Backstage, Before and After

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

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

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

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

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

Hands Have No Tears to Flow

"Hands have no tears to flow."

~Dylan Thomas, "The Hand That Signed the Paper"

I bore my first hand tawsing last night. Three strokes to the right, three strokes to the left. I am dizzy with thinking about it, even as I write with those same hands. I feel fortunate that I have this record of the event on film. The memory itself is blurred at best, a mix of emotion more than pain, and more words than emotion at that, though sometimes, like last night, there are no words more emotional than, "My hands."

The last words I remember saying to Mr. Williams before the tawsing began were, "But they're my hands." It wasn't scripted, it wasn't planned. The tawsing was planned. I even remember the night in early winter that I told him I wanted him to use our new tawse on my hands. It was another way of telling him I love him, another way of giving myself and of going ever farther into this journey we've embarked upon together.

Even so, I'm not surprised it took us months to get here. We have sometimes spoken of those parts of ourselves we could not live without, and I have always said I could not exist without my hands. For this reason I have been fascinated by tales of amputation, from Titus Andronicus to Boxing Helena. I can live if I cannot run. I can live if I cannot speak. I can live if I cannot hear morning's birdsong or see its early light. I cannot live if I cannot write. My hands are my strength and my courage; my sorrow, my joy. The thought of losing them is unbearable. If I lost them, how could I tell you how it feels? How anything feels? My hands have words that I do not.

Just before the tawsing began, I thought to myself, "They look like good strong hands, don't they?" These were the words of the Rockbiter in The Neverending Story, after the Nothing comes, after he opens his palms and realizes he has lost those he was trying to keep safe in his grasp. I opened my palms and realized how vulnerable I was, that I have offered my heart perhaps a thousand times, but this was the first time I had dared to offer my hands. Hands may have no tears to flow, but how I could I describe the tears that do flow without them?

I didn't think words after that. I know I screamed. I know a small blister was raised on my left hand. I know my hands didn't hurt by the end of the punishment that came afterwards, that the pain was immediate and fleeting, so unlike the discipline that was admistered to my bottom, which left me sitting uncomfortably today. Still, I look down at my hands now, comfortable and nimble on the keyboard, and appreciate them so much more than I did before I knew how it felt to have them taken, even ever so briefly, away from me.

....And to think, my hands and this camera angle are only the beginning.

When You Want to Go Where Only Kinksters Know Your Name

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Leatherbound

Our leather collection, so far...

As a self-confessed bibliophile, the draw of the leather-bound tome is undeniable. The book is a living thing, its changes over time as much physical as psychological, its meanings altered as its possessor ages. To wrap these timeless but fragile entities in leather is to endow them with skin, to admit that they are meant to live, to last.

I have long been fascinated by this book-flesh. As a child, it would have been my first experience of leather. My clearest memories of childhood are of bookshelves. Leatherbound volumes cannot help but be a part of those memories. I remember the difference between stroking leather and stroking the naughahyde (faux leather) of our reclining chair. Is it any wonder that I now stroke straps and belts, tawses and leather paddles, noting their differences in thickness and pliability, their texture and bite? These are the stuff of skin on skin, of the vicious effect of flesh on flesh. On a pessimistic level, a beating with leather is a microcosm of the plight of humanity. On an erotic level--ohhh. A beating with leather is a mercurial sensuality.

When whipped for an extended time with a strap, my flesh tightens, becoming the infamous bright red leatherbottom of spanking yore. I am fascinated by this, spending time looking over my shoulder into a mirror, stroking the stiff rounds of skin that are normally so yielding. A tawsing, for me, is best described as a leather caning--biting at impact, fading in the seconds afterwards, stinging more thoroughly with each stroke. A leather paddling is painfully sexual--I'm not sure I can even explain it further than that. I hate it, I adore it, I crave it.

I've noticed that I am not the only one compelled by leather on flesh. I think the clip I posted from "Time for the Belt" in "Doctor When" has been one of my most viewed blog entries ever. I think it's also interesting that so many caning scenes begin with some form of leather strapping. It serves as an excellent warm-up for the punishee, but I can't help but think it's a warm up for the top and the viewer as well. I know there are certain videos where that first part is all I need, and I can't imagine I'm alone in that. I also know that right now, despite my facination with the cane and my new paddle, all I want is a leather strapping (as may have been apparent recently). Is it too much to say that after I walked off screen in "Time for the Belt," my lips attacked poor Mr. Williams' face? I went straight from screaming into a pillow to, well, screaming for other reasons. Leather makes my bottom so hot so fast. I suppose it's no surprise that it does the same for other parts of me as well.

I am compelled by comparing my body to a book, to say that a leather beating is comparable to a leather binding. Although I may not be physically bound, I am psychologically wrapped in leather. These writings and films on the subject immortalize me, to a degree, as a leather binding extends the lifespan of a text. The irony there is that during a punishment with leather, I feel as if I am certain to die. Thus can I not help but compare a whipping to a classic Shakespearean passage? To die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream of spankings. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time...?

In order to experience the eternity and transcendence of leather, oh I would. I would. I would.

Doctor When?

Preview from "Time For the Belt"

One of my favorite things about filming these spanking sessions is that I have a whole new realm of spanking subjects to write about. In this blog, I've covered subjects from "Am I a masochist?" to "Am I secretly a little girl?" I never really thought I'd have an opportunity to focus on the answers to questions such as "Is that really what my arse looks like?" and "Is that a real spanking?" (As many a spanking model has noted before me, the effort in special effects alone make it far more reasonable to just beat a girl than to pretend one is doing so.)

"Time for the Belt," the bit o' fun we shot Thursday night, answers all these questions. For example, if my backside is as pink as a sunburnt baby, I just might be a masochist. Looking at those hips, why, no, I am not secretly a little girl. However, yes, that really is what my arse looks like, and I am finally just loving it. All soft and glowy and curvy and womanly and apparently, quite spankable. It's taken my whole life to be comfortable with my body. Turns out, all I had to do was put it on film and know that people around the world were alright with seeing it. The exhibitionist's delight. And finally, is that a real spanking? If the belt fits, well, take it off and use it on my backside.

I think this is our best film so far, in terms of sound, lighting, and how my bottom looks. It also contains bits of comedy I hadn't noticed at the time of shooting. In the preview clip, I make a funny little goat sound at the end. What is that? I laugh every time I hear it (which has been a few times, what with editing and all). If you find yourself giggling, quite all right! I don't normally make farm animal noises, so I'm finding it quite amusing.

In the full version of the clip, you may also discover our flair for accidental absurdist theatre. As Mr. Williams chastised me for being late, he kept looking at his wrist to indicate the time. The problem is, Mr. Williams does not wear a watch. When he finally realized what he was doing, he scolded me, "I'm not even wearing a watch, that's how late we are." I'm hoping it becomes a catchphrase in the international lexicon of reasons to be spanked.

Was that a gauntlet in my comments?

My Mason Pearson hairbrush.

I know one isn't supposed to fuel the fire when someone makes a comment one perceives as inflammatory or ill-willed. However, a reader (and viewer, apparently) requested in my last post that I use a "REAL" hairbrush in my clips. The above brush, dear reader, is the exact brush that was used upon my backside. You'll note the box, indicating "hair brush." If you view the history of the company, you will note that the brush was designed by Mason Pearson in 1885, making it not only a real hairbrush, but also a classic Victorian hairbrush, and an expensive one at that.

We also have a lovely $4 hairbrush from Target. This, I presume, is what is meant by a real hairbrush? I promise you, I've felt that as well, and because of the curved design of the Mason Pearson, that stings far more than the flat-backed bargain brush.

We also have a Victorian clothes brush, well-worn and from a genuine antique store, not a shop of knick-knacks. Does its wear and tear make it worthy of the "brush" name?

There is a scene in Henry & June in which Henry Miller instructs Anais Nin on the appropriate way to respond to an insult. "Fuck you, Jack!"

That's What I Get

Not the same strapping as the one below, as that one wasn't on film, but here's a preview of the belting film we made this week. Preview to be posted soon. Edited clip is already up on the (link defunct) clip site. It's my favorite of everything we've done so far!

"You haven't blogged in days," Mr. Williams tells me as he walks into the room. I'm already at the computer, browsing my favorite spanking blogs, wondering what I want to write about. "Haven't I given you enough to blog about?"

I cock my head. A curling auburn tress falls into my eyes; I bite the inside of my cheek, trying not to grin. He raises his eyebrows at me. "Well?"

"I don't know what I want to write about," I say, shrugging my shoulders. The royal blue Western Conference hockey jersey I'm wearing, disparate with the literate persona I try to maintain, rises and resettles around my hips. I have to raise myself to set it comfortably against my bare lower half again. He watches with what he wants to appear as feigned interest.

"Why don't I help?" he asks, hands already at his belt.

"Really, I'm fine," I tell him. I want to want what he's offering, but I'm not there yet. There's always a moment before a spanking when I think to myself, I do not want this. I try to hide it with tantrums and protests. This time I try to tell him the truth. "Give me a few minutes. I was just commenting on Dave and Bonnie. I had a long day. My head space isn't right." I turn back to the computer.

He comes towards me, touches my chin and pulls my face back towards him. "I wasn't really giving you an option." His grip tightens slightly; my eyes narrow. A single throb passes between my thighs, through my belly, my heart, my breath, into my throat. I gulp. "Now get up," he commands.

I rise, unsure of where to stand, where to face. He removes his belt and folds it over, forming a taught black loop of leather. "Hands on the desk," he tells me. "This is what you can write about." Before I can take a deep breath, the belt strikes my naked thighs and my knees buckle. I gasp, too shocked even to cry out.

"That's a good beginning, wouldn't you say?" he asks. I shake my head, but he's not looking. He belts my thighs again, higher this time, and harder. "Please," I beg, whispering. "I'm not ready."

He laughs. "Let's ready you then." He pushes down upon my lower back, forcing my torso parallel to the floor. He slaps the belt between my legs. "Wider. No, wider." He pulls back and cracks the leather once against my inner right thigh. I spread my legs and arch my back. "That's it," he says calmly, pushing the jersey up past my waist, stroking the small of my back gently until my muscles relax. "Now open Real Player."

"What?" His words are almost as startling as the first belt stroke.

"Open Real Player. There's a playlist ready. Hit play." Still arched and bent, I guide the mouse to the program he's requested and start the queue. On the screen, a slender blonde is bent over a bale of hay outside a stable. A silver-haired man stands behind her, cane at the ready. I smile to myself. I've seen this clip before, when he wasn't home. I liked it. The girl was beaten hard and I got off fast. My breath catches as she begs him not to beat her; the silver-haired man pulls back and raises the rattan to the height of his elbow. As the cane cracks against the blonde's bare backsdie, the belt whips across my own bare skin, uselessly clad with the thong I wore to work. I scream.

"That's a good storyteller," he says. "Getting into character." He belts me again, and again, and again, in time with the caning on the screen. Each strike feels harder than the last. He's flicking his wrist so the tip of the fold catches the curve of flesh where left meets right. The cane leaves red welts on the girl, white at the edges. With each welt, a bar of crimson stripes my own backside. He whips me and I cry out. He whips me and I cry again. My cries echo the girl's so that the room is filled with the sound of beaten young women.

The girl's caning stops and she is sent off-screen. My whipping doesn't stop. I bounce and the belt catches the upper part of my bottom, then the lower part of my thighs. I can't keep still. The playlist starts the next clip. A brunette is leaning against a wall, viciously marked with a wide leather strap. My own strapping continues, faster to match the film, harder, to intensify my weeping with the increase in volume of the new girl on the screen. Our screaming is in exact time now. I know this clip as well. "You recognize this, don't you?" he asks, striking harder. "Dirty girl. Says she has nothing to write about." The belt strikes, strikes, strikes even harder. "Tell them how much you like it."

"They can't hear me," I pant in between sobs. I know I am as scarlet as the girl who's made me come before, and I am ashamed at being aroused at this level of pain. "Please sir. She takes this for six minutes. I can't. I can't."

"You're just lucky the camera isn't on," he tells me. I hear the belt swish in the air before it lands, so hard that my forehead touches the keyboard. "And it's been eight minutes already, by the way. Show me how you come." I shake my head. The pain is too much. "Touch yourself," he demands.

The tips of my index and middle finger circle my clit as I watch the brunette screaming, as the belt turns my flesh into raw agony. When he sees my head fall, when he sees my fingers circling faster and faster, he whips me as hard as he can. "Count," he commands. I'm crying, but I try. "One, sir," I whisper as the edge of the belt strikes just beside the spot between my cheeks that would hurt the most. "Two, sir," as the belt strikes first my outer left thigh, then "Three, sir," as it strikes the already bruised flesh on my outer right. "Four sir," as he pulls the belt in an arch against the full of my flesh. Then he pauses.

"Stop touching yourself. Reach back and pull your cheeks apart." I shake my head no. "The next caning is about to begin," he warns me. "It's Lupus." I regain my balance and reach back, exposing the most sensitive of spots to him and his belt. The belt strikes hard, then harder, then harder, then harder. I can't stop screaming. "What about five?" he asks. "Isn't it five yet?" He's still whipping me and I can't take a breath to even breathe the number, nevermind the ten strokes beyond it.

Three more strokes and I kneel to the ground. I can't take anymore. I don't even know what's on the screen. He grabs my hair at the nape of my neck. "You can come," he tells me. "Then you can write about it."

That's exactly what I do.

Spanking Inferno in the Forecast for the Weekend

All Abby's arse, all the time. At least for the weekend. I hope.

Much as I may regret it by Monday, I am dedicating this weekend to spanking. I want to do nothing but work on some stories, work on the new website, and be spanked on camera and off. Perhaps I may go buy some new panties, an activity which is also now spanking related, to a degree. Perhaps some day I can even consider it a business expense.

I have been pulled in a million directions lately, especially at work. This weekend, I want everything to be pointed at my bottom. Figuratively speaking, more or less. Perhaps I'll write a serial about my three days at The Spanking House, a bit like Reage's chateau only far more fun, plus it's my house so it's less scary as well. Perhaps we'll film a mini-series. Perhaps I'll blog naked (but on a very soft pillow). Perhaps there will be a spanking inferno. (Perhaps... perhaps... perhaps!) (Oh, Coupling.)

Anyhow. My bottom. To be continued. As always.

What's My Line? (Abby's First Paddling)

Preview from Abby's First Paddling 

There are a few standard characteristics I have when I'm about to receive a spanking. I call Mr. Williams "Sir," for starters. I instantly go into little girl mode, pouting and protesting, having a bit of a whiny tantrum, but I do what I'm told, albeit hesitatingly.
As the spanking progresses, the woman takes over. My pride makes me squirm and grit my teeth, trying not to make a sound--usually failing. My breath quickens; I exhale in moans and sighs. I still cry out, I still yelp, I still, most certainly, call him Sir, but the body in which I resided at the beginning, the one that doesn't want to be punished, is overcome by the arch of my back and the tension in my thighs. I am all too aware that when I toss my head back in pain, I want him to grab my hair and pull it. When I lean forward from a powerful stroke of whichever implement he holds, I know what flesh is within his view. The shame I would have felt at being exposed in the beginning is gone. If anything, the only shame I may feel is that of wanting to be harshly disciplined, and even that dissipates as all feeling becomes focused increasingly on my backside. I am then free to fall into the punishment, to let it become, for a short time, my world.

There are, of course, variations to the tale, but the short version is: I am small, I am grown, I am released. Perhaps, in that sense, a punishment scene is like a micro-lifespan for me. Afterwards, I am reborn. I have been experiencing and writing about this long enough that I know this spanking story by heart. I know it, that is, until the rehearsal that has been my life is over and the tale is played on stage.

I'm posting another clip, this time of a paddling we filmed last night featuring the Cane-iac Little Red Schoolhouse paddle. The paddling, by the way, was enormously painful and fabulous and I am ridiculously sore today. That, however, is another post. Right now, what I am fascinated by is the fact that we cut the first minute because I cannot keep track of who I am. Am I my husband's wife, about to play with a new toy? Am I Abby, spanking and schoolgirl enthusiast? Am I a little girl or a grown woman? Why is playing myself suddenly the hardest role I've played?

From second grade through college I was on stage. I have been a 17th century New England colonist, two fairies (one of whom, oddly, is murdered on stage), a wicked stepmother, a wicked queen, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady--for heaven's sake, I was Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing! How is it easier for me to have a beard, a sword, and a drunken swagger than it is to bend over and be me?

Part of it is knowing that we're not going to film straight through the parts that come after an off-screen spanking. We're making spanking films, but as the one friend I have told informed me, I am not a porn star, despite my insistance that after a week of owning a camera, I most certainly am one. (Insert wry grin.) Part of it is knowing that although my instinct is to play the girl, I am a woman. I'm never going to convincingly play the schoolgirl, and I know that. Part of it, quite simply, is that I am almost always in character. I am a different person at work than I am with my family, who is a different person than I am with my husband, who is a slightly different person than I am with my friends. It's all masks and hats and hoping I wear the right one at the right time. In the past year, I have been more myself in this blog than I have been anywhere else, save with Mr. Williams. I want the me that is here to translate to the me on film, minus the floral language.

The difference, I suppose, is allowing myself to not play a character. To let go, to not even attempt to create a script, to wear what I feel like wearing and to be the person you've come to visit here. Not a schoolgirl, not even a bad girl, just Abby, her arse up in the air and her heart on her sleeve. Maybe I'll be able to fully be m yself next time. Then again, I've had quite a few new readers lately, and maybe the new ones are here for my round red bottom. Either way, here's a taste of why I can't sit comfortably today.

Self, Unbound

There's something wonderfully secretive and expository about this photo all at once (if you know where I found it, please tell me so I can credit the source--I can't remember). It almost seems as if the two women are one person. The girl in the background, doing the unlacing, is peering over the other's shoulder, as if peeking, as if saying, "Do you see this? Here I am. Look what I am doing." The corseted girl in the foreground is her secret self, the one she is exposing.

I dreamed last night that I was trying to dress for work and none of my skirts were long enough to cover my bruised bottom. Apparently, my dream self owned no pants. I also could not find any tights or leggings--my only option was to wear a skirt that barely hit the sweet spot where cheek meets thigh and socks that only went up to my knees.

In the dream I was frantic. "Everyone will know," I kept saying to myself. My husband appeared in the dream and said, "Everyone can see you." I know. I know.

There were times before we started the Naughty Abby project when I wanted to delete my entire blog, to go back into hiding. Sometimes it's so much easier to wear a mask (a subject I have already written about and will post later today, once a sample clip of the new paddling movie can be posted with it). I am so exposed. But I chose this, didn't I? It was my self in the background, telling the self at the core of me, "Like it or not, you're coming unbound."

Then again, in the dream, after my husband told me that everyone could see me, he told me he wanted me to cook eggplant for dinner. He would never say that. Never. So perhaps the desire to be naked in both soul and flesh before God and everybody is the real me, and the one who wants to hide is only a dream, a memory of me.

Literally Beaten By My Blog

The amazing paddle CANE-IAC made for me.

I was honored recently with an email from the Cane Master and Cane Mistress at the New England-based CANE-IAC, home of Handmade and Crafted Quality Rattan Canes, Wooden Paddles & Spanking Toys. The email featured photos of this paddle, a unique piece made especially for me--or, rather, for Mr. Williams to use upon me. I was absolute blown away.

It still surprises me that I am a part of the spanking community at all. That I am read, and now viewed, on a daily basis is almost shocking to me. Just a few years ago, I was still a good girl from a small town in New England, a graduate of a small Catholic college, working in a small Cambridge bookstore. Now, somehow, I'm a very naughty woman doing big bad things, having her big bad bottom punished, telling and showing all on her big bad blog. Somedays, I feel as though to get from A to B, I had to travel through the Greek, Cyrillic, and Cuneiform alphabets. Other times, like the moment I received that email, I feel as though I blinked and became the me I always meant to be.

The paddle arrived this past Wednesday, and it is even more beautiful in person. The hand-crafting is smooth and seamless, and it came in a lovely carrying bag (which has been set aside, as the paddle is of course already hanging on the wall). And oh does it sting! Even more than receving the paddle, though, was meeting these wonderful people from back home. They didn't do this to boost their business (though I hope it does!) or to barter one service for another. We've been emailing back and forth, and they are just like my husband and I, huge enthusiasts of spanking and punishment and wanting to share it with everyone. They also have rattan and delrin canes, more wooden paddles, and unique spanking and erotic punishment paraphernalia. It's a known fact that I like to hunt for "pervertables," those random items than can be turned into spanking tools. But sometimes, one wants something made just right, and I am happy to add CANE-IAC to our weekend online toy shopping travels.

The only problem is that now we have a good sized paddle to play with. If I have an absolute fit over a hairbrush (and I really do--there is now proof on film), I can only imagine what Mr. Williams will have on my hands. If I had to guess, I'd say it will be a very toasty bottom attached to a very pouty girl.

(P.S. Thank you Curvaceous Dee for adding the word "pervertable" to my vocabulary!)