"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. ♥