Fantasy

I want it to be a surprise. Perhaps it would go something like this:

She sends a text message on her way home from work, when the train comes above ground. “Put on the clothes that are in the bottom drawer of the dresser, and stand in the corner of the hallway until I get home.”

I text back—“What?!”

And she responds—“Do as I say. Or you’ll be in even MORE trouble.”

My clit starts to throb from the mere fact of bottoming. I go into the bedroom and open the drawer, wondering what I will find. It’s a school uniform, or a close approximation: knee-length plaid skirt, white button-down shirt, striped tie. Knee-high socks, my lace-up oxfords, plain cotton underpants.

I blush as I change, and knot the tie carefully. I consider my hair, and put it into two French braids, because that seems to fit.

My heart is pounding, and I feel quite silly as I go to stand in the corner. I wonder how long it will be before she gets home. I wish I had my watch. I stare at the wall, and think about what she might have in mind. I wonder whether she’s really going to spank me, or if something will happen to distract her before she gets home. I wonder how long I have been standing in the corner, and consider whether I have time to go check my cell phone to see how long it’s been since she called. She will have no way of knowing how long I have stood in the corner, after all.

But, deep down, I’m a good girl, so I do as I’ve been told. The wait seems longer and longer. I wonder whether something has happened to the train, or whether she has stopped to talk to one of the neighbors before she comes in. I wonder why she decided to give me a spanking.

And then I hear feet on the stairs outside our apartment, and a key in the lock. I force myself to keep facing the wall. She walks up beside me and looks closely at how I am dressed. When I turn my head to see her, she firmly points it back towards the corner. She lifts my skirt to be sure that I am wearing the full uniform. “You’re properly dressed,” she murmurs. “That might help.”

She opens the bedroom door, and turns to make sure I haven’t left the corner. I hear her rummaging through the cupboards, and then going into the bathroom. I am dying with curiosity, but I keep my eyes to the wall. Much as I want to know what’s happening, I am grateful that the situation is so completely in her control. I take a deep breath as I stand there.

Finally, she says, “Come here.” I notice that she is wearing a uniform that is identical to mine. I wonder when she got them, and how she managed not to mention it to me. I grin, to think of how hard it must have been for her to keep the secret.

“What are you smirking about? This isn’t funny.”

“I—“ I start to protest, but then I decide to be “in character.” I look down, and examine my shoes, waiting to find out what our role-play is going to be.

“You know that as the head girl of our form, it’s my job to keep order, right?”

I look up at her, and nod.

“You are a senior student at this school, and I would think that you would help by being a good example to the other students. But you haven’t been, have you?”

“I am a good student!” I protest.

“You may be very smart, and you may even behave in your classes, but outside of class, you have been a very bad example to the other girls. Just look at this!” She hands me a sheet of paper.

September 2. Convinced entire first form that the common room is haunted by the ghost of our first headmistress. Four first form girls caught sneaking out of their dormitory at midnight to see the ghost.

September 5. Helped two first form girls put salt into all of the sugar bowls in the dining hall before breakfast.

September 9. Short-sheeted the beds in all of the senior dormitories.

September 12. Left the dormitory after lights-out, and read a novel in the common room until two a.m.

September 13. Overslept and caused the house to lose 10 points because bed was unmade and drawers were untidy.

September 15. Convinced five second form girls that it was the headmistress’s birthday, and that she would like to receive a singing telegram to mark the occasion.

September 16. Left the dormitory after lights-out, and read a novel in the common room until two-thirty a.m.

September 17. Replaced all of the articles in the school newspaper with parodies of the school songs. Disaster was narrowly avoided, as the assistant editor discovered the substitution shortly before the paper went to the printer.

September 20. Went to town and bought all of the supplies for the third form to have a midnight feast. Hid their food in the craft cupboard in the common room, and loaned them a travel alarm so they would be able to wake up.

September 24. Inserted two long passages from Enid Blyton boarding school stories into the school newspaper. Disaster once again avoided when the assistant editor discovered the insertion.

September 26. Hid ten alarm clocks, set to go off at different times, in the school auditorium. These interrupted a speech by one of the trustees.

Now I had to grin. These were entirely silly crimes.

“This isn’t funny. You are undermining the authority at this school, and you are setting a very bad example for the younger girls. The only reason the head hasn’t found out about this is that the other seniors, especially the prefects, have been making sure you aren’t caught. What are you thinking?”

“Well, it’s my last year here, and I thought it was time to have some fun,” I grin. “Besides, that was the most interesting speech that particular trustee has ever given, and you know it. Even the head looked relieved.”

She frowns at me. “I can see you aren’t taking your behavior seriously. You know that most of the items on this list would get you caned if you had been caught.”

“But I was careful, and I wasn’t caught, was I?”

“Yes,” she says, “you were caught. I caught you, and you know that I have the same power to punish misbehavior outside of class as any of the teachers have in a class.” She points to the bed, and I notice that she has both a cane and the bath brush arranged beside a pile of pillows at the edge of the bed. When I don’t move, she says, “I’m sure you remember the drill. Go lean over the edge of the bed.”

I walk over, my heart thumping. I wonder how seriously she is going to take the game. Very seriously, it seems. She stands beside me, and lifts the hem of my skirt.

“I am starting with a hand spanking, because many of the misbehaviors on this list are the kind of thing a silly first form girl would do, and silly first form girls don’t get the cane.” I can tell that she has been reading up on how to give a hand spanking. My bottom is uncomfortably warm, and I am squirming with each slap by the time she is done.

She pulls my underwear to my knees, and lifts the cane. “There are eleven items on my list. I’m sure that you have done more than that, so I’ll make it an even dozen cane strokes. If you move out of position, I will start again from the beginning.” I brace myself.

Swwiiissshhhh-CRACK! I squeal as the pain hits, but I stay in place as the second and third strokes come whistling down. She must have been reading about caning, too, because this is far more intense than she usually is with a cane. I really feel that momentary pause between the impact of the cane and the pain from the stroke.

She picks up the pace. I can’t help twisting to the side after the seventh stroke, just to get a break. She pushes me back into position.

Swwiissshhh-CRACK! “One,” she says, letting me know she is starting over. I clench my bottom and draw a slow breath. She keeps to a slower pace for the next several strokes, and then begins to go quickly again.

“Owww!! Slow down! Please! It really hurts!”

“Of course it hurts,” she says. “It’s a spanking, it’s supposed to hurt.”

CRACK! “Nine.” I clutch the bedspread and tense my legs, doing everything I can to stay in place. Just three more strokes, two more strokes, one more stroke…. I breathe a sigh of relief when it is over, and resist reaching back to trace the lines I knew she has left on my bottom.

She lays the cane down and climbs up on the bed. “Now that I’ve gotten your attention,” she says, “I want to make sure the lesson sticks. Give me the bath brush, then take off your skirt and underpants, and come lie over my lap.”

I look at her, my heart pounding. She can’t really mean that there’s more of a spanking. “I think the lesson will stick,” I say, rubbing my bottom gently.

“This will be over when I say it’s over,” she says firmly. “Come here now.”

I slowly do as she says, and find myself face down over her lap. She strokes my back for several seconds. I break character just enough to look at her, and we smile at each other, reassuring ourselves that this is all right with each of us. Then she gets back in character and firmly turns my head towards the bedspread.

“I want you to think about the behavior appropriate to a senior at this school,” she says firmly. “What you do reflects on all of us. And if you behave poorly, it makes me look like a bad head girl.” She emphasizes her last sentence with firm smacks of the bath brush, and then begins to spank me in earnest.

When I kick my leg just a little too much she stops, pushes me forward so that I am resting mostly over her left knee. She puts her right leg over the back of my legs and starts the paddling again. I squeal and squirm, but the brush keeps coming down. I know that she could hit me harder than she is, but the steady cracks are taking their toll.

Despite the increasing pain in my bottom, I have room to wonder how far she will go. Experimentally, I reach back to cover my bottom. She stops long enough to grab my wrist. “This spanking will continue until I think you’ve learned who is in charge,” she says resolutely.

Without the option of moving, I find that I can’t pay attention to anything but the steady smacks of the bath brush. Each one burns across my bottom and thighs. I relax completely into submission. I allow myself to squirm, but I also allow myself to yelp. As my bottom gets warmer and warmer, I slip further into the role-play. I promise to be good, I apologize for my misbehavior. The bath brush keeps slapping my bottom.

Finally, my emotions have nowhere else to go, and I start to cry. I cry because of the pain, but also because of the fact that I know it is safe to let go. I am not in charge, I do not have to be in control. No matter what I do, I will get this spanking. She is giving it to me not as a punishment, but simply because she knows that I need it. Several more smacks land on my bottom and thighs, and then she puts the bath brush to the side.

She slowly rubs the small of my back, and runs her hand over my bottom. Then she slides down and we rearrange ourselves so that we can snuggle. I rest my head against her chest, and she strokes my hair.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“You’re very welcome, love,” she responds.

The Relief of Bottoming

We had a busy weekend, pretty much as usual. W.’s younger sisters came for a visit, and we went to see their cousin in a play on Saturday. After dinner with the extended family, we came back home, and then ended up driving her sisters back towards their own home (about an hour and a half from where we live). On the way back, W. asked whether I wanted a spanking on Sunday. Of course, I said yes.

I’ve been stressed out and edgy lately, and I really needed to bottom. On the way home from doing the weekend’s shopping yesterday, I checked in about W.’s energy levels, and mentioned that I really needed to bottom.

We got home, had some dinner, and did our usual early-evening things. Then, about an hour before bedtime, W. announced that it was time. She told me to choose music with a beat, which I did. She instructed me to kneel on the bed, facing the wall (we have no corners that aren’t filled with stuff, so this was perhaps the only way to do “corner time” in our bedroom).

I knelt and stared at the wall. I alternated between contemplating the fact that I was about to get a spanking and figuring out exactly how far-sighted my eyes have gotten (I absolutely cannot focus on something that is less than a foot from my face). W. finished reading the chapter she was on, and then went out of the room to do something else for a while. Then she came back, and rummaged through our toy cupboard. She arranged me for the spanking, and began.

And here is where I feel kind of guilty. She did a nice warm-up, and even had me over her lap, but it was… unsatisfying. I really, desperately needed to bottom, and I just wasn’t getting that last night. The spanking felt, I don’t know, perfunctory. And the sex afterwards also really felt like we were failing to communicate, or failing to get what we wanted.

I’m still too edgy to really be able to talk about it with her. I’m not sure how to describe what it is that I need, and I feel badly about wanting something that she isn’t giving, and about not being happy with what I’ve got. I could tell that she was being gentle and loving—but it’s like I was watching a television with the sound off, and although I could tell what was going on, it wasn’t coming through very clearly. It feels really selfish to say, “I know you gave me what you thought I needed, and I could tell you were making efforts, but it really didn’t meet my needs.” It’s like how I feel when I know someone spent a lot of time or money on a gift for me, but it’s not what I want. So I find myself grateful for the thought and love behind the gift, but also kind of resentful that they spent so much effort on something that I don’t like or want.

Maybe that means I should try to articulate what it is that I do want. I guess what I need is to not be in control, but that’s the usual situation. It’s not just about not being in control of the situation in general, though. I need to not have to be in control of myself.

I guess it’s a side effect of being responsible about so many things lately—I’ve been doing my work like I’m supposed to. I paid the bills instead of spending our money just on fun stuff. I spent my extra day off on Friday doing the laundry and grocery shopping, instead of hanging out doing something just fun.

Part of my frustration comes from my usual conflict. W. wasn’t into spanking before she met me, and so I feel like I should try to avoid asking for much from her in that area. And I feel like I should be grateful for what I get, even if it isn’t what I need. But what good is that? I don’t know if she enjoyed giving me the spanking, but for me, it was the equivalent of a finger just barely brushing my clit during sex—it’s nice in moderation, but it just increased the need for a different kind of stimulation.

But it’s not just that. On some levels, I see the spanking as where we can make other aspects of our relationship balance out. I feel a lot of the time like I have to be the “grown-up.” I make sure that bills get paid and groceries get bought and money gets managed. I’m the one who remembers to pick up the mail, and take out the trash, and all of those kinds of things. Honestly, none of this is precisely a problem. I don’t mind doing most of this, most of this is stuff it wouldn’t occur to me not to do, and it often makes better sense for just one of us to be in charge, you know? It’s not even like W. doesn’t do one of the most important grown-up things in our household: she goes to work every day, and brings home the paycheck that provides the bulk of our financial support while I work on my dissertation.

But I still need a space in my life where someone else takes charge, and for me, that tends to be during a spanking (and, to a lesser extent, during sex). I suppose it would be healthier if I could let her be in charge of other areas of our life, but it’s still a lot of work for me to let go in most areas. And there are times when I need the relief of bottoming.

I need a space where I can let go, where someone else is in charge of what happens. I crave the opportunity to know that I have no say (aside from safewords, because, well, those also make me feel safe). I want to be able to squirm without the spanking stopping. I want to have W. take charge like she means it.

The funny thing is, I could have ended up with something very like that sensation today. W. called on her way home from school to ask how my work had gone today. It hadn’t gone well, but that wasn’t because I didn’t spend the day in front of the computer typing and trying to get work done. When she asked, I was kind of vague about how the work had gone (who wants to admit that they typed and retyped the same six or seven paragraphs all day, getting absolutely nothing?). Besides, I couldn’t honestly say I had been productive, because I had no product to show for my work. She simply said, “Okay, we’ll deal with that when I get home.” And she made a point of checking in with me about my work, and about how I had spent the day. We agreed that I didn’t deserve a punishment, because I had worked, I just hadn’t had a good workday. And some days are like that (even in Australia).

It was clear that if I hadn’t been working, though, that I would have gotten a punishment spanking. And that made me feel good, and cared for. I made sure to thank her for checking in, and holding me accountable, because it makes it easier for me to hold myself accountable.

What I need right now is not really a punishment spanking, exactly. I need something a little bit firm, perhaps disciplinary, but not as a punishment. The words that come into my head as I think about it are that I need to be held together for a little bit, just to ease the strain of doing it myself. I need a structure around me, and I need the release of the spanking. I need to feel like there are boundaries, and like I’m not the one in charge of maintaining them. But I really don’t know how to find our way to a compromise on this, since it’s not something I think W. wants.

Yes, it might make more sense to just talk to her about it. But right now, I’m so needy that I can’t get to a place where I can talk about anything like a reasonable human being, let alone having a conversation where I have to force myself to be vulnerable and take risks.

And I still struggle with the question of “why spanking?” Why not something like playing with blocks, or coloring? Some of that is that I can separate even disciplinary spankings from age play, and when I’m this vulnerable, ageplay is the last thing I want. Some of it is that bottoming meets some need I haven’t yet figured out how to articulate. It allows me to let go of control, it holds me together, it allows me the space to release emotions I can’t seem to stop bottling up. And it makes me feel really good.

I really wish, sometimes, that something else gave me those feelings, or that W. got equally good feelings from topping.

Breaking bad habits

I guess I got a little cocky after my first punishment. I thought that just knowing neither W. nor I liked the experience would be enough. And I did make myself do some work that week.

But I bewildered myself—I was doing the absolute bare minimum, holding (just barely) to the letter of what I had agreed to do. And, as it turned out, I hadn’t even been doing that, since it wasn’t until we checked in about my work later in the week that I remembered I had agreed to work five, rather than four hours a day, until I had “repaid” the hours that I wasted this summer.

I couldn’t understand it: I do like my dissertation topic, and while the chapter I’m working on is less interesting, it’s not completely boring, and I do understand why I need to do it now, rather than after I’ve written some of the more “fun” chapters. Thinking about it, there were probably two reasons I wasn’t working well.

First, I really dread writing, and I haven’t written a paper less than a week before it was due… in my life. I wrote my first last-minute paper at eight. I pulled my first all-nighter in the sixth grade. It’s just how I operate. Unfortunately, it’s absolutely not going to work with a whole dissertation (or even with a single chapter).

And second, I was testing my wife. Much as I hate to admit it to myself, a huge part of me needed to see if she was going to come through with the punishments, just so that I could relax into having a reason to force myself to write. And I hate to admit even more how I needed the punishment to be a disincentive all by itself. Because as it turned out, the fact that I knew W. didn’t like to give the punishment just fed into the guilt I always feel about how not doing my work hurts both of us. It’s too abstract to work very well as a motivator.

Actually, there are two more reasons that I hate even more to acknowledge. I wasn’t going to bed until quite late, and I wasn’t eating properly during the day. Both of these combined to give me a lot of trouble concentrating. I don’t have the sheer stamina I had in college, and I’m just not able to do without sleep and good nutrition and still get to have good use of my brain.

I brought the first two reasons up two weeks ago, and she gave me what felt like a very token spanking. She was looking at things from the outside, and felt very proud of me for having managed to get any work done at all. From the inside, I knew I had been setting the goals too low, and really failing to meet them even then. But I kept trying to make myself work, and getting at least a little bit done each day, which was an accomplishment of sorts.

And then came Labor Day weekend, and things went truly awry. Somehow, I couldn’t get back into the habit of working after taking three days off. Reading a dissertation that should have taken me perhaps two days of serious work was filling up my workdays. In a manner of speaking, because those “work days” were really much more filled with reading email and surfing the web. And even though I know perfectly well that my best work hours are in the morning and early afternoon, I would come into my study and check email before I started work. By the time I was done with all of my fooling around, I was lucky to get started with what I was supposed to be doing before noon. And even though I had suggested a perfectly reasonable rule—that I do my required work by 4 in the afternoon (to have some down-time before W. got home from work)—I was just not getting it done.

When W. asked what I had accomplished each day, I was appropriately vague, trying to make the small amounts of work I had done seem like enough to have filled up four or five hours of diligent work. She finally called my bluff last week on Wednesday. When I vaguely said that I had read two chapters, she asked me whether that was really sufficient. I admitted that it wasn’t. It was painful, because much as I didn’t want the punishment, I needed to know that she was going to follow through. But I felt so guilty for that, and I had soothed my guilt in perhaps the worst way possible—by not being open about my procrastination. I didn’t want her to have to punish me, since it seemed so self-indulgent, if a punishment can be self-indulgent. So I was keeping my guilt to myself.

She finally said, “I feel like I should do something about this.” I couldn’t look at her, because I didn’t want to prompt it. We moved on to other topics, and I went to take out the trash. When I came back to the bedroom, I noticed the loopy toy on the bed. Relief and fear: she was going to follow through.

But either because she had noticed the power waiting for the punishment had on me, or just because she wanted to finish up with everything we had to do that night, she didn’t initiate the punishment yet. I tried to casually read in bed while she finished with her online stuff, and talking to her sister, and all of the other things she was doing.

But finally she told her sister she was going to sleep, and hung up. I felt mingled disappointment and hope—if she was going to sleep, that meant I wasn’t getting punished. But we cleared the bed, and she told me it was time. We chose music, so we could avoid disturbing the neighbors with the noise of the spanking. I took off my shorts and underwear, and lay across the bed in front of her, clutching a pillow to muffle my squeals.

This was not a token punishment in the least. It started off hard, and before I had gotten three strokes, I was desperate for it to be over. This wasn’t about not wanting W. to have to do it again. This was about not wanting to get the punishment again. And it kept going on.

I don’t reach back to cover myself, because I don’t want to be hit on the hands any more than I want to be hit on my backside. What I do is twist to the side to get my bottom out of the line of fire. But I remember with perfect clarity the second time I did that, when W. paused, put her hand firmly in the middle of my back, and calmly said, “You have to accept it.” And she went on.

She has given me harder spankings, in total. She has given me much longer spankings many times. But this one was, bar none, the worst spanking I had ever gotten. It was hard and fast, it didn’t give me time to relax between strokes, and it was completely unpleasant.

When it was over, she held me and comforted me. But we talked some more. She warned that I really wanted to avoid getting another punishment spanking.

“Because the consequences are worse for repeated offenses,” I acknowledged.

“No,” she said, “Because I’m getting more able to give a hard punishment spanking.” It wasn’t that she is comfortable with it, she explained, but that she was understanding how to give a punishment spanking and not back off from it.

We cuddled some more, and went to sleep. And on Thursday, I got up, read the paper, and got right to work. It was amazing: I had done a good solid five hours of work, and was finished by 2 in the afternoon! I had tons of time free! I could read my email without guilt, and surf the web, and even bake a little celebratory cake for the first day of school.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the increasing ache I’d been feeling in my back all day was due to a case of the flu. By evening, I had a temperature of 102°. So I spent the next four days in bed drinking fluids and sleeping.

But when I was finally able to be out of bed today, I remembered the spanking I had gotten last week. And even though I knew neither of us expected me to get any work done today, I also know myself. And spending the day fooling around online would just reinforce bad habits. So I decided to just do a little work, taking breaks as I needed them. Because while the theory of not reinforcing bad habits is little motivation, the reality of getting an even harder punishment spanking not too long in the future is not one I look forward to. So this time, I really think I’ll be able to start changing my habits. I hope.

Vibrating Buttocks Key to Driver Alertness

Someone on a list I'm on posted this link. It's about how a car manufacturer has come up with a way for the driver's seat to vibrate when the driver is apparently inattentive (such as when crossing a lane too slowly, or when about to rear end another car). The article claims that a Japanese carmaker says that all cars will be equipped with this technology by 2010.

I'm sure there is a good spanko application for this: either a vibrating massage to ease pain, or perhaps a more, um, targeted vibration to keep people behaving correctly.

Story: What I Need

I posted this on the SSS newsgroup probably four or five years ago. It's another of the Janey and Michelle stories, and I figured it would do some of the work of lightening up the mood on here, since it's not depressing at all.

“What I Need”
F/F, consensual
=======================


I had been in a rotten mood for weeks, and I had no idea why. I would force myself through necessary interactions, controlling my temper with sheer force of will, and then hole up in my study trying to make myself work in between times.

I felt guilty for neglecting Janey, but that was better than sniping at her, which is what I did when we spent time together. But Liza invited her over for our house’s “family night,” when we would each clean one room, and then play games afterward. I’d volunteered to clean the bathroom, and I’d tried to take out my irritation on the mildew in the grout. I was sweaty, but just as irritable as I’d been before I started.

I washed up, and joined the rest of my house, plus Janey, for pizza and Scrabble. The first game was fine, because I started out with a word that used all seven letters, and continued kicking butt for the rest of the game. It was easier to be nice when I was winning. But I didn’t do as well during the second game, and I found myself wanting to snap at people.

Everyone teased me in a friendly way, trying to cheer me up. They could tell that something was wrong, but they’d all given up on figuring out what it was by that point. So they tried to be nice.

Finally, I managed to get a word worth a measly six points on the board, and then discovered there were no more letters in the bag. “AAARRRGGHH!! I HATE this game!! I’m no good at it! I’m TIRED of being so STUPID!” Everyone looked at me curiously.

“You kicked our collective butt in the last game,” Liza pointed out.

“You’re not stupid,” Gwen reassured me.

I glared at both of them, trying to keep myself from flinging the board across the room.

“Do we need to have a talk upstairs?” Janey joked, hoping that the spanko reference would cheer me up.

I was stunned by the surge of relief I felt when she said it. I looked at her thoughtfully. “Actually, maybe we do.”

Janey looked at me; Liza and Gwen glanced from me to her. Finally, Janey broke the silence. “Will you two excuse us for a moment?” Liza and Gwen nodded, half smirking. Janey led me out of the living room and upstairs to my bedroom.

She sat at the edge of my bed, and patted the spot next to her. I sat down in the chair instead. “What’s going on, Michelle?”

I stared at the floor. Finally, I said, “I don’t really know. It’s not PMS, since I’ve been edgy and irritable for almost a month now. And I’ve had my period. I… I just want to snap at people. I seem to need to get into an argument and shout and throw a fit, and that’s not okay. Nothing is helping, and I just keep getting more and more and more tense.”

“We’ve noticed,” she said wryly. I felt a surge of irritation. What right did they have to notice?! I swallowed it, and didn’t say anything.

“So why are we up here?”

I examined my fingers, and the end of the bed, and the grain of the wood on the floor. Finally, I whispered, “Um, well… Okay, when you asked if we needed to come upstairs, I felt so… relieved. I had this image of you giving me a spanking, and… I think it would make things better.”

Janey looked at me consideringly. “Fine. Let me go down and tell Gwen and Liza to play without us.” She stood up.

“Wait! If you go down there, they’ll know exactly what’s going to happen up here!”

“Michelle, whether or not I go down there, I think they’ll have a pretty good idea,” Janey laughed. “Even if you’re really quiet,” she added.

I sat on the chair waiting for Janey to return, half nervous and half relieved. I got up and rummaged through the toy box and found the stingy little hairbrush. I put it in the middle of the bed, and then sat back in the chair as though I hadn’t moved.

Janey was laughing as she came up. She composed herself at the doorway, and then closed the door quietly behind her. She raised her eyebrow when she noticed the hairbrush, but she didn’t say anything to me about it. She sat on the bed with her back against the wall. She patted her thighs. “You may as well take off your pants and underpants right now,” she said. I complied, and then got into position over her lap.

Janey rested her hand on my bottom. “I’ve wanted to get you in this position for a few weeks,” she mused, rubbing gently. “You’ve been a real pill lately.” SMACK! “You need to realize {SMACK!} that you don’t have to be perfect.” SMACK!! SMACK!!

“What?” I protested. The last thing I’d been for weeks was perfect. I had been more imperfect than ever, and I have never approached any kind of reasonable standards.

SMACK! “Michelle, we will {SMACK!!} still love {SMACK!} you, even if you’re crabby.” Janey stopped talking for a few moments while she smacked my bottom. “It’s okay to just let us know you need some comfort.” She delivered several stinging smacks to the tops of my thighs as she said this. “You don’t have to lock yourself up all alone just because you’re feeling hurt.” Janey punctuated each word with a sharp smack.

My bottom began to feel tingly and warm. Some of the tension started to ebb away. Janey stopped long enough to pick up the hairbrush. “Why, where on earth did *this* come from?” she joked. “Perhaps someone really needs a sore bottom tonight.”

CRACK!!! I yelped. That brush had never hurt like THAT before! “You need to learn to relax,” she said. She continued whacking my bottom and lecturing me. Instead of the usual sting, the hairbrush was setting my bottom well and truly on fire. My irritability and frustration seemed to radiate out of me along with the heat in my backside. Finally, Janey put the hairbrush down on the bed. She slowly rubbed my bottom and back.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I sighed, and took a deep breath. “Thanks. That helped.”

“Shall we go back downstairs?”

I followed Janey downstairs, and I felt better enough that I didn’t even mind the teasing I got from Gwen and Liza about “learning to play nicely.”

Story: I Have Learned My Lessons Well

I've been thinking about this story a lot, lately. In part, it's because my wife thought Make Me Whole Again was a story from my own life. That one isn't, but this one is. I posted it to the SSS short story contest in 2003. I placed it in "edge" because it's quite edgy for me to talk about negative parts of my childhood. Things are only hinted at in this story, but I "tell" by not telling.

Parts of me kick in, wanting to say, "It wasn't that bad, there were good parts, too." And there were. But it's the not-good parts that I struggle with, and that add so much extra, unneeded confusion to my relationship.



=================
I have learned my lessons well:
Good girls don’t remember.
What they remember, they don’t tell.


It’s hard to forget things. Especially when you’re only supposed to forget some things.

“I thought I told you to fold the laundry.”

“I forgot.” My voice is small. I make myself as numb as possible, so I won’t try to protect myself. That only makes them angrier.

Chores sometimes get mixed with the things I’m supposed to forget. “Don’t tell your mother I was in here.” “Don’t let your teachers know.” “Don’t remember what I did when you were five… when you were three… when you were eight….”

Don’t remember. Don’t remember.

It’s a more important rule than don’t feel, don’t need, don’t tell.

How can I help it if the forgetting leaks out?

It’s easier this way. I cannot let them know at school what happens at home. Nothing here is bad enough for us to be taken away, and when social services did come, after… I don’t remember.

But I remember not to tell.

There are lots of ways of telling. Drawing pictures is telling, unless you’re careful to draw happy pictures, with smiling suns. Forgetting your homework is telling, fighting is telling, crying is telling… I practice being good very hard, because everything else is telling.

I become the perfect student. My teachers love me. They say how proud my parents must be. I don’t say that no matter how smart I am, nothing will make them proud of me. I’m too horrible, and I keep on remembering.

I learn that a lie can be just as good as forgetting what I can’t erase. My mother is drunk and remorseful. “I still feel guilty for when you were five and I beat you for half an hour because you lied to me.”

“I don’t remember that,” I lie.

But I do remember. I found a quarter. I remember the glint of metal between the seats of the car, fishing it out from between them. She insisted I had stolen it. I insisted I hadn’t.

I remember her rage. I see the wooden spoon. I remember her eyes, and the smoke floating up from the cigarette. “I’ll teach you to lie!” My heart pounds until… I can’t remember.

But I learned my lesson: No matter how innocent I am, it is better to accept the punishment.

I only lie when I must. “Yes, I did it.” “It’s my fault.” “I don’t remember.”

I make my mind large, to encompass the forgetting. I skirt carefully around the places I must not travel, relaxing only in the safe grounds of classrooms and story books.

I lock the memories behind thick walls. When I was ten and took too long coming home. When I was three and wouldn’t eat enough dinner. When I broke the dinner plates. The memories loom, threatening until… I don’t remember.


I have learned my lessons well.
Good girls don’t remember.
What they remember, they don’t tell.

===============

Being In Total Control of Herself

Being In Total Control of Herself

The phrase was meant to reclaim the word for which it is an acronym and make it positive. But the truth is, the acronym is a description of what happens when one is in total control of oneself for too long. I should know (and those around me probably know even better). I’m not always successful with it, but my natural mode is to be in total control of myself at all times. It’s not easy, of course. It takes constant vigilance. But I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, and most likely long before that.

I’ve been talking with my wife about how I’ve longed for disciplinary spankings for most of my life, and how that connects to the spankings I received (or didn’t receive) when I was a kid. There was a lot of spanking in our house, but I didn’t come in for much of it. I can remember, offhand, perhaps half a dozen times I was spanked or hit by someone older than I was. My siblings and my mother don’t even remember that many times. And this is just a little strange, given that people were being hit constantly.

So how was I avoiding it? Because I was in utter and total control of myself. I did not allow myself to mess up. And, what’s more, when I did make a mistake, I was pretty much certain to beat myself up over it (figuratively, not literally). So a scolding was more than enough to make me change my behavior, and I only got hit if I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—i.e., within reach of an authority figure when they blew their top. Or else, when I made mistakes at the wrong time.

Punishments (or rewards, come to consider) were nothing like consistent when I was growing up. Sometimes a little mistake (say, taking too long to find my siblings before dinner) would result in a huge eruption. And other times you could mess up pretty badly, and nothing would happen at all.

Psychologists say that random reinforcement is the most effective kind. For my siblings, this meant that the randomness of the punishments rewarded their misbehavior. For me, it just cemented that if I was perfect, absolutely responsible and reliable, I could avoid having that anger come crashing down on me. But it came from making changes in myself that are exacting a high cost, now that I’m an adult.

I still beat myself up about little mistakes.

I still strive to separate myself from any negative emotions.

I still have that filter in my brain that will not physically allow me to talk about the bad parts of growing up—at least not directly.

Even while I was growing up, I craved a consistent type of discipline. I wrote stories in which the characters got spanked, but in which it came from a loving and protective impulse from their parents. For years, I explained this to myself as a way of trying to reconcile my love of my family with a way that I could understand what they were doing. But that’s a stretch. Those stories make much better sense if I read them as a way of me trying to work out why I wanted spankings, even if I hated the way they happened in my house. In fact, when I was ten or eleven, I remember telling my older sister that it wasn’t the spankings I minded, but the way they happened. She pointed out, “You cry just the same.” And I couldn’t explain the difference to her (or to myself, really).

There is a world of difference between the disciplinary spankings I need and how I was hit as a child. When I was a kid, and someone hit me, it arose from frustration. As I’ve gotten older, I have managed at least to comprehend the unhappiness, despair, frustration, and anger that would make people need to hit something. I don’t quite get how they were able to hit small children, but I do understand the desire to hit. Hitting came from a loss of control. It was unpredictable, and it wasn’t safe. The person being hit might have been a catalyst, but it wasn’t really about us.

The thing is, either because of how I’m internally wired, or because of how I was raised, punishment works better for me than rewards. It’s probably a part of why I was hit so much less often than my siblings—because I would do anything to avoid punishment. (Well, not anything, because the only time I ever successfully lied my way out of a punishment was when I was nearly given a speeding ticket when I was 25.) You know how they say that kids prefer negative attention to no attention at all? Not true for everyone. I far preferred being ignored to punishment.

Rewards were nice, but they came at a cost. Or else they seem somehow insincere—I got a lot of positive reinforcement at school, but it really didn’t overwrite the messages I received at home. The only reason my teachers liked me, I reasoned, was that they didn’t know what I was like inside. Because if my family didn’t love me, then how on earth could anyone else care for real? What’s more, the only reason my teachers liked me was that I was so practiced at being good that I rarely slipped up in the simple environment of school. Things were so predictable at school that my success at reading my teacher’s minds was no challenge at all. I failed more often than I could bear to at home, where it counted.

I’ve been working my way through all of these issues ever since I left home. I’ve chipped away at it, but so much of me is still inclined to strive to be in total control of myself (oh, yeah, and everyone else around me). And there are times when it makes me a real bitch.

It’s tiring to always be in control. It makes me feel resentful that other people don’t take up the slack. But I can’t tell them that I need this, and I have the devil of a time accepting when help is offered. Help is a dangerous a thing.

It’s so hard to change my way of interacting with the world. More importantly in this situation, it’s nigh impossible to change my way of interacting as it affects my wife. It’s incredibly frightening to just tell her what I need, to speak honestly about how I feel.

Yet, I have started to learn that I can actually avoid a long bout of depression if I actually face the issues that are giving me feelings that I don’t want to have. I don’t want to need someone else (one wonders why I got married—well, I do have some good sense, buried somewhere in my brain!). I don’t want to acknowledge that I’m imperfect, that I make mistakes, that I need attention and nurturing. And for even more reasons than I can express, I really don’t want to acknowledge how much I need for someone safe to take some control in my life.

So now we’re grappling with what it means for her to take up some of the control in our relationship.

My wife commented yesterday about how much she loves being the passenger. She meant it to be a thank-you to me, for being there, and being in charge of that particular part of decision making in our lives. I was shocked at the resentment that burst inside me. It’s not that I don’t want to be the literal driver, because I do like doing the driving. But often, it feels like I’m always the “driver” in our relationship.

I crave someone else to take charge somewhere.

I’ve been working on understanding that my wife is that separate, real-life individual, with feelings and issues of her own. So often, not talking about things, my brain will build up this sense that it would be easy for her to just give me the spanking, easy for her to just take more charge in our lives. It’s especially hard, because in so many ways, she is very like the fantasy I had built up about my ideal partner. And then she turns out to be this human being who has needs of her own, who can’t read my mind. Our relationship turns out not to be this simple thing, where we always want exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

I was reading Pink Bottomed Girls, and Pink and Brat each made insightful posts this weekend on this very topic. What Brat wrote resonated with me because it’s so much what I’m feeling right now. Pink’s post really helped me to empathize with my wife. Pink said that there are times when

… the last thing on my mind is disciplining someone else. I can’t even discipline myself. I am feeling the need for externally compelled discipline and self -discipline, for order, for giving up control, for someone to take me over their lap and show me how much I am loved even though I haven’t done the dishes or put away the laundry, either. I do think that part of the problem with our situation is that we don’t have clearly defined roles (gender or otherwise) in our relationship; we share every responsibility with no delineations. How can I punish her for something that I could have/should have done? I procrastinate, I’m messy, I’m lazy too. How can I punish her for faults I share? And who will discipline me in return?

My wife may not want or need to be spanked, but, like Pink, she does want someone to help her get organized, to stop procrastinating, to become more consistent in doing the things that she needs to get done. She needs the knowledge that I love her unconditionally. Much of the time, I provide that for her (or I hope that I do). But when we both need it, it’s difficult for either of us to have our needs met.

In our house, we do have suprisingly well-defined roles much of the time. From the beginning, we recognized that we each were strong where the other was… less so. And most of the things that need to get done can be divided along the lines of our strengths. I’m the one who is supposed to be type-A, responsible, reliable, dependable. I’m the one who is supposed to take charge in so many of these details.

Much of the time, this is easy and natural for me. I have taken charge most of my life—I took charge of my younger siblings when I was growing up; I took charge of my own life so that I could go to college; and I have continued to take charge ever since then. Sure, there’s the side-effect that I can be very controlling. Yes, sometimes it means that I sulk when things don’t go exactly my way. It also means that I roll right over less, um, pushy personalities. But most of the time, things do get taken care of.

In some ways, I worry that my wife resents me when I need her to take control. I feel guilty, because I know that it isn’t easy for her to take charge, to tell me what to do. And it’s even harder, because I find myself resisting, even when I know that it’s exactly what I need. Something inside me struggles against easing her way. I do this with so many of the things that I need—comfort as much as spankings, encouragement as much as criticism. It’s as though I want her to prove that she cares enough to fight her way through the barbs and challenges I throw up against her. If this is hard with things that come naturally to her, how much harder must it be with something like spankings?

Tomorrow is Labor Day, one of my traditional “New Year’s Days.” It’s time for a fresh start, time for a clean slate. So I will make two resolutions. First, I will strive to be a little less of a “Being In Total Control of Herself.” And second, of course, I will strive to procrastinate less and to be in control of the things that depend on my control. We’ll see how it works out.

Procrastination or Not?

I can't decide whether this idea is yet another way I'm trying to avoid work I don't want to do (ie, writing the chapter). I was thinking that it might be a good plan to write a bibliographic essay, to make myself think in a consistent way about the historians I'm responding to in my dissertation. It would probably take a week to re-read my notes on the books I've already read, and to "gut" the books I haven't read, so that I have a sense of what their arguments are.

The benefit would be that I'd have something to refer to as I'm writing, because once I start writing, everything I know (both about writing and about the subject matter) tends to fly straight out of my head.

The downside would be that it would be entirely for my own uses, and wouldn't show my advisor that I'm actually getting any work done. And it wouldn't move me forward in the dissertation (except that, well, I might actually end up paying attention to what other people have said, and engaging with the literature).

Thoughts from other academics would be helpful. Thanks!

Piled Higher and Deeper

I can't remember where I got the link to this comic. If you make the title into an acronym, you'll know what it refers to. Yup, PhD students. Anyhow, I thought that this comic was particularly a propos for my situation. It's the one good thing about being off campus--on days when my wife is at work, there's no one to procrastinate with . Ah well.

What's for dessert?

I'm cranky this evening, although I don't quite know why. So I am coping by removing my cranky self to my study, and writing some, and reading some email, and surfing the web.

Can't remember the site that had the little link to Jane's Guide, but I was browsing through its recommendations, and guess what I found? What's Your Pleasure? Lesbian spanking stories, my very favorite! Yummm!

A clean slate II

I got my punishment for procrastination this morning.

By the time we had finished discussing my behavior, and why I wanted/needed to be punished for it, it was too late to have the punishment last night. W. suggested that when I got up, I should do my usual morning routine (i.e., read the paper and do the crossword), eat breakfast, and then do some work from nine to ten. Then I was supposed to wake her up, and I’d be punished before going back to work.

I tossed and turned all night, and then woke up insanely early, given how long it had taken me to finally fall asleep. I went for a walk, read the paper, did the crossword, and found that it was still only eight o’clock. So I allowed myself to check my email, and do a little bit of web surfing. I was even Very Good, and downloaded the temptation blocker (which didn’t work on my computer. I don’t know whether to be grateful or not.). Then I looked at the clock, and found that it was ten after nine, and I hadn’t eaten breakfast or started work. Not a great start. But I took some time to clear off my desk, and found the documents I had been working on most recently, and pulled together the articles and notes I needed to write with today. I even managed to read one of the articles. And then it was nearly ten o’clock.

I went into the bedroom to wake my sweetie—and she is especially sweet in the mornings, with her hair all tousled and her skin glowing pink. It was strange, feeling so tender to someone, yet knowing, dreading what was coming later. She woke slowly, and then her phone started ringing, first one person and then another. Half of me was glad for the delay, and the other half resented it mightily. She sent me to make breakfast for the two of us, and I took my time preparing it. We took our time eating, and W. answered several more phone calls.

Then it was time. She pulled a pillow in front of her, and told me that she didn’t think she could give me the sixty-five strokes with her hand, so I should get the “loopy toy.” I had been expecting that, but it still made me shiver. I gave it to her, pulled down my shorts, and lay down over the pillow.

“Why are you getting this spanking?” she asked. We had discussed all of this last night, but I know she wanted it fresh in my mind.

I looked at her, and back at the pillow. “Because I wasted so much time this summer.” I remembered the things she had said the night before, about how hard it is for her to work all the time and have us not be able to do more than pay the bills; about how much we need for me to be finished with the dissertation so I can get a job; about how important it is for both of us for me to simply have the thing finished, and to be successful with it. “Because I was selfish. Because I won’t be able to do as good a job now.”

“You will do a good job on this,” she said. And she wasn’t just saying that—I think she seriously meant it when she said I will finish this dissertation even if she has to threaten me through every chapter. “You have got to do this. And you will do it.”

And then the spanking started, hard and fast. Every time I twisted to the side, she pressed her hand firmly into the small of my back, to remind me to stay still. She paused, and said, “Twenty.” I took a breath, relieved that she had been keeping count, and that she wasn’t expecting me to keep track. The second twenty wasn’t quite as bad, but I was still writhing, and my breath was coming fast. The third twenty was just as hard. And then came the final five, and she really made those count. My breath shuddered through me—not quite tears, but closer than I’ve come during a spanking in years. And it was over.

I lay face down for several seconds afterwards, still shuddering. It wasn’t just that my bottom was on fire, even though it was. There was so much emotion roiling through me, so much regret for my failure to get work done, and regret that it had come to the punishment. It wasn’t that I felt bad for asking her to punish me, but that I felt bad that I had done anything to earn the punishment, and that she had to give it to me. But W. pulled me to her, and rubbed my back. She soothed me until I was breathing normally, telling me that I was good, that I was smart, that I was brave, that I would be able to do the work.

And then I actually had to go start working. While the punishment helped, I realized that I was still going to have to work on focusing. I had gotten out of the habit, had been spending a lot of time allowing myself to play solitaire, or read email, or read a book, or do nearly anything that isn’t work. When we discussed my punishment, part of what W. wanted was for me to “repay” the work I hadn’t done this summer by doing extra work until I’d made up the difference. So my goal for today was ten pages.

Boy, was it hard. W. and a friend were cleaning the rest of the apartment, and I wanted to help with that (or at least to offer suggestions). The renovators upstairs were doing something insane with drills and hammers directly above my study, but I needed access to my printer, so I couldn’t work at a café. It was hot; I didn’t know where to start; I wanted to take a walk; I wanted to do the laundry. But W. kept sending me back to the study after my breaks. And by the end of the day, I had twelve pages (when I put it on double spacing, anyways) of raw draft. Probably it will amount to three or four pages of usable writing, but it’s a start.



In the spaces between thinking about my dissertation, I’ve been reflecting a lot about punishment in real life. When I was a kid, I didn’t have to wait for spankings; if I made an adult angry, punishment came swiftly and without much discussion. I didn’t have to spend time reflecting on my behavior, and I guess it was largely assumed that I would figure out what I was done, and would “make it better” by never slipping up again.

This, on the other hand, was a punishment between adults—between equals. And there was a person on the other end of the hand that was spanking me. It was an unpleasant, difficult thing for both of us. And while the spanking was uncomfortable, if it were just the spanking, I don’t know how hard I would work to change my behaviors. It was over in five minutes, and while my bottom is still a little sore fourteen hours later, it’s not unbearable. What I want to avoid in the future is the disappointment, the frustration that W. experiences when she sees me sabotaging myself by procrastinating. I don’t want to have her go through it again. If it were just me, it would be much easier to slack off.

I’ve been surprised by one of the side effects of bringing up punishment spankings. As my fantasies turned into reality, the biggest thing I’ve had to grapple with is the fact that W. is a real person, with emotions and responses of her own. And my behavior doesn’t fall into a vacuum, where the only person I hurt is myself. We’ve talked a lot, W. and I, since I told her about the blog. Some of that is just us getting the chance to readjust to being together after weeks apart. But there’s more to it than that.

We’ve been forging our way into new ground, and it’s both scary and liberating. I’m realizing she’s more resilient than I sometimes imagine her to be, and I’m also realizing the ways that this shift in our relationship will help her (to be more assertive, to be more vocal, to talk about the things that she needs, or to tell me when I’ve upset her). It’s hard to figure out, this give and take in relationships.

Story characters, alter-egos, and why a real-life partner will never live up to a story character (and vice versa)

I wrote this several weeks ago, and never got around to posting it, but it seemed to fit with other things I’m thinking about right now, so here it is.

I really started writing stories in the fifth grade. We were supposed to do a book report, which normally would have been fine. But the teacher said we had to do a book report on a book we hadn’t read.

This posed some difficulty for me. I pointed out to my teacher that I had read every book I owned, and I had likewise read all of the books in the library at school. I proposed that, instead, I write a story of my own. After checking with the librarian, my teacher believed that I had read pretty much every fiction book in the school library, and most of the non-fiction books, too. So she let me write the story.

The battered folder with the pencilled story is packed away in a box somewhere, but I remember the main details. There was a pair of twins, to whom I gave the middle names of myself and my best friend at the time. The story starts with an awkward, derivative bit of deus ex machina, in which a “squeaky voice” out of nowhere gives the twins the “wishing power,” in which their wishes would all come true. I wrote perhaps five pages for the school assignment, and then kept at it on my own. And, of course, there were spankings in it. The story, of course, continued to be derivative—a strange combination of Edward Eager, Beverley Cleary, Carol Ryrie Brink, and who knows how many other authors. Eventually (sometime the next year) I outgrew the characters, and the story got packed away in a box, for me to bring out and read fondly every so often.

Over the next year, I dealt with life, and sixth grade, and hormones, and losing my best friend but not yet finding new friends. And I kept writing stories to find myself friends somewhere. Finally, I wrote about Jill, and something clicked. We had the same initials, for one thing. We had cute, blonde haired, blue-eyed younger sisters, for another. But there the similarities largely ended. Jill was snarky. Jill was vocal. Jill’s parents weren’t abusive. But she still got the occasional spanking. And she and her sisters got sent away to boarding school. Jill stayed with me for years. I was still occasionally writing about her in college. But eventually, I outgrew her, and the various futures I created for her, too.

I wrote other stories, and occasionally wrote other story series. There was Arynn, my foray into fanfiction, until I realized that I didn’t have the patience to learn someone else’s world when it was so much easier to just create a world of my own. There was Beth, a girl on one of the planets newly colonized by Earth. There were Beth’s various descendants, whose names I can’t even remember. It was probably a good thing I didn’t need much sleep in high school, or else something else would have gone undone!

By my third year in college, I wasn’t writing many stories. Maybe it was depression, maybe it was having a heavy writing load in my classes, maybe it was that I was remembering too many things that I didn’t want to write about, and couldn’t make up someone else’s life. Maybe it was just that I had friends, and didn’t need to fill up my loneliness with imagined people. For years, I might write papers, or grant proposals, or press releases, or annual reports, but I wasn’t writing many stories.

But then I read other people’s stories online, and started thinking about writing my own. The first of what are now the Janey and Michelle stories was actually about Janey and Jill, my original alter ego. But as I wrote the stories, I realized that the person I was writing about as “Jill” was someone else entirely. She was like me in a lot of ways, but not exactly the same. So I gave her my middle name, and she became Michelle. A little brattier than I am, perhaps a little braver, but pretty much the same. And Janey became pretty much my ideal in a partner. Warm, nurturing, intelligent, playful, just a little bit snarky. And a top.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the characters in my stories. Mostly, about the Janey and Michelle stories. In the months after I wrote the first story, I wished desperately for a partner like Janey. In many ways, the woman I’ve married is very like her. Warm, nurturing, intelligent, playful, just a little bit snarky. And even a little bit of a top. But sometimes I get frustrated, because my wife absolutely fails to read my mind. In the stories, Janey generally knows just what to do to meet Michelle’s needs. Michelle hardly ever has to say what she needs, virtually never has to ask for the things she can’t say.

Of couse, the reason Janey can read Michelle’s mind is that they are fiction. They are both inside of my head, and I’m quite sure I pass messages from one’s subconscious to the other’s, so that they don’t have to articulate those things they would rather not say.

An actual, real-life partner has a lot of advantages over the best fictional character. She’s really there when I touch her. Her spankings hurt my real-life butt. She makes real dinners I can eat, and we go on real dates where I’m out in public and everything. But she’s never going to read my mind. Her failure to do the things I want her to do, but don’t ask for, is not out of meanness, or oblivion. It’s because real people can’t actually read your mind.

So I guess that leaves me with doing some work. It leaves me with asking for the things I want, with admitting the things I need. And it requires compromise—there are things Janey would do that my wife won’t. There are things my wife wants that Janey would never ask for. In a real-life partnership, desires don’t match up perfectly, or consistently, or conveniently.

But maybe I’ll take the easy way out, and write some more Janey and Michelle stories, and give them to my wife. You know, as a subtle hint.

A clean slate

I don’t want this, and yet I’m asking for it. I guess there’s a difference between what I need and what I want. I want to be able to just do my work without needing help. I want to be perfect, capable, self-disciplined.

But I’m asking W. to take over some of that discipline, and that scares me to my core. It’s letting someone else make decisions. It’s being held accountable, and it’s getting immediate consequences for my increasingly bad habits.

The natural consequences of not doing my work are… well, vague. Who knows how well I’d write if I did it further ahead of time? Part of what stops me from working without deadlines is the fact that by procrastinating till the very last minute, I can then blame any of my failures on the fact that I didn’t have enough time, that I was working under pressure. Sure, I have potential, but who knows whether there’s anything more than potential, you know?

I do want to do this dissertation, and I know that the natural consequences of not writing are just that: that I won’t get the opportunity to write the dissertation. But that’s not really real for me. It’s something vague, off in the future. I would be incredibly disappointed, but I can’t make myself believe that it will really happen.

And so I asked W. to help me, so that I will have some more believable consequences. God, I don’t want to go through with it. After yesterday, I (mostly) believe her when she says that if I get a punishment spanking, it will NOT be a fun experience.

When I imagine spankings, there’s still an element of fun from my point of view. Even when the characters in my stories don’t want them, well, it’s not my butt on the line. I don’t have to actually experience it. It’s all in my head. But an actual punishment isn’t fun, not at all. And I, an actual person, have to go through it.

Why did I ask her for this? Well, because of all of the usual reasons—I want, need, crave the structure. I need to let go of my guilt; that guilt over my procrastination ironically just drives me to procrastinate further. And why did I ask her to punish me for my procrastination this summer, which she is just as happy to forgive me for? Because I need a clean slate.

We had discussed me setting clear goals for this week, and receiving consequences if I didn’t meet them. And a big part of me is afraid that I will not meet the goals, not because I’m incapable of doing so, but because I will be testing to see what the consequences will be. So I guess I asked for the punishment in part because I would rather get a spanking and then do my work than not do my work and then get a spanking.

But, oh, it’s not a happy thought. Because even though I want the result of the spanking, I really and truly do not want the spanking itself.



She asked me how we can make this spanking relevant, and this next part is my answer, so far as I have one right now:

There were eight weeks of this summer. One and a half of them don’t count, because I was sick. And I’ll also give myself a freebie for the week that I was at camp with W. and her family, and for the two days when I was picking her up from camp. And I’ll even give myself a free week for the time I was dealing with my brother leaving.

That leaves four weeks. A reasonable workday for me, when I’m making myself focus and really using my brain, is about four hours. And given a five-day work week (I work better when I take time off every week), that means twenty hours a week, or eighty hours.

And on top of that, I know perfectly well that even if I can’t concentrate or do other work, it’s still useful to spend fifteen minutes a day just writing off of the top of my head, getting that day’s thoughts down on paper. I don’t need the computer to do that, and I don’t need a very clear head. I just need discipline. So that’s fifteen minutes times ten days, if I exclude the week and a half that I really was way too sick to do any work (and I tried to work for two days at the beginning of that—I was just too sick to manage it). Two and a half more hours.

So the total number of hours I should have worked adds up to 82 ½.

To my credit, I did have one week in there where I was working pretty well. In that week, I worked for three and a half hours on Monday, two on Tuesday, five on Wednesday, and seven on Thursday. That’s a total of seventeen and a half hours. So I pretty much wasted 65 hours that I could have, and should have, been working this summer.

So I guess a relevant spanking would include paying up for those hours I wasted. I think that if I continue in my procrastinating ways (which, of course, I’m not going to do!), then it might be reasonable to also restrict my access to solitaire and blogs and email. But right now, I don’t think that’s necessary.

Let the Punishment Fit the Crime

So yesterday, I had my punishment for breaking our no-masturbation deal this summer. My wife has been reading my blog, and the blogs I’ve linked to, and the blogs those people have linked to, and a bunch of other sites I hadn’t even heard of. We talked a lot last week about punishment in general, and why I want it, and how or whether it could work in our relationship. Silly me, though, I didn’t connect all of that to my upcoming punishment.

My wife may have been reading other people’s blogs, but she came up with her devilish punishment all on her own.

She called me from the grocery store, and told me to be waiting for her in the bedroom when she got home. When she came in, she sat on the bed next to me, and asked me what day I had broken our deal. We checked my letter with the confession in it, and determined that it was two weeks after I dropped her off at camp. So she told me I was going to have to masturbate one hour for each of the weeks she was at camp after I broke the deal. Five hours!

I tried to bargain—I had been with her for one of those weeks, and picked her up to come home halfway through the last week, so three and a half hours would be more like it. And also, the last two weeks shouldn’t have counted at all anyways, since we had called off the deal. She considered my arguments, and said we could check in after four hours.

I guess I’m a little arrogant—I thought it wouldn’t be too bad of a punishment. She started by making me read my letter of confession to her. I was touching myself, but not, well, seriously—enough so that it was clear I was masturbating, but not so much that I was going to come. Because I know myself, and continuing to masturbate after I’ve come gets to be rather difficult. So I was pacing myself. I got away with this for an hour and a half, but even without coming, I knew by then that it was going to be really, really hard.

She made tapas for lunch, and instructed me to eat one-handed. And then she raised her eyebrow, and pointed out that I wasn’t being “goal-oriented” enough. When I slowed down after coming, she told me she was going to keep track of all of the minutes when I wasn’t coming. And then she went back to surfing the web, on her laptop, next to me on the bed.

I was touching myself, but it wasn’t interactive in the least. By the end of two hours, I was completely miserable—my cunt hurt, my arms were sore, my nipples were swollen. I got rather whiny (not intentionally—it just sometimes happens). But she held firm. And she pulled out a butt plug, and lubed it with (evil woman!) KY Warming Gel. {{Shudder}} They may *say* it loses its effect after fifteen minutes or so, but I noticed that it was rather warm back there for a good forty-five minutes.

By the end of three hours, I wanted nothing more than for the punishment to be over. I squirmed, I sobbed, I begged… nothing. She was holding firm. I tried to weasel my way out of things by slowing down, only for her to look up from the computer and start counting off the minutes that I wasn’t coming.

As I went through it, I started to think about how she had felt, that I had broken our deal by cheating, rather than by talking to her about it. All of a sudden, my choice seemed less reasonable, and she seemed less unreasonable. I agreed to the deal, and even if I thought it was just a game, I realized that I should have respected her enough to discuss it, instead of cheating.

The introspection didn’t mean that I wasn’t more than ready for the punishment to be over at the end of the fourth hour. But when we checked in, I don’t know what she saw, but whatever it was made her decide I hadn’t been punished enough. I had to keep going. I was so sore that it took all of my creativity to figure out a way to touch myself that wasn’t thoroughly painful. I could barely stand to come again, but she kept ticking off the minutes when I wasn’t coming.

Finally, finally, I thought it was over. She ran a bath, and led me into the bathroom. I winced as I got into the tub, because the water was brushing against my sore, swollen cunt. And then she reminded me that I had fifteen minutes left. I whimpered. It seemed impossible. I could not imagine forcing myself to go on for fifteen minutes more.

Then she gave me an out. Kind of. She held up one of the loopy toys, and said I could do the final fifteen minutes, or get thirty strokes. It was not an easy choice—especially because I had been sitting in a tub of warm water, which meant my bottom was especially tender. But I went for the thirty strokes, because at least then I wouldn’t have to be forcing myself to do it.

She made me turn over, and kneel in the tub. She proved that she’s not completely evil by taking her time between the strokes, so I could catch my breath and not absolutely fly out of the tub. But she also made me control myself, and not yelp so loudly that the neighbors would hear me. After the second or third time I squealed, she told me I would earn two penalty strokes if I did it again. I made it to twenty before I yelped again… and the count went down to eighteen. I know she was going easy, and a lot of the strokes were just token swats. Even the few where she came down full force were enough to cause a good deal of pain. Finally, it was over. She washed me tenderly, and then joined me in the tub. Everything was forgiven.

Afterwards, we spent a long time processing about our experience. I was surprised at my response to it, and just a little scared. Why? Because it did exactly what I had hoped it would do. Before the punishment, I hadn’t even noticed the guilt I had for breaking the deal by cheating; but afterwards, it was like a spot in my chest stopped hurting. There’s no better explanation. I had been guilty, but once I was punished, I wasn’t guilty anymore. And it’s not like I just chose not to feel guilty, because that would mean repeating the behavior. At least right now, there is no way I would cheat on a deal like that one again.

But why is that scary? Because it’s one thing to imagine being punished for my shortcomings, and it’s something else entirely to realize that it would work in real life. I didn’t really have much trouble integrating play spankings into my life, because they seem more, well, normal. It’s not strange to be a little kinky in bed, you know? But it says something entirely different about me, and about the relationship if I get a spanking for “real” things, especially if that spanking has nothing to do with sex.

And this punishment was really just a practice—she and I both wanted to see what it would be like, and wanted to see whether we would carry it through to the end. She chose something that, in the end, wasn’t really that important. If it hadn’t worked, we wouldn’t have lost much.

But now I wonder where things are going to go from here.

Temptation Blocker?

Someone on an email list I read posted a link to this site. It bills itself as a "temptation blocker," basically restricting your access to programs for a specified period of time. I haven't tried it, because, well... ack! How on earth could I work without checking my email, reading blogs, playing solitaire, surfing the web....? {{Shudder}}

My Sweetie is Back!

My sweetie is back home! Well, we’ve been home together since late Sunday night, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to post about it.

Giving in to the inevitability of it, I told her about this blog several days before I was supposed to go pick her up from camp. I wavered a lot about how I felt about her reading it, but I figured I was going to spill the beans eventually, so I told her about it. But since I was (and am) nervous about how she will react to the things I wrote, I said perhaps she shouldn’t mention to me whether or not she had read it.

I got to her camp pretty late Wednesday night. (I had been meaning to surprise her, but rotten liar that I am, when she called as I was walking out the door, I spilled the beans on that, too.) We had a day to rest, and then made the return drive to New York for a friend’s wedding.

I was cranky by the time we made it to the hotel where the friend was staying—it was hot, our car has no air conditioning, we had to sit in traffic, and then right near the end of the drive, the directions I had failed to send us where we actually needed to go. I was NOT in the mood to socialize. We checked into our room, I spent a bit of time vegging out, and I was feeling a little better.

Before I joined the crowd to discuss dinner, she rummaged through our toybag and brought out one of our “loopy toys.” I made these myself with loops of telephone cord from the dollar store, with handles made out of duct tape and fabric, wrapped tightly. The first tests proved that they are virtually silent and don’t do any permanent damage (that is, don’t bruise or break the skin). And my sweetie likes them because she can have me begging for mercy with just one or two quick swipes. Those things HURT. And I made more than one of them. After I had felt the first one! What on earth was I thinking?!

She had me bend over the bed, bare my backside, and gave me “just two.” We walked down the hall to the brides’ room, and I was just as happy to stand while we discussed dinner. They decided to order in, my wife followed me back to our room to collect our set of menus… and she gave me two more. She met her goal with just four strokes—I knew she was paying attention to my needs, and I behaved for the evening.

The next morning, she was rummaging through the toy bag when I went to take my shower. Midway through, she came in and told me I was getting a spanking when the shower was over. I had seen the evil toy, and I was just a little nervous. I took as long as I could, but there is only so long I can spend in a shower, so I finally had to get out. She had me lean over, and gave me a thorough spanking.

We didn’t have time for more spanking the rest of the weekend, what with having the wedding festivities to attend, but she warned me that I would be spending the following Saturday getting my punishment for breaking our deal about not masturbating. I knew the punishment wasn’t going to be a spanking, but I didn’t know anything else about it.

We’ve had a week of getting used to being together again. Well, that, and shoveling out the mess of the house (I may be the more proficient housekeeper, but it’s been a difficult summer, so things had gotten out of hand). I asked her on Tuesday whether she had read the blog yet, and of course she had. We’ve spent time talking about what I’ve written, and I think we’re communicating well about it. More in a later post about that.

I need this t-shirt!

The guy at the booth next to us in the restaurant on Sunday was wearing a t-shirt that said "My inner child needs a good spanking."

I need that shirt, although I admit I probably wouldn't wear it in public.

A quick online search found several sources, but I'm not putting links since I have no experience with any of the companies.

Breathing in and breathing out

I just realized that I've never gotten around to posting about the song that gave this blog its name (what? you think I can come up with a title entirely on my own?! Ha!).

The Asylum Street Spankers have a wonderfully sultry song called "Breathin'." It's steamy, sexy, good for slow dancing, and makes me think happily of my wife. Each verse of the song ends with the statement "You know that loving you is just like breathing in and breathing out."

Also, it's a good reminder for me to breathe both in and out--I've got some trouble remembering to do this.

If you haven't heard of them, definitely check out the Asylum Street Spankers. Any group that could sing both "Breathin'" and "If You Love Me, You'll Sleep on the Wet Spot" gets my vote.

Cryptoquizzes

I like to do word puzzles—they’re a fun way to pass the time when I’m sitting around waiting for something, and they’re a good way to wind down before I go to sleep. They’re also a prime procrastination activity.

And in the interest of helping out fellow procrastinators who are also spankos, I thought I’d offer a few “Cryptoquizzes.” (Also known as “Crypto-clans” and other things, depending on the brand of puzzle magazine you bought) These are lists of words, for which all of the words in the list use the same code. For instance, G might stand for M in all of the words in a particular list. The code is different for each set of words, of course!

Spanking Implements

JKLLDP
EPDY
IKZP
NKSOEOMAN
CVVLPZ AJVVZ
NKZL
ACSYIN
AYOKJ

Adjectives

WQKT WGZZGDTR
LZKOHTR
KTR IGZ
KTHTFZQFZ
WKQZZM
GCTK ZIT AFTT
KTUKTZYXS
HXFOLITR

Things People Say

YCHG TBCQ
HTK JT APQG!
NXII GTMH VTXQ NPHKJ
TXFA!
JKPV OH NTJOKOTH
KAPHU VTX DPV O APBC PHTKACQ?
FTXHK KAC JKQTUCJ
APQGCQ NICPJC!

Note: the code for the first set was random, but I used a certain logic for the second two sets. Extra points to those who can figure out how I decided to switch the letters!

I’ll give y’all a while to figure out the answers, and then I’ll post the solution.

Asking for it

It seems like it should be so simple. I was recently talking to my wife, and said I wished there were some behavior we could agree on that didn’t annoy her, but which I could use to let her know I needed a spanking. “What about asking nicely for a spanking?” she asked, quite reasonably.

But it’s not that simple. How can I ask for something that I know pushes her comfort zones? Because the times I want to ask nonverbally for a spanking, it’s because I need to submit, I need someone else to take charge of my life, to tell me what to do, to order me to bend over, and then to spank me hard, to make me feel those mixed feelings of regret and relief.

Sometimes I miss those courageous days of our early relationship, when I had less to lose, so I was more willing to take risks. I told her about my interest in spanking very early on. It seemed worth it—if she wasn’t interested, if she found it too disturbing, or too kinky, well, we hadn’t known each other for long. Our lives weren’t twined together, and I hadn’t seen how very well we fit.

The longer we are together, the harder it is to change the terms of the relationship. While I may have assured her, early on, that I just liked spanking as play, or as foreplay, I have found something very different in my actual desires. But I know her now; I love her with all of my heart. I’m almost willing to live without the spankings I need, because I cannot bear the thought of losing her.

My subconscious doesn’t completely agree with me, though. I find myself getting resentful at how I expect her to respond, or at how she does respond to my testing of the waters. It’s like she has something I need, she isn’t using it, and she refuses to share. My intellect is bewildered—I know perfectly well that she isn’t psychic. She cannot read my mind, she cannot know the things I don’t say to her.

And I can understand her discomfort. It is one thing to do something she knows brings me pleasure. And she has moved far beyond those early, tentative spankings. She takes pleasure in my response, and she has even made some moves at pushing me, at making me almost wish the spanking were over. She tries, but something is missing.

And what is it that I want? It’s not that I don’t ever want our playful, sexy spankings. Spanking is very much a turn-on for me. It gets me wet, it makes me happy, it’s fun. But, oh, how I need to be made to submit.

In most of my life, I am the one in control. It’s a side effect of being the type-A, future-focused, intellect-driven side of this partnership. My wife is excellent at living in the present, at dealing with those pesky emotions, at knowing how to take time to nurture herself—and me. Most of the time, I have to struggle not to take charge so much that she doesn’t get her own needs met. There are times when I know I push to get my own way, solely because I don’t recognize that there are other ways to do things.

The problem is, it isn’t good for me to always be in charge. It makes me feel stressed out, overwhelmed, angry, resentful. And while I have learned how to compromise, how to be just a smidgen less tied to always being the one in charge, it’s hard work for me. And I still feel overwhelmed, angry, and resentful, because there isn’t a point in my life where I don’t have to be in control of myself, where I don’t have to gauge each of my behaviors and the reactions they will provoke. There isn’t a point in my life where I am absolutely forced to focus on the present, and stop thinking about all of the other things I worry about.

But it’s not just about not being in control. I have spent my life expecting perfection from myself. I try to never, ever make even the slightest slip or mistake. I find it hard to even watch a movie or read a book where a fictional person is making mistakes. That’s how much of a perfectionist I am. After I have made a mistake, or, heaven forbid, actually intentionally done something wrong, my brain automatically kicks in with some serious self-punishment. Depending on how serious the mistake is, I can beat myself up about it for years.

Part of what I want is someone else to take over that punishment. In my fantasy world, at least, I might be able to let go of some of the needless guilt for things like forgetting to pay the phone bill or not keeping the house clean. In my fantasy world, perhaps there could be a point when there are not constant voices in the back of my head berating me for my mistakes and reminding me to be on guard to never, ever make another mistake.

I also crave external structure. I have wanted someone else to keep me from procrastinating since I was an adolescent. I long for that structure, but have never been able to create it for myself, at least not believably. And the older I get, and the more I live with fibromyalgia, the less able I am to make up for it as I have made up for it all my life—pushing myself, not just to try to work before a deadline, but to meet the deadline when it is staring me in the face.

Back to that fantasy world: I want someone to give me a schedule. More than that, I want someone to force me to keep to that schedule. Not in an unreasonable way, but in a way that will hold me accountable without the consequences being dire. In the real world, if I don’t get my work done, I will lose the chance to finish my Ph.D. I can’t cope with those consequences, so at some levels, I pretend they aren’t there. I mean, I can beat myself up about the failure for the rest of my life, once I’ve failed. Heck, I’ve already started beating myself up about the procrastination, and the loss of goodwill I’m sure it’s already generated from my advisors. Why not add complete failure to the mix?

But then I pause and think about my wife as an actual person, and not as a character in a story I’m writing about my life. One of the things I love best about her is that she is so supportive and loving. And here I am asking her to do something that looks suspiciously like abuse, longing for her to give me no choice, wishing that she would spank me hard enough that I can’t sit comfortably for days.

This is a woman who loves me, who hates to see me in pain. For days and months at a time, she has to watch my face strained with the aches and pains of fibromyalgia. Pretty much my whole body hurts, sometimes so much that I can barely think. She would do almost anything if it could mean that I wasn’t hurting so much.

And what do I want? I want her to make me hurt even more, in one of the few parts of my body that isn’t in constant pain. From her side, I guess it doesn’t make a lot of sense. To her, pain is pain, and she doesn’t really feel the difference between “good pain” and “bad pain.” But even if it felt exactly the same (which it doesn’t) the pain of a spanking has a concrete beginning, middle, and end. It goes away.

I get angry with myself for wanting her to do this. Why can’t her amazing love and support be enough? And then I ask myself whether I am doing enough for her—am I stretching my own boundaries and comfort zones, and giving to her as much as she gives to me? Have I done enough for her to deserve to ask her to do this for me?

Maybe I’m selling her short. Perhaps if I took the chance, and explained what I need, and why, she would be willing. Part of me is scared that this is true: much as I long for someone else to take charge, it also scares the shit out of me. If she were taking charge, it would mean I wasn’t in total control, and it’s really hard to imagine what that would be like. I’m afraid I would resent it, struggle against it, resist it. And that would hardly be fair to her, would it?

Story: Make Me Whole Again

I'm so glad people seem to have found my blog. Greetings, especially to those of you I know from SSS.

Because Natty mentioned it, I thought I'd post a story I wrote several years ago, before I met my wife. As I noted when I posted it to SSS, even though I wrote it before I met her, we've had several of the scenes work out almost exactly the same in real life. However, the story is fiction. Warning: it has some flashback scenes of abuse.



Make Me Whole Again
=================

"Hey, you," Janey said fondly, and kissed the top of my head. "Can I watch with you?" She sat down on the arm of the chair. "We could cuddle on the couch while we watch," she suggested.

"Because cuddling fits in so well with Tales from the Crypt," I laughed, but I got up to sit next to her. I lay my head on her shoulder, and wished… I don't quite know what I wished for, but I wished I felt different. It had been my day for therapy, and I really hate going to therapy. It stirs up all kinds of things I'd rather not think about. And it was worse than usual today.

Janey pulled loose several locks of my hair, and twisted them around her fingers. We snuggled, not saying anything, even during the commercials. When the show was over, Janey picked up the remote, and hit mute. I continued to stare at the TV screen.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" I asked evasively.

Janey sighed. "Did you think I forgot this was therapy day? You're really spaced out. Do you want to talk?"

"I'm fine."

"I know you're fine. Do you want to talk."

I snuggled into her shoulder. I sighed. "It's. it just stirs things up. I'd really rather not talk."

Janey nodded. We cuddled some more, while watching television without any sound. Then Janey turned the t.v. off. She walked towards the kitchen. "I'm making tea. What kind do you want?"

"Headache tea," I sighed, knowing she wouldn't let me just have none at all. I sat at one of the stools in the kitchen, and watched her making a pot of tea. We sat in silence as it steeped, and then as we drank our tea. Janey looked worried, but she gave me space.

When we went to bed, she rubbed my back, still not saying anything. I closed my eyes.


**************
SMACK!! And then the sound of the belt being put down on the floor. I shuddered, hating the next part even more. "Stand up," my stepfather ordered..
**************

I shuddered, and opened my eyes. Janey's hand paused. "Are you okay."

"Um-hm." My voice was muffled. I really didn't want to talk. I wanted to blank out the sounds and the voices.

"Here. Why don't I read you a story?"

I rolled over enough to look at Janey. "Read me a story?!"

"Sure. I'll keep reading, and we'll see if we can't get you to sleep without any nightmares. It worked for me when I was little." She stood and looked through the bookshelf. "How about. oh, this is a good one. How about Spindle's End?"

I nodded, since I've always wanted to hear that book read out loud.

"The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like slightly sticky plaster-dust," Janey began. I snuggled into bed, listening to the words of the story, and I fell asleep before the mean fairy even showed up at the christening.

**************
"Mommy! Mommy! It's the monster again!" A hand covered my mouth, a dark voice muttered, "Shut up! If she heard, you're going to get it tomorrow!"

I lay silent, and the sounds began again. It hurt..
**************

"Michelle. Sweetie, wake up, it's a bad dream, honey." Janey's hand was rubbing my back again. I sat up, blinking my eyes until I could see the clock. 3 in the morning. I sighed.

"I'm sorry, Janey. Go back to sleep. I'll be fine."

"It's not a problem, Michelle. Do you want to talk?"

"It was just a dream. I'll be fine."

Janey turned on the light. "Here, I'll read some more to you. Don't close your eyes until you've heard some more of the story. You don't have to think. I'll keep reading until I'm sure you're asleep, okay?" I blinked back tears, and nodded. It felt so stupid. When I was little, I could keep myself from having nightmares. But lately, it's been every single night. I can't make them go away. They even float up when I think I'm awake. But I drifted off to the sound of Janey's voice, and if I had any more dreams, they didn't wake me.


The next day was better. I was able to focus on my classes, and I didn't jump every time I heard a sound behind me. By Friday night, I actually felt like myself again. I called Janey to invite her over for dinner. Her housemate answered the phone. "Hi, Sam. Is Janey there? I wanted to know if she wants to come over for dinner?"

I heard Sam calling to Janey, but couldn't quite hear what she said. Janey got on the phone. "At your house, eh? Will I be allowed to bring anything, or will you insist on being a total kitchen top?"

"I know you are, but what am I?" I asked, in my brattiest tone.

"You're clearly feeling better. Do you need anything from the store?"

"You can bring dessert," I offered generously. "Ben and Jerry's," I added, then thought for a second about what I was cooking. "Bring that Turtle kind, with the nuts, if they have it. Or else Chocolate Fudge Brownie."

"Leaving me a lot of room for variation, aren't you? You are so bossy."

"Rubber, glue." I pointed out. "Okay, see ya in a bit."

"Uhm-hm. Love you."

"Love ya too."


After dinner, we were snuggling in front of the television, watching a re-run of Star Trek the Next Generation and eating ice cream. It was another of the ones showing off Riker's heterosexual prowess, so after I was tired of eating ice cream, I whined, "This is boooorrrriinng." Janey just raised her eyebrow, since I'm the one who picked the show in the first place.

I commented, "You know, Liza's spending the weekend at her girlfriend's, and Gwen's out dancing until who knows when.."

"So?" Janey said lazily, raising an eyebrow.

"So we have the house to ourselves. Let's get rid of this ice cream, and go up to my room." Janey held out her hand for my spoon, and took the ice cream to the freezer. She put the spoons in the sink, and headed upstairs.

I let her go up the stairs ahead of me, and kept trying to peek under her skirt on the way up. I don't know why, but it amused me a lot to do that.

"Stop that," she said, irritably. "I'm gonna trip if you're not careful."

"No you're not," I argued, just for the sake of argument.

"Good grief, you're in a bratty mood."

"Maybe you should do something about that," I challenged.

"Perhaps I should," she said, and shut the bedroom door. She sat down on the bed, with her back to the wall. I lay myself across her thighs, in case she hadn't gotten the right hint.

Spank. Spank. Smack. Her hand was gentle, but she paused to rub, in case there might be any sting. Smack. Smack! Spank. Rub. Smack! Smack! Rub.

"Want to take off your jeans? This can be more effective." she suggested.

I scrambled out of my jeans and lay back down. Smack. Smack! Spank. Smack! Her hand gently caressed my thigh. She paused in question, and then slowly rubbed between my legs. It felt sweet and good.

All of a sudden, I started crying. Janey pulled her hand away, quickly, and then slowly rubbed my back. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," I sobbed, "It's just.." But years of training kept the words from slipping past my lips. Even though I knew better, deep down inside, I still believed that my stepfather would appear to hurt me if I ever told. I had to stay safe.

Janey kept rubbing my back. "Is it about your stepfather?"

I nodded. She kept rubbing. Finally, I thought of what I could manage to say. "Janey, I like when you spank me. It's exactly the opposite of…" that part, I couldn't say. "Can you keep doing like you were doing, before I started to cry? It felt so good."

"But.." Janey sounded really uncomfortable.

"No, really. I'll tell you to stop if I need you to. You always say it isn't bad to cry," I added. I turned to face her, blinking through the tears. "Really. It's the good kind of crying, where you'll feel better after. And I liked the way it felt, to have a gentle spanking, and good touching." It was much easier to talk about what I wanted right now, rather than the things I'd had before, that I hadn't wanted. Janey slowly nodded, and turned me around.

Spank. Rub. Spank. Smack. Smack! Smack. "You are such a good person," she said. Spank. Rub. Smack! "And you're so beautiful." Smack. Spank. Spank. Smack! Rub. "I love you so very much." I continued to cry, and she continued to gently spank me and caress me.


Janey sat at one of the stools the next morning, watching me chop potatoes for breakfast. As I tossed them in the spices, she asked, "How are you?"

"Don't social work me," I said irritably.

"How could I?" she asked, reasonably, "I'm not a social worker."

I put the potatoes on a cookie sheet, and put it in the oven. I leaned against the counter. "Omelettes, or scrambled eggs?"

"Omelettes, I think," she answered. "And how are you?"

The woman is nothing, if not persistent. "I'm fine. Really." I cracked several eggs into a bowl. "Here, grate this cheese." She raised an affectionate eyebrow, but did as I said.

I watched the butter melt in the pan. As I swirled it, I turned to look at her. "I have an idea. Why don't we get more flexible safe words?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, like if I could use one word to say, 'keep going,' and another to say stop."

Janey looked amused. "What, and one to say, 'slow down.'"

"Yeah. Like traffic signals. How about red light, green light, yellow
light?"

"It's a thought."



Things seemed to be settling down, but then, the next Wednesday, it was the same as ever before. Every time I closed my eyes all day after therapy, the memories came rushing back. It made no sense. I was tired of it.

Janey watched me as we ate dinner. "Do you want to talk?"

"Not really."

She looked like she wanted to say something, but she gave me space.

When it got to be bedtime, I said, "Maybe I should sleep at home. I'll probably be having nightmares again."

"Why should you go home? Who'd read stories to you, so you can sleep?"

**************
SMACK!! SMACK!! SMACK!!! "I told you not to say anything!" SMACK!
"Why were you talking to your teacher?" SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

"But I didn't SAY anything!" The tears ran down my face. "I promise, I didn't!"
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! "Don't lie to me! She called the house today!" SMACK! SMACK!! SMACK!! SMACK!! SMACK!!!

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" SMACK! SMACK! "I promise!! I didn't say ANYthing! Maybe she just wanted to talk!"

He put the belt on the floor. I took a deep breath. It was over. He sat down. I closed my eyes. It was only beginning.
**************


"Michelle! It's a dream!" Janey shook me awake. She rubbed my back. "Do you want a story?" The light was already on.

"Yes, please," I sighed.

She handed me a mug. "Here's the rest of your tea. Drink some, it's still warm."

"I HATE therapy," I said.

"No you don't," she replied. "You hate what you remember." She opened the book, and began the next chapter.



I felt better than I'd expected the next day. When Janey went upstairs to take a bath before bed, I joined her, and events followed the natural progression.

We cuddled in bed, warm and damp. Janey stroked my back, and then her hand shifted slowly down my back, and reached between my thighs. I flinched. "Yellow light," I whispered. Her hand paused.

I took a deep breath. "Okay. It's fine." She continued.

I felt a knot of tension release, and tears started to fall. Janey stopped.

"Green light," I said, and turned to face her. She looked into my eyes, and continued.

I kept crying, but I had never felt so safe, or so happy.

My birthday this year

This year, for the first time since I met my wife, I didn’t get a birthday spanking.

She has been working away from home, and even though I visited the week before my birthday, we had neither time nor privacy (the first because I was visiting along with her family, and the second because her room is only marginally partitioned from the other staff rooms).

It’s been hard, because I’ve had a stressful summer, and being spanked is one of the few ways that I’m able to let go of some of the stress. And my birthday spankings are usually very, very good stress relievers.

Last year and the year before, my birthday conveniently fell the day after play parties, so we were able to go somewhere we could make just as much noise as we wanted, without worrying about disturbing the neighbors or my brother. I remember those spankings so clearly—the anticipation, the excitement. By the time midnight—and my actual birthday—rolled around, my bottom was already sore and welted. The official birthday spanking was all the more noticeable because it came on top of a thoroughly warmed bottom. And then we came home and made love for hours. The freedom to stay up late almost makes up for having a birthday in the middle of the hot, sticky, humid summer.

I know she pushes her own boundaries with my birthday spankings. She wasn’t into spankings when we met, and I think she’s still a bit uncomfortable with the idea of spanking me. It’s kind of funny to me, because she has no problem at all with some very dominant behaviors—grabbing my hair, biting my nipples, taking my ass, giving that tug on my belt loop to remind me that I am HERS and hers alone. And oh, how she loves fisting me, loves the power of it, loves the sense of having me entirely under her control, loves that I open myself to her and submit completely to her hand.

But the spanking is more difficult. Perhaps it’s because all of the rest of it is very clearly about sex, and really, only about sex. But there’s that other level to the spankings. She is fine when they are primarily sensual, when she reddens my ass just enough to get it sensitive, and then we have sex, and she can feel exactly how much I like to be spanked. For my birthday, though, she goes beyond that. She spanks hard enough to leave marks. She spanks fast enough that I struggle. If hard spankings were more regular, I would probably ask for the birthday spankings to end earlier. But I hold out as long as I can, trying to save up enough to last until my next birthday.

Four years into our relationship, we are still building trust. She is still struggling to learn that I do know my limits, that I will tell her to slow down if I need her to, tell her to stop, let her know if she is hurting me in a bad way. And I am still struggling to understand for myself what it is that I need, so that I can communicate to her why I crave this and not something less troubling.

So I’m sitting here on my unspanked bottom, hoping and wishing that I will get my birthday spankings when she comes home.