Minimalist Rope Bondage

Sometimes, there’s quite a lot to be said for using less rope, rather than more.

I was reminded of this last weekend, when watching a person self suspend at an event. She’d already tied her leg and hip harness and I think that was pretty much it. After that, she just had a hip line and a line to attach to her hip harness when she wanted to.

And she rocked a very hot self suspension performance, that reminded me in some ways of the grace of aerial silks but with the intensity of rope… moving, arching, spinning about gracefully in the rope she’d tied herself, retying her legs and tying her body into different configurations.

In order to do this, she used two pieces of rope, which she shifted and retied as she needed to. That was it.
Afterwards, I’m told the rigger standing by in case of emergencies was left muttering “I need to use less rope…”

Minimalist rope use, when practiced and applied with skill and thought, can be super fucking hot.

I believe that particular rigger put in her time, thought it through did her practice, and rehearsed for the performance… and that thinking resulted in a fantastic performance with only two active pieces of rope.

She knew what she was doing, and she knew how to get the results she wanted without having to use a big ass rope kit or make things too complicated. Simpler became better.

And thinking about it, I’ve found that in other situations, sometimes using just one or two pieces of rope keeps things simple, without being too complicated, and affords more opportunity for interaction.

There’s one scene in particular that comes to mind…

It was an “exploratory” scene, where I’d wanted to learn more about what this particular person could enjoy, how I’d be able to play with them in future. There was a lot of things she hadn’t tried, and she wanted to explore them in a play context.

And this person was a BRAT… the kind of person that likes to mess with the top and be put in their place. A lot of their play is about being put in their place. I occasionally enjoy the brat dynamic, but I don’t trust brats for a second – they always want to fuck with you somehow, to see what they can push and how far.

So naturally I’d limited her opportunities by putting her in bondage.

Brats need something to fight against… so the game that day was that I was going to “torture” her with various different stimuli until she used the word “please” to get me to stop. Because manners, brat. Manners are important. Naturally, she was more than happy to try and resist this.

Freaking fantastic opportunity to try out lots of different things to see what she enjoyed and what she didn’t, and it was in her power to stop the scene whenever things got too much or she couldn’t deal with a particular sensation… all she had to do was overcome her pride and say “please”. Either way, it was a win. We got to explore lots of different things, and eventually she’d use her manners, and maybe get an orgasm.

I’d done a double column tie on her wrists, tied in front, and then, with all that extra rope left over, I’d woven the end into a quick little crotch rope. Every time she pulled or yanked because of whatever I was doing, she got confused by the sudden fun feelings as well.

So we did some interesting things… a few times she tried to escape, and because I was using so little bondage, it was necessary to grab her, to interact more, to push her back against the bare space of wall I was using for that part of the play. At times I had to grab her hair and hold her in place as I tested different little games…

And that was actually a really enjoyable consequence of using so little rope, such basic bondage. It necessitated more interaction, more physical contact, more connection.

Which was just fucking hot.

Later, I undid the crotch rope part of the tie, checked her wrists and hands to make sure she was still good, and then pulled her hands up and back over her head, securing the tails of the rope down around on her torso. This meant that now I could easily put her on her back with her hands out of the way, and leaving her front exposed.

Still just that one piece of rope… and that was all I needed to untie and re-tie.

It was only the second time we’d played, and it was a hell of a fun scene. We’d both enjoyed it greatly, and she gave me a lot of positive feedback afterwards. It was a great way to learn more about what different sensations and toys we could use together in our play.

It was also when she learned that trying to knee your top in the balls results in no orgasms for you, little miss. That’s just bad behavior. After I’d gone to all that effort on her behalf, too…

So there are some definite benefits to keeping things simple, and using less rope, rather than more. You don’t have to prove your worth as a rope top by creating these enormously elaborate arrangements with rope on every limb… sometimes you just have to apply one or two ropes, judiciously, and then enjoy the opportunities that open up with that.

Noticeable benefits include:
– Far less to untie when you need to (though you can still do so super slowly to get maximum reaction if you like)
– Far less clean up (because you don’t have as much rope strewn everywhere)
– Opportunities to untie and retie into different configuratons… super fun when everyone involved enjoys the process of tying and being untied as well
– More opportunity to combine literal hands on restraint with the restraint of the rope… there’s something very primal and fun about that.
– And just this nice, clean, simple aesthetic that comes with using less rope. Mmm, minimalist style… all about it.

Sometimes it’s just a really good time to move away from the three rope harnesses etc and move back into the really simple, less elaborate styles of rope bondage.

Just my thoughts for today.