I Like to Be Told

Amelia Jane Rutherford, asking if it's going to hurt as much as last time.

(www.firmhandspanking.com)

We bought our first tawse for Christmas, a beautiful Lochgelly-style piece from MC Customs, but we've only had opportunity to play with it once. Since then, it's made a daily appearance in my repertoire of daydreams. At first, I simply replayed our experience with it, but as will happen, unexpected alterations began to occur. I found myself in different positions, or the speed at which the tawse landed on my bare flesh increased. Then, one afternoon as I gazed longingly at the heavy 2-tailed leather strap already hanging on a hook by my side of the bed, I closed my eyes and found myself in a wide stance, already naked and bent over with my forearms supporting me, my husband standing behind me with one hand holding the tawse and the other pressed against the small of my back.

I like when he talks to me, when he asks me if I'm ready. When he tells me how many strokes I am to receive if we're counting that day, and if I am to count out loud. I like to be told why I'm being spanked if there's a reason, or that he's spanking me just because he wants to if there's not. As he talks, I arch under the gentle pressure of whichever implement is in his hand. A leather strap might be rubbed in circles over my bottom. A cane might slide back and forth or tap across the path it will soon take.

In this scenario, the tawse tickles the insides of my thighs, the furrow of my backside. I imagine the tips of the tails glistening slightly from licking me lightly between the legs. Then he says something new, something I've been craving to hear in real play since this fantasy occurred:

"This is going to hurt."

I'm not given a chance to protest or acquiesce before he begins laying into me, whipping me steadily, the heavy tawse feeling strangely less like a strap and more like how a cane might feel if it were made of stiff leather. There's the tiniest moment of breathing room between the sting and the next stroke, something I've also come to look forward to during a caning, that moment when I can announce a number if I'm counting, or reposition myself if I've squirmed out of place. His words echo along with my own squeals. Perhaps it hurts more only because he said it would.

It's not the pain I want. I've written about that before. For me, a spanking (or caning, or tawsing, or strapping, etc.) is about giving up control, or at least pretending that I have. I think that phrase strikes a nerve specifically because I don't want the pain. It's a reminder that I'm no longer making the decisions, that it's going to hurt as much as he chooses to make it hurt. It's also a promise that he's going to take me as far as I need to go, that it's not just foreplay but the real thing.

A few days after this phrase became my newest spanking-related obsession, I encountered a few clips of Amelia Jane Rutherford asking, "Is this going to hurt?" or "Is it going to hurt as much as the last time?" I guess I'm not the only one who likes to be told. Of course it's going to hurt. We all know that. If we're lucky, yes, it will hurt as much as the last time. Isn't that what gets us into these situations in the first place? But being told it's going to hurt--that gets the blood going, doesn't it? Just writing about it creates a heady mix of fear and anticipation and arousal. Tell me it's going to hurt. I promise to tell you when it does.

I like to be told
If it's going to hurt.
If it's going to be hard,
If it's not going to hurt.
I like to be told.
I like to be told.
("I Like to Be Told," music & lyrics,
amusingly, by Mister Fred Rogers)

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.