[This story, a particular favorite of mine, originally appeared in Issue 4 (May/June 1988) under the title "Boy Turned into Bondage Addict by Slick Magazine". In the course of time I received two more letters from this wonderful writer, and one of these days I'll remember which issues they appeared in and post them here, too. BW]
Many years ago, about the time I was 12 or 13 years old, I had the habit of spending my Saturday afternoons in the public library. On one of those afternoons, I picked a magazine off the reading rack (I don't remember if it was Life, Look, or one of the other photo-journalism magazines), and as I thumbed through it, I came to a page which headlined the story of how several prisoners had managed to escape from a Southern jail, and how, one by one, the authorities had tracked down and captured them. On the facing page, there was a picture of one of the escapees taken just after his capture; it was a picture that I will never forget. What follows is my recollection of that picture as best I can describe it, and how it influenced the rest of my life.
In the background, there were two black and white sheriff cars parked at the side of a gravel covered road; a sheriff deputy stood by one of the cars. Also in the background was a group of four or five men: two were sheriff deputies (and carried rifles); the others were dressed in tee shirts and farmer overalls. In the far background there was a wooded tree line.
A stereotypically beefy (but not too unattractive) sheriff deputy stood in the foreground; his left hand was wrapped in a firm grip around the upper right arm of the prisoner. They appeared to be moving toward the open car door. The prisoner had turned his upper body and head to one side, tucking his head down and into his open shirt collar as he strained to hide his face from the camera.
As I looked at what I could see of his profile, I was immediately puzzled by what I noticed next; de-spite the way he had turned from the camera, I could see that his shoes (a pair of black hightop work shoes) had been tied together by their laces, and hung around his neck. As I looked down the picture toward his feet, I saw that his hands were handcuffed together behind his back; because of the way he had turned, only one hand was actually visible. From what I could see, the cuff seemed to be locked snugly around his wrist.
I saw then that he was barefoot; looking closer, I also saw that there were leg irons locked around his ankles, the connecting chain dragging in the gravel between his feet. As my attention shifted back and forth between the story and the picture, I began to notice other things about the prisoner. His hair was cut short in the crew cut or flattop style many men and boys wore in those days. While the story said that he was in his early twenties, from his profile he looked almost more like a boy than a young man. He also looked to be trim and slightly built; but perhaps that was just because his clothes seemed to be a size too big for him. His shirttail hung out over one side of his pants waistband, and between his shoulders, I could make out the faded letters "JA..." and "INM...." stenciled into the back of his shirt. It was then that I realized he was wearing more than just ordinary clothes; he had been captured still wearing the same uniform he had been forced to wear in jail. His uniform looked sweaty, perhaps from trying to outrun his captors; and here and there, it was smudged with dirt, perhaps from struggling with the sheriffs while they pinned him to the ground and shackled his hands and legs. Overall, I had the feeling, from his body language, and the dirty, disheveled appearance of his uniform that this was a humiliated, exhausted, broken young man.
As I studied the picture before me, I was filled with many different thoughts and emotions. As I, and the boys I counted as friends grew older, I was becoming aware that we were also developing "socially adult" interests. I was beginning to perceive in some of my friends, a certain disdain for the games we had played as younger boys. In particular, the bondage games I had so enjoyed were being seen by more and more of them as "kids' stuff." The picture before me was proof, however, that even grown men still played them; but with a few differences. The differences were that they played them out in uniforms, with shackles instead of ropes, and with force and humiliation as their weapons.
By 10 or 11, I had begun to notice newspaper and magazine pictures of men, their hands handcuffed together behind their backs; for reasons I did not understand, I found such pictures erotically exciting. This particular picture was the first I had ever seen of a man in leg irons, and it excited me even more. I was fascinated. I tried to imagine myself as this young man.
I tried to imagine just exactly what it would feel like to be shackled; to feel the weight of other men pinning me to the ground; to feel handcuffs and leg irons being tightened and locked around my wrists and ankles (would the steel feel cold?); to be completely helpless; to have no chance of escape; to be paraded for others to see, shackled the way he was.
To me, his barefoot state gave the picture an obscene, pornographic quality; it struck me with almost the same force as it would have had he been completely naked. Except for the beach, I only saw very young children barefoot in public; grown men never were. By forcing him to walk in public with his shoes hung around his neck, the deputies seemed to be trying to further show the onlooker (as if there was any doubt) just how helpless and just how much in their control this young man really was. The deputies' decision to deny him the use of something so personal, so intimate, as his own shoes, struck me as a terrible, calculated humiliation.
I had no firm idea of what might happen to this young man once he was back in jail, but I doubted it would be pleasant. I knew I felt a sad tenderness toward him; he quickly became the center of a favorite romantic fantasy. For months, as I fell asleep at night, I would imagine myself as the country sheriff, an older, decent, more kindly man than the deputies. I would imagine walking past the young man's jail cell, and seeing him through the bars, a small figure, sitting alone on his bunk, dressed in his dirty inmate uniform, still shackled in handcuffs and leg irons. I would imagine him crying softly to himself, crying for his lost brief freedom, his public humiliation, the hopelessness of his situation. I would imagine unlocking the cell door and sitting down beside him. I would put my arm around him and with the other arm I would pull his head toward mine. I would imagine the feel of his crew cut hair against my face as he wept against my shoulder. As the imaginary sheriff, I knew and accepted that he had to be punished for his crimes. I hoped that by comforting him, some of my strength would flow into him, giving him the courage to deal with his fate.
As time passed, I was eventually struck by the realization that in different clothes, this young man could just as easily be any of the boys I knew; even me. I also realized that to an onlooker, if any of us were to be seen, pictured, as this young man was, it would be impossible to perceive any of us as just an ordinary boy. Whatever our life, real or imagined, I began to understand that it could be changed, powerfully, by the clothes we wore. I seemed to reach the conclusion that fantasy and reality were not two distinct and separate things, but rather the same thing, existences that were interchangeable, worlds that could be jumped between by simply changing the "package," the "uniform," the clothing we put ourselves into. I began, from that time on, to pay special attention to the clothes that other boys (and men) wore.
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