Preparation for death part 1
The first erection I ever had was at the age of twelve and it was when I saw ‘The Dirty Dozen’ for the first time. If I had a video at the time I would have watched the hanging scene over and over again.
From that moment on I knew I wanted to hang. I wanted to be Private Gardner being walked to the gallows hands cuffed high behind my back; Olive Green uniform and T-shirt with the large white letter ‘P’ on the back; old well worn boots with the laces removed.
The moment when he stands in the doorway of the execution chamber and sees the noose hanging there is just so fantastic. I wanted that moment of suspended time. Knowing that every step you take is one step nearer death. The guards taking over and taking you to stand on the trap door and the black hood (used in US executions while Britain uses white) being slipped over my head by the guard standing behind me. While a guard in front of me straps my booted feet together.
But the hottest moment of all would be when the noose is pulled down and fitted snugly around my neck with the black hood bellowing in and out as I hyper-ventilate and beg them for mercy.
Then listening to the officer read out the death warrant and ask me for any last word and then while I am still pleading for them not to kill me the executioners pulls the leaver.
Year after year I have dreamt and fantasised about being hanged – acting out this roll.
All thought my teenage years this dream became part of how I was. But I didn’t know any hangmen or any one who shared this fantasy.
Hanging became my obsession. I would day dream in classes about hanging. Thinking about all the different ways and places it could be done. But Private Arthur James Gardner was there with me willing to take his place and hang instead.
I the town where I lived there were rival soccer fans. Often on a Saturday night after a few beers they would clash with each other finding some place to have a ruck.
Other times one gang would find a single fan of the other team and kick the shit out of him.
Over the years the media reports got more and more graphic about the violence and the gangs wanted to make sure they got more news coverage than the others. One gang would steal the Doc Marten boots from their victims. The police used to confiscate the laces from fans going into soccer grounds and you didn’t get them back on the way out. So there were a few thousand guys wandering around with no laces in their boots.
There were reports of other gangs tying up their victims either to trees or posts before beating them up.
Then one week there was a story of one guy you had been tied to a concrete fence post and given a beating and then they had taken his boots off him. He still had his laces so he hadn’t been to the football match.
This gang had then taken one of the laces from his boots and used it to secure a plastic bag over the guy’s head.
The gang had then run of leaving this guy to suffocate. He had struggled and panicked to get free but before he had passed out he had managed to chew through the bag.
He had eventually freed himself by eroding the rope used to tie him against the corner of the concrete post.
For weeks I could not think of anything but what it must have been like to be tied to the post with a bag over my head and the air running out.
A couple of weeks later there was a story of two kids who had been playing cowboys and one had hanged the other.
In my head the two stories came together. I wanted to be tied to a post, beaten and hanged.
But never could I find anyone to even talk to.
I saved up my pocket money and did odd jobs for people all to save for a part of OX 14 hole DMs and a soccer shirt for the team that had the fans who where doing these things. That was stupid really it should have been the shirt of the other team so they who gang up on me as an enemy fan.
I used to try and hang around places were they might have been drinking and then in places that were dark and empty late at light. Sometimes I saw them but then always ignored me. I might be trying to dress like a hooligan but I just didn’t look like one. There’s more to being a skinhead than boots and bleachers.
Over the years I tried tying my self up and putting plastic bags over my head. I even tried to hang myself but it never worked. It wasn’t the asphyxiation that I wanted. It was the preparation, being tied up and beaten, then being dragged to the noose.
But most of all I wanted to experience what it would be like to wait, ready to hang, waiting for the executioners or whoever to do there thing; to be the victim for their pleasure.
Years passed by the fantasies remained.
I must have gone through a dozen copies of The Dirty Dozen wearing out the start by putting it into repeat play. I even copied it on to a cassette tape and stood hooded and noosed while the black tape played through and then I heard the reading of the death sentence.
Then came the internet and then came chat and then came my hangman.
We chatted for months and months about hanging how he would hang me. I then began to tell him about my childhood dreams. Little by little he got me to tell him more and more of the detail.
How I wanted to wear my OX DM’s and football shirt. Get tied up and blindfolded and then given a kicking until I begged him to hang me.
When we saw each other on line we chatted and I asked him if he liked my fantasy. He said he liked the idea of taking my boots was I was about to hang.
I told him more and more about the detail of my fantasy.
He said he new of a place where he would be able to meet and if I paid for the hire he would make my dream come true.
It felt like all my life had been building up to this moment. I just couldn’t wait excitement building all the time. Then doubt started to build up in the back of my mine. Wasn’t this too, too good to be true? Was it really safe or sane to do this? What happened if something went wrong?
The hangman got angry. He said he had hanged loads of people and they had all survived. But my feet continued to grow cold. Soon though, desire overcame common sense.
I got my kit together any put them in a holdall. My twenty year old OX DMs showing their age but at last going to get the use they had been intended for. The soccer shirt had worn out long ago but the club had started selling a like of vintage shirt copies – it was like it was meant to be. A pair of jeans I had bought from the internet (They had a prison logo printed on the leg). Last a brand new pair of black steel toed DMs. These were for my executioner/torturer to use to kick me before he hanged me.
I caught the train into the city - hours before time and hung around. I thought I’d find loads to do. But I didn’t I just wanted to the time to meet to arrive and my life’s ambition to be achieved.
The hours dragged every second felt like a minute and every minute like an hour.
But time came and I had been sat in the pub for an hour already. I didn’t see him come in but suddenly he was there stood in front of me.
“Ready?” he asked and turned on his heel and walked away. I was close behind – I had been ready for years.
We used public transport – he knew the way –and he led me to an ordinary front door in an ordinary street. He typed in a code which opened the gate to the tiny garden and then pressed a separate door bell and the door clicked and opened.
He went in and I followed. There was a room with a shower by the door. He told me to go in there and get my kit on and when I came out the fantasy would start.
I hurriedly stripped off put on my levi’s and shirt and then started to put on my OX DM’s which had white laces. It seemed to take forever to do up the laces. He had told me not to wear the socks but to give the socks to him.
I opened the door and walk out. He was stood behind me and pushed me had up against the far wall. He told me to spread my legs and put my hand high up the wall. He started to search me and took the socks out of my hand.
“Put you hands behind you back!” he ordered. I did and be punched me hard in the back. “Properly!” he ordered. I crossed my wrists behind me and he started to slowly and carefully tie them. He was taking his time and using plenty of rope. There was not going to be any escape.
He then pulled me upright by my hair and used one of the soccer socks to blindfold me.
He then takes one of my arms are guides/pushes me into another room.
He orders me to “Stand still with your feet together.” He then tied them tightly together.
“Which team do you support?” He asked and punched me hard in the kidney.
It makes me jerk backward and then forward to try and keep my balance. With my ankles tied together it was difficult to keep upright.
He moves around to be in front of me sand starts punching my abs and each time asking which team I supported. A few times he punches me so hard that it winds me and I can hardly breathe.
I start to randomly name a few football teams and he shouts “NO! and punches me even harder. This carries on for a while until he hits me so hard in the gut that I first double over and then fall over. I hit the ground hard with my knees and then go over on my side landing on my right shoulder.
From punching he had changed to kicking. He is kicking me with my own black steel toed DMs. Even though blindfolded I know just how good they must look on him.
I had spent half my life dreaming of this moment and now it had come is it absolute hell. You say ‘getting and kickin’’ in you head or in a chat but you’re not conscious of what it means in reality. Isn’t there are proverb about being careful what you wish for in case you get it. It’s one thing to talk hard and it’s another to take it.
Eventually I name a team and the kicking starts. He pushes me over onto my stomach and kneels down beside my head and whispers in my ear. “Now lick my boots clean” and with that something hard hits my lips. Reluctantly I start to lick. But I can see so I am not sure what I am licking. It doesn’t seem to please him as he keeps give the odd random kick.
It is stupid I can’t see what he wants me to do so I can only like what he puts inform of my mouth.
He is getting more and more angry. He kneels down beside me and lifts my head. He starts to force a rag into my mouth and then ties it in place with the other sock.
“This is your punishment for not licking my boots properly” and with that he starts kicking me all over again and there is nothing I can do to stop him. I try working at the rope around my wrists but he has done to good a job. The pain gets worse and worse and without any control I am crying. The sock around my eyes gets wet with the tears while he continues with his violent kicks
He stops and takes off the blindfold. He wipes his boots with the tear soaked blindfold he takes out the gag and tells me to lick my tears off his boots.
After I have licked the boots again he pulls me up to a kneeling position and I start to beg him to stop and let me go. But he doesn’t. He first puts the blindfold back on and then the gag. He leaves me kneeling while he is doing something else. He is getting some form of equipment ready. There is also sorts of stuff in this place: Things to be tied to and things to be tied with. Hoods, gags masks, whips and things I just don’t know what they do.
He is ready he gets fold of my arms and drags me across the floor and then pulls me up to a standing position.
“Stand still or you’ll die” he whispers is in my ear.
He takes out the gag and then pulls the blindfold away.
Immediately in front of my face is a hangman’s noose. “Oh fuck!” I exclaim. “Yeah, you’re fucked” he replies.
With that he pulls a black hood over my head from behind me and I then feel the noose dropping over my head. I have waited decades for this moment and now with the fear and the pain from the kicking it is over with in less than and second. He is then positioning the noose so that it is has he wants it to be.
“Stand still!” he orders again.
The noose is moving up behind my head and forcing my chin up. The noose tightens and I start to choke. Without thinking I start to stand on tiptoe.
Now you are going to stand like that for an hour. And if you beg and plead with me nicely I might let you go or I will hang you.
I start to beg and plead and I can hear him moving around. After a while he says I am not good enough and I hear a few metal clicks and the noose tightens. “You better do better or you won’t make it thought the hour”.
Again I start to get him and promise anything if he just won’t kill me.
But again he tightens the noose. I call him a bastard and he punches me hard in the abs which throws me off balance.
“Tell me you deserve to hang” he says. It is close to my ear and menacing. After a while I tell him I want to hang that it would be a mercy for him to kill me now and that I don’t want to live anymore. This seems to please him.
As he does not tighten the noose any more but leaves me begging and pleading to die.
Then without any warning the rope is pulled up so I am on the very, very tip of my toes. I can’t breathe and feel like my head will explode if my neck is not pulled off my shoulders first.
Lungs burn and eyes bulge and my tongue is poking out of my mouth.
And finally, I am sat on the floor and breathing in sweet cool air. The hood and noose gone and my feet and hands are untied.
“OK?” he asks. “FANTASTIC” I reply.
“Well you’ve had your first lesson in hanging” he says and I know I must have lesson two soon.
