Is it too cold for you Stacie?

Everyone who reads anything I write knows that I have a goofy name for almost everything that happens during a shoot. I don't know why it happens, it just does. I'll joke about something at the time, the model and I will get a chuckle over it and then it becomes stuck in my brain. It's over at that point. Every time something similar happens the silly little word or phrase comes back into play. In this case it's "the turkey popped, she's done!"

I do a series where the damsel begs to be tied up instead of taken and dumped in the middle of nowhere or locked in a closet. She pleads with her captor that if she is tied up really tightly and with a lot of stuff she'll never get away. She explains that if you stuff her mouth, wrap it, tape it and cover her face she won't be able to call for help, she won't be able to get free. The captor is assured a getaway because her predicament guarantees  nobody will find her until the next morning, an exhausted, sweaty and still very much helpless robbery victim.

The thing about this series is that it relies on layering tape over rope. Poor Stacie up there has her elbows welded and her legs pinned with bands of thin cord three times wider than what I would normally use. The knots are protected from prying hands by tight wrappings of electrical tape crushing the rope into her delicate skin. Her mouth is filled with a huge ballgag, her face covered with a stocking and her head tightly wrapped with electrical tape.

She is not comfortable and not a happy camper at this point but her wonderful nipples pop out into full erection. Is she turned on? No, she's in agony. She knows she has at least 5-10 more minutes of this plight and is hoping that any second I'll say I've got my footage. Is she cold? No, she's roasting. We're shooting with over 2000 watts of halogen lights. The room is 90+ degrees. Those nips are popping out because she's a turkey, and she is done.

There is a point in any strict restraint where the damsels starts to sweat. The ropes are so tight that her skin is taught and her nerve endings are sensitive. As the tape started going on Stacie broke out into a light sweat. There was no relief from the rope or the tightness, so the only things her system could do was sweat. That's how you know it's tight, when the model sweats standing still. We finished the restraint, and her playful moans were gone. Every noise she made was a reaction to her restraint. She slid off the couch onto the rug and "pop." Her body told her she was ready to be untied and her built-in turkey thermometer popped out.

The nipples are a great way to know that your damsel is at her physical edge. They don't pop out to let you know she is in trouble, they pop out to let your know that at that moment she is not faking. She is not acting, she is not playing a role. She is gutting it out for your material.  Those erect nipples let you know that physically she is done but mentally she is pushing herself so that you get the footage that you need. When a restraint is super-tight there is a point where the only thing the body can do to alleviate the discomfort is rush blood to the skin. The nipples are no longer controlled by discomfort, temperature or your mental state. They perk up an perk up fast. When this happens you need to make a note for later. Shoot your footage, get her out quickly and thank her like you've never thanked a model. She just gave you 5-10 minutes of the most precious footage you can get, the time when a model becomes a real damsel in distress, the time when she can pull the plug and doesn't, the time when she is mentally stronger than she is physically, the time when she chooses your material over her comfort!

Image courtesy of Stuff My Mouth and Cinch Me Tight So I Can't Call the Cops with Stacie Snow.

A very tough tie

I've always been a fan of lotus ties because they somewhat achieve their normal goal. Traditionally the position is used to align the body in such a way as to allow for meditation. Well, the tied version certainly does align the body in such a way but I'll be damned if you're going to be doing any meditation. As I've said before I love contrast, and the contrast between this position allowing alignment but preventing meditation is wonderful.

I do the position two basic ways. The mean way and the really mean way. Poor Stacie here got the really mean way. The year before I used the position on her but was nice and tied her ankles to her torso by the chest. This puts all the stress on those strong back muscles. The really mean way I go around the neck. It doesn't choke or anything dangerous but it puts the strain on the back of the neck which forces the damsel to use her abdominal muscles to help relieve some of the pressure. If you look at Stacie's face here the strain and slight redness isn't from the ropes causing pressure, it's because she's been doing crunches for about five minutes!

If that's not bad enough I put her on her side on a tiny ottoman. Her elbows are welded, she can't use her legs for support and her face is crushed down to her feet. Combine that with a ballgag and you have some fun almost-struggling. She commented that she couldn't move at all :)

A Lotus That Gave Her Something to Think About with Stacie Snow. Enjoy!
Ted Michaels

No escape

I've always been a huge fan of predicament bondage, but that sort of thing is up to interpretation. That makes it important for me to explain my personal view of predicament bondage. Yes, it includes the damsel in distress scenarios of "will she get loose in time" and "will they arrive to save her in time." My interpretation though has grown through the years as I've experienced more and more ties.

I have a personally philosophy of pushing people's limits. No, that does not mean I tie them up until they cry and then I let them go. That's not pushing a limit, it's exceeding a limit and then pulling back from it. There's a market for that and some folks that produce great material around it. I'll leave that to them. To me pushing a limit is taking somebody up to the edge of what they thought they were capable of and then letting them decide to go past that edge. I love when someone is exhausted at 10 minutes but decides to keep rolling for 15.

That's not the only example though. When someone is tied up the endorphins and adrenaline kick in and they became somewhat like super women. You have a period where you can responsibly get great material out of them if they allow it. Okay, so what does this mean. When you tie someone up there's a give and take of layering on restraint and making sure that the model is cool with things. However if you talk to them in the right way and put things on at the right pace they start feeling more flexible and resilient. They'll let you amp it up a bit more. That's when you get the best results. You're bending them but not breaking them ... and the results are wonderful. They struggle like hell until the adrenaline wears off and then realize, "holy shit he made me into a Russian gymnast."

I had a recent experience like that with Stacie Snow. Her elbows touch because she's tough and flexible, but I never really weld her elbows because she's a wiggler and a little space lets her do her thing. We were doing a scene with layers and I taped over the rope to cover the knots. A cool thing about electrical tape is it's somewhat elastic. That means even though I left a little room with the rope that tape squeezed her elbows together, no crushed them together. And she lasted forever. She went from couch to floor, struggled, rolled and even lied on those welded elbows without even saying ouch. And then the adrenaline wore off and she was done.

That's predicament bondage. We bent the limits without breaking them and got a scene where at the end she was totally spent and totally at her captor's mercy. Luckily I'm a nice guy, so I let her go! Check out Stacie Snow in Stuff My Mouth and Cinch My Body so the I Can't Call the Cops if a mile of rope and tape with a full hooding is your cup of tea!

Stacie wrapped up for the holidays!

I often don't really know where a sequence is going until it happens. I have a girl tied up and struggling in what I call the basic tie. That's the tie where the girl is already tied up, but things can get much worse. Her wrists, elbows, ankles and knees keep her somewhat compliant and her ballgag keeps her somewhat quiet. It's a great way to start because you can do so many things to make it more challenging.

That's where my bad guy mode kicks into gear. I film that first part and that part of me watches how the girl is struggling, and I think, "how can I keep her from getting to the phone, getting scissors or attracting attention?" I jump in with more rope and just go for it. Before you know it the poor thing is just a wiggling pile of flesh and rope on the ground with a look on her face that is half play-acting and half, "holy shit Ted, why?"

That happened with Stacie Snow earlier this year. We decided on a nice blouse and skirt combo and some nifty blue high heels. I put her in the basic tie and told her to struggle until I figured out the next part. She wiggled and grunted and stayed in the chair all the time. The bad guy mode kicked in and whispered that the chair is too comfortable and tied her into a fold tie. Then the bad guy thought it was too hard to see her face and that chair is way too comfy. I dumped her on the ground, and she tried to kick me. Bad move ... soon poor Stacie was cinched into a tight balltie with her face wrapped in tape. She wasn't making much noise and she was moving even less. Every effort just exhausted her to the point where she could barely lift her head.

Some models hate ballties and some love them. Regardless there is one thing that is certain. It offers the most limited movement of almost any tie including the hogtie. It exhausts you quickly and done right there is no escape. Check out Stacie Snow in Roped Readhead Balltied in Blue Shoes and see how poorly she fared :)

I love coffee

I woke up today feeling like I got hit in the face with a sledge hammer. I guess the change in weather has finally caught up with my sinuses. And that's why I love coffee. I'm not even finished with the first cup, and I already feel almost normal. I don't know how that works, but I'm not arguing.

Sitting over the steaming cup of miracle elixir, I'm doing my usual list of odds and ends. I had fun with some yahoo group posting. Knowing HTML is fun because you can always post messages that have links, pictures and formatting. It's all about the presentation. I put in an update from my last shoot with JJ Plush at her Yahoo group. I loved her blurb about me, "This guy doesn't fool around." It goes on the wall of quotes, with gems like "Nice guy, ties REALLY tight!" and "I'm glad I took my muscle relaxer."

Then I meandered on over to Stacie Snow's group to check things out. She was nice enough to put up a link for me and comment on the recent clip of her that went into my store. I always get a kick out of her group because she hates spammers more than I do ... and I hate spammers. I fully support her use of a tomahawk in solving the problem. The clips is from a series that I call "Hogtie from Hell" because it is basically just that, a hogtie that pushes people to their physical and mental limits. The "hell" challenges are all about the 3-minutes of video after the model is spent. I don't know why people agree to it, but I'm glad they do.

Oh, and the image of that hogtie agony is called Stacie Snow in Hogtied and Hurting available at my C4S Store.