Tying up

ROPE

Much as I like the look and feel of rope, I find it too inconvenient for self-bondage when it is used to tie wrists together. Its hard enough getting good rope in the first place, so the last thing you want to do is cut it to get free every time you have a session. Instead, I use handcuffs or leather cuffs which can be padlocked on. I rarely use rope directly on my limbs because of it's tendency to cut off circulation when tension is put on it, instead I use it to connect things to other things, such as belted ankles to furniture etc. Every self-binder experiments with slipknots in rope, and usually there will be a memory of thinking 'Oh, that's a tighter knot than I expected!'. This is usually followed by a day of red, chaffed wrists and long-sleeved shirts. Silk rope has nearly had me a couple of times, in my opinion the feeling of wrists bound hard together with good rope is superior to the looseness of handcuffs or even tight wristcuffs. Well tied wrists really restrict movement. Yum yum.

HANDCUFFS

Handcuffs are easily to get hold of, but some of the cheap ones have a habit of tightening when you don't want them to, if you lean on them, for instance. I recently got a pair that can be double-locked, so that they stay where you set them. The closure of a pair of handcuffs is an exciting moment, hearing the ratchet click is often the sound indicating the moment between being free and being completely bound. Handcuffs feel unbreakable, unyielding, sometimes painful, and always absolute. If you haven't got a key in reach, they are there to stay.

PADLOCKS AND CHAINS

If you really want to make sure you can't get out of a position, use padlocks and chains on all the bonds within reach of your hands. There can be quite a lot of pleasure derived from trying to find the right key on a large bunch, then getting it into the keyhole of a dangling padlock, when your hands are behind your back, it's dark, you are wearing tight gloves and a vibrator is buzzing madly somewhere. The only problems with chains are that they are noisy, cold to the touch and has a tendency to pull hairs trapped between links, which isn't even nice as a form of torture as far as I'm concerned.

...Lying there, hyperventilating from blowing upwards towards a dripping ice-cube somewhere in the dark above your hands, trying to make it melt faster with the heat of my breath, after an hour more than I expected...

LETTING YOURSELF GO

Naturally, once you've tied yourself up, you need to be able to free yourself at some point in the future. The most reliable ways I have found involve a set of keys being dropped near your hands after a certain amount of time. You then use the keys to open handcuffs or padlocks on wristcuffs. Some people choose to hang keys from the hands of clocks, so that they drop then the hand points down, or use combination locks and timers on electric lights, so that they cannot see the numbers until the light comes on. Some people wriggle into another room to retrieve a knife to cut their ropes away. Human ingenuity must have produced thousands of successful methods over the years.

THE ICE-KEY

Ice melts, solid becomes liquid and drips away, slowly. An easy release timer can be made using this property. Use an ice cube inside the foot of a stocking with a key-ring threaded over it, as shown in the diagram on the left. The ice cube has to melt before the key-ring can slide off the end of the stocking. The key-ring has a string attached to it so the keys will hang near my hands once they have dropped, and not disappear into some dark corner. The stocking hangs somewhere above where my hands will be when I'm tied, with the position and length of drop carefully considered so that you cannot reach them when they're suspended and you can when they drop.

You just need to keep a few ice-cubes in your freezer. Obviously this is just from using my particular set-up, but an 'average' ice-cube melts enough for the keyring to fall in about 1hr 40m - 1hr 50m at 'average' room temperature. However, make sure you test your rig thoroughly before you use it in earnest as there are many variables in the equation: shape and size of cube, room temperature, diameter of keyring, weight of keys etc.

ELECTRONIC RELEASE

These days, I use a computerised system, an electromagnet which is controlled by timing software on a computer. The keys hang from the electromagnet until the computer switches it off, then they drop to my hands. The system also controls vibrators, either to specific programmes or randomly, so it can torment you while you're tied up. It's called Cybertrix and it's my seedy late-night project.

Cybertrix - it doesn't look sexy at all.

ABSOLUTE BONDAGE
If you know you can escape your bonds whenever you want to, then you cannot truly admit to yourself that you are helpless. When you know your absolutely restrained it gets more interesting, so you find yourself carefully planning, thinking things like 'If my wrists are there can my hands reach this buckle here?' When you involve wires running to vibrators it gets worse. Being able to snap the wires or pull the vibrator off would only spoil the fun, and if you could, you might well try to when the vibe kicks in just after your third orgasm.

SCENARIO 1.
I'm on my back on the bed, my wrists are handcuffed to the bedhead, my ankles tied together to the foot of the bed and my knees are strapped together. There's a rope which loops around a waist belt, then down between my legs, a strand each side of my balls, then up behind my back to the bedhead. This stops me bending my legs because if I do, the rope will squeeze my balls and push the butt-plug further in, grrrrrrrrrr. The keys hang from the wall above my wrists. Maybe I'm dressed head to foot in black PVC, with satin lingerie underneath. My hands are in tight satin gloves. IM so stretched that I can't reach the collar and gag harness. I'm waiting for the vibrator on my penis to start...

SCENARIO 2.
I'm sitting on a low wooden chair, my wrists are either held at the sides of the chair by padlocked wrist cuffs or they are held to my chest or knees by handcuffs. My ankles are tied to each front chair leg. My knees are strapped together then tied by a rope between my legs to the back of the chair, to stop me sliding forward. The belts around my waist, chest and the collar are also tied to the chair back, making me sit upright, which pushes in the butt-plug I'm sitting on. The keys are suspended from the ceiling to drop into my right hand when the time's up, which could be hours. I'm in a red nylon basque with stockings, high-heels, opera gloves, and underneath a black satin petticoat, the vibe is making the tip of my cock brush the inside of my elasticated satin panties and any minute now I'm going to fill them with spunk.

FAVOURITE METHODS

For ankles and knees, I prefer a combination of leather belts and rope. If I want to tie my ankles together, the belt goes around both ankles and the rope goes around the belt between my legs, to cinch the leather together above the ankles. Same goes for the knees. I might use the end of the rope used for my ankles to cinch the belt between my knees, and if it's long enough, tie it off to a waist-belt at the back, so the rope runs down the crack of your arse! These methods are quick-release, too, since when the belts are unbuckled you can slide them out of the rope cinches without having to undo any knots. Of course, a small padlock can be looped through the next free hole on a belt and the metal buckle, to create a key-only quick release. The leather is comfortable, can be padded, and doesn't possess the cruel properties of rope or chain.

For wrists, I try to use a pair of leather wrist cuffs which can be padlocked on in the manner described above. These can be held to furniture, or eachother, by a short length of chain looped through the d-rings and padlocked. If my hands are to be separated, sometimes I have to tie my left wrist in it's cuff to something using my right hand, then tie my right hand. I have found the a pair of steel handcuffs can be good for this - what you do is close one handcuff through the d-ring of your right-hand leather cuff, lock the leather cuff onto your right wrist, then tie your left wrist. Now you can use the remaining handcuff to lock your right wrist to some furniture or whatever. If I have to use the steel handcuffs, I always wear padded wristguards, 'cause they can hurt like fuck when you pull on them. They scare me. As I write, there is a noticeable red mark on my right wrist from today's fun. At least with leather you feel like you've got a fighting chance.

TRICKY ELBOWS

For elbows, I use a variation on the leather and rope technique. Short belts are fastened around my arms, just above the elbow. A length of rope is passed through each one, behind my back, twice so there's two loops of rope linking the belts. Now, you have to pull the ends of the rope to shorten the loops and draw your elbows together. It takes a bit of wriggling but you can get them quite close together. At this point, your hands are free but with your elbows together, your reach is not so good, so you have to tie off the ends as best you can. I find looping the ropes under a waist-belt then knotting them just above it can work well. Once you've cuffed your wrists to, say, a rope running to your ankles (as in a hog-tie) it can be impossible to reach the knot for the elbows until the wrists are freed. Be careful, though. Rough rope can sometimes stick and not slip open once the rope ends are freed and you try to pull your arms apart. When this happens, you suddenly realise that hands aren't everything. You can do lots of stuff, but it's impossible to to take off your PVC French maid's dress before your wife comes home with her girlfriends...