12 Most Q: Can’t I just take care of my STDs when I get them? people agree
that there are three essential elements to any successful relationship --open communication, honesty, and trust. Establishing and maintaining this trio can take a great deal of time and effort. Now try adding Bondage, Discipline, and Fantasy Fulfillment into the equation! It looks like a recipe for disaster, right? When my current partner and I met, it was important to both of us that we begin to build mutual respect and trust from the outset. You see, the two of us enjoyed the occasional trip to the baths. We were both into leather sadomasochistic (SM) sex. And we both managed our use of crystal meth. The trust and communication required between two people to engage in SM sex, (i.e. Bondage, Discipline, and Fantasy Fulfillment) is enormous. Factor in drugs and the baths and you can see the task we had before us! In essence, we wanted to have our relationship and eat out too! Just for the record — I do not advocate, for any one but myself, injection drug use or drug use of any kind, for that matter. For me it has become an acceptable pattern of behavior... for now. If I know me, when I get bored with it, I’ll move on to something new and different — maybe something else, like skydiving or macramé? Another thing. Many SM Puritans say that you cannot play BDSM games while under the influence of drugs or alcohol... that SM play might become dangerous if both individuals don’t have all their senses and the scene gets out of control. I understand their concern. Mixing SM Sex with “mood-altering” substances requires careful planning and established rules. For me, SM Sex and Crystal allow me to express some of my deeply repressed emotions. They also help me cope with some A: Some STDs, like HIV and Herpes, are with you for a lifetime. early life issues in a non-destructive way. The same thing can be said for my partner. In order to foster and encourage the bond growing between us, we made a deal. It happened one night at the baths, after a mistake in communication led to an ugly we came up with a set of rules that we agreed to follow whenever we were high scene between us. Afterwards, like two good tweaks, we analyzed the evening from all angles. We allowed each other the freedom to express what happened as we saw it. We each told our point of view. And we both listened to the other’s point of view. Each of us made some compromises. Then, we came up with a set of rules that we agreed to follow whenever we were high. Playing by these rules, we felt, would show honor and respect for each other. And being the great Capricorn/Taurus combo we are, we acknowledged the need to give our rules the official weight they required. We wrote them down and signed our names. It took some time, but from those first simple rules, we developed our Play Contract. It is loosely based on the “scene negotiation form” we found in the Basic Basics chapter of the book SM 101, A Realistic Introduction, by Jay Wiseman. The content of our contract is fairly selfexplanatory. We use the scene negotiation form for each SM scene. We also have an Idea Box, where we put outlined ideas for a scene or roleplay that we’d like to do. (sample contract on next page) 13
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