Pre-party: Prux, Panda, Presents, Punishment

I first met my friend Prux over fetlife nearly a year ago. We got to see each other in person for the first time at BBW. I was practically shocked by what a sweet girl she is: caring, gentle, kind, polite and loving. We got to spend much more time together at July's Crimson Moon party, and it was then that I knew that we were going to be really good friends. My favorite memory from our interactions during the summer was when we both stayed the night at Joe and Ten's house following the July party. The Brat Brigade was in full force and ridiculous hijinx were happening all around us. At one point, Bad Alex had gotten me into trouble and I was waiting nervously for the consequences of my actions. Prux came and stood next to me sweetly, holding my hand.

"Do you want to go hide?" she asked. The other girls had been running around the house all evening, hiding in closets and attempting to escape spankings. At this point, I'd never hidden to avoid punishment before in my life (and I'm quite sure Prux hadn't either), so it seemed like a possibly fun experiment. First, we hid in the closet but it was dark and a bit scary in there, so when no one was looking, we crept up the stairs and out into the front yard. We considered hiding under someone's car like cats, but decided that was not a wise idea and simply crouched behind it. We stayed there giggling and holding hands for quite a while before we realized that no one was looking for us, so we gave up and wandered back to the basement where everyone was hanging out and confessed what we had done. I took my spanking and then Prux and I cuddled. It would have been fairly anti-climactic if she hadn't been so damn adorable. That night, we both slept on the same L-shaped sofa, having arranged ourselves so that we wouldn't poke one and other with our feet.

I got to see Prux a little more at Shadowlane, but that was a particularly busy party for me so I didn't get to spend as much time with friends as I would have liked. We chatted lots after it, though, and I was really excited to see her during this party. We planned to spend the Wednesday before the party fully started together, and Prux obviously gave careful thought to what we should do together for the most adorable, girly fun possible. Unfortunately, Paul and I didn't end up getting into Chicago until about 4:30 or something, so we weren't able to do as much adventuring as we would have liked. I was still one of the most excited girls in the whole world when I saw Prux pull up to meet us at the airport! I couldn't stop hopping up and down. It was exciting to introduce her and Paul: I love it when the people that I adore finally get to meet each other.

We had to do a couple of errands before going to the hotel, and Prux and I chatted happily while we did them. I had forgotten several important things when packing (as is always the way with me). One of these was a coat-- it had been in the 70's when I left Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, so I left my coat sitting on the chair in my study. I was sorely missing that in Chicago as the wind whipped around. Prux kept giving me cuddles whenever we were outside to keep me warm. :D Another thing I had forgotten was a stuffed animal. When we stopped at the grocery store for other supplies, we noticed a shelf full of stuffed toys. I asked Paul if I could get one.

"Of course," he responded. "You'll need something to clutch desperately while I'm beating you." My tummy felt funny when he said this, but Prux helped me pick out an adorable pink panda to be my newest companion. I named her Penelope.

Meet Penelope!

After errands were done, we went to dinner, where Prux and I had nearly excessive cuddles and I managed to get ketchup in my hair. Then we went to the hotel and got checked in. Here, Prux gave me a present: one of the sweetest ones I've ever gotten!

It was a "bag of sunshine": she had assembled a yellow bag full of fun, adorable yellow presents to represent what she said was the "sunshine that I bring into her life." I couldn't stop grinning as I unpacked it. Everything was carefully selected, and the whole thing was made more excellent by the fact that yellow is my favorite color!

A puzzle, candy, yellow flowers, cider mix, face masks, nail polish, gummy bears, glitter crayons, a candle, silly string, cute animal containers filled with candy, a giraffe which is also a fan and a card with a sweet note. There were also two rubber ducks, who aren't shown because they were in the bathtub.

The bag included a puzzle with cute ducks, and Prux and assembled it together (this was the second time that Prux had done it, because she checked to make sure all the pieces were there before giving it to me, which I think is over-the-top sweet!)

Artistic rendering of Prux and I!

After that, I had to take a bath because I was super gross from traveling and had ketchup in my hair. We chatted while I was bathing, and SheldonFT texted to see if he could come say hi to Prux. Soon a small group of spankos had assembled in the living room area of our room while I sat naked in the bath. Paul had gone down to the lobby and got to meet the handful of friends who were in the room when he came back, then he came to talk to me where I was sitting in the bathtub. He instructed me to turn over in the bath so my bottom was up and he gave me my first few swats of the party, scolding me for making such a mess in the restaurant. It started out playful and tender, but then I decided to suddenly drop down so that my bottom was submerged. He wasn't expecting it, and the next spank made an enormous splash, getting water all over him. The rest of the spanking was much more brisk after that!

Once I had finished in the bath, I came out and got into pajamas and saw Sheldon, Naughty Freckles and LilAngelWings. The group of us chatted until it got a bit late, and then everyone returned to their rooms. I had to say goodnight to Prux, since she wasn't staying in the hotel that night. I gave her the biggest hug ever and a million thank-you's for her sweetness. I'm so grateful to have such a wonderful, loving friend. After our hugs time was finished, she shyly and adorably asked Paul if she could hug him, too, which was of course very acceptable indeed!

Once she was gone, though, the evening got slightly more serious. I had done something (personal) I shouldn't have earlier in the day, and I knew that I was going to be punished for it before going to bed. Paul instructed me to sit on the bed and wait for him while he went downstairs to smoke. I sat on the bed cuddling Penelope and being very still and quiet, my heart racing. I wasn't sure what exactly was going to happen, but I knew that I needed to be punished for what I had done, and I felt a sense of serenity in the knowledge that my correction was inevitable. After what felt like approximately eight years of waiting, Paul came back and sat down next to me on the bed. He scolded me for my behavior earlier in the day and reminded me why I needed to be punished for it. His voice was gentle the entire time, and his touch sweet. "I thought about it and I've decided that I'm not going to cane you for this," he told me. "It's the start of a party weekend and I'm partly responsible for what happened this morning. That wouldn't be fair." I let out a little sigh, as I had been fairly confident that was what was coming. "Instead I'm going to strap you." Oh. Well, fuck. "I know you think that's worse," he acknowledged.

When other people say "strapping" they could be referring to a spanking given with any of a number of  leather implements, some wide, some narrow, some light and delicious and others bitey and cruel. In my household it only means one thing, though: the tawse. I'm sitting alone in my bedroom writing this, and I still blushed and shuddered to type that word. Mila and I have taken to calling it "the other thing" (with "the first thing" meaning the cane). No other implement has ever focused my mind so much. I'm not entirely sure where my extreme, obsessive love/(but mostly)hate relationship with this implement came from. Part of it comes from the fact that it appeared in stories and historical things that I read and in films which I saw during my pre-spanking fantasy period. Part of it comes from the fact that early on in our dynamic, Paul sent me a very detailed email about how intended to use this particular implement on me and how it was going to feel. I received this message at a time when I wasn't really playing, and certainly not in the way I wanted to be, and it became a seed that grew into a fantastic tree of delightful and terrifying fantasies. Then there's a film from Nimue's World entitled "I've Seen You" that I've been a bit obsessed with in which Paul plays a wonderfully creepy character who beats Nimue rather mercilessly with said implement. This film is dark, but in reality, totally consensual and I find it very, very hot. Then, of course, there's the reality of the thing. "The other thing" hurts, to me, in a way nothing else does. Hot, pinching, biting, swelling, firey hurt. I think it has a 100% "made Alex cry" rating still. Owwwwww.

To return from my tangent, I sat on the bed wringing my hands at this announcement. I seriously considered begging for a caning instead, but I maintained my composure, as I knew I had messed up and I knew I needed to be punished. If I had asked for something else and received it, even if it had been severe I would have felt like I got away with something. It wouldn't have put me in the headspace that I needed to be in. So I just looked down at the ground and was quiet and obedient. Besides, he had approached this as an alternative to a caning and mentioned that I "think" it's worse, which could have seemed patronizing but wasn't. To me, it suggested that it wasn't intended to be (this time).

First there was a warmup, which happened OTK and was very short and made me pretty sore itself. I had tears forming behind my eyes before the proper punishment even started. The proper punishment arrived soon, though, and I was ordered over the end of the bed and it was announced that I'd be getting eight: the rounded-up version of half my usual punishment. The first stroke landed and I wailed and started to cry, although I recognized that he wasn't doing it quite as hard as he usually did. On the second stroke I dared to look over my shoulder and saw that, indeed, he wasn't swinging with the ferocity that he usually had. This didn't stop it from hurting terribly, but it was more manageable. I couldn't help but cry at each stroke, though, especially when I focused on the careless thing which I had done earlier in the day. I let the pain focus me on my desire to be a good girl, and I cried out my frustration with myself and my guilt at my earlier behavior. My cries got louder as the number got higher, but soon, it was finished. It wasn't a severe punishment: a lot of it had been in my head, but I felt much better for it.

It took me several minutes of lying on the bed gasping and clutching Penelope before I managed out my thanks for the punishment, but once I did I was reminded that I'm a good girl and wrapped up in a delightful snuggle. Then it was time for photos and to get ready to actually go to sleep!

See? Not TOO bad!

Unfortunately for me, I had a hell of a time sleeping throughout the entire party, so at six AM, after having no sleep the night before, I accidentally woke Paul up because I was literally in tears from insomnia. Awww, that's pathetic. He gave me a sleep aid and cuddled me and stroked my hair and eventually I did fall asleep. I had a big day ahead of me... ♥

A Post About a Post

So, for over a week now, I've been working on a post about whether or not there are forms of play, especially emotional or mental play, which are inherently abusive or universally unacceptable and questioning whether there are limitations to what can be consented to, even when all parties are adults who are fully mentally capable of giving their consent. I've questioned what sorts of activities are appropriate to do in a "blanket consent" or "generalized consent" relationship when one has given a general surrender of power instead of negotiating specific activities.

I don't know that I'm ever going to be able to finish this post. It's probably the most difficult thing I've tried to write.

This is partially because I'm scared that this will look like I'm trying to point fingers, or that I'm writing this with an agenda, which I'm honestly not doing. I'm not trying to say that I was abused, or that someone I know was abused, or that there was a specific situation I was involved in or witnessed recently where consent was not appropriately given. My thought process for this post started because I described a form of play as being "abusive" recently, and then started thinking about whether it's possible for any one thing to be inherently so instead of being different in any situation. I don't want to cause any outrage or hurt any feelings. I'm trying to write carefully and deliberately with this in mind.

This is also partially because of my writing style. When I'm ruminating on a theoretical topic, I tend to pull in examples using anecdotal evidence from my life or from other people's activities that have been shared with me. I feel like it's unfair for me to do that in this situation because then it puts these activities under the scrutiny of "was this abusive?" and no one wants that. That isn't fair to anyone, nor is it generally appropriate. When you remove all the specific descriptions from the text, you're only left with a series of questions to which I don't have any answers:

Are there things that can't be consented to? 
Is consent valid when a person doesn't fully know or understand what they are consenting to?
Is consent valid if it's given when a person has already been brought into subspace? 
Are there any activities that simply shouldn't be done?
Do we ever have the right to judge other people's activities? 
If the same activity can be both positive and abusive depending on context, are there any aspects that influence this besides consent? 

For now, I'm going to keep the rest of the post that I've worked on as a draft. Maybe I'll eventually come up with a way to finish it. In the meantime, I'd like to pose these questions to all of you. I'm curious to see if you have any answers. ♥

KOTW: Understanding Tickling

Well, my plan to write more has been working to some extent. I've been working on a kind of big "theory" post that deals with a concept that I've been struggling with for some time. As such, it's hard to get through the writing. I keep going back and forth on what I want to say.
Because of this, I haven't had a full post for you since the last Kink of the Week (le sigh!) but I can promise an interesting one soon. Not that KOTW isn't interesting.

So, onto the post!

The KOTW topic this week is tickling.
I've always had a very neutral feeling towards tickling. I'm rather ticklish, but I don't particularly dislike being tickled. As a child, I found tickling to be a pleasant interaction, although I grew up in a family where that was considered a bit too much physical contact to be appropriate. As I grew up, it sort of stopped being something that I thought of very often.

From time to time I meet people in the scene who sort of roll their eyes at my spanking fetish.
"Spanking? Really? That's hardly even kinky. That's so childish. That doesn't even hurt," they say. Then I get all kinds of flustered and annoyed and defensive. Let me tell you a long list of reasons why your wrong. But this hardly matters, because the person with this opinion just doesn't "get" spanking or understand what it means to be a spanko, so they can't really be convinced.

In the process of brainstorming for this post, I discovered that my feelings towards tickling were quite similar to the feelings that I hated having directed towards spanking.

In my mind, tickling is a tender, playful interaction that doesn't feel kinky to me. There's something that seems sort of unappealingly childish about it to me (and I'm sitting at my very small desk dressed in my fuzzy nightshirt which is printed with cartoon owls and a pair of Hello Kitty panties with my hair in pigtails, typing this on my sticker-covered laptop). I decided that these feelings aren't really fair for me to have, and they certainly aren't very educated.

I decided to start looking at some Tickling sites to learn a little bit more about it. A lot of them presented tickling in a way sort of similarly to the way I was imagining it: two girl-next-door types gently rough-housing and tickling each other in their lingerie, sometimes using colorful feathers. The presence of the feathers connected it to something else in my mind: "sensation play."

Via Teaseglam.com

I originally thought that sensation play was a pretty milquetoast idea, as well. This was during a period of my life when I was very focused on submission as being challenging and where I frequently intentionally denied myself the enjoyable side of things like spanking. The idea of "things which feel nice" seemed, well, lame to me. Later on, I started to break down the barriers between things being "nice" and things being "kinky" and I discovered that I like quite a lot of sensation play. I like the feeling of something cold being placed on my bottom after a spanking, or the startle of it touching me on my unaffected skin. I like soft materials on my body and especially on skin that's sore. I like the feeling of pressure as something weighted is pressed against me. I like focusing only on my body, and making my world very small, and sensation play lends itself to that very well. Just as pain is a focusing device, so can be any sort of touch. I often find gentle touches with a single finger being run slowly over my body to be some of the most erotic. This motion when repeated over and over can become a slow tickling sensation. I can see how this would be enjoyable, positive and nice.

But tickling fetishists don't always think that tickling is nice, right? Sometimes tickling is a torture. I think the primary reason that I can't imagine tickling as being particularly kinky is because I've always had tickling stop before I even got particularly tired of it. I've never been held down, restrained and tickled until I wanted it to be over. I know that many people enjoy combining tickling with bondage, and I can imagine the point where anything becomes unbearable and apply that to tickling to create a scenario which is not unlike the point in a spanking where I feel like it's difficult to endure it any longer. This is the place where submission is required, where I have to focus on passivity and give myself over to the spanking. I can imagine that tickling can come to require a similar kind of submission.

Then there's the idea of tickling as being a rougher, harsher activity. If you tickle someone with your nails, for example, that somewhere between tickling and scratching. If you use a rough or abrasive motion, especially on the tender parts of the body, tickling can be strangely painful. Once or twice, Malignus "tickled" me in a method that he calls "deep tissue tickling." I don't fully understand what he did, but I think it combined massage techniques with tickling motions to create a sensation that was similarly invasive to the pain that I felt when we experimented with bastinado. It felt like there was a creature loose inside my body, or sometimes, like I was being stabbed. It was so invasive feeling that I wasn't able to be submissive towards the feeling. Again, we didn't do much of this. :P

So, at the end of the day, I can see the appeal, I think. I've certainly found a new appreciation for why it might be enjoyable and how I could possibly relate to what a tickling fetishist enjoys. I'm glad that I explored this because I don't like not understanding something, and I hate to think that I'm not giving something a fair shot in my mind.

As always, I'm open to questions and comments.
I promise that there'll be a post with spanking in it very soon. ♥

Missing Persons

On a daily basis, I happily answer questions about lots of different things in my comments, ask box on tumblr and email. Usually, these questions are related to logistical things (where can I find a particular video, when will you next be visiting my area et cetera) or questions about my life, history and interests (which implements I prefer to be spanked with, whether I was spanked as a child or not, how I got into the scene et cetera). I do my best to answer everything that I get, although questions that are too personal or that request information which isn't mine to give out get skipped over. There is a pair of similar questions that I consistently get, and I'm going to answer them on the public forum so that the information gets out there.  That said, because I'm discussing people other than myself, these answers are intentionally vague.

The first question is "What happened to Heather Green/Michaels? Is she ever going to make more videos?"

Usually people sound a bit worried about Heather's video making cessation, and ask if she's alright.
Heather is doing quite well, but has retired from modeling. She's happily living out some of her life's greatest dreams at the moment, and has chosen to stop doing films in order to focus on her vanilla pursuits. Heather still has one unreleased video that I know of: a scene that I'm also in which will be coming out on Northern Spanking at some point in the fairly near future. That said, she won't be making any new films, so that will likely be the last "new" Heather Green release. We'll all miss seeing videos from her, but I'm very glad that she's happy and well. ^_^

The second question, similar in nature is "What happened to Spanking Debs and Firm Discipline? Where can I purchase those videos?"

Firm Discipline is currently off-line and the content that was held therein is not available for purchase anywhere at the moment. Debs has taken a break and stepped back from video production. I don't know if this is permanent or if she'll be back. I also don't know when or where the existing content will be available again. I'm under the impression that it will be for sale again at some point, although I don't know the specifics. I'll post more information when I have it. In the meantime, you'll just have to wait and see what happens. I'm sorry I can't tell you more, I honestly don't know the answers to this. Several people have asked me if I can distribute the Firm Discipline scenes that include me. The answers is that I am not able to do that. Sorry!

I know that this is a far less interesting post than that which I usually have! I just wanted to share this information and let you all know the answers to these questions. If you have any other questions (about anything, really) feel free to leave them in the comments or email me at alexinspankingland@gmail.com
♥

KOTW: Experiments with Bastinado

I did one "Kink of the Week" post during the summer, and since then, I haven't participated.
This is just because I was having a hard enough time keeping up with my regular posting, let alone try to add in something with a *gasp* deadline!

For those of you who don't know, Kink of the Week (or KOTW) is a feature on my friend Jade's blog. Every week, she posts a particular "kink" as the theme. These things are sometimes activities, materials, practices, ideas et cetera that a person might fetishize or enjoy as part of their kink play. She then invites other bloggers to write up their opinion, interests, ideas or "take" on this topic. Everyone's links are posted to the KOTW page, so readers can get a variety of opinions on one topic.

It's a bit hard for me to write these posts sometimes because I see my kink play as being fairly limited because my fetishistic interests are pretty straight forward compared to some people. That said, I have dabbled in a lot of things and I do have thoughts on basically everything. That's the beauty of having a brain, isn't it? :P More importantly, I like the *idea* of KOTW. I like having a variety of minds come together and describe their thoughts and feelings. I like the fact that instead of it being a thread on a forum somewhere or a place where you can comment on her blog, Jade allows us each to showcase our own work. We write and format our posts in the style that's natural and comfortable for us, and we do it in our own spaces on the internet. When we invite others to read our KOTW posts, it draws attention to each person's blog or site and allows us to find people whose thoughts and words are powerful and important but who we would not normally encounter.

For these reasons, I've decided that I'm going to try to make myself write about the KOTW topic each and every week, though, even when the kink is something that I don't fetishize or usually practice. I don't know how much I'll have to say about these topics, or how great my post will be, but we'll try it.

Relatedly, this week's topic is Bastinado.

Bastinado isn't something that I've ever fantasized about. I think this is probably because even though it's a traditional form of corporal punishment, it's very removed from the domestic/institutional corporal punishment base of my fantasies. It feels darker, to me, but it doesn't fit with the dark parts which draw me in. In general, the basis of my darker interests is always a change in theme or intensity, not a change in the style of play. Then there's the fact that my feet are very sensitive and because I'm very clumsy, I've injured them a lot of times. There's nothing particularly exciting about a sensation that I associate with accidentally hurting myself.

Still, I've experimented with getting hit on the feet on two different occasions. The first was during the very start of my relationship with Malignus. During the time that we first started sceneing together, we tried a lot of things that I had never done before, many of which we would never do again, just for the sake of experimentation and new experiences. One day, while we were hanging out in his living room (this was before we lived together), he grabbed my foot and applied a sharp smack to the bottom of it with a wooden spoon. I found the sensation of this to be something which I can only describe with one word: "invasive." I don't mean that it was invasive to my personal comfort zone that he did that or anything like that. I found the pain to be invading my body in a way that I'd never experienced. Because the hurting traveled up the body of my foot, the feeling seemed more akin to a foreign object entering me in a place where it wasn't meant to than just feeling sore. I thrashed around, trying to shake the feeling out of my foot. This kind of sensation made me very uncomfortable and almost a little disturbed, like some shockwave of hurt was wiggling around in my body.
We never did that again.

Target? 

The second time that I experimented with this was very recently. Someone with whom I was playing asked if he could hit my feet very gently. I decided to try it, to see if gentler, more percussive sensations would be different. Besides, it had been years since my previous attempt at it, and my tolerance for different sensations had increased. So we tried it. He used a leather paddle to lightly strike the bottoms of my feet, avoiding the arch and the toes. I wouldn't call the sensation pleasant, but I didn't have the same reaction that I did last time. It felt very similar to being struck on the hand, although it was being done in a much less intense way than my previous hand-striking experiences. It hurt, and but it radiated in a traditional pattern. Afterwards, it felt a bit odd to walk around on tender feet, but the feeling dissipated quickly.

Maybe you could give warmup strokes over socks, to make a foot-baring ritual and borrow from the spanking routine?

I don't see myself playing this way much in the future, but I am starting to understand why people who enjoy it might. I think that for some, the unusual, almost exotic nature of it could be exciting. Of course, if you're into feet, then that's a huge bonus. One of my friends described the feeling of being caned on the soles of her feet as sending shockwaves through her body which felt similar to the sensations that she felt during orgasm, and therefore she finds it tremendously arousing. I would imagine that both this positive reaction and my initial negative reaction would have been caused by the layout of nerves in the foot: she's just getting struck on nicer feeling ones than I was. Or perhaps they're the same and the feeling that I found invasive and frightening feeling excite her.

I've mentioned this idea before, but I always find it very humbling when I play around in a kink other than my own. I can get to feeling very tough indeed when it comes to taking spankings. I can have a very high tolerance (I say "can" because in a vulnerable situation my tolerance is laughably low). It almost fills me with awe at how much things hurt me that *aren't* on my bottom or thighs, and my bastinado play experiments are a good example of that. Still, I think that when I want that feeling of being shocked by how painful something is, I think I'll stick to something that I find thematically more interesting (like my hands).  ♥

A Very Long Walk

I'm back!
FINALLY!
I've never let this blog sit around uncared for for such a long time. I finally have the basic pieces of my life in order now, though: my house is nearly unpacked, I have most of the furniture that I require and all of my appliances, my cats are happily adjusted to the new home and, perhaps most importantly, I finally have internet. It took them two weeks to get around to setting it up. It was ridiculous. I got tremendously behind on everything that I needed to do, since nearly all of it involves being online.
I'm finally getting caught up now. It's very time consuming.

But life is good.

Paul and I are growing into a comfortable lifestyle as things get settled. Like everyone else in the world, we spend most of our days doing our respective jobs, but we both do large parts of that from home so we spend a lot of time together. I make dinner nearly every night and do lots of baking, which makes me happy. Between work and chores and making cookies, there's time for me to do the silly things that I like, such as drawing with sidewalk chalk, chasing my cats around and doing craft projects such as making foxes out of paper.

Two dozen cookies from scratch, one dozen foxes from construction paper

After I made them, Paul used string to carefully hang them from the weeping branches of the tree in our yard, whose trunk is wrapped with tiny, solar powered Christmas lights. Our mail box is matte black, so I color on it with the sidewalk chalk. We have a pumpkin on our stoop and yellow flowers growing in a planter. It's so incredibly obvious that I live here. It's a very happy house.

Paul and I have grown very comfortably into having D/s as part of our daily lives instead of maintaining a long distance relationship, probably partially because the foundation that we built during the time that we were long distance was so strong. Aiding in the ease of this transition is the fact that we both have a very strong and well defined idea of what we want from one such relationship and that those ideas are very much in line (see also, our compatibility). I'm sure that being seriously in love doesn't hurt, either.

Just as our daily life has become very domesticated, our daily kink life has, too, in a way that I find infinitely comforting. Spanking fits into our daily life seamlessly. It's the most natural thing in the world. Our bedtime ritual involves me getting spanked each night as a re-affirmative act, but spankings just happen throughout the day, too, whether it's taking a break from work for spontaneous play or setting time aside to address something more serious.

Interestingly, now that I'm living in a location where I have a lot more kinky friends and scene activities to participate in, I've found myself much more involved and interested in my vanilla life. I've been reconnecting with old friends, doing personal writing projects, doing craft projects, doing more baking and more experimental cooking and just generally rediscovering interests that I had put aside.

One thing that I really like is walking. That sounds like a very lame thing to like, doesn't it? I do, though. In college, Zeki and I used to walk huge distances, sometimes passing through two or three towns, or even out of the county. We'd talk and share stories. Some of our best mutual ideas were fostered during these walks. Other days, I would walk by myself, usually on a shady trail that followed the Bronx River. I would get deeply involved in daydreaming and often make up spanking stories in my head or review others that I really enjoyed, sometimes from films, sometimes from my own limited experiences with SF.

The other day I decided to go take a walk, since I needed to talk to someone on the phone I get antsy when I'm just sitting still when I'm on the phone. Paul was working in the study, so I told him I'd be back shortly. I did plan to be back shortly. Maybe I didn't really plan at all, because I was wearing jelly flip-flops and I didn't have any water with me and it was a particularly dry, hot day. None the less, my conversation ended pretty quickly, but I kept walking for a while, daydreaming happily like I used to do. I realized that I was walking in the direction of a particular major road where Target is located, and I decided that it would be neat if I walked all the way there. It's about a mile away from my house, so it was certainly feasible-- I've done 8 - 10 mile walks in the past. I needed to go there anyway, and I estimated that I was about halfway there already. I'd walk the rest of the way, get the hangers I needed and then walk home.

Unfortunately, I wasn't actually walking the way that I thought I was.

Two miles later, I was hot, dehydrated and tired. My feet were incredibly sore and seriously blistered. I decided that I needed to give up and turn around.

I tried to walk home, but I got about six blocks before I realized that there was no way I could possibly do that. I was tired. I needed a drink. This was a stupid idea.

I slowly began to realize how poorly I had planned this. Why did I think it was a good idea to walk in the heat without water or proper shoes? I hadn't even told Paul where I was going, and he was under the impression I was going to be back shortly. I realized that I'd been gone for nearly an hour. Under the strap of my sandal, my feet looked like they were about to bleed.

It was then that I realized I was going to have to ask Paul to come get me in the car. It was also then that I realized that I was probably going to be in pretty serious trouble. Taking care of myself is pretty much rule #1. This was a serious failure in that department.

Well, fuck.

Paul agreed to come get me without really saying anything about it, but as soon as I got into the car, I knew that he was seriously displeased with me.

"Are you mad?" I asked, my voice small and meek.
"You're going to be punished when we get home" was his only response. We drove back in silence. I could do nothing but think about how thoughtless this had been. I'd interrupted Paul's working. I had entirely failed at taking care of myself. Tears ran down my face, and I sniffled a bit.

As soon as we got in the door, Paul turned to me and said "Go to your room." I went into our bedroom and flopped on the bed. I didn't want to stand up. My feet hurt too much. I was hot. I was tired. I was in big, big trouble. I lay there like a lump, doing an activity which really can't be described as anything but "sulking." In the seeming eternity (but actually one or two minutes) before Paul came in I could hear him moving around in the kitchen. Then I heard the sound of a cabinet being opened and shut again, and my heart began to pound.

There's a shallow, white cabinet in the kitchen. It's separated from the other kitchen cupboards and obviously original to the house, but it's only about three inches deep. I'm not sure what it was used for, but it's become the official storage place for some of our meanest implements.

I wanted to mope about the fact that I was about to be seriously corrected, but I couldn't bring myself to. I knew that I deserved it. Still, my tummy hurt.

Paul finally came into the room holding a cane. I had sort of known that was going to be the end of this story from the moment that I realized that I had messed up so badly, but the reality of the situation was sinking in very quickly.

In addition to feeling upset about how thoughtless my actions were, I had been really focused on worrying that Paul was mad at me for inconveniencing him. Having to stop your work to go rescue a silly girl who got herself into a mess is bound to annoy anyone. But once he began to scold me, I realized that he was much more upset about the fact that something bad could have happened to me. I felt very loved as he lectured me about thinking before I did things and taking care of myself. I could feel how precious I am to him, and how he won't let any harm come to me, even through my own poor judgement.

Then he ordered me over the bed and began to spank me. While technically a warmup, he started hard and furiously. In my tired, vulnerable state, I pretty instantly started to sob hard, offering absolutely no emotional resistance to the spanking. I needed it. I knew that.

I felt impossibly sore after the warm up, but this was probably mostly because of my mental state at the time. Then Paul ordered me to kneel up on the bed, which I did quickly. I kept my feet off the edge of the bed because they had gotten filthy as I was walking around on the dusty sidewalks in flip flops. Paul noticed this, too, and said "You'll clean your feet after this," which I quietly affirmed through my tears. "Get down on your elbows," he told me, and this made me cry harder, but I did as I was told. This position means only one thing: strokes to the tender area where my thighs and bottom meet. Paul then tapped my bottom with the cane before simply saying "Ten."

The first stroke startled me into some sort of clarity for a second, although after the initial crack, during that long moment when the pain begins to built and develop, I felt overtaken by hurting and began to cry again. The next two or three were quickly paced-- no time for one to finish building before the next and I could make no attempt at processing them. I wailed. After five strokes, he gave me a little break, pressing his hand against the welts in the same motion that I do when a beating is over. The pressure seems to hold the pain in for a moment. I caught my breath, but didn't slow my sobbing.

The next two strokes were to that aforementioned tender area. I did my best not to yell, but I felt an overpowering warmth: burning, biting, pinching, gnawing heat. The rest of the strokes came in quick succession, and after each one, my cries became louder and more desperate.

It's a very good thing that we live in a house instead of an apartment. I'm....noisy.

When the whole thing was over, Paul immediately sat down on the bed and pulled me onto his lap, holding me close to him. I wiped tears all over my face in some attempt of cleaning myself up and apologized over and over. He stroked my hair and told me he forgave me.

Part of our protocol surrounding scenes is that I always thank him for spanking me. This is something that I initiated because it makes me feel very submissive in the best way. After being soundly punished I felt a bit shy to say this this time, but I managed it out in a coy whisper. "Good girl," he told me, kissing my forehead. I sat there on his lap for a long time, entirely vulnerable, my bottom aching and burning but my tears drying. I felt lucky to be so loved. I was filled with contentment.

Finally, I felt calm enough to get up and get myself properly cleaned up. I rinsed my feet off and then climbed into a cool bath, the water still feeling tingly and antagonistic against my welts. I was glad, though. I didn't want them to be fully soothed. I didn't stop to take a picture of the lines, but they were impressive: perfectly parallel and close enough together that they very nearly touched, but not quite.

Anyway, I'm back now. I'll be updating one to two times a week, as I used to. I've missed writing, and I hope you've missed reading.♥