I was invited to perform a bondage demo at the gear night at The Cuff. I accepted. TonyBuff would be performing next to me.
SoundsFun and I arrived a bit early and relaxed into the space. I had a coffee and sugar free redbull.
I was offered use of ceiling hard points for use in full suspension. I thought that full suspensions would be a little slow to perform in front of an audience. I was still wanting to perform a partial suspension as one of three or four positions in the allotted hour.
But the ceiling hard points weren't available for use. (they hadn't been able to move them away from the lighting and mirror balls) TonyBuff was disappointed.
I laid out my 8mm braided rope and a couple pieces of red and yellow webbing. SoundsFun stripped down to a pair of white aussieBum underwear and combat boots.
TonyBuff arrived with two boys. Toby, the announcer, asked me if I wanted to tie yngOtter to SoundsFun. I had never done bondage with multiple bottoms, and it didn't seem a good idea to start in front of an audience.
Boys started to arrive. There was an announcement. SoundsFun was described by the announcer as my parnter. (SoundsFun and I discussed this later, and found that neither of us felt comfortable with that word)
I started to tie. I tied the armbinder, and pulled the line after the wrist friction to tie his ankles.
I was working fast to make things interesting for the audience. This is when I looked at how long I was taking and realized that I didn't have enough material to complete a full hour of demo.
I stopped with SoundsFun fully tied and tried presenting the dominance that I didn't feel. I thought it looked okay.
I untied the rope, and retied with climbing webbing.
I tied his hands together with a red climbing webbing variant of the two column tie. I pulled his hands up and behind his head. I tied these into a chest harness. I added a piece of yellow webbing for the shoulder straps.
I got out some rope and tied a tripled swiss seat. I pulled him around a little by the nice handle that this tie provides at the waist just around the height of the center of gravity.
I untied the chest harness. I brought his hands to just in front of his crotch and brought the line from them between his legs and up to a line around the outside of his upper arms. I added the yellow climbing webbing and brought it to lines that went from the shoulders to the armpits.
I untied the webbing.
I tied simple single column ties to his wrists. I tied them around one of the support columns of the bar. By this time my hands were shaking from exhaustion and the finger muscles starting to cramp. As sometimes happens, when I am exhausted I had trouble tying a square knot to finish the cinch around the pole.
I untied SoundsFun from the support pole. SoundsFun told me to untie slowly to make the bondage last, and recenter myself.
At this point I needed to do something that was second nature easy. I tied the boxtie suspension harness variant that I use. I tied his hands behind his back with a simple single column tie, with his hands grasping opposite wrists. These are things that I can and do tie blindfolded.
The hour long demo was over. The announcer thanked us.
SoundsFun and I put away the gear, and we had two nice hours out at the bar.
There seem to be lessons that I learned.
The first is to know the lineup of participants. Inclusion of yngOtteras an additional bondage bottom would likely have made the demo less intimate, but switching off between them might have slowed the pace to allow better viewing of the bondage. (described as letting the bondage bake) I needed to move slower. I probably should have a better idea of how to suggest dominance during the downtime between positions. I needed to have prepared extra material in case of a change in the situation (like the lack of hard points). Scene intensity and speed are not mutually exclusive.
There are things that I think went well. I learned to trust SoundsFun. His quiet guidance from the bottom made me look a lot better. I think that I earned the respect of some of the community that had never seen us play before. I believe that the bondage was visually stunning, and looked completely different than the bondage in other people's recon profiles.
(there was an event photographer, I will post photos when they become available.)
