Of Monsters and Men

Star Belly Beneath My Bed by Lisa Evans. See more at her blog, Firefluff.

When considering new fiction, I often think about the nature of the world in which the story is to be set. I'm compelled by the idea of worlds where erotic corporal punishment is a commonly accepted part of daily life, but I find it hard to justify these worlds, in part due to the mistreatment of humanity in our own world. Stories that serve many of us as arousing fantasies can too easily be found as the living nightmares of those for whom suffering is not a luxury.

Man's inhumanity to man can be a terrible stumbling block when trying to write spanking erotica. Morally, I believe that corporal punishment is unjust and inhumane and that non-consensual domination of another person's body or mind is the gravest of wrongs. In my own fantasies, however, those morals become quite blurred. That is why I latch on to the ideas of worlds so different from ours, such as the lands of myth and fairy tales, in my writing. In these worlds, I can play with sex and pain without feeling like a moral failure.

When I found the illustrations of Lisa Evans, one of which is pictured above, I was immediately drawn in by them. I showed a friend a picture called The Keepers' Tea Party and said, simply, "I want to live there." For two days straight, I've pulled up her blog whenever I've had a free moment, staring longingly into the worlds she depicts. I want that to be the reaction when my stories are read. I want the reader to long, to desperately, heart-achingly long, to be in that world, either as the inflictor of pain and punishment or as the recipient. I don't want to show you a monster that makes you afraid or uncomfortable. I want to show you a monster and for you to say, "I want that monster under my bed."

Snap

I met Mr. W when he came to work with me at the Barnes & Noble in Calabasas, California, bookstore to breast-augmented soccer moms and famous families. Jada Pinkett-Smith once chatted up Mr. W about horror novels and Anne Rice. Alec Baldwin, with his daughter in the children's department years before the infamous voicemail rant, checked out my ass while I was bent over cleaning up after spoiled children. Nikki Sixx really wears his hair that way all the time and Kate Hudson, even when she was pregnant, is inordinately tiny.

Obviously, I was a little star-struck. Mr. W wasn't so impressed, having lived in Southern California his whole life, so his free time around the store was spent not celebrity-ogling but shooting rubber bands at my rear end.

At the end of the day, I'd have bruises on my backside. Foreshadowing, I suppose, as we were just friends at the time. He'd get me when I wasn't expecting it, shelving books or hunting for overstock titles and corrugated displays in the receiving room. I swear, he kept his pockets full of rubber bands just in case he encountered my bottom when no customers were around. Spankophile flirting: he'd inflict pain on my rear, I'd squeal, he'd laugh. Oh, memories. The very fact that I let him do this to me, and daily, reminds me that there never really was anyone for me but him.

Yesterday, a rubber band broke while I was organizing paperwork at my office desk. The snap of the old rubber on my hand stung intensely, more than I remember the snap of rubber bands stinging. But even as I tried to shake the pain away, I realized I was flushing. I was radiating heat. I was suddenly so aroused that I wanted to step away from my desk for a minute, take a minute to breathe, to, well...

Was it the surprise pain? The flash of memory of Mr. W inflicting just this type of pain on me years ago? All I knew was that I wanted to be home, over his knee, squealing, happy.

I restrained myself from snapping another rubber band on myself, but I thought about it.

Scribe for Sale?

What do you think of the idea of on-demand spanking fiction?

I've been considering a new venture, a business venture, that would involve the writing of personalized stories. You tell me what you want in your story and I create it, just for you. I haven't figured out what the fee would be (similar to buying a term paper, I'd imagine?) or what rules would apply (18+ characters a must, NC ok, minor squick probably fine but dealt with on a case by case basis, no fan fic due to copyrights, that sort of thing). As much as I want to keep working on putting a story collection together for actual publication, I really like the idea of creating these personal erotic works. They would exist just for the customer, not to be published on this blog or anywhere else.

I like the intimacy of this idea. One of the stumbling blocks I hit with my own fiction is suddenly wondering, "What if I'm the only person who finds this sexy? What if I'm the only one aroused by this?" While there is nothing wrong with that, and while I know in most scenarios that wouldn't be the case anyway, I really love the idea that I would be writing something just right for somebody else. One of the things I regret about not making any more Naughty Abby films is that I never got to fulfill some of the scene requests I'd received. There were some really good ones, and this would be another way for me to fulfill those fantasies.

Tell me what you think, either here or by emailing me at abby.schoolhouse@gmail.com.