Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal
C is for clothespins and clamps! These little buggers are some of my favorite toys to play with, and oh! have they been played well…
First off, a tip of the hat to The Toybag Guide to Clips and Clamps by Greenery Press. For those who like to read their way through first steps, I highly recommend this cute and quick little read.
I love clothespins. And I fucking hate them. They can give you the type of pain you just want to feel feel feel for long periods of time, and even the taking off of the little wooden clips is divine… but I will also admit that nothing has nipped me harder and more annoyingly than them either. There are places on my body I definitely do NOT prefer the sting and ache of a clamp.
There are a million different types of clamps: clothespins, butterfly clamps, tweezer clips, vibrating clamps, hair clips, the list goes on… All have their own sensations and degree of evil associated with them. The game is that of pinching and manipulating to the delight of the players – that can be hard, soft, or anywhere in between.
Photo by M
I have one partner who really enjoys clamping my nipples and waiting until I’m really uncomfortable before wiggling them around causing the pain that’s just started to become manageable to crest all over again. I had one partner who put me in predicament bondage threatened to rip off my nipples if I put my feet down (I held them up in the air for a very long time). When it came time to undo the ropes tying everything together, this partner made me take the clamps off my own nipples – I swear to god I’ve never done anything scarier. Damn it hurt, but I cherish that memory almost as much as the sensations I experienced during the event. Clothespin Zippers are also a really fun game. A zipper is made by lining up a row of clothespins over a ribbon or string so that when it comes time to remove the clothespins you can yank all of them off at the same time quickly. Scary. Awesome sensations. Great to do when your partner is about to orgasm! I’ve performed pieces where I covered my body with clothespins (see pic above), and I’m pretty sure that clothespins were the first pain toy I ever discovered waaay back in the day when I had my first ever kinky play partner. Sufficed to say, they still make me melt.
Photo by Marmotoons
I’ve always wanted someone to give me clothespin wings (though I’d want bigger ones than these). My birthday is this Sunday…
The trick to clips and clamps is this: It hurts going on. Then you get used to it and the pain subsides a bit, even becomes tolerable and sometimes negligible. Movement changes that and ups the discomfort level, as does weight or vibration. Then you have to take them off, and that hurts. A LOT.
What’s happening there is this: You get clipped and the pinch hurts, it ignites all your pain sensors in the area that’s being pinched. Over time though you are depleting skin tissues of blood and they fall asleep (not unlike how your foot will when you unwittingly cut off your circulation). That is what causes the numbness and strange sensations while the clips are on. When you remove the clamps though the blood rushes back into that area of tissue and it become hyper sensitive to sensation. You will feel pain, tingling, and other strangeness. Sometimes this is a welcome relief, sometimes it is excruciating.
You can put clamps on pretty much any part of your body without too much worry of lasting damage as long as you pay attention to the level of pain you are receiving and communicate clearly when you feel it is the wrong kind of pain or getting to be too much for you. The great thing about clips and clamps is that they can go almost anywhere on the body (nipples, stomach, chest, back, genitals, toes, arms, ears, lips, you name it…), and you can get clamps with a very widely varying degree of intensity; some are even pressure adjustable.
So what have we learned today, Class? We’ve learned that these versatile, often extremely cheap and easy to find items can be worth their weight in gold for the masochist and hedonist alike. Play, discover, learn! I want to hear your stories too, now go forth and have fun pinching one another!
To Breath and Being,
~ Karin
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~Thank you.
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