Partials
Rope Camp Memories continued…
“There is bondage on the ground, and suspension in the air, but in between there are many baby steps. And there are cool things that can happen between the ground and the air; no phase is just a mid-point. All steps in between are their own bondage moments.”
I learned a lot in Murphy’s Partial Suspensions class. I think it was here that my turning point in rope-topping happened. I came into Rope Camp as a novice who had learned a little from hanging out with my friends and asking them to show me things. But I left camp feeling like I lived rope, and would continue to live rope long after I was gone.
Murphy started his lesson with a lecture and demo, with mecha-Kate as his willing model. He talked about some basic aspects of partial suspensions. In the most simple of scenes, some weight was taken off the ground to a hard point. Murphy cited leg-based partial suspensions as the most basic.
In such scenes, part of the play involved controlling someone’s center of gravity and their range of motion. As the top, it was my challenge to create a plane for my bottom to exist in. If I made my tie looser, I gave them less stability, and vice-versa. Some of the fun laid in messing with my bottom’s balance and figuring out what I could do with that.
Murphy noted, before starting a scene, he’d look at how a person stood; this was their default. He then posed the question: “How do you want to mess with that?”
Murphy suggested trapping people into normal positions. Play with their sense of balance and control. Use normal positions against the bottom.
Murphy noted how there would always be a small modicum of time for a person to regain their balance once ensnared in rope; what I chose to do with that time, leave them alone or mess with them more, was up to me.
When playing with a bottom, Murphy explained three general categories of play: physical, mental, and emotional. For physical, it could be anything as simple as a push, or could expand to impact play. He suggested kneeing as a good method. For mental, Murphy shot his Nerf gun at Kate, who laughed and seemed mostly unphased. For emotional, he cited threatening the bottom, using fear against them.
With each of these three methods, he noted this was still breaking their balance. The bottom still needed time to recover from any of these instances. If the bottom was in extreme distress or needed to feel secure quickly, giving them a leg back was the best way for them to regain a sense of balance and security.
Murphy suggested, when you have someone in duress, occasionally allowing a moment of laughter or silliness may ease them. This would help the bottom relax, the scene would last longer, and the bottom would do better.
In partials, Murphy noted a top should still use all the normal play equipment. He shook the rope, which both put Kate off balance, but, if he had incorporated “happy knots”, would have given her a little fun as well.
To end the lecture portion, Murphy demonstrated a basic chest and hip harness. He then encouraged our hands-on-rope time. The class split up into two groups of three. It just happened I ended up in a group with a gentleman who was a top and Cabin Meat, who was a bottom. Since I was a switch, the gentleman tied me while I tied Cabin Meat; this allowed me to break in my new Shibari ring.
When creating Cabin Meat’s hip harness, I gave her a “happy knot” right over her clit. Though we both were partially suspended, I still had enough range of motion to reach my ropes tied around her. As she relaxed into my strands, every now and again, I flicked her rope. And each time, Cabin Meat’s head rolled back, her eyes closed, and she softly moaned. I loved the look of her enjoying her time in my rope.
That was it; that’s when it all changed for me. That’s when I went from being a novice to knowing what it was like to have someone in my ropes, and really, really, get it, whatever that it is.
Once we both were secure, Murphy came over and checked our work. As a reward, or purely for his enjoyment, while Cabin Meat and I weren’t looking, he gave us a double spank, smacking our asses at the same time. This loving gesture was the icing on top of an already tasty rope-tastic cake.
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