The First Boy I Tied Up

Racine, Wisconsin, April 1968

I was eight years old, in second grade at Hansche Elementary School in Racine, Wisconsin, and I wanted to tie up a boy.

Guys were being tied up all the time in the mass culture of the 1960s: on Batman, The Green Hornet, The Wild Wild West, in Tarzan and Bomba the Jungle Boy movies, in comic books.  It was a standard means of putting the hero in peril.

But I didn't want to put anyone in peril.  I wanted to tie a boy up so he could strain against the ropes, so his muscles would stand out, and I could see and feel him as much as I wanted.

Maybe we would even kiss.







I didn't know the name of the boy I wanted to tie up: I only saw him in the schoolyard at recess.  We were probably the same age, but he was bigger than me, with hard shoulders and biceps.  He had a strikingly handsome face, heavy eyebrows, high cheekbones, and black hair, long and unruly in the 1960s style.

He didn't play with the other kids.  He sat by himself.

He never smiled.

I wasn't sure, but I might have seen him at the beach, too.  Lake Michigan was only a couple of blocks from our house, so we were there almost every warm day, and once last summer I saw a very cute buffed boy splashing around in the cold water with his parents.

He wasn't smiling then, either.

That's why he was so attractive: he was dark, brooding, a lost soul.

I knew exactly how I wanted to tie him up: on a chair, with his shirt off, his hands tied behind his back, and his legs tied to the chair posts.  That way, I would be able to kiss and touch his chest and biceps, his belly, maybe even his private area, and feel his "shame."

Mom said we should never touch our own "shame," except to wash and go to the bathroom, so it would be especially intimate to touch another boy's.

As I devised the plan, problems arose.

1. It couldn't happen in the house: Mom and Dad would be there.  This was too intimate for them to know about. Finally I decided on a park a couple of blocks from Hansche School, where there were some benches amid the trees.  I could tie the boy to one of the benches.

2. I didn't have any rope, at least not the nice, thick kind they used in the movies.  I hoped kite string would work.

3. I didn't know how to tie knots, except on my shoe.  So I would have to use those bow knots.

4. How could I get the boy to agree to be tied up?


When you're seven years old, you can make friends easily: you just
walk up to the guy and start talking.

 It took me a couple of weeks to screw up my courage, but one day in the spring, I walked up to him at recess and asked "Do you want to play after school?"

"Sure," he said.  "I have to ask Mom if it's ok though."

That part was easy.  After school we walked to his house to get his Mom's permission, then to my house.  He probably thought we would play in my back yard, but after I got my Mom's permission, I led him toward the park instead.

"There's nothing to do there," he complained.  "Let's go to the beach and throw stuff into the water."

"I want to play Batman" I told him.  "The Joker has Batman tied up, and he has to escape before an atom bomb explodes on Gotham City."

He shrugged.  "Ok.  Do you want to be the Joker or Batman?"

"You can be Batman," I said politely, as if I was giving him an honor.

It was a gray, cloudy Friday in April, and the park was mostly deserted, just a couple of old people, who wouldn't bother us.

I steered the boy toward an empty bench.  "This is my secret lair," I said.  "I have you in my clutches, Dynamic Dodo!"

He looked dubious.  "Shouldn't we have Robin, too?"

"The Boy Blunder can't save you this time, Batman!"  I sat the boy on the bench and whispered "You got to take your shirt off."

"What?  No way -- it's too cold."

No shirt off? How disappointing!  "Ok, then, I'm here to tie you up!  You can't escape me!"  I pulled the boy's arms behind the bench, and used the string to tie his wrists together.

"What are you doing?  That's too tight!"

"It will get even tighter than that for you!"

I had just enough string left to tie his arms together.  Then I sat on the bench next to him and ran my hand over his chest.  "Your muscles won't save you this time, Batman!"

The boy started jerking.  He wasn't supposed to do that!

"No!" he yelled.  "Let me out!  Let me up!"

Startled, I jumped over the bench and tried to untie the string.  He was jerking so much, I couldn't do it.

"Hold still!  I can't get a grip!"

"No!  Ow!" He was starting to cry.   An old guy started walking toward us.  I was going to be in big trouble!

Finally I got the knots undone.  The string fell to the ground.  The boy jumped to his feet and ran away.  I ran as fast as I could in the other direction, then circled around, went back to my house, and hid in my room.

Soon the boy's parents would call, demanding to know why I hurt their son.  Or maybe the police would arrest me and send me to jail!

But nothing happened.  No parents, no police.

The next day was  Saturday.  I stayed close to home, worried that I might see the boy out on the street, and he would try to beat me up, or send his big brother over to do it.

About 2:00 in the afternoon, the knock on the door I had been fearing finally came.  I stayed in my room, hiding.  I heard Dad answer the door, some muffled voices, and footsteps toward my room!

Maybe I could hide under the bed, pretend I wasn't there?  No -- Dad knew I was in my room.

He swung the door open without knocking.  "Your friend is here," he announced, leaving me alone with -- the boy.

All by himself.  No Dad, no big brother, no police.

I looked down at my feet, embarrassed to face him.

"I'm..."

"Do you want to play Batman again?"  he said.  "If we do it in the house, I'll take my shirt off."

He was smiling.

See also: My First Indian Sausage Sighting and BDSM Scene.