TOP CROP (kotw)

A riding crop is the classic gateway drug for impact play. Go to Ann Summers in Oxford Street and, alongside all the sexy underwear and nurses outfits, I’m sure you’ll find a “kink for beginners” kit with some faux leather cuffs, a blindfold and a riding crop. It will only be 12 or 14 inches long, might even be pink, and if you really swing it, it might sting a bit.

I suspect many have started their journey into kink with just such a kit, before moving on to more challenging implements.

But not all riding crops are created equal. After I’d been playing with Elita for a year or so, I bought her a vintage crop made by Swaine and Adeney, founded in 1750, whipmakers to King George III. That bloody thing really hurt and she broke me in our first session with it

I’ve owned several crops. I bought one from a local saddlery when I was about 16. When my parents found it, it became the cause of the first of many lies my hidden kinky life forced upon me.

I bought Lilly her first crop, and still smile when I see her with it in one of her twitter posts. Don’t be fooled my the heart-shaped end. It’s a proper weapon

Why the crop? How has it become so ubiquitous? A good crop is a very flexible instrument: it can be used to tap, tap, tap with the end causing a light sting that can be applied all over the body, the sort of thing one might do at the start of the session to wake up the nerve endings.

Bend the victim over and swing it hard and it becomes a leather covered, dense plastic cane, vicious and demanding. The sort of thing one might do to end the session.

Here’s my current crop. It’s of medium weight and length: not a toy and yet not quite the real deal either. The willing victim is, of course, the lovely Lyra, with whom I’ve just spent a delightful two weeks. She posed for this and accepted the blows just so I could take the picture for this piece. What a trooper!

I think I’d like to own a Swaine and Adeney vintage crop myself. A long one with a stiff. leather end. I’d like to feel that again, the biting, stinging shock of it. The warm after-glow.

I’d like to use one again too. Perhaps it’s a challenge L would relish. I’d like to find out.

More kink on crops here: