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.