The following text was written in Italian by Tenshiko after a long session on a hashira, and it was translated by Kirigami. We hope you enjoy it, as we think it might offer a glimpse of what doing bondage feels for us.
If I think it over, I can still feel the shivers along my neck and the hot feeling, climbing from below and devouring me from the inside.
It never happened like this, I have never felt both strong and resigned at the same time, like yesterday evening.
It’s still light outside, the sky is about to become dark but I can still clearly see; the air is chill, chill enough to make my muscles stiff. Not far away, in our friend’s house, another couple is beginning a session. We go out to let them have their space and to get an intimate place for us. It has been a while since I have been tied last time: I’ve been working out of town for four months so I was far from Kiri. We haven’t been together a lot, we worked too much. I was missing the feeling of being tied but I didn’t dare to ask. I always hope him to grab me all of a sudden, to drag me in his dark corner.
Abruptly he pushes my face against the hashira in the garden. I am standing on my feet while the TK takes shape. I was shaking a bit; I felt tired and weary but there’s something inside me that pushes me toward that dark wall.
When he closes the second rope of my TK I feel it very tight; I can’t breathe comfortably but I don’t want to say a word. Out of the blue, he takes a ladder and puts it against the hashira, grabs my hair and pushes me toward it, implying I must climb on it. I mount on the first step and I think this will be enough but he slowly pushes me on the second one… and the third, while still pushing my hair. He turns me with my back against the hashira, he ties the TK up high. The floor below me is far away and I am slowly fastened to a pole that looks like a wall by now.
Now, waist is next. I feel tight, I can’t breathe and the hashira is more and more nailed into my back. I hear some voices, the trees rustling and the last cicadas singing. It’s hot and it’s chill, I don’t know what’s happening, I wonder if this is the same feeling of martyrdom. My waist is completely choked against the pole and now it’s time for legs… Another tentacle wraps me and pulls me against and into the hashira. I can’t move. The ladder is now redundant and then taken away. I can’t move at all, not even a millimeter to fix some minor discomforts.
Now also my feet are tied. The waist is meanwhile tightened and it feels the weight of my legs attached to it. My feet are pushed against the hashira, no more space is left for breathing. I look upwards, as if I am striving for oxygen. I can see everybody from that height. I feel like I am lifted up more and more, minute by minute, centimeter by centimeter.
I am now still and steady. I just feel a dark shadow wrapping me. At times I feel it far away; at times I feel it close to me… I also feel it on my neck. I feel a hot breath on my neck, that is in fact becoming hot and it burns. I sweat. At some point I feel lost but safe at the same time. I feel like I am in a black room, locked up by a warder that loves me as much as he doesn’t want me to be in touch with the world, not even to breathe. This feeling makes me let a sob out. I want to cry but my chest and my waist are so tight that I can’t. My body gives up, it doesn’t react anymore. “I can’t even cry” I screamed to Kiri. That was the moment I could breathe again. I break in desperate tears at first then I keep weeping in resignation. This doesn’t last long. Crying is too painful. It’s awful, it’s like someone kept me from clearing the pain in a moment of grief.
Now I feel like a dog is turning his jaw into feasting on me, trying to eat every single piece of me, to keep them into itself forever. I feel the bites and I want to cry again but I can only afford small sobs, still good enough to let fear, resignation, and strength free. That dog is still there; I feel it eating me and watching me. The hashira is a part of myself, I feel it in my bones and in my hands. It’s a bolster and a scaffold at the same time.
The hot feeling is stronger and stronger, the sky is still the same and time has stopped. [Actually she has been there for all the time the sun took to completely set]. I am up there, endeavoring for air and then I stop feeling anything at all. At some point I start stating in a loop “I feel bad – I feel bad – I feel bad….” I don’t actually want to say anything, but I hear inside a voice talking nonsense. Maybe the voice wants me to repeat what it says.
Eight hands around me, eight… my gaze is lost, my body is pushed against the hashira and the snout of that dog, while a charming sensation gets into my body. Everything is done but I don’t want it to end. Please let me be up there again. He had to come close to me and let other people help him to put my shreds together. [She was about to faint, so I had other people help me while lowering her].
When my weight stops making me suffer, that dog comes back. I am now on the ground; it can do whatever it wants with my body. Anyway, it licks my wounds and bites the few pieces where the flesh is still untouched. My body is exhausted, the chill is strong, but it is still daytime [Actually it was completely dark by then].
He suspends me again, not high up where I could not breathe but close to the ground where the tool shed is built, not far away from the bushes. While he keeps tying me, I wake up all of a sudden; I can feel every part of my body, I see it is night, all at once.
I am now alone. Nobody is by my side. Neither the dog, nor even Kiri, nor our friends. It’s just me tied to a hashira that presses against my shoulder. I am alone and weary. I am scared, but I hear noises coming from the house. I think I could scream for help. I feel safe. My senses are alert, I try to turn but I cannot.
After a time I could not define, he comes back, emerging from the darkness. Now I am only tied by my hands, ankles and neck… He disappears again. I feel hopeless.
My ears are even more attentive, the moonlight is bright enough in order not to make me scared. I see shadows in the bushes, I hear unfamiliar voices, I am afraid and I think my fear should be even bigger. This is not normal. I think my unvented tears over, those small breaths. Everything hurts and I think I’ve never been so happy at the same time. In the darkness, sitting on the ground; the insects have crawled all of my body by now. I think to that weeping and to my shredded pieces. I think how he is far away and I still feel him on my neck. I cry.
I see a light coming from behind. It’s him again. “Now he will set me free” I think.
His hands are now over my body, I smell the scent of the dog that shredded me and made me empty, happy, naked.
I feel cold, very cold now. I shake. He picks me up, he brings me indoor and warms me.
It was him, it has always been him. He was the dog, he was the darkness, he was my oxygen and my despair. He was that choked weep and that rustle in the bushes.
If I think it over, I can still feel the shivers along my neck and the hot feeling, climbing from below and devouring me from the inside.
