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Whether you’re an active proponent or a passive admirer, bondage has an intrigue all its own. Notorious bondage master Van Darkholme spoke to Garrett Bithell.
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“Have you ever seen that perfect stud at the gym? We all have. You’ve seen him working out there for weeks. He’s a loner and seems extremely unapproachable. You’ve stared at his handsome, boy-next-door face.
You’ve discreetly worshipped his legs in the reflection of the mirror. When he walks by to the water fountain, you take a deep breath, hoping for a faint smell of his sweat or deodorant. Now, blindfold him and tie him up. That’s what I do.”
So says Van Darkholme, the infamous San Francisco-based bondage master whose work is celebrated in a new outrageously-arousing monograph, simply titled Male Bondage.
What is it that’s so powerful and stimulating about the bondage experience? Is it simply the uncanny feeling of binding rope around wrists, ankles, knees, shoulders? Is it the gag stifling protest? Is it the striking vision of all that bound male energy struggling to get free? Is it the fantasy of inescapable helplessness and complete abandonment – being absolutely subject to the sexual whims of another?
On the other hand, what is it that has made this erotic subculture so taboo to so many people? Is it the parallels that can be drawn to an abuse of power? To rape? Is it the intrinsic humiliation? Is it demeaning? Does it open the floodgates to primal urges perhaps better left suppressed?
“I think there’s something very primal about bondage,” Darkholme tells SX. “I have this vision of prehistoric men being captured by their rival species. Captured, raped. Somehow it is deep-rooted in our DNA. It provokes fear and sexual energy simultaneously.
“Today, bondage is the product of many things. Bondage can be soul-searching and very intimate between two people, or it can be a headless sex game reliving lost teenage fantasies. Personally, I get a shot of adrenaline when I’m in control over a hooded bottom tied up from head to toe. It’s the masculine energy constrained – ropes pulling back the bulging muscles. That gets me high, simple as that. Complete control, complete power.”
Indeed sex, even the most vanilla variety, is about power to some extent – who’s on top, who’s below, who’s getting done. As Bob Wingate, publisher of Bound & Gagged, has suggested, the bondage experience goes a step further towards clarifying the power dynamic, bringing new and more potent elements into the equation.
However the complexity of this power dynamic, and the complexity of the origins of arousal generally, is perhaps beyond any psychological or social theory. But where does a desire for bondage come from?
Darkholme’s first exposure to bondage possibly provides a small insight. He was 12, and playing in the woods near his home with a group of friends. They began picking on the weakest member of the group and, for a joke, stripped him almost naked, strung him up from a tree branch blindfolded, and ran away. Darkholme was the one that came back to save him.
“While tied up, he became an object and almost non-human,” he muses. “I remember his tight ivory muscles flexing, and his genitals flopping around inside his tightey whiteys. He was in pain and completely helpless.
I stared for several minutes and then let him down. He was so relieved that he hugged me. I believe that was my first male-on-male contact. It ignited my entire being. That vision of bondage and affection has manifested itself over and over again in my adult life.”
Now Darkholme utilises the ancient Japanese bondage form known as Shibari. “Western bondage consists of leather straps or nylon/cotton rope restraints,” he says. “It’s mainly tying up the ankles or wrists for bondage play.
“Shibari is an ancient Japanese rope art that mainly uses hemp rope. There are many intricate rope patterns where the sub gains pleasure from being under the pressure and strain of the ropes, squeezing the chest or genitals. These pressure points make the sub aware of his body and heighten all of his senses.
“Shibari also cuts off the blood circulation to the extremities, which forces the sub to have an intense erection since the blood needs a place to go.”
But Darkholme’s creative expression transcends mere titillation – the images in Male Bondage urge us to both consider the spiritual subtext and appreciate the inherent beauty.
“All my life I have found joy in shining light on things society has disregarded. I like to make rejects into objects of beauty. I myself am a reject and I guess I’m seeking a little attention.
Bondage has such negative connotations to most people – visions of sweaty, hairy leather daddies doing crazy things in a sticky, popper-filled dungeon. I like to present bondage in a way that even a vanilla person can find interesting.”
For more information on Van Darkholme, visit www.vandarkholme.com
Male Bondage is out now through Bulldog Books, and is available from the Evolution Publishing online shop here
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