Rope Jams of a Bygone Era

We entered the back courtyard of a century-old factory in a working-class northern Berlin neighborhood, its still unrenovated industrial ambience intact. It was soon to be sold to a New York billionaire, but in the meantime, it was home to fitness and dance studios, a music club, and creative startups. And the Lotus Loft, where only those ‘in the know’ would enter. The line to get in stretched down the stairs and out the door. Some people wore black outfits that screamed hipster or goth. Others wore nondescript sporty or business-casual outfits, having come straight from work to queue up in time to get in.

After snaking our way up the chipped cement stairs, carefully avoiding a hole near the exposed walls, I pushed through a heavy red velvet curtain covering the thick fire-wall door. This was my rope jam, and my very first kinky event.

My date and I each paid five euros, and as we were identified as newbies, we received a brief first-timer introduction to the space by a tall blond woman and a bald man who stamped a flower on my wrist in red ink.

Soon one of the organizers, a man whose name tag went something like “Mr_Misfit78” — his screenname from Fetlife — began the introductory talk for first-timers. This was an all-volunteer run event, with no dress code and, thus, a strict no-photo and no smartphone policy. Terms like consent, responsibility, and no liability were mentioned. There are real risks and dangers associated with rope bondage: both physical and emotional. Intense feelings and emotions arise with rope. It is a powerful medium, a powerful experience. He continued that we should inform ourselves of these risks, including the different types of suspension points on bamboo versus metal rings, what types of carabiners are used, and other tie-off methods. All of this was like a foreign language to me.

I was there with a man I’d just met online to do a rope class together. Upon his invitation, we went to the jam instead. He was my introduction to the scene and the concept of a rope jam.

Music was playing overhead, and participants were to keep their voices down — unless we were involved in a scene — not interrupt people while they were playing, and to keep an appropriate distance from people who were. Near the couches was a self-serve honor system bar with wine, beer, soda, and a porcelain kitty for extra donations and anonymous comments. There were flyers for various events and rope training courses offered by some of the organizers. On the low table in front of the couches, there were two pages of stickers to choose from: one with a coil of rope, the other with two hands being tied. We could put a sticker on our shirts, depending upon our preference or goal. It was meant to encourage conversation, we were told — not indicating a promise or obligation.

“Everyone has different expectations and reasons for doing rope bondage,” said the goateed man with the name badge. “If two people get together to tie with differing expectations,” he continued, “They’re gonna have a bad time.”

How could I know what my expectations were? I’d never seen anything like this! By the end of the talk, I knew only that I wanted to be tied. That much was clear, and I reached for the corresponding sticker.

We walked around some more, observing the people who were tying and others watching. I tried to act like this was all totally normal, something I saw every day. A man and a woman were playing with another woman in one area. The woman being tied was wearing a black bodysuit, and the man was fully clothed. They were tying her up very hard and roughly, squeezing the rope and twisting it tighter against her legs until she screamed and hollered. But then she would moan in pleasure. Another pair were tying quietly, but the woman wore a blindfold. On another mat, a large woman with pale skin and bright red hair had tied up a woman wearing only lace-thong underwear, and I heard first before I saw it: spanking. First soft, then louder and louder. Whap! Whap! The top was spanking the woman’s exposed rear, and she couldn’t move — because she was tied up. I began to understand the potential of rope bondage. I began to notice the ritualistic process that those engaged in their scenes were following. After watching in wonder — and a little shock, for some time, my date asked me whether I would like to try some rope myself. Over coffee, we had agreed to go to the event, with no expectation even to tie. Now I had a clear and pressing desire to know what it felt like. I wanted to be part of this event and not just a spectator.

***

How many churches, temples, holy — and alleged holy places — have I visited? Surely, thousands. My life has involved many rituals, some deliberate and learned and others inherited. The religious historian Mircea Eliade posited that rituals were the vehicle for humanity to return to a mythical time when the sacred originated. Most of our lives in the modern era exist in a profane setting. We get up, brush our teeth, pay taxes, wash the dishes, run for the bus, or squish into the crowded subway. The opposite of the sacred is profane, which is our daily lives.

We have to go out of our way to make something special and make a deliberate and conscious effort. This is what I found in the rope jam — a sacred approach to the human encounter with rope as a medium and a tool for exploration.

I met a guy at one of the jams once who told me how he’d grown up on a farm in Eastern Germany, where they had a special room just for the farm tools and especially for all the rope that was needed. This room was holy. One did not just enter the room and play with the rope, but it had a set of guidelines and protocols for how, when, and who could touch the rope and use it. He got into rope bondage later in life, and this farm-rope room served as his personal kink origin myth.

Though I did meet people at the jams with a more casual approach to their rope, the general vibe was to treat the whole endeavor as something ritualistic, if not even sacred. A ritual has a preparation, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And clean up. There’s the decision of what to wear to the jam, the packing of the rope, carabiners, and other accessories. The thoughts running through your head, who will I meet there tonight? The body is already showing signs of sweat, breathing, and blood flow anticipation. Then the standing in line, the newbie intro, the rope partner negotiations, followed by the climax of the session, and then aftercare. Maybe a glass of wine or water and chocolate. Everyone has their preferred emphasis on each part of the ritual.

But the most important thing for me was that it didn’t stop there. The rope jam had an added playfulness that opened up the space for true human creativity. Within the ritual of the jam, anything could happen. Emotions of all kinds appeared, and interpersonal dramas didn’t cease but even played out in plain view, as part of a scene, or — as in all human social interactions — in more destructive manifestations like passive aggressiveness or smack-talking. All aspects of people were welcome at the jam, not just their kinky selves.

***

That year before the pandemic came and turned our lives upside down was the year I discovered rope and the jam. I was back regularly on Tuesday evenings at the Lotus Loft with my ever-widening group of rope friends. I loved the ritual of the jam began with changing garments, greetings between friends, the intro, the music, the stretching, and preparing for the encounter. The session’s creative arc was essentially sacramental, a secular rite that felt familiar to me from my prior life in religious training. I even began to refer to these rope jams only half-jokingly as my ‘new church.’ And I attended religiously, eager to learn the rituals, philosophy, and worldview.

I went about getting to know my new community like an anthropologist doing fieldwork, but much less unbiased. I was part of the study. All types of people are into rope bondage and BDSM in general, and now I was one of them. Some had come to rope via tantra, others from yoga or tango dancing, some from karate, or others like me, via the internet and their imaginations. It took some time for my previously fixed ideas about how people should relate to one another to loosen up enough to grasp the genuine openness and flexibility of the scene. It wasn’t only men tying women either; there were many women riggers and many men eager to be tied up by them.

My enthusiasm for the rope jams meant that I invited people I met at other kinky events. I recruited new participants. Where I used to invite people to visit my church, I was now encouraging attendance at my new loft temple. Only sixty people were allowed in, and eventually, people showed up an hour before the doors opened at 8 pm, like the line outside the Apple Store before a new product dropped. Maybe, like me, they were fascinated by the social dynamics of rope. Who were these people, why did they come, and what were their relationships with one another? I discovered concepts like polyamory and open relationship models being implemented that I’d previously found unthinkable. I learned about people in vanilla relationships who had rope partners, others who had monogamous rope and romantic partners, and others who had different rope partners every week; the types of relationships and their constellations were as diverse as the people drawn to the loft. This new “church” was more anarchical than anything I’d yet experienced in all my explorations of ritualistic communities.

Of course, the jam was not a church, but more of a community, or a network, where people could experience something together, yet simultaneously discover themselves in their unique kinky preferences. Here was a place where ritual and communal experience met the freedom of self-individuation.