Chapter One. About This Book

Electrical play is increasing in popularity. Even though electrical toys often cost $200 or more, you see more and more people playing with electricity. Certainly the thought of an attractive submissive writhing at the turn of a knob or the zap of a violet wand is very intriguing indeed.

One nice thing about S/M folk can be our commitment to safety – both our own and our partners’. We attend classes and workshops on bondage, whipping, and more. All this is done for the purpose of making our play safe. Yet I see many electricity players who seem unaware of the risks of this style of play.

Yes, there are electricity workshops and many people willing to share their knowledge about it, but there seems to be little emphasis on understanding the basic physics, physiology and psychology needed in order to play with relative safety. I liken the state of electrical play for many players to someone who plays with a loaded pistol without being told that people can die or get hurt if someone pulls the trigger.

I mean by this that not fully understanding the basics of electricity and electrical play can cause serious injury and/or death, and that accidents can happen faster than you can respond to them.

Assessing Risk

The big question in the mind of everyone who plays with electricity – including the casual and less-trained player – is, “Is it safe?”

What they’re looking for is a “yes” or “no” answer or some sort of number like, “there’s a 98,7% chance of someone dying using this toy.” Here I’m going to have to disappoint you: there are no answers like this.

A lot of what BDSM people do is risky. There is a chance for injury or death in anything we do. A lot of times we use common items in uncommon ways. A TENS (Transdermal Electrical Neural Stimulator) unit was designed for the purpose of pain management for patients in chronic pain – not as a play toy to be used with a vaginal or butt plug. No medical TENS manufacturer in their right mind would sanction, let alone guarantee, the safety of the way we use their units. The specifications and test results on these units only apply to the way they’re supposed to be used, and may not have much to do with the way we actually use them.

No hard data are available on the risks of our kind of play and no one would be willing to fund the necessary millions to gather such data. (Although I’d be willing to work on such a project if such money – and some cute, masochistic volunteers – become available.)

Anecdotal information is available from BDSM folk who are willing to share their personal experience, and that is of some help. For example, we know that not every single person who ever tried nipple-to-nipple electrical play died doing it, so we can deduce that the risk of fatality from that practice is rot 100%. But then we hear other, incomplete anecdotes that indicate it’s not completely safe – 0% fatality risk – either.

Two things that we do have going for us are 1) willingness to share information about our play, and 2) being willing to train, practice, understand, and hone our play skills. Both of these advantages are motivated by our quest for safety. We want to enjoy our play with and protect our partners, and we want to do this more than once. For this, well go to program meetings and workshops and watch demonstrations and go to parties to watch other players and on and on. Our commitment to safety is paramount.

The more we understand about our play the better players we are and the safer players we are. And that’s what this book is all about.

Will this book or all your accumulated workshop information or alt or your experience in electrical play ensure that you’ll never have an injury? Alas, no! There is no such guarantee. What you will have, however, will be an information base that will help you make informed choices about electrical play.

The more you understand about electrical play, the better prepared you are to assess your and your partners’ situations. You’ll need to have a sense of the mechanics of an electrical scene. In the event that something does go wrong, you’ll have a better chance to recover from it.

This increased understanding, this commitment to safety, will enhance the enjoyment that you and your partner will get from your electrical play.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Writing this Book

As an author trained in electrical engineering, as well as a kinky male bet dominant who plays with electricity, I originally thought writing this book was going to be a piece of cake. Boy, was I ever wrong.

My first draft went over some readers’ heads, and many of them wondered why they should learn the material I found necessary to include.

I guess this is a problem faced by many experts trying to write to a general yet motivated audience. Not everyone has a degree in electrical engineering or physiology. Things that seem easy to me aren’t so easily understood by others. Yet I don’t want to talk down to my reader. I want you to understand what’s going on, but not feel put off by someone mocking your intelligence.

The challenge for me is to write with a combination of levity and seriousness so that you will be motivated (and possibly entertained) while getting your understanding.

Who Should or Shouldn’t Play with Electricity?

Because of the edgy nature of electrical play, and especially because of the lack of obvious danger signals before injury and/or death can occur, I would have to say that electrical play is for the experienced player. St is not for the newcomer or novice player. If you’re still learning about things like negotiations and safewords, if you’ve never even used a paddle on anyone before, then this kind of play is definitely not for you.

If you are a newcomer to the scene, welcome – but you’re still learning the basics. You still have to understand the basic psychology of playing with someone, of watching for body responses (or being aware of your own if you’re a bottom), of actually doing some play that requires learning a skill like bondage or whipping. Here I would wholeheartedly suggest reading some of the books and joining some of the clubs mentioned in the Resource Guide in the back of this book. Then you can become a novice player.

Making Connie Relax

Before she moved to New England I often did electrical play with a transsexual named Connie and her transsexual lover, Becky.

Connie loved my relaxicisor. Becky and l would tie her face down to a bondage bench with her tore ass exposed. I’d piece the pads on the outer side of her ass cheeks, on the fronts of each of her thighs, and one pad resting up against her cock. I’d use ordinary water to ensure good electrical contact with the pads.

With four channels on my relaxicisor and by rewiring the pads. I could arrange for many delightful stimulation paths.

Daring our earlly negotiations I had taken an extensive health inquiry about the state of her heart, so I knew that her health was sound.

During our scene I would man the relaxicisor and Becky would “person” the riding crops and flaggers. Becky and f coordinated our timing to send Connie deeper and deeper into her experience.

As on example, Becky would lightly flog Connie s ass to lightly redden the skin and make it more sensitive. Seeing as I only had intensity control on each of the relaxicisor channels, I would start with each one at zero. Then I’d slowly move up the intensity on one channel until Connie noticed and mooned with the stimulation. I’d then bock off end after a short delay would increase the intensity to slightly beyond that range. Again I’d notice Connie’s new reactions, in this manner, I determined the best range for each channel.

Connie would be generating her own endorphins ail during this time, and we’d pace our play based on Connie’s reactions.

Becky would sometimes do a flagging – gradually increasing in intensity. As Becky would finish a series of strokes, I would hit one of the Channels to the maximum on the range. Connie would wiggle and scream and laugh and enjoy it. We’d then bock off to a lighter flogging to build her bock up again.

Sometimes I would gradually do on-off in-creasing intensities on one or different channels, thus building Connie up, and Becky weald finish the series off with a couple of heavy strokes of the whip on Connie’s ass.

We played this way as often as we could. I miss those two now that they’ve moved. I hope to see them again sometime. These were some of the most enjoyable scenes I’ve ever done.

Being a novice player is a bit like being a novice driver, someone who’s finished driving school and passed the licensing test, but not spent much time on the road. You may do everything right and safely, but your mind is still occupied with things like “brake or accelerator?” or “when do I look at the speedometer, the road, the passing traffic?” When you’ve developed all the confidence and safe driving habits that don t require active thinking, and you concentrate on the trip and any road and vehicle exceptions that do require your active attention, then you’re ready to consider yourseff more than a novice driver.

I'm afraid that I’ll have to exclude “cyber-scenes” as your sole claim to calling yourself an experienced or even a novice player. Because of the responsibility on the part of both the top and bottom in electrical play and because of the need to understand the physical mechanics and details of the play, you need experience in doing real world, intimate-proximity (right next to each other and not via a computer link) play – what I’ll call hands-on play.

Even if you already have a little handson play experience, you should get more. A way to see if you’re ready for any edge play let alone electrical play is to ask yourself the question, “Have I achieved enough skill in bondage or whipping that I am consistently aware of my partner and his responses, recognize the slips I’ve made and make corrections for them, and still do an enjoyable, flowing scene without being bogged down by the minutiae?” I want you to honestly consider yourself more than a novice player before you start playing with electricity.

What This Book Will and Will Not Do

Oh! A Word About Death and Injury in This Book

You’ll notice many references in this book about death and injury. In the BDSM world of electrical play, we almost never hear about a death, and very rarely about an injury. This is largely due to our commitment to playing safely. However, let me tell you a little story as to why I mention these subjects in the book.

When I was studying scuba diving, we had a very safety-conscious diving instructor. The second sentence out of his mouth after “Hello” was, “This is a sport where if you hold your breath underwater and raise 18 inches without exhaling, you can die.” He repeated this warning many times throughout the class, and actually taught us why that is so. This warning struck the fear of the almighty in us. We were motivated! We listened attentively to every word he said as if it were the word of God. And that’s what was necessary. We learned and we learned well.

So it is to get you and keep you motivated, gentle reader, that I talk so much about injury and death. Such things can and do happen, and I’ll explain why in the book, I know almost all of you are safe players and committed to learning and understanding electrical play for that safety.

When I was an engineering student there were some times when, to pass a test, I had to just memorize the procedures by rote. Fortunately when I began to work in the profession I began to understand my lessons at the University. I saw their relevance. I could swim through engineering problems with ease because the basic lessons were now a part of my very being, I became a happy engineer.

My classmates that never understood the concepts had a harder time solving engineering problems, They left engineering early in their careers to become engineering managers. They became rich. Figures!

Let me expand by mentioning the two ways people successfully get things accomplished. One is to follow a set procedure - like a cookbook. Under optimal circumstances, you can prepare great-tasting food this way. However, if you’re missing one ingredient, you won’t know what to do next or how to compensate.

You can also cook a meal by understanding what you’re doing. You have a mental picture or model in your head of the process you’re working on. That way, if something is missing or you start off on the wrong track, you know what went wrong and how to compensate.

This is something you already know about. Consider a complex task that you’re good at, like flogging. If you’re a skilled flogger, you know the areas of the body not to hit and why, and how to make adjustments to your strokes if the tips are landing in the wrong place or your bottom is getting sensations you didn’t intend.

You already have a useful mental picture in your head of what to do. This is the kind of basic understanding I want you to have in understanding electrical play, OK? OK.

Chapter One About This Book