SESSIONS / EXPERIENCED PLAYER

PRIVATE ADDRESS / 001

EXPERIENCED
PLAYER

RECOGNITION

You know what you return to.

You bring your history. Developed preferences. People, rooms, objects, things worth repeating and things never to repeat.

Familiar things can remain charged because you know them. The fitting of leather. A particular position. Recognising what is being prepared.

Tell me what repetition never exhausted.

I am not particularly interested in the obvious part.

The strike is obvious. The scream is obvious. The photograph afterwards is obvious. I am interested in the hand gripping the edge of the bench before anything has happened. The sudden swallow. The person who has been talking confidently for twenty minutes and then becomes very, very polite.

I notice these things.

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU

Be particular.

Tell me what worked. What did not. Which part of a familiar practice matters to you.

Two people can ask for the same restraint and mean entirely different things.

Bring me the detail you almost leave out because it seems too small to matter.

We agree the scope and limits before play. Consent remains active throughout; you can pause or stop.

01

Which detail matters more than people realise?

02

What do you keep returning to?

03

What has experience taught you to refuse?

04

What would you like to place in my hands?

RELINQUISHMENT

You do not need to write the session for me.

Give me what I need. Then let me think.

You may recognise what I am preparing. Know what a position makes possible. Have preferences about all of it.

Within what we have agreed, let me decide.

I have always liked the second before. The fastening of a buckle. The sound of a lock being tested. Gloves pulled slowly over the fingers. A machine standing idle. Someone waiting while I decide whether I am going to use it.

Waiting tells me an extraordinary amount about a person.

THE WORK

Things I return to.

I have an obsessive relationship with restraint, ritual, machinery, discipline and the behaviour of bodies under pressure.

I have built around these ideas. Altered things for them. Discarded perfectly serviceable solutions because they were not exact enough.

Pain can be useful. So can silence. So can humiliation, restriction, discomfort, anticipation, absurdity, tenderness, boredom and fear. I don't rank them. They are materials. What matters is what happens when I put the right one in the right place and wait.

01 / RESTRAINT

CONTROL THE BODY

I like the precision of something being fitted correctly. I like knowing exactly where somebody is in a room without having to look at them.

The geometry of a body when movement has been reduced to almost nothing.

A position held longer than expected. A restraint that stops feeling decorative. The slow irritation of having no useful choice to make.

02 / IMPACT & CLINICAL

CONTROL THE RESPONSE

Pain once it has ceased to be an idea.

You know which sensations you enjoy. There is also the instruction you must keep while receiving them.

The instant dignity becomes inconvenient. The point at which resistance changes character.

03 / SENSORY

CONTROL THE INPUT

A hood. A mask. Something you can hear but not place.

You bring your knowledge of sounds, sequences, positions. I choose which clues remain.

I like systems. I like repetition. I like the strange intimacy of paying such close attention to another human being that eventually they become aware there is nowhere left to perform.

WHAT I NOTICE

I remember particulars.

A foot moves. Eyes go somewhere they weren't supposed to go. An instruction needs repeating.

I notice these things too.

When we meet again, I do not begin from zero.

The adjustment that mattered to you. Something we laughed at. A particular instruction. What you wanted to return to.

I think about these things long after the room is empty.

I don't need you to become someone else for me.

Quite the opposite.

I want to see the thing underneath.

  • The detail worth remembering.
  • The arrangement worth altering.
  • The idea I have not finished with.

You’ve been watching long enough.

Offer yourself forward.