It is evening and the country road is deserted when my husband and I finally find what we are looking for and park the car. We are standing outside a completely ordinary house, having just arrived at the place where I am to be bound in bondage for the first time. Arm in arm we ring the doorbell. My heart is already working overtime. The couple, whom we know a little, opens the door. They are both dressed in black, I note. It seems solemn, and I like it.

They are about our age. She is small with short dark hair, feminine shapes and quick movements. He is tall, fair-haired and very calm. The man, whom I have only greeted before, is going to tie me up. That is why we are here. Not just to wrap me in rope so that I am stuck. But to tie me up artificially, to tie me according to a special system, to tie me up aesthetically and with precision.

I have never considered letting myself be tied up in bondage before, and I am not at all attracted to the harder SM environment. But the last few months I have been so pressured at work that I have been in the mental and active gear almost continuously. I have practically left my body. Result: Sex life at home has come to a standstill, and I feel out of touch with my softness and my feminine sides. Something has to happen. I WANT to give in, I just can’t figure out how to let go right now. Maybe Japanese bondage will help.

Prelude

Shortly after arriving, all four of us are sitting decently on their corner sofa. We are in a small square living room. There is a metal ring hanging from the ceiling, and there is a thin, Japanese-looking straw mattress on the floor. Otherwise it looks pretty ordinary. It is nice and stylish here. I have been given a glass of red wine, which I have to force myself not to just throw down.

There is no small talk, just a brief clarification of my starting point. No – I have no experience with rope. Well, we haven’t really experimented with bondage. Those handcuffs once, I could probably get out of them if I wanted to,

“So that was cheating”, I say with an apologetic smile.

“Yes, it was”, is the woman’s answer. Her eyes are kind.

It has been a long time since I have felt like a virgin in any direction, but I do now. A faint electricity is already spinning in my body. A little nervous. No, very excited is more accurate.

Quiet music fills the living room. The man has stood up and has started fiddling with some rope. Beginner’s rope. It is brown and quite soft, I have been told. I think it looks narrow, about the thickness of a little finger.

We have agreed in advance that I can wear some light clothing during the session so that the ropes don’t seem too rough.

“Can you help me with what to wear?” I say to the woman, a little embarrassed, as I unwrap myself from my wrap dress. Then I stand before her in black leggings and underwear and a small silk slip.

“No bra,” she says so quickly that I immediately throw my bra away. It’s completely unthinkable that I would show up without it in other contexts, but here there is clearly no point in fussing.

First rope

Soon I am standing upright on the mattress. My husband and the hostess are watching me kindly from the sofa. They are supposed to watch me being tied up. I quickly close my eyes, and I keep them closed.

The first thing I notice about the man who is going to tie me up is that he stands behind me. Very close, so that I can feel his stomach and chest. Instinctively, my attention is directed backwards towards him. He is tall, much taller than me. Then he puts his hands on my upper arms – giving me a little squeeze. And then I feel the ropes. It happens surprisingly quickly. As if it were a matter of course, he gathers my arms behind my back and wraps my wrists together. The ropes run around my shoulders, round and round. It doesn’t hurt. But it’s tight. I stand completely still, breathing into my stomach.

I can feel the others who are following me in what is happening. Their energy is in the room. Now he ties my breasts. Tightly across them. So tightly under them that they are in tension. He touches them, controlled and limited, just long enough for me to register his hands on me through the silk.

Then more ropes are put on my body. He has bent down and tied one of my legs – and suddenly I feel it lift off the ground. I am now standing on one leg like a stork and sense with a sigh in my stomach where it will probably soon take me. It feels so unfamiliar. I am blindfolded. Now I can’t see anything, even if I wanted to, and he is about to put ropes around the other leg.

Floating

“When you let go of the floor, try to keep your leg straight,” he says softly. That’s all he says to me. I obey silently. That’s actually all I want. Normally I would be upset that I’m not a sylph at a time like this, but my inner judge has no influence now. And then, in a gliding movement, I hang there. I guess I’m hanging almost on my side in the air. I don’t know how, I just feel that I have no connection to the ground anymore.

I can clearly hear his breathing now. The ropes are snarling at my skin, under my hip, in my armpits, in the back of my knees. Does it hurt? No… well, a little. But it’s actually a pleasure.

For some reason, tears are rolling out from under my blindfold. My face is wet and covered in my long hair. I don’t know if anyone sees it. My mouth tastes faintly of salt. I’m tied, but I feel free. Completely free.

He folds me and ties me up again, lets me hang alone for a moment, twisting faintly around the rope. Weightless. Touches me gently and briefly on the back. A hard slap on the ass explodes like a bang in my world, but not a sound escapes me. I just accept, feel open, totally trusting the man who is controlling me now and the situation in general.

The smallest sounds that interfere with the experience in my inner universe are disturbing. When at some point someone leaves the room, I immediately become uneasy.

Electricity

I am completely exposed and at the mercy of hanging there, but the man with the ropes makes me feel safe. His movements are measured. He surprises me by letting the rope run between my toes, making me laugh.

At one point it is as if something changes places inside me. I start to shake. He notices it immediately and puts his arms protectively around my face, and I calm down again. I sense the others in the room looking at me – they are there with me, their presence feels benevolent, but at the same time I would rather just be completely withdrawn inside myself. All my senses are working at full speed, and I feel impulses of pleasure all the way across from the sofa. Or is it my own?

Then his hand is at my face. I still see nothing, but instinctively turn my face to him, wanting to feel him, his fingers against my lips. For a moment I am allowed to press my face against his hand, kiss it, stick out my tongue. A wave of erotic energy that has been simmering in me rises up through my restrained body, and it sucks between my legs as he pulls away from me again.

I don’t know which way my face is facing, towards the others or away from them. I don’t know how much time has passed. I have no sense of where we are in the process. Whether there is a middle and an end, and whether this is one of them. There is a tremor in the air between us, but each of his actions is well considered, concentrated.

Play and seriousness

When he removes some of the ropes, I feel reluctance, a longing to continue being fixed. I want to stay in this responsibility-free, safe universe, but I have to surrender to what is happening – even that which is beyond my control.

Gently, first one leg, then the other, hits the ground. I can barely stand. He supports me until I am lying on the Japanese mat. He sits there with me. The ropes are still on my body, around my breasts, my lips are dry and I lick them.

He teases me. My petticoat has slipped up a little and he lets the rope run over my bare stomach. Then he lets the soft rope run between my legs until I glow, have to stretch, move as much as I can.

And then I feel rope around my neck. To my surprise, I am filled with an intense desire to surrender that I don’t fully understand, but I let my body decide and bend my head back, exposing my neck, making me vulnerable. He marks my throat with the rope, calmly. Lets me feel that he is in charge, that’s all. He plays with me like this for a while. Touches me lightly, moves me. All the time restrained. He doesn’t take, he gives.

Eventually I am free of the rope again. It will probably be a few minutes before I realize that I am completely untied again. It feels almost naked now. I lie limp on the floor, resting in his arms. My body is warm and completely, completely soft. Powerless. I don’t want to open my eyes and turn back. When I do anyway, I look up with a warm smile. I want to be protected, held, but I don’t know what I can ask for here – I don’t know the rules.

Grateful

“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen him tie up someone else”, the woman says then. She and my husband are huddled together on the corner sofa. She smiles wide, her eyes are warm, radiant. He also looks as if he’s doing well, looking at me with love. Four quarters of an hour have passed.

I sensed that it was something special to witness. I myself have no visual impressions of the experience, and I have no idea whatsoever how I got out while I was hanging there. My inner film is quite different and does not consist of images, but of one long series of sensations.

The man who tied me up is completely calm. He’s sweating and I can feel his heart beating slightly, but he’s not in a hurry, he’s just sitting there breathing with me. I close my eyes again for a moment. Full of emotions, thoughts and impressions, still with the feeling of rope on my skin.

I am grateful. To the man who tied me up, and whose legs I am currently lying across. For the permission to be passive. Everything he did, he did for me. I am grateful to his beautiful girlfriend, who has invited me into their intimate world, and who now confirms that everything is okay with a warm look. And I am grateful to my own husband, who lets me experience this. Who is so much a man that he wants to support me in unfolding myself and witnessing my journey.

When we later say goodbye to the couple, I feel soft, open and slightly dizzy. My body is both exhausted and turned on, and I am 100% present in it. On my arms and chest, there are imprints from the thin ropes. The patterns are beautiful.

Aftereffects

The next day I am tired all over, a little bit sore, like a pleasant flu onset, if there is such a thing. And inside I feel like a volcano that has been awakened. As exhausted as I was shortly before, I feel just as alive now. It was like connecting jumper cables to a car with a dead battery. And to my husband’s delight, I feel like sex, sex, sex.

I also think a lot about what it was that I actually experienced with those ropes. It was like going down into a basement. A basement inside myself. I knew there was a hatch in the floor. I had just never been down there before. And it was completely dark down there – yet I want to go down there again.

I want more. I can’t quite explain it myself and am a little uneasy about the realization. Because this universe, this magic, I can’t obtain or create myself. I have to ask for it, and it feels incredibly vulnerable.

I want to feel again how the ropes feel against my body. I want the man with the ropes to rule over me. Want to get new patterns on my skin. And maybe find out if the contact and control he showed me applies to more than ropes.

I talk to my beloved about our adventure that evening. At length. We both agree that there is more to experience here. More for both of us to learn too. It will be good for both of us, and it will be easier for me to enter that state of surrender again. An email from our new friends opens the door ajar, so I bite my insecurities and write back. Four words I probably never imagined I would have to use in context: “Tie me again, please.”