I was thinking about this earlier. It legitimately terrifies me and I want to say I don’t want to do this because it’s so frightening or too dangerous. I look at this and start to get a taste of the sort of things I would experience in this situation, a hint of that primal flight response, the struggling, the panic. And I get turned on. Of course I want to do this. It’s frightening and dangerous.
The interesting thing is that from the other side, it’s not about the fear, not about the danger—at least for me. You’re completely safe. There’s no way I’m going to let anything serious happen to you, no matter that you’re naked, bound and completely helpless. If you didn’t trust me, after all, there’s no way this scene would even have started.
The water and the ropes serve the same purpose: they constrain you, remove your options and your ability to choose what happens to your body. They reduce you to reactions. They make you an instrument, to be stimulated or denied, no matter how you fight. (They also make you wet.)
You can always go limp, when I make you fight me. You can always refuse to react, or at least muffle your reactions. Not when I drop you into the tub, though. The reason I put you in there is because I can make you panic. You’re back to a thrashing, panicked thing beneath me, your body struggling even though it will make you run out of oxygen faster.
In a moment I’ll haul you out, turn you over to cough, watch your chest and back heave with your frantic breathing. And then maybe I’ll play with you, in your dripping, helpless state, before I drop you in again. It’s a shortcut way to create a specific behavior. The struggle is what I want from you, and right now, it’s what you’re going to give me.