Beautifully Bound in Shades of Grey

A muscular captive, tightly bound, neatly packaged, awaits his captor's pleasure.

His bulging jock shows the extent of his excitement.

It's been a long wait.....

At first the bondage game sounded like fun. Adding spice to a mediocre pick-up.
He awoke still bound, not remembering much about the night before.
He could hear his trick showering nearby and waited to be freed.
He needed to be at work soon.

But his trick didn't free him.
He adjusted his bindings, gagged and blindfolded him.
Then he bundled him into the bathroom, seated him on the toilet and left him.
The front door closed, leaving only silence.

After a while the seat felt hard on his bare bottom.

Not quite believing what was happening, he called out - at least he tried to. 

But the gag incorporated a plug which seemed to fill the deepest recesses of his mouth.

Trapping his tongue underneath . It had a bitter taste.

It allowed him to grunt, no more. No-one came

The strap was tight too, pulling on his jaw, which soon began to ache.

He tried to free himself from the ropes, twisting his arms, swiveling round.

But his biceps were pinned tight to his sides, his wrists pulled up towards his shoulders.

He could hardly move them at all and he couldn't see anything.

He would be late for work if he couldn't free himself soon.

 His knees were roped tightly together, 

preventing any movement of the ankles.

He could stand up and hopped around to find the door .

 The tiled floor felt cold, dirty and sticky beneath his feet.

The door was locked.

He sank down on the pedestal again.

 His feeble calls to be released still went unheeded.

He began to understand that no-one was coming.

He wouldn't be able to escape.
He wasn't going to get to work
and no one knew where he was.
 

In sudden despair and frustration, he wept.

Finally he settled down on the floor and slept.

It was many hours later when his captor finally returned.

He heard him enter the flat and moving around and thought 

"Why doesn't he come to me?"

Then the door was unlocked, he heard him piss in the toilet.

The flush gushed and he felt droplets splash him.

His captor tenderly stroked his pecs and his jock pouch, 

He tied his legs tighter, then left again.

 

Eventually he was transferred from his ceramic cell back to the bedroom.

Even more ropes were tied around and between his thighs.

But the softness of the carpet and the bedding was blissful. 

Placed on his captor's bed, he does not know what is to happen to him. 

It might be pleasure, it might be pain - or worse.

He probably won't be going to work tomorrow either.

 Now he knows, he has no free choices any more.

He feels strangely excited.

*******

 I find this last bondage image from ropetopsfbay particularly impressive. I love the neat simplicity and tightness of the ropework. It both complements and contains the natural-looking bulk and muscularity of the model. A little clothing lends identity to a man and I recorded my enjoyment of jockstrap imagery in one of my earliest postings here 'In Praise of Jockstraps'. For me the garment sings of masculinity, but only if it is worn by a model with some bulk - as in this case here. Boys don't cut it. This man is wearing the classic deep waistband design like he was born to it. The unusual grey colour is rather good for showing the details of the garment since it doesn't produce glare like a white one does. It also lends a well-used look which gives the wearer the air of an authentic sportsman. I love these images.

See more bondage imagery at RopeTopSFBay, my thanks to him for the pix.

Ulf Retrospective - The Year 2002

After the powerful scenes of the preceding years there's rather less agitation and menace in most of Ulf's 2002 output. This golden shower scene is still intense but it's almost introspective compared with the pissing bullies from 2000. Here in the privacy of his cubicle, a young man exults in the hosing of his torso by four anonymous men. However, they cannot even see what is happening, let alone enjoy  his abasement. Instead it is they who are being used.

This prison scene also shows a private pleasure snatched in a forbidden place. The bars of the convicts cell even keep us at a respectful distance. They modestly obscure the most explicit details focusing our attention instead on the clumsy physicality of the two men's coupling.  Usually jail scenes of this kind (by Etienne and Tom of Finland for example) depict the exploitation of new arrivals by the old lags but it's not obvious that is what Ulf has in mind here.  Rather perhaps an mutual release and temporary escape from the boredom of incarceration, with no more mental connection between them than the participants in the picture above.

In the remainder of my selections from this year, Ulf discards his fiery logo for more a classical style and the images themselves become softer and more centred on the erotic, epitomised by this striking 'predicament' bondage image whose symmetry reminds us of Ulf's thoughtful approach to his art. His rendering of shackles, particularly those clasped around the captives ankles has moved on considerably from the 2000 'Loops' image.

In 'Contrite' (which has the same 'Greek' style logo) Ulf goes further into classical territory discarding mammoth organs in favour of genuine psychology and the effect is altogether more impressive. This set piece has a certain kinship with Victorian morality prints such as the fallen woman although one suspects the offence committed here is not that profound (and possibly less sinful than the punishment it will attract). Ulf's characters sometimes look too 'posed' but it works well here and you can sense the penitent is about to kneel in the face of the carefully controlled outrage and superior power of the man who is reprimanding him.  

Ulf exploits his medium to the full in this picture creating two extraordinarily attractive men and bathing their bodies in a warm, orange light that is both attractive and atmospheric - reassuringly homely given the ominous subject matter. It's done so well that he gets away with the lack of shadows and classic CGI hovering feet - this last flaw a pet hate of the late Martin of Holland. 

This year also saw a series of 17 pictures from Ulf entitled 'The Buddy System', telling the story of a sexual encounter in a military latrine. Such a project invites comparison with Tom of Finland's 'Kake' series, not least for the size of the organs being flourished but Ulf doesn't seek to emulate the pace or erotic intensity that infuses every Kake adventure. There are a couple of spectacular aerial views that Tom would certainly have appreciated but this series more closely resembles the progression of a porn film through it's prescribed 'Stations of the Cock'. Unlike that format, however, Ulf's encounter (somewhat unexpectedly) unfolds with an element of softness and seduction that is evident in the example shown above and ends with a romantic jism-mingling kiss that you won't ever have seen in Kake. The artist's progress in refining his technique can be seen here in the quality of the composition and fine detailing like the tile reflections.

Lest you fear Ulf going soft, this memorable and disturbing image pulls out the stops to portray the horror of a captive facing a daunting level of punishment involving some heavyweight electrical equipment. At this stage the connectivity seems incomplete but likely to involve the prominent steel plug, which despite it's industrial size is not preventing him from leaking excitedly onto the wooden floor. 

The aerial viewpoint draws attention to the bareness of the room and the isolation of the victim whose helplessness is reinforced by an ultra-sophisticated, breath-control mask through which his eyes gaze out upwards. In the midst of all this high-tech, control paraphernalia, the presence of humble, domestic, laundry pegs whose contribution to the victim's ordeal would equate to the level of a flea-bite seems just a little incongruous!
 *

Continued with 2003

(To read these articles from the beginning start with Ulf Retrospective part 1 ) 

Ulf has a blog The Ulfian which is an interesting mix of his art, political comment and selected porn.

There's also an Ulfian fan club on Google Groups which you have to join (it's free). 

The older Fan Club on Yahoo! Groups seems to be inactive now.

Ulf retrospective - The Year 2001 - The Frontier Series

My article on Ulf's work from 2001 omitted a notable series of images set in the "Wild West'' era against the background of the conflict between the Native Americans and the Frontiersmen and US Government who sought to appropriate and exploit their homeland. 

 
In this series the 'Indians' (if I can use that term as shorthand*) take their revenge in a variety of ways and this urination humiliation is one of the milder ones. If you've read Ulf's blog you will know that he has a keen political awareness and there's a fairly unambiguous message here conveyed by the Indian's heroic pose and the fiery background, succinctly symbolising the erupting anger of his people.

Ultimately though in this picture political message loses out to erotic entertainment. This Indian's nordic features and muscularity seem less than authentic and, for a gay audience, his enlarged cock puts him into the category of hunted trophy rather than feared, superior being. Likewise, the piss spray which he is unleashing probably dilutes(!) his outrage for us rather than amplifying it. If you invert the image you'll see his victim's expression is almost blissful too!

In this picture Ulf invokes the terrifying, scalping-renegade stereotype much beloved of white literature and films but thankfully from my point of view he spares us the blood and gore, contenting himself with posing the threat and capturing the young victim's dismay which he does rather impressively. Although this series of images has a somewhat 'staged' feel about it, you can see Ulf is striving here to make his characters interact, both dramatically and erotically.

Drama aplenty here driven visually by the Indian's lunging pose. This is the only picture in this series where Ulf's 'labels' the captive with 'cowboy' clothing - hat, belt and boots (click to enlarge). He seems more mature than the other victims too, which for me adds to the intensity of the encounter but also makes him a more appropriate object of the Indian's 'justified revenge' against the white man. He seems to be acknowledging and enduring his terrible fate sadly, but quite stoicly. You might see echoes of Christian martyrdom in this imagery, deflecting guilt back to the persecutor, except that this man is clearly preoccupied with the painful present, possibly the guilty past but certainly not the well-earned Paradise that lies beyond.

There's some confusion of intent in the detail around the flaming brand in the centre of this picture. The Indian seems to be grasping the hot end of it and there's an odd vertical stick too which I can't interpret. It's as if Ulf has made some last minute changes here, pulling back from a more explicit image. (See discussion in 'comments' below)

I have cropped this image, which in it's full form shows a burning at the stake which I think is a little too vivid for display in this blog. The mounting fear of the victim as the flames rise around him is amazingly captured. However, although fear and sexual arousal can be linked - survival of the species and all that - his erotic response here is pure wishful thinking and fantasy. 

The youth of this victim makes him seem quite undeserving of the Indian's anger although I must confess his near-porcine fleshiness does lend his gruesome fate an intriguing, dark aptness. The captor, however, is revealed to have a base, sexual motivation - underlined by his awkward pose and ugly, mean expression. This picture completely lacks any sense of the virtuous revenge, which I attributed to the first image in this article. Instead we see beauty, innocence and virtue vindictively destroyed which is almost the reverse motivation. Oddly enough the protagonist's skin colourings are reversed too. I doubt Ulf did that deliberately but it seems to be an appropriate closing of the circle of hate and an unintentionally perceptive reflection on the barrenness of arbitrary revenge.

Back in the fantasy, I would hope that with his lust duly slaked the captor is willing to spare this beautiful creature for more rewarding porking pursuits. (Compare with  Sergey's less ambiguous outcome and other immolation imagery referenced in that article)

*****

This is the earliest series by Ulf with a common theme which I have been able to identify. In it there seems to be an intense if slightly unfocussed outpouring of anger and energy and in this it's not untypical of this period in Ulf's art. This subject seems to have had special significance for him but I don't think he ever returned to it in later years. He's still refining his technique here but the power of the imagery comfortably exceeds those limitations. As far as I know there are 8 images in this series and I will be posting the full set as a temporary exhibition at my Yahoo! group in the next few days.

Ulf has a blog The Ulfian which is an interesting mix of his art, political comment and selected porn.

There's also an Ulfian fan club on Google Groups which you have to join (it's free). 

The older Fan Club on Yahoo! Groups seems to be inactive now.

Continued with 2002

(To read these articles from the beginning start with Ulf Retrospective part 1 ) 

* Any discussion with racial ingredients these days is fraught with linguistic pit-falls and faux-pas. In the UK 'Native' is probably seen as a more derogatory term than 'Indian' is. I hope that my readers are able to realise that these words are used here as convenient, collective nouns and not with any intent to maliciously label or denigrate the individuals belonging to that group.