Hello, Voyeur

I claimed the title of Exhibitionist/Voyeur for my own last week. After a lifetime of writing and talking about spanking and sex, after more than a decade of posting pics to show off my ass, whether a blank canvas or a masterpiece of markings and a glimpse of drippy wet naughty bits, I announced bravely from the privacy of the bathtub to Mr. W, “I’m finally saying it. I’m an exhibitonist, and obviously a voyeur too. I’m owning it. This is me.” Duh. It was a little anticlimactic. I’ve always know that I wanted to stand out, and I’ve always wanted to connect with others over kink. Most of my life, I haven’t allowed myself to do so, but it’s been engrained from the start. I have new readers, so many of you haven’t heard my stories of sitting around with friends and neighborhood kids at my yellow and orange Playskool plastic picnic table, asking them to tell me about their spankings. Most would, eager to share their experiences. We were kids, so it was hand spankings, mom’s wooden spoons, and the very rare and shocking daddy’s belt. Boy did I wonder about that last one, it sounded so mean and intense. Sometimes we moved on before it was my turn and I was relieved, or if we got to me I’d make something up. I’d never been spanked. All I had were their real life experiences and my fantasies about them. All these kids really knew about me regarding spanking was that I was fascinated, perhaps obsessed. As just an innocent seven year old, I was given a lead role in the annual second grade Thanksgiving play, which was always a big deal in my school. I was cast as Mother in “Back to the Future at the Garrison House.” It was 1985 and “Back to the Future” had been the hit movie that summer, so naturally, our play was about time-traveling to the 17th century. Wild West my butt, Back to the Future III. We did it first and we took it farther back. In my colonial New England town, we had two historical buildings that were named for what they were - The Little Red Schoolhouse and The Garrison House. Later in town history, we built a ginger ale factory and named it after the town - Chelmsford Ginger Ale. Pilgrims - not great with making ginger ale or at naming things, considering the town name itself is a town in England, as are pretty much all the other townnames in Massachusetts, except for those with Native American origins. One thing about growing up in a colonial town with colonial events and “growing up colonial” history lessons is that you can’t avoid corporal punishment, especially when talking about school or how children should behave at home. I already knew from children’s literature that spanking was to be expected as a part of life - who didn’t want to be whipped by Pa’s strap in “Little House in the Big Woods,” or take a turn as “The Whipping Boy?” Then I had my friends and neighbors confirming my suspicions. Spanking was already everywhere for this little bookworm and schoolgirl voyeur. So what’s a girl to do when she finds out she’s playing a Pilgrim Mama and this is her big line in the school play? “GET TO BED CHILDREN, OR IT WILL BE THE SWITCH FOR YOU!!!” I had to say this to my friends, my classmates! In my black and white pilgrim dress and bonnett, clapping my hands after the line to indicate the sound of impending smacking. I knew what a switch was, knew it was birch, knew my children would have had to go outside and cut the branch themselves. I get shivers remembering, and I get shivers telling you about it now. As I begin to explore switching and femdom, I feel like that little girl all over again, wanting so desperately to be spanked, standing up in front of the world and saying the opposite, knowing deep down it’s just as true. Ever since that play, when I felt exposed to but not actually seen by my school, my teachers, and my family, I have wanted nothing more than to be exposed and seen daily. I think I’ve been screaming since I was seven, “Will someone please see me for who I truly am?” I grew up smart and weird, polite and awkward, fitting in everywhere and nowhere. I found boyfriends to play at play spanking by the time I was an older teen, but until Mr. W, I never did feel fully seen. Once we’d played, I also knew I’d never been fully spanked until he came along. My life since then has been figuring out just how much a person needs to be seen. How much I need to be seen. Is one person knowing who you truly are enough? Can you live a life doing your best impersonation of yourself, and every now and again you get to be the complete you, only to tuck her away again, polite and tidy? Your friends might have a little piece, the internet might have a little anonymous piece, your family probably doesn’t know a damn thing about you. Do you even know yourself, if you spend so little time with the real you? Over the course of adulthood, I stopped knowing myself, and eventually lost myself completely. No, I didn’t just stop knowing myself - I hated the me I thought I was. Every now and again I’d pop out and how up here on the blog, but it got to the point where even Mr. W wasn’t getting to see the me that any of us know and love. Fortunately, when I feel good, I really love myself and I think I have an absolute treasure trove of knowledge, passion, compassion, and enthusiasm to share here, in the world of kink, and in the world at large. That is why it still feels powerful to say that three years ago, I started myself on a path to get myself back, which began with five days in a behavioral health facility (a mental hospital) in January 2016. It has been an absolute fight to be the me who writes this today, but here I am, about to turn forty-one, and for the first time, more than ever in my life, I feel seen on a daily basis. Most importantly, I see and love myself. Every. Single. Day. Mr. W has loved every version of me because he knows that it’s always been me on the inside. I can finally look back on my life and love every version of me too, because whether I’ve been in hibernation, incubation, or secret old spanking videos, it’s all led to now, Abby standing on her little red soapbox, announcing this, that, and the other thing. I’m publishing this! I’m selling that! I’m getting spanked! I’m writing smut! And here’s my butt! Hello, Voyeur. I’m Abby, Exhibitionist. Voyeur. Spanko. Monogamous kink player. Erotica writer. Vintage smut librarian and purveyor of filth. Ass worshipper and worshippee. Goddess. Seven year old Abby was ashamed and embarrassed of listening to her school friends’ spanking stories and threatening to thrash them on stage. Forty-one year old Abby is proud and literally aroused to say the world is her stage and she is ready to be its star. That’s how good it feels to say this to anyone willing to listen/read/watch/experience. I am so happy you’re here. I couldn’t do any of this without you. I definitely couldn’t have made it here without Mr. W. I love you more than anything, Mister. Thank you for walking beside me when we are balanced, carrying me when I fall, and celebrating me when I rise. I wouldn’t have anywhere near as sexy a story to tell without you.

Becoming My Fetish Incarnate

If you're not up for reading - more welty bruisy pics below. But I'd love if you read my love letter to spanking as it slowly begins to consume more and more of my time and life. xoxo, Abby


I am overwhelmed with a renewed sense of desire, as if on the verge of something so illicit and delicious that my skin can barely stand the anticipation. An underlying but constant distraction keeps my mind and nerves abuzz. I get through the day but the thrum in the shadows grows louder and stronger and faster - I have become lust incarnate for a thing I cannot possess.

I crave this thing called Spanking. I want to live inside it, taste it, fuck it, be it, know it like an acolyte knows the meaning behind the meaning behind the meaning of a favorite prayer.

Suddenly I'm writing again. I have ideas for stories. I'm putting together collections. As you know, I've been more comfortable posting photos of myself as well, either spanked or just in celebration of the body and the bottom. Mr. W is working on a number of spanking-related projects that I hope to be sharing with you here soon. We've started going out smut hunting again, and looking for pervertibles, and just being in the mind-space all the time. It's starting to feel like we're always turned on.

For too long, spanking has been a core part of each of our identities, but we haven't allowed it to be front and center. Yet, if you asked each of us privately, it is THE thing that makes us each who we are. And if you asked us together what makes us amazing as a couple, if we were comfortable enough to say so, we'd tell you it's because we not only complement each other's fetish, we ARE each other's fetish. He is my top and everything I would want that to be. I am his bottom.

Starting next week, I've actually adjusted my work schedule so that I have more time to write and play and share all this with the world that knows what I'm talking about. And I want to be an advocate for spanking play! This blog contains eleven years of (on-and-off) writing about understanding why I am like this. I am at long last through with that. I am like this. I think things are about to get really good.

The pic at the top and these here below are from playtime with the strap and cane with Mr. W last night. I wrote the above yesterday but didn't get a chance to post it. Then all this happened. One of my "vignettes" to tell you the dirty details will be coming up in the next few days.

Afterwards, I asked him if he had a favorite moment or part from what we'd just done, but in true brat fashion I was too excited to tell him my favorite to let him answer. "My favorite part," I told him, "was when  you had my in - for lack of a better term - diaper position on the edge of the bed, and the strap really hurt and I started wiggling. You grabbed my legs and did your best to hold me in place, but you let me cry and twist and turn." That twisting and turning resulted in some of the welts you see on my left leg - truly my own misbehaving fault! "There was a moment in there when I realized you were just going to let me cry and squirm and I just let go and existed purely in that moment."

"My favorite moment," he replied, "was that same moment, when I felt you let go."

I'm writing up this last bit early this morning and I have the most delightful shivers. Someone's going in to work wet today.

Time for a Spanking

When I first started blogging, I was as much trying to understand my love of spanking as I was trying to share it. "Why do I like this?" I would ask myself. I didn't need to understand the fetish or what anyone else liked - it was all about me.

In one of my first posts, The Weight of the World, I wrote about spankings as a reset button, a way to let go of the things that were stressing me out so I could carry on:

And when I do break, when I do begin to weep silent slow tears, then sob, when I can't hold back a cry with every stroke, when I know I've built up to it, have earned it, have struggled through every part of my mind and have released it all, I can let go. Every pain throughout the day is gone. Every familial agony and workplace drama is released in the whoosh of his chosen implement. Swish. I pay every bill in full.Crack. I am beautiful and striped and proud. Then, slice, I'm only a little girl. I'm only a little girl. With each stroke, this is all I know now. I collapse into him afterwards, this little girl fully punished, released of all her sins and the sins of those around her, and he holds me, curls around me, gently, whispering how proud he is of me. My hips begin to rise and writhe, pressing back against him even with the pain, and I am a woman, ready to carry the weight of the world once again.

Released of all her sins and the sins of those around her. Wow. I was not kidding about feeling like I carried the weight of the world.

I've long since let go of the idea that I am being personally punished during a spanking. It's sexy in fantasy, but we do not punish in our home. We play, even if we're playing at punishment. I don't list off real or imagined wrong-doings in my mind with each stroke. So besides mutual sexual pleasure with Mr. W, what do I get from a spanking now, if not temporary release from all the world's sins?

Making time for a spanking is making time for and about us. We get attention. Connection. We are fully focused upon one another. The space is set - door closed, implements laid out, clothes removed. The air is quiet, heavy with breath and anticipation but there is no music, no TV, no buzzing or beeping of phones. There is no one and nothing but us and the spanking, which in itself is an extension of us. We give it and each other our everything.

Spanking is perhaps one of the more zen sexual activities - you're in the moment, completely immersed. The top is aware of the bottom's physical and mental state, guiding the experience, ensuring both safety and satisfaction. The bottom is vulnerable but not a victim, consensual but not complacent. You don't just give or receive - together, two individuals become one spanking.

In the rush of daily life, there is traffic and work and then more traffic, groceries and pet supplies and pharmacies, dishes and carpets and yard work. After the must-do work of life, I still try to find time for the gym, to write, or to take a nice bath with epsom salts, because I am tired and thanks to the gym, I am always sore, and not in the fun bright-pink bottomed way. For Mr. W, after a day spent working with energy vampires, he still tries to find time to play his guitars, to work on his leather craft, or to just find a small spot of inner peace so that the things he really wants to do are possible.

Spanking can be exhausting for both partners, if you really give it your all and allow it to overcome your physical, emotional, and mental faculties. For a couple both trying to live their best lives as well as recover from the lives they've already lived up to this point, it can be daunting to even consider taking whatever ounce of strength you have left for the day and invest it in something that may leave you both unable to do much past snuggle and watch TV for the rest of the night. But that's the best kind of spanking! Pardon the pun, but I don't want a half-assed spanking. I want a full-assed, exhausting, arousing, three orgasms followed by dinner in bed kind of spanking.

As much as we wish the world was different, it can't be time for a spanking all the time. But when we do take the time, we give it and each other everything we have. There is nothing outside ourselves. No weight of the world, because there is no world. Just us. Just spanking. Just who we really are, and who we are together.



Image Source: Casemiro Arts - Peter Reiss on Society6. I just discovered both him and Society6 today while searching Google Images for "spanking clocks" for this post. Has a number of other art pieces also featuring the female bottom. On this one, "Fitness Time," I loved the curl of her left toes. I'm a toe-curler too. 

Breaking Points, Ball Gags, and Blog Rolls

A sample clip from The Breaking Point

Mr. W and I just spent a portion of our morning watching snippets of the old "Naughty Abby" movies. We haven't seen them in years. The drive they were on died years ago, and I had to re-download them from the site where they'd been hosted and fortunately when I "killed" Abby a few years back, I did not take them down. The only one I couldn't get was "The Breaking Point," our final film, because apparently at some point I accidentally deleted it from that hosting site. If anyone has this movie and a way to transfer it to me, please let me know. I will write you personalized erotica, or send you the original cost via Paypal. I'd really like to have this movie back, because it was such an unintentionally iconic moment in our lives. The breaking of the paddle, the ending of the era of "Naughty Abby," the ending, even, of aligning spanking with the word "punishment." I'd like to have it again, for sentimental, erotic, and future project purposes.

Watching one's personal oeuvre of fetish movies does get in the way of other intentions for the day, and so I have not yet worked on the audio files I mentioned. I want to start by turning the old movies into audio files, because I have recently become fascinated with ASMR videos on YouTube. That is a post to come. I thought it would be the one I wrote today, but I'm not there yet, due to the watching of myself and my husband getting our spank on. I really enjoyed it! I had moments where I winced, and Mr. W would look at me and all I could say was "I feel really bad for myself there!" Other comments included: "What ever happened to those panties?" "Ohhh, I'm bruising right there" and I'd point at the screen, touching my own bottom in video form, which is oddly fascinating. "I wore those white socks because I hadn't had a pedicure." "I cried a puddle of tears on the table with this one. You were so mean!" And, four minutes in to "Time for the Belt,"  "Do you really just belt me for nine minutes straight?" The answer to that one, it turned out, was yes.

I'm coming back to this blog a slightly different person. I'm 35 now, having just celebrated my birthday on Imbolc/Groundhog's Day/Saint Brigid's Day/Candlemas/etc. We celebrated with an amazing spanking and caning, helped along by my new-found toy, the ball gag. The gag is partly due to an initial curiosity, and partly due to apartment living. We finally have an upstairs neighbor we like, with a very darling but young and therefore anxious dog, and I just don't want to randomly scream, even though my body, presumably due to hormonal changes, is more sensitive than it was a few years ago. The other part is that I find it oddly comforting. We keep it loose, so I can move it in and out of my mouth as needed. It's not to stifle me. It's so I can let out the murmurs and moans while restraining myself in taking the harder hits. I like knowing that my reaction is up to me: when the strike is warm and full across the fleshiest part of my bottom, I can moan in sexy "agony," but when it hurts like hell, I can bite down and take it, if I choose. Most importantly, the "naughty" is officially gone from my name. I think there a few other women out there who know what I mean when I say, I am a damn good woman, wife, and creature of the flesh. I deserve not punishment, but uplifting. And if my uplifting comes in the form of having my ass lifted in the air and turned bright red or striped until I can hold it up no more, so be it.

Suffering to Sooth the Soul, or, Assedia & Me

Although I have long since come to terms with my fascination with and craving for the pain of a good hard spanking, in all its various forms and by means of all its various implements, I still ponder the reasons why I like what I like and why I want what I want. I've expounded on theories over the years - the need to relinquish control, the healing power of tears, the reversion of woman to child in order to fully embrace the identity of woman once again - but I haven't settled on any one reason. I don't think there is or can be such a thing. And yet, through my casual reading I've developed another theory. Let's add escape from spiritual ennui to the mix.

I'm currently reading Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris, author of the monastic memoir The Cloister Walk. In Acedia & Me, she explores the concept of acedia, a sort of boredom of the soul that was once considered the eighth "bad thought" in the philosophy of the early Christian desert monks. The eight bad thoughts of the monks became the seven deadly sins of the church and acedia was subsumed by sloth, but sloth does not cover the greater meaning of acedia. Sloth, as we know, is the act of being lazy. Acedia, in contrast, describes the state of being detached from that which we once found meaningful because we have found it, or all things, to be meaningless. In suffering from acedia we might be lazy, yes, but it is because we can perceive no value in doing that which we are avoiding.

A simple example, for Norris as well as myself, is that of acedia and writing. A few years ago, I decided that every story has been told. I have never wanted to do anything but write. I call myself a writer. But having come to that decision, it's hard to find the motivation to write when I believe that all I am doing is regurgitating in text. I've been "working" on my collection of retold fairy tales for years. "Working" means I've started a few, thought about them, abandoned them. There are all ready so many retold fairy tales. Do I really have anything new to offer? A small piece of me knows that I do. The greater part of me has trouble finding the energy to waste on mimicry.

Early concepts of acedia were tied more closely to spiritual suffering and rejecting one's closeness to God. Essentially, it's the idea that God, or the Universe, or Life Itself, metaphorically comes to a person and says, "Here, have this gift. It is the gift of now and today and your presence in it." In response, the person says, "No thank you." It is Melville's Bartleby, having accepted a job and arrived to do it, proceeds to respond to each task with "I would prefer not to."

Early in the book, Norris considers acedia's etymology and word associations. In listing its synonyms, she lands on indolence and writes:

"Dolor is an ancient word for "pain," and indolence is the inability to feel it. We've now come close to the worst that acedia can do to us: not only does it make us unable to care, it takes away our ability to feel bad about that. If we can no longer weep, or desire, or feel pain or grief, well, that's all right; we'll settle for that, we'll get by." (p. 45)

From a masochist's perspective, what could be more terrifying than the inability to feel pain? Although the quote above refers moreso to internal pain and emotional suffering, I could not help but see the parallel between feeling pain and feeling alive, feeling as though I and my actions have purpose. I think my mental state after an experience of corporal punishment must be much like the feeling one has after sky diving or white-water rafting a dangerous river, or even after riding a particularly terrifying roller coaster. There is a life-affirming sensation of having survived. Is it too far-fetched to say that reaffirming the ability to feel pain can ease the spiritual suffering of acedia? If I accept pain, I accept feeling; if I accept feeling, I acknowledge presence; if I acknowledge presence, I accept implied purpose. If I accept implied purpose, I impart meaning.

In other words, if I am punished I will feel pain. Feeling pain grounds me in myself, a self I view first and foremost as a writer. Being present in myself, as a writer, I am meant to write, and if I am meant to write, then my writing, be it word or blog post or epic tome, cannot be meaningless. I am spanked therefore I am.

Of course, this entire theory does nothing to explain why I like the thought of others being spanked. I can honestly say that I have never watched a spanking video or read spanking erotica and thought to myself afterwards, "Well, my life now has purpose and my soul is no longer wretched and abject." Then again, reading and watching erotica does always make me want to write my own, so perhaps there is greater meaning in our dirty art forms after all.

Submission vs Obedience. Now featuring Bondage Puppies.

img (and bondage dogs for sale): www.honour.co.uk

When a pet-owner becomes exhausted by a rowdy canine, that dog might be sent to doggy day-care or obedience school, but even the kinkiest of us would probably take pause before sending a beloved pet to a school for submission. Submission School for Dogs sounds like a fetish-oriented pet care program, which may explain why I was unable to find a listing online for any canine training program with the word "submission" in its name. Apparently, even dog trainers know that submission is different from obedience. Why, then, is it so difficult to explain how one differs from the other? How do I know if I am submissive or just willing to follow commands?

I've been thinking about the disparity between these two concepts since MurasakiTeapot, kinky conversation starter and fellow fetishist in the Twitterverse, posed her Kink of the Day Question on Tuesday: "Submission vs. Obedience? Can you obey and not submit?"

I won't repost the whole thing here, but the course of the conversation can be followed on MurasakiTeapot's Twitter page if you go back far enough. I summed up my feelings with the theory, "Obedience is submission to a command. Submission is obedience to a person."

I'm going to approach my feelings on this from the perspective of sex and punishment, but not life and lifestyle. I know for certain that if I could never be the "s" in a D/s relationship, and I'm therefore not well-versed enough to consider that aspect of this subject. What I do know is that I've always considered myself to be sexually submissive, in the sense that I want to give up control. I want to be told what to do and how to do it, to be physically manipulated into the right position. My attitude takes on a "Do with me what you will" quality that can at times be crippling because it means I don't take initiative. I wait, because I fear I will do something dissatisfactory. In this sense, my submission greatly varies from obedience in that I have put my whole self and the entire scenario into my lover's hands. In waiting to take action because I am waiting to be told, I'm not actually obeying anything. I may, at times, even be preventing anything from happening at all. I haven't been told to wait. I haven't been told to fear. Those traits are intrinsic. Therefore, it seems I have answered the opposite of the original question. It is possible to be submissive without simultaneously being obedient.

Now consider a scene in which I am going to receive a spanking. Before the spanking itself, possibly for hours or days on end, I may have been literally begging for it. I most likely will have been pointing out, at times to an obsessive and irritating degree, exactly what I want and how I want it. No submission there. I do try to top from the bottom, I'm aware of it, and I know it's perceived as a big no-no, but I am nothing if not a series of diametrically opposed characteristiccs, and this just happens to be one of them. I've been told not to, and still I try to, pun intended, force my husband's hand. So no obedience in the spanking prequel. Apparently, I am just a very, very bad girl before my punishment.

When I want to be spanked, what happens to the sub from the bedroom? Why am I not that girl when it comes to discipline? Why do I suddenly want to take control and command my own spanking? My fear of behaving dissatisfactorily flies out the window. I have actually become aggravated with myself at times for wanting a spanking so badly that I am perfectly willing to ruin an otherwise peaceful but spank-free day by whining and pleading and then getting mad when I don't get my way. Mr. W is forced to prove his dominance by denying me the very thing I want. I realize this, and still I behave this way. So does that mean I really want the spanking, or I don't?

Fast-forward to the punishment. I bend where I'm supposed to, I take the strokes I'm meant to take, but I don't enjoy it. It hurts. I obey, but once it really starts to sting, I fight it, I wiggle away, I moan "please no more" into a pillow, I stamp my feet or kick or otherwise make a fuss. Inside my head, I'm wondering why I wanted this, why I'll be happy afterwards that it happened. In the moment I hate it, and I want it to stop, but when a new command is given, such as to reposition or to count the strokes, I obey. I'm mad about it, I don't want to do it, but I obey. Original question answered: Yes, it is possible to obey but not submit.

So where does this leave me? Do I need to learn to be both more dominant and more submissive? I think, in my case, the debate between obedience and submission is less relevant then the debate between my confidence as a spankophile and the tentativeness with which I approach other aspects of my life. As a spankophile, I know what I want, and won't rest until I get it. Is it really so easy as that? If I just knew what I wanted, and said what I wanted, would I get what I want as well? I don't think Mr. W even knows about the part of me that wants to fully submit, at least sometimes. He's so often exposed to Miss I Want My Way that he may not realize that Miss I Want Your Way to Be to Have Your Way With Me even exists.

I guess it comes down to three things. The first is that who I am sexually and who I am in terms of my spanking fetish really are two different entities. That is good to know, and something I had never considered separating until now. The second is that the theme song Mr. W picked for me when we first met still applies today, and I still laugh every time I hear Cheap Trick singing, "I want you to want me. I need you to need me. I'd love you to love me. I'm begging you to beg me." If nothing else, it seems he knew what he was getting into.

The third is that maybe I'm more submissive than I realized in the grand scheme, because what it all really comes down to is me saying not only "Dominate me" but also "I want so much to do what pleases you that I want to please you all the time, even when it might just be time to relax."

Next lesson: learning that submitting isn't really about what I want. And we're back to me considering D/s and realizing if I'm the "s" it's going to have to be a capital letter.

Origin of a Sexy Species

I have XM radio in my office, but it only gets three music channels - Top 40, hip-hop, and a mix station. The mix station, called Pink Channel Radio, is bearable in regards to music, but every now and again it offers up "life tips for women" from pop doctors and psychologists. They tend to be cringe-worthy on a good day, but today's tip especially irked me.

The subject was feeling sexy. "Show me a woman who feels sexy 24/7, and I'll show you a liar," intoned the condescendingly friendly voice. She went on to explain that feeling sexy is all about self-confidence, and if one is self-confident, then one will naturally feel sexy, look sexy, and be perceived as sexy by others. This isn't bad advice, in general. Self-confidence is fantastic. Feeling sexy is fantastic. Aside, however, from the obvious offense of implying that all women share a desperate need to look, feel, and be perceived as sexy by everyone at all times, this radio blurb assaulted the millions of women - and men - who struggle with their own self-confidence, among other more serious life issues, because of how they are perceived in regards to sex and "sexiness."

So let me get this right, Radio For Women. I need to improve my self-confidence so that I can be sexy, and then once I am sexy, the world can objectify me, ostracize me, or embarass me, because a sexual woman, and in addition a sexual woman involved in kink, is not the most openly embraced woman in the world. Then, objectified, outcast, and ashamed, I can search deep down for that self-confidence, bring it back to the surface, take pride in who I am and - because, by your own rule, Radio For Women, as a woman I need to be perceived as sexy - fall into the same painful cycle again.

Maybe I'm just a little sensitive right now after reading an insightful blog post from the brilliant and beautiful Miss Tori (and I'm not just saying that because she's a disciplinarian). On her (now defunct) blog La Dolce Tori, she recently wrote about the possibility that the influx of women into the adult industry during the recession could raise acceptance and remove the stigma of being a sex worker. She cited an article from the SF Gate, which stated "In this economy, 'desperate measures are becoming far more acceptable,' said Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist who's had clients who worked in adult entertainment." Acceptance due to necessity had not occurred to me, and I have found myself hopeful since reading Miss Tori's post. If acceptance of traditional sex work (i.e. "vanilla") becomes commonplace, can the acceptance of fetish work and lifestyle and its practitioners be far behind?

I can admit that I have not experienced hardship because I like to be spanked. However, friends, strangers, and those I admire in the spanking world have experienced far more than hardship, often publically, always unnecessarily. Sex workers of the world, be they providers, pornographers, models or mistresses, have the right to their careers perhaps moreso than anyone else in the world.

Sex work isn't known as the oldest of professions because it was the career nobody wanted or the service nobody sought. I've been reading a vastly entertaining collection of sex trivia called Sexy Origins and Intimate Things by Charles Panati. It light-heartedly traces early prostitution from hunter-gatherer society onward. One theory as to why we, as humans, are essentially constantly "in heat" is because women bartered sex for food and protection for themselves and their children. The men fed and protected the women who remained sexually receptive for the longest periods, thereby essentially creating a race that was ingrained to want sex all the time. The need for sexual satisfaction is literally in our blood.

Why, then, are we outcast when we want to provide sexual satisfaction to others and obtain it for ourselves? Cultures and mores aside, why would we as a society subscribe to the denigration of the men and women who, quite literally, uphold our origin of species? Whether the work is for pay or for pleasure, we are doing what our genes, not our radios, have instructed us to do: be sexy.

Being sexy, in this sense, is not comparable to that of the pop psych radio pop-up. We have long outgrown our need to propagate the species. The fact that we still crave to satiate our sexual needs indicates that somewhere along the way, sex ceased to be about procreation. I think, as you read my blog, we are all in agreement here. The fact that the need for sex did not dissipate, and instead actually took on new forms (balloon fetish, anyone?) indicates that we now require our sexual needs to be met for our own innate human requirements. No assembly necessary, we came as we are and we now want to cum as we are as well.

The key is the fact that those needs are innate. I was born to become a woman who wants alot of sex and to be spanked to varying degrees quite frequently. I was born to want that mostly from a man, but now and again I have sought a woman in his place. I was born to prefer leather and the cane over hard flat wood. I was born to want to be erotically commanded, reprimanded, commandeered. When I am confident about who I am and how I was born, I am also someone who cannot express this "sexiness" to my family or co-workers or most of my friends. Let me tell you, Radio For Women, when I am feeling sexy, looking sexy, and being perceived by others as sexy, I'm also bent over a solid object and having my ass beaten with any number of implements.

So thank you, Radio For Women, but until this world has changed, I am afraid your advice does not adhere to me, or to any woman, or to anyone. We don't need to be sexy 24/7. We need to be accepted and allowed to live our lives. Offer a tip on that, and maybe I will be more willing to listen to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" three times in one day. Until then, Top 40 it is for me.

(The Pink Channel does provide a valued and charitable service to breast cancer research and treatment, which is why I am not going to actually send this diatribe to them. Still, I'm fairly sure that when they state that breast cancer affects one in three women, they didn't just mean the vanilla ones or the ones who could grace the pages of Maxim. And no one should be expected to "feel sexy 24/7." Don't give us tips on how to do so, give us tips on how to tell those who expect us to do so to piss off.)

Everything I Need to Know I Apparently Learned in Kindergarten

Cute, but no longer a self-requirement.

The first phone conversation I can remember having involved me asking my five year old friend to tell me spanking stories.

I'm sure I'd been on the phone before then, saying hi to Grandma on a Saturday afternoon or sleepily wishing my dad goodnight when he had to work late, but this was my first true conversation with someone outside the family. The details are fuzzy now. For example, why was I alone in my parents' bedroom, talking dirty on the phone with my best kindergarten friend? How did I segue from "Do you want to come over and play tomorrow?" to "Do you want to tell me a spanking story right now?" All I remember is that I asked and she delivered, telling a story about a girl our own age who made a mess of the kitchen while making brownies. Punishment involving a hand spanking and a spanking with a wooden spoon, possibly still covered in brownie batter, ensued.

By the time I was seven, spanking stories about five year olds grossed me out. By the time I was thirteen, I had no problem envisioning a teacher putting me over the desk at the front of the room, but prepubescent spankings, even as adminstered by the hottest of middle school teachers, were no longer part of my fantasy lexicon. Up until I was eighteen and in college, the spanking stories that I had long since had to tell myself featured girls who were my own age, at whichever age that happened to be.

What changed when I hit eighteen? I went away to school, new laptop in tow, and in my dorm room was a DHL connection. I was online! I'd never had access to the Internet before and there was research to be done. It turned out my five year old instincts were right - the world was just full of people who wanted to tell me spanking stories. I couldn't get enough of them. I read everything from childhood memories to elaborate science fiction scenarios. My only rule of thumb was that the spankee(s) had to be female. My parallel age prerequisite dissipated in a textual universe populated by naughty daughters, naughty schoolgirls, naughty teachers, naughty office workers, and naughty wives. When I took those stories to bed with me, I fantasized myself as every archetype. I had a chance to be thirteen again, or sixteen, or to age a decade in order to imagine the husband who would punish me for leaving the burner lit on the stove.

Now, thirteen years later, I have come to realize that I've left most of those fantasies behind. I still enjoy reading all types of spanking erotica, and I still enjoy the sight of a spanked woman at any age - as long as she is at least eighteen, though preferably at least a few years older - no matter what character she happens to be playing. But as for what I experience behind closed eyes, I want, once again, to envision myself in scenarios that depict me at my own age. Maybe it's just a phase while I continue to sort out my own identity and my role in the spanking universe. Or maybe a core element of my erotic persona has come to understand that adults are as spankable, perhaps even more-so, than schoolgirls, and that I do not have to be anyone other than myself in order to deserve, receive, and fetishistically enjoy discipline.

I still want to play dress-up in crisp white shirts, A-line skirts and knee socks with Mary Janes, but I don't want to pretend I am younger than I am and I don't want to play a character. I finally want to be exactly who and what I am - a dirty, kinky, sexy woman who need not pretend at innocence or repentence, whose costume indicates not that she is a good girl being punished for being bad, but that she is a bad girl being punished because being punished is what she needs to feel good.

Maybe It's Really a Red Balloon.

Keyra Augustina, apparently known to the internet as

"The World's Perfect Ass."

photo: RockyJay.Com

I really wanted to post today, but I was stuck on subjects. I looked through my folder of "Possible Pics to Use on the Blog" and came across this one. The funny thing is, it's not a spanking photo. Or, if it is one, nowhere is it labeled as such. I even did a search on the model, Keyra Augustina, and spanking. They do not seem to go hand in hand. So this got me thinking again, as it did when I first found the image - why is her bottom so red?

On another subject entirely, my local and amazing bookstore, Powell's Books, is currently running a Six Word Memoir Contest. Six word memoirs are less like memoirs, more like very short haiku. For weeks, this has had me attempting to sum up life's experience's in exactly six words. This morning, I even decided to try Twittering one six word "memoir" per hour, but I only managed one. (I'm terrible at this Twitter thing. Watch me attempt it here.) Now, I am trying to come up with six word memoirs for this woman's bright red bottom.

Next time, check the water temperature.

Timer buzzes. This bird is cooked!

Roxanne turned the red light on.

(My apologies for The Police reference.)

Instructions: apply rouge to cheeks. Ohhhh.

Maybe it's really a red balloon.

The real definition of "bubble butt."

Submit your own six word memoirs in the comments! No contest here - everybody wins when we're writing about bottoms!

Little Fun to Be Had in Explanations

I've recently become compelled by the unknown. In my quest to ascertain the necessity - the readability - of plot in spanking fiction, I've allowed myself to explore the darker half of my fantasies. These are the ones that make me squeamish with myself, the ones that make me wonder if I'm actually on the other side of this whole cruel business, if I am a sadist out to wound the helpless and it just so happens that too often, one of the helpless is me.

In exploration of plot, I've forbidden myself to imagine reason in the scope of punishment. I envision harsh canings solely because a girl has had the bad luck of the draw. I picture being tied down and strapped for longer than I can take, crying "Why?" until I am gagged, no explanation forthcoming. I foster the feel of cobwebs in my hair, flung to the floor of an unused basement, no light by which to see a tormentor, hands bound and unable to soothe anguished skin. No reason to be there, no sign of escape, nothing, nothing, nothing but punishment for a crime never committed, never accused.

I used to cling to reason, even in play, even in rushed fantasy. I'm not sure I ever used these words aloud, but I can recall thinking, "Tell me what I've done so I can repent." I do remember asking for a reason and there being no reason, that the spanking, albeit not much like the less savory scenarios above, continued despite neither of us coming up with a cause for discipline.

Perhaps I've molded to the style of play we've embraced. Maybe that's why I seem to have lost my desire to repent imagined sins. Real ones, too. I've made plenty of bad judgement calls recently. It seems they have nothing to do with my identity as a spankophile. Life itself deals out the consequences for human error. My fetish, these days, is about punishment dealt as nothing more than the consequence of being human.

In last week's issue of Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote about the scariest films being the ones with no explanation. "But nightmare exist outside of logic," writes King, "and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." I've been thinking about that phrase all week, the poetry of fear. The punishment, as they say, must fit the crime. Knowing twelve strokes are to come for talking back? Any of us can handle that. But if there is no crime, how does the punisher know when to stop? Or does he stop? Is it discipline or cruelty? Is it punishment, or only stark, unending, blissfully blinding white pain?

If we skip the plot, isn't that all that's left? Meaningless chaos wreaked upon the bare flesh of the innocent? Or is that pain the plot itself? The poetry of punishment, of pain, of fear, with little fun to be had in the explanation, and all of the fun to be had in the execution.

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.

Mrmph in Translation

I now think about writing and spanking more than I think about anything else. On the one hand, this is a huge relief, because previous to starting to this blog, I tended to obsess about finances, the possibility of an upcoming move, and my complete distaste for my job. Now, when I think about finances, I wonder if I can afford the shipping fees for getting a really nice tawse from overseas. I think about where we'll live next and hope that the walls are thicker, or at least that our bedroom window won't be directly next to the neighbor's front porch. I don't think about my job all that much now--even when I'm at it, I'm thinking about spanking and blogging and the bulk of my day is spent checking my personal email for comments and coming up with ideas for new posts.

There is one time, however, that I am not thinking about writing, blogging, or, for that matter, my love of spanking. Ironically, that time is when I am being spanked.

Much to my chagrin, we've been playing a good deal with strappings recently. I finally understand the idea of tanning someone's hide, as one would tan an animal skin. As my flesh turns brighter and hotter, I actually feel as if I am becoming leather myself. I feel as if the texture of my very flesh is changing, softening and toughening at once. But these thoughts aren't clear until the strapping is over, after I have discovered that I have not turned into leather after all, as I put on a pair of clean white panties and admire the redness showing through and along the sides of my panty-line. I can't actually think about what's just happened until what's just happened is over.

When, on Tueday, I found myself receiving a strapping yet again, I decided I would try to think about how I would write about it later. I made it about two strokes when I realized I wasn't thinking about writing anymore. Refocusing, I began to think about how I was standing, how to set the scene when... I realize I've lost focus again. I can feel the heat swelling over my bottom, the sting spreading so that each stroke is less... Oh, ouch, ouch, ouch! Okay, so I can't describe the heat, then. But my readers! I'm just becoming established here. I want to be able to write about this experience. The strap is of medium-weight, a rich chocolate shade of leather, the sort you'd use to... No, no, no, no, no, I'll be good I swear, just don't.... And so I never was able to think about the experience itself as I'd describe it here. Even thoughts that could be later translated into this entry were at the time expressed as "Mrmph!"

That complete inability to focus or to analyze is the secret boon of spanking. I've made a number of questionable choices in my life, and I have justified all of them by saying, "But if I do this, then I can write about it." I have purposely chosen the darker paths because they'd make more interesting stories. I've even stared into the eyes of a lover I know I'm about to lose and wondered not how to keep him, but how I'd describe him in text once he was gone. I have lived a good deal of my life as a character. But when I am being spanked, either as myself or if I am roleplaying the naughty little girl, I don't think of myself as a character in a story. I can barely think at all, but when I do, I'm very present, experiencing what I am experiencing and free of all else.

So while I do think about blogging quite often now, I think about it during the times when I would have been wondering what to make for dinner. I think about it while the women in my office debate whether to go to the new IKEA. I even think about it as I fall asleep. But at last, I am thinking about what parts of my life I can turn into a story or a blog entry. I am no longer thinking about what part of a story I should turn into my life.

Bring Your Fetish to Work Day

Straightening my white blouse, I looked down, wondering if anyone would comment on today's outfit. Black knee-length corduroy skirt, white button down shirt, black sweater vest, long hair parted in the middle. I was missing the tartan and the knee-socks and the Mary-Janes, but I still felt like I was costumed as myself, not as the business-casual character I usually play Monday through Friday. Remembering the costume I wore to work last Halloween--Schoolgirl from Hell, replete with the plaid skirt and delicate hand-made bronze clay horns--I couldn't help but wonder if anyone would comment on this more austere version of the theme.

What will I say if they ask? I wondered. The answer was obvious. "It's Bring Your Fetish to Work Day," I'd tell them, looking them up and down. "I can't tell what yours is though. Pasty skin, too much blush... are you a necrophile?" Or to the mountain-climbing man who always comments when I wear new shoes, "Will you be tasting my toes today?" Or to the girl who only talks to vegetarians, "Just what do you do with the carrots and zucchini you grow in your garden?"

Fortunately, no one asked me the anticipated question, because what I'd really say is something along the lines of, "I just liked it as an outfit," and move along. But the day was different. I was more sociable, willingly chatting about meaningless subjects with the other women in my office. I made jokes; I stayed on top of my work without feeling like a slave to it. I was feisty! When I was asked to cut a check for a political group I found offensive in the guise of a deductable donation, I finally found the courage to refuse. My refusal was accepted, even applauded by some, albeit secretly. By wearing a self costume, I actually was myself.

To a degree. As I become more and more the woman/schoolgirl I've always wanted to be, like the mountain-climber showing off a bruise or the veggie girl showing off an immense squash, I want to show off the fruits of my own activities. I want to lift my skirt and show off an especially wicked bruise or stripe. I want to bend over my desk and announce "Look what I can do!" with an appropriate volunteer. I want to pull up this blog and make them read. "I'm a writer who writes about the things that make you squirm," I want to tell them. "Live in my skin for a day and know that even after having been tied around the waist to a school-desk, legs spread and ankles bound as well, caned by an ambidextrous man with a tennis pro's backhand, my greatest agony is walking through this door and becoming someone you don't mind having the desk next to yours."

I have a feeling I won't be working there much longer. I can take a lot of punishment, but trying to hide among conservatives and catty accountants isn't really the type of daily beating I crave. It's not that I think that my next job will be somewhere that I am spanked for my typos and transgressions. I just want to be able to wear an outfit like today's to work and grinningly say to someone, "It's Bring Your Fetish to Work Day," leaving them not horrified, but wondering what they should have worn.

Outfit or no outfit, I often bring a bottom like this to work.

(photo not my own bottom, Red Charls free gallery)

Scent of a Spanking

Rachel Hurd-Wood in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (photo: rachelhurdwood.net)

Spanking provides a unique experience of sensory overload, one that activates every inch of me, from the curl of my toes to the sway of my hair as it tickles my face as I wriggle or writhe according to the force of the strokes I am receiving.

Visually, there is the sight of my punisher, the hard line of his lips matched with the twinkle in his eye that gives me shivers before we even start. Being shown the implement we're using makes me excited and trembly. Sound is key; this goes without saying. The sound of a spanking, whipping, caning--for those who think like we do, there may be no more beautiful music. The whimpers or cries of a girl, even if they are issued from my own lips, send me further into excitement or terror, depending on the tone. I think sometimes my own yelp scares me more than the blow I just received, heightening the sensation of the spanking by suggestion. The swish of a cane in the air. I got goosebumps just imagining that sound as I typed that phrase.

The sense of touch is almost aggravated during a spanking. The hardwood floor beneath my bare feet, the hard edge of a desk or the soft comfort of a pillow on the bed as I grasp for anything to hold onto during my punishment, the chafe of whatever clothes I may be wearing as I long to be both more naked and more covered all at once--but none of these distractions can truly keep me from the sensations blossoming on my backside, whether it's the cruelest stroke of a cane or the reassuring touch of a hand. Spankings make me terribly, uncomfortably, joyfully alive in my own skin.

Even taste is activated when the saltiness of tears drips into the corners of my lips, or I find something to bite when the pain is severe. But this does not cover all the senses. What is the scent of a spanking?

I found myself wondering this last night while watching the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, based on the novel by Patrick Suskind. The film itself was a sensory overload of sorts. It actually evoked scents, and not always pleasant ones. Set in eighteenth century Paris, just the first few minutes of the film ask the audience to imagine the scent of rocks, leather, dead fish, street whores, and powdered wigs all in a dizzying stream of lush imagery. It tells the story of a young man with an amazing sense of smell who becomes obsessed with capturing the perfect perfume--the scent of woman. There was much bare flesh (stunningly and amassedly so, at times) and much beauty, despite the aberrant horrors that begin to play out as the story unfolds.

I found myself wondering, Just what does that virginal girl he's after smell like? And that, of course, led to thoughts of spanking, what a spanking does smell like, and what it would smell like if it were bottled as perfume. There are the implements, of course. Bamboo of canes and old oak of paddles, weathered leather of straps, or the fresh leather scent of a riding crop bought at a tack shop, meant for horses but to be used on untamed girls. But a perfume of wood and leather is very masculine, and while perhaps the perfect cologne for my headmaster, it doesn't fully capture the scent of spanking.

So let's add in pink bubblegum, and roses, for our rosy bottoms, and chalk, because, after all, my fantasies are based in the schoolroom. Strawberries, for the strawberry lip gloss I wore when I was little. And peaches, because a lovely ripe round bottom does remind me of that fuzzy fruit.

I stopped by the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab to see if they have a perfume called Spanking, seeing as they have everything else imaginable, from scents based on Neil Gaiman's characters to the seven deadly sins (you can spend hours just reading the scent descriptions, really a fantastic site). There were no spanking perfumes, but I did find Jailbait (Innocence defiled. Sticky pink bubblegum and the thick, sweet scent of orange and cherry lollipops smeared over a breath of heady womanly perfume), Whip (Agony and ecstacy: black leather and damp red rose), Lolita (Bright, sweet and youthful, but swelling with a poisonous sexuality. Glittering heliotrope, honeysuckle, orange blossom and lemon verbena), O, of course (The scent of sexual obsession, slavery to sensual pleasure, and the undercurrent of innocence defiled utterly. Amber and honey with a touch of vanilla), and the possibly intoxicating Les Infortunes de la Vertu (A pain-tinged, pleasure-soaked blend of leather, oakmoss, orange blossom, amber, and rose with a breath of virginal French florals and a hint of austere monastic penitential incense).

If you've made it all the way to the end of this post, what would the perfect spanking scent be for you?

Abigail vs. Abby

(photo: dominiqueswain.org, still from "Lolita")

It's been one of those days--the kind that should end with a bottle of wine, a soak in the tub, and a shoulder massage. Yesterday was one of those days, greeted with a gray skirt and white blouse fit for a schoolgirl, coaxed throughout the afternoon with naughty text messages about what shade my bottom would be by the end of the night, and then, sadly, ended with a troupe of friends showing up at the house unannounced, the spanking left only to our imaginations and to what should have been today.

What do I do when a play-date overlaps with a day that wants to drink and be done with it? Who wins out when the little girl wants to be punished severely like she was promised, but the woman fears it might just be too much? I don't want to back out in case it's what I really need at the heart of it. But I also don't want to get started and realize I just can't.

If I let myself go, let myself be the little girl, I might not want to come back from it. If I go to that headspace, I want to be there for a while. To escape, to relish the experience, to stay, as if on vacation, until I am ready to come back and deal with the world again. How fantastic it would be to call in "immature" to work tomorrow. "I'm sorry, I'm only sixteen today, I've been terribly naughty and have to stay in the corner with a sore bottom, and really, I just failed out of math, do you really want me in your accounting department anyway?" I think that would be followed well with a snap of gum and a "Like, you know?" But tomorrow is Thursday, and in my position, Thursday is the most important day of the week. I could have the plague, nevermind a case of the teens, and still have to go the office.

I have a few more minutes before my husband gets home to decide what to do. As a precaution, I've bought steak and shrimp cocktail and plan to attempt to bribe him, but I haven't even figured out the bribe yet. To play lightly? To play viciously, to take me out of myself? To get that shoulder massage? Alas, even steak and shrimp could not bribe that sort of play into reality, unless it comes with a post-massage sting.

Spanking by Numbers

When I was fifteen, just before dropping out of Honors Geometry, I stopped trying to invent the correct answers on tests and started writing my math teacher poems. He gaves me F's on the front of the tests but A's on the backs, where I'd written the poetry. Nevertheless, A's on my backside weren't going to help me pass, so he suggested I read Edwin Abbott's Flatland and drop down a level. I remember him telling me that someday I would understand the romance of numbers, if only I would give them a chance.

Instead, I decided that God had something to do with math and that I would never solve the numbers problem that would get me into Heaven, so I gave up on math altogether. Even now, I can just picture Saint Peter up there, standing not at pearly gates but at a chalkboard, pointer in hand, directing me towards the longest equation ever fathomed. I don't think I'd even try. I'd give up and ask if he couldn't just punish me with that pointer and let me in that way. He might acquiesce, but I just know he'd ask me, "How many? How many strokes do you deserve to be allowed into Heaven?"

As a girl who can't do arithmetic, there are two things I dread. One is being asked to count. The other is being asked to come up with the final number first. How am I supposed to know? If I choose too few, I'm just in for more. But if I choose too many, I will be a very sorry girl, sorry for more than just failing math.

Once a number has, or, sometimes frighteningly, has not been decided, there is then the matter of counting the strokes. We do this, I think, because I cannot count, and have been known to get lost between four and five any number of times. Occasionally I don't know I'm supposed to be counting and only find out at the third or fourth stroke. Then we have to start again. I am sure that is not fair! But so it goes. I count, and count, the number twelve looming before me, not because that is how many strokes I'm receving, as I'm almost certain to be in for more, but because it's after twelve that the numbers get especially difficult. Even before the implement comes down upon my bottom I am panicking over what the next number could be. Is it seventeen? Seventeen loses all meaning when its announcement is meant to follow a stripe of bright red pain across my bottom's tender flesh.

As the numbers increase, they stop being numbers. They become little prayers, meant to appease this mean God of Math, i.e. my husband, but my prayers are met only with higher numbers to reach. "Can't I just write a poem about this?" I want to cry out, but no, it is numbers, and numbers alone, that must get me through.

Only once the equation has been solved do I understand the math. I reach back to touch hot skin and welts that will bruise, the soreness that is the solution to this problem, perhaps to all problems, if I had my way. I'm sure this isn't what my geometry teacher meant when he said one day I'd understand the romance of numbers, and it's certainly not what I was thinking when I decided that I'd need to do math to find Heaven, but isn't it funny that we both turned out to be right after all?

The Old Woman Who Whipped in the Shoe

Mother Goose makes me nervous. Despite my love of fairy tales and children's literature, I think of Mother Goose as a Victorian schoomarm, yielding a birch in one hand and a book of terrifying and surreal rhymes in the other. She gleefully reads to trembling schoolchildren of cradles falling out of trees, mice having their tales cut off with carving knives, and the ring around the rosy that we all now know to be a metaphor for plague.

As my particular predilection is for that birch, or other academic implement, to be in the hand of the Headmaster, I can't blame my fetish for this Mistress Goose invention. I think the trouble lies in my childhood, at a place called Benson's Wild Animal Farm (aka The Strangest Farm on Earth). Benson's was a zoo, circus, amusement park, and storybook-land that seems in retrospect as if it should have only existed in dreams. Open from 1924 to 1987, it featured, among other oddities, elephant and camel rides, a 500-pound silverback gorilla, performing tigers, a Santa's Village complete with singing elves, a rickety-rackety roller coaster, and, most relevent here, a giant shoe.In searching online for a picture of this giant shoe, I learned an unsettling thing. The park has been closed for twenty years. The shoe still stands. In the 80's, when I would have been visiting the park as a very little girl, it had a wooden staircase leading up to that small window, wherein you could view the animatronic actitivies of, naturally, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Most times she'd be doing the laundry, her arm in a steady up and down rhythm against a washboard. A few times, however, she'd been repositioned onto a chair, an animatronic child kicking its legs across her lap as she spanked the poor little robot all day long. I was always disappointed if she was only doing the wash.

The first time I would have seen this, I would have only been three or four years old. It was probably one of my first encounters with spanking. Perhaps I'm embellishing, but I can almost remember blushing. I do remember always wanting to go up those stairs alone after that, in hopes of seeing a spanking but knowing that if I did, I wanted it to be private, that I didn't want my mom or dad to know I was excited to see that animatronic arm rise and fall upon that shiny, plastic, and yes, bare, bottom.

This must be how I came to confuse Mother Goose with that mean old woman in the shoe. It was a Mother Goose rhyme that enabled this little girl to see her first spanking. Lest we forget, the original certainly has a CP flare at the end:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe;

She had so many children she didn't know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread;

She whipped them all well and put them to bed.

(Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales of England, 1853)

As illustrations life-size and otherwise of spanking disappear (or become graffitied and overgrown), as it becomes uncouth to reference in mainstream literature, even as it appears in our pop-culture only in a horrible, tasteless, and unrealistic Girls Gone Wild sort of way, how will the wee spanking enthusiasts of the world come to know their kink? How might I have turned out if it hadn't been for the Old Woman Who Whipped in a Shoe?

Rhyme text and Old Woman illustrations: ECLIPSE

Book cover illustration: Children's Books Online

Benson's Old Woman's shoe: IUSSA.Org

The Weight of the World

Despite my red hair and curves, I confuse myself with Buffy the Vampire Slayer more times than you'd imagine. It's not all about wanting to be spanked by Giles, either. One of the main themes of the show is her struggle with balancing being a regular girl with being the girl who saves the world. Although most of the demons I battle are my own, I have spent years wondering how I can stand upright with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

The answer is surprisingly simple: Don't stand upright all the time.

The world balances just as well on one's bottom, and having them both whacked about a bit lessens the universal weight considerably. As a woman, I want to be in control of every aspect of my life. My name is on all the bills. But I have also felt too responsible for too much--from everything from my parents' divorce, which happened so quickly after I moved out of my childhood home that I could not help but feel that I'd been the glue for years, to my little sister's virginity, which, at almost 27 years old, is inconceivable and yet somehow my fault for having set an Ophelia-like example by loving the wrong men and then going a bit mad over the loss of them. Turning into a little girl, receiving punishment with the transformative powers of forgiveness, lightens the burden. Letting go absolves it.

Hitting the breaking point, the moment between taking the strokes and being consumed either by pain or the dark headspace that serves as both vessel and cocoon, is something I crave more than white chocolate or Chinese egg-rolls, more than Fresh's Rice Sake Bath or Cosabella (photo, right) panties. The trick is getting there. Some days, I just can't even begin. I'll be weeping within the first stroke or two. Others, I want to be brave, I want to take it and take it and take it, to be a brave little girl who can carry the world on strong shoulders or a stinging bottom, seeing no difference between the two.

It's the days when I'm ready to let go that I live for. The days that I can start by saying to myself:

• "This stroke is for my boss who'd rather talk about herself than help me."
• Then, "This is for not paying the cable bill, always overdue."
• And, "This is for not doing the laundry yet, even though I meant to but got distracted with spanking blogs."
• Then three, thank you Sir. "This is for having the nightmare I couldn't shake all day."
• And four, thank you Sir. "This is for the naughty thought I had about Anthony Stewart Head as Headmaster in that episode of Doctor Who, even though he turned out to be a flesh-eating monster alien.
• Five, thank you Sir. "For liking this."
• Six, oh, thank you Sir. "For wanting to always be your naughty girl, so you'll do this with me."
• Seven, thank you. "For wishing I was an only child, even as an adult."
• Eight, ow, ow, ow, thank you Sir. "This is for wanting to be thinner, when you love my bottom as it is."
• Nine, thank you. "For wanting this to end."
• Ten, thank you Sir. "For wanting to tell the world that I am brave and strong and can take a caning when my co-workers can barely take a phone call, but I can't tell them who I really am."
• Eleven, oh, oh, ow, Sir, please, thank you, "For wishing you would only be inside me."
• Twelve, thank you Sir. "For..."

And when I do break, when I do begin to weep silent slow tears, then sob, when I can't hold back a cry with every stroke, when I know I've built up to it, have earned it, have struggled through every part of my mind and have released it all, I can let go. Every pain throughout the day is gone. Every familial agony and workplace drama is released in the whoosh of his chosen implement. Swish. I pay every bill in full. Crack. I am beautiful and striped and proud. Then, slice, I'm only a little girl. I'm only a little girl. With each stroke, this is all I know now. I collapse into him afterwards, this little girl fully punished, released of all her sins and the sins of those around her, and he holds me, curls around me, gently, whispering how proud he is of me. My hips begin to rise and writhe, pressing back against him even with the pain, and I am a woman, ready to carry the weight of the world once again.