When you take one sense -- especially a dominant sense like sight -- offline, the mind instantly starts to refocus its dependence on the remaining senses. Blindfold your lover and watch their four remaining senses grow ever more sharp. Searching for clues about their environment, your lover will focus deeply on the sound of your voice, the touch of your feather, the scent of the oil you rub into their skin. Blindfolding is the instant sex makeover.

When you talk to your blindfolded lover, the lack of sight makes your voice more likely to create pictures in their minds. Here are some adventures you can take your blindfolded lover on, just with the sound of your voice.

1) You can create scenes -- or recreate them -- like your first date. "Remember when we got the extra long ride on the Ferris wheel? Remember how I grabbed your hand in the back of your Dad's car -- was it like this?" Try to include all the other senses as you create memories. Could you obtain cotton candy? There's smell and feel and taste. You can try to recreate carnival sounds: if there were shooting galleries, record a small cap gun and play it in the background, perhaps a cell phone ring tone will sound like the music for a ride or a downloaded song would remind her of the skating rink or the game arcade.

2) Talk the story of your first kiss, lead up to it slowly, and then recreate the kiss as your lover remains in the dark. As you move on, you could talk about the first feel of her breast. Or if you're a newly connected couple, tell a story about what you always pictured doing with this person, and then follow through.

3) You can play guessing games "Guess what I've got here?" Run the warm oil under her nose. "Guess what I'm about to do to you now?" Run your finger along her inner thigh.

4) You can talk hypothetical situations: "Pretend we're at the Pier Elegant restaurant. We're sitting side by side at this exclusive restaurant, and I'm not wearing underwear, and you're not wearing underwear." To punctuate, take off your lover's underwear. Then you can start with the wine. "You're drinking the finest wine…" and you can proceed to narrate parts of a meal and feed them to your blindfold lover. But continue to interrupt: "I'm putting my hand up your skirt, right here at the table." (Wait a moment and milk the suspense, then go for it. Hand up her skirt.) Then "Oh, shit, those people over there are watching us like hawks." Vary your pussy play. "They know what we're up to." Your hand gets bolder with her pussy. "The old guy wants to see bush -- should I pull your skirt up more?"

By the end of the meal, you could have her standing there naked, perhaps some wine dribbled across her breasts, and you can tell her that people are staring at her angrily as they walk out of the restaurant, looking at her up and down, examining her breasts. "The old guy is about to touch you!" Grab her nipple. "Don't touch my wife." And so forth. You can tweak the scenario to taste -- yours and your partner's -- but you get the idea.

5) You can also create role-play fantasies. If she likes you as a tough guy, you could be a pirate who has just captured her. Maybe use your neck tie to bind her hands behind her back. Then really play with her senses. Place an unlit cigar nearby for the effect of its powerful scent. Undress her quickly and roughly. "I'm not sure how much I'm going to get for you on the market." At this point you can manhandle her breasts, open her pussy, feel around her mouth, and so forth. Or if she likes to be the dominant one, she could be a Duchess or Queen. You can approach her in the darkened palace chamber: "I've been sent here to massage and oil your feet, milady."

6) The heavier play works really well blindfolded. You can use a really light flogger or strap and have great results because of the power of the unexpected. If you decide to give a beating, make sure your strokes are of erratic rhythm. Your blindfold lover will have shifted to the sense of sound. They'll hear that incoming and brace. Launch some "fake" strikes that go whizzing by and don't connect. The element of not knowing is sweet torture.

7) Some subs like to play on their fears. This works wonderfully with the blindfold. The blindfold is the gateway to exotica. Anything you see can become something else under the dark of a blindfold. A friend of mine once found a smooth replica of a snake at a fair and his sub was afraid of snakes. The play snake was segmented so that it actually "slithered" and it was smooth enough to crawl across skin. He was able to run that over the naked body of his blindfolded sub and torture her as she lay there on her back. Though she suspected it might not be a real snake, she was never really sure. As the snake slithered down between her breasts and wiggled over her belly and across her navel towards her cunt, she shuddered and the chills were visible on her body.

8) The blindfold is also a great way to test obedience. Just having your sub follow your voice or take your direction to get across the room can be a great test. "Step more quickly!" Or "Stop immediately!" Or you can make it difficult. "I want you to listen to my voice, drop to your knees, and find my cock with your mouth -- but without using your hands. A lady friend of mine had a male sub who enjoyed it when she sometimes brought in a second sub, male or female. Well, she brought in a male so they would be competing. Then she asked for a test of loyalty. The sub who most eagerly obeyed would get to service her pussy. The sub who lost would be spanked and left in a far corner of the house. The competition was to be a food test. She would announce that she had a certain food on hand, and that they would have to show undying trust by eating whatever she put on their lips. She would tell him a little bit about what she was holding (usually fictional), pass the food in front of the sub's nose, then order him to eat it. Needless to say, she wasn't always truthful. Even worse, she knew all her sub's food weaknesses. He hated things really sweet. He hated raw shell fish and so forth. My friend the domme went to great lengths to approximate the feel or smell of these objectionable foods. She even claimed to have foods to which her sub might be allergic (needless to say, her permanent sub was going to be the one who failed her test that day). And she would chide and coax. "So, you don't trust me? So insolence is all I get from you? So this stranger here is more obedient than my supposedly loyal, trained sub?"

Well the coup de grace of this scene was something my friend had discovered at a nearby Chinese restaurant called "stinky tofu" which literally, to use the vernacular, "smells like shit." And she didn't let them off easy -- she told them it was exactly what it smelled like. As you can imagine, both subs failed the final test and the domme gleefully beat them both. She then ordered her long-time sub into a far corner and dragged the visiting sub into her bedroom. She left her bedroom door open so her long-term sub could hear the sounds of the visitor eating pussy -- which was actually one of her sub's fantasies).

Of course, any type of scene with props and narration like this takes a lot of planning or at least some effort. A complex scene is probably not something you'd invest time in, at least for the first couple of dates. But it sure can add spice and show your partner you've invested a lot of time and effort in the process. This in itself can be an aphrodisiac. (A scene like this also scores "long-term points" in that it's sure to produce many memorable, one-time-only moments).

So here are some tips to get your imagination going on each of the four non-sight senses, hearing, smell, taste, touch.

[To be continued…]