Bob Wingate's Blog

The B&G Archives Have Left the Building

For weeks Lee and I have been packing up the Bound & Gagged archives for their journey to the Chicago Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M), which will be their permanent home from now on. This morning Jeff Storer, the LA&M Director of Operations came by with a U-Haul, collecting for posterity approximately 70 boxes containing correspondence, photos, video masters and office records—including those which document in detail the Great Bound & Gagged Embezzlement of 1996 by a trusted, even beloved employee who, I'm told, continues badmouthing me after all these years and claiming he himself was badly treated by me (he knows who he is, and should he read this I'll remind him that he never began to make good on the legal contract our lawyer and his lawyer brother had him sign to repay even bottom dollar on the amount he stole). The B&G archive also no doubt contains, for posterity, a few personal laundry lists, dirty thoughts scrawled-on post-its, embarrassing pictures of yours truly, and overlooked bills.

I am going to continue this blog, though our source material will be elsewhere. I've seldom had to resort to it, anyhow. Everything important for my own purposes, and the blog, e.g. stories, pictures, documents, etc. are on easily accessible hard drives in my possession. So if you're a loyal follower of the blog, please stay with me.

 

Besides, I've held back on at least three sizable boxes of personal-experience submissions, some of which did appear in Bound & Gagged, but a lot of which—even excellent stories—I haven't been able to locate anywhere in our print or online editions. Over recent weeks, in the course of packing the archive up, I've been scanning and sometimes keying in these stories, turning them digital. So far I've already entered about 60 submissions which as far as I can tell have never been read by anyone but the people who wrote them, and there are, possibly, a lot more to come. I'll be posting them here, or, possibly, turning a lot of things into e-books, since I feel myself heading in that direction.

 

I've also held back on a fair amount of original artwork, for reasons I'll mention below.

 

That said, what is at this moment hurtling (safely, we hope) toward Chicago amounts to probably nine tenths of our collection. We waved it and Jeff a fond farewell as he drove out of the storage facility and turned onto the road.

  

Thoroughly exhausted from the packing effort, I am going to take a little vacation, including a vacation from this blog. I'll return to it after September 15th. At that time, I'm also going to put up a page offering a lot of Bound & Gagged artwork for sale (see above), artwork I'm hoping you will buy. Sadly, doing bondage porn for all those years didn't make me rich, and old as I may be I've still got to eat. I'll make the prices as reasonable as I can; I'll also be open in some cases to negotiation.

 

While I'm taking it easy, I'll still answer mail, if maybe not in immediate turnaround fashion; and if you send me something worthy of posting, and I'm in the mood to post it even while I'm lying around drinking mojitos on the patio, up it will go.

 

Happy Labor Day to one and all. See you on the 15th!

More Wacky Letters

Three more eye-opening letters received by The Outbound Press, publisher of Bound & Gagged, and KW Enterprises, our sister mail-order company, which sold bondage gear and (other companies') books and videos.

Curious B&G Communications

This week the Leather Archives and Museum (LA&M) in Chicago will be picking up the great bulk of the Bound & Gagged archives, which we are consigning to their care. To that end, Lee and I have been scrambling to prepare, filling up boxes and inevitably going through documents we haven't looked at since we closed up shop a little over ten years ago. 

 

One of the small files I just came across was labeled "Weird Letters." It didn't contain all that many—we had an amazingly sane readership, for the most part—but some of the documents are doozies, a few letters simple howlers, one or two of them sad. Lee and I had a ball rereading them, and I hope you enjoy them, too. Printing them here (with no special regard for the order in which they were received) means keying them in, since many are handwritten and contain names and addresses, but I'll do what I can, and maybe even just turn some of them into jpegs and post them that way. 

Bondage in the Burbs

This delightful little piece appeared in Issue 73 of Bound & Gagged [November 1999]

 

BONDAGE IN THE BURBS

 

MINNEAPOLIS, MN. I’m writing to share an adventure of sorts that’s still going on. It all started with a dare. I’d been getting to know a new buddy named Kyle who started hanging out at the same bar on weekends. He’s cute, about 5’9", so he’s maybe four inches taller than me, and the professional type that turns me on. I enjoy playing the field, but Kyle was looking for something steadier, so the two of us had reached the point of some friendly groping and kissing but no more. But one night we were sitting with some others at the piano bar when the pianist started making some jokes about bondage and S&M. Bondage pig that I am, that turned me on, and Kyle noticed.

Bondage Garage - The Full Story - 6

New top Patrick brings his two bottoms together.

Bondage Garage - The Full Story - 5

Where else is Drew to go than back to Marc's car to do another inspection of the gear there, and possibly try some of it on? Apologies again if there are some errors in the order of the pics, and for the fuzziness of some of them. I'm trying to give you pretty much every photo we took.

Married Man Tied Up By Best Friend

A little break from Bondage Garage. I just reread this heartwarming story that appeared in Issue 73 [Nov. 1999] and thought I'd offer it here.

 

IRVING PARK, IL. I have recently become involved in a bondage relationship with an old buddy. Steve and I have known each other for nearly 20 years, ever since high school. He’s always been a real good friend and a close one, but in all that time in school and years afterward we never even mentioned having sex together. We went our separate ways, moved to different cities. I was a groomsman at Steve’s wedding, and we stayed in touch afterwards. But I was still in the closet with most people and I never told Steve I was gay. I’m not proud of that, but it just happened that way.

Bondage Garage - The Full Story - 4

I'm sure there were some photos showing the taking of Marc from the loft back down to the garage and onto the roof of the car, but I can't find them right now. No matter. The story picks up when they've just about finished tying him on the car roof (apologies if there are some dupes here, I tried to get rid of them but may have missed some).

Bondage Garage - The Full Story - 3

Bondage Garage - The Full Story - 2

 

Bondage Garage - The Full Story - 1

Apart from the various comments resulting from my posting the last section of Bondage Garage, I've had a number of emails asking me about the story, and begging me to post all of it here. Unable to resist begging, I'll do my best. But there were so many pics! I'm going to have to do a lot of winnowing. There may be 50 or more photos before we ever get down to the bondage. Things like that never bother me, since to me context is everything. But if you're impatient to get down to the nuts and bolts…and rope, you may want to skip most of today's post. In any case, here are the opening scenes.

 

The story starts when a young leather guy (Marc Pierce) on his way to a bondage scene, gets lost somewhere in the back woods of Los Angeles, and pulls into a driveway to study his map (this was long before there were such things as GPS systems). Along come the two lovers who own the garage…

Four Frat Drawings for Sale

 

 

 

Frat Fun by Leo Ravenswood. 10 ¾" x 7 5/8" (approx.). Pen-and-ink on vellum affixed to art stock. Artist’s copyright mark: “Leo 81.” Unframed. $400 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees.

 

Frat Fun is in my opinion the primary drawing. But there’s a complete second drawing by Leo on the back, namely on the art stock itself, of a hand wearing a studded leather wristband, holding four Tarot cards: the Fool, the Magician, the Devil and the Hanged Man. The Tarot card drawing has no copyright mark but it's unmistakably Leo's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Enema by Leo Ravenswood. 8 ½” x 11” (approx). Pen and Ink on vellum taped to board. Artist’s copyright mark: “1990 Leo.” Unframed. $250.00 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees. This drawing appeared on page 11 of Pledges & Paddles 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Paddle by Leo Ravenswood. 8” x 7 ½” (approx.). Pen and Ink on vellum affixed to paper with bluelines lightly visible. No artist’s copyright mark but unquestionably Leo's. Unframed. $150.00 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pre-Fuck by Titus. 4 ½” x 5 ¾” (approx.) Pencil on art stock. Signed. Unframed. $75 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees. This small drawing is not properly speaking a fraternity drawing but it was blown up and used in Pledges & Paddles 4. 

Bondage Garage - Last Scene and Outtakes

Think I'll just put all of these up as they come, with no guarantees that they're in the right order. Apologies if there are some repeats among them, or some photos aren't crystal clear. These were taken before HD. The two bottoms were Marc Pierce and Drew Andrews; the top, who couldn't keep his hands or mouth off them, was Patrick Ives. The final shots, probably never before printed or posted, were taken after the ropes were removed, with the exhausted guys—it had been a busy day—having themselves a nice little orgy.