On water and finding a new language for BDSM

This is one of the first essays I have ever written about BDSM – on the beauty of losing control but being in control, on breath play and closeness, and on language. I write because I fall in love with experiences and I want to keep them forever. With sex, you can’t quite do that – the joy of it is partly in being beyond the conscious mind. But as a writer, I still find a lot of pleasure in trying. 

Thank you for your support <3 

When I first got into BDSM, I was thinking a lot about water. Culturally, water is often linked to spirituality, a connection with something bigger than us, a symbol of both something nurturing and gentle, mystical and uncontrollable. Water is purity, if we think of all the religious rituals where you’re thrown somewhere to come out clean – or of a deeply chlorinated swimming pool. Water is also life-giving dirt, if we think of dark murky ponds. Water is pleasure, like long hot baths. Water is the unknown which renders you helpless. Water, much like our bodies, never stays the same. 

The first time someone puts their hand over my mouth, index finger and thumb squeezing my nose, time slows down. In BDSM, the term "breath play" relates to the restriction of breath used to increase the intensity of the sexual experience. What goes through my mind, as I’m pinned down to the bed, is that it’s probably like diving into the swimming pool from very high up. I choose to think so, even though I have always been too scared to actually dive. We all make choices for our thrills and our kinds of play – choices informed by fears or pleasures or circumstances. From looking down into the blue as a child – to holding your breath as an adult.  

When I discover how much I am into breath play, it scares me a little. Allowing someone to control your breathing involves going against your body’s instincts. About two seconds in, there is always a moment when your brain becomes alarmed. When you have a chance to stop it, to get out before it started, and the passing seconds become very slow, very liquid.

It always makes me feel suddenly aware of my body’s physical boundaries, where my skin connects to small electricity in the air or to the other person’s touch. It makes me feel aware of my body’s limits, of the slow beautiful struggle abound the edge of how much I can handle. In these long few seconds, inside my body I can travel into deeper unknown places. Heartbeat so velvety, low frequency. Then, it’s like coming up for air – you open your eyes above the surface and everything is new again. A slap of the water, a moment of nothingness, followed by joy. 

I toyed with this comparison in my head many times. But there is one fundamental difference. During breath play, same as any BDSM activity, you are not alone. Not only physically, but on a mental level, which is a rare occurrence in life, you are there with another person. Before adrenaline takes over, looking up at someone, meeting their eyes, sharing this moment of intensity and closeness. It is a carefully negotiated journey which you take together. It is a moment of deepest trust and intimacy. 

We often think of water as colour, or as transparency. But I am fascinated with the texture, with how it’s hard but soft, heavy but gentle. Draining. When it’s all gone: wet skin, wet hair, devoid of energy, buzzing. Clean, warm – but how quickly we lose that warmth. How quickly we regain the fine layer of the day-to-day scents, oils, and dust. How we live by heavy beautiful water washing over our skin, how we tiptoe around taboos which involve spit or tears or piss. How we're drawn to the ocean, yearning to be pulled around or carried gently. 

In these early days, that’s how BDSM made me feel: like there is a cold luminous ocean next to where I live. I could dip my toes, and I could make so many choices of how to carry my body to it and what to do. But also, in my earliest experiences with consensual pain and giving up control, I wanted to find a different language. Something not connected to pop culture, not necessarily chains and dungeons and whips – even though these are an integral part of it. I wanted a language that goes deeper into the history of your body, into such simple things as cold water swimming, or hot showers. Like water, it has different meanings for different people – and sometimes resists interpretation entirely.

In BDSM, one can find precious moments on the brink of losing all control. Like suddenly you don’t exist. There are only sensations and they’re overwhelming. I could compare it to being high, dancing in the dark, swimming in the sea. In a way, it is similar – but also completely the opposite. It is a novel act of treating your pleasures seriously, approaching them with communication and consent and research and safety. Even if you give up all control, you are ultimately in control like never before. When you're born into this world, there is no such a thing as safety  – and there certainly isn't such a thing as safe breath play. And yet, it is as if you could tell the water how to carry you – a place of power otherwise unknown. 

Image by Alexandra Kacha