The Spanking Writers

Time for another of our occasional discussion points. Oh, how I enjoy reading replies to these little scenarios!

You’ve misbehaved, been caught. You know that you are in the wrong – guilty as charged. And you know that you’ll be spanked as a result.

So: what’s better, what’s worse: for the gentleman to take you over his knee (or remove his belt or reach for an implement) there and then, or for him to send you to your room to wait until he comes upstairs to deal with you?

I’m reading a book called “Lunch in Paris”. The main character, an American girl, has started a correspondence with a French guy she fancies.

Artfully worded e-mails flew back and forth. I even tried writing one in French, begging Gwendal in advance to correct my grammar. He waited several months to tell me that corrigez-moi doesn’t imply “check my spelling” so much as “tie me up and tickle me with a feather duster.” There should really be a footnote in those high school textbooks.

There you are, you’ve learned a useful bit of French!

Wandering randomly around the web t’other day. I came across an extract from a rather lovely C19th feminist fairy-tale, “The life of High Countess Gritta von Ratsinourhouse”. I loved one particular (romantic and ultimately poignant) section, about a girl who’s not birched by her father, and thought I’d transcribe it for your delectation:

Until he was made a count, your great-great-great-grandfather had raised his children properly. Shortly after becoming a count, however, he became a father again, this time of a baby girl, and he now thought that a little countess ought no longer to be beaten with a switch. So the birch trees around the castle were no longer watered, and the countess grew up most ill behaved, since the count had no means of punishing her without insulting the nobility in her blood.. Besides, he thought, hers would never be more than minor offenses. That, however, was a mistake. She outgrew the age for spanking and turned wild: She stayed out night after night and came home the following morning in superb humor with wild thorn vines, moss, and night dew in her loose and flying hair…

“One morning she arrived shouldering the carcass of a young bear. It had attacked her in the woods so she had strangled it with her strong firm limbs. Just at that moment her father was speaking with the young man she had chosen for her husband… The young count with his pale face and black beard looked at her with friendliness…

“Now she loved the young count passionately. She did not become his fiancée, one couldn’t call her that; she became his companion… And when the young count sat at his studies, for which he had special inclination, she learned with him. They often sat before old manuscripts until late into the night, their arms interlocked, one helping the other… [Her father] often looked toward the family tree of birch switches, whose rustling leaves seemed to remind him of his failure to raise the countess properly.

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There is a special place in my fantasy for this type of inexperienced or reluctant spanker. They know and accept that their job involves punishing people – it’s their duty – but they would much rather not be doing it.

Picture, for instance, a new prison guard. Her training has mentioned that she might be called on to administer corporal punishment to the inmates, but she thought that surely, this would be something more experienced officers would do. When suddenly, on her first day on the job, her boss calls her into her office.

There in the office, a gloomy young prisoner is standing in front of the desk.

“Smithson here is due ten with the paddle,” the boss says. “Why don’t you give her the swats?” she takes a thick wooden paddle out of a drawer and places it on the desk.

“Uh,” the new guard’s insides twist uncomfortably. She knows that she must show no hesitation, or her authority on the prison block won’t be worth anything. “Right.” She picks up the paddle and turns to the prisoner. She has no idea how to proceed, but covers it up by fake decisiveness.

“You, bend over and touch your ankles,” she says curtly.

The prisoner shoots her a look full of disgust, but obeys nevertheless; perhaps she knows that there are far worse measures up the guards’ sleeves.

The new guard measures the backside in front of her with an uncertain gaze. It’s covered up with tight uniform jeans. She grips the handle of the paddle tight, and aims for the middle of the buttocks. She can’t afford to hesitate, can’t afford to show any of the distaste she feels about this procedure. She swings the paddle and brings it home. It connects with a loud thwack, and the prisoner grunts in pain.

The guard throws a sidelong glance at her boss, and sees her watching with curiosity. This is a test. She must pass it. She concentrates on the job, and lets the paddle swing harder. She knows she’s doing it properly when the prisoner can’t contain a yelp of pain, and yet it doesn’t feel like a reward: it feels like a blow.

She finishes the paddling with grim, jaw-clenching efficiency, and succeeds in keeping her face stony when that the prisoner’s face is wet with tears by the end. Impassively, she returns the paddle to the boss, who thanks and dismisses her, keeping the prisoner behind for a post-punishment talk.

The guard goes into the bathroom to splash some water on her face. She sees herself in the mirror: a proper prison officer face, impassive, stony. The face of the sort of person who hits people as part of her job.

She shakes her head and returns to work.

I’ve just spent a lovely week with at my boyfriend Jimmy’s house. Due to unknowable Internet gremlins, I find it very difficult to go online from there, so whenever I go, I feel a bit isolated from my usual haunts. It feels a bit like being locked away in a boarding school, behind a massive firewall that keeps you from the dangerous time-wasting of social media.

If I were really at school, I can well see myself using a chain of proxy servers to get to the websites I wanted. The IT department being wise to these, things, I would be caught very soon, and hauled in front of the head of IT. He would be a bit like Pablo, all glasses, pony-tail and Northern vowels, though I suppose the school would have him wear a suit.

He would lecture me about breaking the rules of Internet use, and threaten me with the ultimate horror: being banned from school broadband. I would burst into tears, and would be pathetically grateful when he announces that I would be spanked instead.

He would stand up, pick up a thick plastic ruler and gesture me over the arm of his swivel chair – the only spot in his office not occupied with hardware or paperwork. I would lift my skirt without complaint, and take a dozen crisp slaps of the ruler, swallowing my yelps in an attempt to recover some dignity. I would promise not to use the proxies again.

And later, in the privacy of my cubicle, I would sit on my stinging bottom and write a very plaintive letter to my parents, explaining why I needed a phone with proper mobile internet.

I’m coming to the end of what’s turned out to be a rather lovely week in Denver.

On the face of it, it should have been a disaster. I’ve not really had enough good-quality, relaxed time lately with either Haron or Emma Jane for a week in the States to have been anything other than an utter inconvenience. Indeed, I’d have swapped the US trip in an instant for a couple of days with them. I’ve missed each of them terribly badly.

I’ve worked pretty hard, during working days starting at 7am and finishing near midnight. I missed a lovely party back home yesterday, with many of my dearest friends – and, no matter how hard I try to be rational, there’s nothing that depresses me more than being away due to work commitments whilst my favourite people are having fun at gatherings I could have attended: it feels so very unfair. (Albeit, actually, I take great pleasure in hearing that they are happy and having fun).

And yet… And yet. The upgrades came in thick and fast (business class on the plane over, a suite in the hotel). Denver itself’s a most tolerable place to wander: some fab restaurants – Marlowe’s, in particular, having become a regular haunt – and a truly gorgeous bookstore (The Tattered Cover). Work went well: people were kind enough to heap praise on my conference presentation, whilst various (important, longer-term) Machiavellian schemes of mine moved on in entirely the right directions.

I bought and read one of the best, most insightful books about love and relationships that I’ve ever come across (“The Lover’s Dictionary”, by David Levithan). And I’m 50-odd pages into another truly brilliant piece of writing (“Lunch in Paris”, by Elizabeth Brand).

Oh, and I outed myself on the poly front to my American business partner. We’re extremely close, as friends as well as colleagues: it was time he knew. He couldn’t have been more understanding or relaxed about it. I feel so relieved to have done so.

Kink-wise? I met up with a dear friend, Bridget, after too many years’ gap – and was so touched to be invited to meet her gorgeous family (partners, kids, dogs!). After much hunting, I eventually found some implements, from a leather worker at a local craft market. (“That belt is made from bridle leather: it’s the thickest type.” “I know”). I mentally corrupted the piano on every street corner – such a nice idea: next up, an implement rack at every junction?

I’ve had lovely online chats with various dear friends, old and newer.  And I’ve swapped some gorgeous, touching emails, texts, calls and DMs with my two girls. I feel very loved, and very in love. I’ve been missing them terribly: yet the very fact I’ve missed them so has merely underlined how much I love them, and how much I have to be thankful for. All in all, it’s been a good week.

More dark, rude thoughts of imprisoned girls as I lay in bed the other morning, my mind racing with naughty thoughts.

–

A wilful girl, she’d refused to strip when he’d taken her into the punishment cell. It hadn’t surprised him: defiance had blazed in her eyes since she’d been moved onto his Wing a week before – yet it had taken him this long to find the excuse to bring her here.

He’d undressed her himself, of course, swiftly removing her prison-issue dress and underwear as she struggled, then forcing her over the whipping bench. It had taken all of his strength to keep her overpowered as he buckled the straps into position.

And then he’d flogged her. No pre-set number of strokes of the birch, just “until you seem sorry – genuinely sorry”. That had taken a long time: defiance had only slowly given way to bravery, to valiant self-control, to sobs, to whimpers.

Afterwards, he’d picked her up when she’d crumpled to the floor. Lifted her eyes to his: “You took that well: I admire that.” And then he’d marched her, naked, back along the corridors, locking the barred door behind him as he left her to the hugs of her fellow inmates.

–

And then I thought the little scene needed further elaboration…

See, after punishing her? Well, with a naked girl, bent over, tied in position? Officers have certain, time-honoured if illicit, privileges…

She’d complained to the governor, as well a girl might. He’d listened carefully, then studied the CCTV screens in the corner of his office. The whole incident replayed before them, from her entry into the punishment chamber; he made her watch it with him.

“Such a shame if we ever lost a video like this. What with the internet. YouTube and so on. Now, where were we? You said you wanted to file a complaint? …. No. I understand…”

–

Of course, the system would have to be changed to prevent such abuses. The cameras would be turned off, to protect the whipped girl’s privacy. Any birchings would henceforth by witnessed by two officers, in addition to the one administering the flogging.

And should a prisoner complain about mistreatment after she’d been punished? Well, it would now be a case of her word against three members of staff. And loyalties to colleagues run deep. No governor would believe an inmate against three of his team, surely? And with the penalties for making false accusations so clearly displayed and understood, it would probably be better for a girl not to cause trouble…

A slavegirl walks warily behind an opulently dressed man who has just bought her. He is only a steward, not a master himself, but he comes from what appears to be a grand household – the household where the girl now belongs. She was bought for her skill in the kitchen, and is pleased with herself for having fetched a handsome price, but she can’t help but be worried. A new household. New rules to learn, new people to find a way to live with.

“Hurry up, girl,” the steward snaps. “Pay attention to the road, not the clouds in the sky.”

He delivers the girl directly to the kitchen, and hands her over to the cook, with the words, “A dreamer, this one.”

“You’ll have no time for dreaming,” snaps the cook, a fierce-looking large woman. “Put your things in that corner by the window, that’s where you’ll be sleeping. Wash yourself at the pump in the stable yard. After that, come straight to me, and no dawdling.”

The girl is desperate to make a good impression. She does what she’s told, at speed. When she comes back into the kitchen, dripping with cold water from the pump, the cook’s gaze falls on her immediately.

“Good, good. You’re ready to get to work. But first, come over here and bend over this table.”

“What? Why?” the girl blurts out, even thought she had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t question any instruction she was given, particularly at first.

“Because I need to show you what happens if you mess up in my kitchen. A fair warning. Come here, now.” The cook is holding an enormous wooden spoon.

The girl bends over wordlessly. It hasn’t been so long since her last beating – the cook in her previous master’s house had also been quick with a spoon – but at least she had earned that one. She can’t decide whether it’s better or worse to be spanked for the first time in the new house without having done anything to deserve it.

The cook brushes the hem of the girl’s tunic out of the way, and slaps down the spoon on her naked bottom. The other kitchen slaves don’t pause for an instant, even though there’s a spanking going on under their noses. The girl bites her lip, because to scream now wouldn’t be a done thing – if you whine and whimper from a simple spanking, there’s no hope for you when there comes a time for a more serious punishment – and it will.

The spoon smacks down a couple of dozen times, each slap painful and precise. The girl bites her lip until it hurts as much as her bottom, but she doesn’t make a sound.

“Good, good,” says the cook, lowering the spoon. “Now you know what happens if you cross me in my kitchen. Do you?”

“Yes, cook,” says the girl meekly, her bottom stinging under her tunic.

“Good. Get to peeling carrots.”

The girl nods and moves to her first task in the new house. She wonders ruefully when somebody will ask her her name.

I’ve realised recently that I’ve missed out on one particular type of spanking play that appeals greatly.

Most people in the world, myself included, are right-handed. As such, most cane strokes are administered in one particular direction – the tip landing on the girl’s right buttock. One can administer stripes back-handed for sure, but they lack the full strength of a strong, full-on forehand whack.

So I want a left-handed top to play alongside – and a girl who’s brave enough to volunteer. He (or she) and me, standing opposite one another behind the lass who’s being thrashed. Alternate strokes, crossing in opposite directions, ensuring that the punishment is as intense as it could be. The young lady would need to be tied, of course. And her offence would need to have been serious, if this were to be roleplay rather than merely the infliction for infliction’s sake of pain for pain’s sake.

Yep, the idea rather appeals… How come I’ve never done this before?

In my dream last night I was starting a summer job as a data entry clerk in a large office. It had no windows, just oppressive neon lighting. I had a huge stack of paper that I needed to finish typing up by the end of the day.

My boss wandered over. He was quite young, wore a power suit, and seemed very full of himself.

“In this office we have a tradition,” he said. “Every new starter gets the tawse on the hands on their first day, to remind them of the importance of careful typing.”

I was horrified, but not at all surprised. I think my dream self was not a stranger to workplace spanking. “Please, not too hard,” I said.

“No, it won’t be too hard,” he said. “Just hard enough to make you think about it as you work. Hold out your hands.”

I did, and he swung the tawse. When it fell, I woke up, and was very relieved, because it wasn’t a pleasant dream at all; I didn’t like the snooty young boss, and don’t want to know what corner of my mind he’d surfaced from.

Yet, I couldn’t help but imagine getting six sharp licks on my palms, and typing for the rest of the day with my hands red and sore, very careful of any mistakes.