Most of the BDSM players I know are obsessed with safety in play. As we should be! Kinky sex is potentially dangerous as all heck, as my personal examples below will illustrate. But I have some further suggestions about how to keep us safe.
I remember a scene gone wrong. I had my lover tied belly-down on my leather-covered bed, and we were doing sensation play. I was whispering words of lust into her delicate left ear when one of the 24 spiral-formed white candles I’d left burning romantically by the bedside unravelled suddenly and dropped about a tablespoonful of molten wax directly into my eye. If I hadn’t been having kinky sex, those candles might have only ruined my best tablecloth, instead of sending me over backward with a cry of “Gah! I can’t see!” Safety goggles, then, are a must for all BDSM play.
Once, mid-scene, my bottom went to powder her nose and I hastily pulled open my drawer o’ sex toys in search of a particular toy. The heavy drawer jumped its tracks, fell, and landed, corner first, on the joint of my right big toe. When my bottom came back into the bedroom, there I was, sitting flat on the floor, holding my toe and whimpering in a most untoppish fashion. Unsafe play, indeed. BDSM should therefore only be done in CSA-approved steel-toed boots.
Once while flirting in a rather physical manner with a handsome butch I wanted to top, I got into a very minor grappling match with her in my bathroom. But everything’s fun until some butch slips and falls against the tub edge, my mother always said. Therefore I suggest outfitting all butches in air bags before any playful interaction.
And recently, I was happily engaged in placing clothespins over folds of skin across the shoulders and back of a pretty girl. Her polydactylous and clumsy cat leapt onto the window ledge and hurled a huge mugful of piping hot tea over both of us; a sort of tea tsunami. Later, after we hastily unpinched her and peeled off our soggy jeans, we commented on how the cat had seemed to enjoy our shrieks at the deluge of steaming liquid. Perhaps he was kinky, too. In any case, the impact of this BDSM-related accident would have been reduced if we’d been wearing proper safety gear; in this case, full-body neoprene wetsuits for both of us.
I hope this column prompts us all to take a closer look at safety; I certainly hope to see my gear suggestions being implemented at public play parties about town.
Especially the wetsuits and airbags.
* Elaine Miller is a firm believer in safer sex.
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