One of the requests I’ve had recently was for a fast bondage tie; here’s one to get you started. And oh yes! It comes with one of those fun and slightly embarrassing stories about how I learned some things the hard way.
So this fast bondage tie is a variant of single column tie. It is extremely fast to tie, and is very useful in struggling or consensual non-consent situations. It’s also useful when you just want to use fast bondage ties to get someone in place on a bed and not have to take too long, because you really really want to get to the other fun bits, like teasing them mercilessly or ravishing them senseless.
That said, there are situations where it is a Very Bad Idea to use it, and those will be referred to after the tutorial.
How To Do The Fast Bondage Tie
It’s actually very simple.
You remember the lark’s head slip knot from this tutorial?
We’re going to use that; and we’re going to lock it off in a really unusual way.
In some situations, when you want to tie this is fast as possible, you can create the slip knot in your hand, very similarly to the tutorial on joining rope. Then you slip the larks head over your partner’s hand (if their hand is small enough and they haven’t been sneaky and spread their fingers) and tug the tie down to their wrist.
Alternatively, you can have the slip knot sneakily in place on your own wrist, abruptly seize your partner’s fist in yours, and then use your other hand to transfer the loop over your joined hands to their wrist.
You may now freak out because you’ve just done something totally contrary to everything I’ve told you in the past about not using slip knots on a person.
But wait! There’s more to this.
Next, we’re going to split our tails (which feels very strange) and hook one of them under the band, and pull the whole thing through.
(You can already tell that this is not one of those more shibari-ish ties; but it’s not meant to be. )
You now have a tail on either side of the band, and one of those tails is creating the barrier that prevents the band from tightening down on the wrist. As long as there is relatively equal tension on both bands, this will not collapse.
For those of you practicing at home with a piece of rope as you read this, go ahead and test it. It’s weird, but it doesn’t collapse if you keep the tension even.
So at this point, if you’re doing a fun struggling role play or something, you can use your tails to control at least one wrist, while you work on getting the other arm under control. You may end up doing a secondary column tie or something similar, although those are tricky with a person being all struggly with limbs all over the place. No matter what you do, you’ll find that you can accomplish a lot by making good use of those long rope tails.
If you’re tying someone down to a bed or similar, however, it’s very important to lock off to a post or frame or what have you. I strongly recommend using the Quick Fix Tie to do this.
Rope used in this tutorial: Esinem Jute
How This Works
Any safe-to-use single column tie consists of a band of rope, a barrier preventing that band from tightening down, and some means to secure the tension on the band of rope and the barrier. Usually, this is the rest of the knot.
In the case of this fast bondage tie, the single tail of rope under the band creates the barrier, and the Quick Fix Tie or other secure lock off at the other end of the rope maintains the even tension on both strands, which prevents it from collapsing down and cutting off more circulation than you would like. This is what makes the fast bondage tie doable for practical use in play.
Useful Note:
Keep in mind that the pressure on the wrists from a fast bondage tie is a bit more concentrated than it is with a wider band; so you may expect more bruising and rope marks than usual from your wild kinky sex. Some of you may like that, because you’re super kinky fucks who like leftover reminders.
Some of you may prefer to take it a bit easy so as not to have those marks, or that leftover soreness. That make a lot of practical sense for everyday life. Some things are difficult to explain…
And now, Embarrassing Story Time
This is how I learned the hard way the distinction of when it is a relatively safe time to use this tie, and when it is most definitely not.
I was at a kink party at a club, and I’d finished the first scene of the night with my partner. It had gone spectacularly well, and had definitely started everyone’s night off with a bang. Both my partner and I were happy and floaty; she was chilling out and recovering well, and I was doing a dungeon monitor shift, keeping an eye on scenes and helping out where need be.
I was approached by a friend of mine who had some polypropylene rope in her hands. She was about to do an impact scene on a St Andrew’s Cross with her partner, and she wanted a bit of help getting him tied to it, as he felt it would help him with his headspace.
“Sure!’ I said. I was still feeling happy and floaty and I decided to show her something new and useful. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll use this very fast bondage tie which is also really easy to untie if you need to. He can hang onto the tails as they go through his hands.”
So we tied him to the St Andrew’s Cross using the fast bondage tie; I hitched it through a couple of the rings on either side of the cross for a bit more security and used the Quick Fix Tie Off at the end. The guy had a good grip on the ropes, and looked very happy. All was well.
I sat and watched the scene. My friend was topping spectacularly well; I hadn’t seen her doing the top role before, but damn she looked good doing it. She was using a riding crop on his ass with excellent technique, and judging by the sounds of his moans, he was really enjoying it.
Really, really enjoying it.
So much so, that it came as a total surprise when he fucking fainted on the cross.
He slumped forward into the cross and began to slide down. I was up and across the intervening space in about two seconds, and his top and I caught him before he could slide further. I yanked the Quick Fix Tie off and it came undone in a flash.
And then I realized that because he was dead weight and slumping, there was no way to get the hitches untied. I’d done my job too well. I needed just a fraction of slack to get the hitches undone, but an unconscious guy who is totally dead weight weighs a ton, and it wasn’t possible.
So we did the right thing, and we cut the rope with a pair of safety shears.
We got him across to the recovery area, and he began to stir and utter confused sounds as he realized he wasn’t where he expected to be. We got some orange juice into him after he came round, and a couple of minutes later he was sitting up and exclaiming that he couldn’t believe he had fainted! He was smiling and shaking his head.
It all happened so fast and was dealt with so smoothly that most of the people at the party had had absolutely no idea that anything at all untoward had occurred. To this day, there are still people who were there who have no idea someone fainted at that party.
That said, I was really upset at myself. Perhaps too much so – my partner told me later that I had handled the whole thing really well – but it had been so long since anything had gone really wrong in one of my scenes that I felt I had become over confident – with anyone I didn’t know well, I should have used a quick release single column tie instead of the fast bondage tie.
You really never know when someone is likely to faint or not, but you can feel a bit more secure when you’ve seen someone in a variety of kinky play situations and you can read their tells.
I also realized that it is a lot smarter to use single column ties such as the one in The First Tie You Should Learn in any situation where the person is upright and has their wrists tied to something. Having that knot at the wrist, particularly if it is a quick release knot, means you can untie things there instead of having to start at the end of the rope such as with a fast bondage tie, which had not worked out well in this situation.
Nobody had gotten hurt; the situation had been handled well, and there’s no chance that I could have prevented the fainting; but there were aspects that I could have handled better.
It was definitely a learning experience.
So my rule following that became:
- Always use quick release single column ties with strangers
- Only use the fast bondage tie when I both know the person well, and they’re going to be horizontal if they’re tied to something else (because of fainting risk and needing that slack).
As for safety shears, they should always be available anyway. If you’re tying a person, you should always have shears either on you or about 1-2 seconds away, and easily locatable (e.g. on the bed side table.)
Learn from my mistakes!
And, as always, have fun!
