I’m endlessly fascinated by my conflicting reactions when I hear about my girls being whacked at scene events, especially at extended gatherings such as the recent Finishing School. Over the past weekend, for example, the drip-feed of texts and calls coming my way let me know – for example – that (in their guise of their respective characters) Haron had been punished for running in the corridor; that Cath had “got double” being caned as Head Girl for misbehaviour after dinner – alongside Emma Jane as her co-conspirator.
Each case provoked sympathy from loving me – a desire to reach out and offer hugs, comfort. And yet, then, kinky me found the idea delightful. After all, these are kinky girls – at the event entirely by choice: the earning and receipt of the punishment are very much part of what they relish.
More than that, my very knowing they’ve been whacked and will be sore – my inevitable voyeuristic attempt (details! details!) to form a mental picture of what went on, imagining how brave they must have been and how beautiful they must have looked – is something I find extremely hot. And I genuinely love it that they have such fun playing with other people.
My place on the “hug – hurt continuum”, as I shall grandly name it, is influenced for me by various factors. There’s the severity of their punishment. Even when a girl is deeply in character in a scene designed to be intense, the more severe the whacking, the more I instinctively tend towards hugs, sympathy. But at the same time, I can actually feel more soppy and protective if the spanking was far from severe, but was earned less deliberately. Take Haron’s corridor exploits, for example, where I doubt she had intended at the time to get into trouble. I imagine a moment of dismay when she realised she’d been caught and, a split-second later, what the consequences would inevitably be.
What else has an influence? Are there other people around to offer hugs in my absence? Do I know the top(s) concerned (and the organisers); am I confident that they would have been careful, caring – which was absolutely the case at the past weekend’s events. (And actually, the girls wouldn’t choose to go to such an event if the other participants weren’t entirely trustworthy). Maybe, too, there’s when we’ll next be together, so I can offer and enjoy real-life hugs (and probe, perhaps, for more details to satisfy my pervy curiosity): in this case, that’s only a couple of days away.
If we’re in contact during the event, there’s also the need to strike a balance between letting them know I’m thinking about them and that I care – and not wanting to break the spell of the scene or bring them out of character by interrupting from afar, too regularly, or expecting them to do so. That’s not always an easy balance for me to get right: perhaps I tend too much towards the “hug” end of the scale.
I’d love to hear others’ thoughts – from tops, as to how you respond when your girl(s) get punished when you’re not around; and from young ladies who are on the receiving end in such circumstances: to what extent do you find hearing from your partner(s) and knowing of their concern to be good and helpful, and to what extent does it interfere with the scene you’re playing and the character you’re trying to inhabit for the duration?
I don’t have any experience with this, but I imagine it would depend on how the communication was handled. If I could imagine that he was my boyfriend from back home or from the boy’s school in town (in this particular case), I don’t think it would be a problem at all. If he said things that were too RL for me to assimilate as my character, it would be much more difficult. Either way, I would absolutely want to be in touch; it would just be helpful if he halfway created a character of his own.
Hmmm – I struggled with this, as you know. Admittedly I’m a bit rubbish at remembering to communicate compared to you, even on a good day; but when I’m in character I find it doubly difficult.
I immersed myself so deeply into FS this weekend that anyone outside of it might almost not have existed. You are *my* boyfriend, not the boyfriend of the FS head girl, who was allowed to use her phone only at designated times. It was lovely to get the occasional text from you, but I lost count of the number of times I started to reply, only to get called away to do something else, flip back into head girl mode and forget the outside world entirely.
So – sorry darling! It wasn’t personal; just that I have only so much capacity, and FS took up the whole of it.
@Melanie – Haron and I had chatted about that as an idea beforehand – that I’d be (say) a guardian not her r/l partner. We didn’t go with that for some reason, but it’s certainly perhaps a good way of avoiding people coming out of character.
That’s echoed too in @Catherine’s reply – in that I suspect a partner wanting contact *does* break the magic of the scene, and that full immersion is perhaps essential. (No need to apologise at all: as I said in the post, I think I probably ended being too needy this past weekend, for various reasons! And I was probably too quick to seize on those texts I did get and reply immediately, thus putting you and Emma Jane and Haron under pressure to continue the dialogue).
@Abel: Aw heck, nobody’s perfect all the time, not even us
xxx
LOL but I *am* perfect…! Oh, OK…
I think it’s natural that we’d learn and evolve from any events like the FS, which is why I wanted to initiate the discussion – in a general sense, albeit set against the background of the specific past weekend.
Although you’d all done residential scenes in the past, the FS *was* a somewhat new style of event – and it was also the first time you three had been at something together for so long that I couldn’t attend. (Hopefully next time, dates will work out better!)
With the knowledge of what worked and what didn’t – not necessarily stuff we could have anticipated (although maybe we could have all talked about it more clearly beforehand: that’s one of the learnings for me) – I think it’d be much easier to discuss how we handle communication for any similar events in future. I know there are things I’d want to do differently, hence partly writing this post!
This took me to some really deep places. For me where I am at it isn’t a choice. Yes we communicate but not about what I am really doing. So I take the risks (and I am sensible) alone and hope not to hurt the ones I love. It kind of works.
Cath’s pretty much said it all. Of course we want to keep in touch but half the beauty of such weekends is being immersed and not having phones in hand all the time.
Was nice at night or first thing to exchange texts but unfortuantel as the day went on the opportunity became less so. Still sharing all the details now is lovely