Wednesday 11 September 2024
Tuesday 10 September 2024
Brainwashed Back Into Nappies (1)
A little bit of photo mapiulation went in to this one to repair somethings which had gone a bit amiss in the raw AI image...but not much, to be honest.
This one too is a raw AI image
...as is this....Starting get some pooy nappies now!Some interesting bondage ideas, once again, raw AI and straight ot of the tin. I love the way the body brace forces the girls to keep their backs straight, shoulders pulled back but forces the bottom to stick out...pefectly presented for the nurse's switch
Monday 9 September 2024
Just When You Thought Dr Swanley's Girls Couldn't Be Placed In Any More Stringent Bondage...
...Dr Swanley's inventive and creative mind comes up withan improved design 'posture correction' device...Yet another raw AI image...Took a long while to get but then all I've had to do is add some text and crop it a bit
Monday 7 February 2011
Locking Cots and Early to Bed
I have been in contact again with my digital illustrator chum in the 'States (remember I spent quite a time telling you all about the ideas hovering out of sight behind an illustrated version of the new book and this guy – Snooze – and his input). Anyway, as well as producing illustrations for a possible pictorial version of my upcoming book he accepts commissions from others and was recently commissioned to produce a series of images interpreting some ideas sent to him that, while now unlikely for various reasons to see the light of day, nonetheless make for a nice showcase of his talents.
As the artist himself says: “The main subject of the picture [to the artist's way of thinking] was the gruesome looking, [quite] terrifying cots. Not the girl. So thick and sturdy that [one immediately recognizes their] terrible purpose and that once [a girl was placed in one] there would be absolutely no escape from its cold confines until who ever it was put [her in ] there decided [she] be released.”
The rubber mattress and pillow “subtly implies that [she] will not be let out for the [purposes of visiting the bathroom].”
The girl on the far side is only noticed as an afterthought. You only notice her later. [Only then] does one discern the rubber suit she is dressed in; which once again implies the lack of bathroom breaks. She is diapered and waterproofed because she is not coming out until release time.”
The illustrator believes – and I agree – that “the image works [not so much due to] what is emphasized [but rather due to] what is understated; because as you look at it you see more and more.”
He sees the scene as “a special dorm for bed wetters in an institutional setting; an asylum? school or prison, perhaps. The first image is set just before 7:00 pm as it is beginning to go dark. Two inmates have been placed in their rubber nightwear and made to lie in their cots. A Dorm Matron has placed a rubber sheet/blanket over her first charge, has lifted the side rail of her cot and already secured one padlock in place and is in the process for locking the second padlock.”
He goes on to point out that:
“The dormitory Matron's second charge is already in position in her cot and is passively lying there while her [compatriot or fellow miscreant] is being [secured]. She could get up, out of the cot - she is not restrained. However, the image tries to show that such an action would be foolish. The locked bars over the window suggest that the room is in any case secure. She would not get far if she attempted to escape. Also positioned strategically in the foreground of the image is Matron's desk with a heavy punishment cane prominently on display along with a leather spanking paddle.
Less prominent, but still ominously visible on the far wall, is a board displaying three additional canes, two tawses and a pair of handcuffs and leg irons. The implication made is that the facility is well able to handle an inmate who tries to create a disturbance.
There are additional furnishings that also suggest resistance is fraught with peril: In the far corner of the room is a wardrobe containing what appear to be straitjackets. It is unclear whether [a straitjacket might be pressed into service to punish a] girl by placing her in it on top of her rubber suit, so that she would be uncomfortably restrained throughout the night] or whether perhaps [these girls] have been [routinely] incarcerated in them during the day and they have now been removed while they are locked in their cots for sleeping.
Another potential jeopardy is the half seen cage on the far left of the image. Presumably if the girls try to create a fuss, instead of being left for the night in their comfy, if very secure cots, they might be confined to the cage, which is too small for them to relax comfortably and has a bare metal floor. The implications of both the cage and straitjackets is that no matter how awful life is, it can always get much worse. And so the second girl realizes that resistance is futile and merely waits patiently for the nurse to cover her with the rubber blanket which is strategically lying on the cot, raise the rail and secure it with the two padlocks that are waiting for her.
To enhance the overall atmosphere, these girls are adults and yet the clock on the wall says it isn't quite seven o'clock. It is light outside still, yet they are doomed to go to bed so early and spend the night in very secure confinement. The lighting isn't bright but, together with the depth of field of the camera, the idea is to focus the [observer's eye] on the girl in the cot, waiting to be put to bed for the night.
The second image of the two lower is meant to capture the scene just over a half an hour later. It is now almost dark outside. The second girl has had her blanket placed on her and the side of her cot raised and secured. The lights have been turned down to allow them to sleep but it is not completely dark. The focus is now shifted on to the Dorm Matron. Her shift isn't up till 8:00 pm, when she will be relieved by a junior night nurse who will keep watch over the girls throughout the night. No talking is allowed of course, which is why the heavy cane on the desk, now well lit up, is prominently on display so that the girls know what will happen if they break the rules.
The [inclusion of the] bed pans [is intended to be] suggestive of the incontinence theme.”
There you have it! Though nothing to do with my storyline, I find the images that have resulted to be most evocative, as I think you'll find too if you look carefully! The idea of the girls just waiting without need of restraint, the no-talking rule – all this I love. But, If I were to be asked to put forward one proviso or criticism, I think it would be that I would dispense with the rubber suits. I guess another would be that I am not so keen on the depicted scenario taking place within “a special unit for 'bed wetters'”... unless it turns out that this is a unit devised to create bed wetters or enforce the behavior in some way – then all of a sudden it becomes delicious! But – hey - that's my taste; what do you think?
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrated Collaboration 3 – Further Evolution
Talking off inspiration: if you remember the piece I posted recently regarding my collaboration with the Stateside computer artist, ‘Snooze’ and the evolution of a particular illustration I demonstrated as an example of the sort of thing we have been developing you will probably be interested with this, the latest incarnation of that art work - compare and contrast with the earlier renditions posted elsewhere. There are many more scenes we are working on – some far more complex and detailed - but it would spoil the fun to give any further inkling of these – you’ll just have to wait until the new book gets finished, or more specifically, the illustrated version of it.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Emails, Latex, Starched Collars, Restriction and Enforced Tattooing
“I am really enjoying the descriptions of the uniforms, especially Lady Madison’s “maid” and the girl in the wheelchair, 24C, I’m not that keen on latex but the idea of all white, including the Nurses’ uniforms is great, adding the Nun style wimple adds to the effect. The idea of tattooing the individual “patients” number on their buttocks is inspirational, just a couple of questions though, why get the girls to write their names when consenting, wouldn’t it have been better to have them sign in a previous chapter that they would in the future as eg 23C and then any consent form would only use their number, or was the intention to introduce a little confusion when they used their previous name. Also what would happen if the patient changes from the school to the cells, eg 30S / 30C and then back again, would she have been tattooed?”
.....
I have to say that latex is only on the peripheral my interests, my interests really lie more with the use of corporal punishment and imposition of strict discipline and school uniforms and the like on young ladies in their late teens or early twenties. As I have said before; my formative reading matter tended to be the likes of Richard Manton and Victor Bruno, and if you know the works of these authors you'll get a feeling for where I'm coming from. As I read around more over the years and discovered other people's interests, the discomfiture inherent in the idea of the heroine having to contend with snug-fitting school knickers, say, fitted with a latex lining seemed to lend itself to developing that all-important sense of restriction. I saw the use of latex under such circumstances much in the same vein as crisply starched school blouses having high, tight starched collars, a girl's hair being tightly plaited and pinned coiled to either side of her head or cut to a short boyish, collar length, style, restrictive corsetry incorporating a stiffened backboard so as to ensure good deportment at the school desk, heavy gabardine rain-capes worn on the warmest of days or toe-crushing shoes cunningly designed to hobble the wearer and so ensure a suitably submissive dainty, girlish gait. You have to realise that when I set out to write these books I also set out to incorporate as many disparate fetishes that seemed to fit with the storyline - not necessarily my own interests in all cases.
.....
The level of discipline and restriction that many letter writer's seemed to advocate in the correspondence pages of Janus, Blushes, Whispers and some other magazines published in the 1980s, the period when I was mostly reading them and tend to hark back to, never really rung true with me in the context within which the correspondents would develop their ideas - such regimes as were often advocated seemed unlikely, if not downright distasteful to the point of being a turnoff, in the context of the parental home or in any sort of conventional and publicly scrutinised school system. Where on occasion some sort of promise of plausibility did seem to arise it was to be found more often than not broached in connection with the subject of ' admission procedures’ wherein the existence of various small, secure and privately funded institutions were sometimes posited - apparently run as much for the amusement of the rich patrons that fund it as to benefit the reformation or education of the inmates.
.....
One writer talked about an establishment wherein a young lady might be confined and where she might be visited from time to time by the man or woman responsible for her incarceration. Some spoke of reformatory schools and short-sharp-shock regimes, lasting two to three months perhaps. Others, excitingly in my opinion, spoke of minimum periods above a year while still others used that wonderful term 'indefinite'. Then one would sometimes come across the idea of a young lady cloistered behind the high walls of her ancestral home, kept from her inheritance by a cruel guardian or stepparent and under a regime of some sort of scholastic discipline whether mediated by a stern governess, dour children's nanny or strict nursery nurse. Influenced by all of the above and having read about the church run, so-called, Madeleine laundries and the ease with which a young woman could find herself committed to such a place - or indeed, in the Victorian period, to the local mental asylum - merely for having refused the advances of the local squire, as well as the unethical psychological experiments carried out in the 1930s through to the 1960s, I chose to invoke a combination of these ideas, centring around a privately funded research unit embedded within a secure psychiatric hospital. As you know it is basically the story of a girl who, having been manipulated into becoming a voluntary research subject for a short period, finds herself increasingly less able to extract herself from the situation to find herself in.
The idea of having the girls sign an earlier legal document stating that from that point forth, while within the institution, their assigned patient number would stand for their given name in all further waivers is a nice one. The reason I opted to have the girls sign the documentation, giving the hospital the right to tattoo them, using their full names, was to impress upon them the legality of their situation and to further impress upon them the futility of attempting to stand against the reform--school / boarding-school regime they are being kept under. It is for similar reasons that the documentation itself is dictated to the girls and has to be rendered in their own handwriting while sitting at their school desks. Obviously, pre-printed sheaves of papers, merely requiring the subject place her signature at the relevant points, could have been handed out, but that would have been missing out on a wonderful opportunity to further apply psychological pressure on them - remember that during the dictation process, any one girl making a mistake or failing to achieve sufficient copperplate-neatness caused the group as a whole to have to start again from scratch. Recall also that the documentation was worded so as to be not so much a permission given to the hospital as it was a request from the girl concerned that the hospital authorities should permanently tattooed each with her assigned patient number. You have hit the nail on the head when you posit the intention of introducing a little confusion when the girls are forced to use their previous names - a girl finding herself automatically going to use her patient number despite herself, perhaps finding her given name appearing almost strange to her, will surely be mindful of the effect that her time in the unit as already had upon her.
As to what would happen as regards the tattoo if the patient was to be changed from the 'schoolroom' regime to the ' prison' or ' workhouse' regimes - there is a good reason why this would not be of too much concern but to elucidate further would be to give too much away.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
A Strict Nurse in Uniform and a Girl in Medical Restraints
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Drip, Drip, Drip - Just an Idea
The tube from her drip feed hangs across the head of her bed and of course naturally sags in the centre at the point where a coupling connects together two lengths of tubing to extend the run over to the cannula in her wrist on the opposite side. It is in the centre of that deeply sagging section, just above her forehead where the drip first begins to form, the liquid dribbling along the tubing from one of the joints, the golden, viscous heavy oily fluid gathering and growing and stretching until…until…it falls, icy stabbing cold and splashing down dead centre on her pretty little forehead, straight through that conveniently placed opening in the head restraint strap…over and over again.
Of course talking without permission is not allowed and complaining of the fault, having been finally driven to distraction, to one of the nurses that share shifts and sit silently reading by her bed side, only gets her bent across the bed for a few strokes of the cane…then the drip feed is refilled and it all starts again…deprived of sleep she is taken once every 24 hrs to the therapists office and if not yet convinced to co operate? well, then its straight back to bed…drip, drip, drip…
Wednesday 6 May 2009
A New and Intriguing Story to Check Out
Thursday 30 April 2009
Dietary Discipline & Harassment Therapy: A Reader's Account (Part 4) - Of Nappies, Leg Braces and Psychological Bondage
“In the average small hospital ward (and I imagine the ward you were confined to would have been quite compact) there are usually only one or two (if that) toilet cubicles. A weird subject I know but one with many disciplinary connotations, particularly under the circumstances you describe, as once in a cubicle the patient could be out of sight for example and might choose to regurgitate an unpleasant meal. And bearing in mind the regimentation of the dietary procedures you describe one can't help wondering whether such toilet visits were regimented in any way (I make mention in volumes 1 and two of my book of bedpan use, both for convenience and for ' medical ' reasons - to allow for easy monitoring of waste output, shall we say (humiliating for the patient, I know, but perhaps necessary).”
It only took an increase in liquid intake and the withholding of potty privileges once or twice and a girl was bound to be found standing in a puddle of her own making in the dayroom or she would wake up with a wet bed.
Such events, whether deliberately induced, entirely accidental, or just written up on paper, were the usual precursor to the loss of potty privileges (called toilet privileges) altogether. That meant having to wear nappies - at least during the day and maybe at night too. If you were one of the retarded girls they might be regular nappies, but those of us who were deemed to 'know better', or be aware of our 'actions', were often made to wear punishment nappies... (the pictures, I think, evoke quite nicely the sort of thing that would be considered suitable garb for such a patient once ensconced in the experimental psychology department, deep within the secure wing of the institution I depict - Garth).
It was on one of the occasions when I was consigned to punishment nappies that I was taken down to the brace shop to have a crotch plate made. The design is a little hard to explain. Firstly my body brace was modified and the waist was reduced even further - making me look more like a wasp than a girl. Then a narrow and most uncomfortable strap was attached to the back of my body brace and passed between my legs and tightly buckled to the front of my body brace. Then a wide rigid plate was made, rubber covered steel I think, and that was similarly attached, by multiple straps, to the back and front of my body brace. By the time all the straps were pulled as tight as the nurses could manage (the narrow understrap could still be tightened after the crotch plate was attached because the crotch plate did not cover the buckle) I was barely able to walk, for the crotch place was about 5 inches wide at its narrowest, and unless I moved very gingerly it would leave me with wheals where it rubbed against my thighs - even through the rubber bloomers, 'panty-girdle', and layers of nappy. Believe me - the panty girdles were very unpleasant, the way they held the sodden nappies in constant contact with your crotch, but the crotch plate was many times worse. Not that I escaped that - I still had to wear a panty girdle, both under and over the rubber bloomers. If you were unlucky enough to be moved to the 'dirty dormitory' then your nappies were usually only changed at bedtime each day. Your dirty nappy and liner were removed and replaced with a 'clean', but still urine soaked, nappy and liner. The dirty nappy was [sometimes] not placed in the nappy bucket until the next morning.
We deviants had our own dormitory, and normally we would never be moved to another - they didn't want any chance of our corrupting the other girls - but the 'dirty dormitory' was an exception - we could be transferred there, and often were.
But punishment nappies were not usually the first disciplinary measure, of that type, a new girl would encounter. They would usually work up to it. My own first experience was when I came back from the bathroom, shivering from a long cold bath. On this occasion I was not wearing a jacket - though often we would wear our jackets in the bath - and as I stood next to 'my' bed the nurse pulled down the cover, and the rubber sheet below it, to reveal the bed made up with urine soaked, sheets and pillowcases - obviously sopping wet, not just damp. It was a very unpleasant experience indeed, though it became even more unpleasant when I was instructed to remove my nightgown and take the gown from beneath the pillow and put it on. Besides being wet and very cold, it too, was saturated in urine. Getting into it was no easy task because the material would keep sticking to itself and the nurse had to help me, much to her annoyance. When told to get into the bed I soon found that the indentation I made rapidly filled with cold urine. It was only an introduction, but that night, and the following nights pent in that bed were very unpleasant”.
The only times I ever left my ward, where I ate, slept, performed my ablutions, and recreated, was to visit my therapist, the therapy room, or the brace shop - and on all such occasions I was securely fastened into a wheelchair that had a top similar to a pram that could be pulled up, and in my case, pulled down, so that I could see nothing of my surroundings as I was moved between locations.
But I could usually still hear what was going on and it was clear that the nurses from my ward were not able to open many of the doors themselves - they were dependent upon getting assistance from others who would only do so if they recognized 'my' nurse. In fact when there was a new nurse on my ward she would have to leave the ward with one of the old-time nurses in order to be introduced to and later recognized by these 'gatekeeper' nurses.
So stealing keys would not have taken me very far. Besides, escape attempts were punished. One girl was already in a full bodycast for attempting to leave the ward when I arrived and she spent another 2 or 3 months in it before she was released. After that she wore heavy leg callipers (click to view pic on Eric Kroll's site) and only moved around with great difficulty. I don't know if the callipers were necessary because she had lost muscle strength or whether they were just an additional punishment or precaution against any future escape attempt. If it was punishment, she wouldn't have been the only girl punished in that way - there were several girls wearing leg braces and other orthopaedic devices that were made for them in the brace shop as punishment for some infraction or other.
I suppose I could have tried asking if I could go out for a walk, but I knew the answer would be no. And the nurses on the ward did not encourage questions (my oft gagged state bore silent witness to that) and we soon learnt that asking questions would lead to punishment. Equally my therapist did not welcome questions, and even in my sessions I was usually gagged. She would say that she had no interest in my opinions, or my lies, only in the measurable results of my treatment. She said that nodding yes or no when she asked a question was quite sufficient. Of course as you might imagine, not being able to ask questions, or even try to clarify what she meant by a statement or question, and not be able to give a more complex answer than yes or no was incredibly frustrating, and I would often leave those sessions screaming to myself from frustration and the feeling that I had been manipulated into nodding yes or no to something I didn't really agree to. For instance I might have to answer yes or no to a general question and then she would assume that I had said yes or no to a much more specific question - one that I would have answered differently had the more specific question been asked.
For the girls on regular diets, being restrained somewhere for the day meant that you would miss a meal or two - meals that were sorely missed judging by their reactions. But for anybody on a 'special' diet, their meals would be saved for them and they would have to eat any missed meals the next day. After a two-day fast, or longer, the 'extra' food might take a couple of days to consume.
"Well, for me it proved impossible until the program was ended - and even then it was difficult. As for people being admitted as a matter of convenience, you might almost consider me one. Of course there is almost always an excuse - or at least a veneer of an excuse - but when you scratch it you often find there is nothing really there. There is no doubt that people were committed for the most trivial reasons - you only have to read the newspapers from the years when the hospitals were being closed to find long lists of people that had been committed for 'being at risk' (aka too pretty) or difficult (didn't get on with new stepmother). The lists went on and on. And it's probably only because the hospitals have closed down that people are no longer being committed for trivial reasons and as a matter of convenience. Of course there are other avenues available nowadays. There are plenty of 'schools' and 'programs' available for 'troubled' teens in far-flung corners of the world, where the authorities cannot intervene. And some of them sound little better than my program. Well, ok, they do sound a bit better than that. "
Friday 24 April 2009
Dietary Discipline, Harassment Therapy & Sexual Reorientation – A Reader’s Account Revisited (Part 3 – Walking Down the Aisle…Again & Again & Again
Also, while your still there: If you enjoy (as I do, quite unashamedly) reading accounts of strict discipline - hands on heads with legs spread - Spartan regimes, late teen girls put back into juvenile uniforms and privileged young ladies brought down to the level of servants and made to wait on table then I can’t recommend enough a story I have just come across on The Spanked Girls Weblog::::: Gymslips & Dormitories (click title to read story or site name to go there – although, as always, it has been added to the sidebar blog list). Also take a look at Spanking Bethie Blog (click) why don't you?...and the yahoo group - Bound Brides (brides in bondage - needless to say...its where I got the bride pic).
“Something else [I came across while researching the basis of my treatment] that I found very interesting was something called 'shame aversion therapy'. Apparently it is/was very closely related to chemical and electrical aversion therapy. I had always assumed that my aversion therapy only related to those physical aversives that took place in the treatment room where I was shown the slides, and that the constant ridicule, humiliation and harassment heaped upon me (and the others) while on the ward, was simple meanness and ignorance combined with a desire to control us and keep a 'tight ship'. But now I wonder if these techniques may have been used in concert with the physical therapies such as chemical and electrical. Certainly something for me to ponder and research further.
Oddly, some years later I saw The Clockwork Orange and didn't associate the aversion therapy with my own. Talk about repressing unpleasant memories. But now it occurs to me that in The Clockwork Orange they took care to make sure that Alex could not avert his gaze from the images on the screen - they used those funny little gadgets to hold his eyes open. Although they took care to make sure that my head was locked into position consistent with looking at the slideshow they didn't use any similar devices to keep my eyes open or make sure I wasn't averting my gaze. Of course I probably wasn't particularly resistant to looking at the slideshow - it's not as if I was trying to protect my supposed deviancy. I do remember being told to 'look at the screen' from time to time - and not looking may have been part of my therapist's complaint that I was uncooperative, but I don't really know.”
Although they initially used the same aversives that would later be used in my therapy for lesbianism, they did not bother using any kind of imagery or measurement - so to that extent it was entirely different. They would just tell me that they would continue the sessions until I could 'eat like a normal person'. In that respect it was entirely punitive and did not incorporate any of the 'scientific' ideas used in aversion therapy - which I assume was meant to be based on the same idea as Pavlov's dogs.”
“Nobody wore any clothes from home. The hospital seemed o have a plentiful supply of clothing that was made on the premises and they strove for a certain degree of uniformity - but you have to bear in mind that for most of the time we 'sexual deviants' were part of a larger teenage ward that had all types of patients - whether mentally retarded, catatonic, psychotic etc. and it would have been difficult to have us all look uniform.
They didn't trust the sexual deviants - they expected us to molest anybody we could get out hands on - whether it was each other, the 'normal' patients, or even ourselves. So we weren't allowed to socialize in the dayroom or move about without some form of restraint - usually what they called jackets, but weren't much like some of straitjackets I have seen elsewhere. There were a lot of variations because they were made for each person in the hospital's brace shop and the nurses could ask for whatever design variations they thought would be helpful. But mostly the arms were laced to our sides unlike the Houdini style jackets that have the arms in front. Many of the other patients were allowed to move about and use their arms so long as they didn't cause any problems. So you would have a number of patients with full use of their arms and then others, apparently armless, moving around the dayroom, looking quite un-uniform. But they did make some attempt to have us properly and modestly attired - perhaps with an added emphasis on modesty given the presence of potential molesters in their midst. Those unrestrained generally wore a mid-calf mid-grey cotton dress, belted at the waist and with slightly puffed sleeves at the shoulder, a white detachable peter-pan collar, white detachable cuffs, and a plain white pinafore. It was neat enough, being tailored to fit each patient, but looked a little incongruous on some of the obviously retarded patients. I take that back - it looked a little incongruous on everybody - but like anything else you get used to it and before long it begins to look normal.
Those of us who were wearing jackets wore 'slips' over them - sleeveless tubes made from the same mid-grey cotton as the dresses. They had the same peter-pan collars and the pinafores were replaced with tabards. There were no belts since we essentially had no waists to speak of.
And then there were a lot of variations. For instance I saw some girls wearing the 'arms crossed in front' style of jacket who were wearing their normal dresses over them - the jacket arms inside the arms of the dress. The jackets were a lot tighter than I have seen elsewhere - presumably because they were custom fitted in the brace shop - either from scratch or modified from an old, often greasy, one. This tightness, especially in the sleeves when they were the 'arms-in-front' kind allowed them to be worn under our dresses instead of over them. So, as you can see, uniformity, if it was a goal, was only partially achieved.
I think I mentioned that I managed to bite one of the nurses when I was being admitted and that turned out to be a big mistake, because throughout my stay the nurse continued to make sure that I 'paid-for-it'. And I 'paid-for-it' in any number of ways. One of them was having to wear a hessian slip under all my clothes and restraints. It was as itchy as any hairshirt must have been and they were always looking for. proof that I must be finding ways to masturbate - and that was in spite of the considerable measures that they always took to ensure that we didn't masturbate. That meant a trip to the brace shop for a very elaborate (and uncomfortable) orthopaedic brace to better ensure my future good behaviour.
I could never really understand why we wore pinafores and tabards. I suppose it was a hold-over from a prior era when such things were more fashionable - maybe when the building first opened - but by the early sixties they were something of an anachronism for anybody but a little girl - an age we teenagers were trying to dissociate ourselves from. They must have been a nightmare for the laundry and we were always getting in trouble for smudging them. But they also served the purpose of identifying us. Every girl on the ward had her number printed in large numerals on both the front and the rear of her pinafore or tabard and the deviants also had 'DEVIANT' printed in large capital letters beneath the numbers, letting everybody know to give them a wide berth - just in case they missed our stubbly heads.”
“I'm not sure how long the average stay might have been. I was there for three years - when the program was phased out - and I don't think that I was unusual. I was lucky to be released rather than remaining a patient in one form or another. The problem was that the results of the program and my own treatment were considered inconclusive and the hospital was reluctant to discharge me, still a possible danger to society, only a teenager and with nowhere particular to go.
Dietary Control and Enforced Weight Gain?
“Still on the subject of diets: was there any attempt to weight control? Perhaps weight loss or even enforced weight gain (something that occurs in volume 2 of my book)?”
“I should apologize for not having read your book yet and for not having read very much of your blog. It is very high on my list of things I must do, but things have been very hectic ever since I found your blog - and writing this letter hasn't helped! As for weight control, I'm not quite sure. I do remember overhearing a conversation between two nurses that were discussing what to do about a particular patient. She was extraordinarily beautiful and I think she had been admitted because it was feared she would become promiscuous because she had a number of older boys pestering her. Anyway, the nurses were talking about what might be done and the question of fattening her up or making her too skinny to still be attractive was discussed - but I'm not quite sure what the outcome was. Somehow I think she may have been moved off our ward.
“I'm not sure if this counts, but I do remember that we were often made to wear the braces, and other devices that were made for us in the brace shop, long after they were comfortable. At our age many of us periodically grew quite rapidly. I don't think it was a cost saving measure because most of the people that worked in the brace shop, and certainly almost everybody who worked in attached sewing shop, were patients, and I assume they had to work for nothing. Besides, they showed absolutely no reluctance to take us down anytime they wanted to get us a more 'difficult' brace or jacket or make a modification to our existing brace. So I'm inclined to think that our wearing of braces that we had outgrown was just one more little way in which they needled us. Incidentally I was the recipient of an elaborate brace within a few days of admittance - ostensibly to cure my stooping. Nobody had mentioned it before and I suspect that the nurse I bit was behind it. Of course after a week or so it didn't seem so bad - but it made moving and bending much more difficult - and in that respect I was always conscious of it.”...to be continued...
Monday 5 January 2009
Labels and Tags and Botox Bondage (I'm Back Folks: Happy New Year)
There were quite a few messages of encouragement - and then there was a very interesting little thing from a contributor that featured some interesting ideas as regards the imaginative use of Botox - yes Botox, you heard right - as a bondage and humiliation tool. It is an insight of shear genius and together with a stimulating exchange of ideas, regarding institutionalised humiliation, has once again reignited my enthusiasm. Anyway, refreshed by the Xmas layoff and this wonderfully stimulating flood of ideas I have taken my life in my hands and, ignoring its bleating and repeated bleeps of protest, I have once more somehow forced my main machine into action.
I couldn't resist sharing this with you in its entirety; I don’t think I have ever felt so invigorated let alone inspired:
In common with the aforementioned stammering study, wherein one participant was 15, there is mention of the involvement of teenagers and thus of young adults, allowing some latitude to the imagination. I am very keen to avoid any connection with paedophilia and also the characters I invoke, both in my private fantasies and more recently in my writing, are of necessity young adults. Sexual maturity is a must if the scenario is to be of any interest to me at all; devoid of any sexual element all one is left with is a disturbingly cold depiction of various forms of torture, both mental and physical. This could be said of all forms of S/M fantasy / writing wherein participation is not necessarily consensual - but in your mind's eye place in either of these situations a deliciously curvaceous and well developed young lady, perhaps a spoiled pouting and pampered princess of a girl, once the apple of her late father's eye and wanting for nothing but now left with the prospect of facing-off against an avaricious jealous young stepmother for every penny...a very clever, very inventive young stepmother.
What really most caught my attention in the article was, firstly, how easily the status of an institution could be changed overnight, from what could easily have been a shelter for young runaways (or - in an earlier era perhaps - a church-run home for young women likely to fall into moral danger) to a mental institution - and solely for financial reasons it seems. Secondly, the way in which, automatically, the way in which the status of an inmate could change along with the institution by default, despite her being perfectly normal in every way, to that of a mental defective or retard and her new status be recorded quite legally - with all the implications that encompasses. And, thirdly, the way an inmate's treatment might change commensurate with that new status, despite her normal disposition and good behavior, as the staff come to view her in a different light (there are possible parallels with the well known Stanford experiment here as regards the effect on the staff's behavior towards their charges). Finally: there is the implied long term psychological effects of the barred windows, sedation, straitjackets, humiliation and punishment; the possibility that an inmate could be changed so as to come to match the status imposed on her - so much easier to control a nice, quite, tamed mental patient.
The latter point echoes the aforementioned stammering study wherein, in addition to the provision of so-called negative therapy, the staff overseeing the subjects unwittingly reinforced the treatment by changing the way they were treating their charges in their day-to-day life once their status had been reassigned and they had been given the label; stutterer. Partly this was the way the staff had been instructed to behave, but partly it was also a subconscious response to the attached label.
I remember reading years ago about the shooting of the film of The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Many of the cast and extras played school girls and had to stay in costume (a gymslip, blouse and tie ensemble) wandering around all day despite only being required on set from time to time. Shooting went on for many weeks and the cast began to notice more and more as time went on how studio staff, canteen staff for example, would treat them as children, despite their being in their late teens or even early twenties in some cases. What is more; they found that rather than complain about such off-handish and sometimes patronizing treatment, as they might ordinarily have done, they found themselves tending to adopt a rather sheepish stance of acceptance, thus reinforcing the staff members viewpoint, and treatment of them, still further, perpetuating the situation.
Monday 28 July 2008
From Behind Stained Glass: Meredith's Tale - Part 3
“…I said; we'll have to see about getting you up and about today, I'm afraid. We can't have you lying on your back all the time, now can we?”
The voice was cheery, brisk and breezy. The woman, maturely-plump, her figure somewhat over-enthusiastically filling her white uniform, was bending over the girls head almost as if her intention was to kiss her forehead.
Meredith, startled, was dragged from her reverie. Memories, dreams, nightmares, call them what you will; whatever they were, she had been lost in their thrall to the extent that she had not had even the slightest inkling of the nurse’s arrival, not even when the curtains around her bed had been drawn back. Now, for the first time, she could see beyond her immediate confines; this was her first real glimpse of the rest of the ward.
A second woman, attired identically to the first but younger and of more slender build, stood at the foot of the bed; half turned away, she was craning over a clipboard, bent necked, scribbling away furiously like some court stenographer as if recording every occurrence, every nuance and idiom of speech. Beyond her, directly ahead, a bed, the exact twin of her own, lay empty, the white plastic of the mattress catching the light where the coverings had been rolled back, presumably in preparation for the next occupant. Immediately to its left, white curtains were drawn around what she could only assume to be an occupied bed.
Twisting her head to the left as far as her pillow would allow she could see there was another unoccupied bed separated from her own by little more than a couple of metres and then, around three meters beyond that came ward’s end wall. The latter was dominated at its centre by a large window, occupying fully one third of the width of the wall, that looked as if to be steamed up or misted over in some way and that lay recessed back behind a row of vertical bars that seemed themselves to be inset into the wall.
To her right, some three meters distant, a barrage of thick glistening-white bars, running floor-to-ceiling, bisected the entire room and guarded the double swing doors that, lying two meters beyond, constituted the ward's only access. Not that this latter pair did not represent a formidable enough barrier in their own right; their porthole windows, each inscrutably gazing out from behind its own crisscrossed basketwork of curving cylindrical bars, were as reluctant as any of the ward’s windows to give way to any more than a diffuse luminescent glow at most.
Meredith blinked, then blinked again as if in double-take, as if her first impression’s failing would yet be exposed; her mouth gaped and her eyes widened -the truth remained the same. Her consternation must have been writ large across that pretty elfin face; at that very moment the second nurse, the one with a clipboard, chanced to look up:
“They had to move you here when you wouldn't calm down. They had no choice - you were far, far too disturbed to be kept on the intensive care ward any longer”.
“But what is... I, I mean, where am...”
“Shhh, hush child, there's nothing to worry about. ” Sensing the young woman's increasing confusion and impending panic the plump woman, the more experienced of the two nurses, had interjected; it was best in a case like this to be candid, to explain quickly. She went on: “This is a secure psychiatric unit, a locked ward as it is sometimes called - nothing to worry about, really. You'll be just fine here until you feel better. As soon as you show signs of recovery, that is that you can satisfy us that you recognise those fears and nightmares of yours as just that, your imagination, we'll do everything we can to get you out of here and back on to a normal ward as quickly as possible. For now, though, I'm afraid this is home for the foreseeable future.”
There was much more here then she could ever have seen, even the rare moments, and they had been precious few, that the curtains had been parted to any degree. For one thing there had never been more than a few degrees of viewing angle opened up between the flaps of that heavily-hanging and sound deadening fabric, for another, such rifts even when opened had been exceedingly fleeting; a nurse might come or go, perhaps a trolley pushed through, but that would be it.
And then there was that cushion, and the strap that went with it. The former was of white foam rubber, the softest imaginable, being U-shaped it wrapped around and cradled her head with a surprising, and initially disconcerting, firmness, covering her ears at all but rendering her completely devoid of hearing.
The associated strap consisted of a broad band of PVC, padded out with a softly quilted lining, running across her forehead, covering it in its entirety other than that at its very centre whereat a circular cut-out of perhaps three centimetres in diameter lay. The latter’s functionality, if any, remained a mystery to her at this point; its existence being known to her only from the rare occasions she had been released from that bands grip so that she might be moved. That it was aligned so perfectly with the fine-bore nozzle that emerged at the very centre of the glittering child’s mobile that hung over the head of her bed, and every other in the ward, was completely lost on her; whether it would remain so would depend solely on the whim of others - any endowed with sufficient pity and wisdom might pray for the continuation of that innocence.
The rational behind that particular immobilisation had been explained to her so many times, all too often in fact; it was a precaution against the possibility that her neck had been injured, though they continually assured her that she was fine. Additionally, on those occasions, as now, that she was released from its unrelenting clamping grip her neck seemed fine, if stiff from the prolonged inactivity. It must be said, though, that even when released her neck’s freedom of movement was somewhat limited by the latex lined neck-brace they kept her in, so she could never be certain.
Even now, her head released from that cushion’s grasp, much lay beyond her field of vision. The wall-mounted colonic irrigation apparatus to the right of the bed head of course remained out of sight, its associated plastic pipe work left coiled on the shelf below; she had experienced its work many, many times yet never once had laid eyes on it. The patient sling and hoist, too, remained for the most part out of sight, having been pushed up against the wall immediately to the girl’s right; this, of course, would not ordinarily have been present, having been drafted in for the purpose of moving her.
The wheelchair she had a fair if oblique view of, the angle sparing her the details of its restraints for now. To any outside of this very singular establishment, not privy to its detailed machinations and agenda, such precautions, even in the most disturbed and demented of cases, might have appeared at the very least somewhat excessive, if not downright oppressive. This would have seemed particularly so considering the degree of hindrance already inflicted by the plaster casts encasing both the girl’s upper and lower arms and those encasing her above and below her knees. The hinged callipers fitted on the latter, presently locked out in the straight position, did at least allow for some degree of freedom in moving her around being positionable and lockable in a multitude of orientations – not all of which were ‘usual’ or necessarily comfortable for the patient.
The gynaecological examination stirrups, presently residing at the bed’s far end, she knew only too well of course. These could be moved up along practically the entire length the bed, if necessary, by means of a simple adjustment of wheel, adorned with a convenient handle, mounted at the foot of the bed – a worm-drive, running along a slot mounted in the bed frame and duplicated at both sides, carried the supports back and forth as required.
Those hideous callipers, or leg braces as the staff were apt to term them, provided more then enough freedom of adjustment to allow for even the most open and exposed display of her person and the most intimate of examinations. On many such occasions her knees would be drawn back practically parallel with her ears, stretching the sinews of her crotch and forcing those once private coral lips to gape. This would particularly be the case on those occasions when shaving her ‘down there’ was required; it gave unimpeded access of the razor to that region and around her anus too. Regular depilation was a must, it was hospital regulations. It was all about hygiene at the end of the day and she was not a particularly ‘clean’ girl ‘down there’, not particularly ‘fragrant’; she was always overhearing them saying that about her, commenting on her ‘smell’. Her cheeks burned with shame at the thought of it; it amplified the trauma of those examinations out of all proportion.
At other times, always at a time her sedation had been increased beforehand, a small plastic box would be placed on the mattress in a suitable position, this supporting a small wheel, not unlike cotton spool, festooned all around with the softest of hand-selected eiderdown and with a row of slightly longer feathers running around its centre. Two arms emerging from either side of the box carried this device on a little axle slung between them, their positioning being virtually infinitely adjustable. Spinning madly and maddeningly, thousands of gentle feather strokes would kiss then later, once soaked and lathered with her arousal, slaver, lick, and suck at her, softly caressing all around and across her clitoris.
A nurse, sitting by her bedside, would read from a script in lullaby tones, a teeny condenser-microphone pinned to her uniform relaying her voice to the speakers built into that U-shaped cushion pinning her patient’s head. Sometimes these words ran true and ever more so in more recent times. At other times, most others in the early days, her mind would rebel; the ideas coming being just too alien to her. Swamped with strangely perverted images and drowning in her dreams, dreams she couldn’t possibly comprehend, she would strike out the safety of the shore – she would struggle against the sleep-tide, fight to wake herself. She never could of course; the sedative they used was just too heavy. Nor could she resist upon waking, for what could there be to fight if there was nothing to recollect?
And the sedative’s amnesiatic effect, albeit temporary, saw to it that there really was nothing to remember; there were just those missing hours and even those went unnoticed in the 24-hour-lit temporal distortion of that place euphemistically known as ‘the ward’. It was addictive too; it was not medically recognised as suitable for long-term use, that sedative. They undoubtedly knew that and yet they kept her on it continuously, albeit at a much lower dosage ordinarily; it kept her relaxed and her mind soothingly foggy – she was beginning to like that feeling, beginning to wonder how she could ever live without it. She would have grabbed at those little blue and gold capsules when they were brought to her, had she been able, she would have snatched at them, now; it was a deeply humbling addiction - and one encouraged by those softly whispered suggestions she knew nothing of.
The sling having been worked under her, a button was pushed and the hoist sprang into life, albeit remarkably gently. There was an almost supernatural element to that smoothness, of levitation rather than lifting; pulleys of nylon and PTFE, a rope of Dacron standing in where a chain might ordinarily have been expected, these had brought new standards to that, and a quietness of operation that belied the work done. Little more than an electric hum emanated from the crane-like structure; and even that was apt to vanish below the swish of the nurses' dresses – that soft polyester rasp she had become so accustomed to, was comforted by somehow.
The wing-nuts on the hinged mechanism at her knees, that sited between the upper and lower sections of her leg braces, had been loosened off before initiating the lift, allowing the adoption of a seated configuration as it progressed. On being satisfactory seated that adjustment would be reversed, locking the girl's callipers in the new conformation, all safe and sound.
The wheelchair's seat gave markedly under her weight despite her slightness, the white leatherette proving to have an unexpectedly spongy, resilient character. The clinical chill of the plastic came to her, even through the rubber of those awful, sweaty hospital issue bloomers they kept her in; at least it chilled those fleshy regions lying to either side of the thick incontinence towel that resided therein. This latter was a particular bane of her present existence. Affixed internally by straps designed for that purpose, positioned two fore and two aft of the gusset region, the most distal of each pair being just short of the waistband while the other sat just clear of the crotch area itself, the thing was constantly in the most intimate contact with her most sensitive flesh; it both irritated and teased in equal measure.
Placed in the chair, her useless hands now dangled over the ends of the armrests, plaster-enwrapped fingers splayed fan-like; true the resin-based nature of the casts made them softer and more resilient than had they been fabricated from the more traditional plaster, but not as flexible as might ameliorate, in any real sense, the totality of that immobilisation.
Analogous to the mechanism surrounding her knees and allowing angular adjustment to her leg braces, a plastic hinge arrangement linked the casts fitted around her upper and lower arms – this providing stability to her elbows. The similarity ran to the wing-nut and ratchet adjustment of each limb's conformation and by this means the required right-angle bend at the elbow had been introduced, making allowance for a seated posture; again a simple re-tightening of the nut by finger and thumb alone was sufficient to lock each limb in the required attitude.
Having secured an entire plethora of straps and bands around the limbs and torso of their patient, both of Velcro and those secured by buckles and all seemingly unnecessary considering the circumstances, she was deemed 'ready for transfer'.
This 'transfer', when it finally came about, turned out to be somewhat disappointing; it was not quite the lengthy excursion that all that preparation, precautions and fuss might have suggested. Indeed, this sojourn consisted of little more than the length of the ward, a decidedly limited dimension, the negotiation of a substantial, securely locked door and a fairly narrow passageway stretching all of ten metres or so, the latter requiring traversing in single file, one nurse leading the way, the other pushing the wheelchair and bringing up the rear. If she harboured hopes of some glimpse beyond the confines of the hospital, then the frosted glass of two windows that they passed in the ward, then that windowless passage beyond, dashed them in their entirety.
Their destination was, if anything, even more of a let-down; four bare white walls stared back at her as she was pushed across the threshold, unadorned in any way and notably uninterrupted by any window. They had set out in the opposite direction to the ward's security-grille-guarded exit and she had guessed from the outset that they were not actually going to be leaving the unit as such – but she had expected something more, somehow, than this near empty box of a room. Being of perhaps four metres on a side, its only occupant stood bang slap in the centre; a bench or examination table of around waist hight and having a most singularly sinister appearance glowed there as if spotlit, its white plastic top dazzling to the eye. This latter furnishing, noticeably bolted to the floor, was arranged longitudinally within the space. Hinged at its centre, it had been left with the end closest to the party folded down in a manner not unlike a drop-leaf table, the extreme edge reaching down close to the floor and the whole having the form of a horizontal 'L'. Releasing her from the imprisonment of her wheelchair, they stood her up against the contraption, her legs once again straitened, knee joints locked and her callipers pressed firmly up against that vertical section.
A short explanation followed, delivered in a hurried flurry and giving the impression of some fast approaching dead line. It flowed past her largely without comprehension; she felt muddled, foggy, as she so often did these days. It was something to do with needing to have an x ray of her back in a particular orientation and, as she was overdue for an anal exam, 'killing two birds with one stone'.
She was placed in a standing position, bent at the waist with arms stretched above her head, her elbow joints having been locked out now as had been her knees, the latter by way of the callipers. A broad Velcro-fastening band was then drawn tightly across the small of her back and another pulled across her shoulders and upper back, the latter being of some thirty centimetres in breadth and seeming superfluous considering the enforced rigidity of her extremities.
Her chin rested in a raised U-section cushion, provided for that purpose; a cap of criss-crossed leather or plastic straps was fitted over the top and back of her head, firmly secured by buckles at its sides, stabilising her head and allowing the neck brace to be released at the rear and her head to be tilted back such that she faced forward.
Despite their apparent redundancy, leather straps were then fastidiously buckled at her wrists, elbows and again close to her shoulders, the fastenings struggling to accommodate the plaster casts at those points. Her legs were similarly restrained, drawn out into an embarrassingly exposed exaggerated inverted 'V' conformation by straps positioned around her ankles, knees and upper-thighs.
There was something disturbingly familiar about it all; all that attention to detail, all that complexity of restraint while so obviously unnecessary. It was something she thought she recognised, had experienced before in some other place, long ago; there was something ritualistic, fetishistic about it all – it froze her blood, petrified her heart, near unhinged her mind.
Finally, as if in answer to an unasked question, she felt fingers toying with the broad elastic waistband of her knickers. With a concerted smoothly sweeping action a pair of hands was dragging the tacky latex from her bottom, peeling the clinging fabric free of the latter's fleshy overhang with a sound not unlike a young girl,s breath drawn softly through lips pursed with uncertainty, then away from, and down, her thighs, to end stretched wide between her knees.
The mortification was tangible; in her mind's eye she could see now the heavily saturated towel at the crotch dragging down the gusset, revealing its loathsome and embarrassing contents to all – why did it always have to be this way? Why couldn't they clean her up first, at least change the towel if not the knickers? Would it be so difficult? Didn't they care about her feelings? That these concerns remained internalised was probably for the best: Yes, they did care, her feelings were of paramount consideration, no, it would not be difficult; beyond these she would not have appreciated, nor liked, the responses – it was best she was spared the fruits of curiosity...
Suddenly they were gone – just like that. She was alone, abandoned in silent vulnerable isolation; no words spoken in explanation, no light-hearted inter-colleague banter, the only clue to their departure being the softly-padded thud of the door closing behind them. She was alone, open and secured, helpless...
How long it had been she had no way of reckoning, yet her feeling was it hadn't been very long; though what such a relative term might actually mean to one confined as she was, is debatable. Strangely, she hadn't heard the door, not even its muffled re-closing yet somehow she sensed she was no longer alone. For a while she couldn't be sure; there was something there, a slight muffled shuffling perhaps – then her very bowels twisted, mangled in fear, in utmost dread...
It was the wheezing that came first – dry, like old parchment, like the rustle of drought fallen leaves. Then the cough came; not quite a death rattle, although she had so often prayed it was. Decidedly masculine, it came in excited staccato bursts, the nervous asthmatic constriction of elderly bronchi. Then it came nearer, that unseen presence, the breathing, laboured and heavy; moist foetid breath lapped around her neck and hung there like rotting strands of seaweed, then dangled down her back, then sniffed and snuffled between and around her buttocks, bony fingers, the nails ridged with time, easing the globes apart.
Her mind had become as frozen in terror as her body had been immobilised by more physical means, her last cogent thought being one of utter disbelieve: how could it be him, here, in this place, in this hospital – how could he have got to her here? She knew it couldn't be, of course, how could it? It had to be some sort of hallucination, the sort they were always warning of, that she denied yet they insisted she suffered – had they been right all along? Yes, that was it, just another delusion, it had to be, just had to...
She waited, what else could she do; even that scream wouldn't come, it froze somewhere along her throat. That scream had always torn through the air, rang in her ears, but that had been only in nightmares; they told her that's what they were and punished her if she said otherwise. They had so many ways of punishing, all for her own good; they could withhold her meals, not let her sleep, they might simply ignore her for days or even weeks - that was by far the worst, no one speaking to her, not smiling, not even acknowledging her own smile, it was subtle but effective – so very many ways. No, she could only wait, the scream wouldn't come, the punishments had been too effective - what if it was all just another nightmare? But this was no nightmare, they were never in the here and now, never in this setting – yet how could she be certain? No, it had to be a nightmare, another derangement. That is what they said they were and she was not allowed to object, she was not allowed to question the fact; that was what was stifling her scream, slowly dismantling her reason thought by thought, belief by belief...
Gnarled arthritis-clawed fingers kneaded and prodded the flesh around her most intimate regions as so often before, exploring, teasing. Then a hesitation, the pause she knew to be the calm before the storm, an uncertain meandering countdown, time itself seemingly hanging pendulous in space, quivering before the coming tempest; a most agonising prospect for any woman. And then... AND THEN...