New York and BBW: Part 1

Although plenty of time passed between my return to the United States and my trip to BBW (in fact, nearly a month, I think) I'm trying to get caught up on things, so I'm going to focus on the most important parts of my adventures. The "problem" with my life is that I have had so many adventures recently that by the time I finish recounting one, I have gone off on at least another. For example, I'm currently in the middle of what is perhaps my favorite adventure I've ever embarked on, and I'm still a full month behind on my story telling. So, the best thing for me to do is to push forward and focus on the best parts. :)

In the middle of April, I left for New York to visit my surviving biological brother and shoot for Kelly Payne's Tantrum Trainers before heading down to Atlantic City for Boardwalk Badness Weekend. I used to live in the New York area when I was a bit younger, and I grew up between Upstate New York and Southern New Jersey, so both places were a bit of a homecoming. My New York schedule was very tight packed indeed, and I didn't really do a lot of socializing or visiting except with my brother. The most important thing that I did in New York was eat pizza. I did this literally every day that I was there. Growing up with the finest pizza on Earth really spoiled me, and going off into the world to discover that it kind of sucked everywhere else was the hugest disappointment that came with leaving home. The first time that I bit into a slice during this visit, I literally cried with happiness. I also was delighted that the weather was much nicer than it had been in Sioux Falls. I swapped snow for snocones, and was filled was joy.

Snocones are one of my top 25 joys in life.

Besides eating a tremendously unbalanced diet, the other highlight of this trip was, of course, filming. Kelly Payne was truly lovely, and I really hope to work with her again soon. The film that we did was challenging, though. I did it fully voluntarily, but it was very, very long (certainly the longest thing I've ever filmed without breaks) and had several things outside of my usual comfort zone. Thematically, it was about me being a prisoner in a women's prison, where I was being interrogated about who was sourcing me drugs that I was distributing. I obviously refused to give this information up, resulting in lots of wicked things needing to be done to me to get me to that point. When I eventually *did* break down and give up my source (a lovely model named Ashely Rose, who appears in the sequel) my tourment didn't stop, as the guards (played by Kelly and Miss Daisa) went on to punish me for having been so difficult in the first place, which hit every possible "terribly unfair!" button in my mind. The scene involved traditional spanking, flogging, caning and hairbrush spanking, all of which hurt quite a bit, although the hairbrush was by far the most difficult, as it was done at the very end. You know who thinks that a hairbrush over welts doesn't hurt? Nobody. :P

You can view promotional stills here. Be aware that these stills were taken during blocking, so that's why you can't see that anything bad has happened to me yet. :P

The film fell only partly into my new "Dark and horrible" category, as my character was a real bitch, so it didn't feel particularly victimizing. It did hit on another point that I've come to enjoy: resistance. I naturally don't resist when I'm being spanked, and if I do, it's minor. Why would I? I love being spanked, and the majority of my harder play has been in a submission oriented environment, where resistance isn't appropriate in the least. I've struggled with trying to resist less and less, with learning to be entirely passive, to try to keep myself still and relaxed thru challenging stuff. As I've expanded my horizons in terms of what types of scenes I enjoy, I've found that it's refreshing to me to do things that are drastically different than what I usually do. Being resistant, struggling, protesting, disobeying et cetera (in a film or a play situation where this is negotiated as acceptable) is sort of relieving. I don't have to try to be good. I can do whatever I want. I don't have to worry that if I work myself up too much, the scene will stop. That makes me feel both a sense of security and a sense of freedom, which is a nice mix.

After spending an enjoyable few days, I got on a bus to head down to Atlantic City on Wednesday night. I lived in Atlantic City when I was a teenager, and I spent a considerable portion of time there with my brother who passed away. I hadn't been back in many years. I had a lot of emotions when I was taking the bus down, as it was the same trip I often used to take with a sense of desperation, as I often returned to A.C. in my earlier days in order to run from something. It was invigorating that I was going there feeling safe, to see people that I deeply cared for and to have adventures.

When I arrived, I walked up the boardwalk to the hotel and got set up for the night. I was staying with Tomdiscp and _Morgan that evening, and it was already fairly late when I arrived. I was all gross from traveling, so I took a nice, long bath while I waited for room service to come and bring me dinner. I had an enjoyable meal after that, during which time I discovered that Richard Windsor was already at the party, so I figured it would be nice to get to socialize with him a bit before things took off and he got really busy. I went down to the bar to meet him, only to discover that Pandora was also already there. This was a most delightful combination of people, and lots of hugging ensued. Rich let me wear his hat, as he sometimes does, and then he did something which made me feel tremendously special: he left the bar for a minute to do something and left his hat with me. Richard is very protective of his hat, as it's something very precious to him, and it made me feel very trusted indeed that he would leave it with me, if only for a few minutes. It was wonderful to see Pandora again, as I missed her horribly since I had left her apartment in London about a month beforehand. We engaged in some of the time honored activity of "girls kissing in a bar," which lead to a bit of staring that didn't bother either of us. Then the bar closed, so the three of us joined a group of people going up to Mike Stien's room. I hadn't met Mike Stien before, but he was lovely, and I enjoyed chatting with him as well as the others. There was a lot of couch cuddling, which made me feel safe and delighted.

This is kind of a silly photo, but I feel that it carries a lot of affection :)

I was a very bad influence on poor Pandora, who had wanted to go to bed early to fix her sleep cycle a bit. I kept her up until the early morning, when she finally had the good sense to stop listening to me and get some sleep. Rich and I chatted a bit more after that, and I eventually returned to the room where I was staying and snuck in to get a bit of rest, as I had several very full days ahead of me. :)

I'll continue in another post very soon! In the meanwhile, I need to get back to my adventuring. ♥

"The Awful Stuff" and Goodbyes.

As my time in England drew to a close, I felt a certain sense of sadness drawing on me. While my trip had begun with me hating everything and desperately wanting to be home, the thought of leaving now made my heart heavy. Of course I was looking forward to seeing everyone that I hadn't for so long, but it didn't stop my other feelings. I was made more sensitive and vulnerable than I usually am (so, that's saying something!) by the combination of this and a stressful situation that was going on back in the states. Everyone remained very patient with me, though and I got to have several more exciting adventures before the day did arrive when I had to leave.

One day, close to the end of my visit, Paul took me for a walk on the shore. Having grown up by the sea, I'm always fascinated by visiting beaches that are different than the New Jersey coastline that I identify in my mind when I hear the word "ocean." It was very different: the waves were small and choppy, but without foam, the water seemed to be a different hue, and the beach itself was made up of a mixture of tiny rocks and broken shells.

And sailboats. 

Being by the water is linked to the majority of my positive childhood memories, and it's a setting that brings me back to a happy part of my mind, making me feel small, but in an entirely comfortable way. Paul held my hand as we walked along, although I constantly stopped to pick up tiny seashells. These shells are precious to me, now, and I always have one of them in the pocket of my favorite sweater, and just running my fingers over it reminds me of that buffer I talked about before: safety, comfort and love. I later discovered that one of them has a hole in it naturally, so I stuck it on a chain and often wear it as a necklace.

Shell necklace, as seen around my neck in this photo from the other day by Amoni.

Another fun experience happened when Zoe came over and spent the night (along with two other girls who I didn't really know) and mass girliness ensued. It was lovely to hang out in a group of people, where we chatted and drank champagne while Lucy dyed one of the other girls' hair, but the part of the evening that mostly stands out in my mind was once Zoe and I were meant to go to bed. She was staying in the same room as me, and in the time honored tradition of any two girls spending a night together that usually don't, we stayed up extremely late chatting. We kept giggling and then remembering to be quiet and whispering for a moment, and then someone would say something that would make the other gasp and we'd forget and get noisy again. We talked about all kinds of things, including how we got into the scene and how we both started filming, and we shared awkward but funny stories and even a few personal secrets. Eventually, we went to sleep, but not without several false starts of "Okay, we really have to go to bed now!" "Alex! It's three! Go to sleep!" "Zoe! Stop talking!" 

The next morning, Zoe painted my nails for me. She's into nail art, and I asked her to do Pikachu faces for me, which she gladly and successfully did. I found this to be the most delightful thing that has ever happened to my hands (in a few days you will hear about the least delightful thing that has ever happened to my hands). I'm still impressed with how cute they are. It was a sad day when I eventually had to take them off.

Zoe Page is the most awesome ever. 

I think it was the next day that I left Paul and Lucy's house. Paul took me to another town, where we were both filming for Bars and Stripes on the day before I had to leave to go back. I was quite sad to leave, and I said my goodbyes to Lucy then, although I would be seeing her at BBW as well.

Shooting for Bars was incredibly fun for me. There was the fact that there were a ton of people that I liked all on set together: Paul, Stephen and Zoe all topped me (I got to be the center of lots of tops' attention again! Bonus!) and Michael was filming. We were filming at Dodgy Dave's place, and he was around and assisting, and I got to know him a bit. It was just a lovely group of people, and a wonderful way to end my visit. I also loved the content that we filmed. I mentioned before that I've recently gotten more into doing "dark and horrible" scenes. At some point, I realized that as much as I love the sweet and innocent stuff, or the very consensual play that I engage in at home, as much as I relish in the good feeling of being beaten by someone with affection for me, there's something that I find positively invigorating about scenes with non consensual themes. I've gotten very fond of abuses of power, force, pressure, terrible unfairness, power held via intimidation rather than respect and so on (in role play, of course). The content that we filmed for Bars was all about that stuff. There was no "you're really a good girl, we care about you quite a bit, but you're going to get spanked anyway." In it's place was a general sense of nastiness, authority figures who disliked me and were very liberal with their force, yelling, shouting back and forth at each other, manhandling, trickery and sleeping on the floor with only a blanket. Again, whenever I say that I'm getting into something new, I don't mean that my interest in this replaces anything that I was previously into, or is more important than that which I traditionally liked all of the sudden. It's just an expansion of my taste to include additional things, or a growth of my set of options.

I originally kind of imagined that there would be something uncomfortable about filming this sort of stuff with people who were my favorite people in real life, like I wouldn't be able to take their scariness seriously. In actuality, it was probably only as awesome as it was because of the fact that I knew and trusted everyone involved. It was delightful to step so far outside of myself that I was in a world where I was fearful and angry towards these people one moment, and then, as soon as we cut, I immediately started snuggling them. I trusted everyone enough that there was no real emotional discomfort when things got intense. I just felt very secure, and delighted by the darkness of the scenes. I don't mean to say that any of the stuff we filmed was vicious. It just wasn't "nice." But it was hot. All of it felt wonderful to do.

The final scene that I filmed in England was a double caning from Paul and Stephen, and it was probably the best film to finish with. I've always been kind of infatuated by the idea of co-topping, and I hadn't had a lot of chances to do well developed scenes of that nature before this trip. I was lucky enough to get to do two of them: the scene I'm discussing and one for Dreams of Spanking where I got double strapped by Pandora Blake and Thomas Cameron. Both of these scenes were delightful. Besides all the things I've just discussed above, there were two things about this scene that really stood out to me. One was the fact that for part of it, the two Tops were kind of chatting amongst themselves about things unrelated to the work at hand (that is to say, unrelated to caning me). I found this to be horribly dismissive and objectifying in a way that was incredibly appropriate to the scene and was also thrilling. The other moment which stands out to me was near the end of the scene when I was made to thank Officer Kennedy for beating me. This stands out in my mind because it made me aware of just how deeply into my character role I'd gotten and how much a different atmosphere can change the way things feel to me. In "real life," it feels entirely normal to thank someone for spanking me. I throw it out spontaneously in the middle of a scene sometimes when something hurts in a way that makes me particularly submissive. If I was prompted to thank someone at the end of the scene, I might feel slightly sheepish that I hadn't remembered to do it on my own without reminding, the way that I feel when someone has to remind me to rinse my bowl before putting it in the sink. In this scene, it was horrible. It was enraging. It was tremendously humiliating. I refused. I would not. That's a rotten, awful thing to ask of a person, and only a terrible man would demand such a thing, thought my in-character brain. Eventually, of course, I did, but it was bitter.

Then the scene was done, and I felt incredibly high. Filled with positive emotion and endorphins. Elevated by having gone to such a place in my brain. Having been co-topped meant that I had an excuse to force two people to hug me instead of one (although, really, with this group of people I didn't need an excuse or force ^_^).

And then we were finished filming, and I felt sad again. My adventure was ending. It was almost over.
That night was melancholy to me, but very nice. We went out to dinner at a pub all together, and Zoe and I got excessively big ice creams, just like we had the first night, when Paul had picked me up and taken us up to Derbyshire. We all bantered back and forth, told stories and laughed as we relaxed from the day's work. Eventually, it was time for everyone else to go home except for Paul and I, who were spending the night at Dodgy Dave's place, as I'd be going to the airport early in the morning. At some point, I had started to get sick. I thought perhaps I was allergic to something in the air, although I later discovered that I was actually just getting a cold. Anyway, I sneezed and my nose ran basically the rest of the night, which made me feel kind of silly and awkward. Despite this, that evening stands out in my mind as one of the sweeter ones ever. Paul looked after me in a way that was firm but extremely affectionate, and I melted into that feeling. We went up to bed fairly early, as I had to get up in the morning and that's not something that's ever easy for me, and then he sat on the bed, put me over his lap and spanked me lovingly for a terrifically long time. I imagined that the entire world was that moment, so that I wouldn't worry about it being over, and melted into some quiet space in my mind where I was delicate and vulnerable but very well protected. This was, of course, interrupted by my constant sneezing, but that really didn't bother me much. This was good.

When the spanking was over, my bottom was buzzing with heat, but the rest of me felt entirely relaxed.
"How do you feel?" he asked me.
"Vulnerable. Safe. Happy." I answered, my voice difficult to find and control.
"Good," he said. "Do you want to know how I feel?" I nodded. "Wonderful," he said.

After that, I snuggled up against him and tried to fall asleep. It almost pleased me that I kept sniffling and keeping myself up, because I liked being awake in that moment, floating in some relaxed, half awake snuggle state. Eventually, though, I slept.

In the morning, Paul took me to the airport, where I we ate breakfast together before I had to get on my plane and leave. Somehow, I managed not to cry until I was in flight, where I snuck into the bathroom to do it. It was okay, though. I knew I'd be back. ♥

The Camden Pancake Incident, More Filming and Alex Buys Too Much Stuff

After having finished the two very exciting shoots that I wrote about in my last couple of posts, I spent a few more days with Pandora. The time that we spent just hanging out was always fun and enjoyable. We did sessions and had fun together. A huge portion of this involved me picking up her cat and not putting her down when she wanted me to. :P Eventually, though, Pandora needed to get back to the rest of her life, and I was meant to go visit S_F at this point. Unfortunately, his situation horrible personal situation had not improved, and he was unable to come get me or host me at his house. I actually didn't end up seeing him at all, the entire time I was in England. Instead, Paul Kennedy and Lucy McLean were kind enough to agree to host me for the rest of the time that I was there. This ended up being basically the best thing ever.

Paul came to pick me up from Pandora's, and we all had some tea and cake (although just regular cake, not Cake of Ultimate Joy™) before I had to say goodbye to her. I knew I wasn't going to see her until BBW, which was about a month away, and this was sad for me, because I knew I was going to miss her. I hugged her a lot, and I harassed her cat as much as I could before I had to leave. As disappointing as it was to have to leave Pandora, I was excited that I was going to get to spend more time with Paul. I had found myself thinking about him pretty consistently since I left his house, and I was happy that I'd be seeing more of him. 

 When we returned to his house, I got to see his wife, Lucy, who I had only briefly met at Shadowlane last year. Lucy wasn't feeling well that night, but being the horrible influence on my innocent friends that I am, I somehow managed to keep us up until the early morning chatting. Lucy is one of the coolest people to talk to ever, because she knows about an infinite number of things that I don't know about, mostly lady things, and because she never makes me feel stupid or annoying when I have to ask a hundred and fifty questions about something. Additionally, she's extremely kind, and I knew as soon as we finally got to sit down and socialize a bit that I really, really liked her and enjoyed being around her.

It's hard for me to pinpoint the details of the time that I spent at their house and put it all in order. As before, I felt very relaxed and at ease while there, and the environment made me feel really free to be myself. Paul and I got to scene together pretty regularly, as well as just spending normal time together, and I found myself feeling very affectionate towards him-- I think I spent the majority of the free time that I had while I was at their house cuddled up to him on the sofa. While it didn't feel much of anything like the other D/s relationships that I've had, at one point or another I realized that I felt very submissive towards him, in a way that made me feel tremendously safe. Some kind of buffer of safety and comfort built up around me as we spent time together, and even though we're away from each other now, it's never gone away. In certain ways I felt tremendously shy about it, but I was slowly realizing that this feeling was greater than just affection, or caring or any other words that I might use to describe it aside from love (spoiler alert, we're in a relationship now). But I didn't entirely come to this conclusion until after I had returned home. At the moment, it was just a very happy time, in a place and with people that made me feel very contented.

One day near the beginning of this particular chapter of my never-ending adventure, Paul took me into London for what was kind of originally meant to be a variety of tourism events including hanging out at Camden Lock and shopping, but which turned into exclusively that, because I was so enthralled by it. It was cold and kind of constantly rainy, but I just loved walking around and checking out everything. If you don't know, it's an area that's full of kind of alternative stores and vendors and it's by the waterfront. I obtained several adorable things here, including a couple of excessively cute bunny related things and my very own prefect badge, which is something I've always wanted. In a vintage store, I found and got to try on some actual school uniform blazers (the fancy type) but none of them actually fit me, largely because they were all designed for boys of various ages. It was still super cool to wear, and I hope that some day I actually can find a real, legitimate one that fits me properly.

I have this bunny shirt now. Also, this photo was taken at 13:37. Hawt.

Shortly after this, a series of events that I now refer to as The Camden Pancake Incident took place. During this incident, Paul got me a pancake from a street vendor. This was basically a sweet crepe, and, for Angelinos, it was served sort of similarly to the ones that I used to get at Four Leaf: folded up on itself in a paper cone. I got it nutella, strawberries and whipped cream, which was basically the best combination of things I could think of, and it was hot when it was handed to me, which pleased me greatly due to my constant state of being kind of cold in England. "Don't make a mess," Paul warned me as I started to eat it, and I kind of responded with "Yeah, of course, obviously" or something.

I then proceeded to make a bigger mess than I have ever made in my entire adult life.

Because the pancake was hot, all the nutella and whipped cream melted together into some sort of drippy, creamy, chocolatey goo that got everywhere. It got all over my coat. It got all over my dress. It got all over my socks and shoes. It dripped in a trail behind me. It got into my hair. I probably got it on Paul. It was just impressively messy. I tried to clean as much of it up with napkins as possible, but that had limited success. I was just a sticky mess for the rest of the day. Later, when we got back to the house and I changed to go to bed, I discovered that I had somehow gotten it on my skin under my dress and on my underwear, which doesn't even seem to follow the laws of physics to me.

Sigh. I'm an adult, I promise.

That evening, we went to a bar where I got to meet Leia-Ann Woods for the first time. She was really peppy and very entertaining to talk to, and I was excited that we'd be getting to see each other again at Boardwalk Badness Weekend the next month. On every occasion that we've been together, I've failed to take a photo. F - -.

That evening ended in a lovely way, as Paul and I went to dinner, and then took the train back to his town (on which I was very sleepy). The adventure finished with taking a midnight ferry ride, which was theoretically really enticing to me, but ended up being super cold. Fortunately, Paul took me upstairs to a giant heat vent, which I stood under and filled my happiness meter.

That weekend, we filmed for Northern Spanking. I often go thru and give a long play-by-play which describes the scenes that were filmed during a shoot, but this particular one is under-wraps. I'll just say the following things:

* Besides me and Paul, the films involves Stephen Lewis, Michael Stamp and Zoe Page. There's something incredibly, indulgently enjoyable about having four tops all to oneself.

* At one point, I wore this fancy outfit, courtesy of Lucy, who besides being amazing herself has all the most amazing stuff to wear ever:

* While we were planning out one of the scenes, Paul sat in this tiny chair, and I think this is the most endearing photo ever.

* Zoe dressed up as a cat and I somehow still managed to take her somewhat seriously.

* It became obvious to everyone that I don't really know my left from my right particularly well and that I'm horrible at singing.

* Some parts of this were ridiculous.


The final adventure that I shall detail in this post involves Primark. I don't think most people in the US know what Primark is, unless they've been around me recently and have asked me where I bought something I was wearing. Primark is a stylish ("fashion forward" I think is the term) but inexpensive store in England. A lot of the styles that they had were very "me." They had an enormous selection of underwear and pajamas.

I bought all the things.

So. Many. Things.

I'm almost ashamed to post a photo, because I feel like it makes me look a little awful, but I'm going to anyway.

This was only the first day. I went back. -_-

Lucy and Zoe took me, and they were the best people I've ever shopped with. They were never annoyed at me for spending so much time, and they helped me try things on, and they told me when things did or didn't look good on me, they carried stuff around, they took stuff into the dressing room for me... it was just amazing. Lucy fitted me for bras and I finally got some that looked appropriate on me AND are comfortable. The second trip involved me learning what kind of jeans actually don't make me look stupid, and I've actually taken to wearing them fairly regularly (one of those developments in my personality that some people continue to be flabbergasted by). After the shopping adventure, I tried on literally everything in a fashion show, including every single pair of panties that I bought, which I think numbered at least 50. This whole "Alex bought all the things" event lead to me being kind of annoying to my friends at home when they want to know where I got something, because basically all the clothes I wear now come from this exhibition. This also lead to me promising not to shop for two months after coming back from England, which lead to me consistently getting myself a variety of forms of trouble, but most of that is another story.

There will only be one more post about England after this, and then I will post rather briefly about BBW, and then I have a few more adventures to describe before I am all caught up. PROGRESS! ♥

Shoot Report: Nimue's World

The day after filming for Dreams of Spanking, Nimue, Pandora and I got up and got ready for another day of adventures in pornography: this time for Nimue's World. In case you aren't familiar with the site, Nimue's World is a mixed fetish site with quite a bit of spanking content. It has other BDSM stuff, bondage, exhibitionism, girl sex and other good stuff mixed in, too. I honestly didn't know a lot about the site before Nimue asked me to shoot for it. I just knew that Pandora had filmed for it previously. I looked at a lot of the preview materials before shooting, though, and decided that I liked the feel of it. It seems to emphasize the feeling of playtime, and it's often very visually obvious to me that the people filming on the site like each other (sometimes, for some of the more horrible stuff, there's a behind the scenes clip to make this more obvious) and I find that very comforting. As a model, it's important to my content-viewing-enjoyment to feel that a site is overall positive about itself, its content and its cast, and I certainly got this vibe the first time that I viewed Nimue's site.

Nimue and I filmed two videos and did three photosets. The first scene was one that Nimue wrote based on some of my preferences that I told her about during our pre-shooting email exchanges. Specifically, I told her that I like force, roughness and clothes ripping. I don't think that these are things that people tend to associate with me, so I'm going to diverge for a minute here.

My primary, ideal kink scene is something that I think everyone who has read this blog for more than five minutes can probably identify: I like pretty domestic spanking scenes that mix affection, trust, vulnerability and physical intensity more than I like anything else. That's at the very heart of my kink experience. All of the scenes that I'm interested in doing involve spanking in some way (or, for those who don't consider it the same thing, involve beating me on the thighs. That's nearly as important to my kink as traditional spanking is). There are a ton of other "kinds" of spanking scenes that also appeal to me, though. Role-play scenes. Ridiculous scenes. Super formal things. I like lots of variety, but for a long time, I was hesitant to explore physically rougher (in terms of handling) and emotionally darker scenes. At some point fairly recently, some switch flipped and I discovered that I found this to be delightful. I started testing the water with slightly less emotionally comfortable stuff from time to time, and it exhilarated me. This is a theme that I'll discuss at more length later in my narrative, because there's an episode in which it's more relevant, but for now, I came up with the idea of having my clothes all ripped off and I was excited that Nimue included it.

I like this (in an obviously consensual environment) because it feels like it's high on the scale of roughness, impatient, horrible, rapey. The scene that Nimue wrote was a bullying one, and I like that, too. It's a scenario I've only ever explored during videos (well, on the receiving end, anyway. There are certain individuals who might claim that I am occasionally a bully to Mila). It works out pretty well for me, though. It allows me to play with my peers in a way that's rough but which makes logical sense as to why the authority is set up. I like it because the authority is set up by force. That's the name of the game. Nimue's bullying scene set us at school. She was dressed in uniform, but because it was my first day, I just had on a dress and knee socks. I hadn't received my uniform yet. Nimue told me to go get her book that she'd forgotten but needed for class, as part of the fine tradition of older, more experienced students bossing newbs around. I refused, unaware of said traditions. Nimue responded by bringing it: she pulled me to the floor by her hair, wrestled around with me, shoved me, ripped my dress off (it ripped gloriously, like it was designed to be torn off. It was kind of epic) and then started to slap me around. She spanked me, including doing it in very non-traditional positions and she rolled me over and slapped me on the breasts. This was pre-negotiated, although I'd never done it before.

Holy. Shit. That hurt.

It was a humbling experience to be hit in a way that was totally different than what I was used to and what fit into my kink picture. I often see myself as being a pretty heavy player. I've taken some epic beatings in my day. When I'm well, in a secure environment and playing with someone I love, I've never actually found an upper limit of what I can tolerate in terms of spanking. This reminded me that I'm not actually all that physically tough: I'm just good at taking spankings. As odd as it may sound, it felt really nice and refreshing to be reminded of that. It made me tremendously vulnerable, but I felt safe and trusting towards everyone who was around me. But every slap, even though entirely not hard compared to what I was used to, took my breath away. I was shocked by how much it hurt. That section was mercifully short, though, and we returned to things I could take properly. The whole scene ended up being really hot, and chock full of the kind of awful that I've come to adore.



The second thing we shot was a bondage photoset. Nimue did a wonderful job tying me, and I like the way the photos came out. It was Nim's idea that I wear my glasses for it and I liked the look: super dorky naked girl all tied up. What's not to love? Pandora did the photography, and I think she did a lovely job as well.

Following this, we moved into the bedroom to do a wonderfully sexy film entitled "Best Girlfriend Ever." This film has me and Pandora together, with her as my Domly girlfriend. I've decided to experiment with self-bondage and have gotten myself trapped in a very vulnerable position-- with my feet up, basically in a diaper position.

Pandora comes in and catches me and chastises me for not being safe, as well as for keeping my desires to experiment with bondage to myself instead of asking her to tie me up. I try to explain that I was doing it to surprise her. She responds by spanking me with her hand and then a leather paddle, and also gives me a number of slaps on my breasts while they're bound in a rope harness. In my opinion, Pandora made this scene crazily hot. There's a lot of sexual energy between us in the film (and it's genuine, she and I are involved off camera) and it's really wonderful. I'm going to eventually write about the way that my relationship between kink and sexuality has evolved (and the ways in which it hasn't changed at all) since I haven't really addressed that recently, but let's just say I enjoyed doing this. :)



Our next project was a photo set in which I got to wear my fabulous bunny romper (a gift from my scene sister Betty Crocker) again. In this scene, Nimue brushed and braided my hair while I threw a tantrum about it, resulting in me experiencing the far less pleasant side of the hairbrush. I'm not going to lie: throwing a tantrum while someone is playing with my hair is counter intuitive. I love having my hair touched in just about any way: tender playing, brushing, rough horribleness, it all works for me. I had to think of all sorts of horribly unfair things in order to inspire my tantrumy faces.

 I think that these pictures are incredibly sweet and adorable. How can you not say "Awww?"

The final thing we did was a stripping photoset, which Nimue suggested that we do outside. I agreed to this, although I made her shoot it pretty quickly because fuck being cold. I do like being naked in the outdoors, although I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have it the weather had been warm. Nimue was pretty effective with it, and I tried my best to do minimal whining. :P

That was the end of the day's work. All of the sets have been put up on Nimue's World, so I recommend checking them out. I've watched them all at least a couple of times, as well as having perved on a bunch of the other content on her site, especially her spanking content. It's good stuff. I like Nimue a lot, and I hope to film with her again in the future. ♥

Shoot Report: Dreams of Spanking

After the adventures involved in my last post, Pandora Blake, Thomas Cameron, Nimue Allen and I prepared for a day of shooting for Dreams of Spanking. Dreams of Spanking is one of my favorite spanking sites. This was my second shoot for it, and my first "full" one. We'd only done a couple of scenes in the past, during the Texas All State Spanking Party last year. I was excited to get to do some more involved scenes, including some with interesting costumes and sets. Nimue wasn't in any of the scenes: she was doing the camera work and other production elements, and we were filming for her site, Nimue's World, the next day.

The first film that we shot was loosely based on our real life behavior the first night I arrived at Pandora's house: we were meant to go to sleep, but instead we kept staying up and talking and giggling loudly. This scene also prominently featured our stuffed animals, who were the ones keeping us up and making all the noise in the first place (or so we insisted). Tom played a kind enough but stern guardian figure who was pretty annoyed by our insistance on being noisy, and spanked and strapped both of us in the morning. We tried to get our punishment lessened by wearing adorable, matching cat underwear, but as is usually the case with these things, this was entirely unsuccessful. I really like the stills I've seen from this set (all previews, since it is as of yet not released) because of how aesthetically pleasing I find Pandora and I when we're naked together. We have very similar shapes, and I think that looks great.

There's a lot of matching in this photo

The second film that we did was interesting because it used creative camera work and had a unique point of concept. This video is currently available on Dreams, and's called "Alex's POV." It features a lot of shots which show what I can see during the spanking: shots taken as I turn over my shoulder and my own view of my bottom in a mirror propped up near us. This scene was great to film, because our characters were very nearly ourselves, and that's always a relaxed environment for me. I also like it because it's fairly physically intense while still being entirely done with Tom's hand: hard hand spanking is always a winning combination in my book. Furthermore, there was something sweet about the scenario: in some ways, it was similar to the spanking that Pandora had given me in my real life the night before: in the film, Tom suggests that a spanking would make me feel better about my less than ideal behavior while I was overseas. He's not meant to be my Dominant, just an affectionate friend who is stepping up and filling that role while no one else was around to. It was lovely to be able to watch the spanking in the mirror: that made it much more intense for me. You can read Pandora's writing about this film here.

Watching this movie after the fact, I was pretty pleased with the way that this captured the actual experience of the spanking. It was the video that I've watched myself in which was closest to my actual memory of the event. It also had a very intimate feeling surrounding it.

The next thing that we shot was a photoset to celebrate the Pagan holiday Beltane, or the rites of spring. This involved Pandora dressing me in a beautiful period costume and the use of lots of props, including real mead in the horn. I got to wear flowers in my hair and I loved my outfit, so it very much appealed to the "dressing up to make a fantasy real" side of things. The unfortunate part of this, though, was that it was March in England, which isn't a time when the weather is nice. It was grey and rainy out, and being outdoors with my shoes off and my skirt lifted wasn't exactly warm. In case I haven't complained about this enough on my blog, I don't enjoy being cold, or undressed in the cold, or getting hit with things in the cold. Still, I liked the idea enough that I soldiered on with it (no one forced me to go out and do it: I just got thru it by complaining a lot because I did actually want to). These pictures came out beautifully, and I love looking at them. These are my two favorites.

I think that whole set is just beautiful, and I was excited to do my first historical shoot.

I then had to get warm, because I was quite chilled, so we came inside and I put a bunch of fluffy things on above my costume:

Oh hey, I'm never ridiculous! Ha. 

The next set that we filmed is, as of yet, unreleased, but it was really hot. I mentioned to Pandora during the creative process that I was getting really into doing dark, awful and non-consensual scenes. This is something I'll talk about more later, as it's been part of the shift that's happened in terms of me accepting what a huge variety of things I like in the scene. Pandora and I then started scheming up a darker scene, and the one we came up with involved me as a journalist about to blow the whistle on some unethical behavior being tormented by two quite villainous corporate figures: Tom and Pandora. I liked the awfulness of the film. It was just hot. I got to genuinely crying pretty quickly, especially when they co-topped me.

Poor me!

Here's a photo of me having been spanked, in heels, stockings and a "suspender belt". You're welcome.

The next scene was one of the most hilarious ones to film in my personal history as a spanking model. The plot was simple and based on Pandora's real life: I played a character based on Pandora who is keeping a cat in her apartment against the terms of her lease. The landlady comes by to check up, and I hurriedly rush the cat into the bathroom and shut the door. Unfortunately, I leave a toy mouse under the pillow (and Fatface has shed everywhere) and the clever landlady (played by Pandora) figures out my scheme and responds with a spanking. This ended up being so funny because I actually had to cart Pandora's cat (aka the love of my life) around for the video. I have trouble sometimes because many of the photographers that I've worked with in the past have directed me to look directly into the camera instead of looking past it, or making eye-contact with someone else in the frame, et cetera. Most spanking producers don't want this: they want things to look more natural. I've tried to train myself to look in the places that look the best on film, but I often still forget. "Don't look into the camera, Alex!" Pandora reminded me as we were shooting the stills for this set.

Fatface gives 0 fucks about your directions.

I laughed so goddamn hard at the way that cat stared down the camera. I still LOL when I see this picture months later. It's just way too funny. The first time we saw this, Pandora, Nimue and I laughed until tears were literally rolling down our faces. Here's another angle:

Fuck you, guys.

The actual spanking was a bit neat, since we used one of my personal implements. This was the first time I've ever done this on film, and in this case, it was the wooden spoon called "Warren" which is part of the "Trinity of Terror" (or, the three worst things I get hit with on a regular basis). There was something personal and kind of exciting about this.

Pandora is so freaking hot. 

We wrapped up the day's filming with another one of the best things I've ever been involved in, in and out of a spanking video: #sofafort. We built the best softafort ever made in Pandora's living room. The shape of her couch made it much easier than it could have been, since it's a sectional. We covered it with blankets and propped the middle up with a broom. It looked incredibly fucking awesome.

We then filmed an adorable ageplay video inside and around it, where Pandora and I are dressed in cute pajamas (I'm in my bunny romper and she's in my bunny pajamas, because we needed a lot of pink bunny stuff and therefore looked to my wardrobe :D). We actually filmed INSIDE the sofa fort, including Pandora spanking me as sort of play acting, and then Tom coming in and finding that we've built a fort instead of tidying up for company and discipling us while bent over the fort with a pair of pretty hard hairbrush spankings. It stung like a son of a bitch, and I kicked and wailed in a pretty pathetic manner. We were then told that we had to dismantle the fort and get ready for company. Sad. Day.

After we finished filming Tom had to go, but Nimue was spending the night so we left the fort up for a while and hung out inside, talking and snacking on chips and hummus. Then we had some cider and filmed our video blog. It was an awesome day. :D

Care, Cake, Cats, Semantics, Spanking.

It's time to continue with the narrative of my life, even though I'm still writing about stuff which happened in March and it's May now. I'm not going to lie: for various reasons, April was a kind of intense month for me and I didn't dedicate the amount of time and energy to the blog that I like to (and is expected of me!) so I am really going to make an effort to get caught up on things. Some of these posts won't be as detailed as they could have been if I'd been able to write about them right away, but I don't at all regret the way I've chosen to spend my time. I hope the stories are still enjoyable to you guys, despite the time-lag. 

I wrote in an earlier post about how the start of my trip to England was very stressful. One of the things which had caused me a lot of concern was the fact that since due to horrible personal circumstances, I wasn't able to spend any of my time with Serious_Face, which had originally been a large part of my plan. Because of this, I ended up leaving my shoot in Derbyshire to go back to Paul Kennedy's house for a couple of days before I went to visit my very dear friend, Pandora Blake.

The time that I spent at Paul's house was really lovely. It was the first time I was in someone's home since I'd left Rafa's apartment in LA several weeks ago, and that was refreshing, and our time was unscheduled and very relaxed. More importantly, during the previous two days, I had discovered that I liked Paul an awful lot, and that we were very much on the same page about a lot of things. The more we discussed what aspects of this-thing-we-do were appealing and important to us, the more I noted that these things were very much in line. We spent quite a bit of time snuggling, we enjoyed a lot of sweet, rather affectionate play together and he generally looked after me. I'm often very resistant to being looked after: I firmly believe that I'm an adult and that I can and should look after myself. Letting someone else, especially someone who I had only recently gotten to know, care for me felt very vulnerable in a way that was very gratifying and, somewhat surprisingly to me, very submissive feeling. I still felt fairly shy and reserved, but the time we spent was filled with positive feelings. Safety and warmth and happiness.

At one point, we went to a cafe where we had to wait a very long time to get brunch because they accidentally gave our food to someone else(I didn't care in the slightest. I just liked sitting there and talking to him). You know how when you go out to eat sometimes they give you a number for your table, so that the person who brings your food out knows where to put it? This cafe did that in a way that made me giggle rather considerably:

Things like that, in a public setting, are enjoyably uncomfortable to me. I could hardly look at it straight on, yet I was infinitely pleased by it.

After that meal, there was cake. I know that you don't come to my blog to hear about delicious things that I ate, but screw you guys, this cake is worth talking about (Cakeboy will probably not judge me for this section, right?) . It was a glorious cake, full of cream and strawberries. I'm salivating just thinking about how damn good that cake was. Actually, I'm kind of making myself mad, because now I want to eat it again and I can't. :( It was one of the best things I've ever eaten. I'm not making that up. I like that cake.

I want this cake to be on a rainbow and in my mouth.

After those very pleasant and reenergizing couple of days, Paul took me up to London to stay at Pandora's. There was much rejoicing when we saw each other. It had been almost a year since we first met, and that was the only time we'd ever been together face-to-face. Pandora is someone that I got very close to over the internet. Besides the fact that we have a ton of fun being ridiculous together (as the stories that follow will show), I really enjoy being with her because we're able to have a certain kind of academic discourse without me feeling like I'm being a pretentious bastard. Upon me entering her home, however, we did not engage in discourse. Instead, we jumped up and down a lot and hugged vigorously. It was during this that I discovered that Pandora has a cat named Fatface. "I forgot to mention the cat," Pandora said, "but based on what I know of you, you aren't going to mind, right?"

Remember a minute ago when I was obsessed with that cake? That cake means nothing to me next to my feelings towards Fatface. Love at first site. Fatface is a big, beautiful cat. She's fluffy and mostly white, and most of the time, she gives zero fucks about what those weird humans are doing around her. The characteristics that make me like her more than the average cat (which I already like a lot) are as follows:

1) Fluffiness. 

2) Passivity. 

3) Facial expressions suggesting dissatisfaction with human company. 

4) Adorable cat food (or "biscuits" as they are referred to in England) seeking behavior. 

5) Fat. 

6) Everything. 

WTF, Alex. I came here to hear about spanking and all you want to talk about are cats and cake. 

Eventually, Paul had to leave to go home, which made me a bit sad and would have made me a lot sadder if I wasn't so excited to be seeing Pandora, and if I wasn't going to see him again later in the month. I was going to come back down to his place for further shooting in the second half of my visit.

Pandora and I spent a lot of time catching up, and then we went to the grocery store to get food supplies for my visit. She recently started doing free-running (a fact which I find kind of really sexy) and had hurt her ankle doing it just before I arrived, so she was kind of hobbling around and we decided that walking a long distance wasn't wise and took the bus. At the store, I was introduced to a lot of foods that I wasn't familiar with, including cider in flavors like strawberry lime (which is pink!) and chocolate oranges. Pandora and I also discovered that we had very similar taste in food, which made things much easier. Being adventurous, we decided to get a dragon fruit, which I'd never had before, and some strange squash or gourd type vegetable that was advertised as being good for curry and sort of looked like a cross between a cucumber and an alligator. We had high hopes for these foods. The dragon fruit turned out to be a bit different than other fruit in that it isn't really all that juicy, nor is the flavor particularly strong, but it was very good.

Pandora and the dragon fruit.

The vegetable in question, however, turned out to be some sort of horrible monster vegetable that shouldn't be eaten under any circumstance. It was bitter and awful, and it TASTED like an alligator's skin looks. I think we nearly cried when we ate it, and we had to pick every bit of it out of our stir fry in order to make the rest of the vegetables edible. Sad. Day.

That was an aside, because I was talking about food. After we had finished at the store, we had a few drinks and then went to bed, but we didn't go to sleep. We stayed up for half the night talking about all sorts of things. We discovered that we had many things in common, including strange, highly personal things that we don't often talk about. It was a great bonding experience. We also were kind of ridiculous with our combined collection of stuffed animals. This night ended up being the inspiration for one of the scenes that we filmed together later in the week.

The next day, Pandora took me to some charity shops in her area, as I was lacking some of the items that I wanted to have with me due to traveling snafus. I didn't end up getting too many things that were practical, but I did get a blouse with cats on it, a pair of white (I mean bone) shoes and a pair of purple suede heels. Charity shops are different than thrift stores run by charities in the US, like Goodwill and Salvation Army, and poppin' tags is a different activity in England than it is here. The stores they have are far smaller, and the selection of items is different. In America, you can find anything at the thrift store, ranging from really trashy, old crap to high class stuff with the tags still on it. In England, everything has kind of already been preselected for quality, which is slightly sad to me, since I thrive on weird, awkward, ironic or geeky things that a lot of people wouldn't consider "quality." I still loved the shopping experience and was pleased with my purchases. I also realized that I had an ace in my hand for hipster oneupmanship now: when someone asks me where I got these things, I can say "Oh, I got it at the thrift store... IN ENGLAND." Ha. No copying me now, bitches!

That evening, Pandora and I somehow ended up in a competition to see who could finish posting to their blog first, which aided me quite a bit in actually getting this stuff done. Pandora, however, finished her post just slightly before I did. "I beat you to posting!" she said, "Now, I'm going to beat you in real life!"

The setting of additional rules to a competition after it's already been completed like that is tremendously unfair. When I have a certain kind of energy with someone, though, I find unfairness delightful, sort of like the way that YS consistently lies to me about how many strokes he's going to give me and that somehow ends up with me being happy.

Pandora offered me a warmup, which I gladly accepted, and then put me over her lap and spanked me with her hand. It had been a long time since I was spanked by Pandora, and I was glad it was happening again. I don't feel entirely submissive towards her, so to speak, but I do feel passive towards her in play, and I enjoy her receiving her Toppiness, and I was very comfortable with her occupying Boss-space for the moment (more information on WTF "bossing" actually means to me coming in a later post). It felt sort of invigorating and exciting to be getting spanked by her. Once I was thoroughly warm, she directed me up onto her sofa for a whacking with a fairly big, leather paddle. I cuddled up to her stuffed dog, Fred, who is known as "Drop Dog" due to his ability to drop onto your head. "Comfort her well, Drop Dog!" Pandora instructed, "she's going to need it!" (I liked that quite a bit, too). She gave me a spanking that was neither severe nor serious, but still hurt enough, and put me in a giggly, happy, nicely spanked mood. (You can read Pandora's side of this story here.)

Thanks, Pandora and Drop Dog!

It turns out that Pandora and I ended up playing together off camera quite a bit, and this pleased me a great deal. Sometimes the space was lighthearted, and once it was mildly corrective: I smacked her with The Heavy Bear (from "The Bear Incident"), after she knew quite well that I was seriously forbidden from "assaulting" my friends, even (especially?) with bears. We were already in bed, but her response was very quick. She sat up and pushed me down and started to smack my bottom fairly thoroughly while I whimpered and apologized for my bear-violence. Then she got up from the bed, and I turned out of position. "Oh no, don't go anywhere!" she warned. "You're not done!" She retuned with a wooden hairbrush, which she gave me twenty whacks with before forgiving me for my little outburst and snuggling down for the night.

Side note: Hitting people with that bear falls into a certain category of bad behavior, along with picking on Mila Kohl: I know it's bad, I get corrected for it all the time, but there's just some insatiable desire in me that prevents me from ever being able to stop doing it. Both activities are just so satisfying. Mila is probably fortunate that she has never been in the same place as me when I had that bear, or else I might have clobbered her to death with it if the power of these two tempting misbehaviors combined. 0_0

Pandora and I also shared a more serious scene later on in the week, in which I was much more vulnerable than I had previously been in any of our kink interactions. I was worrying about something, like I am known to do, and I was feeling detached from my D/s dynamics back at home. I was generally a bit moody and out of sorts because of it, and felt a little less than secure. Company was arriving soon, and I wanted to be perky and cheerful for them, but it was kind of a struggle to get myself back where I belonged. I talked to Pandora a bit, and she asked me rather straightforwardly if I needed a spanking.

Yes. Yes, I did.

There's something particularly comforting to me about that phrasing as a way to initiate a scene, especially if I'm having some sort of emotional situation. It's largely about semantics. "Do you need a spanking, Alex?" makes me feel instantly taken care of. I think that the question format of this is particularly pleasing to me because it requires me to openly admit to what I need and desire in that situation, and doing that often clears my head and gives me focus (as well as being a lovely way to guide me onto the path of active submission). There's also a feeling of some level of concern for me: there has never been a situation where someone that cared about me asked that and I felt that it wouldn't have been perfectly acceptable for me to say "no" if that wasn't actually what I wanted (although me not wanting to be spanked when offered is usually a sign that I'm either horrendously overtired, drunk or need to be taken to the hospital). The similar question: "Do you want a spanking?" does much less for me as a positive trigger because it feels very casual ("Hey, wanna get spanked? Cool.") and because it just seems like a very obvious question. Am I awake/sober/healthy? Then probably, yes, I do. "Need" is a word that can be a bit loaded sometimes. There's a large part of me that doesn't want to admit to needing anything, but if someone else brings the word up first, it feels good to me, like it's been made acceptable for me to have needs. I understand that this is a very complex breakdown of a simple sentence, but these sorts of things are interesting to me. I'm curious if any other bottom-types have similar thoughts on these sorts of phrases, too.

I was slightly reluctant to accept, simply because I didn't want Pandora to feel like she had to look after me, and because my emotional state involved worrying about being a burden to people, but she reassured me and then took me over her lap while she was seated on the corner of the sofa (so it was more of an "in a chair OTK" than an "on the sofa OTK" in terms of positioning and I tried to relax myself. She spanked me with an atmosphere that felt corrective but not chastising. It was quite spot on for the headspace I needed: I didn't feel like I was being treated as though I'd done something wrong, but I did feel disciplined, as in I felt like I was existing in the comfortable space of being given the necessary structure and care. It was one of the rare moments where I felt as if I could understand the difference between "discipline" and "punishment", even if I never grabbed onto it enough to properly articulate it here. Physically, the spanking was appropriately thorough. Pandora used her hand throughout, but still produced some squeals and gasps. I didn't feel a need to struggle, although it was firm and did hurt. I just felt a safe calmness, and the feeling of my internal centering being restored. When she finished, we hugged and I expressed my gratitude. It had been lovely and kind of her. :)

That night, I got spanked one more time, although not by Pandora. She did, however, totally set it up. The company that arrived that evening consisted of Nimue Allen and Thomas Cameron, coming to spend the night so we'd be able to get up early and start shooting the next day. I had made it obvious to Pandora that I was interested in potentially playing with Tom before we shot together (I like doing that, in general, if it's possible, and I'd seen a lot of pictures of Tom that had sort of piqued my interest). She then suggested that I might need to be spanked again later in the night when my comments got slightly inappropriate later in the evening. This was largely just used as an initiating device: the spanking that I got didn't really feel disciplinary. It did feel quite good, though, in a painful sort of way. I went over Tom's lap while Nimue and Pandora watched, and he spanked me quite firmly with his hand, including spanking the entirety of the backs of my thighs. He used his hand effectively, and it hurt a lot. I wasn't sure exactly how it was going to go, but it ended up being a very fully formed scene: he kept going at increasing intensity until I broke past whimpering and into sniffling and moved into proper crying. That was a fairly rare thing: outside of a video, it's rare for someone to make me cry the first time I play with them (legends of me crying every time I get spanked are gross overstatements). I think that it worked because there was no expectation set that this would happen. Very often, when someone sets out to make me cry, they are not successful. It jinxes it. This time, it just happened, and it felt right and good.
Afterwards, there were, of course, cuddles.

Dear Pandora, I stole this off your blog. Love, Alex. 

This seems like a very good place to wrap up this post, as the next day we shot, and that will be a whole other thing to talk about.