Bob Wingate's Blog: Interview with Eric Tide

For some time Eric and I have been working on a sort of Q and A interview to respond to the many questions of my own and those of other readers. What follows is pulled together from our long correspondence and readers’ comments and questions. I’ve tried to make it coherent, and hope it doesn’t seem too much all over the place.

Let me start with something I wrote to Eric not long ago. The subject is one he and I have been batting around like a badminton birdie for years, so it may seem to you that we’re beginning in the middle. But that’s as good a place to start as any.

BW. Eric, you and I have been going back and forth for a long time about what it is that makes us tick when it comes to bondage/torture situations. You tell me that few have ever understood what drives you, to the point where you’re seriously tired of even discussing the subject anymore.

If you’re willing, let’s discuss it at least this one last time, and start by contrasting you and me, as I see us.

When it comes to subbing, I'm a pretty simple guy, with simple desires—to be made helpless by a bully (of my secret choosing) who takes total control of me, sexual and physical. My darker desires have always been fueled, I think, by the bully rather than the master fantasy. To be tied up by this bully “against my will” and forced to do what I secretly desire has always been a potent fantasy of mine. My bully gets pleasure from tying me up and making me do what gives him pleasure and, whether or not he knows it or cares, what he does to me gives me pleasure, too. I have no choice, which is the way I (secretly) want it.

That’s my psycho-sexual profile in a nutshell. What I find confusing and, I think, complicated, about you, is the lack of any acknowledgement of a sexual motivation behind your desires.

ET. You use an interesting word that might get right to the heart of the matter. You use the word “bully.” You may have hit the nail on the head.

I had never really thought of it that way before, but I guess in the end, that’s exactly what I want. I want to find a bully whom I can trust not to kill me or send me to the emergency room, but otherwise can do anything he wants to me. Even things I don’t find particularly enjoyable. I want to find someone who will make me do anything he wants, not what I want (although sometimes the two mesh together nicely). I don’t want to have any control over what happens. I don’t want to have to tell him what to do, and I really don’t want to know what’s coming next. I want to dread what might happen. Fear, uncertainty and at least some terror add to the experience. So I guess, in that regard, the two of us share something in common—although I seem to desire rougher bondage than you.

BW. Some common ground at last. And sexually?

For me, conscious sexual pleasure has much less to do with it. If anything, I seek my bully because, while I may be greatly magnifying my faults, I perceive myself as something of a bully myself—strong-willed, forceful, dominating, bossy. And since I don't really like that aspect of myself, I seek someone strong enough to subdue me, beat me into submission if he has to, and punish and humiliate me. That’s what I need, what I deserve. Sometimes, if he does a good job and pushes me hard, I can lose that true character of mine which I so dislike for a while.

BW. So you get no sexual pleasure at all from the experience?

ET. Don’t let me kid you, or myself, too much. When I am finally subdued—if the bully can succeed in breaking me and bringing me under control—it does give me pleasure and satisfaction…but only afterwards. I may not like it while it is happening because it is usually both physically painful and emotionally draining. But once I am broken down into a proper state of submission, that satisfied state can last for a long time—hours, days or weeks, depending on how good the bully was. Even if I am not sexually excited by our activities during a session, I often am later. Once I think back over what happened, the memories certainly do sexually excite me. I will relive them over and over. But eventually the feeling fades away and I need another dose. So I guess my love for these activities is tied to my sexual drive in some complicated way.

BW: Was it that way for you, too, with Logan and Dylan?

ET: None of us—Logan, Dylan, Graham, or I—did what we did for sex. That is, of course, unless it was completely subconscious on all our parts. We never had any desire for oral or anal sex.The brothers and their cousin were as straight as arrows and would have found even the thought of homosexual activities absolutely appalling.

BW. At least to the extent that you knew what was really going on in their heads, or they in yours. We so seldom know what’s going on in the heads of even our nearest and dearest. May I cautiously suggest that none of you would have let the others know if that had been the case?

ET: Logan and Dylan did make me masturbate in front of them plenty, although we have not quite gotten to the place in my accounts where that started. But we didn’t really think of it as sex—I’m pretty sure of that. Rather, it was deeply humiliating for me, and they knew it. That's why they made me do it.

BW. When I was in my teens, I was as homophobic as the next guy. None of my friends had any idea what was going on in my head, and I didn’t really want to know it myself. I would have died defending myself as straight. I’d be loath to speculate about was going on in any of your heads. I’ll have to take your word for what was going on in your own.

ET. Well, for my part, I can say that back then, I would have died defending myself as a straight guy. Being gay in the south, especially at that time, was not something one would have wanted to admit to publicly. The results would not have been pretty. I considered myself to be straight, but I knew deep down that I had feelings that confused me. For example, if I saw a great looking guy walking with a great looking girl, I spent much more time looking at the guy. I would memorize his features, and at times the guy might catch me looking at him a little too intently before I could divert my eyes. But I never had fantasies about having sex with him. Rather, I found myself wondering what he would look like tied up, maybe stripped to his shorts or even naked. Or what he would look like locked in chains wearing raggedy shorts or a loin cloth and forced to work at hard labor. Or better yet, I would fantasize about what it would feel like if I was the one tied up by him. Or even best of all, what if he and I were tied up together by some other guys? Maybe whipped and tortured and beaten into submission.

If the guy happened to be barefooted and in blue jeans or shorts (which was pretty prevalent in the hot south back then) when I saw him, my knees would turn to jelly. Heaven help me if the guy happened to be barefoot and shirtless. For the next few days, I might masturbate to my bondage fantasies of the guy. Or I might dream about him all night and then relieve myself in the morning. So I was confused about my sexuality for sure.

BW. Like many boys that age. Even today, I’ll bet. But it was probably harder for boys in our day.

ET. But I never wanted to have sex with Logan and Dylan, nor—I’m pretty sure of this—did they with me. Any activities even resembling sex (like masturbation) were done strictly for the humiliation—never for the sex.

Having said all of that, let me add something else at the risk of further confusing the issue, and this may be a spoiler alert: There would be a few times that Dylan made me suck his dick. When that happened, he and I were always alone, and I was tied up and being tortured. The activity was strictly designed to humiliate me, and it was always spontaneous and usually brief. Except once. That time he made me suck his dick and eventually shot his cum on my face. Again, it was Dylan’s way to humiliate me beyond imagination, which he succeeded in doing quite well. He definitely subdued me, I would say.

BW. Did Logan find out about this?

ET. No, never. He would have beaten the hell out of Dylan and probably dropped me like a hot potato, even if I told him I had been forced to do it.

BW. What was going on in your head when you sucked Dylan’s dick?

ET. I was embarrassed, to say the least. I wanted to crawl into a cave and die. I was deathly afraid he might tell someone or allude to it, even if it was a slip of the tongue. That would ruin me. I was especially fearful of his telling Logan because I didn’t want to lose Logan as my best friend. But he never told anyone.

BW. It may be off topic, but do you have sex with your current Doms, who as far as I can tell are all males?

ET. As I have grown older, most of the guys I meet with (I do try to pick my partners well) want sexual activity of some kind. Sometimes we get by with only masturbation, but sometimes it involves more. Many of them like ass play, or giving and receiving oral sex at the very least. I don’t enjoy those things—they are not why I do bondage—but I accept them. It is humiliating—about the most humiliating thing I can conceive of.

BW. Let’s get back to Logan and Dylan and your Master/slave relationship with them, which you may prefer to call a bully/victim relationship.

ET. That’s what it was, exactly. It was harsh, and it was brutal and terrifying at times, but what they did to me met my needs so much. I had never really thought of it in bullying terms until you used the word. I gave them permission to bully the living hell out of me. In fact, I urged them and even badgered them into bullying me with all the skill they could muster.

BW. Did either of them have a history of doing that with other kids?

ET. No, most people thought they were the salt of the earth—good old proverbial southern barefoot boys with cheeks of tan. Everyone loved them and they would both do just about anything for anybody. They are still that way today. On the other hand, they were so good at bullying me that perhaps deep down they wanted to, and so maybe unwittingly I met a subconscious need of theirs.

BW. Logan and Dylan laid down certain rules for you. You always had to be barefoot and shirtless except when they told you otherwise or you pleaded with them to let you wear shoes and they did, though you would be punished for that later. I take it these slave rules did not extend to when you were not with them, when you were with your parents, for instance, or hanging out with other friends…?

ET. Bare feet were required, but I was not always shirtless. Sometimes they made me go shirtless, but I would say that most of the time I wore a shirt. However, I was not allowed to wear shoes at all without permission. They allowed me to wear shoes to church and school, but once church was over and the bell rang to end school, the shoes and socks were expected to come off. If I wanted to wear shoes at any other time, for example if I was going out to eat at a restaurant with my family, I had to ask permission. Usually permission was granted, but often I would have to pay a penalty—perhaps ten lashes for every hour the shoes were on, or be tied to a tree for a certain period of time, etc.

Logan and Dylan owned me 24/7. Any rules, like being barefoot, extended even to when I was not with them. However, I was with one or both of them most of the time. Especially Logan—he and I were inseparable.

I have explained this before, but I guess I will mention it again because it is such an important point to understand my psyche. I did not like going barefoot in public. It was almost like a phobia with me, but it was something they required, so I had to do it. It is not something I ever got used to, and for most people it might not seem like a big deal. But I felt naked. I always considered bare feet to be a sign of total weakness and submissiveness. My true nature is far from weak and submissive, so being barefooted just wasn't in character for me. I was too prideful for that.

I don't know why, but I have felt that way ever since I can remember. Obviously something happened in my early childhood to ingrain those feelings in me, and you just don't lose strong feelings like that. The odd thing is that I never talked about my feelings with Logan and Dylan until much later. But somehow, they instinctively knew them from the start. And so they made me do it. Eventually, I did tell them how I felt, and neither one of them was surprised. I can tell you that making me strip off my shoes, even today, gets me in a pretty submissive, uncomfortable, vulnerable state. Imagine how you would feel if someone stripped you naked and dropped you off on Main Street. That's how I felt when I was forced to go barefooted in public. I felt naked and ashamed. I have no clue why.

BW. They had total control over you, yet sometimes the three of you just behaved like friends together. Was it hard to go from hanging out like friends, to taking orders like a slave?

ET. The way I handled our relationship was that I considered them to be my friends, but I subordinated myself to them in every way. If they chose to treat me as an equal for a couple of hours, then that was my good fortune. I was always aware that the situation could turn on a dime at any second. When that happened, I had to be prepared to accept my role. I always knew my place.

Actually, it worked best for me when I didn’t know what they were going to do next. I wanted them to have total control, and I wanted them to be tough and brutal. The ultimate test of my endurance and self-discipline was to take whatever they dished out and to obey any order they gave. So we might be playing a friendly game of basketball one minute, and I might be hogtied in the woods half an hour later, and stay hogtied for the rest of the afternoon. I might be tied spreadeagle to the bed and tortured all morning, and we might go out on the lake waterskiing in the afternoon. That was the way our relationship worked. They were always in charge and in control. I was subservient to them, my status was less than theirs. It was perfect for me.

BW. Weren’t you ever just not in the mood to be submissive? What happened then?

ET. Of course there were those times when I just didn’t feel like being abused and bossed around. It still happens today. It’s at those times that my real personality comes out. I lashed out, got into arguments with them plenty of times. But one of the ground rules was (still is, with my Doms) that Logan and Dylan had permission to do whatever they wanted whenever they felt like it, and to punish me when I resisted. They learned to tie me down well, and gag me before they did anything too tough to take, so that I couldn’t curse them or break free and go after them. Logan actually had to punch me out one time.

BW. I could envision something like that almost ending your whole relationship, especially your slave relationship.

ET. It didn't. Logan knew I could take a lot of abuse, but at times I can fight back if things are too intense. That time he had failed to secure me properly and I lashed out at him as if I was going to attack him. I was in a fit of rage, but a right cross put me on my ass. He didn’t knock me out, although I thought he had broken my jaw. He hadn’t. He’d been careless, but he brought me back under control pretty quickly.

BW. Let’s move on to some reader comments and concerns, some of which may take us over familiar ground: What taxes the credulity of many, I believe, is that these different things you got subjected to, which went so much further than is the norm in the modern SM playroom or relationship, did not in fact maim or kill you.

ET. To be truthful, I’m not completely sure why I seemed so indestructible. Part of the reason had to be my small stature. I weighed barely more than 110 pounds at the time Logan and Dylan were abusing me. That’s probably why I could hang by my arms for long periods where a heavier person would probably suffer more damage. There were times when my feet didn’t even touch the ground. Even now as an adult, Doms will string me up on my tiptoes for hours on end. I have never had a problem, except that it is tough to take, especially if you are being whipped periodically.

BW. I had a small stature, too, but can’t see myself at that age undergoing what you did without severe consequences.

ET. I was pretty athletic and strong, especially for my size. When I was in the ninth grade, everybody took physical education. We all went through a physical training test that took weeks to complete. We were tested in every way imaginable—chin ups, sit ups, push ups, throwing, running, obstacle course, etc. Only one other boy in the entire ninth grade had better scores—and we had one of the largest schools in the state. I could do 15 or 16 chin ups where most boys were lucky to do 5. I could stand flatfooted in front of a high jump bar and clear it from a standstill when everyone else had to get a running start.

I was also very flexible. I was part of an acrobatic team at school, long before male gymnastics became popular. People used to say I was like a shark in that I seemed to have cartilage rather than bones. I have never had a broken bone. I am not quite so flexible now, but back then Logan and Dylan had no problem twisting and bending me into whatever position they wanted.

Finally, I played a lot of contact sports. I had collisions with lots of bigger and stronger guys, but I never suffered any injury other than spraining my ankle once when I was in college. I missed one game and then played on. I was always aware that I was resilient and durable far beyond the norm.

I’m sure all of these factors played a part. I was able to endure most of what Logan and Dylan dished out. Hard to believe maybe, but I did. If there’s any consolation, most of the stuff they did to me would probably kill me now.

BW. Another frequently asked question: how did you kids get away with all you did without attracting the attention of friends and family?

ET. The truth is we didn’t. It did get noticed. If you recall, before Dylan came on board with us, I pointed out that Logan found it difficult to keep our activities a secret from him. Dylan asked questions. He saw red marks on my legs and back, and even a few welts and bruises. He noticed rope marks on my wrists. We always made up lame excuses, but I doubt that he believed them.

Dylan also noticed that I always seemed to be working my ass off, often doing Logan’s chores, while Logan lounged around watching television. Dylan commented about it several times.

Similar things happened with our friends. We were not as clever or as secret as we thought we were, and likely neither were our friends as clueless as we thought they were, either. Every now and then I would get questions like, “How did you get that stripe on your leg?” Or, “Why are your wrists so red?”

I would answer with things like, “We were playing tug of war with some little kids and I wrapped the rope around my wrists.” Or, “We were playing around in the back yard, wrestling around, and Logan hit me with his belt while I had my back turned.”

BW. And your friends bought those explanations?

ET. They seemed to, but from their glances at times, I doubt it.

We did get pretty good at hiding marks. If I had rope marks or belt stripes or welts or burn marks, then I would usually wear clothing to hide it—jeans or long sleeve shirts. After a good whipping on my back, the boys would let me wear a shirt in public. Usually the marks faded in a few hours, faster than some of your readers seem to think.

I learned to put my hands in my pockets to hide rope marks, or to keep my hands under the table or behind my back, or to stay in the shadows. Most of the time, the most serious marks were on my back or my butt, and those were usually hidden from view anyway.

Still we were careless at times and we got questions. We did pay some consequences for our odd and secretive behavior, and for spending so much time together. Logan and I were like Siamese twins, and Dylan was with us plenty. But that has nothing to do with my bondage autobiography and I would rather not discuss those emotionally painful consequences here.

[To be continued]