Monk of Twisted Monk was at Salon d’Orleans recently to teach a small, private workshop on rope bondage for myself and a few colleagues. We had two male bodies to work with as we explored some advanced rope suspension and immobilization ties as well as predicament ties that incorporated the fabulous asshook.
Digging into rope again was so inspiring. I’ve been so focused lately on leather (and more recently latex) bondage that it’s been awfully rare for me to even bring rope into a scene. Monk, like me, also revels in the sensual energy of rope; he not only understands but talks about the tactile intimacy of rope in a way that I rarely hear from rope Tops, particularly males. As I uncoiled the hanks of hemp and let the coils drop to the floor with a prophetic thud as I prepared to tie on a woven suspension harness, I sighed with happiness.
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Earlier tonight, over IM, a play partner expressed an interest in rope. “Cool. We can do some rope next time we play,” I told him.
“Wow! You do rope bondage? Where did you learn?” he asked, surprised. (We’ve always done bondage play…but leather, rubber, mummification. Never rope. We’ve been playing for more than two years.)
As long as I’ve been practicing BDSM, I’ve been studying rope. Do a search on “hemp” in the MF Lobby and you’ll find a lot of posts with my name on it, including this one from June 2005. I’ve been a regular attendee at Shibaricon, graduated from Midori’s Rope Dojo (Sept 2007, NYC), attended countless public, private, and personal rope workshops (special thanks to Suzanne SxySadist and Dov for their mentoring), and have taught rope informally on numerous occasions. Several rope bondage books, including how-to titles by Bridgett Lee Harrington, The Knotty Boys, and Midori, as well as art books by Steven Speliotis grace my shelves and dozens of bondage blogs are bookmarked in my web browser. While I’ve never really had a “house slave” at Salon d’Orleans, I’ve had a few “rope practice bottoms” on call over the years for whenever I had an itch to try a particular rigging or just do some rope work for my own pleasure.
I also hand condition all the hemp rope I use in the studio myself. I buy it in heavy, rough spools and spend days subduing it until it’s the perfect strong, sensual frictive against the skin. I buy pre-“made” rope too and have a nice collection of unusual and exotic varieties: Thick, dark brown cotton (I call it my “fat baby rope”); flat, woven hemp (which I love for head and face bondage); luminous Bavarian hemp; gorgeous lengths spun from silk; and many, many more.
There aren’t many requests for rope bondage among the people who seek me out to play. Maybe that’s because I don’t talk about my rope work all that much…or at least not nearly in the way I talk about, say, leather or metal bondage. Seems to me a lot of people also dismiss rope as being either too time consuming or ineffective. It doesn’t have to be.
The thing is, a lot of people who say they do rope bondage actually kinda suck at it. They use cheap, crappy rope that’s not suited for people. They don’t really know any effective ties. They have no idea about the structural dynamics of rigging. Or it’s just plain ugly.
Not that all my rigging is photo perfect or superfast. While I’m not much into the endless “erotic macrame” rope work that’s like the equivalent of self-absorbed, noodling guitar solos, part of what I love about rope bondage is the methodical process of it. Sure, I can get you undeniably, inescapably bound — hogtie, anyone? or maybe a punishing hojojutsu restraint? — in under five minutes, easy. That’s fun stuff. But what really gets me going is the layering of several different ties, each one further restricting your movement, challenging you, until you’re a rope bound object wholly under my control.
Here are some photos I’ve taken of some of my rope work from the past two years.
