I wrote some about this a year or so ago but a recent poll on another site brought it back to the forefront of my little brain - so I thought I’d explore it again, from a slightly different angle.

“Fear can be headier than whiskey, once man has acquired a taste for it.  ”~Donald Dowes

True, hmmm?

Edgeplay.  The stuff we do that it is hard to claim is safe or even sane.  The stuff that is risky, that rides along the edge of safety, often dipping across the line, over the edge into dangerous.

Knives.  Blood.  Breath play.  Fire.  Electricity.  Nails and needles, oh my!

None of these things can be rationally considered safe in their edgier forms.

Take knife play, for instance.

Safe enough, I suppose, if one is using a cold piece of flatware to pretend they have a sharp knife.  Or using the back, unsharpened edge of a knife to give the sensation, the illusion of being cut.  But many knife enthusiasts don’t play it safe.  They cut.  They draw blood.  They use knives and scalpels and bits of glass.  They make scars.  Big scars, small scars, pretty scars in fancy designs and ugly scars that thicken and hurt even three years later.  Education and knowledge can make you more safe than blindly diving into these activities but (unless you’re a surgeon, I guess) nothing is going to be…  truly safe.

People flinch.  They move.  They breathe too deeply.  A hand gets a cramp.  A knife is sharper than you thought and goes deeper than expected.  The possibility of accidents occurring in knife play - in all edge play - is exponentially higher than in our more sane, more tame methods of play.

So why do we do it?

Because we relish the fear.

Feeling it.  The rush, the knotted stomach, the trembling breath, the near shut down of the mind as it focuses on one single sensation, one single moment.

Causing it.  The power, the rush, the thrill that I cannot explain because the ability to cause it is not in my psychological make up.

We crave fear.  We wallow in it.  It is addictive and glorious.

The poll question that inspired this went something like:

Have you ever been scared in an edgeplay scene?

• no, I live for the rush
• yes, my partner went TOO far
• I don’t touch edgeplay
• no, my partner and I have the safeword thing down

And I was baffled.  I couldn’t answer the poll.  Because all I could think was….

Of course I’ve been scared.  Being scared is the whole point!

What is edgeplay without fear?

It’s a watered down, sanitized, trendy and false representation of the things those of us who lovingly walk that edge do and enjoy.

Without fear you are not on the edge.

“Fear made my mind a blank, and a yearning so sharp it was like pain made breathing difficult” ~Phedre, Kushiels Dart, Jacqueline Carey