On Friday night I found myself standing naked in front of a glass-top table in a London hotel room, wondering how I would lean over it without freezing my chest and tummy right off. Behind me, my husband was unbuckling his belt.

“Cold,” I complained when my skin touched the icy glass surface.

“I’ll warm you up,” Abel promised with a carnivorous grin, folding the belt into a loop. I’d guessed he might say that.

Why was I about to get a whipping?

The simple answer would be “just because”, or even “why not?” – which in many cases is good enough.

The more extended answer is that we had just returned from a gig by our favourite band Keane.* We had agreed beforehand that for every song they played, I would get two strokes of the belt. Admittedly, Keane – bless their little public school socks – were very generous with their set list, so that in the middle of the concert Abel put his lips to my ear and shouted over the noise of the crowd belting out their favourite songs: “I think I’ll have to use discretion over those strokes!” I would have been the last person to object.

Thus, the glass table in the hotel room, a chair in front of it for me to grip, and Abel’s voice behind me:

“I think twenty is a fair number. You can count them.”

Before we started, I had decided to try and take this whipping as stoically as I could. Normally I don’t bother, but Abel likes spanking motionless sacks of flour stoic people, so I gritted my teeth, and gripped the back of the chair really hard.

I think, my resolve lasted until about the eighth stroke. The pain had been building – not gradually, like with a hand-spanking or even a caning, but in great jumps. It grew manifold with every lash. I remember the eighth one particularly, because my mouth refused to wrap around the count, and when number nine came, I suddenly found myself upright, clutching my behind, with Abel’s arm around me. I honestly don’t remember how I got there.

“Shhh, good girl,” he was saying. “You’re very brave. Come on now, it will be over soon.”

I allowed him to help me back over the desk. Funnily enough, I didn’t object its coolness any more.

It wasn’t over all that soon: each of the following strokes was memorable for its particular little ways of hurting me more. Finally, Abel ended my suffering by delivering the last five strokes so fast that I didn’t have time to freak out about them separately – I just howled the place down from their cumulative effect.

I don’t know if I’m still into being whipped with belts – maybe it’s just that particular belt that should be urgently shredded and recycled. I’m definitely into going to gigs, though.

Being stoic and stuff? Forget it.

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* A special, non-advertised, kill-for-tickets pre-album-launch gig in London’s “Astoria”, which we’d got into because I happened to be online at the moment when the tickets went on sale. (Pats self on back.)