Author’s note:
This is a story about ropes, trust and openness, relationships, self-exploration, gender and its fluidity, personal growth, sex, consensual induced change of body image, and being neurodivergent with ADHD and possibly other things as well. And it might possibly be about love, as well.
This is a slow burn that is more erotic than sexual and is not intended to be a steamy story from start to end. Be assured, though: we do get steamy, in the end.
I have also, for the purposes of story, compressed what would normally be a longer process of introduction, exploration and negotiation of desires, boundaries and consent into one afternoon. I do recommend taking things a little slower than portrayed here.
# ~ # ~ #
The first time I met Ella, I was at a party. That was a little unusual for me, but it was hosted by a couple I love, we had several mutual friends and I had enough advance warning to psych myself up for it.
Most importantly, Gitte had sent me a pointed question about how she was going to see me there, wasn’t she? Gitte is the only person I allow, in fact welcome, to bully and mother me. She had earned that right.
There were several of my friends there, including Gitte and her partner, the spiky-haired, disarmingly grinning, torn-black-jeans-wearing Peta, who was new on the scene but who I was finding a surprising and very welcome kinship with. For a start, they were the only other person I knew who identified as non-binary.
I got fierce hugs from them — very welcome — and an introduction to Ella, a rather pretty, slightly wary and faintly cynical friend of Peta who did not have Peta’s lean height but, I realised when she stood up, was still on the above-average side for a woman. She was polite, shook hands and raised an eyebrow at Gitte’s emphatic “Phelan is good people” after Peta introduced us (Yes I’m non-binary, but in a vague way that means I’ve never attached enough importance to pronouns to use they/them).
I didn’t think much more about her after that — or see much of her. Gitte dragged me off to demand an update on how I was going, then other friends arrived. Given the size of the parties Frances and Stewart usually put on, the people I knew were comfortably in the minority and I stayed with them.
It was pleasant enough. I wasn’t drinking alcohol because I was riding home later and I wasn’t drinking much by those days, but the music was good (Stewart’s choices always were) and it was a very pleasant warm night.
Nothing noticeable happened until about 2 hours in.
I was sitting on the edges of a group a couple of my friends were in, idly chatting and with a bottle of ginger beer dangling from my fingers, when someone I didn’t know laughed and mentioned handcuffs.
I hadn’t heard any of the conversation before that but so far, so unremarkable. Take any group of women, I’ve found, let them drink and chat and someone will find an opportunity to slip in a reference to being kinky.
Maybe that’s just the people I know.
The difference at that party was that someone else I didn’t know actually recoiled, looking like they’d just seen something foul in their drink, then thrust themselves forward again and said, “don’t joke about that! It’s wrong!”
Now, I have known people who take a highly simplistic approach to human interactions and link domestic violence to mild BDSM, advertising, eating meat and (the reason I “have” known people) “the trans lobby”. I thought that’s what we had there.
Another woman laughed. “Oh, come on, a little bit of…”
“No!” the complainer cut her off, aggressively. “It’s sick. All bondage is! It’s not right!”
It would be laughable if she wasn’t so clearly earnest and so obviously upset.
For some reason, on some bizarre impulse, I said something.
I wouldn’t normally. I don’t usually get involved in arguments with people like that. I don’t see the profit in it for me. If someone is asking questions (and not “just asking questions”, a classic tactic of bad faith), I will happily discuss. But I rarely jump in. This shames me — not because I think bad ideas should be challenged, but because I know there may be people watching who are hurt and I should be doing something for them.
But just then, I was obviously in a fey mood.
“You know, people in BDSM relationships have better mental health than the average,” I said.
That got a reaction. Some stared at me. One or two actually gave a bark of laughter. The complainer (I never did actually learn her name) rounded on me.
“How can you say that?” she snarled. I was pretty sure she had been hurt in a relationship, but I had started so I pressed on.
“BDSM relationships,” I repeated. “Not abuse. It’s the difference between after-dark street racing and the Gold Coast 500. BDSM is not abuse by definition because it is founded on consent. The research has been done. People who are in the BDSM community have better mental health than the community at large.”
I think my comment about abuse gained me a little time, so I pressed on while I could.
“I mean, it makes sense, these are clearly people who know what they want, are prepared to pursue desires society has very judgemental and usually wrong opinions about, they are often in committed, loving relationships and they know more about consent negotiation than anyone else on the planet…”
“It’s not consent!” she shouted.
“Consent is at the core of BDSM, and if you don’t know that, you don’t know enough to criticise it,” I shot back at her. “You’re just talking from ignorance and if it’s from bad experiences, I’m really sorry for you.”
“Well, who fucking asked you,” she snapped, an admission if ever there was one that she had no argument. She may have been badly hurt before. But fuckwits will use any tools they like and call it what they like. I was not going to apologise for trying to educate her in public when she said something in public.
“You did, when you cast aspersions on my friends,” I said. Not strictly speaking true: I could name any number of friends who weren’t cisgender or heterosexual, or who lived outside the monogamous norm, but I couldn’t actually name anyone who was into kink outside myself — and my interests were hardly well-formed enough to defend.
She chose to storm off to get another drink. Looking back, it may have had something to do with the look my friend (not even Gitte, who would cheerfully have taken her to the cleaners) was giving her.
I chose to be diplomatic and move away, ending up giving Frances a hand in the kitchen. Everyone who knows me knows my skill with knives.
An hour after that, I found myself suddenly face to face with Ella.
“Thank you for what you said back there.”
I blinked. “What…”
“About BDSM. I was trying to suppress the desire to punch her.”
Ella didn’t look like the type, but I could see the potential in her expression at that moment.
“I think she’s been hurt. But I’ve seen what can happen when that hurt isn’t dealt with,” I said, which wasn’t really a response.
“People turn into fucking bigots,” Ella said, slightly more calmly than I was expecting.
“Exactly.”
Ella put her head on one side with a faint smile on her lips, the first such expression I had seen from her. She didn’t quite have the resting bitch face I tend to get, but she did perhaps have resting bored face. “So, are you into anything, or just defending friends?”
I had to think about my response to that. Clearly, she was supportive of kink, but I also didn’t know her and I wasn’t in the head-space to think hopefully about being flirted with.
“Kinbaku,” I said. I’ve met lots of people who know what shibari is and have rough opinions about it, but I was expecting that if anyone knew the term kinbaku, they probably knew more than just a little bit.
She actually blinked. I wasn’t sure if she was surprised, or was trying to hide ignorance.
“I’ve got issues with most of BDSM,” I said, “I mean, I’d dip my toe in, but I’d have to be so selective about what was going to happen that it’d stop being fun. I find it safest to not identify with the lifestyle. It’d prevent tedious conversations.”
“You mean you just haven’t found the right partner,” she said with what was almost a smile.
“True, and likely to remain so.”
She raised her eyebrows. I was to discover that Ella had extremely mobile and expressive eyebrows that do most of the work for the rest of her face. “You have trouble finding, or trouble committing?”
“Oh, I’m an inveterate fence-sitter. I don’t commit to anything. Sexuality, gender, politics … I hate surveys, they demand simple answers to complex questions. I try to educate myself about problems and I end up seeing too many complexities,” I said, flippantly but perfectly accurately.
“Too many potential problems.”
“Yes.”
“And yet, Gitte tells me you ride and that’s your bike in the driveway and I’ve seen it, so I know it’s something exotic built into an adventure tourer, so you’ve chosen how many problems?”
That threw me. I don’t expect to randomly run into other motorcyclists. “Oh, I might face them, and prepare for them, but I will find myself identifying them. I’m not a very brave or skilled rider. I’m way too careful.”
Her lip quirked. “So, do you jump from relationship to relationship, trying to find someone to meet your standards?”
That definitely sounded like a taunt and it was a justified one, but I wasn’t sure it was delivered as one.
“I… put relationships to one side about two years ago, and haven’t really picked it back up again. I’ve been busy.”
Ella blinked again. Not a regular blink, but a definite taken-aback or double-take blink.
“I’m sorry if I touched anything,” she said.
“The standard I would be looking for is: how much can I really trust you to respect me,” I said. “Right now, I’m in the mindset of thinking I don’t have time for fucking about wondering. Maybe one day I’ll meet someone I’m prepared to risk everything for. But I don’t think I ever really have, and…” I shrugged.
Two years ago, Gitte helped me recover from a relationship so epically bad I seriously considered taking a vow of celibacy for the rest of my life. It was also true that I not only had serious reservations about trusting anyone else ever again, but I also had an almost terminal inability to tell the difference between flirting, friendship and friendly politeness. I deeply treasure the friends I already have and make new friends slowly because, with friends, I know the boundaries and don’t have to think about them.
But that story would come later. I did not tell it then.
Ella was nodding slowly. “I can understand that,” she said. “I have… complex relationships, but it’s been some time since I’ve found anyone… But hang on, is that why you don’t identify as BDSM? You haven’t found anyone you could trust?”
Her abrupt change of subject spoke volumes, but I accepted it as evidence that maybe she did understand me, and moved on.
“Subbing? Yes, absolutely. That’s a gigantic degree of trust if I’m going to consent to any forms of restraint, pain or anything that could potentially cause injury. As a dom? I don’t know if I could be trusted with that degree of responsibility and do a good job. It terrifies me.”
She put her head on one side again. “You know, people say that not being sure if you can do something is the best sign…”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” I said dryly. “Self-awareness: great. Watching yourself: good sign. Not necessarily a gold-standard guideline, though. Some confidence does come from actual self-knowledge, and so does some doubt.”
Her lip twitched. “Well, true.”
She glanced at my hands. “You’re not drinking?”
“Riding. Don’t drink among strangers, in any case. And I may head soon, I don’t generally do,” I gestured vaguely around us, “drunk people.”
She nodded. “Oh, I get that,” she said meaningfully. “Don’t know how long Gitte and Peta want to stay, though. I came with them.”
For a moment, I felt an unexpected, unusual feeling I should stay to keep her company.
“Speaking of,” she said, interrupting my feeling, “I asked Peta about you. They say you’re good people.”
The best response I could muster to that was: “I hardly know Peta.”
“They seem pretty sure,” Ella said with a faint smile. “More to the point, they dragged in Gitte, who insisted you were good people and said if anyone fucked with you, she’d end them.”
I paused for a beat. “That is not what she said,” I said with absolute conviction.
“No, but I can’t repeat what she did say without giggling,” Ella said with a straight face.
I had to smirk. I knew Gitte and her vocabulary well.
“She also told me to check out your bike,” she said. “What was it when you started?”
“Husqvarna TE630.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Huh. Fancy.”
“You ride?” I asked.
“Check your phone,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows at her but pulled my phone out. I had an Instagram notification of a new follower. The name was an alphanumeric string that looked suspiciously as though it was extremely clever to those who understood it. The profile pic was someone in a black adventure motorcycle helmet with the internal sun visor down, hiding the eyes. But it looked like a woman. The account was private.
I glanced up at Ella and raised my own eyebrows. She gave me a pointed look. She was also holding her own phone.
I hit follow.
Ella accepted.
Most of it was her bike or trips with it, but none of the sexy poses you so often see on biker women accounts. I saw one attractive shot, which was showing off a new dress. Her bike shots were about riding.
“Yamaha?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“XT660R with a fairing?”
“Yep.”
“You could have just bought a 660 Ténéré.”
“Where’s the fun in that? And also no, I couldn’t find one. But building up a project was more fun.”
I peered more closely at my screen. “Nice tyres. You do a lot of dirt riding?”
“As much as I can. Grew up on a farm, on farm bikes. Look, are you doing anything tomorrow? Want to get lunch?”
I blinked. OK, it was not clearly an invitation to a date, we were both riders, this could be entirely platonic. Knowing Peta’s friends, she probably wasn’t going to be interested in me. I lacked a certain essential qualification. And Gitte had almost certainly assured her I wasn’t a creep.
“Where?” I asked.
“You live in Ipswich?”
“Not quite, but a reasonable assumption. Across the river. Anstead.”
“Huh. Nice. Glorious?”
I had to laugh. “Sure!”
She grinned. “Great. Midday at the café?”
There are a few cafés on Mt Glorious, but only one that bikers go to. “Sure.”
She nodded. “Alright. See you then?”
That seemed to be an end to the conversation, then. I saluted her with my empty ginger beer bottle. “See you then.”
When she left, I was left wondering if I should leave, or hunt down my friends to see if any were staying longer.
As I was thinking this, two of them left, which seemed like an omen.
The next person I found was Gitte.
“I know that look, you’re going to leave, aren’t you?” she said immediately.
“You know me too well,” I said for I’m not sure how many times. “Where did Ella come from?”
“Old friend of Peta’s.” She gave me an amused look. “Why?” Gitte, bless her, knew every intimate detail of why I had trust issues but also never gave up hope I’d find someone who interested me enough for me to try.
“Oh, she was talking to me. Seems like a good person.” I said “good” deliberately, knowing Gitte would deflate her expectations slightly, which did happen.
“She is. Don’t know her well yet, but Peta has convinced me I need to and they would trust her with their life.”
“Huh. OK. Yes, I’m heading off.”
“Come here, then.” Gitte could reasonably be termed a big girl and she’s strong and when she hugs you, you know you’ve been hugged. You know how babies were wrapped in swaddling clothes? Being hugged by Gitte is good enough for a burst of dopamine even if your ribs creak.
Peta arrived about then and gave me her own hug, bonier but just as friendly, before I went to try and find at least one of Frances and/or Stewart to say goodbye to.
# ~ # ~ #
The next day, I gave myself the morning off before throwing my riding gear on.
I can get ready quickly, it’s plaiting my hair and then making sure I haven’t forgotten anything from being in a rush that takes time.
It was a hot day, so I was wearing my most vented gear and didn’t bother taking more than a windproof lining in case the weather turned or we stayed out late.
I went west, to the highway then up to the dam before turning off for the mountains. I made good time (let’s just leave it at that, shall we?) so I got there a little earlier than intended, but Ella was already there, lounging at the end-most outside table, her dark blue bike directly opposite in the regular parking line.
I almost had to double-take so hard I nearly made a fool of myself as I parked and put the bike on its side stand. She had been wearing a loose jumper the night before, with the quiet air of someone who knows how to appear smaller and less significant and substantially less feminine or female than she really was. It had been effective, too — I had realised when talking to her that she was actually taller than she seemed.
I understood that, if it was her first time meeting most of those people. But there, at the table with her riding jacket over the back of her chair, she was wearing slightly baggy riding pants but a skin-tight scoop-neck T-shirt that variously hugged and revealed not just a pair of unavoidably nice breasts but also a musculature that suggested she was probably no slouch taking her bike off-road. She compared favourably to professional enduro racers I’ve seen photos of.
She didn’t just look outright sexy — something I am not blind to, no matter my essentially celibate existence in recent years — but relaxed, comfortable and in her element. That made me feel a lot more comfortable about noticing her attractiveness.
She waved at me but did not get up to hug, so I just waved back and said hello as I sat down.
“Want to order before they’re busy?” was her opening gambit.
Sensible. I did.
When we had settled back at the table, Ella leaned forwards. “Look, I’m sorry if I was too direct and said anything insensitive last night.”
“No! Not that I can remember,” I said, making a gesture of waving away.
Her top lip twitched. “Only, I got the impression from Gitte that it wasn’t ‘if anyone hurt you’, it was ‘if anyone hurt you again’, and while I don’t know Gitte’s standards of hurt, I have known people to be hurt so badly they were turned off men entirely for about three years. So, was it a man, or…”
I had to laugh, sharp and short. “No! It was a woman, but I don’t have issues with women because I didn’t see it as being a woman who hurt me, it was a romantic partner who happened to be a woman. That’s it. I’ve known too many women, had and kept and cherished too many women as friends, to fall into that mistake.”
“But romantic partners?” she asked. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather not…”
“Well, you may have a point,” I admitted, riding over her apology quite deliberately. Then I rubbed my hands together, then clasped them, while looking at Ella. She waited for me.
I studied her for a few seconds, debating how much I was going to tell her. Then I thought: Fuck it. I have known Gitte enough to trust her judgements absolutely, and Peta long enough to not distrust her. Let’s see if Ella would make a worthy friend.
“It’s not a story I open with, but it’s hardly a secret,” I said. “Her name was Anna. Which is really unfortunate, because there’s an Anna at work and I’m having trouble with that. But anyway.
“She professed attraction to me, did most of the pursuing, we got together, had decent sex, ended up moving in together, started talking about buying a house. At some point, which I did not recognise at the time, she flipped from courting to manipulating and then ultimately got very nasty when I tried to talk about anything I had trouble with, while pressuring me to change. Then, when I finally said I couldn’t go on and we would have to talk about this because I was getting stupidly, inexplicably stressed at work and was burning out, she stormed out of the room, then came back saying she’d been sleeping with someone else and if I wanted to fuck her ever again, I was going to have to win her back.
“I walked out. Quite literally. Without saying anything else. Just turned my back on her, grabbed some clothes, jumped on my bike — not that one, that’s new — sent Gitte a text asking if I could talk because she had been getting worried about me and kept ordering me to call her if I ever needed her, and spent the night at her place while trying to talk her out of, and I quote, ‘calling up some of the lesbian mafia and going to sort the bitch out’.
“So, collecting all my stuff wasn’t a problem because Gitte organised a truck and some friends. We had been renting but it wasn’t entirely coincidental that the lease on that place only had a month to go anyway, so I just paid the last month and told Anna that was the last thing I would be doing. As it turned out, I had enough saved up to get the house I wanted — which was not the house she wanted — by myself. I found it that week. So Gitte let me stay until settlement. I can not believe how fucking lucky I was that Anna was not financially savvy and had got me to organise our shared stuff. I sent her half of our shared account, which was more than she had put in, cancelled every service with my name on it and said goodbye.
“But staying with Gitte meant she had time to give me third degree and I thought, hell, why not, and opened up, and by the time I had worked over how Anna had been behaving the past year, I had a new and in-depth understanding of the terms ‘gaslighting’, ‘manipulation’, ’emotional blackmail’, ‘psychological warfare’ and ‘fucking cow-faced bitch-ho skank’.”
Ella had been listening to me with her mouth open and eyes wide, but she couldn’t keep a straight face when I got to Gitte’s most rarely-used and highest-level insult.
She struggled to contain herself, shoulders shaking and biting her wrist as I drained my glass of water.
“Laughter was probably the only thing that kept me sane,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Ella gasped, “but I can just see Gitte’s face when she said that. I haven’t known her long enough to hear it, but I can just see!”
I nodded. “I saw it quite a lot.”
I spread my hands. “So, upshot is, I’m OK with it, it’s in the past and this is not the me that I was. But I haven’t really seen myself getting into another romantic relationship. I meet lovely people, I sometimes meet someone I think might actually be interested in me, but either I don’t meet anyone who is both interested in me and assertive enough to say so straight out instead of expecting the ‘man’ to do the work, or I put off such an intense friend-zone vibe that nobody’s asked. I suspect I really am just that bad at recognising any sort of overture less overt than ‘I want a date with you’, or ‘can we fuck?'”
Ella had her head canted to one side and was giving me a thoughtful look. “Do you get interested in people? Sexually, if not romantically?”
I sighed. “I still have a sexuality, and I’ve become much more aware of what it even is since I left Anna and felt free to explore. That was when I discovered I even have kinks. But I haven’t explored with anyone else, no. The desire for sexual contact has not over-ridden my distrust.”
“But do you ever look at someone and…” Ella pressed.
“Yes,” I said, drawing the word out to ride over the rest of what she was saying. “I do sometimes get the hots for someone. I can look at people and appreciate that they’re beautiful, or hot, or gorgeous, or sexy, or went to a great deal of effort and did it well. But I missed the part of growing up where people raised as male tended to get some sort of sense of entitlement to getting access to that.”
Ella just nodded.
“Besides, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been, I’ve probably got more actual libido than ever before, but…” I shrugged.
“But if somebody did come up to you and say ‘hey, want to fuck’?” she asked with a half-smile.
“I’d thank them for the compliment, ask what they were into, and stress it would be strictly a one-time thing.”
“And if they wanted more?” she pressed.
I could be forgiven for wondering where that was going.
“I would take it glacially slowly, and say no a lot more, and negotiate with every request, probably.”
“Healthy,” she said.
Our lunches appeared.
We had sated our hungers before I asked: “So, why did you want to meet?” Her questioning had been stewing at the back, and even front, of my mind.
“Thought you seemed like a possible friend,” she said, a little too casually.
“Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “And?”
She scowled at me, but clearly wasn’t putting any heart into it. “Look, I don’t meet… anyone who’s nice and rides the same sort of bike I do.” She took another mouthful of food and spoke through it. “And is into shibari.”
“Ah,” I said, instantly almost wary.
“Because,” she said, gesturing at me with her fork, “you said ‘kinbaku’, which is the sort of thing that someone says when they know that lots of people have heard of shibari but they probably only know that term if they actually know what they’re talking about, and you’re saying it as a test. Or a dodge. Either way, my first point still stands.”
“Gold star,” I said.
“Thank you. Anyway, I asked Peta if they knew anything about your kinks and they asked Gitte, who said she had no idea but knew you were kind of bisexual and basically gender-queer, which… what does that even mean? For the record, I’m pansexual.”
“It means I don’t know if my sexual attraction is more about a certain body type,” I began while marking out boxes on the table with my hands, “or a certain personality, or… ‘femininity’,” I dropped the air-quotes into place, “or ‘women’, or a set of personality traits that society or other factors deem ‘woman’.” I paused, looking at my hands on the table by the plate. “I think that’s it. So, if I think about all the people I’ve been sexually attracted to, there are men but the men have been ‘feminine’ but some of the women have been quite ‘masculine’. And I’m attracted to female bodies that are deemed masculine and even masculine male bodies if they’re cute. And if I think of the people I have had sex with, they were all, with one exception that didn’t really work, cisgender women — I think — but if I had met those women in male bodies — I probably would have been more than happy to go there. So,” I shrugged.
“And for gender, it means I don’t identify as a gender, I hate the concept, I hate the social rules, I find some women’s clothing very nice. I don’t really identify as male, either, but I’m pretty sure I’m not trans, so I just say I’m queer because this meat suit of a body is OK but I’d like to experience life with a female meat suit. I look for opportunities to feel feminine. But I don’t really care enough to stand up and challenge things by wearing makeup with ‘men’s’ clothes, or a dress in public. Except for goth clubs, but that hardly counts.”
“OK, now, that… You know, I have never been to a goth club, but I keep having people be surprised by that.”
I looked at her T-shirt, which was black and featured a half-skeleton zombie cute girl with a machete, and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
She laughed. “I have no idea what goth even is!”
I shrugged. “Neither do I, really, but I seem to fit in.”
“You seem fine with telling me all this,” she said.
I shrugged. “No point in waiting to freak someone out. Let them know up-front what they’re in for. I’ve gone through too much to not be open now.”
“Good point.”
“So: spill,” I said. “Quid pro quo.”
“Ah. Right. I’m a pansexual woman who has never in her life tried to be feminine but sometimes it just happens. I have very specific desires and kinks and trust requirements. And I’m not interested in a relationship for the sake of it, but I might be if it fulfils all my other boxes well enough, so I have people I play with but not anyone I would describe as a partner, but I get reasonably regular sex.” She spread her hands then clapped them and rubbed them together. Almost a gesture I had already made.
Then she folded her arms and rested her forearms on the table, pushing her empty plate back so she could lean on them, looking up at me from under eyelashes that, like mine, were long enough to make her entire face seem more feminine.
“And, I’m a rigger.”
I froze.
“When I said I have people I play with, I mean I know some rope bunnies I scene with, not just practice tying. It’s very satisfying for both of us and for some of them, it goes beyond sexual to actual sex. But only one or two. The rest aren’t looking for that. One even offered to let me if I wanted to, they didn’t mind, but I’m not looking for that permission, I want desire from both of us, so: no. I’ve been practising for about seven years but properly, with actual proper equipment and instruction — there are courses available around here, and I’ve done workshops with visiting Japanese instructors — for five. I’d like to think I’m pretty good. I can make up ties and do it safely, and nobody has ever been injured in my ropes.”
I stayed frozen, listening.
She sat back, picked up her glass of water, sipped it. “What about you?”
I found my tongue. “I’m entirely an amateur, exploring his own sexuality,” I said. I had to take a swig of my own water. “So I haven’t had any instruction. I know there are studios around, which I have never been to. I’ve been self-taught off tutorials because I’ve never made the time for anything else. It’s how I learn most things. I like the thought of being a rigger, and binding someone, but the responsibility of it also terrifies me.” I had to take a deep breath. Honesty was one thing, but we had suddenly become very close to soul-baring being relevant, which was a different thing entirely. “But I mostly want to explore the bunny side of myself.” There. Said it out loud.
Ella didn’t react with glee or guardedness. She examined me steadily. “What appeals to you about it?”
“Ooh, that’s going to have to be a complex answer, I’m afraid,” I said, which was not, I promise you, stalling for time. She nodded.
I held a finger in the universally recognised counting gesture. “So, one, I just love the aesthetic. I adore seeing people in ropes, suspended or not, mostly constraints and restrictions, but also just patterns on skin. Male or female, and we really need more male bunnies shown, instead of just using rope as an excuse to show off more conventionally attractive female models. And I like the thought of looking like that. Also, I’ve always found specific tight clothing nice. I tend to wear belts slightly tight. It’s… reassuring, I think. Sexually, I like pressure, I like restraints, it can be erotic without being sexual, but it also just feels… nice. Look, do you know about pressure vests?”
“No, is this a circulation thing?”
“No. Weighted blankets?”
“Heard of them, but not really.”
“Many people with autism find that tight clothing helps with focus, emotional stability, comfort. Weighted blankets serve the same function. I’ve never been formally diagnosed as autistic but I am ADHD and I’m sure as hell autism-type neurodivergent to some degree. And I find specific types of tightness comforting, although I get very warm in bed so I haven’t tried weighted blankets. For comfort, I like tight clothing. When I tie myself, even if it’s just a practice cuff or a ladder on one leg, it feels… good. I’ve found that practising ties on myself is a great de-stress strategy without being in any way erotic, but when I’m in the mood, it’s intensely arousing. So, there’s that.”
“I have had people tell me I’m on the spectrum,” she said. “Never felt it was something I needed to look into.”
“Birds of a feather,” I said. “We really do tend to find each other.”
Her lip quirked.
“And are you naturally submissive in bed?” she asked, so seriously the question was clinical.
“No,” I said, bluntly. “I’m happy to lie back and let someone do the work if they insist, but I can’t deal with only being on the receiving end. I have to be forced to let someone take care of me. I get actively guilty when someone does things for me. Gitte once had to chase me out of her kitchen with physical threats because I couldn’t just sit and let her clean up.
“I can’t relax and let someone lead because then I feel guilty. I have to know I’m giving pleasure. I have to be active. Actually, no, I feel guilty about not paying back, but I don’t have to be active, I need someone to be active, I can’t cope if one of us isn’t taking charge, so it becomes me by default.”
Ella actually looked intrigued by that. “You need the presence of the dynamic,” she said.
“If you’re talking sub/top, not sure about that. I’m never not restless and I need something happening and I can’t cope when I’m with people and everybody agrees we should do something and nobody commits. So if I’m in bed with someone and they aren’t deliberate, I will be.”
“Huh,” Ella said. “Huh. But you’re not… dominant?”
“I’m scared of the responsibility of actually being capital-D Dominant and having responsibility for someone’s emotions,” I said bluntly. “I’m nervous of the responsibility of using potentially dangerous toys and I get actively sick at the display of master-slave role play stuff, so, basically, I like all the tools of BDSM but not the actual power dynamics. And I can be receptive, but I’m not sure about submissive. And I can be in charge, but not properly Dominant. It’s just that most women I’ve been with have assumed I’d want to be all manly and, looking back, Anna was just a textbook example of playing up to stupid, toxic fucking masculine assumptions.
“So no, I have no problem with the thought of handing myself over to someone who wants to tie me securely and take charge if that is their jam.”
Ella was nodding thoughtfully but seriously.
“But the level of trust I require…” I let that hang in the air, as well.
Ella nodded more emphatically
I raised my eyebrows. Challenging without saying anything.
She smiled faintly.
“I enjoy relaxing and letting someone play with me,” she said. “And I come and it’s nice and it can be great and I won’t say no if I like them, but I do actually, actively get a real thrill out of being in charge. Not dominating, absolutely not sadism, not master-servant role-play, not having somebody submit to me but having them put themself in my hands and I take them and take away all their freedom of movement and control, and I give them… whatever they’re looking for. Subspace. Bliss. Comfort. A long, still moment. The experience. Orgasms. Whatever. When I’m tying, sex is a tool for me. If I’m invited, I’ll participate. If it’s desire, I’ll use it. But tying is another entire world for me that overlaps with sex but isn’t a subset. Can you see that?”
I nodded slowly. “I can imagine it. I…” I was about to say I had never done that, but a memory struck me, clear and sharp and painful. It had been early in my relationship with Anna. I hadn’t felt like sex, I had been too tired and a little depressed, but I had wanted to give her pleasure, but she had insisted she wanted “me” — meaning my penis, meaning me having her — not just my attentions. It had unsettled me at the time.
So, yes, I knew what it meant to use sex as a tool without participating. Having no interest at that moment, but wanting to make someone feel good.
I nodded again. “Yes, I can understand that.”
She gave me a searching look for my moment of flashback but didn’t push it.
Instead, she abruptly changed tack. I thought.
“What’s your opinion on aftercare?”
The question took me a little by surprise. “Fundamental?” I said. “Fuck, I need to cuddle after normal sex, let alone scening. I can’t imagine how terrible it could feel to not have aftercare. It’s one of the things that makes me nervous about topping. Letting someone down would be devastating.”
She smiled, for the first time since she started talking about herself. “Hold, and reassure, and be protective and be there for them in their own time,” she said. “I’ve had a foot cramp when giving aftercare, and it was excruciating, and you have no idea how much she laughed about it when she was feeling better and I admitted it. That’s how I approach tying. It’s all duringcare. Fuck, that’s how all sex should be.”
She broke off, frowned, looked around. The café was filling up, the table closest to us occupied, noise rising, and it was getting harder to talk quietly. “Look, would you like to continue this back at my place?”
I froze for a second. As someone male-presenting, I would never make that offer about my house, or request to see hers, this early in a friendship with any woman. I was as much moved by her trust, given the nature of our conversation, as I was surprised by the offer.
I also wondered just how far this conversation was going, because it seemed pretty clear even to me. But… Why not? I was shocked to discover that whether or not I felt any attraction for Ella — there is a part of my mind that deliberately shuts off that assessment while I’m talking to people, and actively suppresses it if I do think they’re attractive — I trusted her. I had been open to challenging her to begin with, and then because she began to earn my trust. We were taking fairly big steps, but behind it all was my trust in the friends who had recommended us to each other.
“I can offer you very good coffee,” she said.
I wondered if Gitte had forewarned her. “I have to tell you, I have very high standards for coffee.”
She gave me a smug look. “I can offer you very good coffee,” she repeated with more emphasis.
“Sure. Where do you live?”
“Ah.” Her hands moved like describing a racetrack. “I’m sort of…” She gave a “way over there” wave, then hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “About 10 minutes that way.”
I stared at her.
“Yeah, sorry, I made you do all the riding.”
“Oh no, I have to ride up Glorious, how will I cope,” I dead-panned.
“In my defence, I was hoping I would feel comfortable inviting you back,” she said.
I was nearly derailed by the revelation I really had just passed a highly significant test. But… “You live on Mt Glorious?”
“Well,” she said with more hand movements, “it’s more sort of… over… yes.”
“How? Did you inherit? You don’t live with your parents, do you?”
She laughed. “No! I bought it, with my money, it’s mine. But you’ll understand how when you see it.”
“Ah. I suspect it’ll look something like my house. Alright, then. Shall we?”
# ~ # ~ #
I half-expected Ella to bolt down the road, even on her very dirt-capable chunky tyres, and make me push myself to keep up. But she almost kept to the speed limit.
We turned off the main road after a couple of kilometres, then turned at a fork, then onto a road cut out of the side of a hill that was so narrow two LandCruisers would have had serious trouble passing each other.
Ella’s house was off that road and up a steep driveway. I was surprised and impressed that although its garage, carved out of the hillside, had only one door, there was comfortably enough space under the house for both our bikes next to Ella’s battered old Subaru wagon.
“It was never really finished,” she said as we stripped off our helmets, jackets and boots to leave behind her locked roller door.
I could see that. The garage/workshop had been finished to the minimum possible standard necessary to get the door operating — it was manual, not automatic — and the lights safe.
The same theme was continued upstairs, in the house proper.
“How are you even living here?” I asked.
“Oh, it was certified, but I think it was done on sufferance,” Ella said. “The bathroom — right there — is complete but it’s shit, the kitchen is complete but it’s shit, there are two rooms I’m happy with. I do most of it myself, learning as I go. I’ve stripped a lot of it back, so it’s technically no longer legal for human habitation. Don’t tell anyone.”
I wondered if that explained her physique as much as her riding did. Standing, her legs were still hidden by her baggy riding pants but her tight shirt exposed a trim but muscular waist and a strong back I admired openly more than I felt comfortable admiring covertly her bra-rounded breasts.
“Which rooms?” I asked, because I thought it was expected of me.
“My bedroom, which I finished after I moved in, while sleeping in the lounge, and this.”
She had been leading me through a house that had walls only skinned on one side.
She opened a door I was astonished to realise looked like an actual shoji screen. We stepped into a Japanese room.
Apart from a window, light came from gentle, paper-shaded lights on opposite walls. The walls were beautifully finished wood panelling. The ceiling exposed the joists, with multiple eye bolts attached at regular intervals and, in the dead centre, a stainless steel suspension ring with the trefoil pattern of the BDSM triskelion.
“My studio,” Ella said.
I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
She gave me a crooked smile. “Do you believe me now?”
“I believed you before. But I am very impressed. Are those mats actual tatami?”
“Of course.”
She walked in and pointed at one wall. There was a framed photo, A4 height — I don’t know traditional print sizes — showing Ella, kneeling and dressed in what looked like a kimono, completing a suspension tie on a mostly naked woman whose face was hidden from the camera.
It was as beautiful a shot as any I had ever seen, and I would have said so if I hadn’t been struggling with the skin-crawling, unreal, spooky sensation of potentialities crystallising around me. A desire that had been slowly growing for almost two years was suddenly, unexpectedly and with almost banal casualness, within reach.
“Would you like coffee?” Ella asked, shattering my moment like glass.
Her kitchen was, as she said, shit. I doubted it had been designed so much as thrown randomly together, or that the assembler had ever cooked properly for themselves.
But Ella had a very nice kitchen island like an old butcher’s block, and seemed to have beaten the setup into something functional.
She also had a very good electric grinder and a very good espresso machine. The two, together, produced a small glass cup of espresso that even I, jaded, cynical and demanding as I am, had to admit met my standards.
Compliment received with smugness, she made herself a cup while I leaned my elbows on the island, watching her and finishing my coffee in a couple of small swigs.
A very large question was hanging in the air, making my skin prickle and putting me on edge.
She turned around with her cup in hand to see me watching her.
“Shoot,” she said.
“I think you were talking when we left,” I said.
“Ah.” she looked down at her cup, then slugged the whole shot in one, ignoring its temperature.
We rinsed cups, left them by the sink, then she lead me to the deck, which hung out over the driveway.
There was one old couch. She sat on one end, pulling her legs up to fold beside her while leaning against the back. I mirrored her pose, something I tend to do that is very probably part of my autism. Since we were both still wearing padded and armoured riding pants, it was a slightly strained pose to hold.
She thought for a second before speaking. I gave her time.
“We are two people with a very specific kink and appropriately large trust issues,” she said. “Is issues the right word?”
“Oh, I think so,” I said. “Requirements? I’ve been very badly let down and am now three or four times shy. How about you?”
She shook her head slightly. “Not so much. I mean, I haven’t not had to deal with arseholes in and out of relationships, but my issue is that I’ve learned to vet my partners extremely fucking carefully before I even mention ropes. Too many just think it’d be cool, or think it’d be sexy to be dommed by a woman, or don’t know how to be careful.”
She sighed. Looked at her fingernails. “Can I ask: What did you think of me last night?”
I looked at her, remembering the dusk and the loose jumper and the deliberate, sociable half-smile. “Reserved. Someone trying to be unobtrusive while watching everyone and wondering if you were going to enjoy yourself.”
She raised an eyebrow. “OK, yes, not bad. And?”
“Then, when you came up to me later, I thought I could see you would be an interesting person to know. You noticed my bike, but then completely derailed that line of thought by talking about BDSM. You seemed more like one of Peta’s usual friends then but you still seemed polite, not friendly. I suppose you were still measuring me.”
“Oh, I was.”
“And?” I asked.
“I was attracted to you when we were introduced, and I couldn’t work out why,” she said. “You were all polite but it felt like it was something you had to practice, but there was something about your eyes that was reassuring. You were in bike jeans and boots, but you didn’t seem like any of the macho guys I usually see on bikes like that, despite looking like you worked out. I mean, skinny and almost pretty-boy and you had your hair, but a bit fit.”
“I am definitely a pretty boy,” I said, making sure my foot-long plait was hanging over one shoulder neatly.
“Where do your arms come from?”
“I’ll show you my house sometime,” I said. “Where do yours come from?”
She gestured slowly, regally, at her house. “And I do take the bike on serious tracks. I grew up in the country.”
“Oh yes, you said.” I nodded. “And then, I stuck my foot into someone else’s misconceptions,” I prompted.
She smiled faintly. “Oh, yes, I was impressed by that. You know, you actually sounded patient and regretful? I was impressed. So I had to talk to you, and I came away from that wondering why Peta had been hiding you from me. But apparently, they don’t know anything about your little desires.”
“Oh, they know my feelings on gender, but somehow we’ve never talked about tying people up. Did you work out why you found me attractive?” I very carefully didn’t say “were attracted to me”.
“Oh, I think so,” she murmured, looking at me. “I’ve never really been attracted to cis men. I need a bit of queer in anyone I’m going to find interesting. Usually, it’s more overt, though. But I have to say, apart from your hair, your thumbnails are rather nice.”
I grow those nails half a centimetre long and file them round. I used to go longer and pointier, but they didn’t really work in motorcycle gloves.
I inspected one and flicked it with my index finger. “I just like them. A small sign of non-conformity. Anna didn’t. Her attitude to them was something that made me start to realise she was not good for me. But she really didn’t like me touching her with them. Especially not during sex.”
“Other people can’t understand why not,” Ella murmured, one side of her lips twitching upwards.
I let that slide past. It didn’t feel like the time for banter.
She cleared her throat. “Why did you agree to have lunch?”
“I was curious, and I don’t know many other riders, especially not with my taste in bikes,” I said. “Also, you came highly recommended, and I like Gitte and Peta’s friends but so few of them are interested in me I was intrigued when one of them wanted to meet.”
Most of their friends, after all, were not interested in anyone male, presenting or assigned. I didn’t think it was necessary to add that.
“Fair enough.” Ella huffed through her nose. “You see, I’m not good at flirting and dating. It’s too much like double-talk and bullshit status games. I only date to find out if I think I know enough about someone to still be attracted to them, and then I just straight-out tell them. So, I’m telling you that after everything you said about being tied, I would really, really like to get you in ropes. If you would like me to tie you.”
I felt strangely calm, but also light-headed. It wasn’t even a sexual offer. She hadn’t really mentioned sex and me in the same sentence, apart from a throwaway comment about my thumb. Shibari didn’t need to be sex, although it was definitely sexual. It didn’t even need to be erotic, depending upon the participants and the viewer. It was sensual, physical. She had said all of that. But she hadn’t said anything about how that would apply to me.
But the question had been spoken.
Many years ago, I would have squirmed, panicked and run. Not that many years ago, I would have been over-enthusiastic and freaked her out.
“I’ve never been tied by anyone else,” I said, quietly. “So: Talk to me.”
She smiled at me. The first actual full smile I think she had given me. “Good. As far as I’m concerned: the bunny is in charge. You tell me your limits and what you want to explore. I work within that. Obviously, I have my limits in skill and desire and what I won’t do, but when I start and I’m the one with the power, I’m working within your parameters. If you want to give me permission to do whatever I feel like, to go wild — you will still have physical limits. Most people I do sessions with come here to let me play with them but for every one of them, I know their bodies and I know their emotional limits. Any questions so far?”
I was nodding along. Everything she said reassured me, made me more confident in trusting her. I could remember people I had spoken to about arranging dinner who hadn’t given me that confidence. “Not yet. No. I do. You haven’t told me why you tie. Yes, you told me what you get out of being in charge. What do you get out of tying?”
She nodded with an emphatic whole-torso motion. “Yes. Thank you, no, I haven’t. So, my complicated answer: simplest part of it is: immense satisfaction at a complicated skill done well. I get the same sort of satisfaction from cleaning a difficult section of trail on a bike. But I also love how shibari looks, and how it makes bodies look, and I love making beautiful things.”
She took a deep breath. “But. The big thing I get out of tying, beyond the fact of tying, is that my domme side… my fetish, if it can be called that, is that I am… aggressively caring. Every mothering instinct I have is exclusively concentrated on trussing someone up and then cuddling them and stroking their hair and whispering reassurances. Don’t get me wrong, I will be physically assertive when I tie you, I will push your body around and be rough if you like that and leave you in no doubt that I am steadily taking away your freedom of movement until you are utterly helpless. Or I could tie you clinically and then leave you alone for five minutes in suspension, if that’s what you need, but if you give me the freedom to act as I wish, I will smother you with affection, whether we are tying for sensuality or for sex.”
When she finished speaking, I couldn’t actually respond. I was speechless as my brain locked. I couldn’t say how much I desired someone doing that to me, how much I desired being held like that, because my brain was locked with the combination of the enormity of how much I wanted it, and the enormity of how much I had been unaware of how much I wanted that.
I had never thought of myself as touch-starved. I got hugs, and I got time with other people’s pets. Yes, I always craved more touch than I got since leaving Anna, and I had realised that if I treated myself to a regular massage, I felt better from more than the actual therapeutic value. But the thought of being held in such a way — it almost broke my brain.
Part of me realised that Ella had finished speaking, was still waiting.
So, naturally, I started to panic and feel guilty about not saying anything and therefore making her uncomfortable.
Ella, it turned out, was a more astute judge of people than I was, and probably had a level of emotional intelligence appropriate in someone who regularly dommed people for rope sessions.
“You sounded like you may appreciate that,” she said. I think her tone was gentle. All I realised from the depths of my turmoil and rising panic was that it wasn’t judgemental or impatient.
“I may not have appreciated how much I might appreciate that,” I managed to say, shocked into baring the part of my soul I hadn’t already bared with hard-learned self-confidence.
“Would you like another coffee?” she asked.
It was a fantastic gesture, offering me the chance to be alone, or simply a brief change of subject to regroup. I was fairly lucky I was in a position to even realise that and decide whether or not to take advantage of it, mind you.
“Do you tell all your rope bunnies that about yourself?” I asked.
“Not all of them,” she said.
“Why me?”
“Because with most people I tie, it’s not a sexual thing. It might be deeply intimate, or just for laughs, or an exploration of submission, but it’s not sexual. So I’m offering to tie you because it’d be a new experience for me and I am always delighted to help people I trust explore that side of themself. But I need to let you know first, because it wouldn’t be fair otherwise, that I would be interested in fucking you.”
That dropped across all trains of thought with a clang. It had been hanging in the air as a possibility — even I realise that it would be really odd to have gone where we were going five minutes into our lunch date without, just maybe, ending up at that discussion — but I am open with all my friends, old or new, and I don’t do well with innuendo and suggestion and hinting, and I know there are people who have long-term shibari relationships without involving sex, and it hadn’t been said, so: clang.
I gave myself a moment to absorb that. “In ropes?”
“Oh, there are things we can do in ropes, certainly, but…” and she looked less than entirely confident for the first time since she had betrayed a hint of defensiveness when showing me her studio and asking if I trusted her. “But I wouldn’t need that.”
That shocked me almost as much as my reaction to her admission of aggressive affection had. It took the entire dynamic of the conversation, of me submitting to her, and shattered it without warning.
That was hardly any easier to deal with.
“I haven’t had sex for two years,” I said. “I’ve never had sex with anyone who was genuinely dominant more than just liking to be a bit aggressive. And I’ve never had sex with anyone who can have an entire conversation about a complex, highly skilled kink they’ve dedicated their lives to and then offered to do me vanilla, if I liked, because they’re not just after me for their ropes. I didn’t just misunderstand you, did I?”
Ella was almost laughing at my phrasing, biting her wrist to control herself. “No, that’s it,” she managed to say.
I drew a shaky breath. “That might just be the most sincere offer I’ve ever had, as well as the biggest demonstration of trust,” I said.
That sobered Ella up.
“Fuck,” I said, before she said anything else. “Is that offer of another coffee still valid?”
“Please,” she said as we stood up, “Tell me you’ve been masturbating for those two years.”
“Frequently, and with great enjoyment,” I said with affected dignity. “And because of it, I understand a lot more about my sexuality.”
I followed her back through the unfinished house to the kitchen, which had been placed in a stupid position relative to the rest of the house. I mentioned that to Ella, who assured me she knew.
As she busied herself with the grinder and portafilter, I sat on a stool at the island and tried to clear my mind, reset my expectations, and actually look at her with my sexuality.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed she was attractive, even while she was being deliberately unobtrusive at the party. Especially when I arrived at the café. But I don’t think about that with most people. I deliberately don’t analyse them or notice their sex appeal beyond a background awareness there is some or the initial shock of noticing it. But, looking at her, I saw she had a face I found extremely pleasant to look at, a figure that was disconcertingly sexy when I let myself look at it, even in the baggy riding pants she still wore but especially in that snug T-shirt, and an athleticism that made my mouth water — when I let myself notice it.
That was when I realised she was almost certainly wearing a bra made for showing off, not the sports bra that other women I know choose for riding. That made me think she almost certainly hadn’t worn it or anything like it the night before. I know at least that much about how breasts work. I sincerely doubted it was her usual riding gear, and I doubted it was entirely comfortable inside her jacket. When she turned sideways, I became even more certain that her jacket and bra had been in conflict, there.
It didn’t surprise me — she had, of the pair of us, gone to the meeting intending to have this discussion — but it did amuse me. Don’t confuse me for someone who thinks that deliberately looking nice is somehow cheating. If I know someone has made an effort for me, I appreciate it.
I definitely appreciated it.
She turned around with my coffee, saw me looking at her with a faint smile on my face, and raised one eyebrow.
“I am letting myself look at you properly, since we’re facing this conversation,” I said.
For someone who had probably made at least that much effort — apart from anything else, it was quite a tight T-shirt — she seemed briefly self-conscious, before rallying.
“And do you like what you see?” she asked, as she put a sashay into the step back to the island I was sitting on the other side of.
“Quite a bit,” I admitted. “Be honest, is that normally the bra you wear on the bike? It seems a bit push-up to be comfortable under a jacket.”
She looked down at her chest then handed me my coffee, completely unfazed by the question. “Not usually, no. And technically, it’s not a push-up bra but it’s not not a push-up bra. It’s my self-confidence bra. I always feel sexier wearing it.”
So, maybe it hadn’t been for me. But she had worn it because of me, which was good enough.
She made herself a cup and sat opposite me at the island, looking as though she had something on her mind.
“Did you just decide to allow yourself to look at me sexually?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Wow. I just check out everyone, and then think ‘nice, pity it’s not going to happen’.”
“Look, I don’t not appreciate all my friends, and I definitely don’t not perve a whole lot when I go to a club, but I automatically switch off anything beyond aesthetics when I talk to people. I’m not comfortable enough with interpersonal skills to handle the extra distraction.”
“Whatever works,” she said, nodding.
I sipped my coffee. Savoured it.
She followed my example.
“So, where are we?” she asked.
The way she said it, it was a bigger question than “where had we got up to”.
I studied her. I had to find my feet again. I had to start doing some of the heavy lifting in this conversation. And, I thought as I looked at her expression, I had to reassure her, even if I had misread her and she didn’t need it. “You offered to tie me, as a rigger, platonically,” I said, holding up my thumb in the traditional counting gesture.
“…Yes,” she said.
“And then you said you were interested in jumping my bones, or being jumped, whatever worked.” A finger.
She almost did a triple-take at that and had to struggle to keep a straight face. “Yes. Not in those words, but… yes.”
“And, you know what?” I continued. “I am actually relieved to meet someone who can say that without being in the middle of a full-on move. It makes me feel immensely flattered, and I’m very grateful you said it, and that you feel that way. And with any other circumstances, I’d suggest, I don’t know, a picnic at … Lake Borumba. Because you’re attractive and I like you and apparently we have at least a couple of interests in common and therefore that offer would be too good to be true and we’ve known each other for a combined time of about 1 hour, so just jumping in would seem a bit impulsive.”
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.”