The Spanking Writers

In a supermarket the other day two children were messing around a lot. They played a game that looked like a mix of catch and nuclear warfare. Their minder, a girl of about 20, wasn’t even trying to calm them down – she was trying to finish her shopping and get out.

I imagined that she was the family’s au-pair. What she didn’t realise was that one of her employers’ neighbours was also in the shop, and saw the children running wild. The neighbour phoned their father that evening, just a friendly call to let him know that the au-pair might not be doing her job as well as she might.

The father called the girl into an empty living room for a talk. He realised, he said, that his children could be difficult, but she couldn’t just ignore bad behaviour and hope it would go away.
The girl said contritely that she understood, and that she would do better.

This promise wasn’t enough. In a bid to demonstrate that bad behaviour shouldn’t be ignored, the father instructed her to lower her jeans and bend over the sofa cushions. Knowing the procedure, she meekly leaned forward as he unbuckled his belt and slid it out of the loops.

The whipping that followed was not unduly harsh, but firm enough that the girl was tearful and sore by the end. Her promises of better work were far more sincere and convincing. The father allowed her to stand, then gave her a warm hug, reassuring her that he wasn’t angry, and was merely doing what was necessary.

The girl sniffled into his shirt and took mental notes.

The setting: a discussion I was leading recently with a group of senior managers.

The issue: their complaint that they spend too much time on internal bureaucracy, and (as a result) not enough looking after their customers.

My contribution: “has anyone heard of Janus?”

They looked blank, so I carefully wrote the word up on the flipchart: JANUS. In block capitals. Where it remained, to my great delight, for the remainder or the workshop.

(Clearly, I was talking about the Roman god, whose two faces look in opposite directions – rather like said managers, forever trying to focus both internally and externally. Any suggestion that I might have been referring to the famous Soho spanking shop or the magazine of the same name would be entirely misplaced. But I was a little disappointed that none of the ladies in the discussion blushed and squirmed uncomfortably in their seats).

Oh, but this story is making my spanking hand itch something awful.

How about this: two Swedish schoolgirls bought bugging equipment in a gadget shop and installed it in the teachers’ common room.

Seriously. They did. They got caught when one of them bragged about it on Facebook, thus failing Spying 101 in a rather spectacular manner. The real-life result of this was a court case, a guilty verdict and a hefty fine.

I picture a different outcome. There would be an after-school staff meeting which the pair of girls would be ordered to attend. A chair would be placed in the middle of the room, and the girls would have to bend over its back one after the other, skirts up and knickers lowered to their ankles. The Headmaster would administer a full dozen of cane strokes to each upturned bottom, with the whole teaching staff looking on.

Afterwards, the minutes of the staff meeting, including the two canings, would be posted on the school’s Facebook page, with links to the girls’ profiles.

That’s only fair, no?

Any of you know what an ‘odalisque’ is? I confess that I had to look it up when I encountered a blog entitled ‘Not an Odalisque’ recently – drawn to it by a post in which the author took in inspiration from a meeting with our dear friend HH (himself author of the excellent “The Art of Corporal Punishment”). It’s the final feature in our week of our favourite posts from other blogs:

It got me wondering why I don’t blog about kink… Kinksters aren’t a poor, oppressed group, but they aren’t exactly accepted, either. I don’t just mean the tabloid treatment of  Max Mosley  or the  ”dungeon” owners in Devon. I mean the scare-mongering about causal links between violent pornography and rape. I mean the idea that a woman doesn’t have the agency to choose to be submissive. I mean the worry I feel that I may lose credibility if I tell you too much about myself.

That’s one reason I haven’t gone into detail about my kink, but it’s also a reason why I should. The problem is that I don’t have a final answer on what my kink is. Sexuality is infinitely malleable, and finding a vocabulary to write about it may change it. The fetish community displays a striking uniformity of bizarre tastes….

Does it sound like I’m making excuses? I suspect that I am. I don’t want to tell you about my kink because I’m haunted by everyone who ever disapproved. The ex-boyfriend who dug for evidence of buried childhood trauma. The ex-boyfriend who thought it was an all-access pass. The confused vanilla friends. They combine into an angel on my shoulder telling me that if only I were to stop wanting kinky things, I could be good and pure and loveable, citizen of a lemon-scented world and creator of incredibly fluffy cakes.

That angel is nothing, however, in comparison to the fear that feminists inspire. You see, I know that when the things I fantasise about happen, they really aren’t fun… Every time I see a kinkster talk about his “natural dominance” or “a woman’s place” I feel as if I’ve committed an act of violence against feminism.

One final worry: I secretly snigger at other people’s kinks. Sometimes they make me feel vaguely ill. You might, too.

Were those good enough reasons? No, I didn’t think so. So I’m going to try to tell you about my kink…

I like to be in somebody’s power. I like to feel that there’s no way out, no way to re-establish my own will, and my only option is to do as I’m told. That’s not enough, though, otherwise I would enjoy getting stuck in traffic jams. I like to be valued. I rather like being rewarded when I’m good: instant justice from an immediate authority. Even being disapproved of, or punished, is proof that somebody cares. And—oh!—I like to be punished. I like it even when it’s not fair. Maybe especially when it’s not fair. And when, unfairly, my protestations that it’s not fair have been silenced on pain of even more punishment…

I want more than a beating, of course. It’s all the parts. It’s when I can’t meet someone’s eye in case he sees what I’m thinking. It’s his slow, deliberate movements, when I’m almost trembling but he’s in no rush. It’s wondering what he’s going to do with his belt as he takes it off. Blushing. Squirming. Being held down by someone’s weight. It’s gasping for air. It’s clinging on to him for dear life afterwards. It’s thumbprints around my wrists in the morning and bruises I didn’t know I had…

So, there you have it, as coherent an account of my kink as I am able to give. You’d better tell me whether or not you want to hear more. I’ll try my very best to do as I’m told.

For any of you wondering, BTW, an odalisque “was a female slave in an  Ottoman  seraglio”. And IMHO any blog as well-written as this is well worth following.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little annual selection of other authors’ and illustrators’ work. Hopefully it’s introduced a few readers to a few sites they may not have known before – and, at the least, it’s recognised some of the folks whose work we enjoy.

The Times seems to be on a roll, with some truly excellent writing. I loved a piece from Damian Barr on 23 July, in which he used a word new to me – ‘gaybourhood’, to denote an area with a large gay population. The following extract really made me smile:

‘I first visited Brighton as a teenager in the late 1980s to take part in a national schools quiz competition. Our team didn’t win but I barely noticed as I gawped at the exotic sight of men holding hands – men who weren’t blind and didn’t need help crossing the road. These men looked unafraid. Happy, even.

Our consolation prizes were book tokens, which I immediately spent buying all the Tales of the City books in the local Waterstone’s. I then went gome and announced to my mother… that I was gay. She politely pretended to be shocked.”

I loved ‘politely pretended’, with its implication that she’d known all along. It made me wonder how my parents would react if I explained my somewhat alternative lifestyle – poly and a spanko. Do they already sense that there must be so much more to my relationship with the ‘best friends’ I mention so regularly? Would, given my suspicions about at least my dad’s kinky inclinations, they be at all surprised to know about my interests in spanking?

I rather suspect not. But much as I’d like to ‘come clean’, there’s still a reluctance to be fully open. Poly equals there must be something wrong with their once-divorced son’s second marriage; spanko equals abusive towards women – neither being in the least part true, but I can well imagine them speculating and worrying.

Much as I’d like to be open and honest, if one assesses these things on a ‘need to know’ basis, do they really, given the risks that’d they could end up shocked and stressed? I’m curious to know whether have others crossed this particular bridge – especially if they’ve done so not as a youngster but after years of keeping their true self hidden.

Continuing our summer series of things we’ve loved in recent months on other blogs, we just had to feature this illustration by Tito Garelli, which appeared at Arte BDSM:

And then what about this, at “Beauty and the Birch”, entitled “The Birching Tower” (a rather different version to the one that Cath gave me last Christmas):

Abel explores the issues arising when adults give their full and informed consent to safe kinky activities taking place in private.

Subscribe with iTunes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Sometimes the blogosphere can be a serious place. So here are a couple of posts from oft-kinky blogs – although not on kinky topics – that have made us laugh, as part of our week featuring posts we’ve loved on others’ blogs. The first comes from the wonderful, prolific Gloria Brame:

And then Celine wrote this gorgeous little item on her blog, Red Bottomed Girl:

This is off topic.   Sorry, but if I’m going to die of embarrassment, I’m not going to die alone…

This morning my dentist casually commented that I have a sensitive gag reflex.   Without thinking at ALL, I immediately responded, “I know, right!   It’s such a pain!   It drives my boyfriend nuts!”    

There was an uncomfortably looooooooong  silence.   I was totally oblivious (it was early, I wasn’t completely  awake)  until the dentist got the pervy giggles, like a thirteen year old boy.   “No, I mean..” I trailed off, turning  a deep  shade of scarlet.   I meant that sometimes my gag reflex acts up when I’m brushing my teeth or eating something with a spoon, but it happens randomly and it’s unpredictability drives [my partner] bonkers.   That’s all…

I hate boys.   They’re all perverts, the lot of them. *pout*

A lovely, if cruel, little scene came to mind as we cruised down the Grand Canal in Venice on our luxury launch the other day*. A young woman, daughter of a nobleman, was in her bedchamber in her family’s palazzo, overlooking the water. As servants busied themselves in the background, a fierce argument was playing out between the girl and her mother.

You see, it was the day of the girl’s wedding, and her father had betrothed her – much against her will – to the much-older son of the ruling Doge. The marriage would bring great advantage to the family’s fortunes – but which bright young maiden wants to be paired up with some old fogey, no matter how influential and wealthy, purely for her parents’ political ambitions?

Tempers flared as the maids tried to dress the girl for the impending service. Eventually the mother’s patience gave way, and the young woman found herself flung over the maternal lap and on the receiving end of a hard hand spanking.

Far from calming her, the punishment had precisely the opposite effect, for as soon as it was over, the lass grabbed her wedding dress, opened the windows on to the balcony, and flung the expensive garment into the water below.

She was taken to her father: the soundest of whippings ensued… and the wedding proceeded that afternoon as planned.

Returning to ponder the scene some more as I wrote it up later, it struck me that she would doubtless prove to be most unwilling when her new husband came to take advantage of his marital rights that evening. But afterwards, he would hold her tight; he’d tell her that he knew he might not have been her ideal choice of spouse, but would vow to be a good husband and look after her well if she’d try to love him back…

* OK, it was one of the public vaporetto boats, but one can dream…

Here’s a very recent post, which crept into our “best of” selection almost at the last minute. It’s a story by Janice, of “Strange Imagination” – of which the following should give you a taste:

It was not a long way from the dungeons of the City Hall to the scaffold in the square. The guards were smiling when they collected me. ‘Quite a crowd, lass…”

They secured my hands behind my back and didn’t care much as I gasped when the ropes hurt me. My dress was flimsy as it was and with my hands behind my back I could do nothing to prevent it from sliding off my shoulder. The guards looked at me and thought I was presentable.

I walked on trembling legs and as the door opened and I met the mob, my heart began trembling as well. The excitement and the cheer that greeted me almost encouraged me, almost made me as excited as they were.

The strong guards protected me as we made our way through the crowd. I hesitated at the stair to the scaffold but was pushed onto the stage…I could do nothing but stand there, bound and look out over the multitude of faces. Should I keep my head high and antagonise them, or should I bow my head and be humble? Neither alternative changed what was going to happen.

Then the crowd broke out in a frenzy. They were taken by their own madness, shouting and cheering and staring. I turned my head and saw what had sparked them. I saw him.

He was the real performer, the one they had come for. He was the master and artist. They had come to see him work. They had not come for me. I was the clay he would work on, I was a tool for his skill. I was the one to be mastered by him…

He made a gesture and the guards pushed me forward. I was stood before the crowd, at the edge of the scaffold, alone with the crowd.

I stood in silence, staring in awe at them. I was waiting, the crowd was waiting. I didn’t see the gesture, I felt it. The crowd felt it. The guards took hold of my flimsy garment and tore at it. I gasped as I almost lost balance and fell. The fabric was torn from my body to the cheering and cries of the crowd…

The guards pulled me away from the edge of the platform and pushed me towards the sturdy pole set in the middle… The ropes around my wrists were loosened and my hands were pulled forward, one on each side of the wooden post. My wrists were retied in front and to a rope that ran through a hoop at the top of the pole. Strong arms pulled at the rope and my hands were hoisted in the air.

I cried out in pain as my hands were pulled upwards. I could hardly breathe as I was lifted from the floor, only my toes in contact with the wood. When they were done, I was almost hanging from my bound wrists, my body tense and pressed to the unforgiving whipping post.

I was prepared. I had been made ready for the whip. Now it was time for the entertainment..

.. which we’ll leave for you to enjoy across at Janice’s blog!