The Winning Team

I work with two riggers. That’s how it has been since I started playing rope, and I’m not willing to change it. I couldn’t. Arthur is the best soft-skilled rigger you can imagine. He’s great at communication, and he knows how to drive your feelings toward the climax of the scene. (When I work with him, it’s not unusual that I end up crying or laughing.) George, on the other hand, is great when it comes to hard skills. He can tie all the knots in the book, quickly and safely. Moreover, he can handle suspension like no one else. That’s why, when I had to find a winning team, I had a really difficult time.

A Shibari exhibition was going to take place in a matter of weeks. There was going to be a contest, and the prize was really good. My problem is that I could only participate with one scene, and that meant choosing between my two riggers. Someone told me that we should try working as a trio, but we did that once, and it was awful. Arthur’s and George’s styles are too different to combine effectively.

If I picked George, I knew we would do something spectacular. I could bet my right arm that he would come up with something that would blow the jury’s mind. On the other hand, they might notice that he’s not very good at communication, and that sometimes he just does his thing and forgets almost completely about the bottom.

Arthur, on the other hand, would be capable of pulling the audience into an unforgettable emotional journey. He can guide the public through a scene almost as if he were doing stand-up comedy, and then come up with an emotional punch that would leave people in tears the next minute.

In the end, I couldn’t choose. I realized that I already have a winning team. Money is great, of course, but I think I would have lost something more important just for chasing a few thousand bucks.

This is my Shibari story.