I know a lot of my examples tend to the edgy side of mindfuck (look at my name, for Christ’s sake) but there are whole other categories of mindfuck to consider. And thanks to my enormous anal-retentiveness, I’ve categorized three types of mindfucks. I call these the “3 F’n MFs.”
Fear-based mindfucks involve scenes that derive their erotic energy from fear. And yeah, these are the kinds of mindfucks I do, primarily. For example, playing with weapons is a fear-based mindfuck. The gun could be real—but it doesn’t have to be to get the same charge. The fear’s the thing, and fear is inherent to the scene. It drives the play and it gets the players off.
Fantasy-based mindfucks involve scenes that may not contain elements of fear but rather transmutations that cannot happen in reality. For example, there are folks out there with micro-philia and macrophilia—fantasies of shrinking to the size of a toy or growing into a giant. That’s not something you can do for real, but it is something you can approximate with mindfuck. I’ve also run across more than one man who fantasizes about being turned into a cigar. Again, can’t actually make it happen, but since mindfuck makes you think something’s happening that isn’t, it can help a pig explore these kinds of unrealizable desires.
Now, technically faith-based mindfucks should be called “trust-based,” but then it wouldn’t be the “3 F’n MFs” and I’m not only anal-retentive but also hungry for symmetry. These are mindfucks that eroticize not fear or fantasy but trust. They involve tests of service, submission, and trust and can be used to deepen the relationship between a Master or Mistress and a slave. Imagine a scene that starts with a Mistress asking “How far are you willing to go for me?” and you can imagine where mindfuck can take two people. My favorite example isn’t sexual but it is from the Bible. (Blasphemous, I know, but that kinda turns me on.) God tells Abraham, “Hey, go kill yer son Isaac for me” and Abraham just about does it, then God says, “Nah, I was just mindfucking you.” Classic!
There’s also one category of antimindfuck. This is something you should not play with ever, period. Do not ever mindfuck around someone’s phobias. Why? Phobias are by definition irrational fears; irrational fears provoke panic; and panic is dangerous for everyone in the scene. I have a great story to illustrate what I mean. I played with a boy once who told me about a scene he had with some other Top. The guy had the boy in leather restraints chained to a bed. He also knew the boy had arachnophobia, fear of spiders. So Mr. Dumbass Top decides to take out his pet tarantula and put it on the restrained boy’s chest. The boy reported to me that tarantulas make a popping sound when they hit the wall. (He broke through the restraints.)
Drowning’s the one for me. You can do a lot of shit to me, but since I almost drowned when I was a kid you play around with that at all and I’m gonna freak and then take it out on you. So, no phobias—agreed?
FUCKIN’ RULES
It should be pretty clear by now that mindfuck is a huge fucking category with lots of room for all kinds of kinksters to do all kinds of things. But there are some basic rules to keep in mind to help any kind of mindfuck happen.
The Top, by definition, has to know more about the scene than the bottom. This starts with a balance of communication and mystery. The bottom has to know what’s going to happen but also know that he doesn’t know everything that’s going to happen, or how it’s going to happen. The bottom has to know the Top enough to trust her, but not so much that she feels fully safe. There needs to be some lingering doubt, always, and always carefully managed. I like to say that the bottom should only trust you enough to show up for the scene.
So as the Mindfucker you have to know if the gun is loaded, and the bottom can’t know. (You have to know if the gun is real, too, and the bottom can’t know.) You have to know if you’re going to kill that person, and the bottom can’t know. You have to know how it will end, and the bottom can’t know.
This also means that you have to know what your bottom knows. I’ve done a bit of weaponsex and I always get hard shoving the barrel of my 9 mm Beretta 92FS down some hungry pig’s throat. But I ain’t an idiot. The gun I use is 1) a realistic blank-firing replica and 2) never loaded. But a smart pig who’s done a lot of gunsex is gonna suck on that barrel when it’s in his mouth. Why? Get plenty of air, there’s no bullet in the chamber, so you know it’s not loaded (or at least not chambered). All the fear goes away and, heck, that ain’t much fun. So, if I know I’m playing with a pig who knows how to do that, man, I just plug up that barrel with a bit of cotton. I can see the fear in their eyes when their clever little trick sends them a whole different message, the message I want them to have in their heads.
That’s because “Control the Info” means more than just “controlling” information; it means managing the information a bottom has access too. Innuendo, sensory control, half-truths—they all play a part. In this sense, a blindfold is your best friend, because the brain is used to processing visual information. Slap a blindfold on anyone, and I mean anyone, and the mindfuck has started. Their brain just runs with the last visual input it got and then tries to extend it. So, you see me with a big fucking hunting knife and then I blindfold you. Your brain still sees that knife and not the little wooden toothpick I’m poking at your privates. Information managed. Same thing with sound, once someone’s blindfolded. Get ’em tied, get ’em sightless, walk away, slam the door. They’re going to think you left. They won’t know, of course, but it’s that not knowing that makes the mindfuck happen.
The mindfuck isn’t happening out here in the real world, though it might look that way. Instead, the mindfuck is always happening up in the bottom’s head. So the Mindfucker needs to get the bottom to do the bulk of the work up in there. That means you don’t want to overdo anything in the scene; instead, you need to provide the context for the bottom to activate the scene. For example, one very bad mindfuck scene I was in was a kidnapping back in my bottoming days that was just, well, melodramatic. After the guy “kidnapped” me (by which I mean I had to help him drag me over to the waiting van), he “called” someone and said something along the lines of “I’ve got him. Erase all his information.” Oy. I knew it was only going to go downhill from there because it was suddenly very obvious just how not real this kidnapping was. The Top did too much, went too far.
Best way to follow the Less Is More rule? Confirm nothing. I once totally mindfucked this bootlicker online. He was convinced, and I mean utterly convinced, that I was controlling his mind. The chats went something like this:
“Oh, fuck, Sir, you’re in my head, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
“Shit, I knew it. Fuck, what are you doing to me?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t even really have to lie to him about what was going on. I just had to hold back and let his head fuck itself. Sweet.
As a Top you need to deliver the mindfuck and maintain it; otherwise the spell will be broken. That means reading where the bottom is, doing what it takes to maintain the illusion, but also knowing when it’s coming to a head and timing the scene appropriately. Every lie has its limits. You need to know those limits and tweak the dynamic to keep the sense of unreality real. For example, you get all jazzed and jizzed thinking about me drugging and raping you, so when you show up I shove a pill down your throat (maybe make you wash it down with my piss). Now, at first, you’re gonna think it’s all happening. And, soon, you’re going to feel a little weird and probably a little tired. I mean, fuck, we’re all tired these days, so no wonder, right? But sooner or later you’re going to realize you’re not passing out. That lie has a definite limit.