Fire and nudity are two things I would have thought are best avoided in combination, but Paradox keeps emphasizing the fun. He starts with a list of safety precautions, explains the importance of using 70 percent isopropyl alcohol as our fuel source (30 percent of it is water and that acts as a barrier between the alcohol and the skin), and explains why the head of the submissive should be covered: burning hair puts a damper on the mood.

Paradox is a handy fellow. He makes much of his own equipment, mainly from stuff he finds at Home Depot. Paradox says he walks down the aisles looking for “pervertibles,” hardware ostensibly for one use that, with a little imagination, can take on entirely different uses. For example, a few wooden dowels, some cotton batting and string can be used to create “fire wands,” small torches. Paradox has a half-dozen of them arrayed on a stand next to a table where his demonstration model, Jenny, is lying topless, a long skirt still tied around her waist. Each one of these constructions must have taken Paradox fifteen minutes to create and that was after the trip to Home Depot. Yet the flames will last seconds. BDSM is a lot of work, which may be why I’ve never taken to it. I’m more the “feed me grapes and bring me wine” sort of hedonist.

First, Paradox applies flaming Q-tips to Jenny’s naked back. This is the “warm-up period.” He rubs them up and down her spine until the flame dies, then repeats with another, a series of blue and yellow dancing fairies tripping up and down her body.

Next he lights his fire wands and gently beats Jenny. The flame wooshes through the air, the wand hits Jenny with a thud, and the wand goes out, usually after one or two hits. Jenny, a short, fleshy young woman with a number of healing bruises, stands up and Paradox whaps her, not very hard, with the fire wands. I look around to watch the dozen or so people observing Jenny being hit by the wands and the flames. They like what they see, but I sense no erotic charge at all.

Fire wands are just the beginning, the easy intro. Over the next half hour, Paradox uses canes, exploding flash cotton of the type used by magicians, and then twin floggers made of Kevlar that he soaks in alcohol, lights, and uses to flog a now-naked Jenny as she stands braced and tied against a big wooden X. Allena dims the lights so we can appreciate the full effect of the whirling, flaming floggers.

“Whoa!”

“Cool!”

“That is awesome!”

Woosh, woosh, woosh, the floggers fly in big blazing circles hitting Jenny and then wheeling back in an arc of fire.

For his pièce de résistance, Paradox lays Jenny back down on the table and forms trails of alcohol in patterns across her back, butt and legs. He orders the lights dimmed. Then he fires up a violet wand and lets the blue and yellow static electricity spark — zzit zzit — through the air. Holding it just above her back, he activates it again and a spark flies from the glass tip onto Jenny’s back, igniting the trails of alcohol.

“Aww! Brilliant!”

But he’s not done. While she is still lying down, Paradox uses soft wax to form a bowl on the small of her back. He pours in some alcohol and lights it. Jenny has become, one audience member says approvingly, “a human candelabra!”

“That is so sexy.”

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