Kate works the strap around my chest, feeds it through the buckle just under my armpit and pulls it tight. The table’s padded surface presses firmly against my shoulder blades.
“Tight enough, Luca-Baby?”
She always asks it, as if she doesn’t know at least as well as I, how to do this properly. Rather than answering, I reply to her by perching my lips as an invitation for a snog, which she provides unquestioning.
“Never felt better!”
She grins and forces another kiss on me, without asking me for permission!
A second strap is tightened around my hips, and more over my knees and ankles. I am not going to escape this table any time soon.
I’ve been into bondage for as long as I can remember, which is just as well under the circumstances. My arms will be tied up next, nothing too extravagant, just cuffs around the wrists to stop them moving about.
I’ve always had this thing about bondage, proper bondage, heavy-duty restraint – not merely ‘hands tied behind your back’-level beginners’ stuff, but complete immobilisation. Not that I ever acted on it in real life, I just dreamt up the scenarios when I was lying in bed. As a boy of about 6, for example, I was fascinated by Han Solo getting frozen in Carbonite. I imagined that he was awake and fully aware inside that solid block, even though the movie made it clear that he wasn’t. In bed, I would take up the pose and lie perfectly still for as long as possible, pretending that I was desperate to get out of the rock-hard material, knowing that it could be months before my friends might be able to rescue me.
I don’t think I ever woke up in my ‘Han Solo’ pose, because that should have created a lasting memory in my impressionable 6-year-old mind.
“Ready?”
“Go for it!”
Kate sets the table moving, gently tilting my head up and my feet down.
At other times during my youth, I would fantasise about being an archaeologist who encounters a group of grave-robbers in an Egyptian tomb. To hide their crime and preserve the secret location of the treasure, they captured me, wrapped me from head to toe in layer after layer of stiff impregnated linen and stuck me in a sarcophagus like a living mummy. Through a hollow reed, they would keep me alive with the juice of some nutritious plant, while they emptied the tomb around me over the course of months or perhaps years – cut off from the world, I had no way of keeping time, of course. I was only aware of the all-embracing restraint and my total defencelessness.
“Whoa … A moment, please …”
I am sure Kate was ready for it, because it almost always happens, this sudden wave of dizziness and light-headedness when I am almost halfway towards fully upright.
When I am all with it again, I send her an apologetic smile. “All good for now, let’s move on …”
The closest I came to living my bondage fantasies as a child was being buried by my brother on a French beach once. We dug a hole deep enough for me to sit on my knees, with just my head sticking up above the level of the sand after he had filled it back in. I was stuck, utterly and helplessly stuck. With my arms by my sides forced down by the heavy weight of the sand and no way to use my legs to push me up, I was completely unable to move until Arthur dug me out 4 hours later. I was about 10, I think, and in my recollection, it was the first time in my life that I was truly sexually aroused … and that sensation was mostly caused by my total helplessness.
For full disclosure, I have been aroused numerous times since, usually for non-bondage related reasons.
“Here we are, Handsome, all the way upright, without further mishaps … Can I get you anything?”
“I am good for now, thanks.”
“Then I’ll make a start on dinner. You stay here and enjoy the view. Give me a shout when you want something – and I mean ‘Anything’, Luca!”
It was the complete helplessness that my younger self found so fascinating about that form of heavy bondage, I seem to recall, the fact that the victim was unable to even move a finger, was utterly at the mercy of his tormentors.
While I was buried, Arthur had tweaked my nose and flicked my ears repeatedly, he had pointed out that he could, without any effort, suffocate me by covering my mouth and nose, and for an hour he had put an upturned bucket over my head so that I was cut off from the world. Until my parents forced him to dig me out, I couldn’t do anything to resist my brother, free myself or even just remove the bucket. And astonishingly, it was that particular aspect of the experience that made me feel more excited than anything else.
That is why it is so ironic that I would find myself in this situation.
I am now living in a similar form of bondage, you see. A life where I am helpless and unable to move a finger, an existence where I am at the mercy of the people around me. Unfortunately, I am never going to be rescued, because when helplessness became my reality, I was because I broke my neck.
That occurred when I was twenty, two years ago now, or just over two to be precise. At a pool party in a friend’s garden, I lost my bearings and elegantly swan-dived into the swimming pool at the shallow-end – and I wasn’t even drunk! Long story short, I smashed head-first into the bottom of the pool, shattered my neck and damaged my spinal cord rather badly. A week later, when I was finally allowed to wake up again, I found that I was fully paralysed from the base of the neck down. And while there was some faint hope during those early days, that I might regain some movement, the hoped-for recovery never materialised in practice.
Tell me that that isn’t ironic: to fantasise about immobilisation and helplessness your entire youth, and then suddenly find yourself as thoroughly and permanently immobilised as any human being could possibly be ... and hating the experience with a vengeance.
‘Enjoy the view,’ Kate had said, but it is the same vista I watch every day, and not the most riveting sight in my opinion: a corner of our back garden, the cherry tree next door – which can be entertaining, but only for about a week, when every sparrow in the county seems to come over to feed on its produce – and the top of the gasometer on Prince Rupert Street.
Oh … bloody hell …
I’ve got a sudden itch just above my ear.
I manage to alleviate it by rubbing my head against the surface of the table, but predictably, that only means that the bloody thing shifts elsewhere. I hate itches so incredibly much … Only someone who cannot move his arms even a little bit, can really understand how utterly infuriating and draining they can be. The current one has relocated to just above my left eyebrow, where I have nothing available to rub it against.
Kate would help, gladly. Kate is a Godsend – she was my fiancé when I decided to check out from the land of the mobile, and she is my wife now. One squeak from me and she’d come over to scratch my eyebrow, then my nose or my ear or wherever it moves next, until everything has settled down. She would come without a moment’s hesitation and without recrimination, but … well, I need her for too many things already. I try to be less of a burden by not asking for help when I am experiencing only a rather minor problem …
… although she will strenuously deny that I am a burden to her at all …
… but we all know that that is nonsense, because there is barely a waking second when she isn’t doing things, preparing for, or thinking about every actual and possible problem that my lack of mobility might cause me – or to a lesser extent, might cause her.
This tilting table exercise, in which I am ‘standing’ upright for half an hour each day is good for my bones, apparently, and for my blood vessels as well. It is utterly boring, of course, but my schedule hasn’t been overly busy since I came home a year ago. You will have gathered that the straps around my body are less to stop me escaping, and more to stop me flopping limply to the ground when the table turns upright. I already have my body to ensure that I cannot escape any situation at all.
With nothing more exciting on my mind, I often tend to spend this time fantasising that I am being held against my will, though – that Kate tied me down on the table against my will, and that she threatens me with the cruellest torture unless I reveal my secrets. If nothing else, it is nice to fantasise that this hopeless immobility is only temporary.
“Sip, Handsome?”
My wife, lover, and light of my life has appeared beside me with a glass of water and offers the straw, only just in reach of my lips if I strain my neck. They taught her that trick as an exercise for me when I was just in rehab, to improve my head movement and exercise the neck muscles. Those are in as good a shape as they will ever be by now, but Kate still goes on challenging me – or perhaps she’s trying to tease me, torment me by providing desperately needed water just outside reach.
“Thanks, Baby … Now that you are here, can you scratch my left eyebrow? … Bit firmer? Oh, Christ, that feels nice … and new my left cheek, please …”
“You should have called me, Luca, when it started to itch.”
“It wasn’t that bad. And I worried that tonight’s dinner might suffer if I distracted you.”
With my face adequately scratched, I pout my lips again, wishing her to kiss me again. A normal man would have done it himself … 25 months ago, I would too. I would have wrapped my arms around her tiny waist, and I would have pulled her into me. Now I am bitterly confined inside this useless body, and I need my wife to action all affirmative kissing that happens between us.
“You really should just call for me, Luca-Baby, when you need any help. Even if it is simply something tiny, like scratching an itch. I love you so much, that it will never be a strain when you want such things done for you.”
I promise that I will from now on. She knows I am lying and tells me again that I am not a burden for her. She tries to reassure me that she’ll never tire of being there for me. I nod, but I am not convinced that that is entirely right, though. She means it now, I am sure, she’ll do anything for me now. But in 10 years’ time? Or in 15? Or 20? Hopefully, by not over-imposing on my lover now, I can avoid her getting frustrated with being wedded to an utterly useless lump of human body.
“Fifteen more minutes, Handsome …”
Before returning to the kitchen, she runs a finger across my forehead to push my fringe from my eyes. I grin appreciatively, even though getting hair out of my eyes is the one action I can still perform myself, just with a sharp flick of my head.
Looking down at my body, I do truly seem to be standing up. If I ignore the unnatural thinness of my limbs, I could be a normal man, strapped to a board by his cruel mistress. Except that that normal man would be allowed to walk off afterwards, of course, and that simple manoeuvre will never be possible for me.
It really is a lucky coincidence that I am into bondage.
Let me first make it absolutely clear without any room for doubt, that my disability is awful. I hate being paralysed like this. I hate being so dependent on Kate and on the daytime-carers who look after me when she’s at work. I hate not being able to feed myself, wash myself, turn over in bed, or move into my wheelchair by myself. I absolutely detest that I cannot go to the toilet by myself. I don’t want to be disabled, never wanted to be disabled, and I definitely didn’t dive into that swimming pool on purpose trying to become disabled!
I really, really, truly hate my situation.
And yet …
… deep down, in the most forbidden corners of my heart, there is a level of excitement at my predicament.
For all those years when I was young, the fantasy that I had been immobilised, utterly and completely immobilised under duress, was at the core of my desires. Since I was a small child, I imagined being forcibly restrained, not being allowed to move again for months, years even in my wildest dreams. But even during my most-aroused teenage nights, I had not envisaged that I might be forced to endure complete immobility for every second of every day of the rest of my life. Even at my most excited, I hadn’t dared to dream that I might never be able to move just one finger again. Yet that reality has come true for me in the most extreme way … since my accident, I have been imprisoned against my will inside my own body, without any realistic prospect of release.
For as long as I can remember, the thought of being helpless and powerless in the hands of others would arouse me, make my stomach flutter and my heart pound. With moving my head as my only remaining ‘superpower’, there are very few people who are more helpless and incapable than I am now. I may not be in the hands of an enemy, but I am totally dependent on my helpers to survive even just one day.
Despite my frequent frustration – and my regular anger – about what happened to my life, deep in my heart I am also feeling a thrill sometimes, a flutter of elation that this awful situation is irreversible. Not often, I am not some weirdo fetishist, but now-and-then there is this sudden burst of excitement, just a few moments, when my brain suddenly realises that ‘it is a year since you last moved your body’ or ‘you can’t even sit upright without support’.
That most often occurs at moments when I manage to temporarily forget the reality of my life.
The last time was a month ago, when we went surfing with friends – well, they went surfing, Kate and I watched from the beach. I used to be a surfer, more enthusiastic than talented, and I still enjoy watching my childhood friends, especially when they are wiped out by a big wave and wash up on the beach half-drowned. When we’d arrived that morning, Mikey and Rashid had lifted me from my wheelchair onto a sunbed, so by lunchtime I was nice and relaxed, enjoying a rare day that allowed me to be almost ‘normal’ for a while. Feeling a little thirsty, I unthinkingly reached out for the bottle of water in the sand next to me … and nothing happened, of course.
Normally I’d feel a stab of frustration, but instead there was excitement this time! A wave of joyful exhilaration that I wasn’t just unable to grab that bottle now, but that I would never be able to reach for it again. I would never ever be able to give myself a mouthful of water. I would never even be able to just wipe my lips after someone else held the bottle for me.
That buzz was almost immediately replaced by resignation that my mind didn’t consider that thought nearly as pleasurable as my heart made it out to be, but those few moments of ecstasy were real, and they were a bondage adventure in themselves. In a perverse way, I am being kept in total and perpetual bondage by a scar on my spinal cord.
Strolling into my limited vista of the outside world, Mrs Underwood – her of the cherry tree – looks over the fence and, seeing me ‘standing’ in the living room, gives me a wave. I exaggerate my smile and nod, so that she can see them. She wouldn’t have expected a wave back, of course, because my accident and the resulting utter uselessness are well-known to people for miles around.
To avoid any further attempts at interaction, I close my eyes and pretend that I am whole. No damage to my cord, no paralysis of my entire body … just a normal man strapped to a table by his sadistic girlfriend. I wonder what she has planned for me, once I have been restrained long enough to leave my muscles drained of all strength. Or maybe she just likes to see me strapped up and has no intention to release me ever again. Imagine that, having to live the rest of your life with your limbs strapped down … Not the most imaginative fantasy for me, to be fair.
“Time’s up, Luca-Baby!”
I open my eyes to see Kate staring at me with a happy grin across her face.
“Look at you, standing there, casually leaning against a wall like a cheap rent boy, desperately trying to attract a lonely sailor …”
With two big paces she stands up against me, getting onto tiptoes while I strain my head down for a long passionate snog. I’ll have to forgive her for her less-than-flattering description of my astonishing feat of not collapsing into a heap on the floor.
“You know that you are the most beautiful man in the world, right, Luca-Baby?”
“If you ignore everything below the jaw, perhaps …”
It is a conversation that we are having with some regularity: Kate pretending that I am still handsome, me putting her right that that is plainly ridiculous. My face is nice enough, I will admit, very nice perhaps if you are into men with a cute babyface, but the rest is a wreck.
“Well, I quite like the rest of you too. Especially this bit here …”
Her hands were roaming. That too is something that happens with some regularity. They descended along my chest and belly in search of my junk, trying to get it to react.
I do have sensation, you see.
It is something that surprises a lot of people, that you can be completely paralysed, but retain some feeling below a spinal cord injury – an ASIA B injury the doctors call it. I have patchy feeling throughout my body: some bits are completely numb, others are very poor, the best areas are ‘not great’, but I have some feeling and I am deeply grateful for that reprieve.
Among the parts of my body with better sensation is most of my crotch, luckily, so I can feel it when she starts to rub me through the fabric of my tracksuit bottoms. I can feel it and enjoy it immensely. My relationship with my manhood is a one-way affair. When my mind is feeling horny, my tool isn’t interested, but when Kate’s mechanical attentions manage to make it grow hard, my brain does get very excited indeed.
“Oh, fuck, yeah …” I groan when I feel myself get erect. I really am that ‘normal’ man now, in the hands of his malicious lover, who is going to keep him on edge, while he cannot resist her ministrations because she has tied his limbs tightly to the table.
I am feeling so horny now, so eager to grab Kate, so ready to bend her over the back of the sofa and ravage her, impale her violently on my monster and ram it in deep and often.
These are the moments when I despair of my disability most, because the frantic, but futile, urge to thrust my loins is so overwhelming right now.
These are also the moments when I most strongly feel like I am kept in perpetual bondage, because arousal and being immobile are so closely linked in my mind. Desperately wishing to have sex but being unable to do anything to bring that about, is making the desire to buck and thrust only more unbearably magnificent.
I am desperate to throw myself at Kate, but in reality, I can only push my head forward in an attempt to make contact with her, hopefully kiss her, or otherwise just gently nibble at her ear. But when even her ear turns out to be out of my reach, I am completely at the mercy of whatever my lover is interested in doing to me.
“Bed?” I suggest, hopefully.
Several times a week we have sex … yes, really! Don’t worry, you are not the only one who finds that notion shocking.
But genuinely, several times a week, while I am draped on my back in bed, Kate gets me hard, lowers herself onto me and plays with what I have to offer. Because my manhood doesn’t receive my brain’s instructions, I can no longer have an orgasm, but I can feel what she does, and I very much enjoy the sensation. I also enjoy the sight of Kate who can definitely still climax, and who tends to do so noisily and repeatedly when she’s urgently working my assets long into the night.
She throws a glance at the clock behind me. “We are supposed to be at Paul and Rashid’s in half an hour … By the time I have managed to get you into bed, we will be too late already.”
“Please?” I try my best puppy-dog eyes, but Kate is lovelessly strict today.
“Tonight,” she offers. “When we are in bed tonight, I will make you a happy man.”
But I am feeling horny now, and the prospect of sex at a distant hour is not going to make that any less urgent. I will have to be graceful about being thwarted, I suppose.
“You do that a few 100 times a day, Baby … with everything you do for me.”
“Oh, Luca …” She seems shocked by that thought. “Please don’t say that, because I am not trying to make you happy. Those things are all – just normal love.”
My smarmy comment… although actually it wasn’t that smarmy, because she does genuinely make me feel happy and grateful when she helps me – My comment does have the pleasant side-effect of encouraging her to give me another kiss, before she turns all businesslike.
“Right, let’s get you back into your chair then, otherwise we won’t be able to make it to Paul’s birthday drinks before the others have left for home again.”
Tilting the table back is a lot easier on my brain, without sudden drops in blood pressure and bouts of dizziness. The straps are loosened, and the fabric of the hoist is fed underneath me, all done efficiently and proficiently, after a year of us going through half-a-dozen hoist-moves a day. I must admit that, even after two years, I don’t like hoisting. Deep in my heart, I find that there is something intensely depressing about being lifted from your bed and loaded into your wheelchair like a bag of potatoes, however thoughtful and careful the person doing the hoisting might be. However, the alternative is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling 24 hours a day, and in that context, hoisting is a small price to pay for gaining an ounce of liberty.
Back home in the familiar surroundings of my wheelchair, my mind lifts instantly. I get strapped in again, tight binds under my armpits and across my hips to keep me upright, elastic bands over my ankles and wrists, lest some part of me bounces free when I come down a curb or hit a pothole. This sort of bondage will remain a major part of my life, but it is really just to keep me in place, rather than to prevent me escaping my jailor.
My jailor, the thing I cannot possibly escape from, is not as ineffective as those feeble straps.
“Can you push the controls a little more towards me, Baby?”
When I am able to reach the straw with my lips, I gently blow down it to make my chair swivel towards the patio doors. A stronger puff tells it to move forward, down the ramp into the garden.
I am moving again, sort of. I am moving around in the world of my own volition … Unfortunately, I am still captive in my own useless body.
My body is the prison I can never ever hope to escape.
THE END