August 19, 2025
The Gimp BoxI lay in my apartment worrying about death and worrying that my constant worrying would eventually manifest in my sickness and death. So, when I saw a job ad looking for a “big guy” who was willing to “become anonymous” and to live in a “dungeon”, I said: Bingo. Because I really needed a place to hide out from Shovel. Mrs Beatrix’s place of business was on the cobbled streets of the Rossebuurt district, Amsterdam.“That house,” said a man, pointing at a terrace house. “The dungeon is below,” he said, with a terrible excitement. “Are you the new Gimp?”I said nothing. “How old are you?” he said in a whisper.“Twenty-six.”The man swallowed. “Mrs Beatrix makes the Gimps wear masks, so you never see their face,” he said. He looked crazy, but crazy in a way that I could handle. Not the pitiless kind that made Shovel a monster. My first month working for Mrs Beatrix, I learned to hog-tie clients, and gag them. I learned that clients liked to laugh as they whipped me. And I began to feel like maybe I wasn’t as heinous a person as I had thought. This all happened strictly under contract, on Tuesdays through Saturdays, matinee and evening sessions. Mrs Beatrix turns the dungeon lights off at ten pm each night, and I get locked up in the Gimp box with Gary. I’m 6’4” so the box is tight, it’s wide enough but not long enough. Gary gets in first, curls up, and I spoon him. We sleep together like big puppies.Gary used to be an accountant. He is short and pudgy with grey skin and greying hair that’s flat almost as if it’s been ironed. He is teaching me the Gimp code. In our situation it’s good to stick together, he says. Follow the code, he says. He’s a good leader. You know? We live in symbiosis. We ablute together. We eat together. That shit engenders a closeness. Gimps are supposed to be occasionally “naughty”, sometimes we’re supposed to resist the clients and—but what happened was, I punched out a farmer from Nacogdoches, TX. Broke off his tooth.This farmer was strangling me. Not in an out of the ordinary way, but certain kinds of men remind me of Shovel. And this Nacogdoches toolbag reminded with more veracity than most. And I fucken lost it. À la his broken tooth.So after we get locked up in the Gimp Box, Gary says, “You’ve got a lot of repressed rage, buddy. You broke the Gimp code.”“I know, man. I’m sorry.”“Also, you breached your contract. You’re lucky Mrs Beatrix didn’t fire you.”“I know. Thanks for talking to her.”“The client wants to sue. Litigation, buddy. And we couldn’t find that tooth. Luckily, she’s got a soft spot for you.”“She fucken hates me.”Gary sighed...“I’m sorry man. I know you’re trying to help me.”“I’ve never seen a Gimp go ape-shit like that,” said Gary. “With one of your arms chained to the wall? No, I have not seen that. Just between you and me, that was impressive.”I didn’t say anything.“You’ve had some experience brawling, huh?”“Some,” I said quietly.“Buddy. Are you hiding from the law?”“The law? No. I got myself in trouble with a guy.”“And he’s not a good guy to be in trouble with?”“Yeah.”“It’s okay,” said Gary. “This is a good place to hide. You’re anonymous. But you also need to be submissive, okay. Calm.”“Yeah.”“Now, let’s go to sleep. And no more bad dreams, okay?”“Okay.”“Because we live in a nightmare world, buddy. A world of the dark and the depraved. And so our dreams are our freedom. So dream of white sand, untouched and serene, the ocean lapping warm over your feet, coming and receding like a heartbeat – Dum-dum, dum-dum....”Gary goes through the ritual, and I fall to sleep. Since I’ve been working for Mrs Beatrix, my nightmares have been less. They are almost gone, Gary says. He says it’s just training. You do the work, work hard on yourself, then you change. You change yourself. Rather than external shit changing you. Then you’re on a path to freedom. Doing the workThe dungeon has brick walls and slate floors. Easy to clean. It has a wooden door like a castle. It’s heated by pipes and is always warm. Sweating is important to the clients. Two Saturdays a month, Mrs Beatrix runs the beginner sessions. Mrs Beatrix has to work hard to get the newbies into the zone. Every new face, I’m looking for Shovel. Would he recognise me in this devil-horned oni kabuki mask? While I’m chained against a wall and getting limply cat-o-nine-tailed by a short fat guy with his balls duct-taped against one thigh and his dick duct-taped against the other? Gary is in a leather onesie that you crawl into via an ass-crack zipper. He has a red-fanged oni kabuki mask on and an elegant lady is tentatively slapping his bottom with a paddle.When Mrs Beatrix finally creates a suitable atmosphere of fear and adrenaline, when the clients enter the zone, what I see is: Gary is getting hot candle wax dripped on him by a bird-like male in a fedora hat. And Gary’s oni kabuki mask, is it smiling, or grimacing? I can’t say. But it’s just a mask, and under the mask Gary is calm, because Gary is on a white beach, feeling the sand between his toes, feeling the sun on his back, seeing the wonders that God hath made. The fedora hat man gets me in a choke hold and I’m gagging for air while Gary serenely submits to about twenty pegs being latched onto his nipples. I wish for that kind of serenity.What does the Gimp contract allow?-Open handed slaps,-Pinching,-Tickles and horsey-bites.Just for starters.Gary and I have different contracts. In my contract there’s no nudity. No sex. General cleaning duties. Light battery. Slapping, whipping, etc. Strangulation within reason, no blackouts. Those are the basics, which is good enough for most clients, apart from the more sickos. The sickos want more and pay more but are still never happy. That’s why I also have “security duties” in my contract. The idea is I’m a Gimp primarily, but also a Security Guard in the event of some sicko getting out-of-kilter. My safe word is Bananas. But if a sicko gets out-of-kilter and my role becomes Security, then the code word is Thunderdome.A hundred dollars an hour, plus board.But Gary’s got different clauses in his contract.Because Gary can take almost anything, submissively and contentedly.-Getting peed on, for example.At the same time as wrestling a client, Gary is watching Mrs Beatrix’s back to make sure no one sneaks up on her, and also keeping an eye on me—he can tell just from the pallor of my skin what my O2 levels are. I’ve seen him subdue volatile clients with little other than gentle patting; love basically. What Gary does, it comes from compassion. The clients come for Mrs Beatrix in the same way that fans went to see Nirvana because of Kurt Cobain, not realising that there in back was the hero Dave Ghrol.By the end of the beginner session, Mrs Beatrix is stepping on client faces, twisting her foot down on strangled balls. She is six-one and PVC-clad. Only wears black. She is visually ageless, and raven. How I see all of this is through a plastic bag over my face held there by the pale, hazy form of a plump patron. My hands are chained to the wall and there is a moment of panic but Beatrix pulls the bag off my head just before I call Bananas.She has a sixth sense for that shit. And she whips the frenzied plump guy into a corner and he begs for forgiveness.I will kill that fat shit if I ever see him in the real world.Oh I will. Oh my God, I am a killer at heart.I memorise the motherfucker’s face.Which, of course, is a breach of the Gimp code. Sometimes in the Gimp box, Gary coughs. He tries to muffle the coughs, but we are pressed together in just loincloths, so I can tell. I’m not sure why he’s trying to hide it. But the morning after the Saturday session I see a fine mist of blood adhered to the wall of the Gimp box.What does the Gimp code say about secrets?The same as every other decent code. So I wipe the blood clean and say nothing. On SundayWe clean the dungeon. We use a high pressure washer. But first we scrub the walls with a Makita Power Bristle and a Bulk Blenz Industrial Cleaner that smells like Forest Pine. We mop the floor. We lubricate the chains and whips. Disinfect the swings, slings, cuffs, restraints, masks and gags (anything leather). Wipe down the nipple stimulators. Fold the laundered hand towels. And oil the dildo machine. This is all contractual.Afterwards we sit in the small courtyard out the back of Mrs Beatrix’s terrace drinking coffee. It is cold but sunny and I can sit out here without a mask. Gary says Mrs Beatrix is married. Her real name is Carol Smithers. “How long have you worked here, Gaz?”Gary looks up from the De Telegraaf, shrugs. “Ten years,” he says. Gary is wearing cargo pants and sandals. He is also wearing socks. “It’s been interesting work,” he says. “There’s always more to learn.”“Learn what?”“Inner peace,” he says, standing. “Let’s go for a walk.”I don’t know about that. No one knows me in this old part of the Dam. However, my likeness is easily described. Shovel has ways of finding people. There is an answering machine in an apartment that I still, theoretically, rent; and I called it not that long ago, and there was a message. Come see me, he said. Don’t make me look, he said, not indifferently but not without heat. The anguish of waiting, buddy, isn’t that worse than just plain blackness?“Come on,” says Gary. “We’ll be fine.” I pull my cap low and put my grey hoodie up over my head, and follow Gary into the gothic adventureland of De Wallen.The streets are one-way ruts made in Medieval times that are used now almost exclusively by Volkswagens. Sex workers in windows remove sleep from their eyes and stifle yawns. Gary buys a twenty-four pack of toilet paper and carries it around. In a church hall beside the Hash & Hemp Museum there is ballroom dancing on Sundays.Gary can dance.Waltz, Samba, Rhumba, Capioeria, Salsa, Tango, swing.He dances, portly Gary. He can lead. Good leading is invisible, unnoticeable. Gary maintains tautness between himself and his partner. When Gary and a new partner become synchronous, each surrenders to the other. Gary’s ability to surrender is his strength. It’s why he’s a good dancer and it accounts for the deftness of his fingers as he hogties a client, for his tolerance of fear and pain, and for his oneness with the revs of the dildo machine. HaircutGary wants to get his hair cut. I sit on the stoop out front of the hairdresser. “I’ll mind the toilet paper.”“I had a son about the same age as you,” says Gary. “He never made an effort with his appearance either.” Gary is smiling but there is pain there. The door bell chimes as he goes inside and sits and the hairdresser floats an apron over him.What I do with the info that Gary had a son is I wonder what if I was Gary’s son. Gary would be a great father. I lean back against the building and close my eyes.In my mind I see a debtor, a man so far in debt that it cannot be repaid by money alone. The man is on his knees, holding his forearm protectively across his face but it doesn’t stop the bat as the bat comes crashing down on his arm and his face and he lies shivering there, flat on the wet bitumen. Haha, harhar, goes Shovel. Again, he says to me, as I am holding the bat.When I open my eyes, a man across the road is staring at me. “You were talking in your sleep,” he says. He puts his finger to his lips and sits back into a shadow. I can see why I didn’t see him before, the building is grey and he is grey–grey face, grey beard, grey beanie, sitting in a grey sleeping bag, ready for the Arctic, but wearing black sunglasses and holding a bunch of dead flowers. This man is a chameleon against a wall, no predator would ever find. Perhaps this is a choice he made, to hide. Or, he has become like this through being forgotten. Does it matter? What it comes down to: he is no one.“What you doing with all that toilet paper?” he says. “You going to use it all?”“In time,” I say.But I get up and I give the man two rolls, and he asks how much money I have. I don’t like his smell, he smells like piss, I don’t like that I don’t like it but I still don’t, and for this reason I don’t lie to him. I tell him I’ve got fifty Euro on me. But I’m keeping it. I don’t know what you would use it for, but that’s not why I’m keeping it, I say to him. I’m keeping it because I’m selfish. I want it.“Well, thanks for the roll,” he says, holding the flowers and the rolls. “Happy dreams.”I take a mental snapshot of his face for this is a man who has seen me at my weakest and knows that I am vulnerable. Ampallang As I lay down with Gary and close the lid of the Gimp box, the dungeon door opens and Mrs Beatrix comes in. I can see her high heels through the breathing holes at the bottom of the box.“Hello boys,” she says as she sits down and crosses her legs. “How is buddy today?”Gary says. “He’s doing well, Carol.”Mrs Beatrix says, “He’s doing a lot better, lately.”Gary says, “yes.”I don’t speak to Beatrix. Gary is The Gimp Rep. Beatrix is negotiating an appropriate reparations deal with the farmer from Nacogdoches, TX. His dental bill was four thousand dollars. We don’t want any police or lawyers involved, so she is having to figure out a way to console him, financially. “What are you getting at?” says Gary.“Well, I’ve had a request that might help us with the finances,” she says. “A well connected, potential, new client, who is willing to pay extra if you were both to be ampallanged.”I feel Gary tighten. The tip of Mrs Beatrix’s heel begins to jiggle.“Body piercings are excluded under contract, Carol.”“Yes Gary. This would require an amendment. You’d be compensated. We’d all be well compensated,”“How well compensated?” “A thousand dollars, for each of you.”I try to advise Gary through touch that this is more than fucken okay with me.“I’m unsure if buddy knows what ampallanging involves Carol.”“Tell him it’s a male genital piercing that penetrates horizontally through the glands.”“A barbell through the head of the penis,” says Gary.My grip on Gary weakens.“Yes,” says Mrs Beatrix. “I’ll need to discuss it with him, Carol.”“Of course,” she says getting up. She pauses though. “Gary, this is an... important client. I...” she sighs.“It’s okay, Carol. Let me speak to buddy.”“Good night boys.”“Good night,” says Gary and there is a solemnity in his voice and great power, the amazing power of the unsaid and a kind of love. Gary says there’s nothing in the code that obligates a gimp to respond to non-contractual requests like this. But there’s the money though, Gary doesn’t mention the money. Gary’s question is: if it’s not in the contract, and it’s not in the Gimp code, then why (aside from the cash, I’m thinking), would we agree to this? This painful thing. And the answer for Gary is that Mrs Beatrix has been good to us and cares for us, and pain is just pain. Because Gary does things out of kindness. But I want the money, a grand might get me out of a good part of the trouble I’m in. A Bullet In The HeadThe body-piercing place is in a tattoo studio just over the Rokin. We have a booking under the name Carol Smithers. The receptionist’s eyes flick to my pants before she looks up. “Right,” she says, jabbing her thumb backwards. “I just need to get... Bear,” she calls.A bear-sized man comes out from the curtain, wizened and rough with scars. He assesses me professionally. “That’s some crazy ink, brother,” he says about my face. He slaps his palms together. “So, who’s first?”“I just need to sit down a minute,” says Gary, and he begins coughing.“You alright?”“Yes.” He nods, coughs. “You... go...”There is a white room behind the curtain. There are instruments. The young receptionist joins us. There is a big boned woman in there with a Maureen nametag in a nurse’s outfit who is wiping down tools with alcohol swabs.The Bear asks me if I want to sit or stand. He says that the young receptionist is going to do me. She hasn’t done genital stuff before, because she is a trainee, but that’s why we got the discount, he says, smiling.I stand in front of a waist-high workbench. The young receptionist puts a wooden block down perpendicular to me and I take out my dick and lay it along the block. Like a corpse at the morgue. She looks at it. Then she looks at Maureen. Maureen looks at it with a medical expert’s indifference. “Bear,” she says, “you want to take a look at this.”Bear comes over, raises an eyebrow. ‘Better use the bigger gauge,’ he says, and he selects a long, tri-bevelled, steel needle from a tray of equipment.. The average penis has a 3.2 inch circumference. You drive a 12 gauge needle through 3.2 inches of dick, then there is a scientific law from which you can deduce how much meat will be displaced by the needle. But displaced where? Out the side of the head? Like brains from a gunshot wound?The young receptionist holds the needle a half inch above my dick. The second before you shoot someone in the head for the first time, as the gun is shaking in your hand, that’s the moment you remember, the moment when you could’ve, in theory, refused. Through the back window I can see a timber Ferris wheel, its empty cages trundling up and over, the whole thing seeming to move like a giant cog driven by some mechanism of wind and time. The receptionist’s hands are trembling.…… “Just fucken do it,” I say to her. Gary and I shuffle back to the dungeon like two critically ampallanged soldiers. There is nothing for the throbbing except to ice ourselves and become absorbed in a few rounds of Canasta.But, there is something wrong with Gary in the Gimp box that night. I wake up because he is so hot he’s burning me. He goes stiff, then his body becomes a bag of air, then it’s like the bag has wild rats in it. But I can’t wake him. I shove up onto my hands and knees and press my back against the Gimp lid. He’s convulsing. I slam myself upwards until the hinge gives. And I get out and Gary flails against the walls of the Gimp box. I bang on the dungeon door but it’s soundproof. The dildo machine weighs about 15 kilos so I grab it and ram the door open. Then I limp upstairs to the interior door that leads into Beatrix’s house. I bang my fist on the door. “We need help.”Bang. Bang. Bang.“Hello?”“Something’s wrong with Gary.”“Pardon?”I can feel Beatrix’s presence behind the door, strangely tentative.“Open the door Carol... Don’t make me bust it down.”The door opens a crack. There is a light behind the door and Carol–Mrs Beatrix–Carol Smithers is way older than I thought. She is an elderly woman. Dressed in a terry toweling robe, her hair in curlers, she looks fragile. Her eyes widen as she sees my unmasked, tattooed face, as she sees the version of me that I have long cultivated. I have worshipped all versions of the devil. “Call an ambulance,” I say. I carry Gary upstairs into Carol’s living room. The room is cluttered by two skirted, overstuffed sofas in floral green and floor lamps with lace-fringed shades. In the corner is an ancient man in a wheelchair, Mr Smithers I assume. He breathes through an oxygen mask.Carol is on her knees holding Gary’s head in her lap, talking to him. The way she talks to him, and smooths his hair, it’s what Gary deserves, that love. The Gimp Box Gary doesn’t come back the next morning. So I clean the dungeon. I clean it once so it’s clean and then a second time, because I’m in here alone but if I’m cleaning I’m not just alone I’m doing something.I’m sitting on the Gimp box icing my penis when there’s a knock on the dungeon door.“Buddy, can you get in the box please. I’d like to talk to you.”Beatrix comes in. She tells me that Gary is out of hospital, but he is not coming back. The doctor recommended against further Gimping.“What’s wrong with him,” I say. “Was it the ampallang?”“He’s...dying buddy.”“What?”“I’m sorry. He’s known for some time.”“What’s wrong with him?”“He said you’d ask that, but he doesn’t want anyone to dwell on it.”“Dwell on it... Well, how long has he got?”“I don’t know,” she says her voice shaking. “Not very long.”“Where is he?”Carol sighs. “He said you would ask that, but even if I knew I couldn’t tell you buddy. I’m bound by confidentiality.”“What, by the contract?”“Yes.”“... did he tell you not to tell me?”“I’m sorry buddy,” she says quietly. “It’s not about you or us, he wants to be alone.” Through the holes in the box I can see her heels and the shins of her leather pants. “I’ve known him since he was a boy,” she says. “I loved him, very much, before I met Alfred.”“Alfred. The old guy, with the tank?” “Gary says he doesn’t know if you’ll want to stay, if he is gone.”I don’t say anything.“Gary wanted me to read you something. Okay?”“Okay.”“Dear Buddy,” she reads. “I’ve known a handful of Gimps in my time and not ever have I felt as strongly for one as I do for you. I know you are a gentle man under all the smoke and mirrors, and I like that man. I know you hate the thought of yourself alone in the gimp box. But buddy, the sufferer is the liver of life, experiencing life as it is. The hedonist only ever searches for life. To live with suffering and worry is a learned skill like any other, to forgive is a learned skill too. And there is forgiveness in the box buddy. I found it in there. We live in a nightmare world buddy, but there’s a white beach somewhere with your name spelled out in its sands.”Carol folds the note. “You know I can’t do the shit Gary does.”“I know, we need to expand your capabilities.”“I don’t know about being in this fucken box alone.”“I know. I’m scared too. I’m scared of you. You’re a fearful creature. I want to do this though, if we can. I need to. Can I rely on you?”“I don’t know.”“Gary says I can,” she says.I can’t answer for what Gary says. I can’t say if Gary is right or wrong, all I can say is only Gary would say that.Carol tells me that she has done a deal with the farmer from Nacogdoches where we don’t have to pay his dental bill but...he wants to come back, with two Texan friends. For what she is calling a forgiveness session. “Is that something you could handle?”“I don’t know.”“It avoids any legal consequences.” “He looks like a guy I know. A guy I do not like.”“I’ll help you.” “Okay.”“Okay? Okay. I’m locking the box now buddy.” She’s had new hinges put onto the Gimp box with 40 mill screws. There will be no breaking them. I already miss Gary. I don’t want Gary to die. I don’t care about the Texans or the whips or the choking. What scares me is what is in this box.She locks the Gimp box and her heels click across the floor and the dungeon door locks. And what is in front of me is pure darkness and the questions that this darkness brings.“White sand,” I say. White sand.
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