A Review of "Chained Convict for Life: The biography of Sabrina"

A shrort while ago, the editors of the Oxford American Dictionary announced that "podcast", meaning "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player" was 2005's word of the year. http://www.us.oup.com/us/brochure/NOAD_podcast/?view=usa The honor is awarded to novel words that have entered the general consciousness. One of the runners up for this honor was "squick: cause immediate and thorough revulsion".

Naturally, the denizens of alt.tasteless, not accepting that revulsion was culturally dependent, proposed a universal definition involving trepanation and fucking.

Squick apparently derives from the bdsm community, where the most formal definition is "Squick means to be so repulsed by something that it would cause an immediate safeword." This is qualitatively different from the alt.tasteless definition. Limits are not universal-- and the utterance of a safe-word means that one's personal limits have been crossed, whether it be whipping, branding, simply being tied up, or some other personal boundary.

The book "Chained Convict for Life: The Biography of Sabrina" by JG Leathers is a novel that caused me to reevaluate what squick actually means.

Sabrina is the story of a young German girl who desires to be placed in chains and held captive in a dungeon, apparently without hope of rescue. She persuades her boyfriend, Thomas, to design a strict dungeon, and a set of chains, incorporating manacles, a head cage, or brank, a chastity belt and a chastity bra. For various periods, she is sentenced to be held in this dungeon, and exposed to various forms of punishment. Initially, these periods of imprisonment are relatively short, although at Thomas's discretion. Outside the dungeon, she wears a less severe chastity belt and collar.

However, Thomas's demands become more and more onerous, and eventually, her incarceration becomes more and more permanent,a and the additional punishments inflicted in the dungeon become more and more severe forms of torture. In the beginning, Sabrina experiences a level of sexual frisson, and a life of periodic imprisonment seems to make the periods of freedom ever so much more enjoyable.

The conceit is that Sabrina is doomed to a life sentence-- interrupted by "parole", in which Thomas decides to reward good behavior-- a rather slippery condition, which leaves Sabrina with no expectation of relief. These are "enforced", as it were, by various "Judgements" written by Thomas, and signed, under conditions that can only be described as duress, by Sabrina. These documents serve little purpose other than to frighten Sabrina and to spell out new tortures, insane work regimens, and to further foreclose the possibility of release, and freedom.

After Thomas meets Babs, a sadistic women, Sabrina's life becomes even worse. Although the relationship between Sabrina and Thomas already involves a rather strange version of love, this relationship is stressed by his friendship with Babs. Before, Thomas was at least in part motivated to care for his prisoner. Afterwords, Sabrina becomes less a submissive than a possession to be, upon occasion, toyed with.

Before long, her brief, and all too unfrequent furloughs from prison become nonexistent, and her interactions with Thomas and Babs center mainly around new forms of torture and punishment. The book reminds the reader that Sabrina agreed to her present condition, without a "safe word". Perhaps the author expects the author to commiserate with the heroine. "You stupid stupid girl. How could you do such a thing?", but it is not so apparent that Thomas would respect her wishes if she had uttered it.

JG Leathers is an imaginative, and experienced fetishist. Judging from his website (http://www.jg-leathers.com/), his chief interests lie in the design and construction of various fetish and bondage suits. He is perhaps most well known for the creation of harnesses for ponyplay (a subject that does not arise in this book) and for the development of the "Creature" (http:/www.seriousbondage.com/Article-TheCreature/index.php), a costume (incorporating , in various incarnations, a chastity belt, a gas mask, a gag, a blindfold, corsetry, restraints. vibrators, nipple pumps, and electrodes) combining sexual stimulation with restraint and sensory deprivation. He serves as fiction editor for seriousbondage.com, a website apparently geared towards well healed bdsm aficionados.

Altarboy has previously published a story by HH entitled "Batteries not included", about a full body chastity suit. Read it. It's good. (And certain spoilers will inevitably be revealed by my review).

An (unauthorized) revision of the original, with elaborations added by JG-Leathers appears on the seriousbondage site. (http://www.seriousbondage.com/Fiction-BatteriesNotIncluded-1/index.php)

From a comparison of the two stories it is evident that JG-leathers has an eye for detail.

The original:

Anne opened the box and there before her was a shining metal likeness of her face staring back at her out of the box. Her breath caught in her chest at the site of it. It was a lifeless face, bereft of emotion. The eyes were black almond shaped orbs. The lips seemed slightly parted with a small hole about the diameter of a straw for breathing she assumed. Next to it, in a separate foam compartment was a wad of black rubber about the size of a fist.

She picked it up and held it before her face. Her entire body trembled as she inspected it. The mask was split in half and hinged at the top on the inside. The place where the mouth should have been on the inside had been replaced with a large plastic coated steel ball that would fill the wearers mouth. The straw sized hole terminated in the center of that ball.

The headpiece was so shiny on the outside and had been coated with the same hard black plastic shell the ball had been. In the top, back and sides of the mask she could see points of light shining through. He had thousands of tiny holes drilled in to it. She assumed that was to allow her hair out of the mask but she didn't know how in the world she would manage to get the hair to grow out of it. Then her heart caught in her throat. How long did he intend to keep her locked in this at one time? The question terrified her and thrilled her at the same time. At the top of the head also was what looked like a grease nipple. It would be covered with hair once the hair got out of the mask. It seemed like such an odd thing and she didn't know what it was there for.

The revision:

Teresa opened the top layer of the box, and there, staring back at her, surrounded by a gray foam liner, was a shining metal likeness of her face. TeresaŐs breath caught in her chest at the sight, but it was a lifeless face, bereft of emotion. The eyes were natural, but mirror finished, almond-shaped orbs, while below the sculpted nose, the lips were slightly parted, as though waiting for a kiss. In their middle, inset between them, was a small, capped hole, about the diameter of a pencil; obviously there for drinking, and feeding. Next to the face piece in a large, separated compartment was the hinged-together front and back halves of the helmet together with a plastic bag containing a folded, black rubber shape.

Extracting the gleaming helmet and looked at it, her entire body trembled while she inspected the steel creation. It was nearly 3 mm in thickness, split in half, crossway between the ears, invisibly internally hinged at the top and with other, hidden, mating hinge jaws on the sides. Surrounding the heart-shaped opening for her face were others, also on the inner side, to which the face panel itself would mount.

When she picked up the face mask and turned it to look at the inside, where her mouth should have been, was a pair of complex looking, rubber-coated, steel appliances and she remembered with a shiver that they were designed to clamp onto both of her upper and lower sets of teeth, while at the same time, the thick rubber gagging pad would fill her mouth completely. A large hole went through its centre, matching that between the lips, and so being able to drink or eat liquified food while she wore it would be straight forward. Teresa knew she could be force-fed whatever he decided she should be required to eat while in the Suit and this measure of control sent an additional shiver down her spine. Surrounding the hole was a series of what appeared to be electrical contact pins, and upon looking into the interior of the mask again, she saw that theyŐd mate to a ring with a matching set of receptacles.

"Whatever on earth were they for?" she wondered to herself.

The gag pad had hidden talents of which she was not aware and when she did discover them, it would be far too late for her to avoid what happened.

The second set of fearful devices projected from within the pocket for her nose: the nostril tubes and breath control appliance. It consisted of two, triangular, closely spaced, quite uncomfortable looking, long rubber shapes, and another shivering fit shook her when she realized that these were designed to project far up into her nose and head, then be sealed in place! She trembled again, remembering his insistence that both the mouth-filler and nose assembly would be an integral part of the design, or the deal was off. She looked more closely and saw that surrounding the area for her each of her eyes was a soft black silicon rubber cup, but she didnŐt look closely at the lenses, and should have.

The inner side of the face piece, as well as that of the helmet, was coated with the same black rubber that comprised the mouth filler, but this liner was textured with small ridges; each raised edge being tipped with hair fine strand of silver. On the top, back, and sides of the helmet, she saw points of light shining through thousands of tiny holes that had been drilled through the steel cap. She assumed they were to allow her hair to emerge from the helmet, but didnŐt know how in the world sheŐd manage to get it to come through. Her heart caught in her throat. How long did he intend to keep her locked in the Suit? The question both terrified and thrilled her all at the same time, then she saw that at the top, back, of the rear portion of the helmet were what looked like a large grease nipples. These would be covered by hair once it emerged from the helmet, but seemed like such odd things, and she had no idea what they were for.

However, a closer reading would also detect a more sadistic note to Jg-Leaters revision. Yes, the new design of the suit is a bit more confining with additional features. But in the original, her master, "Rick" is horrified that Anne would install the suit without that last crucial part. In the revision, Rick is less sympathetic, and even seems to be excited by the prospect.

Perhaps these differences can be summed up by comparing to final lines.

She slept with the words of a distant dream replaying in her head. -- Life Imprisonment!

versus

It would not be the last time she cried herself to sleep beyond the arms of a Master she could no longer touch, and the final thing she remembered, on that morning so long ago, were the words of a distant dream, replaying in her head - Life Imprisonment and Punishment.

The idea for this novel did not, apparently, spring fully formed from the twisted mind of the author. Many years ago -- it has long since dissapeared., geocities hosted a site: (http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Metro/2471/hvyhar.html), in German, by one Sabrina, who described her imprisonment in a "heavy iron harness". It is partially accessible through www.archive.org, however. JG-Leather implies in the introduction that the author of that website is the real, living, subject of this novel.

The book is perfect bound, 453 pages, and aside from the cover, contains no illustrations. I think it's a tad long, perhaps because I raced through the lengthier descriptions of torture, preferring any glimpses of Sabrina's humanity that I could discover. I was, in this regard, disappointed. The publisher, Pink Flamingo has published an excerpt (http://www.pinkflamingo.com/eroticnovels/ExcerptChainedConvict.htm) on their site-- Chapter 3, which highlights JG-Leathers' descriptive ability, but it barely hints at the sadism contained in the novel. I can't really whether it's worth the asking price-- the writing is quite competent. But large portions of it do not appeal to me.

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