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It was my neighbor who showed me the first one. Katya redefined the meaning of tightlacing, one I was not sure I could ever recover.

When I was young I could watch her take in the strength of the corset and bind it tight, feel with my eyes how the laces confined and tightened. “How do they make these?” I asked her.

“With whalebone. They’re made of the finest material.” My neighbor had little patience for questions, but for this she made an exception. “You see the whale bone?” She held it in front of my eyes and ran her finger along the ridges hidden inside the smooth brocade material.

“What about the laces?”

“Made of sturdy cotton,” she said. “Weaved tight, rendering unbreakable.” She stood in front of her full-length mirror with several corsets next to her bed and dragonfly Tiffany lamp. I stood next to her, marveling at the instant transformation. My best friend was in a chair on the opposite end of the room. She thumbed through adult magazines of tightlacers. My neighbor did not mind that we were in the room as she tightened her waist, taking in the laces, exhaling her soft breath. The ritual gave her some peace. It gave her waist form and was there for all of us to see.

It was a struggle closing the corset entirely; a creaking sound. My neighbor used doorknobs, never the extra pair of hands in the room. “Get an even pull. Tightness is much more secure. And the knobs stay fastened,” she said. The first tug was most intense. The laces pulled tighter, giving way to a more curvaceous figure of the natural female form, and it did the magic with whalebone and fabric. The sight deepened my appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of a woman’s waist.

I was in high school when my neighbor gave me my first chance to lace her up. She taught me how to put the lining on her, how to wrap the corset around her waist, how to fasten the hooks, and how to bring in the laces: how to tighten evenly, then wait, then tighten again.



My girlfriend Katya is tall. Her hair cascades down her shoulders, over her full breasts and folds under like a stroke of an onyx calligraphy pen.

“Do you mind?” I ask.

“I love the material,” she says. “Japanese silk is a fabric I wish I could wrap all around me.”

I open it and straighten out the laces. I slip the corset around her waist. She holds it in place and pulls the two ends together. The latches fasten tightly. She kisses me. “I’ll need some help with the laces. I can see the back alignment, but I need help.” A single eyebrow rises laden with her intent.

She holds the corset in place as I pull on the laces. I see the material hug her as I pull tighter. She walks away from me. “Is this going to close,” she says. “Do I have to suck in my breath?”

“I’m going to tighten it,” I say. “Hold in your stomach.”

“Someday I would like to have my very own corset.” She says this slowly while pulling in her stomach.

“This makes your chest bigger, big enough for me to see your breasts.”

She expands her chest with her eyes closed, drawing it gently, firmly. Her waist shrinks. She steps away from me, wrapping her hands against her shrinking figure and continues until the pressure is too much to bear.

“You’re crazy enough to get me to get you in a smaller corset,” I say. She holds her hands in the laces and begs me to complete one more tug.

She twists her head so that her mouth is close to my ear. “I’m enjoying this,” she says. “Get it going. Then tighten it some more and show me what I look like, transformed.”



I do pretty well for myself. I know how to make deals, size up situations, and maximize opportunities. I’m making enough money for a cushion on my cushion. “It’s like a museum,” my neighbor said. “Why do you want a museum in your house?”

My collection room is small, a bit larger than a small study. I had it built out of a useless room. Hired professionals did it. Work was slow for them so I made them an offer we both could live with. They installed the lights, the stands, and the glass door. They arranged everything together, to preserve historic corsets. The mannequins were made of cedar.

I stocked it carefully, and I have some prizes in it. There are the corsets from the early centuries with extra set lacing, lace trim on the bottom, extra boning, and spoon busks. I have ones worn by Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, several playboy bunnies along with other famous figures. An array of other splendid historical pieces: Empire Corsets, Merry Widows, Night Corsets, Ribbon Corsets, Swan-bills, Guepiere, and training corsets filled the empty spaces.

“Pick one,” I said, holding the image of her when I was younger.

“Sure, they are beautiful, but why do you have these?”

“It keeps them preserved. I can protect them.”

“Protect them?”

I brought my old neighbor to see it when it was finished, completely finished. I wanted her to be the first one, to christen it in a sense. But she didn’t understand the purpose, what it was I wanted.

“Listen,” she said. “This is what it’s about. You find one you like. You shop for it like a piece of fine antique. You go to the corset shop, go into the room and bring the best ones together. Then you look, touch them, feel the quality of the fabric, the stays, how the string will hold. Get the best ones. You might even ask the clerk to model in one of your selections before bringing anything home.”

“Try each one, live with the damn thing in your own living room. Then you go back and go in search of more fine masterpieces that give form to women. It’s important to preserve the very element that shapes the feminine form. I applaud you and even hold deep fascination to this. But this is ludicrous. Have you gone overboard?”

She tried on several of the corsets. But it wasn’t how I had imagined it. We talked little. I didn’t ask too many questions. She enjoyed the whalebone corset; I could see that without asking. Through the mirror, at the transformed hourglass figure, I could see some of her way.

I finally gathered enough courage to confront her. “Why the disapproval?”

“You’re hiding your collection, and that is a mortal sin. You need to spread the word out to others, men and women, and show them your creation. Try to bring back the need for more feminine curves, brought on only by corset usage.”

The understanding was there. In society today, many women exploited themselves by revealing their bare stomachs with some curve along the sides. However, there is nothing left to the imagination. All is lost because everything is already on display.

Eight months later, she died of a sudden heart attack. I went through her things on her request via her lawyer and found several boxes of historical corsets, carefully preserved. They were priceless. I don’t know who they belonged to. I took them along with her neck braces and garter straps. The boxes are on display in my preservation room, behind my Queen Elizabeth corset.



Katya is pale and creamy, like pure snow. I whisk the back of my hand over her face, draw her to my chest, close my eyes, and hum low enough so that she can’t hear, only feel. She turns her head up and drives her lips up to my throat. “I want you to lace me up,” she says.

“Tightlace?”

“You don’t know what it does to me.” She doesn’t say this in a teasing way. She wants me to know the mystery of the corset and how it works for her.

“We should go to the preservation room. I’ll let you choose,” I say.

Katya is like a poultice for the good, one that draws of dangerous fluids. She moves at me brutally from all sides, looking at the fundamentals. She invades those dark, unexpected spaces that bring the pain you would never bring upon yourself even if you knew it was good for you. But once it’s there, you revel in it.

Katya opens the boxes, touching each corset, lifting them up before her. She holds them under her nose and takes deep breaths, rolling them in her cheeks. She kisses one, inhaling the very essence of the former owner.

One stops her cold, drawing her attention from the others. “This one,” she says, “is remarkable.” It’s a Victorian one used for strict training. The tag is off, so I’m not sure exactly what it is. But I see it is in excellent condition, despite its age. This much I know. She holds it in both hands: the female hooks on the right, the male in the left, stretched out!

“Look at the magic it holds,” she says. She lifts it to her eyes and stares it down like it’s the holy grail of female transformation. “This looks like a man with strong arms,” she says. “And the fabric, the tightness, reminds me of the power wielded over me like a submissive female. Relinquishing control. Surrendering to something bigger than myself.”

Her eyes widen when she says this. She closes them and wraps the corset around her waist.



My old neighbor never wore anything worn by celebrities. She didn’t want to have anything to do with any corsets of those who weren’t serious lacers. In her eyes, such people were phonies. She thought the sculpted female figure was a worthy characteristic, more worthy than enjoying the best material in the world. She never said much about my celebrity collection or how I got them. She would refuse my offers to try one with a quick turn of her head.

“I don’t want to put any support in those wretched starlets,” she would say. “Let the material fall to ruins and perish.” She crinkled her nose, “You go ahead, try to preserve them, but they won’t get any recognition from me.”
I would hold the corsets up in midair and she would smile, envisioning them on her. “You think I don’t know,” she said. “You think your old neighbor doesn’t know as much as you do. Well, let me tell you, before you were born, before the real history of those fancy people you admire, I relished the idea of being transformed by one of those corsets. The good old-fashioned ones, then the women’s movement came along and did away with the appreciation of the feminine figures. Movie starlets wore such staple as a novelty and dismissed corsets as soon as the filming was over. And instead of being enigmatic and alluring, women have let themselves go. It’s a disgrace if you ask me.”

“You know, it was women who strayed from corseting and tightlacing because...”

She waved her hand, dismissing my logical explanation, and said, “The demand for equality is an infectious disease that led to the abandonment of tightlacing. Didn’t women realize the moment they shed their corsets, they shed their inner strength?” She shook her head and caught my eyes, “You mark my words. One day, women all over will realize what they gave back and soon, they will come back in droves wanting a piece of what they had lost. And it will go beyond the silver screen.”

She mumbled something under her breath about those wretched movie starlets once more.



Katya asks me to kiss her hair. I fill my hands with it and bring it to my face. I smell the soap and the sweat through the strands. I kiss her scalp while she dons on the selected corset. “The fabric, look at the boning,” she says. “The bones are thick and they’re nicely aligned, stretching from the top to the bottom. It’s like the bulging veins of your cock.”

She asks me to kiss her ears, then her neck. Her smell is soft and airy. I trace my tongue across the surface of her fleshy earlobe and move down her neck. A chill rolls through her. I seal my mouth over a patch of her skin at the base of her neck and embrace the blood racing through her veins. I sense the excitement building. The corset hugs her the entire time.

I wrap the strings around my hands and kiss her lacy brassiere so that I can feel the silky material in my mouth. I stretch the strings, pulling the corset tighter. She sucks in her stomach. My mouth floods, like it does at the first bite of a succulent peach. I slip my tongue under the straps of her bra.

She asks me to lift her arms and tighten the stays. “Close me all the way. Leave no space between,” she says.

She shrinks in size, like a fading star. I tighten and take in as much as her body can withstand for the first lacing. She shivers and from this I know I have reached her. I tighten until the shapeless form fades, and continue until the prominent dip emerges. She groans. The sound comes from the depths of her throat. I move back to the nape of her neck and suck as she relishes the transformation. She smoothes her hands down the length of the secure corset and whimpers.

“Please…”

“Katya.”

“Tighten it all the way.” Everything she says will be all breath now.

I am hard. I feel myself grow, turn sticky with sweat, the drops of liquid pushing from me. Katya pulls away, leaving the preservation room, the strings trailing against the wooden floor. She has her hands pressed against the fine fabric, feeling it; tracing the material. I turn her around and tie her off. She sits down on the edge of the table and stretches her legs out in front of her, pulling her skirt up along her thighs, rolling it to her hips. Her pink panties darken with a spreading patch of moisture. She traces the edge of her finger tips up the length of her thigh and slides them against the elastic edge. She pulls the silk fabric off, leaving her exposed to me. The space between her thighs bristles in its fullness, glittering with oceanic fluid. A glimmer in her eyes pleaded for me to allow her to reclaim what had been lost, a sense of her femininity.

“Please, sit down,” she says. “The pressure is immense, but I love the feel of this corset. Is it supposed to enhance the feeling between my legs?”

“Why?” I smile inwardly. This is just the start of the addiction. I have seen it before in others. First, women dance around the idea of lacing, and then they try it on for the first time, wanting to be laced in all the way. Once the heroin- like high surges through them, and their head becomes light, the hook is already in and there is no hope for redemption.

She holds her hands out to me and I clutch them, dropping to my knees. My pussy fills with a familiar ache, filling with desire of wanting to consume of her. The feel of a corset used in strict discipline. The sounds of the previous owner, pleading to be tightened even more thrilled me. In some ways, I imagined she sounded a lot like Katya. I squeeze her calves and draw her legs further apart, exposing more of her to me.

She catches my gaze, trailing her succulent tongue over her lips. The undeniable ‘come hither’ look her becomes irresistible.

Each bat of her eyes draws me closer. Her breath shortens under her confines.

“Not yet,” I say.

A subtle whine fills the space between us.

“Only if you promise you’ll never come out of those stays?”

The gleam in her face remains, unfading. She takes her hands and slides them down the sides of my waist, slipping her hands into my panties.

“I’ll do anything for you.” She says, whispering into my ear. Her hands slip past my folds.

A smile creeps across my face as I relish the dream come true. No longer do I have to go to the memories of my neighbor and her sensual corsets. The woman beneath me is willing to defy the masses of shapeless women. Perhaps Katya will set a new standard for our defiant society or other women will see her in her stays and request their mates do the same. At the same time, the prophecy of my neighbor comes alive.

My thoughts blur as she guides me deep into her. All I feel is the tight pressure of her induced by the corset. My mind, body and soul spin into oblivion because I know when I come out of this, I -- like a corseted woman, will never be the same… again.