Long Night's Journey

I have a recurring dream in which I am walking down a school hallway, sometimes one I remember from high school, sometimes one from college, when I realize that I've forgotten to attend one of my classes all semester and am now sure to fail.

One lazy Saturday afternoon, my hand idling between my thighs, I unexpectedly remembered this scenario. I then began to imagine the scene in which the grade might be saved.

A female student stands in the small, dimly lit office of my favorite college professor. It's evening, the sun already set and the violet clouds outside the two small narrow windows of the office turning to plum as night sets around the campus. She's come to him after hours in hopes of winning a battle she could not win in the usual light of day. She faces the broad wooden desk, though I cannot remember nor can she tell the color or species of the wood. The wall behind his desk is lined not with literature but with media studies. A framed production poster of Long Day's Journey Into Night is the only decorative piece in the room. "You forgot to come to class all semester?" asks the professor, though I know now it's not the man I remember, nor any man I have known since then, though his voice reminds me of Mr. Williams, as does his lilting, laughing tone.

 The story unfolds: she wants to make up for it, she wants to do the classwork. She wants to pass the class and graduate on time. He wants to let her, to giver her a chance to do an intensive study version of the class in the last two weeks before finals, but this isn't the lesson she should learn on her way out the doors of the Ivory Tower and into the real world. She asks, "What can I do to change your mind?"

"Action and inaction both have consequences. What grade do you want from this class?"

"An A," she answers, indignation unavoidable. "I need an A to maintain my 4.0." He laughs. He says, "You did well while you weren't taking the last class you need for your degree."

"I'm not about to lose my average now. What do I need to do?" She leans forward. Her cleavage is visible, her dark hair falls around her face, she bites her lip while looking up from under the wave of hair, meeting his eye.

He goes to a waist-high cabinet below the poster of the play she knows is his favorite. He opens it slowly, looks back at her, then back to the cabinet and removes a long leather strap, a short wooden paddle, and a cane that I know, even as the young woman's eyes widen, to be the type referred to as the senior cane. "You will take the intensive study, and you must get an A on your coursework, or none of this means anything." She nods. "You will now and at the end of the study receive a test of your commitment. You will receive the full ordeal today. At the end of the class, you will go through the same stages I will walk you through today. You will decide how much you want to endure, and this will determine your final grade." I know, even as my wetness increases at the thought, that this very idea is against everything I stand for in my own being. So why do I want to find out what happens next? Why do I crave to see this unknown young woman bent over this barely remembered desk?  I press the tips of my index and middle fingers against my flesh. We go on.

She's taken classes with this man for four years, and for all four years she was of age, a grown woman, as she perceived herself, doing the things that grown women do. She'd even enjoyed a little pink-bottomed time in the bedroom with a small number of other men her own age, though it had never gone past some hand spanking and a few playful strokes of  one particular young man's belt. "You're going to spank me? And whip me? And paddle me? And...?" She tilts  her head, not knowing the name for the final item he pulled out of the cabinet.

"Cane you."

"Cane me." She breathes in deeply, considering her options. After a moment she knows she only has one choice, one chance. "I'm in. But I can stop at any time and take the failure."

He smiles. "Once we begin, if you ask me to stop, you'll receive an incomplete. The worst that will happen is you walk with your friends at graduation but don't receive a diploma, then take the class during summer semester and receive your diploma by mail. Are you ready?"

This settles everything. "Yes," she says without hesitation. This will be her last class with this man, but she has begun to wonder - but she cannot focus on that now. She wants the A. She, like me at that age, is the first of her family about to graduate a four-year college. This is not the moment to lose hope. He points to the chair at the side of the room. "You may fold your clothes and leave them there. Then you may bend over the desk." I realize for the first time that I've left his desk empty of all the clutter that once covered it. As she begins to remove her clothes, she knows as well as I do that she was never going to say no to anything he asked of her.

The moment she bends over the desk, he is behind her to the right side, right hand on the small of her back, left hand just resting on her bottom. "This is all you must do if you want the incomplete." She can feel him breathing. He doesn't tell her where to put her legs. She spreads them just a little, two inches of space between her inner thighs. Nothing happens. She spreads herself a little farther. She leans forward, reaching for the opposite side of the next. She tries to arch her back to push her bottom into his hand. Finally, she whispers, "More?"

"If you pass your intensive study and this stage, you will receive a D. You won't fail, and you will graduate. You will receive a hand-spanking, approximately 30 strokes. Though we both know this is not the math department." She tries to stifle a giggle but cannot. She can't see his face, but he smiles too. "Well?" She nods quickly, afraid that her voice will break and her sudden excitement over the moment will be all too obvious.

He begins slowly, bringing just a flush of pink to both cheeks, back and forth between the left and right, slowly and steadily. She doesn't think to count until she realizes she doesn't know how many she's received. Ten? Fifteen? He pauses, then his hand flies down at her bottom quickly and sharply and he begins a faster, harder rhythm. When he pauses again, she thinks he's done, but he only switches sides. He begins again and it feels like a real spanking now, the kind I worried about receiving as an infrequently misbehaving teen but never did, the kind she always hoped might happen in the bedroom but it never went as far as she wanted. She's squirming and it's now his left hand that is holding her in place and she's breathing fast, tears in her eyes, but has not made a sound other than the murmurs that escape when one moans between tightly closed lips. Finally, it ends. She knows he exceeded thirty strokes, but even in the moment of rest she realizes she's setting her legs just a little bit farther apart, and she's ready to receive at least a C.

"Very good," he says. "You did so well, I may need to go a little lighter on the next round." Then he picks up the strap. "Or not." I grin along with her.  I realize this fantasy has an incredible repeat value, that each time she goes through what she must receive to get each grade, I can change the requirements. Maybe next time she's less willing, and he begins with the cane. Maybe the time after that he begins by paddling her for a solid five minutes with a floppy rubber paddle, like a spanking clip I thought I'd long since forgotten, turning her strawberry pink and sore for any future implements to come.

"To receive a C, you will receive 24 strokes of the strap. This strap is half of a leather barber strop, its fabric backing removed." This particular barber strop lives in my nightstand, and I love to hate it. "It will whip across your backside with a firm sting, then leave a lasting tenderness to the flesh. I may go lightly on you from time to time. When you feel a light stroke, brace yourself for the next one, young lady. Do you accept?"

She imagines walking at graduation but not receiving her diploma. Her family left wondering in the bleachers why her name was never called. "I accept."

The first stroke causes her to see a flash of white behind her closed eyes. Her jaw is clenched so tightly that she realizes she hadn't cried out. As the second lands, she squeals, not quite the sound she'd been hoping she would make. He allows her a moment to compose herself, then whips her firmly and steadily, allowing her a cry or even, once, a howl, but never attempting to make her scream. After seven strokes she finds the rhythm. Then, with stroke eleven, he lets the leather just whisper past her buttocks. There's a light sting, but nothing worth moaning about. She remembers his warning and holds tightly to the far edge of the desk, which she's finally reached as she's risen up higher and higher on her toes with each subsequent stroke.

He waits only a few seconds to let the twelfth stroke fall, but she is already so aware of its swift coming that she wails and begins to weep, tears falling onto the desk. He takes a moment to soothe her bottom with gentle circles with his palm, and she is grateful for the touch, no matter the circumstances. "Please," she says.

"Please?" he asks.

"Please continue. I can't stop now."

He takes a moment to breathe before continuing. He is grateful for this woman beneath him who for the past four years has enlivened his classes, enlightened him with her theses, and somehow, beyond any hope he had allowed himself to maintain, invigorated him with such thoughts that just last semester he'd installed the cabinet beneath the poster in hopes that a day just such as this would come. It had been left untouched until today.

He lifts the strap. He won't let her down. She'll earn the A through her coursework, and he won't let graduation day pass without the degree he cannot deny she has already earned,  but she'll learn a mighty lesson in this process. Action and inaction both have consequences. It may have taken them four years of inaction to reach this moment, but it's finally time for their scene. Action, he thinks to himself. He lets the strap fall across her backside, anxious already for her receive a B at the mercy of his paddle, to receive an A beneath the savagery of his cane.

She awaits the next stroke, already imaging, having matched the grades to implements, what she might be willing to offer for an A+.

With that, I gave up to the orgasm, unable to continue further. I challenged myself to get the A next time. I haven't yet, but I'll keep trying.

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.

A Short Note

A short note to say I'm still around. I have some plans for some audio files that I will want opinions on, so please check back. I am also working on publishing to Kindle. I am thankful to everyone who still keeps my link alive, and to those who still stop by to see if I've posted. And, as always, I am thankful to Mr. W., who has waited and listened patiently through my many philosophical conundrums these past few years, in faith knowing that I would always come out the spankophile he knows and loves. I hope to post again this weekend.

xo,
Abby

Lost Language

From Joseph Campbell's commentary in Pantheon Books' The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales:

The "monstrous, irrational and unnatural" motifs of folk tale and myth are derived from the reservoirs of dream and vision....They are thus phrases from an image-language, expressive of metaphysical, psychological, and sociological truth. And in the primitive, oriental, archaic, and medieval societies this vocabulary was pondered and more or less understood. Only in the wake of the Enlightenment has it suddenly lost its meaning and been pronounced insane.

This was once a spanking blog. In my writing, I pondered the "monstrous, irrational and unnatural" motifs of spanking , told stories, explored my own desires and dreams, and by it, I thought I understood myself and my place in the universe. Then I deleted it all, the vocabulary of spanking having lost its meaning, the cruelty and injustice inherent in the fetish pronounced, silently and by my heart, at least in part insane.

It didn't leave my fantasies, of course. The same cruelty and injustice inherent in the fetish are inherent in me, and my orgasms have always been coupled with the victimization of flesh. It didn't leave our bedroom, where, though we play less often than we did, I still sometimes talk a dirty caning story into reality. I may now only take six strokes where I used to take three dozen, but it all comes down to the same truth: you can take the girl out of the fetish community, but you can't take the fetish out of the girl.

Going back to Cambell's statement about the motifs of myth, I think fetishes can be seen as an image-language as well. They have an innate truth, but once we start to analyze them and break them down, as we do with most everything in modernity, the language is lost. If there was one question I tried to answer in the old version of this blog, it was "Why am I like this?" I come into writing this now with the answer: "Because this is the way I am." I can't question it any longer. It's like taking "Hansel and Gretel" and trying to place it at a certain point in history. There are dark and wild things in the wood, and some of them want to eat us, but the architect of the little house that was built of bread and covered in cakes never registered those blueprints. There is truth, and there is Truth. One we can prove. The other just is.

I watched the first twelve episodes of Grimm this week on Hulu, while I've been home with the flu. You can credit it, along with a fever, for my writing now, because it reminded me of the passion I once had for folklore, for retelling the old tales, for finding the Truth and presenting it in a new way, especially if that way was one that would result in erotic titillation. The premise is that the stories collected by the Grimm Brothers were true, that the creatures, the animal-people and the wicked witches, the things that go bump in the night, were real, and the Grimm family were supernatural humans who hunted them. It's the opposite of Campbell's statement above. It's the idea that the dreams and vision are the reality; believing the stories are only stories will get you killed.

It's an interesting take and I'm enjoying the show, but it limits the scope of the folktales it sources. For one thing, all the creatures are named something Germanic, which would indicate that all monsters come from Germany, except for one type that appears to be from France. Now, if that was reality, you might be a pig creature born in Laos, but you'd still be called a Bauerschwein. That doesn't seem fair. Folktales are, by nature, nondescript. They could happen anywhere, anytime. By taking a metaphor and turning it into fact, the entire world is limited by the new language.

I don't want to limit myself any longer. I have just spent a year living within the confines of a collection of stories that is meant to be factual and infallible, but it's like living inside a Grimm collection. The problem in my heart, and why I cannot abide by a collection of stories is this: I know that not all the monsters are real. There is truth, and there is Truth. We are the Bauerschwein. We are the demons. The image-language of myth is universal, timeless. It may not be fact, but it is reality. The world is so much more than we allow it to be.

The things I like about spanking, the exposition of bare flesh, the relinquishing of the body and the will, the suffering but not the pain, the forgiveness implied by the punishment, are not facts of the fetish. Those may be completely different from what anyone out there likes about this sexual subset. They are derived from my personal experience and concept of what spanking should be. They are not necessarily what it should be for anyone else, and what you want, want you crave in your heart of hearts, your bottom of bottoms or your top of tops, may not be truth for me.

Somewhere along the way I lost my language and tried to give everything a new name, but the names were wrong and the stories weren't mine. I'm now, I hope, taking my reality back. I'm just at the edge of it, learning to speak and learning to see this image-language, culled forth from dreams.

Discomfort Me With Apples, Part Two

Read Part One

I kneel on the bed, cautiously, hesitantly, as if it is a worn wooden bench outside a barn, as if splinters are poised to break the bare skin of my knees should I move too quickly. I am also tentative of the unknown. The belt hurt more than I expected it to, more than I wanted it to hurt. The balance of character and self is precarious. I want to be playing with Mr. W; the apple thief does not want to be punished any longer.

As wife, I know I'm wet, know I'm ready for Mr. W to take the scene where it always leads, but the swish of a cane through the air behind my poised backside lets me know the farmer is not ready to let the apple thief off so easily. I clutch a pillow just before the cane lands.

Thirteen strokes of the belt have not properly warmed my bottom and I lurch forwards into the pillow to stifle my howl of pain. A tap on my lower back reminds me to return to position, kneeling on my hands and knees properly with my back arched and bottom presented. I tensely shift back, not ready but not wanting to seem unwilling.

The next stroke cuts full across the spot where bottom meets thigh, and though I begin to wimper, the thief, who can say the things I would not, says through clenched teeth, "That. Fucking. Hurt."

"Maybe this will help with the pain," Mr. W says. He goes to the nightstand and I think he's going to pull out one of the smaller paddles, something to finish warming me before the remaining eleven cane strokes I know he still wants to give me. Trusting in my husband, I close my eyes.

He returns to his place behind me, stroking my bottom, then clutching the flesh beneath his palm, pulling me open so that I feel even more naked than I already am. His finger touches the orifice between my reddened cheeks, pressing just a little. I relax into the touch. He presses deeper, then pulls out. I think I am about to receive a gentle leather paddling, something sexy, something that will finally send the farmer and the thief from the room. Instead, he presses into me again, this time with something thicker, firmer. It's not flesh. I recognize the toy we bought just weeks ago specifically for this purpose, for this spot, and irrationally, indignantly, the apple thief rears back. "Sir! I hardly think I know you well enough for that!"

Mr. W, clever farmer that he is, pushes me back down. "You've been on this farm before," he says.

I can't hold back. I snort, then giggle, then I'm all out laughing. He begins to laugh too, and the tenseness of the entire scenario is broken. I wiggle my bum at him. "You're right," I say, "I have been on this farm before. I remember now why I came back."

He slides the toy into me and I groan, but happily. The caning begins again. I don't have to count aloud, I just have to take it, holding the toy inside me, trying not to cry out too loudly. It still hurts - it's a caning, after all - but the fear is broken and I ride the pain as I love to do. The strokes are slow, with plenty of recovery time. Tears form but it's nothing I can't stand.

We get to stroke ten and Mr. W pauses. "Three left," he tells me, his voice low and rough, the voice that means he wants the caning to be finished as much as I do, the voice that says he, too, is ready to be inside me. "Would you like your last three to be gentle and slow, or hard and fast?"

"Hard and fast," I say without thinking. He rubs my welts for a moment, surely planning the final three. As he rubs, I reach down to touch myself, not surprised to find how wet and swollen the play has made me. My fingers stray back a little; the toy is still firmly in place. Mr. W sees my exploration and strikes the air with the cane, prepping. "Ready?" he asks.

"Yes," I breathe. Three strokes land in an explosion of agony, but so quickly I can barely breathe, nevermind scream. He throws the cane down, pulls my hips back, and drives into me. I am completely filled. The arch of pain from the last strokes has not yet finished and the combination of toy and man is still so new as to be overwhelming. Moments in, I'm already coming, the orgasm rendering me back to my complete self.

But as the apple thief leaves the room, she and I are finally in agreement about one thing: she'll be back to this farm again.

Discomfort Me With Apples, Part One

A few hours after revealing a fantasy I'd been having based on a spanking video I saw a decade ago, I found myself at the mercy of an apple farmer ripe with anger over my theft of his produce.

"What have you been doing?" he demanded.

"N-n-nothing," I stammered, unsure where the line of query was heading. After all, I thought I was in our bedroom, naked and ready for a little playtime but not at all realizing I was standing at the base of a maturely gnarled and heavily laden apple tree, bag of stolen Mcintosh in hand, about to be spanked for my collection of this forbidden fruit.

"I hardly think that's the truth," Mr. Williams replied. "What's this? A bag of my apples?" He pointed to my right hand, empty but for the fruits of our imagination. In this case, that was enough.

I caught on, realizing he was allowing me to play out the fantasy I had confessed to earlier. Of course, it would have his own twists to be detailed in good time, but quickly I replied, "Yes, sir. Your apples were so bright red and beautiful, I could not resist."

"Red and beautiful, hm? I have my own mind of what we shall call bright red and beautiful, but let's see what you have to say for yourself first. How many of my apples did you steal?" As he spoke, he removed his belt. He folded it and snapped it, letting me know that no matter my answer, the leather was destined for my bare skin.

I don't know why I said it, but I told him, "Three sir. Only sir." He peered into the imaginary bag then put his hand on my lower back, pressing so I bent slightly forward. "Only three?" The belt whipped quickly across my backside three times. "Fuck!" I hissed without realizing I was cursing before the word was out of my mouth.

I heard him swallow a laugh. For a moment I was embarrassed at my expression of shocked pain, but then I realized this was my character, obstinate and foul-mouthed, ready and willing to steal for the thrill, but ready to take her comeuppance as well. "No sir, not only three. I subtracted ten. I stole thirteen apples."

Mr. Williams sighed, as if he really was disappointed in me, as if he would have preferred that I had not stolen thirteen of his pretend apples. Of course, the actual disappoint was that I had not stolen twenty-three, or thirty-three instead, but he allowed me the grace of only thirteen. As if it hurt him more than it was going to hurt me, he instructed, "Bend over and touch your toes."

I bent over, fingertips to toes, shifting my body weight from side to side as if I really was an impatient young thief, ready to receive her spanking so she could be on her delinquent way. "Thirteen strokes, then," said Mr. Williams. "You will count."

"Yes, sir," I murmured, but at the first stroke of the belt, I found myself angry, irritated with the pain and the situation. I huffed, letting him know I was irritated with the punishment. "One, Sir," I sneered.

The second stroke landed, harder than the first, just where bottom meets thigh. I refused to show how much it stung. "Two, Sir."

The third stroke fell as hard as the second, whipping across the same spot. I cried out and felt shame. He was making a point. I wasn't going to get away with obstinacy. The only appropriate reaction was pain, not irritation. But I wasn't giving in. "Three, Sir," I counted through clenched teeth.

He rubbed the folded end of the belt across my bottom in a sawing motion, the same he uses when he's holding a cane. If I was clever I'd have noticed the foreshadowing, but I was too caught up in the character and the sensation of the belt. I wanted him to know how much it hurt. The character wanted him to know she was non-plussed, that a little belt whipping wasn't going to change her ways. Confusion won and I wasn't at all prepared when the fourth stroke came. It was across the full of my backside, stinging from left to right. I stood up, and I am not sure if I was fully broken from the character or completely subsumed by her when I squealed, "Holy shit! That fucking hurt!"

"Bend over," he commanded. "Watch your language." He paused a moment. "Are we not counting?"

"Four, Sir." I collapsed a little into the pose, a signal I hoped he would recognize as submission.

The fifth and sixth strokes were less shocking. I counted them properly and I didn't make a scene. Stroke seven would mark the halfway point. I had started to relax after the two strokes I could handle; I thought I had shown that I was willing to take the punishment and that he would be less forceful about the punishment, in kind. I was wrong. The seventh stroke crossed my thighs in a painful amalgamation of cruelty and curiosity. Mr. Williams knows that I detest any spanking upon my thighs, and I know he's always interested in my reaction. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that I was being tested. Instead, I screamed. I don't know if I was speaking to Mr. Williams or myself when I followed the scream with, "What the fuck?" I just had not been expecting that level of pain in our apple farmer scenario.

The silence then was so strong that I began to twitch. "I'm sorry, Sir," I whispered. "That's seven."

"That's right," he said tersely. I was in for it.

Strokes eight through twelve were hard, but my submission was no longer an act. I wasn't going to fight the belting any longer. I counted, and the strokes stung. At one point, I don't remember at which stroke, I became a little dizzy. But I held position as long as Mr. Williams held the belt.

After stroke twelve, we both knew I had only one left to come. Mr. Williams paused to give the stroke the gravity any presumed last stroke of a punishment deserves, and this was no different, despite the punishment being for an imagined crime. My only misdeed, in retrospect, was confessing the fantasy to him in the first place, as it had been turned on me, as the best fantasies, when shared, are wont to do.

"Last stroke," he said. "Are you ready?"

I prepared myself, making sure my position was as he would desire, bent fully, hands resting atop my feet, bottom pushed out, fully on display to meet the belt. "Yes, Sir," I whispered. I knew the stroke was going to be very hard, that the tears already formed in the corners of my eyes were going to flow, that I would wish I had never mentioned the apple farmer video that afternoon. The belt cut across both cheeks and I howled, but quickly fell silent, trying to catch my breath. "Thirteen, Sir."

"You may rub," he responded.

I stood there, not rubbing, not wanting to show that it had hurt, despite my tears. Pride took over unexpectedly. In other words, I stood there, near the corner of our bedroom, pouting just as hard as I could. Pouting so hard that I didn't notice Mr. Williams walk to the other side of the bedroom until he commanded, his voice now farther away, "Over here, hands and knees on the bed. Now."

"Oh God," I whispered to myself, not mentally prepared for more. What had I gotten myself into this time?

Read Part Two

Well, if you're going to live near a tourist attraction...

As sometimes I have nothing to say about spanking (or, better phrased, sometimes I have no time to write what I would like to write about spanking), I can at least take a moment to post about something just as good - a woman's bottom.

I found the above picture by chance. I'm reading a gorgeous novel by Nicholas Christopher called The Bestiary, which is about a man's quest for a lost text detailing the animals denied passage on Noah's Ark. It has nothing to do with women's bottoms, but as the universe can't help but lead me to them anyway, so too did this book.

While reading this evening, I was struck by a passage in which the narrator blacks out and wakes in a room filled with lifelike jade statues of animals, along with "statues of the Buddha, his mother Maya, the goddess Kwan-Yin, and the Zen patriarchs, Bodhidharma and Huiko. Mara, the Evil One, was carved in cinnabar, as with his army of winged demons."

I am not well-read in Buddhism, but I do have a favorite room in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that I have called, since I was in elementary school, the Buddha Room. It is a medium sized room, so dimly light it is near dark, in which a collection of Buddhist statues is housed, each in its own display around the perimeter. The first time I visited it, I stood before a statue, golden in color and strangely slender compared to the others, and I remember feeling, "This statue does not like me." I am long time believer that statues are alive, in a sense, and perhaps this is the root of that belief. I told my mother, who agreed that the statue did not feel right, and we wondered together if it fought with the other statues. Interestingly, after a remodel of the Buddha room, this particular statue was moved into the room next door and encased in glass near no other statues. Museum folk know: art is alive.

Anyhow, upon reading the passage, I wondered whether that same unnerving statue of my childhood was Mara, so I looked the name up in Google images to see if I could find an image of the entity or of the actual statue from the MFA. I couldn't find it, but being Google images, I was treated to various ladies in their sexy poses and states of undress. And then there was the image above.

It is a mermaid, despite her bottom and legs, and stands in Kerala, India. The Google image is from a blog called Mermaids are Real. The author conjectures that perhaps the statue stands in tribute to a possible history of female divers in Kerla, female divers (for food, not sport) being the actual subject of the blog. The statue seems shockingly large, but after a while, I can't help but wonder if residents even see it as they pass by. I'm not sure I'd want to become so accustomed to a naked bottom that it no longer impresses me when I pass by. Then again... I guess most of us never tire of these lovely things, do we?

The Playground Sadist

The Perils of Hansel and Gretel - Bryan Baugh's Cryptlogic

I started writing a Hansel and Gretel inspired tale last night, but was quickly led off track at the memory of a playground game from elementary school called "Growing a Rose Garden" It was a strange exercise of sadism even for children, who at that age are still exploring what it means to be mean. Now I'm not sure where the story is going, but here it is so far:

“He began by growing me a rose garden,” the young woman who called herself Piper said, candlelight plumping the sunken curve of her cheekbones and warming the blue hollows beneath her eyes.

The old woman who had wrapped her in a blanket, fed her bread and broth, and offered her a narrow pallet by the fire in exchange for help in and around the cabin placed her furrowed palm upon the girl’s forearm. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” She caught herself, knowing all too well that stories never end where they begin. “For a beginning, I mean.”

Piper shook her head, twisting her arm beneath the old woman’s grasp so that her inner arm was exposed. “It’s a game children play. Cruel children, kind children. Some like to grow the garden, some like to have the garden grown. Some don’t know any better that rose gardens are nothing but ornamental thorns until it’s too late.”

The old woman frowned. “How do you play?”

“Hold out your arm. Like this.” Piper held out her arm, soft inner flesh upwards. Her companion held out her arm.

“First, the farmer goes to the store,” said Piper. She walked her fingers up the woman’s arm from palm to inner elbow. “He buys some seeds. Then he goes back home.” She walked her fingers back down to the woman’s palm; the older woman shivered. It had been so long since she had felt another human’s touch.

“Then he digs holes to plan the seeds.” With the half moon of her index fingernail, she scraped the woman’s arm six times, as if digging six small holes in her flesh. She was gentle.

“Then the farmer plants the seeds.” She tapped her fingers against the other woman’s flesh, burying the imaginary seeds. She struck a slow pattern up and down the arm.

“Then the farmer waters the seeds.” The tapping quickened, fingers raining tiny blows back and forth across the forearm a number of times. “Watering is the trick to the game,” Piper said, whispering to indicate her words were not part of the process. “The watering lulls you, fools you, dominates you.”

Piper grabbed the woman’s palm with her other hand, the one that had not been playing the game until now, holding the arm straight out. “Then the roses bloom.” She pinched the arm hard, terribly hard, so hard that a pink bloom rose upon the white flesh. The woman cried out but Piper held the arm, refusing to let her pull away. She pinched her again and again until five more pink spots rose like welts. “There is your rose garden,” said Piper, finally releasing the old woman from her grasp.

Tears of unexpected pain had welled in the woman’s eyes but she did not let them fall. “Someday I will tell you of another rose garden, but not tonight. Not tonight, my dear.” She stood then, leaving Piper both embarrassed and afraid.

“Will you still let me stay?” Piper asked.

“You may stay as long as you like,” said the woman. “For now, and forever after, if you so desire. But stories are meant to be shared, and a beginning is a stranger to a story‘s end. Tell me more of your tale tomorrow and we will see where both our endings lie.” She leaned over, dimming the candle with her bare fingertips. “These old hands of mine,” she said. “They’re so dry and withered, I’m not sure I would know if they were to catch on fire.” With that, she left Piper to her doubts, the darkness, and dreams.

Filth Foreshadowed

Men's Adventure Magazines (Pop Pulp Art found here!)

A few months ago, I started a project involving the random selection of a story from the collected Brothers Grimm, followed by rewriting the selected story as an erotic spanking tale. I got through one story, sort of. I wrote the entire thing except the actual spanking scene. Still, excited by the project, I used a random number generator to select the next page number: page 826. The story, "The Aged Mother."

This is a one paragraph story about an old woman who is lonely because everyone she knows, including her own two sons, has died. In the middle of her lamentations one night, she hears the church bells ring, so she goes down to the church, only to find its pews packed full of her dearly departed. Her dead aunt comes to her and says:

"Look there beside the altar, and you will see your sons." The old woman looked there, and saw her two children, one hanging on the gallows, the other bound to the wheel. Then said the aunt, "Behold, so would it have been with them if they had lived, and if the good God had not taken them to himself when they were innocent children."

A sexy spanking story this does not make. So, back in January, I became stuck. For one thing, the story is one paragraph long. Secondly, the sons would have to be made into daughters, because I, at this point in my life, have not yet ventured into writing men into submissive roles. Thirdly, even at it's mildest, turning this story into an erotic spanking story is the equivalent of torture porn. So I gave up. I didn't want to say "Pass" and pull a new random story to retell because that felt like cheating, and and I didn't want to write this story. So: nothing.

Five months later, I have remembered that I like torture. I've always been fascinated by it, in fact. Torture in the classic sense, that is. Scold's bridles, pears, whipping posts. None of this water torture nonsense, or Hostel films, or prejudicial inhumanity. No, I'm talking medieval, sexualized, wood-engraved, Andrei Codrescu's The Blood Countess-style torture. I even own sword-swallower Daniel P. Mannix's History of Torture, romanticized and devoid of references though it may be. My favorite fairy tale retelling is Anne Bishop's "Match Girl" as it appears in one of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's fairy tale collections, Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears. Per that retelling, poor little match girl, indeed.

This morning when I got into work, I realized I didn't care much about my work day, and in between moments of productivity, I worked on a list of both stories and blog posts that have fallen by the wayside. The Grimm project was on the top of the list. Then I started taking notes... and notes... and notes... and while I do not have an actual story to present to you now, I am finally writing again. The aged mother has been turned into a farmer, the sons into wives, the gallows and wheel into... well... you're just going to have to wait on that, but there are whipping posts and stocks in the future, as well as a second wife's skirt lifted well over her waist while she is, shall we say, retained.

You may have noticed I changed the header image and subtitle of the blog. I want to write more about the writing process. And yes, the filming process, which may or may not begin again this weekend, depending on the mood of the household. For the writing, I just need to sit down and write. For the filming, well, I've gained thirty pounds since I last filmed, and I wasn't exactly slender then, so it's all a matter of deciding whether to bare myself to that degree or not. More bottom to spank, right? Well, I'd like to think that's the case.

So, to round out the blog entry, I'm going a bit mad with desire. Wanting to write spanking stories at work, wanting to make spanking films whilst I'm actually only walking the dog and going with Mr. W to the grocery store. I'm going to write a story of depravity, filth, and torture. And spanking. And then, with any luck, I'll have a chance to reenact some of it on film. And then it's on to zombies. You don't even want to know about the spanking Antarctic zombies...

Porn FAIL

And.... not so much.

Let's begin with a description of the porn, ridiculous and available on Comcast "Worst Cable Monopoly Ever" On Demand though it may have been: "WEW presents "Nude Booty Beat Down". The Booties are poised and ready for a smack down! Hold on to your belts, paddles, and straps as WEW gets it going with "Nude Booty Beat Down". You don't want to miss one second of the totally nude totally uncensored action!"

Aren't you curious? And if you have a spare $9.99 that you probably aren't going to pay Comcast for three months anyway, isn't there a chance you might just, on a lazy Sunday morning, explore that curiosity? Well, stop right there my friends. If you have any respect for the vocabulary of not just spanking but erotica itself, you will go no further into this downward spiral of eyeball pain. No spanking pain, no sexy ladies in pain, just the pain of your eyes as you wonder why you didn't spend $9.99 on a Naughty Abby video (alright, I do own my own videos, so that wasn't an option for me) or any other fantastic creature who has experienced an actual spanking on film.

Vocabulary issue #1: If you are going to use the phrase "belts, paddles, and straps," you ought to make sure they appear in your film. If there is no belting, paddling, or strapping, you are better off watching an old WWF/WWE spanking match (see below).

Vocabulary issue #2: If you imply that it is the wrestlers who are nude, then the wrestlers should be nude. If it turns out that the wrestlers remain clothed the entire time, with barely a flash of panty to be seen, and the nudity comes in the form of intermissions that were filmed separately from the wrestling ring and feature young obviously-not-interested-in-pornography women who were probably hoping for a break into the business of modeling, then the description should note, "Fully clothed female wrestlers preceded by girls with belly-button rings on small badly designed sets who will make you cringe as they glance off camera for reassurance that they look sexy."

Vocabulary issue #3: Did you know that WEW stands for Women's Erotic Wrestling? No? I can see how you might not know, as there is no eroticism to be found in this travesty. I understand that some folks might have a fetish for women's wrestling, and that is fine and good, but to describe the entire league as "erotic" leaves much to be desired. There was nothing intentionally "erotic," as I understand the term, there was very little actual wrestling, and, I hate to say* it, but there were definitely a few characters who had me pondering whether there was any literal meaning to Women's Erotic Wrestling whatsoever.

Definitely save your dollars for your Internet pornography, as I am sure Mr. W and I will do in the future. We weren't so much disappointed, since we weren't expecting much, as we were completely baffled. Porn can be disgusting, boring, embarrassing, or arousing, but it should never be baffling. Baffling "porn" = porn FAIL.

(*Horrific typo on my part: accidentally had written "hate to see it," which sounds like I don't think transvestites and transsexuals are awesome and amazing human beings. I was just looking over my blog, realizing I'd written very little this year, and noticed this blaring error. I usually don't make spelling typos, I make word typos, and thus a similar word will get typed. This one was bad, though, because I didn't catch it in editing and the typo changes who I am and what I think. I'm really mad at myself at the moment for not noticing the word blunder. Please please please accept my apology if by any chance you saw the typo, were offended, but by some miracle found yourself back on my blog.)


The mainstream getting it right: