Secrets of the Women's Self-Bondage Cult (29 page)

       Although I dislike putting things into categories, in this case that sort of organization may help. So, I am going to talk about safety concepts in two groups: active and passive.

       Active: for the purposes of this discussion, let’s consider active devices as those which function with or without any action on the part of the SB participant. In other words, if you chain yourself to the supporting vertical upright in your basement and use an active safety, it will release you, eventually, no matter what else you do. This kind of thing has advantages, such as limiting the time you spend in bondage, but it can also be annoyingly unwanted if, for example, it suddenly releases when you are on the last lap of a rigorous climb up the orgasmic slope.

       Here’s how one active safety works:

       You set a timer to turn on an electric switch. When the power comes on, a small electric heater, kettle, or hot plate is activated and it heats up and melts a soldered link in a chain fastened to the heating element. This sounds complex, but it uses three household items easily obtained and reasonably safe to use. A variation on this is to use a wax link or candle, which will melt much faster, but you must take precautions that the hot wax does not ignite.

       You can do similar things with ice molds that hold rope or chain. There is a product specifically designed for this purpose, called an Ice Lock. It takes about two hours to melt enough to release the interior metal pin which in turn releases a chain. In a simpler form, you just use a block or cube of ice. It melts and the release activates. In any case, this device is active because it is operating from the time you start the timer.

       Weights: One of the simplest weight safeties involves filling a bucket with water and putting a small hole in the bottom. You can make it more sophisticated by using a container with a spigot valve so that you can control the flow of water out of the container. When the container is full, it holds a rope, chain or cord. When it empties, the container allows the rope to release whatever safety you have created. This may simply be a key, a knife or pair of cutters that drop within your reach. In the more sophisticated version, a much larger container holds enough water to provide a suspension counter weight for you. This means heavy-duty blocks or pulleys, strong overhead supports and other more advanced gear, but the concept is the same; you fill the container(s) with liquid and set the drain. Fully extended, the supporting rope or chain will hold you upright or however you want to be. When the liquid is gone, you are released.

       Passive: A passive safety is one that does nothing until you activate it. In the simplest form, this is nothing more than a key taped to your arm or leg where you can reach it and use it when you wish. It can also be an intercom or voice activated phone that allows you to call someone to come and release you.

       Many SB aficionados use both active and passive safeties as back-up. This is a good idea, providing they have been tested and actually work as expected. But imagine my surprise a few years ago when I was using chain and padlocks and had set up a weight safety to drop the keys right next to my chained hands. All was going splendidly until the water bucket over the bath tub emptied and rose up towards the pulley attached to a hook on the wall, lowering the key set to a spot right next to my hands. I was more than ready to be released and quickly picked up the keys and tried one after the other in vain. None of them fit the nearby locks holding me in a quite uncomfortable position between the toilet and the tub. I was stretched out enough so that I could only reach two padlocks and neither of them accepted the keys.

       When a safety fails, you need to have an alternative ready and waiting. I did. The set of shackles I used on my ankles, which were closely bound, had two stainless steel split rings connecting them to the chain that went around the base of the toilet. By applying as much force as I could muster, I pulled one of the rings apart and released my feet, then sat up and was able to get my arms and other bindings free, but I still lacked the keys for the locks holding my hands and arms. I slithered out of the bathroom and went to the kitchen cabinet that had a rack where household keys hung. There, I noted with surprise, hung the correct key set. I had mistakenly swapped the key sets and used the wrong one on the safety.

       I see some people here nodding, so I can assume that I am not the first to make this sort of error, but it illustrates the need for multiple safeties.

       One popular active safety that many people use is to freeze the ends of a chain or rope inside an ice cube or some container holding water that is then frozen. The trick here is to know accurately how long it will take for the ice to melt.

       Another simple way to have a key become available after a certain amount of time is to put the key on the minute hand of a clock and when the hand drops from, say the one to the four, the key falls. If you use a cheap alarm clock with the clear face removed, this is easy to do, but bear in mind that the key can get stuck and fail to release or the clock may quit before the hand drops.

       Try to use simple, foolproof safeties. The more complicated they are, they less likely they are to work.

        I also would strongly urge you not to use anything that requires fire or a flame. The classic mistake is where you build a very simple safety by putting a string through the center of a candle about half way down. The concept is that when the candle burns to that point, it will release. But what if:

       The candle goes out?

       The string catches fire and ignites another, bigger fire while you try to get to the key?

       The string somehow gets set on fire and the key never drops for you?

       The bottom line is that fire is not a good, reliable, safe tool for SB and I strongly recommend that you not incorporate it in your personal activities.

       Some people, (especially the English and the Germans, I have found), like complicated. The more complex their bondage, the happier they are. A while back, at a BDSM event in Belgium, I heard about this particular complex safety:

       Joanne had a boyfriend who enjoyed chaining her up in the attic and Joanne loved it as well. One day, he offered to leave her there, knowing that he would have to go away on a business trip for a few days. The idea was tantalizing, especially when he showed her the release mechanisms he had developed. Viewing the very sophisticated arrangement and the various back-ups, she agreed to the plan and they spent two days setting it up.

       When Thomas, the boyfriend left, Joanne was well secured in her attic, cuffed, gagged, hooded and chained with her wrists cuffed, (as they often were), to a long spreader bar that incorporated a collar in the center. Her feet were equally well spread with another heavy steel bar connected to ankle cuffs at each end. Her usual SB safety was to use snap clips on each cuff. She could free herself easily by just releasing the clips. Thomas’ system was considerably more complex and was triple redundant, a factor that played a large role in convincing Joanne to try it out.

       They took other steps to insure her safety. The gag she wore allowed her to breathe through her mouth without any significant obstruction, so it was more of a bit than a noise-prevention plug. The hood was a standard discipline helmet with eye pads and three different straps plus a zipper. There was no way to get out of it without having use of one’s hands, but Joanne used it so often by herself that she had no misgivings about it.

       After considerable debate, she decided to wear what she liked most, high heels, black thigh-high hose, a black bikini panty and matching black bra. They decided against nipple clips and weights, but added a stringent chastity belt and two moderately large prongs to go with it.

       The Thomas System, as they eventually christened it, relied on several separate control elements. First, there were electromagnetic (EM) releases attached to the top of the suspension chain that held Joanne’s neck and wrist bar to the overhead. The EM releases were in turn set to disconnect the chain if power failed in the house or the electrical power to the magnets was terminated by the small, laptop computer Thomas set up on the floor in front of Joanne. The computer also had a video camera with it. Thomas could check on Joanne from his own notebook computer. He was also able to release the EM locks by triggering them through the computer.

       They experimented with this and it never failed to function as planned. Of course, even if the suspension release worked, Joanne could not get free of the wrist and collar bar, so Thomas devised three separate mechanical releases on the bar. Once released from the overhead suspension, Joanne could free her hands by striking the ends of the bar against the floor or the wall. This force released the locking pins holding her wrist cuffs to the bar and she would then be able to unlock the rest of the bondage.

       The third part of the safety system was based on the remote premise that Thomas could not activate it and Joanne wanted out at once. It involved a simple series of sounds that she could make. By shouting through the bit gag and the facial opening in the hood, Joanne could trigger the overhead releases that were separate from the EM/computer system. She had only to shout “Yes, Yes, Yes” and the audio receptors Thomas had installed would fire a small explosive charge that released the chains on both the suspension and the leg bars at once. Once again, they tested these and found them effective.

       So Thomas left Joanne there and went on his trip. On a few occasions that day and night, he checked on the video and found her still there. His audio connection worked well enough for Joanne to verbally assure him that she was doing fine and enjoying the prolonged bondage. She had a water line attached to her gag and this allowed her to suck a bit of water if she needed it. Preliminary enemas had cleaned her lower GI tract entirely, so her only concern was urinating and she did not expect to remain suspended that long anyway. By midnight, Thomas checked again and found the system was down. He was not too concerned, assuming that it would come back up shortly. By morning, he was worried enough to begin arranging his schedule to head back home sooner than planned.

       Meanwhile, Joanne, growing tired, yelled the three yeses and nothing happened. She tried it several times and got no response. She needed to pee and her arms and legs were aching from the extension on the bars. She screamed and shouted and got no release. Suddenly, with no warning, the charges fired and instead of releasing just the chain, they severed the overhead beam and the entire suspension system came down around Joanne. She was unhurt, but now lay in such a way that she could not bring the bar ends in contact with any hard surface, so she was still spread eagle on the floor when Thomas arrived later that afternoon. All’s well that ends well, but this is one example of a complex safety system that did not work as planned.

Epilogue

       Every attendee at this event had an opportunity to contribute to the interviews and research sessions that led to this book. Those who elected not to participate nevertheless remained interested in the outcome and several contacted N, who, in turn, passed along their comments and questions to me. I responded confidentially to each and offered them the opportunity to see to results before they were published. As candid and revealing as these stories are, no one in the group had any reservations about the final manuscript, even though all who asked reviewed it.

       There is a great deal of information here. For the uninitiated, I suspect that some of it is shocking and some is simply unbelievable. Just as some people ask parachutists why they elect to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, non-participants in SB may ask, somewhat baffled, why anyone would want to tie themselves up. As the reader here will note, the contributors and I made no effort to justify or explain the psychology behind SB. This is for the experts to ponder. However, if there is any additional significance to this book, I think it simply proves that those who practice SB are in fact no different from anyone else. They have their own interests, which, in most cases, do not impact anyone else. There is no moral or PC ground to be explored because these activities are done alone and in private. There is no need for consent as long as you understand that the participants are of sound mind and doing what they do without any sort of coercion. They have private lives to lead, and, most important, they too are fallible.

----Jurgen von Stuka

APPENDIX A

The Survey Questionnaire

       Privacy - When you have completed this questionnaire, please use the event code assigned to you at registration to assure that we are getting responses only from authorized attendees. Do not use your real name on any documents unless you want to. As with everything else at this event, your absolute and complete privacy will be respected here. Any excerpts or edited portions of this questionnaire or the interviews we are recording will remain totally anonymous. Your name and any specific references to anything that might identify you will be changed to protect you.

       Please answer the questions as honestly as you can, but feel free to omit details that might compromise your identity. Also, do not mention any illegal activity, no matter how candid you want to be. This material will be carefully safeguarded and not shared with anyone outside the event organization. Once the responses are edited and incorporated into our report, the originals will be destroyed.

1. Describe, in as much detail as you can, your history with SB. Include, if you can, your memories of when you first were exposed to the concepts, by whom or in what from. For example, if you heard about SB in a book or in a film, tell us about it.