Backstage, Before and After

My apologies for actual transgressions getting me nowhere in Please Not My Hands, completely breaking character and scene as I sob, "I'm sorry... really I am... I was just scared of the tawsing all day."

I wish I had another camera just to show you the comedy that is "backstage," aka the other side of my living room. You can only imagine the sight of me running back and forth between a tripod and the piece of furniture I'll be bending over in the shoot. Hit record, run forward, test the shadows, bend over, wiggle around, rise up on my toes, arch my back, then go back to the camera to review the twenty seconds of film, critique the curves of my bottom, and move the whole set-up to what I hope will be a more flattering angle.

It's a frustrating and time-consuming process. By the time we're ready to shoot for real, I've become so bratty and bitchy that Mr. Williams is quite ready to punish me for real. In Please Not My Hands (the title we settled on for the tawsing clip), my apologies once I break down are very real. We'd had an issue about capturing both the top of my head and the top of my thighs in a single shot, and I became quite testy, insistent that the top of my head was very important. By the time I've taken my tawsing and Mr. Williams has taken me over his knee, I'm sobbing and apologizing legitimately, which I think is the first time a film punishment has been both real punishment for bad behavior and real repentance for the same.

Afterwards, I was so worn out with both the weeping and the whipping, I didn't want to stand up. The film ends with me rising, rubbing my bottom and collapsing a bit against the wall in front of me. I collapsed more after that. Something that wasn't caught on film was me with my face pressed against the lightswitch on the wall, sobbing, "---, I need you." He held me for the longest time, telling me it was okay, that he wasn't actually mad at me for being so bratty beforehand. Then, after I'd calmed down, I leaned back over the chair just to rest a moment, and suddenly it was a photoshoot, my red bottom and welts captured for posterity and posting.

I originally intended to write more about the process of dealing with the photos afterwards, but as I was writing I realized I hadn't written about the rest of the punishment, about the penitential aspects of it, past the intimacy of beginning with my hands. I haven't had Mr. Williams make a sample to post here because I can't get past the wholeness of the experience. I can't say, as I have come to do after a film edit is complete, "Well, get two strokes of that, and then lead into there, where I rise up and my bottom looks tighter, and then...." There is no single shot or two that captures what I experienced. I don't want to just be a disembodied backside. As soon as the actual punishment begins on screen, I lose all sense of character and scene and it's just us, husband and wife, punisher and punishee. My heart and soul are literally pouring out along with my tears and I just can't find a way to edit those pieces of me down.