become more attuned to each other. And that's an important precondition for having amazing rope scenes later on.

Do not behave like it's all about you

As I mentioned before, rope is not only 'fun' and requiring that riggers entertain you at all times and always engage with you when tying is making it very one-sided and selfish. Additionally, it skews the power dynamics entirely to your side which, if you are submissive like me, is the last thing you want.

To me, being a submissive is not an on and off thing. You don't turn it on for the fun stuff and off when the work needs to be done. To me, being a submissive is very much about service, about an offering that you make of yourself, about being useful. That actually gives me more satisfaction than being involved in submissive acts during play. The latter is just a cherry on top, a temporary emanation of a dynamic that's always there, a reward of sorts for being ready to serve my Dominant at all times.

In the way I approach rope bondage, a D/s element is essential to me. I don't tie with people with whom I don't feel some level of submission. And if I am submissive to someone (even to a small degree), I will never try to dictate them the terms of our engagement with each other. Doing what they want (and not what I superficially might seem to want) is, in fact, bringing me the deepest kind of pleasure. And when they require me to model for them for practice, to be useful without getting direct pleasure from it, is a proof that, indeed, I do not dictate the terms, that what we are doing is because they want it and not me.

Have an attitude of service and gratitude

This one is tied to the previous one, but I want to elaborate on it a bit more. As much as we, models, are offering our bodies for the riggers to tie and torment, they are offering us their skills and hard work that stands behind them. And we shouldn't forget about it.

Recently, there has been more and more attention drawn to giving recognition to the models and their efforts, which I think is great. Riggers should be grateful for our offering, and as an appreciation of it, they should serve our bodies and our minds as good as they possibly can. They should not use us as requisites in an exercise of boosting their egos, but they should respect us and our gifts and in that sense give justice to the sacrifices that we are making.

At the same time, models should also recognize the effort and risk that the riggers are taking when tying us. We rarely talk about the fact that becoming a skilled rigger takes really a lot of effort. We should be grateful to our riggers and appreciate them for it. Also, we should try to serve them in their efforts as much as possible, not only consume the benefits of their hard work but also be ready to give of ourselves what there is to give in order to support them. We're not learning the complex technical skills of having an absolute command of rope that they do, but we can assist them in doing it.

We want to be tied by the best riggers and have great experiences, but what do we do to actually deserve it? I don't think that just being young, pretty and flexible should do. And if it does then it's up to the riggers to evaluate whether they respect themselves enough in their choices of who they tie with.

Always stay in the rope space, don't practice casually

Finally, even though I do tie for practice nowadays (something that I used to not do at all in the past) and I model for technically-oriented workshops, I'm still always trying to have my mind in a being-tied special rope mindset.

I still hate discussing ties or talking in general, while I'm in rope. I give feedback to my riggers, but only after the tying is finished. In this way, I can practice getting out of my head and into my body when being tied and I develop the habit of doing so each time when I'm in rope.

I keep the feeling of being in rope as something that is special and prevent it from becoming casual. That's why I never do other things when people practice on me, as in, watch television, read, play on my phone. Even if the rigger does not need my attention at that moment, I want to keep the offering attitude and the 'sacredness' of the feeling of being in ropes.

I do realize that my approach to rope is very particular and not every model looks at their practice this way. I also don't think that they should. I think that we should all look for our own approach and our own expression in our practice of rope bondage.

However, I do think that reading about different attitudes that people have in rope can be immensely helpful in finding your own. And I hope that by sharing mine, I help others in achieving that, even if it's by them realizing that they completely don't agree with me. I also hope that maybe for some, my thoughts will be like that feedback that I received after the TK workshop. Something that makes you slightly uncomfortable but allows for change and growth.

Because I do think that, at least if we wish to tie with skilled riggers, patience is a quality that we should work on developing. It benefits the riggers, as it takes the pressure of entertaining the model away from them and allows them to focus on perfecting their skills whenever they feel is necessary. It also benefits us, models, indirectly by contributing to the skills of the riggers, and directly as it teaches us to take care of ourselves and to be able to manage our own mind better, without relying on the rigger so much.

Finally, the attitude that I describe creates a positive feedback loop in which each party supports the other in their growth, but at the same time takes full responsibility for their own development. It also calls for appreciation and gratitude of both partners, each one of them recognizing their different but equally important and complementary roles. It makes each rope related activity valuable for both parties, at the same time not trying to equate them, but preserving their distinct nature.

Because the nature of the rigger's practice is very different from the model's. Neither of them is easy and because of the partnered nature of rope bondage, neither can fully develop without the help of their partner. And if we want to tie with great riggers, let's try to be the models that they deserve.

Savouring jealousy

It's such a complex feeling and such a delicious one to unpack. Jealousy is something that I have been intrigued by from the moment that I realized that it is possible to incorporate it into play. It plays on human most basic fears of loneliness, abandonment and not being enough. And that offers tremendous possibilities for emotional suffering.

I am not a jealous type of person in general. I am usually rather secure in most of my relationships and I am not easily fearful about losing a partner. Also because I think that it is something out of my control either way so I rather try to focus on what they are giving me instead of thinking how I might lose it. There is one type of situation that does ignite jealousy in me very strongly, though. And that is when it is mixed with envy.

Because of my high level of ambition and a constant hunger for more, I tend to want a lot of things and there have always been people around me who had more of something that I wanted than me. Sometimes it's not so much about them having more, but simply about having something that I don’t have, not at all or not at that moment. Those are the people who I am envious of. I can even be envious of my Dominant for being dominant even though I don't have a drop of dominance in me. It's not about wanting it for myself as a person who I am right now but about not being able to have it. Ever. And at the same time finding it something admirable or desirable. 

And because my envy is so often about the absolutes, things that I can't change, mixed with jealousy it can be formidable to play with. Especially, because being jealous ignites my deepest anxieties. And what can cause one more pain than having their anxieties dragged out in the open and prodded?

I learned recently to savour my jealousy. It usually appears in relation to other partners of my partners when they are female and fundamentally different from me. Not just any different, but they need to be a kind of woman that I am uselessly attracted to because of her alluring femininity. That kind of woman that is very beautiful but in a cold and distant way, aware of her beauty and knowing how to use it as a powerful tool to get what she wants. In general, she usually gets what she wants in her life without much struggle. Often because of an aura of slight helplessness that surrounds her, which makes you feel like she needs you in some way, but at the same time, constantly keeping you at a distance, making you want to provide for her, making you feel like you might have something that she needs and if you give it to her, she might, for a moment, become yours. 

This is the type of woman that I am very envious of. Of course, the above image is a huge generalization and a big part of it is my own imagination about these women and not the reality. It doesn’t matter, though. What matters is how they make me feel.

They come in many different flavours but there is one thing that unites them, my reaction to them. It's my reaction that tells me that she, as well, belongs to their breed. It's my inability to turn my eyes from her, the moment she appeared in my sight. My strong desire to talk to her and make her laugh, to entertain her. I want her to be mine, even though I know that it's impossible and, also, I wouldn't know what to do with her once she is. Because I want to have her, but at the same time all I really want is for someone else to have me. 

And if this is the way she makes me feel, I can only imagine how my partner feels about her. How is it even possible that they still want to have anything to do with me if they can have her? She is so superior to me that there is no point of even trying to compare myself to her. 

But I do. I find a perverse pleasure in observing her (or them together) and finding all the ways in which she is better. All the ways in which I don't measure up. All the desirable ways in which they treat her and they don't treat me. It's very cruel to do it to myself, but it's my personal gift, self-inflicted suffering. 

When I think about it, I feel ashamed of doing it. I feel like I shouldn't feed on my jealousy like that. I shouldn't torture myself using those two people who are not even aware of what I am doing. It's a very twisted kind of voyeurism and mental masturbation. But it's so delightfully painful that it's hard to stop. 

I would like to believe that I am able to control it. That I am not going to make any permanent damage to my relationships because of that. That if I keep it to myself, nobody will get hurt. I don't know if it's true. What I do know is that I love observing myself around those women and can't really help it. I love how small and pathetic they make me feel. How their presence makes me retreat and accept that my partner will probably not want to touch me ever again. And understand it. I love how low and hopeless it makes me. How desperate and undeserving. How acutely aware of all the things that I will never be able to provide to them and she is. How resignation and acceptance of the inevitability of being rejected creeps up on me when I see them together. 

Of course, I know, rationally speaking, that it doesn't work like that. I know that people are different and they like each other for different reasons and there is no notion of someone being objectively better than me. I also know that I have many qualities that people might find attractive. That it's not so black and white. That if they say that they like and value me then I should trust they do. And usually, I do. Just not at that moment. Because at that moment I'm busy drowning myself in self-deprecation, humiliation and loneliness. 

At that moment, I know only one thing that I have that she doesn't that might be the reason why my partners haven’t abandoned me yet. I know that she will never go as low as I do for them. She will never lose her dignity for them, as I do so easily. They will never feel as justified in their cruelty towards her as they are in their cruelty towards me. They will never turn her into something that is as far from a human as I can be sometimes. She won't entertain them with her misery and pitifulness. 

I know that that is the reason why they keep me with them. So that they can be at their worst with me and at their best with her. They need to degrade me so that they can cherish her. And knowing that only makes me wish to be someone else even more. Someone beautiful and respected. Someone feared and admired. Someone valued and taken into account and not just used. 

I will never be that person, though, because, in reality, it's not who I want to be. I could be her only if I wasn't myself. But I want misery and suffering too much. I long to feel degraded. I long to feel rejected. I long to be hurt. And if my partner is not there to provide it to me, if they are busy with someone who actually is worthy of their attention, then I'm always there for myself. I’m always there to rub some salt into my wounds and then sit back and enjoy the pain, sipping slowly from the bitter-sweet cup that they passed on to me.

Thoughts upon recovering from a rope injury

I've been tied a lot lately and I think that I can finally say that I'm back to my full physical fitness from before the injury. It feels great to be able to be in ropes again without constant vigilance over what's happening in my body. To be able to let go like I used to do. 

However, being tied now is not the same. I'm not the same. This experience has definitely changed me. Fortunately, not in a way that I was afraid it will. I didn't become more cautious or more focused on my bodily signals. If anything, I might actually be less now. I think that I became more accepting of the fact that I might get an injury. It happened once and it might happen again. I'm not saying that I became more careless, but maybe less obsessive about it. 

Because when I got injured, I didn't receive any prior signals. It might have been that I was not paying attention, but I don't think that was it. I'm generally pretty aware of what's happening in my body and I'm able to communicate if something doesn't feel right. The scene was tough and I was suffering a lot. The position was not something that I am used to. But it wasn't more extreme than other things that I've experienced so far. It didn't make me feel like my body was violated in a bad way. And yet it did lead to an injury. 

Coming back to rope after recovery, I had two choices, limit what I do tremendously to make sure that I won't get injured again (which, in fact, you can never be sure about) or come back to the way that I used to do rope and accept that at some point I might get injured again. I went for the second option, which was my mindset also before the injury, but which has now become more mature because the risk is not so theoretical anymore. 

Rope bondage (especially if you do semi-suspensions and suspensions) is an edge play. And the nature of playing on the edge is such that you do get hurt from time to time. That's what makes the play exciting. But if you want the reward, you also need to be willing to accept the risk. Especially for me, since I really love my limits to be pushed, I really love to suffer, I feel like it's inevitable that from time to time something will go wrong. Trying to convince myself that I can prevent an injury from happening again while preserving the intensity of the experiences that I get from rope would be lying to myself. And doing that is limiting in my opinion. 

Realising and accepting the possible consequences and making a conscious decision to go forward regardless is freeing. The elephant disappears from the room. It also makes you realise how big value the thing that puts you in danger has to you that you continue to do it despite being conscious of the threat. I know that I would rather get injured again than stop having the amazing experiences that rope is giving me.

Of course, there are ways to minimise the risks. I tie with people who I trust and who, I believe, know their own limits. I work on maintaining my body awareness while being immersed in the tie. I analyse my bodily and emotional reactions after each tie and try to communicate to my rigger anything that I feel might be useful for them during (but preferably after) the session.

But… If I want myself and my riggers to develop, if we want to get out of our comfort zones, we need to move to an unknown territory. And since it is an unknown, you don't know what to expect there and you can't really prepare for it. You can listen as much as you want to other people who have been there but their experience can't really prepare you for your experience. Their body is not your body. Their mind is not your mind. Relying too much on their input might make you pay attention to the signs that were left there for them and miss the ones that are waiting for you.

However, if you stay cautious, self-aware, open and willing to learn, that exploration might lead you to amazing insights. Sometimes your lessons might be painful, sometimes you will need to lose something in order to gain something else. I think that now I am more aware and accepting of that. And looking forward to exploring the uncharted territory of rope bondage further. Because the real adventure has only just started.

The quiet space of being an object

It began as an intense abuse and ended in silence. They were torturing her, throwing her around, exposing and humiliating her. They were causing her pain or pleasure at their whim. They were using her for their entertainment. And when they would get tired of the play, they would leave her tied up and disoriented and start kissing and pleasuring each other. Becoming, what it seemed like, completely oblivious to her existence. 

Most of those moments were short and it was a perfect time for her to catch a breath. She didn't even have much time to think, but she did have time to feel embarrassed and out of place. “What am I supposed to do now? Am I allowed to watch them? Do I want to watch them?” she thought. It felt like being a witness to something very intimate that she shouldn't be a witness to. The fact that they've left her in the same room did not mean to her that she was also allowed to stalk them. Besides, she was already embarrassed enough by being left tied up and exposed. Watching them being intimate with each other would only embarrass her more. 

After each short break, they would come back to her, their entire attention directed, again, at giving her pain and discomfort. She wasn’t sure what she wanted more, being touched in an overwhelming amount of places or not touched at all? Being looked at and inspected closely or discarded and left alone? Each of those states was catering to her different and competing needs. Each of them longed for when the other one was being delivered.

At some point, they tied her to a chair in a corner of the room with her legs spread and her pussy exposed. A cloud of worry went through her head, “What will it lead to for me?” she thought. But they proceeded to kiss each other, getting undressed, and shortly after, making love. After a moment, she realized that she was not going to receive any attention from them for a while now. And that was the moment of welcoming the silence.

She hadn't gotten used to the experience of being an object yet. The quiet place that she went to when it happened. The overwhelming silence that was descending upon her there. The feeling of freedom and weightlessness in her mind. It felt like, on the one hand, she was leaving her body, and on the other hand, she was only a body. She ceased to want things. She ceased to wish for things to happen. She just was. She became still, her breathing slowed down. It was almost like she was melting into the background. 

Bue she loved when it happened. She loved it when her mind was freed from her ego in that way. She loved the experience of being without wanting and needing. It usually happened when she had been abandoned after a period of intense use and objectification. When, after that, she was being discarded and left in the state of an object. Especially, when she was left somehow bound or immobilized, either physically or by her need to follow orders. The fact of being used like a thing depersonalized her and in order to get out of that state, she would need to be pulled out of it by another human being, preferably the one who put her there in the first place. Just being left alone in that state did not diminish it. She was still being an object, just not one that was being used at the moment. And what do objects do when they're not being used? Well, they don't do anything. They just are. And that is what was happening to her. She just was.

When they’d finished and the girl started untying her from the chair, she was still, quiet and barely breathing. And when the girl started to ask her questions, it took her a while to realize that they were directed to her and that she actually had a voice that she should use to reply. It felt weird to talk about her needs and well-being, notions which a moment ago were basically non-existent. 

She was being brought back from the quiet space into the normal world and in order to land fully and in one piece, she needed to know one thing, "Did they enjoy it?" she asked. This was the one question that she always needed to ask after an experience like that. Did they enjoy using her? Did she bring them joy? Was her suffering fruitful? For her to assess whether she enjoyed the play herself, the only thing that mattered was whether her users did.

Their answer was positive and she could finally relax hearing that. She was happy. She had been a fun toy.

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:

Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio ‎-- Cocktails Carnage Crucifixion And Pornography Cd 2003. if you like Visit my Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnROS...

My thoughts on objectification in Japanese rope bondage and the differences between the ways that the Japanese and the Westerners do rope

Disclaimer: This post is full of generalisations as I use them as a tool for extracting certain patterns. However, I must stress that I do not claim that it is a proper description of the way that people in Japan and in the West practice rope. Rather, it is an indication of certain tendencies which I do believe, partially, to be culturally influenced. When I talk about ‘The Japanese’ I draw most of my conclusions from my experiences with Akira Naka and Suzuki Iroha, Hourai Kasumi, Shigonawa Bingo and Yoshida Yoi, all of whom I have seen live. Finally, I believe that most of the attitudes that I describe here as ‘Japanese‘ are related to the traditional Japanese culture with its arts and crafts which is deeply influenced by Zen as well as Shintoism.

Some time ago, I’ve been teaching a workshop on objectification in rope with Soptik and during one of the feedback rounds an interesting statement was made by one of the participants. They indicated that they are currently mainly practising Naka style and therefore objectification was a very unnatural (but also interesting) way for them to treat their model. I was extremely surprised by this statement because the way that I see Naka style is that it is extremely objectifying. That is one of the reasons why I love to be tied in this style so much. Of course, different people might perceive the same ties in very different ways as this perception is usually the result of the intention of the rigger and the mindset of the model. However, the discrepancy in the perception of one style by the two of us was so big that it triggered me to investigate it more. 

In more or less the same time, I was a witness to a performance of a well known Japanese rigger, Yoi Yoshida, which, added to my previous experiences with Japanese riggers, made me think a lot about the differences (as perceived by me) in the way that (most of the) Westerners do rope compared to the Japanese. Combining both, resulted in some thoughts that I decided to word here.

By no means, it is an attempt at defining some ultimate cultural truths. Rather, it is a description of how I perceive certain things, very subjective and personal and definitely open for a discussion.

For the Japanese rope is a ritual, for the Westerners, it is an adventure

I have an impression that a lot of us, Westerners is often focused on the ‘newness’ in rope. We constantly look for new positions, new emotions, new forms of expression. We are always trying to innovate. Looking at the performances of the famous Western riggers, you can see that they always strive for showing something that is, in a way, unusual. They are afraid that if they don’t, they will appear boring. 

From what I have seen so far about the way that the Japanese people do rope, I feel like for them rope is not so much about the new experiences, but rather it is about one very particular experience. They do not mind repeating the same sequence over and over again. They don’t get bored with it. Rather, they recognise that, just as in a ritual, even though seemingly it is always the same, it actually never is. Even though on the outside the sequence of your movements looks the same every time, each of those times you are not the same and your partner isn’t either, and by letting your body flow in a sequence that is so recognizable, you can awaken deep and powerful emotions within, even without much effort on the side of the rigger, just by the sheer power of the archetype.

I often hear a critique of more traditional Japanese performances that they tend to be very repetitive and if you’ve seen one then you’ve seen them all. After seeing a couple, I can say that it is partly true, there is a certain universal dramaturgy to them, a certain flow that remains more or less stable. I find it fascinating, though. Watching it is like watching Shakespear's play on stage. On the one hand, it treats about the notions that you know like the back of your hand, on the other, these notions are so powerful and deep that you can never get enough of relieving them and there is something new to be found there every time you see it. 

New things are big and bold and exciting. They can make one feel a lot. Often though, they lack subtlety. The newness is so overwhelming that there is no space for nuance. Only once you familiarize yourself with a state, either physical or mental, can you go deeper into it and start to explore it in its fullness. Just as with re-reading a book or re-watching a movie. The first time, you are focused on the plot and you mostly follow the most sensational part of it. And only the following times, you start to recognise the craftsmanship of the makers and the beauty of the language used or the particular way the image was shot.

The Japanese focus much more on the path, while the Westerners have a goal in mind

Related to the above is my impression that Japanese people, in general, are much less goal-oriented and much more process-oriented. In their view, the entire process of tying is a goal by itself. When tying, they do not have a particular end position in mind, but rather a journey that they want to go through with the model. I feel like they are much more sensitive and aware of a time aspect of the rope scene and they appreciate it much more.

I think that models in general, both in Japan and in the West, are more aware of this time dimension as it is very hard for the model to dissociate themselves from the process of being tied and only see the end result. While the tie is constructed, you have the visceral experience of having the rope caressing or constricting you, which is basically what you are looking for as a model (at least most of the time, I think). You don’t necessarily want to experience being in a particular position, but simply being tied and the states that are related to it. 

For a rigger, though, it might be different as he or she might be much more drawn to focus on the end result if they are not tuned in with the model. My guess is that the source of satisfaction from tying people might either be your impact on the model, which will draw you more into the here and now or succeeding with finishing the shape that you had in mind which can be more future-oriented. Especially in our, western, culture, we tend to appreciate the successes, but not the path that leads us to them causing people to be very goal-oriented. And I think that often spills into the way we do rope. 

Even models in the West can sometimes be goal-oriented. I often see scenes where the model is just standing there, bored and absent-minded, waiting for the rigger to finish the tie and put them in the air, which then seems to be the goal for both of them. It is always such a shame for me when I see it because I think that they miss a lot of experience.

The Japanese seem to have a more internalized notion of passing time but at the same time, it’s continuity. They don’t see the world as a series of achievements and failures but rather as a constant flow of things. And it is reflected in the way they do rope. It is about the process of putting the rope on and then off and about the mental journey that it brings you on. None of the stops on that journey is more important than the other. Their sequence and flow are what brings you joy.

For the Japanese, the model is at the centre of attention but as an object of beauty

In my experience and understanding so far, Japanese riggers pay a lot of attention to the model, but not in the same way as we would do it. They definitely understand very well that the model, including their emotional state, is a part of the tie. While Westerners often focus more on the form of the rope itself, forgetting about the model that is in it, Japanese sculpt using the model, both in the physical as well as in the mental dimension.

Having said that, Japanese riggers don’t tie for the model, the way that Westerners often do. They don’t tie to give this particular model a particular experience, but rather to achieve a certain universal effect using the model they have at hand. That is why, I think that the Japanese way of doing rope is very objectifying, even though the emotions of the model often are at the core of it. How I see it, is that in the way that Japanese riggers approach rope even emotions get objectified. 

Especially when you look at the Naka style, which is very aesthetically driven, as Naka-san developed it in close cooperation with and deeply influenced by Sugiura Norio, the emotion of the model is very much a visual output. The aesthetics of his or her emotional response is crucial. Of course, it comes from within them and the rigger looks for their real natural expression. But still, the external beauty of it is at the core of the rigger’s interest and not their internal emotional process. That is why, in my opinion, the model in her entirety, emotions and all, is treated by the rigger as a beautiful object. 

The concept of ‘muga’ applies as much to the model as it does to the rigger

There is a concept of muga, selflessness, that is often talked about in the context of the riggers. That the rigger should be empty at the beginning of the scene. He or she should have no expectations and they should let the expression of the model and the tying itself fill them in and flow through them.

Many people understand it in the way that the rigger should be empty so that they can be there for the model. So that they are not self-centred, but model-centred. That they let the expressions of the model guide them. I would venture a different theory, though.

In my opinion, both the model as well as the rigger should be muga. The model should not have any expectations of the rigger or of the tie either. He or she should be empty at the beginning of the scene and let the experience itself fill them with emotions and flow through them, emanating to the outside world and inspiring the rigger. The way that I see it, they both serve a higher purpose, which is performing a kinbaku scene. They both sacrifice themselves in their own ways in order to create something that they both find beautiful. In that sense, I see the model very much as an object in the context of a kinbaku scene, because it is not about them expressing themselves, but about being the vehicle through which the rigger can express the beauty of the Japanse rope bondage. 

In the West, we often focus a lot on expressing our personalities in rope, on making the model feel a particular emotion or on pleasing him or her. My impression is that for the Japanese it is not the case. They do end up doing all these things (maybe except for pleasing), but they are all a by-product of a kinbaku practice and not a goal by itself. The Japanese don't strive for self-expression in the way that we often do. Rather, it comes from within them when their ego is quiet and when the time for it comes.

 
Finally, I want to stress that I am not trying to criticise the people who don’t strive to do rope the Japanese way. I don’t think that one is better than the other. I am not even sure if I should call it ‘the Japanese way’ as I don’t think that there is one Japanese way in the same way that there is no one Western way. What I mostly talk about here in terms of Japanese rope is what I experienced myself, which is seeing Akira Naka and Suzuki Iroha, Hourai Kasumi, Shigonawa Bingo and Yoshida Yoi or learning from western teachers who are deeply influenced by traditional Japanese rope Masters. I do think that, even though generalizations are never entirely true, an effort taken in producing them can give one a lot of insights about the area that they are trying to generalize about.

And for me, if I practice an art coming from a certain culture, I usually want to learn as much as I can about the culture itself because I think that in order to get into the core of the practice, you need to take its cultural aspect into account as well. And only after internalising it, can you make it your own. 

People often criticise the Westerners who are trying to be too ‘Japanese’. For me, there is something beautiful about it, though. There is this art that fascinates me and that comes from a very different culture. To me, it must mean that there is some link between me and ‘them’. And maybe by exploring and trying to live that culture, I will uncover what that link is and therefore uncover and incorporate that part of myself that was so drawn to it in the first place. 

The unvoiced truth of your touch

Disclaimer: this is a highly personal post in which I talk about how I want to be treated. By no means, it is an opinion on how a Dominant should treat a submissive. Nor is it a critique of service tops in general. It is simply an account of my feelings in certain situations.

It’s unbelievable how much I can read from the way I am being touched by someone. How many unspoken desires and motifs can spring from under the tips of their fingers. How subtle but at the same clear those unuttered truths are.

Your touch can tell me everything about your desire for me. No matter how rough or reckless your gestures seem to be, it is very easy to read between them and see how much you actually want me. How your touch often might seem objectifying, but what it really screams is “I want you. I am dying to have you.” 

There are people who can beat you up in pulp and each of their powerful strikes reads like an insecure question: “Do you like it?” And there are people who can stroke your cheek gently and what you read them saying is “You’re mine and I will do whatever the fuck I want with you. And it won't be pleasant.”

The second type is what I fall for.

So don't think that you can fool me with your violent pose. I can see how you are trying to read if your actions are pleasurable to me if this is the way I want to be treated. It is clear that you are looking for the signs of enjoyment in me, that you are drinking greedily from the cup of my contentment. 

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad in wanting to please your partner. I don’t condemn you for wanting to give me the pleasure that I expressed my desire for. Your tender violence could be exactly what I need. By fulfilling my desire to be dominated, you could be giving me precisely what I want. 

And maybe sometimes you even do... But what I am certain about, is that by treating me this way, you will never make me yours. The moment I feel that you want me, I know that you’ve lost me. You handed the power over to me, no matter how much we want to pretend otherwise.

Being desired means holding the reins. If someone wants you, they will do anything to get you. They will do all the things that they know you want them to do to you. They will violate and hurt you. They will make you crawl on your knees and they will humiliate you. They will beat you up and make you beg to stop. But if underlying all this is their desire to please you, it becomes meaningless. An empty theatre of Dominance and submission. 

If this is the case, I can feel that all the things that are done to me happen only because I want it. One word from me and it would all stop and my Dominant would be at my feet. I stop being violated and start being served, in a twisted kind of way. And the thought of being served by my Dominant makes me cringe. Being served kills the sacrifice.

I love making sacrifices for the people I admire. I love to feel that I am serving them. I love to feel like I am giving up something for their pleasure. Sacrifice is one of my biggest fetishes. And what is the point of a sacrifice if it is not needed? 

When I feel like you are mine without any effort on my side, just because of the sheer fact of my existence, then I lose my appetite entirely. And I stop wanting to give you what you desire. 

Myself.

Even more so, I begin to wish to punish you for your weakness of falling for my whims. I start to torture you using your neediness. The door closes. By trying to win me over, you lose me irreversibly. 

I know that it is kind of cruel on my side. I know that I can be ruthless in my desire to be used and violated. I demand of my partners to truly disregard my needs. I demand of them to take pleasure in my real misery. I don’t want us to act like I am their property, I want to be their property. With everything that comes with it. 

It is a great responsibility because what is and isn’t too much for me becomes their decision. They need to decide how far we can go, without endangering my physical and emotional safety to an undesired level. I require them to know something impossible to know, that only I could know. I require them to know and state my limits. 

I would like to believe that what I desire is not a complete madness. That there are limits to the sacrifices that I will make. That I will see and voice those limits when they truly are unbreachable. 

I will never know until I get there, though. 

What I do know, is that being wanted makes me cold and cruel. Your avid and passionate touch turns me into stone. Your need to please me makes me indifferent and withdrawn.

I know that it's unfair and probably unhealthy. Especially, because I do not want my partners to truly not care about me. My desire is not to be a victim of abuse. But what I do want, is for your touch to show not even the slightest sign of worship. I want you to grab and grope me as your trophy and not as a precious gift. I want you to use me for your pleasure and disregard mine. I want you to demand sacrifices of me and make no concessions for my sake.

Only then, will I yield under your touch. Only then, will I relax into submission. And only then, will I feel truly recognised and appreciated for who I am. 

An object. A possession. A toy.

Lessons on the poetics of kinbaku from Barkas and Addie

A while ago I participated in a workshop by Barkas and Addie on their interpretation of Yukimura style at the beautiful Atelier Simonet in Paris. The number of inspiring concepts in that workshop was so enormous that it took me a while to process them into a condensed form. I finally did it and here are the most important thoughts that were born during or as a result of the workshop.

They are not general truths about kinbaku (do general truths about kinbaku even exist?), but rather concepts that can be inspiring and help one to get into a certain mindset. To me this workshop was eye-opening in many ways, the crown jewel being the first concept that I am going to talk about.

Rope bondage is in its essence a form of a dance

Throughout the workshop, we did exercises that were circling around this idea, even though we didn't talk about it specifically. One time, Barkas said that the aim of doing rope for him is 'to move his partner so that he is moved as a result'. And isn't that what dancing (at least partnered dancing) is?

When dancing, we move our bodies, put them in certain positions in order to evoke feelings in ourselves, in our partners and in the audience. In rope, we do exactly the same. And even though the music is not an essential part of a rope scene, we still move in a certain rhythm, certain tempo when tying. A good scene should be timed well, the ropes and the body manipulations coming at exactly the right moment and not randomly. Only then, you can get into the feeling of flow with your partner and get lost in the fluidity of your experience.

We dance to the silences and to the rhythms of our hearts. To the sounds of our breaths and the ropes caressing our bodies. We don't interpret the music that we hear outside of our bodies, but the one that is within us.

Another 'dancy' element in rope bondage is the presence of a leader (the rigger) and a follower (the model), which we also observe in many partnered dances. The rigger proposes to the model to put their body in a certain position, to which the model gives an emotional response. They respond with their interpretation of the position in a form of an emotional expression, which in turn moves the rigger.

One of the most beautiful and important concepts that I learned from my tango teachers was that in tango the leader provides a structure, a frame, into which the follower pours their emotions. The follower fills the dance with their passion, inspiring the leader and moving them emotionally. And it is an essential role of the follower as the leader already has to think about the structure of the steps and managing their and their partner's positions on the dancefloor. If they have to focus on filling the dance with emotions as well, it will be simply too much put on their plate. Therefore, it's the role of the follower to fill the empty frame of the steps with beauty. I like to think that in rope bondage similar rules apply.

Rope bondage is more about leading and following than it is about rope

One of the more interesting exercises, illustrating how much in the end rope bondage is about leading and following, was an exercise where we were tying without ropes. Barkas asked the riggers to tie one of the classic Yukimura style ties, but without using the ropes. It was a partial suspension with the model lying on her side, involving a TK and with one leg of the model raised. The challenge was not to force the position, but to use your will, the time, the context and the mind of your model in order to get them where you want them to be. Surprisingly, it worked very well.

When both partners are focused on each other, when they understand each other’s vocabulary (which was partly fixed here because of the context of a rope scene) and when the roles are clear, the rope becomes in a way redundant. Of course, using rope does give an opportunity to create shapes that without it would not be possible, and causes an enhancement of the experience, but they are not essential for creating the experience itself that being in rope is.

No matter how weird that might sound, rope is only a tool and not the central point of a rope scene. The central point is to experience the connection with each other, to move and to be moved, to assert and fill the roles of a rope bondage scene and see where it will bring you. And as Barkas showed us, you don’t necessarily need rope in order to achieve that.

The torture of Yukimura style is not about being captured, but about being (almost) free

Contrary to, for example, Naka style in which the model is often progressively bound tighter and tighter until at some point she can barely move, the ropes in Yukimura style are quite loose and the model has a lot of freedom. This creates an illusion of having a choice and as a result captures the mind of the model, not allowing him/her to let go. It's more difficult to accept what is happening to you when you constantly feel like you could almost free yourself.

In Naka style, the ropes often form a tight cage impossible to miss and the model feels very acutely that they are captured. Paradoxically, this immobilization of the body often allows the mind to let go and free itself.

Yukimura style feels more like a house arrest in which you wear an electronic bracelet tracking your location. There are moments when you feel like you are completely free, walking around the house, but then you touch the border of your invisible cage and you are reminded again that you are not. In this way, you relive the realization and drama of being captured each time when you are reminded of your captivity. Because of that, you are stuck in this experience, and it's very hard to let go and accept your faith.

Additionally, the combination of eroticism, shame and humiliation which are ever-present in Yukimura style together with capturing of the mind can be very powerful. Giving the model an illusion of freedom makes the shame and humiliation much harder to accept because they feel like they could almost escape it, and because of that, the feelings become even more intense.

Good technique is a means to gain the trust of the model

At certain points throughout the workshop, Barkas would give some technical tips and tricks to the riggers. What was interesting for me were not the tips themselves, as I'm not a rigger and I don't intend to be, but the reasons he gave for applying them, which was gaining the trust of your model and lulling them into a sense of security. If you have good technique and you know how to handle your rope and manipulate the body of your model, you seem like you really know what you are doing. And that is what the model needs in order to trust you.

As Addie mentioned, technical things in rope are something that you don't notice when they are done right, but you acutely notice when done wrong. It breaks your trust, as a model, because fiddling with rope and doing unnecessary movements gives an impression that the rigger doesn't know what he or she is doing. And that definitely makes the model doubt whether they should put their health, and possibly life, in the hands of this person.

I like this approach to stressing the importance of good technique to the riggers because it gives the ‘why’ that makes sense and has a depth to it. You don’t want your technique to be good in order to impress someone or to stroke your ego. You want it because it is needed in order to gain the trust of your model, which in turn will result in amazing scenes.

Once again, the models and their reactions should be at the centre of attention

This notion comes back over and over again in my learning, yet so little riggers apply it. It doesn't mean that you tie for the model but that your goal is to elicit a reaction and not just tie a certain pattern.

Barkas told us an interesting story of how he was trying to learn one of the classic ties of Yukimura sensei and how he kept getting it wrong, but he didn't know why. He would think that he tied the tie perfectly and then Yukimura sensei would come and tell him that it's wrong again, adjust the rope a couple of millimetres and then walk away, content.

Barkas couldn't figure out how to repeat the exact pattern of Yukimura sensei successfully since it seemed like he was so deadly precise. Until one day when sensei was showing him the tie again, he started to look at the face of the model instead of the ropes. And then everything became clear. It was not a pattern that Yukimura sensei was looking for, but the expression on the face of the model. If he achieved the result that he was looking for, he was content. The pattern was not always exactly the same, it would change depending on the day and the model, but the end expression was.

So please riggers, remember to look at your models when you create shapes with their bodies. The models are a part of the tie and only if they fill your ropes with their being, will your tie become a perfection.

Rope scenes are Other Spaces where the reality is governed by different rules

During the workshop Barkas mentioned at some point that in his opinion rope scenes are heterotopias. In terms of Foucault definition:

Heterotopia is a certain cultural, institutional and discursive space that is somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. - Wikipedia

Looking at the above description it's hard not to agree with him. Entering a rope scene transports you into another dimension, in a way. In principle, you still are in the same real tangible world, in a room or any other physical space where the rope scene takes place, but at the same time, your and your partner’s minds travel somewhere completely else.

Rope allows you to let go of your day-to-day worries and immerse yourself exclusively in your sensations and the connection with your partner. It takes away the physical freedom of the model, often causing them to go inwards and confront what's inside of them and what they were trying to avoid in their daily lives. As for the rigger, I can imagine that it also frees their mind as they become hyper-focused on the model and because of that let go of everything else.

Also, the rules and norms of everyday life don't apply in ropes. It's a special space where it is ok to take away the other person's freedom and at the same time to be intimate with them, to open up fully to the other person and allow them to penetrate or even violate you. It's a space where you can let go of the social norms and adopt new (often D/s-governed) ones. What is interesting is that through rope any space can become a heterotopia. Once we enter into a rope scene in a certain space, we transform it into something ‘other’, which is governed by different rules and where time and space are distorted.

According to Foucault, the function of the heterotopia is unfolding between two extremes: between providing an illusion that exposes the real world as still more illusory, and providing a space of perfection to compensate for the flaws of real life. I think that in rope we can see both these extremes and anything in between. On one hand, by creating an illusion of certain situations (being captured, violated) it elicits emotions in us, which feel real, even though the threat is not. Thanks to that, it lets us reflect on the nature of emotions in general and might give us some space to evaluate what we feel in real life as well. On the other hand, it gives us an opportunity to get lost in this perfect moment of connection, to forget about everyday life and experience a pure moment of connection with another human being.

Silence is also music (or there is no such thing as silence)

At some point, Barkas was recalling a story of a composition by American experimental composer John Cage, entitled 4’33’’ in which the musicians do not play their instruments during the entire duration of the piece and the music is created out of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. The point of the composer was to show that any sounds may constitute music.

I think that another interesting thing about this piece is that the sounds of the environment indeed become music for the listeners because their attitude is that of listening to a piece of music. And because of this change of perspective, they become much more sensitive and attentive to sound, and they start to notice and listen to something that they would normally ignore.

One of the things that Barkas was trying to make us realize is that in rope there is no such thing as lack of tying (even if the rigger does not make any movements). Throughout the duration of the scene, each position of the rigger has a meaning and communicates something to the model, making them feel. A break in tying or a lack of movement is also a form of communication. It also makes the model feel.

The same way as when musicians didn’t play, the audience started to listen to what is around them, when you don’t actively move the model emotionally, they start to be moved by their own emotions. You provide space for them to feel what is inside them, and because of the context of taking part in a rope scene and being highly attentive to what they are feeling, they go there. And it can be a very powerful experience. Therefore, the rigger does not always need to induce the emotions on the model by constantly moving their body or adding more rope. By stepping aside a bit and letting them experience the ‘silence’, they can also make them feel a lot. It can be difficult to step back sometimes, but ultimately it can facilitate an even more powerful scene.

We will never be able to read each other 100% correctly and that's ok

We also talked about the fact that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to tell 100% what is happening in the head of your partner, but it is alright because such accuracy is not needed. When tying together, we both tell ourselves stories about what is happening to us and to the other person. We also try to read the story of the other, guessing from their body language what is happening to them. Not all of these guesses will be correct, but as long as they are not completely off and you can get the general direction of where your partner is, you can try to direct them where you want them to go.

You will never find out for sure if you succeeded, though (you can always ask afterwards but then their recollections might already be distorted because of your question). Like with a book or a poem, the moment your actions leave your body and try to influence the other, they start to live their own life. Your initial purpose is dead and the model starts to interpret them in their own way, like a person who reads a poem would. Most of the time your intention will be preserved in some part but new meanings will be added to it. And that is beautiful.

It always reminds me of the fact that even in the most intimate moments between the two people, you can never become one. There is always this barrier of the two minds getting close to each other, but never close enough. It can make you feel sad and lonely, but it can also make you appreciate how special it is when for a short moment you do manage to get close.

Even though what Barkas and Addie were showing us was so different from the rope that I usually practice, there were also some repeating themes from other teachings that I followed, like the focus on the reactions of the model instead of the ties, the importance of breaks in tying, the importance of good technique, the strong D/s element in the bondage and the eroticism of it.

It seems to me that Yukimura style in Barkas interpretation is extremely focused on mental domination and manipulating the emotions of the model, more than on the actual ties. Personally, I find it absolutely fascinating and thrilling. I love how because of the simplicity of the rope in this style, the entire focus is on the model and the art of creating something beautiful with their emotions. And I love the recognition of the beauty that is in the shame and humiliation.

This workshop showed me that, indeed, there is a lot of poetry in kinbaku. It made me slow down and see the beauty in the details. It made me think of what kinbaku is and what it isn’t, and reorganize my own ideas about it. And because it was so different from what I usually do, it enriched my practice of kinbaku in new and unexpected ways. And I am grateful to Addie and Barkas for that.

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.

Sometimes, I wish that you’d kiss me more

I don't dare to tell you that, because I don't want you to think that I'm greedy (which I am) or ungrateful (which I am not).

I do cherish every single moment when your soft lips touch mine like it's my last moment on Earth. In fact, at that moment, I wish that it was the last one. I wish that I could just stay like that forever, captured in an illusion of us together, loving and tender.

And because I am greedy, I want more of it. I want more taste of that romance, because it feels so, so good when you are soft to me. So good, that I freeze when it happens, afraid that even the slightest of my movements might make you change your mind. Hoping that maybe if I remain still, you won't notice how much pleasure you are giving me, and continue longer.

I think that you know exactly how much your kisses mean to me, though, and that is why you are granting me that privilege so rarely. And I'm glad that you do. I'm glad that it's you who is deciding when and how I am going to receive pleasure from you. And that you are so frugal when rationing it. I'm glad that your mind is so strong and composed when mine is squishy and soft and restless. 

Because if I could, all I would do, would be to kiss you. I would bathe in the taste of your lips day after day after day until I would grow so sick of it that I wouldn't want to taste them ever again and I would lose your kisses forever.

Sometimes, I wish that you'd kiss me more and I'm glad that my wishes are not what guides your choices. I'm glad that you are so relentless in not giving me what I want. I'm glad that my disappointment and desperation is what gives pleasure to you.

Because underneath that layer of neediness and softness, there is the me who needs to prove herself to deserve tenderness. There is the me who only appreciates what requires effort and hardship. The me who needs a constant challenge.   

And I know that it's not easy to be that challenge. 

I can't help but wonder, though, are you treating me this way because you know that scarcity is what I need, even though it's the abundance that I want? Are you catering to my deeper needs, the ones that I wouldn't express, but that actually need fulfilment? Do you want the tenderness and romance as much as I do on the surface, but you're just smarter than to give it to me?

Or… Do you simply not care about me, and are you kind to me from time to time out of pity, just enough to keep me coming back, but not enough to ever satisfy me? Is cruelty all you care about and are your kisses a necessary evil, a prize that I'm granted for 'good' behaviour, and that you generously put up with when you feel that it’s time for it? 

These are the questions that cross my mind when I am getting desperate about the fact that I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that you've truly deeply kissed me. And when I am thinking about how much I enjoy and admire this fact and how devoted to you it makes me feel.

I hope that I will never learn the answers to these questions because I need them all to be positive. And that's impossible, I know. Or is it? 

It would be impossible, once I've heard the answers, but as long as I don't, I can believe them all to be true. Sometimes, I can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. I'm one of those, you know? Like with the Schrödinger's cat, as long as I don't open the box, all the possibilities are equally true and valid. And I need them to be.

Because sometimes, I need to believe that you don't care about me, otherwise the foundations of our dynamic would fall apart. And other times, I need to believe that you do, because otherwise what is between us would be a simple abuse and I would be its naive victim.

The uncertainty is what holds it all together. And even though I often wish it would go away, I know that it's a cowardly wish for safety. And like with the kisses, fulfilling it would take away from me what I really want. 

Sometimes I wish that you'd kiss me more, but I hope that you never will.

Lessons on shame, objectification and humiliation in rope from Soptik and Door

Recently, I've been a model for an amazing workshop by Soptik on objectification and humiliation in rope. He asked me to be his partner because, as he says, I'm a 'perfect object'. I guess that what he means by that is that I let people do anything to me without fighting back. And I enjoy it. It was very interesting to be able to show and share with people the states in which I love to be, but also in which I am at my most vulnerable. 

I think that teaching objectification and humiliation is a difficult undertaking. Much more difficult than teaching techniques how to tie. It's all about playing the emotions of your model, and having a command of human emotions is so much more complicated than having a command of rope.

It was the first time that I've given a workshop like that and since it was emotionally very intense, it was quite hard for me to formulate my thoughts on the topics that we’ve taught real-time. I did my best, but still many interesting thoughts emerged in my head only when processing it later. So many that I will probably spend more than one writing on them. But here is a start. 

On objectification 

Objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. - Wikipedia

In theory, it's the most severe form of lowering someone's status. In practice though, it can be much easier to take than humiliation or degradation. That is because it can put you in this state of 'not being' in which you can detach from your feelings and experiences. When someone objectifies you, you can truly become an object in your mind as well and your ego doesn't get in the way anymore. You go to this quiet place where you just exist, and let things happen to you but without affecting you. 

This was also the experience of most of the models, which I find truly fascinating. Despite being so different we basically all went to the same place in our heads. 

Suffering as an object is suffering alone

The first exercise that we performed was tying the models into household objects. I was turned into a chair and left like that while the rest of the participants started tying, having someone occasionally sitting on me.

After a while, the position got really challenging and I began truly suffering. The experience though was very different from the typical suffering in semenawa ties. The traditional suffering in kinbaku is done for the rigger while he is there, witnessing you in it. And it makes things very different and in some ways easier (but in others not).

When your rigger is with you, you're staying more on the edge, I think. You are more aware of what is happening to you and you hope that he will put you out of your misery soon. He is seeing you and therefore you also see yourself through his eyes and are more aware of your suffering. At the same time, his presence makes it easier to go through the hardship because you know that you are doing it for him and you are being appreciated. 

Here, I was all alone with my suffering. It was a byproduct and not the aim. There was nobody who cared about what was happening to me (at least that is how I felt like, in reality, my partner was having me in his sight most of the time). In a way, my suffering was pointless. That made it harder to go through on one hand as I didn't have the energy of rigger's appreciation to lift me up. On the other hand, being left alone with it made it easier to accept and easier to surrender. There was no hope for me. I was a mere object and all that was left for me was to accept my faith. 

There are not many things that are more hurtful than not being seen

There are many ways to objectify someone, which was exactly what Soptik was trying to teach. We did exercises on turning people into actual usable objects, on sexual objectification and on turning models into living sculptures and objects of admiration. Those different states were also eliciting different reactions in different models. Some caused arousal, some sadness, some going quiet and some desperation.

In general, I love to be objectified. I love to be used for someone’s pleasure, in any capacity they see fit. It gives me a lot of satisfaction and at the same time frees me from worrying whether my actions are according to the other person's wishes. I have no initiative of my own, therefore no way of making mistakes. But there is one experience in the realm of objectification that can leave me truly shattered. And that is being looked at but not seen. Especially, when it's done by someone by whom I desperately want to be seen. 

In one of the exercises, Soptik was teaching the riggers how to look at your model as a mere object. We were standing in one place and the riggers were walking around us and observing each detail of our body like we were at an auction and they were about to buy us. This kind of look makes you embarrassed at first. The sheer fact that someone dares to look at you that way, and that you allow them to do that, makes you question your worth. As long as they don’t look into your face though, it is not painful. It makes you uncomfortable and slightly anxious, but not hurt. Everything changes when they look straight into your eyes, but don’t see you. 

The moment when they turn their look at your face, you become hopeful. You start wishing that they will finally look into your eyes and see the person that you are. That they will stop assessing you like a piece of meat and really look at you, your inside and not your outside. You can't help but expect and anticipate it in a glimpse of a second and when you meet their cold stare, your heart is shattered. 

It hurts so much to be denied something as fundamental as being looked into the eyes and be seen. Somehow, at that moment it is not possible to switch off the feeling mode and become only a body. Being so close, and yet so far away, from meeting someone’s sight makes you extremely aware of that little person inside you yearning to be elevated back to the status of a human being. And when it is not happening, it hurts. A lot.  

As a sucker for emotional pain, I can’t say how much I appreciate the ability of someone to treat me like that. I can imagine that it is not easy to look at someone this way, but the amount of suffering that such a simple skill can generate is truly remarkable, so it's worth practising. 

There is no shame in being an object

In one of the exercises, the task was to sexually objectify your model. The riggers had to tie us in a position that makes us as sexually available as possible, at the same time giving us the feeling of being objectified. I was basically turned into a sex doll with my arms in a TK, thighs tied together behind my back, legs spread as wide as possible and a fabric over my head on which Soptik drew a new face for me. He also cut a hole in the fabric for my mouth and put a ring gag in it so that it stayed open. Finally, he tied my breasts, so that they became prominent and swollen. Real sex doll. 

The interesting thing was that even though I was so exposed and in a way humiliated (at least to me being so explicitly sexual and ready for use is usually humiliating), I didn't feel that way. That is because I didn't feel like a person, I felt like a doll. And a doll is not ashamed of being looked at or used. That is what it is for. 

At the end of the exercise, everyone was untied and sharing their experiences and I was still sitting there with my wide-open mouth and a doll face on which Soptik drew tears. Those tears truly reflected how I felt, like an abandoned doll, sad that nobody is paying attention to it. But even though I was exposed in front of everyone and unable to speak, I didn't feel ashamed. 

Usually, I feel a lot of shame when being publicly exposed, especially with my breasts tied like that. But now it wasn't me who was in that position. By losing my face to a piece of fabric, I also lost my shame and dignity. It was my body they could see, but not me. There is no point in feeling shame when nobody expects you to act with decency when you have no agency. 

Shame can only be born out of situations that you have some influence over, when you feel personally responsible for it and when your dignity is at stake. You are doing something indecent, but at least you are ashamed of it. It saves your face in a way. Here, I didn't have a face to save.

On shame and humiliation 

Humiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It is an emotion felt by a person whose social status, either by force or willingly, has just decreased. - Wikipedia

Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self, withdrawal motivations, and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. - Wikipedia

There is a thin line between shame and humiliation. What for some people is only shameful, for others might already be humiliating or even degrading. What shame and humiliation have in common is that they require an act from a position of someone being a person, in contrast to being an object. They also might be much more mentally impactful in the long term than objectification. 

I think that it's because while it's easy to contain the experience of being objectified within the scene and detach from it afterwards because of it being so far from how you usually feel about yourself, it's much more difficult to detach from what you've experienced in a humiliation scene. The reason for that is that humiliation play uses the image that you have of yourself as a person against you. Therefore, it's something that is much more personal and that you need to be much more cautious about. 

Humiliation play needs good negotiations, aftercare and sometimes even ‘precare’

We've spent a long time at the beginning of the second day of the workshop, discussing all kinds of precautions that you need to take before you get into a scene involving shaming, and even more so humiliation. As a top, you need to get a good understanding of where the feeling of self-worth of the bottom comes from and which parts of it can and can't be toyed with. If you as a bottom have any triggers or deep anxieties that you know shouldn't be messed with, this is the time to talk about it. 

You also need to make sure that you will have time and space for good aftercare and that it's clear for both of you what would such aftercare entail. While for some scenes it's ok to just hug and part your ways, here it's really important to make sure that you both leave the scene the way you started it, not feeling bad about yourself (both in case of tops as well as bottoms).

Finally, I mentioned before that there are certain things that are better not toyed with and sensitive topics are better left out of this kind play. But… Some people (like me) like to be kicked exactly in places where it hurts the most. And that's ok as long as both you and your partner are aware of the risks that you are taking. In such case it might also be a good idea to do some ‘precare’, to ensure the other person beforehand that their insecurities that are going to be dissected soon have no grounding in reality and to make ground for the aftercare that will come later. As a top, say some good things that you can come back to after the scene. This is what we did with Soptik for example, when we played with my intelligence (or lack thereof) which is one of the things that I can be insecure about and it worked great in restoring my feeling of self-worth after the scene.

Little things make all the difference

Bringing humiliation or shame (or objectification for that matter) into your tying is about small gestures. It's not about what you do, but how you do it. 

We started and ended the day with ties that were very similar in terms of the position of my body (partial suspension exposing my crotch), but which gave me very different experiences, because of small details. 

The first one was in a way more 'light'. I was tied with one leg up and open and one on the floor with a lot of possibilities for movement. It gave me a constant feeling that I could almost hide the parts of my body (crotch) that I didn't want to be exposed. I was on the verge of feeling decent, getting in and out of it, depending on whether I thought that my foot can hide my crotch or not. Soptik kept the mood of the scene playful. He toyed with my embarrassment. I felt like he put me in this shameful position to entertain him, but also so that I have fun myself, and not to put me down. I didn't feel humiliated at all, but I did feel embarrassed and ashamed about what people could see. Still, I felt ashamed about the position that I am in, but not of myself.

The mood of the second scene was very different, even though the tie itself was similar. From the start Soptik was constantly putting my head down, not letting me look at him. Apparently, putting someone’s head lower than their heart puts them almost automatically in a state of submission. It was the case for me. I immediately felt subdued to him and because of that less prone to try and change the position, even if it was leaving me exposed. At the same time, I felt like the fact that I wasn’t fighting him was depriving me of even more dignity. 

Also, the way he was interacting with me was different, he wasn’t playful anymore. He was intentionally showing me that I am less of a human than he is. That he can do to me what he wants, ridicule me in front of all the workshop participants and there is nothing I can do about it. The tie was also more and more constricting my movements, not only leaving me feeling humiliated, but also helpless. Like there is no escape for me from that state. 

I think that making someone feel helpless really helps with humiliation. Not necessarily physically helpless, but more so mentally. Making them feel less of themselves because they are not preventing what is happening to them, but at the same time overpowering them so much that they won’t. 

And the switch in the intention in order to do that is really not that big. It is in small details of how you treat the other person and not necessarily in tying different things. 

You can't humiliate an object 

The thing about humiliation is that it undermines one’s sense of worth. The concept of self-worth is only there if the person you play with feels like a person. If they went into the mental space of being an object, they won’t feel humiliated anymore.

It was very tangible for me when we did an exercise with tying face rope in a deforming way. Having your face deformed, being made ugly, is a very humiliating experience for most people. However, there is a very subtle difference between deforming one’s face, which is humiliating and taking away one’s face, which is more objectifying. 

For example, if you tie a lot of rope around somebody’s head, covering it entirely, you make them lose their face completely and become more like a puppet. Especially if you tie their eyes as well, it is very easy for them to go into an ‘object’ headspace. On the other hand, if you tie the rope in such a way that the attributes of the face, eyes, nose, mouth, are still present but distorted, it gives much more humiliating experience. They still have a face, but it is made ugly. What intensifies the feeling is being made aware of it over and over again, for example by being presented with one’s reflection or being touched where the rope is so that they can feel how distorted they are. 

So if you want to stay in the realm of humiliation, you need to stay focused on your partner and observe whether they are not hiding in ‘safe space’ of being an object. You have to keep reminding them that they are a human, but a lesser one.

It is all happening in the head of the model

Humiliation, shame, embarrassment are all highly personal and context-dependent feelings. To be able to control them, you need to be able to get into the head of the model. To observe him/her and learn what makes them tick. 

I also think that, contrary to objectification, tools for inducing which are quite objective, humiliation and shame are very subjective and dependent on the 'willingness' of the model to go with their mind where the rigger is suggesting them to go. Possibly there are certain things that are objectively humiliating. Usually, though, they are rather on the intense side which brings them more into the degradation realm, the next stage after humiliation. 

In general, a lot of what is happening during a shame or humiliation scene depends on a story that the model is telling herself/himself in their head. The actions of the rigger are only a catalyst for it. Therefore, the more the rigger knows the model, the better, as they can approximate more accurately what is happening in their heads. 

At the same time, the model also has quite a lot of power over whether they want to go the route of humiliation or shame or not. Do they believe that what is currently done to them is shameful or humiliating? Or can they talk themselves out of it? The more context of the model's story the rigger knows, the easier it is to make them believe. 

The rigger is also part of the context. For example, while I might not be ashamed of getting aroused when playing with my sexual partner (I basically always am, though), getting aroused during a scene with a stranger might be very shameful. So even observing the model playing with others might not provide you with the necessary information. 

Humiliation is one of those things where it's really about an intimate interaction between the two people and getting to know each other's darkest secrets. It might take time to build tools to execute it, but if it's your thing, it's definitely worth the effort.

I guess that from the length of this writing (and it is still not all) you can figure out how dear the topic of humiliation and objectification is to my heart and how amazing it was to be able to show it to other people together with Soptik (who definitely is an artist in the realm of inducing it on people). It is so personal that it was hard to define for myself what could be interesting to contribute as a model in such a workshop. There is still much more to tell on the subject, but I hope that we were able to show at least part of what it means to us and that I conveyed some of it here.

You like your cruel games

Sometimes I wonder if his cruelty has any borders. And what's wrong with me for being drawn exactly to that cruelty? He is capable of doing things to me that are beyond my imagination. Showing me that I will go further than I ever thought is physically or mentally possible. And then even further than that. I will stretch my limits so thinly that single strings begin to snap, just to catch a glimpse of entertainment in his eyes. Just to amuse him for a little while.

But it's not only about that. It's also about seeing how far I can go. He is enabling me to explore uncharted territories that I would never have been able to reach without him. He is bringing me to places in my head that are far beyond my reach. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time. Exciting, because I love new experiences and crossing what I thought are my limits. Terrifying, because what if I am not as strong as I thought I am? What if at some point I snap?

Prologue

Recently, he began to expand our play beyond the short intense moments when we see each other. First, by putting a chastity belt on me, he made me physically unable to orgasm for 40 days that were in between our planned encounters. And it worked. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to come.

In the beginning, it was quite enjoyable. It made the presence of his will in my life constant, even though he wasn't there. It turned every sexual experience with my other partners into a reason for me to feel used and miserable (with their knowledge and agreement to proceed regardless of my handicap). It expanded his control over my life far beyond where it was before, and at the same time made me accept it because I knew that it's a sacrifice that I needed to make in order to get somewhere where I've never been before. In the end, though, I was feeling quite desperate.

I am an extremely sensual person. The sensation of having a penis filling up my pussy would basically always make me come multiple times during intercourse. Sex is a very important part of my life and as it turns out, orgasms are an inherent part of sex for me. Being such an avid receiver of pleasure was a part of my identity. And now he took it away. 

It made me feel frustrated and desperate. It made me feel like I am starting to lose myself. And I didn't even know for what. Well… Actually, I knew. I was doing it for him. I was doing it because it's what he decided that I should go through. But I wasn't sure if I really could take it. Especially without his presence in my day to day life. I didn't know if I can go through it all alone, and at the same time not crack entirely under the weight of the experience. 

I did survive those 40 days, but it was much more difficult than I anticipated. I waited desperately to see him again, even though I wasn't sure what's going to happen and if he is going to release me from my ordeal.

He did, but not in the way that I expected. As always, he didn't give me what I wanted and at the same time, he did. He made me realize that what I think I want, is not what I really want, and what I really want is to be made utterly desperate and mindfucked beyond imagination, at the same time not being able to handle it and enjoying it tremendously.

The main act

The moment that I waited for so long, finally came. I saw him again. I was both excited and terrified about it. As I always am when I am about to see him. I knew that he is going to use my neediness against me. I just didn't know, how. And I wasn't sure what I am more afraid of, him allowing me to orgasm or not?

As it turned out, it didn't matter because both can be a means of torture.

One morning, he finally decided that he might let me come from having him inside me, which was a great privilege for me. He can easily switch off my ability to feel bodily sensations or my consciousness, so any time he doesn't do it really feels like a blessing. He ordered me to ride him, which is my least favourite sex position (too much feeling like I am in control), but it didn't matter at that moment. He taught me not to expect too much and cherish even slight scraps of his grace. 

“I could feel him and I might be allowed to come feeling him,”  that thought offered more possibilities for happiness than I could have ever imagined. Of course, he didn't grant me that joy easily.

He made me beg for an orgasm through a gag, torturing me by requiring me to be inventive in my pleading and at the same time increasing the intensity of my sensual experiences, so that all I could think about was how good it feels to have him inside me and how horny I am right now. Somehow I did manage to come up with more and more humiliating ways to beg for an orgasm, which I didn't even think he understood exactly because I was splattering through the gag, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that I kept humiliating myself by mumbling through the gag and drooling all over my breasts like a total idiot.

The thing with me is that I love humiliation, but I also have quite a big ego. I enjoy debasing myself, but only after I'm being cornered into it. And no matter how many times I do it, it never gets easier. Each time I have to call myself names, I am going through an inner struggle, I am battling my pride. I will do it and it will make me wet, but only if I really have no other choice. Only if the price of disobedience is too high to pay. And still, with each uttered sentence, the fight starts all over again.  

Finally, after a while of entertaining himself with my debasement, he said that I am allowed to come. At first, he set a time limit of 5 seconds after his permission, which I obviously couldn't fulfil and failing at which was only making me more and more aroused, as after each 'failure' he would put the chastity belt on and increase the intensity, and the ball of pulsating pleasure growing bigger and bigger inside of me. 

I realised that when I am going to ask him again, I really needed to feel like I am almost there. He hated me playing it safe. I had to get really close, risking going crazy with frustration if he says ‘no’. But he didn't. Finally, I managed to orgasm within the time limit.

But he didn't let me savour this long-awaited orgasm much. 

The moment he started giving me orgasms, he didn't stop. He made me come over and over again, each time increasing the intensity and each time making me dread it more and more. What was a pleasure that I longed for so much, now became my torture. 

The thing with my hypnotically induced orgasms is that he made them extremely intense. He worked on me a couple of times, describing in detail how they would fill my entire body with waves of pleasure and how with each orgasm they would intensify. And they did. As it turns out, having intense waves of pleasure shaking your body over and over again is exhausting to the point of being unbearable. Especially when you keep on bouncing on somebody's cock.

I was sweaty and my pussy was extremely wet. My thighs were hurting from jumping on him that I wasn't allowed to stop and my mouth was hurting from the gag. I was trembling and I felt streams of sweat and drool running down my body.

"You can always beg me to stop giving you orgasms. But remember that it might be for a long time," he said and escalated the intensity even further.  

Of course! How could I not have thought about it? How come I always take whatever is being thrown at me without even considering the possibility of asking him to stop until he mentions it?

So I started to beg him to stop, interchangeably with begging for more orgasms, when I felt like coming without permission was becoming too much of a risk. He was amused by my confusion and each time I begged him to stop, he would ask if I am sure about it, since it might be for really long. 

And I wasn't sure. I didn't want to be deprived of pleasure again for such a long time. But I also felt like I can't stand any more orgasms right now.  

At some point, I broke. I became sure that at this moment I really can’t take any more. Even if it meant no orgasms for long. I was not able to pay the price. I also realized that I won’t win. He wanted to drive me to say it. He wanted to make me beg him for the exact thing that I dreaded so much. And he did. I was just a puppet, dancing on the strings held by him for the sake of his amusement. 

Epilogue

Oh, how I sometimes fear the power that he has over me… How he can direct me to play out any scenario that he has in his twisted mind. How I will follow obediently and knowingly into the trap that he set for me when he leaves me no other choice but to follow through. The only thing that could spare me being his mercy which rarely shows it’s head. 

He gave me what I dreamed of and then made me choke with it. And now, he made me dream of it again. 

After it was all finished, I took a shower to clean myself up from the mess that I’ve become and then kneeled in front of him in my usual position with hands behind my back.

“So how many times did you come?” he asked, looking at me intently.

“I don’t know Sir, ten maybe,” I answered embarrassed.

“Ten, you say. And how many times did you say ‘thank you’?”

My heart stopped at this question. I didn’t say ‘thank you’ even once. I was so tormented from the very beginning, that it didn’t even cross my mind.

“I didn’t say it at all Sir. I am sorry,” I said frozen from fear.

“Oh, you will be,” he said with his cold and cruel voice, ”So for ten orgasms without saying ‘thank you’ I would say that ten more months without an orgasm sounds fair, doesn’t it?”

My eyes grew huge from terror. “He can’t be serious right now,” a desperate hopeless thought crossed my mind.

But knowing him so far, I couldn't exclude the possibility that he was.

He is a mirror that shows me all the parts of me that I wish I didn’t see. He makes me trip over my vices over and over again. And no matter how much I don’t want to admit it with myself, I love his cruelty. It makes me wet to just think that he truly is capable of casually taking away my orgasms for such a long time. How he can execute his power over me in cold blood, makes me melt. He left me cornered by my own mind, wishing for having my freedom back and at the same time knowing that nothing tastes as good as being a slave to his whims.

Provided to YouTube by TuneCore Mean · Nicole Dollanganger Natural Born Losers ℗ 2015 Eerie Organization Released on: 2015-10-09 Auto-generated by YouTube.

I just think that I should be used

Some people might call me a slut, but I don't think that I am one. As far as I understand, being a slut is about enjoying sex and having as much of it as possible because you have pleasure from it. I don't care about my pleasure. I just think that I should be used. Other people should have pleasure from my body. That's their right.

My threshold for physical closeness is very low. As soon as I kind of like you, I will probably let you fuck me. If you realise that it is a possibility and how easy it is to get, I won't say no, because I'll think that you deserve it, just because you’ve requested it. Whether I want it is out of the question.

I think that it comes from the notion that I acquired as a teenager, that I need to repay people for physical closeness. And that payment should come in their ability to access my body. My need for physical touch and closeness is huge. Not necessarily sexual, just hugging, being caressed, kissed. Just feeling someone close to me. Being intimate.

In my youth, I thought that I can't just get it from someone without giving something in return. Somehow, I didn't feel like being close to me might be of any value to other people. So I needed to give them something more of myself to deserve the closeness. And sex was an easy and obvious currency.

So I learned to treat my body as an object and to use it to get an illusion of being close to someone. An illusion, not because they didn't want to be close to me, but because I couldn't really be close to them. Usually, because they weren't the people who I truly wanted to be close with. And those with whom I did, I was too terrified of rejection to ask.

I became a master of my way of seducing people by giving them all my attention. If I decided that I want someone to like me, I would do anything to please them. I still do it and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is no pretending in there, they do really have all my attention at that time. The problem is that it's not sustainable and when it ends, it hurts. You can't be so focused on the other person 24/7 and not lose them and/or yourself. You should never forget about yourself in your quest to please.

Or shouldn't you? Getting to know more and more about BDSM and especially about D/s, I begin to realise that all these imprints that I have and that I used to see as negative, and which are negative in a normal world with ‘normal’ norms, are perfect for creating a successful D/s dynamic. With the right partner, my inability to be something else than a sexual object, my need to please and my hyper-focused attention on the other, are assets. As long as we both know what we are exploring and what we're both giving up and we agree to it, there is nothing negative about it.

Because can’t my unwillingness to explore my own sexual needs, and the desire to be a sexual object, be a need on its own? Why is it considered unhealthy to get pleasure not from my own physical pleasure, but from pleasing the other? Why isn’t it ok to suppress my own personal expression as a price of moulding myself to the image that someone else might have designed for me?

In today's western society all the above are definitely not valued and understood. We strive to develop the individual self, to express ourselves fully and to be emotionally independent of other people as much as possible. This kind of attitude is often portrayed as an ideal that we should all be striving for. But what if my individual expression is a lack thereof? What if I prefer to please other people than to please myself? What if I prefer to focus on other people than to focus on myself?

And don’t get me wrong, I am not an altruistic mother Teresa. I do have a lot of individual self-expression in my daily life. I do have goals, strong opinions about things and I like some people and strongly dislike others. But in sex, I just want to be used. I just want my partners to enjoy me and I want to please them as much as I can. I want to be their perfect toy. My only need is for them not to care about my needs.

It seems great at first sight, but actually it is a lot to ask. It is easy to get from someone who truly doesn’t care about you, but when they start to like you (or even worse, love you), they usually start to care about what you want. And that becomes very problematic for me.

Before I discovered kink, I had a lot of random sex with people who didn't care about me, because it was very easy to be objectified by them. But when I would start to be intimate with someone, having sex with them would become more and more difficult. They would begin to ask me too many questions about what I want. It was becoming too much about me. And when I started to think about it, I wasn't even sure if I want sex at all. I begin to wonder what should I want. What would they want me to want? Why don't I have needs on my own? What's wrong with me?

There is definitely something wrong with me (maybe 'wrong' is not the right world, out of the ordinary is better), but I don't necessarily want to change it. I found a place where the weird notions in my head can be a source of pleasure without guilt. I finally understand and accept that I enjoy the feeling that being used gives me, proxying my own pleasure using the pleasure of the other, the attention that I am getting from my user and how natural they become with me when they realise that they can just do whatever they want with me and they don't need to care about my needs. My whole life I've been working towards becoming a perfect toy (and I still am) without even realising it, and finally, I am starting to see value in my predisposition instead of considering myself a freak.

Because I just think that I should be used. Is that too much to ask for?

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.

On the pleasure of feeling shame

Disclaimer: I'm writing from a position of a woman because that's the experience that I have. Of course, shame is not only a female experience and I'm not trying to say that is, but that's my personal angle of looking at it.

Shame is a problematic emotion. In principle, it is a negative and not desirable one, of course. Especially for women, shame about our sexuality is deeply ingrained in us culturally, partly as a means of control. If you can control someone's sexuality, you can very easily gain control over other aspects of their lives, as you thwart their self-expression and don't allow them to look for the answers by themselves (yes, I do kind of say that everything, in the end, is about sex).

Since currently, we are in the age of women gaining back the power, being shameless sexually is often seen as a form of a fight against the patriarchy. And in a way it is. By not conforming to social norms, not feeling shame when society tells you to, you show your independence and freedom to live according to your own rules.

But feeling shame doesn't always have to be something negative. Especially in kink. As with many other negative emotions that people normally don't want to experience, kink gives us tools and context to experiment with them without (theoretically) the normal repercussions that would come with it. Context of kink gives you a controlled environment in which you can explore the places to which you normally wouldn't want to go. And that's exactly what I find so appealing about it.

The way I often feel about shame is that it kind of alleviates guilt in me. It allows me to do things that I normally wouldn't do because I would feel that they are not decent (even though I know that deep inside I would enjoy them). But when I'm doing them while feeling ashamed, I feel like part of the blame is gone, because (at least) I am feeling ashamed. Especially when I am ashamed of something that I was 'forced' to do (while secretly enjoying it), like being exposed in rope, for example. I can enjoy the pleasure of being seen and (maybe even) desired, without taking the responsibility for being so openly sexual, keeping a little bit of decency.

Of course, as an independent emancipated young woman of the XXIst century, I could say that I should get rid of these old school ideas of sexuality being something shameful. That I should own my needs and desires and stop hiding away behind a wall of shame. But should I really?

If the (mostly Slavic) culture that I grew up in equipped me with all these notions about what is decent and what not for a woman, allowing me to experience amazing states of misery, why not use it to my advantage? Maybe it is old school to be an innocent damsel in distress when it comes to sex, but how romantic! And have I mentioned that romance is what I live for? So why should I consciously deprive myself of the experiences that I desire in the name of proving something to someone?

I guess that what I am trying to say is that we shouldn't make shame a shameful feeling. Which I feel like it kind of is recently, especially for women in the western European culture (I can't say about other cultures as I haven't been exposed to them long enough). I think that consciously choosing to experience shame, even though it is not something admired in our society is a sign of bravery and not of conforming to stereotypes.

And there is a beauty in shame. In this confusion about breaking the rules, which feels both enjoyable and wrong at the same time. In eating the forbidden fruit. In uncovering something that should stay covered. And also in submitting to the norms of the crowd and feeling the power of the group pressure over you, crushing you under the feeling of inappropriateness. There is a pleasure to be found in allowing yourself to stop fighting against other people trying to dictate your choices and for once let their views take control, while at the same time doing something against what they deem appropriate. It's this perverse feeling of being a 'fallen woman' who lost her status but desperately wants it back.

Rules and norms give one structures and scenarios opening endless possibilities for play. Especially the old school notions are a great tool for that because these archetypes are so deeply ingrained in us that it is very easy to tap into them. Being ashamed of one’s desires, group shaming, shame about being exposed and about one's actions are all situations that we've been surrounded by throughout our lives, even if haven't actively participated in them. I love to play with those notions and use them to my advantage. To let myself live the stories of women who were here before me. To experience their pain and their pleasures.

I wouldn't want to let it go in order to prove how independent and developed I am as a woman. And I don't think that I should have to do that. Sex and play is not a political statement. It's a way of connecting to myself and to my partners in a very pure form. It's a means for exploration of my body and mind. Exploring traditional notions is a very interesting thing to do, even if only as a way of facing them truly and letting them go. Playing with them gives one power over them. It allows one to see them for what they are, states of mind that one gets in and out of, initially unconsciously, but as one grows more aware of them, more and more consciously.

I guess that if I really wanted to, I could stop being so easily ashamed. Only that I don't. Instead, I prefer to take what my upbringing gave me and twist it to the limits. Put my shame in a pressure cooker and see what comes out of it. It is such a fascinating feeling and it brings so much joy to me and my partners. Let's enjoy it while we can. But on our terms.

What I find so alluring in being hypnotized

Recently, I have experienced hypnosis in completely different circumstances from what I am used to, and the ease in which I followed and how much I enjoyed it, made me realise that I am much more into it than I anticipated. I knew that I loved it being used as a tool for asserting more control over me, but this experience made me understand better what I love about hypnosis in particular and that it might be much more my kink than I previously thought.

The feeling of complete letting go

One of the things that are amazing about being in a hypnotic trance is how much it allows you to let go of all the noise that is in your head and around you and just follow the voice of your partner. Even though you are under the control of the hypnotist, you are actually feeling unbelievably free. All your worries are gone, everything disappears, you become calm and centred. At the same time, you are extremely aware of what is happening to you, as soon as it is brought to your attention. Your attention span narrows, which really frees your mind from all the chatter, which is usually happening inside you. It is so relaxing to just let it go and follow the soothing voice of the person who is guiding you. You feel safe and taken care of.

Total control of the other person over you

I love the fact that it allows me not only to give someone my body to play with but also my mind. It makes me feel like I have barely any control left. In a normal D/s scenario, you do things that your Dominant wants you to do because you want to obey his orders. But it is still happening out of your own free will. Here, you do them, because that is what he tells your mind to do. Of course, you still have the control over whether you want to let them hypnotize you (depending on the dynamic), but past that point, you are all theirs.

It is scary, but at the same time really exciting to have someone have so much power over you. To give them your mind to toy with. For them to be able to tap into your unconscious and control you from that point makes you feel like a real human toy. And it is amazing how much possibilities for entertainment I am able to provide them with this way.

Being able to do and experience impossible things

Thanks to hypnosis I was able to experience things that I did not know were possible. And that were not available to me in normal circumstances. Like experiencing a full body orgasm just from hearing someone counting, or losing the sense of touch or the ability to speak. It can literally turn you into an object without will and consciousness, giving your partner the possibility of using you without your participation in it.

It is unbelievable how much control over your sensation one can tap into using hypnosis. How much they can suggest to your unconscious. How much they can increase or decrease the intensity of your experiences by suggesting certain things.

I love exploring new, uncharted territories and discovering previously unknown bodily experiences and I don’t think that there are many things giving more possibilities in that realm than hypnosis.

The loss of will

As far as I experienced, it is true that I can’t be made to do things that I really don’t want to do. But that limit is much further than you think it is. You will do things against your conscious will, but not against your deeply rooted instincts and principles.

And it is interesting how much hypnosis can reveal about your real desires. For example, I hate to look silly or be made stupid in general. If I could, I wouldn’t do things that make me look this way. On the other hand, I love to be forced into humiliation, which making someone look silly is a great tool for. That is why I will let someone make me do stupid things using hypnosis, even though consciously I really don't want to do them.

Still, the things that make me look silly are not the easiest ones to plant in my head, as there is some resistance in me to follow those suggestions. Anything sexual or sexually objectifying on the other hand is as easy as it can get, which reveals what I am really into, even if I wouldn’t want someone to know about it.

So in a way, when in hypnosis you will lose your will because you will follow what your partner tells you, even though your consciousness says that it is not what you want. Again, as I've already said, hypnosis can be a tool of an immense control, which I personally love about it.

The opening-up

Letting someone peek into your head and mess with it is a deeply intimate thing to do. It requires trust and vulnerability and openness. They might discover (or almost surely will) things that you would rather keep secret. You have to either trust them that they won't go there or trust that if they do, they won't use it against you.

For me when I let someone hypnotize me, I am putting all my guards down. Also, because of how open and vulnerable I am in general and because of my tendency to hand myself over very easily to people who want to accept it. I don't think that this level of vulnerability has to always be there during a hypnotic play, but it is always there in my case. It's frightening but also beautiful to be so open, to let someone dive so deeply into your head. And it's one of the reasons why I enjoy hypnosis so much. Because it allows for that openness to happen.

I was quite amazed by how easy I followed into a trance state with someone whom I barely knew. How easy it was to let go and just let him guide me into the experience that he wanted to give me. How seamlessly it happened. True, I trusted him, but should I do it so easily? Part of why I did it was because I so much wanted the experience again. Before it happened I didn’t even realize how much I crave to be in this state. I was playing with fire, as always, and it created magic again. I know that I might burn myself at some point, but how worth the experience of absolute loss of control is of those burns.

Going through a rope injury-induced existential crisis

What was bound to happen, has happened. I got injured when doing rope. It’s not your typical wrist drop, but some weird strain of the muscles in my shoulder, which in turn compresses my nerves. At least that is what the physiotherapist told me. The technicalities are beside the point of this writing though (although I do realize that it is an interesting topic in itself). What I want to talk about is how it makes me feel, because writing about stuff usually helps me get over it and in this case getting over it is highly advisable as I am going a bit crazy.

I feel like my body is betraying me

Rope makes you feel invincible in a way. When you get out of a difficult position that you’ve been able to sustain for much longer than you thought you would, you feel amazing. You feel strong and empowered. You feel like you can take anything.

The truth is that you don’t. Even if your mind doesn’t have limitations, your body certainly does. Right now I am feeling its fragility very acutely. And I hate it. I hate it because I feel stupid and incompetent. I feel like the injury is my failure. How could I not have felt it happening? How could I push myself beyond my limits? And why do I have limits? Why can’t I be able to just take anything that is thrown at me?

I have a strong and intimate relationship with my body. I love moving it and feeling it move. I love all the sensations that it is able to provide me with. I love using it to become stronger. I love yoga and dancing. I love to exercise and to feel my muscles working. And right now it is all gone.

I put it all on standby because currently, I feel like I don’t know my body at all. It’s like when you’ve been in a relationship with someone that you trusted for a really long time and suddenly that person betrays your trust. You start to doubt everything they do. I feel the same about my body now. And it is killing me.

I feel like I am betraying my body

On the other hand, my body is just a tool. It is me who commands it and I am aware that I haven’t taken good care of it. I wasn’t listening enough to it. I missed it’s crying for help. And the injury is the result of it.

And even now, although what I should be doing is taking care of it and tending to it, so that it can recover properly, I can’t get myself to do it. I don’t accept the injury. I am just waiting for it to be over, but I can’t get to love my body in this state. I can only love it when it is in perfect shape, otherwise, it’s a nuisance that I have to put up with. Which is the case at this moment.

I realize that it is a betrayal on my side. I shouldn’t be so harsh to it. I should love it for better and for worse. I should cherish it for the fact that it allowed me to do such crazy things as rope bondage for so long. And I should accept and love it also when it is not perfect. Also when it needs me, not only when I am needing it. But I just… don't.

I am afraid that I will never be able to tie again in the same way as I used to

And should I even? Isn’t doing rope bondage the way that I do it essentially an assault on my poor body? Is it a loving thing to do at all? Can I do it in a way that will not cause another injury at some point? And if I think I can’t, should I get back to it?

These are scary questions because I realize that I don’t want to stop doing rope. And I won’t. But at the same time, I don’t know if I will be able to feel loving towards myself and doing rope at the same time.
I definitely have self-destructive tendencies and I am hoping that kink and rope are a safe way to unwind them without being really self-destructive. But is it really true?

Lately, I've been trying to push myself less and to be more accepting of myself in general. And I am not sure if doing rope is really helping me with that. Or if doing it is just tending to my old overly critical and striving for perfection self.

On the other hand, maybe indeed I won’t be tying in the same way and it is good. Maybe I will start to listen to myself more. Maybe next time I will say stop before it is too late. Maybe I will become a tiny bit more cautious and I will be able to balance a bit better the need to push with pulling out when I need to.
The only thing that I really hope for is that I won’t lose my ability to let go and give myself completely to the experience. Because that would kill my modelling.

I am afraid that people won’t want to tie with me anymore

This is another thing that really worries me. Because I feel like I failed as a bottom for letting myself to be pushed too far. And why would anybody want to tie with a bottom who is a failure? Am I unsafe to play with? Will they trust me that next time I won’t let them injure me?

I do realize that the above worries are a bit overdrawn. People make mistakes and I am a person. It wasn’t only me who is responsible for the injury and with this reasoning I should also not want to tie with the rope top who caused it, which is definitely not the case. I don’t blame them and I see it as an accident and a lesson to be learned from. That's when I look at it from their perspective. When I look at it from my perspective, though, I feel like it was an ultimate failure proving that I am incompetent and risky.

Additionally, I am worried that I will become more cautious and because of that less fun to tie with. I know that caring for my safety is important and calling for the position to be changed or for the scene to end is nothing to be ashamed of. My rational mind knows it. My feelings, though, tell me something different in such situations. They tell me that I am spoiling the fun and that I am a disappointment. And that if I will want to quit, my rigger will find someone else who doesn’t and therefore is more fun to be around. I know that only an asshole person would do something like that and if they do, I probably shouldn’t tie with them at all. But still, my irrational worry is there to entertain my thoughts.

Doing mild things doesn’t satisfy me

My injury is only in my left arm, so I actually could still do many things in rope. I could practice leg ties with people, do mild floorwork, maybe even some suspensions as long as they don’t involve my arm.

It doesn’t satisfy me at all, though.

And here is where my perfectionism comes into play. Because I don’t want to be limited in any way. If I and my rigger can’t do everything that we might feel like doing, then I don’t want to do anything at all. I can either do all kinds of ties or none. There is nothing in between for me that I would find even mildly satisfying. If I can’t let go completely (and currently I can’t because of my condition) I don’t want to tie at all.
Additionally, I don’t want my rigger to have to adjust to my condition. Why should they? Why would they want to tie with broken me anyway when they have hoards of fit models that could do much better than me?

I know that in the reasoning above I miss the part that people who tie with me want to tie with me and not just tie a body. So they might be perfectly ok with tending to my limitations as long as we are doing something together. To me, it feels like I am failing them, though, and ruining their experience because of my limitations. And that they must be doing a favour to me by still wanting to tie, but they definitely are doing it out of pity and they aren't enjoying it.

On the other hand, maybe it is ok if I don’t want to tie until I am perfectly fit. If I feel like I am not able to enjoy it if I can’t let go fully then why should I force it? My way of bottoming is very intense and immersive and if I won’t be getting that intensity because of the injury, maybe it is better just to wait and get back to it on my terms.

I can’t come up with something that I could do that would make me feel like I am still developing even though I am not actively being tied

So here I am, rope-deprived, watching all the rope pictures passing by online and thinking about the times when I was in one of those positions. Wondering, when will I be back? Being envious of all the models with their healthy bodies developing their skills, while I am getting rusty and out of shape.

Since I started rope, I have been on a spree of self-discovery. Basically each session would teach me something new and exciting about myself, my body, rope or the connection with my partners. I’ve been tying 2-3 times every week (at least), I’ve been taking workshops and starting to teach myself. I’ve been tying with amazing people.

I felt like I am on a path of discovering what rope bottoming is for me and what can I bring to the table as a model. I’ve been beginning to feel empowered and like I am getting my own voice in rope. And now it all stopped. I haven’t had a proper rope experience for weeks now and I don’t feel like lab time and dry practice is teaching me anything in the realm that I am interested in. I feel stuck and I don’t know what to do about it.

Maybe it is one of the most important experiences that I’ve had in rope so far, though?

Falling in love for the first time is easy. You jump headfirst into the experience, oblivious to the possible consequences in the shape of disappointment and heartbreak that might be awaiting you. You immerse yourself fully in the feeling of infatuation, every second spent with your lover feeling like a blessing.

This is how my relationship with rope has been until now. It’s an amazing experience, but it doesn’t last forever. Sooner or later things get tougher, you break up or you go through a crisis. Sooner or later you get hurt by the person you love. And, ironically, it is often those moments that shape you the most. It is those moments when you gain the perspective and understanding, which in the end allow you to go even deeper. If you dare.

So who knows? Maybe it is one of the most important lessons that I am going to learn about rope. Being outside of rope. I can’t tell right now, because I am still in the middle of it, but I feel that it might be. Because so far things have been too easy for me. And ease is never a good teacher. Right now I definitely am in a sort of a crisis, which I hope is going to make me understand what I am doing in rope even better.
To me, there is much more meaning in opening up to someone, after you’ve been hurt. It’s a proof of courage and strength if you are able to open up your heart over and over again, despite knowing how it might end up.

Of course, each time it happens, you become wiser. Hopefully, you learn from your mistakes and you get to know yourself better and chose your partners wiser. But still, love is uncertain and the risk of heartbreak is always there. You either accept it and open yourself up to experience love fully again or you close and deprive yourself of that amazing feeling, but also prevent the possible heartbreak.

In relationships, I’ve always chosen for the first option. And I feel that in rope it will be the same. In time I will tie again and I will give myself fully again. Maybe, in the beginning, I will be a bit more cautious. And maybe I will learn that it is ok to be. And that my riggers still want to tie with me despite it. Or maybe because of it? Because they will be able to trust me even more? Who knows? Only time will tell.