Chapter Three
Bondage
Monday morning was almost back to the normal routine, except for the under current from knowing what was planned for that night. If all went as planned, Charlene would spend part of the evening tied to the bed, unable to resist what George wanted to do with her. Charlene noticed that George spent the morning routine with a partial hard on. Her own pussy was a little damp from the moment she woke. This had the potential to be a very frustrating day.
George went to work, planning on spending a good portion of the day on various sites, or between them. Charlene headed out for another half day at the clinic. Once she had finished, shortly after 1, she considered where to go to get rope. The only place she knew for certain that sold rope was someplace like Home Depot. She laughed to herself at the thought that she was buying something for sex at possibly the least sensuous or romantic place she could imagine.
When she got to the area that had rope, she was quickly overwhelmed. She had no idea that so many different types of rope existed. There was anything: from bales of twine; to hemp ropes in thicknesses from 1/8 inch to two inches; to plastic ropes; nylons and some from materials she did not recognize. Some she was able to eliminate quickly. She had experienced plastic rope and knew that it was almost impossible to get it to hold a knot decently. Hemp felt so rough that she wanted no part of it next to her skin. Beyond that, she had no clue.
"May I help you find something." A young man in one of those ubiquitous orange and white Home Depot smocks had come up behind her.
"I'm not sure I need some rope, but I'm not sure what kind to get." Her mind was furiously trying to think of something that she could ask about that would not be, "I want my husband to tie me up and we need a rope that is good for that."
As she feared, his next question was, "What were you planning to use the rope for?"
Unable to think of a believable response that wasn't the truth, she gave an uncertain answer. "I'm... It needs to be usable for a variety of purposes. We just need it to be around if something comes up."
The man gave her a look that said, "Her husband sent her here and she has no clue." Out loud, however, he was more discreet. "Well, the best general purpose rope would be hemp. It's strong, holds a knot or tie well, and is spliceable."
"I don't know., it's pretty rough. I can imagine it would be hard on any surface it is used on."
"Well, if you want rope that you can suspend something with and minimize the cutting damage on whatever you're hanging from, I'd suggest the cotton. But, if you expect much swinging to be going on, you should try the nylon instead. It's not as soft, but it won't be cut though as easily. Don't want to be waking up in the middle of the night as a planter comes crashing down on your porch."
She picked up an end of the nylon. It did not feel too harsh against her hand. "Sounds like the nylon is what I'm looking for."
"How much do you want?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe fifty feet?"
"All one length?"
"Yes. We can cut it down if we need to."
"You do want to be careful to seal the ends. Nylon rope has a tendency to fray and unravel if a cut end is left unsealed. The easiest way is to melt the end with a match, though that doesn't always take. You have to be sure to melt the entire end together, or the individual melted strands will unravel from each other. End result is still a frayed or unraveled rope. More effective is epoxy. Dip the end in an epoxy and let it harden. The epoxy will literally glue the ends together and stop any thoughts of fraying. The downside is that you have to wait until the epoxy sets before you can use the cut piece of rope. In a pinch, you can wrap the end tight with a length of electrical tape. As long as there's no tension on the end itself, the tape will keep the nylon intact. In fact, you can wrap the place you want to cut with the electrical tape first and cut through the tape, leaving the ends already protected from fraying."
"How about the cotton? Does it need any special treatment when you cut it?"
"No, cotton rope is woven, not twisted together like others. That causes it to hold together well when cut. Thanks to the stiffening chemicals that cotton rope is soaked in these days, any temporary knot you're planning on is more likely to tighten into a Gordian knot that has to be cut instead of untied. Don't use it anywhere you might need to untie quickly. Untreated cotton rope is hard to find. We don't carry it."
"Why don't you give me fifty feet of nylon rope?"
"What thickness?"
"I have no idea." Actually, she had kind of an idea. She wanted it to be a good size for tying people up, but didn't feel like she could come out and say that. She might be thought of as a pervert, or a criminal!
"Well, thickness determines strength. For example, if you are going to be hanging things that weight less than 100 pounds, quarter inch should be just fine. That's the most common type for boy scouts to get for projects like lashing and such. If you're doing anything around the house that needs more than that, you'd be better off using something other than rope."
"Okay, make it the quarter inch stuff. Where can I find electrical tape?"
"That would be in aisle 23. You want inch wide tape to make sure that you have plenty of coverage on each end of the cut."
Charlene wandered over to the electrical department on aisle 23 to find the tape. On the way, she passed by bins full of various fixtures. Like most people, she had difficulty walking through a hardware store such as Home Depot without browsing through the things she happened to see. Her eyes were drawn to the small trays of eye bolts. They seemed to come in various sizes, from as small as an eighth inch across made out of brass to large ones with three inch loops made out of galvanized steel. All were threaded so that they screwed into a wall and had a gap at the loop's top (near the screw end) that rope or other things could be slipped over.
She knew that her fantasy involved being tied to the bed, spread eagle, but she was also aware, from watching various movies (spy melodramas, pirate movies, adventures) that there were other ways to tie people up. Her mind's eye could see her tied to an eye bolt in the ceiling, barely able to stand on tip toe. Her body reacted to the thought with a flushing and stiffening of her nipples. She suspected that her pussy was getting wet as well. She looked at the labels on the bins, but could not see any indication of how much the various sizes could support.
Looking around, she found a service person and asked, "Excuse me. How much can these things support?"
He walked over with her and started to pick up examples of the sizes and talk about them. "This one can support maybe ten to twenty pounds, quite sufficient for hanging things like small plants or small mobiles. These can hold almost 100 pounds, quite suitable for hanging a wide assortment of tools from. These midsize ones can hold upwards of 250 pounds and would be perfect for hanging, say a porch swing from. These larger ones, they hold weights close to 1000 pounds, but that assumes that the wood they are embedded in can support the weight as well. Just be sure that you place them in studs if they go in a wall or cross beams if you put them in the ceiling. Plaster board can't support weight well and you'll be unable to suspend more than a tenth of their load if they don't go into something designed to take a load."
"Thanks. That helps a lot."
She selected several of the ones between the 100 pound and 250 pound bolts and continued towards the electrical area. The electrical tape was easy to find and from there she headed to the checkout where she paid and returned to her car. Once she was at home, she took the rope and tape into the bedroom and tried to gauge what length pieces to cut the rope into. She was having difficulty because she had no idea how much rope was used in tying knots. Spreading out on the bed, she could tell that there only needed to be about two feet from each hand to the head posts and four feet from the foot posts to her feet. Playing around a bit, she tied an end of rope to one of the posts and then tried to tie around one of her ankles.
The feel of the rope around her leg and the lack of give when her foot moved against the rope had her excited, drawing in a quick breath. Forcing herself to stay on task, she marked a spot on the rope that was several inches from the end of her ankle tie and then untied the rope and measured it. It came out to almost six feet. Two knots with significant ends (she was worried about not being able to reach an end to untie) took two feet. She decided to make each length six feet long and measured off where her tape was going to go. Once the four cuts were taped, she used a pair of kitchen shears to cut the rope into four six foot sections with a 26 foot section left over. She wasn't sure what they would need to rest for, but didn't want to cut it before they knew.
Once that was done, she went about household chores and fixing dinner to be ready when George came home. While she was doing this, George finally managed to get free from work and drove to a used book store to see if they had something about knots. Used bookstores can be a little tricky to browse in. Some do not have a good system for displaying books, leaving you with the task of looking on each and every shelf for things. Ironically, there are people for whom this is heaven, the people who view hours of idle book browsing as a pleasant way to spend their time. For those in a hurry, that lack of organization was hell.
Books Again was not such a place. It was run by a retired librarian who would have been appalled at the idea of disorganized shelves. The store was divided into sections based on topics or genre with titles organized by author primarily. Although popular series were filed by series title if there were multiple authors (such as Star Wars books). It took only ten minutes to find that all the scouting books had been shelved under non-fiction, 'S' for scouts. There were three copies of the Boy Scout Handbook present. A quick scan of the insides revealed that there was an extensive section on knots in two of the three (the most recent edition had a smaller knot section but had a computer section the others did not).
Having been successful faster than he had anticipated, he stopped by Starbucks on the way home to peruse the section on knots. After getting himself a hazelnut mocha latte, he sat down and looked over the book. There were only a couple of questioning looks at the sight of a grown man reading a Boy Scout Handbook, but he simply ignored them. There were more than a dozen knots illustrated in the book. Many seemed to be specialized knots, intended for some specific purpose, usually camping related. Two caught his attention. A knot called the Bowline supposedly had the property that, if tied properly, it would never jam or slip. The book indicated that this made it a good knot for rescue purposes, since it could safely be tied around someone's body to lift them up from a fall or out of the water. There was another one that was called a Tautline Hitch. It was the scout standard for tent raising since it could be tightened or loosened by hand after being tied, but would not slip under tension. There were several other knots that might have been useful, but he could see these two knots serving all his needs. A small Bowline around her wrists and ankles with the Tautline on the posts of the bed, tightened as needed. The drawings made them look easy to tie, but, as any contractor knew, easy on paper is one thing; easy in practice is another.
Satisfied that he had what he needed, he went back home, arriving a little before dinner. He could smell the pork as soon as he entered the house.
