Here’s the thing about tantra and BDSM and meditation and hook pulls and prayer and so on: We’re all climbing the mountain, but we’re climbing up different sides. The peak of the mountain is the few moments you get to be utterly present and in utter acceptance, and your spirit explodes out of you and fills the universe. It’s worth a lot of work and pain to get there, however briefly.

“It may seem a contradiction that I learned from playing with strangers that love is essential to any successful kink scene, and certainly to the ones that are about ecstasy and catharsis. Which is not to say that those scenes were bad (some were, most weren’t). The corollary to my theory is that love happens in odd places – sometimes in a dungeon in a strange city, with someone you’ll never see again.”