This post was inspired by a piece called How My Love for Female Domination Grew, written by fetish photographer and fellow sex writer, Dirk Hooper.
Presumably like a lot of people, I think my very first interests in bondage stemmed long before I even knew of its sexualized nature.
I have many memories of playing tie-up games growing up – we’d be playing cops and robbers and someone would produce a coil of rope or a roll of tape, and for some strange reason I didn’t so much mind “being caught” at that point!
In one particularly awkward memory, I recall encouraging the neighborhood kids to tie me up to their swing set, which unfortunately culminated with their Mom spotting me through their kitchen window and rushing out to untie me…
Discovering a friend of mine had a pair of toy handcuffs that I was welcome to borrow was a real treat as I spent the better part of an evening cuffing various body parts to the small, but sturdy table in my bedroom though I’m not sure if I ever had the guts to try locking them behind my back even with the handy safety latch within reach.
I mostly experimented with rope bondage, however, as I grew up in the Boy Scouts and learned everything there was to know about knots and lashing things together. Rope was something I had easy access to, resulting in many tie-up games with a friend in my patrol … to the extent that I recall him having to run and answer questions from my parents when they called out for me because I was tied up and we wanted to avoid discovery!
Of course, it wasn’t until I started exploring the Internet that I learned about the not so innocent side of bondage…
Back in those days, when we downloaded our porn a few lines at a time at painfully slow speeds, I would wait 5-10 minutes for a single picture of a scantily-clad woman and if I was lucky, she would be bound with rope or leather straps in a way that frankly made plain, old nudity just seem boring by comparison. I was instantly drawn to fetish imagery of tight corsets and thigh high boots, coupled with these restrictive poses where elbows frequently touched and booted ankles were melded tightly together with perfectly coiled ropes and strict leather straps.
Possibly because most of that early online experience was still text-based, I grew an early affinity towards stories about sex and bondage, and in particular this is how I first discovered the concept of self-bondage … which was immediately appealing considering that as a teenager, I didn’t exactly have anyone else to do the tying for me.
I’ve spoken accolades about it many times, but The Perils of Batgirl (by The Weatherman) was one of these first erotic tales that piqued my curiosity because it was covered so many kinky bases that were each incredibly arousing in their own way – fetish fashion and high heels, bondage with a partner, self-bondage, forced orgasms … it gave a whole new angle to the classic TV show that I loved growing up and I spent a lot of time fantasizing about that intricate rope bondage scene that Cheri put Amanda in, complete with weights to help ensure that her bondage remained taut…
‘I zink M’am’selle needs more rope,’ indeed! 😉
And so like a lot of kids growing up in the ’90s, most of my early sexual education was self-taught either in front of the computer late at night after my parents went to bed or playing with rope underneath my sheets, hoping that one of them wouldn’t walk in to find me exploring a new use for all of the knots that I’d learned while camping!
Eventually when I got old enough to have a credit card in my own name, I’d splurge on a purple ball gag (that tasted horrible) and a pair of handcuffs that I still own to this day. I recall that when they weren’t in use, I hid them above one of the ceiling tiles in my bedroom, which coincidentally had also been a convenient place to hide my weed that never did end up getting discovered. Of course, eventually my toy collection grew too big to hide in the ceiling and I branched out into other toys including my first pair of real leather restraints that I found on eBay and several pairs of nipple clamps that added an unexpected bite to my helplessness that I definitely didn’t quite understand at the time, yet couldn’t get enough of.
But don’t get me wrong, exploring my earliest kinks wasn’t all sore nipples and self-bound orgasms!
I certainly fought my share of shame and regret and feeling like an outcast as these bondage fantasies took their hold on me while I was just beginning to experience sexuality itself. I couldn’t tell you how many times post-orgasm that I denounced my kinky ways and swore to never open my toy box again, only to circle back with an increased drive a few weeks later.
One pivotal moment that will forever live in my brain is when my father walked in on me looking at bondage porn and dismissively told me, “You shouldn’t look at that stuff – people don’t do that stuff in real life.”
It turns out he was wrong, and mostly thanks to the Internet over the decades that followed, I’ve had the pleasure of finding many, many people who do this stuff in real life, and eventually I came to understand that kink isn’t weird and wanting to be tied up or spank people is perfectly healthy when done right between two consenting adults.
Today I can look back on the 20+ years that I’ve loved the art of bondage and I can appreciate it in a variety of different ways. I enjoy the frustration and helplessness and excitement that comes from restraint, and the flair that it adds to any sexual encounter. I also love how bondage serves as a physical expression of dominance over a submissive, and even visually how ropes and chains and straps can become a breathtaking and beautiful form of art against the skin or fetishwear of one’s choice.
There’s a special trust that has to exist for one person to submit their body to the bondage of another, not to mention a certain respect for the restraints themselves and the power that they hold. It’s sexy, and it’s intriguing, and it’s a little intoxicating … and it’s so much fun when you finally learn that you don’t have to be ashamed of enjoying it. 😀
