Chapter Two
Calibria is an extremely attractive, active, young woman in her early twenties. She functioned as narrator for several meetings and provided a great deal of detail about her own and others' SB experiences.
She demonstrates a broad range of knowledge and experiences with SB. Here, she sets up some sensible guidelines and talks about common errors, mistakes and how to avoid them.
Of special interest is the discussion of bondage media and positions.
Some of this information was distilled from other interviews as well
Calibria - How I got started
The easiest way to talk about tying yourself up, (easy for me anyway), is to relate how I first got into it. For my twentieth birthday, while I was still in college, an old friend sent me a heavy package with a long letter enclosed. She cautioned me to read the letter before examining the contents, but I went ahead, ripped open the package and was astonished to find a large collection of comics. This was a collection she began, she said, while she too was a university student. Her letter mentioned vaguely that there were few entertainments in those years…no TV, no internet, no U-Tube.
There were many editions of comics with female heroes from an earlier time and I slowly read each one, marveling at the detailed and complicated plots. What I found most amusing was the amount of bondage in these books. Men and women were often quite graphically tied, gagged or chained and I found it surprisingly arousing. Back then, it was perhaps a short jump from reading comics to lying in bed at night, imagining myself in the situation of some woman, (or man), in the comics, bound to a tree by some evil criminal and left to suffer whatever additional perils the writer or comic artist and writer had in mind. Some of the books were hard bound, (no pun), editions with the entire history of the comic strip and the more I read the more I marveled at the freedom these graphic artists had in their day to portray vivid and detailed scenes, often with nudity.
Going to see a film was often an even stronger stimulus and I remember going back to my college dorm and wanting desperately to try to tie myself up as I had seen done in the film. I discovered, somewhat belatedly in my life, that certain parts of my body responded to the mental and physical stimuli. For example, I found that rope was an excellent source of arousal on my breasts and nipples. Putting a course rope around my waist and then tying it through my legs was the most exciting thing I could do.
I began by using whatever materials I found. Lengths of cord and rope were often easy to find and could be kept, with relative secrecy, in a hundred places where no one, even if they found them, would become unduly alarmed. Tying my hands and feet while in bed, supposedly asleep, became a common practice when I was still in college and I cannot recall that I had any real understanding about what was happening other than it was an impulse and a satisfying one apparently. When I was at home and accidentally caught by my parents, little or nothing was ever said about it. If it worried my parents, it was probably passed off as a"growing up" thing that would go away in time. It is important to note that no one ever said that it was wrong or dangerous. In fact, no one ever said anything about it at all.
So I moved ahead with a normal life, collecting more comics, books, magazines, clippings and other printed materials along the way. These often described or showed people tied with rope, chain, straps or even shoelaces. I literally learned the ropes of BDSM from books, not from other people.
Over time, I formulated a series of personal guidelines, but until the author of this book asked me, it had just never occurred to me to write them down or codify the elements.
Only a few times in my active BDSM life have I had a serious incident with self-bondage. Once I was lucky enough to be able to get help from a close friend who knew about and shared my erotic interests. Another time, I came close to having to get help, but somehow managed to get loose. So, given the many years of quiet, secret practice, here are some basics which I have learned. The various types of bondage media are broken into arbitrary categories: Overt, middle of the road, neutral/passive.
Overt -