Crush training

A BDSM trainee in a ‘Crush’ drysuit w/o inflator hose

In the photo above: A BDSM trainee is wearing a shoulder entry heavy rubber drysuit with no low pressure hose connected to the inflator port, for ‘crush’ training. You can see details of her suits neck seal and the hood she wears to keep her long hair from getting tangled in her dive gear. She is on the preparation shelf and from her suits inflated chest area it’s obvious she hasn’t completely vented her suit to get as much of the ambient air out as possible before beginning her descent. She has been coached to leave as much air in her suit as she can and still have negative buoyancy as the more air remaining in her suit the slower she will descend to aid in equalization. In a suit like this with a weight belt and no BCD her descent will be uncontrolled down to a net stretched across the diameter of the well. She will have to work on equalizing as best she can and will pick up speed as she descends because the remaining air will be compressed inside her suit. Her goal, once she reaches the net at the 100 foot (30 meters) level will be to masturbate against the rubber crotch of her suit while holding her air consumption to 1.75 cuft per minute or less. She is wearing a nylon/lycra bodyskin to minimize the effect of being pinched by the rubber folds of the suit as it compresses around her. As she gains more experience in crush diving she will wear only a bikini under the crush suit or be completely nude except for nylon booties.

Crush diving is one aspect of BDSM training that I’ve intentionally avoided. I have inadvertently been squeezed in one of my fully functioning drysuits when I accidentally vented air and it collapsed around me. But since I’m lactating it is not a good idea to compress even empty breasts after I’ve pumped much less when they are filled with milk. Not only can the folds of rubber pinch and hurt like blazes, but breast compression can cause clogged milk ducts, something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.


‘Crush training’ in a collapsed drysuit: Adolph uses several old heavy rubber drysuits with no low pressure hose connected to the suits inflator fitting for crush training. He uses old suits because the deflated suits ‘squeeze’ causes an even greater need to urinate than the dive itself and the trainee is not allowed to wear a diaper to absorb her urine. Without an inflator hose and valve connected the wearer is unable to control her buoyancy with the suit and needs to wear a buoyancy control device, BCD, or have a lift bag available to be able to return to the surface on her own or needs a handler to assure her safety. No crush training student is allowed to wear a BCD and her instructor, Adolph, is her handler and he will leave her at depth to reach the surface as best she can as, among other things, her ingenuity is being tested. She is not allowed to remove her weight belt so that any positive buoyancy of the empty tank (There is none, an empty the tank is -2 lbs), the air in her mask and hood would float her to the surface. The crush diver wears a single HP steel Nitrox-Ready Worthington X8-130. The specs for that 130 cuft tank are:

*Volume: 130 cubic feet (16.0L)
* Service Pressure: 3,442 psi
* Outside Diameter: 8.0"
* Weight: 43.0 lbs (empty)
* Height: 25.5 inches* Width: 8.00 inches
* Buoyancy Empty: -2.0 lbs
* Buoyancy Full: -11.7 lbs

The trainee breathes Nitrox II (36 % oxygen) to reduce her nitrogen loading on the dive and he gives her a lift bag, but no Spare Air bottle to fill it with so she needs to watch her gas and inflate the bag with the bubble stream from the exhalations of her last few breaths of gas from her tank rather that removing her mouthpiece and pushing the purge button and she must be sure to put a foot in the ascend loop before the bag gets away from her. Her performance score is heavily dependent on how long she is able to remain at depth not how little air remains in her tank when she reaches the surface because she could intentionally purge gas w/o using it. So crush training teaches tolerance to pain and breath control under adverse conditions and requires steady nerves, all important attributes for young divers (either Domme or Sub) entering the BDSM lifestyle.

Dive-sex bottom time calculations: Typically an experienced diver/escort’s surface air consumption (SAC) rate can vary between .5 and 1.1 cu ft and during orgasm it can rise to 2.5 cuft/min or more. For dive-sex training we assume an average of 2.25 cuft/min. If we assume a surface air consumption rate (SAC) for penetrative dive-sex of 2.25 cuft/min x 5 min = 11.25 cuft on the surface.

Crush training bottom time: For Crush training (with masturbation to orgasm) we are estimating an average of 1.75 cuft/min X 5 min = 8.75 cuft on the surface. At 100 fsw (4 ATA) 8.75 cuft x 4 ATA = 35 cuft divided into the tank capacity 130 cuft = 3.7. To get bottom time in minutes: 3.7x5 = 18.5 minutes and that is w/o any rock bottom time air for ascent and deco so the tank will be empty in about 18 minutes +/- depending on how good the divers breath control is. Breathing regular (21% O2) air if the trainee’s bottom time is no more than 20 minutes she needs no deco stop. Breathing Nitrox II (36% O2) her max bottom time is about 25 minutes bottom time before deco is required. So with good breath control she can get her minutes of bottom time into the low 20s if she can stand the pain of her suits squeeze.

Conception in a drysuit: It’s impossible to have penetrative sex with a man when the woman is in a sealed drysuit. However it’s not impossible for her to become pregnant if the woman had sex a few hours prior to diving and she is wearing the wrong style gas-guard. I’ve written about this before and it’s frustrating to me because this is an area that hasn’t been covered in women’s contraceptive training. We are seeing gas-guard problems more frequently now since the weather is warming up and The Lorelei guests are taking drysuit dive excursions to Lake Mead and Adolph has begun crush training in the well. I’ve tried talking with Adolph about alerting the guests at The Lorelei and his BDSM students who use diaphragms as gas-guards and I’ve talked to both guests at The Lorelei and his students when I meet them, but they don’t seem to understand, until it’s too late.

After Adolph tampers with a woman’s hormonal birth control all she has as backup is her gas-guard and if she remembers what it was like to be fertile before she went on hormones she may use a diaphragm for contraception and feel she is well protected. But the diaphragms that European women are most often fitted with are Milex, which is popular in the EC and will protect them in typical residential swimming pools but neither rim style, arcing or coil spring, will protect them on a dive below 30 feet. As I’ve written so often before they need a Reflexions flat spring rim diaphragm that won’t distort due to pressure during a deep dive and it’s frustrating to try and help and get rebuffed and then I’m sought out when they are in trouble from something that could have been easily avoided by using the proper protective equipment.

So there they are typically having sex in their suites or in ballet class the morning of a deep dive and with fresh semen still in their vaginas are sealed into a drysuit and descend deeper than 30 feet either on an excursion to Lake Mead or in The Well during crush training. The women use no spermicide since they are protected by the pill - so they think – and therefore are in the habit of wearing their gas-guards dry (w/o spermicide) and rim of the diaphragm they are wearing distorts, leaks and semen is suckled into the dome and sperm swim into the diver’s cervix. By examining the fluid collected in the dome when a woman removes her gas-guard she can get an idea if it leaked and she is in trouble or not. But, most of the women haven’t been taught to examine the fluid in their diaphragms immediately upon remove. The fluid can be a mixture of liquefied spermicide, fertile cervical mucus (FCM), natural lube from the anterior vaginal wall, or semen that leaked past the rim. If they were familiar with the differences and something looked suspicious they could take ella right away, but even with the ones who suspect many are reluctant to take EC hoping that they are safe and that none of the fluid was semen leakage and two weeks later they miss their periods and test positive for hCG.

Avoid Lea’s Shield for dive-sex

Lea’s Shield Top view

Lea’s Shield showing the 10 mm vent opening in the bowl

Lea’s shield: Lea’s shield was supposed to be a one-size fits-all cervical barrier with a one-way valve that would allow vaginal discharge to flow out while preventing semen from entering the bowl to reach the wearer’s cervix. I haven’t written about it because while the idea was marvelous the design was flawed so it was taken off the market several years ago and very few women I know and no entertainers use an LS. However, because it was made of surgical grade silicone women and their partners who had the anatomy to use it as intended (for traditional sexual intercourse at one atmosphere of pressure) and liked it still use the Shield so there are still a few in use and it can still be purchased on-line.

Problems with the Shield: One of the problems with Lea’s Shield is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all cervical barrier. At best Lea’s shield is a one-size fits-most device so women with small anatomies found because of the Shields large volume it was difficult or impossible to insert. Or, for those who could insert it and wear it comfortably the valve often hurt a well endowed partner. I take an 80 mm diaphragm so I’m on the upper end of a ‘normal’ size unaroused vagina, but I tent far more than the average woman because when fully aroused and penetrated from the rear I can take an 11 inch man with almost no discomfort. However, with the Shield inserted I can only take 8 inches and the valve, even though it’s very soft, hurt my well endowed partners. So, my Lea’s Shield in its lovely teal bag has ended up as a paperweight and conversation piece on my desk at work.

The Shield and dive-sex: Why I’m writing about Lea’s Shield now is because a 26 y/o woman was brought into the ER side of the clinic just as I was leaving after my usual CD1 menstrual extraction yesterday morning. She had gone into the 20 foot deep pool of a pool bungalow wearing a Lea’s shield as a gas guard. She is a friend of the guest who had reserved the bungalow for a week and she had always before used an arcing spring diaphragm as a gas guard but had forgotten it so wore her normal surface sex protection, the Lea’s Shield into the pool. She had used Semécide, the Dive-Gel with an N9 spermicide, in the bowl of her Shield and wore a bikini and her own single hose reg and a buoyancy vest with integrated weight pockets. The security cams show that after checking her equipment on the surface she released air from her vest and began a rapid descent and at about 5 feet she started to squirm and apparently panicked. She tried to inflate her vest and drop her weights but managed to do neither and she continued to sink to the bottom doubled over and writhing in pain with her fingers inserted in her vagina. The guest, her boyfriend, was ready to start his descent and emptied his BCD and sank to her side in less than a minute then hit the fill valves on both their buoyancy compensators and made an a emergency ascent and pulled her to the shallow end and out of the pool.

Fortunately she was using her own dive gear so the casino isn’t liable for damages and having pool access she had signed a waver one section of which spelled out the gas guards a woman should use (which does not include Lea’s Shield) if she intended to have pool-sex. So I think we are in the clear as far as legalities go. With other style cervical caps; FemCap, Prentif or Oves the silicone or latex of the dome is so soft and small that the dome can collapse around or on to the cervix and there will be no (in the case of Oves) or very little squeeze in the case of Prentif or FemCap. That is often not the case with a Lea’s Shield.

The bowl void: The problem is that the dome, which the manufacturer calls the bowl, is large, 30 mm wide, to accommodate women who have given birth. That means it is too large for most women who have never been pregnant so there is a large surface pressure void in the bowl. And the bowl is very stiff which means that if the wearer descends to much depth at all and she has a large void in the bowl the surrounding water pressure will squeeze her cervix and the neck of her uterus into the bowl to fill the void and then squeeze her cervix out through the 10 mm opening between the bowl and the one-way valve that is kept shut by being compressed between the rear vaginal wall and the outer surface of the bowl. We are talking about the diameter of a small cervix being 20 to 22 mm so having that squeezed through a 10 mm hole gives you some idea that the process is unbelievably painful even though the cervix itself has few nerves in it. Having ones cervix crushed by pressure squeeze while diving the first indication is severe cramps and then a sickening searing pain. The interior of the cervix is full of blood vessels and once they are ruptured the woman bleeds freely and the hemorrhaging is difficult to stop.

The ER Gyn sedated her gave her a unit of blood and opened her vagina with a speculum, then had to cut through the thick silicone dome of the bowl with a laser knife to break the vacuum so the shield could be removed. Then a tube was inserted through her cervix to allow drainage and the cervix was injected with a med to cause the wounds to clot and her vagina was packed with gauze and she was sent to the private hospital the casino uses which specializes in reproductive tract trauma. Rebuilding a cervix is tricky and I’m guessing if she is able to carry a pregnancy to term she will never be able to give birth vaginally or she will almost certainly tear.

Flooding a Kirby Morgan

Use a Milex gas guard – when only the best will do

Flooding a Kirby Morgan: Returning readers remember that I changed the neoprene neck dam in Kim’s KMH-16 for one that fit me when I harvested it after her suffocation (Or should that be drowning?) when she died from fluid in her lungs caused by breathing chlorine gas maliciously pumped into her helmet. [For more about that see my entry for November 17, 2009, Gassed and suffocated.] When she was found we think she had been on the bottom with pressurized chlorine gas in her helmet for more than three hours. The Divemaster said the neck dam would have had to be replaced anyway because chlorine gas reacts with neoprene to rapidly destroy it so the one Kim was using was no longer safe. The neck dam is the only thing in the helmet that is neoprene, though latex neck dams are an available option. Neoprene is warmer and usually lasts longer so I think neoprene is pretty standard.

I’m mentioning this because the Divemaster put the old chlorine impregnated neck dam in the trash when she replaced it with a new one in my size and certified Kim’s old helmet safe and ready to dive. And now there has been an incident with the failure of a KMH-16 neoprene neck dam. From what I understand it appears to have been caused by deterioration from a corrosive chemical. We think what happened was that a 17 y/o boy who was into diving as a hobby found the neck dam while dumpster diving the casino’s trash and took it home to replace one that had torn in a secondhand KMH he was diving. Security had caught him in the dumpsters several times and escorted him off the property so he was known to them. He was on the bottom of the 15 ft dive well of his parents pool with his girlfriend when his surface supplied air shut off. He should have been ok long enough to be able to get to the surface if the safety features of his helmet had been working properly, but the gas supply non-return valve failed (inspection showed later that there was grit holding the valve open.) and the helmet lost gas pressure and the resulting ‘squeeze’ put such a strain on the deteriorated neoprene of the neck dam that it tore and the helmet flooded. This happened very quickly, our Divemaster thinks it took less than a minute. The squeeze that occurred before the flooding compressed the stiff deteriorated neoprene of the neck sheath causing it to corrugate and crush the small bones and vertebra in his neck as the water pressure pushed the neck dam toward the top of the helmet. If he was still alive when the neck dam ruptured he drowned. He didn’t have time to unfasten his weighted dive boots and attempt an emergency ascent. The girl he was having dive-sex with at the time is safe. She was wearing a single hose regulator SCUBA set so wasn’t affected by the surface supply air failure, but she freaked out and is in therapy. We don’t know for sure that he was using the weakened neck dam from Kim’s helmet, but the coincidence is striking. In hindsight we probably should have slit the chlorine deteriorated neck dam to make it obviously unusable before throwing it in the trash. Dive fatalities usually occur from a series of equipment failures or mistakes rather than one major one. The failure of the non-return valve was major and probably was fatal, but the rupture of the neck dam from the stress of being pushed into the helmet immediately afterward sealed his fate. Life support gear like diving equipment should be inspected and have routine maintenance like lubrication and replacing gaskets and seals performed at least once a year or more frequently if used in harsh environments. The boy’s helmet hadn’t been properly maintained and certified as safe since the boy bought it several years ago.

Thanksgiving plans: I am having my friends over for dinner and to watch the parade and sports. I’ve invited Taryn, Cyndi, Anya, Shelly, Marie-Claude, Diané, Chris, Chuck, Pirate and Robin, Peter and Jacques and perhaps another man. Shelly and Marie-Claude need partners for holiday sex and I’m not sure who they will be yet. Perhaps Robin will be with Marie-Claude they make a lovely couple. I’ve talked with Jacques and emotionally he has moved on, to me I hope, and said he doesn’t mind Marie-Claude being in someone else’s bed and he seemed sincere when he said it, but if he is now interested in me as a recreational sex partner he couldn’t possibly have given me a different answer. Given how shabbily Shelly was treated by her new husband Rubberstud before he and a paramour disappeared off a cruise ship in the Caribbean she is taking a while to begin to put herself into the dating scene again. But as a young widow with emotional and physical needs she has recently been looking for a bed mate and I hope she or we can find her one by Thanksgiving. If it isn’t love by then infatuation or just raw lust will do. The girls are all bringing their Milex gas guards as there will be group dive-sex.

Barbers, beards and breasts: For long weekends or holidays with a lot of male guests I hire a barber, one who is an expert with a straight razor. It is very painful for a woman to have a lover caress her breasts with sandpaper beard stubble. That just tears up the sensitive tissue of a girl’s areolae horribly. So the easiest way around that is to have a barber on site who can give the men in the party a close shave twice or sometimes more each day. My women guests think that’s a marvelous idea!

Heather and Alison: I had a comment from a friend and returning reader about the women in my November 16, 2009 post ‘Brotherly love and incest’. Bryan thinks it doesn’t seem right that Heather wants her step-daughter, Alison, to become a Sub in the D/S subculture. I can understand his skepticism. However, in my experience sometimes you can't tell which way a person will swing Domme or Sub. I think Heather can go either way just as I can, depending on the situation. I think Heather wants Alison under her control so she can steer her away from her psychological need for sex with her father who is Heather’s new husband. Bringing Alison into the D/S as a sub will strengthen her grip on Alison's vulnerabilities. And, just because Alison is introduced into the D/S lifestyle as a Sub doesn’t necessarily mean that she will always be a Sub. I was introduced to BDSM as a Sub and accepted that as an entry position and learned the rules of the subculture from my master. The master who trains you has a huge influence on how a girl turns out and I’ve seen some gorgeous and talented girls broken by extremely sadistic masters who gave no praise or encouragement regardless of how well the girl performed. So Heather’s choice of Master for her step-daughter or who gets Alison if she is auctioned at a Sub-sale is crucial.

I’m hoping that Heather doesn’t decide to enter Alison in a Sub-auction. She doesn’t need the money and the likelihood of Alison being taken out of town by the winning bidder is pretty high as Vegas auctions have some of the highest quality female Subs available at auction in the U.S. If all she wants is just to steer Alison into the sub-culture she should be able to do that with a local master who wants a lovely new Sub to dominate and will give her a 2-year contract.