During the summer of 1977, when I was twelve years old, I spent three weeks at my Aunt Jean's house. I played tie up games with my cousins Donna (13), Shirley (11), and George (7; who mainly watched). We also roped in the neighboring kids Becca (14), her brother Jim (12) and Karen (13), the little girl who lives down the street.)
On the Thursday of the final week of my stay, Karen and I decided to play a tie-up game. It was a spur of the moment deal. We were hanging out at Karen's house when who should walk by but Becca. I happened to be holding a water pistol, and when I saw her coming down the street, I abruptly pointed it at Becca, who smiled at me and held her hands up.
"Quick, get her inside!" Karen said excitedly.
But Becca explained that she was actually on an errand to the store for her mother. "Hold that thought," Becca said, as she pointed at my water pistol. "You can abduct me when I'm done."
That sounded pretty cool to us, so Karen and I plotted what terrible things we were going to do to Becca once she returned. George came over and asked what we were doing. When we told him, he promptly sat down next to me on the steps to wait right along with us. Karen and I exchanged a sly glance at how the little guy invited himself to our kidnapping party.
We had a laugh when Becca came back from the store carrying a bag. I ran back out to the sidewalk, held my water pistol at her, and maniacally shouted, "NOW I've got you!"
"No, no, no!" Becca cried as she waved me away. "Not now! I've got to bring this home! Look, wait ten minutes, then come get me at my house, ok?"
"Oh, ok," I replied. I strolled back to Karen and George and told them that Becca wanted to be abducted at her house. This ticked off Karen, because, after all, just who were the captors here, Becca or us? Nevertheless, we waited five minutes (Karen didn't want to wait the whole ten minutes), then ran off to Becca's house.
Becca's mom was in the kitchen. She told us that her kiddies were downstairs (I thought it was screamingly funny that she would point out her kids for us to abduct them). We found Becca and Jim in their basement rec room. Karen and I promptly held our water pistols at them and told the siblings that they were our captives.
Jim, who was barefoot, shirtless, and clad in a pair of jeans, sat cross-legged on the floor reading a comic that I lent him. He gave Becca this disgusted look, as if to say "so this is what you were up to!" He told me later that Becca had merely walked into the rec room, sat down next to him on the floor, and started reading a magazine. She knew all along that we would burst in at any time and take her captive, but she neglected to tell her brother this.
Becca had changed from her previous outfit of jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers into a pair of cotton short shorts and a tank top. Like her brother, she was also bare foot.
We gave George a pistol to cover our captives while we tied them up. To my surprise, Karen immediately started tying Becca's wrists together behind her back. So I was left with binding Jim. I knelt down behind him while he still sat cross-legged on the floor and bound his wrist together behind his back. While I did this, Jim glanced up at George and jokingly said, "You're gonna untie Becca and me later, right?"
George stared at him with this shocked expression, as if to say How dare you even suggest such an awful thing?!
Karen bound Becca's hands behind her back, then stood up and gave me an annoyed look. It turned out that Karen was still a little peeved at having to come over to Becca's house because she wanted it that way. Karen wanted to move the game back to her house by bringing the captives over there with us. But here was the catch: she wanted to walk Becca and Jim up the street with their hands still tied behind their backs!
"Fine," Becca replied casually. "But if you make us do this, then I get to do whatever I want to you guys when we're the captors."
"Agreed!" Karen said, then she promptly gagged Becca.
But Jim looked a little nervous. He very quickly begged to be released--and I immediately freed his wrists. Karen called him a wimp, but I didn't blame him one bit. We had always played our games in privacy of houses and back yards, and the very thought of being paraded up the street while tied made me jittery as well. I wondered if Karen knew what kind of door she was opening with this idea of hers (as it turned out, both Karen and I would suffer for this when Becca would later extract her revenge on us).
After sneaking up the basement steps and out the side door (thankfully, Becca's mom wasn't in the kitchen at the time), we all went over to Karen's house--Karen, George, Jim and myself--and we had Becca walking out in front of us with her hands bound together behind her back and her mouth covered with duct tape. If Becca was bothered at being bound and gagged in public, she certainly didn't show it. In fact, Becca casually strutted down that street as if being bound and gagged was the most normal thing in the world.
When we passed my Aunt Jean's house, Donna and Shirley were out front, and they both did a hysterically funny double take once they saw our golden-hair captive. Shirley wore a skirt with a blouse while Donna was clad in cut off shorts with a short sleeved shirt. They were both barefoot. My cousins ran up to us and peppered us with such questions and comments as "Whose idea was this?" and "Are you crazy, Becca?" (to which Becca replied with a solemn nod of her head). We kept glancing up and down the street, but other than Donna and Shirley, nobody else on the block was out at that moment.
Needless to say, Donna and Shirley came along with us (although when I offered to bind them right there in the street like Becca, my cousins both shook their heads). When we got to Karen's, we led Becca into the guest bedroom, where I helped her to lay face down on the bed. I then bound her bare feet together with rope while Donna, Shirley and Karen all squawked like a bunch of magpies about what had just happened.
Jim stood shyly against the wall and watched me bind his older sister. "If you want to tie me up again, you can," Jim said, as he shrugged his bare shoulders. "But only if you want to."
I was going to tie him again, but before I could even answer, Jim faced a verbal barrage from the girls, who accused him of being chicken for not going outside while tied. Jim shot back (and rightfully so) that Donna and Shirley didn't appear to be too eager to go outside while tied, either. Donna then threw down the gauntlet: she would go outside with her hands tied behind her back. Shirley abruptly said that she, too, would go outside with her hands tied, as well. Donna promptly ordered me to bind Jim's hands behind his back. I did, while Karen tied my cousins, and then they all played a bizarre game of chicken where each bound person would run out of the house and back inside with their hands tied behind their backs. They would dare each other to run further into the street, then a little further up the street, before running back inside.
I remember being very annoyed at the abrupt turn this game had taken. Now that we were in a house without adults, all I wanted was to tie up whoever wanted to be tied up (as well as being tied up myself) and just enjoy a regular game like we always did. While the others continued this weird game that was straight out of the Bondage Olympics, I slipped away to the bedroom and glanced down at poor Becca, who was all but forgotten. She glanced up at me with a hysterically funny Do you believe this? look on her face.
I sat down on the bed and proceeded to tickle poor, bound Becca. When I tickled her sides, Becca let out this high-pitched squeal under her gag, and glared at me in mock anger. When I held out my hands as if to tickle her again, Becca shook her head with a muffled whimper as she tried to writhe away. But my wiggling fingers found their target, and she flailed around on the bed as I tickled up and down her sides. Her mad giggling was infectious, and I started laughing along with her.
Becca was able to roll over on her back and pull her bound legs up to her chest, as if to protect herself from my tickling. But that didn't really help, because I then started tickling the soles of her bare feet. This caused her to let out a shrill scream as she fell over on her side and lay still with her eyes closed. She lay there quietly, playing possum like that, until Karen ran in at that point and said, "What the hell are you doing to her?"
Through the doorway, I saw Jim, Donna and Shirley all laughing and giggling while they stood with their backs facing each other. They were trying to untie each other at the same time but there was a little bit of tickling and pinching going on--such as when Donna suddenly flinched and shouted, "Stop it, Jim!"
"It wasn't me!" Jim protested.
"Don't look at me!" Shirley screeched. And so on.
I got caught up in the giddiness of the moment, and tried to tickle Karen's stomach. She recoiled in mock horror, then grabbed a water pistol and pointed it at me. When I held up my hands in surrender, Karen ordered me to lie down on my stomach across the foot of the bed. I did this, and Karen grabbed some rope, straddled me, and bound my hands behind my back. (For those keeping score, I was barefoot, clad in jeans and a T-shirt).
At this point, George ran into the room, being chased by Donna, Shirley and Jim, who were all trying to get the little guy to untie them first. They literally cornered poor George and all shouted at him at the same time. Donna: "George, I'm your big sister, so untie me right now!" Jim: "George, I've always taken good care of you, right? Now you take care of me!" Shirley: "Untie me, you little @#&%!"
George just put his hands over his ears and shook his head at all of them. He still had a broad smile on his face despite being caught up in this three ringed circus.
Karen completely ignored this insanity while she lovingly bound me hand and foot. She then rolled me on my back--then straddled me again--so she could plaster my mouth shut with several yards of tape.
Shirley saw this, and started complaining about why Karen tied me up without making me run outside like everybody else. Karen's answer was to climb off me and tackle Shirley to the floor. Karen bound Shirley's ankles together. Shirley fought her every step of the way, so it was a real wrestling match, with a lot of struggling and writhing. But with her hands already tied behind her back, Shirley didn't stand a chance.
Donna and Jim saw this new development and exchanged a look that said Uh-oh! They both tried to make a discreet exit, but George abruptly reached out, grabbed their bound hands, and dug in his heels. Donna and Jim then tried to convince George to let them go. But he shook his head with a smile.
Once Karen had Shirley securely bound and gagged on the floor, she turned her attention to Donna and Jim. With George's help (he slapped Donna on the back of her knees to make her get on the floor; this resulted in one of the rare moments when I actually heard Donna curse!) they were soon writhing around on the floor, bound and gagged like the rest of us.
Karen, who was barefoot, and clad in denim overalls with a red T-shirt (she looked like she was ready to paint a house) gave us a little curtsy. Then she took George in hand and led him out of the room.
Those of us who were bound and gagged (and that was just about everybody) lay there for a while. I lay across the foot of the bed, with Becca's bound bare feet pointed at me. I watched as Becca raised her feet up in the air, while keeping her legs perfectly straight. Then, once she dropped her feet back onto the bed, Becca used her legs as a counter weight so that she could effortlessly sit up. She wiggled her eyebrows at me as she squirmed and writhed into position right next to my bound body. All I had to do was roll over on my side, and my bound hands were easily within reach of her own.
Becca went to work on picking the knot that bound my wrists, so all I had to do was lay there and wait. I watched Shirley writhing and struggling around on the floor. She was basically doing the same thing that Becca did, by trying to get into position behind Donna and untie her sister's knots. But with all of her struggling, Shirley's skirt started riding up on her--until Donna and Jim both started laughing under their gags. Shirley stared with wide eyes over her gag at the fact that her underwear was now in plain view.
Becca got my knots loose, and I pulled my hands free. I removed my tape gag, and--leaving my feet tied for now--rolled over to untie Becca's hands.
Once Becca's wrists were free, I finally untied my feet. Just as I did, Karen came back into the room. She started to say something until she saw Becca and me untying ourselves. Karen then spun around and started to run out of the room. I got off the bed like a shot and tackled her from behind. I half dragged-half wrestled a wildly giggling Karen back into the guest room.
Becca, now free of her bonds, got off the bed and did a double take at Shirley on the floor. "Hey, Shirley," Becca said, as she gave the 'thumbs up' sign, "nice underwear!"
Shirley let out a muffled groan as she tried to pull her skirt back down with her bound hands. Donna tried to help her sister in an attempt to grab the hem of Shirley's skirt with her toes.
As soon as I deposited Karen on the bed, Becca grabbed Karen's shirt--then she surprised me by grabbing my shirt as well. "You two," she said simply, "are mine!"
Becca's wild-eyed proclamation of vengeance was premature, for Karen's elderly neighbor--who served as her caretaker while her parents worked--chose that moment to enter the house. Karen and Becca quickly ran outside to run cover for George and I while we untied the others. In retrospect, I find it very funny that we tried so hard to hide the fact that we were playing a tie-up game--especially when I consider that just a half an hour before, Donna, Jim and Shirley were parading up and down in front of Karen's house with their hands tied behind their backs!
Becca never did her revenge in a small manner; Karen and I would soon find ourselves in for a very interesting evening as her captives. That story--the last one from the Summer of '77--will be next. As always, thanks for reading.