## 17) 1977 Donna & Doug's Big Adventure

Post by canuck100 » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:54 am

Donna & Doug's Big Adventure
By Doug R
During the early summer of 1977, my cousins Donna (13), Shirley (11), and George (7) spent a week at my lakeside house. We played our first bondage game of that week in my family's boathouse (see my story in the July Part One archives), where I tied up Shirley and Mona (also 11), a girl from my neighborhood. Shirley had vowed revenge on me, swearing that I would soon be her captive, and I accepted. Donna, who had missed out on our game, quickly agreed to be "captured" along with me when I told her about Shirley's threat. To be honest with you, I wasn't exactly intimidated, and neither was Donna. We had both figured that escaping from whatever predicament Shirley and her newfound friends dreamt up for us would be a piece of cake.
And we couldn't have been more wrong....
It started on a warm and humid summer morning. Mona had come over early and left with Shirley and George. After about an hour, George entered the back yard, ran up to us on the dock and blurted out: "You gotta come over to Mona's house!"
"Is that an order?" Donna asked with a bemused smile.
"No, Shirley and Mona just want you guys to come over," George said in his best innocent manner. He was about as sincere as a used-car salesman. Donna and I exchanged a knowing glance. We knew where we would be spending the next few hours. All that was needed now was for us to enter the trap.
Since Mona's house was also a lakefront property that was easily within view of my own home, I suggested that we simply row over there in the Enterprise, my meager rowboat.
"I'll go tell them you're coming," George said, as he ran off.
"He means he'll go warn them," Donna said with a laugh.
After checking in with my mother, who came out and carefully inspected the clasps on our life vests, Donna and I shoved off in the Enterprise. I rowed, facing Donna. She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, gazing at the lake. "This almost feels like a real adventure," she said dreamily. "Like we're a couple of treasure hunters...and we get captured by pirates!"
I agreed with her. Rowing over like this made it feel even more like an adventure. I was tempted to say that I felt like my hero Jonny Quest, but then who would Donna be? (there were no regular female characters in the original JQ cartoons). So I went with Donna's idea that we were a couple of youthful explorers out on a treasure hunt.
When we arrived at Mona's, I moored the Enterprise behind their speedboat and helped Donna get out. Once on the dock, we removed our life vests and placed them in the boat. I was shirtless, clad only in a pair of cotton shorts, and barefoot. Donna wore green satin shorts with a pink tank top, and she was also barefoot.
We strolled off of the dock and onto the lush lawn of the backyard. What we saw there made Donna and me stop dead in our tracks.
Seated on top of a picnic table, next to a tent, were Shirley and Mona. Both girls were clad in shorts and T-shirts and were barefoot. And they were also gagged with handkerchiefs, with their hands behind their backs, and had what appeared to be cloth bonds wrapped around each of their ankles.
Stunned at this sight, Donna and I approached them--but before we could even ask what was going on, Shirley and Mona pulled their hands around from behind their backs and stuck two water pistols into our faces. Shirley pulled her gag down with her free hand and cried, "Gotcha!"
Donna and I raised our hands in surrender as they kicked off the cloth bonds from their ankles (which were never really tied) and surrounded us. George and Lynn (also 11) came out from hiding behind the tool shed. They had wide grins on their faces.
My suspicions about the tent were confirmed when Mona ordered both Donna and me to walk over to it. The tent was a good sized structure with a square base from which a rigid exterior framework sprouted. Movable flaps on all four sides of the tent were raised, revealing vast insect screens which exposed the interior to the outside.
Just before Donna and I entered the tent, Mona's older sister Marie, age 16, came out on the patio. Barefoot, and clad in a light summer dress, Marie smiled at Donna and me. "So, you guys got caught, huh?" she asked good-naturedly. "You gonna wait till Tyler gets back before tying them up, Mona?"
"No," Mona flatly replied. Tyler was Mona and Marie's nine year old brother, who had been sent out on an errand shortly before Donna and I arrived.
Mona ordered us to get inside the tent, and lay face down, which we did. Two large beach towels had been placed down over the floor of the tent.
Lynn and George took the water pistols and kept them trained on Donna and me while our hands were tied behind our backs. Mona tied my hands, while Shirley bound her sister's. The rope they used looked like clothesline, but it was softer. Mona wrapped it around my wrists several times before she cinched it off. Then she tied another, separate cord of rope vertically over the original bond. I saw Shirley had also tied Donna's wrists in this same, double-knot fashion. When Mona moved down to bind my ankles, I gave my wrist bonds a tug and was surprised to find that the rope was very secure.
Mona crossed my ankles one over the other, then bound them together--while Shirley tied Donna's ankles the same way. Shirley, George and Mona went into the latter's house to find suitable gags, leaving Donna and me under the watchful eye of Lynn.
Barefoot, and clad in a one piece outfit that exposed her legs and back, Lynn knelt down in-between us, holding her water pistol at the ready like a secret agent.
"Treasure or no treasure," Donna jokingly said to me, "this is the last time I'm ever going boating with YOU!"
Even Lynn had to smile at that one. After we stopped laughing, she asked, "What treasure are you talking about?"
"We'll cut you in on it if you free us," I said, pouncing on a chance for freedom. "You don't have to do it right now--wait until the time is right."
Lynn actually appeared to mull that one over, but before she could reply, Shirley and Mona returned with the gags. Donna and I were cleave-gagged with torn cloth strips.
After one last check of our bonds, we were left alone in the tent. But we weren't really alone. The tent's insect screen walls enabled our captors to check on us with a glance from where they sat at the picnic table. It almost felt like being tied up on display in a cage. We were in plain view of our captors at all times.
Don't get me wrong; we weren't complaining. Donna and I were presently having the time of our lives. It was all too easy for me to immerse myself in Donna's fantasy scenario: that we were a couple of vacationing kids who decided to go treasure hunting as a lark--only to run afoul of some ruthless locals who were after the treasure for themselves.
However, that didn't mean we never thought about making an escape. We laid there quietly as we watched and waited--until our captors grew so overconfident that they no longer glanced in our direction. What helped us was that Mona had brought out a portion of her doll collection to show Shirley and Lynn. George, growing bored, came over to us and sat down just outside the tent.
I glanced over at Donna, who, like me, still laid on her stomach. Despite the fact that George was just on the other side of the insect screen, Donna made a grasping motion with her bound hands, as if gesturing for me to come closer and pick her knots loose. If she was willing to test George's loyalty, then so was I. I figured all I had to do was roll over on my left side, and I would be able to easily reach Donna's bound hands.
But, you've heard of what happened to the best laid plans, haven't you?
At this point, we heard a voice call out, "Are they here, yet?" Tyler, age nine, was Mona's younger brother. When he excitedly entered the yard, Mona merely gestured towards Donna and me in the tent. Once Tyler saw us bound and gagged, he burst into a big, toothy grin. "Oh, wow!" he raved, as he pressed his face up against the insect screen. "Did you really tie them up?"
"No, they're just pretending," Lynn replied sarcastically. "They're funny that way."
Tyler, either not hearing--or completely ignoring--Lynn, entered the tent and bent down between us. Donna's eyes grew very wide when Tyler reached over and gave her wrists bonds a good tug. "Wow! They're really tied up! You even gagged them, too! Cool! What are you gonna do with them, now?"
That question brought the girls came over to the tent. Lynn sweetly said, "Why don't we interrogate them about the treasure?"
When Lynn told them all about our treasure conversation, Shirley instantly picked up on our little thread. "I knew they were looking for the treasure," she said triumphantly. "We'll just hold them here until they tell us where it is."
And that was what pretty much happened for the next half hour or so (although it felt longer than the usual half hour). All thoughts of any escape attempt went out the window once Tyler arrived, because he wouldn't leave us alone. He would even come into the tent every five minutes and tug at the ropes binding our hands and feet. At one point, Donna just rolled her eyes at me.
To my surprise, it was actually Lynn who asked if it wasn't about time for us to get a break. But Shirley couldn't untie us until she reassured both Mona and Tyler that this didn't mean the game was over. Once Donna and I were finally cut loose, we even had to agree that we were still their captives before they calmed down.
We ate lunch after that, which was served by Marie, who was pretty much the unofficial baby-sitter for her siblings since both their parents worked. Marie had a very easy-going, laid-back attitude. It didn't faze her a bit that we played tie-up games. In fact, she was the one who suggested that Donna and I be tied up in the tent.
No sooner did we finish lunch than Donna and I were retied again. Literally, I had just emptied my cup of soda and placed it on the picnic table when Mona appeared behind me with a length of rope in her hands. Donna, who sat right next to me, glanced over her shoulder to find Shirley standing behind her with rope. Donna and I exchanged a "what-are-ya-gonna-do?" look as we both put our hands behind our backs.
"Can I tie one of them up?" Tyler asked. Mona said no, but sent him and George into the house to get fresh gags for us.
Marie came back out to clear off the picnic table just as Mona and Shirley began binding our hands together behind our backs. The boys returned with the gags, which were basically torn strips of cloth (Mona's mom sewed for a hobby, so there was a lot of left over scrap material which made for good gags). This time, the boys were allowed to gag us--Tyler gagged me, while George happily gagged Donna.
Marie watched all of this with a bemused look on her face. She jokingly asked what did Donna and I do that made us so dangerous that we couldn't be left untied. When Lynn explained the treasure story, Marie shook her head and said, "So Doug and Donna are actually the good guys! And all of you are the evil ones!"
As if to avenge what they did to us, Marie made our captors help her carry everything inside. This didn't go down well with our rival band of greedy treasure hunters (being forced to do chores wasn't cool when you were a captor), but they went along with it and quickly helped clear the table. At one point, Donna and I found ourselves sitting by ourselves at the picnic table after everybody brought the stuff inside.
I figured there would be no better time for us to try and pick each other's knots than now. However, Donna let out an anxious squeak under her gag as she gazed worriedly over her shoulder. When I turned to see what had caught her attention, I saw a cabin cruiser slowly sailing by on the lake.
The houses in my area were set far enough apart--with enough dense foliage in-between to offer plenty of privacy for each backyard, which was why Donna and I didn't mind at getting tied up outdoors. But I had forgotten all about the lake; anyone on a boat could see clearly into the yard. When Donna glanced back at me, I just shrugged my bare shoulders. Then she burst into giggles, which was too infectious for me, so I started giggling right along with her.
Donna asked me later if I thought the people aboard the boat had seen us. They probably did, but the boat was so far away, they wouldn't have noticed the finer details, like the fact that we sat gagged with our hands tied. Of course, if somebody aboard had a pair of binoculars, then they would have seen everything. But, what could we do about it, anyway? Hoped they enjoyed the show.
Before we could pick at each other's knots, our captors returned and led us back to the tent. Donna and I had to be helped down into sitting positions because our hands were already tied. Mona tied my ankles together while Shirley stood back and allowed Tyler to bind Donna's ankles.
The bondage game sort of lost some steam during this second session. Our captors, who never left us alone, soon became bored. The fact that it was a hot, sweltering, muggy day also didn't help. Mona abruptly suggested that they all go for a swim. Notice I said 'they'--apparently Donna and I were expected to continue sweating it out bound and gagged in the tent while our captors splashed around in the cool lake.
Everybody ran off to change into their bathing suits. Lynn went home to change, while George and Shirley ran back to my house to fetch their bathing suits. So, everybody left--except Tyler. Without saying a word, Tyler entered the tent and untied our ankles. He threw the ropes used to bind our legs over his bare shoulder. Donna gave me a wide-eyed look, as if to say, "Now what?!"
Still gagged, with our hands bound behind our backs, Donna and I were ushered out of the tent, and into Mona's house by Tyler. This was the first time I had ever been inside this place, and it was with the unique distinction of being a bound captive. At least they didn't have to worry about Donna or me touching anything fragile.
Marie was in the kitchen, and her reaction at the sight of us being led through the house by her little brother was funny. "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Marie exclaimed at the ceiling, in a pretty good impression of Sgt. Shultz from Hogan's Heroes.
Tyler led us to his bedroom, which looked like a disaster area with all the toys and knick-knacks lying on the floor. It wasn't a great place to go barefoot. Donna and I were made to sit side by side on Tyler's narrow bed. Taking the rope from his shoulder, Tyler re-tied my ankles together, then re-tied Donna's ankles. Then, with the flourish of a movie-serial villain, Tyler slowly closed the door to his room--even going as far as making an ominous creaking sound.
Then, it really got weird.
Tyler submitted Donna and me to one of the most bizarre and painful acts of torture ever inflicted on us yet: Show and tell.
Tyler picked up each and every item he had in that room and showed it to me. If it weren't for my gag, I would have made some complimentary remarks. But all I could do was simply nod at everything he showed me. It wasn't long before I realized that I was mainly the recipient of this honor. Donna, taking as much as of this as she could stand, let out a groan under her gag as she slowly laid back on the bed. I glanced over my shoulder at her and saw that Donna stared up at the ceiling in a wide-eyed daze.
Tyler patted my shoulder. "Doug, c'mon, you're not looking at this! Pay attention!"
By now, Shirley, George and Lynn had returned and they--along with Mona--noticed that their captives were missing. I could hear them shouting outside. Marie must have told them what happened to us, because they immediately made a beeline to Tyler's room and pounded on his door.
"Shhh! Don't make a sound," Tyler whispered to us.
Donna promptly sat up and started yelling as loudly as she could through her gag. When I joined in, Tyler stood there helplessly waving his hands at us.
Mona barged into the room. She was now clad in a one piece bathing suit, and appeared to be very ticked off. "What the hell are you doing?" she said to her brother. This started a screaming match between her and Tyler. Shirley, George and Lynn all burst into laughter, apparently upon seeing Donna and me sitting tied up on the bed.
Marie came up and pulled her siblings apart. "Maybe it's time to give the tie-up game a rest, huh?" she suggested.
"Do you guys still feel like playing?" Shirley asked--to which Donna and I both shook our heads 'no' vigorously.
But Mona couldn't wrap her brain around the concept that captives were equal players in a bondage game. Even as Shirley started untying us--with Lynn helping--Mona protested long and loud that we were still her captives, and who cared what captives wanted, etc, etc, etc.
"Mona," Marie said curtly, "knock it off."
When Mona stormed out in a huff, Marie, shaking her head, followed. Soon, we could all hear another wild argument down the hall between the sisters.
"She's like a mini-Becca," Donna muttered under her breath. Shirley, George and I all giggled at that one.
Lynn, who had been busy untying my ankles, knelt back with a frown and asked, "Who's Becca?"
"You know Darth Vader in Star Wars?" I asked. When Lynn nodded, I added, "Well, Becca is sort of a female Darth Vader."
Both Donna and Shirley stared at me in shock and went "Oooooo!"
"I'm telling her you said that," Donna promised me.
I tried to act as if I didn't care, but the truth was I regretted saying that as soon as it came out of my mouth. That Saturday, I would go up with my cousins when they returned home for another three week stay at my Aunt Jean's house. And I knew that I would most likely be seeing Becca--along with her brother Jim, and Karen; our other partners in bondage--on the very first day. I'd hoped that Donna would forget to tell Becca about my calling her a "female Darth Vader".
But, of course, I couldn't be that lucky, now, could I?
Next up, I return for another summer of sun, fun and bondage at my Aunt Jean's. As always, thanks for reading.