Waiting

This is (in an obscure way) a follow-up to my previous post on the interaction between fantasy and reality. I like the image below because it stimulates both sides of my brain. The fantasy side loves the bondage and the sense of isolation this pose has. A few years ago, that would have been my only thoughts on this image. Now I simultaneously admire the clever hatch based bondage (hiding the tie points from guests) while also worrying about his knees. Strappado is bad, but knee pain from being on a hard uneven surface is really tough. That’s not the kind of thing you pick up on until you’ve tried it. It’s a very masochistic experience.

Rope Mummification

This image by Mistress Hinako makes for a nice complement to yesterday’s post. I think if you simply described the setup of the two images to someone they’d assume the wall bondage with straps was the realistic one and the man mummified entirely in rope was the fantasy artwork. Yet with this Mistress Hinako has managed to pull off one of the more spectacular rope bondage scenes I’ve seen in a long while.

Much as I love the aesthetics of this, I’m not sure I’d want to be the submissive. According to the blog post it took about 2 hours to create this set-up. Plastic wrap or bondage tape might not look as cool, but they’re definitely a faster way to mummify someone. I’d rather save my play time for the post bondage torture. But for all the rope sluts out there, this would definitely be an unforgettable scene.

You can see more shots of the rope mummy from Mistress Hinako’s blog post. If you’d like to see movies of her in action, then her clips store is here.

Fastened to a Wall

There’s a common theory from the anti-porn crowd that the more porn you look at the more extreme your tastes will be. It’s a typical slippery slope argument. One day you’re getting off to 60’s playboy covers, and a few months later you’re tracking down pictures of oiled up Roman gladiators doing unspeakable things to each other with a rubber trident and a well trained octopus.

It’s obviously bullshit, as my 20+ years of looking at naughty pictures demonstrates. My tastes may have broadened, but they haven’t got significantly more depraved. In fact, in many ways I’ve got more critical of unrealistic or extreme imagery. I’m now drawn to scenes that have a stronger connection with reality and ones that I can almost imagine doing myself.

For example, what caught my eye in this image was the carefully placed padded bolster in his back and the tight but not too tight straps. It’s very hot bondage, that’s certainly difficult to pull off this neatly in reality, but it’s not crazy or an impossible physical position. Even his verbalization, with the moans and coughs through the bit gag is relatable.

I’m afraid I don’t know the original artist for this work. As usual, if you can help me attribute it, then please leave a comment.

Weirdly Hot

After my strangely sexy post of last week, today I have something that’s weirdly hot. I’m not particularly into foot torture and yet this shot, by Mistress Hinako, really grabs me. I think it’s the contrast between the heavy restrictive rope bondage and the artfully placed clothespins. It’s a beautifully balanced pose and picture. Severity around the torso and delicacy around the toes.

This is from this tweet by Mistress Hinako and also her new blog post, which features more images from the same session. If you’d like to see more of her work, she has a members site here.

Relaxing in Rope

Vice has an interesting article on someone discovering and using rope bondage as an aid to coping with the anxiety. I can’t say it has that effect on me, but I do understand where he’s coming from, particularly with more complex and ornamental bondage. Concentrating on a difficult physical activity can often bring focus and a meditative state, and bondage enhances that with a sense of control and being held.

I also like the comparison he draws with yoga. This bondage scene looks a bit like a variation on locust pose, although I can’t imagine it’s a great position for reducing anxiety or relaxing.

This ropework is by the famous Julie Simone (from her bondage gallery), who was the first woman to win the ‘Best Rigger’ award in 2004. She’s currently based in SE Missouri and available for personal sessions.

Intermission (continued)

Real life continues to get in the way of my blogging. It’s now 4am local time, and I really need to get to bed, but I also don’t like to leave it this long between posts. So I’m continuing the intermission concept with some more eye candy. This time it’s a beautiful piece of suspension bondage, shot by the photographer Weronika Bachleda. The rigger is Gestalta.

I found this via a tweet by Ruby Marks.

Corner Time

This is a pretty clever design for a restraint system. It reminds me of a bondage chair, which is always one of my favorite things to be strapped to in a dungeon. They create a great sense of vulnerability, while also allowing the submissive to see the dominant and know exactly what she’s about to do to him.

In this case hanging the submissive on the walls not only removes the need for an extra piece of furniture, but also adds a touch of objectification. It’s not very clear, but I assume there’s some sort of shelf that he’s perched on, so all the weight doesn’t fall on the limbs. Just perfect for some CBT and nipple torture.

This particular piece of dungeon apparatus is located at the Sub Rosa space in Portland Oregon. This image came courtesy of Mistress Viola’s twitter feed.

Another trip to the library

I hadn’t intended a second post on books, but then this Daily Beast article popped up on my radar and I couldn’t resist featuring it. The book being plugged in it is ‘The Ultimate Guide to Bondage‘ by Mistress Couple. I’m sure the book is great, but what really caught my eye in the article was the broader value of kink and bondage that Mistress Couple describes, outside of simple sexual pleasure.

She talks about how consensual bondage helped her work through some traumatic experiences of her own, overwriting the negative with the positive. She also emphasizes how being vulnerable in safe situations can make you stronger. The article finishes with a lovely story of a nervous couple trying out bondage together at La Domaine Esemar. It’s not exactly a happy femdom story, given the woman ends up being tied, but it certainly comes across as a happy kinky story.

Mistress Couples Ultimate Guide To Bondage comes out on Dec 11th, just in time for Christmas shopping. Caveat Emptor – I’ve not read it and know nothing beyond what the article and Amazon page tells me. However, given the background and skills of its author, I’d expect it to be well worth acquiring. Plus, it’s nice to have a bondage book where the cover image is a bound naked dude, rather than the usual lithe lady.

Triple Bondage Trouble With Mistress Tess

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was lucky enough to get not one but two sessions on my current trip with the amazing Mistress Tess. We split them as 2 hours and then 4 hours, with my original thinking being that we’d start with a gentle warm-up and then get into the heavier stuff in the longer second session. In the event we started with intense and awesome, followed by even more intense and even more awesome, which turned out to be just fine with me! There was a lot of bondage in both, but we only snapped photographs in the second one.

That second session started with a leather body bag, and straps, and rope, and more straps, and some locks, and then more straps. This abundance of leather and bondage was complemented by some electrics attached to the only skin showing – the cock and balls. You can see all this in these images – torso, angle, side and close-up. I should add that throughout this Mistress Tess was spinning an imaginative medical experimentation fantasy, with me as the object at the focus of it. Apparently amputation and castration might have been in my future – but luckily, this time at least, I escaped with all parts intact.

We then moved on to some metal bondage on her pegboard bed, as shown in this overhead shot. I’m sporting some particularly sexy boots, and the metal spheres just in frame at the bottom are actually enclosing my hands. The metal creates an interesting head space, as there’s a little more initial wiggle than ropes or leather, but at the end of the wiggle it’s hard and immovable metal. Everything’s bolted down, so you feel very much part of the apparatus, rather than simply held by it. While I was bolted into place, Mistress Tess took the chance to do some piercing and continue to zap my delicate bits.

Finally, we did something entirely new to me  – a wet pack. This consisted of multiple cold wet sheets being wrapped around me to swaddle the body.  As a newbie to the process I got the lightweight version, which didn’t feature sheets that had been kept wet in the fridge for hours, but it was a still a major shock to the system. Apparently a wet pack is a genuine medical ‘treatment’ that used to be used in asylums to restrain/cure/punish patients.  Tess being the bondage aficionado that she is, didn’t just stop at sheets, as leather straps and then plastic wrap were added to finish the encasement off. You can see the final result in this image and this image. Luckily, body heat eventually warms the sheets, so it becomes almost relaxing. I say ‘almost relaxing’ because of course, with Doctor Tess in the clinic, the restraints are only the start of the procedure…

It was a genuinely awesome experience, and I was giddy and burbly for many hours afterwards. The technical elements of the play were exceptional and, as I mentioned the last time I played with her, Mistress Tess  is also brilliant at spinning a verbal fantasy. There was a lot of tease, denial and creative sadistic storytelling to go along with it all.  It’s unfortunate that I live a 6 hour flight away, otherwise I could see myself spending a lot of time as a specimen in her laboratory of kink.

This shot is a close-up from the first scenario. You can see the white rope pulling the body bag tight, with the padlocks locking the straps into place.

If you’re in the NYC area and interested in seeing Mistress Tess, then her professional site is here and her twitter here. If you can’t make it to NYC then her OnlyFans account has a lot of great content and is here.