Pony Boy Gets Suspended

Tom helps break in the new truss

Here's yet another shoot by Silver and Tom and I. With this shoot posted, I'm almost caught up on my backlog (although I still owe Sylvia a post from several months ago). For this shoot, I wanted to use my new truss, and Tom wanted to wear his pony gear, so we decided to dress him up as a pony and hang him from the truss.

The usual disclaimers apply. Although there's no explicit sexual activity in these images, they do show real bondage and suggestive imagery. If images like that are likely to upset you, maybe you shouldn't look at them.

Full suspension bondage is still a fairly new activity for us, and we're all learning a lot. I think the images from the shoot do a pretty good job of capturing the process of putting together a suspension, and managing and adapting the scene as it evolves.

All photos are Copyright 2006 Tornus. Please don't use or distribute them without permission.

Our goal for this shoot was to suspend Tom from the truss in an all-fours position in full pony gear. The basic plan was to have him stand underneath the truss and attach a chest harness with a vertical line, then hoist him into the air with a waist harness and second vertical line. Finally, we'd complete the leg bondage once he was in the air. As it turns out, things didn't go as planned and we had to do some improvising.

Getting ready for the shoot. Tom's wearing a PVC catsuit with a body stocking underneath, which will be the foundation of his pony outfit. He's geeking out with his pony gear (the straps he's holding will be used to hold his calves against his thighs).
I'm geeking out with my camera. The gizmo on top is a Pocket Wizard MultiMAX transmitter. It's a very cool gadget with all kinds of applications, although here I'm just using it to trigger the strobe lights.

Here's the initial chest harness. I'm using a 50 foot length of 8mm hemp rope, which is long enough for 12 wraps around the chest plus shoulder straps. Because I happen to like carabiners a lot, I'm using a total of 3 carabiners to attach the harness to the vertical line.

Attaching the vertical line to the chest harness.

Rigging the vertical line. The line is tied to the chest harness with two half hitches, and then goes up through the ring and back down through the carabiner. This creates a pulley system which makes it easier to hoist the suspendee.
Notice that Tom is wearing his pony tail, which is essentially a modified wig. This was a huge pain: if you look carefully, you can see that the tail hairs are getting tangled in the rigging. In future, we'll add the tail last. Who knew?

Testing the chest harness and rigging. So far, so good.

Tom's added some more pony regalia, including boots on his arms and partial headgear.
Although the chest harness worked, I decided to use a shorter vertical line, and attached it directly to the harness, rather than using two carabiners.
I've also added a waist harness (with thigh wraps to help distribute the weight), and have attached the second vertical line to it.

Rigging the first vertical line.
Note that because I'm a leet bondage ninja, I have a pair of EMT shears on my belt, and a long chain of carabiners hanging from my belt loop. Chicks dig that, because it looks really cool. The only thing that could make it better is if I had a flogger hanging from my belt, or maybe a kimono.

Up we go! This arrangement allows me to get Tom fully into the air without ever having to lift his entire weight at once. As it turns out, plan A didn't work. It quickly became apparent that the waist harness wasn't going to work. It was uncomfortable, and Tom was having trouble breathing. We quickly brought him down and reconsidered.

Plan B was to suspend him using the chest harness (as before) plus a second line attached to his thighs instead of his waist. Since the original goal was to strap his calves to his thighs, we decided to bind them with rope instead, and use that rope for the second attachment point.
The problem, of course, is that this meant tying his legs early on, which meant that we wouldn't be able to start him in a standing position. We decided to put taut-line hitches on both vertical lines, and raise him stepwise (first raising the chest a few inches, the the legs, then back to the chest, and so on).
Here I'm raising his chest for the first time.

Now the legs. At this point, Tom can stabilize himself with his arms, but his weight is almost entirely suspended by the vertical lines.

I raise the chest again, and Tom's airborne.

Pony Boy is now officially suspended. After the initial suspension, Tom had some discomfort around the top of the chest harness. To shift the weight, I attached the end of the vertical line to the shoulder straps, which helped considerably.

A closeup of Pony Boy in action.

The chest harness was still causing some problems, so Silver added some additional line to the harness, further shifting and balancing the weight.

A closeup of the rigging on the legs. Each leg has eight wraps binding the calf to the thigh, with a basic frapping turn to keep it tight. A carabiner is passed through each frap, and the legs are connected to the vertical line with a single short length of rope. As before, the vertical line is tied to the completed harness, and a carabiner is used for the pulley. It's possible to make a pulley out of a rope loop, but I prefer to use carabiners because they have less friction, and to reduce wear and tear on the rope.

A closeup of the chest rigging, with the original chest harness, the vertical line to the shoulder straps, and Silver's additional harness rigging.

Here Silver's binding Tom's forearms to his upper arms, making him more symmetrical.

Poor Pony Boy!

Silver puts the finishing touches on Pony Boy's bondage.

Tom's a great bottom. He always gets this happy far-away floating look when he's in the zone.

The final rig.

As always, thanks to Tom and Silver for a great shoot!