The Opportunity Cost Of Bondage Aesthetics
I like a good bit of artistic rope bondage as well as the next guy, possibly even more than some of them.
Looking at the pictures, I mean.
When it’s just me and my girl and some rope, I always get distracted. I mean, she’s right there, usually naked, shivering a little, and I’m, what? On minute seven of winding rope around her boobs? Doesn’t that nipple need biting? Or, a couple of clothespins? Don’t I have better things I could be doing right now?
What I’m saying is, about halfway through anything but the most simple rope bondage, I tend to realize there’s something else I’d rather be doing to this tied-up woman, if only she was properly tied up already. A couple of pairs of leather cuffs, plus four short lengths of chain with snaps on both ends, will do 90% of all bondage tasks in ninety seconds or less.
Which is why Kaya’s comments on rope bondage made me laugh when I saw them:
Master wanted to do some bondage so he fiddled around with the rope for awhile.
I’m a finicky bondage fanatic. Bondage for the sake of bondage doesn’t do much for me. I tend to find the process of rope work to be tedious, downright boring sometimes, and if it takes too long, I’ll get foot-stomping impatient.
Cuffs and chains are so much faster and easier, don’tcha think?
My interest in bondage begins and ends at restraining me for the purposes of fucking my brains out, painfully please, and me not being able to do a damn thing about it. Or securing me to something, somewhere, so’s he can beat me and I can’t do anything about it.
Bondage for the purposes of looking pretty in rope? Meh. I can take it or leave it.
I take it, whenever he’s in the mood. He was in the mood.
I suppose that all sounds unappreciative or something. It’s not meant to be. I soak up any kind of attention he wants to pay to me, especially if there is a kinky-flair behind that attention. I just would rather spend time doing other kinky things than having to stand there while he winds rope around and makes knots.
Elsewhere on Bondage Blog:
well I cannot agree, since I love complicated and aesthetic bondage… while I really cannot stand simple and easy restraints.
Totally agree: I want my girl restrained, and I love doing that with rope, but I have a few quick knots, some coils, and that’s enough.
Agreed. it’s an incredily beautifull sight to see a skillfully tied up girl. even watching a bondage-master (prefereably japanese) doing it is watching art in the making. But like I rather take a photo of a beautyful sunset than start an oil painting, that’ll never be a big work of art, I prefer faster ways of tying a woman down, if I do it myself.
I totally know what you mean. Hell, when my girl’s naked, and she’s expecting that spanking or nipple twisting, and her pussy’s right there, surely there are better things I could be doing besides biting her neck or the rest of that Pansy-ass “foreplay” stuff. What’s the purpose of it, anyway? “Arousal”? A squirt of j-lube takes care of 90% of the lubrication needs of any sex scene anyway…
I trust you get my point. Actually, you and I have a lot in common- when she’s there all naked and articulate like, and I’m tying something relatively complex, I too get the urge to bite that nipple, or smack that ass, or bend her over and fuck that pussy. I guess the difference is that I just go ahead and do it…and then, if I feel like it, I’ll keep tying. Or I won’t. Why let rope bondage get in the way?
That’s what I see the problem as. It’s not that rope is slow; I start my “tie ’em up & fuck ’em” class (“rope for the impatiently kinky”) by “racing” a person with manacles to tie up wrists. After about 20 classes, no one’s ever gotten more than one manacle on-and by the end of te class, everybody can secure wrists that fast.
I remember doing a performance at a club which had most of the audience entranced. One guy, however, blurted out quite loudly “So…when’s he gonna fuck her?” I’ve thought about that question for a lot of years since, and I now know the answer, which I encourage every other rope top to emulate:
Whenever I damn well feel like it….
It is like those idiots who spend hours and hours on an 8 course meal at a 3-star restaurant.
I can eat exactly the same amount and be just as full on McDonalds in like 15 minutes for $10.
LOL, and I was just thinking about de gustibus non disputandem.
One of many reasons I love Graydancer. :)
I actually had a bottom of mine request leather cuffs once, just for variation. I raised an eyebrow but complied. I put them on his wrists and fumbled to adjust them to the proper notch. Then I stretched his arms out toward the attachment points — the D-rings wouldn’t reach them. I grabbed two more D-rings and hooked them onto the first ones. Still too far. I grabbed two more. When all was said and done, I looked at the guy and said, “You know, this would have been a lot faster if I had just used the damn rope.”
When someone tells me that rope bondage takes too long, my response is usually… Well, tie better.
Then again, there is something that’s very sexy about half-finished rope as well (as Gray mentions), or rope that’s been tied quickly and messily in order to get to other things in a hurry. (It’s kind of like sex that happens with a few articles of clothing still left on because, well, the sex was more important than taking off that other thigh-high sock.) If I’m the one in the rope, the last thing I want is to feel like I’m a bondage model being styled for a shoot (unless, y’know, I actually AM being styled for a shoot). Tie me like you mean it; I’m not a ming vase.
Ropework should have passion behind it. (At least if I’m involved.) If it feels like you’re doing it just to get it out of the way and do other things… well, it’s not going to be that interesting to your partner either.
WOW I miss rope! But seriously people — just tie better.
This is what I love most about BDSM–different people like different things. Personally, I appreciate both the rope that takes 45 minutes to wind its way properly around me and the cuffs that immobilize me in moments. As someone who does get off on bondage for bondage’s sake, the process of being restrained, no matter how long it takes, is always gloriously hot and sends me right off into subspace.
happy to think differently from the mass of casual bondagers so…
Lazlo: I have to disagree with you…
First off, I am such a person. I would gladly pay hundreds for a good meal rather than 10 bucks at McD’s: its not about the calories, or the sense of feeling full. I LIKE FOOD! I enjoy it when its skillfully prepared, with consideration of the flavour and so forth. I don’t enjoy deep fried cardboard and grey nondescript meat patties. Its not about the calories, or feeling full. Its about the sensations! Besides, a good barolo (for example) needs time to breathe, and even more to be appreciated. If I wanted to get drunk, I would buy wiskey. you may be so desensitized to food that you can’t tell the difference, but I am not. Who is the idiot? Not me, from my perspective.
So it is with bondage too. Its not always about getting your dick into a pussy (or any of the other permutaions of top&bottom). Building anticipation is good. The feelings from being denied release can be good too. Dominance doesn’t need sex to function or even be satisfying. It just needs control.
To me, someone being unable to wait for the ropes and losing control to his lusts is a dom who isn’t in control. Fun for some, not for others.
I gotta agree with you freakygeek, but sometimes, after eating steak and drinking fine wine for a long time, you just need to woof down a cheese burger and a coke.
Its the same with bondage. I love the look of complicated knots and ties but sometimes, you just want a fuck.
Or maybe he’s just a dom who isn’t all that interested in rope bondage. That hardly equals being “out of control”.
I would submit that a Dom who is too in control, on the other hand, can be one that is ultimately rather uninteresting. I’ve played with them. There’s no element of danger. If I’m being topped, I like the idea that the person who is topping me is always just a bit on the verge of losing control. I like to worry just a bit that I might actually be flayed flesh from bone if things go too far. :)
This is why I feel it’s so important that rope bondage is not antithetical to passion.
You know, at the time when “traditional” rope bondage (whatever that means) was supposedly begun, it was for military purposes in a country that lacked the natural resources to create metal restraints — it was for capture, and the different ties that were developed were created to be able to restrain a struggling captive in a manner that would be quick, effective, and allow for the least chance of escape. There was FIGHT involved. It wasn’t about pretty knots. There was no TIME to worry about how it looked. A warrior had to know his ties and be able to effect them without thought in the moment of capture. Practice your shit and when you have that hot girl in front of you, it will come out as muscle memory.
Tonight at the Slipper Room in NYC I’ll be performing and putting someone in a fully restraining hogtie in under thirty seconds. And I won’t be delicate about it. I’ll kick his knees out from behind when I want him down on the ground. And then I’ll push him over. First because that’s the way I like to tie, but second because the song I’m performing to is not that long. Utility.
Also, am I the only person who is pretty sure that Lazlo was being 100% sarcastic?
No, I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic. Hope so, anyway.
I was trying to make a point. My comments were meant as sarcastic, not to be taken literally. Anyone who prefers McDonald’s to a 3 star meal is not someone I want to hang out with.
Likewise, someone who can’t appreciate the energy exchange of a good, slow, beautiful sensual rope scene is someone I don’t want to tie.
/me gives Arden and Graydancer a cookie :)
VARIETY is the spice of life.
Sometimes that long slow tie is the right thing, other times the quick cuffing is right.
Hardest of all can be admiting after starting one direction or the other that it was the wrong decision and changing course. Good to be flexible, and have a variety of gear to play with.
A cookie! Yay!