Sometimes when with myself I will layer my face, first with the mesh hood, second with the leather.  Sometimes that is enough to block out the light, other times I want more. Other times I will take electricians tape and start rolling it over and over and over around my head until I feel I have covered enough material that no possible light could penetrate through; could disturb my moment of solitude.

There is something intimately private about my transformation and I often stand before the mirror, unable to see my reflection and yet with my hands, I run my fingers along the uneven ridges of the tape, I allow my palms to slide back and forth, seeing through the sensation of touch, smiling inside my mind at how I must look.

Most often I experience a moment of panic. This occurs when I come to realise that I pulled the tape a little too tight and the pressure of the adhesive is restricting my ability to blink my eyelashes, to move my lips or even twitch my nose.  I am suddenly uncomfortable, increasingly so and I shake my head wondering what the hell I am doing.  Instinctively I grasp to find a loose flap, hoping to yank my bindings, desperate to breathe without restrictions, to breathe without the pungent sensation of my own hot breath blanketing my cheeks. Somewhere though in my fumblings my panic dissipates, almost as though the darkness has suffocated my fear and I allow my body to slide to the floor, crawling on all fours through the bedroom and into the walk in closet.

My sight is captured and yet I know the closet is submersed in hues of black and grey. And I like that. Nay, I thrive on it. From it.  Most often I find a corner, resting my back against the cool wall, pulling my knees up under my chin and I rest; not my body but my mind. It is here, in my cocoon where I finally am silenced. Where my mind permits me a reprieve and no longer shouts rules and laws and expectations; where my thoughts of eroticism, decadence and deviance are unchained and my body is finally permitted a pleasure only my darkest of images and desires can provide.  I genuinely believe that it is in those brief, rare moments that I connect with my body, connect with myself and I feel weightless and peaceful.

I am no longer me when encased in my own personal eclipse. I am an object. I have no responsibility. I do not need to be accountable for my actions, for my lust, for my lascivious thoughts. I do not need to worry about others' feelings and or desires; instead I can be greedy and selfish and sadistically evil and sexually cruel and no one will shame me or reprimand me; including myself.

How it is possible to feel both connected and grossly detached from my being I do not know, but that is how I feel when bound in my own sensory deprivation trap.  When muffled from my own set of limitations I embrace every and any sexual, masochistic, animalistic possibility, tempting my thoughts to go deeper, to go past what I have considered the norm all my life and to challenge what I have deemed wrong, unacceptable and improper. And when my mental journey delves farther than it has before that is when I experience complete freedom. It is also when I know my body could endure more than it ever has before; when I could be beaten until my pale flesh is speckled with colours of erotic violence; when my holes could be probed, stretched and sadistically violated; when my mind could be tortured, fucked and manipulated to the point where I no longer know my name; where I no longer know what I am -  except to know I am an object, a thing, a creation for pleasure and use.

Anything is possible when my consciousness is mummified. I can be ridiculed. I can be degraded. I can be humiliated. I can be forced to say and do and perform acts that I would only moments prior to my bindings, consider to be immoral, consider to be reprehensible.  I can cry without emotion. I can feel anger without connection. I can feel isolated without feeling alone, without feeling lonely. I can hurt. Others. I can silently scream in pain without being emotionally attached.  I can be mentally violent without causing damage. I can be physically assaulted without emotionally battery. I can be coerced, mentally moulded and conditioned to desire, to crave, to ache and to beg for more.

More pain.

More pleasure.

More.

Hooded. Blocked from life. That is freedom for me. Freedom from myself. I am not scared when in a state of cognitive drowning, on the contrary. When my mind swims in darkness I am alive. A living, breathing, performing object.  I crave such seas, the ones that consume me, where gigantic erotic waves beat down upon my limbs, my frame, my internal being. Where I choke and gasp for air, taking pleasure from my inability to breathe effortlessly.  Taking solace from the bindings that stop me from seeing, from feeling, from being anything but an object.

My time in that dark space is short. I feel myself slipping and too afraid to completely fall I push myself up, walking towards the bathroom, my hands guiding me until I know I am standing before the mirror and as I had only hours earlier, I undress my eyes, my ears, my nose, my mouth,  until at last I am physically naked, the brightness of the light causing me to squint, the ache in my jaw forcing me to part my lips and stretch my mouth, the sounds of the chirping birds unfortunately penetrating my previously silenced ear drums. I wear nothing. I am exposed and yet...

My mind is covered. Blanketed with rules and expectations and morals and ethics and laws that have dominated me; have controlled me and will do so again until the heavy scent of leather dons my flesh once again.

~His

(Photographer unknown)

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