At the End of My Tether

I didn’t intend this to be a cautionary tale, but it worked out that way. It just goes to show how experienced self-bondagers can still get “stuck”—in my case, through a series of incidents involving recklessness, false assumptions, and impatience.

My employer allows me to work from home on occasion. Now, if you have that kind of arrangement, I’m sure you have probably worked in whatever seemed comfortable to you—pajamas and slippers, old sweats, or—perhaps—nothing at all.  I got the idea for my home work environment from an old union bargaining poster, that portrayed workers chained to their desks.

The main feature of the arrangement is the tether, a fifteen-foot steel cable dog tie-out.  I affixed a heavy ring-bolt through the frame of my massive desk, using lock nuts in such a way it would take tools to remove it.  I can then padlock the tether to the desk and the other end to my bondage, which allows me enough slack to move around the upper floor of my house, including most importantly the bathroom,  and about half of the master bedroom, where I keep my bondage gear and keys.

It was a Monday.  I was scheduled to work my normal shift, 8AM to 4:30PM.  Unusually, my mistress’ work had her working 1PM to 9PM.  Seeing an opportunity, at 12:30 I set my status indicators to “work at home,” and shifted to my house.

Since I had done this before, it didn’t take me long to get set up while my computer was booting up and connecting to the network.  First, I stashed a cache of keys outside the house in the back yard. Visualizing a squirrel or crow carrying off the small ring, I chained and padlocked the ring to the iron frame of a bench on our terrace.  While shielded from most direct view, the bench is overlooked by upstairs windows of two neighbors’ houses, so there is a bit of risk involved in recovering the keys if one is naked and chained as I would be.  Back in the house, I took care to put all my other keys out of reach except the ones I would actually use to escape.

Then, I took off all my clothes and put on my chain set. The center point is a hinged metal belt that locks around my waist and can’t be removed without unlocking it.  There is a metal collar that locks at the back. Depending from the front of the collar is a chain that is locked to the waist belt. About half-way down the chest, a finer chain is attached, which I lock to my nipple rings with small padlocks.  Three other chains are attached to the waist belt.  One goes to ankle shackles, which I have snubbed up to a short hobble of about eight inches.  One has two small padlocks that I attach to the steel chastity device I was already wearing, one at the base, and one at the tip.  The third has a pair of standard handcuffs attached again by about eight inches of chain. I would not use those at this stage, but they would come into play later.

Instead, I put on a pair of Smith & Wesson handcuffs which take a non-standard key, and which have been modified to have a twelve-inch chain. When these are not attached to the waist belt, I can type and mouse with perfect ease. The keys to these cuffs were put on a high shelf.  I then put an extra padlock and my favorite gag in my workroom for use later.

The last stage was padlocking the free end of the tether to my waist belt, which anchored me solidly to the desk in the workroom.  I then set about placing the key to the tether. 

For this bondage, I was using what I call a phased release. First, I would have to get the keys to the tether. Unlocking that would allow me to move about the house and go outside to get the key ring that had the majority of keys to my chains on it.  Upon freeing myself from the rest of my bondage, I would then be able to reach to the high shelf and get the Smith & Wesson keys, which were the last bit.

In the past, I had left the tether key in the bedroom. There is a small throw rug at the foot of the bed, which is about the limit of the tether. I had tossed the key onto the rug at a point outside my reach, and, when I came to get it, had to use my feet to pull the rug to me to get the key—a simple task, and no longer satisfying.  Looking at the situation, I calculated that if I pulled the rug out of the way, and dropped the key in a similar position on the bare floor, I should be able to get it if I extended my legs and pulled it to me with my feet.  Pulling to the limit of my tether, I dropped the key.

The key and ring landed almost exactly where I had intended. However, it then bounced, and came to rest a good foot further away and over against the wall. I kind of figured I had screwed myself at that point, but I figured, what the hell—in for a penny, in for a pound, I would play out the game as I had planned it, and deal with the consequences. Besides, I had to get back to work.

Work that afternoon went well. Traffic was light, people were congenial, and no one I was working with via e-mail, phone, or instant message had the least idea that I was happily naked and chained to my desk, a literal wage slave. 

When four-thirty came, I started my shut-down process, picked up my gag, and buckled it on tightly. Once my system was shut off, I closed the standard handcuffs around my wrists below the S&W cuffs. So, now I was wearing two pair of handcuffs, the second set of which was locked to my waist by eight inches of chain.  Then, I picked up the extra padlock I had provided and, with a good bit of fiddling, hooked it through the S&W chain close to the cuffs, and then locked it through the cluster of locks and rings at my waist.  True, this made the standard handcuff arrangement redundant, but I didn’t want them just dangling around for what came next.  Besides, more is always better, right--?

So, there I was: naked, gagged, shackled, collared, with my hands cuffed to my waist, and I was tethered by a steel cable to a 200 pound desk holding all my computer equipment, that moreover could only be moved out of the small room it was in by being upended.  There were chains locked to my nipple rings and to my chastity device. These latter are largely for decoration/sensation, but they would make good “grab handles” for anyone who caught me in this state. And besides,  those are more sets of locks that have to be opened before I can get the chains off.

Having now reached the point of maximum bondage, I began my journey towards freedom by shuffling into the bedroom.  Getting to the corner of our bed at the tether’s end, it seemed that the key was further away than before.  Going back to my workroom, I carefully made sure every possible bit of slack was available and tried again.  It didn’t look good, but I decided that I would work my plan anyway. If nothing else, I deserved to be put over the jumps for getting myself into this.

Gingerly, I got down to the floor.  Getting down to the floor and up again in bondage is something I have practiced, and I recommend every self-bondager should be proficient in.  Once down on the floor, I saw sure evidence that this was going to fail: standing up, I had been able to “cut the corner” of our bed because the tether line was above it, and gain an extra foot or so. On the floor, the line had to go around the corner of the bed base, which brought me up shorter yet. Nevertheless, I writhed to the end of my tether and stretched out my legs toward the key, but it was hopeless. I was a good foot and a half away from it.

The next task was getting up from the floor, which was substantially more difficult than getting down, in the restricted space between my dresser and the bed. At this point, the tether is actually a help, since pulling against it helped me get my knees under me, at which point I could roll up to my feet.

I began looking around the part of the room I could access for something to extend my reach.  I had left my trousers on the bed, and I worked the leather belt out of the loops.  I hoped to catch the key ring with the belt buckle, but the belt was too short, and trying to flail out with it was hampered by my bound hands.  I tossed the belt at the key ring, hoping to then drag it to me, but missed.

Then, I thought of the throw rug, which was more than long enough to reach to where the key was. Manipulating it with my foot,  I pushed the end of the rug past the key, then slid it over against the key, and pulled it back.  Initially, I had success! The rug pulled the key a couple of inches my direction before the friction quit working and the rug slid free. Trying again, I only managed to push the end of the key under the edge of the baseboard, where it stuck tightly enough that no amount of teasing the ring with the rug would drag it free.

At this point, I was feeling pretty well stymied.  I was scarcely nearer the key than when I had started, and, if anything, it was now harder to get.  My nipples were sore from pulling on their chain when fighting my up from the floor, and my elbows and knees felt mildly floorburned.  I also had a raging erection straining in my chastity device, since there’s nothing like that feeling of being really helplessly bound to turn me on.   My situation was, as a friend used to say, “hopeless, but not serious.” My mistress would be home—in a little matter of four and half more hours--. In the interim time I could be reasonably comfortable and could use the bathroom. I’d get pretty thirsty, though, and the scolding I would get would be pretty unpleasant.  Nevertheless, I gave serious thought to giving up. I even thought about calling my Mistress at work to tell her that I was OK, but to not be surprised by the condition she would find me in. However, I couldn’t reach the gag buckle, either, so I fortunately gave up on that as well.

At last my eye fell upon a recent addition to our bondage props. This was a cattle goad, which looks kind of like the elephant goad or “ankus” you see in movies. This one is about four feet long, has a light shaft like a golf club, and a point with a hook on the end. It was leaning against a shelf near the far side of the head of the bed, and it looked to me like, if I climbed on to the bed, I might be able to reach it. (Our king-size bed is basically square, so the distance from head to foot is approximately the same as from side to side.) Since I had slack enough to reach the foot of the bed, I should be able to get across it at the top.

So it proved, but it was a struggle. For one thing, our bed is a water bed, which means its easy to roll into, but hard to get out of with bound hands, since it has rails at the edges. I had to get up on the bed, squirm across, and work my hips up onto the rail at the far side (without falling off) and extend my legs over to the shelf and get hold of the goad.  This was complicated by the fact that I had left other bondage gear strewn on the covers.  I was able to push it out of the way, but had a bad moment when the laces of a leather corset wrapped around an ankle. All I needed was more impediments! I managed to kick free of it, and reached out. The shaft of the goad fit nicely between my toes, and I was able to lift it and pull it to me. A success at last! (Picking up things with your toes is another useful self-bondage skill. I was thankful I had decided to go without stockings--.)

I got the goad into my hands and pushed it to the edge of the bed, then writhed back the way I had come, and managed to struggle off the bed without falling. I picked up the goad and reached for the key. I was able to get the hook of the goad through the ring on the first try, congratulating myself on the elegant maneuver. I knew I had a ways to go to free myself yet, but I was sure I could do it. I didn’t know how difficult it would be.

Having unlocked myself from the tether, my next goal was the keyring outdoors.  To get there, I had to make my way downstairs, which was a slow and painful process due to the shortness of my hobble. Since the stairs curve away from the hand rail at the bottom, I sat down and took the last few steps sliding on my butt.  Getting to the back door and out was no problem. It was a clear, bright afternoon. The air was mildly on the cool side, but I hardly noticed. I crouched down by the bench and worked the key to the padlock there off the ring, which allowed me to open the lock and retrieve the rest of the keys.  My initial plan was to free my hands from my waist, which meant opening the padlock that held my hand cuffs close, and then taking off the standard handcuffs, which would give me a lot more freedom to act.

My plan came a cropper with the padlock. This was one of those designed to work with a standard handcuff key.  However, not all “standard” keys and locks are created equal, and the handcuff key I had, which I knew would work with the cuffs and shackles, didn’t work with this lock. I had known the lock was reliable, and used it many times, just apparently never with this key.  OK, then. I tried to undo the standard handcuffs, with no luck either. In this case, I had carelessly put the cuffs on with the keyholes facing the S&W cuffs and when I tried to move so as to insert the key, the stress pulled the S&W cuffs over the keyhole.

Frustrated, I was at least able to unshackle my feet, which made moving around a lot easier. Taking the keys I went back inside.

Back upstairs, I tried various combinations of keys and locks, finding, to my chagrin, that the position of my hands and the locks made it virtually impossible to get keys into any of the crucial locks. (This usually is not a problem, but the stubborn padlock foiled my usual order of unlocking.)  I decided to unlock such ones as I could, hoping that any additional play in the system would work to my favor. So, I unlocked the chain from the waist belt to the chastity, and the chain from the waist belt to the collar. This didn’t really free me from anything, but it did allow me to work a key into the “master” lock that held all the other chains to the belt.  Since I was then able to pull my cuffed hands away from my body, I was able to reach up to where I had stowed the Smith & Wesson cuff key. Once free of the S&W cuffs, I had no trouble removing everything else.

Due to this “perfect storm” of screw-ups, it took me a good forty-five minutes to escape from a bondage I can usually get out of in five. I was reckless placing my primary escape key, and reckless in going through with the rest of the bondage even though I knew there was likely a problem. It was careless not to have tested a lock with the key I intended to use.  I was sloppy putting the second handcuffs on. Fortunately, there was a happy ending. I tidied everything away in good time, and Mistress doesn’t know. Since I’m currently doing a chastity regimen, I didn’t get to relieve myself afterward, although memories of the situation kept me up with erections pushing at the chastity most of the night.  That, with the various other bruises and abrasions I acquired, I accepted as appropriate punishment.

08.11.11