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The year was called “1972”, and it was still quite young when it gently let Johannes slide into this day, which was imbued with a very special meaning that Johannes hadn't really understood. “Birthday”, that word kept going through his mind while he lay in bed and let his thoughts pass; he didn't know what to expect from this day, the ‘birthday’, and was therefore a little worried. Johannes welcomed the white fog that finally came to envelop him in what his parents called ‘sleep’. When the fog gradually lifted, a boy suddenly appeared in front of him as if out of nowhere. Johannes was irritated to see this boy standing in front of him, who was he, and where did he come from so suddenly?
“My name is Hannes, and I'll share something with you if you share something with me,” said the boy.
Johannes was completely confused; his aunt always called him “Hannes,” although his name was “Johannes.” “Hannes” sounds like half a name, Johannes thought, maybe his aunt called him that because he was a child, half a person. But Johannes wanted to be a whole person and, like everyone else, have a full name.
“My name is Hannes, and I'll share something with you if you'll share something with me,“ the boy said again.
Johannes wondered what the boy wanted from him and why he introduced himself as ‘Hannes’.
“So?” the boy with the half name followed up, “What will you share with me?”
Johannes didn't know what to say. What did the boy mean by “share”? Did he mean that he wanted to divide something into two halves? And above all, what was to be shared, the name, for example, “Johannes” into “Jo” and “Hannes”? That couldn't be meant. No matter how hard Johannes thought about it, he couldn't find an answer.
“What do you share with me?” the boy asked again.
After he asked a third time, Johannes said softly to himself, ‘I don't know.’ He was a little desperate about being asked so insistently and not being able to provide an answer.
“Well then,” the boy replied, ‘I don't know what to share with you either,’ and he moved away without moving, just getting smaller and smaller.
Just before he disappeared completely, he repeated, ”I don't know what to share with you either.”
As soon as he had disappeared, Johannes saw himself sitting on a bench next to this boy. He only now noticed that the boy was wearing the same clothes as he was, that he looked exactly like himself. The only difference was that his own face was clear and sharp, while the boy's face looked blurred, as if covered by a fog. Both of them were looking straight ahead and didn't move; the scene looked like a photograph. Then the boy, who pretended to be called “Hannes,” faded until he had completely disappeared and Johannes finally saw only himself sitting on the bench.
When he heard his mother's voice, he started; she had a cake with 5 candles in her hand. “Five candles,” thought Johannes; his favorite number was seven. Five times seven equals thirty-five, he thought; between five and seven is six, and six times six equals thirty-six. Johannes was sure that the five candles hid a secret that he would solve, a secret that was definitely related to this special day, the day he had now arrived on. 5 times 5 equals 25, while 7 times 7 equals 49, and between 25 and 49, right in the middle, is 37. The 3 is exactly between the 2 and the 4, and the 7 between the 5 and the 9. 35, 36, 37 – Johannes was fascinated; indeed, a very special day, a “birthday”.
John thought about the dream he had just before waking up. About the boy with the blurred face who said his name was “Hannes” and looked just like himself. Was “Hannes” perhaps his childhood name and “John” his adult name? That couldn't be, because everyone, except for his aunt, called him “John,” not “Hannes.” Maybe his aunt had other reasons for calling him “Hannes”, maybe because she couldn't pronounce the “Jo” or the “Jo” had a meaning she didn't like. Did the “Jo” really have a special meaning, like this day today? “Hannes” sounded mutilated to Johannes, like a cut-off name. Could it be that the boy had a blurred face because he had a mutilated name?
“Johannes, wake up; you don't want to oversleep your birthday,” his mother interrupted him; the cake with the 5 candles was on Johannes' desk. ”You've been sleeping for a really long time now; the children will be coming from kindergarten later, so you have to be fit.”
Johannes was shocked; he had completely forgotten that his mother had invited the children from kindergarten to the birthday party. He clearly remembered her picking him up from kindergarten a few days ago. He can't be serious, thought Johannes, when she announced that it was his birthday on Sunday and that all the children were invited. How could she do this to him? His mother explained to him that it would be good for him to play with other children from time to time; she didn't seem to accept that he didn't like doing just that because the other children were too rough and too loud and, on top of that, he didn't even know what to play with them.
Now it was here, this Sunday, which was also a birthday and did not bode well. 35, 36, 37 - that seemed to have been a bad omen; he should have been warned. Johannes wondered if it wouldn't be better to escape before the children came. After all, they could play and celebrate well without him.
“Get up now; your father is sitting at the breakfast table waiting for us,” his mother urged. Johannes didn't feel like getting up at all. After some hesitation, he finally gave in to his mother's urging and got out of bed. Escaping might be difficult, he thought, his parents would certainly not let him go voluntarily. It was probably better to lock himself in his room instead before the children came. Johannes felt relieved that he at least had a rough strategy for dealing with what awaited him that day.
“My name is Hannes, and I will share with you if you also share something with me,” went through Johannes' mind again and again.
He could remember the dream in great detail, he saw and heard it as if it were a movie that he could rewind and fast-forward. He looked at this boy, who was like himself and was called “Hannes,” in his mind as he reached into the butter when he wanted to grab his bread; he didn't like jam and there was only sausage for dinner - that's why he always ate bread and butter for breakfast.
“Behave yourself at the table,” his mother said, and the boy repeated, ”I don't know what to share with you either.”
No matter how much Johannes thought about it, he couldn't come up with even the slightest idea of what the boy had meant. What could he have shared with the boy? What could the boy have shared with him? What did he mean by “share,” anyway? You can divide an apple into two halves, thought Johannes. Was it about dividing something into two halves? None of this made sense. Johannes couldn't remember ever dreaming anything that stuck in his mind so clearly afterwards. And then it was such an enigmatic dream with such an incomprehensible message.
In his mind, he observed the boy again and again, how he appeared, how he spoke and asked his questions, how he disappeared at the end, becoming paler and paler until he was no longer visible. Finally, John observed himself sitting on the bench; first next to this boy, then alone, completely motionless. He had never seen himself like this before, he thought, never like in this dream; only in the mirror and in photos had he seen himself like this, but that was quite different – the dream was much more real.
What irritated him most was that apparently the boy was also himself, wearing the same clothes as him and looking exactly like him, only with a blurred face. Johannes looked at his own face, which was unusually clear and sharp, so strangely over-clear, as faces were never otherwise. And he looked at the face of the boy sitting next to him on the bench, whose name was “Hannes”; “Johannes” and “Hannes,” he thought, and listened to the sound, “Hannes.”
“What?” asked his mother, “What are you muttering?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“You're a bit dreamier than usual today, aren't you?”
Johannes nodded. “The boy is a little dreamy,” she sometimes said to other people, or also, “He has a vivid imagination, but otherwise he's all right.” Johannes didn't know exactly what that meant, but it didn't sound worrying.
In his thoughts, he saw himself sitting alone on the bench again, in a dream. The boy, Hannes, had disappeared, but was still somehow present, like a shadow, a light shadow that stood out barely visible against the light in which the scene was bathed. But if he looked closely, he could make him out. “Hannes” kept ringing in his mind; he didn't like the sound.
In the afternoon, the time had come; Johannes froze when he heard the doorbell. Now it was time to act quickly. He ran to his room door to lock it. But before he reached it, his mother opened it from the outside to get him. Johannes tried to push his mother out again, but he had no chance; his plan had failed.
“I'm sick and have to go to bed,” he said in his distress, but his mother replied, ”Don't be such a baby, they won't bite you.”
Johannes resigned himself to his fate. When he came into the kitchen, he was amazed to see the birthday cake with five candles on the kitchen table. He hadn't even noticed that he had been taken from his desk and brought to the kitchen.
“5 plus 7 equals 12, 5 plus 5 equals 10, 7 plus 7 equals 14; 12 is exactly between 10 and 14, and it is also 6 plus 6,” thought Johannes; he liked the fact that addition and multiplication were very similar, but that they still allowed you to create other new numbers.
The first children were already sitting at the kitchen table; the doorbell rang again and again, so that the kitchen was full before Johannes had time to realize it.
“I think most of them are here now; will you cut the cake, Johannes?” he heard his mother say, who then tapped him on the shoulder,
“Don't dream; just cut the cake so we can start.”
Johannes didn't have to think long to decide to cut the cake into seven pieces; that was a real challenge, because he only had five candles. When Johannes was almost done, not without being proud that he had actually managed to create seven pieces of roughly the same size, his mother said, “What are you doing again? There are nine of you children, and if Dad and I want a piece, that makes eleven. You've cut far too few pieces; give me that.”
Then she took the knife and cut each of the seven pieces in half. That made fourteen, and if eleven of them were eaten now, three would remain, one each for his parents and for him. Johannes' mother was truly ingenious sometimes. After the cake was eaten, she asked the children to play in Johannes' room. Johannes, however, strongly objected to this, and after a short discussion, permission was granted to hold the birthday party in the living room.
There he received a gift from his mother, “From Dad and me”; his father had already fled - he left right after he had eaten his piece of cake.
There was a set of building blocks; round, triangular and square. Johannes fetched the building blocks he already had and started to build towers with the new ones. He now had so many that he could build really tall towers and then there were even building blocks left over. He used them to build more towers or walls. He was fascinated by building towers, houses, walls and castles with building blocks, and imagined living in these structures. He didn't like the fact that everything was already predetermined; he would have much preferred to be able to build his world himself first. Then it would be his world, and he would feel at home in it. At the moment, he felt anything but at home.
The children were noisy and messing everything up; it was like being in kindergarten – and Johannes was right in the middle of it. But in his thoughts, Johannes was in his world, in his towers and walls, and hardly noticed the rest of what was going on. After enduring the hustle and bustle, as it seemed to him, for what seemed like an eternity, he decided that enough was enough and went into his room.
Right after that, however, his mother came and said that he couldn't leave the children alone; after all, it was his birthday. She also said that it was almost time for dinner anyway and that the children would be going home soon. Encouraged by this, Johannes joined the children again and even said goodbye to them when they left. He was relieved that it was finally over, this birthday party.
The birthday was a very exhausting day; even more so because it descended on Johannes like a natural disaster. But Johannes had weathered it all well and was glad that it was over and that he could finally play with his new building blocks in his room undisturbed.
He had the idea of building a cave out of blankets under his desk again. He sometimes did that, and then he would crawl inside and play in the cave. In the cave, he built a wall with his wooden blocks, which was closed at both ends by a tower that almost reached the underside of the table.
He wished he had a crane that could properly construct his buildings, just as they were built in real life. Cranes fascinated him above all else, and no matter where he was, he immediately noticed when new cranes were erected or old cranes dismantled. He also wished he could live in a world that was completely empty and that he could build from scratch, just as he built the wall with the towers. He would start with a large wall and the towers that went with it to protect himself and his fragile world from people. After that came the house; a very small, winding house full of little niches and caves where he could crawl. That would really be his home, his world, a place where he really belonged, he thought. Johannes saw himself building the wall with his crane, in a square with a really tall tower at each corner. Then came the house; he was thrilled when he saw it in his mind's eye, it couldn't have been better. He saw himself exploring the hidden corners of the house, crawling into niches and caves and sitting in them.
Suddenly he saw himself sitting on the bench in that dream he had last night, alone. Thought-Johannes, who was sitting on the bench, moved further and further away, together with the bench, until he was hardly recognizable. After he had finally disappeared completely, Johannes found himself in an empty, bright world, which was perfect for building a home.
He began to think of his crane again, to build the walls with the towers and, of course, the house; this time it would be even better than the first time. Then, in his mind, he explored the nooks and crannies of the house, walking into them and feeling what it was like to be inside them. Johannes found such thoughts very calming and he liked to hold on to them forever, at least until sleep came to guide him into the next day.
That he was nevertheless wrenched out of them before that, because he still had to brush his teeth and put on his pajamas, he found more than annoying. But just before he fell asleep, he fortunately had another opportunity to devote himself to his thoughts, which showed him his world. He was convinced that he only had to wish intensely to get to his world, and it would happen; someday. He couldn't seriously imagine anything else; he found the thought of having to live somewhere forever where you didn't belong too absurd to be true.
Johannes went to a Catholic kindergarten that was very strict. The children were not allowed to be loud, had to take a nap every day, whether they were tired or not, and were not allowed to spill food. Children who did not behave properly were scolded, and sometimes, if they had annoyed other children, they were punished. Then they had to sit on a large bench and were tied to it with a string. Johannes had observed this several times and wondered what exactly was behind the “punishment”.
Even though he was not afraid of this “punishment”, he was still afraid of the sisters, especially Sister Anne, who scolded particularly loudly, so loudly that it hurt his ears. Worse than the sisters, however, were the other children; they were loud and often rough and loved to disturb Johannes while he was playing.
Particularly bad was Ias, a boy who had only been in the kindergarten group for a short time. Ias's real name was “Tobias,” but Johannes thought that he had the “Tob” in the name because he was always so rambunctious, and that his real name was just “Ias.” As for his own name, “Johannes”, he had a similar guess, namely that the actual name was “Hannes” and for some reason they put a “Jo” in front of it. But he had no idea what this “Jo” should mean; he wanted to leave it at his name, because “Hannes” alone sounded stupid, he thought. But Ias's name was “Ias,” because “Tobias” didn't sound like a real name at all.
Ias, in any case, was especially rough, rougher than the other children, and he loved to push other children; Johannes hated him for it. Johannes always played with his wooden building blocks in kindergarten. He built towers with them, which he let collapse again when they were finished. The special challenge was to build a tower in such a way that Johannes had to knock out a certain building block at the end to make the tower completely collapse.
Johannes had been playing this game for a long time and had also come to terms with the regular interruptions for meals, naps, singing together or other games. He hated these interruptions, but knew that it made no sense to rebel against them.
On this particular morning, on this day that was to become a very special day for him, he went straight to his building blocks, sat down on the floor and began to build his first tower. The night before, he had come up with an idea for a new construction that would make it possible to build the tower even higher than before.
He had almost finished building the tower when he felt a strong push from behind and fell forward onto the tower, which collapsed. Of course it was Johannes again; he was furious, especially since something like this happened almost every day in kindergarten. He suppressed his anger, as he always did in such situations, and collected the building blocks to start building the tower again from scratch. When he was back to building a new tower, the anger had quickly evaporated.
After some time, Johannes was pushed again and knocked over the half-finished tower.
He shouted loudly, “Stop it!” and heard Sister Anne call with satisfaction, “Tobias, now finally leave Johannes alone.”
But it wasn't long before Ias pushed him again. This time Johannes was able to catch the tower and prevent it from collapsing; but when Ias pushed him again and he fell on the tower again, Johannes could hold back no longer.
He was actually a quiet, withdrawn, rather timid boy, but now he was almost bursting with rage; that rarely happened. But it was now the third time that day that Ias had destroyed one of his towers; he had never experienced anything like this in kindergarten, and it was clearly too much. Johannes jumped up and pounced on the hated boy, so that they fell to the ground together, with Ias underneath him. Johannes was beside himself and choked Ias's neck; he screamed like a stuck pig and immediately Sister Anne screamed too.
Johannes was frightened and let go of the boy. He and Ias were then immediately grabbed by Sister Anne and very roughly pulled up. She shouted at them that they weren't behaving like normal children, that she would tell their parents, and threatened to throw them out of the kindergarten if something like this happened again. She held them so tightly by the arm that it hurt, almost more than her voice.
At the end she said, “As a punishment, you both come to the bench,” and Johannes froze: now he was to learn what “punishment” was all about.
He looked at the wooden bench that was against the wall and where the children had to sit as punishment and were tied down. It was actually an adult bench, much too big for children, too big to put their legs on the floor, too big even to be able to lean properly. At the thought of being tied to the bench, he felt a moment of fear, but it soon gave way to curiosity. He thought about the children who had to sit on this bench sometimes crying, which Johannes had never understood; it might not have been comfortable to sit on this bench that was too big, but it certainly wasn't bad. Johannes thought the whole punishment thing was pretty strange.
Finally, Sister Anne asked the two boys to sit on the bench and then went to a cupboard.
Johannes and Ias climbed onto the bench and sat down next to each other. The bench was so big that they couldn't lean against it if they wanted to dangle their legs over the edge. Johannes did not find it particularly comfortable to sit like this, but it was still better not to lean than to have to stretch your legs while sitting because the seat was too wide.
When he saw Sister Anne coming with ropes in her hand, he thought, so now they should be tied up. He imagined a rope being tied around his stomach and then knotted to the back of the bench.
“I'll start with you,” she said as she stood in front of Johannes, and laid the ropes on the bench except for one between him and Ias. As Sister Anne prepared to wrap the rope around Johannes' stomach, Johannes raised his arms in the air so that they would not be accidentally caught by the rope.
“Arms down,” the nurse ordered him.
In shock, he immediately lowered his arms again and pressed them to his sides. He thought it would certainly hurt if his arms were pinched between the rope and his body, so he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. When Sister Anne had wrapped the rope twice around his stomach and arms, he was relieved to find that it did not hurt. She tightened the rope and tied a knot in it; as she did so, Johannes' arms slid back and his palms touched his buttocks.
The rope was wrapped tightly around his stomach several more times and knotted again. Then she pushed Johannes backwards, against the back of the bench, so that he had to stretch out his legs. She took a second rope and tied Johannes to the back of the bench; this rope went diagonally across his chest, and his arms were now trapped between the back of the bench and his back.
Johannes was still a little surprised that it didn't hurt to be tied up so tightly that it didn't even feel uncomfortable. It was only that he had to stretch out his legs, he didn't like that; maybe that was the punishment.
Sister Anne then turned to Ias, who immediately started crying and whimpering softly, “Don't tie me up.”
“It won't hurt,” Johannes said, and the nurse shouted at him, ”There is an absolute ban on talking on the bench, do you understand?”
Johannes was frightened and didn't say another word. Ias didn't stop crying while the rope was being wrapped around his stomach and arms. Johannes noticed that his arms didn't slide behind his back, but stayed on his side.
He tried to move his arms to the sides, but it didn't work. He was quite fascinated by not being able to move his arms, even with great effort. In his mind, he saw himself sitting on the bench with the rope wrapped around his arms and stomach; he felt his arms trapped between his back and the backrest.
Then suddenly he felt a warm, comfortable feeling flood through his body; he was really surprised at how pleasant this punishment was.
In the meantime, Ias had also been tied to the backrest and was still crying quietly to himself. Johannes thought that was a bit much; sitting here on the bench really wasn't that bad, in any case it was a lot less bad than being shouted at.
Johannes was completely absorbed by these beautiful, tingling emotions that went through his body; he felt really comfortable with the arms tied tightly to his body. He enjoyed the relaxation he felt and dreamed to himself.
Occasionally, his gaze fell on Ias' hand next to him, which was tied to his body. After a while, Ias stopped crying and endured his punishment without showing anything. Johannes noticed that Ias' hand also moved from time to time and tried in vain to change its position. He watched it with fascination. Every time he tried to move his arms or hands against the rope, the waves of emotion that ran through his body increased. Johannes enjoyed these unexpected feelings.
After a while, Sister Anne came back and untied first IAS and then Johannes. Johannes thought it was a shame that the punishment was over so quickly; he could have easily lasted longer. But IAS was quite impressed by this punishment; at least he never pushed Johannes onto his tower again.
Johannes went back to his building blocks and saw in his mind's eye himself and IAS tied up next to each other on the bench. He thought about how Ias' tied hand tried to move, how Ias cried when the rope was wrapped around him; he thought it was a good punishment and hoped to be punished that way again soon. When he was in bed that evening, the images of the punishment went through his mind again.
He turned on his side and took his hands behind his back, where he pressed them tightly against his body, then turned back on his back so that he was lying on his arms. After a short time, this pleasant feeling spread through him again, but some time later, so did an unpleasantly numb feeling in his arms, on which he was lying.
A few weeks later, Johannes watched as another child had to go to the bench and realized that this boy was also tied up, just like him. Johannes kept watching him out of the corner of his eye until he had served his sentence. He really wanted to be tied up again and kept thinking about what he could do to get punished again.
Once he almost thought he had achieved his goal when he was jostled by a boy and shouted, “Stop it!” Sister Anne immediately shouted at the two of them,
“Will you stop it?” Johannes asked in joyful anticipation, ”On the bench?”
“If you absolutely want to, you just have to say so, then you'll be back on the bench.”
Johannes didn't know what to say at that moment, and after a moment's hesitation, he turned back to his building blocks in disappointment. He was still annoyed about this missed opportunity some time later.
From then on, he did the exercise with his arms pressed to his back almost every evening, falling asleep afterwards with a pleasant, relaxed feeling. Most of the time, he thought about how he was tied to the bench, and saw himself in his mind's eye with a rope wrapped around his arms and stomach several times and across his chest. Sometimes he also thought of the boy who had appeared to him in a dream some time ago and was really himself, and saw him and himself sitting next to each other on a bench - but not tied down.
School was much worse than kindergarten. It started with the fact that Johannes had not passed the school enrollment test and therefore ended up in a special school. The teacher at the special school was very strict and hit the children on the hands with a ruler, which hurt quite a bit.
After half a year of school, Johannes transferred to a regular school where the children were not beaten with a ruler. But there were many more children there, and above all, there were many more mean children who teased Johannes every day; they liked to make fun of him, push him, or chase him around the schoolyard. It didn't help much that Johannes tried to hide to avoid being teased by the other children during the breaks. Most of the time, a teacher would find him and send him to the playground.
The only good thing about school was the homework; Johannes loved homework. The letters they had to paint were the best. They had to paint each letter ten times, and once Johannes started, he couldn't stop, he was so fascinated by the letters. But often he found the homework boring and then invented his own, much more exciting homework, which he did instead.
One day, just after Johannes had started second grade, a boy clasped him from behind during the big break, pressing his arms firmly against his body. Johannes felt a pleasant, warm shiver flood his body, which increased as the clasp became tighter and tighter; it must have been a fairly strong boy holding Johannes.
Without thinking about it, Johannes whispered, “fester”, and the boy squeezed even tighter.
Johannes' arms slipped backwards, on his back, and suddenly he saw himself in his mind being tied to the bench in kindergarten, when his arms slipped backwards while the rope was tied around his stomach. He also remembered how, some time later, he had missed the chance to be punished again.
He whispered again, “fester”, and the boy squeezed Johannes so hard that it really hurt.
Johannes was stunned by the pleasant feelings that flooded through him; he wished the boy would never let him go.
With a sudden movement, however, the boy kicked his legs aside and threw him to the ground. That was pretty mean, because Johannes couldn't brace himself as he fell because the boy had let go of his arms too late, and he hit his face; luckily it happened on the lawn. John felt rather dazed as he lay on the ground and heard the children laughing at him in the distance.
He thought about the feeling he had when he was held by this boy all day; he was so absorbed by it that he hardly noticed the rest of what happened that day. When he finally lay in bed at night, he pressed his arms against his back again and lay on them. The pleasant feelings that flowed through him increased when he visualized what it felt like when that boy pressed his arms against his body.
He closed his eyes and imagined being held by this strong boy, so tightly that it hurt. Finally, a tall, strong boy appeared in his mind and said,
“My name is Hannes, and I will punish you because I want to be mean to you.”
Johannes couldn't see the boy's face at all; it was blurry.
“My name is Hannes, and I'm going to punish you because I want to be mean to you,” the faceless boy said again.
Johannes stretched his arms down and held them close to his body. The boy finally began to wrap an endlessly long rope around him. The rope pressed his arms, which had slipped back behind his back, tightly against his body. The boy didn't stop winding at all, wrapping the rope around his stomach and chest so that he couldn't move his arms at all, then around his legs, until he was completely motionless in a thick ball. Johannes felt the relaxing and at the same time exciting feelings that flooded through his body; the tremor in his body increased immensely until he could hardly stand it anymore.
Then it suddenly subsided, and Johannes had to turn to one side involuntarily and free his arms, on which he was still lying. How light he felt now, almost weightless, how secure and warm.
He noticed that it had become moist between his legs, and at first thought that he had peed without wanting to. But it was something else; Johannes decided not to worry about it and to think instead of the tangle in which he was stuck, and of the boy who was pressing his arms against his body.
That same night, an idea came to him. He went quietly into the bathroom to get his robe and to take the cloth belt off the loops. He then wrapped it twice around his waist and tied the ends together. He then tried to wedge his arms between the belt and his stomach. It was not easy, and it took him a few tries before the belt was not too tight and not too loose, but just right, so that he could just about fit his arms between the belt and his stomach.
Once he had succeeded, he took his arms out again and lay down in bed, under the duvet; under no circumstances should his parents catch him now, he thought.
He lay on his back, wedged his arms back under his belt and turned them behind him, on his back. That was not so easy; the belt was so tight that it was just possible. So he lay there for quite a while and gave himself over to the floods of warm, soothing feelings until his arms hurt. He then pushed them forward again, pulled them out of the bondage and fell asleep immediately.
After a few days he repeated the experiment, this time turning onto his stomach after he had forced his arms behind his back. This way his arms no longer went to sleep, and he was able to enjoy this pleasant, calming feeling longer.
In the following period, this new exercise increasingly replaced the old one; it proved to be significantly better and more intense. When he went to bed, he always waited a while before getting the robe from the bathroom, always taking great care to ensure that his parents did not notice. In the morning, he returned it just as secretly. When he then had the idea of always leaving the bathrobe in his room, this experiment became an evening routine.
After some time, Johannes came up with a new variant that he could try: He tied the ends of the belt together so that he could comfortably put both hands into the loop. Then he twisted one hand around this loop so that it became entangled between his wrists, and his hands were tied. With a reverse twist of the hand, he could easily loosen the tie again.
After practicing this a few times with his hands in front of him, he lay on his stomach and tied his hands behind his back. This was by far the best thing he had ever experienced; every day he looked forward to the evening in bed, when he could indulge in his belt exercises, which he liked to vary.
Sometimes, more seldom than often, the emotional outbursts and arousal went so far that they discharged themselves and left Johannes incredibly relaxed, but also wet between his legs. That was a little scary for him; he refused to think about it, as if there had been a ban that he had to strictly adhere to.
A crucial shortcoming of these bindings, however, was that he could free himself from them again. Johannes tried again and again to imagine what it would be like if he were “really” tied up, and in his mind he saw Ias trying to move his hands.
He also saw himself tied to the bench in the kindergarten, the way Ias must have seen him. But no children were tied up at school; Johannes would have liked that much better than being scolded or hit with a ruler – after all, being tied up was also a punishment. But school was not a good place; kindergarten was not a good place either, but at least it was better than school, at least as far as the punishments were concerned.
Johannes was already in the fourth grade and about to start high school when something happened that was bound to happen sooner or later. When he came home from school that day, his mother showed him the bathrobe belt and said,
“Look what I found in your bed.”
The belt was tied in a knot, exactly as it had to be, so that Johannes could tie his hands with it.
The shock went right into his limbs when he saw the belt. His mother expressed her amazement and asked him why the belt was tied so tightly and why it was under his bedspread.
Johannes remained stubbornly silent about this incident; he would not have been able to utter a single word anyway. He had become very careless and could not quite grasp the fact that he had forgotten to untie the belt and put it in its proper place.
Later, he thought of explanations he could have offered, such as that he had only been practicing how to tie a proper knot; but by then it was too late. The best thing was to ignore the incident and to pay close attention in the future to not leave any marks when practicing the belt.
It was actually a strange contradiction: on the one hand, these exercises, the bindings and the feelings associated with them, seemed very natural and obvious to Johannes, but on the other hand, he still had the feeling that it was better to keep this habit secret.
It was one of those things that didn't exist in the real world; nobody talked about it, it only appeared in Johannes' own world. There were some things that only seemed to exist for Johannes and that he kept to himself, for example the meanings of the numbers. Strangely enough, it was precisely those things that seemed particularly important and indispensable to him. The effect of this was that over time the gap between the worlds, between Johannes' world and the real world, became more and more apparent and also increasingly concerned him.
What was it like for the others? Did they also live in their worlds, separate from the real world, and did they also have their secrets, the things that were important only to them and to no one else? Johannes thought this was very unlikely.
A year and a half ago, Johannes' parents had moved. He went to a different school with different children who were no less foreign to him and who teased him no less than at the old school. But for the past six months he had been at the grammar school. Although the idea of having to get used to a new building and new teachers again was extremely distasteful to him, he was not unhappy about it.
The new school had not disappointed the hope that things could only get better, and he was not teased and pushed around as much as before. In addition, the class was considerably smaller and the lessons were also more interesting; Johannes found English particularly exciting and loved inventing new English words. He was not discouraged by the fact that his English teacher showed little interest in his English word inventions.
But he also missed his favorite subject, astronomy, at grammar school. And that despite the fact that it was much more important than anything else covered at school.
For example, the question of why Kepler's laws apply to both Earth-like and Earth-unlike planets; Johannes had never received a plausible answer to this question.
Johannes had come to terms with the move a year and a half ago; at first he even found it quite exciting because the new house was in the middle of a muddy landscape where gray clay could be found if you dug deep enough. It also took a while for him to get to know all the cranes in the new neighborhood; they were no longer as important as they used to be, but they still had a calming effect on Johannes.
Meanwhile, his new home seemed to him to be just as good or bad as the old one. Before, there were the railroad tracks where Johannes put coins on the ground, which were then enlarged when a train passed over them; now there was a densely overgrown area nearby that became Johannes' favorite place.
And there was this huge supermarket, full of all kinds of things, brightly lit and very colorful, to which he felt magically drawn. Where he used to live, there was no supermarket and no such densely vegetated area.
At least Johannes had a really big room in the new house and was even allowed to choose the colors in which it should be painted. He wanted the most colorful colors he could imagine, but his parents insisted that it could only be one color; so it became green.
Once again, as every winter reliably always at the same time, it was birthday, the eleventh this time, 11, a number with two identical digits.
Multiplied by itself, 11 yields 121, which in turn, when multiplied by 11, yields 1331. In this way, a whole series of numbers could be generated, 11, 121, 1331, 14641, all of which seemed to represent something special.
But then came 161051, which did not fit into the series at all. Johannes investigated and found out that a number in this series was created by adding the neighboring digits of the predecessor number together and then adding a 1 at the front and back. That also explained the appearance of 161051 in the series; in reality, this number was called 15(10)(10)51, which fit, but 10 was no longer a digit.
Johannes decided to invent a digit for the 10 in order to be able to continue the series, then one for the 15 and the 20 and so on; after all, a digit would have to be invented for each number so that the series would never cease to be a series of special numbers.
He received the toy crane he had wished for as a present; it was huge and easy to operate using a crank handle – it had everything that made a crane a crane. Johannes loved cranes, even as a small child; every time he discovered that a new crane had appeared somewhere, he was delighted, and was sad when he realized that one had disappeared again somewhere. Ever since he had the idea of asking for a crane as a birthday present, he had been eagerly anticipating this day. Now he could hardly believe it, seeing it in front of him and hanging building blocks on it to wind up and down somewhere else.
But for his eleventh birthday, he got something else: two shiny silver coins. That was money, he knew, and he immediately recognized that they were two marks. Twice one, he thought, and in his mind they combined to form the number 11 and began to form the series, 11, 121, 1331, and so on. His parents explained to him that from now on he would receive pocket money, two marks each month.
Johannes was a little surprised that it was called “pocket money”; this probably meant that it had to be put in a pocket, in the trouser pocket, for example. But he didn't want to put it there, and when he decided to keep it in a box, he wondered if it was still “pocket money” even though it was in a box. He didn't know why, but it filled him with a certain pride to get pocket money now; it was clearly a sign of the two ones and the series they could form.
His mother tried to explain to him that it wasn't meant to be collected, but that he could use it to buy something.
“The pocket money is there so that you can buy something you would like; a bar of chocolate, maybe, or something else. Whatever you want.”
But he had to keep this memory of this special birthday of the two ones, he thought, he couldn't just exchange it for chocolate.
For the next few days, Johannes kept thinking about his pocket money. Not least because his mother kept reminding him of it and asking if he didn't want to buy anything with it, a bar of chocolate, for example.
In the end, he decided to keep one of the two coins and use the other to make a purchase. Johannes actually liked chocolate quite a bit, so after some deliberation, he decided to follow his mother's suggestion and buy a bar of his favorite chocolate, chocolate with hazelnuts, with his pocket money at the supermarket. He had already earmarked one of the two birthday coins for this. He took it out of his pocket money box, put it in his pocket and went to the supermarket to take a bar of hazelnut chocolate off the shelf. He liked the idea of shopping alone, especially with his own money; he was a real boy now, he thought to himself.
As he was standing in line at the supermarket checkout, he heard a voice behind him that was unfamiliar to him.
“Nut chocolate is really delicious; but I have a white chocolate that tastes even better. Do you want to try it right away, and then I can try some of yours?”
When Johannes turned around, he saw the face of a boy he didn't know. He saw his blond hair, his facial features, nose, mouth, which seemed strangely beautiful, unreal, and his blue eyes, which looked directly at him.
Then his gaze fell on the parka this boy was wearing, olive green, buttoned up to the top; he froze when he saw the hood, with a brown fur inside.
Johannes couldn't help but stare at the hood with the brown fur on the inside. A pleasant, comforting shiver flooded through him, which he felt throughout his entire body; he was very irritated.
This boy was not like the other boys; he had a face, a fine, beautiful face, and he was wearing this incredibly fascinating piece of clothing with a hood. Johannes felt like he was in a dream.
“Young man, it's your turn.”
Suddenly torn from his thoughts, he held out the chocolate to the cashier and dug out the pocket money piece from his pocket, which he then also gave to the cashier.
She took the coin and put two green and one reddish-brown coin on his hand in return; the ones again: 10101, 111111, 1222221, 13444431, 147888741, ...
Then the boy with the parka paid, while Johannes awkwardly put the rest of his pocket money back in his pocket, without taking his eyes off the hood of the parka.
After he had paid, he asked again, “So, do you want to try some of my white chocolate?”
Johannes nodded.
“Then let's go outside.”
Johannes stared at the boy in the olive-green parka with the fur-trimmed hood. He thought to himself that there must be something very special about him, this boy with the fine features, blonde hair and blue eyes, who looked at him so directly that the boy spoke to him and wanted to share his chocolate with him.
“Sharing,” went through Johannes' mind, and in his thoughts he heard the boy say, ‘I'll share something with you if you share something with me’; the chocolate.
Johannes actually wanted to take it home with him, to eat just a small piece of it at first and save the rest. And he didn't really like white chocolate that much either; but that wasn't the point now.
Johannes watched the boy as he pulled a cap out of one of his parka pockets; it was patterned in reddish brown. He put it on and then pulled up the hood over his head.
“Come on,” he said, and they both left the supermarket building.
“Don't you have a cap?” the boy asked, and Johannes shook his head.
There was snow outside and it was really cold, but Johannes never wore a cap and certainly not a hood. He didn't even have a jacket with a hood, except for his rain jacket, which he only wore when it was really raining.
As the boy walked next to him, Johannes kept glancing sideways to catch a glimpse of this boy with the olive-green hood and the reddish-brown cap underneath. The idea of wearing a cap or a hood on his head had been rather uncomfortable for him; even when it was really cold, he had nothing on his head. They walked across the parking lot together and stopped at the edge.
“My name is Len,” the boy said, ”I'm just here for a few days visiting my grandmother. And what's your name?”
Johannes stared intently at the hood Len had on and at the cap underneath; he was confused by the stirring feelings he felt, by the peculiarity of this boy and by this encounter in general. He wasn't sure if he was just dreaming it all.
“Len,” it sounded in his head; he had never heard a name like that before.
“Len? That's a funny name,“ he said, fascinated that this special boy also had a special name.
“It's an abbreviation. My full name is Lennart Adrian.”
“Lennart Adrian,” it sounded repeatedly in Johannes' head, while his gaze never left this hood, “Lennart Adrian.”
“And you? What's your name?” Len asked him, and Johannes replied, ‘Johannes.”
“Jan,’ said Len.
“Jan? Why Jan?”
Johannes didn't understand what the boy meant by that.
“Jan is short for Johannes. I read that.”
Johannes had never thought about the fact that names also have abbreviations. Especially not that he was not only called Johannes, but also Jan, just as Lennart was also called Len, like Adrian.
“Len - Jan,” it sounded in Johannes' head. It sounded good.
Johannes listened to this sound in his thoughts, watching the face of the boy who had this melodious name and was wearing a parka with a hood on, over a cap.
“Is something wrong with me?”
Johannes saw that Len was handing him a piece of his white chocolate; he hadn't even noticed her opening it, he was so absorbed in his thoughts and dreams.
“No,” he said, and ‘Thank you,’ as he took the piece and put it in his mouth.
“Will you give me a piece of yours now too?”
Johannes opened his chocolate and gave Len a piece of his. They ate the two bars of chocolate together.
Johannes learned that Len was twelve years old and also went to a grammar school. Perhaps, Johannes thought, there were more special boys at the grammar school, boys who had a parka with a hood, and he hadn't even noticed it before. He explained that they didn't learn about astronomy at his school and asked Len what it was like at the school he went to; but Len didn't even know what astronomy meant.
“Well, about stars, planets made of stone and planets made of gas, the many moons and the sun. Did you know that Jupiter has 14 moons and Saturn has 10? Jupiter is much bigger than Saturn and that's why it has more moons; the Earth is tiny and that's why there's only one moon here.”
Len shook his head.
After they had shared their chocolates, Len said that he had to go because his grandmother was waiting for him. He also said, “You're a nice guy, really, maybe we'll meet again.”
Johannes would have liked to say that he would have liked to meet him again too, absolutely, but he didn't know how to say it. He looked again at the parka that fascinated him so much, with the boy in it, who had the hood up. “Lennart Adrian,” he kept thinking, watching the boy and the hood for a while after he had turned around and walked away. Then Johannes went home too.
“Len - Jan,” it sounded in his head, and this image, Len with the parka, pulling the hood over his cap, was deeply imprinted on him. On the way home, he thought about the eerie feelings that this boy with the parka triggered in him.
At home, he put the rest of his pocket money back in the box and gave himself over to his thoughts. He also thought about abbreviations of names and suddenly it occurred to him that maybe “Hannes” was also an abbreviation of Johannes, like “Jan”. However, he liked “Jan” much better than “Hannes”; even better than “Johannes” - “Jan” was a really good name, as good as “Len”.
Even after weeks, Johannes couldn't get this encounter out of his head. He was amazed at how clearly he could remember Len's parka, the hood and especially his face. It took him a while to realize that Len, “Lennart Adrian,” had a face, a distinct face, one that could imprint itself on Johannes. All the other people, on the other hand, didn't have such a face, one that was so clear and distinct. Faces were something Johannes normally had trouble memorizing; he always found them unclear and difficult to tell apart. But Len had a different face, a clear and distinct face; never before had Johannes seen a face the way he saw Len's.
He was undoubtedly a very special boy, not only because of his face, but also because of his parka with that intriguing hood and, of course, because of his name.
“Len - Jan,” what a special sound.
If only there was a way to meet Len again; Johannes often thought about what it would be like if Len suddenly reappeared, on the way to school, in the supermarket, or even on the overgrown grounds where he liked to hang out.
A few weeks after the encounter, when Johannes had been in bed for some time and was thinking about Len, as he often did in the evenings, he continued the encounter in his thoughts. He heard the doorbell and saw himself jumping up to open the door.
“Hello Jan, are you coming?” asked Len, who was standing in front of the door.
Johannes saw him very clearly: he was wearing his parka with the hood up and his cap underneath.
“Are you coming?” he asked again, and Jan said ‘Yes’ and put on his shoes.
Then he took his parka off the coat hook, which had a brown fur just like Lens Parka, and put it on. After he had buttoned it up, he took a red-brown cap out of his pocket, put it on and pulled the hood over it.
As he saw himself in his mind's eye, in the parka, with the cap and the hood over it, and felt the fur of the hood sliding over the cap, this exciting feeling spread through his body in an instant, similar to the feeling he could feel when he fixed his arms behind his back. The moment Johannes, that is Jan, had put on his hood in his mind, this feeling disappeared and was replaced by a deep relaxation; the image faded.
He was quite irritated when he felt the damp spot in his bed with his fingers.
The thought of the parka, especially of the fur-trimmed hood, apparently triggered similar feelings in him, a similar excitement and subsequent relaxation, as when his hands were tied. Johannes found this connection rather strange and also a little disturbing; what did it have to do with each other? Did Len also like being tied up? Johannes was very unsure whether he could imagine that; Len tied to a bench somehow didn't fit at all.
Johannes often wished he were someone else, a boy named Jan who had a parka with a hood. In the evenings, he liked to dream about how he, Jan, had a parka, how he put it on and pulled the hood over his head. He could really feel it on his head and then gave himself over to the exciting and at the same time calming emotional shivers that it triggered in him.
It was obvious that his world was much more different from other people's than he could even imagine. Johannes thought to himself that probably all people lived in unimaginably different worlds. It was a miracle that they could communicate at all. Some people could communicate very well, others, to whom Johannes belonged, less so.
Could it have something to do with the degree of difference between the worlds in which they live? Is it possible to at least measure or calculate this degree, if one cannot even imagine the difference?
This was a similarly difficult problem to that of Earth-like planets and Kepler's laws of motion. These laws also did not take into account that the planets they described were very different from each other, which Johannes found highly unsatisfactory. Just the rings around Saturn, for example, are something so special that there must be laws that distinguished this planet as a special planet; that was exactly what Kepler's laws did not do.
Johannes wondered whether Len shared his world with him, or whether he also lived in that strange world in which all the others also resided. Len, Lennart Adrian, Johannes was quite sure of that, belonged to his world and not to that of the others; otherwise, why should he have a parka and pull the hood over his cap?
Why else would this boy have a face and a name that sounds as wonderful and promising as “Lennart Adrian”?
Johannes spent a lot of time with such thoughts during the following years. Gradually, he also realized that Len was the first and only person he had met, the only real person to appear in his life like a dream and then disappear again.
This encounter brought something truly new into his life, something that gave his life and his world a new, difficult-to-understand meaning, a promise that would certainly have consequences.
The memories of Len faded over time, turning into an abstract longing that would henceforth widen the gap between the worlds and accompany Johannes in his loneliness. It was a longing to meet him and at the same time a longing to become what he wanted to be, what he actually was, to become Jan, Jan with a parka and fur hood. Both seemed out of reach, and so the exciting dreams with the parka and hood remained, as did the gnawing longing to meet this boy again, Len, Jan.
It was still very early when Johannes was startled awake from his sleep; after his daze had subsided, he remembered that the school holidays had begun and that he didn't have to get up early. He stayed in bed and tried to remember the dream that had startled him.
Half asleep, he had a variety of thoughts until he was startled when he suddenly remembered this incident in kindergarten and saw how he strangled this boy who screamed for his life. What was this boy's name? Johannes couldn't remember the name.
He saw everything very clearly; it was as if he was experiencing it all over again. How he and the boy were scolded and then punished on the bench. How his arms were tied to his body, sliding back behind him, how Ias cried when he was tied up as well;
“Ias”, that was the name, a strange name. Johannes was surprised by the name and wondered why he had remembered it; was that really the boy's name?
After a short time, he gave himself up to the feeling of being tied to the bench, next to Ias, who was very sad about it, for some reason.
In the dream, he tried to move his arms, just a little, to feel the rope that was tied around his arms and stomach. Then he tried to free himself from the bondage and after a few attempts, first one arm and then the other was free. His arms were held only by a rope that was wrapped around them and his stomach several times; it was easy to get them free.
Ias, who was sitting next to him, didn't dare to move his arms.
Suddenly Johannes heard sister Anne screaming - she often screamed in the kindergarten, which he really hated, because she always screamed so loud that it hurt his ears.
“You'll see what happens when you're being so nasty,” she shouted as she stood in front of Johannes, who was sitting on the bench with his arms free.
She first untied the rope that was now loosely wrapped around Johannes' stomach and then the one that tied him to the back of the bench.
She didn't say a word or scream anymore.
She took Johannes firmly by the arms and bent them behind his back; Johannes understood that he should leave them there and willingly let his hands be tied behind his back. He was then tied back to the back of the bench. Sister Anne then untied Ias so that Johannes was sitting alone on the bench. This time he couldn't free himself from the bondage; no matter how hard he tried, his arms remained behind his back.
Johannes watched himself for a long time, sitting on the bench with his hands tied behind his back, serving his sentence; after a while he felt his underpants bulge and the pressure increased.
The dream slowly dissolved and Johannes got up to pee; the pressure was gone afterwards, and so were his thoughts of kindergarten.
They now focused on this strange event that had taken place shortly before at school and was called “sex education”. He had the impression that the others in his class found it somehow embarrassing - although the teacher never tired of stating that there was nothing embarrassing about it; he did not find it embarrassing, just absurd.
Johannes found the teacher's explanations in “sex education” completely implausible. Not only did they not involve bondage or hoods, but the teacher also said things that were not only highly peculiar but also quite unpleasant.
Why would anyone do such a thing? Why should children come about through such nonsensical and probably unpleasant actions?
What astonished Johannes most was that he had the impression that no one except him had expected anything else in sex education class.
Since all this seemed highly unbelievable to him at first, he asked other adults what they thought of the theory of sexuality that his teacher was expounding at school; he also questioned other students. His father took his questions as an opportunity to visit Johannes in the bathroom one evening to explain to him again what “sexuality” was all about; he, too, told him roughly what the teacher said at school.
What remained was the vague but distinct and almost familiar feeling that something fundamental in his life was completely different from what it seemed to be in everyone else's. In his world, the things discussed in sex education class did not exist; there was nothing embarrassing about it at all.
Johannes' father was a group leader in the Boy Scouts. Johannes, on the other hand, was not a Boy Scout, even though his father would have liked him to be. But Johannes did not enjoy these scouting activities.
In the summer of 1979, when Johannes was 12 years old, his father went to a Scout camp for a week and Johannes had to come with him, which he didn't like at all. Sleeping in a tent with boys, many of whom he didn't know and didn't like, was a horror for him. Above all, because he was typically always the one who was teased and annoyed. He was a withdrawn, quiet boy who put up with a lot and was, so to speak, an easy target for other boys. But with this argument that he should play with other children much more, he was so strongly urged by his parents to come along that he finally had no choice.
On the very first day, after he had chosen a place in the tent, he met Kay.
While he was unpacking his things and spreading out his sleeping bag, a boy came into the tent and stood in front of him, a head taller than he was.
“This is my place,” he said, kicking Johannes' things aside.
Then he began to push Johannes when he reached for his things, and pushed him to the tent wall.
“That's your place,” the boy said, pointing to the floor.
The space was very small, so that he didn't even have enough room to spread out his sleeping bag properly. Then he went back to Johannes' old place, sat down on the floor and watched as Johannes rearranged his things. Another boy whispered to Johannes,
“That's Kay, he's really disgusting.”
Johannes thought so too and wanted to leave right away; but he knew that wasn't possible.
After he had put his things in the tent, he learned that an outdoor game was planned for the next day, for which the scouts were all to be divided into groups. The game was probably about hiding in the forest and tracking each other down. The division of the groups was planned for the evening, after everyone had put their things in the tents.
Johannes was very surprised when two scouts approached him and asked if he wanted to be in their group. Here he seemed to be the one that nobody wanted to be in a team with; the game was beginning to interest him. After the groups were formed, Kay came up to him and said,
“I'll catch you first.”
“Why? What did I do to you?” Johannes asked, but Kay just pushed him away without saying anything.
Then he came up to Johannes again and said, ‘Why aren't you defending yourself?’ and pushed him again. Johannes ran into the sleeping tent.
A short time later, his father came and asked him if Kay had hurt him; one of the scouts had apparently told him about the incident.
Johannes said no, and his father said, “Kay is a bit difficult; sometimes he has to play the strong man.” But Johannes didn't need to be afraid of him,
“Just come to me if he causes trouble again.”
Johannes was reassured and thought about the outdoor game the day after tomorrow and how he could manage not to be caught by Kay. Later Kay came to Johannes and said, “I should apologize to you.”
Johannes' father had spoken to him, thought Johannes, and said, ”But I didn't tell on him.”
“I know,“ Kay said, nudging him gently with his fist on his shoulder.
“Why do you want to catch me tomorrow, what have I done to you?” asked Johannes, to which he was told,
“It's just a game.”
He thought about what Kay meant by “just a game” for a while.
After breakfast, the time had come and Johannes was quite excited; he didn't know why himself, but he had an idea that something special was behind it, behind this game of hide and seek that was “just a game.”
Especially for this game, Johannes was lent a scout shirt with a neckerchief and short scout trousers, which he liked very much: at least in this game he was considered a scout like the others. The rules were simple: in the forest there were places where you were given tasks, which you had to find and solve. The trick was that you could capture members of the other groups, and the prisoners were not allowed to solve any more tasks, but were held captive at the fireplace.
“How is that supposed to work; the prisoners can just run away again,“ Johannes asked a scout standing next to him.
“Of course they'll be tied up,” he said, and Johannes flinched a little: Under no circumstances should he let Kay take him prisoner.
Johannes went into the forest with two scouts from his group. He wondered how he would be able to find these tasks, since he didn't even know what they looked like. Johannes and his group wandered through the forest for a while until they saw a flag hanging from a tree.
Underneath the flag were some ropes and on the tree was a note saying that the task was to tie three specific knots in a rope and to take the rope with you as proof that you had passed the task. Johannes had no idea about knots, but he was with experts in this regard. They showed him the knots and Johannes put his rope in his pocket. Then they wandered further through the forest.
Suddenly Kay stood before them; Johannes almost died of fright. The two scouts ran away immediately, Johannes too; but it was clear that Kay would run after him and catch up with him quickly.
He literally threw himself at him; Johannes thought his bones would break.
He was lying on his stomach and Kay knelt on his back, took his wrists, held them together behind his back and then jammed them with his knees; it was quite uncomfortable.
“Now I'll show you what the neckerchief is for,” he said, taking Johannes's neckerchief off to tie his hands together crosswise.
Then he stood up, grabbed Johannes by the arms and pulled him up. Johannes tried to move his hands and tugged at his bonds; they were really quite tight. Kay held him firmly by one arm and ran with him through the forest.
“See, I told you I'd catch you first,” he said.
Johannes was annoyed that Kay had actually caught him, and at the very beginning of the game. Suddenly Kay stopped and said, “Now I'll put you here for now.”
They were standing in front of a hunter's high seat, closed all around, like a small hut on stilts.
“The prisoners come to the fireplace, don't they?”
Johannes was a little worried; he was a little afraid of Kay.
“If I take you there now, everyone will see that you are the first prisoner,” said Kay, ”And that would be stupid, wouldn't it?”
That sounded perfectly plausible; Johannes really didn't want to be the first to be captured.
“So you'll have to wait a little while longer until it's time.”
Kay pulled the string with the three knots out of Johannes' pocket,
“Go up the ladder.”
Johannes asked anxiously, “But you'll come back for me, won't you?”
“You'll see.”
Kay pushed him up the ladder until he fell into the little house at the top. Then he took the knotted string and tied it around Johannes' ankles, “So you don't run away from me,” and climbed down the ladder again.
Then he took the ladder away as well, so that there was really no chance of getting down again. Johannes heard Kay's footsteps moving away.
He lay motionless on the floor for a while, until he finally found his position uncomfortable. Then he began to move his wrists and legs as much as he could, and after a short time he felt a pleasant, warm feeling flowing through his body. He began to tug harder on the ropes, finally using his whole body and wriggling on the floor like a worm.
This pleasant, warm sensation increased immeasurably; Johannes fought against his bondage until he was completely exhausted from the rather strenuous movements.
Lying on the floor had also become quite uncomfortable. The only positions that came into question were on the side, which, however, became uncomfortable for the shoulders after some time, or on the stomach; it was best to change them from time to time.
After a while, Johannes decided to try to straighten up and lean against the wall. He pushed himself up until he could sit against it. It was not easy to straighten up with hands and feet tied, and it took some effort. And every time he made an effort to change his position, that flowing, exciting feeling in his body increased. When he was finally sitting, he was able to devote himself completely to the feelings that were flowing through him again.
He tried again and again to move his wrists, but the restraints held; Kay had done a good job – after all, he was a boy scout. The restraints on his feet were also tight and wouldn't loosen at all.
Suddenly Johannes remembered being tied to a bench in kindergarten. He remembered the pleasant feeling of his arms being tied tightly to his body. Just as he did then, he now felt his hands being tied behind his back, and the magical way in which these feelings excited and at the same time calmed him.
He closed his eyes and lost himself in his thoughts and in these pleasant, tingling feelings, and made sure again and again that his hands and feet were still tied tightly together by trying to move them.
After a while, however, even sitting became uncomfortable, even though he stretched his legs from time to time and bent them again after a while.
Meanwhile, he had doubts that Kay would even come back to free him; the time he spent in the high seat seemed so long to him that he thought the terrain game was definitely over long ago. Maybe Kay had forgotten about him or, even worse, he was having fun keeping him trapped in the high seat until he couldn't take it anymore.
Again and again, and with increasing desperation, Johannes tried to loosen the ropes, but to no avail; they held.
Finally, he heard someone coming; he had no sense of how much time had passed, only that it seemed like forever. Just as he was about to call for help, he heard the ladder being put up to the hunter's stand. Kay climbed up and said,
“Well, are you still here?”
He came into the hut and sat down next to Johannes.
“Show me if your ropes are still in good order.”
Kay examined the ropes on his back and then pulled on his feet.
“These will hold for a while yet.”
Johannes found the situation quite arousing, but his arms and back were already hurting from sitting in this rather uncomfortable position for so long.
He thought it was really time to end this bondage game and said, “Untie me and take me to the other prisoners.”
“Not until you admit that you're a little brat,” Kay replied, but that was out of the question for Johannes.
There was no way he was going to let Kay make fun of him; he would rather grit his teeth and endure even longer.
“I'm no brat. Now untie me, please.”
Kay sat silently beside him and after a while began whistling.
“Untie me,” Johannes repeated, but he didn't respond.
Then Kay took a bar of chocolate out of his pocket; it was nut chocolate, Johannes' favorite, and Johannes suddenly realized that he had become quite hungry. He had only had breakfast and, on top of that, he had lost his food bag when he was captured by Kay.
While unpacking the chocolate, Kay said,
“You can also say that you are a weakling, that's okay too.”
Johannes remained stubborn and silent.
“Well, we have time, the game is far from over. My group has already solved all the tasks, but the others will need a while longer to finish.”
Then Kay held a piece of chocolate in front of his mouth, “Do you want it?”
He pulled it away again when Johannes snapped at it with his mouth;
“It's delicious,“ he said and shoved the piece into his mouth.
Then he offered Johannes another piece and pulled it away again.
“First say what you are,” he said, and Johannes replied, “You're really disgusting.”
“All right,” Kay said, “if you won't have it any other way, then you can just stay here and rot.”
He put the chocolate back in the bag and went to the ladder. Before he climbed down, he threw the opened bar at Johannes, “So you won't starve,” and then he left.
Johannes stared at the chocolate lying on the floor next to him. He curled up on the floor again and tried to unwrap it with his mouth; he couldn't do it.
He was on the verge of tears with despair; if only he could think of something to get himself out of this predicament. At the same time, he also felt pressure in his pants, but that was mainly because he had to pee. Fortunately, Kay came back a short time later.
“Well?” he asked, ‘Haven't you had enough yet?”
“I'm still not a little shit, I'd rather starve to death here.”
Kay took him by the arms and pulled him to the wall so that he could sit against it again. He then took the chocolate, opened it and broke off a piece, which he held in front of Johannes’ mouth; this time he didn't pull it away. He gave him the rest of the chocolate piece by piece. Johannes was confused about how much being fed chocolate by Kay stimulated him. The hunger, the aches in his arms and back, all that disappeared under the tingling sensation that spread through him.
Only the urge to pee grew rapidly stronger and the associated pressure more unpleasant. After he had eaten the chocolate, Kay said, “Let's go,” and untied Johannes' feet. He put the rope back into Johannes' pocket.
“And the hands?“ Johannes asked.
“You're still my prisoner,” Kay replied, pushing him towards the ladder.
Johannes was afraid of falling down the ladder and initially resisted being maneuvered to the exit by Kay. Kay sat him at the hole, went ahead and lifted him down bit by bit, holding him firmly.
Once at the bottom, Kay grabbed Johannes again by the arm and said, “Let's go.”
“I have to pee,“ Johannes said, and Kay stopped with him at a tree.
When Kay opened his trousers, which slid right down to his feet, Johannes noticed that his underpants were visibly bulging.
“That's just because I have to pee,” he said, while Kay pulled his underpants down a bit.
He remained standing next to him, which didn't make it easy to pee; Johannes noticed that Kay kept looking at his erect penis. Even though the pressure was great, he couldn't possibly pee.
“I can't do it with you watching,” he finally said, and Kay took a few steps back,
“You're not going to run away on me.”
The time seemed endless for Johannes, standing there with his hands behind his back, waiting until he could finally pee; luckily only a few drops got on his trousers.
To his surprise, Kay refrained from commenting, waited patiently and only came back when Johannes called “finished”. He pulled up his underpants and then his trousers, which he buttoned up again.
Johannes thought about the fact that he found it really exciting to be fed, undressed or dressed by Kay while he was tied up. Kay no longer held his arm as they walked on.
After a while, he said that he had respect for the fact that Johannes hadn't given in.
“You're all right,“ he said, and Johannes wondered if this was a test to see if he really was a ‘wimp’ or a ‘pantswetter’; if so, he had apparently passed the test.
“I'm not a wimp,” Johannes said, just to have it confirmed again.
Kay laughed and said, “You really aren't.” Johannes was confused by Kay's reaction; could it be that he really could be nice, as his father said?
When they arrived at the fireplace, three other prisoners were already sitting on a bench, all with their hands tied behind their backs with their neckerchiefs. Kay sat Johannes on the bench with the three others.
“Have you been captured too?” Johannes suddenly heard his father say.
He didn't know that he would meet his father at the fireplace. He apparently had the task of guarding the prisoners. Johannes was a little uncomfortable that he was brought to his father tied up.
“Considering that he is no boy scout, he did well. But in the end, he had no chance,” Kay said;
that was very fair, if rather exaggerated. Johannes was quite happy that it remained hidden that Kay had captured him right at the beginning of the game. So there was one good thing that came out of staying in the high seat after all.
Kay then asked his father, “Should I take the ropes off him?”
Johannes felt relieved at the prospect of finally getting rid of the ropes and being able to move his arms again; after all, he had been tied up for some time. But he was astonished to hear his father say,
“They can stay on until the game is over, like the others.”
Until the game was over, Johannes sat on the bench with the other prisoners. More and more prisoners were added to the group, and all of them except two with their hands tied had to sit on a bench until the end of the field game.
While Johannes sat on the bench, the otherwise pleasant, calming current increasingly turned into an unpleasant and almost eerie excitement. The harder he tugged at his bonds, the stronger this tension became in his body, until he felt as if he would explode any second. Yet he couldn't help but keep trying to move his hands behind his back.
When Johannes saw that the pressure he felt in his pants was clearly visible, he panicked. The idea that the other scouts or even his father could see it was more than uncomfortable. He tried to remain calm, to stop resisting the ropes and, above all, not to show anything.
Finally, the space around the fireplace was full and the game was coming to an end. Johannes was now quite exhausted and hardly noticed the end of it all. To count the points, each captive came to the group that had captured him; so Johannes went to Kay's group. After the points were noted, Kay came to him, said,
“Go on, turn around,” and untied his hands.
“That wasn't so bad, was it?”
Johannes rubbed his wrists. He then went straight to the sleeping tent and lay down on his sleeping bag to let his mind wander. Thoughts, above all, of those pleasant feelings and that excitement to which he had surrendered on the hunter's high seat, of how it felt when Kay tied his hands together and when he untied them again.
He dreamt of the boys on the prison benches, almost all of them with their hands tied behind their backs, and wondered if they had felt that pleasant tingling, or that eerie, exciting feeling, if they had baggy trousers too? He hadn't even thought of checking. John spent the rest of the day lying on his sleeping bag, even missing dinner, and eventually fell asleep.
The next day he learned that he was the one in his group who had solved the fewest tasks. But that was okay; after all, he wasn't a Boy Scout.
The next day, John didn't see Kay at all; but somehow he couldn't stop thinking about this big and strong boy. Above all, he thought back to the time when he had fed him chocolate while Kay was tied up, which had fascinated him quite a bit. It wasn't easy for him to admit to himself that he had really liked it; he was somewhat unsettled to realize that he really missed Kay after this incident.
Late in the afternoon, Johannes was helping to prepare dinner and sat at a table with a few scouts, cutting bread, cheese, and sausage and placing them on various plates. Suddenly he was grabbed by the arms from behind and his arms were pulled back, onto his back. That could only be Kay, he thought, fearing that he would once again fall victim to his rough jokes. With a quick movement, Kay grasped his thumbs and held them tightly together behind his back with one hand.
“Got you,“ he shouted.
Johannes grimaced; the way Kay held his thumbs together was quite painful.
“Say you're a little snot,” he said, but one of the other boys immediately intervened and said,
“Let him go, Kay, you're hurting him.”
Kay let go of his thumbs and said, “I was only joking.”
He asked Johannes, ”I didn't hurt you, did I?”
Johannes remained silent. Kay sat down next to him and said, “He's pretty brave, that little one,” and began to tell how difficult it was to catch Johannes and how hard he had fought. Johannes felt flattered, even though none of what Kay said was true.
After a while, he patted Johannes on the shoulder and said, “He would have been a good boy scout,” and laughed. Then he got up and left.
“You really fought back?” one of the scouts who was preparing dinner asked. ”Against Kay? None of us would stand a chance.”
“Well, a little,” Johannes said, ”But in the end it was of no use.”
Another scout then told how he had been tied to a tree by Kay at an earlier campout and had to stand there for hours, somewhere in the middle of the forest. Kay was apparently notorious for being particularly ruthless with his prisoners.
Johannes was a little surprised that being captured by the boy scout had earned him a certain amount of recognition, especially since word got around that he had fought back against him. Kay wasn't quite as rough on him in the days that followed, even if he couldn't stop joking around. When he was around, Johannes felt really good, all the more so because he thought Kay paid more attention to him than to other boys. He liked him, this strong boy who had tied him up and fed him chocolate.
The day before departure, there was a competition in “scout disciplines”. Each scout was to perform something, either alone or together with one or two others. When it was discussed at breakfast who would do what, the question arose as to what Johannes should do; he was not trained in these scout things and had nothing to show.
Kay said that he still needed an “assistant” for his demonstration and that Johannes was exactly the right person for the job. Johannes had no idea what Kay wanted to demonstrate and how he was supposed to assist, but he was glad that his demonstration was solved. He was lent the scout shirt, matching shorts and a neckerchief for the occasion again. He asked a scout if he knew what Kay wanted to demonstrate, and received the answer,
“Well, knots; Kay is our expert for knots.”
After lunch, benches were set up around a stage, which was indicated by ropes on the ground, and the demonstrations began: reading compasses, surveying maps, reciting scouting sayings. Johannes was quite excited about his upcoming performance and therefore could hardly concentrate on the demonstrations. Kay had told him that it was quite easy and that he just had to do what he said, but Johannes was still a little uneasy about the whole thing.
Then it was their turn; Kay went on stage with a bundle of ropes in his hand and called Johannes to him. He talked about the different knots that existed and explained how important it was to use the right knots. Then he said,
“I'll show you how it's done,” and to Johannes, ”Hold out your arms and hold them together.”
Johannes obeyed and Kay tied a rope around his wrists, which he tied with a simple knot. The rope was very tight. Gradually the spectators arrived, examined Johannes' wrists and expressed their appreciation; the demonstration was apparently convincing. Kay then untied his hands and went on to explain that other knots could be used for tying. He demonstrated each of these knots on Johannes' wrists, and Johannes stretched out his hands to him each time, unsolicited, to have them tied together and then examined.
Johannes was relieved that his task was actually very simple in the end; he actually found it quite exciting to be Kay's assistant. He found it pretty titillating that the bindings were then examined and the boys took his hands to study exactly how they were tied.
Finally, Kay announced his last demonstration and Johannes held out his hands to him again.
“This time on your back,” Kay said and explained to the audience that he would show how to tie the hands correctly crosswise.
Johannes had to stand with his back to the audience and put his hands behind his back, which Kay then tied crosswise. After this bondage was examined, Kay said, ‘That's it,’ and sat down again.
Johannes then stood alone in the stage area with his hands behind his back and asked, “And my hands?” It was only when the next boy came to demonstrate how to start a fire with just dry grass and two pieces of wood that one of the supervisors said, “Kay, I think you can untie your assistant again.”
After Kay had untied his hands again, Johannes sat down again next to Kay. He stared at the welts that the demonstration had left on his wrists. Suddenly he noticed that Kay was looking at his trousers and grinned; only now did he notice that they were clearly visible.
In the evening there was a final campfire. Johannes sat next to Kay and was almost a little sad that the week was already over. The camp had been exciting in an unexpected way, and above all, Johannes felt that he was accepted by the scouts. Johannes sat down by the fire away from the other boys and mused to himself while watching the flames. Then Kay sat down next to him and Johannes thought about the fact that he actually liked Kay a lot now, while he had found him really disgusting at the beginning.
Suddenly Kay whispered in his ear, “You had a hard-on earlier.”
Johannes was startled and speechless.
“I saw it clearly when I untied you.”
No doubt that meant the bulging trousers; Johannes was silent, embarrassed.
“It's not a problem,” Kay continued, ”Some people just like being tied up.”
Johannes wondered if he really liked being tied up. Was it perhaps quite normal to experience these emotional shocks when you were tied up? But Johannes had the feeling that it was rather not normal; strictly speaking, he had the feeling that it was not normal at all. He felt caught in an extremely unpleasant way and thought anxiously about who else might have noticed his bulging trousers.
“I didn't have a hard-on,” Johannes said somewhat helplessly.
“I don't believe you; I saw it; and during the terrain game too.”
“I had to pee then.”
Kay grinned at him; Johannes was desperately looking for explanations, but nothing convincing occurred to him. The most diverse thoughts shot through his head, all mixed up. After a pause, Kay whispered in his ear,
“It turns you on when you're tied up, doesn't it?”
“No, it really doesn't.”
Johannes would have liked to have sunk into the ground.
“Bet?” Kay said, ‘Then put your hands behind your back.”
Johannes hesitated and thought about just getting up and running away; but that wouldn't change the fact that Kay had seen through him.
“So it's true after all,’ Kay said, still grinning, ”otherwise you would dare to put your hands behind your back now.”
He seemed to like the game. Johannes then put his hands behind his back and crossed his wrists. Immediately, he felt pressure in his trousers and tried to concentrate hard not to let it get any stronger. Kay then held his wrists together with a firm grip and the pressure increased immediately.
“You see, it's true.”
Johannes looked between his legs and saw that the trousers were bulging again. Kay let him go and whispered,
“I won't tell anyone.”
Johannes was quite confused and worried about this secret he now shared with Kay. After a while he sat down with the other scouts and stayed away from Kay for the rest of the evening.
The next morning everything was packed up, the tents taken down, and by noon the first parents were already coming to pick up their children. Johannes would travel home at the very end with his father. In the afternoon Kay came to him and told him that he was being picked up now and wanted to say goodbye to him.
“It was nice with you; maybe you'll be there next time too.”
Johannes' father heard this farewell and remarked, “You must have become friends during your time here.”
“Johannes is really a nice guy,” Kay said to his father and left.
Johannes was overwhelmed by the sadness he felt because this camp was now over, and he even fought back tears. But he didn't let on.
When they arrived home, Johannes and his father were greeted by his mother with a meal that was already cooked. His father said that he thought the camp was very nice, that the boys were all very nice and had helped with everything.
“Johannes even found a new friend,” he then said to Johannes's amazement.
He wasn't at all sure whether Kay was really a friend; actually, he didn't know what a friend was supposed to be. Kay did fascinate him, that was true, especially since he shared a rather delicate secret with him. On the other hand, he was also a little scary to him because he was significantly bigger and stronger and especially because of his rough jokes.
“Really, who?“ his mother asked, and he replied,
“I think Dad means Kay.”
“Kay, really?” his mother asked and explained,
“The boy hasn't always had it easy either.”
Johannes became curious, “Why?”
“You don't have to tell the boy that story now,” his father interrupted, but Johannes insisted.
After a moment's hesitation, his mother explained that Kay's father had died a little over two years ago in a car accident.
“His mother couldn't really cope with her husband's death and took it out on the boy; it wasn't nice. She was completely overwhelmed by the situation, alone with the boy, who had also become more and more aggressive.”
After a short pause, she continued that “what happened with Kay” had come to light after half a year and Kay had come to live with his grandmother, with whom he still lived. His mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Johannes had the feeling that his mother was keeping something from him and asked what “what happened with Kay” was.
His father then said, “She locked him in his room every day and sometimes she probably even tied him up because she couldn't handle him any other way. That's probably why he became so aggressive. At school, they realized that something was wrong and called the youth welfare office. When that came out, his mother broke down and was committed to a psychiatric ward.”
He added that he didn't think what Kay's mother had done was right, even though she was in a difficult situation and Kay was not an easy boy.
In Johannes' mind, the situation when he was punished on the bench with that other boy came up again. He saw himself and that boy sitting on the bench next to each other, each with a rope around his stomach and arms. He saw himself and the boy “from the outside” and could also see himself exactly as he sat tied up, with outstretched legs, on that bench and tried to move his arms.
So he and Kay actually had something in common? Johannes was fascinated by this thought; he tried to imagine himself tied up in his room. He wondered how Kay was tied up and whether his hands were tied as well.
Maybe that was their secret: John liked being tied up and Kay liked tying other boys up. Maybe because he himself had been tied up often enough, unlike John, who had only been tied up once before the camp. His parents would never tie him up, he thought as he lay in bed, which was a shame. It didn't have to be often; once in a while would be enough.
Before he fell asleep, Johannes thought about friendship; why he didn't have any friends and whether Kay was really his friend now. He wasn't interested in other children; on the contrary, they disturbed him, were loud and rough, so he preferred to stay away from them. That's why he had never felt the need to have friends.
But there were rare occasions when he was interested in a child, or to be precise, two occasions: Len and Kay. He had only seen Len once, in the supermarket, but he had thought about him very often and had always wished to meet him again. There was something special about both of them: he shared a secret with both of them, something that no one else knew.
Johannes was fascinated by the idea that there were “special” guys like that, with whom he shared something he couldn't share with anyone else; things like the fascination that Lens Parka, with a fur hood, held for him, or the indescribable feelings that came when he was tied up. This idea was somehow reassuring for him – apparently he wasn't alone after all.
While he was thinking about this, he realized that he hadn't even considered the possibility of there being “special” girls. It seemed to be a purely boyish game.
Johannes was overjoyed when he learned that he was also allowed to go to the autumn camp. The leader of the scout group didn't want him at first because he thought Johannes should either join the scouts or not go to the camp. Joining the scouts was out of the question; he would have had to attend the regular group meetings and sing songs; that was out of the question for him. In the end, the group leader gave in and allowed Johannes to go as an exception.
He had already packed his things the night before they left. This time, he had taken special care to make sure he had everything he would need, because this time he was on his own. His father couldn't come because he had injured his foot and had to go to the hospital for an operation.
Johannes felt a little queasy; after all, his mother had called the head of the group to extract the promise to pay special attention to Johannes. Johannes was a little uncomfortable, especially because she said that he liked to be annoyed by other children and couldn't defend himself.
The next morning, his mother took him to the meeting point. Kay was already there and came straight up to them,
“Great that it worked out and you can come too.”
“I heard that you two got along well last time,“ Johannes' mother said; Johannes hated that his mother always had to interfere in his affairs.
“Yes,” Kay said, “he's really nice, little Johannes. A bit shy, but really nice.”
Then he added with a grin, “He's a good boy scout, too.”
Fortunately, Johannes' mother refrained from asking Kay to take care of him as well. Instead, she went to the group leader; Johannes stayed with Kay and watched from a distance as she talked to him.
Finally, after a two-hour drive, they arrived at the site where the camp was to be set up. Everyone pitched in to help, except Johannes; he didn't know how to pitch a tent and was not asked to help. He thought it was stupid just to stand around, and his mood deteriorated rapidly.
When he was unable to find a place in the pitched sleeping tent, he took his things and decided to go back. But the group leader didn't think about driving him back; he went with Johannes to the sleeping tent and called the scouts together.
He said that it was not compatible with the scouting principles to leave Johannes no place in the tent. One of the scouts replied that Johannes had not helped with the construction and therefore did not deserve a place; other scouts supported him. However, the group leader did not accept this view and asked the scouts to immediately give Johannes a place in the tent.
Then Kay appeared and said that Johannes could also sleep in his tent. Kay had his own tent this time because he had annoyed the other scouts too much last time and some of them refused to sleep in a tent with Kay. Johannes was glad about this solution and immediately took his things to carry them to Kay's tent.
“They're all stupid,“ Kay said as Johannes unpacked his things.
Johannes asked him why he was in the scouts if he thought they were stupid.
“They often go away,” Kay replied, “and my grandmother sometimes needs a vacation from me.”
He grinned as he said it. Johannes' mood had improved again by dinner time; but secretly he doubted that he would survive the time well. But then he also thought that last time it was very exciting and beautiful in the end, mainly because of the terrain game, which was surely on the program again.
When Johannes went back to the tent after dinner, all his things had disappeared; Kay had also vanished. Johannes stood rooted to the spot in front of the tent and fought back tears.
Then he heard Kay's voice, “A real boy scout won't cry.”
It came from a nearby bush, from which Kay emerged laughing. He then gave instructions on where Johannes could find his things and apparently enjoyed himself very much watching him fish his things out of the surrounding bushes.
Johannes spent the rest of the evening in the tent and resolved not to say another word to Kay. He didn't like such jokes at all. He thought that maybe his mother had tied him up because he was always playing such nasty tricks.
He imagined Kay sitting on a bench with his hands tied behind his back. He thought that Kay's mother had probably tied his hands behind his back. But maybe she had just tied them together or not tied them at all; maybe she had just tied a rope around his waist to a bench or chair.
When Kay came into the tent, Johannes was already asleep; when Johannes woke up the next morning, Kay had been awake for a while.
Johannes didn't say a word to Kay, as he had planned to, and Kay also remained silent as they lay awake in the tent that morning.
Then Kay said, “You know what? You really are a spoilsport. Just because I allowed myself a bit of fun, you're now playing the offended party; don't you think that's over the top?”
Johannes ignored him.
After a while Kay said, “Then we won't talk to each other anymore; I'm not saying anything more either”;
Johannes remained stubbornly silent. He was very upset and finally started putting his things into his pockets just to keep himself busy with something.
Suddenly Kay grabbed him by the wrists, pulled him to him and said,
“In that case, go join the others. Maybe they've saved you a place.”
“No, not with the others,” said Johannes, he really didn't want that.
He liked the way Kay held him by the wrists.
“I want to stay here with you. It's just that I didn't like it at all last night. I don't want you to make fun of me all the time.”
“OK.”
Kay let him go, “I'll try, honestly. But you'll try too and not take everything so seriously, agree?”
Johannes agreed; he was relieved and glad that the situation had finally been resolved.
Since that morning, he got along much better with Kay, who was very reserved with his jokes. Kay was very caring, defended him when the others were too rough on him, and showed him many of the skills a scout must have. Johannes now really felt like he was a friend and found that having a friend felt unexpectedly good.
However, he also experienced a disappointment that day, because he had to learn that there would be no outdoor game this time. That would have been the most exciting thing for him at the camp, especially the prospect of being tied up again. But the disappointment was quickly forgotten; he learned many interesting things and the scouts did so much every day that he was so exhausted that he hardly had time to think about the fact that the really interesting things were cancelled.
Above all, Kay was usually very nice to him, and Johannes always found it very pleasant to crawl into his tent in the evening.
One day after lunch, the scouts were in a flurry. All their things had been mixed up and messed up in their tent; they would have to spend the whole afternoon sorting everything out again.
There was also a suspect, who at first denied his deed but then had to admit it because he was observed doing it. Johannes watched from a distance at first and then approached the group of scouts in front of the large sleeping tent, in the middle of which the culprit was being held.
“He's definitely going to be staked,” one of the scouts said to Johannes.
“Staked?”
“Yes, don't you know? That's the usual punishment for such nonsense.” That sounded quite exciting, thought Johannes, even if he couldn't imagine what it was.
He watched as the scouts formed a circle and hammered a long tent peg into the ground. Meanwhile, the convicted culprit was held by several scouts by the arms and tried in vain to wriggle free. When the tent pegs were stuck in the ground, he was pushed to the ground and tied to hands and feet by four scouts at the same time, so that he had to lie stretched out like an X on the ground.
He tugged at his bonds, but obviously had no chance of getting free. Finally, he was smeared with dirt and leaves while the scouts howled with glee and left him lying there while they began to collect their things one by one.
Johannes remained standing and watched the boy, who didn't stop struggling against his bonds. What an exciting punishment; the word “pegged” wouldn't leave his head. Only the smearing with leaves and earth could have been avoided, thought Johannes, he imagined it was really unpleasant.
“That's what happens when you're full of mischief,“ he suddenly heard Kay's voice; he hadn't realized that Kay was standing next to him.
“If you annoy the others enough, they might tie you to the pegs too,” Kay said, laughing.
Johannes feared that Kay would tease him again about liking to be tied up, and walked away. He kept looking back from a distance to see if the tied-up boy scout was still there, and also observed how he was untied again.
When he was in the tent with Kay in the evening, Kay asked him, “You liked that, the punishment today, right?”
“Why?” Johannes asked back, ‘What makes you think that?”
“You admitted it before, that you like that kind of thing, at the last camp.”
Johannes couldn't counter that; he was silent.
“You probably would have liked it even more if you had been punished like that,’ Kay pressed.
Johannes looked at him; what was he getting at? Was he trying to make fun of him?
“That's none of your business, and besides, I haven't admitted anything,” he tried to play down.
The situation was very difficult; on the one hand, he found it exciting that Kay knew his secret, but on the other hand, he feared that he would expose him in front of the other scouts.
“You can tell me,” Kay said, ”After all, we're friends and that means we have to be honest.”
Johannes hesitated; Kay was right, he thought, part of friendship is sharing secrets with each other.
“All right,” he finally said, ‘I admit it. In return, you'll show me a few knots, right?’ I think the part about knots is interesting; I want to learn that too, to be able to tie different knots like the scouts.”
“All right, I'll show you something,” Kay said and explained that the first thing to learn was how to tie slings. He took a piece of rope out of his backpack and demonstrated various types of slings with it; Johannes noticed that he was grinning the whole time. After Johannes had tied all of them, which wasn't difficult for him, Kay said,
“Now I'll show you what this is good for. Hold out your hands.”
Johannes held out his hands towards him, holding them so that the palms touched. Kay slipped the rope over them and with a single hand movement he wrapped one end around the loop between the hands and pulled the whole thing together. Johannes tugged at the ties, which were perfectly secure; he was fascinated.
He wondered if Kay's mother had ever tied his hands together like this. It was only fair that he should learn some of Kay's secrets, he thought, but he was also unsure how to ask about them. His parents had been secretive when they told him about his mother, and maybe he wasn't supposed to know. Kay had never talked about such things of his own accord; he hadn't even told anyone that he was living with his grandmother.
“Is that true?“ Johannes began, but then faltered; his hands being tied made him even more insecure.
“Is what true?” Kay asked.
“That you're with your grandmother because your mother locked you up and tied you down?”
Kay remained silent. Johannes felt very uncomfortable having to wait for Kay's reaction with his hands tied.
“How did you know that?”
“My parents told me.”
“Don't you have any other questions?” Kay replied, but then said, ”All right, that's true. Satisfied?”
Johannes looked at him silently; of course he was not satisfied with this answer. Kay then asked if his parents had also told him that his father had died, and said that his mother had become more and more strange after his father's death and that he had often argued with her. He also admitted that he had a lot of nonsense in his head, and that his mother had locked him up and sometimes tied him up because of it.
“Until the youth welfare office came,“ Johannes added.
“Yes,” Kay said, laughing, “that was really dramatic. We had argued again and she accidentally gave me a black eye.”
“A black eye?”
“A black eye; when the class teacher saw it, she was really shocked. That afternoon, I had a really big fight with my mother when I came back from school. I then started breaking dishes and she not only locked me in my room, but also tied me to the chair. She was very strong; in the end, I never had a chance to get away. Suddenly the doorbell rang and my class teacher was standing at the door with someone from the youth welfare office. My mother didn't want to let them into the apartment, but the teacher threatened to call the police. Then they found me in my room, tied to the chair and with a black eye. My mother then completely lost it and then they did call the police; that was that. She only tied me up sometimes, not often; but she locked me in my room almost every day. It wasn't nice, and I'm quite happy that I'm with my grandmother, she's really great.”
Johannes hesitated for a while before finally asking how his mother had tied him up.
“Now you're being very nosy. But if you must know: she tied my hands behind my back, then tied me to the chair and only untied me when I had calmed down. Are you satisfied now?”
Johannes nodded. He had never argued so fiercely with his parents; they had never locked him up or even beaten him, and unfortunately they had never tied him up either. He couldn't imagine his parents doing such a thing.
“Will you untie me?”
Johannes thought he had been tied up long enough.
Kay grinned, “The knot lessons are not over yet; you have to free yourself.”
Johannes examined his hands, which he held out to Kay. The rope went once around each wrist and the ends hung down from the knot between his wrists. He tugged hard again, but the rope didn't loosen a bit.
“Can't be done.”
“Then you'll just have to sleep like this.”
Johannes kept tugging at the rope without being able to free his hands.
“It's quite simple,” Kay said, ”Think about it a bit, and you'll see.”
“It's too tight; I can't get free.”
Johannes was already a bit desperate; being tied to sleep was a bit much.
“Watch,” Kay said, and with a strong tug, he pulled on one of the rope ends hanging down from Johannes‘ hands. To Johannes’ greatest astonishment, the knot came undone and his hands were free.
“See?”
It was like a magic trick. Johannes insisted that Kay show him the trick again in detail and this time he freed himself by taking the end of the rope into his mouth and pulling on it until the knot came undone.
Johannes couldn't fall asleep for a long time. He had a lot of different thoughts going through his mind as he lay next to Kay, who was already asleep. Kay's mother had tied his hands behind his back; he found the thought of Kay tied up very stimulating.
He thought about the fact that Kay now not only knew one of his secrets, but that he also knew one of Kay's. He wondered if Kay and he were really friends now; they got along very well and even slept next to each other in the same tent. Johannes liked having a friend, especially one with whom he could share such a precarious secret.
He dreamt that he was caught messing with the Boy Scouts' things, and the Scouts decided to tie him to the tent pegs as a punishment. How Kay then tied his hands and feet so tightly to the pegs that he couldn't move at all and had to endure the punishment procedure completely defenceless. In his dream, Kay kept coming to him to check whether the ropes were still tight enough.
He recalled being tied to a bench as a punishment in kindergarten and thought about the strangeness of something that stimulated and fascinated him so much being a punishment in reality. Did the boy who was tied to the stake today like being punished that way? With these thoughts, Johannes finally fell asleep.
Kay showed him new knots every evening until the end of the camp. He was allowed to try them out on Kay and proved to be a good student.
However, Kay couldn't stop joking around with Johannes either; the worst of it was the kitchen duty. Johannes had kitchen duty with Kay and two other scouts one day; this included setting up breakfast in the morning. He relied on Kay to wake him up in the morning, but he didn't. Johannes had overslept and only woke up when everyone was already having breakfast. He was very embarrassed, all the more so because Kay made some rather stupid comments about it and Johannes had to clear the table by himself as a punishment.
When Kay then told other scouts that he had been late on purpose because he liked being punished, Johannes decided to end his friendship with him. But Kay managed to make things right again, and during the knot-tying lesson that evening, Johannes was glad to have Kay as a friend again.
Then the day came all too soon when everything was taken down and the scouts went home. Johannes was sad when the camp came to an end; above all, he couldn't imagine not sleeping in the tent next to Kay.
In retrospect, Johannes thought the camp was nice again, even though it started with the scouts, or at least some of them, not wanting him to sleep in their tent. The boy who had done most to keep Johannes out of the sleeping tent had apologized to him afterwards, and the scouts had hardly let him feel that he was not a scout, just as they had done at the first camp. In the end, sleeping in Kay's tent was a good solution, Johannes thought.
When they returned, his mother was already waiting to pick him up.
“He survived it,“ Kay told her.
“Yes?” she asked Johannes, “Did everything go well?”
When Kay replied, ‘Sometimes he was a bit wild, we had to tie him down, but otherwise he was quite well-behaved,’ Johannes would have liked to have sunk into the ground.
His mother looked at him in astonishment at first, but then she laughed. Johannes couldn't find Kay's jokes funny, but they weren't as bad as they had been at the beginning. When he said goodbye to him, Kay said he was happy to have “made a new friend” and promised to call soon. Johannes was really happy to hear this; Kay was the first friend he had ever had, and so far it was really exciting and nice to have a friend.
The Saturday after next, Johannes' mother knocked on his door and said Kay was on the phone. Kay invited him to come to his place that afternoon; he lived in a neighboring village and Johannes had the exact directions explained to him.
Johannes was amazed when he reached the place where Kay lived by bike; it was a real farm. At first he couldn't find a bell, so after a moment's hesitation he went into the courtyard, which was surrounded by several buildings.
“This way,”
he heard Kay's voice, and after a brief search, Johannes found the right entrance, which led him straight into a kitchen. There was Kay and his grandmother, who immediately offered Johannes a piece of homemade cake. A real farm; he was really impressed. After they had eaten cake, Kay showed him around the farm and showed him everything there was. Johannes found the tractor the most exciting, and he and Kay took a ride in it.
Finally, Kay led him to a staircase that was set into the floor and ended in front of an old wooden door that was locked with a padlock.
“This is the grotto,” he said, unlocking the door.
Inside, it was pitch black, and Johannes hesitated to go in with Kay. He followed Kay only a few steps and then went right back out; as far as he could tell, it looked like a vaulted cellar behind the door.
Kay showed him other parts of the farm that really fascinated Johannes: so many hidden places, tool sheds, haylofts, the grotto and, above all, the tractor.
“I'll get a candle, then we'll go back to the cave, okay?” Kay said suddenly. ”You must have really seen it.”
When Kay returned and led Johannes to the door in the floor, Johannes waited until he had lit the candle before following him. Johannes looked around carefully; it was a long room, made of bricks and with a semicircular vaulted ceiling. It was supported in the middle by wooden pillars, from which crossbars extended to the wall. These were so low that even John, who was significantly smaller than Kay, had to be careful not to bang his head on them. Empty crates were stacked against the walls. Kay explained that vegetables and fruit used to be stored here because it always stayed cool in summer.
“It's actually a giant refrigerator.”
At the other end of the underground vaulted room, Johannes saw a passageway leading into the darkness. Kay went in there and Johannes followed close behind; he found this “grotto” quite eerie. The second vaulted room they came to looked similar to the first. Here, too, there were the pillars with the low crossbars and boxes standing all around. Johannes noticed that the crates were covered with cobwebs.
Kay went to a wooden door that could be seen at the end of the room and Johannes followed him closely; the door had no lock and on it was carved, in large letters, “KAY”.
“This is my realm,“ Kay said;
“Kay” with a “y” - Johannes found that very exciting.
He would have written “Kai” with an “i”; but with a “y” the name immediately took on a completely different meaning: it was clearly a special name, because “y” was a very special letter for Johannes, and he didn't know of any name that contained a “y” – until now.
He followed Kay through the door into another room that looked similar to the first two. However, it was furnished differently: There were no old boxes lying around and it looked very tidy. There was a carpet on the floor with a small table and three chairs. Then Johannes saw a shelf with notebooks, tools and several boxes. There were several candles on the table, which Kay lit. Johannes was speechless as he looked around; he envied Kay having his own room in such a hidden place.
“Do you like it?” Kay asked, and Johannes nodded,
“You're the only one besides me who's seen this room.”
He was very touched that Kay trusted him enough to show him his secret hiding place.
Johannes really liked living on a farm, with all the things standing around everywhere and the shed full of exciting nooks and crannies waiting to be explored. And of course the grotto was the best thing of all, next to the tractor.
After showing him the farm, Kay suggested going to the forest, where he would show Johannes his favorite places. The forest bordered the farm and was huge; it was easy to get lost in it. In the forest, Kay explained what he could see there and what he could tell from the tracks: places where deer had spent the night, fox dens and footprints of birds, hares and other animals. Johannes was particularly impressed by a huge anthill teeming with large forest ants.
“It's like a big city, only with ants instead of people,” Kay remarked.
Suddenly Kay stopped and said, ”Look around carefully; do you see anything?”
Johannes looked around carefully, but saw nothing unusual. There was dense shrubbery next to them and otherwise only forest to be seen, in which nothing unusual stood out.
“Come with me then; you'll be amazed,” Kay said, squeezing through the bushes. ”But you have to watch your step.”
Johannes realized that the bushes were growing over a hollow and that it went quite steeply down into it. When Kay pushed aside a few branches, they could see an entrance to a cave that led diagonally downwards. Kay squeezed through and Johannes followed him until they were standing in a real cave.
“There must have been a house here once, and this is all that's left of the cellar.”
Once Kay had explained it, Johannes also realized that the walls of the cave were made of bricks; he was thrilled. Kay said that no one would know about the cave except for him and that Johannes must not tell anyone about it under any circumstances. They crept out again and continued through the forest, while Kay explained the names of the shrubs and trees that grew here. He showed Johannes some other exciting places, a half-fallen hunter's high seat leaning against a tree, a hollow tree that could be climbed from the inside.
After a while, Johannes wondered whether Kay would tie him up as well. Johannes kept wondering whether he should bring up the subject of bondage or whether it would be better to wait for Kay to come up with the idea of tying him up on his own, but he didn't give in to his urge to bring up the subject.
When they finally returned to the farm, they had been out all afternoon. Kay's grandmother invited Johannes to stay for dinner, but before that, he was able to take a ride with Kay in the tractor; this time, Kay even let him drive a short distance by himself.
Johannes felt really happy as he finally drove home. It was a really nice day with Kay; that was exactly how he imagined a friendship. However, he was very concerned that Kay hadn't made the slightest suggestion about bondage, not even a casual remark. Johannes kept thinking about how he could get Kay to tie him up the next time they met.
Two weeks later, on the Saturday after next, it was time to visit Kay again. When he arrived, he went straight into the house without ringing the bell and, after a short search, met Kay's grandmother. She didn't know where Kay was and said, “I think he's in the yard.”
When Johannes couldn't find him outside either, he went to the grotto and called out to him. He was actually there and immediately suggested going back into the forest. As they walked through the forest, Johannes was completely absorbed in his thoughts about how he should make it clear that he wanted to be tied up. After a while, the outdoor game they played at camp came to mind, and he asked Kay if he wanted to play a game with him.
“What kind of game?”
“Well, maybe like at camp; I'll hide and you have to catch me.”
“That doesn't sound particularly exciting; especially since I'll catch you in no time, it's not that hard.”
“Don't be so sure.”
“All right, I'll show you. I'll count to a hundred; I'll count very slowly.”
Kay covered his eyes and turned to face a tree. Johannes ran off, running through the forest for a while, changing direction several times and finally hiding in the undergrowth. There he waited until he actually heard footsteps a short time later. From the undergrowth, he couldn't see anything, but he kept hearing the sound of footsteps slowly approaching.
Then he heard Kay's voice, “I know you're here; look out, I'll get you in a moment.”
Johannes felt rather unsafe in his hiding place, so he decided to sneak away carefully. Suddenly a dry branch cracked under his feet and Kay shouted ‘There’; Johannes was startled and ran.
But Kay had caught up with him immediately and pulled him to the ground. Johannes lay on his stomach while Kay sat on his back,
“See? I would have been quite annoyed if I hadn't found you right away; I know this forest like the back of my hand.”
Kay was quite heavy and Johannes groaned under his weight.
“Am I your prisoner now?“ Johannes asked, expecting to be tied up.
“My prisoner?” Kay asked. “Yes, that's right. I almost forgot the really exciting part of the game.”
He didn't have any rope with him, though, so he used one of Johannes' shoelaces instead. Then he told Johannes to put his hands behind his back so he could tie them together crosswise.
When he was lying on the ground with his hands behind his back, Johannes was immediately flooded with these pleasant, exciting feelings. Kay helped him to get up again, “You're all dirty”; the forest floor was damp and the leaves stuck to Johannes' clothes, even on his face.
Johannes was glad that his strategy worked so well and that Kay seemed to still be willing to tie him up. He enjoyed walking next to Kay with his hands tied, tugging at the ropes every now and then to increase his arousal.
But he also had to be careful not to lose his shoe without laces while walking, which had happened from time to time. Just before they got back to the farm, Kay asked, “Shall I untie you?” and when Johannes didn't answer, “Or do you like it that way, with your hands behind your back?”
Johannes still didn't know what to say and finally stammered, “It's okay like this.”
When they arrived at the farm, Kay led him straight to his grotto, lit candles and sat Johannes on a chair.
“Maybe I won't untie you at all and just send you home tied up afterwards.”
Kay laughed and went to the shelf to get a few boxes and put them on the table.
“Have I already shown you these?”
In the boxes were plaster casts of animal tracks. Kay told him how he had made them and from which animals they came. After he had put the boxes away again, he said, “Now I'll untie you, okay?”
After untying Johannes' hands, he suggested going outside again and taking a ride in the tractor. All Johannes could think about was how he walked next to Kay while he was tied up and how it had turned him on. The ropes had left clear marks on his wrists. When he finally arrived home that evening, he examined these welts extensively and wished that they would stay, as a reminder of this meeting.
The feelings of happiness that Johannes felt lasted unabated for some time. The feeling of having really found a friend, and one who did such exciting things with him, put him in a high mood that he had never known before.
About two weeks later, Kay called him and asked to meet again. They arranged to meet on a Sunday so that they could spend the whole day together, and Johannes went to Kay's house in the morning. There he met him in the yard; he was on his way to the grotto, where Johannes followed him.
“What do you think of a knot lesson?” Kay asked while lighting the candles, ”Why don't you get the box over there?”
Johannes took the box Kay pointed to off the shelf and placed it on the table. Kay sat down on a chair and opened the box, which was full to the brim with ropes.
“So, then show me what else you can do.”
Johannes sat down too and took a few ropes out of the box, which he first had to unwind before he could show Kay the knots he had memorized. He still knew them all and Kay praised him for that too. Kay showed him a few more knot variations and then suggested trying out tie-ups.
Just as he had done at the camp, Kay demonstrated a particular tie on Johannes, who then looked at it closely and explored how it felt. Johannes then practiced this tie several times with Kay's hands until he had memorized it.
Johannes liked these lessons very much. Even at the camp, the evening lessons were undoubtedly the highlights of the whole trip; they were more than compensation for Kay's stupid jokes. Johannes also increasingly liked the atmosphere in Kay's secret cave; he thought that Kay was actually quite a good friend to him.
After Johannes had already learned a few new things and secretly feared that the lesson was about to end, Kay said,
“Finally, I'll show you how to tie a rope tightly to a beam.”
He took two ropes and tied one to one of the crossbeams that ran through the vaulted room.
“Now you,” he said, handing Johannes the other rope.
Johannes was a bit surprised, because they had already gone through this knot a long time ago. He took the rope and wanted to tie it to the beam next to the other one.
“No, there,” Kay interrupted him, pointing to the other side of the post.
It should be tied to the beam about half a meter from the post, just like the other one, only on the other side. Johannes sensed what Kay had in mind and waited eagerly for the order to stand by the post.
Kay told him right away, “You know what this is for. Stand there.”
Johannes stood at the post and held his hands next to his head so that the joints touched the knots of the two ropes. He waited for Kay to tie them to the beams, but Kay just looked at him and grinned.
“Aren't you going to tie me up?” Johannes asked after a while.
“Shall I tie you up?” Kay replied, ‘I don't want you to get another hard-on.”
Johannes was unsure; was Kay trying to make fun of him? As he was about to lower his arms again, Kay said, ’If you don't keep your hands up, I definitely won't tie you up.”
Johannes put his hands back by his head and waited for Kay to finally tie them to the beam. But Kay just grinned at him,
“If you want to be tied up, you have to say so.”
Johannes thought the game was pretty stupid and was also irritated that it still turned him on.
“Well?”
“Yes, come on!”
Kay finally tied his wrists to the beam and sat down on a chair. Johannes felt the excitement in his body increase. It was much more intense than during the knot lessons and felt more like it did at the first tent camp when he was trapped on the high seat.
“Do you like it?” Kay asked, ”Otherwise I can help you along a bit.”
He took a handful of ropes out of the box and went over to Johannes. He first tied his ankles together and to the post, then his legs just above the knees, and finally he tied him to the post at stomach and chest height.
Johannes could hardly move and this pleasant, comforting feeling that he knew from the outdoor game at the campsite spread through him with a vengeance; he also felt the increasing pressure in his trousers all too clearly. Being tied up properly was something different from the knot-tying lessons, which were also exciting, but didn't come close to what a real bondage did.
“It really turns you on, doesn't it?“ Kay remarked.
Johannes thought of the incident at the campsite when Kay had shown him that being tied up turned him on.
“It's okay,” Kay said, grinning again,
“I like the game too, especially when I think of how you'll beg to be untied later.”
Johannes was not entirely comfortable in the situation. But he definitely found it exciting to have his hands tied at his sides, next to his head, and not being able to move otherwise; it felt quite different from having his hands behind his back, but no less good.
“And if I don't beg you to untie me afterwards?”
“Then you'll just stay there; simple as that.”
Kay took a book from the shelf and sat down at the table. After reading for a while, he said, “This is Robinson Crusoe, do you know it? It's really exciting; I'm reading it for the second time now.”
Johannes didn't know it and could hardly concentrate when Kay told him about the book. He was too absorbed by what being tied to the post triggered in him. Increasingly, the pleasant shivers that ran through his body were mixed with rather unpleasant feelings that came from the restraints. They were quite tight and almost too tight on his legs.
“Are you going to untie me now?”
“As I said, not until you beg for it.”
“Please, Kay!”
“That's still not enough.”
Kay continued to read his book unperturbed. Johannes was a little desperate; begging to be freed was not really an option for him. But he felt increasingly uncomfortable, especially the ropes on his legs were becoming more and more unpleasant.
“Kay, please; I've been standing here for an hour now, that's enough.”
“Don't exaggerate. After all, you wanted to be tied up.”
Johannes thought of the time he had spent tied up in the tree house, and feared that Kay would not untie him anytime soon.
“Then at least untie my legs, they're so tight it hurts.”
Kay then actually untied his legs, “Is that better?”
After that, he sat down again and started reading his book.
“I could leave you tied to the post until I've finished the book,” he said, and asked, “Does it still turn you on?”
Johannes found this word, “turn on”, very strange and not at all appropriate for what bondage did to him. On top of that, Kay's comments had irritated him so much that he could no longer enjoy being tied up anyway.
But he didn't want to give Kay another opportunity for blasphemy and decided to endure until Kay untied him by himself. It didn't take long until he finally did it. When he sat at the table with Kay afterwards, Johannes asked, “Do you actually like being tied up, too?”
Since Kay didn't give him an answer to the question, he asked further, “Did you like it when your mother tied your hands behind your back?”
“Well,” Kay said, “somehow yes, but it wasn't easy with my mother.”
After a pause, he finally said, ”I don't want to talk about it. You know that story and that's good enough, okay?”
Johannes tried to imagine how he would feel if his mother tied his hands behind his back as a punishment, but he couldn't really picture it at all.
Being tied up by Kay was different. Kay knew his secret and, above all, was a special boy; one with whom Johannes could share his secrets, the only one with whom he could do so. Johannes had many questions running through his mind; why were there such secrets at all, why did he like being tied up? He thought of the first camp when he felt like he was going to burst with excitement after being tied up for some time.
He saw himself tied to the big bench in kindergarten, next to – what was his name again? Ias?
“Are you dreaming?” Kay pulled him out of his thoughts,
“No, I'm thinking.”
“You don't have to think about everything. Do you want to come and eat? My grandma has probably already prepared something for us.”
After dinner, Johannes was allowed to take another ride with Kay on the tractor and then went home.
For the next few days, Johannes waited every day for Kay to call again, but it didn't happen. After New Year, he decided to call Kay and made an appointment with him.
He went to the farm that same morning and found Kay in his room, putting together model airplanes. Johannes was amazed to see that there were a considerable number of model airplanes in Kay's room. Kay showed him the ones he liked best and explained the details, such as the name of the airplane and how many horsepower it had.
“And what do you do?” Kay suddenly asked.
Johannes felt a little caught off guard by the question and stammered at first, then said, ‘Astronomy.”
“Oh. Horoscopes and star-gazing and stuff?”
“Astronomy, not astrology,’ explained Johannes, ”It's about planetary systems and galaxies, for example.”
“And what do you do?”
Johannes began to explain that he was currently studying Kepler's laws. He found it fascinating that such simple formulas could describe such complex things as the planets, including the Earth with all its animals and plants.
Kay interrupted him after a short time, “Wait a minute. I have an idea.”
Johannes waited for Kay to say something, but he got up and rummaged through his closet for a rope. After he sat down on the bed next to Kay again, he said, “Put your hands behind your back!”
As soon as he was told to do so, Johannes felt pressure in his pants. Without thinking about it, he put his hands behind his back and felt Kay tie them together.
“Now continue,” Kay urged him.
“What?”
“Well, about the planets and the formulas and stuff.”
Johannes had the feeling that Kay wanted to make fun of him again, but he wasn't sure, so he continued his explanations. After a short time, it seemed increasingly strange to him to talk about astronomy while tied up, especially since he noticed that Kay was grinning all the time.
“You're making fun of me, aren't you?”
“Oh, no,” Kay said without stopping grinning,
“I just want to see if you get a hard-on when you talk about formulas.”
“Of course you're making fun of me. But you don't make fun of friends, and you said you were my friend.”
“It's just a joke; don't be so offended,” Kay replied, but Johannes still had the feeling that Kay was making fun of him, and he felt increasingly uncomfortable being exposed to Kay's jokes with his hands tied.
“Of course we're friends; and you're the only one who even feels good when I tie him up, the others don't like it at all.”
Kay laughed and then said that he would stop talking about it now, “otherwise you won't get one up anymore.”
Johannes didn't really know what Kay meant by that, but ‘not getting one up anymore’ didn't sound friendly.
“Then untie me now; I don't feel like it anymore.”
“You're still offended.”
“Yes. I don't like friends who make fun of me. Untie me now!”
“All right,” Kay said, and untied Johannes's hands.
“It's not my fault you have such strange preferences.”
“What do you mean by ‘strange preferences’?”
“That it turns you on so much when you're tied up; I mean, I find it kind of exciting too, but it's not like you, that it makes me cum.”
“Cum?”
“Yeah, that you get a boner.”
Kay had strange expressions for it, Johannes thought. But he didn't really know how to express it differently either.
“It just is,“ Kay said, hesitating for a moment, ‘unusual.”
Johannes was silent. He felt caught off guard by Kay's comments and had no idea how to respond. He had never expected Kay to find anything unusual about his ’preferences,” as he called them.
Johannes felt paralyzed and sat in silence, letting Kay say what he had to say. Fortunately, Kay didn't elaborate on this topic and after a while, they sat next to each other in silence, “Come on, I'll show you how I put the model airplanes together.”
Johannes followed him to the table, where a partially assembled airplane and numerous individual parts were still lying. Kay showed him how to put the parts together and let him glue the joints.
At some point Johannes went home again; he couldn't get Kay's words out of his head. He felt what Kay said, or rather what it made clear, namely that he felt his special relationship to bondage as strange, somehow as a betrayal; all the more the more he thought about it. Betrayal of the secret he shared with Kay. Johannes wondered whether he should ever let Kay tie him up again; he also suddenly found his bondage exercises, which he had almost taken for granted, delicate and thought about giving up this habit.
First the story with the sex education class and now this with Kay. It was probably the first time that Johannes had the thought that something very fundamental was wrong. Finally, he also wondered whether it might not be better not to have any friends.
Johannes' birthday was approaching with frightening speed. Actually, he had planned to celebrate his birthday this time because he had a friend in Kay whom he could invite. His parents, especially his mother, urged him year after year to invite friends, or for lack of them, just other children for his birthday; Johannes hated being constantly confronted with this topic. He just didn't have any friends and he didn't like other children either; he didn't need birthdays to celebrate.
Nevertheless, he had liked the idea of inviting Kay for his birthday this time. But now that the relationship with Kay had become difficult and Johannes had serious doubts about this friendship, the reason for a birthday party with invitations had also disappeared this year. He certainly wouldn't invite Kay, not after what he had said last time, but who else?
So Johannes decided not to have a birthday party this time, not to have a birthday at all from now on. He actually did skip his birthday – after an argument, he even managed to get his parents to refrain from any birthday activities as well, except for buying the present.
But he couldn't get the subject of friendship out of his mind. The more he thought about it, the more Johannes became convinced that his friendship with Kay was based on a misunderstanding, that Kay and he understood something very different by “friendship”.
About two weeks after the canceled birthday, Kay called; Johannes was very excited when he answered the phone. Kay asked him if he was free again and acted as if nothing had happened, which took Johannes by surprise. He hadn't expected that. Kay suggested meeting at Johannes' house for a change.
“I've shown you so much about myself; now I want to see what you're doing,” he said and also asked, ”Is that okay?”
Johannes was so surprised by this idea that he agreed without thinking about it.
On the day they had arranged to meet, which was a Saturday, it was quite cold; it was the first time that Johannes had seen Kay wearing a thick woolly hat.
He was a little uncomfortable at the thought of meeting Kay in his room, so he suggested going to the overgrown property in the industrial park where he liked to spend time.
“That's my favorite place; it's almost as good as the forest near your place.”
While they were walking there, Johannes had a wide range of thoughts about his friendship with Kay and about bondage. He wondered whether he should share his doubts about the friendship with Kay, or at least ask him again exactly what he had meant by “strange preferences”. But he had no idea how to broach the subject, so he said nothing.
“Is something wrong?” Kay finally asked, ‘You've been quiet all this time.”
“No, I'm just thinking.”
“And what are you thinking about?’ ”You always think way too much.”
“Nothing special.”
Finally they reached the property and crept through the bushes until they reached a place that was Johannes' favorite. It was a small hollow, quite hidden in the middle of this property. This place was similar to Kay's best hiding place in the forest, but there was no cave here.
“You always go here?” Kay asked.
“Yes, often. Sometimes I go into the forest, but it's further away; it's best to ride your bike there.”
“It's okay here, too,“ Kay said and sat down on a rock.
“I was tied up as punishment in kindergarten, too,” Johannes said and was a little shocked himself that he had said it. It was like a thought that accidentally became audible.
Kay looked at him in astonishment.
“Sometimes it might not have been all that wrong,” he said after a pause that seemed endless to Johannes. ”I can understand my mother tying me up from time to time; otherwise I would have destroyed my whole room. When I was angry, I sometimes went completely berserk.”
Kay looked at Johannes as if he expected an answer.
“But I can't imagine you being so wild that you had to be tied down,” he said, laughing.
Then Kay explained that it wasn't that uncommon in the past to tie down unruly children.
“I saw a movie on TV once that was set in a school about a hundred years ago. They were very strict there, and the children who didn't toe the line were beaten and sometimes tied up as punishment. It was especially bad with one boy who always teased the other children, usually in a way that the teachers didn't notice. When he was caught, he had to stand in front of the class and stretch out his hands so that the teacher could tie them together. Then he had to sit on the floor and hold his legs like that.”
Kay bent his legs and wrapped his arms around them so that his hands touched his feet.
“And then the teacher put a long wooden ruler between his arms and the back of his knees. He couldn't move anymore and had to sit like that in front of the class the whole time. That's how it used to be, they didn't mess around.”
“Punished?”
“Yes, those who didn't behave were punished, and the punishments were really nasty. You have to imagine having to sit like that all the time.”
Kay showed again how this boy in the movie had to sit in front of the class, and Johannes tried to imagine being punished like that. He didn't know whether he should believe that children were punished in this way in the past, but he found the idea quite exciting nonetheless.
He couldn't get this story out of his head, and after a while he was able to visualize everything. How the teacher had caught the boy, how he had stood in front of the class and had to stretch out his hands; how the boy had sat on the floor, the ruler clamped between his arms and legs, and how the other children in the class had looked at him the whole time.
Kay and Johannes finally went back to Johannes's place, where Kay wanted to know exactly what Johannes did when he was involved in astronomy. He showed him a book with pictures of the planets and tables in which the known quantities, such as orbital periods and sizes, were described.
“What is the inclination against the ecliptic?” Kay asked, and Johannes began to explain the quantities as best he could.
“I think it's important to be able to do something, to tinker or assemble something,” Kay finally said. He obviously couldn't understand Johannes' enthusiasm for astronomy.
After Kay had left, Johannes thought about his story again and again. He was very interested in learning exactly how it felt to be tied up as he had described it. He sat down on the floor and bent his legs, then wrapped his arms around them. With a ruler under the back of his knees, he really wouldn't be able to free himself from this position; this bondage was truly fascinating.
In the evening, before going to bed, he had to try this position again. This time he tied his hands together with the bathrobe belt. He found it very stimulating to sit on the floor tied up like this.
As he fell asleep, he dreamt that he was sitting in a classroom next to Kay, who kept teasing him, until suddenly the teacher called out,
“Johannes, that's enough nonsense. Come to the front.”
Johannes went to the front and the teacher told him to stretch out his hands.
“And now on the floor,” said the teacher, after he had tied his hands together.
It was not so easy to sit on the floor with his hands tied. Finally, Johannes had to bend his legs and wrap his arms around them so that the teacher could fix him by sliding the long wooden ruler between the back of his knees and his arms.
Seeing himself sitting in front of the class half asleep excited Johannes very much, so much so that not only in his dream but also in reality his pants became wet. The following days he kept thinking about whether he should let Kay tie him up in this way, if only to experience what it felt like.
A short time later, they arranged to meet again, this time at Kay's house. Kay was in his room when Johannes arrived, and was making airplanes again, just like last time.
“Look at this,” he said, showing Johannes a sheet of paper with a table on it. ”You can do that not only with stars.”
The table listed the aircraft with their names, year of manufacture, length and wingspan. Kay had also added the sizes of the models he had. He showed Johannes the aircraft that went with them and finally fetched a book in which photos of some of the originals could be seen.
Johannes looked at the aircraft models and compared them with the data in Kay's table. He calculated the size ratio between the model and the original, noticing that Kay's data could not be correct, since the ratio of the lengths was usually different from the ratio of the wingspans.
Just as Johannes was about to point out this discrepancy to Kay, the aircraft he was looking at suddenly fell to the ground. It lost one of its wings in the fall.
“Can't you be more careful?” Kay asked. ‘Damn, it's broken now.”
Johannes stared at the aircraft and stammered, ’I can try to fix it.”
“No, you're not touching any more planes,” Kay was visibly annoyed.
He picked up the plane, the broken wing and other smaller parts that had also broken off, and put everything on his workbench. As he looked at the individual parts and held them together at the appropriate places, he swore softly to himself.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that,“ Johannes said, but Kay continued cursing.
Johannes didn't know what to do at all; he would have preferred to just leave. Suddenly, the thought occurred to him that Kay might punish him for it; perhaps in the way he had described the last time.
“You can punish me, if you want,” he blurted out.
But he felt that this suggestion was probably not appropriate for the situation.
“What? Don't give me that!“ Kay reacted rather irritably.
“I mean, because I broke the airplane.”
“You mean I should spank your ass because of that?” Kay asked and then said, “It's not a bad idea, actually.”
“Or like in that movie you were talking about.”
“What do you mean?” Kay asked. ”Oh, I see what you're getting at. But don't tell me that you threw the plane down on purpose because you wanted to be tied up again.”
Kay now seemed really annoyed and Johannes was desperate that he had exposed himself to a suspicion that he would find difficult to refute.
“No, definitely not. I really didn't do it on purpose,” he protested, ‘Really not, Kay, believe me, it wasn't intentional. The punishment only just occurred to me.”
“Yes, yes,’ Kay replied, ”You can tell me whatever you want now. You just want to be punished because it turns you on.”
Johannes could not answer Kay. It was simply completely inappropriate to bring up the subject of punishment in this situation, and it could not be undone. He refrained from further explanations and imagined what it would be like if Kay were to punish him now.
“All right, come here and stretch out your arms!” he heard him say in his mind and saw himself standing in front of Kay and stretching out his arms towards him.
Kay pulled a piece of string out of his pocket and tied Johannes' wrists so tightly that he could hardly bend his arms.
“It should really be a punishment,” he heard Kay say. Johannes then had to sit on the floor and wedge his legs between his arms, as Kay had shown him.
However, his hands were tied so tightly that he had to bend his legs as far as he could to be able to wedge them between his arms. Finally, he saw that Kay was holding a long wooden ruler.
“That's hardly going to fit through,“ said Kay as he pushed it between Johannes's knees and arms.
It was really uncomfortable sitting on the floor tied up like that, especially because the ruler was pressing on his calves.
“After all, it should be a real punishment and not just about you getting off,” said Kay.
In his mind, Johannes made sure that he really couldn't move his arms or legs, not a millimeter, and felt a distinct pressure in his pants.
But it quickly subsided because he suddenly got a cramp in his right calf. It was so painful that it brought tears to his eyes and he started moaning.
“What's wrong?” Kay asked.
“My leg,” Johannes groaned, ”I have a cramp in my leg.”
Kay said that he should stamp his feet firmly on the ground; the cramp actually went away after Johannes stamped his right leg firmly.
He was quite irritated that he was startled out of his thoughts in this way and had to realize that he had actually forgotten where he was for a moment. It took him a moment to realize that the punishment had only taken place in his imagination.
In fact, he was still standing lost in Kay's room while Kay was sitting at his table trying to repair the broken airplane.
“That's what happens when you have stupid thoughts,” Kay said, not without a grin, ”Come and sit with me.”
He had apparently calmed down again by now, and Johannes sat down at the table with him and saw that the plane had been glued back together again. Kay had managed to do it surprisingly quickly; however, the place where the broken wing had been glued to the fuselage was clearly visible.
“I just have to repaint it, then it'll be okay again.”
Finally Johannes left and when he got home, he couldn't stop thinking about that afternoon at Kay's. It was really stupid that he had knocked over the plane; he could also understand that Kay was annoyed about it. At least he had managed to repair the damage at the end.
He found the punishment even more stupid; he really shouldn't have asked Kay to tie him up. The fact that he then got this calf cramp was therefore quite fitting – as a real punishment for his stupid fantasies. Most strange of all, he found that being tied up in these fantasies was so unusually unpleasant. During his experiments on himself, this kind of bondage had not been unpleasant at all; however, he had not tied his hands together so tightly that his wrists touched.
It couldn't have been like that in the movie Kay had told him about either. The teacher had probably tied the student's hands so that there was a few centimeters of string between them; Johannes couldn't imagine it any other way.
All in all, this incident confirmed his suspicion that it was not a good idea to let Kay tie him up. Even though Kay was conciliatory again in the end, the feeling remained that something was wrong with this friendship. The relationship remained delicate and Johannes would have preferred it to just fade away; even though he would have missed the farm and, above all, the tie-ups.
But Kay called again a short time later to arrange a meeting with Johannes. Johannes drove to the farm in the morning and found Kay in his room.
“You're coming now?” he asked. ”But that's inconvenient; I still have to tidy my room and help my grandma clean.”
They hadn't actually agreed on a time, and Johannes wasn't sure what to do. Unfortunately, it had just started raining when he arrived at Kay's house.
“I can wait until you're done,“ he said.
“Look!” Kay said, showing Johannes the airplane he had pushed off the balcony. It had been newly painted and looked as if it had never been broken.
“It was still quite a job. I had to re-glue it because the glue hadn't held properly.”
Kay said that he wanted to start tidying his room now and suggested that he accompany Johannes to the grotto, where he should wait for him.
In the grotto, Johannes immediately noticed that the two ropes were still hanging from the beam.
“And what are you going to do until I'm ready?” Kay asked. ”It may take a while. If you want, you can read something; I have a few books here.”
Johannes didn't have any better ideas, and it was kind of stupid to be there too early.
Kay thought for a while and then said, “Or I'll just tie you up. Then you can try to free yourself until I'm ready.”
Johannes was unsure whether the idea was really good, especially because Kay's grin was unsettling. But the prospect of being tied up excited him quite a bit.
“To the beam?” He asked, and Kay replied,
“All right; then stand there!” he replied, pointing to the beam from which the two ropes hung.
Johannes stood at the post and pressed his wrists against the places where the ropes were tied to the beam. Kay tied them to it and said, ”I knew you'd like it.”
It was obvious that Johannes' trousers immediately became baggy. After he had tied him up, Kay blew out the candles and left. Johannes was able to enjoy standing with his hands on the post to either side of his head for quite a while.
But after a while he thought that Kay could come back to untie him. In the dark underground cellar, he completely lost track of the time he had been standing there; it seemed like forever. His legs were already feeling uncomfortable from standing, and his arms were about to fall asleep.
Johannes kept tugging at his bonds, but they were really tight. This had the effect of mixing up the whole thing in a really unpleasant way. At times Johannes feared that Kay had possibly forgotten him. But Kay was probably just having fun torturing him a little, he thought. But he didn't want Kay to have any fun at all. Therefore, he was determined to hold out, no matter how long, and above all not to show Kay anything at the end.
Finally, he heard someone coming into the grotto and immediately saw Kay, who came through the door with a candle in his hand.
“Well, do you still like it?” he asked, grinning.
“This is probably another one of your weird jokes, leaving me standing here for so long.”
“Don't exaggerate. It wasn't even four hours.”
Four hours?
It was definitely Kay's intention to torture him, Johannes thought; it certainly hadn't taken him four hours just to tidy his room.
Kay grinned and said, “Don't pretend you didn't like it. It's a shame you couldn't get it up, but four hours of hard-on is probably not bad either, right?” Then he started laughing.
“You're really disgusting,” Johannes said, ”Now finally untie me, then I'll go home and our friendship is over too.”
“Don't be so touchy. If you're angry and end our friendship, I certainly won't untie you. I can just as easily leave if you don't like something.”
Johannes was silent; he didn't want to argue with Kay, but simply to be freed from his uncomfortable position. Once again, it turned out to be a bad idea to let Kay tie him up. Johannes was annoyed that he kept doing it anyway.
“Wasn't it so good what I did?” Kay asked and began to untie Johannes's hands.
“You don't know what it's like to stand here at the post for four hours, especially in the dark,” said Johannes. ‘I'm tired of your antics; now you'll have to find someone else to do that with.”
“All right,’ Kay said, ”if it was really that bad, then you can punish me for it, okay?”
Johannes was surprised by this offer and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Punish me for making you stand at the post for so long. After that, we can be friends again and I promise not to annoy you anymore. You can tie me up too.”
Johannes thought for a moment, then pointed to the post and said, ”All right, then stand there!”
Kay stood by the post and immediately put his hands in the appropriate places. Johannes tied his hands to the beam, exactly as Kay had tied him; he noticed that Kay's trousers did not bulge at all.
It seemed that Kay was indeed different from him when it came to sex and bondage, he thought. Nevertheless, he liked it very much to see Kay standing at the post with his hands tied to the beams. He especially liked the ends of the rope hanging down from Kay's wrists.
“I'll be going now,” said Johannes, blew out the candles and went straight to the exit.
“You will come back, won't you?” Kay called after him.
Johannes had actually planned to leave him standing at the post for a really long time and to go home first. When he came out of the grotto, it was raining, but he set off anyway and was soon soaked to the skin. He stood under a tree and then decided not to go all the way home, but to turn back instead.
But in order not to arrive back at Kay's too early, he waited for at least half an hour until the rain had eased a little. Then he drove back to the farm, completely soaked, and went into the grotto. Kay was still standing at the post with his hands next to his head and still had no baggy trousers.
“That was quick,” he said. ”It's probably not so cozy outside.”
“Keep making jokes, and I'll be sure not to untie you.”
“Okay, I won't say anything more.”
Johannes was unsure what to do next; actually, Kay didn't deserve to be untied again so soon. But, as wet as he was now, he found waiting as long as would have been appropriate too uncomfortable. So he untied Kay, not without making sure once again that the bondage had not actually caused Kay's trousers to bulge.
Johannes wanted to go home, but Kay forestalled him and said that he should change into dry clothes first. They went to his room and Kay gave him something to wear.
“You're still offended, aren't you?” Kay asked.
“Yes, you made fun of me again; you're always making stupid jokes at my expense. You said we were friends, but in reality you just need someone to make fun of.”
“That's not true. Maybe I said something stupid, but you're just way too sensitive. How can I help it if being tied up turns you on?”
But Johannes couldn't be persuaded by Kay, “You're not interested in friendship at all, just having someone weaker that you can annoy. You need weaker people to tease and annoy so you can feel strong.”
“And you only get tied up because it makes you cum,“ Kay replied, but then said after a short pause,
“All right, I may have left you tied up for too long and I apologize for that, okay?” Kay held out his hand.
At first Johannes didn't really know what to say, but he finally gave Kay his hand and said, “OK.”
Kay invited him to have something to eat at his grandmother's and to wait until the rain stopped.
When Johannes finally arrived home, he couldn't get the thoughts of this incident out of his head. Kay was obviously right when he said that he wouldn't feel being tied up the way Johannes did. Was there perhaps no one but him, to whom these pleasant, calming and at the same time arousing feelings were triggered by being tied up, not even Kay?
Such questions made Johannes feel rather insecure, since they meant that he couldn't really share this secret of bondage with anyone. He hadn't shared it with anyone before either; his relationship with Kay had been more of a coincidence and, as it turned out, had no real basis. Rather, this friendship seemed to be based on a misunderstanding: Kay liked to tie up Johannes, perhaps because he generally liked to tease smaller and weaker boys, or perhaps because he himself was tied up by his mother; but in no case did he like it for the same reasons that Johannes liked to be tied up.
Johannes felt at Kay's mercy because of the difficult secret he had revealed; sometimes he wished Kay had never learned of his penchant for bondage. In any case, he felt vulnerable because of this preference, because he obviously could not hide it, at least not when he was tied up.
He kept thinking about the fact that Kay said he found it “strange” to be aroused by being tied up. But Johannes didn't find it strange at all; what came up in sex education seemed much stranger to him. He couldn't even begin to imagine that he might like something like that. But Kay seemed to be different. He was certainly also “peculiar” in some way, at least a little, otherwise he wouldn't have been such a loner and so unpopular with the other children.
But Johannes had come to the disturbing realization that Kay intended to end up like all the other boys, with whom Johannes couldn't relate. He realized that the isolation he felt was the price of not being like the others, and that with his “peculiar” preferences, he ran a high risk of becoming the target of ridicule from other boys; Kay was no exception. Johannes therefore decided once again to stop the bondage sessions altogether; he rarely practiced his corresponding exercises in bed at night anyway, and he really didn't want Kay to tie him up anymore.
Some time passed, more than four weeks, before Kay called Johannes again. He asked why Johannes hadn't contacted him and whether he was still angry with him. Johannes was a little surprised by this question; he hadn't expected Kay to have been waiting for his call. However, he hadn't thought about the fact that Kay hadn't called him for a long time either.
No, he wasn't really angry, more thoughtful; he had doubts about whether friendship with Kay was the right thing for him.
“You are still angry,” Kay said, ‘I can tell.”
“No,’ Johannes replied, ”I don't know.”
He didn't know how to explain his concerns.
“Actually, I wanted to meet up with you again, but if that's the way it is,” Kay said, apparently waiting for a reaction.
Johannes finally replied, ”On Sunday?”
“OK, are you coming over?”
Kay said that he could show him a few knots that Johannes didn't know yet; if he wanted to, of course. Johannes couldn't let go of this until the day of the appointment and every time he thought about it, he clearly felt the excitement that arose in him just from the thought of being tied up again. He wondered how he should deal with Kay's announced knot lessons, since he had decided never to let Kay tie him up again. This question remained undecided until the end.
On the Sunday of the appointment, it had become quite cool again after a few warm, spring-like days. When Johannes arrived at the farm, Kay's grandmother was sitting in the kitchen and said that Kay was in his room.
“I'm glad you came,” Kay said when Johannes entered his room.
“Yes, of course I came,” said Johannes, ‘We did make an appointment, after all.”
He took off his coat after pushing the door to his room closed. Kay was sitting on his bed, winding a long rope.
“It's a bit cold outside, so we'd rather stay here,’ said Kay, laying the rope on the floor.
When Johannes sat down on the bed beside him, Kay asked what he would like to do. Johannes couldn't think of an answer off the top of his head; he wondered whether Kay meant the knot-tying lessons or something else.
“I mean, what would you like to do most?” Kay asked when he didn't get an answer from Johannes.
Johannes was almost a little desperate because he really didn't know what to answer and, on top of that, had the feeling that he couldn't avoid this question.
“What I like most,” he said, ”Well; with my hands behind my back. That's the best when your hands are behind your back.”
He was surprised by the sudden feeling of excitement that overcame him when he said it. Kay also seemed taken aback and looked at him questioningly without saying anything. The time they spent in silence seemed endless to Johannes until Kay finally said, “All right, then, let's not wait any longer.”
Johannes was positively bursting with excitement as Kay took the rope and started to knot a noose.
“Don't you want to take off your sweater?” Kay asked.
He was right, it was really too warm in the room for the thick wool sweater Johannes was still wearing. Johannes could feel his heart beating with excitement as he took off his sweater and put his hands behind his back. He felt Kay slip the noose first over one hand, then the other, and wrap the rope around his wrists several times before tying it.
Johannes gave himself over completely to the overwhelming feelings that it triggered in him to sit tied up next to Kay.
“You've got another hard-on,“ Kay said, and Johannes immediately felt the pressure in his trousers.
What a strange word, ‘hard-on,’ Johannes thought. He would probably never get used to Kay's expressions.
“Then pay attention; I'll show you something I saw the other day,” Kay said,
“For that, you have to lie on your stomach and then bend your legs.”
Johannes dropped onto the bed and turned onto his stomach with Kay's help.
Kay then took his feet and pushed them into a bent position. Then he tied them together with the long end of the rope that was tied to Johannes' hands.
Johannes watched spellbound as his arousal increased as he lay tied on his stomach and could hardly move. However, he feared that these feelings would become so strong that he could no longer bear them, just as it was at the end of the outdoor game at the first camping trip, when he was Kay's prisoner.
Finally Kay tied the rope between his hands and his feet so tightly together that Johannes couldn't stretch his legs out a bit more. The tension in Johannes' body was so strong that he couldn't help but fight against the bondage with all his might. He felt as if he were about to explode; even during the outdoor game he hadn't felt such overwhelming feelings as he did now. Finally, the tension in his body was unbearable and his thoughts and perceptions were completely absorbed by this inner tremor; he felt as if he would really burst at any moment.
“Do you like that?” it came through to him with difficulty after what seemed like an eternity, and he gasped,
“Untie me!”
“Already? I think I'd rather wait a bit longer. After all, I want you to get your money's worth, too.”
“Kay, please, I really can't take any more,” Johannes moaned again and again, until Kay finally started to untie his legs, which fell onto the bed with a feeling of incredible relief.
“All loose?” Kay asked and Johannes nodded.
After Kay had finally untied his hands, he sat back down on the bed next to Kay and only now noticed that his trousers had become damp between the legs; Kay seemed to have noticed it at the same moment and said with a grin,
“You seemed to have particularly enjoyed that this time, from the looks of it.”
Johannes didn't know how to react; he was more than uncomfortable with the fact that Kay had noticed how much being tied up turned him on. He lay back down on the bed, immediately turning onto his stomach to hide the stain on his trousers.
“You don't have to hide it from me; I saw everything,” Kay said, which made the situation even more uncomfortable for Johannes.
He finally got up and put on his sweater, ‘I'm leaving.”
“But you just got here,’ Kay replied;
Johannes also thought it was stupid to just leave now, but he couldn't think of anything else to do but give in to his urge to flee. There was no way he wanted to listen to Kay's comments on what had happened. He put on his anorak and shoes and left without saying a word; Kay didn't say anything either.
The stain on his trousers shouldn't have happened, not in Kay's presence. He shouldn't have let himself be tied up again, but once more the prospect of the feelings associated with it was stronger than any sense of reason.
On his way home, Johannes thought about the feelings that overwhelmed him when he lay on the bed with his hands and feet tied together. Lying on his stomach with his hands and feet tied behind his back was probably the most exciting thing he had ever experienced. He had seen a movie on TV where prisoners on a prison island were punished by having their hands and feet chained together behind their backs, and they had to lie on their stomachs like that all day long.
That's what Johannes had to think about, and that he was tied up like that for only a few minutes, until he couldn't stand it anymore and his pants got wet. He thought of the punishment he received in kindergarten when he was tied to a bench, and of the punishment in the scouts, of being “pegged”. Then of the punishment with the ruler, which, according to Kay, used to happen at school, and finally of the punishment of having your hands and feet tied behind your back.
Punishments were really something very strange.
When he arrived home, he went straight to his room to change his trousers and underpants without taking off his anorak. Before putting them in the laundry basket, he made the stains unrecognizable by rubbing them thoroughly with a damp cloth.
After a few days, Johannes decided to call Kay. The feeling of having to do something so that he wouldn't look too foolish after this incident with Kay never left him.
However, he had no idea how to explain his behavior; the easiest thing would have been to leave it at that and not see Kay anymore. On the other hand, this incident was an unfortunate end to his friendship with Kay; Johannes really didn't want to leave it at that. The feeling of nakedness that he felt during the last meeting in Kay's presence had also been extremely unpleasant for him in retrospect, even more unpleasant than the situation with Kay himself.
Especially because he himself found it rather strange that the feelings he felt when he was tied up could trigger ejaculations in extreme cases. At least the word for it, “ejaculate,” was exciting to Johannes; he had learned it in sex education class. It seemed fitting, because it sounded similarly strange to him as what it described.
Some of the boys in his class called it “a wank,” which Johannes didn't like at all, and said that they thought of naked women when they did it. But Kay had never said anything like that; Johannes couldn't imagine Kay thinking of naked women when ejaculating; but then what, tying up or teasing smaller boys? Did Kay ejaculate at all?
Finally Johannes called Kay and said that he was sorry for what had happened and that he thought it was stupid to just leave.
Kay laughed on the phone, “That was probably pretty embarrassing for you, wasn't it?”
“Embarrassing?” Johannes literally stumbled over this word.
Was he really embarrassed, like the children in his class found sex education embarrassing? He was unsure.
“It doesn't matter. If you want, you can come back. I also want to discuss something with you.”
Johannes wanted to.
The following days, he kept thinking about why the situation at Kay's was so uncomfortable for him and whether he had really felt “embarrassed.” There were probably different kinds of secrets, he thought, those that you could share, for example, that he liked being tied up, and those that were somehow not meant to be shared, for example, that he could increase his arousal to the point of ejaculation. Perhaps that was what was meant by “embarrassing,” namely, sharing secrets that were not meant to be shared.
The more Johannes thought about it, the stranger it all seemed to him. Still, he was glad he'd called Kay and made another date with him.
When the day of the appointment arrived, he hesitated at first and even considered whether he shouldn't cancel the appointment. He was quite unsure of himself, especially because Kay said that he wanted to discuss something with him.
In the end, however, he was determined to meet Kay and set off. Kay was in the yard cleaning up when Johannes arrived. He suggested going to the grotto and said he wanted to talk to him about their friendship.
Johannes immediately noticed that the two ropes were no longer hanging from the beam when they came to Kay's hiding place and Kay lit the candles. He sat down at the table with Kay and waited somewhat uneasily for Kay to explain exactly what he wanted to discuss with him.
“Yes, about last time,” Kay began, ”you know.”
He looked at Johannes for confirmation that he had been understood. Johannes knew exactly what Kay was alluding to and nodded.
After a pause, Kay continued, “The bondage thing, that's not okay, you know?”
Johannes couldn't really understand that; what did Kay mean by ‘not okay’?
After thinking about it, he asked, ”Why?”
“I'm just not into little boys,” Kay replied, ”You understand? You're thirteen and I'll be sixteen soon, and anyway, I think the whole tying thing is pretty weird.”
“If you think it's weird that I like being tied up, why did you tie me up?”
“Well, I just found it kind of exciting that being tied up turns you on so much,” Kay replied and concluded after a pause, ”That's all.”
Johannes felt confirmed in his fears that Kay had been mainly concerned with amusing himself at his expense.
“I always thought we were friends, but in reality you've only ever made fun of me. You just want to pick on someone weaker to prove how great and strong you are; I think that's funny too,” he blurted out.
Kay visibly froze when Johannes said this; Johannes was also surprised that it had come out of his mouth exactly as it had been through his mind many times before.
“That's not true,” Kay said, ”You are a friend to me, honestly. I like you too; you say what you think, no matter what others think about it, that's fine. But just stop the tying up.”
Kay hesitated and Johannes was very curious to hear what he would say.
“You know the story about my father,” Kay began to tell, ”When he died, I wasn't too unhappy about it; I didn't like him because he often took his moods out on me and my mother. But my mother was very sad when he died, and I think she hated me because I wasn't sad. Anyway, she started grumbling at me all the time and forbidding me everything I enjoyed. I just defended myself and she locked me in my room; it was like that every day, really. Sometimes I made a racket, banged the chair against the door and so on, then she came in and tied me to the chair with a piece of clothesline.”
Kay put his hands behind his back to show how he was sitting in his room.
After a short pause, he continued, “Well, what I want to say is that when she had tied me up and I was sitting in the chair with my hands behind my back, I found it pretty exciting. Somehow it turned me on and it even happened that I deliberately went on a rampage just to be tied up. But it's just,”
Kay paused again, which had the effect of Johannes being stretched to breaking point, waiting to hear what Kay would say next.
“It's just not normal,“ Kay finally continued.
Johannes felt a little helpless; he didn't really know exactly what was normal and what wasn't, but he had an idea of what Kay was getting at.
“And what is normal?” he asked.
“What is normal, you know that; everyone knows what is normal.”
Johannes was quite confused; he couldn't figure out what Kay was trying to tell him. Johannes couldn't really imagine that he was alluding to the things that were discussed in sex education class.
“Nothing against you; maybe it's okay, the tying up, but it's not for me. That's just not how I am.”
“What do you mean, that's just not how you are?”
Did he mean he was not like Johannes? He certainly meant it, thought Johannes, anything else would not make sense.
“Maybe I wasn't completely fair to you; for me it was just fun, nothing more. We can stay friends, but not like that, with the bondage and everything, do you understand?”
Kay sat silently in his chair and Johannes didn't know what to say either. He tried to imagine what it would be like if his mother tied his hands behind his back because he had trashed his room. But he didn't trash his room and his mother would never tie him up; at most she would scold him.
He wondered what Kay had meant exactly by saying that being tied up was abnormal. Johannes had never really asked himself whether being tied up was normal or not, and didn't know how to answer the question. He sometimes found it strange that being tied up triggered such feelings in him, but not as strange as what was presented in sex education class. Why should one be normal and the other not?
Johannes was sure there were boys, maybe only a few, for whom it was normal, and normal for him too. Len was definitely one of those boys, but Kay was not, as it turned out. Although he had feared something like this for a long time, Johannes felt disappointed by Kay's explanations; somehow also betrayed.
That was the end of the friendships, and the same applied to being tied up, which he found almost worse.
“Then I'll go now,“ he said, and Kay nodded and accompanied him out of the grotto.
“Don't be angry with me, okay?” he said as Johannes got on his bike.
He wasn't angry with him; he was rather surprised that this now definitive end to his first friendship gave rise to real sadness in him.
In the summer, there was a big scout festival. Johannes' mother thought he should go there to make contact with other “peers”, as she put it. Besides, his father also intended to go to the festival because he wanted to go to the campsite again this year as a supervisor. Johannes didn't feel like going to the scout festival at all; he didn't like such festivals and also thought it was stupid to be a non-scout among scouts.
On the day of the festival, however, the weather was warm and sunny, so his mother had no sympathy for his wanting to stay at home. So Johannes finally let himself be persuaded to go. When he arrived, the party was already in full swing. Johannes could hardly remember the scouts from the previous year and felt rather out of place.
Kay was not there because he was no longer a member of the scouts and was not well liked by them.
After Johannes had been standing around feeling increasingly uncomfortable for a while, he decided to secretly leave without his father noticing. But then one of the group leaders approached him,
“Don't be shy; you know them all from last year,” and he called one of the scouts over, ‘Aren't you going to do something right away?”
“Yes,’ answered the scout, ”we wanted to go into the forest to identify animal tracks”
“Then take Johannes with you; he's bound to be interested in that too, right?”
Johannes nodded; he did find going into the forest to read tracks quite exciting. Shortly afterwards, a small group of scouts were standing around him, all in scout uniforms, but that didn't bother Johannes.
“Why aren't you in the scouts, actually? You've been on two camping trips with them already,” one of the group asked him.
Johannes was at a loss for an answer and before he answered, another one asked, “Or didn't you like going to the camp with us?”
Johannes hesitated, ”Yes, but...”
“That's his decision; if he doesn't want to, then he doesn't want to. Not everyone has to be a boy scout.”
The boy who, to Johannes' relief, ended this interrogation, seemed to be the leader of the group that had gathered around Johannes. He held a piece of paper and a pen. On the paper, a schematic map of the area was drawn, which the boy used to explain which way they should take through the forest. He also explained the task of the group, namely to find animal tracks, draw them and identify them as accurately as possible. To draw the tracks, he had brought a notebook and several pens.
Finally, they set off. After a short time, one of the scouts had found a track that he interpreted as a hare track and drew it in the notebook. There followed tracks of deer, birds and, again and again, hares. Tracks of dogs and humans, which were also frequently seen, apparently played no role and were not drawn.
Johannes found it exciting to find the tracks and compare them with the drawings made from them. The plaster casts of Kay were, of course, much better and more faithful to the original than such drawings, but also more laborious to produce.
Johannes also found it exciting to find out that the boy scout leading the group was called Jonas and thus also had a name that started with “Jo”, just like his own name. He thought about what other names there were that started with “Jo”; but there weren't many that came to mind, Joachim, Jochen, Josef - that was about it. All names that Johannes did not find particularly sonorous, he did not like “Johannes” either; “Jonas” was clearly the most sonorous of all Jo names.
Finally, the scouts had followed enough tracks and went back to the party.
As they walked back, one of the scouts suddenly asked, “Is it true that you like being tied up?”
Johannes was struck by lightning and couldn't utter a word.
“That's what Kay said,” added another, ”And he's your friend, he probably knows.”
Apparently Kay had told the scouts the secret that Johannes had shared with him, so it was no longer a secret. Johannes had no idea how to react, and it was difficult for him to hide his horror.
When he still didn't answer, the boy said, “So it's true: you like being tied up.”
Johannes felt unable to say anything in response and after a moment's hesitation stammered out, ”That's not true.”
He thought it didn't sound very convincing, and it was clear that the boy would not let up. They had almost arrived at the fairground and Johannes hoped that he would soon be able to escape the situation by simply walking away; just as he could escape a bad dream by simply waking up.
“We can bet,” suggested the boy who had started the conversation, ‘I bet my camp knife that it's true.”
“We can try it out,’ suggested another boy scout, ”We tie him to a tree and see. If it's really not true, then he gets a camp knife from you; that's fair.”
Anything but that, thought Johannes and felt as if he were freezing. He would have liked to just run away, but he was unable to move.
“Unless you admit that you like being tied up; then of course we don't have to try it,” the boy said to Johannes.
That was out of the question. Johannes thought hard about how he could escape this situation, but he had no chance. With alarm, he noticed how a mixture of arousing and panicky feelings increasingly took hold of him and literally paralyzed him.
The scouts were standing around Johannes and the one who had the idea of tying him to a tree asked, “So what is it; are you going to admit it now?”
Johannes now felt unable to say anything and wordlessly stood with his back to a tree.
“Does anyone have a rope?” the scout asked, and the one who had bet his hunting knife gave him his neckerchief.
Johannes put his hands behind his back, behind the tree trunk, and gritted his teeth to concentrate on suppressing the pressure he increasingly felt in his trousers.
He didn't succeed, though; he could clearly feel his trousers bulge at the moment his hands were tied together.
“It's true, he's got a hard-on,” the boy shouted, and the other scouts stood around Johannes, looking at his trousers. Not without making their comments, which were even more mean than Kay's.
Johannes tugged at his bonds, which, however, increased his excitement even more, as well as the fun the scouts had with this game. In desperation, he started screaming, whereupon Jonas intervened and said, “Stop the nonsense and untie him.”
He was the only one in the group who did not take part in the humiliation and who did not find the situation funny. Johannes liked him somehow, not least because he also had a Jo name; such a name seemed to express something connecting.
After he was untied, Johannes ran to the festival grounds, where he immediately met his father, who asked him, “What was going on there? Why were you screaming?”
“They're all so disgusting; that's why I don't want to be a boy scout. They're all just stupid.”
Johannes could hardly calm down again. The other scouts in the group had arrived in the meantime, and when Johannes' father asked them what had happened, the boy who had suggested the bet said, “We were just trying to see if he really likes being tied up.”
“Yes, we didn't do anything bad,” said another boy scout, ‘he really likes being tied up. Then he gets a hard-on.”
Johannes’ father looked at him irritated and Johannes couldn't think of anything else to do but just run away and go home.
He went straight to his room; he didn't know how he could explain all of this to his father. What had happened was about the worst thing he could have come up with; everyone now knew his secret, even his father.
Strangely enough, his father didn't say another word about the incident. In fact, he behaved as if nothing had happened, which Johannes didn't like; he wouldn't have known what to say about it anyway. This topic didn't come up again at school either, although Johannes had actually feared it, because some of the scouts went to the same school as him, one of them even in his class. But none of them were present at the festival.
The fact that Kay had revealed Johannes's special preference to the scouts was unforgivable. Johannes kept wondering why he had done that, why he had betrayed him like that. When he thought of Kay, he often recalled Kay's bondage experiments and the knots and slings that Kay had mastered so well; and also the arousing memories of what it was like to be tied up, standing with his hands beside his head on the beam, being led through the forest with his hands tied behind his back, or being tied up like a parcel.
Kay was the first and only friend Johannes had in his life, and Johannes was sure that he was meant to be his last. Until then, he had thought that there must be boys who were like him, not like all the other boys with whom he couldn't relate; since his encounter with Len, he was even sure that such special boys really existed.
He originally believed that Kay was one of those boys, because he was the one with whom he could share the secret that he had ultimately betrayed. The fact that he had been so wrong about Kay and that this deception had such an impact on him unsettled him deeply. It seemed more likely that he was alone after all and would be better off without friendships.
About two weeks after this unspeakable incident at the scout festival, Kay called again and acted as if nothing had happened. Johannes told him that he never wanted to see him again. When Kay asked why, Johannes told him about the incident with the scouts.
It turned out that Kay had already told other scouts at the first campout that Johannes liked being tied up.
“You said you wouldn't tell anyone, and I trusted you. But you lied, from the very beginning.”
Johannes was extremely disappointed and repeated his accusation that Kay had lied to him several times. When Kay tried to appease him and downplay the betrayal, Johannes simply hung up the phone. His friendship with Kay was over for good; he didn't like friends anymore, not even ones who tied him up, he just wanted to be left alone.
He often thought about why other boys made fun of him just because he was not “normal”. It was not easy to cope with the fact that Kay was like the others. He found the thought particularly disturbing that Len might also be like the others, that he might have been mistaken about him too.
After this experience, the time of being tied up was finally over. Johannes no longer tied himself up and certainly no longer let other boys tie him up. Instead, he learned to masturbate, as normal boys did. He always thought about himself, mostly about being tied up by Kay. When he looked at the images in his mind, the images of himself, it was almost as if Kay was really tying him up right then. He felt the ropes holding his wrists, the pressure in his trousers and also the pleasant and at the same time arousing feelings that spread inside him.
At some point he realized that he saw the situations as Kay must have seen them: He only ever saw himself in these images, never Kay. There was always something confusing about these images, especially the one in which his mother said to him, “As a punishment, I'm going to tie your hands behind your back,” tied his hands behind his back, and locked him in his room. In this image, too, he saw only himself, while he recognized his mother only by her voice.
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The boarding school