The Fool on the Hill: Hanging out in the gorge

I've known the gorge on the Hill of Screen Burn since my twenties, but it's not a place I visit often. It's not, in itself, a spectacular gorge: short, narrow, and with a lot of trees which make it difficult to walk through, and although there is a waterfall at the upper end it's not a very big one.

I went up there in September of last year with a party of friends, and found that the gorge had changed in a significant and, to me, very exciting way: a mature oak tree had fallen into the gorge and ended up wedged across it, much broken but still living, about two and a half metres above the deep pool at the foot of the waterfall.

Outdoor suspension bondage — tying (ideally naked) women for outdoor suspension bondage — is one of the key fetishes of my strange and uncomfortable sexuality; and the oak tree across the gorge seemed an ideal, a magical, a deeply symbolic place to do it.

It would be a technically difficult tie, both in getting the woman up and in getting her safely down. It would be a very beautiful setting for the tie. And actually, the very tightness of the gorge, the almost-claustrophobic enclosure, would add to that. I really wanted to do it. I spoke about it to each of the two women with whom I most enjoy tying, and… for different reasons, nothing happened.

And then, this summer, one of those women, Momentology, was coming out of a relationship which had in my opinion been very damaging for her, and wanted to tie with me. I suggested the gorge, and she agreed. We did a tie at the beginning of July which was intended to be an undress rehearsal for the gorge tie, and it was a quite complex and rather spectacular one with which I think we were both very pleased: a full inversion based on a double futomomo, with a chest harness which served mainly to hold her arms crossed across her chest.

We planned to go up to the gorge with an airbed, so that I could tie her floating on the pool and then lift her from it, and lower her back onto it, without her getting wet and cold; and with another person, to act as both safety person and photographer. I went up to the gorge by myself to do a reconnaissance and secure a strong point to the tree, in the expectation we would do the tie in late July. But again, it didn't actually happen.

Then, this last week, Momentology phoned in distress. She was feeling bad about herself, mainly over the ending of the relationship. She felt unclean; she wanted a sort of ritual of absolution. We agreed we'd go up to the gorge and I would give her a ritual washing in the pool, and then, if she wanted it, we would try a tie.

There wouldn't be a third person. There wouldn't be an airbed. It would necessarily be a bit extemporary. I would have to busk. I actually enjoy that, working in the moment.

On Monday, Momentology and I walked up the hill to the gorge. We walked up mostly in silence; I led, because I knew the way, and because in a lot of places the path doesn't allow two people to walk abreast. But also, I think we both wanted silence.

I was mostly ruminating on the state of my own relationships (or lack of them), which at present doesn't feel very comfortable. There is a particular person — the Anonymous Candelabra — with whom I have had a curious but very intense sexual relationship in the past, who is a very close friend of mine, and with whom I very much hope I shall again have a sexual relationship in the future; I very much hope, but know that it is extremely unlikely. I don't at present want to engage in any other sexual relationships because I don't want anything to get in the way of a potential reawakening of the relationship with the Anonymous Candelabra.

But, is tying with Momentology sex? When the Anonymous Candelabra and I tie, it is most definitely sexual, and it's for that reason that she and I are not tying together at present, something which I am, yes, sad about. I do not feel that when I tie with Momentology I'm being unfaithful to the Anonymous Candelabra. And, also, faithfulness is not something which the Anonymous Candelabra and I have ever been concerned about in the past. But, nevertheless, I'm aware I'm being a little jesuitical in deciding that it's OK to tie with Momentology, because there is a degree of intimacy about tying with someone, even when it isn't explicitly sexual, which is nevertheless very deep and intense.

But there's another thing that was tugging at me as I walked up the hill. In the past, on such expeditions, not always but often, in places where meeting someone was really improbable, I would have my partner naked, collared and on a leash. That experience — of leading someone I care deeply about naked and on a leash through a beautiful landscape to somewhere where we will together do something intense and transgressive — is for me extremely potent, extremely precious; and I'm very much aware that it is something which may not, which will probably not, ever happen again.

And I want it so much.

As it happens it's as well that I wasn't actually indulging my fantasy, because we did encounter someone working to repair a fence on the way up.

But when we got to the highest meadow on our route up the hill, I did suggest to Momentology that she should be naked; she chose not to be, and that was OK.

When we arrived at the gorge, I unpacked my ropes and kit, and climbed up the tree to rig the lift tackle to the strongpoint I'd set up earlier. Momentology stood, looking stressed. I think — I hope! — that I asked her whether she wanted to go ahead with the ritual washing. I know that I told her that it was time she was naked, and this time she did peel off.

I tied a fairly basic chest harness on her, hitched it to the lift tackle, and used the lift tackle to force her to walk into the pool, which, I should say, as you'd expect for a hill burn, was cold. Once she was in the pool, I forced her fairly roughly under the water, pulled her back up, and with a loofah and coal-tar soap, gave her an extremely brisk and thorough all over wash. At the end of the wash I held her for a short while, and then asked her whether she'd like to be suspended or just to get out and dried.

She chose to be suspended.

When I tie people I usually use natural hemp rope. Its benefit is that it's a good compromise between strength and comfort on the skin; synthetic ropes, while stronger, are harsher, whereas cotton ropes, while even softer on the skin, are of pretty unreliable strength. However, natural hemp loses a bit of strength when wet, and also becomes harder to untie when wet. I had packed mainly natural hemp, because when I had packed I still had it in my mind that we would have the airbed.

I had tied the chest harness in the one reasonably long length of 'hempex' — a polypropylene rope which is made to look like natural hemp — which I had with me; I had two shorter lengths of hempex which I could have used to complete the suspension, but I decided not because it would have been pretty harsh.

I didn't feel we could to the double futomomo inversion we'd practiced. Firstly it would take too long, and I was very much aware of the risk of Momentology getting too cold; but secondly, working alone, it would be very hard to prevent her head being in the water both when going up and when coming down, perhaps for rather longer than would be wise. So I tied only a single futomomo — an ankle to groin tie — and linked that with a short bridle to the chest harness on the same side. I tied this with her standing on one leg in the shallows, and she was awfully good and co-operative about that, although standing on one leg while your other is being tightly bound cannot be easy!

I secured the bridle to the lift harness, and then… the truth was the only way she could go safely up was from the water, so I put her back into the water (although with this rig, not with her head under it), and lifted from there.

This was not an epic tie. The chest harness was a bit sketchy: it was done quickly with not really enough rope. There's also always an issue of how tight you tie for suspension, and in this instance I think that chest harness would have been both more supportive and more elegant if it had been a little tighter. If I had had the karabiner that attached the lift tackle a little closer to the futomomo, she would have hung more horizontally, which would have been more elegant.

There was also a long wand of a holly branch which I should have cut back before we started, which added to the, uhhmmm, range of sensation that Momentology was experiencing. Yes, I am a sadist, but this was not supposed to be a sexual tie!

I took some photographs, but not, I think, ones which really did the scene justice. I was concentrating too much on Momentology, on how she was feeling, on how cold she was, on safety.

But Momentology is gorgeous to tie with. Unlike many other 'rope bottoms' — people who choose to be tied — she's not the least passive in rope. Instead, she dances in it. Bondage limits agency, limits the ability of the person tied to move, limits their degree of freedom. But Momentology, without struggling, explores those limits. And it was gorgeous to see peace settling on her as she hung.

Getting her down, of course, was necessarily the opposite of getting her up; I had to lower her into the water. Once there I got the futomomo off as quickly as I could, so she could stand and get out; I wrapped her in a towel, held her for a bit, got the chest harness off, and helped her to dress. The mood was, for both of us, very much brighter than it had been walking up the hill.

I quickly packed up all the gear as Momentology finished dressing, and we had a happy, energised walk back down the hill together, talking much more than we had on the way up; about tying and about relationships and about the things that go wrong with them. The sun even came out, and shone on us.

I do want to tie in the gorge again. I think it would be worth having a third person present, partly because I really would like to do an inversion there, and getting someone safely up and down inverted is not something I feel I can do by myself — you really need someone in the water supporting her head, and someone else on the lift rope controlling the movement — and partly because I find I don't take good photographs when I'm too busy being responsible for safety and the comfort of my tying partner. A third person who could take good photographs would be a very good thing.

But nevertheless this was a very emotionally satisfying tie. The ritual cleansing worked, I think, for Momentology; but I also feel strongly that she finds peace in rope, and in the emotional connection which comes with the intensity of doing rope together.

Tags: Repression, BDSM, Sexuality

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