Practice by Sente

Ben's recent instructional bondage video inspired me to set up a hands on lesson with him, and I wanted to share some of the pointers I picked up.

We began with the nuts and bolts, and practiced the technique Ben had shown us in the video.  I already had the basics of the two column tie down, but I had not seen the trick of passing the loose ends of the rope through the bight to tighten the cinching.  It works like a charm.  After crossing the two wrapping strands and passing the loose ends through the bight, a good solid tug tightens the rope up nicely and puts just the right amount of pressure on everything.  So I've become a big fan of the technique.   The other technical detail I picked up was to understand better just how big a difference an additional properly layered wrapping turn or two can make while applying the two column tie.  When I tried it with only two layers (4 strands), the rope bunched up during the cinching and was clearly both pinching and pressing unevenly.  Even with just an additional wrap to bring it to three layers, I could see that the rope remained much more even and much flatter against the wrists when I cinched it up.    More comfortable, as well as much more visually appealing.

On the bigger picture, Ben helped draw out the point of creativity in combining basic techniques to come up with effective and interesting bondage ideas.  For example, one question I had posed for him was how to tie someone's hands behind their neck with minimal leeway.  I had made attempts before, but always wound up with the bottom having too much wiggle room.  His first suggestion was to use a two column tie to bind the bottom's upper and lower arms together, preventing him from unbending his elbow.  (Actually, he got me to make this suggestion - a sign of good teaching.)   When I tried this on him I accidentally used a longer rope on one arm than the other, and wound up with a good length left over.  I was about to untie it and switch to a shorter rope when Ben encouraged me to use the extra to enhance the bondage, which I did by running the ends around the rope on his other arm, thus forcing him to keep his elbows raised and close together.  I also bound his wrists together with a simple two column tie at that point.

This still allowed him too much motion in his arms for my taste, so I proposed tying a chest harness and attaching the whole arrangement to that.  Ben, however, had a better idea.  Simple and elegant, yet fiendishly effective - why not tie it off to his balls, rather than to a harness?  Doing so prevented any significant movement on his part and discouraged him from even struggling much at all.  Moreover, this allowed me to set up a bit of predicament bondage, which I had told Ben I wanted to explore more.  The idea of predicament bondage is to put the sub in a position where he has to choose between two or more unpleasant predicaments. Here, by making the rope between his wrist and balls nice and tight, I was able to force him to choose between arching his back and pulling hard on his balls.   Once I had it all in place I amused myself by letting him spend a while shifting back and forth between those options futilely trying to get comfortable.   Very fun to watch.

The usefulness of a rope to the balls came up again later when I was looking for a way to tie Ben in a kneeling position from which he couldn't rise.  I first thought of tying his thighs to his lower legs with a two column tie, but that would have been awkward to apply.  An easier solution, Ben pointed out, was to tie his ankles together and then run a very short rope from them to his balls.  Once I had done that and tied his wrists and upper arms together, he was quite helplessly bound kneeling submissively.  At times he needed to relieve the pressure of his weight resting on his calves, and all he could do was lean forward, tugging on his balls, and entering into an even more humbling pose.

One last tidbit I picked up wasn't exactly about bondage per say.  Ben had made a special request to be gagged with socks I had worn while teaching, as part of a long standing professor fantasy of his.  I was sufficiently pleased by the help he had given me, so near the end of our session, while he was bound on his knees, I finally stuffed the sock in his mouth.  The trouble was I stuffed it toe first and then worked to get as much of it in as I could.  It was a thick sock, and I wound up stopping with just more than half of it in his mouth.   Ben later explained that it's more effective to ball the sock up ahead of time and then stuff the whole thing in at once.  The way I had done it the toe starts to drift towards the throat too quickly and it's hard to get enough of the sock in to fill the whole mouth.  I tried again and in went the whole thing on one go, leaving Ben effectively and happily gagged.

I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for us to build off of in Ben's next video.

-Sente