Tristan Taormino - The Ultimate Guide to Kink - BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge

In the final analysis, this exploration was more about myself than about my applicants. Though the conversation continues with a few men who are seeking a more intense form of slavery, the fruitlessness of the search leads me to question its validity and viability. I have also had to evaluate how real my desire was to become the Dark Lord.

Patrick, my slave and partner of more than 15 years, commented recently that my failure to attract a viable “object” rested within myself. It was just not part of my nature, he thought, to engage in the kind of dehumanization, humiliation, and degradation that being the Dark Lord required. My discussions with applicants led them to see that I lacked the ego, the necessary haughtiness, to pull off the role successfully. I was just too friendly, too kind, to be that dark.

A recent scene with one of the applicants I continue to have contact with illustrates my personal conundrum. The man in question vacillates between wanting degradation and avoiding it. When, after four months of nearly talking the idea to death, he arrived to try a week in my dungeon, he was well guarded by a list of limits I had agreed to, many of which left control in his hands, not mine. The fundamental issue was his inability to trust me. I couldn’t tie him to an immovable object, for instance—chain him to the wall in the dungeon or to a cross. It was obvious that putting him in a cage for the night was out of the question until he knew me better.

Could I have simply violated his limits and tied him up anyway? I think I could have. Would the Dark Lord have done so? Certainly. Would I have? Not then and there, and probably never. Should I have? Ah, there’s the question, since I certainly wanted to. Darkness, it would seem, lurks in my heart just as fully as in any other.

Having enjoyed and learned from the Dark Lord experience, I will continue it, adapting my approach to the lessons I learned. There’ll be less compromise and more authority in my words and actions. As for its fruitfulness, or lack thereof, I will most likely spend less attention on it, except for those candidates who indeed show some process of developing a relationship with me.

I have come to the conclusion that if I am to realize my Dark Lord fantasy, I have to act as the Dark Lord would. I cannot be “Jack” and “Dark” at the same time. Only time will tell if I can become the Dark Lord. On the other hand, time has made it obvious that I want to do so. I want to see where this ends. If and when it does, I’m sure there’ll be another story to tell.

My name is Edge, and I mindfuck. Oh, I do lots of other things—beat the crap out of faggots, [24] 1 As a gay man, I am not allowed to marry, I am not allowed to donate blood, but I am allowed to call other gay men “faggot,” especially when they get off on verbal abuse, which is most of the men I play with. feed smoke to stogiepigs, throw some mean Japanese rope bondage, hell, I even cuddle (though only with my cub)—but mindfuck is what I’m most known for because, really, it’s what I do best. Dunno how, dunno why. Just a knack, ya know? I mean, give me a singletail and I’m a total klutz; I’ll have it wrapped around my neck somehow in minutes. Give me a TENS unit and I’ll end up crossing some wires and shorting the whole thing out. Give me a set of needles and I’ll gently place them back down. But give me one hour—just one hour—with you, alone in a room, and you will know what mindfuck is. And you will not forget. Not a promise, not a threat, just a fact. But, shit, you’re there and I’m here so this essay is gonna have to do.

Read on. Get wet. Get hard. Get scared. Get excited. Get it. It’s good .

Before we get into the meat of the matter, though, I have a few warnings. First, this isn’t an essay that teaches technique. There is no cookie-cutter mindfuck, really—no single thing you can do with everyone. That’s what makes mindfuck so powerful and really so intimate. My goal here is to introduce you to some of the dynamics in this kind of scene, to give you some sense of the process. Second, because you’re often playing with fear, which risks panic, this can be a kind of edge play. Third, I’m revealing secrets of the trade in this essay, so stop reading if that spoils it for you. It’s a bit like knowing the secrets behind a magician’s tricks. Knowing how the illusion works either 1) spoils it for you, 2) makes it that much easier for you to volunteer to be sawed in half, or 3) helps you enjoy the magic that much more because you can appreciate the skill of the sleight of hand. If it’s going to spoil it for you, stop reading and go get mindfucked. Finally, I’m going to sound like a psycho killer at times. I am not. Promise.

Assuming you’re still reading, let’s start by thinking about just what mindfuck is and isn’t. There are any number of ways we might define mindfuck: playing with someone’s head, edge play with consciousness, consensual hallucination (which is why mindfuck works so nicely in cyberspace), erotic terrorism, sexual lying, or perhaps even a theater of intimacy. But there’s one definition I tend to use the most because I think it best describes what happens in a mindfuck scene: Mindfuck is making someone think something is happening that isn’t really happening .

What do I mean by that? Well, mindfuck can cover a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from the rather mild to the extremely wild. For example, a rather mild mindfuck would be tying up and blindfolding your partner and then making her think you’ve left or that someone else has arrived. An edgier example would be starting a scene by making someone write his suicide note at gunpoint. (And, yes, I’ve done that one. Always tear up the first note and tell them it’s not convincing enough. Be sure to obtain samples of their signature well before the scene so that you can confirm they’re not faking that part either. Doesn’t hurt to make them dig their own grave, too. Just saying.)

There are many things mindfuck isn’t, even though it often gets bound up, mixed up, and confused with those other things. For example, mindfuck isn’t always edge play. Edge play is pushing the envelope of a scene—any scene. So edge play for you may include very risky activities, like breath control and weapon sex, but really, every scene has its own edge: plaster bondage is an edge form of bondage, double fisting is an edge form of fisting, singletail whipping is an edge form of flailing. So, while a lot of mindfucks can be edge play, they don’t have to be. Conversely, most edge play doesn’t involve mindfuck at all.

Mindfuck isn’t playing head games, though you might think of head games as a kind of nonconsensual mindfuck. “Game players” (and they’re all over cyberspace) are creating that sense of illusion and are, essentially, lying, but not in a way that works for both players. Clearly, the person doing the lying is getting something out of it, maybe getting off on it, but the person being lied to has not agreed to be lied to. That’s not to say that head game players are not into mindfuck, but it is a way to further delineate what makes mindfuck mindfuck. One of its essential elements is the mysterious and intoxicating paradox of consensual nonconsent. Consensual nonconsent can be summarized like this: I’m going to lie to you all throughout the mind fuck but only ’cause you’ve told me it’s okay to fuck with your head like that. To put it simply, mindfuck always requires the consent of all parties involved.

Mindfuck isn’t mind control. Mindfuck is making someone believe something is happening that isn’t really happening.