In Anne Rice’s erotic novel The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, there is a scene where Beauty was made to play a game: twenty roses were scattered all around a room where the Queen sat, and Beauty had to crawl around and pick the roses up and return them, one-by-one to the Queen, all the while being flogged to keep up her pace. Every time Beauty would bring a rose, the Queen would stick a large gold marble in Beauty’s ass. The trick being that the further along she got, the harder it was to keep going without dropping the marbles.

My husband and I thought this was really hot, and we’d love to play it out, but we are concerned with the idea of losing a marble inside my ass. Could that happen, and if so, what could we do to prevent it? We have worked with anal beads before, but there are only so many on a string, and those knots can sting! What can you suggest?

–Losing My Marbles

While I love erotic fiction as much as the next kinky reader, when it comes to representations of bondage, sadistic sensation play, and other BDSM activities, you need to remember that half of the stuff that fictional characters do in books isn’t even physically possible, let alone safe or meant to be instructional. Many, but not all, writers of leather smut have never actually done any of the things they write about. Or, even if they are players in real life, often they still indulge in fantastic fantasies they know are great to jerk off to; they don’t mean for anyone to try to replicate them.

The scene you describe from The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty is an example of a sexy scenario that’s not practical, and could be physically harmful. In general, anything you put in the ass should have a flared base (like on a dildo or butt plug) or another way to stop it from going all the way inside (like the ring on the end of a string of anal beads). Obviously, marbles don’t qualify, and they could get lost inside your ass. You’ve already played with anal beads, and you’re right, most people find the knots of the nylon or cotton rope pretty uncomfortable.

I have several suggestions for scenes that may appeal to you. If you want to be surprised, now is the time to stop reading and hand the magazine over to your husband. Several sex toy manufacturers sell toys which are a continuous series of beads, but the toy is all one piece (no string, no knots); some have several beads of the same size, while others have graduated beads which get larger and larger. Your husband can insert the first bead, send you off to retrieve rose #1, then slide the second bead inside, and so on. It creates a similar effect as the marbles with a toy that’s completely safe.

Or, if the goal is to make it increasingly difficult to keep the object inside your ass as you retrieve the roses, he can begin with a silicone butt plug, and, each new round, replace it with a plug made of a heavier material, moving from clear acrylic to glass to marble to stainless steel. I’ve used all of these high-end toys, and can tell you that when you stand up with a steel butt plug in your ass, it feels like a barbell that’s fighting gravity! A similar effect can be achieved with only one butt plug and a series of small weights usually used for cock and ball play or genitorture. Find a way to attach the weights to the base of the plug (I suggest a small piece around the rounded base), you can keep increasing the amount of weight each time a rose is retrieved. Use the story in the book as inspiration, but then be creative and create a scene that’s clever, cruel, whatever works for you. Most important, make it safe.