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

Anime angles

I wish I could remember when I started shooting extreme up and down angles. It probably stems back to my years of drawing comic panels. In a drawing extreme angles portray action. In video they do the same thing.

I've found over the years that the extreme upward angle gives the feeling of isolation in the scene. When you film at eye level it gives the impression you're seeing what the antagonist is seeing. Extreme angles put the perspective in the scope of the damsel being alone and helpless. It's a neat feeling for video as long as you don't mind break dancing all over the floor to shoot it right.

Since I have a propensity to tie peoples ankles apart the models will often splay their knees apart as they struggle which gives what I call the anime angle. If you've seen enough anime and manga you'll know what I'm talking about. Wenona was great for this. She knew where the camera was at all times and made sure her knee never got in the way. It really served to isolate her in the scene as a bound, gagged and utterly alone damsel. It is also one of my favorite scenes from FC two years ago!

Welded in White courtesy of Ted Michaels Damsels.

Heels, hose and helpless!

I consider myself a bit classical in nature when it comes to bondage. I was around during the days when pretty gals wore the bare essentials and got tied up tight. Images of ladies wearing nothing but high heels, hosiery and panties (and a lot of rope) were everywhere. I've always focused heavily on that but until I started going back into my video archives I never realized just how much. It seems like every model I've worked with at some point has been down to nothing but heels and hose. There's just something about the tease of being almost nude and the embarrassment of being helpless in your scandalous hose and heels. It takes the elements that a woman uses to tease men when fully dressed and making that her only bit of coverage. Amazingly those elements still hold just as much allure when that is all a girl can hold onto for dignity.

The above image is from Black, White and Helpless All Over with Lyric. If features what I consider the number one outfit for a damsel: black heels, black thigh highs and black panties. To be honest that probably ties with a garter instead of panties, but both rank well above anything else for my tastes!

No wiggle room

I've always loved the expression "not a lot of wiggle room" because it rarely ever applies. You can use 800 feet of rope on somebody and they'll still wiggle around, quite a bit in fact. I've done so many things with so many people to get them to wiggle as little as possible. I hung someone from the back of a door with their hair tied back to welded elbows and the damsel still thrashed around. I've done strict hogtie after strict hogtie and the hogtied damsels still managed to roll onto their sides. I've welded people to chairs and they still get the chairs to spin. I've even completely mummified people in vet wrap, saran wrap and even duct tape and they still roll around. I'm firmly convinced that you could encase someone in plaster or foam and they'd still be able to wiggle more than enough to be more than "not a lot." I'm looking for volunteers to test that out though.

I've found that "not a lot of wiggle soon" to be so much more appropriate. By that I'm referring to what happens after you thrash, sway, swing, roll, spin and rock as much as they can. What happens after every muscle is exhausted and the restraint makes you feel like you've run a marathon? What happens when your skin is so sensitive from the pressure of tight ropes that you feel like you're tied with barbed wire and gagged with sand paper? What happens when staying still is preferable to discomfort of moving at all. That is a predicament. You're in no physical danger, but you are totally helpless. All you can do is wiggle your toes, moan a bit and just lie there and wait for release.

Restraint in a damsel scenario is about making sure the damsel stays put for an amount of time. You can tie someone, chain someone or tape someone into helplessness but they will eventually get free or remove their gag. If the goal is to make sure the damsel stays put until you want them to get loose, the goal is to exhaust them until they stay put by choice. No threats, no violence ... just a pure physical and mental challenge. Just ask Ashley Graham after shooting He Tied Me So Tight I Had to Tell.

Careful what you wish for

Have you ever been in the ocean and been hit by a huge wave that you didn't see? You know it's there somewhere. You get preoccupied, stop paying attention and that's when it hits you. It knocks the breath out you, drags you under and spins you around like a rag doll. It pins you to the bottom and churns you with the broken shells and sand for what seems like forever. Just when you think you are going to suffocate it lets you go and you pop to the surface. The sun is on your face and you take a huge breath of air that feels like the greatest breath of air ever taken.

Welcome to my last two weeks!

I've been preparing for the biggest event of my life and every detail is hitting at once. The stress has been a bit overwhelming with discussions, details, writing checks and trying to stay sane even when the world has gone crazy. On top of that we have a dog that had knee surgery and Angelique got bitten on the face by the other dog! Emergency rooms, trauma centers, medication, stitches (on the dog only thank goodness) and the list goes on. Just having to carry the dog around everywhere has been a chore although it's burned off seven pounds of my post-holiday dough-boy physique.

Fortunately everything all just fell into place yesterday. So many things resolved themselves and so much of the pressure has been taken off of everywhere. Now we sit back and enjoy life!

I've still been putting up clips but I haven't had time to update my musings. A recent clip starred a gal named Tina. I have a normal pattern when I shoot. I do a test position to gauge someone's abilities. Then I do an amped-up position followed but a much more relaxed position to regroup. After that it's usually something off-the-wall for fun. I broke that pattern with Tina. She walked in feisty and basically demanded to prove she was the best bondage model in the world. So I gave her the treatment. We started with a full-out take-down with sports tape and then moved on to two more positions. In all three her elbows were crushed. I was the wave and when Tina popped up for air she needed more than the sun and a deep breath, she needed a pain-killer. Then she said, "let's see all those other posers handle that!" Makes me laugh to this day ... I felt like I was being a little mean the whole shoot and it was really just a badge of honor to her.

Check out Tina in She Tried to Rob Me So I Stole Her Dignity but only if you like harsh take-downs, ballgags, welded elbows, bare feet, head wraps and a hottie sitting butt-ass naked on a toilet seat while she struggles!

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!