I Like to Be Told

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Let's All Beat Abby

Since I was a teen, one of my recurring fantasy scenarios is that of being spanked in a public or semi-public setting. As often happens, I was surprised when I found myself orgasming to something that hadn't occurred to me in normal thought. It worked, though. I've carried this one with me for at least fifteen years.

I'd been a naughty girl, but my parents, who didn't believe in doing the spanking themselves, had sent me to a neighbor's house for my punishment. (In other versions, it was a wicked uncle, and--this is fun--later on it was the man who would become my husband as a character who ran a spanking operation that looked like a noir detective agency, complete with the huge wooden desk that nearly fills the front room and a frosted glass door leading to the punishment room.)

This time, after the lecturing and the tucking of my skirt into the waistband of my panties, he opened the curtains that had been covering the French window in the front room. A small crowd of people had gathered on his lawn and were leering in at us. I shrieked; he laughed, placing a wooden chair just feet from the glass. "Over my knee, young lady," he demanded, commanding me to leave the corner in which I'd placed myself in attempt to hide from the neighborhood crowd.

I shuffled over to him, grateful my panties were still up, and, tears already in my eyes, awkwardly bent myself over his lap. Immediately my left arm was in his grasp and held against the small of my back. I kicked and squirmed. "They're watching!" I cried. "You can't do this! My parents didn't ask you to do this!"

He laughed again. "Oh, but they did," he said, slapping my cotton-clad bottom lightly, as if in jest. "In your galavanting, you have crushed Mrs. Johnson's herb garden, Mr. Alan's exotic rose bushes, Miss Violet's pansies and impatiens, and cracked Mr. Smith's new walkway. You broke the latch on your parents' back gate and at least three slats of the fence that is meant to keep miscreants like you and your boyfriends out of the woods behind my yard. Shall I continue?"

"No, sir," I gulped. He was right. My friends and, yes, some of them boyfriends, had been sneaking around late at night when we were supposed to be in our own beds or at slumber parties. Apparently, we hadn't been exactly careful in the sneaking.

"Your parents let everyone on the block know of your punishment." He slapped my right bottom-cheek quite firmly, three times in a row. I moaned and wiggled. "You're lucky they didn't offer to let everyone have an equal go at you." Three quick slaps to the left side made me writhe all the more, more in embarrassment than pain. I snuck a glance towards the window and saw Miss Violet nodding in approval. The set line of Mr. Smith's face led me to believe that he would have accepted his turn on my backside had he been given the chance.

My attention was drawn back to my predicament when I felt my panties being yanked down to the tops of my thighs. "I'm not a little girl anymore," I cried. "You can't let them seeeeeee..."

"Stop whining." His hand began to land in steady firm smacks back and forth across my bottom. "A little girl might not realize when she's stomping on prize-winning roses, but you ought to know the difference between a bare patch and a bush, shouldn't you?" I felt both sets of cheeks growing red. "And a real young woman does not dally with her boyfriends behind fences at midnight, does she?" The spanking was relentless now. As I kicked, my panties slid down my thighs. He followed their progress with firm slaps before trailing back up to his main target. "I ought to let them in," he told me. "Let each of them whip you as they see fit. Would that teach you not to trample from one yard to the next? If instead you are beaten with hand then strap then paddle, from one lap to the next?"

I always come at the word "beaten" and this first fantasy of a public spanking was no exception, and so there is no more of this particular tale. If it had continued, would I have been beaten by the band of neighbors after all? Of course, in due time. In some versions, the neighbor has set out implements for them to choose from, the only rule being that the same implement cannot be used twice. In another version, there is a lottery, or I get to choose who gets to punish me, only to find that I've chosen terribly, terribly incorrectly.

I've never been spanked publically in reality. I'm not sure I'd want to be. Our bedroom being a yard away from our neighbors' front porch is probably close enough. But my mind comes back to scenes such as this one, so rife with shame and humilation along with the promise of punishment. Sometimes the set up is so good I don't even get to the spanking. It's the possibility that gets me, I think. Anyone could be watching. Anyone, though even in fantasy these days it's anyone as long as it's my husband's hands and face, could have a go at my backside.

Today I finally added a stat-tracker and found one of the biggest turn ons of all for a spanking exhibitionist, even a secret one like me. Anyone could be reading this. Judging by the list of countries that has popped up this afternoon alone, everyone's having a mental go at my backside after all.

(I should start noting where I'm stealing my titles from, even if I can't always remember where I've found some of the pictures I post. This time it was inspired by Ray Bradbury's Let's All Kill Constance.)

Santa's Not the Only One With Pink Cheeks!

Merry Christmas!!!

Now to go play with our new toys...

xoxo,

Abby

Self Discipline

This odd figurine turned up when searching under the keyword "discipline" on eBay. Apparently, she is part of a line of figurines called Vintage Virtues. I appreciate gathering one's own birching twigs as being a vintage virtue. And she does it so happily! "Hurray, I am so excited to be gathering my own birching twigs that I went out barefoot to do it," says our little modicum of self discipline. Is she going to birch herself? Was the birching her idea? Is the true meaning of self discipline that self control is less important than admitting when one deserves punishment?

If so, I am a self-disciplinarian of unequaled measure! Even when it comes to my Internet "Favorites," I have a folder entitled Spank Me, with a subfolder of implement toy-stores called Beat Me. I manage to work the subject into most text message conversations with my husband during the day, and by the time we get to talk and see one another in the evening, I have all but turned myself over his knee. So much and so often do I beg for punishment that I think I may have made it impossible to actually be punished. After all, the best spanking stories are not exactly the ones in which the schoolgirl runs to the headmaster's office after misbehaving, calling out along the way, "Get out the long cane! I ought to be disciplined quite severely!"

Afterwards is a different story, of course. I just read a wonderful story called "Value for Money" (Hi R! Hope it's ok that I quote this. Didn't think you'd want your name in here, though!) in which the soundly punished girl says to the Headmaster after her punishment, "Thank you very much for caning my bare bottom. It was richly deserved." That acquiescence, that change of heart, is one of the elements of a good scene. If a change of heart were to occur after my pleading for a paddling (um, not really a paddling, please, Sir, it was just good alliteration), I would end up impertinent and outraged at the end. That sounds like a terrible ending for everyone.

The message I am attempting to learn here is that I'm probably not going to get what I want by asking for it. I can make implements aplenty arrive at our door (thank you Phil at Conventry and where on earth is our tawse, MC Customs? just in case anyone out there reads my blog), but putting them into my love's hand is seemingly something I have to earn by more than begging. I suppose this entry isn't helping any. Points (or demerits!) for honesty?

So. Perhaps I will try not to take the advice of this little vintage virtuoso so seriously. It's not about self discipline. It's about running amok and being terribly naughty and, well... letting the fates of flagellation take it from there. (Really, I just like alliteration.)

Jeal-ass-y

I've just realized that I've seen the naked bits of far too many girls lately. Good chance, if you're reading this, you have too. It's not that I'm about to diatribe about naked girls in this favored genre. If I'm seeing so many of them, I obviously don't have an actual problem with them. It's just--well, it's Christmastime. Somebody buy these poor girls some panties.

Seriously though, I think my bottom is jealous. How often I think to myself on a random Tuesday, as I'm adding up numbers for general ledger accounts, Gosh, I wish I could just get beaten for a living. Since that's not an option, I've tried writing spanking fiction recently, but there is too much of the Would-Be-Great-American-Novelist in me. I start giving what should be a page-long scene a full novel-sized scenario and I realize that if I'm going to have my way, I will have to start a whole new genre of mainstream spanking fiction. I can't draw, so artwork is off the option list. So, no spanking as a livelihood for me. My only option is to make the most of it at home.

My computer is obviously making the most of it. More so than I am, I think. Its bookmarks and history files are literally clogged with naked bottoms. I know the computer spends far more time with naked bottoms than we get to spend with mine. Hence, my ass wishes it was on the computer.

I realize this is an absurdity in and of itself, as my ass is on the computer. Right here and now, not to mention in the archives. No ass, no blog. But it's not the same. If it was my livelihood, I would have to give it the attention it deserves. Instead, I've spent a month away from this blog, which only goes to show that it was a month before I had a spanking to inspire me. What kind of girl have I become that I complain when I can sit down comfortably?

I tried giving my own bottom attention by purchasing it new attire. Victoria's Secret has an entertaining pair of red panties in their Pink line with the words "Gimme More Pink" across the backside. Even my underwear now demands a spanking! I tried gussying it up in lacy Bel Nientes. It still demands more. I tried giving it entertainment--it turns out my arse is really terrible at watching movies and wants to fast-forward through the bits with the talking. It's lucky that Merchant & Ivory never made spanking films--I'd never get a chance to appreciate the costumes and clipped accents.

So what's a girl to do? Besides run away to Scotland? I really do love and appreciate many of the girls out there who go through a great deal to get onto hard drives like ours. After all, I know I'm getting Niki Flynn's Dancing with Werewolves for Christmas, and I'm thinking of asking for the paddle named after Amy Hunter for my birthday. But, even if it was only within the confines of my own house, I wish I could take their place.

Core

Sometimes during sex I see images in my eyelids. Most recently it was a mosaic of turquoise, rippling like stained glass under water. For a time it was a bare cherry tree, Japanese brush strokes stark against an expanse of white. When I was younger, I saw a ship with golden sails, distant against a gray horizon. I was often overcome with the beauty of the visions, but I never lost my place, my rhythm, or my partner. I've never been overcome with the occurences inside my own eyes.

During a spanking, I see the swing of my husband's arm in the corner of my eye. I see the rumpled tan of the comforter on bed, the speckled plaster on the library walls, the grain in the wood of the desk. If I'm bent over, wrists to ankles and hair in my eyes, I see glimpses of my bare toes curled or my reflection in the patent leather of my Mary Janes. I may see tears gather on the hardwood floor. I am present, whether I am counting or squirming or stamping my foot in defiance. I am anxiously awaiting that one stroke that takes me from wanton to weeping. I wouldn't miss that moment for anything--

anything, except, apparently, for a blinding white light.

The last time we played, I missed the ending of my punishment. It had been about a month since my last spanking, so we were at it for a while. A long warm up led to one of my more intense strappings, the leather strap being my current fantasy implement of choice. We experimented with our three barber strops, each of different weight and texture, the results of which remain in violet outline upon my bottom a week later. By the time I goaded him into caning me, the scene could have been over. Instead, I began describing what might happen next, the stripes as they would appear on my already terribly pink flesh, the way I might cry out, the way it might make me come.

In moments, the strokes were raining upon my upturned backside. Firmly, not viciously but controlled, stern and agonizing. I remember flashes of pain unlike anything I'd experienced before, fascinating even now both because they hurt like nothing else ever had and because I was so aroused.

I don't like pain. I struggled with this statement for years, not understanding what I was, what I wanted, until very recently. I had even, for a while, settled with the invented term "self-sadist" rather than call myself a masochist, because it is so very much not what I am or what punishment is about for me. Experiencing pleasure at what was surely one of my most painful experiences of punishment was terrifying and overwhelming and exhilarating. And then it was over.

Afterwards, I knew I had been thrashed. I had bruised my sternum on the edge of the desk and a seemingly brutal diagonal welt across the crease of my left bottom cheek was proof of just how much I had thrown myself out of target. My thighs were sticky and the source throbbed in time with my racing heart. I've never missed an orgasm before, nevermind the last strokes of a caning, but this time, all I could remember was white lightning. He held me and I tried to remember, but all I had was an intense sensation of bliss and burning and blankness.

I've gone back to that moment countless times in the past week. I keep thinking the initial shock of the experience will pale to a more exact memory of what I felt there at the end, but all I am left with is a craving to experience it again. I'm afraid of myself a bit for this. I know I've been wanting to go farther, into the extremes of what we do, deeper into the dark places. I'd never have thought that the deepest, darkest core of me was so filled with light. I want more.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Cane

Photo from Red Charls. Note the quivering end of the cane.

The cane was once my ultimate squick. As a college girl, encountering my first spanking films and stories online, it was "the thing to be avoided." Most of my time was spent on Laura's Spanking Corner, and if a story, even my beloved schoolgirl stories by Mary Catherine and Daria Little, started to become a caning scene, it was the back button for me. My terror was not decreased in my search for free videos and encountering snippets of what was then Rigid East. I remember watching in utter horror as Pavel Šťastný caned a Czech girl strapped to her desk. (I just looked this film up on RGE Films and the girl was Drahuše Brdečková in "From the Headmaster's Study: A Note for Absence.") The clip was only 30 seconds and it was far too much for me.

See a preview here.

I maintained this squirmishness until my mid-twenties, when I met the man who would become my husband. Flirting in the bookstore in which we both worked, our jokes and teasing comments made it more and more obvious that we were of like minds with the exception that, as we are in most things, we were opposite sides of the same coin. We quickly learned that he was a top and I was a bottom. Then came the terrifying news. I was still afraid of the cane. It was his favorite implement.

He called it the whippy stick. I called it the "No, no, no way in hell am I getting beaten with that stick" stick. He took advantage of our place of employment and special ordered me an early favorite of his, a Blue Moon novel by Richard Manton called Fancy Girl. Rife with delicious punishments, it also included the first caning scene I read in its entirety. I'm still not sure which made me so wet upon reading it--the scene itself, or the knowledge that it was something he wanted to do to me.

So it came to be that he caned me two years before he kissed me. We went on the first of our now many implement shopping trips. At Target, we found a perfectly flat-backed square wooden hairbrush, an item that maintains a place near the bed or the schoolbench to this day. At Home Depot, in the outdoor gardening area, we found a bundle of dried bamboo. Red-faced, I was made to carry it to the cash register. No one could have known that the bamboo canes were to be applied to my bottom rather than a gardening purpose, but one look at my face and I'm sure my excited shame showed through.

The events that transpired back at his house are now a blur of exhaltation and agony. I know he cut the bamboo down to cane-lengths, about a yard long each. I remember the swish as he tested them against the air. I believe that he warmed my bottom with hand and brush before the caning, but what I remember clearly, so clearly, is being told to bend down and touch my ankles--a new position for my limited spanking repertoire. I remember trembling.

He told me to count, and I tried. Each stroke brought a pain so quick and sharp, unlike anything I'd ever felt, that with each stroke, I thought that I would die. Three sets of six. I lost count on the way to six at least once. I'm sure I cried, but the only wetness I now remember is the one between my legs, juices webbing across my thighs, aching for the touch that would for years be denied. Even so, the stripes and bruises left on my flesh were indelible. The cane had claimed me. So had he.

We whisper now of how I will be caned. Whether he'll strap me to the bench or bend me down to touch my toes, my tears leaving tracks on the hardwood floor. Whether I will count or if, as he likes to tenderly threaten close to my ear, the caning will just go on... and on. I like to tell him how much I want it, how much I deserve it--as long as it's not happening yet. Once I am in position, waiting for that first stroke, I am again terrified, trembling and convinced that I can't take it, that I will never be able to count to six, or tweleve, or twenty-four, or more. Then he begins, and my only fear is that he will stop at six, or twelve, or twenty-four, or...

The book that started it all, and my very first spanking-related gift.

Two Eyes!

Just a really quick update to say I am ok! Thank you all so much for your good thoughts and well wishes. They must have helped! It's not glaucoma. In short, I had a scratch in my cornea which healed poorly, and every time I'd wake up or move my eyes quickly, I was tearing the new cells of my eye right off. So now I have eye drops to keep me from ripping my eye into pieces. And hopefully more interesting stories from now on. :-)

To See or Not to See (A Whiny One-Eyed Blogger Moment)

Happy Halloween early, just in case.

Since beginning this blog, I've made an effort to tie my life events into spanking fodder, or at least, fodder for writing about spanking. But as I've written about lately, I've been having a harder and harder time of dealing with life, nevermind this thing we do. I can't remember the last time I had a real spanking. August, maybe? I can't remember the last time I felt I was really truly up for one. Nonetheless, one probably would have done me good.

Now I find myself in a situation that spanking cannot fix, or even aleve, and I am quite sad over this. For the first time this autumn, I am ready to be punished. I feel silly for having been such a bundle of nerves, for not having taking steps to deal with it long ago. Now that I am dealing with it, having seen a doctor, stopped drinking, and taken to going to the gym a few times a week, I am ready to put all the stress behind me--quite literally. But no punishment, not even a good caning, is going to beat the pressure out of my eye.

My eyes have always had high pressure readings. Doctors have always told me that I am in a high risk group for glaucoma. I've never worried about it, because the other women in my family have also had high pressure readings, but have never encountered problems. Lucky me, I get to be the first.

Two weeks ago, I woke up and had shooting pain in my left eye. I couldn't keep it open. Light, movement, everything made it hurt more. It excessively watered, literally blinding me with tears. I figured I'd scratched or abrased my cornea, and that it would heal. It didn't. Last Wednesday, the pain worsened. I began to feel that it hurt when I would blink. I spent half my work day with my hand over my eye. The same on Thursday. By Friday, I couldn't drive. My husband drove me to work. A co-worker drove me to my doctor in the afternoon.

He couldn't find anything wrong, although he witnessed the excessive watering and the light sensitivity, which he termed photophobia. Nothing was scratched, abrased, or trapped. My symptoms, he said, matched early glaucoma and optic neuritis, a condition that often indicates the onset of multiple sclerosis. He set me up with an emergency appointment with an opthamologist on Monday. I have spent all weekend wondering if I'm going to go blind. In otherwords, I have been terrified.

My husband has taken beautiful care of me. He kept his arms wrapped around me all of Friday night and Saturday, and he'll be with me when I get out of the doctor's tomorrow, so I'll have support no matter what the outcome.

I'm not sure why I'm writing about this. Just to calm myself, I suppose. Putting life into words always makes a situation less painful, whether that situation is a trip over the schooldesk or a trip to the hospital. Let's hope I'm back over that schooldesk again in no time.

A Slut of a Different Color?

Well, so much for not thinking about it. My bottom is just way too white these days, so I took the "How Spankable are You?" test to double-check that I'm still me. I apparently passed the test with flying red colors. Not only do I enjoy a good spanking, the test has gone so far as to call me names--I am a Spank Slut. I look forward to telling my husband of this, if he doesn't read it here first. "Honey, guess what? Even the computer thinks I am a naughty, naughty girl. Aren't you proud?" I have a feeling I know what my reward will be.

Your Score: Spank Slut

You are 93% spankable!

You loved to be spanked, good and hard, with any available object. You will take it as hard as anyone is willing to give it. You are probably guilty of provoking your lover into spanking you, by flagrant misbehavior or verbal challenges. Hell, your ass is probably red right now. We wouldn't be surprised if you are standing at the keyboard, because it hurts to sit down.

Link: The How Spankable Are You Test

Are you there, readers? It's me, Abby.

I'm a little late with Love Our Lurkers Day, but I promised myself I would at least blog today, even if I've become a bit of a lurker myself. I've barely thought about our favorite subject of subjects. It's not that I've lost interest. The more I think about why I've faded off, the more I think it's a combination of two things.

The first is that I want to give up control of my body for a short while, give myself to the spanking that cleanses my mind of worries, my heart of pains, my eyes of tears. The second is that I cannot give up control of myself right now. While I try to get myself back on track both physically and mentally, I am also still in charge of all of the things that drove me to the point of falling away from myself. What I need, and this would solve the problem right here, is magic spankings.

Here's the theory. Something unpleasant needs to be accomplished. The bills need to be paid, the dishes need to be washed, the floor needs to be swept, the laundry needs to be done, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. (Who doesn't love a good Yul Brenner reference?) No problem! Ta-da! It's Magic Spanking.

Magic Spanking comes with a variety of spanking implements, each of which has a programmable Wish Level that you and your spanker determine. Love the paddle but hate the strap or the cane? The paddle is set to Wish Level One. Level One accomplishes minor tasks. It may bring all the dishes into the kitchen, but does not actually wash them. It may sweep the floor, but it will not scrub it.

The strap is set to a higher Wish Level. If you hate the strap but hate the cane more, set the Strap to Level Four and the cane to Level Five. These accomplish more frustrating tasks. The decision is yours! But beware, Magic Spanking measures your reaction and determines if the Wish Level is appropriate. If you've set a super-soft play paddle to Level Five and as you are being spanked it senses you have cheated its Internal Punishment Meter, no task accomplished for you!

Alas, I have no Magic Spanking set, so I will probably still be sporadic with my posts. Please know that I am reading my comments and email daily, and sometimes those little notes get me through a day. I love knowing that you're out there. And for those who used to get daily comments from me and I've been silent for so long, know that I'm still out here too. So often these days I just don't know what to say.

The Weight of the World, Part Two

In one of my earliest posts, I wrote about spanking being a transformative experience, allowing me to regress into a little girl for a while, letting go of all my worries, and then regaining my womanhood and "the weight of the world." Well, the weight of the world became a little too heavy for a while, hence the hiatus. I disconnected from my body; I was all mind, all worries, all the time.

In my quest to free myself from troubles, my thoughts became preoccupied with punishment and how it could release me. Sex didn't just take a backseat, it got out of the car. I was surprised every time a kiss led to love-making and not a lashing. So I decided to take a break from writing about spanking, from, honestly, obsessing about it. Then it became a break from everything: reading, sleeping, focusing...

Something changed this weekend. Some piece of me returned. I was gone from myself long enough, I suppose. In celebration of my return to myself, I even changed my hair color back to its natural shade. I've spent so long escaping myself that I had forgotten how good it feels to just come home.

Fortunately for all of us, a favorite part of my home is the spankings my husband gives me. But whether I'm using them to escape a bad day or my grown-up self, I realized that to him, I am always a woman. His woman. And the spankings are to say I love you, I love this thing we do, I love that you love it, too.

My favorite fetish is still the punishment of the schoolgirl by the headmaster. My fantasies will probably always return to that. But I'm going to try something new. The next time I'm bottom-up for one of my beloved beatings, I'm going to try to take it like a woman. A strong, tender, intelligent, bruising, brave, bright-red bottomed woman.

Just Push Play

I have a new obsession. Unlike my summer obsessions, which primarily consisted of spanking implements, spanking models, spanking blogs, and getting spanked myself, my new fall obsession is more introspective, more worldly, more.. alright, let's face it. Still about spanking.

But I tried really hard to make it about more than that! You see, my new obsession is the new Blogger Play. I first clicked on the link Friday night and found myself watching the random imagery of newly uploaded photos for half an hour. When my husband came home, I made him watch it too. We sat together in front of the computer for an hour, watching smiling babies, M&M ads, Grand Canyon family shots, pet pics, manga imagery, and a bizarre amount of photos of the Taiwanese boy-band Fahrenheit flash by. Every now and again we'd click on a photo to link to the blog where the photo was being posted--and yes, someone is really, really obsessessed with Fahrenheit somewhere in Indonesia. We kept saying, "I just know something really good is going to come along any second." When we were rewarded with this questionable Harry Potter film capture, we were finally able to leave the computer.

We talked about what made it so fascinating. "It makes me feel less alone," I explained. "These are all things that people care about, their worlds, their lives, the minutiae that make their lives meaningful. It's comforting." You see? Introspective. Worldly. The scroller has a filter that keeps the naughtier photos from popping up, though they do, of course, from time to time. Mostly, though, it's babies and landscapes and pets. So, last night, when this Australian schoolgirl popped up, I have to admit I was on her blog immediately.

She's just an ordinary schoolgirl, thankfully eighteen, doing ordinary schoolgirl things--acting in plays, taking photos of her friends and family, stopping to smell the flowers (there are pictures). Quite a few photos of her and her friends in school uniform, as well. The problem is--well, the problem is people like me who see this photo and their first thought is, "Ooh, she looks naughty!" It's why I'm not actually linking to her blog. The last thing a teenage girl needs is to be ogled by we perverted folks, even if we're miles and miles and miles away. So, back to introspective. Ah, the Internet. Pointing out uncomfortable things, indeed.

Then again, I also linked to a number of amazing blogs last night, most of which I cannot read. Why no one blogs in Latin, I just don't understand. This fantastic photo led me to the Portuguese-language Clarisset Anobanheiro. So, obsession adjective checklist. Introspective? Check. Worldly? Check. Dirty, naughty, and perverse as always? Check. Check. Check.

In Control of Not Being In Control

When a television show does something so unbelievable that viewers can no longer suspend their disbelief, it's called jumping the shark. As absurd things happen in television constantly, the term "jumping the shark" is reserved for when the absurdity is in conflict with the realm the show has created. In the same vein, a grown woman receiving a strapping for an imagined crime is commonplace in the realm we've created for ourselves. But what do we call it when something goes awry? What do we call it when a spanking scene jumps the shark?

A few nights ago, I came home from work to find myself suddenly pulled over my husband's knee, pants down to my ankles, receiving a hand-spanking for an unnamed infraction. If I had to guess, it was for pouting the night before when I didn't get punished for having forgotten to take out the trash. After the hand came the hairbrush, a Mason Pearson with a curved back and therefore a terrible sting, and then somehow found myself facedown and squirming on the bed, my favorite leather slapper being used in new and wicked ways against my backside. I was terribly wiggly for some reason, every blow stinging and making me squeal. By the time I was let up, thinking I was going to get dressed to go out but instead bent back over to take a strapping, I was completely disheveled and nervously agitated. I wasn't sure I could take any more.

Now, none of this is out of the ordinary. I was dripping wet, anxious for the ordeal to end but disappointed every time we paused and I thought it might be over. But as the strapping progressed, though it was nothing vicious except for it being with the heaviest of the straps, an antique barber strop we found on our honeymoon, I became increasingly panicked. At one point I asked if I still had skin on my bottom. When he told me I didn't, I laughed. We were having fun. But I started to freak out a bit, at one point actually turning around and sitting my sore bottom down on the edge of the bed to protect it. I also kept putting my hands in the way, which I'm usually a bit better about. When the strap caught the back of my left hand, it was my own fault. Unfortunately, an unbidden and vocal part of me didn't see it that way.

I yelled at him. It lasted a sentence or two, but it wasn't in my getting-a-spanking voice, or any voice I even recognized. I expected to be punished for acting out, but no more strokes came. I apologized, begging forgiveness for having yelled and cursed, but it did no good. The scene was over.

We sat. I cried. I didn't think of the phrase at the time, but I had jumped the shark. I had acted completely out of character, both my spanking self and my real self. I don't yell at my husband. We don't even fight. By breaking character to such an unexpected degree, I had made continuing the scene unbelievable for us both. I kept apologizing. "I didn't mean anything by it. I just freaked out," I repeated. We talked and he comforted me by telling me that we had the rest of our lives to get it right. I think we came out of the situation better for it having happened, because it gave us the opportunity to talk about it.

Still, I'm a little unsettled with myself. I try to be self-possessed during my spankings, aware and focused, in control of not being in control. This time, it was like I was possessed by my self instead. Even if a safeword was something we used, it wouldn't have helped. The reaction came unbidden and instantaneously. I trust him implicitly, but I trusted myself a little less after the incident.

Later that night, after we took each other shopping, we came home with plans to eat our takeout and play our new video game (Tetris for PS2!) in bed. I took off everything but my panties and a white oxford blouse. Next thing I knew, I was in our library, hands on my ankles, cane swishing in the air behind me. It was the thinnest and whippiest one, and I squealed and squirmed at every stroke. I don't remember his exact words, but after a dozen, he demanded I gain control of myself. I took the next twelve so well! I un-jumped the shark. Order had been returned to our universe. Our scene ended happily, I kicked his butt at Tetris, and I fell asleep smiling, in control of not being in control once again.

Take Me to the Chorus

Galavanting around town, indeed! My beautiful man, in his secret anonymous disguise, has finally commented on my blog. I suppose now I really must finish that story, though I wouldn't mind some "or else" right now! I really wasn't galavanting, though. Along with almost every other twenty-something girl in Portland, I was at the futuresex/loveshow. It sounds kinky if you don't listen to pop music. If you do, you'll know I went to see Justin Timberlake.
The show was surprisingly mature, as was the audience. Maybe local parents had heard there would be a burlesque segment and just too much sexiness. JT has shed the boy-band persona completely. The fashion was Jazz Age, the dancing was slick and sexy, and the musicians were as much as part of the show as Timberlake and the dancers. Spending much time on the piano as well as taking turns with a guitar and keyboard, Timberlake himself proved to be quite the showman. I expected to be entertained. I left the show not only entertained, but also respectful and impressed.
More importantly, however, is how Justin Timberlake fits into a blog about spanking. Let me set the scene for you. An arena packed full of girls, most of whom are of age, though there are of course quite a few teens as well. Everyone is dressed up, though some are not especially dressed. Fashion ran the full gamut from short-shorts and tiny tops to slinky satin dresses to tight jeans and cute tees. Everyone is singing and dancing along, wiggling their bottoms and shaking their hips. Justin himself slaps a few dancers' backsides during various numbers, the hottest of which was during "Sexy Ladies," which incorporated three girls in classic burlesque costumes (i.e. a little fringe and little else). The girls brought out stools for some Fosse-inspired chair-dancing. JT took a seat on one as a brunette went over his lap--no, not like that. Face up, unfortunately. But after she did her little lap dance, he smacked the back of her thigh, and it looked so natural, like he might not have even thought about it, like it was instinct. Makes a girl wonder about a boy.
So we've got our arena of girls, we have some flesh-smacking on stage, and we get to the last number of the show, the one we've all been waiting for, "SexyBack." Thousands of girls sing along. If you don't know the song, you don't know how hot this is. Thousands of girls sing along with the chorus and this line:

I'll let you whip me if I misbehave.
After seeing the show, I can't help but wonder if Timberlake planned ahead for the concert tour, knowing full well that at every show, he'd have a room full of girls singing that line to him. And now I better get back to work on that story, lest I be whipped for misbehaving. Hm. On second thought, maybe I should do something else.

A Writing Spasm

After coming home from vacation to find the longest, most ridiculous spam ever as a comment on my last post, I found myself wondering, "Now, why can't I sit down and write these days? Crazy people can do it. Why not me?"

I've always considered myself a writer. These past few years, however, I've begun to refer to myself in my internal dialogues as "the writer who does not write." After writing 70+ pages on fairy tales for my college thesis, I thought it would be easy to rewrite some of my favorite tales. After all, the thesis was on how the primary characters of the maiden, the prince, the mother, and the father have changed in retellings of five specific fairy tales over the centuries. How simple, I thought, to take the darker elements and create modern retellings that are true to those dark roots? I write a page, two pages, and then... nothing. It's not even writer's block. I just stop trying.

When I started blogging and the words were flowing faster than my fingers could type them, I decided I would try to add my favorite past-time to the stories. After all, who doesn't want to imagine vapid Snow White getting birched by the hunter when he takes her into the woods? Or find out just how wicked Cinderella's wicked stepmother was? I had a few great ideas. I started writing them, beginnings, bits and pieces. I got ten pages into one--ten pages! too long, but I haven't written that much in years--and had finally reached the spanking scene when, once again, I just stopped.

Am I afraid of writing a spanking scene? I never have. I've described my own in short form here, but I've never realy written a scene. I feel like I'd do it justice. I simply haven't tried. I can see the scene in my head, down to the eyelet details of the main character's cotton pantaloons. It's set in the West Indies. She's sweating, the fabric clinging to her bottom, the backs of her thighs. She's never been spanked before. The man she loves beckons her forward. "Madame Marie told me you deserve to be punished, little girl," he tells her, patting his lap, "but she didn't tell me why. We'll just have to start slow and keep going until you seem contrite." She shakes her head. This isn't what Marie asked her to do the night before. When he entered her room, she had thought she would finally be in his arms. Punished? By him? Her new legs tremble. "Come here," he demands more forcefully. She steps towards him. He smiles, his teeth gleaming like pearls from the blue of his beard. She steps again.

When she reaches him, he pulls her to his right side, pressing his hand against the small of her back to bend her forward over his lap. Her white camisole rides up. The small of her back glistens. She is so pale, so delicate. He wonders whether Marie was not being cruel in asking him to punish so fragile a girl, but once she is postitioned fully over his lap, her bottom surprisingly full and straining against her cotton pants, he silently thanks the madame for this unexpected gift. He cups one cheek, then the other, testing her bottom's resiliency. She wiggles. When he slaps her once, firmly, she freezes then looks back at him slowly, shaking her hair from her eyes. He sees shock there, and confusion, but at the core of her gaze is a hunger unlike any he's seen from any woman, nevermind a pale and silent girl. In the humid evening, he shivers. "Eyes on the floor, young lady," he demands, catching the tremble in his throat. "You know what you've done." Even if I don't, he thinks to himself before raising his hand over her. The spanking begins.

Hm. Well, that wasn't planned. There's more of a scene there, more description to come. Maybe I'm going to have to write the whole story on here, if it takes an audience to get me going. Maybe I'll even post the back-story (though perhaps not all ten pages of it). Even that little bit wore me out, though, and we still didn't get to the good part. To be continued, I suppose...

Which Leg Shall I Be Today?

If I had to guess, I would say that the message of the vintage photo to the left is that this woman is both the good girl and the bad girl, the wife in the kitchen and the whore in the bedroom. Or possibly, she is just demonstrating the wide selection of hosiery available at her favorite turn-of-the-century shop.

Either way, the other message our fine-stockinged friend bears is:

Abby is going out of town with her husband and her in-laws for a long weekend. She'll be back Tuesday night.

Sadly, despite having had a very difficult week (hence no new posts), this means that I will have to be a good girl all weekend, with no lovely markings to show for it. I have literally been shaking all day. Really, all I want is to be the bad girl and be taken out of my head for a while. Instead, it's out of town I go. It will be wonderful and fantastic and I really do have lovely in-laws. It will be a great trip--it just won't be the trip over the knee or a desk right now, like I need.

Still, ocean air and please please please, a forested turn-off somewhere along the way, here I come! Have wonderful weekends and I'll try to be more diligent about writing when I get back.

The Monster at the End of This Post

Yahoo's homepage today features this photo of students in uniform with the question, "Are school uniforms harmful or helpful?" The link leads to Yahoo Answers, one of the most terrifying sources of information on the Internet. If you need a question answered by a twelve year old with an attitude and poor spelling, this is the place to go. Needless to say, most of the responses were against uniforms. A few adults chimed in to point out that school is a place to learn, but nobody seemed terribly impressed.

Now, if I was one of the tween or teen students responding, I, too, would have been against being made to wear a uniform, though being a spelling bee champion, I could have made my case more convincingly. In fact, I was part of an anti-dresscode rebellion during my first year of highschool. A male friend was sent home for wearing a skirt. It was the early nineties, after all. We made posters and passed out petitions, telling students that if the boys couldn't wear skirts, soon the girls wouldn't be allowed to wear pants. We won, to a degree. Boys won the rights to wear kilts. Good enough.

This is all so humorous in retrospect, considering I spent a good portion of my weekend putting together a schoolgirl outfit that I could get away with wearing in public. Friday night found the perfect plaid skirt, knee-length, with a slight A-line. I'd have to be ten years younger or thirty years older to have gotten away with pleats. A simple black sweater vest was next. Throw it on over any button-down shirt--instant schoolgirl/librarian (perfect, as I worked in a library in highschool, and still miss it terribly). Oddly enough, the white blouse was more difficult to find. I gave up on the long-sleeved version, especially as I already have a few, and found a very fitted one with adorable puffed sleeves. It could double as a milkmaid blouse, which is fine. Milkmaids need spankings too. New black Mary Janes on Saturday completed the ensemble. Naturally, I already had the white knee socks at home.

This is where Yahoo's question becomes problematic. Whether a school uniform is harmful or helpful really depends on the goal, doesn't it? If my goal was to get a 24-stroke caning with no warm-up, then I'd say the uniform was quite helpful, indeed. However, from a hands-on-my-ankles, tear-drops-on-the-floor perspective, I'd say the outfit was fairly harmful to my poor plump bottom. So it's a toss-up. I had a wonderfully terrible, or terribly wonderful, time of it. So, to sum up: Plaid skirt on sale at Macy's, seventy dollars on debit Mastercard. White schoolgirl-milkmaid blouse, thirty dollars on debit Mastercard. Mary Janes at a terrific price, seventeen dollars on debit Mastercard. A perfectly striped caning from the man who loves me? Priceless.

Halfway through the caning, I was put in the corner while my husband went to find my camera. We've never taken photos of me during or after a punishment before, mostly due to my own self-consciousness. He left such perfect marks, though, that he couldn't resist, and I wasn't exactly about to say no. Halfway through a caning could easily have turned into a third or a fourth of the way through. After we admired the pictures, he encouraged me to post them here. I never planned to share my bountiful bottom on this page, but I do want to show of his handywork.

See how much I love my marks, Sir? Let's hope they like 'em too.

P.S. For those not current on their Sesame Street literature, "The Monster at the End of this Book" was a classic Grover tome, in which the monster at the end of the book turns out to be Grover himself.

We Are Not Alone

I see spanked people.

They're everywhere. So are the people who spank them. Seriously. We are everywhere.

Yesterday, over at My Bottom Smarts, Bonnie's Sunday Brunch topic was about a fictional spanking interview show for television. Everyone offered realistic and interesting suggestions, thus begging the question, at least in the UK, why isn't there such a thing?

Today, on The Cherry Red Report, Dave offered up movie posters and some fun suggestions for spanking-based feature films. Why did cinematic spankings die with the golden age of film? In a culture run amok with "torture porn" like Hostel, Turistas, and the upcoming Elisha Cuthbert faux-snuff vehicle Captivity, what is so wrong with seeing a girl's bottom turned over a knee and spanked to a nice glowing hue? Would we really rather see her fingers cut off? If audiences are craving a bit of titillating violence, there has to be a better way, especially when it appears that we're all doing it behind closed doors anyway.

When I typed "spanking" into the search field at Cafe Press, the make-your-own-merchandise website, it pulled up 2,290 designs. There was a bit of BDSM, a bit of joking, and apparently quite a few Irish people who need to be spanked, but most of it was along the lines of "Spank Me" or "I Spank." The adorable Punishment Book pictured to the left is at Hell's Harlot . The "I Want a Spanking" image up above is there, too--on a little white tank top.

Apparently, OTK is not just an anagram, it's also a logo to be worn on hats, t-shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads, drink coasters, thongs, etc. Here are two I found, again on Cafe Press alone:

There was also this darling warning at The Lipstick Sub:

Not to be outdone, another t-shirt advertised, "Slippery when slippered," which I thought was a nice nod to a true understanding of the fetish.

After finding all these sites on Cafe Press alone, I turned to my husband and announced, "I think we're in the majority." There was even a spanking image, albeit not a sexy one, on a rerun of The Simpsons last night. The more I look around, the more spanking is everywhere I look. Could it be we're all either sitting with sore bottoms or typing with sore hands? I'm on the look-out now.

It's funny--I think most of us kept our fascinations with spanking quiet for at least some parts of our lives. Those of who knew since we were children certainly couldn't talk about it until we were grown-up. Those who discovered later on were, I'm presuming, possibly overwhelmed by the discovery. All of us have had to face telling someone we care about what it is we like. I know that not everyone is understanding, but I think there are more of us out there than we realize. We are not alone.

Looking Glass Bruise

Sometimes a bruise appears on my forearm or my calf and I off-handedly wonder, "What did I bump into this time?" I tend towards clumsiness; I rarely notice when I walk into a table, or a bookcase, or a doorframe. Knowing this, I never startle when I find another yellow-edged, half-dollar sized spot of plum flesh. They are just marks to indicate that I've made it through another day, bruised but not beaten.

Why, then, is it that when I am beaten, when I know that I spent the night before receiving five dozen each of the strap and the cane, I shyly approach the full-length bathroom mirror, turn around, and gasp to find not only sore red patches and welty stripes, but also two mirrored and navy blue bruises, one on each side of my tender sit spot?

My mind always goes blank when I first see a bruise. Then I wonder which implement did it. In this case, most definitely the cane--or one of them, at least. We played with four different canes last night. Touching this morning's bruises, I remembered running to my husband after I'd checked myself out in the mirror. "These red spots right here," I began, taking his hands and touching them to the spots that became the twin marks. "Is my skin," I paused, "hard?" He grinned, his accomplishment blatant beneath his fingers, as he confirmed my suspicion. I should have known then that they would be bruises in the morning. But for some reason, I never think that I will bruise.

I love a bright pink bottom radiating out from the edges of white panties. I love red stripes. I even find the sight of little scarlet pinpricks of blood fascinating and sexy, but bruising is a part of spanking that I have not yet embraced. I have never looked at my bruises and thought them beautiful. In fact, I have a hard time looking at them and not thinking they are ugly.

When I first started reading spanking stories, I avoided anything that made me squeamish. If a schoolgirl story took a turn for the worse, that is, the girl was suddenly about to be caned or paddled heavily, I found a new tale to read. When I started seeing pictures and clips of spankings, I couldn't take screaming, I still couldn't take caning, and I could not take the sight of a bruise. "How can she let that happen?" I would cringe. In my mind, spanking models became Eastern European slaves, captured and tied to desks, beaten to a pulp and then some. Now that I read their blogs, I know that's not the case. Ten years ago, though, new to everything and without the resources to know the difference, the things that made me squeamish were the things I just knew I would never let happen to me.

The cane is now my favorite implement. When I stop crying and catch my breath, I like to ask for more. Those "Eastern European slaves" are brave and brilliant women, literate and well-aware of what they're doing. They brandish their bruises with pride and I admire them for it. So why do I cringe when I look over my shoulder today?

Part of it is simply knowing that if we want to play again this weekend, it's going to hurt more than it would if we were starting fresh. Part of it is instinctual--it's my body's reaction to witnessing its own weakness. I don't think a body likes to know that its human drive to defend itself has failed. The reason that resonates with me most, though, is that the bruise scares me because it is a harbinger. If I let a bruise like that happen, next time it might be larger and darker, and even more vivid and vicious the time after that. What makes me squeamish anymore? What are those things that I won't let happen to me?

This is my world now. I want to know every dark crevice. I want to be taken beyond my limits, to allow my husband to reach beyond his and mine. These two little bruises taunt me. "This is only the beginning," they tell me. The woman writing this is excited to know what comes next. The more I think about it, the more I want darker bruises and longer-lasting welts, and I want to be punished for wanting those things. What makes this so exhilarating, though, is the little girl inside me who is absolutely terrified. She's the one looking at the bruises, touching them daintily and declaring "Ouch" to her own reflection. Her lower lip trembles. "I must have been a very bad girl," she thinks.

The third party in the mix, my husband, who loves me as both woman and child and calls me "young lady" to keep me balanced somewhere in between, will surely read this and I know what he's going to think. "Are you questioning the bruises I gave you, young lady?" I picture him asking. As this little schoolgirl shakes her head "No" and this brazen woman grins and nods her head "Yes," I know that neither answer matters. He's teaching me to love my bruises. Until I do, I'll be a very bad girl, indeed.

Earning My Stripes: A Dream Allegory

Some days I feel like this little piggy in the picture, adopted by tigers, trying to earn my quite literal stripes, all the while thinking that at some point soon, I am going to be devoured. I meant to write last night, but ran out of time. That post, which is still to come, would have been about the fiction I am now writing. I've given up trying to write straight fiction and have realized that if the subject of spanking has me writing again, then perhaps I should run with it in my fiction as well. Of course, I'm struggling a bit, and so I was hoping to sort it out in text.

Since I didn't get to write about spanking, I dreamed about the spanking world instead. But this wasn't a playful dream in which my bottom was bared. No, I dreamed about all of us and our blogs, in which we existed like exhibits at a zoo. Some of the exhibits were large and lush--those belonged to the more established personalities and writers. My exhibit was small and new, but clean, with a little plaque with the name "Abby" on it.

At this spanking zoo, one particular girl had a beautiful, tropical exhibit near mine. She had tiger stripes. She was planning a costume party (a strange activity for a tiger, but this is dream logic) and I was the Cinderella of the tale, wanting terribly to go to the ball. Then, to my absolute bliss, she invited me!

Mysterious dream things occurred; time passed. Briefly, there was an octopus. Then it was the day of the ball. All of the girls wore amazing satin dresses with detailed backsides--intricate beading, lace, and, of course, little ties that could fix the hem of the dress to the waist, since this was, after all, a costume ball for the animal people of the spanking zoo. I, however, had no dress. The tiger girl, in a sumptous cream confection, offered to help me. We found a costume closet at the back of the ballroom, filled with the strange outfits you might find in the costume closet of a college theater arts department. I could have dressed as Puck, or Dogberry, or an Elizabethan nurse. I could have worn the uniform of a Confederate Civil War soldier. But the only dress we could find that was appropriate was sage green, made from wallpaper fabric. The sleeves wouldn't stay up over my shoulders and the zipper wouldn't go up over my bottom. It didn't have any of the features that all the other girls' dresses had. So I attended the ball, but my dress kept falling off. Everyone kept saying I ought to be punished for wearing such a silly dress, but because my dress wasn't as fun as everyone else's, no one wanted to do the actual punishing.

I don't think anyone is really looking at me that way. I've felt nothing but accepted here. Maybe it's just that it's been eight days since my last spanking, or that I got writer's block this weekend as I came close to the scene that up until that point I had been so excited to write. Maybe it's just that I'm not getting as much time to write as I'd like. Or maybe it's that little girl inside me who never felt like she fit in, and she's just so scared that now that she's fitting in, it's going to be taken away somehow.

Or maybe I was just overtired and the forward I'd been sent about a mama tiger who adopted orphaned piglets became this distorted brain debris. And what was up with the octopus? I think this little piggy just needs her little pinkish-white bottom to be covered in tiger stripes so she can go on to think about other things. Other things on the same subject, of course.

Mrmph in Translation

I now think about writing and spanking more than I think about anything else. On the one hand, this is a huge relief, because previous to starting to this blog, I tended to obsess about finances, the possibility of an upcoming move, and my complete distaste for my job. Now, when I think about finances, I wonder if I can afford the shipping fees for getting a really nice tawse from overseas. I think about where we'll live next and hope that the walls are thicker, or at least that our bedroom window won't be directly next to the neighbor's front porch. I don't think about my job all that much now--even when I'm at it, I'm thinking about spanking and blogging and the bulk of my day is spent checking my personal email for comments and coming up with ideas for new posts.

There is one time, however, that I am not thinking about writing, blogging, or, for that matter, my love of spanking. Ironically, that time is when I am being spanked.

Much to my chagrin, we've been playing a good deal with strappings recently. I finally understand the idea of tanning someone's hide, as one would tan an animal skin. As my flesh turns brighter and hotter, I actually feel as if I am becoming leather myself. I feel as if the texture of my very flesh is changing, softening and toughening at once. But these thoughts aren't clear until the strapping is over, after I have discovered that I have not turned into leather after all, as I put on a pair of clean white panties and admire the redness showing through and along the sides of my panty-line. I can't actually think about what's just happened until what's just happened is over.

When, on Tueday, I found myself receiving a strapping yet again, I decided I would try to think about how I would write about it later. I made it about two strokes when I realized I wasn't thinking about writing anymore. Refocusing, I began to think about how I was standing, how to set the scene when... I realize I've lost focus again. I can feel the heat swelling over my bottom, the sting spreading so that each stroke is less... Oh, ouch, ouch, ouch! Okay, so I can't describe the heat, then. But my readers! I'm just becoming established here. I want to be able to write about this experience. The strap is of medium-weight, a rich chocolate shade of leather, the sort you'd use to... No, no, no, no, no, I'll be good I swear, just don't.... And so I never was able to think about the experience itself as I'd describe it here. Even thoughts that could be later translated into this entry were at the time expressed as "Mrmph!"

That complete inability to focus or to analyze is the secret boon of spanking. I've made a number of questionable choices in my life, and I have justified all of them by saying, "But if I do this, then I can write about it." I have purposely chosen the darker paths because they'd make more interesting stories. I've even stared into the eyes of a lover I know I'm about to lose and wondered not how to keep him, but how I'd describe him in text once he was gone. I have lived a good deal of my life as a character. But when I am being spanked, either as myself or if I am roleplaying the naughty little girl, I don't think of myself as a character in a story. I can barely think at all, but when I do, I'm very present, experiencing what I am experiencing and free of all else.

So while I do think about blogging quite often now, I think about it during the times when I would have been wondering what to make for dinner. I think about it while the women in my office debate whether to go to the new IKEA. I even think about it as I fall asleep. But at last, I am thinking about what parts of my life I can turn into a story or a blog entry. I am no longer thinking about what part of a story I should turn into my life.

Bring Your Fetish to Work Day

Straightening my white blouse, I looked down, wondering if anyone would comment on today's outfit. Black knee-length corduroy skirt, white button down shirt, black sweater vest, long hair parted in the middle. I was missing the tartan and the knee-socks and the Mary-Janes, but I still felt like I was costumed as myself, not as the business-casual character I usually play Monday through Friday. Remembering the costume I wore to work last Halloween--Schoolgirl from Hell, replete with the plaid skirt and delicate hand-made bronze clay horns--I couldn't help but wonder if anyone would comment on this more austere version of the theme.

What will I say if they ask? I wondered. The answer was obvious. "It's Bring Your Fetish to Work Day," I'd tell them, looking them up and down. "I can't tell what yours is though. Pasty skin, too much blush... are you a necrophile?" Or to the mountain-climbing man who always comments when I wear new shoes, "Will you be tasting my toes today?" Or to the girl who only talks to vegetarians, "Just what do you do with the carrots and zucchini you grow in your garden?"

Fortunately, no one asked me the anticipated question, because what I'd really say is something along the lines of, "I just liked it as an outfit," and move along. But the day was different. I was more sociable, willingly chatting about meaningless subjects with the other women in my office. I made jokes; I stayed on top of my work without feeling like a slave to it. I was feisty! When I was asked to cut a check for a political group I found offensive in the guise of a deductable donation, I finally found the courage to refuse. My refusal was accepted, even applauded by some, albeit secretly. By wearing a self costume, I actually was myself.

To a degree. As I become more and more the woman/schoolgirl I've always wanted to be, like the mountain-climber showing off a bruise or the veggie girl showing off an immense squash, I want to show off the fruits of my own activities. I want to lift my skirt and show off an especially wicked bruise or stripe. I want to bend over my desk and announce "Look what I can do!" with an appropriate volunteer. I want to pull up this blog and make them read. "I'm a writer who writes about the things that make you squirm," I want to tell them. "Live in my skin for a day and know that even after having been tied around the waist to a school-desk, legs spread and ankles bound as well, caned by an ambidextrous man with a tennis pro's backhand, my greatest agony is walking through this door and becoming someone you don't mind having the desk next to yours."

I have a feeling I won't be working there much longer. I can take a lot of punishment, but trying to hide among conservatives and catty accountants isn't really the type of daily beating I crave. It's not that I think that my next job will be somewhere that I am spanked for my typos and transgressions. I just want to be able to wear an outfit like today's to work and grinningly say to someone, "It's Bring Your Fetish to Work Day," leaving them not horrified, but wondering what they should have worn.

Outfit or no outfit, I often bring a bottom like this to work.

(photo not my own bottom, Red Charls free gallery)

Scent of a Spanking

Rachel Hurd-Wood in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (photo: rachelhurdwood.net)

Spanking provides a unique experience of sensory overload, one that activates every inch of me, from the curl of my toes to the sway of my hair as it tickles my face as I wriggle or writhe according to the force of the strokes I am receiving.

Visually, there is the sight of my punisher, the hard line of his lips matched with the twinkle in his eye that gives me shivers before we even start. Being shown the implement we're using makes me excited and trembly. Sound is key; this goes without saying. The sound of a spanking, whipping, caning--for those who think like we do, there may be no more beautiful music. The whimpers or cries of a girl, even if they are issued from my own lips, send me further into excitement or terror, depending on the tone. I think sometimes my own yelp scares me more than the blow I just received, heightening the sensation of the spanking by suggestion. The swish of a cane in the air. I got goosebumps just imagining that sound as I typed that phrase.

The sense of touch is almost aggravated during a spanking. The hardwood floor beneath my bare feet, the hard edge of a desk or the soft comfort of a pillow on the bed as I grasp for anything to hold onto during my punishment, the chafe of whatever clothes I may be wearing as I long to be both more naked and more covered all at once--but none of these distractions can truly keep me from the sensations blossoming on my backside, whether it's the cruelest stroke of a cane or the reassuring touch of a hand. Spankings make me terribly, uncomfortably, joyfully alive in my own skin.

Even taste is activated when the saltiness of tears drips into the corners of my lips, or I find something to bite when the pain is severe. But this does not cover all the senses. What is the scent of a spanking?

I found myself wondering this last night while watching the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, based on the novel by Patrick Suskind. The film itself was a sensory overload of sorts. It actually evoked scents, and not always pleasant ones. Set in eighteenth century Paris, just the first few minutes of the film ask the audience to imagine the scent of rocks, leather, dead fish, street whores, and powdered wigs all in a dizzying stream of lush imagery. It tells the story of a young man with an amazing sense of smell who becomes obsessed with capturing the perfect perfume--the scent of woman. There was much bare flesh (stunningly and amassedly so, at times) and much beauty, despite the aberrant horrors that begin to play out as the story unfolds.

I found myself wondering, Just what does that virginal girl he's after smell like? And that, of course, led to thoughts of spanking, what a spanking does smell like, and what it would smell like if it were bottled as perfume. There are the implements, of course. Bamboo of canes and old oak of paddles, weathered leather of straps, or the fresh leather scent of a riding crop bought at a tack shop, meant for horses but to be used on untamed girls. But a perfume of wood and leather is very masculine, and while perhaps the perfect cologne for my headmaster, it doesn't fully capture the scent of spanking.

So let's add in pink bubblegum, and roses, for our rosy bottoms, and chalk, because, after all, my fantasies are based in the schoolroom. Strawberries, for the strawberry lip gloss I wore when I was little. And peaches, because a lovely ripe round bottom does remind me of that fuzzy fruit.

I stopped by the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab to see if they have a perfume called Spanking, seeing as they have everything else imaginable, from scents based on Neil Gaiman's characters to the seven deadly sins (you can spend hours just reading the scent descriptions, really a fantastic site). There were no spanking perfumes, but I did find Jailbait (Innocence defiled. Sticky pink bubblegum and the thick, sweet scent of orange and cherry lollipops smeared over a breath of heady womanly perfume), Whip (Agony and ecstacy: black leather and damp red rose), Lolita (Bright, sweet and youthful, but swelling with a poisonous sexuality. Glittering heliotrope, honeysuckle, orange blossom and lemon verbena), O, of course (The scent of sexual obsession, slavery to sensual pleasure, and the undercurrent of innocence defiled utterly. Amber and honey with a touch of vanilla), and the possibly intoxicating Les Infortunes de la Vertu (A pain-tinged, pleasure-soaked blend of leather, oakmoss, orange blossom, amber, and rose with a breath of virginal French florals and a hint of austere monastic penitential incense).

If you've made it all the way to the end of this post, what would the perfect spanking scent be for you?

Abigail vs. Abby

(photo: dominiqueswain.org, still from "Lolita")

It's been one of those days--the kind that should end with a bottle of wine, a soak in the tub, and a shoulder massage. Yesterday was one of those days, greeted with a gray skirt and white blouse fit for a schoolgirl, coaxed throughout the afternoon with naughty text messages about what shade my bottom would be by the end of the night, and then, sadly, ended with a troupe of friends showing up at the house unannounced, the spanking left only to our imaginations and to what should have been today.

What do I do when a play-date overlaps with a day that wants to drink and be done with it? Who wins out when the little girl wants to be punished severely like she was promised, but the woman fears it might just be too much? I don't want to back out in case it's what I really need at the heart of it. But I also don't want to get started and realize I just can't.

If I let myself go, let myself be the little girl, I might not want to come back from it. If I go to that headspace, I want to be there for a while. To escape, to relish the experience, to stay, as if on vacation, until I am ready to come back and deal with the world again. How fantastic it would be to call in "immature" to work tomorrow. "I'm sorry, I'm only sixteen today, I've been terribly naughty and have to stay in the corner with a sore bottom, and really, I just failed out of math, do you really want me in your accounting department anyway?" I think that would be followed well with a snap of gum and a "Like, you know?" But tomorrow is Thursday, and in my position, Thursday is the most important day of the week. I could have the plague, nevermind a case of the teens, and still have to go the office.

I have a few more minutes before my husband gets home to decide what to do. As a precaution, I've bought steak and shrimp cocktail and plan to attempt to bribe him, but I haven't even figured out the bribe yet. To play lightly? To play viciously, to take me out of myself? To get that shoulder massage? Alas, even steak and shrimp could not bribe that sort of play into reality, unless it comes with a post-massage sting.

The Great Blueberry Muffin Caper

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