The Ultimate Guide to Kink (45 page)

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.

NEXT

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.

Endnotes

1
Definition of dark,
www.thefreedictionary.com/dark
.

2
Definition of desire,
www.thefreedictionary.com/desire
.

CHAPTER 20

MINDFUCK (C’MON, DOES IT NEED ANY OTHER TITLE?)

EDGE

My name is Edge, and I mindfuck. Oh, I do
lots
of other things—beat the crap out of faggots,
¹
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.

WHAT THE FUCK?

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.

Mindfuck isn’t mind control. Mindfuck is making someone believe something is happening that isn’t really happening; mind control is making someone believe something is happening that really
is
happening. With mindfuck, trust is used to enter and then leave this altered sense of what is real. With mind control, trust is used to enter and then make permanent this altered sense of what is real. The two work very well together and are often combined, but they’re definitely not the same thing.

Finally, mindfuck isn’t interrogation. I often see mindfuck and interrogation paired in classes at various SM educational events, but there’s a crucial difference—you
know
the interrogation isn’t real: you’re not really a prisoner of war and your Top doesn’t really work for the Gestapo, you’re not really a perp and your Top isn’t really a cop (well, unless you’re really, really lucky). It’s the sense of could-be-real-but-hope-it-isn’t that defines mindfuck for me, and that’s something that doesn’t happen in interrogation scenes. Besides, you know how to end an interrogation scene: give up the right info. For a bottom in a mindfuck scene, half the fun is not knowing how, when, or
whether
it will end.

Given what mindfuck is and isn’t, any scene can use mindfuck but some scenes seem particularly good for it. In particular, scenes that might seem difficult to do “for real” make sense for mindfuck, since mindfuck can make extreme situations feel real. I’m talking about scenes like kidnapping, white slavery, rape, castration, even snuff. Whoa—extreme examples, I know, but if you’re the kind of person who has desires like these, mindfuck comes in very handy.

WHY THE FUCK?

So why the fuck do people get into mindfuck? For one thing, there’s a good biological reason. In the kink scene there are a lot of endorphin junkies, often called pain pigs. They get a real, actual physical high from pain because the brain releases its own natural painkillers. In the same way, mindfuckers can be considered adrenaline junkies. Fear triggers the fight-or-flight response, fueled by adrenaline, which, as it turns out, is chemically related to amphetamines. Granted, it’s a very different kind of high for mindfuckers: not a mellow, floaty “my vulva is one with the universe” high but a jittery, revved-up “oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck” kind of high. Endorphins are like great downers but adrenaline is uppers all the way. And it’s just as addictive. Don’t believe me? Go ask anyone who likes to jump off bridges or out of airplanes.

For others, though, part of the appeal of mindfuck is its potential for magic. One way to define magic is to say that it is the ability to alter someone’s perception of reality. In that sense, mindfuck literally is a kind of magic because during the mindfuck things feel very real. Thus it can be used for very transformative, spiritual, cathartic, shamanic scenes: walking someone through death or trauma, for example. I’ve used mindfuck a lot for catharsis. I helped one boy through the loss of his Daddy on 9/11 and a woman deal with the fact that her family had deliberately forgotten her grandfather because he didn’t get out of Germany in time during the Holocaust. Powerful, magical shit it is.

But for the more jaded among us (me included) mindfuck is about a special kind of fear—the fear and wonder we had when we first got into kink. Let’s face it, at first kink is mysterious and unreadable and even a little scary, but it becomes prosaic, if not boring. You know what they say: it’s only kinky the first time. My cock used to drip just seeing a pair of cheap handcuffs, but these days I need the most elaborate restraints devised by the most devious minds just to get my attention. That kinda sucks. Mindfuck brings back the edge—the edge is where we teetered before exploring kink, before we stepped into this world. I can remember my first few scenes. My heart would be racing, my stomach flip-flopping. Nerves, fear, adrenaline. It’s nice to feel that way again once you’ve gotten inured to it all.

And as with most forms of SM, people get off on mindfuck because it plays so well with power. The bottom experiences an enormous sense of being controlled, because someone is “in your head.” Mindfuck goes beyond physical control and reaches into the psyche, where it feels much more real. And
fuckkkkk,
what a rush for the Top to feel that kind of power and control.

Add it all up, and you can see that mindfuck also lets us experience outlaw SM. Safe, sane, consensual, risk-aware consensual kink—blah blah blah. Mindfuck lets you do all the stuff you’re not supposed to do. You’re not
supposed
to rape people. You’re not
supposed
to kill them. You’re not
supposed
to offer their souls to Satan in return for more power and pleasure. You’re only
supposed
to play nice—hard maybe, but still nice. Mindfuck lets you play nasty, though again only through consensual nonconsent.

THE 3 F’N MFS

I know a lot of my examples tend to the edgy side of mindfuck (look at my name, for Christ’s sake) but there are whole other categories of mindfuck to consider. And thanks to my enormous anal-retentiveness, I’ve categorized three types of mindfucks. I call these the “3 F’n MFs.”

Fear-Based

Fear-based mindfucks involve scenes that derive their erotic energy from fear. And yeah, these are the kinds of mindfucks I do, primarily. For example, playing with weapons is a fear-based mindfuck. The gun could be real—but it doesn’t have to be to get the same charge. The fear’s the thing, and fear is inherent to the scene. It drives the play and it gets the players off.

Fantasy-Based

Fantasy-based mindfucks involve scenes that may not contain elements of fear but rather transmutations that cannot happen in reality. For example, there are folks out there with micro-philia and macrophilia—fantasies of shrinking to the size of a toy or growing into a giant. That’s not something you can do for real, but it is something you can approximate with mindfuck. I’ve also run across more than one man who fantasizes about being turned into a cigar. Again, can’t actually make it happen, but since mindfuck makes you think something’s happening that isn’t, it can help a pig explore these kinds of unrealizable desires.

Faith-Based

Now, technically faith-based mindfucks should be called “trust-based,” but then it wouldn’t be the “3 F’n MFs” and I’m not only anal-retentive but also hungry for symmetry. These are mindfucks that eroticize not fear or fantasy but trust. They involve tests of service, submission, and trust and can be used to deepen the relationship between a Master or Mistress and a slave. Imagine a scene that starts with a Mistress asking “How far are you willing to go for me?” and you can imagine where mindfuck can take two people. My favorite example isn’t sexual but it is from the Bible. (Blasphemous, I know, but that kinda turns me on.) God tells Abraham, “Hey, go kill yer son Isaac for me” and Abraham just about does it, then God says, “Nah, I was just mindfucking you.” Classic!

There’s also one category of antimindfuck. This is something you should not play with ever, period.
Do not ever mindfuck around someone’s phobias
. Why? Phobias are by definition irrational fears; irrational fears provoke panic; and panic is dangerous for everyone in the scene. I have a great story to illustrate what I mean. I played with a boy once who told me about a scene he had with some other Top. The guy had the boy in leather restraints chained to a bed. He also knew the boy had arachnophobia, fear of spiders. So Mr. Dumbass Top decides to take out his pet tarantula and put it on the restrained boy’s chest. The boy reported to me that tarantulas make a popping sound when they hit the wall. (He broke through the restraints.)