Peer Rope Afternoons

C., my companion for the occasion, wasn't naked and there were no odd cables sticking out of her nether regions. I did not drool over her with a manic smile either. All the rest was in the original photo.,,, yes, it was very much fun.

My best wishes to C.... I really hope that she found the woman that she was looking for.

Today, of all days, I realized that I have been unjust with the land where I live, a place that, his many defects notwithstanding, has very much kept me alive.

I am talking of the very, very, very (and, may  I say, very) humid land of Galicia, the corner of Spain just above Portugal...

More exactly, the coast where most of the rain - that would make the whole country a fertile land,  rather than the semi-desert that it is - stops, and dampens things beyond believable (never have I seen, before getting here, car workshops with rows of Mercedes Benzs, each with an electric heater - in the trunk - trying to dry up the moisture in the electronics).

I arrived here, pretty much like the rain, a bit half-voluntarily. I was just fed to death with Lombardy, and some members of my family were moving here.

I didn't want to remain alone there (worse, with my mother... yes, she is still the one from the aphorisms, though the Alzheimer is, actually, improving her)  so I ended here, again in a small city.

I will be honest - if you are BDSM (which is not the same as being "into"... exactly like being gay is not exactly as being "into" occasional homosexual dalliances) and do not have a stable partner, the LAST thing you want is to live in any fucking city with less than a million inhabitants.

Or even the wrong country.

My village has 350 inhabitants. The nearest city is just 80000... anything bigger is one hour, and change, drive. Or two - and I hate to drive. There is a good thing, though, in being a foreigner in a foreign country - like in a big city,  you do not really have to know your neighbours, or care about what they think.

It seems harsh, to you? It depends on your neighbours.

If you live in the right block in New Orleans, your neighbours may be a bunch of musicians and tell you stories of lost gigs in the middle of the Bayou, bigamy, cocaine and staring at one's soul through a scotch too many.

It is the kind of stuff that you find in good books.

And, if you happened to talk to them about the way you fucked-up a box-tie when meeting a new partner.-in-crimes, they'd just - likewise - file it under "the kind of stuff you find in a good book; Big deal...".
 
But, to live in in a suburb in North of Italy - in any of them -  is like living in a slowly decaying New Jersey, with far less grass...

You'll hear raucous stories of taxes too high (on average, about 50% of income), sons that are going nowhere (Italians under 35 are another lost generation, just like the Japanese , kept afloat by grand-parents while they half-starve from a temp job to another... so that said grandparents may receive their pension, with which they help the youngsters,  and keep them on a tight leash) and how the fucking immigrants have stolen jobs (that nobody in his right mind would want for any of their children, of course, but that is a detail).

I used to dream about nuking my home town... after years of reflection and personal growth, I came the conclusion that the whole damn region would be greatly improved by nuclear carpet bombing.

I landed in Galicia that I was a wreck (I still am, mostly, but I am getting better) and saw no future, at all.

Still can't, really, but... who cares.

The place, at least, is beautiful (like the  rust belt for U.S., the industrial area of Lombardy is possibly the ugliest place in Europe) and, in reality, my current neighbours are not so bad.

They talk you about their years as fishermen, or those spent sailing forth and back on supertankers, of their Eskimo six-month wives (in front of their Spanish full-year wife - is that a vein that I see throbbing on her forehead? yes, it is) and music is one of the area's industries, so you may end up at four in the night, hearing a bassist and a drummer damn the Classic Music Mafia and its stranglehold on state's funding for musical activities, or the undersides of "Pachanca"'s bands, with the omnipresent kickbacks to the Party that runs the city council (usually, not the Communist Party, round here). 

Thanks God, when the alcohol in the blood is high enough,  they also toss in remembrances of lost gigs in the middle of Ourense (just like the Bayou, somewhat less difficult to navigate, but awfully dry in summer), colleagues that got busted by their woman while they were with their other woman and had to flew back to Argentina, or of nights spent composing with one porro too many in and Cthulu at the door.

And of how is hard to play Jazz, in a place where people always expects Pombia.

The locals are also very relaxed, like no one was back home -. high taxes and the sensation of slowly going down the drain, thirty years and counting...  just what the physicians recommend - any more.

But, maybe more important, here is the place where I started having a life, going out a bit, really admit to myself  that I like what I like (and that, in itself, is just an orientation as others) and taking contact with, ahem, a local BDSM community.

Or three - there is more than one group, each defined by the personalities of their first organizers.

One of them organizes "Peer Rope" encounters and Shibari workshops.

I do not loose any of the first, and go to the seconds when I can - when I find a "model" willing to be tied by me, and the some 80 bucks needed.

Being a world class pervert has its drawbacks... so, I do not always find a partner for the workshops, and the ones that I find are the kind of determined players that recognise the state of affairs and soon sails forth, to some capital city with a bad-ass Shibari dojo (Madrid, Copenhagen, Oslo...)

(Is it the universe, trying to remember me of something that I just wrote? probably).

At the Peer Ropes I can just hang out chatting, so there I am every Xth day of the Month, at the Santiago Extempore Dojo. 

If you already know the truth of real life BDSM and Shibari, what follows won't be a surprise.

If you don't, maybe it will.

The Peer Rope is more like a class of Pilates than anything else. If you were thinking about some kind of orgy, with naked women tied up all the time... sorry, that happens only in a script for "The Upper Floor[.com]".

It is a nice website, but no normal woman would approach such an environment - nor any professional performer would, for less than 200$ an hour and an organizing party with a verifiable,  good history of compliance with safety rules and a sound incidents management.

Yes, knowing how stuff is made makes it much harder to enjoy... that's the reason why I feel blessed never having seen a "Matanza do Puerco", while I eat a sausage.

So, the peer rope is... just a bunch of friends, in a nice hall, playing with ropes.

It start by entering the parquet without shoes, sitting all in circle, presenting ourselves  - if there is someone new.
 
Follows a small reminder of the basic safety rules of the activity - which boils down to respect the others, their personal space, their desires, their physical limits and problems, their gear and respect yourself...  starting with your limits, do not tie, or allow to be tied, if you have doubts about the outcome, and keep the safety cutters at hand - and an overall recommendation to be cautious, because the Peer Rope is always just an incident away from catching some local newspaper attention and, consequently, having to shut down.

Finally, as the focus is just about practising the use of the ropes,  "genital activities" and SM role-play are forbidden, too - hence the "peer" in the name.

You may be a "dom" or a sub, but that stays  out of the Dojo (usually, though, the issues only come from doms... subs have no problems accepting to behave normally).

Luckily for me, after some time the initial prohibition of sexualised activities was dropped, as I should really had to blindfold myself, to obey that rule. My gaze is very sexual thing, being a porn artist and all.

(In a moment of lucidity, the organizers came to the realization that one can't really hog-tie someone of hir preferred gender without feeling something sexual... also, that SSC is just a nice ideal; in real life, you run risks crossing a street, or eating a steak, more so in an inverted suspension; at one must evaluate and do the utmost to mitigate said risks, but complete safety is impossible.)

Other suggested behaviour guidelines: "take it easy", "this is not a competition [with oneself]", "if you are not into after-care, tell it before you start tying people up" and a few more.

Is it complicated? not really.

In that nice video that you watched yesterday, there was none of these negotiations?

No, the producer had a fourteen pages standard contract, prepared by a corporate attorney,  that the performers needed two hours, off screen, to read and mark everything they accepted or not.

So, spending half an hour to get everybody on the same page, and to warm up, is not really that much.

Then, the fun can start... because, no matter the safety rules, the worries about doing possible damages, the way of the rope is really fun, for rope fiends like me.

In the end, I do not need much more to be happy.


(I revised some orthography and grammar mistakes... if someone spots more of those things, let me know)