Rolling Stone magazine has an interesting article on waterboarding as a kink. It features Elise Graves, the bondage aficionado I played with and posted about last week.
Waterboarding is certainly a more extreme kink, although I think its intensity can vary dramatically depending on how it’s done. I actually experienced it a couple of times a few years back, but not in an inverted position and not with a huge amount of water. I was basically horizontal and could lift my head slightly, which meant the water tended to drain away from my nose and mouth. I suspect that makes a big difference to the degree of terror induced. The coldness of the water triggered the mammalian diver reflex, which combined with bondage and a D/s dynamic created quite an unusual and intense headspace.
It’s a kink I could never have indulged in during the years when America was actually using the technique to torture prisoners. That’s not entirely logical – what I did in a Seattle playspace had no bearing on what the government did thousands of miles away – but it felt wrong and immoral to get sexual kicks from something that was being used in such a horrible way. When I did eventually try a lightweight version of it, years after Obama banned its usage on prisoners, we still avoided any kind of interrogation dynamic or roleplay. That seemed too close to a terrible reality.
Of course water and cloth is just one way to take someones breath away. As this Rodzo artwork shows, there are other options.