Does your partner have a personal history of any sort involving addiction, or this tool specifically? Is one of you drawn to this tool out of rational choices for its effects, or a specific ritual, or are you drawn to it because the drug use itself is a sexual turn-on or fetish? Has this been thought through, or is it being done on impulse? If the response is overly dramatic in the conversation about using this tool, what is behind that reaction? Fear? Longing? Pain? History? Are they responding to the current use of this tool, or something that happened years ago that left an imprint, overly positive or overly negative, on them?
Who Needs to Know?
When choosing to engage in these practices, who need to know? Your play partner? A spotter or guardian? A close friend? The people running the party? These issues should be discussed as well about legal substances. If you are on pain killers, mood stabilizers and more, they too change us…so who needs to know you are on them?
Other Ramifications
How long does the substance affect the system? Are you hyper-sensitive the next day? Will you need different sorts of aftercare? How will this affect your relationships? Your spiritual discipline?
What happens if stuff goes wrong? What is the back-up plan? Whose responsibility is it to take care of the person on the journey? What if everyone is high? What if stuff goes really right? Have you discussed in advance whether this is a one-time journey, or part of a series? How do you make sure this stays a sacred tool instead of becoming a habit? How will you maintain respect for yourself and the plants involved? How will you give thanks?
If the altered state revealed truths, who will help you process those revelations? How will you deal with them that day? Next month? If it has lingering or transformational effects years later?
We must all make choices.
in the scene, combining kink and chemicals is met with respect by some, volatility by others. The choices that are right for you need to be weighed out by you. Aspirin for a headache, the neurochemicals flying through our system from new romance, smoke wafting into the air… they all affect us. We each need to develop our own ethics concerning what will affect our sacred workings and our profane play alike.
Spirit of the Smoke: A Journey
Each hand-rolled cigar is one of a kind. Veins of leaves like fingerprints tell a tale of shade-grown and sun-grown tobacco, mixed and blended under the skilled hands of an alchemist. In kink, this versatile tool has its roots in the earth, its memory in the soil, and with each puff we call upon the past, weaving spells for the future.
Tobacco in pipes as sacrament dances back into ancient memory, prayers flying to the heavens where the Creator hears each long drag, each dramatic release. Gnawed ends of fat stogies echo grandfathers and made men, strength and sadness in the stink clinging to their fingers. Thin cigarettes echo of 80s memories, big hair and big-time greed, jelly shoes and blue eyeshadow. Corn cob pipes whisper the heartland through our lips, good ole boys and watching the grass grow. Red and white boxes and silver wrappers inside sing of James Dean bad boys and country cowboys alike, bummed singles outside of clubs and smuggled teenage angst.
Our choices in tobacco speak volumes in cultural weight, or be simple personal choices. We can evoke archetypes, or play with our own history. We play back trauma and make it passion, white paper and red hot ash lowered to the skin of our inner screaming child. We make it our own, inventing rituals or creating customs for ourselves.
I tap the cigarette box into my hand, pack, pack, pack. Flip over, pack again. The rituals ring through my skin and bones. Open, pop back foil, and “flip the lucky” for the end. Lift to lip, keep talking with friends or stare off into the horizon and as flame dances to the end, pull into myself. Lungs fill, exhale, and see my fears float away in clouds.
I can choose to time a break for a single smoke, alter my headspace for a period of time designated by the burning of the short stick in my hand. I can sit down and chain smoke, chaining myself in place, each puff a link along my journey into self and back out again. I drag the smoke in, drag myself through the muck of my troubles, lift them up, and let them go. Finally, I let go. I let go of attachment, of the pain I was carrying, of the moment. I let go and the cigarette hits the ground, ground myself, and grind it out.
A cigar is a different journey. Each smoke is a lover, a commitment, not a five-minute fling, but a thirty minute to hour and a half relationship. I take time for myself. This will be my partner for that time.
Three kinds of leaf weave together a tale of filler, binder and wrapper. These layers mirror my own journey, and I find myself asking myself–What am I made of? What am I filled with, how do I hold it all in, and what do I wrap it in to make it accessible and acceptable to the world around me? Am I aged and mellow, new and spicy, dark or light? Am I made from one land, or a song woven together from four estates, a complicated flavor when my tale comes to your lips?
I open up my humidor, my collection of travels, and make a choice. Cigar culture has led to “cigar arithmetic” as kink educator and novelist Graydancer refers to it—you arrive at an event with three cigars, smoke two, and go home with five. Cigar culture is a gifting culture, longing to share favorites with everyone else, an oral history passed on through the leaves and rings. Fat or thin, long smoke or short. I peruse my tales and the stories of friends alike, then select tonight’s journey.
The rituals intoxicate me. Removing the plastic, I pull myself out of my shields, leave my wrappings for the time being. I smell the cigar under my nose, and if a lover is there or not, perhaps play with it a bit in my mouth. Teasing it into telling me its truths, I reach down for my punch, a small metal and plastic tool that opens up the smallest hole in the cap possible so I can keep a tight draw as I smoke.
But I could have chosen a guillotine cutter, cutting off its head like casting aside lies. It might have been a double-bladed cutter, efficiency and elegance being brought into my life. Perhaps I might have used a v-cutter, leaving a line like an open wound or a thin line of a cunt calling me to lap at the crevice, tongue it until it explodes with flavor into me. That same v-cutter might have come down three times, a six-pointed star opening up air and sigil working at the same time. Or, had I been truly brutal or embraced my inner hunter, I might have bitten off the cap or taken some testosterone-charged blade and cut my way to my needs, warrior of the smoking section.
Open cap back to my mouth, I wet the end, draw in, savor my potential. Like the cigar, I am unlit, I am ready. I am able. Removing the cigar from my mouth I light the torch and begin to toast the end, rolling the earthy veins between my fingers. Butane lighters will not do, for a cigar will carry on the flavor of what lights it. What lights me? What has flavored the catalysts in my life? For the cigar I use a torch, classic matches, or a piece of cedar. I recall nights spent in cigar lounges with women in fishnets holding up cedar like sacred offerings, while men holding scotch leaned forward and breathed them in.
I rotate the cigar as I finally start to light. If I only burn on one side, my life will be lopsided. I will be out of balance. I twist as I light, deep breath in, puff out, turn again. Set the groundwork for the long journey ahead, set up base camp, and prepare for the climb. Some enjoy inhaling cigars, or forcing their partner to inhale the smoke, but for me, that is a rite for cigarettes. I breathe in, let it fill my cheeks, and hold. Flavor, taste, release, repeat. Puff and hold. Hold and release. What do I need to release, what do I need to hold onto?
In service, my partner can do this work for me as well. They watch me and learn, or ask questions. Like the wrapper slipped off, I slip off my pretenses and share with them what I long for in my cigar service, in my life. I train them to prepare my smoke, or take them to a shop where an expert can enthusiastically help them learn. Perhaps they can hold my ashtray if that suits either of us better, the bondage of them staying there until I am done. They become the pupil waiting at the guru’s side during meditation, they become the poet watching the sunset, taking in every moment but
unable to speed it up or slow it down.
I pull, smoke wafting up from the cigar, away from myself. Using my hand as a fan, it becomes a smudge, waving the whiteness over my partner and chasing away the demons that plague them. The smell becomes an incense, pulling forward personal and cultural memories, marking them with the flavor of the tobacco. They carry the blessing in their scented clothes, I carry my own blessings in my scented clothes.
A pair of us smoking creates a circuit of conversation and desire. Smoke between my lips meets theirs and I breathe out, the smoke and my dreams entering them. They are amplified and passed back in the wisps of white. I blow out and stare into the mingling shades of gray, meditation and divination available for me. Drink in hand, I breathe out the smoke into the glass, brandy or scotch flavored with the acrid or spicy scent. I breathe out into a boot or heel, into a gas mask, into a plastic bag, over their face. I breathe myself out, pass the best of myself on, pass on that spark, that catalyst, that knowledge of passions to come.
Sometimes the magic in a cigar comes not just from the smoke, but from the ash. I open up my mouth, gather a pool of saliva into my tongue and ponder my nature as a receptacle. I am Shakti, taking the world into her body. My wet mouth opens and my lover breaks the ash off into my mouth, the heat landing with a sizzle and cools. Closing my mouth, the world goes wrong for a moment, goes strange, I step out of normalcy. My rational mind knows that ash cannot kill me, but my mouth does not believe me. I descend into knowledge of what it is to be a receptacle, not of potential, but of waste. It consumes me, I become trash, a thing, something wholly inhuman, and know the world from this place. The grit sticks in my teeth as I chew, descend deeper, eyes wet and rolled back. Then suddenly I am back, human and whole, gifted with this secret vision from the place of other.
Ash has so many uses in magic and connection. Spit and ash mingle in my hand and become paint created by time well spent, glyphs laid onto their skin, drying and falling off as the astral body absorbs the message. Dry ash clings to fabric, or can mark the forehead, “Ash Wednesday” in the leather bar. Ash in my mouth becomes an abrasive for blowjobs, can mix with lube and abrade the tender tissue of the body when pushing a partner. I reflect that soap is made of ash and lye, reminding me as my boots are blacked with one, covered in another, and hold the possibilities of being toxic if my journey is taken too far.
Cigar still in hand, the closer I get to the end of my smoke, the more I feel the heat. I trace it along my skin, feel the heat echoing out just as every desire I put out into the world ripples out and can be felt by those around me. I lift the cotton shirt off of my partner’s chest and burn a hole in the fabric, exposing skin a centimeter at a time. I hold them down and slowly singe off their pubic hair, careful to not get too close to the skin lest I unintentionally burn skin.
A brand is not something to undertake lightly. Any mark, even those that are meant to be temporary, may stay longer than intended. This is especially true when there is meaning behind a mark. Dedicated rituals involving marking may become permanent, even when intended to only last a few days, depending who or what is listening. Organic branding with cigars is especially tricky because there is a misconception that it must be put out on the skin. A cigar or cigarette, even with ash on the end, can brand the body with less than a second of light contact, and those marks can last years, or a lifetime. Though a powerful tool for sacred working, cigar branding should be discussed before undertaken, even in jest.
Pipes, on the other hand, hold different medicine. Packing the bowl, we do not just choose what to smoke, but how tight our journey will be. We, like a pipe, need breath to circulate, and packing too tightly can cut off the ability to light. When we are packed too tightly in our lives, there is no space left for magic to take place. There is no room for spirit to enter us, ignite us, and inspire us.
Though I can sit down and smoke a pipe all afternoon, relighting every once in a while, I do not have to. Just as there is work inside our spirit that sometimes is best to come back to, so it can be with a pipe. I light, I smoke, I am filled up, hold, release. I set aside the work, come back hours later, and the flavor still appeals to me. There is more to do here. I need not cast aside my work and start from new just because life interfered with my spiritual work. I can pick up where I left off, keep enjoying, keep going deeper.
The pipe itself is a reminder that I improve with time. The oils and smoke sink in, color the white to a beautiful tawny gold, the browns to radiant chestnut. In purchasing pipes from estate sales, or being gifted one from a friend, memory is handed down. The work of those who came before enters me, and I carry on their tradition. I become a reincarnation, an avatar of their path.
I breathe in the smoke. I blow out. I sit in the smoke. I am the smoke. I breathe in the smoke. I let it waft out of me in waves.
With each pipe, cigar, and cigarette that touches me, my lips tingle. My mind soars. I offer a friend a drag, and ancient tradition continues on. In playing with the smoke in my kink, I use this versatile tool for all it can be. I realize, I too, am a versatile tool, and I can find more outlets for myself than what everyone gives me as at first glance. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a cigar may be just a cigar, but sometimes it is spirit. Sometimes it is faith. Sometimes the smoke soars, and I soar with it.
Profound Piercing
Sexuality educator and activist Sarah Sloane has commented that “when we open up the skin, stuff comes out.” There is profound truth in this. Throughout literature on surgical procedures and body modification, people have been shown to have a variety of reactions to the procedure that are not intuitively linked to the procedure itself. Individuals having hysterectomies end up processing not just the pain and sensation, or the biological effects of having their uterus and ovaries removed, but often that day, or over the coming years, process feelings of sorrow or fear, or revisit past traumas associated with sexuality or identity.
The same is true for body piercings. Whether temporary or permanently installed in the flesh, the smallest point of intrusion into the body can trigger a range of responses. For some, this is related to their personal meaning behind the piercing, why they had it done in the first place. This could be a reminder of a trial they went through, a change from one phase of their life to another, a comment about reclaiming themselves or being claimed by another, a statement of self-love, rebellion, pride, joy, overcoming fear, or so much more. For others, by opening up the flesh, unexpected emotions escape through the hole—Pandora’s box left cracked open and the demons and desires of our life flying out into the night.
When engaging in temporary body piercing, where a hypodermic, acupuncture or body jewelry needle is inserted under the surface of the skin using safe and clean methods, the piercer and piercee can choose where the needle will be placed. This work usually involves only going a few millimeters under the skin, penetrating the dermal layers but not the muscle tissue beneath. In choosing placement, sometimes the choice is made based on what will look pretty. Other times, what will hurt the most or least. The placement can be based on the type of energy that needs to be released from the piercing.
A prime example of this is referred to as Chakra Piercing. In the Path of Breath, we discussed the associations of each of the Chakra points for moving and processing energy through the body. In the Path of Sacred Plants, we have the ability to hack that system and release pressure within those chakras by preparing the piercee to release that energy, walking them through what that chakra means. At Anahata, the heart chakra, we cleanse the skin using Technicare or some other hospital-grade internally safe product, and with gloved hands place our hand on their heart. They place their hand over ours, or on the heart of another, or find some other way to either create a circuit or let the energy move. Breathing in and out, they focus on their heart, acknowledging the pain they have held within their heart. Then, as they continue to breathe, the slightest amount of skin is lifted up in the way taught to the piercer, and as they breathe out, the ne
edle slides under the surface and back out a centimeter or inch away, depending on the needle.
Just as we have the ability to open up a section of the dam when the water levels are high and threaten to flood an area, so does piercing above a chakra point work as a vent to let the pressure dissipate. Tears, sorrow, laughter, or a need to talk out what is felt are not uncommon—even when the piercer and piercee did not intend for this to be any sort of sacred or energetic working. Piercing over a chakra, or along a meridian (energy) line in the body can release stuff even for people who did not plan it, or do not believe that this will be anything other than hot kinky fun.
This can apply to permanent piercing as well. Having a genital piercing installed by a professional body piercer can open up all sorts of emotions. Not just around sexuality and sexual trauma, they can also open up feelings associated with Muladhara, the root chakra, such as survival concerns, money fears, and food addiction. Belly button jewelry can associate with the womb, and for others with the solar plexus. Nipple piercings can trigger releases of heart chakra work as the line between the piercings creates an energetic conduit that charges the energy between them. Septum piercings and between the eyebrows can clear out previously blocked third eyes and psychic energy, or lead to processing of dreams, desires, and our spiritual path.
Hook suspensions are another source, where holes in the body provide a way to hack into raw emotion. Just as play and temporary piercing and body modifications can be profane or just for fun, so can hooks. But for some, hooks installed under the skin for flesh pulls or full-body suspensions can lead to profound releases of emotions that have been stored. What will be released during any given suspension is hard to predict, even if the suspension artist or suspendee has done this exact procedure before. Some of the responses I have seen include rage or sorrow over a lost family member, a need to prove one’s self strong as steel, love and joy erupting over every inch of the skin, release of the need to follow a previous life path and fully embrace a new one, and direct energetic connection to a deity. It’s hard to know what will come, making hooks often a far less “predictable” tool than chakra piercing.
The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond Page 38