Shock Tactics, Part I

Despite, or more likely because of, its scary reputation, electricity can have a powerful fascination. Images of torture, execution and the evil experiments of deranged horror film scientists are easily invoked by the sight of a couple of wires attached to a sensitive area of the body. But electrical play is also a physical experience: our nerves are themselves electrical devices and even a small current applied in the right place can produce agony or ecstasy. Electrical stimulation may also prompt the production of endorphins — which is why many of the commonly available electrical toys are intended for the purpose of pain relief.

Electrical play can also be thrillingly impersonal. Most physical SM games are hands-on activities, with the top directly applying the stimulation each time. Human fallibility gives built-in variety: whip strokes or nipple squeezes are never totally uniform or predictable. But an electrical device can be set to go about its job with all the cold inevitability of any machine, while the top sits back to enjoy the reaction.

If all this sets you buzzing, read on...

Energy makes things move, and electricity is basically a form of energy. It works on the molecules that make up the world around us: with each molecule setting its neighbour in motion, electricity moves through materials rather like waves moving through water, causing what's called an electrical current.  Materials it travels easily through, like copper wire, are called 'conductors'; those it has more problems with, such as air and rubber, are called 'insulators'; and the level of difficulty a particular material presents is known as its resistance.

Current won't flow at all unless it can complete a circuit, by finding a way either to get back to its starting point or to go somewhere else it likes to go, such as into the ground. If there isn't enough energy to overcome the resistance in the circuit, then there will be no current. And when current does flow it always takes the easiest route, or the path of least resistance. If you make things too easy, say by connecting two electrical terminals together with a simple length of a good conductor like copper wire, you will create a short circuit where the current will just whiz round and round getting things dangerously hot and damaging components. Normally, you would put something else in the circuit that increases the resistance but gets the energy to do something useful as it passes, such as light a bulb, or power a computer, or even make a bottom wince.

The body has its own circuitry known as the nervous system, conducting electrical signals from touch receptors to the brain that register on the consciousness as sensations, and from the brain to the muscles stimulating them into movement. Electrical toys intervene in this directly, sending deceptive sensation signals to the brain and prompting involuntary muscular movements which in turn can cause their own peculiar sensations.

1. Use only Low-Powered Devices

   The body's own natural electrical activity uses very weak currents: we are certainly not built to cope with the high energy levels used by mains electrical appliances. The output of electrical toys should be — and in fact only needs to be — correspondingly low. As with all forms of energy, too much electricity will simply destroy our cell structure, and in this case can also cause serious burn damage from the heat generated.

   The best rule here is only to use devices powered by small batteries of the sort used for calculators and personal hi-fi, such as 9V MN1604s (PP3/6LR61). Such equipment will still have an output powerful enough for our purposes, but even if it malfunctions, you can be sure no lasting tissue damage can be caused.

   You may encounter devices that run off the mains but are designed to have an output low enough to apply to the body. With proper design, such equipment could be safe. But if something goes wrong you could find 120 or 230V mains current most likely travelling across some of the more sensitive parts of the anatomy. Even a 12V car battery can pack too hefty a punch. Most people would conclude that it isn't worth the risk and stick to low-powered equipment.

2. Don't interfere with the heart or brain

Those weak electrical signals we intend to intervene with also control some vital bodily functions. The heart, in particular, is regulated by a repeating series of nerve impulses that cause its muscles to contract in an orderly manner. Even a small stray current in the wrong place at the wrong time could knock these contractions out of sequence, causing a lethal heart attack.

For this reason one of the accepted rules of thumb for safe electrical play has long been: 'Don't place anything above the waist'. You won't go wrong if you stick to this rule, but it is arguably misleadingly strict: the real point here is to ensure that you place the equipment in such a way that the path of least resistance does not pass through the chest cavity.

Think carefully about the route the current must take: with a terminal on the left wrist and another on the left hip, for example, if a person lifted their arm away from the body the current would be passing up the arm and then down the left of the torso, dangerously close to the heart. Placing two contacts on the chest itself would be highly inadvisable, and placing one on the chest and another on the rear of the shoulder blade would be asking for trouble. But two contacts each side of the navel, or both on the same arm, can do little harm.

I would also not advise allowing current to pass through the brain, an organ that functions entirely on electrical signals. Electro-convulsive therapy is considered barbaric these days even if carried out for psychiatric reasons, and DIY One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest scenes are probably even less advisable!

There's just room this month to give a brief overview of the sorts of equipment that can be used safely and stimulatingly within the above criteria. The main types of ready-made equipment are listed below.

• Neural Stimulator Units are specifically designed to provide controllable electrical pulses at safe levels. They include TENS (Transcutaneous Electro-Neural Stimulation) and EMS (Electro-Muscular Stimulation) machines and Relaxicisors. They are often marketed for the purposes of pain relief or on (dubious) claims that they build muscles. A good battery powered TENS is one of the safest, most useful and best value ways into electrical play and next month's article will discuss them in detail.

• Induction Coils are electro-magnetic devices popularised in the days when electricity was seen as a cure-all. They are best obtained second hand today; they also form a component in the cardiac resuscitation units familiar to hospital crash teams. They are potentially more dangerous than neural stimulators and should certainly be kept below the waist.

• Violet Wands also date from electrical cure-all days and are still available, if rather expensive. They produce sparks of radio frequency energy that feels sharp and looks spectacular but is generally very safe to play with. A third article will discuss them in detail.

• Electrical Weapons such as cattle prods and stun guns are often very difficult to obtain, since they are banned in many countries. Those intended for use on cattle will be designed with cattle's bodies in mind, which are rather larger and more robust than humans. And in those intended for coercive use on humans, the welfare of the victim may not be uppermost in the design considerations. Use with great care and keep well away from the upper body.

• Improvised devices: cranks, magnetos. Cheap electrical toys are sometimes improvised from the hand cranks of old-fashioned telephones, which are still available in second hand stores. But special care should be exercised here: old equipment is likely to be unreliable and unpredictable, and enthusiastic cranking can produce currents much higher than those from TENS machines, even capable of burning. Start slowly and gently and take special care with the placing of the electrodes.

Some enthusiasts with electrical expertise also make up their own equipment, though providing details here is outside the scope of this article. If you have a circuit diagram you care to share, please get in touch!

Next Month: TENS and Neural Stimulators — how to have sadistic fun with pain relief equipment!

Des de Moor is the editor of one of the web's most exciting and ambitious BDSM sites, The Deviants' Dictionary, an attempt at a comprehensive "encyclopervia" of SM terms.

Based in London, he has another life as a polemical singer-songwriter , performance poet and host of Pirate Jenny's Musical Cabaret Club, details of which he also splashes liberally about the web.

He prefers rubber to leather, shaved to hairy, and Doctor Martens to biker boots and plots devious and twisted SM encounters while going on long country walks.