Me: Do you have any idea where those police issue handcuffs are?
Him: Maybeeee. Why? Do you want to use them? And with this he makes a slightly surprised face
Me: Well yes and no. I want to use them to take a picture so I can write a post about why we don’t really use them.
And so here we are. One picture obtained and now let me explain why finding these handcuffs meant getting under the bed to stuff we have not touched since we moved house.
Firstly a quick history. Yes they really are UK police issue handcuffs. Well they were when they were gifted to us which was probably 2015. No idea if things have changed now. A kindly man, who may or may not have been a serving police officer ( I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble) gifted them to us. I had made some joke with him about handcuffs and being arrested and then he turned up with these and said I thought I might like them.
It was a sweet gift and I will admit my eyes initially lit up at the sight of them but I soon realised that maybe there was a reason they were police handcuffs and not the same as other handcuffs. They are heavy, like proper heavy and they are supremely uncomfortable. Unlike a lot of faux hand cuffs they are fixed in the middle and apparently are called Rigid Solid Bar cuffs. The plastic casing the middle the covers the metal bar that attaches the two cuffs serves no other purpose than to make it easier for the arresting officer to hold the central area to lead the ‘prisoner’.
For the person wearing them they are I believe purposely uncomfortable. The moment you tighten them enough so that I can’t pull my hands out they fit closely to my wrists and because the central part if rigid you can’t twist your hands in them at all. They are designed to be fairly uncomfortable maybe even painful if you fight or move about too much. For obvious reasons I guess. So if you are still and calm then they are fine but if you twist or turn in them then not so much.
They do look good. I will grant you that but when it comes to using them for play we quickly realised the design makes them oddly unsuitable. If you used them to cuff someone to a something and then set about flogging them any movement on the cuffs from them pulling or twisting is going to be fairly uncomfortable possibly even really very painful. I am sure that added pain would work for some people, I totally get that, but I find if I have too many competing sensations going on at once my brain struggles to cope and it all becomes too overwhelming.
I am all about comfort kink. Which even as I write that sounds weird because how can a good beating be comfortable? Isn’t part of it the harshness and struggle? The answer is definitely yes but also it is within reason. If you chain me up by my wrists that is hot and sexy and certainly taps into my submissive kink but the chances me of staying like that for a long session are slim. I am likely to call time on it much quicker than if you use leather cuffs on the bed. I am still helpless and exposed and at your mercy so it still taps into that aspect of my kink but my shoulders are not starting to hurt of the skin on wrists starting to chafe or my feet getting cold on the floor. All things that distract my mind from processing the impact or whatever type of play is happening. I am likely never going to orgasm no matter what you do if all I can think about is the pain in my wrists.
Form follow function, basically how something looks should be dictated by the job it needs to do. Maybe these handcuffs are a perfect example of that. They look the way the do because they work really well at their job, subduing and restraining people who possibly do not want that. They are not designed with any give or comfort, they are definitely not designed to facilitate movement. The opposite in fact and it is that very thing which as far as I am concerned makes them mostly totally unsuitable when it comes to kink play.
1 comment
Yeah, I’m totally with you on this, comfy kink is all I can handle now.