Last night while roaming around the spanking blogosphere, I happened upon the new Eric's Spanking Blagh, where Eric has introduced himself to readers with a lengthy story about a naughty coed whose drinking and inattention to her studies gets her a bad grade on a test and a sore bottom. It reminded me of the spanking fantasies I had when I was in college about having my own strict daddy or uncle. Indeed on the Southern California Evangelical campus I wandered, there was a grad student who looked to be in his forties who stood out amongst all the teens and earlier twenty year olds. I never actually talked to him, but I imagined on several occasions him giving me a few over the knee chats in his apartment in the graduate housing next to my dorm.
By the end of my freshman year of college, having both a strict daddy and mommy was a dominant fantasy. I knew I wanted to study Arabic, and I imagined being adopted by a childless Arab couple who would use, er, traditional methods in teaching me their native tongue. If I tried to speak in English at all, I'd be spanked. You know, sorta like the Language Pledge at Middlebury College. And they would certainly see to it that I did my homework every night (no doing it in the middle of class like I sometimes did). They would probably even have very traditional views about boys and dating (i.e. mamnoo'a -- forbidden).
That fantasy remained with me throughout college and into graduate school, though I think I had a few fantasies about being spanked by my Arabic instructor in grad school, especially as he actually did rule our class with an iron fist. If the university would have let him get away with it, I don't doubt he probably would have included corporeal punishment along with the dictations he used to punish us with when he thought we weren't studying hard enough.
The thing is, though, that when I look back at what I was like in college, I had no real need for a strong disciplinarian, as much as I may have dreamed of having one. I never drank. To be sure, it wasn't readily available my freshman year at that Evangelical university where alcohol was prohibited. But then, so was pre-marital sex, yet that didn't stop a lot of my classmates from giving it up in their boyfriends' backseats. When I transferred to a state school where I could study Arabic, alcohol was readily available from my friends who at times pleaded with me to have a drink with them. But I didn't drink because I was a Baptist. And the family I lived with from my church maintained a most assuredly dry home.
Not only did I not party, but I also kept my nose in the books. Sure, I procrastinated at times, slacked off here and there. But I had to have some sort of a social life, even if I insisted on being home by 9pm so I could get to bed by 9:30-10 at the latest. Yes. You read that right. I went to bed most nights well before 10pm throughout college. It boggles my mind now. Even I want to tease my undergraduate self for acting like such an old maid, as my friends often did. The only thing that saved me from being the class goody-goody (at least in Arabic, in my Honors class I had the good girl position totally locked up) was a guy I'll call Clark, who transferred into our Arabic class after spending a year in Egypt. He did nothing but study Arabic when he wasn't in class. Well, that and go to church. By my senior year, he'd overtaken me in grammar as well as in being the teacher's pet. I hated him, even though he was a very nice guy -- a fact that made me hate him even more. Next to Clark I felt like the naughty girl, which a small part of me enjoyed a great deal.
Obviously at some point I moved into the real world. I mean, now I not only drink but fornicate -- and celebrate my deviant sexual behavior in a blog! It was a gradual change that started the second year of grad school when I finally had my first beer. But I didn't actually start exploring sex until after the surgery that triggered my ME/CFS and after converting to Catholicism. Perhaps my willingness to forsake the faith of my youth gave me the courage to forsake its mores as well. And as my body moved beyond my ability to rigidly control because of illness, I desperately needed an escape. As I explained in my earliest post, I needed to play. Badly. So I retreated into that world that before I had only allowed myself to escape to at night while drifting off to sleep.
It makes me smile a bit to look back and think of my longings for a disciplinarian as a college student. I still had a healthy sexual fantasy life despite how repressed I was. And even if the fantasies themselves were rather unconventional -- so much so that I didn't even connect them to sex at the time.
That hunger for more discipline is also perhaps a bit disturbing. I clearly had no need of a disciplinarian. But all I could see then was the failings one would have kept me from making, even as everyone around me was constantly in awe of how good I was. I wanted to be perfect and surely a disciplinarian would have taken me to the Promised Land.
Or maybe I did need one, but only as a way of telling me it was okay to be bad. You can't live the fantasy of being naughty and getting spanked unless, well, unless you're actually naughty, or at least pretend to be so. If I was still the good girl who went to bed at 9:30 every night and whose only fault was that she procrastinated a bit, there wouldn't be much fun.
Yes, in many ways I think there is a lot about this kink that, for me at least, is about having the permission to be naughty, even if -- or perhaps, so that -- I get spanked for it. I think in many ways what I longed for in college was the freedom to be a naughty coed without the world falling apart. I had worked too hard to get there, and had too many great plans (even if illness quickly whisked them away) to risk pregnancy or the zillion other things that could have gone wrong. The only way I could make sure (or so I thought) that everything went as they were supposed to was to be perfect.
I'm really glad I'm not perfect anymore. So very glad.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
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13 comments:
Natty, I was never ever as good as you! Still, I agree, letting go is such a relief!
Oh, wow! YES, for me a lot of having rules and consequences is about having enough safety that I can push against the limits.
I wasn't such a goody-goody in college, mostly because my vision of being "perfect" required being sufficiently "normal" that I would do things that were socially and developmentally appropriate. Maybe the difference is that by high school I didn't identify very much with the churches I'd been raised in, so it was pretty clear that I didn't need to follow all of their rules.
But there's a difference between behaving like the other intensely driven, hard-working, responsible people I hung out with in college, and actually being "bad." When we stayed up late, more often than not, it was because we were doing schoolwork.
I have done some pretty *wild* things in my life, but there was a level of... responsibility within that. The wild things I did were truly harmless.
At the same time, I also craved someone who would provide external discipline. I recognized that much of that was being exhausted by providing that discipline for myself, and really needing someone else to put limits around me, so I could just relax, and allow myself to be held together by something other than sheer willpower on my part.
Even now, I am not especially bad. I don't speed, I don't break the law, and the risky behavior I'm most inclined to engage in is that I don't eat... which admittedly is risky behavior, and something I'm working on, but at the same time, it won't harm anyone other than me.
This post really resonates with me.
Hey Natty, permission granted and welcome even. Such a description of yourself turns you into a much better defined 3-D character. Of course you are a real person, but for many of us, readers, you are a character in your life's story. ;)
It's funny how you changed your life around. I have been into a intercontinental (more theoretical 'intercontinental' since practically it's still one pieace of land) relationship and after 4 hard years of travelling (you know how long-distance relationships work) we finally got married. It was worth it, I believe. But honesly, Natty, if I were to start all over again, I wouldn't have the strength for it. The airport was my best friend and my worst ennemy. :) The good part about this - sexual life is at its peak in this relantionships, when the two meet again. ;) Enjoy! ;)
And I totally dig this fantasy of Eric's because it was on my list in a similar way in which it was on yours - with the only difference that I would replace the family with the image of my guy. I never had and still don't have the guts (imagine, after 10 years almost together! :( ) to tell him that in terms of spanking I am still a bit into the Daddy/tutor thing. I found a way around it, that suited him as well - teacher/student scenario. Better than nothing, anyway... ;)
Hugz,
Kay
Ah, permission not to be perfect. The amazing thing about this is that it doesn't seem to matter in how many ways one is cheerfully imperfect-- there are still those areas in which it so very hard to to let go even a little. I was never very meticulous in most ways, but I was always pretty dedicated, if not particularly organized student, and I certainly developed a streak of perfectionism in that area as I grew older.
When I got to college, I remember at first really missing having somebody in authority against whom I could rebel. Looking back, I wonder how much of my adolescent pushing of limits (perhaps more appropriately described as being an obnoxious wise-ass) were at least in part an early expression of kink. I really loved to get in minor trouble as long as nobody I really cared about was actually angry with me-- I rarely did anything to risk that!
I agree with...everything! I've always said that I've been an adult since age 10 or so. Unfortunately, since I acted so adult, everyone assumed I was an adult instead of letting me be the age that I was.
You've given me a lot to think about.
Take care,
Lele
Wow -- every one of your comments gives me so much to think and write about that my responses could take up five separate posts. So if this is super long, you've been warned. ;-)
Sara -- You may not have been as good as I was, but you probably had a lot more fun. ;-) But you're so right, letting go is a relief. The last line sort of came spontaneously after the paragraph before and with quite a few tears.
JA -- Yes, I think a lot of my being good can be explained by the "field of landmines" analogy. I had been in the middle of that field of landmines for so long that I couldn't conceive of venturing forward and exploring the world beyond. And yes, my connection to my faith at the time played a huge role in keeping me from venturing forth as well.
I recognized that much of that was being exhausted by providing that discipline for myself, and really needing someone else to put limits around me,
Hmm...that's an interesting comment. And maybe why I started exploring my discipline/punishment kink after getting ill and being too exhausted to discipline myself. Even my best friend, who can be a very dominating, self-disciplined sort of person, found that he too craved external discipline once MS left him exhausted. There may well have been an element of "I don't have the strength to be this disciplined on my own anymore."
Kayley - It's true that I haven't been writing the really personal pieces quite as much as I used to, say, back in early 2005. They take a lot more energy that I've been sorely lacking these last three years. But I totally agree that posts of DETAILS!!! (as we call it on the newsgroup) can get old after awhile, especially with all the blogs these days doing just that. Hopefully my brainfog will keep to a minimum so I can share more posts like this. :-)
It's funny how you changed your life around.
:::smile::: That's an amusing way of putting it as we generally associate that with someone who's had a life of crime or something. Yet it is a very correct way of stating it. I've been working on a piece called "How fornication saved my soul" as it really did. I was so in to being good and took so much pride in that that it really was endangering my soul. Despite the enormous freedom I had in college, I never took advantage of it because of my pride and fear. And I really regret that now.
As for intercontinental relationships, well, I did sorta know what I was getting into when we started (see this post at the Punishment Book). When it comes to the airport, it's mostly associated with something good as I never go with A. to the airport anymore when he leaves. But it does feel weird to go now for something else other than him coming back.
Indiana -- The amazing thing about this is that it doesn't seem to matter in how many ways one is cheerfully imperfect-- there are still those areas in which it so very hard to to let go even a little.
Isn't that the truth?! I think that's been one of the positive things about being ill: it forces you to give them up whether you want to or not. Academia, otoh, really encouraged those perfectionist tendencies. Though I should note, being at home all the time has made me more of a perfectionist about tidiness, which A. has been remarkably patient about, even if he is starting to rebel against my Anne of Green Gables-ish decorating style. ;-)
As for minor limit pushing, I started that when I was 13, but a particularly traumatic experience with my step-father crushed it so that I think it took me until 27 or so for it to come back again. What I realized was that I had been suppressing my natural smart-ass-ness for way too long.
Lele -- Oh I so hear ya about being treated like an adult. In one memoir piece I started writing, I likened it to being able to speak the language of adult, but that didn't mean I was an adult. However, the adults around me couldn't understand that. It sucked. A lot.
How about we make a deal, and you send some of your perfectionistic tidiness over my way? Not that I, individually, don't want to be neat and tidy and have the house properly cleaned. But if other parts in my system would get down with that one, it would be a huge help. Or at least reduce hindrance. ;P
Seriously, though, I was writing a reply here yesterday, and realized I was going on for pages and running off on a tangent, so I turned it into a post instead.
It's interesting to think of the ways that physical health (or a lack of it) and kink go together. For me, it is more around mental health, and not only about having parts who are developmentally young enough to need those limits. But really, it's as my life slides beyond my control that I start *really* craving limits.
On the other hand, I craved those limits long before having fibro. Then again, my life was wildly out of my control from the time I was a little kid, so I can see trying to get those limits.
Thinking about getting into minor trouble: for me, it was all part of my cunning plan of looking as though I was doing all right. Normal kids push the limits a little. So I would push the limits, just to that point where it didn't cross the line, but was enough to make me look like a basically good kid who had no serious worries in the world. I think I can remember one time in all of the stepping up to the edge with snarkiness where I got into even minor trouble. But I was consistently snarky (at school, not home!) beginning in middle school.
And here I am, writing yet *another* long comment. Time to be done!
It's interesting to think of the ways that physical health (or a lack of it) and kink go together.
Yes it's something I've thought about a few times. I mean, just among the nine of us at the Punishment book, three of us have fibromyalgia. At least three of us have asthma. One has another health problem that I don't think she's talked about online before so I won't go into it. But it does seem like a very high incident rate and it's made me wonder if there is something about this kink that either makes us more prone to express it in terms being taken care of/discipline and/or makes us more prone to illness. My feeling would be the former though I suspect some doofus at the CDC would try to argue the later. But it's an interesting connection to me nonetheless.
I think my natural snarkiness-wise ass-ness was so crushed at home that I didn't think to express it at school. Plus, for some reason I wasn't all that bothered about peer approval (I mean, I didn't want them to dislike me, but wasn't that big on being popular), but I was desperate for the approval of my teachers. It took me many years to feel safe enough to unleash my natural, internal smart ass.
I was kind of uninterested in peer approval, at least in the broad sense of the "popular" kids. But I did have my small group of smart, nerdy friends.
The snark, in my case, was partly because there's a natural snarkiness that runs through my family, and so it was harder to completely destroy it.
But as for being snarky at school... it was in part for the teachers' benefit. I had to be just imperfect enough that they wouldn't notice something was up. I had to look "normal" but far to the well-behaved end of normal.
Or maybe my natural snarkiness became irrepressible. That's probably almost as likely.
This is a really interesting thread, both here and JA's post on Breathing In. I totally buy the argument that being sick or even just really burned out makes anybody want someone else to help manage it all, in whatever way that's natural for that person. And I think only Murray Straus (see Iris's site if that name doesn't ring a bell) would think that kink leads to illness.
And as for being a smart ass, I'm not sure I've ever seen such a talented late bloomer as you, Natty! ;-) I've been practicing continuously and with great diligence for over 30 years and can barely keep up!
Looking forward to the "How Fornication Saved My Soul" post. (Don't worry about trying to make the post as good as the title-- that's an awfully high standard!)
It has been an interesting thread and then I got all tired and didn't keep it going!
I don't know that I'm a late bloomer with snarkiness as it was always there just asleep. I realized this my junior year of high school, after my mother had left my stepfather, and I was with my sister and her best friend, N. N. made some comment and I immediately thought of some wise-ass reply and that's when I suddenly realized I'd been suppressing all these smart-ass comments for so long. Once my mom complained about how much my sister and I tease with wise-ass cracks and we pointed out that she should just be grateful that we don't actually say everything we're thinking!
So, you know, it's always been there, it just got hidden away for awhile. ;-)
As for the "How fornication saved my soul" piece, well, I'm actually hoping to make that one a more polished article to sell. You know, if this damn brain fog will ever relent for a bit...
Natty,
I hope your "brain fog" lifts as quickly as the evidence of our 6-inch, just-before-spring-break snowstorm has disappeared! Nice to see you back on-line!
Take care,
Indiana
the great thing about a blog is that a conversation can be picked up days--or even weeks or months--later, and you've still got what everyone said, even if they don't think the same things now.
hope you're feeling a little better.
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