When play is work

Sometimes play is just...hard work. An ordeal in which the forces of the Erotic and Encumbrance battle throughout. You know, the sort hyped by some over-the-top announcer. "Tonight on the Michelle's Sorry Life channel, watch a special Kink versus Illness smackdown! One horny girl. One debilitating illness. Who will win?" Except at the end of the whole thing, both sides are usually able to claim some amount of victory.

Such was the result of a phone spanking a couple of weeks ago. I had awaken even later than my normal mid-afternoon reveille and was just finishing up breakfast at 4:30 pm (yes, that's really PM) when A. called.

"Heya dear," I answered blithely.

"Oh. Did you get my email with your instructions?" he replied with a mixture of restrained formality and genuine uncertainty.

Instructions, eh? There was a familiar -- and pleasurable -- tightening of my pelvic muscles at this most obvious declaration of impending tele-erotic activity, even as the rest of my body whined with weariness.

"Actually I was just turning on my computer," I explained as I hastened to open my inbox, still a little disoriented given that I had only waken up an hour earlier and was feeling the inevitable crash following a rare day of jittery, almost euphoric energy.

"Well, then, I think you better open your email."

My face flushed not only from excitement, but also embarrassment that I wasn't prepared. He had ended our conversation the day before noting that he might be sending me instructions -- not to mention I had emailed him a fragment from my journal before going to sleep detailing my kinky fantasies of late. I also felt a twinge of annoyance at how what was going to be my first phone spanking since May was starting out rather awkwardly.

"I said in the email that I was going to call you at 4:30, but how about I give you a call at 5pm?

"Okay --er, Yes, Sir."

This, dear reader, is what I found in my inbox:

I want you to put on a little girl's dress, flowery knickers and white socks as soon as you have finished reading this email. Nothing else will be worn until I grant permission. The following items will be laid out on the bed:

1. a wooden spoon
2. a table tennis paddle
3. the long brush
4. a razor
5. shaving gel / foam
6. a box containing sex toys,* butt plugs and a nipple clamp.

At 4.30pm (your time) you will stand in the corner of the room and await my phone call.

My pelvic muscles tightened further, along with those of my abdomen. My bottom tingled with anticipation. And I couldn't help but gulp. However I quickly swallowed that anxious lump in my throat along with my giddiness and set about attending to his instructions, as well as letting those following me on Twitter know I was about to get spanked.

Except as I got up to fetch the various items and dress myself accordingly, I quickly realized there was more to my elevated heart rate than mere excitement. One of the peculiar quirks of my illness is that the more weary I am, the higher my heart rate gets both during activity and at rest. Pulling on my dress and arranging my bra-less breasts, sorting through my sock drawer, grabbing my razor, digging out implements from under the bed -- all of it, of course, was shooting my heart rate higher and higher, making me feel dizzy and icky.

Should I tell A. I can't do this? It wasn't so much that I was worried about disappointing him, but rather Natty. My alter ego had obligingly endured months of setbacks and downright neglect as a result of my ill health and A.'s work. I sighed. I am going to get spanked, goddamnit.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I did some diaphragmatic breathing, bringing my heart rate down a bit. Once the dizziness wore off, I stood and made my way to the corner where I was to await A.'s impending phone call.

How bad would the spanking hurt? It had been such a long time since my last one. The high ceilings of my apartment, which drew my gaze after I became bored with a fragment of chipped paint, made me feel particularly small and childish.

But the little feeling did not last long. My heart rate was creeping up again. I tried some more diaphragmatic breathing as I stood facing the corner -- so very un-childish -- but it just would not drop down below 120.** I absolutely had to lay down. I made my way to the bed, where I lay with the full skirt of my bubble-gum pink dress draped over my belly and legs in a less-than flattering spread when A. finally called.

"Hello, Sir."

"Hello, there. Where you standing in the corner as you were told?"

"I did stand in the corner after I was ready, Sir. But I had to lay down after a few minutes."

There was a pause as we both sought to figure out how to proceed. Should I tell him I could manage a spanking but no shaving? Was I even in any condition to consider orgasming? Would I be okay so long as I was laying down?

"Are you still laying on the bed?"

"Yes, Sir."

Please don't break the spell. Don't ask me if I'm alright. Let's just keep going. Let Natty keep going...

"What sort of knickers are you wearing?" A. asked after another moment of silence.

"Pink flowery knickers," Natty declared with vigor.

"Well, let's get them off."

With pleasure. Even if I did feel a bit dizzy standing up to take them down as well as rearrange the cord to my headset so it wouldn't interfere with spanking.

He had me start out with the ping pong paddle. It's a good thing it makes a lot of noise even when I'm not whacking that hard because I don't know that I could have made myself hit any harder given how tired I was and how much it stung.

"What's that on the pain scale?"

It was a momentary lull in the magic. Given the circumstances, I figured A. probably needed some reassurance that I wasn't dying on the other end of the phone, even if I always find giving a number to my pain level a difficult thing to do in a Natty frame of mind.

"Um...about an 8 -- 8 1/2."

While the whacking was draining me a bit, my heart rate was staying down. I just had to stay flat.

"I think it's about time you got that butt plug in. Have you got your Naughty Box there?"

"Yes ::gulp:: Sir."

Just typing the word butt plug makes me blush. Saying it out loud makes me blush even more. Hearing A. order me to take it out of its box and put it in my hole with a deep, imperious, British-accented voice not only makes me blush but gives me that piquant constriction of shame in my belly. If he ever moves on to enema bags (another word I can barely utter), I tell you, dear reader, the embarrassment alone will be both painful and orgasmic.

"We're going to have to get your bottom warmed up before I get there."

"Yes, Sir." I bit my bottom lip. Grinned demurely into the phone even as my cheeks continued to flush.

"Pick up the wooden spoon. Give yourself twelve on each cheek."

Oddly enough, the spoon didn't hurt nearly as much as it usually does. Probably because the handle is narrow and thin, making it difficult for me to grasp with ease. So A. switched me to the clothesbrush (long brush), with a nice thick handle. It made a much more satisfying sound across the trans-Atlantic phone line when it smacked against my bare skin. After a dozen or so strokes, endorphines began to take the edge off the sting. But they did not keep my arm from wearing out.

"Tell me about your cunt. Is it shaved?"

"No, Sir." I swallowed hard.

"Pick up the razor and shaving gel. I want you to shave yourself, but I only want you to shave one strip down the middle..."

The razor was cold as it scraped against the stubble covering my labia. But it did not feel as laborious to shave as it felt like it would just fifteen minutes earlier.

"I expect your cunt to be completely bald when I arrive in three weeks."

"Yes, Sir." I finished shaving my swathe smooth and patted my cunt dry.

"You may finger yourself now."

"Can I use my vibrator?" I can be such a greedy girl.

"Not yet. Just swirl your finger around first."

I led my index finger back and forth between my increasingly saturated cunt and my increasingly swelling clitoris. Around and around the slicked, sensitive tissue. Awakening nerves from their hibernation with each revolution around my rosebud.

"Now you may use your vibrator."

With giddy delight I burrowed the Silver Bullet into my vulva and set the plastic black heart knob at medium speed. After several minutes of rocking my pelvis gently, I turned the vibrator up to full speed. After several minutes more produced no orgasm, I placed it directly onto my clitoris, then pulled it off again when the stimulation was too much. After a few more minutes, after all the weariness and worry, all the whacking and whirling, all the work, there were, finally, those familiar contractions pushing endorphines, blood, and happiness out into my ear lobes and fingernails and toes. Only then did my heart rate momentarily surge again. And after that...a uniquely benevolent fatigue.

True, within half an hour the fatigue returned to its customary tyranny. The following day my muscles -- particularly my pelvic muscles -- were more cantankerous than usual. And I can't help but look back with a little bitterness that a mere spank and wank over the phone was so damn arduous.

Yet I also can't help but just be grateful that I did it. That I made it through and Natty got her spanking. Illness and poverty do that to a person. Make you appreciate every little bit of life you can grab hold of. Especially the hard bits.

_______________________
*Aka, "The Naughty Box." A wooden, rattan-covered box A. bought for me initially for its ostensible decorative value. However its size rendered it the perfect container for butt plugs, particularly as it also fits so nicely under the bed.

**One of the primary means of treating ME/CFS is pacing, including using a heart rate monitor to help patients stay below their remarkably low anaerobic thresholds (generally between 110-90 bpm). For a longer explanation of how this works, see this video (requires Quicktime; about 30 minutes) from exercise physiologists at the Pacific Fatigue Lab.

The perfect body for three-minute porn

Last year A. requested I make a few sexy videos of myself for his birthday including both dominant and submissive themes. Eager to grant my beloved's birthday wish, I set about creating story lines and writing scripts for the three minutes of video my camera will shoot.

I did so with a muggy dread at seeing my body in all its fullness and folds on camera, peppered with carbuncles, cellulite and bruises in their multicolored stages of healing -- so very unsexy when they aren't on my backside. The video of me as a slave in which I was completely naked was -- and remains -- the most difficult for me to watch. However upon checking myself out in the mirror when I was dressed up in a black lace bra, black stockings, and black garter belt for my dominatrix character, I was surprised to find myself thinking that I looked, well...hot. Neither was I adverse to watching myself in this costume on video.*

For one of only a few times in my life there was symmetry between my body and the construct. Between the ideal depicted in popular culture, in this case the full-figured dominatrix, and what I was trying to attain in my imagination. It was then I realized that one of the reasons it has been so hard for me to accept my body over the years has been that as someone who has lived much of my imaginary (and sexual) life as a little girl, seeing a fleshy woman with mountainous breasts and lavish hips in the mirror has always been a source of tremendous dissonance.

It's not that my body is devoid of "little" characteristics. I'm 5' tall. My feet can fit into shoes as small as size 5 1/2 if they're wide enough. The fingers on those miniature stretchy gloves are often still too long when fitted onto my tiny hands. And the hair stylist I used to go to referred to my hair as "baby hair" because it's so thin it slides right through "adult-sized" barrettes.

However I did not have the body of a child for much of my childhood. I can remember watching Annie as a nine-year-old, with Aileen Quinn dressed in dainty cream and navy sailor suits and perky royal blue rompers with puffed pants and wanting terribly to dress like that. To look like that. Except I would have looked laughable in them. Despite being the same age as Aileen/"Annie," I had finally resigned to wearing a bra that year as my C-cup-sized-breasts could not longer be allowed to hang about. A few months ago my grandma presented me with a picture of my 11th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. I suddenly understood why strangers were so shocked when I told them how old I was. In a my black and white flowered dress with the collar dipping down to breasts bulging against the cotton fabric, I would have sworn I was in my mid-20s.

Being a woman who is sexually submissive is about being small. Easily overpowered and dominated. You do not see many tall, fat submissives in BDSM porn. Not only is there the cultural aesthetic favoring the thin, but large women also take up too much space with estrogen-rich fat that the male dominant should be filling with testosterone, muscle, and patriarchal authority.

Yes, I'd like to see porn with more fat -- and tall -- women playing submissive characters along with their traditional roles as dominatrices. Though if I'm honest, I know I'm being more than a little hypocritical as I personally would not feel comfortable putting my own body on film for more than my lover to see. It may be that there are spanking porn producers out there who are more open to various body shapes and sizes but simply do not have many larger women auditioning.

I suppose I could say I have the perfect body for a switch. I'm short enough that my feet dangle above the floor when I'm over his knee and I have enough weight to throw around as the demanding domme. The perfect body for my dearest to both pet and worship. The perfect body for three-minute porn just for A.

_________________
*Needless to say, neither was A. He was quite pleased with all three.

Will you please call me Cordelia?

"Will you please call me Cordelia?" she said eagerly.

"Call you Cordelia! Is that your name?"

"No-o-o, it's not exactly my name, but I would love to be called Cordelia. It's such a perfectly elegant name..."

"...Unromantic fiddlesticks!" said the unsympathetic Marilla.

oOo

"Do you never imagine things different from what they really are? asked Anne wide-eyed.

"No."

"Oh!" Anne drew a long breath. "Oh, Miss -- Marilla, how much you miss!"

"I don't believe in imagining things different from what they really are," retorted Marilla. "When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances He doesn't mean for us to imagine them away."

Anne Shirley has been a kindred spirit ever since I first watched the Kevin Sullivan production of the classic book by L.M. Montgomery. The first time I heard her talk about "so much view for the imagination," I remember thinking, someone else thinks like that too? followed quickly by oh but you're not supposed to say that out loud! Like Anne I spend a lot of time in my imagination. And when you spend the overwhelming majority of your time alone (and in bed to boot) the imagination can become your permanent place of residency.

For the last four years now I have required an in-home caregiver. I don't know why, but I always imagined she'd be a thick Germanic sort of woman. Probably based on a character in a cartoon or TV show that I've long since forgotten. She'd be no nonsense, of course. A bit like Marilla, though more affectionate. She'd have hands as hard as bed slats, to borrow Harper Lee's phrasing. With the personality of, say, Thelma Ritter in Rear Window. Or my nurse when I was in the hospital with my first pulmonary embolism (Nurse K. might well fit too, though she has some subby inclinations). She'd be discerning, dependable, and devoted. And she would definitely be the one in charge, with the hairbrush to prove it.

The reality, of course, is completely different. It's having a total stranger come into your home when you've just waken up and every dish you own is scattered about the kitchen counters and the laundry is a smelly mound Sir Edmund Hillary would have found a thrilling climb. It's having a total stranger who doesn't understand that while you may look perfectly healthy because you're young, not paralyzed on one side, and still have most of your wits about you, you're not. It's having a total stranger handle your belongings both precious and intimate.

Indeed the very first day with my very first caregiver ended with laundry soap all over the bathroom, a hardwood floor stripped with dark grime after being mopped, and a LCD screen sporting a giant crack after she tripped over the cord and sent my laptop flying (to be fair, that last one was mostly my fault for leaving my laptop in a precarious position). I burst into tears upon her departure. The agency actually fired her a couple of months later after she repeatedly failed to show up for work. I felt badly for her because she had no telephone but did have a child with a father who wasn't particularly helpful with childcare. Yet she was obviously in the wrong line of work.

It got better after that. Her replacement, J., was as perfect a non-kinky caregiver as I could want. Her first day she simply went about tidying up the disarray of my home without needing a great deal of instruction. And when she came across kinky toys that I had forgotten to put away, she never said a word. Just set them aside and went about her work. I was heartbroken a year and a half later when the agency she worked for dumped all of us county-paid clients. The county then moved us all to the only other agency they were contracted with and J. wouldn't work for them. I didn't blame her. The pay was shit and they effectively didn't provide health insurance. Which meant that her replacement wasn't nearly as good.

This last January I was switched to a different program which doubled my monthly allotment of caregiving hours. But with this new program, I have to hire my caregiver. And I hate calling strangers on the phone. With the old program, the agency just sent me someone. If I didn't like the person, I could ask for a new one but the agency was really the boss. Now I am and it feels...weird.

The first woman I hired, G., had the potential to be another J. But she had to quit after three months when she got a job that provided health insurance. I quickly hired S. as she worked for a woman just across the hall. S. could sense the ambivalence in my direction and promptly decided to take charge herself, which, on her second day, included replacing my old laundry baskets and handing me the bill. I hate conflict and since it was only $4.50, decided that was cheaper than mustering the energy to say no. Later that day she decried the clutter in my apartment and, after asking me if it was because of my illness that I'd "let the place go," notified me that she wanted to completely reorganize everything. Yes, there is clutter in my apartment though, while not nice to look at, it is neatly piled on shelves and out of the way.

This was not exactly the sort of bossy I was looking for.

So I mustered the energy to sit her down the next day and explain that I appreciated her ambition but I needed to channel that ambition based on my priorities, not hers. In addition, if she made me feel self-conscious about everything, she was not going to work out. She apologized, acknowledged that I was the boss, and agreed to follow my agenda. I thought it was going to work out after that. But, alas, she switched to a more passive-aggressive approach, telling me how I needed to replace this or that, including my vacuum as it hurt her shoulder. When she emailed me a few days later to tell me she was quitting because her shoulder hurt and her doctor told her to cut back on work, I was relieved. Fake excuses do make the world a happier place, no?

But that left me needing to hire yet another new Home Care Worker. And calling more strangers from among a list of names. It took me almost a week before I even looked at the HCW list and a few more days before I started calling potential caregivers. While my phone phobia could explain some of my procrastination, there was clearly more to my dawdling.

As I sat and thought about my feelings, I realized that, along with my continuing resentment over not being able to do my own cooking and cleaning, was fear and vulnerability. Will the new HCW understand that I really am sick, despite my seemingly healthy exterior? Will I have to prove I'm truly deserving of in-home care? Being fat makes me particularly paranoid about being seen as lazy. And what if she happens upon my toys? Will she freak out? I'm tired of putting together task lists and care plans (I haven't ever even bothered with creating a job application or seeking/checking references as apparently I'm supposed to). Being my own HR person is exhausting. I just want someone to simply take care of me already.

In the end, here alone all the time, it's so easy to slip into my imaginary world with my imaginary caregiver who already understands how ME/CFS works and will make me rest. Who understands and shares my kinkiness. Who doesn't need me to list every last thing that needs to be done but just...knows.

While I don't know if it was God, karma, fate, or whatever that put me in the circumstances that I'm in, Marilla's point that I'm not meant to imagine them away has a great deal of merit. Once I awake from my reverie, the real world is still here requiring my action. I can whine all I want about how hard it is. And like Anne begging to be called Cordelia, I can beg for life to be like it is in my imagination, but at the end of the day she was still Anne -- with an "e" -- and I still need to hire somebody to come do my laundry.

Tonight will be my first day with my newest HCW. I'm sure she won't be the caregiver of my imagination. And I don't even know if she'll be as perfect as J. was. But so far we've talked on the phone so much this week I feel like we're already friends. She cheerfully agreed to work my dream schedule and even volunteered to call my caseworker to make certain her pay is arranged (at least I don't have to deal with paychecks and tax withholdings), so I feel hopeful.

However it will be the alarm on my cell phone telling me when to go to bed tonight, the heart monitor I will be getting in the mail soon to telling me when I need to rest, and the good folks at LibriVox telling me bedtime stories.

Though I can imagine it's a strict nurse slapping a hairbrush against her palm...

The ghost of abuse

It haunts every stroke, every word of a scolding, every moment anticipating a punishment. Years of being afraid and worse. Sometimes it seems so long ago, I start to wonder if it was really me all that stuff happened to. Sometimes the memories are still hot and raw, so much so that a year or two ago when I tried to write this post, I had to walk away lest it break the pieces I've spent years gluing back together.

While there hasn't been a lot of research on those who engage in What It Is We Do, research regarding BDSM in general suggests that child abuse is not the reason practitioners have the sexual orientation they do, even if those outside our community may think otherwise. In my own case, I started fantasizing about being spanked years before the abuse started and I am convinced that I'm a spanko despite the abuse.

oOo

My stepfather has delicate lips and a front tooth that is slightly crooked, and when making certain expressions, A.'s mouth reminds me of him. Sometimes when A. coughs or clears his voice, it's almost the same pitch as the muffled coughing of my stepfather that I listened ever so carefully for from my bedroom. When I'm over A.'s lap and he's giving me the full force of his hand, the motion feels almost identical to the full force of my stepfather's rage-filled palm.

There are so many ways that my punishment kink interacts with the abuse I experienced as a child. Memories that I've not thought of in years will suddenly terrorize me as I approach a punishment. Feelings that I can't quite articulate will harass me after, especially when a phone spanking doesn't allow for tactile cuddling.

Of course, communicating with my partner is vital. It means telling A. when I'm beset by the ghost of old chastisements and cannot deal with any new. He faithfully discharges me from whatever disciplinary session is at hand, no questions asked -- even though I may have spent all day worried that he would be mad, would not understand my fear. Sometimes the desire to continue with whatever regime we've agreed to is there, but I just need to make him -- and even more so, myself -- aware of the turmoil brewing just below the surface.

What I have learned is to never repress, though admittedly the habit is hard to break completely. Ghouls of all shapes and sizes never fare well in the light. The more I write (journal) and I talk out loud (mostly to a therapist) about my memories, the more power they lose. Not that it isn't painful. And it scares the living shit out of me at times. But it gets easier. Really.

After my mother and stepfather divorced, I kept having this recurring dream where I was in my old bedroom and it was littered with piles of old clothes, books and knick-knacks. A move was imminent, but I was completely overwhelmed with the disarray, as well as bewildered about what to do with all the stuff. I always woke up distressed and fatigued.

I still have the dream, except now the room is almost empty save for a handful of things that I'm still not sure what to do with. But I always wake up knowing they will find their place.

Yes, there remains a nagging interplay between my punishment kink and my history of child abuse. However, embracing my discipline fetish has been a means of empowerment through choice. It is also a means of healing because this time, there's no yelling, no rage, no belittling. And when there is fear and shame, it's yummy and magical and completely therapeutic.

(Cross-posted at the Punishment Book)

A spanko in a non-spanko world

I've joined a writing group as a way to actually interact with real, live human beings. It's just next door, which is what allows me to participate given my limited mobility. I'm really enjoying a bit of camaraderie and surprising myself with some of the writing I've done thus far.

I suppose it was bound to happen at some point. We write based on prompts and one of the prompts tonight er, prompted me to write about a character interested in spanking. As different people read their pieces, I debated about whether I would share mine or pass. In the end, with a warning about its racy nature and what I'm sure was a bright red face, I shared. And it was received well. A few people even said they wanted to hear more, though I suspect that it had more to do with the characters rather than it being about sex and spanking.

Of course, that's just my guess. There well might be some kindered spankos in the class for all I know. However, I didn't get that sort of vibe.

I'd share it here, but it was only a few sentences, and I'm not sure if it might turn into something more that I might want to publish.

But it was sort of my small step for spanko-kind in the non-spanko world.

A riding crop conversation

Some of you might remember that I'm out to my massage therapist/acupuncturist, who is a little on the kinky side herself.

Friday evening when there was a lull in conversation during my massage therapy/acupuncture session, my practitioner asked me about how my sex toy research was going. I replied that it was going well, and that I had two more toys to write about before I get the next batch (and God-willing that will be sometime this next week!).

"I've always wondered where the best place to buy a riding crop is," she pondered. Which made me giggle a little because it reminded me of where A. bought the riding crop we use.

"We have two," I said. "One I bought down at Spartacus, which we never use. The one we actually do use, A. bought at a charity shop in England. It's a real riding crop for horses."

Which made us both laugh, mostly about the charity shop bit.

"Yeah sex shops never seem to have very good ones," she said.

"I would imagine the best place to get one would be a tack shop," I suggested.

Our discussion then turned to the topic of DIY toys, as she loves the idea of being able to make your own. We both love the site Frugal Domme. I proudly described the electric cord flogger (aka the wankin' spankin' tool) and loopy toy that A. made, as well as the spreader bar I made from a dowel and screws obtained at WalMart.

She thought that was very cool.

I also described with less pride my ill-fated attempt at making wrist and ankle restraints with satin, quilt backing, and Velcro. Which, of course, was not so cool.

It was fun being able to chat so freely about kinky stuff. I love that I can tell her how that spanking on Election Day helped to loosen my perpetually-tight gluteaus medius and have her respond with "that's great! Gets the blood flowing into the area."

Makes being kinky feel a little more normal, ya know?

People I could hang out with

My senior year of college I was invited to be part of a national student delegation to the country of Kuwait. A week or so before I received that invitation, I found out I had been accepted to graduate school at Georgetown University with a full tuition scholarship. As our delegation was meeting in Washington DC for a week of briefings before heading to Kuwait, I went a few days earlier to visit the place I assumed I would be spending the next several years of my life.

The waiting room for my graduate program was lined with cherrywood paneling and upholstered in arabesque print. I remember worrying that my wet, squishy tennis shoes would somehow dirty the place after walking in from the April rain. I stayed the night with a recent alum from my hole-in-the-wall state university, but the next day headed to a posh DC hotel where we student delegates were to stay during the Washington leg of our journey.

It was the first time I'd ever hailed a cab. And I was surprised when a guy in a uniform picked up my suitcase as I checked in. I'd never been to a hotel with a bell hop before. The nicest place I'd ever stayed before that was at a Red Lion with a bunch of girls from my church youth group when we attended a winter youth festival. The bell hop led me to the room, opened the door, set my luggage on a rack, opened the curtains, and then stood at the door awkwardly for a few seconds. Was I supposed to tip him? Or was that just something they did on television but not in real life? The bell hop had mercy on me and left quickly. I felt terribly out of place in this new, fancy world I'd found myself in. And I tell you the truth, dear reader, I broke out into tears as I sat on the immaculate bed.

That is how I feel when I read most erotica.

But I didn't realize it until I read Jacqueline Applebee's story "What I do for my pain." When blogger friend Pandora mentioned that Ms. Applebee's erotica included disabled characters, I pictured blond girls dressed in hip retro dresses sitting in specially-designed wheelchairs -- you know, people with real disabilities, as opposed to someone like me with amorphous pain disorders and controversial multi-systemic diseases.

I was so wrong.

There was no mention of stylish clothes or hip apartments in the city or parties with canapes or exotic furniture where two people with perfect bodies have perfectly aligned sex.

No, instead I was met with a character who bumps into her lover's boob in bed. Who has enough flesh that it can be kneaded. Who wants a tattoo that looks like a sunflower. And whose disability was chronic period pain.

See, I'm clumsy in bed too (among other places). And have plenty of flesh to kneed. I don't know that I can get a tattoo now that I'm on anticoagulants, but if I were to ever get one, it'd probably be something cheery like a sunflower too. And boy do I know what chronic period pain is like as everyone of my periods since I started having them when I was ten years old have been dreadful.

Sometimes it’s a constant cracking against the back of my spine, sometimes it’s a top note sung by a soprano, but held against my groin for sixteen hours. Medication doesn’t seem to help, and heaven knows I’ve tried most of the alternatives.

It sounds a bit silly, but I started crying a little when I read that bit. I just never hear anybody ever talk about the ordeal that painful periods can be -- you know, outside of pamphlets from the doctor's office. And I certainly haven't see someone validate that experience by making it the primary conflict in a story. But it wasn't just a story, it was a damn sexy story.

As I continued reading, I found that this was a character I could so see myself hanging out with. Exchanging medical horror stories or sharing the alternative that has finally worked for me (Red Raspberry leaf tea, as impossible as that may be to believe, considering how exquisite the pain).

And that, that was when it suddenly dawned on me that I don't ever imagine myself hanging out with the characters in the erotica I generally read. Part of that comes down to just how effective Ms. Applebee is in creating such realistic characters. But a lot of it is that characters in erotica intimidate the hell out of me.

I'm not stylish. I'm five feet tall and fat. The last pieces of clothing I bought were a sensible white Playtex bra on sale this month online, a red shirt and a pair of jeans on sale at Walmart about a year ago, and a t-shirt from the Goodwill several months before that. I only own three pairs of shoes (that accommodate my orthotics). So, you know, no skin tight dresses or several hundred dollar fuck me shoes here.

I do live in a studio downtown, but I live in HUD housing with seniors and the disabled which sorta takes away any sort of glamour from the whole living in the city thing. And my part of the city is where the meth freaks and pimps hang out, though personally, I like the color they add to the neighborhood.

Being on Food Stamps means that canapes are never on the menu here, though I do make the best chocolate chip cookies ever. And Two-Buck-Chuck is about the only wine you'll find in my kitchen -- and then only when A. is here because I can't really drink much wine anymore.

Erotica is all about fantasy and so it is understandable that it will reflect what is most perfect in our society. Writing -- erotica or otherwise -- requires a certain level of education to both attain the skills necessary to create worlds on paper (or computer), as well as the ability to think originally about topics, particularly ones that are mostly taboo. And most of those who get that education come from a base socio-economic level and higher. It's hard to think and write about sex when, say, you just barely finished high school and you're trying to figure out how to pay the rent on your trailer despite working four jobs (a common predicament in my family).

I remember years ago listening to essayist Richard Rodriguez on the NewsHour talk about how little poverty makes it into our literature (aside from the Bohemian sort). That we needed people to write about the experience of being poor in the same way that writers such as Toni Morrison have talked about the experience of being African-American or how he had written about being Latino.

I remember thinking at the time, hey, I could do that. I know what it's like to grow up poor. Thanks to an illness which has left me incapable of doing any job in the national economy (as the vocational expert testified at my disability hearing), I still get to know what it's like to be poor.

And if Jacqueline Applebee can write hot, sexy erotica about chronic period pain, well damnit, I should be writing hot, sexy erotica about poor, fat, sick people.

You know, people I could totally hang out with...

Our peculiar erotica

(Father Ted's diagram of reality vs. dreams)

It's common to read spanking stories at the soc.sexuality.spanking Usenet newsgroup. Amid the flame wars and off-topic discussions are stories where writers share their inner spanking life. Indeed now that it's summer, there is even a Short Story Contest to encourage posters and lurkers alike to write about the fetish in new and unique ways. And a good number of them do succeed in giving a fresh voice to what would seem like a fairly straightforward event.

But it struck me the other day after reading one story how very peculiar our form of erotica must be to the outside world. There was nothing about this story that was particularly extraordinary, though it certainly set off my spanko imagination. In it two girls are naughty and get spanked by their parents. The ages of the girls -- 9 and 4 -- are probably younger than the average spanking story, but certainly not unusual. The primary sex acts, if you will -- spanking and an enema -- were done to young (fictional) children.

When I look at it from that perspective, I feel like some sort of really sick fuck.

And, in fact, that is what a prosecutor from Pennsylvania thought about Karen Fletcher of Donora, Pennsylvania, who owned and operated the site, Red Rose Stories, which included fiction about rape and violence against children (hat tip to Zprymantis). Ms. Fletcher plead guilty (who was this woman's lawyer?!) to obscenity charges and is now serving a year of probation including six months of house arrest, confiscation of her computer, and a $1000 fine.

Is Debbie Ann Wertheim, the creator of Debporn, next?

While none of the stories I write include the rape of children, they do contain violence in the form of spanking. And don't even get me started on my incest fantasies. Is there all that much difference between me and Ms. Fletcher?

Fiction about children being spanked and abused can be so powerful, so erotic because so many of us began to fantasize about being spanked and abused when we were children. Sure, we didn't know what sex was -- just that it was a naughty word that made our parents turn the TV channel. But that doesn't mean we lacked sexuality. And as we grew up, our sexuality remained firmly rooted in and expressed itself though childhood.

However we never misunderstood the difference between our dreams and reality. Between real children and fictional ones.

Childhood and narrative have always been and mostly likely will remain at the core of my sex life. While every now and then my fantasies may wander to that of a Victorian prostitute or a demanding sex goddess, they always wander back to being a little girl. Even some of my topping fantasies include me as a child.

And yes, mixing children and sex is uncomfortable. But here in the real world, where the knowledge that our children are sexual beings can make our interaction with them messier, when we'd rather remain faithful to traditional taboos and constructions of sexless parents and chaste children, perhaps the best way we can help our own real and vulnerable children as they sort through their own sexuality is to help them understand the difference between fantasy and reality too.

Medication blues

My apologies for the lack of posting lately.

A few weeks back I had to stop taking an immune supplement that was giving me more energy but eating away at my stomach. My energy level has since taken a nose dive.

Morphine has begun turning my nights into everything from vivid Alice-in-Wonderland surreal (and Lewis Carroll would know a thing or two about opiate-inspired dreams) to horrific Quentin Tarantino-esque nightmares that make me afraid to go to sleep.

Another drug, Reglan, has turned my days into stiff, achy, listless napfests. And when I am awake, I wander aimlessly through the television and Internet -- though my time online has recently been reduced the no more than three hours per day in an effort to conserve my limited energy.

I've discontinued the Reglan a few days ago, but don't have a lot of options when it comes to the morphine as without it, I'm in a great deal of pain. There probably are other drugs available, but I doubt my insurance would cover them, especially as it was a long, hard fight just to get them to cover the morphine. Indeed, I'm pretty sure Satan himself spawned health insurance companies from the blackest pit in the bottom most depths of Hell. And at the end of the day, then decided that even the most evil of Hell's inhabitants didn't deserve to suffer the fate of being HMOed.

But not all the dreams have been bad.

This afternoon I dreamt that A. and I were driving to the coast and "Little Surfer Girl" was playing in the background, except that it was "Little Ocean Girl" for some reason in my dream. And we stopped and I was bent over some sort of metal bar and he was whipping me with a switch. It was so vivid that when I woke up, I was quite surprised to be curled up in bed in my apartment.

Only more 18 days until it will be a little closer to reality.

Take it all, Bitch

As you might imagine, What It Is We Do can be a bewildering concept for both kinky and vanilla feminists alike. Hell, it's a bewildering concept for us feminists who engage in it, as the epic thread that followed my post from a little over a year ago at the Punishment Book can attest. In her article, "Slap Happy," in this month's issue of Bitch Magazine (Spring, No. 39) author Jessica Wakeman doesn't necessarily provide any answers to make it less bewildering, but she does give the reader plenty to think about.

I think it's important to remember that she walks several fine lines among word limit and the need to contextualize, describing who we are and what we do -- and what we think about what we do, and how the whole thing relates to the issues of female choice and empowerment to an audience of women who may or may not be sex-positive and know absolutely nothing about domestic discipline. In dealing with all this, she makes points and asks questions that were very thoughtful, if somewhat provocative at times. And, yes, despite walking all these fine lines, there are elements she gets wrong too.

Wakeman's thesis is that domestic discipline is a method that some couples use to make their relationships work. A lifestyle that can provide a certain yin and yang that is missing in the contemporary male-female relationship. She quotes at length family historian Stephanie Coontz, who talks about how marriage has changed more in the last 35 years than in the last several thousand and how couples are finding new ways of "doing" a relationship. And couples have more choice about how to do that relationship than ever before, including consciously utilizing domestic discipline.

In the process of explaining this novel-but-not-novel way to do a relationship, Wakeman tries to contextualize DD within the recent history of feminism and the much longer history of male dominance and female submission.

"If an imbalance of power, based on centuries of socialization, is bubbling just below the surface of a relationship, some couples deal with the conflict by establishing some boundaries and choosing to accept then."

This was sort of an inversion of how the writer of the blog Whatever she says describes their relationship: "Most women are the 'boss' of their marriage. The only difference is that I've admitted it and she has acknowledged it." It seems fair to say that DD is a way of acknowledging that we're not all the same. Some have different strengths and weaknesses and we've simply negotiated those differences in power in ways that work for us rather than let them fester below the surface and cause problems with the relationship -- a marked departure from the past where gender roles were fixed and there was no negotiation.

In looking at the rhetoric of blogs like Loving Domestic Discipline, Wakeman rightly acknowledges that "taken at face value, domestic discipline reeks of feminist backlash." Female dominance -- even equality -- is a scary prospect for a lot of men (and women) and there are indeed those who utilize DD in an effort to get women back into a traditional, feminine submissive role. Let's face it, to newcomers looking at the endless blogs and Yahoo groups on domestic discipline, most seem to revolve around women who are bitchy, get into fights with their husbands, get super-bitchy, get spanked by their husbands, then everything is better without ever looking at why she's bitchy or that she may well have some damn good reasons to be bitchy. Not to mention all those spanking stories where the woman is strong-willed, irrational, stubborn, and irresponsible. They reinforce the notion that the emotions of women require the management of stable, reasonable men.

On the other hand, while second wave feminism made great strides in demonizing domestic abuse, "the resulting taboo," says Wakeman, "pushes couples in DD relationships into the closet." Along with a brilliant quote from Mija about how "there's nothing feminist about sublimating your desires because society says you shouldn't have them," Wakeman subtly reproves her audience for creating an environment that is hostile to the choices some women make about what to do with their bodies.

While trying to address the question that many non-kinksters have regarding the relationship between childhood abuse and spanking, Wakeman makes it clear that "for DD women, there's no readily apparent thread connecting actual childhood discipline with their current lifestyle." And she does a good job of placing DD squarely within the spanking fetish by noting that, while not all spankos practice DD, all those who practice domestic discipline are confirmed spankos.. "...[T]he line between spanking intended for a boudoir thrill and spanking as an outside-the-bedroom consequence can be blurry..." Indeed, as I have argued in the past, punishment and DD are really just sub-fetishes within the larger fetish of erotic spanking.

Wakeman's most interesting and challenging question in this article was asking how much of our yearning for discipline is about a strong societal norm for female perfection.

"Their fallibility frustrates and overwhelms them...Many American women strongly feel the drive to be perfect: to be educated, to be a breadwinner, to be a good mother, to be a good wife, and to be beautiful to boot. Is it possible some women -- whether kinkily inclined, formerly abused, neither, or both -- turn to domestic discipline the same way others find solace in punishing behaviors like eating disorders, cutting, or obsessively working out?"

Ouch. I can't answer "no" right away. I found the timing eerie, reading this a week after writing my own post on my obsession with perfection (though I failed to include a gender element in my discussion). And it's certainly been a topic of mine at the Punishment Book. Indeed, when I first started acknowledging I had this preoccupation with spanking and punishment, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps it was a variation on cutting. While most of me says it's not -- as I say in the article, my sexuality expresses itself as a child who gets off on shame and punishment -- if I'm being brutally honest, there's a part of me that can't say definitively no, it's not at all about my inability to deal with my own fallibility. I have a hard time accepting the fact that I'm finite, and I have most certainly been guilty of using spanking as a means of trying to attain that ever impossible perfection.

Now, like many of you, my first reaction to this article was heavily influenced by my disagreements with it, as well as being rather chagrined that I was introduced in the article as the one who self-spanks over the phone with her boyfriend. It's embarrassing enough having to admit that to fellow spankos, but to be introduced to the feminist world like that was a bit...er, uncomfortable.

The first issue involves a little linguistic nitpicking.

"Mija and Natty control the nature of their DD relationships with a power referred to in the BDSM community as 'topping from the bottom'. In such situations it's the submissive partner who's actually in control; the 'top' is required to have permission from the bottom before inflicting any BDSM action."

I would not consider what I do as topping from the bottom. That is really a form of manipulating the top to do what you want her/him to do -- not that I haven't had my moments. Oh, I hope you don't spank me with the belt! That, my friends, is topping from the bottom, though it's brazen enough that A. generally knows I'm trying to get him to do something very specific. However, because he's the top, he controls whether or not he's going to go on to spank me with the belt. Thus, I maintain my status as bottom and he as top.

Negotiating the framework of our disciplinary relationship, with me having a say in how it will proceed doesn't strike me as topping from the bottom; it's simply negotiation. Once we have negotiated what we want to do, A. then decides how to execute the framework we've both decided upon and I submit to those decisions, save for a safeword or phrase that might stop everything until we can decide what's wrong and where to proceed from there. Basically, the same as in any sort of BDSM safe-sane-consensual scene.

But, of course, the main point of disagreement was on the issue of gender and DD. About half way into the article, in parentheses, Wakeman states:

"Theoretically, a man can be the submissive in a heterosexual domestic discipline relationship, and a DD relationship can be same-sex, but based on both Internet presence and the couples that I interviewed, it's far more common to find heterosexual, female-submissive practitioners."

In the year since I was interviewed for this article, A. and I have started switching more regularly.  It is true that we don't switch in terms of discipline but it has little to do with gender; I'm the one who gets off on it and finds it more effective (my musings as to why are here). However, as I've started topping more, I've started seeking out more F/M blogs and am realizing there are a lot more than I realized when I was primarily a bottom.

As A. and I talked about this article, we both agreed this was the one point where we thought Wakeman got it wrong. He suggested that there are a lot more men in DD relationships than are reflected online because men are less inclined to blog about their activities (as, apparently are female tops). It's true too that F/M couples don't use Yahoo groups to quite the extent that M/F do, though to be sure, there are quite a number of disciplinary F/M Yahoo groups. It does have me wondering what is different about F/M domestic discipline that it doesn't express itself online in the same way that M/F does (pictures -- it's more visually oriented is my first thought). Men do not seem to be articulating submissiveness, nor are women articulating dominance in the same ways and in the same amounts as submissive women. Is there still a strong societal standard against men expressing submissiveness and women domestic dominance?

A. also believes that a lot of men are simply going to dominatrices when they can't get what they want from their partners. A frequent commenter here, Indiana, asked in an email, "Is it true that societal forces make it more likely that a woman will consent to spanking than a man?" I would argue that I think the societal force is more along the lines of making woman feel less comfortable dominating (or rather, our form of domination has traditionally been in manipulation rather than in blunt force) so that it is very difficult for submissive men to find a partner willing to provide the strong female hand they need and desire. It's a lot easier to slip back into traditional roles than chip away at new, less comfortable ones.

While, yes, it's true there isn't as much of a same-sex presence online (though it is there), that reflects the fact that heterosexuality is the norm. Out of any given population group, same-sex couples are always going to be in the minority (well, you know, except maybe the Castro district in San Francisco) but it was unfortunate that same-sex couples were excluded, as Jigsaw Analogy noted in the comments for the previous post, as it would have demonstrated the problem genderizing this lifestyle entails.

So, yes, I cringed when Ms. Wakeman stated that "The crux of domestic discipline is that women's behavior is inherently rife with transgressions, and the discipline provided by their intimate partner will be a leveling force." The context of this comment is unclear to me. I'm not sure if this was meant to represent the views of Mr. Loving DD and his ilk rather than my or Mija's view. And if it was, I wished that there was more contrast between what Mija and I do, and what MrLovingDD does (that is, if he does it at all or just writes very good "wank material" as one friend has called it). He genders behavior, we do not and I don't think that point is very clear.

If it was meant to truly describe the essence of domestic discipline as practiced by the majority, then I think she (or her editor) missed a very important point. F/M domestic discipline is not a fringe group within DD and making it so within this article marginalizes their sexuality (though there is the point that it is "feminizing" men, which is still a form of female submission in its own way). By insisting on maintaining a gendered perspective on dominance and submission, it keeps women boxed into rigid definitions that ultimately dis-empower women.

However, again I think it's important to keep in mind the audience for whom this article was written: feminist women who may know a little something about erotic spanking but know absolutely nothing about domestic discipline. And it's damn hard to explain it to an outsider. It is impossible for the target audience to look at this completely outside the construct of gender, as much as I think they should. I mean, the relationship that A. and I have -- that all nine of us at the Punishment Book have with our partners -- is not necessarily the norm when you take into consideration DD blogs and groups in their entirety. Would I have liked an article that looked at how some women are practicing DD without the stereotypes? Sure, but first people have to actually know what the hell it is.

I should also note that Ms. Wakeman was under a great deal of pressure to sensationalize this story, (i.e. make this a story that poked fun at us freaks) or simply couldn't sell the story because it was too edgy (and the magazines she pitched it to were hardly the Ladies Home Journal). While we're used to What It Is We Do, most people are not, and I think the compromise she found at Bitch in describing this as a way that women are seeking to "do" a relationship is a reasonable one even if I disagree with the gendered approach.

On Monday when my county-appointed housekeeper arrived to do my laundry, she told me the harrowing tale of how her daughter was beaten by her husband the weekend before. He started to choke her when she refused to give him the car keys because he was drunk, all the while shoving his knee into her three month pregnant belly. For hours after the cops came and dragged him off to jail, they could not get a heartbeat on the fetus. Eventually a heartbeat was heard, though they will not know the extent of any damage until birth. It was a poignant reminder to me that while we have come to a point where I can exercise my right to play with dominance and submission, we have not reached a point where the raw, non-consensual execution of it has ceased. And for a lot of people, it is impossible to divorce one from the other, even if I can.

But it's hard when you're a woman who has done all the things you're supposed to do to be a good feminist to hear someone suggest that you're doing something that puts the whole thing back to the days when the police wouldn't be showing up to take a wife-beater to jail. That you're embracing a construct with thousands of years of misogyny backing it up. I think that's why places like the Punishment Book, This Thing We Do, as well as the increasing number of feminist voices -- female and male -- among the domestic discipline community are so valuable. And why consciously grasping the choice we have to practice What It Is We Do in a non-gendered, mindful way is a profoundly feminist act.

My naughty little girl imagination

Sorry to be so quiet this last week and a half. I'm going through a phase of sleeping a lot. It's a recuperative-sort of sleeping rather than a depressive-sort of sleeping, and frankly I find myself impatient with the whole thing. But at the end of this sleeping phase I know I'll feel better, so I've learned to just go with it. Unfortunately yesterday I had to make a trip to Walmart after massage therapy/acupuncture, and that's knocked me back for what will probably be a few days. I'm working on a post that requires my brain to be a little less foggy than it has been lately, and hopefully I'll get that posted in a few days.

In the meantime, as I wrote on my non-kink blog, I've been trying to practice being in the present more and finding it difficult when stuck in bed a lot of the time. Not only that, but I end up having to deal with my current feelings about past events (see this post or this one). After wrestling with the demons of unanswerable whys the other night, I've found myself in a very little girl sort of mood.

I keep imagining A. taking me over his lap and scrunching my cotton panties down to my knees. As he begins to spank my fat, creamy white cheeks with his large, hard hands, he will tell me that this spanking is to remind me that I'm a little girl. His little girl. No amount of pouting and whimpering will keep him from spanking me until my cheeks are scarlet and I'm kicking and crying like a small child. And I'll feel particularly small when he stands me up and orders me to the corner, where I'll waddle to with my panties down around my ankles. After a few minutes of feeling very small indeed, he'll bring me to himself and cuddle his special girl. He'll stroke my hair and tell me what a good girl I am. A little girl who is wanted. Always wanted. And those horrible demon whys will go away.

As you can see, my imagination has a penchant for intruding on my being present.

Right. Back to bed. Hopefully I'll have dreams about the paragraph above instead of the emotionally draining sort I had earlier this week...

Permission not to be perfect

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.

The spanko tutor is in

In the last two days I have found myself in the position of tutoring someone on the topic of S/M and spanking.

The first tutorial was brief and, er...uncomfortable as my tutee was my mother. See I've strongly suspected that part of the reason her current (fourth) marriage is not working out is that her husband may actually be submissively oriented, as is she.

Now why would I even know enough to deign passing judgment on my mother's sexual life? Well, because I get to hear about it in intimate detail.

Yes, I know. EWWWWW!!!!

My mother cannot grasp the concept that children do not want to think of their parents as sexual beings and has always shared freely with me about her sexuality. Not to mention, has always felt it her duty to share sexual information with us. I'm still traumatized by our discussion regarding blowjobs. I was in the car. Nauseous. Begging her to please...stop...talking...

I've gotten more comfortable over the years (not totally comfortable but, you know, I don't completely want to vomit) as she and I have been much more like sisters than parent-child anyway (hence my hunger for some sort of parental figure). So yesterday as she was driving me to Trader Joe's and talking about her husband, I finally just blurted out, "why doesn't he just go to a dominatrix already!"

"What's a dominatrix?"

Was she serious?

"You know, a woman a guy pays to have order him around and often, you know, whip him and what not...you know, S/M and what not," I tried to explain.

"What's S/M?"

My jaw dropped. For a woman who has always seemed to be this fount of sexual information, I was shocked.

"You know dominance and submission. Where one person's sorta in charge in the bedroom...In fact, I've often thought that you, with your obsession about having a husband who is the head of the household and takes care of you, would totally be into domestic discipline..."

"What's that?"

I took a deep breath. Then shook my head.

"I should probably talk about this later and do my shopping," I said grabbing the car door handle. "You can look it up on the Internet."

"Good idea."

The Loving Domestic Discipline page probably had a few hits from Clackamas, Oregon last night.

I've actually been toying with talking to my mom about the whole DD thing for awhile. Yet aside from the ick factor, there's also the concern that if she did totally get into the whole thing, I'd never be able to go to a spanking event in Portland again without my mom being there (yes, she's little Miss Outgoing).

Then again, it could solve my transportation problems getting to and from said events. Just kidding! The gross-out factor would always, always override my mobility problems.

Still, I often wonder if she'd finally find happiness if she did start looking into DD. But I'm not sure I feel comfortable talking anymore with her about it. That's what Google is for, right?

oo0oo

The second conversation was this afternoon with my godfather. That was less uncomfortable as my godfather is my gay best friend (if we lived closer and I didn't have a boyfriend, I'd totally be his hag) and very familiar with deviant forms of sexuality. It was the logistics of how it worked that he was a bit mystified about, especially when I explained that often it is the act of being spanked (or playing pony, which was what started our conversation) that provides sexual gratification, not necessarily penetration. Indeed, penetration may not even come into it at all. When I was first coming out, I got spanked by many guys but it never involved sex.

"So, what does the top get out of it?" he asked.

"A lot of it is about sadism. About being able to hurt someone and getting pleasure out of that as well as pleasing the person you're hurting. And controlling how the scene is going to play out once you've negotiated the ground rules." As a newly practicing switch, I actually had an answer to that question which as a bottom I'd always sort of wondered about myself.

"I have to say, it's all about penetration for me," he stated. "...I wouldn't really know what to do in that context."

"Well, while I do think there is a lot about our sexuality that can be learned, I also think a lot of it is inbred. A form of sexual orientation, if you will."

"Interesting."

After that we talked about how wrong a certain professor of ours was when he used to go on about how the Internet was going to create political revolutions throughout the Arab World when, in fact, the revolution really has been in sexuality. I don't see the monarchy changing in Saudi Arabia anytime soon, but dating certainly has (i.e. it actually happens) thanks to instant messaging.

I'm sure that you, dear reader, can relate to that last point. Google has almost single-handedly changed our lives and blogs like this help both writers like me and readers like you know that we're not alone.

oo0oo

At any rate, those have been my spanking tutorials over the last two days. The weird and the interesting. The disturbing and the thoughtful.

If I'm not careful, I'm going end up teaching community college courses on spanking and D/s. Then again, I do miss teaching, so that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Just as long as my mom doesn't enroll.

Reaquainting my bottom with the belt and more

Despite the whole falling down the stairs thing, I had had a lot of pent up spanking energy the last couple of weeks. And what was really keeping us from playing much was hosting my dad for a few days as he's been having a particularly bad time of it lately. But once we had some time to ourselves last Tuesday night and our cuddling on the bed could lead to groping and petting, all sorts of things happened.

Like A.'s member swelling and myself getting a bit dewy. And me scraping the splint on my finger down his dick (which made it swell more). And my ass getting butt plug-fucked. And, of course, spanked.

At first I did the topping from the bottom bit. "Please don't spank me with your belt!" I begged.

"You so want to get spanked...Say it! I want to hear you tell me what you want," A. demanded.

Hmph! I hate asking!

But as I was naked on all fours with my ass high in the air hungry to feel that belt on my ass, I quickly gave in.

"I want you to spank me," I admitted just above a whisper. "I want you to whip me with your belt."

And, dear reader, he did. And oh did it hurt! Within a couple of strokes, I was swimming in nausea (the room spinning every time I turned my head didn't help matters any) and shocked at how much it stung. I thought about stopping the whole thing but kept thinking I would adjust to the pain. Instead I just kept thinking "oh God -- make it stop!" Thankfully A. sensed this from my yelping and moving about and lightened the strokes, then stopped completely and went about trying to increase my endorphines the old-fashioned vanilla way.

And I didn't even get a decent orgasm out of it. Even worse, I was soooo sore the next day (worse than falling down 23 stairs!). I mean, some of those muscles haven't been used for, like, eight months.

Needless to say, it kind of put me off spanking for a bit. At least any spankings with implements. I was still craving the odd hand spanking. But frankly, my friends, I was rather afraid of encountering that belt again. Or straps and ping pong paddles. And hairbrushes, canes and riding crops were too hideous to even contemplate.

So when A. announced the night before last that he wanted to finally break in our new futon-cum-spanking bench, I was a bit reticent. I mean, I was sorta in the mood for a spanking, but more of a little girl over the knee hand spanking sort. And I certainly wasn't in much of a submissive or sexual mood. I had been feeling annoyed with everything since the night before, though I didn't know why. As I watched A. get out just about every implement we own, I felt even more ambivalent and slightly sick.

Yet I think it was that fear that finally pushed me to go ahead with it. If I wussed out, the fear would just grow and it would be even harder to meet up with that belt again. Or any other implement for that matter.

So I stripped as ordered (except the cast boot on my left ankle that I sprained in September which the doctor said on Monday I have to wear all the time now, not just when I leave the house, because it's still not healed), though pouted a bit to myself as I did. Sat naked on the bed while he went out for a smoke. Contemplated my impending thrashing, still feeling petulant and afraid, yet also determined. When he returned, I timidly made my way to and over the new bench. As I rested my arms on the seat of futon and laid my ample bottom right on top as my feet dangled several inches above the carpet, my emotions felt like two weather fronts about to collide in the form of a nasty storm. My eyes were already slightly moist. This was it. This just might be the time I actually cried.

After giving me several smacks with his hand, A. decided he wanted my bottom a bit lower. I jiggled my hips down so that my toes touched the floor. He smacked me a few more times, then started softly with the strap. But the edge of the top of the futon was pressing against my pelvis -- you know, the pelvis that always hurts -- and the nausea started trickling back.

"I gotta move," I practically whined. A. fetched a couple of pillows to place under my pelvis as I scooted my bottom back up on top. This was bit more comfortable and after I took a deep breath, A. continued with the strapping.

"What's that like on a scale of 1-10?" he asked after a succession of progressively harder strokes.

I always find that a difficult question to answer in the midst of a spanking because at that moment it will feel a lot more painful than if I have time to compare it with other spankings. On the other hand, each spanking is unique and this one in particular had some very specific conditions attached to it making this a necessary question.

"Um...maybe a seven or so," I answered.

"Let's see if we can get it up to an eight or a nine."

Ugh.

"I'm going to give you 12 strokes. Count them, please."

I groaned aloud reflexively before I remembered that was serious transgression.

"Yes, Sir," I said as submissively as I could. But it was too late.

"Was that a groan I heard?" A. asked as he patted my head.

I stopped for a second to consider if somehow I could spin it as something else but quickly decided to just apologize and hope he had mercy.

"I'm sorry, Sir."

"Right. That will be an additional six."

D'oh! I almost groaned aloud again by accident but stopped it with a deep breath just in time.

A. brought the strap down with a reasonable amount of force. Certainly not full force, but definitely harder than he had been. After the first six strokes, he changed sides so my left cheek wouldn't feel left out. At nine and ten, I was getting close to my limit, especially as the strap kept landing just inside my cheeks. At twelve he rubbed my bottom and switched sides again.

"Now for the extra six. Continue counting, please."

I think it was during those six that my endorphine spigot finally turned on (in addition to another sort of spigot). When he finished with the extra six and groped my bottom, I eagerly pulled my legs apart. His fingers wandered a bit, just as I'd hoped they would.

But he wasn't done with that strap yet. And I wasn't quite finished pouting either. Indeed, a part of me was even just a little irritated that I was getting aroused. Yet I couldn't deny that I was hungry for that strap even as it hurt so much. When he switched to the ping pong paddle and it kept hitting me just inside where my thigh and cheek meet, I so wanted to plead and beg him to stop. And I also wanted more. More, more, more, more, more...

Of course he did stop -- with the spanking, that is -- and turned his attention to more intimate areas. I still didn't come (I'm not sure if I can in that position), but I did feel all nice, warm and fuzzy when I laid down a few minutes later (which I made sure to do earlier this time as I didn't want to get too sore again).

However I still felt like crying. As I got ready for bed I thought about asking A. to spank me more. To give me a hard spanking full force with the hairbrush until I bawled my eyes out. But when it really came down to it, I knew I probably wouldn't get the release I needed that way.

No, I needed to do it in a less kinky, less fun way -- sitting down with myself and being aware of my feelings. So I went to bed and A. went back to work at the desk in the kitchen and I pouted and cried my way through my frustration at having to spend so much time going to doctors appointments lately and being too tired to do much of anything else. And having a broken finger that makes typing hard. And a stupid ankle that STILL has to be in a cast boot. Yeah it was definitely wallowing. But somehow by letting myself wallow, I went to sleep feeling a lot better.

And by pushing myself over the back of that futon, I was able to feel a lot better about getting thrashed. Which is good because tomorrow is my birthday -- the most spankable day of the year.

How do you think I should get my 35 whacks?

Kinky in the ER

So when last I left you, dear readers, I had fallen down a very long flight of stairs while incurring relatively minor damage. Actually you can barely tell I fell except for the red splint/cast on my left index finger.

I did promise to share some kinky moments from our time in the ER, and I apologize I've been slow to get to that as well as to your comments. While the fall itself wasn't so bad, it's meant even more doctor's appointments (I had 3 last week and have 4 this week). Coupled with vertigo (that finally went away last Friday -- yay!), it's left me knackered. Plus, it's hard to type with a broken index finger.

At any rate, during the several hours they kept me in the ER for observation, A. and I tried to pass the time as best we could.

We considered snagging some of their purple nitrile (latex-free) gloves, but then I pointed out that I'd already absconded with a whole bunch of gloves from my clinic a few weeks back. "Very naughty," A. said. Indeed. And I'm hoping the punishment for said theft will require those gloves.

After the doctor put my finger in a splint, he handed us a large roll of medical tape and instructed me on how best to wrap my finger until I was able to consult with the hand surgeon sometime the following week. Upon seeing the sizable roll of medical tape, I immediately thought about a thread on the newsgroup many years ago about using medical tape to hold the cheeks open in order to administer discipline to one's bummy hole. After the doctor left, I promptly told A. about this other possible use, who seemed to agree that some medical tape experimentation would be in order.

The whole time, of course, I was hooked up to an oximeter which read my heart rate and displayed it on a large monitor. A. decided to have a bit of fun with it.

"Let's see what words make your heart rate go up," A. said. "I'm going to fuck your ass..."

82..84...85

"I'm going to open your cheeks and tape them back with medical tape... "

86...87...91

"...so I can plug your ass with ginger..."

91...92...93

"And spank you with a hairbrush."

88...83...82

"Ah so spanking isn't doing it for you," A. said

"Well, maybe the thought of spanking is relaxing for me," I offered.

"It shouldn't. I'm not doing it right if it does."

"I dunno." I shrugged. I didn't consciously feel less inclined to being spanked.

"Uh oh, your spanking mojo is critically low." A.'s voice became urgent. "Nurse -- get me 5 CCs of spanking mojo right away!...Then show me your knickers."

I always giggle when A. says knickers. I mean, how can you not? It's a funny word!

What ended up affecting my heart rate the most was talking to my mom on the phone. The almost perfectly identical waves on the heart monitor suddenly became erratic and my heart rate jumped up to the mid 90s. True, I was talking about the fall. But I do think it suggests that my mother may actually be hazardous to my health.

The next day when I had to go back to the ER to get another CT scan to make sure the vertigo wasn't from something more sinister, my mom drove us to the hospital and stayed with us. At first we thought about playing our little heart monitor game again, but quickly realized we'd have to do a more PG-rated version. Thankfully there was a television in the room to pass the time. And also thankfully my CT scan ended up being normal. So my mom stepped out while A. helped me get dressed (him dressing me made me feel very child-like, in a kinky sort of way), after which he managed to steal a few soft, playful swats on my bottom with me bent slightly over the gurney.

Despite what my heart rate did when A. suggested he was going to spank me, my spanking mojo has actually remained mostly intact. But as this post is long enough, I'll post about that tomorrow. Promise.

Taunting gravity

So I got that spanking a few hours after my last post. It was a lovely over the knee, good-girl sort of spanking with A.'s hand. Just the perfect getting reacquainted kind of spanking.

However there have been a few kinks in our spanking play since then, despite both of us being eager to try out our new wooden-slatted futon-cum-spanking bench. There's been a family issue. And A.'s jet lag. And my shoulder getting really cranky. And then there was last Wednesday.

Once a week my massage therapist/acupuncturist massages and needles away my pain and makes my life just a little bit better. The only drawback is that her office is up a long flight of 23 hard wooden stairs. So every week I slowly make my way up the stairs with little rest breaks along the way and carefully make my way down after my session.

Except I wasn't very careful last Wednesday. I quite foolishly decided to attempt going down the stairs with my bum right knee, a cast boot on my left foot, a plastic bag of groceries and my cane in my right hand while holding onto the railing in my left hand. It only took one step for me to completely lose my balance and fall head first down each and every one of those 23 hard wooden stairs.

As I was falling -- you know, after the obligatory SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! -- I remember being amazed at what was happening to me. I mean, I never fall down head first. In all my years of bad balance, I've learned to fall backwards onto my butt or against the wall. I also remember thinking while I fell that I had to finally stop falling at some point. And eventually I did. I landed flat on my back on the concrete floor next to the door.

A woman in the shop next door heard me fall, came over and ordered me not to move. My massage therapist came down and (I think she was the one) called the ambulance. Someone got my mother sitting out in the car waiting for me. "Why hasn't the ambulance gotten here?" she demanded and was answered a moment later by the paramedics arriving.

There was a lot of concern about internal bleeding because I'm on Coumadin, but after being examined by a zillion nurses and doctors and various radiological equipment in one of those blindingly bright trauma rooms in the ER, I had only sustained a cracked nose (with a tiny bit of bruising under my right eye), a dislocated/broken left index finger (it makes typing LOADS o' fun!), and lingering vertigo (also great fun on the computer). And, of course, lots of beautiful bruises. Oh and a large scrape under my nose that A. says makes me look like Hitler (though it's close to gone thanks to Neosporin). I totally look like I've been fighting with the bruises on the knuckles of both hands and the broken nose. Or like a domestic violence victim (yes, we've been having fun joking about A. slapping me around -- not that domestic violence is anything to joke about!)

Everyone from the doctors to my family were amazed. A. figures I used up one of my nine lives (I think that makes four left). We can't decide if I was unlucky because I fell or lucky because the damage was so minor. I mean, I wasn't even that sore the next day like I expected to be. Though the vertigo has kept me from moving much -- both because moving aggravates it and because the medicine to treat it makes me very sleepy.

In some ways, the fall has actually been a good thing. It's been a reminder that I'm not as fragile as I sometimes feel. I've also stopped getting that sharp, icky feeling in my sternum that I had been getting lately when I thought of pain (a good thing for my spanking mojo!). And it seems to have actually relieved some of the chronic pain in my tailbone so that I've been able to lay on my back for the first time in awhile. It's all so very yin and yang, ya know?

And to top it all off, my neck and shoulder, which my massage therapist spent a lot of time working on during my session, felt great the next day. Now that's a good session!

I have some funny, kinky moments that A. and I had in the ER to share with you, dear reader, but I'll leave that for a later post.

The other side

I think I have discovered a cure for my tentative spanking mojo: topping.

As we usually do when A.'s arrival is imminent, we start sharing fantasies that we'd like to act out when he gets here. Granted, half of it we never actually get around to doing, but the planning itself is quite fun. The other day as I was laying in bed and thinking about evil things to do to A., I found myself getting rather aroused as I imagined whipping him. Indeed picturing a bunch of rosey-purple marks welling up on his pasty ass and thighs made me positively wet.

So this is what it's like on the other side.

To be honest, while I have wondered in the past what motivates someone to inflict pain on another, my curiosity rarely extended to a desire to see the view from the other side of the paddle, strap, or cane. Despite a friend's view some years back that the exclusive nature of my role as bottom was "selfish," I've always seen it as a matter of sexual orientation. I've fantasized about getting spanked just about every day of my life since I was six or so. But in all those years I don't think I've ever really fantasized about spanking someone else.

However, as I mentioned back in April, the collusion of chronic illness and A.'s subby moods has brought out an inner domme in me that had not previously existed. And as you can see, now that she's out, she is starting to quite enjoy herself.

For the moment, I may yet wince at the thought of me getting spanked, but I still like the idea of spanking in a general, abstract way. What I've found is that the thought of spanking my partner gives me a personal connection to spanking. Allows me to fantasize about it by proxy as I imagine being the one getting spanked -- sort of like how reading a spanking story works -- without the immediate threat of personally feeling pain. If that makes any sense at all.

I've even figured out how to feed my inner little girl as a top. It started last winter when A. and I had our own Christmas together. I wore a velvet-satin Christmas dress that I made in the early nineties that is not really in style much these days, but always makes me feel very girly. After dinner, when A. said he was feeling subby, I worried that my little girl mood and his subby mood were totally going to clash. However, before I knew it, I started slipping into this demanding, selfish, spoiled little princess. Voila! Princess Natalie was born. And lemme tell ya, she's downright despotic. Perfect for any aspiring masochist.

Maybe it's just the whole yin and yang thing. Maybe it's just that the thought of someone else being spanked is whetting my appetite. But I tell you dear friends, my spanking mojo is becoming less and less tentative. I might -- just might -- even try a little wakin' spankin' tonight before I go to sleep. You could say it's the one way to get a simultaneous view of both sides.