JOURNAL
Retired model Dia Zerva texted me to tell me that Girdlebound Richard had passed away, weeks ago now. I don’t do twitter or facebook so I miss a lot. Although he was far from the perfect picture of health he seemed like one of those people that had lived through a lot and would outlive us all. I reached out to him in 2006. A photographer named BT Smut who became BT Charles and later retired told me about Girdlebound. I was never much of an internet explorer, I was looking for vintage lingerie in thrift stores mostly. I was striking out and BT told me to check out Girdlebound. It looked like a mom and pops shop and I noticed the galleries. I emailed some photos that my friend Big Lew took of me in hopes of someone emailing me back a discount code but he wrote me back and offered to send me wardrobe in exchange for images! I was flabbergasted, yup that word. I had also only done 3 photoshoots at the time. I was thrilled to send him photos. Often when I would buy something from the site when I still had my day job he would notice and send me back the money. Apparently many photogs and models he sent stuff to back then never even sent one image back. I was soon doing lots of bondage, I was often wearing girdles. I did some events for him, sent him photos of other women in girdles, visited his home, he visited my home. We actually never sessioned, not even once. He was brilliant and a good listener. Most of his gallery girls were much thinner and I was shall we say pleasantly plump or as my German friends like to say zaftzig, which he thought might actually help sell shapewear more than the model bodied girls he gave the freebies to he said. Eventually he lost the warehouse and the people that were doing shipping for him because they wanted to expand their own business. Since hitting puberty I had always wanted a lingerie store called Justfigures because I had a body that was hard to fit in the 90s. I suggested slowly buying him out. It didn’t go smoothly to put it mildly. The first disaster was how his warehouse sent me the stuff. It took weeks of 12 hour days sorting it all and nothing had been properly inventoried. It was all downhill from there. I gave it back to him when my life fell apart. The only good thing is that he was getting it all back organized and inventoried which he was actually thankful for in words. When he first scheduled to come and get it he told me he had a plan and a new place and people to run it but that was just so I wouldn’t panic or worry, it certainly was not all straightened out. We hugged and I cried out all of the misery from the previous few years from my chronic illness and failures and broken heart in his arms. His exact words were, it is a new beginning for us and time for fun again. I sent him some photos of ladies in girdles very rarely. We didn’t really talk. I wasn’t traveling to the east coast anymore and I wasn’t doing events much. Richard was witty and a giver. He took care of soooo many of our fetish ladies in one way or another. Three days before he passed I was shooting Rachel Adams. She mentioned several times that she had seen him the month before and he had given her his new favorite girdle. I shot a clip of her in it, the one I’m posting next to this post. I had intended on sending Richard images of her in it knowing he would actually appreciate seeing one of his gifts on one of his lovelies and the bondage position I put her in was right up his alley even though bondage wasn’t really his thing. I dropped the ball. It could have made him smile, it would have been a nice send off….so anyway people, life is short. When you think of someone you haven’t thought of much or haven’t talked to in a while, send the message. You never know when it could be your last opportunity.