Ice cubes

What are ice cubes in BDSM?

Ice cubes (Dutch: ijsklontjes) are frozen water moved across the skin during temperature play to make cold felt. The cube pulls heat away from one small patch, so the nerves there react far more sharply than to ordinary touch. Within BDSM, ice cubes are the cold half of the same game that candle wax is the warm half of.

How ice on the skin works

An ice cube adds nothing, it takes away. Wet ice lies directly against the skin and pulls heat out faster there than air or fabric ever does, so the cold receptors on that spot fire in a short, sharp burst. Small contact patch, so you know exactly where it is. That’s half the trick.

Keep moving and that point moves with you, and the skin behind it warms up again. An ice cube left in place does the opposite: the tissue under it cools through. In the description by StatPearls, ice crystals first form outside the cells, on further cooling inside them too, and cell membranes can rupture.

Why people use ice cubes

The pull sits in not knowing, not in the cold itself. Blindfolded, the difference between a drop of wax and an ice cube on your shoulder blade is only clear after half a second, and it’s that half-second people come back for. On top of that, ice is in every freezer.

Honest about what it doesn’t do: ice cubes build up poorly. The first contact is the sharpest and after that the skin gets used to it quickly. Anyone who wants to build a whole scene around it needs something else alongside.

What to watch for with ice cubes

Keep the ice cube moving. That’s the whole rule; the rest follows from it.

What goes wrong when cold stays put is neatly documented. In the British Journal of Sports Medicine, O’Toole and Rayatt show that an ice pack lying directly on the skin for twenty minutes, with no cloth between and body weight on it, can give a second-degree burn. Cold and pressure at once, then. So always put something between, and keep it short.

That was a gel pack and not an ice cube, but the scenario is exactly what you want to avoid: cold that doesn’t shift, with weight on it. In practice that means four things. Don’t lay ice down anywhere. Stay off spots where feeling or blood flow is already reduced. Don’t insert ice, because melting ice gets edges that cut. And watch the skin instead of asking whether it’s still okay: skin that blanches white and doesn’t color back right away is the moment to stop.

Where this fits on this site

Candle wax is on my list of possibilities, and ice cubes are the cold half of it. Often in the same scene, right after each other. If you want to know what an evening like that looks like and how we go over beforehand which sensations are on the table, that’s on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• Frostbite at the gym: a case report of an ice pack burn. G. O’Toole & S. Rayatt, British Journal of Sports Medicine 33(4), 278–279, 1999. Supplies the finding that an ice pack lying directly on the skin for twenty minutes, with pressure on it, can give a superficial second-degree burn, and that a cloth between prevents it.
• Frostbite. Hajira Basit, Tanner J. Wallen & Christopher Dudley, StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf, revised 2023. Supplies the mechanism: ice crystals first outside the cells, on sustained cold inside them too, after which cell membranes can rupture.

Related terms

• Sensation play. The umbrella ice cubes are the cold corner of.
• BDSM. The broader entry above that, with the agreements that apply everywhere.
• Fireplay. The other side of temperature play, with a risk profile not comparable to ice cubes.
• Blindfold. The object that gives ice cubes their effect, because you don’t see the moment of contact coming.
• Foodplay. Where ice from the freezer turns into eating off the body, and why warming up is the hard part there.
• Autobondage. The one use where the melting itself is the function: a key that only comes free once the ice is gone.
• Candle wax. The warm half of the same game, with the melting points per type of wax.
• Peppermint oil. Cold that exists only as a signal: the skin reports it, the thermometer doesn’t.
• Pinwheel. The same surprise under a blindfold, but with pressure instead of temperature.
• Temperature play. The practice ice cubes are the cold half of, with the limit above which warm starts to damage. The warm half is called waxplay.