Back in mid-October my friend Leo in Texas sent in answers to bondage questions I’d asked, then asked a bunch of bondage questions of his own. At that time I asked you for your answers to his questions. While I wasn’t swamped with emails, a fair number of responses did start trickling in. Some were short, most were sensible, and the best I’ll post here.
No one had any answers to two of Leo’s five questions, each of which would require medical knowledge. Here’s the first:
“Is there such a thing as an anal catheter, to let fecal matter pass through a tube? This would be for long-term mummification. It goes without saying the bottom would have to be given a laxative or lots of water beforehand. Is the alternative to plug him and have him stop eating a day or two in advance of the session?”
As uninformed as the next lay person, I can’t resist putting in my own two cents here: I can’t believe that for long-term mummification—and how long is long-term?—it’s a good idea to have someone stop eating several days beforehand. In a very early issue of B&G (I think it was #12) someone did write about long-term encasement in a plaster cast, but I don’t remember if they actually did it or were just thinking about doing it, or how they solved, or intended to solve, the defecation problem. When I get a moment, I’ll go back to that issue, and check.
Leo’s second medical question:
“In the same vein, where can you learn about catheterization without going to medical school. What I’d like is personal instruction. I don’t trust what I learn from a book to teach me technique.”
My own two cents again: You might try contacting Mr. S. or any reputable shop that sells sounds and catheters, and ask if they can recommend someone in your area who could give you advice or instruction, but while that’s the best I can do, I can’t suggest it with great enthusiasm. I’ve never been a great fan of sticking sounds and catheters up my dick.
Now here are the questions Leo asked which got some great replies:
“What do you do if the bottom keeps giving you the wrong safe-word and it is somewhat unclear that he means it and he has told you not to interrupt the session unless he uses a specific word or pair of words?”
Leo actually answered his own question, though I held his answer back at the time. “I would probably end it and risk being wrong and ruining the guy’s experience if he really is intentionally giving the wrong word,” he wrote, which I thought made sense. But I also wanted to see what the rest of you thought.
Master F wrote:
I wouldn’t give a damn what the bottom told me beforehand and too bad if he gets mad or unhappy and won’t play with me anymore. If I’m not clear about what’s going on in my bottom’s head, I stop the scene. Not sure what you mean by the “wrong” safe-word. Is it something like “Stop!” when you told him the word is “Red”? Or is the safe word something he himself made up and/or gave you? In a case like that, I guess I’d pause and ask him if by “stop” he means “red,” or whatever his personal safe word is. If his answer doesn’t make sense to me, then I’ll keep the scene stopped until he makes himself clear or I get bored, untie him and tell him to get out and not come back until he knows his own mind.
Tim wrote:
I don’t like safe words and don’t use them. I have a long questionnaire I give all bottoms before we ever do anything together, so I get a good idea about them and about how much they think they can take before we ever get together for a scene. Even with newcomers I’m pretty good at reading body language, and I never leave anyone alone for more than a few minutes, especially since my bottoms tend to be gagged all the time when they don’t have my dick in their mouth. So they couldn’t use a safe word if we had one. I know some tops tell their bottoms to snap their fingers if they’re gagged, but I also like my bottoms wearing mitts, and it’s hard to snap your fingers if you’re wearing those. Especially if your mitts are thickly padded like mine. If a guy shakes his head back and forth violently and makes choking, panicked sounds, I usually get the impression that he’s having problems so ungag him right away and find out what the problems are. Then we either fix what was wrong and go on with the scene, maybe toned down, or end it. I’ve been playing for over 15 years and haven’t lost a bottom yet.
Tommy L. wrote:
What do you mean by the wrong safe word? That the sub playing games with you? Or that he’s forgotten the safe word you and he agreed on? If I were you I’d stop and find out, no matter what the sub said. There are too many chances for things to go wrong in bondage situations and you don’t want to find out that you seriously injured somebody (or worse) because he forgot the safe word you agreed on or he was playing games.
Tommy P. wrote:
I’m a bottom and I think the top should stop if he doesn’t understand why I’m shouting something, even if it’s not the word we agreed on. Sometimes I go places in my head and I could easily forget a safe word, but need the scene to stop.
Another question from Leo, which got two great answers:
“If a bottom says he wants a really tough session but in the past when you met him he has indicated that he is ‘new to all this,’ do you call him on it? Or make him negotiate, and then hold him to his words and have some fun, and scare him a little when he finds out he has bitten off more than he can chew?”
Sir Edward wrote:
I build up to tough scenes progressively, especially with new boys. Sometimes we go very far and hard during our first meetings. But I don’t advise starting out tough with someone you’ve never played with before. Some boys who say they want their asses tanned real hard break down in tears after a few little swats and plead with me to stop, while others, who aren’t sure they’ll be able to take much at all, can’t get spanked or flogged hard enough. I’ve met a few newbies who talked tough and fell apart, and some who talked tough and went the distance. But I only learned that when I was working on them.
Tim wrote:
I like negotiating with subs beforehand, especially newbies. I make them tell me the minimum amount of time they’d like to spend in my puppy cage or straitjacket or sleepsack or locked-on hood, but I warn them in advance to be careful about what they say, because I’ll hold them to it when they come to me. That tends to make them cautious, though they still often bite off more than they can chew.
Some of those who give up early I immediately send on their way. Others, the ones I like, I make negotiate the punishment they’ll get for failing to meet the challenge they themselves imposed. One of the newbies who gave up the first time was a real cute twink who came to me very cocky and left with a tear-stained face from a severe spanking and his tail between his legs. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from him again. But a year later he called out of the blue and begged me to let him come over, then when he arrived he pleaded with me to make him my full-time slave.
The year before he had told me he wanted to spend 48 hours in my puppy cage, but after about 18 hours he couldn’t take it anymore. When he came back the following year and was slobbering over my boots, I told him my slave would have to spend lots of time in the cage. Then I asked him how long he’d be willing to stay in it that weekend. He told me without even pausing to think, that he’d stay in it as long as I made him. That was the correct answer, I thought. I kept him in the cage for 36 hours, mostly gagged and always mitted. The only time he wasn’t gagged was when he was sucking my cock through the bars, or eating and drinking.
He drank by sucking water through a nipple connected to a funnel and tube that doled out either water or piss or both, and he ate what I gave him out of a dog bowl on the floor. He relieved himself, when I gave him permission, by peeing into a portable urinal hooked to the cage (from time to time I poured some of his own piss into the funnel) and shitting into a pot I rigged up as a toilet.
When I finally opened the cage to let him out, 36 hours later, he crawled over to lick my boots and thank me.
He was my slave for three years, until work took him to the other side of the country. There he met the man who is probably still his master today. I’m not sure since, for reasons that aren’t relevant here, we lost touch.
(By the way, it was a great story about a bondage marathon in The Bound & Gagged Bedside Companion years ago that gave me an idea for my own bondage marathons, one I’ve used ever since. When I’m doing long-term scenes, I warn my bottoms beforehand that if they say even a word when I remove their gags to feed them, the gag will go right back in, they’ll miss that meal and will have to wait hours before they get the chance to eat again. And of course I gag them as soon as they’ve finished eating. It’s fiendish and one hell of a turn-on to me.)
Here’s Leo’s fifth and final question:
“Where in the hell can I get a perfect gag! One that really works, and stops 95% of the sound. I know some sound gets out through the throat (in a rumbling in the throat) and even from the mouth behind the gag. Is it possible for a gag to have a tube extending into the windpipe past the larynx, thereby preventing air from affecting the speech area of the throat? There are no real ‘vocal cords’, I know that for a fact, I saw it on the Discovery Channel. The bottom would of course still be able to breathe quite well with the gag I envisage, I think, but I’d probably need to go to medical school for that one too. But it wouldn’t be too hard to make: Take a ball gag, make a hole in it and pass a tube through it. Just make positive you don’t lose the tube down the bottom’s throat if you don’t connect it securely to the ball gag, and DON’T use a toxic adhesive if you try it. (This is not something I’m suggesting anyone should try!!).”
I got mostly short answers to this one. A few people wrote that they thought Leo’s own potential solution was dangerous and were nervous about him trying it; and Bill S. asked what would be desirable about a gag that stopped so much sound, the garbled grunting of the victim being a turn-on. I personally can tell you what I learned years ago from Jim Stewart of Fetters, that since most of the noise a well-plugged-and-sealed bottom’s mouth can make comes through the cheeks, a muzzle, or something thick surrounding the cheeks, would certainly muffle a lot of the sound that gagged men make when they simply try to call out or groan loudly. Since, like Bill S., I’ve never wanted to silence anyone using more than a well-sealed-in plug or sock, I can’t give a better answer than that.
Any questions, or responses to these answers, from you? Write me.
