In Farewell my Lovely, Robert Mitchum plays the ageing and down-at-heel Philip Marlowe, who realises, to his surprise, that he and Helen Grayle, played by Charlotte Rampllng, want to fuck. So he says, “my place or yours?”

She says, “Why? We got everything we need right here.”

I feel that way about bdsm. Don’t need clothes, let alone costumes. Don’t need ties, or implements of discipline. Don’t need no electricity. All we need, a submissive woman and I, is our bodies and our voices.

Stuff is fun, and I own, oh, boots and vests and tawses and spreader bars and so on these days. Lots of stuff. But I don’t need it. It’s never the point.