A few months ago when I started talking to my now-editor, I joked that I was Tom Hardy's twin brother Joe (due to my habit of using Hardy as my icon online... not that he has a twin brother for real ). Fast forward to last week when, out of nowhere, I was reminded that my first love just happened to have been named Joe Hardy.

Yup.  Joe Hardy from The Hardy Boys books.

This is how he's described on the wikipedia page:

Joe Hardy is 17 years old, with light blond hair, blue eyes, and a muscular frame.

Dreamy, right? *laughs* That's him and his brother on the spine

Ah, Joe. I don't think I pined longer for any other fictional character (sorry, Rick Hunter from Robotech and Dusty from GI Joe... and Spiderman). He just seemed so perfect to me. Not as bright as his older brother Frank, certainly... but Joe went with his gut, something I really admired.

I met Joe when my mother's youngest cousin—we'll call him Richard—dropped off a big box of books at my house one day when I was around eight years old. I really idolized Richard. He was the coolest guy I knew... I wanted to grow up to be just like him: he was 6'4, looked a little like David Bowie, had gerbils, read comic books, and had a computer. He even had a really cool fake fur rug in his room. So you can understand my excitement at inheriting a box of his stuff. I looked inside and saw nothing but blue books. They looked sort of dull from the side, a little like a set of encyclopaedias, but the covers were interesting when I pulled them out and, when I cracked open that first musty book... I fell in love.

I had the first 37 books in the series - The Tower Treasure to The Ghost at Skeleton Rock. I must have read them all at least a dozen times.

Now... not only was I in love with Joe, but I discovered something about myself over the course of that first year. And it was due to this cover:

There was something crazy interesting about this cover for me. It was the look on Joe's face. The fact that the gag pressed into his skin. The way he was restrained. It made me feel... excited.

I would lie in bed and think about Joe tied up a lot.

Eventually fantasies grew out of it.

Joe and I would be alone in the room together. He was tied to the chair just like in the cover, but it was me who had tied him up. I would start to touch him - his face, his neck, his shoulders over his shirt. He would struggle, and his eyes would plead with me. I would laugh and shake my head. Sometimes I would straddle him so I could hold his head steady while I forced him to look into my eyes. I wanted him to know that I was the boss and that he had to do what I said—to let me touch him and maybe even kiss him (hey I was nine)—and I would let him go. I often wanted to punish him for struggling. Sometimes I would take out a knife and start cutting his shirt off. Sometimes I'd cut the gag off too so I could hear him beg and promise to be good... 

It was intoxicating.

Now... looking back, the fantasies were a bit on the abuse/non-con side, but I was just going on what was making me excited. In fact, in my fantasies, Joe always realized that he was in love with me and it would be a mutual happy ending.

It would take another eight years before I made the stunning discovery that there existed people out there that wanted to be tied up. That enjoyed begging. That got off on giving me complete control.

And that, my friends, was a glorious, fan-fuckingtastic day for me.

So... a big thank you to Joe, the first Hardy I obsessed over, for introducing me to my kinky side. *grin*