Bob Wingate's Blog

Our First eBook is Available…Again!

It’s been a long haul, but I think I can say with some certainty that the ebook of Spreadeagle Tales is available at last, with a new and less “hostage”-like cover. My certainty derives from the fact that the book has already been up for more than a week, and if the powers that be had been planning to remove it they’d almost certainly have done so by now.

 

 

If you’d like to purchase Spreadeagle Tales for a laughably low price, go to Amazon and look for the title. It should come right up.

 

Some readers of this blog may get this information more than once, since I’m about to send out an announcement of the ebook’s availability to my mailing-list. If you’re not on my mailing list and would like to be, write me at [email protected]. Put the words “Put me on your mailing list” on the subject line.

 

Another new eBook, with the title “Natural Slave, and other stories of submission and dominance” is now in the works. We’ll be putting it up at the end of March, to be followed by a third eBook at the end of April, with still more to follow.

 

And while we're at it, write me about your own bondage adventures, which I'll post on my blog. My email is the same as above, [email protected].

Winter Doldrums

I've been so involved in a civic uproar in my New York neighborhood these days that I haven't posted anything here all week, something I only realized last night with a shock.

 

Thinking about what I might post today, which I did as I lay awake much of the night, led me to wonder if this blog hasn't run its course, or if I'm not giving you what you want. I still get over 1,000 hits a day, but with one or two exceptions I hear from no one, and writing into the void has become disheartening.

 

Maybe it's just the winter doldrums, but I'm going to suspend posting old Bound & Gagged stories and photos on this blog for the next month or so, after which we'll see. I'll gladly publish your thoughts on bondage or your bondage experiences or your bondage photos if you email them to me (the photos with releases) during the hiatus. But until spring is on the way, or you come clamoring to give me a good reason to keep posting regularly, I'm taking a vacation.

 

 

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

Some Bound & Gagged History

 

 

I thought you might be amused to see this original 1987 Bound & Gagged subscription form. I'd sent out notices about launching the magazine to every gay newspaper I could find, and in those days there were many. Then, as soon as I received inquiries about subscribing, I sent out the double-sided mimeographed form below. The questions asked at the top of the form, as I urged potential subscribers to tell me about their experiences, are the same ones I continue asking today, and which I continue to find as fascinating as ever.

 

The form below was slipped as an insert into Issue No. 1, which explains the crossed-out words.

 

Don't be afraid to send me your own replies to any of the questions that interest you, but please do NOT attempt to subscribe by sending $21 to the address on the form, since the magazine is gone and that address itself no longer exists.

 

Side 1:

 

Side 2:

 

 

 

Lost Bondage Stories - 2

For the planned book, I did not only use responses to my NYBC questionnaire. I also solicited letters guys had exchanged with one another after responding to bondage classified ads in such popular publications as Drummer, The Advocate, The New York Native, etc. I included, too, letters from guys I'd corresponded with myself: the Letters from a Cowboy and From a Student in Issues 1 and 2, for example. 

 

I didn't keep records of who sent me what, so have no idea where the letter below came from. It wasn't from any correspondent of mine, since the fantasy described wasn't mine. The letter is not, strictly speaking, a bondage letter at all, since bondage only comes up in the last paragraphs. But they alone are worth it.

 

 

PUNISH ME, DADDY DEAREST!

 

Enjoyed talking with you the other night and have been thinking a lot about some of the scenes we could get into — jerked off thinking about you this morning and am hard again now. It sounds like we're both very flexible and into a lot of the same fantasy scenes. Would really like you to be my dad — want to do things to make you feel good and to make you feel proud of your son: want to get on my knees in front of you and polish your boots, want to clean your toilet... Want to suck different parts of your body — your toes, your balls, your tits, the hair in your armpits, the hair around your asshole. I really get off on body hair — want to worship yours and have you shave off mine to humiliate me when I've been bad. But when you first get home from work I'll be so glad to see my dad that I'll try to be good for a long time.

Lost Bondage Stories - 1

In my post of August 23rd, I described how I recently came across a compilation of essay question responses to the questionnaires I sent guys interested in joining the New York Bondage Club over the four years that I ran it, from 1984 to 1988. I originally thought I would publish these responses as a book, rather than in a magazine. Having decided to do the magazine instead, I locked the 180-page, single-spaced manuscript away and forgot about it. Now, having found it, I discover that I actually never published the majority of the responses, which ran from thoughts on bondage, to the movies or stories that inspired bondage passions, to descriptions of fantasies and/or personal experiences—a lost treasure.

 

Considering that Bound & Gagged published well over 1,000 stories in its lifetime, it's possible that  a piece I post here may actually have been published, and I just didn't find it when I tried to look it up. My system only allows me to check by title and first line. But I think it's safe to say that the great majority of "stories" I'm going to start posting today never appeared in the magazine.

 

These pieces may be anywhere from a paragraph to several pages. Some will be more interesting, or hotter, than others. I'll leave that for you to judge.

 

To liven things up, I'll occasionally throw in photos, which may only tangentially have anything to do with the stories, sometimes not even that.

 

FROM A BUSINESSMAN:

1. FILM-AND-TV-OGRAPHY

 

My interest in male bondage goes back as far as my earliest inclinations towards homosexuality.

 

When I was growing up, I enjoyed watching TV programs with jungle or western themes. I'll never forget an episode of an early '50s show, Ramar of the Jungle, starring Jon Hall. Ramar, his associate Howard, and several others, are rounded up by blood-thirsty African natives and taken to a clearing. Howard, a rather attractive young man in his 30s, is tied spreadeagle style between two trees. Just as a native is about the cut the vines that would spring the tree branches and, in the process, tear Howard's body apart, a shot rings out and the safari members are saved. Though I was only five years old at the time, I clearly remember how turned on I was at the sight of a young man in bondage and threatened with death. Of course, I could not understand why I harbored those feelings, and this worried me. Nevertheless, as time went on, I deliberately sought out other such programs and movies that might contain similar scenes to tantalize my libido. Not surprisingly, many were discovered in films/shows of an adventure/western/horror nature. Here are just a few of my all time favorites:

 

• Wagon Train (TV, episode title unknown). Hunky Robert Horton, captured by Indians, is stripped to the waist and spreadeagled between two vertical posts. As the midday sun broils his naked body, Horton is subjected to whippings and verbal abuse.

 

• Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941 feature). Tarzan's sexy teenage son, Boy, is captured by a tribe of African natives. He struggles to escape, but is overcome by the tribesmen, tied to a post and nearly burned to death.

 

• The Magic Sword (1962 feature). Gorgeous Gary Lockwood, playing a knight, is stripped to the waist and tied spreadeagle-style between two posts by an evil sorcerer's henchman. His body gleams with sweat as he struggles against his bonds, to no avail. Before he can be slain, he is rescued at the 11th hour.

 

• Macumba Love (1960 feature). A young newlywed is snatched by frenzied voodoo worshippers in Haiti and taken to a midnight ritual. His coat and shirt are torn off and he is spreadeagled on the ground between four posts. As the chanting natives dance up a storm, the terrified young man is slowly skewered to death.

 

• Daniel Boone (1936 feature). A hunky young pioneer is abducted by Indians as he steps out of his canoe. In the next scene we see him tied to a tree, surrounded by Indians bearing torches. A last glimpse of the frantic, struggling young man, his shirtless body bulging against the ropes as he is set afire, is a classic!

 

2. "I STOOD IN ECSTACY AS MARK SOBBED"

 

My first experience in acting out a bondage fantasy came when I was about eight years old. I was horsing around with Mark, a young friend of my brother, on our front porch. Wrestling with this boy rekindled the same strange sensations within me I had been experiencing more and more, always around other boys. Overpowering Mark, I tied his wrists together, and fastened the end of the rope to the screen door handle above his head. I stood there in a state of barely contained ecstacy as Mark sobbed, trying to free himself. I was just about to run my hands over his body when I caught a glimpse of his mother walking the dog, heading straight towards us! Horrified, I quickly unbound Mark and managed to calm him down. By the time his mother had reached us, Mark had fully regained his composure and I breathed a deep sigh of relief!

 

As I matured, I entertained a vast number of custom-made sexual bondage fantasies for my own private daydreaming and jerkoff sessions. Although I was beginning to experiment with male sex, I never had the guts to suggest a bondage scenario to a partner. I satisfied my lusty desires strictly on a fantasy level. I peopled my daydreams with guys I knew, guys I wished I knew, attractive show biz types, etc. My fantasy repertoire runs the gamut, from envisioning steamy sessions in which muscular blonde studs are chained and tortured by savage natives, lust-ridden women and sadistic POW camp wardens, to personal bits wherein I drug, bind and gag the cute guy in the next office, and spend hours teasing, torturing and molesting him.

 

3. TORTURERS AND VICTIMS

 

As much as I revel in fantasizing about other guys undergoing enforced bondage sex, I get an equal amount of pleasure dreaming about myself as the “victim”. One of my all-time favorite fantasies has me cornered and overpowered by half a dozen hostile black guys. First, let me explain that I have always been blown away by the concept of hot sex between men of different races. The sight of two contrast-colored men writhing ecstatically in each others' arms gets my adrenalin pumping faster than anything else I can think of! Add to this concept the element of bondage and S/M, especially when there is a struggle between one guy and a group of men of a different race, and I am really gone! Back to my fantasy...I am carried away by these men, stripped down to my bikini briefs, and suspended spreadeagle-style vertically to two posts or horizontally across a plane. For hours I am teased, and tortured, and blown off again and again, finally dying in their hands. I sometimes like to cast my fantasy with some of the black men I have enjoyed sex/relationships with over the past few years, motivating their hostile actions against me with real or imagined wrongs I have done to them.

 

 

4. “I BIT HIM GENTLY ON THE LIP”

 

My first real bondage experience occurred quite recently, when I answered a personal ad in a popular gay tabloid. Russ invited me to his apartment for dinner and drinks first. Slightly older, attractive and definitely dominant, Russ had plenty of experience as a topman, and a box of equipment that would have done any dungeon proud. After clearing up, I excused myself, went into the bathroom to tidy up, walked out into the livingroom and was seized from behind by my friend. He tied my hands behind my back and gagged me. Before I knew it, I was lying across the floor, helpless, while he coolly lit a cigarette, then started rummaging through his bag of tricks.

 

Russ systematically stripped me nude and fastened leather clasps to my wrists and ankles. Minutes later, I was securely chained in spreadeagle fashion across a small cot. Russ turned off all the lights, lit 3 candles and placed them around the room. He turned on pulsating music with a Latin flavor, and began burning incense. Not only did the atmosphere of the room change, but so did my host's attitude. He changed from an amiable, good-natured type to a slightly sinister, “in-control” topman who demanded I address him as “sir”, or else. He left me alone for ten minutes in that dark, foreboding room, while he busied himself in the bedroom. Lying there on my back, totally naked, my arms and legs stretched to the aching point, made me think that perhaps I was foolish to put my body at the mercy of a guy who I’ve known for little more than an hour. This threat of danger heightened my excitement and anticipation even more, and I could hardly wait for Russ to come back to me. He finally did, now dressed only in a leather brief and leather vest. He savored the sight of my body instinctively struggling against the restraints.

 

I decided to test his authority and bit him gently on the lip when he lowered his face over mine. Genuinely angered, Russ decided I needed to be taught a lesson. He paddled me good across the side of my rump, then applied two tit clamps to my sensitive nipples. The pain was real, and I tried hard to free myself so that I could remove the clamps, but it was no use. Russ felt I had to be punished even more. He removed a medium size butt plug from his collection, greased the tip and applied it firmly to my ass. By this point, I realized I should not have tested this man’s patience, and I was the obedient slave for the remainder of the scene.

 

Russ massaged my entire body,made love to it, and granted me the favor of sucking on his balls and erect prick. Finally, he grabbed my own well-moistened prick, and began to jerk it off violently. This was the true height of ecstacy! He demanded that I shoot off a thick load of sizzling cum...or else. Naturally, I fought back, and pulled hard against the relentless chains. Inevitably, I let loose with a geyser of creamy cum, and continued doing so while Russ mercilessly jerked me off. Lying there exhausted, Russ embraced my body and sensuously French kissed my mouth, over and over again.

Lost Bondage Stories - 2

Apparently I didn’t only include NYBC responses in the book I intended to publish. I also had requested and obtained copies of letters guys had sent and received in response to bondage ads in popular gay mags and newspapers such as Drummer, The Advocate, The New York Native, etc., sometimes together with carbons of their replies. I used my own correspondence as well, e.g. the letters from a cowboy in Issue 1.

 

I don't know who sent me these letters, I kept no records of that. I can say that the letter below was not  written by or sent to me, since it didn’t personally speak to my personal turn-ons. For that matter, it isn’t, strictly speaking, a “bondage” letter at all, except for the last paragraphs; but those paragraphs alone made it worthy of inclusion.

 

 

PUNISH ME, DADDY DEAREST!

Enjoyed talking with you the other night and have been thinking a lot about some of the scenes we could get into — jerked off thinking about you this morning and am hard again now. It sounds like we’re both very flexible and into a lot of the same fantasy scenes. Would really like you to be my dad — want to do things to make you feel good and to make you feel proud of your son: want to get on my knees in front of you and polish your boots, want to clean your toilet... Want to suck different parts of your body — your toes, your balls, your tits, the hair in your armpits, the hair around your asshole. I really get off on body hair — want to worship yours and have you shave off mine to humiliate me when I’ve been bad. But when you first get home from work I’ll be so glad to see my dad that I’ll try to be good for a long time.

 

If you’re wearing a business suit, I’ll help you off with your coat and loosen your tie for you and slowly take off all your clothes. If there were any piss stains in your shorts, I’d lick and chew and suck them away for you. Want to lick your thighs, too — especially way up by your balls where it gets nice and sweaty and smells so good. If I were lucky, you wouldn’t have taken a shower in the morning so I could get hot smells from different parts of your body.

 

We’d go and lie down together on the bed to take a nap. I’d put my head on your chest and suck your tits and you’d ask me if I’d been a good boy that day at school. I’d hesitate for a moment and then lie to you and say yes. Just after we’d dozed off together in each other’s arms, the phone would ring. It would be my gym teacher calling to tell you about the trouble I’d gotten into at school — how some other guys and I had ganged up on a younger boy in the lockerroom and had teased him until he’d cried—goosing him and snapping his balls with wet towels, and then taking him into the shower room and pissing all over him. The coach found out from the other boys that it had been my idea. He’d embarrass you by telling you that he didn’t think you were doing a good job as a father if you raised a son who would do things like that, and what I apparently needed was a good long spanking across your lap.

 

You’d be furious when you got back to the bedroom. You’d slowly take the leather belt from your pants, double it over, and come after me with it. You’d give me a few hard cracks across the ass, then lecture me and tell me what a disappointment I’d been to you. You’d draw the punishment out, giving me many separate spankings with periods in between to let me think about how bad I’d been.

 

You'd spank me in different positions — across your lap with your hand, standing up facing the wall for a caning, bent over a chair, spreadeagle on the bed with a pillow under me so my butt was way up in the air. You’d start out easy, but then build up so I’d wind up with an ass that was very red and sore — by the end you wouldn’t be fucking around, you’d really be letting me have it, so I’d be kicking and squirming around, and whimpering and pleading with you just like a little kid. Maybe you’d spank me till I acutually break down and cry (have gotten close to that point a couple times but have never been taken that far — it’s one of my strongest fantasies, and it would be within limits, if you want to do it)...Then you’d send me to my room and tell me to lie quietly on the bed and think about being a good boy from now on.

 

Maybe in about fifteen minutes you’d come in to check on me — I wouldn’t hear you coming, and suddenly you’d open the door and catch me jerking off. That would be the last straw. You'd tell me that you were going to have to teach me to control my body.

 

You’d tie me spreadeagle to the bed, facing up. You wouldn’t yell at me, you’d just start rubbing my body and explain to me that I was not going to be allowed to come for two hours. Then you’d start to experiment with my body, seeing how sexually frustrated you could get me and how much pain I could take while still staying turned on. You’d rub me and lick me and tell me what a nice body I have but how I shouldn’t abuse my body by jerking off so much. Tell me how you don’t like to find all those cum stains on my jockey shorts, or on my jockstrap, or on my sheets. That jerking off is just like smoking or drinking —that it’s all right to do it once in a while, but that it should be done only when my father’s with me and with my father’s permission...not something that a boy should sneak away and do on his own or with his friends in some neighbor’s garage.

 

You’d get me so fuckin’ hot that I think I’m going to go out of my mind. Rub the head of my dick with oil, put clamps on my tits, stick your finger just a little way up my ass and twist it around, shave my balls — then grease them up and squeeze ’em till they pop out of your fist, tickle my feet, pull hairs out of my crotch, tape my cock down to my leg, spit in my face and then roll your cock around in it, let me smell your ass but no more, whip me up and down my whole body with a leather thong, jerk on my cock and then hold off before I come, untie one of my hands and let me stroke my cock only ten times before you tie me up again, rub my body up and down with your warm smelly socks, play with your own cock in front of me and tell me how good it feels, ETC. ETC.

 

Worship me and punish me and drive me wild. Tell me that there are going to have to be other kinds of controls, too...that I won’t be able to piss or shit or do anything else without my dad’s permission. You’ve got me thinking about diapers, too! I think that a grown man (me!) who has been diapered (maybe shaved all over first) could be hot!

 

[Have you ever been spanked and/or spreadeagled and/or diapered by your "Dad,"—or by anyone else, for that matter? Write me about it!]

An Apology, and an Announcement

Apologies for not blogging at all this past week, it's been a busy time for me. As most of you know, Lee and I are paring down our possessions in anticipation of the sale of our beautiful Bucks County farmhouse and a full-time return to our small but rent-stabilized New York City apartment. Though no one's knocking down the doors to buy the house yet, once someone does we'll have to get rid of tons of stuff fast. We're starting now with all our B&G possessions, since we won't be keeping our storage rooms  in PA either. 

 

We got rid of one 10' x 20' storeroom when we pulped several tons of Bound & Gagged magazines last April. Now it's time to get rid of a second storeroom, much of which is filled with cartons of B&G videos. 

 

Going through the room yesterday, I found a large box we set aside years ago for copyright and other purposes. Inside I discovered a quantity of video titles I thought I'd sold out of years ago, in their original packaging.

 

They, and all our other DVDs, will go on sale tomorrow. The sale will last until the end of August. At that time, all the DVDs that haven't been sold will be trashed.

 

Hell Week Memories

Back in 1994 I found myself in L.A. with Bob Jones (of the foot fetish videos, not the university), and John Stevens, owner of Close-Up Productions. I helped them out on at least two videos (Hell Week and Bondage Dreams), scripting the stories and tying up the "actors" who got tied up: namely some real cute guys with real beautiful bodies, wearing white sweatsox and sneakers. That was, as you can imagine, a difficult, distasteful task for me.

B&G Relaunch Update

Last week I didn’t do my regular Friday relaunch update because our internet was down, and remained down through the weekend and into the first days of this week. I hate it when I fail to make good on a promise, but the truth is it didn’t matter, I had nothing to report.

 

Since my mass mailing went out in mid-January, I’ve heard from quite a few people who’ve sent me offers to contribute to a crowd-funding campaign as well as  suggestions on how we might hook up with one or more existing bondage sites. Thanks so much to all of you.

 

In the end, however, after endless discussions and attempts to see how we might make a go of things, Lee and I have come to the painful conclusion—for us at least—that we can’t do it, and will stop trying to relaunch. We could never raise the necessary funds through crowd sourcing to create the website we envisage and believe indispensable for success, and we’ve spent too much time working toward a Bound & Gagged that would stand proudly on its own as we once did, to try and start all over again as part of another entity.

 

We might give more consideration to that latter option if we were 20 years younger; but sadly, we can’t help feeling we’re just too old—old age being the most unpardonnable crime in the gay community—to start over from scratch. The original Bound & Gagged was great, and we hope it will be remembered that way, not as an old nag that tried to compete in a race for which it was no longer qualified, and got sent to a glue factory—which is where horses were sent, they said, when I was young. Is that still the case?

 

If any of you knows someone, or knows of someone, who might be interested in buying our company, the magazine and website, together with its huge archives of stories, videos, photos and art, please tell them to contact me. But do it quickly, because I’m about to start dismantling everything, starting with two storerooms piled high with back issues, DVDS, photos, artwork and miscellaneous items. The storerooms themselves cost us thousands of dollars every year.

 

As all readers know, I sell back issues for only $1 apiece. If any of you have been considering buying them, do it now, because within the next month or so I’m going to send every back issue to be shredded, keeping only a few copies of each. Once that happens, the remaining copies, all in perfect condition, of course, will go for much higher prices.

 

(Within the next few days I’ll start selling long out-of-print issues from my personal archive. These will go for very high prices indeed, starting at $150.00 apiece. If any of you have been looking for specific back issues, and want them pristine, now’s the time to write me about them. I may only have two or three copies of some. Don’t even ask about issues 16, 36 and 38. I only have one copy of each myself, and I’m holding on to those).

 

I’ll soon be dumping box upon box of Bound & Gagged DVDs, including the ones I’m selling right now for $4.99 apiece. Within a month or so, everything in those boxes will be trash, so get them while you can.

 

If anyone is interested in any particular artwork that appeared in B&G, or that we sold separately, now’s the time to buy it.

 

On his death I inherited many original works of the great bondage artist, Lazy Leo, including his magnum opus, “The Estate,” a massive 60-page work. I’ll be selling separate pages from “The Estate” for $150 apiece, unless someone makes me a good offer for the entire edition first. I’ll also be putting up more of Lazy Leo’s artwork for sale as I go through it.

 

Looking for something in particular? Have any questions? Write me. I’ll continue with this blog, always soliciting personal experiences; my email address is not about to change; and I will always love corresponding with readers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Relaunch Update

The terrible weather aside, this has been a much better week. Which is to say many more people contacted me to say they’d be happy to contribute to a crowd-funding campaign, some for small amounts which are all they can afford, others for several hundred dollars or even a thousand. Contributions of all sizes will be welcomed.

 

Our thinking right now is to try and raise money in phases, so that we don’t ask for one large, impossible sum from the start. The first phase would be for design and development, or rather for development, as the design is pretty much already done; The development, which must restart from scratch, will be the most expensive amount we’ll be asking for. We’ve had long talks with our developer, who is putting together a full budget and timeline as I write.

 

Having raised enough money for development, we’ll set to work trying to raise enough to make a few videos. In the old days, we used to budget $12,000 for a 2-3 person video; and while video quality has improved, I can’t imagine that the process itself is any less expensive these days. Bound & Gagged has to offer more than simple home movies—not that it won’t offer those, too: equipment still has be be bought or rented, locations have to be found and rented (we used to have our own studio and hopefully will again, but that’s in the future); actors, videographers, editors, directors, lighting and sound people, not to mention gofers/assistants, still have to be paid.

 

Ideally, we could make two or three videos for the price of one, using the same actors for a feature-length movie and then for one or more shorter scenes repurposed from stories in our archives, but until we’ve done that at least once, I’ll stick to $12,000 per. On the other hand, I can say that if any of you out there would be willing to volunteer your equipment and/or skills at such things as videotaping, editing, tying up, and anything else you can think of, not to mention sexiness for performing often helplessly in front of the camera, please contact me. The less we have to pay, the more we can do.

 

Once we raise enough money, get the development going, and the site in a viewable condition—I’ll let you know how long that will take next week—we’ll invite all those of you who have contributed to come to the site, play with it and inundate us with your comments, reactions, thoughts, advice, etc., so that on completion Bound & Gagged really will be able to call itself the site of the male bondage community, a production of the male bondage community.

 

A third phase, once the site was nearing completion and we began making videos, would be to raise enough money to keep it going and constantly providing new material (in other words for a full-time employee or two) until it can run on its own. I think it would be able to run on its own pretty quickly, but I'd feel more comfortable with a cushion, which I think could be filled by another $25K.

 

I’ll update again next Friday—or sooner, if something important happens. In the meantime, please write me your thoughts on what I’ve said. Put them in the comments section, or email me at [email protected]. 

Bondage in Context?

I've had some nice responses but not nearly enough from my relaunch post of two days ago. I'm going to have to hear from a lot more readers if we're even going to consider trying to relaunch.

 

Here's one email I got, which I blush to post. I post it nevertheless because it touches on something that seems to me very important: the importance of videos with whole stories where the bondage with or without sm has a context, as opposed to videos which just show bondage/sm scenes.

 

In response to your recent blog entry with the question of whether or not to go through relaunching your website.

 

When I became of age, the first website I subscribed to was Bound & Gagged. Unfortunately, the website was shut down shortly after and I never really got to enjoy the site. Of all the porn sites there are out there today, Bound & Gagged would be the one website I would always keep a subscription.

 

What made your site so special was that you played with the fantasy. I don't mean to trash talk other directors' work, but there is so much of today's work that's just superficial and focuses more on hot models than an actual story. For me, the story has always been the most important part because it's what makes it real, it's what connects me to the characters and takes me in.

 

One of my favorite movies was your Bondage Under Construction video, where you had two cute guys messing around in a cabin. What you did was a work of art. You directed an actual movie, you had scenes that set up the story and my favorite part was actually where Jim emptied his backpack and the way Brent reacted when he saw it and when he was getting gagged.

 

Ever since Bound & Gagged, I have never seen one single male bondage film with that kind of depth and story. For me, the relaunch of Bound & Gagged isn't about getting more porn, it's about your work. And to be honest, I wouldn't care if it wasn't called Bound & Gagged anymore, I would just like to see you direct again. So even if your project doesn't succeed, I sincerely hope that you won't give up because you are, in my opinion, a legend.

 

I'll be writing this reader personally, but let me just say thank you here. And asking others reading this to send me their thoughts on this subject as well.

 

 

To Relaunch or Not to Relaunch

I’ve been bad about posting here this week. Spent most of it personally answering email responses to my mass mailing of January 15^th, which I posted here as well. I’m amazed at how many people have been writing me, jumping on the idea that we try a crowdfunding program like Kickstarter, some saying they didn’t have a lot of money but would gladly contribute at least $25, most saying they’d happily kick in $100, a few even offering sizably more. It’s got Lee and me giving serious thought to going that route, which we’ll be talking about with our lawyer next week.

 

Kickstarter is the best-known crowdfunding source, but as I’ve told everyone who’s written me, it doesn’t accept “adult” projects. On the other hand, there are more adult-friendly sites around, and we’ll be looking into them.

 

I’d been wondering if Lee and I couldn’t simply create our own crowdfunding escrow account, establishing a goal of a certain amount of money which would have to be raised by a certain deadline (say three months from the date we started), and returned if we failed to meet the goal. Lee thought no one would trust us to do it like that, and we might better have our law firm (one of the top firms in New York) direct the escrow account. But a correspondent I suggested this to said it’s important to make it as easy as possible for people willing to invest in a crowdfunding project, which is why an already existing program might be the best way to go. That way, with one or two clicks they could make contributions in escrow-form into something like PayPal.

 

The suggestions and advice of everyone reading this would be greatly appreciated.

 

The minimum amount we require to design, develop and then, once relaunched, survive for at least six months—at which time we believe the company should be able to go it alone—is $100,000.

 

But before I go further, I need to hear from readers of this blog whom I haven’t heard from yet. Do you want me to continue trying to restart Bound & Gagged? And would you be willing to invest anywhere from a few dollars to the sky’s the limit to make this happen? Unless I feel strongly that I have the support from you, who remain my most loyal followers, I can’t see a reason for going on with this.

 

Write me, please, at [email protected]. I’ll answer every email personally, no matter how long it takes. But I’d prefer you to communicate with me via email than through the comments section here, since one of the things I will require is your individual email addresses, in order to put you on my new mailing list. The majority of addresses on the mass mailing we sent out two weeks ago were, obviously, very old, so we had, as expected, a tremendous number of bouncebacks.

 

I’ll post the results of what I hear from you next Friday and, if we do decide to go ahead, give regular weekly updates here on our progress.