Tag: Bondage

Vista published a post recently over at her Sexual Destinies blog that caught me eye. She was writing about stress reactions and her feeling of panic when being blindfolded and gently restrained. I find those kind of reactions fascinating, as they can be simultaneously very intense and yet very illogical. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. There’s no right or wrong way to react to these situations. It’s just that in hindsight the strength of the reaction can seem very out of proportion to the specific stimulus that triggered it.

I’ve written about pain in the past, and commented on the fact that it’s not additive. A more intense pain in one location can distract from a mild pain elsewhere. The body has clearly evolved to direct attention to the single point that’s currently experiencing the greatest damage. Stress doesn’t seem to work that way. It is additive, each new stressful element building on the one before and pushing you closer to your panic threshold. This means that the final thing that tips someone over the edge may seem relatively minor when considered on its own.

I experienced this effect in a scene with Lydia a couple of months ago. We were doing some heavy bondage and CBT. She’d started with a rope harness, lashing my arms to my sides and pulling my legs into a frogtie. Over this she’d layered plastic wrap, carefully encasing my limbs and body, mummifying me completely from the neck to my toes. Not content with this level of restriction, she’d then wrapped my entire body in duct tape, creating a thicker encasing shell. The final touch was a duct tape gag and blindfold, rendering me mute and blind. The only thing uncovered was my cock, which she proceeded to slap and beat.

A year or two earlier we’d have never made it that far into the scene. I’d have been freaking out at the degree of restriction. But practice makes perfect and although it was intense, I was breathing through it and getting nicely spacey. Then my right hand started to get a little uncomfortable. It had moved under the wrapping and the wrist was pressing against the top of my hip bone. The absolute level of discomfort was very low, almost trivial, but it just tipped me over the edge. I started to lose perspective of where I was, my breathing became shallow and an overwhelming sense of ‘I need to deal with this now’ pushed aside me attempts to relax into the bondage. Lydia, expert that she is, spotted the change in my body instantly and removed the blindfold and gag. That was enough to bring me back, kill the panic, and let us deal with the situation.

Logically, in terms of possible things to panic about, a little muscle discomfort in my hand should have been well down the list. I was mummified in plastic wrap, had a duct taped head and someone was slapping my cock around with a pointy stick. They all sound like pretty good reasons to panic. Not a hand twinge akin to writers cramp. Yet that was the one thing that pushed me over the line. All the others had done the job of getting me close to it in the first place.

For an image I thought it’d be appropriate to run with something featuring mummification. In this case it’s a Divine Bitches shoot featuring Mistress Madeline and Kade, plus a lot of fabric wrap.

I love the moments as I drive back from a session. I almost always play late, so it’s often near midnight when I’m returning home. The city is lit-up with the neon of bars and the strings of streetlights. I’m floating along in my little cocoon of endorphins and adrenalin, wrapped in leather and metal, enjoying each blip of power as I navigate the corridor of signals and lights. I’ll often drive further than I have to, extending my route to sustain the moment. There’s a thrill to looking out at other people, silently enjoying themselves behind the windows of bars and restaurants. A sense of shared pleasure and also my secret pleasure.

I always play something on the stereo during these drives, and it’s always something very approachable. I don’t want difficult, complex or challenging. Emotional, simple and perhaps a touch cliched works just fine. My current favorite is U2’s With or Without You. It’s got a very hooky bass line, great guitar parts and lyrics which are actually pretty appropriate in places.

My hands are tied, my body bruised
She got me with nothing to win
And nothing else to lose

It works wonderfully when I’m drifting along feeling emotional and buzzed after a session.

Picking an image for this post was a little tricky. I considered going with this, which is appropriate in the use of the car, but a crash doesn’t exactly capture the mood I’m tying to portray. So instead I’ll take my cue from the U2 lyric. His hands are tied, and if he’s not bruised yet, it may well be in his future.

I found both images on the excellent Femdom Style Counsel tumblr.

Here’s a disturbing and ambiguous image. Which makes it my favorite sort of image.

It reminds me of the show Dexter, although in this case with a female lead. There’s a plastic wrapped room, a bound figure, a trickle of blood and a slightly distant and emotionally neutral figure capturing a trophy of the moment. I found it on the Selina Minx’s Musings tumblr, but I can’t find an original source for it. I’d love to know the initial context for the shot. There’s a real beauty in the symmetry of the figures, spatially and otherwise.