First Party: Chapter 1

Extended Title: Chapter 1: In which I travel to my first spanking party, arrive, meet friends, settle in and get beaten with a sjambok.

Well, it's been a full week since I last posted. Due to the circumstances, I don't feel all that guilty about it.

On Thursday, I got sent home from work because I was coughing too much. This didn't exactly bode well for a girl who was supposed to be heading to a cabin in the woods the next day for a spanking party, so I spent the majority of the day and early evening resting. Eventually, Malignus woke me up because I had procrastinated doing anything involving packing for the trip and we were leaving in less than twelve hours (which I cannot say he was overjoyed about). I hustled through the stuff that needed doing, then we went back to sleep for a few hours before we left. Unfortunately, I was too excited to sleep. This came back to haunt me later.

Eventually, Malignus woke up, a few other things happened and we hit the road. The drive there was not a lot of fun. I was tired and nervous and a bit cranky, and when it was my turn to drive, I had difficulty with the fact that I was driving stick, which is something that I've never gotten particularly good at. We eventually arrived in the town where the cabin was located, but had trouble finding the cabin itself. We ended up in an old graveyard at one point, which didn't help to calm me down at all.

Finally, we arrived. I was incredibly, incredibly nervous. My hands were shaking. I walked in the doorway to see an extraordinary amount of alcohol on the kitchen counter, two scenes in progress and a lot of new faces standing around talking. In reality, none of that stuff is all that scary. At the moment, I was petrified. Pretty much all that I could get to come out of my mouth was "Yes, Sir" and "No, Sir" to Malignus and "Hi" to everyone else. I went into our bedroom to discover that MissbehavinMegan, who organized the party, had gotten me a present:

 Question: was the primary purpose of obtaining this gift for me to irritate Malignus? 
Answer: probably, yes. But I benefit from his unhappiness! 


When I first got to the cabin, Megan was off doing something else, but once I finished unpacking our stuff and she finished doing that, I got a drink into my system and had some "alone time" ( ^_~) with her, and suddenly, I felt perfectly at home and friendly. The next few hours were a fun-filled blur. ellee and her husband YoggSothoth were delayed in their arrival, and I had tried to stay up and wait for them, but in the end, I asked Malignus to wake me up when they arrived. That happened around three AM, and I instantly regained my spunk when I saw them. I'm pretty sure that the moment we met was the moment that ellee and I became best friends forever. She also had a present for me, which filled me with mass amounts of glee:

We had lots of hugging and squeeing, and then we both got bedtime spankings and went to our respective rooms to sleep.

All in all, despite being tiring and scary, it was a great day. I knew that the party was off to a very good start indeed!

The next morning, I woke up and followed the smell of bacon to the kitchen. I guess a few other girls woke up earlier than I did and cooked. The only cooking I did during the entire trip was sandwich making, which I was strangely okay with. Once in a while, I guess a break can be nice. Right after breakfast, Malignus and Megan were taking a run to the nearby town to get a few things from the store that had been used up already or forgotten, and I came along. I said that this was because I needed to make sure that they got the right kind of butter for me, but my motivation could be more plainly described with the words "YoggSothoth mentioned to Malignus that they should pick up some capsaicin because we 'forgot' ours and I wanted to do everything in my power to ensure that this pattern of 'forgetting' continued." You'll be happy to hear that I was successful in my mission.

After I saved everyone's life by ensuring this, I got myself into what one might call a "situation."
One of the implements that was available for use at this party was a sjambok. I'm scared of those. Double, triple scared. I'm especially scared because I've seen photos and read stories about them. Because I have absolutely no sense of self preservation whatsoever and I love to actively seek out the things that terrify me to further my submission/satisfy my curiosity, I asked Malignus to hit me with it. Remember that there have been no stories of me being spanked yet this day. This was the way that I started my play for the day. For being such a smart girl, I can be pretty stupid sometimes.

The first thing I can tell you about sjamboks: they are big. They are really long and they are super thick. They are flexible. It was kind of like my most feared cane (the nylon one) on an overdose of PCP.

I remember when I thought that this was a really big implement:

Spoon!

Here's that spoon next to the cricket bat (which you will hear tales of later) and the sjambok.

The tape measure is extended to 44 inches. This photo belongs to Malignus. The bat belongs to TNSpanker. The sjambok belongs to Latte (and in hell!) 

After I asked to be beaten with this horrible thing, Malignus marched me down to our bedroom with a horrible, sadistic grin on his face. He got far too much enjoyment just from holding the sjambok. His face was positively lit up with glee. He had me bare my bottom and lay over pillows and then, with very little warning (let alone warming up!) he hit me with it.

How can I describe it? Was it the worst thing I'd ever been hit with? Yes. By a lot? Yes. Was I just psyching myself up into believing that? I don't know. I've certainly had things which looked worse afterwards. The individual weals were thicker than anything I've ever had before, though, rather raised, and were hard underneath. He gave me five (I believe) and then told me he was doing the last one two handed. I was crying and having a hard time holding still, so I asked for a moment before he did that. He agreed, but gave me two that way as a result. One of these was on my thighs. The other was higher than the others, and where I least expected it. I nearly experienced Sudden Butt Death, but somehow survived. ;)

This looks nowhere near as bad as it felt!

The results? Sjamboks are bad and no one should buy them. So much hurt!

Chapter 2 out of many will be posted tomorrow. (I know this for a fact: I already wrote it!)

Extra Special Adventures, Coming Right Up!

I've never been to a spanking party before. I've been to play parties and to dungeons before, and I've been to a few things that are ALMOST like a spanking party. For example, I once hung out with my best friend, HeatherFeather, another spanko girl, another BDSM bottom who was somewhat into spanking and Malignus at what was at the time just his apartment (which is now where I live) and had lots of spanking adventures.

Then there was the Halloween party at Threshold where a number of spankos (including me, Christy Cutie and Porcelain Ass) and a bunch of BDSM people who are fond of spanking hung out. It was a party and there were spankos and spanking! Almost like a spanking party, right?

There was also the hotel party that took place right before left Los Angeles. There were about ten people and lots of spankings happened. I even got spanked by one of my friends who was wearing a panda suit at the time. Good, good times!

Still, none of these have been extended and dedicated spanking parties, and that's about to change. This weekend I'm going to a small, private spanking party. It isn't going to be anything like a large party, but it will have some pretty significant new experiences.

First of all, everyone who will be in attendance is a spanko, despite being from all walks of life. I've never been in a large group of spankos for more than a few hours at a time. That's an exciting prospect for me. Secondly, there will be a lot of people there who I've never met before. In fact, the only person I'll have met in person before will be Malignus. That said, two of the people who are going are good internet friends of mine, which makes things slightly less intimidating. Still, meeting a whole bunch of people can be really scary. I don't even really know what people do at these kinds of parties, but I figure that there aren't too many rules and regulations for it.

Another thing which is on my mind is the fact that I'll be playing with people for the first time there.

I hear Tops talk from time to time about getting performance anxiety before spanking a girl, especially for the first time. They worry that they won't do it hard enough, or that they'll do it too hard and scare her off, or that they'll do something that she misinterprets as creepy. They worry that they'll mess up their reputations as good, trustworthy spankers.

I've never heard another bottom express this, but I get this. This is totally different than my generalized spankoanxiety, which is something that I've made great strides towards lessening by simply getting closer and closer to fully accepting myself for who and what I am. I just worry that the kind of bottom that I am won't be desirable to the Tops that I engage with. What if I cry too much? What if I'm not snarky enough? Will they find spanking me boring because I just lie there and take it and there isn't any struggle? Will I seem like a wet blanket because I don't really engage in "the game" of getting spanked for being a brat?

I know that a lot of the other girls who are going (the party is pretty much M/f) enjoy playful bratting and that's not really my forté. I like being good. I'm not kidding when I say that. I've recently been watching a lot of videos to try and learn how to be snarkier when I'm filming (especially videos with Erica in them, because she's the most clever) but I still have trouble imagining myself acting that way when I wasn't... acting. My hope is that people will just accept that I'm the way that I am and not think that it makes me a lamesauce wet-blanket. But I'm nothing if not an insecure worrier with a deep-seated obsession with the idea that no one will like me, so it keeps popping up.

My guess is that everything will be great and that it will be a learning experience for me. I'll get to see the way that other people in the scene interact with each other and learn more about other attitudes towards TTWD. I also plan to have some serious cuddle time with one particularly adorable spanko bottom Doctor and to get some lessons in how to be really good at drawing kitties, to do some super fun baking, to make new friendships and strengthen ones that have thus far only existed online and maybe to try some exciting new things.

So here I am, with that combination of terror and extreme excitement that always comes with new things but especially comes with new spanking related things. I turn to you, dear readers! Have you ever been to spanking parties? If so, what was your first one like? What advice would you have for a girl attending her first one? Do you ever get "performance anxiety" before having a scene with a new person? What do you do to combat it?

Sniffle sniffle cough!

I haven't been online for a few days. I've let messages sit in my email and fetlife inboxes. In fact, until last night, I hadn't so much as touched my laptop for 72 hours. Now, that's unusual. Why? Because, first of all, I'm addicted to the internet. Secondly, I love my laptop. It's the first computer of my very own that has actually worked well. My first two computers ("Lappy" and "The Craptop" respectively) could never do anything right pretty much ever and were in and out of repairs all the time. I bought this machine in 2007 and have never regretted it. With the exception of the power cable that died while I was at my mother's house over Easter last year and had to be fixed with tape and later replaced and the keys that are missing from my keyboard from over use, nothing has gone wrong with it in the past five years.

I had trouble color correcting this photo. My computer is actually white and not gross looking.

This means that my dear Shenandoah Puff Octopus Prime (who still has a shorter name than my legal name!) has never spent the night in the shop, and therefore, the only time I've gone this long without using the computer since 2007 was either when I was in the hospital or when Serious_Face grounded me from my computer for four days because I said that I was more interested in looking at this than listen to him talk more about the differences between Greek and Roman coinage. (Men in my life are always over reacting!)

Also, while we're on the subject of SPOP, this is what the front looks like:

Whoever comments and names the most characters/cuteness franchises represented here will get a Cuteness Appreciation Award and public recognition.

What has been keeping me away from my beloved? I've been working (at my job) quite a bit recently, but I've been sleeping poorly and constantly feeling run down. I'd come home from work or wake up in the morning and want to do nothing. I spent my free time this weekend entirely lying around and watching TV with Malignus. He even surprised me and came to pick me up from work and take me to go watch a movie and I was like "Just take me home for bed! I am going to die! My legs are going to break off at the knee and that would be sad!" (which made me feel like a total cuntmuffin but was absolutely the truth.)

I felt icky and gross, but I had not yet reached the point of True, Undeniable Sickness®: I still wanted to be spanked. So yesterday, I asked Malignus to spank me before I headed to work and then eagerly climbed over his lap. He spanked me with his hand, which does not mean that he went easy on me. I love hand-spankings because they're at the very core of my kink and they feel so close and connecting, but in a lot of situations, one sacrifices the amount of hurt for that comfort. Except with Malignus. When he wants to, he makes a hand spanking hurt more than many other people's best efforts with a hairbrush. This was what happened yesterday: he spanked me crazy hard and fast and left me crying out and gasping. When he stopped, he told me that was my warmup. I had a very scrunchy face. He then did the same thing to my thighs, and told me that was the warmup for my thighs. I was already on the verge of tears (which is really not surprising considering that he's made me cry with a single swat from a dishtowel) when he directed me to get up and get over the bed. He then proceeded to give me a very quickly paced caning, covering both my bottom and my thighs, which left me crying very hard indeed.

When I sat up next to him to hug him, though, he started hitting the front of my thighs with it, which is a very mean thing to do. I think that the main reason he's so crazy about hitting the front of my thighs is because he gets to look at my sad and pathetic face while he's doing it, and because it hurts so much, it's EXTREMELY sad. He started hitting me a bunch and I sat there crying and sobbing and doing what Naomi calls "screaming like a dying monster." He then stopped and I finished my crying and he would start again to make me cry a bit more. He then gave me the most difficult of instructions ever: "Don't cry." He returned to caning my thighs (they weren't full strokes, mind you, but the amount of sting was ridiculous) and I tried my best not to cry. It didn't last long, though, because Malignus collapsed on the bed and literally rolled around laughing. Apparently my sad face while trying not to cry was the saddest he's ever seen me, and it filled his sadistic, little heart with such glee that he was "happier than he'd been in a long time." We will eventually be recreating this on film for your viewing pleasure. I know it's been a good scene when it ends with me crying and him grinning uncontrollably. It just makes the world feel right.

I don't like going to work on the weekends, but the day went by very quickly when I was covered with welts and bruises. I felt warm and safe and loved. That said, impact play actually CAN'T cure all problems (WHO KNEW?!) and about halfway through my shift I started coughing and sniffling. By the time I got home, I felt about half dead. The mystery of why I've been so run down was finally solved: I was slowly but surely getting sick.

It's actually good timing: I'm going away this weekend, so this means that I'll be better by the time I leave and I won't be likely to get sick again while I'm there. More details on where I'm going coming soon.

For now, though, I've been spending my time coughing and snuggling in bed with my Pikachu. I basically feel like this:

Hopefully, I can get back to my usual posting schedule. If I can stay awake long enough to write.

Valentine's Day

There have been a lot of people posting all kinds of romantic and interesting stories about their Valentine's Day celebrations and spankings and such things. Compared to some, mine was extremely simple. We're going to celebrate things more this weekend: on Tuesday, Malignus and I both worked evening shifts. Unfortunately, the night before, neither of us got much sleep. Our original plan was to celebrate Valentine's day earlier in the day before we went to work. I was extremely sleepy when Malignus woke me up, but less so after he gave me a very spontaneous but thorough "wake up caning" with a 1/8" acrylic cane. Spontaneous spankings are very hard for me to be submissive during, because they go from "I'm doing nothing!" to "I'm getting spanked!" at an extremely high speed and therefore don't leave me much (any) time to get into a submissive headspace. Still, I did a fairly good job of being still for it. I was wearing my pajamas still when I started getting caned, and about halfway through, Malignus pulled the bottoms and my panties down to cane me on my bare bottom. I rarely ever get bared by someone other than myself, so it had a strong psychological effect on me and brought me into a sort of warmly submissive headspace for the rest of the scene. This is a lot of writing about a very short thing: he caned me at a very fast pace and it didn't last long at all, but it made me feel happy and loved, and was therefore certainly worth sharing.

After a little while of being awake, we decided that we didn't want to go out that day after all because we were feeling excessively sleepy. First, though, we spent a little while hanging out in the bedroom and watching TV. We were in high spirits and Malignus was in a creatively sadistic mood. While I was only wearing a t-shirt and panties, he told me to hand him a short cane. He told me that he was going to hit me on the arm with it (he occasionally hits me with little force on my upper arm). I made a scrunchy face but braced myself for this. Instead, he hit me on the front of my thigh. That's one of his favorite "games": hitting me where I don't expect it. Then he hit me on that thigh again. Then he hit me on the other thigh. Then I cried. Then he gave me a few rapid fire strokes on the back of one of my thighs as I was rolling around in pain. This particular cane is one that doesn't get used as often as others, I think largely because it's a shorter cane. I rarely ever get caned while OTK (although the first few canings I got, including very extended ones, were done that way) so my two shorter canes get less use than longer, more intimidating looking ones. The one that was selected on Valentine's Day was an 18" Tearjerker JR Delrin Cane from Cane-iac. It's actually one of the first canes that I owned. Scotchgrove purchased it for me for my birthday. It's one of those things that doesn't look all that scary when you see it lying there:

Then you get hit with it a few times....

and suddenly it's very intimidating indeed! The thing that I find the most amazing about this cane is just how much the welts raised after just a few moments:

Malignus said that it looked like I slept with Wolverine.

Another interesting thing about it: from time to time, cane strokes will break the skin a tiny bit or leave a little blood blister where the tip hit. For whatever reason, probably something good about the design, this cane just left a larger welt on the tip instead of a cut. That's much nicer and probably better for people who don't want to get broken skin. The marks kind of looked like this: •­­­­–––. Another nice thing (in this situation) was the fact that it's a very stingy cane that isn't particularly weight-bearing. This meant that I didn't get as crazy of thigh bruising as I did the first time I got my thighs caned (which was with an acrylic cane.) It still hurt. A lot.

Finally, when we were playing around Malignus said something to tease me and I responded with "I'm going to poison your sandwich!" After he finished hitting me with things, he did indeed ask for a sandwich (that's my usual aftercare: making him a sandwich :P). I had a bunch of kitten stickers left over from making my Valentine's Day cards for my friends, so I stuck one on the top of the sandwich to be the poison. I felt very clever. Malignus responded by setting the sticker on fire in a candle. SAD FACE!

You can sort of see the burnt remnants of the sticker.

After some cuddling, we napped and then went off to work. I spent the rest of the night feeling contented, warm, loved and sore. It was a lovely day indeed. :D

A Blog Post About Sex

Sex is pretty much the one topic that I don't post about. Why not? Because I don't mix spanking and sex, and I feel like a lame-o posting about something that doesn't have anything to do with the purpose of this blog. I know a few people who successfully write off-topic posts that are very enjoyable, but I don't know that I've reached the point where I'm good enough to pull that off.

Still, sex has made itself relevant to the conversation recently. I'll explain how in a moment. First, some background.

*I'm polyamorous. All my relationships are open.
*I'm a pansexual. A person's genital configuration and gender identity aren't a factor in whether or not I am attracted to them. Somehow, this does not make it easier for me to get laid in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
*My boyfriend/Dominant/primary Top/HoH/favorite person, Malignus, is an asexual. This means that he is not sexually attracted to anyone. We're romantically involved. We don't have sex with each other. We don't talk about sex. I'm pretty sure he's never seen me entirely naked (except in photos on the internetz). Because of my strict wiring against mixing sex and spanking, this makes for the ideal relationship of the sort that we have.
*I don't want to have sex with Malignus. At all. Ever. The fact that we have no sexual interest in one and other is a point of huge comfort for both of us. I get really grossed out when people imply that we're doing it.
*I am in two other romantic relationships, both with sexual components. My boyfriend is on the West Coast and my girlfriend is on the East Coast. I have not seen either since I left California.
*Compared to other people interested in sex, I have a pretty low sex drive. Compared to my spank drive, I have like, no sex drive. I'd be pretty happy with having sex once every week or two.
*I have not had sex with another person in four months.

Four months got to be a bit much for me, and sex got to be on my brain again. I decided to start looking into finding a sexual partner. This has proved extremely challenging.

Here's the thing: I want to date outside of the BDSM community here, for two reasons. First of all, I'm really lame and vanilla in bed. I do not like to have sex that hurts, even a little bit. If someone smacks my ass during sex, well, they've ruined it. Any accouterments of "the scene" (even dumb, sex store versions of them) just don't belong with sex for me. Sorrryyyyyy! The second reason is drama. The scene here is my primary social circle. Sex between friends can lead to drama. It is my goal to avoid that at all costs.

Due to the second reason that I've listed, I don't want to date people that I work with. Unfortunately, that leaves me with no other people that I know. So, I did what I did every time I've moved to a new city: I started a page on okcupid. In New York and Los Angeles, that quickly produced matches in the 90 percent range with interesting, educated people. I uploaded a quick couple of cell phone photos and started to fill out my page.

See the watermark? I left that there to prove I'm really on a dating site!

My page here was kind of like my fetlife profile, only without mention of spanking and way more pretentious/geeky. I'm sure you're wondering how both those things are possible. I'm not linking to my vanilla identity (even if it doesn't include my real name at all) here, so you'll have to use your imaginations. I then answered 75 of the "match questions" in hopes of making the things that are important to me clear.

The site didn't fail to disappoint me: within 20 minutes of completing this, I got a message from a guy who seemed to be on the opposite side of the fence from me on every issue possible, including things like religion, politics, evolution and birth control. The message simply read "your sexy." I've yet to find any person on there who seems to share any of my actual interests, besides an interest in wanting to have genital contact with another person. How hard is it to find someone who likes Foucault, Terrance Malick, The Mountain Goats, homemade bread or pandas?! I'm not saying I want them all, just one!

The extreme lack of eligible mates in the vanilla dating pool leads me to the main problem, and the reason that I brought the s-word up in the first place. How the hell am I going to find a person outside of the scene who is going to be comfortable with my lifestyle? There's no way that I can hide it from them. On any given day, I've got bruises on my bottom. Furthermore, why would I want to be involved with someone with whom I cannot share this very base part of me? The problem is with finding someone who is willing to accept what I do without wanting to do it with me.

I guess, at the end of the day, I can't look too hard. My current plan is to consider all my options and not limit myself so much, and be less afraid and more open about who I am with people that I meet. The idea of being more "out" has been pretty appealing to me once I got past the point where I was ashamed of myself as a spanko.

I know that a lot of people don't have the same sort of arrangement as I do in terms of separating sexual partners and spanking partners, but still: how has dating worked for you, as a spanko? Did your current partner know about your spanko-nature when they got involved with you? How did you bring it up?

Well, talking about sex was awkward. I blushed. The best thing to do when things are awkward is to show the internet your boobs, right?

Oh. That's not it? Well, it made sense to me!

Today's Valentine's day. Both Malignus and I have to work, but we'll be doing something special earlier in the day. It will probably involve A) romance and B) spanking. Win-win. Expect a more spanking-heavy post tomorrow. :D

New Preview Video!

A while ago, I wrote about the awesome experience I had shooting with The Spanking Court. I did three scenes in a very fun (and quite "me") storyline. The plot centers around me as a college student protesting for animal rights. In the first segment, I brought myself to the court because I was worried that I was going to cross the line. This is the part that made this particular production so relatable for me: I'm much better at acting in situations where I'm trying to do my best and ameliorate myself than I am at being bratty. The second segment is an update where I talk about how I've continued to do well. Those two spankings were great fun to film because they were very positive--the theme was "You're doing well: keep doing well!"

In the third clip, I got out of hand and crossed the line and got myself in a boatload of trouble. This was also pretty relatable for me because, let's face it: sometimes I get myself into a world of trouble. It's never  because I try to: it's because I don't try hard enough not to. That's what happened in the video, too. I didn't keep myself under control and got arrested. (OOPS!)

This third segment, where I get a very hard, 200 stroke paddling, is now available on Spanking Court. There's a promo video for it here:



I haven't actually watched the entire video: I have a really hard time watching videos of myself. It just makes me feel weird. I watch enough to learn what I can do better in future videos (things with my posture, speaking more clearly et cetera) and then I'm usually done. This is a pretty intense video, too. It made me want to hug myself to watch it again.

Additionally, I've never posted them here before, but there are two other promo videos of me available on spankingtube. There's one from my first shoot ever, with Assume The Position Studios:



and one from a recent(ish) shoot with Lily Starr Spanking:



Have fun watching me cry and stuff, and be sure to check out the sites from which they originate!

Strange Sense of Humor

I haven't been posting for the past few days. This is primarily because I haven't been sleeping well. The less I sleep, the weirder my brain gets. For one thing, I tend to be pretty cranky, unless I get that under control (like I finally managed to do tonight.) When I'm not being moody and getting annoyed over tiny things, I get strange. Malignus once told me that when he gets sleep deprived he can feel parts of his brain shutting down. I'm kind of at that stage, too. Unfortunately, the first thing to go seems to be "making sense to other people." So, we'll see how this blog post goes. 

I think I have kind of a strange sense of humor to begin with, but it's certainly been weirder the past couple of days. Example:

Yesterday, Malignus gave me a rather hard spanking. It started like this: I was wearing long underwear with pajamas over it. He hit me (not that hard) on the thigh and I pointed out the fact that I said "Ow!" despite the fact that I was wearing multiple layers of clothing. Using Top Logic®, he took this as a challenge. He decided that he was going to give me my spanking for the day over the clothes I was wearing. Then he decided that he was going to give it to me RIGHT THEN! 

So I got spanked really hard with a giant, hard plastic spoon called "The Killamajig,"plus this thing and our acrylic cane from caneiac, which is in close competition with my nylon cane for "cane that hurts the most ever invented." Despite wearing all these clothes, I was still crying hard and rolling around on the bed. Then he told me to bare my bottom for the last few, which had a pretty powerful psychological effect on me (if it hurts this much with all this protection...) and took me a second to do. Those last few were certainly memorable.  When it was finished, I spent a while crying and wiping my face off while he spent a while being very pleased with himself indeed. I adore that: there's really nothing better than a sadist who is pleased with his work. 

(NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE FUNNY PART. That was background.) 

I was proud of my marks, so I took a few photos. They were missing a little "pizzaz" or something, though: the lighting in our apartment isn't ideal for photo taking, and it's much harder without my giant mirror that used to serve my butt photography purposes so well. I didn't upload any of them.

Then it hit me: I knew what I needed to do:

Mission accomplished. I'm way, way, WAY too amused by this. Every time I look at it, I literally lol. 

Additionally, tonight, one of my friends and I went to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and we stumbled upon this:

It's a plastic spoon with a scared face! It makes me so, so, so happy! Even though I had sworn off purchasing implements, I HAD to buy it. The thing is solid, too, and different than any plastic spoon I've ever felt in composition. When the cashier picked it up to scan she said "Woah, that's heavier than I expected it to be!" My friend, who is also a kinkster and knew exactly what the spoon was for, and I said "YEP!" in unison. I hardly made it through the rest of the transaction without bursting into laughter. 

LOOK AT THE FACE! It's so perfect. 

I need sleep. -_-

Happy Face!

First item of business: I'm February's Blog of the Month over on The Spanking Bloggers Network. Thanks to everyone who voted for me! The Spanking Bloggers Network is an awesome thing, and I'm very grateful for it. It brings a lot of traffic and introduces me to new and exciting blogs every time I check it out. If you're a spanking blogger and not a member of it yet, I urge you to check it out. If you don't blog, check out the main page for links to other awesome writers on our favorite subject.

Secondly: I'm almost embarrassed to brag about this, but I finally got my driver's license. I didn't learn to drive when I was the normal age because my life was in a difficult place at the time. After that, I always lived in large cities and was greatly intimidated by driving in heavy traffic conditions. Finally, out here in South Dakota, I was able to become a confident driver. Once I got ready to take my test, however, things kept going wrong.

The first time I went to take my test, Heather drove me. We arrived and were promptly told that I was not in the computer system to take my test that day. They gave me a different appointment. The second appointment had to be rescheduled, however, because it was for the time when I was in New Jersey for my elder brother's funeral. On the morning of my third appointment, I got running slightly late because I needed to put air in one of my tires which had gotten a bit low, and I arrived five minutes behind schedule. I was told that I was too late to test. The morning of my fourth appointment, I got a phone call from the DMV saying that all morning tests were cancelled because the Examiner was out sick and they were unable to find a replacement. The morning of my sixth appointment, I woke up to eight inches of freshly falled snow and near white-out conditions. As I was clearing off my car, I got a call that they could not test because of the weather.

The morning of my seventh appointment I was very, very nervous. I'd wanted this for such a long time and all the roadblocks that had been thrown in my face made me almost believe that the Universe had some kind of conscious, malevolent agenda against me (I DID say almost, you know I don't buy all that metaphysical stuff :P). I got up, got ready and got to the appointment without anything bad happening. They found me in the computer and gave me my paperwork. Finally, I got in the car and started my test. The Examiner was mean. He seriously yelled every time I did anything less than perfectly, and before I started each turn he would say "DO IT PROPERLY THIS TIME!"

Why are mean men always showing up and yelling at me EVERYWHERE I GO?

When we finished the test, he said "did you prepare for this?"

I nearly started to cry. I was so sure I'd failed. I told him I had, indeed, prepared.

"Well you did very bad" he said. I was so upset I didn't even correct his grammar. He brought me inside and started doing a bunch of paperwork. He didn't tell me I had passed the test, ever. I only figured it out when he handed me my license. I nearly exploded with relief and excitement. It was magical.
I listened to The Mountain Goats and sang off key way too loudly all the way home.

Malignus was super proud of me, and we've basically spent the entire past two days celebrating how awesome I am. He gave me a reward spanking yesterday before we went out, and it was seriously the nicest thing ever. It started with a nice, long warmup that made me smile and practically coo (I try not to do that aloud, of course, because I think spanking a girl until she made happy bird noises might make Malignus explode to death and I don't want that.) Then he spanked me with a wooden spoon for a while, hard enough to make me cry, but still with a tone of happiness and contentment. When that was finished, he gave me a lovely cooldown with his hand. It was incredibly cozy and happy, and I continued to feel warm and snuggly for the rest of the evening.

After that, we went out to dinner, where I proceeded to get moderately intoxicated from one glass of Sangria, consumed with a meal. SIGH. Being a lightweight is kiiiiiind of embarrassing. The food we ate was super amazing, and I got a tiny pink dessert in a little tea cup. Cute and delicious and full of win. I then went over to some friends' house and had lots of fun hanging out with them while Malignus went to work. I then went and hung out at his office and ended up getting home at 6:30 in the morning or something. After that, I slept ALL DAY. I know this isn't something to be proud of, but damn, I'm proud of it. I love sleeping and I don't care who knows. I seriously slept until it was time to get ready for dinner.

We went out to dinner again, and then to ice cream, and then to a movie. Now I'm home and snuggled up writing. Tomorrow, we're going to hang out with friends for a Super Bowl party. This weekend is basically full of win.

I didn't take any photos of my butt for the past several days (GASP?!) but here's a picture of it after a caning I got last weekend.

Don't worry: I didn't get sudden butt death!
I hope your weekend is good, although I bet it isn't as amazing as mine! :P

Tips for Newbies!

I have a couple of friends online who are anticipating receiving their first spankings. Talking to them about it reminds me of when I was at that stage in my journey as a spanko. There's an awful lot that can be learned about spanking from the internet. Just reading fetlife, or even spanking stories, can teach you most of the basics about how things tend to go. Watching videos can sometimes give you insights into some of the mysteries of things: for example, things that make the person getting spanked yell and twist more probably hurt more. Still, there's stuff that seems to be common knowledge among some people that, six years into my adventure, I'm just picking up on. I decided to list some tips for new spankees. Feel free to add your own in the comments section! Note: I write using male pronouns for the Top and female for the bottom. This is because of the way that my mind is wired, and it just makes things easier (kind of the way they assign a gender to the Game Master and Player in Roleplaying game rulebooks so that they don't have to keep saying "he or she." I'm not a geek. Really.)

Getting Started:

1) Wait until you are 18 to start. I can't stress this enough. When I was 17 and I first met the man who later became my first Top, the fact that he refused to spank me until I reached 18 seemed really stupid to me. It didn't make sense to me why it was such a big deal. I saw myself as an adult and I felt that I was "ready" to participate in an adult activity. Now, I'm deeply appreciative that he waited until the next year for my first scene. In retrospect, it's a sign of his integrity and trustworthiness, and it's just the right thing to do, period. I sound like a Top when I say this, but laws exist for a reason. The age of majority may seem arbitrary, but it exists to protect minors and to make sure that no one is coerced into something dangerous. Respecting this law is respecting the very basis of the spanking community: that we engage in consensual adult spanking.

2) Communicate with your Top during a spanking. This is also incredibly important. Tops aren't mind readers. Everyone reacts to a spanking differently. Some people twist and writhe around when everything is fine and dandy-- just because in your mind, it seems obvious that you are in distress doesn't mean that it seems that way. Generally, an attentive spanker will ask questions regarding the bottom's condition during a scene until he knows her reactions well. That said, if you aren't being asked for this information, volunteer it. Say "This is more than I'm comfortable with" or "I'm doing well" every now and then.

3) Come prepared to use safewords, even if you don't believe you'll need to. I have had a lot of talk about how I don't use safewords and I prefer to communicate verbally (since I don't participate in consensual non-consent, when I say "stop!" or "I don't want to be getting spanked anymore!" or something, I actually mean that I want the scene to end) but I still have a system of individual safewords (it's based on Pokemon) that I've used when playing with new partners in the past, and I've used (as in, actually called) the Universal Safeword of "Red!" once. Keep that in the back of your mind when you scene, just in case.

4) Remember that there are plenty of spankos out there! Nearly every time I hear stories about girls who stay with men who are abusive to them within the spanking scene, the girl expresses that she believed that he was "special" in the fact that he was willing to spank her, or that he told her that he was the only one who would really understand her or that he was the best in the scene or some other line that encouraged the spankee to feel dependent. Especially if you aren't involved in the community, that can seem incredibly true. I spent my early life wondering if there was a single man in the world who would be willing to spank a girl, and if so, how I'd ever find him. The truth is, there a bunches and bunches of awesome Tops out there. You don't have to stay with a jerkface.

5) Spankos, like all living things, grow and develop. When I first started getting spanked, I only wanted to be spanked for punitive reasons. I eventually began to enjoy a very rare fun or arbitrary spanking, but it was not until I ended my dynamic with my first Top that I realized the ways in which my desires and interests had started to change. It took me another year of playing around with different people, learning about the community and doing soul-searching before I realized that submission was something that I wanted to explore for myself. Be open to the ways that you might be changing and don't box yourself in.

6) Talk to other people. Spankos are cool. We make great friends. Reaching out and talking to others makes for good socializing and fosters a feeling of belonging in the community. More importantly, it opens you up to new ideas and allows you to learn from people, gives you a chance to ask questions and seek guidance and can help you to accept yourself. Don't be afraid to reach out. I personally waited far too long before I did.

Practical Tips: some of these things might seem way too obvious, but it's stuff that either I didn't know when I first started out and found surprising or I didn't believe for a long time.

7) Getting hit on the thighs hurts a lot! Thigh swats may or may not lead to sudden butt death depending on who you ask, but they're a fairly common practice in the spanking community. S_F used it as a threat for a long time: "If you don't hold still, I'm going to spank your thighs." I didn't even get why that was a threat. I just thought that it meant that a greater amount of my body was going to get hit. Then one day, I didn't hold still. And then I understood. It's horrible! The lower you go, the worse it gets. Be warned!

8) Icing works after a spanking, but never before. I just finished learning this lesson a week or so ago. It isn't an old wive's tale: getting spanked when your bottom is cold or has been iced is hellish! Using ice after a spanking is soothing and wonderful, plus it prevents bruising, but for the love of all that's sacred, don't use it unless you are SURE that you are done getting spanked for a while. It's at least twice as bad after icing.

9) Wet bottom spankings don't just sound louder. That's what I'd been told: the sound of the impact is increased on a wet bottom so it has the psychological effect of sounding louder and therefore seeming scarier. That's true. It's incorrect that that's all there is to it. It hurts more. A lot.

10) Don't let curiosity kill the cat. If someone seasoned tells you something is horrible, you should probably trust them. If you don't know if something is going to be extreme or not, you should probably ask another bottom before you try it. One of my best friends told me that the first time that she tried capsaicin cream it was her idea because she read about it on the internet! She didn't know how bad it was going to be (and neither did her spanker) and she ended up standing in front of a fan crying for a long time. While I'm giving advice, avoid capsaicin. You'll end up in front of a fan crying. You don't want that.

11) Just tell everyone you're allergic to rubber. Trust me on that one. Neoprene? Hypoallergenic? No. You're allergic to that, too.

Genetic Vs. Interest

The following is a piece entitled "Genetic vs. 'Interest'" which was written by my friend, Thursday Knight, and posted on fetlife. It raised several points that are important to me and that I wanted to add my thoughts on.

The day I opened up my fetlife account was on my 18th birthday. Throughout the internet, various websites had a new user of "Thursday Knight"--all of them spanking related.


I am a spanko; ever since the age of three years old I've had the desire to be spanked. While holding true to most spankos who can relate, I had all the signs. Anything spanking related in books or TV was a rare obsessive delight (the clock in Disney's Pinocchio, Benjamin Bunny, and countless other things), looking up the word "spanking" in the dictionary, getting the topic brought up among friends to find out if they had any personal stories, etc. etc. etc.


The thing is, I did not choose this condition. I did not choose to be sexually dysfunctional (and despite spanking being a very 'mild' sexual deviancy, it still is not 'normal'). Yet...what astounds me is that people do choose it.


Now, for the sake of whoever may be reading this, this is not an attack. Or even judgement. I am simply pointing out that there are many people on this website who choose to get into "the lifestyle".


From experience, I started typing in spanking searches into the internet when I was thirteen. Other people with sexual fetishes (note that a "fetish" is described as: a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc. [NOT] "it just turns me on") I would assume would do likewise. They would want to connect, find out more people who think like they do.


But besides the casual "bedroom partners", how do average people who want to "spice" up things, suddenly become "rope professionals" and "vampiric dominate daddys"? When they were growing up did they have a small interest and it grew? Or did they "decide" that this would be okay? What would possess someone to come up with the idea that people can come together and have parties where they'll tie each other up and eat snacks?


I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it, I am purely wondering where someone would come up with the notion.


Is it human nature to deviate from the norm? Are human minds just naturally perverse and therefore susceptible to the malleability of something new? They hear about something from a friend or on TV and realize that sounds fun?


Or is something genetic at play? Are those "vanillas" who will never even think a website like this, and perfectly happy too, every know (what we feel) they are missing?


Pretend your partner and you had a 'normal' relationship with very little concept of what you do now with each other, would that relationship still work? Would you think he is a lazy ass? That she is a needy attention-hog?


If these feelings are genetic (or at least a genetic disposition, in that our brains are pre-disposed to this sort of thinking) would they serve the purpose of balancing out our mental stability?


What makes people with an "interest" want to "choose" to be different in this way?


One last thought: Could you truly live without your kinky-doings and be happy? If someone said "You can be painlessly euthanized or live without ever doing your fetish/kinky thing ever again." Could you?


I, I could not.


Thursday's post resonated with me for a couple of reasons. First, she brought up an issue which I've often wondered about: why would anyone choose this? I'm also not attacking and I'm not pointing fingers. I don't think that there is anything wrong with choosing to join the lifestyle. I just don't see why one would. In fact, when I first started attending munches and other kink events in Los Angeles, it didn't occur to me that there would be people there who weren't "born with it" the way that Thursday and I (and I'm sure many of you) were. In fact, I operated under the assumption that the people I met who were into bondage were as excited when they saw a damsel in distress tied to the train tracks in a cartoon as Thursday and I were when we saw that Benjamin Bunny getting thrashed with a switch for his naughtiness in the picture book. Now, there *are* people who are bondage fetishists. I know one person who was involved in doing self bondage from a very young age indeed and several who always thought about being immobilized or secured in various ways. But many of the people who I've met who are into bondage, or D/s, or general impact play simply were told about it, gave it a shot and found it interesting. It sort of baffles me. There are people who choose this. They became curious about deviant behavior and decided that it was somehow worthwhile for them to engage in. Were they equally predestined to enjoy their lifestyle activities and simply unaware that they existed? Is one actually able to control their identity so much as to select something like this and make it his or her own? And to what end? I'm open about the fact that my involvement in the spanking and BDSM communities enriches my life, but I can't imagine that the lifestyle is inherently enriching. The growth, joy, development, relief et cetera that I gain from my activities seems to me to be based on fulfilling something which has always existed. It doesn't naturally follow that a person who developed without those early desires would have the same, or even a slightly similar, response to being exposed to the stimuli that I find valuable.

Part of the reason why I'm slightly taken aback by this is because I've always seen my spankophilia (if it can be called that because it isn't sexual) as, at worst, a deformity and, at best, some sort of social hindrance. I'm not ashamed of it anymore, but it has always been something which made my life more complicated. Like Thursday, I can't imagine myself being happy if I couldn't have spanking in my life. Given the choice, I'd sooner give up almost anything else. I'd go so far as to be prefer losing a couple of limbs over losing spanking. I don't want to say that I NEED to be spanked, but it's hard not to. At the very least, I need to have it in my life on some level. I don't ever NEED a spanking in a particular moment, but I truly don't know if I could have a satisfactory existence without it. Other kinksters who aren't spankos but like spanking want to be spanked or to spank others. In many ways, we require it. Requiring something brings along a boatload of things to work through and accept, fears, insecurities, difficulties et cetera. It also places a high value on something that can be very hard to find-- that is to say, a good spanking partner.

It's a lot of interesting stuff to think about, and it's territory that I don't often cover for fear of being offensive and making too many waves. So: what do you think?