I’ve always been fascinated by the nocturnal. That liminal space between the waking hours. The traces of time passing disappear. No set meal times, no sun moving across the sky. Just a compact darkness enveloping all. It’s the land of dreams, where seeds of fantasies grow. And I love to play in these lands.

A friend of mine told me about a role-playing scenario centred around being homeless. Outcast from society. At the beginning of the play, one’s pristine clean clothes were replaced by old dirty-smelling rags. And one was taken to the streets, to experience the initial distance taken by all things civil. The scent of not belonging. Not being capable of meeting the most basic human hygiene needs. As night fell, there was shelter in an old abandoned laundry room. A bed of old newspapers and a stained wool blanket from the Cold War days. While waiting for sleep to come, one had plenty of time to be mesmerised by a life, this time chosen, but more commonly involuntary for the least privileged. Rationalising, empathising from the outside. Now that I’ve walked in your shoes. The sleep that eventually came never stayed for long. And I remember my friend telling me about the confusion of waking up. To an unknown world. The stench, the aching back, the bright fluorescent light. The time it took for the brain to catch up. For rationality to explain that this is just a role play for another 24 hours. Of course it was a relieving thought, but still, how he loved the confusion, when realities bled into each other.

In my teachings I often talk about the three fundamental taboos. Maybe as the three things often too private to play with, or maybe the three things at the root of much play. Food, hygiene and sleep. The three most fundamental things to remain human. I’ve been exploring food and hygiene in almost all of my workshops, from fighting like animals for an orange, or being cleaned in front of an audience, or simply being a drooling mess looking at one’s own reflection in a handheld mirror. It’s always very popular, I think because it touches something so deeply human, the borderland of no longer being human.

In smaller workshop groups, I often ask how people slept, because it says a lot about how the group is processing things. During the workshop, or the play for that matter, there are so many things happening. So much input. A lot of doing and much less being. So it is actually when people arrive in bed, after everything that has to be done is done. Messages are answered, food is eaten and teeth are brushed. Only then can the real private experience begin. When nothing else can disturb.

Sometimes I lock my lovers in a heavy iron cage overnight. Well, I don’t really lock it, because if I were to die of a heart attack in my sleep, I wouldn’t want the added tragedy of my submissive starving to death in my cage. So we close the cage when going to bed, but leave it unlocked. There is a clear expectation and trust that the iron doors will remain untouched. So when a submissive then wakes up at dawn and sees the monochrome sunlight filtering in through the windows, there is no phone, no watch. No way to pass time, only waiting, while listening to my peaceful sleep next door. One could spend only so much time memorising every title on my bookshelf, or examining the paintings, masks and photography on the walls. But eventually they are faced with their own submission. There is no dominant’s complete attention or fancy knots pinning them in place. Perhaps it’s a little bit like praying to a god, without ever receiving any reassurance back. It comes down to faith and devotion. How long does that last when the night feels endless?

In my latest teaching topic, OBEDIENCE, we’ve started to explore the taboo of sleep. It’s first introduced as cute little going-to-bed and waking-up routines. Like saying gratitude before going to bed, or waking the dominant with some soft loving touch. But then it develops, sometimes, into whole rituals. If the routines are made to be cosy, then the rituals are made to move things. Sometimes they look like chaining the submissive to the bed, without a proper lock unless the dominant is sleeping there next to them. Or cuffing their hands to their collar far away from any sensitive part and then waking them every second hour to tickle their desires. Or if they are alone, having them schedule an alarm in the middle of the night, to stimulate themselves while half asleep. Or more abstract versions, like meditating on a certain fantasy before falling asleep. The options are endless.

But if there is anything that I take away from having taught the first two iterations of OBEDIENCE, it is that most things happen in between things. Sure, the exercises during the day are intense, but if anything they are like planting seeds for the night. And that makes me wonder, maybe it’s the same in all my topics, it’s just that this is the one where we make the time to talk about the taboo of nights. What did you last dream of?