Vacation: In Which I Meet Erica Scott (Final Part)

I'm finally getting around to posting about one of the most exciting parts of my vacation to Los Angeles for me. I got to meet Erica Scott.

I'm sure that my readers are familiar with who she is: she's pretty much the best spanking blogger (in my opinion) and she has a wonderful mix of wit, insite and honesty in her writing. She's also a fellow spanking model and has made some pretty awesome videos.

Erica was also, without her knowledge,  fairly influential to my choice to get actively involved in the spanking scene instead of keeping my spanking life a secret, hidden activity that I did not share with anyone but the few who were involved. It went like this: I got drunk one night and made a fetlife account and started trolling through spanking related groups and observing how people interacted with each other in them, trying to see if it was a place where I felt I could ever "fit in." I noticed various people who seemed pretty awesome, and others who made me decidedly uncomfortable. I've always been a "no nonsense" kind of girl. I don't take bullshit from people. If someone who hasn't earned the right to tries to boss me around, they're in for it. If someone makes a creepy sexual advance at me, I will make fun of them to all my friends. I had trouble figuring out how someone who enjoys taking a passive role and likes to be spanked (this was before the idea that I might have *gasp* submission in me had even been allowed to enter my mind) could present herself as both these things. The kind of woman that I ideally wanted to be was one who was outspoken, confident, even boisterous, who had no shame about what she wanted and knew that her choices, be they to be spanked, to be passive, to choose to submit, what have you, did not make her any less fierce and respectable. But I didn't know if that was possible, or if the community could find that to be "okay."

Then I discovered Erica and I knew not only was it possible to be the kind of woman that I wanted to be, but that there was someone setting a positive example for me in the community. Having Erica around, just on the internet, made me feel somehow safer and it made me like the Spanking World, hell, the world in general, more because she existed.

Then a sock puppet claiming to be a Mormon spanko started to freak out when "she" got called out on her socketry and attacked a whole group of people, including me, and I discovered that the spanking community was FULL of smart, strong, hilarious women like Munchkin, Lily Starr, The Famous Kat (who doesn't seem to have a blog anymore), and Iggy, and that the male Tops were often awesomely fun individuals that I could truly respect anywhere, like Richard Windsor. And then suddenly, BAM, I felt like I was part of something. I grabbed that and ran and my life has been pretty fricken amazing ever since.

Anyway, needless to say, I like Erica a lot and was looking forward to meeting her. We met up at a Starbucks and she got us some comfy chairs (since I was taking the bus due to transportation failures, she got there first). And then we started talking: we talked about our favorite people to film with, what my shoots had been like recently, what her best and worst experiences shooting had been, what she enjoyed about parties she'd attended, what I get out of playing with sadists and why that's awesome for me and a bunch of other stuff. She explained the way that some groups and organizations within the scene came to be and she laughed out loud when I told her a clever brattism that I'd said in a recent shoot. Hanging out with her made me feel great: she's warm and welcoming in person and just as well spoken as she is online. She's fun and sweet and awesome. And she's beautiful. There's something about her that's undeniably stunning.

We sat and talked for two and a half hours. It was an awesome day.

The rest of my trip to LA was largely filled with vanilla adventures.  I went to the Sanrio Store

and to Knott's Berry Farm

and I sang Japanese Karaoke with Zeki. MaskofNormality took me out to Indian food and we talked about all sorts of stuff. Then, in the end, I packed up all my stuff and headed back to South Dakota. Malignus and Heather picked me up from the airport and I came home, got a lovely spanking and then started to catch up on all the sleep I missed. The trip was excellent, and I can't wait until I have a chance to go back!