The Breaking Point

Oops! Poor little paddle! And poor me! This is only the beginning.

We didn't call our new film The Breaking Point just because Mr. Williams broke the new paddle on my backside, although it did have something to do with it.

Nor did we call it that because I took my punishment staunchly until something inside me twisted and broke open. No, I actually took to sobbing fairly early on. We'd both had a terrible few days and we needed this scene, but it nearly didn't happen because I was feeling obstinate and unsexy. When he bends me over the bench at the very beginning of the film, it's not so much the beginning of our movie as it is the end of Mr. W putting up with me. Guilt flooded me as I simultaneously began to release the stress of the day into the pain. Everything--my mind, my heart, my soul, my backside--hurt, and the tears flowed freely the moment the first one escaped down my cheek.

The real breaking point, the point when everything changes, occurs after the last stroke of what was to be punishment. I was to take eighteen strokes of the cane. After the first six, I begin to feel nauseous, dizzy, not certain I can take any more. At twelve, I feel thoroughly punished and ready to be held. For a moment, I even think I'm going to receive a reprieve and that I am finished. I'm wrong. I receive the next three strokes with squeals of agony, but then, with stroke sixteen, I am silent. I realize my silence with stroke seventeen, and ride the pain with number eighteen. The scene is edited to show my face during these strokes, and the transition from punished girl to woman craving discipline is palpable. After the eighteenth stroke, I ask, "Can I have more please?"

The answer, of course, is yes.

I think the perceived "breaking point" is often when a girl begins to cry, or moves from tears to sobbing. Even the phrase sounds like a shattering, not a union of body with pain. But I'm very vocal about my pain, and have been known to become a weeping wreck at sad sitcom episodes, nevermind physical duress. I'm not saying there have not been times when I've crumbled during a punishment--I have, and in those instances, the crumbling was my breaking point. This time, though, the stressed, panicked, crying girl was the broken one, and I somehow was the one to break through. I've rewatched those few strokes quite a few times now, and I can literally see me become myself. And then I become embarassed, because the strokes that come after the punishment was supposed to be over are fast and hard and hot, and I feel strange at being turned on by myself, and I feel strange that this intimate moment I've written about countless times has been caught on film. It's not just viable, it's now visible to others.

"Why do I like this?" That's a question I no longer ask myself. Now, during a punishment, I ask myself, "Do I like this?" Last night, for the first eighteen minutes of my discipline, the answer was no. The breaking point--when the answer became yes. Yes. Yes.

Mr. Williams, seemingly wondering if it hurts.

Yes. Yes it does.

The Repentant Hat, and Other Retails of Terror

My salvation hat.

There's something to be said for having a hobby that allows every trip out to become the equivalent of a late night trip to the adult shop. The singular difference between the two is that I generally find what I'm looking for when I'm anywhere other than the adult shop. Whole Foods just brought in a new line of wooden cookware. The flat wooden spatula is quite appealing. Ikea has a chair we call "the sex bench," ideal for positions both erotic and disciplinary. In fact, we bought a spanking horse there this weekend. They seemed to think it was for holding up a draft table! Oh, Ikea. They also sold us an implement holder, primarily for canes. They had it labelled as "umbrella stand." Little did they know.

Most fruitful, though, are stores of antiques and collectibles, especially those "antique malls" that feature vendor after vendor of random pervertable items. In the past few weeks, we've amassed a whole new collection. There's the sewing table in the previous post. Last weekend, we found a chair to go with it, an old school chair, from what we can tell, complete with the piece of wood onto which it was bolted surely decades ago. We also had successful trips to Hillsboro (hi, people who visit me from Hillsboro!) and Aurora.

The mounted, and to-be-mounted, chair.

In Hillsboro, we found a fantastic antique store in an old movie theatre. If we'd had the funds, we would have bought the entire building and turned it into a playspace for local fetishists. It featured so many small rooms in an upstairs area, what once were most likely offices but are now perfect individual punishment rooms.... but I digress, as for now, they belong to individual antiques vendors. We found one vendor that surely had the same interests as us, as amidst other ass-centric items--paintings of naked cowgirls, canes, equestrian items--we found a strange riding crop, completely unused on horses but with an interesting curvature indicating other usage.

The coveted crop.

Mr. W had to take a phone-call outside while I made our purchase, so I was alone when the cashier became jealous of the crop. "Where did this come from?" she demanded. "If I'd seen it..." I thought perhaps I should offer her my backside, to make up for having purchased the crop out from under her. I very nearly did so when she asked, "Do you have horses?" I had to tell her no, hoping secretly that this lovely woman who wanted the implement didn't have horses either.

Things were a bit more obvious this past weekend when we bought a well-worn paddle from an antique store in Aurora, Oregon. Their entire small downtown is antique shops, a haven for collectors of antiquities and erotic collectors such as ourselves. In fact, to any Oregon locals, one of the shops (I'm sorry, I cannot recall it's name, but it has a sign about carrying your dog if you bring it inside) has a ridiculous amount of wooden kitchen spoon-paddles. They're not quite spoons, as they have flatter backs, thus making them a bit more useful for spanking purposes. I'm wishing I'd bought them up, but I didn't, so they're there for the taking. Anyhow, we found this light flat paddle in Aurora, and as I purchased it (for embarassment purposes, I always make the purchases), the man behind the counter laughed and said "I'm not gonna ask what that's for. Too much information." I laughed, then blushing slightly, commented, "Well, my smile gave that away." I found myself wishing I had a business card! How I've advanced in just a few weeks. I now want to tell even random strangers what I get up to in my private time.

The obvious paddle.

My favorite find of this weekend, however, is a peculiar hat with a cross on it. The seller said it was an old Salvation Army hat. Mr. W and I had both tried it on, and turned each other on immensely. We both have a thing for hats--something we haven't explored yet on film, as we need the right sets, but come the day, we have a great collection for starters--often in the vein of Russian military, so...ouch. I'm already fantasizing about scenes involving this hat. For example, I imagine it being found out that I haven't done my good deed for the day. Or that I've had an unrepentant sinful thought and I'm made to repent. Either way, despite the hat's inherent absurdity, I feel wonderfully sexy in it. And just, just, a bit silly.

Rattanniversary

Our new vintage Singer sewing table. Featuring our cats, rather than my ass. We meant to take the table upstairs and shoot in the attic. Instead, we took pictures of our cats and ate Chinese food. Please, please, wish us better luck for this weekend. Cute table, though, huh? Can't you just see me bent over it? Is it just me?

I was reprimanded by the gas station attendant this morning. It was the same man who always assists me, his bright blue eyes normally friendly and peaceful amidst the beard that is his face. This time, however, after he'd taken my debit card and my request for ten dollars regular, he returned to my car window, asking, "Did you say twenty regular?" I'd only woken up half an hour before driving up to the pump. Dazed, I responded, "Ten or twenty, either way." Obviously, that was the wrong answer. Those eyes flashed and I was actually frightened when he growled, "Well, what is it? Ten or twenty?" I ended up with ten dollars more gasoline than I wanted because I felt I had to appease the gas station gods.

I sometimes struggle with making decisions. It's not so at work, where I dislike having decisions made for me. This statement also isn't true when it comes to major life decisions, but when it comes to choosing dinner, I'd just as well be told what to eat, or even what to cook. Last night, when Mr. W asked what I wanted to do, I had no idea. I'd spent the day in supervisor mode, filling in where needed, aiding one of my employees in keeping her calm. "Supervise me," I begged him. He chose Chinese for dinner, then supervised me right over the edge of the bed. He's quite excellent at supervision.

These bouts of indecision, sadly, come from knowing exactly what I want. If I don't get what I want, I turn inwards, shutting down, hesitant to make my desires known for fear of denial. On Wednesday evening, I was to be caned. Strapped down, in fact, something I've been craving lately, and truly punished. I'll go into the reasons once the caning actually happens. The caning was to be on film; I'd even already named it and was looking forward to both the mental and physical release that was to be obtained.

I'd been thinking about it for days, but especially on Wednesday. I was having an especially difficult day at work and was so grateful that I had the evening to look forward to. I didn't allow myself to get too upset about anything because I knew I would have the catharsis I craved soon enough. In addition to the atonement I had already attached to the caning-to-be, there was now frustration with two of my employees (easily worth seven strokes each) and aggravation with three of my bosses (five strokes for two of them, ten for the third). Add it all together, and I was in for it--but desperately looking forward to it. At one point, I'd even texted Mr. W, "My soul needs this."

Unfortunately, he also had a bad day at work. The trouble is, when we've both had a bad day, and are both feeling, simply put, violent, there are safety issues at hand. My mental space is to risk my flesh for the peace of my psyche. Thank God, he thinks differently, and my bottom was spared what could have turned into an unnecessary ravaging. In retrospect it sounds delicious, but could potentially have ruined this weekend, the weekend of our first wedding anniversary.

The absent punishment turned me at first vile, then horribly complacent. By yesterday, I was a puddle of acquiescense. I wasn't about to put my own needs on anybody. By yesterday evening, when the time came round for the discipline we had post-poned, I didn't care so much. There was no passion, making it useless. I had even dressed for the occasion in a new plaid skirt and stockings, but I just didn't want it, not in a "No, sir, please don't punish me" way, but in a "Whatever. Do what you will," sort of way, which wasn't going to be fun for anybody. I'd spent the day trying not to get my hopes up because of the disappointment the day before, and perhaps that intentional lack of desire backfired. I did ask Mr. W to pull me into a scene, but he wasn't up for it either. Hence, getting yelled at by the gas station clerk this morning. If I was a puddle yesterday, I was a lake of both acquiescence and indifference today. If only he'd pulled me out of the car and over the hood. Perhaps this would be a far different blog entry...

But it's not. The good news is: long anniversary weekend! No work, no irritations, just implements, implement shopping, time to film, time to play, and time to actually be ourselves. They say the first anniversary is the paper anniversary, but for us, I'm hoping it's rattan.

Fierce Foreplay

Braced for Fierce Foreplay. I love this shot. I love this film!

The vocabulary of our fetish is not broad enough to encompass all we do. Some punishment truly is punishment, discipline in the old-fashioned sense, described by Merriam-Webster as "suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution." Those of us who make use of punishment as part of our erotic, domestic, and/or spiritual lives have surely experienced those punishment scenes that are based explicitly or loosely on actual wrong-doing. Our tops provide that retribution for us, usually not because they need to, as would a judiciary system based on corporal punishment, but because we need them to. Perhaps it aids us in forgiving ourselves, or in simply releasing ourselves from the perception of wrong-doing. Perhaps it allows us to perceive ourselves as forgiven. Cause and effect, naughtiness and punishment--the bread and butter of the spanking world.

But, as has been confirmed in blog after blog, comment after comment, email after email, there is something else we spankophiles do that has nothing to do with notions of wrongdoing and reprisal, something completely lacking in Dostoevskian drive. It's the thing that makes spanking a viable form of pornography. It's the thing that made my husband know that I was the woman for him. It's the thing that has been the basis of every masturbatory session I can remember in my adult life. It's the fact that spanking--in all it's agonizing, power-struggling, ripe-bottomed glory--is simply hot.

My fetish is multi-faceted, a spanking diamond, if you will. Hold it to the light this way, and when watching a spanking film, I find myself thinking the phrase "Beat her harder" during an already firm punishment. Held another way, all I can think is "Why do I like this?" well struggling not to cry so much it would worry the neighbors or the postman. Hold it one way and I want to hear stories of cruel Victorian canings on the bare backsides of non-consenting young women, but hold it another way and it's the most sensual, most fulfilling foreplay imaginable, the kind that could substitute or even has substituted for sex.

Getting beaten as foreplay is no less painful--some of my more erotically fulfilling spankings have also been the most severe. To a degree, those spankings are no more consensual, either, as usually at some point, my body realizes that a paddling or a caning is not sex, and that it hurts, and that it's going to hurt for days. They're often even more mentally challenging, because there is nothing to repent, no reason to explain to myself why I am experiencing the ordeal. It's happening only because it's what we do.

I came up with the phrase "Fierce Foreplay" in naming the most recent scene we filmed. Our only intention was to capture what it is Mr. W and I do together, usually when the cameras are off. We captured it so well it's taken me a few days just to brave watching the edited version, which Mr. W executed beautifully. The film is so me, so bare and honest that it terrified me a little. In the beginning, there's some giggling, some enjoyment. Then there hits a point when I think I don't want to go on, as a tawsing tortures me between the thighs. By the end, a caning takes me over the edge and leaves me bruised and a little bit embarrassed for days. Abby's fingers, at it again.

I'm really proud of this film, because I think it captures the intensity of what we do as well as the connection we share behind it. But I'm terrified, because if I can forget the cameras are there now, if I can be completely myself, then what might we capture next? I've always known I spent my days dancing with my demons. I never thought I'd have a chance to watch that dance on film.

My backside is Demon Number One.

Who's That Baby in the Picture?

There was a Golden Book I liked when I was very small called Who's That Baby In the Picture. It was about a little girl who, dressed in her mother's finest Sunday hat, explores a closet in her house and finds pictures of a baby she does not know, a baby who turns out to be her when she was a baby. Because she is so tiny and just understanding her own self, she doesn't recognize herself as anything other than they way she looks then and now.

Though I am much older, I feel the same way. I look at the above photo, taken just last night before another filmed spanking, and I ask myself the same question as the little girl in the book. I look at that photo and see a beautiful girl. Who is that? I ask myself. I don't see myself like that. How is it that the camera, an entity that has always been cruel to me, sees the real me, when I can barely see myself?

This morning, I read a Powells.com blog entry by novelist Rabih Alameddine , who wrote about the nature of writers primarily being that of liars. Alameddine writes, "When I write, I fabricate. Art, after all, comes from 'artifice.' I've always considered novelists to be grifters, charlatans, the greatest of them marvelously proficient liars." I was once shocked by this same sentiment in college, when a man, a writer, whom I loved solely through letters and online conversations, told me the same thing. There are two phrases for which I will always remember him. One was simply, "You are like remembering dreams." The other: "Writers are liars." I have long sinced ceased worrying about the dissidence. The latter I somehow always knew to be true.

Now that my true self is revealed through words, and my false self, my bill-paying self, my actual self of artifice, is the one revealed during the course of the day, I can't help but wonder if a phrase I have long believed to be true, "Writers are liars," is a falsehood of the utmost degree. What if it's not that we are liars, but we have so disguised ourselves from ourselves that we express truth and claim it to be false because we can no longer tell the difference? With the exception of when I am solely with my husband, I am the most myself when I am here, or communicating with others I have met through this blog. You, reader, know me better than the people who see me a straight nine hours a day. That does not Abby a liar make. Rather, it makes the woman you know as Abby a liar. The real me, a falsehood. The falsehood, the truth.

Small pieces come out during the day. I handed a Papermate pen to my new boss this morning and remembered to remove the paperclip I had wrapped around it at the last moment. "You don't need to use a martyr pen," I said offhandedly. "Martyr pen?" he asked. "Like the monks who wear a cilice around their thighs? I had this paperclip around the pen and it kept poking me, but I don't know why I didn't remove it before now." "Ah, a penitent," he said, and he said it in the most lovely Australian accent, but he's my boss, and I can't exactly reveal the whole of myself to him.

I would tell everyone, if I could. I told my best friend from high school shortly after writing my last post about what I'm up to these days, and she applauded me whole-heartedly. A few people at work do know. The one friend from Southern California who has remained in contact with me found out this week as well, and received the information with grace and interest. Strangely, though, I still occasionally feel estranged from myself, as if this alter ego has separated herself from me, has declared the daytime me unworthy of her evening activities. Who is that baby in the picture? I wish I had the freedom to be myself. The baby in the picture, the woman staring directly into my eyes--that's me.

Riding-Cropgasm

I must have sounded like a small child in the backseat of a car all day, intoning, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" Only, my question wasn't whether we had arrived a destination, but whether we were finally at a point of being ready to film after a month-long hiatus. I'd been craving the scene all weekend, but especially after working on the NaughtyAbby.Com site all day on Sunday, transferring the short films we'd made already to a PayPal friendly agent and redesigning the current main pages of my little baby business. In other words, I was due for a spanking. Past due.

We'd played a bit since that last tawsing we'd filmed, but nothing session-like. As Mr. Williams set up cameras and I changed into pony-tails and the white eyelet panties I'd been so excited to wear since buying them especially for this purpose early this spring at Victoria's, tension resonated through our house. What were we going to play with? What was the scene? How long would it be? Was it a screaming scene? A crying one? A playful one? Neither of us knew. We'd spent the whole weekend talking about it, but we still didn't know what was going to happen once I was face-down on the bed and he'd hit record on the cameras.

The scene, as it turned out, was one of revival. I may have wanted to believe that the short lunchtime caning two weeks ago was was my return to form, but it was this, a full twenty-five minute scene that was, more than anything else, what Mr. Williams and I do together when there are no cameras, when there are no eyes on us other than our own. The scene turned out to be an example of our courtship, our marriage, our love. It was us.

He began with a hand-spanking. I was face-down on the bed and he knelt next to me. A friend the other day told me of how much a hand-spanking can really hurt when you're used to implements, and I thought I understood, but I didn't, not until his smacks started landing on my upper and outer thighs. Unlike last time, not once did I question my dedication to the pain. I rode every moment, experienced every sting without letting go of it or trying to send it away. I knew what was to come next was going to be good.

Oh God, it was. He paddled me with a leather bat from an equestrian shop. He strapped me with one of our favorite barber strops. He double cropped me with two riding crops, and I actually orgasmed as he struck me with one and rubbed me with the other. It was... it was phenemonal. And that was before the caning that made me want to beg for more. It hurt so much and I adored every second of it because it made me feel like me again.

Unlike during some punishments, when I have the agony of a misdeed or a bad day to release, I had nothing to release this time except the heaviness of winter, the fear that this wasn't my calling, my concern that in turning my passion into a business, I was somehow whoring a part of my soul. Two emails influenced my ability to let those worries go and to let go of myself into experiencing one of the most sexual and passionate scenes (and after-scenes!) I've had in some time. One was the one containing the content of my reader Jim. His comments about my tawsing film restored my faith in what I'm doing. I'm not perceived as being a tawdry woman in the face of my husband. Instead, we are perceived as joyfully celebrating this shared fetish, and it makes me both relieved and ecstatic that what we do is seen as being a true part of ourselves.

The other email was from my best friend from high school, who sent a link containing a You Tube clip featuring another classmate performing karaoke Neil Diamond, commenting that she never would have recognized him. I wondered if she would be surprised to know what I'm up to online, or if she might have suspected I had it in me all along. I found that I was and am proud of the Naughty Abby project, of the woman I have become and have decided to share with my fellow spankophiles. I wanted to send her a link with the subject line, "What I'm Doing These Days." I may still.

At the end of it all, we had issues with two of our three cameras. The good news is that the fully-functioning camera was the one focused (with zoom) on my backside. We'll post the full version once we have the Members site up, and for now, we're going to work on picking out our favorite few minutes for a short video feature, if only to share that surprising (but quite amazing, complete with an announcement of "Sir, I'm coming!") riding-cropgasm. The other good news is that Mr. Williams is home every night this week and Saturday. So despite my extremely sore bottom today, even more tender flesh awaits me as the week continues. With any luck, more films and posts await as well.

Round Two!

At this point, this image is a golden oldie, but it has to do with what I'm posting about.

Bear with me!

The Naughty Abby site is taking forever to come to fruition. I've barely had time to write, nevermind film! I know that there have been a few people who have been curious about the movies I'm making, but didn't want to venture into a non-PayPal world, so I finally found a way of posting the same clips from the clip site onto NaughtyAbby.Com. I started with the tawsing clip, as that's one of my favorites, and I just put it on the front page tonight. I kept the pricing the same as the clips4sale site (where the prices were determined by the site, not me) in order to keep it fair for those who have helped me towards continuing to film. Please know that you have! We bought a third video camera and more memory and have been anxious to try them out! Bear with us and my bottom will be back soon. For now, I'll try to get some of the other films up on my own site as well, and that will at least let me know if there's still an interest in my poor red bottom. Also, a thank you to Pandora and Dave, both of whom have shown great faith in the future of the Abby site and have listed it on their own blogs. Thank you so much! For the Paypal people, let me know if there's a video you want me to post sooner rather than later, and I'll get on it as soon as possible. Comment here or email me.

xoxo,

Abby