Dear Play Partners: I want to play with YOU, not just your kinks! I don’t really care too much about what toys you like to use or what clothes you like to wear. Sorry — that’s all pretty interchangeable to me.
I want to know what beat your perverted internal clock is ticking on. I want to know what your passions are and where your weaknesses are. What fucks you up? What gets you high as a kite?
So to that effect, here are some questions I really like to ask people I play with. They’re also the questions I like to answer before someone plays with me. As the time becomes available, I’ll be adding more of my own typical answers here.
Depending on who you are, what we want to do, and how much time we have, you may hear some, all, or none of these questions:
You As a Kinkster
What is the theme of your kinkiness?
The easy question, right? It’s the first one for a reason — I take a theme-based approach to play rather than action-based. Well, most of the time. More than particular kinks you have (actions, vignettes, words, tools, etc), I’m interested in the overarching passions you drive towards in play. If you make a big list of 100 moments in play that are sexy to you, your theme will be the underlying current uniting all of them.
The theme of my kink is power struggle, physical or psychological.
What do you like to be called? What, specifically do you not like to be called? Most importantly, why?
Is there something that you are hesitant, nervous, or unsure about but you want to explore?
Scenes in General
What makes a scene good for you? What is a visual you see when you think about a good scene? (Same question for a bad scene)
How do you like to be challenged in a scene?
When have you used a safeword in the past? If you haven’t, what hypothetically could make you safeword in a scene?
How do you respond to giving or hearing a safeword? Does it frustrate you? Disappoint you? etc.
What should happen after you safeword? (E.g., should I untie you? Somebody else? Should you be left alone?)
Do you have any tendencies that show up in a scene that I should be aware of? (E.g., I lose track of time; I don’t communicate or safeword when I know I should; I tend to accidentally lock my knees; etc)
What headspace do you like to be in? What can create that headspace? What will disrupt it?
This Scene in Particular
I will want to talk with you about the scene afterwards to see what we liked, what we didn’t like, and what we might do differently. When, how, and where will we debrief? (E.g., immediately afterwards, in a week or so; by email, in person; in the playspace, in the lobby, etc.)
Someone called this a “pre-negotiated post-negotiation”. I love it.
What type of scene are we talking about? How much of this is S/M, how much is D/S, how much is other factors?
When does the scene begin? When does the scene end?
What sort of touch, communication, or affection (if any) is OK before and after the scene?
What do you want to learn in this scene?
Who will clean the equipment afterwards?
What is your current headspace like?
Right before we go into aftercare, how do you see this scene ending? How do you see yourself feeling as it ends?
Other bits that aren’t questions:
I thought of very few of these questions myself. Most of them I stole shamelessly from conversation with other kinksters. What sort of questions do you like in negotiation that get you past actions and into desires?
A lot of these questions may be subjects someone hasn’t thought about before, and it may be hard to provide answers on the spot. That can be made easier by phrasing a question as: “If you think back to scenes where _________ (it was good / it was bad / you lost focus / you felt safe / etc), what were those scenes like?”
These questions can also be asked in different ways: yes/no answers; scale of 1-10; open-ended answers; would that feel green/yellow/red; etc