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Learning The Ropes A Basic Guide to Safe and Fun S/M Lovemaking Race Bannon Foreword by Guy Baldwin Daedalus Publishing Company 584 Castro Street; Suite 518 San Francisco, CA 94114 USA Copyright © 1992 by Race Bannon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the author . Published by Daedalus Publishing Company, 584 Castro Street, Suite 518, San Francisco, CA 94114 USA. Cover design by Don Mooring ISBN 1-881943-07-0 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-73484 Printed in the United States of America Learning The Ropes To all those brave individuals who have blazed the trail leading to erotic freedom. I salute you all. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No one writes alone. I thank Guy Baldwin for encouraging me to write about SIM and guiding me with loving honesty. Wes Lockwood and Andrew Irish deserve credit for being part of my life as I was learning so much of what this book contains. I want to thank Karen Kircher, Gayle Rubin and Nan Borrows for connecting me to the womens ' and heterosexual SIM communities. Tony DeBlase has been inspirational in my desire to educate the masses about SIM . Thanks to Richard Sauer-Wooden for the book's title. My father raised me as an independent thinker and I will always love him for that. To Kevin Lockwood, my closest and dearest friend, for simply being there whenever I needed him. To my partner, Mike Pierce, for his constant support. And to my editor, Richard Labonte, for his expertise. TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD 11 PREFACE 13 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 15 Chapter 2 THE SENSUAL WORLD OF SIM 19 Chapter 3 SIM IN THE REAL WORLD 31 Chapter 4 SIM AS EROTIC THEATER 53 Chapter 5 DISCOVERING HOW SIM FITS INTO YOUR LIFE 63 Chapter 6 SIM TECHNIQUE 73 Chapter 7 THE PLAYGROUND OF THE MIND 99 Chapter 8 SIM GEAR 107 Chapter 9 FINDING SIM PARTNERS 117 Chapter 10 TIPS 125 Chapter 11 SAFETY 131 Chapter 12 THE NEXT STEP 143 Chapter 13 CONCLUSION 145 THE SIM RESOURCES GUIDE 147 RECOMMENDED READING 149 GLOSSARY 151 ABOUT TIIE AUTIIOR 157 ORDER FORM 159 FOREWORD It has always been mystifying to me that human cultural groups are so intolerant of behavioral diversity. Nowhere does this intolerance reveal itself more dramatically than when one group evaluates and then condemns the erotic behaviors of another group simply because they are different. Honesty about one' s erotic differentness risks condemnation. Consequently, the erotically diverse have tended to hide this truth about themselves. Isolation has been the unhappy result for all the erotic minorities: homosexuals, fetishists , sadomasochists, and others. Simply put, hiding in closets is toxic and produces emotional pain. Truth - accurate information, has proven to be the single most valuable tool for unlocking and opening the closet doors behind which the erotic minorities have sought safety at such a terrible price. As useful information has become available to the erotic minorities, their isolation from each other and from the rest of the world has slowly begun to end. This happy development has been made possible by a dedicated and brave vanguard of social scientists, journalists, publishers, and writers who have been willing to come forward with the truth about the realities of erotic diversity , In this hone