The SMITH Diaries Project

Ropes & Erotica: Turning on to the Art of Shibari

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

By Mistress Y

I’m back, writing to you from my dungeon after a long and prosperous school year. I’ve spent my last few months torturing my fellow schoolmates with misplaced modifiers and surveying the professors with a keen eye, determining which ones (female and male) were wearing lace panties to class.

I’ve always loved the idea of student/teacher affairs; it’s a role play fantasy that I have often entertained. In reality, I’ve never latched my fantasy onto any one of my professors. I’ve definitely assigned them Mater or Pater roles in my wanting to meet their approval and favor, but as of yet, my Wet Dream Professor usually resembles the latest movie star that has churned my butter. Cate Blanchett has been making guest appearances as of late.

After I finished my final papers and toasted the completion with my fellow aspiring writers, I took off to Chicago for a BDSM convention called Shibaricon. Shibari is a style of rope bondage that incorporates Japanese aesthetics with erotic intention. Its place in BDSM is akin to yoga in the domain of sports. The low impact, balance and suspension poses and breath-body mindfulness combine for an overall elated effect. Most rope bondage sites are filled with pretty fetish models bound in circus poses. These damsels in distress look good, but they’re a bit like the skinny gymnasts at the front of your yoga class who bend their legs behind their ears and levitate on the tips of their pinkies, while the rest of us are sweating in down dog. But, like yoga, rope bondage is not just for 90-pound contortionists, it can be done on everyone. In fact, after I came back from Shibaricon, I suspended my 77-year-old slave to test a newly learned format that resembles the architecture of the Brooklyn Bridge. I am always more impressed when I see photos of normal-weight men and women in Shibari. Curves and muscles are sexy, especially when accentuated in an asymmetric web of red hemp rope.

I love rope bondage. It’s one of my favorite activities in BDSM and I’ve sought out brilliant instructors, such as Midori and the Knotty Boys to learn how to tie effectively and safely. The rope itself is a perfect instrument. I like running it through my fingers, feeling its diameter and weight, judging its length, and testing the texture of soft cotton or slick nylon or fibrous hemp. The different kinds of rope produce a different effect on the bondage bottom. Rope is a utilitarian form of bondage. It’s inexpensive, easy to carry, and can fit to size. A well-crafted set of leather bondage cuffs can price around $200. The amount of rope needed to securely bind wrists is about five feet, less than five bucks at Home Depot. I am also pleased that my rope knowledge can be used in survival of a post-apocalyptic world gone to hell or camping. I can also wrap birthday presents in really neat ways.

Practitioners of Shibari consider it a form of martial art and it is a kind of erotic sport. The act of tying the body is foreplay. It’s not about passively accepting worship or stoically barking commands; instead it requires getting close to the partner, encircling them, binding their limbs into place. The grasping, touching, and maneuvering all develop a connection that leads to the activities that will be done to your partner’s body once it is bound. It can be done in a rough, take-down style or a sensual dance. I also love the challenge of puzzling the body together so that my partner cannot escape and yet is still in their comfort zone for erotic exchange. I play with some bottoms (people who like to be bound but don’t necessarily take on a submissive mentality—yeah, the differences in psyche are subtle and complicated) who enjoy trying to escape. I have a challenge for my Houdini’s: if they can escape my rope then they get to tie me up. It hasn’t happened yet.

Like other forms of sports, participants must be aware of safety precautions and bodily mechanics. For example, rope should never be tightly bound around joints and there should definitely be no pressure at all against the front of the neck. That is called a noose. No nooses. Sounds like common sense, yet every year there are accidents that make it to the newspaper causing everyone in the BDSM community to cringe.

So you get my drift; I love rope bondage enough to travel by plane on Memorial Day weekend to attend a conference. BDSM conventions are quite similar to a play by Beckett: profoundly existential, fetishistically repetitive, and, at times, hysterically absurd. Gender roles and social norms are tossed and reassigned at personal whim. Collars, floggers, and other symbolic adornments are brazenly displayed alongside the plastic ID cards that are printed with one-word names, often not real names, but names chosen to title their BDSM persona. By the way, if you haven’t done the detective work to find out who I am yet, don’t bother. I’ve contemplated revealing my identity but that would be so anticlimactic, so I plan to slip it in so casually you’d never notice. Oh wait, it’s already been done for me. Drats!

Back to Shibaricon. It just so happened that two other conventions were taking place in the same hotel: an ice-skating convention (which baffled me since there was no skating rink located anywhere close to the hotel; they were more Beckett than we!) and a dart-throwing convention (in which the players threw fake darts). And then there was us, 700 bondage nuts. The possibilities for cross-convention intermingling were frightening.

Shibaricon was comprised of a four-day bondage curriculum and evenings of “play time,” during which the attendees could practice and show off their craft. Classes were held from 9am to 6pm on various topics: hogties, predicament bondage, safety courses, breath training. The students came prepared with notepads and pencils and bags full of specialized hemp rope. After six hours of classes every day, I was exhausted. Every evening, when I finally made it down to the practice arena, I could barely run a lark’s head on my partner’s limbs so I chose to watch the amazing suspensions that were being rigged throughout the hotel’s conference rooms. I wandered through a landscape of trussed-up bodies, hovering from multiple jungle-gym frames. The rooms wafted of bliss and arousal. Nothing overtly sexual was taking place; it was just a group of adults sharing revelry in an engaging game. Smiles were abundant from the enjoyment of sensation, the same joy I recall every time I get a chance to scoop myself high into the air on a playground swing. It’s a chance to fly, to suspend belief for that while. In the mornings though, I awoke to the realization that I, and hundreds of others, had traveled to mid-America to learn to tie one another up.

And I thought the dart convention people were weird.

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8 responses

  1. ted taunt says:

    Welcome back! I thought the Jesus freaks had chased you off!

  2. Kevin says:

    Well worth the wait to hear new words from you Ms. Y. Thank you.

  3. Subdued says:

    Great to see you back writing here. Have really liked these essays.

  4. Ahu says:

    Hiya, back again. Cool. Really really good. Cheers
    Ahu

  5. Shibari-Blog Germany says:

    realy nice article…. you have bought it to the point…

  6. Sweet Larry says:

    Excellent Post. Pretty interesting as well.

  7. Aethonan says:

    Surprisingly interesting and well-written. It’s a relief to hear an intelligent, dryly humorous voice in a realm that often takes itself far too seriously. Thank you, and I look forward to reading more of your work.

  8. Dakota says:

    I found this article while researching for a book I’m writing, and while I freely admit I’m wet behind the ears when it comes to BDSM, my husband and I are exploring it and having a lot of fun along with way. Thanks!

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