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.