An Unexpected Hitch
Reading one of
Jennifer's stories (Part
3 of A Trip to my Aunt's) where she describes a fairly successful attempt
to tie herself up, I was reminded of one of my own experiments in that
direction.
If you've read
my previous stories, you will know that I like to be able to date my childhood
memories. This incident defeats me. It's definitely early or mid 1960s, but it
could be anywhere from 1963 to 1967. However that's a detail that's hardly
relevant to this salutary tale.
From about the
time I started school until my early teens, I attended a weekly ballet class
along with my sister Karen. I enjoyed it immensely and it probably contributed
to the general physical fitness I have enjoyed all my life. However, by the
time I was about 12, two things were very obvious. The first was that I was
hardly God's gift to ballet: good enough to enjoy it, but never good enough to
have anything more than a background role in any of the productions the dance
school staged. The second was that I was also far too tall to fit into a chorus
line: almost 5 feet 5 even by that age and towering over everyone else.
My sister
persisted with ballet while I moved to different streams of dance that the same
school offered, such as jazz and tap. Once I was relieved of the need to do
ballet every week to keep on top of the discipline, I started to make dance a
summer thing. From September until Easter, I would spend my Saturday mornings
on the hockey field then for the rest of the year, I would attend informal
dance classes.
That was a
rather long (and probably unnecessarily detailed) lead up to say that the
events I am about to describe took place one Saturday morning, probably shortly
after Easter, just after my dance class.
For the dance
class, I wore the usual sort of outfit. In my case it was a black sleeveless
leotard worn over opaque black tights with either tap or jazz shoes. (For some
reason, exercise tights always had feet back then; footless ones didn't appear
until about 1980.) We always finished the class with a series of cooling-down
exercises (very important: if you just stop, then there will be stiffness and
possible muscle damage next time you do anything strenuous). For these
exercises, I put on a pair of legwarmers (proper long ones that went the full
length of my legs, not the short fashion ones you see now) and a traditional
dancer's cross-over cardigan, all knitted in black and green stripes. (I had
learned by then that green is a very good colour for redheads, even for
near-redheads like me.)
I didn't
bother to change into street clothes to go home. Instead, I changed my dance
shoes for a pair of what we called 'bumper boots' back then (not unlike
high-top Converses today), put on a skirt (actually an elastic-waisted
mini-skirt I used for some dance routines) for a modicum of modesty and a heavy
sweater. For dance, I wore my hair in a bun, with lots of hairspray, zillions
of pins and a net. I didn't bother trying to dismantle that structure but
covered it with a big knitted beret.
It took about
25 minutes to get home on my bicycle. One Saturday, as I pedalled along, I
decided it would be a good day to try out an experiment I had been
contemplating for some time: to see if I could successfully tie myself up using
a method I had recently worked out. I had used handcuffs for self-tie games for
a while, but I always found that rather unsatisfactory. Although handcuffs were
completely secure and inescapable without a key, I always preferred the more
confining sensation of rope and it was a rope tie that I had devised.
I discovered
that the house was empty when I reached it. This wasn't unusual on a Saturday:
my parents tended to do the big weekly shopping expedition on a Saturday
morning and my siblings and I were old enough that we could go off and do our
own things without supervision. I had been hoping that Karen would be home to
give me some help, but as the object of the exercise was to see if I could tie
myself up, that didn't matter too much, although it meant that I would have to
be careful to make sure I could escape. Being on my own gave me the advantage
of not being disturbed while I was carrying out my experiment and let me have
the full run of the bedroom I shared with my sister, which was my chosen venue.
I like to be
comfortably dressed for tie-up games and, as my planned experiment could well
prove quite demanding, my dance outfit was probably ideal: warm, comfortable
and unlikely to get snagged on the ropes. I took a trip to the bathroom first,
always a good idea before being tied up. (Of course, dressed as I was in a
leotard over tights, that involved stripping almost naked and then dressing
again after I had done my business.) I left the skirt and extra sweater off but
kept the cardigan and legwarmers on over my leotard and tights. I added a pair
of of thick socks to provide a little more padding for my ankles (green to
colour-co-ordinate) and selected a pair of woollen gloves (also green) which I
would put on just before the final stage of the tie-up. I also chose a pair of
black knee-length socks for use as gag and blindfold.
The key to the
self-tie I had devised was a knot I had recently come across at Girl Guides:
the buntline hitch. This knot is effectively a slip-noose on the end of a rope.
Unlike others of this type, the buntline hitch has the unusual property that
when it is fully tightened around something, it jams and will not slip open
again. (To untie it, you need to use a tool of some kind to pick the knot
apart.) This knot was originally used for the buntlines on old-fashioned
square-rigged sailing ships. These are the vertical ropes fastened to the
toggles on the footrope that runs along the lower edge of the sail and which
are used to lift the sail for furling. A really secure knot was required for
this job (if it came off, the whole sail might have to be lowered to the deck
to refasten it) hence the buntline hitch. (I won't attempt to go into the
details of how to tie the knot here; if you are interested, there is a good
article on Wikipedia.) My plan was to use the jamming property of the
buntline hitch to create a self-tightening non-slip cinch.
I sorted out
the lengths of rope I would need from the box of tying-up supplies that my
sister and I shared. Mostly we used white cotton sash-cord about a quarter inch
in diameter. This has a smooth braided outer casing and is very flexible so
that it knots well.
I began by
sitting on the floor with my knees raised and my ankles crossed. I lashed my
ankles together so that they crossed at 90 degrees, winding about four turns of
rope around them north-south and then east-west. I finished off with a couple
of turns between my ankles to tighten the whole thing up. (Former Boy Scouts
and Girl Guides will recognise this arrangement as a diagonal lashing; it's
amazing the uses that scouting skills can be applied to.) I made sure that the
final knot was to the front of my crossed ankles, which would be the side away
from my hands when I was eventually finished.
The next job
was to tie the buntline hitch. I put it at one end of a piece of rope about
three feet long, forming a noose about two inches in diameter. I tied the free
end of this rope to my ankle binding so that the noose was about nine inches
from my ankles and was lying on the floor beneath my raised knees.
The last piece
of rope I needed was a coil of about four turns carefully sized so that I could
slide my hands through it comfortably while ensuring that a cinch wouldn't
either make it too tight or leave it too loose.
I was almost
ready for the final stages of the tie-up. I first needed to reposition myself
so I was upright. With my ankles tied the way they were, this meant that I was
in a sort of kneeling position with my knees splayed wide apart and I was
sitting on my crossed and bound ankles. I made sure that a large pair of
scissors were lying on the floor beside me so that I could effect an escape and
that a strategically-placed pillow was in position in front of me.
I picked up
one of the black socks I had chosen earlier, put a knot in the middle of it and
applied it as a knotted cleave gag. I tied its partner around my head so that
it was just above my eyes. I put my gloves on next then put my left hand
through the prepared wrist coil. I reached up and slid my blindfold down into
position over my eyes.
The success of
my experiment entirely depended on whether the rope would behave the way I
thought it would. I was about to find out.
I put my hands
behind my back. I kept my left forearm parallel to the floor and pressed my
wrist against the small of my back so that the wrist coil wouldn't fall off.
With my right hand, I located the buntline hitch which was lying on the floor
just behind my feet. It was quite tricky feeding the wrist coil through the
loop of the hitch but I managed it after a couple of attempts. Once that was
done I slid my right hand into the wrist coil, so that it went through the coil
in the opposite direction to my left hand, while keeping my right forearm
horizontal. (The idea was that it would be easier to tighten the hitch into a
secure cinch this way.)
I was now at
the point of no return. I lifted my forearms gently and felt the wrist coil
tighten as the hitch closed around it. The binding was snug but still not tight
enough to be inescapable when I reached the limit of how far I could lift my
arms behind me this way. Trusting that I had positioned the pillow correctly I
cautiously leaned forward until I overbalanced and toppled forwards. My face
landed on the pillow as I hoped it would. I could now pull gently with my feet
to tighten the hitch, wiggling my arms a little to encourage everything to
slide smoothly.
Once the hitch
was fully tightened, I tested it to see if it behaved as I hoped. I tried
pulling my wrists apart, which would cause an ordinary slip-noose to open up,
but nothing happened. I was delighted; I was securely hog-tied and I had done
it without any assistance.
I'm not sure
how long I lay just enjoying being tied up and enjoying the sense of
achievement that went with a successfully-concluded experiment, but I
eventually decided that it was time to get myself loose. The knots holding me
were all secure and mostly inaccessible, so I was relying on using the scissors
to cut myself free.
The first
difficulty was actually retrieving the scissors. With my knees forced apart by
my ankle binding, it was quite difficult to twist my upper body far enough to
reach the scissors with my hands. Also, without really thinking it through, I had
placed the scissors to my right with the intention of using them in my right
hand (I am quite strongly right handed). However, with my forearms across my
back as they were, it was actually my left hand that I had to use to pick the
scissors up. I transferred them to my right hand rather inelegantly by putting
them down on my bottom with my left hand and then picking them up with my
right.
The next
difficulty was finding a way to use the scissors effectively. Once again, the
problem was the position that my hands were in. Both hands were pointing away
from the ropes that I needed to cut, which meant that I had to use the scissors
reversed in my hand with the point towards my wrist. I could only open the
scissors a little using them this way, so I was obliged to rely on just the
tips of the blades to cut the rope. I rapidly discovered that I simply couldn't
bring enough pressure to bear on the scissors to cut the rope in this way. The
scissors themselves were fine; I had used them to cut this type of rope in the
past, but had always done so in the conventional manner and with the blades
wide apart to obtain the maximum leverage. As I pondered my predicament, it
dawned on me that garden secateurs or even toenail clippers would have been a
better escape tool than the scissors.
There was
really nothing I could do but wait for someone to find me, so I tossed the
scissors aside and settled down as comfortably as I could. Other than being
unplanned, it wasn't really a hardship; I enjoyed being tied up anyway and my
body was young and fit enough not to be under any significant stress in a
hog-tie.
With nothing
to do and my eyes covered, I eventually sank into a semi-doze. I was roused by
the sound of a door banging shut downstairs; evidently at least one member of the
family was home. If it was Karen, I would be discovered immediately as she
would be sure to come up to our room as soon as she was in. If it was any other
member of the household, I could well have to wait a while longer; I wasn't
sure I could make enough noise to be heard downstairs.
In the event,
it turned out that it was indeed Karen who had come home first. I heard her
feet pounding on the stairs then the click of our bedroom door opening.
There was a
surprisingly long pause before Karen spoke. Finding me tied up wasn't that
unusual an occurrence, but I think the hog-tie surprised her.
"Did you
do that by yourself, Becca?"
I grunted and
nodded in reply.
"It's
very good. Can you get out of that yourself?"
I shook my
head.
"Do you
want me to untie you?"
I decided that
I had had enough of being tied up for one morning so I nodded.
"Well,
hang on for a mo; this is much too good not to take a picture first."
I heard the
creak of the wardrobe door opening; our camera gear was stowed in the bottom of
it.
"No flash
bulbs, so I'll use the tripod and do this just with available light."
Various other
noises followed, which I interpreted as the tripod being set up and Karen's
Voigtländer being screwed to the top of it.
"Long
exposure; hold still."
There was a
distinct double click; it sounded like about an eighth of a second exposure.
Two more
photos followed then Karen removed my blindfold.
"One
more, Becca. Look at the camera please."
I looked up
and attempted to smile around my gag, holding the pose as still as I could for
another long exposure.
Satisfied with
the photography, Karen put the tripod away and put the camera on her desk. She
tossed a cushion down onto the floor next to the pillow I was resting my chin
on and sat down on it crosslegged. It was fairly obvious what my sister had
been doing while I was at dance class: she was wearing a white tennis dress
with a cream V-necked sweater on top (actually an old cricket sweater outgrown
by our brother). It was early in the season, so she was also wearing a pair of
white ribbed tights under the dress for warmth. There were green grass stains
on both knees, which probably also explained the lack of shoes; if they were in
a similar state she would have taken them off before entering the house.
Karen leaned
forward and untied my gag. "Now, Becca, before I untie you, you have to
tell me all about this."
I explained
how I had been thinking about the practicality of a secure self-tie for some
time and that the idea had finally come together in my head when I learned
about the useful buntline hitch. I went on to describe exactly how I had done
the tie-up and told her about the problem with the scissors.
"It looks
really good," Karen enthused when she had hear my explanation. "I'd
like to try it too and then we can be tied up together."
"What,
right now?" I asked.
"You
don't mind being tied up a bit longer do you?"
"Well
no," I conceded, "but we'll both be stuck instead of just me."
"I'm sure
Mum will untie us when she gets home. Come on Becca, talk me through it; it'll
be fun."
I had been
getting bored tied up on my own, but Karen was right, it would be fun being
tied up together, so I didn't demur.
Like me, Karen
decided that she wanted a little more padding on her ankles and wrists, so she
put on a pair of socks and laid a pair of gloves aside ready for use. I guided
Karen through the process that I had used to tied myself up until she reached
the point where she was about to put her hands behind her back and embark on
the final step.
"I don't
think I need any more instructions," she told me as she re-tied my gag.
Karen gagged
herself, using the sock that had been my blindfold, put her gloves on, slid her
left hand through the wrist coil she had made and put her hands behind her. I
watched her expression of intense concentration as she fumbled with ropes
behind her back. Her frown disappeared and I saw her elbows and shoulders lift
as she started pulling the cinch tight. She adjusted her position by shuffling
on her knees then carefully overbalanced, coming to rest with her head on the
opposite end of the pillow that I was using, her nose a few inches from mine.
She used her legs to pull her wrist binging tight just as I had then grunted
through her gag, presumably indicating that she was securely tied up.
We might have
tried to free each other by using the point of the closed scissors as a marlin
spike to pick the knots undone but by unspoken mutual consent, we just lay
there enjoying our shared predicament.
After half an
hour or so, we heard sounds from downstairs but were left undisturbed until
there was a tap on the door followed by our mother coming into the room. She
was well used to finding us trussed up, so there was only the barest hesitation
before she commented, "I thought you two were awfully quiet."
We mumbled a
greeting as best we could.
"Lunch in
about ten minutes, girls. Can you get yourselves loose from that?"
We shook our
heads.
"Well, I
need to get back to the kitchen, so you'll have to wait a few minutes,"
Mum told us as she left the room again.
A few minutes
later, our father came into the room. "Mum said you'd tied each other up
again," he commented, "and it looks like you've done a good
job."
I shook my
head vigorously and Karen joined in.
"You
didn't tie each other up? Somebody else tied you up?"
We shook our
heads again.
There was a
long pause while he worked his way through the logic, then he replied, "So
you each tied yourself up?"
We nodded.
"I wouldn't
have believed it was possible do do it as well as that," Dad said, clearly
impressed at our ingenuity.
Karen's camera
was still on her desk, so after asking her permission, Dad took a few more
photographs of the two of us before freeing us. I had been tied up for a lot
longer than I had originally planned and required a minute or two to unbend but
suffered no serious after-effects of my escapade.
I used the same basic self-tied technique again from time to time after
that. Sometimes I embellished it by adding ropes but I never bettered that
basic mechanism.