Today's activity was to get the footers ready to be poured. Two footers needed additional dirt removed to "move" them into the right location. The next step was to level the bottoms to within .25 inches over 2 feet. I was just getting started when work was called off because of the heat. In a very few minutes, I was escorted down into the basement cell by Harold.
I was again asked what "I might like". Thinking back to the previous time Harold had asked, I first mentioned that Bob and he were so different, that just because Bob had done something, it didn't mean he couldn't repeat it. I don't think that Harold could do it the same as Bob would even if he tried, they are just so different. I didn't get any disagreement there. The gist of his reply was that "Harold was institutional and Bob was counterculture". This is partially reflected in Harold's 37 years in the military, and Bob avoiding Vietnam by citing "homosexual tendencies" to the draft board.
I suggested that I might like getting placed in a straitjacket and strapped to the cell bars. Harold needed no more encouragement. The Fetters jacket, still sitting on the floor at the far side of the room, was proficiently strapped on me in what seemed less than a minute.
Harold is good at this, probably better than anyone who ever has put me in a straitjacket. He seems to have an intuitive feel for how tight it is. If he wants it so snug that it is hard to breathe, that's how it goes on. If he wants you there a while, it goes on tight, but it is not initially uncomfortable. It didn't seem to make any difference that I was trying to keep some extra slack. Harold put the jacket on the way Harold wanted the jacket on. Very nice.
I was soon strapped tightly against the inside of the cell door, with my orange pants, orange shirt, and a straitjacket, with straps:
Harold then defined two terms, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Satisfactory was defined as any condition that would result in no permanent bodily harm, regardless of how uncomfortable or painful it might be. Unsatisfactory was defined as a condition that could result in bodily harm or loss of life.
He then dropped in on me every so often over the next few hours to ask me my condition and to stun-gun my legs. He also took a fancy to asking me how long I had been there. So, there I am, strapped in a straitjacket, against the bars of a cell, getting sorer by the minute, no clock, no glasses, thinking I might get stun-gunned the umpteenth time, in my own way loving every bit of it, and I was supposed to know how long I had been there! Well, when Harold asks, he wants an answer. I found out later that my 2.5 hours was really about 3.5 hours. Not that it seemed to make any difference. Harold got his answer.
The last time Harold asked me about my condition I responded "partially unsatisfactory". The pressure on my lower throat was making me a bit nauseated. The thought of up-chucking into the head harness, which completely covered my mouth, didn't seem like a safe plan. Harold said he had planned on letting me out, so he was getting his own way, anyway. I don't think getting "out", with Harold, will ever be as easy as getting "in". First he took off the straps connecting the head harness and then the head harness. Then he removed the straps on my ankles and my knees. This gave me enough slack to stretch my legs, which I promptly did, lifting both off the ground and up into the air as far as I could get them. I like to stretch if I have been tied immobile for any length of time. With my body still in the straitjacket lashed tightly to the cell door, he unlocked the cell door and swung it open, while commenting that some prisons remove high-risk prisoners from their cell by strapping them to the door before opening the cell.
After getting unstrapped from the cell door, I was given more experience with the stun-gun. I was still in the straitjacket with Hyatt leg irons on my ankles, and the leg irons were still chained to the cell bars. Harold grabs me around my hips with one arm and "attacks", first my upper left thigh, then the right one, then back to the left using the stun-gun. The stun-gun was used on me for more than ten seconds. This is the only activity at MCF that left me with bruises, and I don't think it was Harold's "fault". If I hadn't had the leg irons on, I probably would have kicked him. I certainly wasn't standing "still" for this. I expect that Harold had to work at it to keep the stun-gun on me, and used a fair amount of force to hold it in place. There is some possibility that the bruising was simply caused by the electric current, but I expect it was just the force Harold was using to hold the stun-gun in place. The six yellow-gray .5 inch diameter spots lasted about 2 weeks. Not a problem.
A note to stun-gun manufacturers, prospective purchasers, and legislators:I didn't end up on the floor. I wasn't incapacitated for 30 seconds. If you plan on using one of these things on someone, expect to anger them more than incapacitate them. I might have assaulted Harold if I hadn't been in a straitjacket<grin>. It did hurt.
After getting out of the straitjacket, things started looking too normal. Un-shackled, I went upstairs, and took a long shower. Fifteen minutes, according to Harold, who yelled at me to hurry up. (Maybe it was shaving my balls, which I had taken up about a month earlier, that was taking too much time.) We then went out to dinner. I was wearing my own clean clothes, not the filthy, smelly, bright orange outfit with "Mountain Correction Facility" imprinted across the back.
Friday night out is one of the rituals at MCF. We went to a place about 15 miles southeast of the facility. It was so busy that we had to wait about 15 minutes to get a table in the non-smoking section. I had grilled salmon with their excellent soup, salad and bread bar. What a change from eating dry Cheerios out of a stainless steel bowl placed on the cement floor while your hands are cuffed behind your back.
After dinner and a quiet drive back, it was strip and straight into the cage. Once in the cage, my hands were cuffed with Hyatt's and attached with a chain to a cold steel collar that locked around my neck. Another pair of handcuffs was still locked on the left-hand side of the cage. Harold had left the key in the cuff. While he was out of the room, I removed it from the cuffs and placed it on the horizontal bar of the cage door. When he picked it up, on about his fourth trip past the cage, he didn't say anything about it. I hadn't expected him to.
Harold asked me when I would need to urinate again. My response was, to the effect, "about 9am, but I assume that if I needed to go before that I am going to get to lay in it until I got unlocked". Harold said that "they don't run a place like that and I would need to wake him up first". This was the first clue that I had picked up on that I wasn't going to be in the cell tonight. I originally thought that I might be getting four-pointed to the bed in the cell.
Harold locked a second chain to the collar, a leash. Then he led me out of the cage to the grass off the south porch and told me to piss. So there I was, stark naked, outdoors, pee-shy as always, hands cuffed behind my back & chained to a collar around my neck, on a lead like a dog, and being told to piss. I wasn't fast, but it did happen. It would have been a REALLY long time till morning if I hadn't relieved my bladder.
Harold led me up the narrow steps against the east wall, and then across the landing to the "bedroom" on the north side of the house. The reason I put "bedroom" in quotes is that there is quite a lot of stuff there in addition to the bed. Thirty or so handcuffs and leg irons hung on the south wall, a Humane Restraint bed set piled on the floor and a vertical cage was bolted to the wall in the NE corner. I am locked in the cage and hooded. The collar is removed but the handcuffs remain. The hood seemed to be the same one that I had on when I was in the sleep sack, fairly light black leather, (I have never quite understood the fascination with black), with a few small holes for breathing, and not very tight. While I waited, Harold went back downstairs and got an EMT backboard that had been stored up against the wall at the foot of the stairs.
After locking the collar back around my neck and unlocking the cage, Harold directs me to the far side of the room, and instructs me to lie down on the backboard that is covered with a blanket for padding. The small space that Harold has to work in doesn't seem to slow him much as I am strapped down to the back board, first with Velcro straps, then Humane Restraint cuffs at my wrists, elbows, and ankles. There is also was a small strap placed loosely across my neck. The Humane Restraint cuffs at the wrist and elbow went around both my body and around part of the backboard. I tried various times through the night to slip my hand out. The cuff seemed loose enough, but I never did get it out. I still think if I had had a free hand to hold it in place, I might have been able to pull my other hand free. It was kind of a "Catch-22".
Harold and I talked as he tied me to the board. He made quite a number of adjustments to make me more comfortable. I don't think he wanted to be awakened in the middle of the night. At one point our conversation turned to cattle prods. I said that I had only done it to myself. He laughed a bit as he grabbed a cattle prod and zapped the bottom of my foot as he explained that he had already been using it on the bottoms of my feet. It feels a lot like a stun-gun, just a bit more intense. Getting cattle prodded hurts. There doesn't seem to be any question there. I don't find it erotic. I don't think it is as simple as "wanting to get hurt". I don't think that is it at all. It scares me. It gets my attention. It focuses my mind in the present. Even that doesn't seem to really explain much.
Early in the evening, after Harold and Bob had laid down in the bed to go to sleep, I twisted my right hand around and was working on the Velcro strap at my waist. The noise that I made alerted Bob who then asked what I was up to. I told him and then ripped the whole strap free. So much for stealth with Velcro straps. This bit of defiance prompted some additional conversation, but no repercussions. I think Harold was more interested in sleep than in putting me in my place.
The backboard was uncomfortable, but I think that they always are. At least the blanket was there. I found the best position was when I had a lump of the blanket just below my butt. It seemed to take some of the stress off of my lower back. I know I didn't sleep very much. I don't think I ever do when I am tied down. Bob said that I was sleeping some, from listening to my regular breathing. I do meditate when I am restrained. I am not sure how different breathing during meditation and sleep would sound.
I could see trees and the westward sky out the window of the bedroom, so morning came with more details and color than it had in the past. The birds were louder than in the basement. I could see the color in the sky change. As the light intensity in the room increased, I started seeing colors instead of just shades of gray. It also was getting cooler. At the beginning of the evening, even stark naked, it was hot and muggy. An occasional breeze swept through the room, but even by 10pm it wasn't a cool breeze. By morning it had cooled off nicely, but I couldn't even begin to get my blanket on top of me.