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Calmly, Catherine Noeth folds her arms behind her back as she stands in the empty PEP Love office, Albuquerque’s local phone sex business. Jack Ixo chooses a length of red rope to match her black outfit, and begins tying her hands behind her back in what he calls a basic box tie. Despite not having full use of her arms, Noeth smiles and laughs, joking with Ixo as he winds the rope around her body.
Noeth and Ixo are practitioners of shibari, a form of rope binding from Japan. Former student Noeth said she has been practicing the art of shibari for about a year.
She enjoys being both the person who ties someone up, known as a rope top, and the person who is tied up, known as a rope bottom.
“For me it’s the art. I love the different creative and wonderful things you can do with a piece of string essentially,” she said.
Bondage involves tying somebody up so they are bound. Shibari, while it can be binding, represents something different to her, she said.
“Shibari is an art and it takes patience and knowledge and it’s such a flowing kind of thing. You don’t rush shibari,” she said.
Noeth said this distinction also helps when she introduces friends to shibari. Whenever she mentions her interest in the art form, she describes it as a physical rope art.
“I’ve had some adverse reactions, but mostly just a shock factor, because people get confused between bondage and shibari,” she said.
Noeth believes in the activity being safe, sane and consensual, she said. In shibari, safety involves both mental and physical safety. Physical safety includes being careful not to tie the rope too tight, and having a pair of medical shears nearby, in case the rope bottom is threatened by nerve damage, panic attacks or a lack of blood circulation. Mental safety involves checking on the rope bottom, making sure they feel comfortable and safe, she said.
“If somebody isn’t consenting to what I do, I wouldn’t be doing it,” she said.
As a rope top, Noeth said she is prepared if people change their mind in the middle of a shibari session, though starting out slow and checking in on her rope bottoms has prevented this from happening so far.
“At any point in shibari, I would be more than willing to cut up hundreds of dollars of rope to get them out of it,” she said.
Ixo, a local shibari instructor, said although he respects the artistic aspect in very elaborate shibari, he said he became interested in it as a form of sexual bondage.
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“For me it’s mostly about control, and my desire to exert control over my sexual partners,” he said.
Ixo got his start in shibari at a young age. At seven years old, he started studying shibari, reading different books to learn techniques.
“I’m one of those people who’s been kinky forever. And when we played, I liked playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians because I wanted to be the one who tied people up. So it goes way back for me,” he said.
