The Ritual of Binding
Judge Beauregard Jackson Lockwood Memorial State Prison. The name alone hung like the Doom of Damocles over anyone who passed by its ornamental gatehouse and scried its name—a cattle brand sunk into the stone in cold iron letters. Marking its time, place, and purpose as a challenging scar upon the beautiful face of the gentle coastal plain of my home state, it occupied an antebellum cotton field. One felt the weight of history—of chain gangs, chattel slavery, and Old Testament judgment—merely with a glance at its granite stone walls and perimeter fence of concertina wire repurposed from the Great War.
Known to the local folk as Lockwood Fields, the cold granite stone walls were hewn, cut, shaped, and placed with the labor of its would-be inhabitants. Built to house those who broke the law in a period when all one needed to do so was to be of a dark enough complexion and behave as though they were equal by birthright to those of light skin, Lockwood Fields was named after a lauded Judge who ruled by gavel during the day and torch by night. Even as a mere witness of history, I felt as though I were condemned to live, rot, and die within the confines of the thin, barred windows and thick, stone walls.
The main hall was some four-stories high, with long and narrow halls and narrower catwalks which passed the various blocks of cells. Without indoor plumbing, stains of decay, rot, and disgust colored privy-like holes in walls and floors where the edifice’s willing mouths swallowed the filth whole without complaint. Here, criminals and miscreants of all walks found their respite from freedom, brought low by labor and the oppression of the guards in that ‘break the body, save the soul’ mantra of both Slavemasters and Inquisitors.
Strange then, in a place of such oppression and disgust and stain of history, I found a moment of most transformative pleasure brought by fantasy—my mind light with ideas, and my loins with passion.
Walking down the block of cells, I heard my heels click against the cold stone floor in a metronomic gait, marking the passage of time for my willing captives, each held in their own cell. Cells would be marked according to the crime in the old ways: Thievery, Adultery, Sodomy, Indecency, Drunkenness, Lewdness, and the like.
Within each cell, each person—men, women, non-conforming folx—finds themself bound according to the punishment most effective for their psyche. Some are chained to the wall, deep-set anchors making a convenient St. Andrews Cross. Some hang upside down by rope, limbs bound into contortion. Others have bars spreading their legs, arms bound in prayer. Every scene—a moment of pure vulnerability built upon their need to fulfill their precise desire. Their crime—to act out instead of asking permission.
With my crop, hand, feather, my own tongue, they feel my presence, slowly warming to it. Paroled only to my musings, my touch their only liberty, they come to crave me. Their need grows with each bound hour and day until time loses all meaning, marked now only by the click of my heels as I approach until the slightest graze of fingertip, the slightest of my breaths, the hem of a flowing skirt causes their own crescendo of passion.
Even though they are all my prisoners, they are there because they want it. They need me, and I cherish each one of my prisoners, giving them the gift of my intimacy and attention. I Know them again and again, and I ensure their needs are met. Such is the Ritual of Binding—-to be bound is to be cared for, to trust with vulnerability, and to be given freedom within the chains and ropes that bind passions together.
Not every one of my cells is filled. Will you hand me the keys to your own cell and ask me to become your warden?
