The Spanking Writers

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.

This morning I woke up quite miserable because of bad dreams that had chased me through the night. I didn’t think facing actual human beings in this state was a good idea, but I needed coffee, which lay beyond the room where Abel, Catherine and Emma Jane were chatting together.

I walked in, and honestly told them I wasn’t doing great emotionally, and would appreciate some serious cheering up.

“I know what you need – a spanking!” Abel said merrily. “Come over here and bend over.”

Now, in all honesty, I wouldn’t recommend this approach to anybody else. Indeed, it sounds pretty flippant – oh, obviously a spanking is a response to everything! – and I wouldn’t even recommend it to Abel that he try it again.

And yet, he said this with such warmth and care, that I instantly felt like a spanking would really cure all my ills.

I bent over Abel’s lap, and received a dozen or so firm swats. They didn’t hurt any more than I could take, and you know what? I did feel better. Though mostly, I think, it was from laughing with Emma and Cath at Abel’s insistence that a spanking is the answer to everything.

Except, in this case, it really was.

Of late, I’ve been listening avidly of late to a few CDs by the quite brilliant band Unheilig, picked up on my last trip to Stuttgart. It’s a rare pleasure to discover a band I’ve not previously encountered with a body of work as strong as theirs: think Rammstein crossed with Muse with a dash of Editors?

They sing in German – which I studied at school, but have hardly used in the 25-odd years since I passed my O Level (with a grade A, I’ll have you know). As a result, I can only pick up the occasional vague clues as to the meaning of the lyrics. Emma Jane, being one of those clever types who can talk foreign, helpfully translated perhaps my favourite of their tracks (featured on my darling wife’s modelling site a while back) as we sped along the motorway recently – and it was fascinating to discover that the words are quite as powerful as the music.

Music, it struck me, is something of a global language – you don’t need to follow the words to understand the shades of dark, light, joy, fear. That must be true for spanking, too – a scolding’s clearly a scolding, whether or not the young lady can follow a word of it. The instructions to bend over: I’m sure the meaning can be communicated without the specific words being understood. The feeling of a hand smacking bared skin, a cane or belt making its impact – language isn’t necessary for the message to be absorbed. Actually, I imagine the lack of comprehension might make the experience still more intense.

So I wonder: has anyone ever played a scene in a language that the young lady concerned hasn’t understood? And did it work as well as I imagine it might?

The severe judicial scenes that Emma Jane and Catherine played with friends a while back have had me wondering about the role of the girl’s partner during such floggings.

Whilst the scenes concerned clearly were ‘play’, they were so well organised and run that they did seem to engender the feeling of real trepidation beforehand for the girls, and the whippings were so harsh that they doubtless felt all-too-authentic whilst the birchings were being administered.

So imagine, for a moment, a real punishment – a genuinely scary ordeal with no potential for the girl to escape, with strokes that were clearly hurting, rather than something playful or light-hearted that could be stopped at any moment. What would be harder for the girl’s partner to take:

•    Not being there at all, as was the case for me in these two scenes – in Emma Jane’s case, wandering the streets nearby, in Cath’s checking my phone every few minutes for tweets or texts, in both cases quite unable to concentrate on anything other than worrying about whether they were OK.
•    Being in the room as a witness – having to watch, but unable to intervene. At least one would be there for them – but how hard to stand by and watch a loved one suffering. (And would it be worse to stand behind, watching the impact of the strokes and the emerging marks, or in front observing their pained facial reactions?)
•    Being in the room as a witness, but allowed to hold and cuddle the girl during the whipping. (I picture the girl tied over the bench, myself kneeling in front of her, holding her hands, her head buried in my shoulder between strokes as she muffled her sobs).
•    Being made to inflict the punishment, knowing that if it wasn’t hard enough, the court officials would re-administer it from the start. Hurting her, yet knowing that it was being done with love – better, perhaps, than by a complete stranger, a disinterested official.

Actually, I guess the answer is that all would be pretty tough! That’s the nature of the scene.

And I wonder which would be best, most supportive for the girl on the receiving end? There’s advantage, I guess, in solitude – in one’s suffering not being observed. But there must be benefit from support, too. I’m curious as to what people think…

A lovely email from a reader recently thanked us for helping her to realise that there are other people who share her interest in spanking.

I think many of us have been through the process of hiding away our secret interest in spanking, sometimes feeling ashamed of it, certainly feeling lonely. (“Am I wrong to think about this so often; am I the only one? Please don’t let anyone find out!”).

And then there’s that moment of liberation, elation, when one tests the water with a partner, or discovers other folks online discussing exactly the things that have been so fascinating for all this time. For me, that tipping point came in the late 90s, just after I’d turned 30; for younger folks growing up in a more online era, the discovery’s typically coming at an earlier age. And I’m guessing there are not an inconsiderable number of folks of my sort of age – early 40s – who are only now exploring their long-hidden spanko side after years of supressing it vanilla marriages entered into in the pre-internet era.

But how many of us are there? I seem to recall reading in various sex surveys that 10% of the population is interested in kink in some way. In a nation the size of the UK (62 million or thereabouts), that’d probably equate to some three to four million people (by the time one’s ruled out those who aren’t sexually active). Of those, I’d guess the majority ‘toy’ with kink – liking the occasional light spanking, having tried it a couple of times, tying the odd rope to the bed to brighten up their frolics. And people tend to overestimate the variety in their bedroom lives in surveys anyway – “yes of course I’m into spanking, I’ve had 40 sexual partners this year, enjoy foursomes outdoors on a regular basis, and the neighbour’s dog [squick] is very friendly”.

So the number of true spankos – in our sense: people whose private lives are, to a greater or lesser extent oriented around spanking. People who actually play, roleplay even, with their partner and others on a reasonably regular basis. Who read anything they can lay their hands on about the topic, who find it endlessly fascinating? Whose kink really is primarily *spanking*, rather than BDSM more generally with a little spanking thrown into the mix?

You know, I’d like to think there are millions of us out there. It’d be great if one could look around any pub, restaurant, meeting, event and be certain in the confidence that there were lots of other spankos in the house. But the more I’ve explored the scene, and discovered how many people know how many of the other people in the spanking community, the more I downgrade my estimates.

So here goes with my best guess for the full-on active spanking-centric community in the UK: 5,000 individuals – plus perhaps twenty times that (up to 100,000) who are deeply fascinated by spanking but who don’t play actively for whatever reason. Not 10%; perhaps more like one in 10,000 for the truly active community. Seems low – but I guess it’s as a good a guess as any, based on people we know, extrapolating guesses based on the likely number of pervy friends of friends, and general gut feel. But I’d be really fascinated to hear others’ views.

As you may have noticed from the occasional post I’ve written lately from exotic locations, I’m doing a rather silly amount of travelling at the moment. It’s not going to get much quieter in the coming months, either – a quick count the other night totalled up 25 trips abroad between now and the end of the year.

I do love travel – always have, since I first set off around Europe by train aged 18. And the likes of Abu Dhabi, Cairo and Paris sure beat Aberdeen, Cardiff and Portsmouth. But too many nights away can end up making me pretty miserable and – a very long way away indeed from my friends and, especially, from the three girls I love so much. It’s even worse in those countries where my mobile phone company sees me as a roving cash machine, meaning that I can’t chat as freely as I’d like. (Annual bill? £3k and rising)

I can comfort myself with texts, tweets (@abeljenkins, if you want to follow) and emails – when, that is, I manage to get online, not always feasible or affordable. (One hotel in the middle east recently wanted £50 for four hours’ internet access. Yes, I thought they’d added a 0 by mistake, too). I can watch spanking videos on my laptop. I can write blog entries and stories.

But sometimes all I want to do is curl up with one or more or all of my girls; to cuddle; to play; to talk. To plan weekend scenes that don’t have to be months away and curtailed due to my need to fly out from Heathrow on the Sunday afternoon for the week’s work ahead. To have enough energy when we do get together to do more than fall asleep in each other’s arms.

I feel like friends, rather than my partners, are being particularly neglected. Dinner at ours? An evening in the pub? A theatre trip? A scene with new friends who are keen to play? Apply here, giving at least four months’ notice. And even then, my diary may not be that accommodating.

I’m not complaining. I know I’m amazingly lucky to be flown around the world at my clients’ expense, often staying in five star hotels. I’m flattered that people would travel for hours to attend my events: I’m grateful in the current climate to have any work coming in. But sometimes that work / kink balance is hard to strike.

Maybe Haron’s spankr concept needs to come along and rescue me. Land at some unfamiliar airport – Romania, Poland, Tunisia, wherever. Switch it on, get immediately connected to a lovely local spanko lass. Being honest, spanking her wouldn’t even be a priority: just being able to spend time openly with someone like-minded would be so lovely at times. But I’d trade even that in an instant to spend more time with Haron, Cath and Emma Jane.

A few days ago the postman handed me a parcel: a thin poster tube with something rattling inside. Now, I know what normally comes in poster tubes, but I didn’t remember Abel telling me about buying any implements.

Curiosity burning, I peeled off the tape, prized off the lid, and into my hand slid a peculiar-looking toy. It was a very thin plastic rod with a cord tongue on the end, similar to a dressage whip, though clearly made to use on humans. The thick handle was inscribed with the name: VibraWhip. I also saw a button, which made me realise that this thing a) wanted batteries, b) was pretty weird as far as whips go.

We experimented with it last night. I lay face-down on the bed, and Abel lightly lashed me, first as with a normal plastic whip, then with the buzzing switched on. It’s a pretty pleasant toy, if you like biting sting (and I seemed in the mood for it), though the vibrations add nothing to the impact. Having it drawn over my skin was also vaguely pleasant – more so on the particularly sensitive bits, naturally. Mostly it’s just weird, though.

I could see it being a useful sort of implement in a long sensation-based scene, with the recepient suitably prepared with a variety of other toys – a bit like a pin-wheel, which is not much by itself, but can do a number of exciting things on a caned behind. I can’t see getting much out of the buzzy whip on its own, but I could see it slotting nicely into the rest of our arsenal.

If we figure out the best use for it, I shall report further.

I got a caning the other day; six strokes: swift, and crisp, and hard. They made me think about that time between the moment a stroke lands – and the moment when your brain registers the awesome pain that wells up along the line of the cane bite.

Only an instant passes, but so much emotion can fit into that tiny blink of time. Apprehension, fear, disbelief, the urge to flee, the powerful realisation of the futility of flight. A small hope that this may not hurt as much as before, the will to be brave, the urge to make an awful fuss. The dashing of that little forlorn hope by the voice of experience.

All this – in a fraction of a second, and just before the explosion of emotion that follows the arrival of pain.

So much happens in such a tiny sliver of time.

It’s kind of weird.

You know?

I was reminiscing this morning about a punishment I used to inflict on myself when I was a spanko child with no outlet for my fantasies.

What I did was make myself kneel on a layer of dry peas or bulgar wheat wheat for lengthy stretches of time. This was pretty painful, and worked better than self-spanking, because, once I commited to it, there was no way to make it hurt any less.

Kneeling on hard kernels is a traditional punishment in Eastern Europe, used in schools through the centuries. A few of my university classmates who came from rural parts of Ukraine reported going through it at home as well. I did my best not to show undue interest in the proceedings.

I haven’t encountered kneeling as a traditional part of spanking in the UK – it seems more of a part of a BDSM scene, a sign of submission rather than a gateway to pain.

Do you have an experience in kneeling as punishment? Love it? Hate it? Anything in between?

P.S. As a matter of safety, I need to note that kneeling for longer than about 15 minutes at a time can mess up your knees for a long time. Play safe.

We’re at a mini kinky gathering at HH’s this weekend. As well as deep, intense play, there’ve been random spankings happening all over the place, and I’ve been variously topping and bottoming through these.

At one point Abel coaxed me into a lovely flogging position: standing up, holding onto two ropes hanging from the ceiling beams.* He found a crop with a very wide slapper, and proceeded to sting me with it on the bottom, back and breasts. I squeaked rather a lot, and everybody present laughed a lot.

When Abel was done, HH picked up the same implement – with a considerably more evil expression on his face. He gave me a few quite sharp flicks on the breasts – harder than any Abel had delivered.

“You’re not yelping for me,” he said petulantly.

“That,” I said, “is because you would enjoy it too much.”

Seriously: I think yelping and crying just encourages some people. Maybe they’re sadists, or something.

*What? Who doesn’t have rope hanging from ceiling beams?