What is role-play, and why is it hot?
We all have dirty fantasies. Part of what I love about my work as a pro domme is learning about other people’s fantasies and finding what really turns them on. Role-play games offer a space to creatively explore these sexual fantasies (even the darker, weirder, and politically incorrect ones) within the context of a relationship built on communication, trust, and mutual respect.
BDSM itself can be seen as a role-play game where we negotiate and act out fantasies of sexual dominance and submission, using deliberate acts, costumes and settings to reinforce a power dynamic and the psychological states associated with it. The clothed Domme performing a full-body inspection on a naked submissive is one favorite dynamic of mine, as is the corporal punishment by a strict mistress of a naughty, misbehaving student.
BDSM educators Easton and Hardy say it well in their famous New Bottoming Book:
“[S/M] combines the child's urge for make-believe with the adult's ability to take responsibility and the adult's privilege of sexual reward. Our sexuality, at its best, represents a remarkable convergence of civilized agreements and primitive urges.”
In a D/s scene, we can experience a range of emotions from intense vulnerability to overwhelming pleasure in a truly unique kind of intimacy. The ability to dress up and play games with our fantasies also allows us to take them, and ourselves, less seriously (which ultimately can give those fantasies less power over us in our daily life).
Planning and preparation
To get started planning a scene together, think about what role-play you’d like to explore. This could be a role-play based on familiar dynamics (teacher/student, doctor/patient), something from a more distant fantasy (like striving to please an all-powerful goddess), or perhaps a role reversal (like the manipulative secretary who gets revenge on her boss after finding incriminating documents). I’m happy to provide further suggestions as needed. Think about how you want to be made to feel: are you interested in exploring pain, punishment, humiliation and degradation, tease and denial? How about feeling small and insignificant, being bound up helpless and vulnerable, or being used for my pleasure and kept in chastity, sexually under my control?
The better we communicate beforehand, the easier it is to plan a scene and get into a role. You can make note of the activities you’d like to try during the session, and consider what activities (if any) are a must for you. Then make note of your boundaries and what you’d like to avoid (this can include both hard limits and things that simply turn you off). Please do not email me to say that you have no boundaries at all, it’s disrespectful (I only enjoy playing with people who have healthy boundaries)! If you’re new to BDSM and not sure what your boundaries are, that’s ok. We can tailor the session to whatever level you are at, and check-in as needed.
Leading up to a scene, following a routine can be helpful to prepare physically and mentally. Taking time to care for your body, grooming, and hygiene helps with confidence (and is nice for your partner). For my own routine, I enjoy taking a long shower and then listening to music while putting on my makeup to get ready. Stretching and moving the body to release tension is also helpful.
Acting Basics: How do you get into a role?
Great acting skills are by no means necessary for playing together. More important is being present, communicative, and attentive. You don’t have to transform yourself into someone else completely (that simply wouldn’t be sustainable). Instead of pretending to be someone else, acting helps us to be more self-aware, finding actions which we enjoy doing and which help us to communicate and get what we want.
In acting theory, an action is anything an actor does to provoke a response in another person. This can be speech, body language, posture: a subtle movement of the hips, a glance, a slap to the face. The character does not exist independent of action, and rather is made up of a series of actions which they perform to affect others. There is always a reason why a person acts the way they do, and part of the work of acting is to bring attention to this, to become more aware of ourselves and the ways in which we behave and provoke responses in others. What this means in a practical sense is that when building a scene, all players involved are constructing that dynamic, whether they realize this or not. There is no “passive” role, so although being completely passive might be a fantasy for some, all partners in a scene are active constructors of the dynamics involved. Communication and a degree of self-awareness is essential for finding and constructing a common fantasy that can work for all players.
Direct communication doesn’t necessarily break the power dynamic, and direct check-ins may be useful to align on intensity. You can also think about how you phrase feedback and try to fit this to a certain dynamic - a polite “Mistress, I can take more for you” works better for a devotee and a very playful “is that the hardest you can hit?” may be suitable for a dominant who loves brats (brats: submissives who like to rebel and want to be tamed. I’d recommend talking with your dominant about that kind of play before going there. Personally, I thoroughly enjoy playing with brats in a well-negotiated dynamic). The flow of the scene is about being able to pay attention to the other person and recognize their needs in the moment, finding where to push harder and where not. It requires an awareness of your own body, communicating what is necessary in order to build trust and find a rhythm.
Roles can be intensified through clothing that fits the scene, and I love having a wardrobe full of options for different characters: from sensual lingerie and nylons to leather and latex fetishwear, medical apparel and full-body catsuits. Restrictive clothing and physical bondage also helps to bring some submissives into the role and submissive headspace. As a relatively small person, rope bondage is a tool for me alter the dynamic between me and my (mostly larger) partners. I enjoy starting to tie it on sweetly, in a teasing way, and shifting the mood once my partner is fully restricted and unable to escape. Then the fun can begin!
Finding Inspiration
Part of what I enjoy most about my work is the endless inspiration that I get from my clients and their fantasies, which often influence my own kinks. Great inspiration can also be found in films, whether it be BDSM porn from Kink(dot)com, arthouse erotica or those really hot interrogation scenes from old Bond movies.
Spontaneous inspiration during a scene can come from being in an environment which encourages play. The fully-equipped themed rooms at Studio LUX are perfect for getting into a role, offering lots of creative ideas and tools for bondage and discipline. Well-designed leather furniture works beautifully for spanking, pegging and CBT, the gynecological chair is fantastic for medical examinations in the clinic, and plenty of hardpoints around the studio make for delightful bondage games and even full-body suspensions.
Interested in a session together at LUX? To book, you can contact me through the booking form on my website.