Twisted Monk is the oldest and most trusted name in bondage rope, and with good reason. Ever watched porn on Kink.com? You’ve seen this rope. Ever seen a performance with, or attended classes by, Midori? You’ve seen this rope. Ever browsed kinky porn on tumblr? You’ve seen this rope.

Hand-dyed, hand-finished using eco-friendly and vegan processes, maintaining all the sweet seductive smell of the natural fibre without any of the harsh chemicals found in mass-produced hardware-store rope. This rope is soft and supple and ready to go when you get it, and like a pair of Monk’s Carhartts it softens and burnishes further as it absorbs your skin oils becoming possibly one of the single most intimate pieces of sex-gear you’ll own.

Most famous for the classic hemp bondage rope, which is what you’ve most likely seen without even realising it. Hand dyed to a gorgeous variety of colours, we finish the ends with a special hand-sewing technique that is guaranteed to last. This is the most versatile rope, and if you’ve only ever been using nylon hardware store rope or cotton sex-shop rope, you’re in for a real treat. This stuff holds knots easily, moves against the skin with just the right amount of friction, and unties easily when you’re done.

If you like luxury, soft, silky materials, or only wear the finest of bespoke fashion you’ll want to check out the hand-spun bamboo and silk ropes. These are the real-deal, no synthetics here! Truly gorgeous- the organic raw silk is plush yet strong, and the bamboo is satiny and feels like a cloud. No, really- that’s the only word I have to describe it. If scarves, neckties and stockings have been your bondage go-to, these are sure to please, perfect to pair them with Ball Gag Australia.

Prefer the classic look while still living in the lap of luxury? You need the Bavarian Blonde. This is fast becoming my all-time favourite rope. Four strand rather than three, it’s buttery smooth to the touch but firm enough to use for strenuous and masochistic ties that I enjoy. With a sweeter scent to the fibre too, it’s just perfection. This feeds a fetish more than any of the others. Sometimes this is referred to as the “single-malt scotch” of rope which I’ll have to take their word for it since scotch tastes like sucking on a flowerpot to me. I like to think more that this is a pair of second-skin tight black leather driving gloves because, well, that’s hot.

If you’re a bit more adventurous, or just really like strong sensations, we even have electro-rope (and I LOVE it). Hand-spun jute (though we can do this with any of our silk or bamboo too) rope that has special fibres worked into it which conduct electricity. No, it won’t turn you into Uncle Fester. Designed to be used with a violet wand or a Neon Wand equipped with a body-contact attachment, the current conducts through the rope creating an amazing sensation. If electrical play is your thing. I didn’t think it would be, but then life happened and proved me oh-so-wrong. Product-testing during development for this was a super fun, if somewhat distracting, part of the workday for a bit there.

The Jopen Intensity is a hideous beast, there’s no two ways about that. It’s strangely shaped ((I’ve heard all manner of descriptions, from “deformed foot” to “preserved fetus in a jar”)). It’s a nausea-inducing shade of pinky-mauve. It’s large, but not in a “oh that looks delightfully filling” way but rather in a “what the fuck IS that?!?” way. It looks every bit like the (quack) medical device that it is purporting to have started out as. Or maybe some bizarre ray-gun. Paint it brass and take it to the next steampunk con?

The Intensity is trying to be an awful lot of things- clitoral vibrator, dildo, g-spotter, electro-stimulation, and kegel exerciser. It’s even trying to appeal to the wide range of preferences for insertable size. Unfortunately, I think they’re trying to ride all the horses with one butt.

I have so many thoughts and feelings on this, but they’re scattered and rant-y. So let’s just start with the base particulars, and then jump on into that list I just rattled off, shall we? Intensity is made of silicone, so that’s good. It has two metal electrodes on the insertion point. The silicone around those looks pretty well cast around it actually, so I don’t feel like cleaning is going to be a chore to ensure proper hygiene. So that’s good too. It uses four AAA batteries, which is not too bad, at least it’s not AAAA’s or somesuch impossible to find size. It… uhm… yeah, I think I’m out of what passes as nice things to say…

Before I jump into my list of Things That Are Wrong With This Toy, I need to say a few words about the battery compartment. I’d normally not mention the battery compartment but in this case I feel I have to. This is a device designed for women, and I’d hazard to say that most women I encounter on my day-to-day activity tend more towards the femme side of things. This battery compartment is most decidedly NOT femme-friendly. My nails aren’t particularly long, just a smidge past the tips of my fingers, but I couldn’t grasp the little twisty bit because my nails are too long. I dunno about you, but I don’t feel like I should have to change my manicure habits on account of a sextoy.

There is an “On/Off” power button, and two sets of controls on the Intensity, one marked “V” and “S” with up and down arrows for each, and a series of indicator LEDs. “V” for vibration, and “S” for… shock? I’m guessing they meant stimulation, but I’m going with shock based on my experiences with this thing. The tricky part is that I can never quite remember if the controls are designed with up/down oriented for when I’m just looking at the toy, or for when it’s inserted in me. This is problematic later, particularly when we get to the shock parts.

The vibrator on here is a “rabbit” style clitoral attachment, except instead of having a pair of ears which flutter uselessly like most rabbit vibes, this has THREE rather firm protrusions to poke you in the clit whilst emitting an annoying buzzing sensation. There is no redeeming the vibe action on this, at all. None. It stabs, it hurts (and not it a good way), and it annoys. Don’t believe me? You don’t have to take my word for it. Not much vibration carries internally, which doesn’t surprise me given the mechanics of this thing.

You see, people like a lot of different things when it comes to an insertable toy or dildo. I get asked all the time “what is the best?” or “what is your most popular?” or some variant on the theme of folk wanting to find the One Dildo To Rule Them All. Sorry folks, it doesn’t exist. Jopen tried to address this issue of custom-fit dildo needs by looking at that pinnacle period of technological advancement known as the early 1990’s. No, really. Their solution? See that big, round, bulbous portion of the “base”? That is none other than an air bladder, which you use to inflate the intensity to your desired size. Just like a pair of Reebok sneakers— a design idea which we all knew was preposterous almost as soon as they came out. The attempt to make this a g-spotting toy is something that I am glad was very clearly an afterthought, but that doesn’t prevent it from being awful for me. There’s an awkward lump on the shaft which presses into my pubic bone in a really painful and pinchy manner. I can’t imagine it being useful, at all, for anyone who wanted to stimulate their g-spot anyhow- wrong place, too small, and just useless.

Which brings us to the reason this toy falls into the $200+ price bracket, and what makes most people recoil in fear (myself included). Intensity is designed to use electrostimulation to engage your PC muscles and give them a work out. Basically? It’s trying to be a TENS unit for your cunt. I happen to like e-stim, and so I was really excited when I was offered the chance to stick this thing in me and electrocute my vagina for fun and science. Remember what I said about the controls being a pair of up/down buttons of vague orientation? Yeah- this is where that becomes an issue. Each intensity level (I see what you did there guys, and I’m not laughing) has a couple settings of how fast of a pulse you receive, and there are I believe ten levels. I don’t know for sure, I didn’t get through them all. Epiphora did though, and I bow to her vagina for doing so. Even just in my hand, I can tell the issue with the shock levels right away. There is too large a variance from one to the next. It’s like, instead of taking a flight of stairs one step at a time, taking them two or three, or stretching reaaaaaaaaalllly far to try and do four steps at once. You generally end up hurting yourself trying to do that.

Despite my reservations, I lubed up, smeared some electrode gel ((The ingredients for which are not located anywhere on the packaging, so I’m thanking my stars that it didn’t give me any problems)) on the contacts, put it in me, and turned it on. The first setting was the familiar “I think there might be an ant crawling on me” tickly feel of a TENS unit on really low. The second setting got buzzy. The third setting changed abruptly to feeling like someone was stabbing the inside of my vagina with one of the old-style tuberculosis tine-tests, but in your cunt instead of your arm. I tried going up to level four, at which point the stabbing moved on to feeling like knives in my vagina, and I tried to turn it off. Except for that whole “which way is up” problem. I still can’t believe I actually gave this a full round of testing sessions before hiding it under the bed for months, wanting never to look at it again.

This problem of power settings going from not enough to TOO MUCH in one step isn’t unique to Intensity, it’s a common issue for digital electrosex gear. Analog may be the way of the past for many things, but when it comes to using electricity to stimulate really sensitive parts of the body, the fine-tune control of analog really is the way to go. I’m the kind of person who, on a whim, decides to see what it feels like to take my TENS unit to a nipple ((Something which some electro-sex folk will tell you not to do due to proximity to the heart, etc. etc. I’m not saying this was a GOOD idea, ok?)) (which was really fun in ways I had never expected), who contemplates shearing my beloved cuntfur in order to get a better contact with my TENS pads on my labia, and there was that whole electro-bike thing…

I like e-stim quite a bit and don’t get nearly enough. I really should have loved Intensity, but I just can’t. I’d much rather do my kegels the old-fashioned way, or with some Luna Beads, than by painfully shocking my cunt into feeling like it’s being stabbed by knives. I’ve had one friend suggest that electrosex, to him, feels like angry bees in his dick. This was like angry bees with scimitars. I’ll stick to an analog unit and the wide world of probes and pads designed for electrofucking, thanks.

We’re a few weeks past a year later, and here I am to think on it some more. I’ve actually been thinking on this quite a bit of the last few months, through my time laid up from surgery and illness (those really are some good times to just sit back and think about yourself and your goals and feelings, I find). Later in the same year Lee Harrington’s delightful journal on Sexual Fantasy was published and helped me further into insight of how to create these solid communicable ideas which I can open up to others, and where my fears lie, to accept those, and put them in the open as well. There are certainly worries and fears, moreso perhaps for those of us who do feel Little and as such want to blush, hide, runaway, brat, or lose our words.

Opening up to fantasies also opens us up not just in these vulnerable  ways but also to the risky delicate dance of facilitation and negotiations for some things. As Lee says so nicely in his journal:

Things I often get shy saying, because of fear of rejection, or fear that they will be promised to me but not happen (that has happened a LARGE number of times in my life, and it sucks).  I tend not to tell folks what I really am looking for, because if I get excited about the possibility, I feel let down if it does not happen.  I worry that when I discuss my actual body realities, my health concerns, my safer sex rules, etc, that I may get turned down even after folks get all excited (which has happened many times to be honest).  I have moved for the most part to instead speaking desires out loud, and if they happen, cool.This too, is not the best system.  But its what I can do right now emotionally.  Some days I go proactive.I have major challenges with the shopping-list approach to sexual and kink negotiation.  Sign up here for a gangbang.  Um… gr… just can’t wrap my head around it.

Which brings me to me, and some of my fantasies. Sexual fantasies sounds rather limiting to my mind, so I’m going to call them kinky fantasies. Anyhow, in no particular order:

• A boot and leather centric scene, blacking a series of leathers through predicament situations and sensation, but also being permitted time to truly just dedicate my entire body to blacking. (requires an existant partner)
• Sensory depravation. My mind wanders to heavy leather sleepsacks, or palatte wrap, or somesuch similar. A hood. A blindfold. Headphones with pre-programmed music in. Suspended in the air, and just let to feel, to think, to process, and to be. (This would be a deeply personal and carthartic scene, and requires someone willing to help with anything that would need addressing in the intermediate. Pre-planning to have a therapy appointment follow the day before is a must.)
• To be collared in a more serious collar than a play collar. A collar of daddy’s-girl-hood, protection, perhaps even property. (would depend on many factors for property, that’s a rather charged word to me)
• Fun and floppily dynamic partial suspensions. Lots of laughter. Lots of lightheartedness. Lots of hitty-hitty.
• Being bound, somewhere dark for a long time, enough to lose track of time. Occasionally to be used or beaten. (Would need to be someone who is ok with my flipping out/getting emotional)
• Being drugged and fucked/played with while unconscious.
• Heavy boot play, my body grinding into the ground beneath you under your soles, your bootprint on the side of my face, treadmarks on my cunt.
• Combined intense candle wax, rope, and spanking/flogging scene. (relies heavily on the D/s dynamic for this to not just be a very surface scene)
• Nazi interrogation/rape scene.
• Having my body pissed on, then my cunt pissed in and fucked full of piss. (obviously someone I’m fluid bonded with)
• A day of learning whatever lesson Daddy deems I need in order to be able to grow. (potential for fun, or for awful)
• Going to the movies, or a day at the Aquarium, or to the arcade, with some sort of naughty thing going on under my clothes. With a companion, not just alone. I’ve done this with rope before, so I’d like to add more next time.
• Electrical play. Let’s not forget the electro-bike saga. I really want to explore this more. I have ideas, and a scary-as-fuck gift to be given once I work up the nerve to do so.
• To play right on the edge of true fear. Again, like the deeply cathartic scene, this is risky business. I still really want to do it though.

Now, I still have my old style fantasies, where I think intensely hard on one aspect of something I like or have done. Things like the ingenius little leather cuff Daddy owns and which I wore on one of our formative dates. The first time he spanked me, where, when, how, how I felt… and the first time he beat me with his belt, where, when, how, how it felt, how it compares, what I have learned… I dream about mornings waking to Daddy rousing me from my cage for an early morning fuck before we both head off to work. I dream a lot how Daddy takes my breath away, and how happy it makes me feel.

So, I think about fantasies, but I’m shy and unusually awkward compared to how I seem. I am a little girl at heart, and I carry my Daddy’s watchful eye and protective heart with me wherever I go. I’m an autonomous individual, free to do as I please, but knowing I’ve got him in my corner looking out for me is giving me a bit more confidence. Not much though. I’ll likely continue to limit who I will play list rather strictly for the time being. Who knows, maybe that’ll change too!

Oh boy did I help out. Unlike last year where I drove 30 minutes into the city after I got out of some classes I was taking, helped out for a few hours, then did it all again the next day, this year I decided to dedicate myself fully to SEAF for the whole pre-show insanity and the full weekend of the event. Yeah, I’m crazy. I took the week off work, and spent my time checking in artwork being dropped off for the exhibition, wrangling spreadsheets, and waking up far FAR earlier than I think anyone should. As luck would have it, not only did I get to do art-handling and installing (and somehow becoming the queen of all knowledge related to the spreadsheets), I got asked to assistant stage-manage the mainstage production. I have a delightful history of getting added to the production team for shows the day before opening night so I put on my headset, hopped onto the com, and away we went! Being backstage and in my element again awoke some parts of me which have too long been dormant, and it felt absolutely amazing.

My techie self wasn’t the only thing that SEAF awoke, and while I’d love to wank on about what a wonderful time I had ASMing and all that rot, you’re probably wondering what the “and all I got was one less hard limit” is all about. That’s fair, it’s really my favourite part of my SEAF experience this year.

photo courtesy of adameros photography

My favourite piece in the entire show was a delightfully interactive installation work by Dana Ollestad called the Electro-Bike. The catalog description of the Electro-Bike says you can “Control your own experience with this everyday object newly subverted into an electrical device that rides the thrilling line between pleasure and pain.” I’d say that’s a spot-on explanation of what the bike was all about. I’ll admit- the entire first day of SEAF I walked past the bike over and over never even looking at it twice. “Eh, it’s a bike” I thought. I didn’t feel a draw to look at it further really. Afterall, what was so exciting or erotic about a bike on a static-training stand? What I’d failed to notice initially was the little generator tucked into the frame. It wasn’t until a couple of folk were geeking over the construction and wiring of the bike that I got interested.

Shortly thereafter I got a chance to climb onto the bike. It was then that I learned that it wasn’t what I (and many patrons I soon learned) had thought it was. Everyone assumed that the saddle would vibrate or electrify. Oh no. The saddle was just a normal bike saddle. What wasn’t so normal were the handles- they were exposed metal wired to that tiny little generator under the frame. Just the tiniest movement of the pedals and BZZZZT! the electrical tingle shot up my arms. I jumped off the bike, displeased at how it felt, and went back about my SEAFly duties. It wasn’t long before I was back on the bike again. And again. And again. And “Are you on the bike again? Really? You’re such a pig!” comments began to come from friends and staff. Yup, I loved that bike. Anyone who was there Saturday afternoon and evening heard my love of the bike resonating down the corridors of the festival too.

Not only did I love the bike, not only was I back on it every time my muscles stopped tingling from the previous ride, but before the bike electrical play was firmly on my hard limit list. I’ve licked my fair share of 9v batteries backstage to discern the live from the dead ones to put into mic-packs. I’ve been electrocuted (mildly) twice. I am freaked out by the high-frequency machine we use in spas to zap zit-forming bacteria (it feels like a needle poke!). The bike changed my mind about electricity, and now I can’t WAIT to get to play more with it. What did it feel like to face a hard limit, and crash through it like the Kool-Aid man? “Oh Yeah!” is about right if you ask me, but I’ll let you see for yourself… (and if you need more, I’ve got a second video up too)

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