Shibari: Almost a Love Story

I took a deep breath. She looked relieved but still guarded.

"But you offered to tie me. Separate to wanting to get your hands on me."

She nodded.

I looked down at my hands on the wood in front of me to give my mind some clarity. I can't always think clearly when my brain is devoting energy to trying to respond to a face. I can't do that naturally, it's part of my autism. Probably my ADHD, as well.

"I believe I can trust you to tie me," I said.

"Thank you," she said. She sounded as though she meant it.

"I believe I can trust you to be sexually interested in me, but still put me in that incredibly vulnerable position, if I ask to keep things platonic until I'm comfortable."

"Thank you, with more emphasis," she actually said.

"And thank you for being this open."

"I don't... do flirting," she said. "Where I came from, we called it flirting but it was about this obvious. I mean, I lost my virginity when barely not under age, next to a hay bale, at a B&S ball, ferchrissakes. Shortly before I got the fuck out of there and realised I was allowed to like women as well. I don't ever want anyone to be unclear about my intentions with them."

"And I appreciate it," I repeated. "I have not really let myself be properly attracted to anyone in about two years, so I'm out of practice with all the emotions, so I may have to deal with that. But you saw how I reacted when you told me about why you tie, and I'm going to have to deal with that."

I took a deep breath again. She gave me time.

"What if we decide to try sex, and it doesn't work out?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't work out. If we have sex and it's great but a relationship wouldn't work for either of us, we can be fuck-buddies. I'll still be your rigger unless what happens between us destroys trust."

I nodded slowly. I wasn't sure if I could still have her tie me. I wondered if I dared risk sex. I wondered which one I wanted more.

She turned serious again. "Look, I think I am very, very good at tying you with a lot of physical intimacy and keeping it non-erotic. Not just about where I put the ropes and touch you. I can bind breasts and make it non-erotic. Crotch-ropes, maybe not. I have trans friends and a little bit of experience in tying in ways that help people with gender dysphoria. I am offering to work with you to explore that ... the rope bunny part of yourself. I like getting new bunnies, I have spare time, I can fit you in even without juggling anything else, and I also feel it's my duty to help anyone with a desire for ropes to explore themself, whether or not I have ulterior motives. I will not make any move on you while we're talking about ropes, how about that?"

I nodded slowly. "It can't be realistic to think we can just park that, though. Can you really?"

She managed to combine a shrug, nod and speculative look. "I'm pretty good at it. We don't have to ignore it, though. If we admit there's sexual interest, all we have to do is be serious when we step into my studio."

I nodded again but looked down at my hands. "I think I can trust you. Not sure about myself."

I felt, more than saw, her study me for a second.

I suspected she was thinking of something, said nothing, and hoped like hell I was right and there wasn't about to be an uncomfortable silence, because my brain had stalled.

Thankfully, I was right.

She drew in a deep breath. "Could I hug you?" she asked. It sounded very formal.

Her tone, more than her words, made me look up in surprise.

"Not, would you like a hug. Could I hug you?" she asked, giving me a steady look. "Can I walk behind you and hug you?"

I felt unbalanced by how strange the request seemed, but as I looked at her, the one thing I could think was that I trusted her, and that she knew how to hold people and look after them in vulnerable moments.

I nodded. I didn't trust myself to say something that didn't sound flippant or uncomfortable.

She stood up very deliberately. With precise, certain movements unlike anything I had ever seen from her before, she walked around the island. She kept her eyes on me.

I let my eyes slide in front of me and straightened a little, but spent most of my concentration on relaxing.

My pulse sped up. There was nothing erotic in her movements or in her offer -- in fact, it felt strangely non-erotic -- but the thought of imminent physical contact made my skin tingle.

She gently put her hand on my shoulder as she came around the island, then stopped behind me. She put her other hand on my other shoulder, then leaned in and moved both her arms to hug me.

She was taller than she had appeared at the party, but not tall, and with me sitting on the stool, her chin rested on my shoulder. Her arms were obviously strong and held me not fiercely or even tightly but securely, squeezing my arms a little against my body and giving me that flood of warm security you should get from a hug.

"Relax," she whispered. "I'm holding you."

As though her words gave me permission, I let go of so much attention I felt giddy. I stopped monitoring her. I stopped being the active participant looking out for someone else. I let her do all that and felt for a second as though I might pass out. It occurred to me I had never, as far as I could remember, been little spoon before. We weren't lying down, it wasn't really spooning, but still, that's what I thought. What I realised. I felt a brief moment of annoyance, of missing out.

"What do you feel?" she asked, softly, into my ear. "Physically and emotionally."

Physically. I could start with physically.

"Your head against mine. Your arms around me. Your muscles."

She didn't say anything, just held me and listened.

"Your breasts against my back." There was no avoiding that, and I knew I shouldn't.

Again, she didn't say anything. That felt liberating. It had been said. Never mind that feeling breasts in a hug should only be sexual in context, it had been said.

"I feel relaxed. Melting. Held. Warm. Comfortable. Comforted. Safe. Secure."

She held me silently for a few more seconds. Or a minute. Then: "What do you want?"

My mind managed to grasp at more complicated concepts again.

"I want to know what it feels like for you to tie me." That thought was uppermost, and it lead my mind down paths that ran alongside being tied up.

"I... also want more of your body against me." I almost stopped myself from saying that, but I knew I needed to. I had to be honest. If we weren't going to start honest, we shouldn't continue.

But as soon as the sentence was out, I knew it sounded like a cop-out to my own ears.

"I want... you." I almost added "to take me" and it would have been true. I wanted her to take the lead. But at the last instant, it was important for me to make that more neutral between us. She might tie me, but I didn't want any sexual relationship between us to start out with an assumption that I would be hers. We might discover that, but that would be something to discover.

"If I asked you to come to bed right now, would you?" she asked.

She didn't move. Her tone was absolutely neutral and calm.

"Yes," I said. I felt a little light-headed. I had never been in that position before. Never actually had a conversation about attraction that honest and straightforward. Always before it had been flirting, a building of mutual intent (and usually, from me, a slow panic that I was misinterpreting something). The clarity and simple honesty of that moment felt surreal. It was also a gigantic relief.

"Would I be taking advantage of you?" she asked.

"Maybe." That, too, was an automatic response. I realised I felt unusual enough that for a light-headed moment, I wondered if I had slipped into some sort of altered state of consciousness. Somewhere on the edge of sub-space. I wasn't sure if, afterwards, I would think I should have given a different answer, or be grateful I hadn't.

Then I realised how responsible Ella was being, and how that moment had cemented my trust in her when she could have shattered it entirely.

Slowly, as I sat frozen with that realisation, Ella relaxed her grip upon me and drew back, stepping away and drawing her arms around me until her hands lingered for a second on my shoulders before dropping away.

"Turn around," she said.

I swivelled on the wooden stool until I faced her. I didn't want to. I wanted to think long and hard about what had just happened. I held that thought to see what she would say next.

She studied my face seriously, the focus of her eyes flicking back and forth between mine.

"I will never take advantage of you when you're physically or emotionally vulnerable," she said. "I will never go somewhere we have not agreed to beforehand."

I just nodded. I wasn't sure what to say, so I didn't say anything.

She smiled faintly. "Which also means that anything you want -- you have to think about it, and say so. Now, come on. We need a change of scenery."

I followed her back to the balcony. A detached part of my mind wondered what her arse would look like in tight pants. There was no way I was not reciprocating her interest in me.

"How are you feeling?" she asked when we were settled back on the couch.

"That was a surreal experience," I said with care.

She didn't noticeably react to that.

"How did you do that?" I asked.

"I gave you permission to relax," she said.

I tried to absorb that.

"Why do you think I did that?" she asked.

"I imagine at least part of it was so we could find out how I would feel with a degree of physical intimacy, before you tied you."

She nodded.

"And if I'd be honest with you," I said.

Her lips flickered into a faint smile. "Equally important," she said. "Also, I really wanted to know if you'd say yes while we were talking about me wanting your body, or run screaming or something."

"Fair enough," I said, suppressing a laugh.

"So..." she said, drawing it out. "Here's what we can do. We can go away and take a deep breath and then have a second date and go from there, or: we can have sex now and then talk about tying, or: I can tie you now and then we talk about sex, or: we can agree to do one and then the other, or: you can say you'd like sex or being tied now, but the other one will be parked for later."

That train of thought had already occurred to me, but: "Sorry, did you say we can have sex now as in right now?"

"Look, these riding pants are uncomfortable to still be wearing. So, when I take them off, do I put something else on or do I keep stripping? Up to you, handsome," she said, grinning.

I felt light-headed again.

"If we're going there, I really should shower first," I said, dead-panned, making it a joke as I stalled for time.

"Oh, if you stay here any longer, you're showering," she said. "If we're tying, you're having a shower first. I have some spare clothes that will fit you. Including underwear."

"What? Why?"

She shrugged. "They come in handy."

I stared at her, momentarily at a loss.

She grinned at me. "You know, I wasn't actually expecting to be able to get my hands on you today, I'm just being hopeful. I was expecting you to need a few days to think things over."

"Don't think you can get out of this by giving me an easy out," I said, mock-offended.

"Sorry."

"The very idea," I said.

"Foolish of me," she said as we maintained eye contact.

"I'm not letting you off that easily," I said.

"Of course not."

"And don't think you can goad me into sex by suggesting I'm not brave enough to make a decision today," I said.

"Damn, you got me," she said, straight-faced.

Neither of us had even blinked by that point.

"So long as I know we have compatible senses of humour," I said, still without breaking eye contact.

"Good to know," she said.

At the back of my head, the fact I hadn't had sex for two years and it was being offered to me, right there and then, had been fighting with the fact that I had been happy by myself without having sex with other people for two years but I was being offered a shibari opportunity I had been wanting for at least half that time.

I briefly wondered, in a silent moment after Ella's last response, if I'd get entirely the wrong understanding of being tied if Ella tied me with that much sexual tension between us. I trusted her, with her experience, to control the situation. But there was a very real risk I was going to end up trussed and helpless and horny as hell instead of relaxed and... whatever I should be feeling. Which was a deeply erotic thought, but not the self-exploration I was looking for.

Fuck it.

"If you tie me today," I said, "and all I can think about is your hands on me and it's just unbearably erotic, I'm not really going to get a valid picture of what shibari means to me, am I?"

"Oh, you'll get a valid picture of what shibari can be," she said with a grin. "Not all of it, maybe. Maybe yes. You might find your own ropespace and be unbearably aroused at the same time."

"Hmm," I said.

"And I will not take advantage of you," she said, gently. "We go where we agree to beforehand. There are friends I tie who do it for the eroticism. One or two I will also be sexual with. All mutual, I'm not an unpaid sex worker for my friends, I'm more selfish than that. There are others who are obviously and highly aroused in my ropes and I just ignore it, and that's what they're there for. What they get out of it, I wouldn't attempt to say."

"Just on that," I said, trying to juggle thoughts without forgetting any. "If we have sex, what will that mean? I will never ask you to give up anything, but what are you thinking between us?"

Her face returned to serious. "I don't do normal relationships. I've never seen the appeal, I've never thought it would work for me. I've been in a polyamorous group where I was basically there for the sex and the friendship, but it was nice to feel part of something deeper for a while. That was very informative. But mostly, I have close friends and I have close friends with benefits."

She let me absorb that for a few seconds. I nodded.

"Occasionally, I find someone I want to see more often than casually. Very occasionally. Not usually someone who is into shibari, though."

She said that meaningfully. I felt myself go still.

"And I don't usually go this quickly from meeting someone to propositioning them without drink being involved," she said. "So I'm thinking that's a positive sign. So, let's say we're going to keep this casual, meet up for rope sessions and maybe fucking, but I'm open to considering something a bit more. If it works out."

I nodded. "If it works out."

We studied each other for a few more seconds.

"I would like... would you like to tie me, now."

She let that hang in the air for a few seconds, then nodded. "Not sex?"

"Not right now. Let's revisit that."

She nodded. "I'm going to shower," she said. "Then, you're going to shower. We'll start with you wearing a pair of fisherman's pants. With or without a shirt, that's up to you. Then, we'll go into my studio and we'll talk about you. We'll start with some simple ties to get used to having my rope around any part of your body. Depending on how that goes, we might do something more complicated. Then, we'll come back out here to debrief."

I nodded. "OK."

She stood up. "What's your waist size?"

"Thirty-two."

"Are you going to be fine here for a few minutes?"

I made a show of looking around. "I can cope."

Her lip twitched. "Good. Be back soon."

When she was gone, I lay back on the couch and let everything that had happened crash over me while I tried to look for the tell that I was dreaming, or something.

I was still lying there, feeling reality failing to make sense, when Ella returned.

She was wearing a kimono and managed to look simultaneously more modest and sexier.

She handed me a pair of boxer briefs I would have bought for myself, a white T-shirt and a pair of light cotton black pants, and sent me off to the bathroom.

It was serviceable, but desperately in need of remodelling. But the shower was a good pressure, and hot.

After towelling off, I stared at myself in the mirror for a long moment before getting dressed, finding a hint of my old nervous low-self-esteem panic lurking at the back of my mind as it pushed against the realisation that in the two years I had been doing things to my house by myself to save money, I had built up a previously unfamiliar musculature.

Saying yes to tying but no to sex had been as much about challenging myself as making any sort of calculation about what I wanted most.

And I couldn't say that being aroused when someone was touching me and manipulating me wasn't in any way a fantasy, even if a small and guilty one. And here was permission.

I almost had an erection when getting dressed. It was a good thing the underpants were boxer briefs -- good for keeping everything under control.

I left the shirt off. It felt more appropriate, it gave me a little more confidence -- although I couldn't explain why -- and I wanted to feel ropes over my skin.

Ella grinned at me. "Nice." Then she stood in one smooth, easy, flowing motion. "Right! Let's get serious." She clapped her hands. "First rule: Banter stays outside the door. We step into the studio, we focus on what we are doing, and leave everything else outside. That doesn't mean we be deadly serious about everything, we need to keep a sense of humour and we will need to talk about your body, but we focus on the moment and we do not go anywhere near innuendo, implied or explicit. You get one more joke, first."

"I am entirely in your hands," I said, with as straight a face as I could.

# ~ # ~ #

We knelt on the tatami, facing each other. She had her safety scissors lying to one side, coils of rope to the other.

"Do you have any injuries?" she asked.

"Not even bruises. My knees and my elbows are prone to problems when I don't exercise enough or do it unwisely, but they've been good for the last few years."

"How flexible are you? Show me."

I stood up, taking a step backwards. I shook out my wrists, raised my arms above my head, then bent forwards until my nose was between my knees. I ran through multiple stretches, including pressing my elbows together behind my back and overlapping my wrists behind my neck with one arm up and over, one down and up.

I didn't look at Ella again until I sat down.

She was grinning but didn't say anything. Keep it serious.

"Are there any positions you particularly don't like?" she asked.

I frowned. "When I'm head-down, I can feel as though too much blood is rushing to my head, but I don't know that's not what everyone else feels. Oh, and I get dizzy when I stand up too fast really easily. It's quite pleasurable. I don't have any medical problems. I would like to avoid predicament ties until I can ease my joints into it."

"Any positions you really like?"

"Anything that stretches me is satisfying. And back arches, being tied facing out, are really sexy. I'm not normally comfortable straight, like a mermaid tie, but I've never been tied so I'm not sure how that changes things. Basically, I like feeling under tension, but when I tie myself, the ropes also give me that feeling, but I do prefer shapes."

She nodded. "OK. Now: I don't re-use rope between people. As soon as I use this for you, it's yours. I'll keep it here for you."

"I have some proper rope at home," I said. "Let me know what I should get and I'll replace it."

She shook her head. "My treat. But you can buy me more to use on you. And yes, you should get more for home. Then, I can visit you."

She didn't grin after that. She was staying serious.

"So: This is how this is going to work," she continued. "This is not going to be a proper session, this is going to be an exploration, so we are going to be talking all through this, making sure you're comfortable physically and emotionally while I get a sense of how tight you like things and whether you've got any tender spots you weren't aware of."