Everything I Wish I'd Known About Kink From the Start

• Never, ever, ever assume good hygiene of a top. Don’t take it as a given that the dildo’s been sanitised, the needles have been correctly stored, or the flogger’s been set aside once it’s drawn blood. Even community leaders are prone to negligence, so just because she’s a host, doesn’t mean she’s careful. This is something you need to check upfront.
• Just because a top can suspend you from a sunbeam with 40 spiderwebs, doesn’t mean they know how to do it safely. Kink skills are fun to learn. Safety requirements are less fun. They go in the bargain bin with the Rick Astley CDs, menthol sweets, and The Vetting 101 Almanac of 1978.
• Predicting what you’re into before you’ve actually tried it is like choosing your investment portfolio based on Nostradamus. This is why they invented play parties and classes, so do that workshop. You might be surprised at what happens when you get there.
• Rope is edge play. So is degradation. Just because it’s blood-free, doesn’t mean it’s risk-free. BDSM can and will shred your pretty pink brain into ribbons for years, so vet rope tops hard. Vet psychological sadists harder. Much harder.
• What’s that you ask? Am I bitter? No. Not at all. This is a Christmas post. It has pretty lights and joyful tunes. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
• Shit tops will injure you without contributing to the medical bills. Half-decent tops will contribute in the short term, but only the rarest of them will contribute to your medical costs for as long as you rack them up. Bottoms absorb the vast majority of the consequences for injuries, so make sure the top in question is worth it. And make sure you can afford it. BDSM isn’t cheap, even when it is.
• Just because a top agreed to play, doesn’t mean they agreed to aftercare. There are tops on Planet Kink who list aftercare as a hard limit. Fortunately, you get to list those kinds of tops as a hard limit, too.
• There’s a reason “bondage and alone death” is a term that exists.
• Your medical conditions will present weird and wonderful risks in a BDSM context. This stuff is counterintuitive, so don’t assume you know how to keep yourself safe. Assume ignorance and find answers. It will serve you better.
• RACK does not succeed on risk awareness alone. It’s not enough to know it’s dangerous. RACK means risk mitigation, too, so stop letting tops off the hook for behaving like clowns.
• You will learn to become as cynical as I am one way or another. You can learn it by listening to the warnings of others, or you can learn it by having your arm lopped off in a super-fun scene. You get to choose which.
• Just because nothing we do is completely sane, doesn’t mean we can’t shoot for some degree of sanity. An all-or-nothing attitude will land you under Santa’s sled with a reindeer hoof in your nostril. Merry Christmas anyway.