Part V: The Session Intro, Volunteers, and a Surprise
The sounds through the door for the next 90 minutes were so entertaining, I ended up writing far less than I’d hoped. I would catch the occasional low hum, much
oohing and
aahing, a fair amount of cheering, clapping, and whistling, and lots of boisterous laughter. Whatever was going on, they were having a grand old time. For my part, as the sun began to set through the sliding walkout doors, I discovered that the basement's ceiling lights were on a dimmer, so I dialed them down to an appropriate dungeon-like setting.
Earlier I had cautioned M as well as Laura about sobriety levels coming into the bondage demo, so while I hoped they were mixing weak drinks, it was hard to tell for sure as the volume next door kept increasing.
But the crew that eventually tumbled through the pocket doors was only slightly lit. Happy, not drunk. That is, except for Cheryl. To put it politely, Cheryl was shitfaced. Apparently she hadn’t slowed down much since I’d seen her earlier on the deck with the 10-gallon Mimosa.
Also, to my great surprise, quiet Greta led the crowd through the pocket doors, wielding a huge dildo like a drum major’s baton. She even gave it a little twirl as I caught her eye.
Once again, Laura looked at me and simply mouthed, “Wow.”
Everyone grew a bit quieter and some jaws dropped as the ladies moved slowly into the room, looking around. The most obvious central feature was of course the “hogtie pit” of two mattresses, slipcovered in dark blue, faced by all the couches and chairs and flanked by benches with organized coils of rope. I watched as a couple of ladies noticed the dangling chains and shackles and other Halloween paraphernalia, including the unfortunate cuffed skeleton on the cot. Finally, the tickle box earned a few “
Oh my Gods” as some of the ladies arrived at the back of the room and saw the display.
And by the way, Lisa came in with them. I saw her by a support post, swinging a pair of plastic shackles in front of her, and she gave me a smiling open-mouthed look of pure shock. It was great.
I let them look around a bit – most ended up by the tickle box, listening to M tell a story – as I went out and retrieved a stool from the bar. While there, I noticed several empty cans of Red Bull and some depleted vodka bottles. It looked like no one would be falling asleep any time soon…
I returned and placed the stool off to the side of the hogtie area, and eventually gathered everyone around. Things were getting off to a nice start. For her part, Lisa stayed and sat down with the other ladies, which was pretty goddamn cool. (I was getting some teasing side-eye from Laura as she picked up the whole Lisa vibe, but she knows me well enough that I probably wasn’t going to be in too much trouble later…I hoped.)
The only hitch at the outset was one that we wouldn’t fully appreciate until later. Somehow all of the couches filled up before Cheryl made her way over, leaving her with the choice to either stand or sit on a bean bag chair. And in her state, standing wasn’t much of an option. So down into a bean bag Cheryl went, cocktail in hand. Remember the scene in the movie
SUPERINTELLIGENCE where Melissa McCarthy’s character tries to sit on a bean bag chair that’s overfilled, and it keeps rolling her out? This wasn’t like that at all. Calling this bean bag chair impossibly cushy would be like calling the Marvel villain Thanos mildly put off. I think it was filled with unicorn eyelashes. When Cheryl sat down, she mostly disappeared. The chair kind of
absorbed her. You could vaguely see some limbs and a cocktail glass floating around in this soft cloud of fluff, but that was about it.
Aside from Cheryl, the other ladies looked at me expectantly, smiling and fidgety and maybe a little anxious. Although I’ve done this maybe a hundred times, I’m not gonna lie…this one had me feeling a bit anxious myself. But it was finally time to get things rolling, so I took a deep breath and soldiered on.
We had covered introductions and backstories out on the deck earlier, so I started by going over the rules of the contest. I noticed that the ladies exchanged glances and sometimes nudged one another as I spoke.
For the hogtie round, we’d split into two hopefully even-numbered teams who would sit at the couches behind the mattresses. For every turn, each team would pick a single contestant for me to hogtie on the mattress in front of the other team’s couch. Once tied, the contestants would get one minute to try and escape. A successful escape would automatically win the round and earn a $200 gift certificate for Passion Party goods (which included chocolate, clothing, soaps and lotions, books and some other stuff as well as sex toys), and the escapee would avoid being tickled.
“Or you might just use the minute to relax,” I deadpanned. “Because no one’s getting out.” That got some chuckles and
ooohs and competitive grins.
Anyone failing to escape after a minute would experience the tickle challenge. The ticklers would be the remaining members of the opposing team, and their job would be to make their opponent give up, or safeword, by saying “butterfly.” The first contestant to safeword would lose the turn for their team. But for each minute that either contestant held out being tickled, they would receive a $100 Passion Party gift certificate. Finally, all members of whichever team won the most turns in the hogtie round would win gift bags prepared by M and Lisa, five of which M was placing enticingly along the side of the room as I spoke.
Also, whoever safeworded the fastest across all turns in the hogtie round would move on to the tickle box for Round 2. I stood up as I explained this and moved toward the back of the room.
The ladies (except Cheryl) followed me to the table where the tickle box and tools were on display, and as they looked everything over I told them that the Round 2 contestant would experience a professional tickling delivered by their humble host. That got another round of looks and smiles.
The contestant’s goal for Round 2 was to last in the box for 10 minutes without safewording. The tickling would start soft, with feathers, and then escalate using different tools. For every minute the finalist endured, everyone would get to keep 10% of any gift certificate prize money they had won in the hogtie round. Safeword in two minutes, for example, and the certificates are worth 20%. Five minutes, 50%. Go the full 10 minutes, and the round ends with certificates at full value.
No pressure, considering it would likely be the most ticklish lady in the group who landed in the tickle box.
Any questions? There were big smiles, wide eyes, and shared looks all around, but surprisingly, no hands raised. So, as we all strolled back to the hogtie arena and sat down, it was time to pose the question I’d been wondering about for six weeks.
“Ok,” I asked. “So who are my volunteers?”
Ellen, Tracy, and M immediately raised their hands, with Ellen eyeing the others expectantly. These three had volunteered way back at the original book club meeting. Laura and I had talked about her holding back to see how the count went, so my wife deferred for the moment. Everyone else was looking around at each other. Carol put her hand on Tracy’s shoulder and asked her something. Greta shook her head no again, and Cheryl, lost deep in the bean bag chair, seemed barely conscious. Kristen and Sara’s eyes were wide. Lisa stood quietly, smiling. Nancy’s mouth was pressed into a neutral line.
It was Ellen, the group’s provocateur and my soon-to-be personal hero, who started leaning on the others. She reminded Carol and Anne that they had seemed really brave at the book club and in the group chat, so where was all that courage now? Then Tracy piled on with some further encouragement, and reluctantly Anne’s hand went up (go team nylons!). Next they all looked at Carol, who was just shaking her head, but after some more goading, especially now from Anne, her hand crept up as well. “I always knew you guys would kill me someday” Carol lamented as she volunteered, “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.”
“Well, that’s five,” I said. “For the team thing, I was kind of hoping for an even number.” Laura shot me a quick glance but still held back.
Slow looks passed among the group. Kristen and Sara were still wide-eyed and smiling, but didn’t look too volunteer-y. Lisa’s eyebrows were raised but she was also (not surprisingly) hanging back. Nancy was standing like an airport guard now, arms crossed and chin tucked.
And once again Ellen, my favorite troublemaker, took her shot. This time at Nancy.
“Nancy Garrison,” she chided. “Look at you. Biggest badass of the group, standing there with your arms folded while hands are raised all around you. For the love of God, girl, for once in your life can't you just do something crazy and have
fun? Or are you too cool and put together to cut loose and play?”
Nancy lifted her chin to look at Ellen, and then shifted her gaze to me. Meeting her eye, I thought of the story M had told me, that when HBO had run the series
Mare of Easttown, almost everyone in the group had called or texted Nancy, each with the same thought. “Oh my God,” they all told her. “You’re on TV!”
I could definitely see it. Nancy didn’t
exactly look like Kate Winslet, but she had a very Kate Winslet vibe. If they ever make a movie about Nancy, Kate should play her. The resemblance was in her look and body type, her serious attitude, and the kind of solid, confident, no-bullshit charisma that could make your friends feel safe and scare your enemies shitless.
Not that any of them were pushovers. Each of these ladies had, in her own way, survived and succeeded in the jungle of big-time corporate politics. That requires brains, courage, and a certain ruthless quality that among other executives must always be cloaked in a veneer of civility. Assassinations in the top corporate ranks are subtle and passive-aggressive. Victims don’t know the thousand cuts have started until they've bled too much to fight back. The unwritten rule says you can’t appear to be a bad person when you fight battles this way; it’s all for some greater good. It lets the worst of the corporate strivers – at least the ones with a conscience – live with themselves.
But I sensed Nancy was different. As a highly successful family law and divorce attorney, her forte was in neither diplomacy nor subterfuge. Nancy was a trench fighter. In the realm of corporate politics, she would be the hammer you dropped after diplomacy failed. Put her in a conflict with the world’s cleverest corporate spinner, and she’d cut them to pieces. While they worried about angles and perceptions, she’d just take off their head and sort out the nuances later.
I’m no pushover, but I wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with her.
So when Nancy looked at me, I wasn’t about to try for a clever line or to manipulate or convince her of anything. I just raised my eyebrows a little, looked around at the group, and then looked a question back at her.
If she had shaken her head no at that moment, the other ladies would have likely backed off. But it appeared that she was considering it, which encouraged them. A round of “
come oooons” ensued as a slight grin tugged at the edges of Nancy’s mouth. But it was Ellen, again, who closed the deal. She smiled the gentlest, sweetest, most understanding smile in the history of smiles and spoke to her friend softly. “Nance,” she said. “Don’t be a dick.”
“Fine, Goddamnit,” Nancy replied as she finally raised her hand amidst the whistles and applause of her friends. “If it means I get to torture you bitches back, I’m in.” This earned her a round of cheers.
Perfect. Two teams of three. I gave Lisa a teasing look, and she just laughed and waved me off. She looked happy and eager to watch; caught up in the buzz everyone was sharing. And at least she was sticking around. I’d be down to only five judges and timers otherwise, and one of them was lost deep in a bean bag.
I directed the volunteers toward the team couches as the others took audience seats. Shaking out six pre-cut lengths of rope, amidst much giggling, eye rolling, teasing, and joking around, I spent the next 25 or 30 minutes throwing a quick chest harness (see pics below) around each lady about to be hogtied. They were all good sports about it, even Nancy.
Here’s a link to a page showing the chest harness I used (mine weren’t quite as neat as shown in the gifs – I was moving fast).
As I finished their harnesses, the ladies moved to the team couches. Ellen, Carol, and M ended up on one couch, with Tracy, Anne, and Nancy on the other. In the audience we had Cheryl (barely), Greta, the sisters Kristen and Sara, Laura, and Lisa. I asked Sara and Lisa if they’d be willing to volunteer as the hogtie round timers, and they happily pulled up stopwatch apps on her phones. Good to go. That way Laura could kind of float around and help if needed.
vs.
Hogtie round teams: Ellen, Carol, and M versus Tracy, Anne, and Nancy
We were less than an hour in; everything seemed to be moving along on schedule.
Coming next...
PART VI: HOGTIE ROUND, TURN 1 - ELLEN vs TRACY
