Then I was watching a YouTube video and saw a little animated ad of a guy using a back scrubber to put Axe body wash on, which cross-faded into a girl draping a flogger over her back.

It then went on to say “The cleaner you are, the dirtier you get.” If only the flogger she had weren’t so crappy.

“Your Personal Kink”

Contact:
Clarisse Thorn
773.761.9200
clarisse at leatherarchives dot org

The Leather Archives & Museum, a cultural center in Chicago devoted to preserving the history of alternative sexuality, wants your help documenting the experiences of BDSMers who do not currently participate in the public BDSM subculture. If you enjoy kinky sex but do NOT attend adult sexuality workshops, dungeon play parties, sex parties, or educational meetups, then the goal of this project is to learn about your experiences through an interview. (Other projects have different goals; if you’re interested in the Leather Archives and frequently participate in public BDSM events, feel free to get in touch and ask about our other work!)

Interviews will be recorded and stored at the Chicago location of the Leather Archives & Museum. They are not being collected for a specific purpose at this time, but may be used for future museum exhibits and will be made available to researchers and scholars who use the museum’s collections for study.

We respect your privacy. Anything you tell us will be kept under an anonymous name, if you prefer, or your real name only if you are comfortable with such disclosure. Interviews will be recorded and stored at the Chicago location of the Leather Archives & Museum, and they may be used to build museum exhibits or to assist researchers.

Interviews may be conducted in any way that makes you feel comfortable — by email, phone, an online voice service such as Skype, or even in person if you happen to live in Chicago. Again, we completely respect your privacy; if you get in touch, we will gladly work with you to figure out how to keep you feeling safe and comfortable throughout our discussions. The point person for this project is Clarisse Thorn, who can be reached by email at [ clarisse at leatherarchives dot org ]. You can also leave her a voice message if you call the Leather Archives at 773.761.9200.

ABOUT THE LEATHER ARCHIVES & MUSEUM: The Leather Archives & Museum is devoted to preserving the history of alternative sexuality. By sharing your experience with the Leather Archives & Museum, you will be helping us document sexual practices that are not widely recorded or understood. The Leather Archives & Museum is located at 6418 N. Greenview Avenue in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL, USA; you can visit the website at www.leatherarchives.org.

In a nutshell, it wasn’t really that bad. There were only a couple of cringe-worthy moments in the 2.5-hour process, and those were fleeting.

A friend of mine described having a tattoo done as being similar to a very intense violet wand session. I can see the parallel, even more so due to the sound that the tattoo gun makes being somewhat like an electric crackle. Overall it felt like what it was: something very pointy being vibrated against my skin very fast. It didn’t really feel like it was actually piercing the flesh — probably because it was going past the epidermis, but just enough to get to the dermis.

There were also two types of needles/guns used. At some point in the process, I think during shading, he used a gun that sounded a lot different — quieter, and a more… “watery” sound, as if it were submerged. I asked about that, and he said it was a rotary tattoo gun. Doing a bit more research, I see that there are four different types of gun — rotary, coil, liner, and shader. I’m not sure which of these was used on me; it’s quite possible all four were, and some just sounded the same as others. The rotary gun had more of a pressure, “grinding” sort of feeling to it, with a hint of an abrasive feeling. I’d classify it as less painful than the other gun by just a bit.

Just as painful as the needle, if not more so (probably more so), was the nearly constant wiping-away that the artist did, to remove excess ink, and any blood that came up. The skin was already raw from the poking, so adding abrasion to that wasn’t terribly comfortable. And it was a different sort of pain, so it was difficult to keep in the headspace.

Being into BDSM definitely helped with the process. Specifically, it helped to practice pain processing such as breathing techniques and focusing. I even found myself going into brief bouts of headspace many times during the process. My girlfriend was there to lend support, but due to being in and out of headspace so much, I was pretty unresponsive. That, combined with the fact that I was looking off into space and hardly ever looked at her, made her think that I was angry with her for checking in — but we talked about it later and cleared that up. I’m definitely glad she was there, and checking in.

Overall it was a good experience, and I have a lifelong mark from it — how cool is that?

For some reason, that feels a bit hard for me to admit openly to the BDSM community. It seems like it’s almost expected that people be into it — I mean hell, it’s the first letter in BDSM!

I’ve heard others say that they like bondage because it puts the partner completely at their whim. I like having my partner completely at my whim without having to rely on her being tied up to do it. I love struggle play. It’s much, much more fun for me to wrestle my partner to the ground and pin her so that I can do what I want even as she struggles, than to immobilize her so that she is incapable of fighting back. Some tops aren’t strong enough, or well-trained enough (martially speaking), to utterly physically dominate someone in this way — or at least, not without the other person losing the struggle on purpose, anyway. And I can completely understand that for those people, bondage is their only option when it comes to physically dominating someone.

But me, I want her to be able to (try to) fight back. I want her to feel, viscerally, that I am dominating her and there is nothing she can do to stop it*. I want to see that realization wash over her, and for her to try denying it even as she knows it, and then eventually give in. And then I want to put her in more pain, different pain, to where she forgets all over again and tries to struggle again.

That is the sort of domination that gets me off.

What I don’t like is the idea of taking 15 minutes to tie a girl down while she sits there cooperating. I love how shibari looks as an art form, but I guess the part of my brain that is into BDSM doesn’t have the patience for it.

Cuffs I’m okay with, but if we’re just talking about my enjoyment, I still prefer not to use them. But that said, it seems like lots and lots of people are into bondage (rope and otherwise). So I feel compelled to at the very least learn and become expert at some basic ties that are quick to put on. I realize that, from a psychological perspective, some people need to be tied down to feel completely powerless. And I definitely do want my partner to be enjoying herself too.

Also, I realize there are some situations where it’s not possible to personally physically restrain someone while having a scene. For instance, I can’t hold someone down and hit them with a 6-foot bullwhip at the same time (not unless I hit them with the handle, anyway). In those cases I still prefer my partner to be free of bonds, but if I’m going to go so hard that they need support to continue standing, I’m fine with cuffing them.

If you’re a bondage aficionado, what do you get from it? The art/aesthetic pleasure? The immobilization/power factor? Something else altogether?

* Other than calling red, of course.

I fucking hate being sick. Hopefully today will be the end of it.