The Spanking Writers

I was innocently reading on the sofa when Abel, in his toppy voice, called down: “Come upstairs, young lady!”

Although I was fairly certain that I hadn’t done anything that warranted a summons, a little worry twitched in my heart.

I ascended the stairs, and heard slow clapping sounds from the bedroom. I wondered whether Abel was, for some reason, spanking himself in there, but when I came in, it turned out that he was slapping an antique wooden hairbrush against his palm. His face looked like he was about to break out in giggles.

“Over my knee!” he said.

I lowered myself over his lap, eager to find out what all this was about. The hairbrush immediately landed on my bottom, lightly but effectively. I yelped.

“How long have we been together?” Abel demanded.

“Er, nearly nine years.”

“That’s right! Nine years!” harder slaps of the brush. “You’d have thought that by now you might have learned that an English gentleman requires a cup of tea in the afternoon!”

I burst out laughing, even as I was yelping. I was about to point out that the longer he kept spanking me, the longer he was putting off his cup of tea. But he must have realised this, because the spanking stopped, and I was released to put the kettle on.

I must admit, this excuse for a spanking might have infuriated me if I read about it on somebody else’s blog, but I actually believe that feminists are allowed to play at being patriarchal monsters, so there.

On Friday Abel came home from a business trip, and our three weeks of separation came to an end. I had made numerous broad hints and direct requests for a welcome home spanking, and he certainly wasn’t opposed to the idea, so it was no surprise that I was summoned to the bedroom in a playfully stern tone.

Upstairs, he helped me out of my clothes and smoothly pulled me over his lap.

“Look at the clock,” he said.

From my position over his knee I looked up at the night stand, where the electronic alarm clock was showing 00:09.

“I’m going to spank you until 11 minutes past,” he said.

This seemed reasonable. The spanking was unhurried, measured and reasonably stingy, and seemed to go on for a very long time – yet, when I sneaked another glimpse at the clock, it was still 00:09. This was odd: I know time drags when you’re being spanked, but I could have sworn it had lasted for more than one minute.

I looked at my wristwatch, and followed the second hand around the watch face as Abel continued to pepper my bottom with smacks. Sure enough, a minute had passed – yet, when I looked up at the night stand clock, it was still showing 00:09.

“Oi!” I protested. “The clock is broken!”

“I don’t mind. You’re getting spanked till 11 past.” He was clearly enjoying himself very much.

“You’re going to spank me forever?”

His only response was to continue the spanking.

Not even Abel can actually keep spanking somebody forever and ever, so eventually the spanking did stop, and we moved on to other marital pursuits. From time to time I would glance at the clock again, and it would still be 00:09. Time had stopped. This turned out to be an excellent way to stretch out a fun night.

“Thou shalt not snitch” has, surely, to be a golden rule for girls: better to take a punishment of any severity than to land a friend in trouble.  This, of course, can be the basis for any number of spanking fantasies – knowing that no matter how hard a gentleman thrashes a girl with the goal of asking her to confess the name of a fellow offender, the young lady will resist. And, actually, as such, it’s not a scene I’d be likely to play, as the disciplinarian is being inherently somewhat unfair  - unless I was playing with someone for whom, and in a context within which, the very unfairness actually worked.

Yet I pictured one such scenario the other day, whilst idly pondering spanking-related thoughts as I drove to a meeting – as one does. Two girls had  already been punished. They stood, stripped and striped, facing the wall with their hands on their heads as a third was caned especially hard whilst she bent over the back of a chair. She was taking the thrashing especially stoically, refusing to disclose the name of their co-conspirator.

He paused and ordered her to her feet. She stood before him, defiant, unwilling to allow him the victory of showing him how much it hurt.  He took her by the wrist, and led her from the room. Time passed – and then they re-appeared, Only by now the girl was sobbing; broken. “You may all get dressed,” their tormentor announced. “And now that I know who else was involved, you can stay and watch her take her share of the punishment.”

Now, I feel horrible conceiving an outcome in which she would give way. And yet I drift into wondering what he must have said or done to her outside the door to secure her compliance, and find that speculation rather hot…

Two trains, fifteen minutes apart, wend their way from central Stuttgart to the suburb in which I’ve been working this week. The first – always packed – arrives at 07:44, allowing the commuters to enjoy the five minute stroll up to their office at a relaxed pace.

Yesterday morning, I took the second – still well before I needed to be at work. It pulled in at a minute before eight; the smartly-dressed young lady in front of me set off up the hill in haste.

I pictured the conversation a few minutes later, in her senior manager’s office, the door firmly shut behind the new graduate and her mentor. “Remind me of your contractual start time, young lady?”

“Eight o’clock, sir.”

“And your arrival time this morning?”

“Almost at eight…”

“Almost. But not at. And not for the first time this week. Your colleagues can make the earlier train: why can’t you?”

She’d have no good answer, of course. It’d be a simple choice: a report to HR with a formal warning noted on her employment record – or he’d deal with the matter there and then. She’d have seen the cane hanging on the wall on her very first visit to his office; it had silently dominated every conversation since, and now her fears and curiosity would be satisfied.

“Eight strokes would seem an appropriate number,” he’d explain calmly, patting the top of his desk. “Bend over…” And they’d be administered slowly, thoughtfully, across her tightly-stretched black suit skirt.

Afterwards, as he made her dry her tears before venturing back to her desk, he’d offer words of support: how well she was doing, how much they liked her. And then she’d be gone… until the next time, which would naturally be on the bare.

–

Now, of course, my mind’s wandering deliciously. He’s her ‘mentor’ as well as her senior manager, offering her encouragement as well as discipline. She’s been curious about the cane. There’ll be a next time. Oh dear, my nice non-consensual fantasy may just, you know, have deeply consensual undertones… And that wouldn’t possibly do. Oh no…!

Yesterday I flew home to the UK, and although the trip wasn’t long, it was full of many little annoyances that, combined, make travel quite unpleasant.

One of the annoyances was a pair of British girls in the airport in Kiev,* who tried to convince the attendant that they had priority boarding cards, when they blatantly didn’t. As the guy didn’t speak much English, and the girls were making quite a nuisance of themselves, he was forced to let them through just to keep the peace. (I don’t think it would work in any airport that isn’t tiny and understaffed, so I don’t recommend that you try the same strategy.)

Of course, in my imagination, the attendant used a radio that magically materialised in his hand to summon some guards, who promptly arrived and whisked the annoying girls out of the departure hut and into the admin building. There they would be subjected to additional customs checks (just in case they were concealing something), and, despite their shrill protestations, each of them would be held over a table by one guard, while another striped her backside with a heavy uniform belt. The whipping would continue until the guards saw a marked improvement in manners, which, having seen the girls, would have taken a while.

Of course, everybody on the flight would know what happened (having learned it from the airport attendant), and when the girls finally arrived at the plane, they would be met with the round of applause Ukrainians normally reserve for the pilot for when the plane lands.

…What? A bit mean? Well, they annoyed me.

* If you decide to come to Kiev for the European Cup in 2012, and you can possibly stretch your budget by a hundred quid, avoid Wizz Air flights to Zhulyany airport. Seriously. Fly to Borispol (KBP) if you can possibly afford it, to avoid the extreme mental trauma of the horror that is Zhulyany. End of public service announcement.

I do find accounts of historical punishments quite fascinating. Much as I recoil from the fact that the events concerned did actually take place, I can mentally pretend that they’re fiction – or the basis for a scene between consenting friends. One such is the tale of a former workhouse girl (of particular interest given our recent visit to one such establishment), punished by her employer, recounted in Burke’s Annual Register for 1829:

CRUELTY TO SERVANTS.— Lewes Quarter Sessions.— The King v. Charlotte Philp.-

The defendant was charged with assaulting Mary Anne Soffe whom she had taken as a servant from the workhouse of the parish of St. John Lewes. The first witness was the girl herself. She said she had gone to live with Mr. Philp, Northstreet, Brighton, on the 6th of November last.

Having offended her mistress., who charged her with burning the hearth-rug, which was not true, she said she would forgive her if she confessed it; and if she did not, she would punish her. Witness, from fear of being punished, said she did do it. At dinner, though she had confessed, her mistress threatened to strip her; but Mr. Philp said—” My dear, you shan’t. The girl has told the truth, and you would break your word.”

Mr. Philp then went out, and her mistress made her strip herself quite naked in the parlour behind the front shop. Her mistress told her she should strip, and untied her frock and pin-afore, and then pulled off the rest of her clothes. She pulled of all. Witness was stripped quite naked. Her mistress then sat down on all the clothes, and ordered her to clear away the dinner things. Whilst naked, she took the dinner things from the parlour into the kitchen below stairs.

She slept usually in the back kitchen; it was in the front kitchen the things were taken. She gave her all the time no clothes whatever; this took place sometime after one o’clock. After she had taken the dinner-things into the kitchen, her mistress ordered her to go upstairs into the drawing-room, and dust all the things: she did dust all the things, made the bed, and emptied the slops, &c., being the whole of the time quite naked. Her mistress was with her the whole of the time, except when she was down in the kitchen. She was kept naked from dinner till tea time, about five o’clock. Her mistress beat her whilst naked, with a birch rod made of an old broom..

On the Friday when I left, she said she would strip me naked again, before her husband and the apprentice boy, as she said I had done something which I had not done. I ran away, because I did not like to be shown naked before my master or the boy.” Witness, after she left her service, returned to Mrs. Marsh, the governess of the workhouse at Lewes, by a cart.

The abusive employer, you’ll be pleased to know, was found guilty, imprisoned and fined. What became of young Mary Anne is not recorded; I hope life worked out well for her, but I rather fear that not to have been the case…

There is a place between exhaustion and sleep where you’re not yet dreaming, but aren’t entirely lucid, either. I went to that place last night, and all I could think about was hand-spanking.

Lying over a lap, knees pressing into my stomach, my fingers brushing the carpet, my toes off the floor.

A cool breeze against my exposed cheeks.

The feeling of skin against skin. Rubbing first, then landing with a slap, stinging and warmth spreading. And more, and more, and again.

Ah, hand-spanking. I’m so hungry for it right now; my frustration is enormous.

But luckily I’m seeing Abel on Friday.

With apologies to Oscar Wilde:

“To lose one partner may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two seems like carelessness…”

Back in February, I wrote a blog post about my poly relationships – exploring, processing, as is sometimes my way here. And it was too raw for me to post; felt too much like tempting fate.

Well, fate was duly tempted. Within weeks, Cath had decided to move on. This past weekend, the wonderful Emma Jane and I had some of the bravest, kindest, most loving conversations a couple could ever have – and (entirely mutually) decided that our relationship needed to change too. We still love and care for one another as much as ever; but “boyfriend-girlfriend”, “partners” isn’t how it’s really meant to be. Much will stay the same – however, without the pressure of being a “couple”: rather than two people who love each other, and who relish the time they’ll spend together and the things they’ll do.

Anyway… time for that belated February post: the one I hoped never to publish, but always knew I would when the time came. Just, I can’t help being a bid sad that doing so came so soon…

The price of poly

Those of you who have blogs may relate to my current sentiment: that writing about issues, uncertainties that are nagging at you can prove to be a great way of processing one’s feelings. That’s what I’m doing here – and, actually, I’m not even sure I intend to post it right away, for reasons that may become obvious. And if you want to read about spanking, turn away now: it’s not core to the discussion.

Regular readers here will know that, aside from our kink, there’s another way in which Haron and I live what would be regarded by vanilla readers as an entirely unconventional life – that is, the polyamorous nature of our relationship. It’s not something we’ve ever explored here – other than in passing references to our other partners.

As I sit here now, I’m in the incredibly fortunate position of loving, and being loved in return, by three truly wonderful women – Haron, Cath and Emma Jane. “Love”, in this context, is not – for me – shorthand for “liking a lot” or “being very fond of”. It’s not a casual sign off to a card or note to a close friend – “with love”. I’m genuinely, completely in love with each of them. They’re different in so many ways, yet I adore all three, absolutely and unequivocally.

And, as I said, it’s not about spanking. We’ve progressed (in each pairing) to the point where play is almost incidental – although I love it when it happens, of course. It’s almost at times as though we’re so caught up in each other’s real, non-kink lives that kink takes a back seat – especially when we never have long enough together (hugs and sleep then taking priority, or the logistics of the events we’re attending), and when that time is inevitably rarely spent a deux. Actually, for a top with three partners, I sometimes seem to end up with relatively little opportunity to wield my trusty cane! And we’re way beyond the sometimes superficial public image that people try to portray in public, at parties and the like. They know my flaws; I know theirs.

Here’s the rub, though. Haron and I are married; we made that permanent commitment to one another many years ago, and it’s a template for relationships that that wider society can understand. And I can’t offer that permanence to either of the other girls; I can’t be that sole, devoted life partner that has eyes for them and them alone; I can’t fulfil all of their long-term aspirations.

I know that; they know that; we know that: we talk and share and trust. And I know too that I never, ever want to stand in the way of what’s right for them. That’s not self-sacrificing; their happiness, long-term, honestly outweighs any selfish personal needs.

More fundamentally, different criteria inevitably apply for a partner for life versus one taken for the shorter-term. Whilst they each seem happy for now to be in a relationship with me on a known-to-be-ultimately-temporary basis, I certainly don’t presume that I’d fit the bill for either of them for a long-term, permanent relationship – irrespective of any other factors. Indeed, I rather doubt either of them would have gone out with me in the first place, had I and they been single and had they been looking for Mr Long-Term Right.

So, despite the incredible joys of such wonderful (and very different) relationships, deep down there’s a sadness. For I know that my two girlfriends will move on. They’ll each find someone else – not necessarily Mr Right, but someone they want to focus their attentions on without the distractions of loving someone else. Or they’ll decide that the time they spend with me stands in the way of fulfilling their rightly-held life needs and dreams; I’ll become a distraction or an inconvenience, peripheral to how they really want and need to spend their precious evenings and weekends.

When the time comes with each of them, as it certainly will, I hope I’ll be brave. I intend to be – for them, as much as for myself: otherwise I could feel crushed. I pray that we’ll manage the transition from lovers to wonderful friends smoothly and successfully – and that we’ll cope with any (perhaps inevitable) blips en route as we try to adjust to the new nature of our our relationships, our non-partnerships. The ‘in love’ tap won’t be an easy one to simply and suddenly switch off. We avoid jealousy now – I hope we’ll avoid it then: me, them, their new partners when they appear. And I trust, pray that they’ll be kind and considerate when they do it – and in the tough weeks and months after.

But it’s tough, sometimes, to love whilst glancing forwards through the calendar wondering when things will change. Will our wonderful recent Valentine’s Day together be our last; will particular things we’ve planned together later in the year end up taking place as friends not lovers? And, worst of all, could I be the person in the way of their happiness?

The secret, it seems, is not to worry about the future uncertainties – the future inevitabilities. It’s to rejoice in the present. It’s to relish each moment with them. It’s to make my girls feel cared for, in whichever way that’s right for them (which is different in each case). It’s to delight in their love for me and mine for theirs; in the wonderful and amazing times that we spend together; in their beauty and generous good natures; it’s to live for the now, not to worry about the future. Even if I can’t help a certain, deep-down underlying sense of dismay at the thought of losing, giving up, what I cherish so dearly. Life will feel so very empty without them.

This world is full of wonders. One of such wonders I’ve just discovered is a “combined lifting and spanking machine” patented in 1909:

In case you’re wondering how this works:

The object of the invention is to provide a trick device of this character used ostensibly as a weight-lifting machine but which, when actuated operates a spring actuated electro-generator and a spring actuated paddle.

Can you imagine this in the gym? You grab the weights, pull on them, and suddenly – THWACK!

Oh dear.

The lass opposite me – sat reading a school textbook – has just come off her mobile. Her conversation went pretty much like this: “Hi, it’s Belinda Green* here: I had a letter asking me to call you… Yes, I was wondering about next Tuesday?… Thursday morning?… Four that afternoon? Yes, I suppose that will be OK… I’ll see you then. Thank you.”

I assume she was booking an appointment with her doctor, dentist or some such. But naturally, I pictured the other side of the conversation rather differently. “Oxfordshire Punishment Centre, how may I help you?… Ah yes, about your birching… No, we already have ten girls to punish on Tuesday… No, I’m sorry, we’re closed on Thursday morning: our fresh birches are only delivered at midday that day. Four in the afternoon?… Right, that’s fixed: forty strokes from Officer Jenkins, 4pm next Thursday. Make sure you’re not late…”

* LOL name obviously changed to protect the innocent