How to Be Kinky: A Beginner's Guide to BDSM

by Morpheous

  How do you get into your role without feeling self-conscious? Running around in a loincloth and swinging from the chandelier might be something that is a little beyond your comfort level to start off with. (And for those of you that it isn’t—call me!) Start small, working a little role-play into your regular sex life initially. You don’t have to be Tarzan, or the Gimp from Pulp Fiction—but what about the desperate housewife who has a leaky sink and discovers she doesn’t have enough cash in her purse to pay the plumber who has been working on it all afternoon? Or, what would you do if you were a good little girl who had never before cheated on a test and then you gave in to the pressure for good grades and were just discovered by the teacher?

  Roles should be believable, and yet they can be as fantastic as you like, even beyond the realm of possibility—but understand that you have to have at least one foot in reality. We can’t very well have an eight-tentacled creature molesting a bunny girl without at least a bottle of lube to facilitate the action, now can we? Setting up a complex role-play scene involves the mundane tasks of making sure there are condoms or dams, and lube; that sex toys are clean and the kids are out of the house for the evening. Above all else, play should be fun, but the issue of safety should always be taken seriously. Whether in the bedroom or dungeon, everything involved in BDSM scenes should be safe.

  The ‘damsel in distress’ is a common role-play fantasty.

  Cinch Knot: A knot made by passing the end of a rope through an opening and around itself with a loop near the opening.

  Communication, no matter how weird the scene, is invaluable. With proper communication, creative ideas from you both will develop and assist you during the role-play scene. Communication really provides a basic foundation for those who need a boost, or a starting point for those who are lost in space. And it’s a two-way street: if you expect your partner to have an open mind about your secret desire to be ravished by a fire-fighter, then you also have to entertain him when he discloses his desire to be dressed like a puppy and chasing balls down the hallway with a butt plug tail in his ass slapping across the back of his thighs. As kinky people, we need to own our sexuality and understand what makes us tick before expecting someone else to provide what we need. If you cannot communicate it effectively, how is your partner supposed to know what gets you hot and bothered?

  Getting into the Good Stuff

  Let the scene develop from dirty talk; too much prepared script will kill the spontaneity. The fantasy should really be more of a foundation, a big pot of dirty and fun ideas that you can pull from. Dirty talk is a great way to nudge that shy partner into the beginnings of role-play. In fact, studies have shown that 58 percent of North Americans like dirty talk. It’s all about making your interaction hot and sweaty and seductive. Remember, you have to start this when your partner is all hot and bothered. You can’t go from first gear to fourth right out of the gate. Get some purring going on. As with blues singing, start with a call-and-response method:

  “You like that, don’t you?”

  “Do you like it when I bite you there?”

  “Mmm… You love it when I tease you like that, don’t you?”

  Even everyday scenarios such as “naughty secretary and her performances review” can be spicy!

  Clover Clamp: A nipple clamp with a chain that tightens the clamp when it is pulled.

  Try two different things on him and ask him which he likes better or how he reacts differently to them. For instance: try two different floggers that are weighted differently and have a different type of leather; one might be heavy and “thuddy” and the other might be sharp and “stingy.” You can try framing your question to include the role-play to add to the ambience: “Mr. Clinton, now that I have you tied up here in this lovely oval office, if I am going to take the fall for you, you are going to do exactly what I say for the next hour. Otherwise your usually understanding wife is going to get a dry cleaning bill from me. Understand? Now, I am going to hit you with two different types of floggers and you will tell me how you like or dislike each one…. Chin up, no slouching now!” I’m sure you get the gist of where this is going. (Getting back to safety, use care when playing with lit cigars.)

  This requires input from your partner. What you don’t want is to launch into a scene with a scared little bunny who is too shy to say what she likes or wants. If you have a new partner or one that is new to this sort of play and doesn’t know what he does or doesn’t like just yet, this is a perfect way to bring him into a comfort zone of answering questions and engage him in an interaction.

  Once you get her in the mood and begging for more you can get into second and third gear:

  “Who is Daddy’s little tramp?”

  “I’ll teach you to cheat on that term paper—you are going to stay after class and do everything I tell you to!”

  Finally, once they are taking all the dirty talk you are throwing at them, you can break out the big guns:

  “I am going to consume/own/mark/devour you!”

  “You are going to do everything I say you will, aren’t you?”

  Real-Life Examples

  Big Bears

  One of the roles I like to play is with bigger men—big, burly bears that are way bigger than me and I want to trick them into submitting to me through seduction. My personal fantasy is to get a tough guy to admit he wants to be dominated by me. Through my role as the Dominant I convince them that letting me play with them would be the best thing in the world to expand their sexual horizons. For me it isn’t about adopting a thematic role like that of firefighter or good cop/bad cop. It goes beyond that type of role. I enjoy the role of the Dominant who is seducing the larger man to get him to relinquish his control, to create a safe space for him to explore being submissive to me. A place that he knows no one will know about. The big bears that I play with want to know that I know that discretion is important and regardless of whether they are Dom or sub or Top or bottom in the leather scene, if they come to me to explore being submissive, they know they are completely safe. What I love most about it is taking such a large man (I’m five-eight and really buff) and wrapping him in my rope, capturing him in my web, having him under my complete control.

  —Dart, Mr. Black Eagle 2007

  How to put on a ball gag

  1 Have Your partner lean into you.

  2 Fit the ball gag in gently, careful of his jaw.

  3 Bring the straps around the back of his head.

  4 Draw the strap through the buckle.

  5 Set the hole that isn't too tight or too loose, you need to be able to loosen it easily.

  6 If your partner is uncomfortable, he can use a safety signal such as grunting three times.

  Cock Ring: A ring made of rubber or metal, or even a strap that is secured around the base of the penis. This ring allows blood to flow in but restricts it flowing out helping to keep it erect. It is important that it not be worn for prolonged periods of time.

  The Catholic Thing

  Growing up Catholic has added fuel to my kink life. Understand that French-Canadian Catholics are huge on protocol. You have to dress your best, follow all the rules, and it all blends and blurs into your real-life imprinting when growing up. My favorite role-play fantasy is one of being a Catholic Priest. As a woman just the initial fucking with gender roles gets me hot and bothered and when I add religion on top of that, it makes it even steamier! The concept of sin buried within ritual—the priest being prim and proper and the word of god, yet really being the kinkiest and most deviant of them all; of setting up that role as god’s personal provider, where flagellations or a hair shirt are necessary for redemption… Forgiveness of your sins that requires suffering spills into my fantasy role-playing all the time. Sometimes it is situation specific. I love the role of catching the naughty altar boy doing something bad—after all, you never know when a priest could show up in the school yard or in the rectory. Maybe I catch him masturbating in the confessional or even worse masturbating with other boy
s! Punishing him for his own good makes me wet. Maybe I fuck him in the ass for redemption, or make him wear uncomfortable items such as CBT [cock and ball torment] or foot binding, and there is definitely hot wax play—have to put all those candles to good use! Endurance for penance, being the vehicle of their redemption is what is centrally important to my role-play. As a Domme I have always held that my personal pleasure with the strap-on is necessary for any boy I play with, and adding the gender reversal makes it even more perverse with the Catholic situation.

  —Mercury Kittie, Domme

  Collaring: Ceremony when a Dom and submissive symbolically commit to each other.

  Using toys and equipment can elevate a scene or role-play to an even higher level of kink!

  Daddy’s Little Girl

  For me it is the Daddy and little girl fantasy. Older men always made me hot, long before I was collared, even when I was dating vanilla men. When Daddy and I were playing on our first date and he was holding me by the neck and he had me tied up, I asked, “Can I call you Papa?” Somehow “Master” or “My Liege” didn’t work; it didn’t fit at all but Papa felt right at that moment. At that point I think he said, “You can call me Santa Claus if you want, just don’t stop.” I loved it that he was taking advantage of me and I wanted him to. Later on I adopted the Daddy’s little girl identity out of the gay culture roles around Leather Daddy—it is not about incestuous relationship, but more about nurturing, mentoring, and creating a safe place. Even if he is twisting my nipples or torturing my pussy it is about a caring role that fosters growth. I am proudly a slave to him now and that is a constant role in our lives, unless we actively negotiate it differently for a particular situation. We have performance reviews where we evaluate each other on where we are and where we want to go. When we were first dating it was a role we would go into when we were together, but now that we are 24/7, my central identity is that of the little girl.

  —Lulu, Daddy’s little girl

  A serious get up will make any scene even hotter.

  Learning to Be a Lady

  I see role-play as dramatic ritual where I assume a persona that can be a cathartic experience for someone that I am playing with. It gives me an ego trip that is unlike any other. I personally enjoy being the “governess” that is helping a cross-dresser realize his dream of becoming a good little girl and becoming part of my stable of girls that are highly feminized and manipulated as I desire them to be in body shape and mind. As a professional Domme I have a lot of cross-dressers who come to me desiring a safe space to explore gender reversal. I tell them that they have no choice in the matter; that they must do as I say in order for them to be complete and utterly enslaved to me. This creates an environment in which they don’t have to wrestle with their desires to be cross-dressed; they can drop their vanilla lives at the doorstep and let their inner girls come forward for some pampering and firm training. Sometimes I can spend a whole session just on teaching a new little girl how to walk in heels. Occasionally I will intersperse an age-play scenario with a cross-dressing session—say, that of a new girl just entering puberty and growing up who needs to learn how to become a lady, how to have her makeup and hair done properly, and the correct way to sit. I have a cross-dressing area in my dungeon, complete with makeup and wigs and clothing that ranges from “little miss prim and proper” to “complete slut.” What I find most interesting about these clients is that some of them lead very hypermasculine roles in their vanilla lives and it seems they come to me in order to balance themselves by letting their feminine sides have a chance to breathe and explore.

  —Lady Fiona, professional Domme

  Consent: Approval or permission freely given in a context for someone to engage in a particular activity without coercion. Informed consent is consent freely given beforehand and being fully aware of the conditions and consequences of the activity. Consent is key in BDSM, See the previous entry on “Abuse” to distinguish it.

  Kidnapped Girl

  This is role-play started as dirty talk in bed when my girl was masturbating and eventually grew into a real-life experience that both of us really enjoyed. Its appeal for me is greatly based on socially taboo situations, outside the realm of what is acceptable. I kidnap a girl and force her into this lifestyle, forcing her to bend to my will and become my slave. It is all psychologically arousing for me. That is my particular edge—I can get aroused just by thinking about it. Taking her and reshaping her, forcing her into the role of my personal doll: it touches the psyche more than my cock. Luckily I am blessed with my own special woman in my life that had the same fantasy and wanted to explore it as well. I would talk about it for months in bed and then when the opportunity presented itself I took advantage of it. One weekend we were in Montreal at the big fetish ball and we both decided this would be a perfect opportunity to explore our fantasy in a whole different city and situation that could make it more believable. Our agreement was that once she put the mask on she became my fantasy for the night. She would talk to me like I was her kidnapper, I would grab her and drag her into the washroom and make her stand there when I took a piss. Or I might leave her alone with someone else and tell her that she needs to watch out, the last two girls I left with this person were never found again. It was a really amazing headspace to be in as it went on all evening. It is emotionally hard to go through that for six hours, but very arousing. We did fuck that night and I took pictures of her and told her I would send them to her family (edging into her blackmail fantasies). But after the hood came off the role ended and we were exhausted and falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  —RetroDeviant, psychological sadist,

  owner and operator of “doll”

  Latex clothing is sexy and perfect for BDSM play.

  Speed Bumps

  Corset: An article of clothing which is tightly laced around the midsection, designed to lift the breasts and narrow the waist. Often-times made of silk, leather or PVC and including strips of rigid “boning,” – higher quality corsets will have steel boning and lower quality will have plastic.

  So what happens when things go awry? How do you stumble through after triggering some hidden emotion in someone and reassure him that things are okay and you really aren’t going to tie him to the train tracks? What happens if you have hit some long-buried issue that causes your partner emotional trauma? You are probably going to feel like a complete and utter shit. And you are going to blame yourself. This is because you are a compassionate person who cares about his or her partner. But what you feel and what you do are the key elements that are going to separate you from the trash out there. You are going to recognize that your partner is having a problem or issue and slow the fuck down. If he or she is ramping up in a bad way and going in the wrong direction fast you need to be his anchor, his brake, his grounding in reality. (See chapter 8 for a full discussion of safety issues and detecting genuine signs of panic.)

  If you are the Dominant, it is your DUTY to ensure that your partner is safe and cared for in ALL aspects while he or she is under your control. If you are the submissive or bottom or even a play toy you are entitled to a safe environment. As Dom, you need to be able to step away from the role-playing if there is trouble and immediately become a warm and compassionate partner. This doesn’t mean that playtime has ended. Your playmate may only need a little calm reassurance that everything is okay and then you can drop back into the scene. Scenes are a failsafe way of determining what is an actual problem and requires attention verses a “play” problem. For example “No no, don’t do that to me!” might be a very hot way of using words in role-play that doesn’t mean what it really sounds like. If there was a real problem such as the wrists cuffs being too tight and cutting off circulation, someone would use the code words that wouldn’t normally tumble out of her mouth. The universal words in the kinky world have become Green (“Oh, I love what you are doing!”), Yellow (“Something isn’t right…”) and Red (“Stop, I need to get back to the real world right no
w!”). There are still some groups and play parties that will have house safewords that you have to honor if you are at their particular event. However with the wide variety of play parties that are available, it could be confusing to have to remember five or six different safewords. Having a universal standard of Green, Yellow, and Red works very well when immediacy in a situation is of paramount importance. I recommend that new parties starting out adopt these code words. They are easy to remember (just like a traffic light) and short, easy to pronounce words. When a submissive or bottom says “Red,” that is your signal, if you’re the Top, to get her some water, hug her, ask her what you can do to make her more comfortable. You need to be a compassionate partner right now, instead of “Blackbeard, scourge of the ocean blue.” You can always revisit things down the road. Never ever berate someone for using his or her safeword.

  When you find the right person to play with, it can be bliss!