Bob Wingate's Blog: The Most Dangerous Kind of Bondage

Is anyone concerned with or talking about safety issues these days? I’m constantly being contacted by guys who don’t know me from Adam, asking me what I’m doing and if I'd like to meet up with them right away for a bondage session.

Of course they could know me from Adam if they wanted to, since I’ve been around a long time and have a good reputation. But many younger guys who see me on Recon and like the photos in my gallery don’t even bother to read my profile before they contact me. And I know from friends that guys contact lots of others the same way.

In pre-internet days, hooking up for bondage scenes tended to take longer. You went through relatively lengthy exchanges of letters and photos and phone calls if you met people through classified ads, or found out what they were like in person and were advised to get references about them from friends if you met them in bars.

Nowadays everything happens at warp speed: You check out who’s online and find someone you may not know from Adam but who looks appealing and lives nearby and isn’t 100 percent passive. You need to get tied up right away, so you message him with the hope that he’s willing and able and will invite you right over to make you his sub or his slave. What, he can’t host? Well, you’re home alone, so you invite him to your place. What does it matter if it’s your place or his? All that matters is that you get tied up.

That’s your cock doing the thinking, and it’s doubtful your cock has passed any IQ tests lately. Certainly, if it had and your mind saw the results, you’d hesitate before taking your cock’s advice.

I’ve always contended that bondage is no more dangerous than any thrill sport. But just as you wouldn’t jump out of a plane or schuss down a hill without first checking your parachute or your ski bindings, you should not practice bondage without first taking certain common-sense precautions. Make sure you know something about the person who’s going to tie you up, more than just the name he’s given you. Get his phone number, email info, address, and verify that these are correct. Make someone you trust aware that you’re going out to be made helpless, and where, and by whom, as well as when you’re expecting to be home—then call your friend if you’re having such a good time that you decide to stay on another day, week or month, so that he himself doesn’t call the police. Let your top or dom know that a friend knows who he is and where you are, or are supposed to be. Also let the new top or dom know about any health issues you may have. And never, ever, invite a stranger or even someone you don’t know very well into your own home to tie you up.

All of this is simple common sense which should go without saying, but when we get bondage-horny our cocks do the thinking, and our cocks tend to be heedless of everything but desire. Some pretty common-sense concepts need to be repeated over and over again, so that when push comes to shove, maybe our minds will pay attention to them and call our cocks into line.

The most dangerous bondage situations are not the ones we’re likely to run into with strangers, if we follow the precautions above. The most dangerous bondage situations are those where we get tied up in our own homes by the person we know better than anyone else in the world: ourselves. And in those situations, because we’re alone, much of the advice above will only be partially helpful.

Many of us have practiced self-bondage to a greater or lesser degree. Some of us do it all the time, either by desire or necessity. Most often we work it so we can untie ourselves quickly, and usually do so soon after we cum. But sometimes we try to make the untying process more difficult, so that we really have to struggle to get free. We use handcuffs and leg-irons and put the keys in places we can only access with difficulty. We develop creative fail-safes, keys frozen in blocks of ice that will eventually melt, combination locks controlled by timers that turn the lights on for a minute or so every hour, things like that. That's fine, if the fail-safes themselves don't fail. But sometimes we’re not as careful as we ought to be and, arms circling a support post in the basement of the house, we snap the cuffs on our wrists before remembering that we left the key across the room, or in an inaccessible pocket, and our roommate or partner is away for the weekend, or for a week, or we live alone and no one ever visits. I once published a letter from someone who did just that and literally had to saw through the support post to get free, hoping the house wouldn’t fall on him. He was lucky: he had a saw within reach and knew how to use it and the house didn’t fall on him and he lived to write me about it.

It goes without saying that, no matter how isolated the place where you live may be, you should inform a trusted friend (even if he lives hundreds of miles away) before you embark on a self-bondage adventure, and tell him to call someone in your area to go to your place if he doesn’t hear from you in a stipulated amount of time. You'll be pretty much on your own until you get yourself free, but if your fail-safe fails and you can't get free yourself, apart from discomfort and humiliation you won't have to worry that no one will find you until long after you've died.

The most dangerous self-bondage of all is the kind where breath-control is involved. Breath control has always made me uneasy, even when the sub’s breath is controlled by someone who knows what he’s doing, but it should never be practiced alone. (The inimitable Harold Cox once told me he always held his own breath when he did breath control with someone, and always released his victims’ airwaves just before he himself had to breathe. This has always seemed like sound advice to me.)

There’s no way to control things when you’re alone and can't get your hands right away to your face or neck to reduce the pressure of whatever may be constricting your breathing. It happens too quickly, and then it's too late.

I've been thinking about safety, and am writing this post now, because a few weeks ago I posted a series of pictures submitted by a reader to one of our photo contests years ago, and a few days after that I received an email from a man who wrote that the pictures I'd posted had been submitted by his dear friend Bruce, who “died from self-asphyxiation due to a breath-control scene that went wrong. Please tell people to STOP doing this! If you are doing a breath control scene it should be done with at least one other person. I know of three other people who died the same way. In the leather/bondage/kink scene it just needs to stop.”

Of course people don’t have to be in bondage, self-administered or with a partner present, to strangle or otherwise asphyxiate themselves in an erotic situation; just cutting off someone’s breath for a fraction too long can cause brain damage or death. But bondage, and especially self-bondage, makes the likelihood of a fatal accident that much more possible.

So please, guys, whether you’re playing with someone else or by yourself, take these hazards into consideration; and while I know there’s no stopping the determined, don’t play breath-control games without someone capable and alert standing by.

It's a thrill sport, but that's a common-sense precaution.

Your thoughts, comments and suggestions on the subject of safety in bondage play are important and would be greatly appreciated.