Those of us into bondage often have fantasies of being heavily tied up and gagged and then left helpless all night long. For me, one fantasy that really gets me going is the idea of having my mouth fully stuffed with a huge pair of panties crammed in there and then having my kidnapper wrap layers of tape across my lips and around my cheeks without mercy, taking pleasure in my distress so that I can only make helpless grunts and moans.

But as I’ve said before on this blog there’s fantasy and then there’s reality. In my fantasy I would end up tightly hogtied on a dirty mattress in a dark basement, with my elbows almost touching and my cheeks popping out above the heavily wrapped tape across my lips, sealing up my lower face. But the reality is that if I were tied like that, I’d be lucky if I could handle it for fifteen minutes. I’ve certainly been in ties that felt almost that strict during photoshoots and all I could do was lie there thinking, “Just get the damn shots and get me the hell out of this!”

Nowadays I’m usually the rigger and the photographer for the videos on my site, and many of the scenes I’ve shot have ended abruptly simply because the model couldn’t handle any more and had to be let out. Safety is always my absolute top concern, and I know how things can rapidly go south, so to speak, when you’re dealing with strict bondage. Not everything I shoot looks like it’s super strict but the stuff I do is generally pretty intense and, in many cases, difficult to get out of on one’s own, if not inescapable. I always like to have plenty of safety scissors on hand and I always monitor how I’m feeling myself while I shoot as well as checking in with the model a lot—maybe sometimes too much. But I don’t want any of the models I’m working with to get to the point where they’re just in agony. So I check in a lot, “You doing okay?” “Can we do ten more minutes?” and so on.

I would say that probably about a third of the scenes I’ve shot have ended with the model finally tapping out and needing to be untied. With some of the models who are very tough we might shoot for another minute or two in order to end the scene, but only if they agree to it. I never want to push anyone too hard. But there have been many many times where I’m quickly untying someone because they’ve reached their limits. The hogties can be especially tough, as well as some of the tighter layered gags. But when you’re doing strict bondage, you’re always racing against the clock to get the shots. The model can only endure so much. I even had one model say afterwards, “I didn’t realize I was going to be really tied up,” which kind of made me laugh!

When I’m doing gags, I always try to pull about a foot of tape or more off the roll before I wrap it so that it doesn’t squeeze the model’s head too tightly (same with vetwrap). But afterwards we still often end up with smashed lip syndrome, as I call it, where you can feel the indentations of your teeth pressed into the backside of your lips. When I do the self-bondage videos I almost always end up with that feeling, and I’ve endured numerous gags where I feel like I nearly have to put my jaw back in place afterwards.

Aside from scenes where the model taps out, probably another third of the scenes I’ve shot require some changes in the bondage or the gag so that the model can handle it a while longer, and occasionally I’ll have to completely retie a chest or arm tie if it’s too tight. Sometimes in the videos the model will start out with one gag and then we change it partway through, and many times the reason we change it is that the model just needs a break. And there have probably been a couple hundred videos that have simply ended abruptly because the model gave me the signal that that’s it, no more! If someone is having a tough time and I’ve already put them through the wringer, at a certain point you just have to call it quits. I don’t want anyone to end up getting hurt by pushing too hard.

Bondage really is one of the riskier kinds of BDSM play because of the obvious helplessness of the sub. Plus the tightness over time can eventually do nerve damage if it’s painfully tight. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve heard a number of stories of female models who get tied up a lot having to deal with bondage-related injuries, some long term. I suspect those injuries happen way more often than we would think. Thankfully I fully recovered from my own nerve-compression injury in my arms, which happened about ten years ago. But at the time it was scary. Both arms were tingly for about six weeks after enduring some very tight bondage and I kept thinking, “Is this ever going to go away?” I actually didn’t get tied up for about six months after that because I was a little spooked and wanted to play it safe. If my website had been scenes of just me getting tied up, I don’t know if I would have had that luxury of taking a break like that.

Thankfully I’m the only one who’s ever gotten hurt that badly on my site. I had one incident where a model wrote me the next day saying that they had a tingly feeling in her arms but thankfully it all cleared up in another day. But I was nervous as hell at the time, and it was such a relief when she wrote back and said she was okay.

I can tell that my bondage is pretty strict because very few models want to stay tied up once a scene is done. People often write me and ask if the models stay tied up for a long time after we shoot. “Did you keep her tied up all night after that scene?” The answer is almost always “No. No, I did not.” Usually once we’ve roleplayed that they’ve been abandoned or robbed (a typical ending), within minutes I’m working on getting them out of the ropes, or getting the gag off, whichever needs to be removed first. There have been a few models such as Stella, Jessica Kat, Sophia, Mika, and Bettie Cho (who’s a big masochist) who have wanted to stay tied up a while longer afterwards but that doesn’t happen very often.

We’d all love to be able to endure the kinds of things we fantasize about, but when you’re very heavily gagged and hogtied a lot of gurls find that, well, after fifteen or twenty minutes it kind of sucks! Sometimes the intensity will cause you to release endorphins, and you can slip into that so-called subspace. I’ve certainly had my own moments of bliss while tied up. Other times though it starts out sexy enough but thirty minutes later you’re just suffering. You really wouldn’t want to be left alone like that at that point!

In the end, it’s not worth it to get hurt or to give someone a panic attack. My approach is to try to enjoy the good moments, have fun with it, but always play safely. Besides, if it’s too strict your bondagette may not come back for more unless they’re a super masochist!