GRENADA HILLS, NEBRASKA
Tom and Mary Jones couldn’t have been prouder than when their son, 22 year old Kip Jones took up shibari as a hobby. But things started to go astray as soon as the young man began experimenting with styles that his parents considered “outside the tradition.”
At one point there was a screaming match which ended with Mary Jones accepting her son’s “deviant practices” but demanding that he “stop calling it shibari.”
According to the couple, Kip had started doing things that were “hardly recognizable” within the Japanese tradition.
“We sensed trouble when he started experimenting with nylon rope and something called a double coin knot. There isn’t even a name for that in Japanese. We should have known then. In a way it is out fault for not reigning him in sooner.”
Once he had moved on to “fusion styles” and “decorative knots,” his parents saw no choice but to disown their son and ask him to move out.
“It was the hardest thing I have ever done. Well except for the teppou suspension that I put Mary in last weekend, which was amazing, but took me years to learn. That was pretty tough too, but for really different reasons,” Tom, who goes by the name RiggerT, explained.
“I just want them to love me, even if I don’t want to do things their way,” Kip told The Daily Flogger. “It is sad that rope, the thing that brought us together as a family is ultimately going to end up dividing us.”
Mary Jones responded by saying “You can’t really call that nylon shit rope. Call it what it is, cord. It’s just fucking nylon cord and no son of mine is going to tie with that!”
Photo credit: manos_simonides CC: NC SA
