Lately I’ve been thinking more about the importance of a good negotiation before doing rope with someone…. and how it contributes to preventing potential disasters.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve known for a long, long time that negotiation is important. I’m a fanatic on the subject; my earlier negotiation forms were so extensive that I think I exhausted a few potential play partners before they even got to play with me.
That said, there have been a few instances lately where the importance of it was particularly highlighted for me, and it made me decide that there really needed to be some discussion about it on my blog. If I’m sharing information about how to do rope and how to do it well, then I really, really need to cover negotiation too.
One of those instances was a teaching session, just the other day. I was working with a person I’d met prior and her friend, who had never met me before, but who had agreed to act as model for her friend. That could have made things awkward, because she was nervous.
However, it became a great opportunity instead. I had a great chat with her, during which I decided to display the useful negotiation practices I use so that my student could see how that was done. So I maximized this opportunity – in speaking with the model in front of the student, we went through previous rope experience, previous injuries, anything relating to physical safety, emotional safety, and what the model in particular liked to get out of rope.
(As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, there are a lot of different things that a person can get out of rope… so it’s important to know what each individual’s preferences are before doing a rope scene with them. )
Usually when I’m teaching, safety is the first thing I go through. However, I think I’m going to change it to negotiation, because it’s just such an important topic to cover. And negotiating with the model was a great opportunity to teach that process, as well. A lot of it I didn’t really need, but the information about previous injuries was useful in the lesson (she couldn’t kneel for long) and the other questions made for great learning for my student.
The second instance that really emphasized the importance of negotiation for me was recently when I was going through things with a potential new play partner.
When I first begin negotiation with someone, I tend to have at least two – three steps before I do a scene with them. I get to know the person; if the person is known by others in the local scene, then I also tend to ask around about that person – I want to know that this person is honest, reasonably emotionally stable, and that I can feel safe to play with them.
I have them fill out a negotiation form as a starting point to negotiation, and then discuss that further with them in person.
And then I like to do some exploratory bondage with them in a quiet environment, a sort of semi “Rope Lab” if you will, so I can learn about physical limits and their reactions outside of an actual scene, with no distractions. The reason for this is that I like to be fairly careful. I want to match up expectations and learn as much as possible so we can both have a great time when we play for real.
This time though, I didn’t have that opportunity. This person likes to be tied in public the first few times, for safety reasons.
As a safety conscious person myself, I can appreciate the reasoning to that, and applaud. It’s a great way to stay safe and avoid either bumbling idiots who want to hide their ignorance or predators who want to isolate the person from others for their own purposes.
However, as a rope top who likes to be fucking careful about learning everything he can about a person before playing seriously with them, it made me nervous.
Usually when I play with someone in public, I’ve already learned about how they react in private; I’ve learned through direct experience what their good/bad reactions look like, so I know exactly where I’m at when I’m at a party or something and I’m surrounded by distractions and other people in my environment. I know how to interpret things.
This time, I didn’t have that previous experience, and we were going to play for the first time at the freaking Fetishball, which is filled with all kinds of people and in this instance actually had a fairly cramped play space. That’s not an easily controllable environment. It’s one filled with distractions and noisy onlookers, and that kind of shit annoys the hell out of me.
So yeah. Nervous.
Anyway, we sent play negotiation forms to each other (I was impressed to see that she had one of her own) and a few days later we met up in person and discussed those forms further, and what we liked the idea of and what we didn’t.
We took our time, and we talked this through. For hours.
And that was actually really really good; I think it’s hugely important to negotiate in person so you can see in a persons face and hear in their voice the things that excite them. That worked really well for me, and really soothed that nervousness, because I felt that I was able to get a better grasp of what she was into, and feel reassured that yes, we were compatible, and I did have some idea of which buttons to push, and which not to push.
During that process, we put together the outline for a good scene, that excited us both, and that we were both really looking forward to. I had a page full of notes on her likes and dislikes, and she’d been an amazingly rare person and had gone to the trouble of asking after my likes and dislikes and what I would need after the scene.
(DEFINITELY playing with this person again. )
I took a photograph of my notes, and saved it to Evernote so I could look at it on my phone again before we actually played.
And, funnily enough, the scene went well! There were a few factors that made it trickier; I didn’t have a stable suspension point for the partial suspension I had planned, but we adapted accordingly, and I was fortunate enough to have people I trusted around to help stabilize my fixed points. It was a hot, intense scene, and we both got a lot out of it.
And what made it possible, what made it work, was all the discussion and negotiation before hand. It was so freaking important that we did that.
So yes, I am going to be going on about negotiation in future. I may even upload some examples of my own negotiation forms, so other people can borrow them and make use of them.
Credit for the photo goes to thegoldguys.blogspot.com/
