Shibari: Almost a Love Story

I nodded.

"If you head straight for ropespace, I will wake you up and we talk about it, before thinking about doing something more intense," she said.

The thought almost made me shiver with a mix of anticipation and fear of the unknown loss of control.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

I nodded. "Ready."

She smiled. "Right. Stay there and relax."

She picked up a coil of rope, stood up smoothly and moved out of sight.

I didn't turn my head to follow her. Instead, I rested my hands on my thighs, let my eyes droop closed and tried to concentrate on my breathing. I had never done any formal meditation training and, with my ADHD, I had never managed it informally, but there were things I found useful.

I heard and felt Ella walk behind me and kneel.

"OK?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, unable to suppress a smile of anticipation. The fact she was behind me just added to the entire atmosphere to make me almost giddy with expectation.

"We're going to start above the waist, and I won't put any strain on your joints yet. Put your arms behind your back."

I did so, laying my forearms along each other with my shoulders relaxed.

I heard rope moving over rope and skin, then sensed Ella close behind me before her hands moved in front of me, rope changed from hand to hand, and then she pulled it back against my bare skin.

Endorphins rushed through my brain. Just the fact this was a culmination of a slowly growing desire made me giddy.

She pulled the rope tighter than I had on myself, around my torso and my arms, pinning my arms to my sides. That pressure caused another burst of endorphins.

"You know, for a tall, skinny pretty boy, you have very good musculature for tying," she said. Somehow, she even managed to make that sound serious -- a practical consideration, not an aesthetic judgement.

"Thank you," I said, feeling giddy joy at the compliment instead of my usual self-deprecating discomfort.

"Where do your arms come from?"

"Pick-axe, fencing bar and chainsaw, mostly," I said.

"Outdoors goth," she dead-panned.

"I know, I need make-up to cover the tan."

"Your arms are pretty pale."

"Long-sleeved shirts. Better for avoiding skin cancer."

Her chatting was settling and grounding me without me even noticing it.

"How's this tightness?" she asked.

Ropes were digging into my chest above and below my pecs. Were digging into my biceps. But I wasn't getting any tingling from lack of circulation.

"Delicious," I said.

I could hear her struggling to contain laughter as she worked, apparently tying off behind me. I felt a thick, comforting, quite comfortable pad of knots at my back. She still hadn't touched my arms, which I was holding loosely, each hand cupping an elbow. I couldn't have moved my arms above the elbows, though.

"Is that comfortable?" she asked.

"Very."

"Any sore spots?"

"No."

Tingling?"

"No."

"Strain?"

"No."

"Discomfort?"

"No."

She touched my shoulder. "How many fingers?"

I had to laugh. "Two."

One of her arms slid around my chest, then she pulled me backwards, not slowly enough to be cautious but not fast enough to startle me.

I went past the point of balance easily and without worrying about it, trusting Ella to catch me. She did, pulling me back against her chest with my head resting against her shoulder. One of her arms held me firmly around my torso below most of the rope. The other began brushing a couple of strands of hair gently out of my face.

Every touch felt intense. I felt giddy.

I rested against her, feeling a sharp, bright clarity of every sensation combined with a warm glow of everything outside the world becoming entirely inconsequential.

"How does it feel to be a rope bunny for the first time?" she asked.

My arms were still free, and so were my legs. That didn't even occur to me.

"Wonderful," I said.

She was still stroking my head. I was letting my head fall into it like a cat wanting scritches.

She chuckled. "You," she whispered, "are falling into ropespace, aren't you?"

I had to struggle to pull my brain back to where it could parse the question, understand it, and come up with an answer. The best I could do was: "Hmmm? Is that what this is?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Dreamy." Again, it was the best I could do. The ropes themselves felt nice, but when she pulled me back against her and held her, everything went warm and fuzzy.

She patted my cheek. "OK, pretty boy, I'm going to untie you, now. But not forever."

I felt a moment of disappointment, of sadness, but her promise she would tie me again served to dampen that.

She gently pushed me back upright, then worked quickly to undo the knots.

I felt a sense of loss with every loosening, and then every time a turn of rope pulled away from my skin.

And I woke up, feeling speechless at my own response.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, very matter-of-fact, as she undid the last few turns of rope.

"Fuck," I said.

She flicked the rope away, then moved closer to me, leaned forwards, and hugged me from behind, managing to put her head next to mine.

The contact was intensely reassuring. "How are you feeling?" he repeated, softly this time, into my ear.

"Wow," I managed, this time. "OK, that... wow. That was amazing."

"Good?"

"Double-plus good."

"Really? Dystopian references?" But I could hear her struggling not to laugh, and felt her shake slightly against my back.

"Shiny," I said. "Really, really shiny. I've never tried many drugs, so I don't have reference points, but I'll take that any day."

She giggled. I felt it through her body against me, her silk kimono cool against my skin. Somehow, it was all intensely sensual without being in any way sexual. "That was a pretty incredible response, first time and right at the start of the tie," she said.

"Do many get that?"

"Not that easily! Yes, some do. Some people I tie don't ever get that sort of ropespace, they're here for the kinky feeling, or because they like their body being played with, or they like the pictures, or because they like to submit and are happy for it to be while I'm practising ties on them. But some are here for precisely that feeling of ropespace. But I don't think anyone's gone there that easily, before."

"Wow," I said.

She stroked my hair. I felt like purring. "You have been missing someone to trust," she whispered, her cheek pressed against mine.

I just nodded.

"You're making me feel all aggressively protective," she said.

"You did tell me..." I began.

"Shush. I know."

I relapsed, smiling.

I only then realised my arms were still behind me. I let them relax, sliding down to rest against her thighs as she knelt behind me.

She squeezed me a little tighter for a second. "Are you awake?"

"I refuse to answer that, in case you let go," I said.

She did laugh at that. "Tough!"

She released me slowly. I sighed but accepted it.

"How are you feeling?" she asked again as she slid back away from me.

"Like after a big stretch," I said. That reminded me to shake out my shoulders and loosen up my back. It wasn't needed, but it always feels nice.

"I've heard that before. Good. Alright, we're going to go out and have a break between ties, so let me show you how to coil rope properly."

A few minutes later, we were back in the kitchen and I was wearing a light cotton kimono. She was brewing a pot of herbal tea, so we didn't overdo the coffee.

"No hesitation? No brief moment of wondering what you had let yourself in for?" she asked with her eyes focusing on her hands and the teapot.

"No! I was trying to control my excitement. Once I decided I trusted you enough to let you tie me, I didn't revisit that."

"Glad to hear it!" She swirled the teapot. "Not at all?"

"No, everything you said just reinforced my first opinion," I said, making it very clear I wasn't just being polite.

"Well, I'm glad I could make you feel that way."

She bought the pot to the bench. "How do you feel about the altered state of consciousness?"

I noted she didn't name it. "Refreshed," I said. "I feel as though I should probably be a little freaked out by it, but instead, I just want more of it."

"No concerns?" she asked, giving me her intent look.

I shook my head. "No. I didn't feel as though I was losing any more control than I had already ceded, and I felt safe and cared for."

"I'm reassured to hear it," she said. "So, you trust me to take you back to that place and steer you through it?"

"Absolutely," I said.

She poured, then sat.

"Question you don't have to answer: How did that interact with your gender?"

I blinked. "It didn't? I didn't think about it. I was just in the moment."

"If I had called you pretty, would you have felt like a pretty boy or a pretty girl?" she pressed.

I blinked again. "A pretty me," I said. "I didn't feel anything gender. I don't usually. I don't think I would have understood the question, in that moment. It just wasn't relevant. Gender is something I have to be forced to think about. Not bodies, I'm always aware what my body is, I just don't apply gendered labels."

She nodded while staring at me intently. I actually felt it easy to have her do that and to look back at her. My mind felt free to not have to panic about trying to follow social conventions, interpret her words and look through pre-prepared scripts for appropriate responses. She meant what she said and I was free to say what I needed to. For something with deeply embedded autistic traits, it was amazing.

"So if I use ties that are normally exploited to emphasise femininity, how would you feel?"

"Probably good, I'd have to find out."

"And if I used ties that are normally exploited to emphasise masculinity?"

"I don't know. That's my default with daily clothing, I guess, but I'd have to experience it to find out."

She nodded, sipping her tea. "OK." She smiled. "That gives me a lot of leeway. But do you ever like labels? Would you like to feel like a pretty girl?"

"Yes! Who wouldn't?"

She coughed.

"OK, yes, point taken," I said. "They're silly people who don't know what they're missing out on."

She coughed again. "You have to remember, we're not the neurotypical ones," she said.

"What did you think I looked like?" I asked. "In your ropes."

"Ah."

"You asked that for a reason," I pressed.

"I did, you're right, well spotted. I almost wanted to ask you then, but we hadn't talked about that aspect. But even with your height and musculature and ... I guess you could say an easy self-confidence that is a little distinct from most of the self-confident women I tie, you just seemed like you took the tie like a woman."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Not sure why," she continued. "Something about you. I mean, to look at you, you're quite male, you walk in a sort of controlled, neutral way that would probably be classed as masculine because it doesn't look feminine -- although you do have moments of suddenly looking very feminine but then neutral again -- but something about you just felt feminine. And I've tied plenty of very male men, I assure you."

"Huh," I said.

"So, if I had called you a pretty girl, how would you have taken it?" she asked.

The question rocked me way more than I might have expected. I mean, I've dressed up and been thrilled to be called one of the girls.

"Probably thrilled..." I began, then had to stop. I had a slowly growing realisation that... "It probably would have flipped a switch in my self-image for the duration of the tie," I said with a burst of realisation.

I said it with a growing sense of wonder that I was sure was written on my face.

Ella sat and waited for me, studying me.

"That would be fantastic!" I exclaimed.

Ella's eyebrows rose, then she started grinning and then had to stifle giggles. "The look on your face!" she managed.

"You know," she continued after she had regained self-control and I was still staring into possibilities, "I have an idea that you are about the only person I know who would flip between pretty boy and pretty girl and wouldn't meaningfully change how you behave: Just how you experience your body."

"I want to change how I experience my body!" I said, still caught in the wonder of how easily I felt she could do that to me.

"I'll experience your body," she retorted, which was so corny and so blatantly sexual it slapped me back to lucidity.

"Wha... Hey! No fair joking when I can't concentrate on a riposte!" I complained.

"Just wanted to get you back to Earth," she said, grinning. "So: Would you like a more serious session?"

"I realise you do have to ask the question," I said, very deliberately, as she grinned wider, "but you really don't."

"I really do," she said.

"Yes, I would like another session," I said.

"Good! Alright: Let's talk parameters."

I shook myself and tried to be serious. "What will be different?"

"This time, I will still be exploring your body and your responses, but since I know you're going to go straight into ropespace, I'm going to work with that and let you enjoy it. But I will need to be in steady communication with you. Ropespace has to be alert enough to monitor your own safety, it's not like a subspace where you can entirely disappear into the moment. Also, we won't be doing anything potentially risky or contorting. No stress, no strain, no suffering."

I was mildly disappointed by the thought we would not be playing with my flexibility, but I saw the logic.

I nodded. "Agreed," I said, reminding myself to be explicit.

"Would you like to try suspension, if it goes well?"

"Hell, yes!"

She smirked. "OK. And since this will not be a full scene, we will be parking any discussion about what happens outside that exploration of how you fit the ropes, how I should be tying you, and what you can find just from being tied. We will also not need to be discussing safewords, because 'stop' will mean 'stop', are we clear?"

"Absolutely."

"Good." She smiled at me. "Finish your tea. Don't rush. I won't be."

That turned out to be so much easier than I had imagined.

Normally, I would be terribly impatient and struggling to contain my self, leading to getting annoyed with myself and externalising that by getting annoyed at the person doing me the favour.

But I remembered the feeling of grounding, calm and peace of the ropespace, and simply remembering that helped me recall enough of it to focus in the moment. It was like taking my Ritalin.

On top of that, Ella had not put one foot wrong, had reinforced my trust in her with every word or deed and, when she promised it would happen, I was able to accept that.

# ~ # ~ #

Eventually, we were kneeling back in her studio, facing each other, and she was slowly running rope through her hands. My phone was sitting off to one side. She had offered to take photos of the finished tie for me, and I had shown her the camera quick launch.

"Are you ready, Phelan?" she asked.

I couldn't not smile at least a small amount. But I wasn't grinning or feeling over-eager. I was just feeling a small amount of glee with the expectation.

"Yes, Ella," I murmured.

"Put your arms behind your back."

I did so, the same way.

She smoothly stood, to walk around me. As she passed out of sight, I already felt that warm, bright, drifting feeling settling over me.

She began tying my torso the same way, and I responded in the same way. If anything, my familiarity and expectation made the experience more overwhelming than my familiarity and preparedness.

Ella checked in with me, with where she was placing the ropes, was I comfortable, was it too tight, and I responded with a detached part of my mind that was managing to perform while most of me floated elsewhere. At one point, she pulled deliberately too tight to check, and my euphoria abruptly swerved towards sharp focus and grounding for long enough for me to say so, and stayed there long enough for me to recognise the amusement in her voice when she said: "Just checking."

When she had finished with my torso, she moved onto my forearms, carefully wrapping them together until they were snugly bound from wrists to wrists.

And the word was "snug". I felt the pressure of each individual or doubled strand of rope, but the overwhelming sensation was snugness, like lying under a heavy doona. Or being hugged.

When she had finished, Ella shifted closer to me and pulled me back against her again, holding me tightly and sending dopamine and serotonin rampaging through my brain.

"How do you feel?" she whispered into my ear.

"Transcendent," I managed to say.

I felt her silently laughing through my back.

Then she rolled me to the side, holding me securely and laying me gently down on the tatami.

I followed whatever she did with me, aware of it all like an interested observer.

Ella rolled me onto my back and picked up another, much longer, coil of rope.

She started around my waist, taking advantage of the way my arms lifted my torso off the ground to tie a secure and tight anchor above my hips, like a high and very tight belt.

That, I assured her when she asked, was good.

She moved down my legs, crisscrossing and turning me into a merman until she secured my feet together with a weave that was almost a boot.

I'm not sure how long it took. The process was not quick, but I didn't have a real sense of time during it. It was like the way my body ignores time during periods of hyper-fixation, but with a calmness that was not part of any familiar experience.

She moved slowly back up my legs, checking the ropes and making sure nothing had slipped onto a tendon or nerve point or was too tight, while I stared at the ceiling and managed to wonder, in the middle of my sun-lit mental clouds, how it was possible for me to be feeling so good.

"I'm going to take some photos," she announced.

"Mmm-hmmm," I said, or something like it. Whatever she wanted.

A while later, Ella pulled me towards her, rolling me onto my stomach. The easy way she pulled me around caused another burst of bliss.

She knelt next to me for an uncounted time, gently stroking my back just above the knot that held my chest harness together.

"Would you like to try a partial suspension?" she asked softly.

More dopamine flooded my brain. "Yes, please."

"Alright."

I could hear the smile in her voice.

I had no idea what she would do. I had a mental image of floating upwards, simply levitating, but if I had forced myself to think about it, there were three good possible anchor points she could have used and she only said "partial".

She left me lying face-down and went to my ankles.

After a little while, my ankles were pulled easily into the air, up and a little back towards my head. She must have planned to have me lying in the right place underneath her suspension ring.

It felt as though she had set up a pulley arrangement with the ropes. She was strong, but I was still heavier than her and even with just lifting my legs, she was moving me easily.

Ella stopped just as she started lifting my hips off the mat. I was still face-down, on my chest, on the ropes.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

"I'm OK," I said, knowing I was smiling.

"Would you like to go higher?" I could hear the smile in her voice.

A little while after my emphatic affirmative, Ella raised my legs until my back was bent and my rib cage was just about to lift, then asked me again.

She tied the rope off when I was hanging like a bat, my hair falling to the mat beneath me, swaying slightly and feeling weightless despite the tension of the ropes and the very real way they supported my weight.

I could feel that my ankles were taking most of the weight but there was some being transferred all the way down my legs to my hips. With the disconnect between my hips and the chest harness, my upper body (lower, then) felt truly free.