By slaveobjectx

I had known it as the Academy Training Center. It only advertised in the pages of Drummer, the pioneering gay BDSM magazine, which all leathermen were addicted to if they could get hold of it. It was banned in the UK. I picked up copies if I visited NYC or Amsterdam. Jack Fritscher also wrote an article for Drummer about The Academy, and this is still available online. My memories provide a kind of partial coda to that account and also give a slightly different, and I believe truer version, of how The Academy ended and The Jail Training Center came into being.

For those of you who know nothing of The Academy, I’ll fill you in a little here. It started in the late 1980s and, at that time, was situated in Missouri. What it offered — at a hefty price — was a ‘real’ jail experience. I say ‘real’ because it differed in some interesting ways from a true jail experience. It’s an undoubted fact that the guards were recruited from either serving or ex-serving prison guards and police officers. But sex was in no way part of the equation.

Undoubtedly, the men who traveled from all over the world and paid for the experience were motivated by erotic impulses — most of the inmates were gay, but straight guys were not unknown and they would all have some lame excuse for why they were there, rather than saying it was a huge turn on. It was also less ‘real’ than the authentic experience as it appears to have been stricter and more verbally and physically abusive than would be permitted in a real jail. The guards seemed to need, for whatever reason, a less tightly controlled environment, and The Academy provided that.

I heard stories of guys who could not endure it and who demanded release, or who found that their choices set out on application forms were being ignored — and in both cases, the guards stopped their super macho acts and became polite and apologetic! The inmates — like any punter with a prostitute — held the upper hand as they were the customers and the guards in effect their servants.

I had a mentor in the late 1990s who was seriously into incarceration scenarios, both as Top and bottom, and who had an immense influence on my own development in the BDSM world. He had visited The Academy and loved the experience — his only regret was that there was no overt sexual activity. Sex took place in the mind.

At some point The Academy had shifted its location along the way and was now based north of Atlanta. This was the place that I was to visit, although its purposes had changed or rather were changing in its re-launch as The Jail Training Center.

I’ll digress here a little to say something about my own experiences with incarceration, as both sub and Top. Who knows where these interests and impulses are born but long before the onset of puberty, I was drawn to ideas of prison, of slavery (especially in the ancient Roman world), of chains and shackles and handcuffs —- always steel. Steel has more of a psychological impact than rope as one can go on hoping that one might cut ropes somehow and escape from the state of slavery or imprisonment. When an awareness of sex and sexuality cut in, I was motivated always by fantasies of involuntary, no-way-out slavery and imprisonment. I chose London as my university because that was where gay action and BDSM action was to be found. I was a lousy sub/slave. I was very manipulative. The upshot of this was that I found little satisfaction in submitting.

In any case, imprisonment was very much a niche activity. In London few guys had the facilities. I met one who had — this mentor that I mentioned. He gave me my first real experience where I was kept in a cell and brought out to serve. There was a lot of interaction during the three days I spent at his place, as well as activities like boot cleaning — learning the perfect method as employed by the British Army. I was also introduced to a cage for the first time. My online nickname became cageslave.

With various Tops I extended the challenges of incarceration, building slowly through more and more intense periods of confinement with less and less interaction with the Top until I reached the biggest challenge to date — 72 hours with no interaction at all, no food, caged, heavily chained, in darkness with only water to drink and a bucket for bodily functions.

With no outer stimulation, the only way to go is inward. At first I found the situation erotic — the weight and feel of the chains even if I could not see them. But boredom quickly set in. I had to travel through that by singing songs I knew. Time passed and that’s when something new took over. You drift and lose sense of time. And even of place. It is as if I was floating…

And then I discovered what a computer system the brain is, storing information that I had thought long forgotten. Suddenly, I could remember the words of songs. Physical discomfort would call a halt to this feeling of floating but back it would come.

It was not long after that experience that cageslave became Cager. I feel now it was inevitable, given how controlling I had been as a sub. I soon set up my own facility, transforming a cellar into a small dungeon with a cage. I fully equipped myself and I discovered that although it is a niche interest, it is a powerful one and attracts guys who want experiences more than the sexual and sensual.

I got to know someone online — and we really enjoyed discussing imprisonment scenarios. Both of us are Tops but had also experienced prison and cage situations as subs, which was very much the case always in Old Guard days. You had to serve an apprenticeship as a sub before becoming a Top, the idea being that you will understand what a sub goes through both mentally and physically. I know what heavy chains feel like, and what being incarcerated in total darkness for days on end does to the mind.

My new online friend, Mike, then told me what was happening with regard to the new Jail Training Center. The guy who is credited with being the mastermind of The Academy was a certain Chip Weichelt. I can safely write about him now, as he died in 2003. The original idea for The Academy may indeed have been his but he lacked the money to make it a reality. I don’t know if he had a backer but the move to Georgia was paid for by an elderly gentleman called Charles. His money transformed the enormous (5,000 square feet) of his basement into an authentic jail environment. It housed six prisoners in a variety of cells, including a punishment cell, which was padded and sound proofed.

The whole jail area included a break room with TV for the guards, and a kitchen for the creation of prison food. In the garage was a real police car. Chip had expensive tastes… In particular, he loved cars and had quite a collection. Jack Fritscher recounts Chip’s story about why he left The Center, but the story I heard from Charles and Mike was different. Basically, he was cooking the books and taking far more than his fair share of the profits. Charles was being ripped off so he sacked Chip. As part of the Center’s remit, Chip made a number of videos which were available for purchase. Charles was a very benevolent gentleman with a good heart, a generous nature as well as a predisposition to incarceration. But enough was enough and out went Chip.

In addition, the total privacy of the place was compromised when some of the videos fell into police hands and they recognised some of their own. However, because the guys were doing it in their own time, not committing any crimes and not wearing their official uniforms, there was no case and the matter was dropped. Enter Mike! He was a longtime friend of Charles and now he was charged with revitalising The Center. It was now going to be directed at gay men with a passion for BDSM including sex.

Now, I believe this was quite difficult as Georgia, at that time (and maybe still today), had very strict laws regarding gay sexual acts. And though sex shops existed, any sexual item was invariably described as a toy for display purposes only. So dildoes and the like were sold as sculptures…

The new Jail Training Center might now lack the macho professionalism of The Academy — but it was going to be run by gays for gays and would cover a range of fetish interests including a lot of bondage, and such activities as Brig incarceration for military enthusiasts as well as more fringe activities like diapers and dog role play.

At that time there was no puppy scene, and the dog scene was more clearly an SM activity. I was big into dog play at that time and had recently written a long article about it for a BDSM gay publication in USA. Bringing a gay element into the whole thing was going to be fraught with problems. However, Mike was determined to plough ahead and had a weekend experience in mind for some lucky inmates. It was to be a trial run, so there would be no charge. The inmates needed only to get there on their own and the rest was spoken for. Gone were the professional guards who had to be paid — for this experiment there would be only two amateurs — Mike and me — keen amateurs and both with a lot of experience in dealing with the psychology of incarceration and adept in the use of restraints and with other strings to our bows.

We believed we were ready to bring the trial weekend off successfully. But little did we know there would be problems ahead with one of the inmates — an ex-Marine.

End of Part One.

Metal would like to thank the author, slaveobjectx, for this write-up!

To read Jack Fritscher’s article that appeared in Drummer, click here.