Green Ocean suit - director's cut

Another director's cut for Hallowe'en: this is a sequence of captured stills from the Motion of the Ocean scene, when I was togged up in a dark green Ocean Rainwear suit, comprehensively roped to a chair and tightly gagged with mouth stuffer, tape and bandage.

GiveIn and I had been talking about an earlier scene involving a hooded coat, specifically how much I'd liked it when he'd gagged me then tightened and fastened the drawstrings of the hood, blindfolding me. This time, he went further, using tape to make a truly effective gag then adding more tape around the Ocean jacket's hood.

This is the point when, unable to seriously resist and already too well gagged to voice a complaint, I realised he was going to seal off my vision, too:





There's something very potent about that last strip of tape going over the eyes. Having recently been pointed in the direction of a forum of mummification stories, I can see that this is a common theme: the captive's head completely taped up, securely gagged but eyes left clear until the last possible moment - presumably so they can see the hopelessness of their bondage predicament.









And he continued wrapping tape around and round...











Generally speaking, I think I prefer it when there's loads of tape gagging under a hood as opposed to on top of it - so that, to a casual observer, I might simply be someone with his jacket hood fastened against the wind and rain. Jim Stewart described something along these lines in his wonderful Initiative Test:

I watched the stars and felt the rain on the part of my face that wasn’t covered with adhesive tape, while the ropes from my wrists were knotted in front of my waist and then systematically run through both elbows pulling them forward before the rope was knotted with emphatic finality below my rib cage.

‘Impossible to reach’ I decided calmly as my neck was released and I stared mutely across the fence into a pair of piercing steel blue eyes.

Suddenly I was looking at the floor again, collar gripped firmly from behind. The athletic figure ahead of me was stooping to produce something from a back-pack behind the fence. I anticipated a sack over my head as everything went dark - but my head emerged out of the other side and I was standing up wearing an army rain poncho-type ground sheet. For the record, it wasn’t the sort of lightweight kit they use now. Back then a groundsheet poncho was thick khaki rubberised canvas with a tall collar but no hood; at front and back it reached to below the knees, at the sides below the finger-ends and had metal eyelets all round the edge for when used as a ground sheet. It completely covered my roped arms I noted as the grim-faced Turk in front carefully adjusted the high collar so it easily hid my taped mouth.

In this story, I like the cunning roping of arms tight in to the torso and also the degree of thought that's gone into hiding both tied arms and taped mouth from onlookers. I love the idea that, at least theoretically, one might be taken outside for transportation elsewhere - even briefly in public, perhaps - with one's restraints not obviously visible, so passers-by would not come to one's rescue. A hot fantasy... maybe I ought to revisit the idea of bondage and capes...

Anyway, this was one of our early experiments in combining tape and rainsuit hoods, and it felt wonderfully confining.



I could mmmph and vigorously shake my head to my heart's content: the gag was in my mouth and the smooth PVC hood sealed around my face; neither was going to move.



It's not always easy to contrive a completely successful gag - just the right level of discomfort, challenging without choking, impossible to dislodge, adequately silencing without seriously blocking breathing - and this is probably one of GiveIn's most effective to date. The other that worked very well was the time he used an open-face drysuit hood over cross-taped mouth, then added further tape on top. Just imagine all of that then a rainsuit hood tightened and knotted over the top. Bliss!



And then, while I wrestled with my bonds and enjoyed the wonderfully frustrating cling of hood, tape and gag, a Black Diamond coat approached... but that's a whole other story.

Acceptable in the '80s

Rereading Frglee's July post on space suits started a bit of a free association meander through the old memory banks. Indulge me.

Animotion's Obsession, which I recalled as featuring a spaceman. It does but only briefly (a rather attractive centurion stars throughout) and I wonder whether I'm confusing it with something else:



Then there was Pete Wylie's The Mighty Wah! and their video for It's Sinful:



Dancing dominatrices, naughty nuns, a mad aviator (interesting that both this one and the Animotion video feature people in flying jackets and helmets) and, most fascinating to Teenage Me, someone completely bound up and struggling (in shocking pink, at around 1:10 minutes in).

I found myself on an '80s video YouTube binge. Duran Duran's Mad Max inspired Wild Boys video is a bit of a fetish classic. Here's the extended version:



Then there was the most (in)famous fetish video of all, Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax. Here's the original, banned version:



(They later tried to recreate that sense of being drawn into a seductive-but-perilous underworld in the video for Welcome to the Pleasure Dome - which is much more professionally shot but also consciously safer, less threatening for a heterosexual audience.)

Bound & gagged or gagged & bound?

A question for the philosophers out there: which comes first, the bondage or the gag?



(Tangent: was it just me, or was Planet of the Apes really quite fetishy? Many of the "damn dirty apes" seemed well into leather, and Charlton Heston had more than his fair share of bondage action. Hmmm.)

My online friend Penguin kindly acceded to my suggestion that he write about his love of gags and gagging:

Why did a piece of cloth tied tightly around someone’s mouth turn me on so much? Was I a freak for feeling like this? I started to analyse what it was about it that was envoking this reaction in me but I couldn’t find a real answer. I just knew I wanted to see more of the same. I guess you could say I knew I liked bondage before I realised I was gay. In fact as a child the gender of the captive didn’t matter at all as long as they were suitably restrained and gagged tightly with a nice handkerchief. A white handkerchief seemed to be the common type and soon I managed to steal one from my dad’s packet that he always used to have. I kept this as my ‘official gag‘, putting it on myself as well as my teddy bears. My philosophy became “you tie someone up so that they can’t remove their gag.” If I would see bondage scenes without a gag they were never as arousing as the ones with gags.

I realised that, although I generally consider a bondage scene incomplete without a good solid mouth stuffer, fastened securely in place, I've never thought of the bondage as being there to reinforce the gag. Penguin added that

When I was watching a captive struggle I'd think "hehe that gag is going nowhere" then look at their hands and kinda think "yep no getting that gag off" and it just kinda developed from there.

I'm planning on revisiting the subject over several blog entries and will doubtless quote him again...

A mac for all seasons

I mentioned Leatherbill in an earlier posting but, really, he deserves a blog entry of his own, not least for his sterling mac-wearing in all weathers.

Sun:



Rain:



Snow:



Then there's a recent addition, pleasantly autumnal, and reminiscent of my own brief outdoors fashion shoot around this time last year.



(I think Leatherbill looks great in that combo but wonder why he never does up the tie-strings of his souwester. Maybe that's just me: I like all hoods and headgear snugly and securely fastened in place.)

Checking out his YouTube profile, I see that most of Leatherbill's Favourite video clips feature women in SBR mackintoshes (and sometimes souwesters, usually outside). From my own experience of male mac fetishists, this isn't at all uncommon. I'm aware of some gay men into this look but the overwhelming majority of mackophiles do seem to be heterosexual or at least other-than-gay. I wonder also whether their attraction to a look which is unisex-but-more-commonly-feminine reflects a degree of low-level cross-dressing or, perhaps more likely, the lack of a specific aversion to clothing that might be perceived as tending slightly toward the feminine.

It's interesting to broadly compare the forums of Rubberzone, a gay male contact site, with Rubberpal, which is much more mixed in terms of straight/gay and male/female. On Rubberzone, a search for "macs" garners nine posts (and several of those are from me!) On Rubberpal, the same search throws up 65 results. Even discounting a third of those (relating to computers rather than rainwear), that's a fair difference. Hardly a cast-iron comparison, since I've no idea of the relative numbers of members of Rubberzone and Rubberpal but it seems, at least superficially, to back up my own impression of mackintosh fetishists as more likely to be heterosexual.

One way of looking at it might be to think about the preferred associations of different types of fetish clothing: specifically, the people we see (and are turned on by) wearing it. As well as the sensual appeal of the gear itself, gay men might admire or lust over the male body inside the rubber wetsuit, drysuit, oilskins, hazmat, hi-viz... and by wearing the same kit themselves, somehow harness or get closer to that erotically supercharged admiration/lust. Straight men turned on by women in raingear (and it seems there were plenty of rubber-mackintoshed women around in the early 20th Century) might well be doing exactly the same thing when they put on similar raingear.

Alternatively, one might argue that people like Leatherbill are stronger and/or purer in their fetish attraction because they're turned on by the outfit whether it's worn by men (themselves, at least) or women. As I was saying to an online contact just the other day (in a discussion of bisexuality), fetish not infrequently cuts across the more conventional homo/hetero distinctions.

Complicated stuff - and I'm not sure that it goes any distance in explaining my own relatively recent attraction to the mac/souwester/riding boots "uniform", as a thirtysomething gay man. Ah well, I'm due a window-shopping visit to Weather Vain in the very near future, which might throw some light on the matter. Watch this space...

Fetish classics: 'Little Shop of Horrors'

Frglee just posted a fascinating blog entry on medical fetishism, mentioning in passing one of my favourite musicals, Little Shop of Horrors. I don't think I've ever found Steve Martin as sexy as when playing Orin Scrivello, the sadistic, leather-clad dentist:



(Obvious echoes of both Presley and Brando. And a Schott Perfecto?)

Having seen both film and stage versions, I think I prefer the relative darkness of the latter; various elements (including the incredibly bleak ending) were cut or altered for celluloid. Perhaps surprisingly, they didn't cut the death of (a now rubber-aproned) Scrivello from what is essentially auto-erotic breath control:



Not your conventional musical fare...

QUESTION: Would you like to see "director's cuts"?

As well as being a skilled bondage top, CJ is a bit of a technical whiz - compared to me, anyway. He's recorded several of our sessions on video and, on a couple of occasions, sent me captured stills (of captured me). An example can be seen in one of our early scenes, in which I was comprehensively roped up in a Black Diamond coat.

I rather like the results of this technique: although grainier and generally poorer quality than photos taken on a digital camera, I think the stills capture a sense of the movement in an ongoing scene, the struggle. The pics showing captor as well as captive are particularly effective: with two people present, there's suddenly a dynamic, a momentum, a story.

Last time we met, CJ very kindly offered to grab some still pics from other scenes, including one of my personal favourites, when I was hogtied in my long green Ocean Rainwear coat. Incidentally, a couple of people have asked about buying Ocean gear in the UK. I've tended to get mine from this online rainwear shop. The coat in question is here...



... and here I am modelling it. I've edited some of the pics into the relevant blog entry but liked them so much I though I'd post all of them again here:









































Of course, having waxed lyrical about the movement within a session, very little movement was possible in this particular case - certainly once CJ had me good and hogtied. I was trussed up so efficiently that even rolling over became a feat of exertion (made trickier by the fact that I was lying on a spongy mattress rather than a firm surface) and pretty much all I could do was twist and wriggle. Eventually, even that was limited, because the hood pulled around my face restricted my rotatory neck movements.

A great scene, now available as a director's cut!

Do you want to see more of these? Where extra screen captures from a scene are available, should I add them as a new blog entry (as I've done here) or to the original write-up, or what?

Jamie All-leather

I'm really not a fan of Jamie Oliver, but you can't move on the Tube right now without seeing posters for the Christmas spin-off book from his American Road Trip series:



(Apologies for blurring. It's taken with a no-flash iPhone in the second or two before boarding a train.)

Hate to say it but I'm finding him quite sexy here. Curse this leather/uniform fetish!

Oubliettes, evil twins, identity takeover

Something of a bitty blog entry this time, for which I make no apology: a mix of overlapping ideas which intrigue me and all relate, in one way or another, to the idea of long-term capture/kidnap/incarceration. Also, I'm experimenting with posting input from other guys talking about their own fetish interests - especially when those fetishes are new (or mostly new) to me.

I really like the word oubliette. It derives from the French verb oublier, to forget. An oubliette was a particular type of medieval dungeon, usually entered from above and sometimes concealed, the implication being that those unfortunates held within it were effectively forgotten about.



I suppose this ties into my growing interest in the idea of storage: long term bondage where one is essentially kept prisoner somewhere out of the way, perhaps nice and neatly packaged up, suitably silenced, and left to meditate on one's helplessness. Despite - or perhaps because of - the edge of anxiety it engenders, the thought of getting to the point of genuinely wanting out (for reasons of boredom, impatience or irritation rather than seriously health-threatening discomfort) but being unable to do anything about one's circumstances is a hot fantasy.

I guess this is the appeal of the cage, the padded cell and, of course, the basement oubliette. Whether immoveably chained to the wall or straitjacketed and left to roll around in frustration, securely imprisoned but safe and (relatively) comfortable, there's a dark glamour to those places wherein willing (at least initially) or not-so-willing captives can be held for days and nights on end.

A similarly long term Internet friend, Grayleft, introduced me to a related concept, that of identity takeover. Talking with him about this, I realised I'd probably seen at least some of the stuff that fuelled his attraction: those rather credulity-stretching plot devices in a drama or soap opera where one character essentially takes on the identity of another. Off the top of my head, I can think of The Prince and the Pauper and Gattaca, but I'm sure there are many others. The doppelgänger isn't that uncommon a literary convention.

In those two examples, the swap is carried out willingly. Where Grayleft's concept really sets my imagination alight is when it's unwilling and combined with long term incarceration: think of those far-fetched soap opera twists where someone (usually an evil twin or long-lost wayward sibling) captures a character and keeps them prisoner somewhere (usually the basement) while usurping their position legally, financially, perhaps even socially, becoming them. The Talented Mr Ripley but with kidnap instead of murder.

Grayleft was kind enough to relate his account of the time he became involved in a real life instance of identity takeover:

I was chatting on-line with about four other men as I recall and one of them said, "Use me." I figured he wanted to get fucked but asked him to define it for me. "Use my house, use my clothes, use my car, use my wallet." I almost fell off my seat.

"Become you?" I asked to which he answered "HELL YES!"

It wasn't the first time I'd heard someone was into identity takeover. I'd heard it lots of times before but none of them ever were willing to meet let alone have me become them. I always have to explain that I'm not going to ruin them financially, that I don't want to open bank accounts, that I won't take out loans. I just want to become someone else for a while. That's it. And I don't even want to think about the psychological implications that means for my own life, but I digress.

We talked a number of times on line, progressed to talking on the phone, and then it happened.

It's been so long, I can't remember his name. (I'll call him John.) But John gave me his full name, his address, his phone number, his air-miles number, and his log in. "Use my miles and get a ticket. Claim it's for a friend. They'll mail it to me and I'll send it to you. I think you'll get a kick out of doing that as me, won't you?" I was speechless.

I got the ticket; the information he had given me was accurate. I must have checked on line four or five times a day for that ticket to make sure he hadn't cancelled it.

Of course I had a back-up plan if he didn't show up at the airport to pick me up. But he did. Our meeting was a bit awkward but went without a hitch. He looked like his photos. He was built pretty much like me. Back at his place, I changed into his clothes which fit perfectly. We went to dinner at a local restaurant.

The bill came and I reached for some money. "No," he said, shoving his wallet across the table along with his car and house keys, "use this. I'm going to wait by your car." I had an instant hard-on. Five minutes later, I was able to stand up and pay the bill. I slipped my wallet into my pocket.

John had a cage he wanted to be in most of the day. I could bring him with me or not, depending upon my mood. I had free reign with the car, the house, the money. And then, one morning, John had an idea.

"Call the motor vehicles department and find out what you need to get a replacement license." My heart stopped. I was in disbelief again. But I made the call. This was long before 9/11 and all I needed was a birth certificate which John had in the house. All I needed to do was show up there with it, claim I had lost my license, and a new photo license would be issued. His info, my photo. I would officially be him.

I couldn't do it.

He pleaded and cried and carried on that he wanted me to do it. Of course I thought long and hard about it for the rest of the week. But I just couldn't. I couldn't commit fraud as hot as the idea was.

He cried again the day I had to fly back home. "You could get a job as me in another state and keep me chained in the basement all day!" Yes, I probably could have, but I had family who would go nuts if I didn't come back home. I had to return to being me.

I've thought about John and his offer over the years. At some point, I tried calling his old number and it was disconnected. I tried logging in on his air-miles account as him and that worked. There was his new address and phone number. But I never called. Perhaps I should have. It might have been interesting to be him again for a while.

On balance, I think this is probably one of those fantasies that ought to remain fantasy: as Grayleft points out, it shades all too easily into fraud. It's also impractical: unless the captor knows all elements of his captive's life inside out, he'll slip up before long. And, even without the identity takeover part, there are the impracticalities of keeping someone securely but safely confined for more than a few hours at a time.

I find the idea utterly fascinating but I'm not sure whether my fascination stems from watching too many trashy soap plotlines in my formative years, becoming turned on by the bondage element (in my teens, pretty much anything featuring men bound, gagged, chained or otherwise imprisoned grabbed my attention) but also, to a lesser extent, eroticising the whole situation. There are certainly plenty of examples online of people having fetishised "peril" situations and one could argue that identity takeover is just a twist on or further refinement of that.

For me, I think the appeal lies in fantasising about a situation in which I'm immured for days in bondage, helpless to do anything but wait and imagine my captor elsewhere, out and about, having helped himself to my wardrobe, my wallet, my ID... essentially being me while all I can do is stew in my bonds/chains/straitjacket, locked away in my basement/oubliette/cell, seething impotently at the injustice of it all. Perversely, I get off on being frustrated, and I think that particular situation would frustrate the hell out of me!

Here's another example of the genre, from Eckie's site: Mistaken Identity Abduction Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. See what you think...

Bondage fiction: 'Waiting For Ross'

I think I first discovered the Waiting For Ross series on Rubberzone, around five years ago now. The author went by the (rather fitting) name Encaser. I've since found the first two stories on Eckie's site (thanks to Frglee for the direct links):

Waiting For Ross

Waiting For Ross, Part 2

The titular Ross is a master of fetish and bondage, particularly long-term bondage. Over the course of the series (and there are, I think, around twenty installments in total), we learn about his penchant for keeping his prisoners ("slaves") neatly packaged in multiple layers of rubber and leather and locked away for hours - days - on end in his basement dungeon:

Ross taught Tim that slavery meant waiting for Ross, and Ross taught Tim what waiting for Ross meant. It meant two rubber suits encased you in two layers of head to toe rubber; it meant you were zippered, laced, and strapped into a leather sleepsack over your rubber; it meant your head was enclosed in a leather hood over the rubber; it meant having all your holes invaded or plugged; it meant recycling your own piss through a gag; it meant being suspended vertically by a hoist attached to the shoulder straps of your sleepsack; it meant hanging alone in a closet in Ross’s dungeon.

Obviously there are elements that don't tally exactly with my own favourite turn-ons - I'm no great fan of piss play, for example - but I'm strongly attracted to the central idea of long-term bondage, being stored somewhere for long periods, completely immobilised and silenced. I've had only limited experience of being held prisoner for any serious length of time and I rather suspect it would be much harder than I imagine; I'd probably start becoming bored and wanting loose after an hour or two, even as I'd be luxuriating sensually in the restraint itself. The idea of genuinely wanting out but having this option denied me is a powerful turn-on - although I can't pretend it doesn't scare me slightly.

One thing I really like about the Ross stories is that the writer manages to capture this anxious ambivalence, the wanting-out-but-not-wanting-out. I think if I were playing with a bondage top who I knew might well keep me prisoner for much longer than I'd bargained for, the process of being bound and gagged - which is generally an erotic high point for me - would be laced with real trepidation. Again, the author captures this beautifully:

Ross loved Tim’s love for bondage and his ambivalence in submitting to it, manifested by the anxious, doubtful look in Tim’s eyes before they disappeared under the rubber hood; the agitated breathing through the nostril tubes as Ross first sealed the hood and gag in place; the intermittent puffing up and stiffening of Tim’s body and limbs as he adjusted initially to being enclosed, strapped in, and suspended in the sack; and the muffled, futile sounds of his gagged mouth as he tried to object, to tell Ross that he changed his mind, that he felt too confined, that he couldn’t take it.

Unusually, the Ross series is written from the viewpoints of both captor and captive. The thoughts of Tim (and Ross's other "slaves") ring true, as he becomes aroused by or irritated with this or that element of his bondage. Well do I recognise those moments when, lying there unable to move, speak or see, one has the "why do I get myself into these situations?" conversation with oneself.

Not being much of a bondage top myself, it's harder for me to gauge the authenticity of Ross's narratives. He's an attractive character, though, the skilled captor who's able to make a restraint situation just uncomfortable enough, relentlessly pushing boundaries while managing to avoid harming the human packages stored in his dungeon (of course, one has to accept that, this being fiction, there's some glossing over of the considerable risks of leaving a gagged/hooded prisoner alone for long spells...). What particularly appeals to me is the fact that he takes a genuine pleasure in his prisoners' struggles:

Ross watched in satisfaction as Tim involuntarily writhed in response. Ross heard stifled moans under the hood and the sounds of rubber and leather creaking as Tim squirmed within his cocoon and swayed back and forth helplessly. Ross liked to watch the worm-like straining movements.

An idealised captor? Perhaps. The Waiting For Ross series may not press all of my buttons but there's a strength of concept at its heart, and it's very precisely observed. It deserves to be the bondage classic it almost certainly is.

Orange crush

WIN!

So... my reward for being first out of my bonds in the two-captive escape challenge (parts I, II and III) was to be comprehensively bound and gagged in the outfit of my choice.

What did I choose? Well, although I've been finding myself gravitating toward leather again, I had a yen to be tied up in a new set of waterproofs: a bright orange two-piece suit from Ocean Rainwear.

Rather than remove Rukka and waders, I decided just to don the Ocean stuff (which was rather roomy) on top. BG kindly allowed me to borrow his long, thick rubber gauntlets:



As runner-up, he would also be tied up but not gagged or hooded. He opted to wear his (rather nice) leather police shirt and breeches. We posed for a pic together. "No fishing permit? You're nicked!"



And the roping began! CJ's trademark wraps of thick hemp around the torso:



I've always rather liked the look of CJ's diagonal cross-your-heart roping. At this stage, heat was just starting to build in the layers of PVC. A reasonably cool day, though, and I was essentially standing still, so not too much sweat.





Lots and lots of rope! It's sometimes difficult to know whether to try to "act" in bondage pics. I know one guy who used to try to look unhappy/desperate, to make the kidnap/capture scene seem more authentic. Frankly, I doubt my acting chops are up to something like that - and in this particular situation, I couldn't help but grin like a Cheshire cat:



The orange Ocean suit was retina-searingly bright; when sunlight hit it, it was reflected around the room. Presumably this has practical use for sailing, in that anyone washed over the side of the boat could easily be spotted in the sea. A Recon acquaintance commented that "... if you are wearing that shining orange, you can be totally sure that all your moves will be easily followed... it's really easy to keep an eye on someone that attracts the eye so much". Which is probably true; prison jumpsuits are bright orange for a reason.



I'm not sure that the gag succeeded in wiping the smile completely off my face, but it certainly covered it up!



A classic CJ gag: large, mouth-filling sponge, sealed in place with several wraps of tape (this time, BG's extra-sticky black bondage tape) and a tight wrapping of outer bandage.



Then a bit of a surprise: the Houdini mailsack was brought out and pulled up to my neck, where it was fastened securely. Additional strapping was added.

I was a little in two minds about this. On the one hand, if I'm watching someone (including myself, later, on video) struggling to escape from rope, I like to see the bonds themselves, the way they bite into the leather/rubber/oilskin and the captive's movements as he wrestles with his predicament. When a sack's added on top, much of this visual element is hidden. On the other hand, I've always been a fan of "bondage overkill", and the sack appeals to me on this level.



BG held me in place on the chair while an S6 respirator was added over the top of the gag. I think I've yet to write a blog entry about respirators and gasmasks; they're something of a marginal fetish for me but I know some people find them an enormous turn-on, particularly with regard to breath control. For me, the appeal lies more in the feeling of having one's head "sealed in", of being gagged then even more muffled. Some gasmasks can be purchased from the likes of Expectations or Regulation with a zip-up rubber hood attached. This kind of hood/mask features in Jim Stewart's Houdini Connections story:

As he returned ... he saw that Robert was holding a sort of gasmask; one that had no straps but a latex backing that would enclosed the whole head. His heart took a leap.

“This OK?”, asked Robert.

“Great” replied Chunky, finding his full voice at last. He took it and pulled it on, his fingers finding his way around the back zip before Robert had a chance to help him with it. With the safety helmet dangling by it’s strap from one elbow the fire-fighter showed how used he was to kitting himself out while wearing his bulky gear. He needed to stretch the latex quite tight before he got the zip started and as it closed down behind his neck he felt the solid rubber mask pulled tight against his face ... and he sensed that no amount of heavy action would dislodge it.

My one in these pics is a standard issue S6, with straps rather than a latex backing. If I'd been in a position to make suggestions, the one thing I might've suggested (to really seal me in and increase the sense of enclosure) would've been addition of the drysuit hood over the gag and under the S6.



One can never have too many hoods! I was pleased when the drawstring hood of the rainsuit was drawn up and over the S6. The look of suffering in my eyes is partly melodrama for the camera and partly genuine discomfort, as I was effectively sitting on my bound hands.



To their credit, CJ and BG noticed this and allowed me off the chair and onto the floor. Much more comfortable, and also more scope for squirming! CJ added pieces of tape to each eyepiece, so I was effectively sightless. In fact, I could see a small fringe of light around the edge of one of the gasmask's eyepieces. Pulling the rainsuit's hood tight and knotting it under my chin soon fixed that!



So, let's recap. I'm in a one-piece Rukka suit with thigh waders attached to a waist belt and pulled tight over my knees. Over that, a fluorescent orange heavy-gauge offshore rainsuit and thick rubber gauntlets. I'm very well roped from head to toe, imprisoned within a sack with additional strapping. My mouth is plugged with a big chunk of sponge, held in place with several wraps of extra-sticky bondage tape and a length of bandage. An S6 respirator has been fitted over my gagged face and the eyepieces taped over. The hood of the Ocean rainsuit has been drawn tight around the respirator, further covering my head.

The heat building, I rolled from side to side and began exploring my bonds, as BG was trussed up and laid on the bed behind me, still in his leather cop uniform. Although I didn't realise it at the time, the piece of rope stretched taut behind me was fastened at its other end to BG's bound legs - so although I was on the floor and he on the bed, we were still linked together.



I thought I was tethered to a bed-leg and tugged on the rope a bit. Poor BG!



CJ had determined that this time there'd be no escape and, from the minute the first knots were tied, I knew he meant business. One new addition to his roping, this time, was a shortish pinion between the elbows behind. Initially, this wasn't too much of a problem (it wasn't tied too tightly) but I wondered whether it'd become one over time.

Lying bound on the floor was very pleasant. The warm Rukka and Ocean gear softened and the smell of warm rubber from the inside of the blacked-out gasmask was oddly soothing. I was well gagged and hooded but could still breathe easily through my nose, so wasn't anxious. The ropes were well applied and tight, and I was pretty certain I stood little or no chance of freeing myself. I felt so comfortable I began to drift off...

... but became aware of numbness extending down one arm.

In Well Waxed and Waterproof, Jim Stewart mentions this kind of numbness:

I’ve spent a lot of hours hog-tied and knew that I could roll onto one side for a change but one arm and shoulder would then soon go dead (and get cold). A routine of changing from one side to the other would minimise the problem. The only other alternative was to work myself onto my back for some relief but it would bring no extra comfort. With considerable effort you can, when hog-tied face down, roll onto your back but with wrists lashed close to your ankles, once on your back the knees are bent tight and your feet are tugging at the wrist lashings ... but regular and determined changes of position have kept me sane for many uncomfortable hours in the past. So, that is part of the process, to keep the circulation moving.

He's talking specifically about the hogtie position but I know from experience that the same thing can happen to me with any bondage configuration wherein my upper arms are pulled close against my body. I know not to panic at the first signs of numbness: changes of position ease the circulation on one side then the other. This I did, and it worked well.

After a while, though, a little under an hour, I think, I realised the numbness was a) affecting both arms, and b) not being alleviated by my shifts of position. Reluctantly - because, otherwise, I was genuinely enjoying my helplessness - I signalled my distress and CJ undid straps, sack and the upper arm pinion. Blood rushed back into both arms, with a momentary prickling of pins & needles, and I gratefully flexed them.

Always unfortunate when numbness stops play but ignoring a persistent difficulty can lead to crushed nerves and more long-term problems with sensation. I felt fortunate that I'd experienced a fantastic bondage "reward" yet emerged with arms, hands and fingers fully intact.

Here's to responsible ropers!