Hair Bondage Braid

“In preparation, I want your hair pleated in one tight pleat at the back and braid it with a rope through it,” Roxy texted me on Friday morning two weeks ago. We were going to the dungeon on Saturday evening and as she said it I saw time evaporate right before my eyes. I can’t braid my own hair. It’s one of those ‘simple skills’ most people have that I don’t possess. In theory, braiding your hair is simple but I find it really hard to keep track of which strand comes next and I generally feel like I need an extra pair of hands. Considering I struggle with a normal braid, doing a french one seemed a stretch and adding in rope sounded impossible. Why couldn’t she have told me to pierce my skin with some needles? That would have been ok!

I thought I’d wait a little while before trying and do the things I actually had to do first, but I was struggling to focus as my mental health had taken a little plunge. Since new rules have been enforced in Scotland, my social life has significantly shrunk. Football isn’t currently allowed and apart from going to the shop I only tend to see an actual person once every two weeks. By that Friday, it had been 12 days since I last saw someone so I figured I might feel better if I succeeded at this braid and could then perhaps be productive after.

I can make a braid, it’s not that difficult; I must’ve simply done it wrong in the past, is what I told myself. I decided to try a normal braid but it went so badly that I ended up watching a tutorial to check if I was doing it right. So that wasn’t working. I then figured I might as well look at tutorials for french braids since that was the one Roxy was after.

I checked one, two, five, seven, eight and couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter which kind I watched (whether someone did it on someone else, on themselves or used a specific technique) my hands couldn’t figure out how to hold the different strands of hair. I tried it several times but very quickly started to despair. How the hell was I supposed to manage this? I felt like I needed to see what my hands were doing in order to make it work but that wasn’t an option. Why isn’t my flatmate here? I thought. The Barefootsub said she’d try it with me later at night, but I didn’t have the energy to try it anymore. I gave up and started worrying about showing up tomorrow without a braid. She would be able to punish me I guess, but really not having my hair tied would mean a delay for the scene and worse, would she be disappointed?

On Saturday morning, I felt like it must be possible for me to do this. By this point, I hadn’t yet tried adding the rope so that became my first task. I split my hair in three and used a bobble to attach the rope to the middle strand, which worked surprisingly well. I chose a red one, as Roxy’d said to wear my red dress and I figured it’d be nice to make it match. But when it came to making the braid it wasn’t working once more. By this point, I had managed to copy the technique for the hands but my hair kept slipping out or getting tangled up in the wrong places. It felt like I had a birds nest on my head. After 2 hours (yes, how ridiculous?!) I gave up and stepped away from the task. I didn’t know how to do this. Roxy may have said I should apply myself to her desires but how could I do that if I literally couldn’t do it?

I texted her: “You seriously need a contingency plan because this is not going to work.”

Immediately she replied: “Don’t tell me what to do. Adjust yourself to my desires.”

I started thinking of how I could solve this issue. Surely, this braid was meant to be functional so if I couldn’t do a braid, maybe I needed to do a hair tie, which would fulfil the same purpose. I told The Barefootsub I’d given up and while I thought she might endorse my backup plan, she said she 100% believed I would be able to do a braid. I only had about 2 hours left to braid my hair now and considering the time it took me when failing before, I didn’t think there was any chance I could get this right. She wondered if I was trying to get it too perfect and was too critical and stopped too early. She said it would be better if I showed up with something instead of nothing, because then at least it’d seem like I had tried. I had to admit she was right and tried again.

About 1/6th in I lost one of the strands, crossed over the wrong bit and it felt like a mess but I kept going. By the time I reached my shoulders, I moved my hair to the front and finished the braid fairly easily. It was the first time I managed to get one in! I honestly felt like I’d finished 1st in a marathon. (The things I struggle with, right, lol). The braid wasn’t tight at all but at least my hair was braided! Though, I wondered if I could get a slightly better one if I tried again. It felt a bit risky as I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish a complete one once more, but my desire to get it right was too strong and so I ended up making two more and I settled on the 3rd and final one. Only the third one slightly resembled a french braid in that it felt attached to my head and when I pulled at the rope it seemed pretty secure. It looked pretty messy but not necessarily in a bad way, I think?

I hid the red rope in the hood of my coat when I left the house and told myself that even if it wasn’t perfect, I’d at least done what Roxy told me. She seemed a bit unsure of it at first (probably because I’d warned her it might not work) but she was quite happy with it afterwards and so was I!

Over the two days that I tried to braid my hair I kept thinking how I would never be able to do this again and how Roxy had to think up something different for my hair but I think I could make a braid now. It still won’t be perfect but it will be functional, so I guess this was another little bit of self-growth.

Xx Mila