Monkey in the Middle (M/M)

[David Han]

We had a little game played between my friends David and Andy and myself called monkey in the middle. The normal rules applied for the game where someone is in the middle and tries to catch a ball that is passed by the players on each end, except we had a twist. We decided that if the monkey caught the ball that the person who threw the ball is tied up. t

One summer day in 1998, I was 8, David was 8, and Andy was 9. We had just finished eating hot dogs at Sonic and had decided to head to Andy's house in the far side of the street in the community of Oak Park Trails. Andy had some rope, duct tape, and more at his place in his bedroom. The game would be held in the living room. First, I was the monkey in the middle. Andy threw the ball, but I tried to intercept it, but it flew over my head, and I failed to catch it. David was next and his pass was nearly caught by me, but all I did was deflect it. The game ended for that round since I failed to catch both of the balls thrown.

In the next round, it was Andy in the middle. I threw a pass and prayed it did not reach Andy, but to my shock and horror, he caught it. I resigned to my fate as my friends grabbed me and led me into Andy's bedroom for the tied up game with me as the victim. The entire time, I was nervous and did not know what else they had planned for me.

David had me lay on the bed with my wrists crossed behind my back. He took the rope and tied my wrists together. Then, Andy tied my ankles. They did not hogtie me though. Andy, however, put a cloth into my mouth, and tied it around my mouth. It was a very effective gag. I could not move or speak. I felt David slightly tickling my feet, and you could hear a muffled laugh from me. This was just good for them because I heard David said, well our friend has nice ticklish feet. Andy then tickled my other foot at the same time as David was tickling my left foot. It caused my toes to wiggle.

It was the first time they had tickled me, and it felt really good. For 10 minutes, they tickled my feet. They gave me a break after that.

I was untied from my restraints, and the game would continue. This time, David was in the middle of the room. Andy threw the ball, and it was caught by David. He gave a defeated sigh as he realized that he was going to be tied up now.

In the same way as before, we led him to the bedroom, but the bondage was a little different than mine. We hogtied him and he was struggling as we did so, but we eventually got him tied after about 15 minutes. We tickled his feet after gagging him with the same cloth that they used on me. It made him laugh. His toes was flexing. We got him for about 10 minutes. As we prepared to untie him, he said, "No, keep him going".

So we listened to his request and tickled him for another 10 minutes. It was nice to hear his near silent laugh. The end was in sight as we untied him from his restraints.

The day was something I would not forget.

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I started around 8, too, but not very often. When I was 10, and was close to joining the boy scouts, the TUG's became more frequent. Other 8-9 year olds would see the 10-11 year olds tying each other up, and, sometimes, the 12-13-14 year olds, and wanted to play. Sometimes, we let them. Most of the time, we just gave them some rope and bandanas, and told them to go tie and gag themselves.

We all thought it was great fun when we got to tie up a bigger and older kid. The only problem, was that at 8-9-10-11, we couldn't tie very well, and they always escaped. I do remember that, when I was 10, after several times tying 13 year old Billy over a couple of months, he finally didn't escape, and I was on cloud 9 for a month.

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