We were wrapping up the Session. He was gathering his belongings and I was coiling rope. Like a good boy, he asked to help and as he reached out to pick up some toys, I spied the faintest of rope marks on his wrists.
I ran My fingers over them and smiled. "Don't worry," I said. "These won't last long. I used the soft rope."
"Oh, I know," he said. I raised My eyebrow in surprise. He was a foot guy and had told Me this was his first time. I had just shown him a great many new things in our hours together. How could he know about ligature marks? Rope climbing? Boy Scouts?
"I did some rope once. On a girlfriend." He sort of muttered and mumbled and looked a bit abashed.
I smiled. I walked over to where the unused items were still laid out on the table. I picked up the pair of safety scissors that I always lay out when doing rope or plastic bondage of any sort. I held them up so he could see them and raised the eyebrow again.
"That's a good idea," he said.
"No," I said. "It's a necessity. If you like rope, find someone to teach you to do it safely."
Education is always a hot topic in the BDSM world. We are constantly taking on the labor of educating ourselves, newcomers, and the vanilla world at large about what we do and why as well as how to do it safely and consensually. Within the BDSM world, I consider Myself ever learning and ever evolving- in the last six months I've learned, relearned, and changed my understanding of all sorts of things.
In that singular moment, I felt I genuinely gave something back. I didn't teach a class or present at a convention or claim Mastery of all things Domly Dom. I simply
opened a young kinkster's eyes to a very real safety precaution and possibly saved
a future girlfriend's life. I remembered all of the really bad bedroom rope and hopefully kept someone from making the same mistakes. It wasn't a big thing, but it felt right.