Even writing that description makes me clench my thighs together, but my curiosity was piqued, so I reached out to Julie, 37, a woman who has a long history of dominating her male partners. When it comes to cock and ball torture, Julie, who works in social services in Toronto, has pretty much done it all, including sounding, which she does not recommend for beginners. (For the record, women can sound too, but Julie hasn't tried or witnessed that.)

That was when I first heard about sounding—a form of cock and ball torture that involves inserting metal rods (like the one pictured above left) into the urethra, for pain and pleasure.

I learned a lot at a swingers' retreat at Niagara Falls over the Valentine's Day weekend, but hanging out with the kinksters there was the most enlightening experience of all.

"I think if you want to start with [cock and ball torture], you should read books and talk to others and keep in mind that if you're watching it in porn, which is very fun and entertaining, make sure you don't just copy the person on porn," she said, adding she always makes sure to get consent from partners before trying something new.

**Did you have any mishaps? ** I've actually slapped someone really hard on the pubic bone and he lost his breath, I slapped the wind out of him. But I've never had anything serious happen.

What did you start with? Hitting, like slapping, clothes pins, biting, abrasion play, scratching. Eventually I learned from friends how to safely do ball kicking and sounding and things like that.

VICE: How did you get into cock and ball torture? Julie: Over a decade ago, I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and it's a really big kink scene there. So I lived there with my partner who was also my submissive 24/7, and I was always sort of into sadism and I started wanting to learn about different techniques and things like that, so I read a couple books—there's a famous book called_ Family Jewels_, which is about cock and ball torture. And I started watching videos on kink.com and there was one model who I really liked. She had a dominant style that I really enjoyed and I learned things from her.

With that in mind, we asked Julie about some of the more extreme forms of cock and ball torture she's experimented with, focusing on the art of inserting rods into someone's pee hole.

So how do you get started? I went to a party with friends and they showed me all the safety things. Make sure you use gloves cause you don't want any kind of bacteria. The first time you use a set, you boil them and you use rubbing alcohol to keep them sterilized. And you need a lot of lube, you can't use spit.

**Sounds fucking crazy though. ** A lot of men are really squeamish about having things put inside their penis so I was like that's a great mind fuck, I gotta learn how to do that. My partner at the time bought me a basic sounding set for Valentine's Day. It's a Hegar sounding set, sort of the most basic common set and it comes with really small dilators to quite large.

Like wrestling... Yeah. Everyone finds cock and ball torture really shocking but it's not, it's just another way to hurt someone and it's fun.

Ball kicking sounds really painful. Like how hard are you kicking these guys? What you do is point your toes so when you kick, you hit him with the flat of your foot. You don't hit them with edges. I wouldn't hit someone with pointy shoes. I don't kick so hard that someone wants to throw up or something. It's always shocking to them even if they like it, it's always a shock to be kicked in the balls. I find a lot of this stuff is really sort of showy so it looks sort of more painful than it is.

**What do you do with clothes pins? ** You put them all along the loose skin of the balls and they grab on and what happens is that part isn't the painful part; if you squeeze them, take them off, and reapply them it hurts more because that's where the blood's gone.

And then what?

You just allow it to slide in on its own, you can't push it, if you push it, you can cause problems, you can hurt their urethra, you can hurt their bladder. I let them drop in. It's not painful to just put it in, you're using lube and stuff. You can pull them in and out, you can rotate them, you can manually stimulate them so they have an orgasm with it.

How big are the sounds?

They start at a couple millimetres and each end of the sound is bigger, if you flip it over. There are ones that are smooth, there are ones that are bumpy, there are ones that have a thick head but a thin rod, there are ones that scratch a little on the inside. That's a little risky, that's above my level.

What do the guys get out of it?

My current partner finds the stimulation really arousing, he likes it. He has a goal, he likes stretching urethra, he sees it as a competition to see if he can stretch it further. Personally I'm not into a big gaping urethra. Other guys see it as a challenge because people are told you're not supposed to put things in your urethra.

What about for you?

I like it when men don't like it. They allow me to do it, but it's not their thing. That's what's kind of fun for me. Another thing that I like about it is a few days after it may sting when they pee which is fun to have a little reminder. By the way, because sounds are metal you can electrify them.