Heavy Play: My Perspective

Warning: this post contains images taken after some of my hardest scenes. They include significant bruising, welting, broken skin and sometimes wet blood. The second post in this series (coming soon) does not include images or anecdotal discussion and focuses more on the concepts behind Heavy Play. I don't recommend this post to those that are squeamish (Not Safe For Erica!). I do hope that lots of people read the other post, because I think the information contained within it is important.

When I first started getting spanked, I had no perception of how hard my playing was. SF, my first Top, also spanked his wife, Audiens, and my friend, V. Between the three of us, I was the one who he spanked the least severely. He and his wife were obviously playing on a totally different level, and V. was always very interested in pushing limits and trying new things, which I felt no need for any of that. I never compared myself to either Audiens or V. in terms of the way we played with SF. It didn't matter to me. We were all different, so we played in different ways. The kind of playing that I was doing was satisfying to me at the time and that was all that mattered. I watched spanking videos pretty regularly, but I didn't compare myself to those girls, either, because in a certain way they didn't seem real to me. Comparing myself to a video would be like comparing what I actually did in real life to what happened in my fantasies in terms of severity. It didn't make sense to me to do that, so I didn't.

My perception of a scale of how hard my play was compared to other people developed pretty instantly when I got on Fetlife. Suddenly, I was aware of the way that a lot of different people got spanked. I saw photos of other girls' spanked bottoms, some red, some pink, some with bruises, others welted. I had no photos of my spanked bottom. I had never taken one. But I started to compare my memory of my bruised bottom to what I saw in these pictures. I must have been getting spanked much harder than so-and-so, I thought, because I look much more reddened after a spanking than she does there. Other times, I saw welts and bruises and thought I've never been spanked that hard. I didn't yet know that everyone shows marking differently, and that the longer you play, the less you color and bruise. I just thought that there was a scale: light pink meant hardly spanked. Deep purple meant the most severe.

It was literally the first day that I was on Fetlife that I started comparing myself to others in terms of severity of play. Right away, I had it in my mind that it was best to be a harder player. I don't know what made me think that, but I absolutely did. The harder you got spanked, the more marked you were, the longer your scenes were, the more severe your implements, then the better. I used to follow someone on Fetlife who just posted picture after picture of extremely severe spankings which he had given. His gallery was just a row of butt shot after butt shot, each with the same background, each with similar purple bruising, "bullseye" marks and uniform bright redness. I didn't feel any sort of connection with the person who gave these spankings, and I didn't like the way that he seemed to objectify the girls that he had spanked but I felt terribly intrigued by the images. In my mind, they were some of the "best spankings." I looked at them over and over.  I'd previously felt entirely satisfied with a long, hard, over-the-knee hand spanking which left my bottom looking bright red and often bruised me the next day, and which would nearly always reduce me to tears. Once I started to compare myself to others, once I started to focus on hard play as a goal, that suddenly seemed far from impressive to me.

This is the first photo of my spanked bottom that I ever took. I obviously didn't know how to take photos of my own butt back then. I also still had a flip phone. Aww. Bless.

When I started to actually talk to people in the scene, it got even worse. There was something so intoxicating about the way that people talked about really severe scenes. They obviously loved them. At the time that my submission was first crystalizing, I heard a lot of stories of very hard play. The two Tops that I talked to the most at that point were both sadists who had done some very, very extreme play. They sometimes described scenes that I would never actually want for myself (scenes that involved intentionally going far beyond the point of broken skin, for example, or which were entirely unrelated to spanking but very intense) and made it sound like they were so proud of those girls and that they earned lots of love and attention by doing them (I was at a point in my development where the idea of needing to earn love and attention seemed acceptable). Some people talked about it like it WAS a contest: one Top referred to the girl with whom he had played the most severely as being the "Gold Medal Winner." Even though I wasn't interested in doing the things those girls had done, I found myself feeling jealous when I heard about them. Maybe I was jealous that they were the favorite one. Maybe I was jealous because they were able to enjoy something that I knew I never would do. It was a confusing emotion: being jealous of someone for having done something that you didn't want to do.

By the time that Malignus and I first met, I hadn't been seriously spanked in probably six months or so. It hadn't been so bad to not be getting spanked when I was deeply immersed in vanilla life, but when I was exploring the scene, it had become agonizing. What I wanted was to be spanked very, very hard, very, very often. I by no means think that this desire wasn't genuine, or that it was a bad thing. It's just what I was focused on then. If you were to ask me to describe what I wanted from any given scene in one word, I would have picked "intensity."

My first few scenes that fell into that category left me incredibly marked:

That giant bandaid is covering a patch of damaged skin.

This took place a couple days later: you can see that the area the bandaid was covering has opened up again.

My legs are healing after my second visit to Malignus'.  You can sort of see the gauze bandages that are covering the areas where my skin was damaged through my panties. My panties are expressing how I felt about that kind of play.

There's another photo which I'm not going to post. Do you remember when I was giving tips about how to care for your bottom after a spanking a long time ago? I mentioned that you should not exfoliate, even using a wiping motion with a washcloth, directly after a scene or else all your skin will come off. This photo shows that phenomenon. You probably don't want to see that.

Anyway, I eventually reached a point where hard play didn't really mark me very much. It primarily just broke my skin, if anything. This meant that light and moderate play didn't mark me at all, which became an asset to me when I began doing video work but was rather disappointing when I finished a scene that I felt had been severe and I wanted to share that with people but my bottom and thighs just looked like a light, rosy pink. There were other consequences from my hard play, though. For one, I got so used to heavy play that I could hardly enjoy light play anymore. This was caused by a combination of factors: for one thing, I think that a lot of my nerve endings just died and I hardly felt spankings anymore. For another, my skin had hardened and gotten leathery: this is why I got so involved in figuring out ways to restore my skin to it's ideal state (which I'm happy to say isn't a problem anymore). Things just hurt less the longer I engaged in hard play, especially hard play without warmups and cool downs (which was almost always what Malignus and I did). 

My scale changed, too. Before, I only needed a hand spanking to bring me to tears. A hairbrush spanking on the backs of my thighs was the worst consensual pain I'd ever felt. That scale was very small, so a hard hand spanking that might include the backs of my legs was very close to the hardest thing I had ever felt. Once I began playing in very severe ways, that same spanking hardly meant anything to me anymore. It was the difference between 3 and 10 and 3 and 100. In the second case, 3 actually becomes quite insignificant seeming.

My emotional stance on things changed, too. My feelings about severe play and intimacy got kind of mixed up. Presently, I find that severe play is often extremely intimate, but is not inherently so. I also find that a huge spectrum of other activities can be similar expressions of intimacy. None the less, there was a period of time where I really only felt like I was making an emotionally intimate connection with my partner if it was being done through very severe scenes. I think part of this comes from the fact that at the time, I was in a relationship which was much less tactile than what I now know I really require to thrive. The connection that I felt during the severe play fed my hunger for all sorts of physical connection, but because it was one of the only things which really did, an excessive emphasis on this was placed in my mind. A tender hand-spanking didn't leave me feeling fulfilled, it left me anxiously wondering why I wasn't getting more than that. 

So, for all these reasons, I was particularly caught up in playing very hard. When I first started to go to parties, I sought out scenes that would be similarly severe whenever I could, even if I didn't have any sort of connection with the Top. Over the past year or so of our relationship, my play relationship with my ex went largely into decline. Things changed between us. This lead to much more infrequent scenes. My interest in finding other play partners who would push me past my limits was intensified. I don't know if it's even accurate to say "push me past my limits" because I stopped really having a sense of what my personal physical limits were. I wanted to be pushed past the limits that I perceived existed for others. I wanted to be pushed past "the" limit.

The decline in how often and how hard I was playing at home (and, admittedly, how much time I actually spent at home as I began to live out of my suitcase since there wasn't any work in my field in South Dakota) lead to a number of changes. I regained my physical sensitivity. I got away from my tunnel vision which focused on severity and intensity as the important factors in play. I treated my skin so it was no longer calloused, nor was it at risk of becoming so again. Spankings became more physically painful for me, and I often made myself more emotionally vulnerable to them. This meant that I had stronger reactions to lesser scenes. I slowly worked my way back to a place similar to where I had started: where it didn't take all that much to leave me feeling satisfied.

The beauty of having gone through this journey is that I now have the best of both worlds. I can play hard. Very hard. Sometimes, I am tremendously gratified by doing very severe, incredibly intense scenes. They mean a lot to me. They give me an exhilarating and unforgettable experience. The difference is that now, I don't need to play that hard. There have been several times recently where Paul made me cry just by giving me a hard spanking by hand. That feels right to me. It makes me feel incredibly vulnerable to be able to let an experience that's so core to my kink, but which had previously become less potent for me, entirely overtake me.

I'm not sure what happened to my competitive nature. It certainly still exists in a number of other facets of my life, and I'm still obviously insecure about a lot of things but when it comes to spankings, I don't feel the need to prove myself anymore. There are bottoms out there taking things that are much more severe than anything I've ever taken. When I see photos of it, or read about it on blogs, I feel glad that they're exploring things that interest them and sometimes a little bit concerned, if the practices don't seem safe to me, but that's all. When I read some of my own, older blog posts, I can see the way that I've changed in this department and I like it.

Because I've had (and continue to have) quite a bit of first hand experience with harder play, at some point in the near future, I'm going to be posting a set of notes with suggestions regarding things to consider when playing to a high level of physical intensity. I hope that at least a few people will find them useful.

Now, it's time for me to go play Pokemon until I fall asleep. ♥

KOTW: Punishment- The Fun Kind

Last time that I posted, it was about my real-life punishment dynamics. This week's KOTW (kink of the week) topic is Funishment, or play punishment. This a wonderfully related topic which allows me to continue on my previous train-of-thought. (Thanks, Jade!)

As I stated last post, I didn't start out in the scene with any kind of dynamic that included play-punishment, or really, play spankings of any kind. Spankings were srs business only. When I started to play with my previous play partner, J, we never had any sort of disciplinary relationship, or any kind of power-exchange at all. It took a while for me to get used to this, at first. The spankings kind of just "happened." I came over and we talked and cuddled, then he spanked me because he liked spanking girls and I wanted to be spanked. Afterwards, I would usually make him some kind of baked good, often without returning to my proper state of dress so he could watch me bob around his kitchen in an apron with my red, swollen bottom on display. It was a great tradition, and I loved those scenes, but it often left me feeling unfulfilled, like something was missing from the interaction that we had just had.

One day, I came over and J. suggested that we do a roleplay scene instead of our "usual." I felt really hesitant about this. "I don't even know how to do that," I remember saying nervously. I had never done anything even vaguely like this before, and I was afraid that I'd somehow fail miserably at it and "ruin" the scene. J. coaxed me into it, suggesting that we play a scene in which my character had similar traits to the ones that I was expressing: nervousness and apprehension are by no means uncommon parts of a lot of spanking scenarios. So we decided to do a scene in which a girl who had never been spanked before was being punished afterschool by a teacher for consistently being late to class. Now, this scene seems so typical and almost unexciting, but at the time, my heart raced. I went into the other room, and we agreed that when I came back in, we'd begin playing.

I stood at the door with my hand on the knob, trying to channel my personal jitteriness into that which I felt belonged to my character. The scene was actually very similar to the things that I had fantasized about for a long time, so I knew how I expected it to go, but I couldn't quite relax. I stood there waiting for a good five minutes before I came out. J. was sitting on the sofa wearing dress pants, a button-up shirt and a tie. I felt my stomach twitch when I saw his serious, annoyed looking facial expression.

"This meeting started five minutes ago, Alex," he chided. "Do you really think it's a good idea to be late to a discussion about your tardiness?"

I felt my face grow hot and I looked down at the ground, nervously twirling my hair and fiddling with a stray string on my dress. "Sorry," was all I managed. I felt unsure about "how I was doing" as a roleplayer, but I felt very immersed in the scene, transfixed by J.'s tone.

J. continued to lecture me, being stern and giving plenty of details about the things that I had done. He was amazing at thinking things up on the fly, and I found myself responding easily and naturally. When it was time for the actual spanking, he pulled me over his lap forcefully and lifted my dress as I gasped and protested. I had never really protested against a spanking before. My attitude towards them had always been passivity, but here, it didn't only feel acceptable to protest, it felt right. J. smacked the back of my leg, hard and corrected me for that sort of behavior and began to give me a flurry of hard spanks, scolding me about how I needed to get myself together and take things seriously instead of flitting around the school in a disorganized mess. It was actually during this spanking, as I was kicking and writhing and J. was pinning me down and punctuating his stern words with firm smacks that I realized what had been missing from my previous scenes with him: energy.

There's a certain energy and drama and that comes from the dance of scolding and protesting that simply isn't there in other kinds of spankings. Some atmospheres create a strong but different energy, like the reaffirmative spankings that I mentioned before, which focus on giving an intense reminder of each partner's role in the dynamic, or spankings that are done for emotional release ("just because you need to be beaten") or as a love act. I love these sorts of scenes, and I do enjoy having entirely arbitrary "just for the love of spanking" scenes now and again, too, but my mind draws itself back to punishment scenarios again and again and again.

J. and I had a successful first roleplay, and we began doing more and more scenes like that, sometimes following up on others which we had done earlier. Still, we played infrequently and mixed our previous "standard" play with the roleplay punishments, so I probably only did a total of ten roleplays before I moved.

Malignus and I never roleplayed together. In fact, we very rarely engaged in play-punishment of any kind, as I felt like I wasn't being sufficiently submissive if I intentionally misbehaved, and he tended to respond to things like that with removal of attention instead of "feeding into it" by punishing the perpetrator. During this time I became very focused on the idea of being a good girl and being as submissive as possible, so when I went to my first spanking get together, I felt at a loss as the other girls ran around doing complex pranks. A friend who was similarly into being good and I made an attempt at hiding an implement at one point, but we ended up wussing out and returned it to it's rightful place. I received no play punishment spankings at that party.

When I went to my first national spanking party later that year (TASSP), I was very nervous about how I was supposed to act. The first night, I found myself sitting with Pandora Blake on the floor of Joe and Ten's suite, having a conversation about this. I expressed my concerns about not knowing how to "brat" and Pandora gave me suggestions based on her experience. We came to the conclusion that intentional misbehavior can't be too annoying, can't be actually malicious or damaging to people or things and should be clever and/or funny. With this in mind, we got a magic marker from somewhere and crawled over to where IMLX was seated and began drawing cats on the bottom of his bare foot. IMLX and I knew each other from the internet and I knew that he was good natured, so he seemed like a good candidate for our naughtiness. It took him a surprisingly long time to realize that cats were being drawn on his foot. I don't know what that says about him as a person. :P When he did figure it out, he playfully spanked both of us, scolding us (including in Russian!) for being naughty, cat-on-foot-drawing girls. It was seriously playfully, and I was seriously pleased.

Overtime, I sort of grew into myself in this regard, and began to figure out ways to initiate playfully punitive scenes. Sometimes I planned roleplay scenarios with people that I liked. Other times, I just whined a little. This seemed to work wonders. :P

My bottom after one such play punishment!

My play punishment life took a turn for the "more frequent" when I became friends with Bad Alex. Why? Because Bad Alex is fucking Bad, and she's amazingly good at it. Her mind is a machine that takes a simple idea and turns it into the most trouble possible. Besides being good at raising hell and getting herself spanked, she's also magically able to get me into play-trouble to degrees that I've never known were possible. For example, at BBW she set things up so I got 16 strokes of the cane because she punched me in the knee. That's talent right there. I'm still kinda reeling from that almost a year later.

When in the "principal's office" and her partner in crime, cutieotk is about to get paddled, Bad Alex thinks it's a good time to play Rude Hand Gesture Bingo.

Bad Alex and I like to roleplay together. While some of the roleplays that I do are dark and serious, the ones that include both the Alexes are always kind of off the wall. For example, at July's Crimson Moon party, we played a scene with our friend Jon83 in which we were sisters who had been caught cutting school to go to the mall by our father. I really like roleplaying with Alex when we're not even caught yet: we just banter back and forth as misbehaving girls and giggle an awful lot. When we came back to our hotel room (in the pretend, our home) after having snuck out of school, we were greeted by Jon, who was none to pleased with us. We then started to try to lie our way out of things. My lies were things like "We just ran home to get our books!" but Alex's were things like "It's National Alex Day! No one with our name is allowed at school! We have the day off!" This threw me into a fit of hysterics, and it reminded me of a detail that had never been discussed: we were supposed to be sisters of the same age with the same name. We made a series of jokes back and forth to each other as we tried to figure out why this was until Jon sent Bad Alex to the corner to separate us, pointing to her and saying "That one! Go to the corner!"

This was the only time in my life that I laughed while getting a hard paddling.

We've done other, really fun scenes since then, and we currently have a ridiculously fun roleplay in the planning stages. It involves us pretending to get kicked out of someplace and needing to be picked up by our angry authority figures, who will then scold us all the way home before punishing us quite severely. In a Fetlife conversation on the subject, Bad Alex stated that she had been DOING RESEARCH into ways that we could get into trouble there.

Bad Alex is a winner

When I first started playing with Paul, I had very conflicting feelings about play punishment. At that point in my life, I had never had a D/s relationship which included funishment: these had always been two separate things. Serious disciplinary and D/s relationships vs. fun play partners and Tops with whom I could do roleplays and non-serious, play punishment scenes. Because I felt a strong and very real sense of submission towards Paul (which I had been aware of from the very first time that we played) I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to try to engage in intentional naughtiness to earn fun spankings. It took a while before I realized that this was totally acceptable, helped along the way by the fact that Mila and I really started harassing each other in sisterly antics at that time and Paul happily took to scolding me for things like "internet hair pulling."

By the time that we had our cabin visit my desire to play in this way exploded. Still keeping in mind the principles which Pandora and I had identified, I spent the whole time messing around. Sometimes when I wanted to be spanked (which was most of the time) I would just directly (although very coyly) ask for it. Usually, though, I expressed this want by doing slightly naughty things: climbing on the furniture when there was a sign that said I couldn't, replacing the sign with another one which said I could, naming a chair after Mila and kicking it, opening a desk drawer while I was sitting on his lap at the desk, finding a piece of chalk and using it to draw on the back of his black shirt et cetera. Usually, these things were met with playful, often affectionate spankings that had the "you're a naughty girl" type of attitude but were ultimately just-for-fun. They were hard enough, mind you, but I only ever felt enough like I was in trouble for it to be exciting, not to tap into that set of emotions discussed before.

Following one such spanking at the cabin!

Occasionally, these scenes were more physically severe. One day, after the chalk had been taken away, I opened the same drawer during the same sort of cuddle to find a few paperclips, which I clipped to Paul's shirt collar. Seeming unamused (in a way that I could tell was not genuine displeasure) he called it "abuse of stationary". I called this "bogus." He produced a hairbrush. First, though, he pulled me over his lap on the sofa and spanked my bottom quite hard with his hand, then he moved on to smack the backs of my thighs. It was hard and thorough, and he was stern and strict with me. I was crying quite earnestly by the time that he had finished with my thighs, but he still continued to get the hairbrush and apply it quite effectively as well. I was a mess of tears when it was done, and in a certain way, I felt legitimately contrite, even though I hadn't done anything. It was like I had the relief and security of having been punished without any of the most unenjoyable parts of it, as I knew Paul wasn't actually disappointed in me for wasting paperclips. The spanking was followed with the same snuggles that would come after a real punishment spanking, and I was left feeling blissful and loved.

Now that we're living together, play punishment is a rather big part of the daily routine that Paul and I have developed. Sometimes it's a quick and lighthearted spanking for something like walking outside barefoot and getting leaves all over my feet (which was delivered in the backyard, by the way. Oh the embarrassment!) and other times it's more emotionally intense and physically severe, like the paperclip scene. Still other times, we engage in roleplaying just-for-fun, but with a punishment scenario (such as a scene where when Paul went away to find something to spank me with, I hid in the other room's closet and might have at least gotten away with it for a few minutes if my cat hadn't sat himself down in front of the door and meowed loudly until Paul came and dragged me out).

Ultimately, play punishment is now up there with "reaffirmative" for my favorite day-to-day style of spanking. Besides just being fun, it also opens up the door to a lot of possibilities. For example, I feel horrible about myself if I don't take a real punishment spanking well. If I protest, or move out of position, or make too big of a fuss I just feel terrible inside afterwards, like I didn't properly atone for the original misdeed and I'm still being a disappointment (note: I'm not made to feel this way. It's just residual insecurity). During a play punishment, though, I can happily enjoy thrashing around, resisting, protesting, shouting "No! No! No! No!" and otherwise doing everything in my power not to take my spanking well. It's delightful to be overpowered, to have my protests fall on deaf ears and to be MADE to take the rest of it. It's also wonderfully exciting to play with non-consensual themes during roleplay which I obviously wouldn't be exploring in any other way. There's something invigorating and yes, sexy (gasp!) about that. ♥

KOTW: Punishment (the real kind)

So, this Kink of the Week post is blatantly late. I don't know if it will even get posted up on the KOTW page, as it's technically Tuesday of the new week now, but I wanted to write about this topic anyway, so I think it'll be a worthwhile post even if it "doesn't count" in the end.

This week's topic is "real" (as opposed to "play") punishment. Discipline and punishment are things which I've always been open about as existing in my life. They're a huge portion of what I get out of TTWD, yet I've only written about disciplinary scenes a handful of times over the course of the past two years. Usually, I've included the story when what I did wrong can be retold in a way which is comical, like this post from a long time ago or my recent "Target Incident." This is because I find actual punishment to be very private, personal and intimate. I used to feel very uncomfortable sharing this aspect of my life with the general public. Now, I feel a lot more comfortable with it, although I sometimes don't want to talk about the things that I've done to require the punishment. So this shall be my first post ever which is explicitly about this.

Spanking first entered my consciousness at an incredibly early age. I remember no inciting incident, simply a burning obsession to know more about it and a feeling of secrecy and shame about my ever developing "interest." All of the thoughts I had and the fantasies that I made up were about disciplinary spankings, as was the entirety of the media that I encountered that had spanking in it, although that was extremely sparse. In my mind, spanking was a very, very serious thing. It was a severe punishment, the ultimate sanction, the consequence of the worst behavior. As I became a teenager, I craved guidance, structure and discipline in my life, longing for the feeling of being loved and taken care of that I imagined would accompany those things. Spanking as part of  sexual activity didn't occur to me at that time. Spanking as something fun and enjoyable seemed like a weird and alien idea. This contributed to my early confusion about my desires. I characterized this activity as something entirely unenjoyable, but desired nothing more than to experience it for myself.

When I turned eighteen and I *did* get my first spanking, it was for demonstrative and introductory purposes. After that, my relationship with SF (my first Top) was entirely disciplinary. It allowed for a lot of space, which is to say that he never policed me. I simply came to him and self-reported about the things which I had done which were against the standards which we had mutually agreed upon and he punished me for them. The relationship was very sterile and austere, with an understanding of affection and caring between us which was rarely expressed. We were kind of an odd pair, me and SF because he's Forever The Most Serious Man Ever (SF stands for 'Serious Face") and I'm patently ridiculous, but he had a pretty decent amount of patience for my antics and I enjoyed his stern nature. It was really, at the time, everything that I wanted because it was everything that I had ever imagined that a spanking relationship could be. I did my best to be good. I sometimes was not, and when that happened, I was soundly corrected.

For the first five years (I think) that I was getting spanked, it was only by SF. After he went back to England and, a little later,  I moved to Los Angeles for the first time, I started to venture into the scene there. When I did, I had trouble with my identity and I struggled to identify what I actually wanted. At first, I attempted to find someone to replace SF, which I found tremendously disappointing. Everyone wanted something different from spanking. Some people wanted dominance. Some people wanted sexuality. Some people wanted to embrace and explore the younger, more vulnerable side of me. Some people wanted to do complicated roleplay. Some people just liked smacking a girl's bottom without any reason for it. It was during this time that I realized that needing to be punished and needing to be spanked weren't the same thing. Both were real and valid needs, but spanking could be a variety of other things. With my play-partner, J, I explored playing "just for fun" and did my first forays into roleplay. I explored arbitrary and enjoyable spankings with a variety of friends that I met in the local scene, many of whom weren't spankos, and therefore had a vastly different attitude towards playing than that which I was used to. Eventually, I met Malignus and began to question whether or not I was actually interested in submission. I determined that I was and began the process of exploring that with him.

While punishment was a fairly significant part of my first D/s dynamic, I'm not going to go into the details of how it worked between Malignus and I. At the time that I started blogging, Malignus and I discussed what parts of our relationship he was comfortable with me posting about and we decided that the details of my punishments were too personal to be written about, although I sometimes asked if it was alright for me to post about a particular scene (like the post I linked to earlier) and he always agreed. Although our relationship has ended, I am going to continue to honor this agreement because I feel that it would be disrespectful and "the wrong thing to do" not to. It's not like there was anything secretive or mysterious about this aspect of our relationship that others shouldn't know about. That's just what we decided at the time, so I'm sticking to it. Punishment certainly wasn't the center of our relationship, though, and I'd say that it was probably the least common reason for me to be spanked, as the most frequent spankings were arbitrary, goal-based or D/s centric, reaffirmative scenes. This was a huge change from where I'd started out, but it was a positive difference, as I had expanded my options for what a spanking could mean.

Fast forward to the present time: I'm extremely comfortable with my role as a submissive, and as I continue to grow in the my spanko identity, I've branched out to embrace forms of play, atmospheres and additional kinks that I would have never thought I'd love so much when I was first starting out in my exploration. In my relationship with Paul, punishment is both something that we play with for mutual enjoyment and something that can be as serious as can be. Playing with lighthearted punishments for silly things by no means dilutes the actual act, and it's just as important to me now as it was when it was just a daydream.

Sometimes, punishments happen immediately after the punishable behavior takes place (like in the "Target" story). Other times this isn't possible, and I'm punished later that evening (usually right before bed) if that's an option. If not, the offense and the requisite discipline are entered into a notebook entitled "Alex's Behavioral Record" and the punishment is meted out at a later date. The "book method" of dealing with things was the only way that punishment was delivered when we were in a long distance relationship: things got recorded and then, when we saw each other, those things were addressed. I really, really like the fact that things don't get forgotten just because "too much" time has passed since the original behavior. It's obviously more effective for me to be punished as quickly thereafter as possible, but the inevitability of knowing that at some point, no matter what, I'm going to get corrected for the things that I do that I shouldn't gives me a marvelous sense of security.

Basically all of my punishments are corporal, ranging from OTK spankings to a series of hard smacks on the insides of my thighs to strappings and canings. Since all these activities are also part of our "for fun" play, the only differences are atmosphere, tone and mood. Being punished makes me feel very vulnerable, and Paul takes a very stern approach towards punishing me (which I like very much). Often times just the scolding brings me to tears, and when I'm in that headspace, there's very little pleasant about the spanking that follows. I say "very little" instead of "nothing" because being punished makes me feel particularly loved and taken care of, and I do enjoy that feeling, even as it's happening. Being disciplined almost always makes me cry, and afterwards the seriousness of the actual punishment quickly melts away and I climb onto Paul's lap, sometimes continuing to cry for a bit as he tenderly comforts me and assures me that I'm a good girl again. Everything is right in the world during those moments, and I couldn't feel safer.

Amoni Jones took this candid photo at the end of a spanking shoot. It's not post-punishment, but it captures the same sort of moment. 

As much as I enjoy "for fun" "play" punishment, and as ultimately positive and edifying as the experience of being discipline is for me, at the end of the day, I want to be a good girl. I want Paul to be proud of me, and I do my best to avoid getting into real trouble. It's intricate, the way that something which is so enjoyable in a different setting can be made truly punitive, but it's not a novel idea, nor is it a particularly rare phenomenon.

I hope that this is at least somewhat articulate: I've just recovered from having been ill, and I'm struggling to get caught up, so I wasn't able to really draft this the way I usually do for posts that are this wordy, and I was getting really tired by the time I was finishing it. I'll be posting more about other aspects of this topic in the future, so stay tuned. ♥

CCM: Thursday, part 1

On Thursday, I woke up as late as I could get away with, since I had fallen asleep around six thirty or something in the morning. I wasn't thrilled to be going into a party on that little sleep, but it was sort of inevitable and there was nothing I could do about it.

The day started out with Paul and I filming with Sarah Gregory for Northern Spanking-- you can read his notes on the shoot here. Paul started working out ideas for scenarios weeks ago, and it was kind of fascinating to see his process. Because we were filming in the hotel, Paul created a set of scenarios which made sense for us to be in such a setting instead of trying to pretend that we were somewhere else and this lead to some rather creative thinking on his part. I was a little nervous about filming because it was my first time ever being on camera for some of the scenes and it was my first time actually filming with Sarah! We've known each other for a while, and we roomed together and I shot a scene for her site while we were at TASSP, so we were comfortable around each other, but we had never actually done any films together until this day.

From my shoot for Sarah's site back in June

Filming with Sarah went quickly and smoothly, since she (obviously!) knows what she's doing. Two of the scenes we shot included her bottoming, which she only does rarely these days, so that was kind of special. The first scene involved Paul playing a seedy private detective and Sarah being a cheating wife who he catches at her meeting place. This was the first time that I got to watch Paul spanking another girl for a film in real life: every time we'd filmed together previously, I was the only one getting spanked. I enjoyed getting to watch this scene, even if through the camera, especially because Paul's character was a bit wicked and I've always enjoyed those sorts of scenes. :D Sarah looked great, too, in her sexy lingerie (but then again, she always looks great!)

The second scene involved me getting spanked by Sarah and is the first film that the two of us have done together. We'd played during group roleplay events before, but never on camera. Sarah is a great top and is easy to roleplay with, and the spanking that she gave me was delightful. Additionally, this was the first time in my entire life that I wore heels with jeans, and I think I like the look! I'd never done it before because I avoided heels except for the most specialist of occasions since I used to have height related self esteem issues, but those don't bother me anymore so I've been enjoying experiments like this. :D In the film, I play a sneaky, snarky writer who gets caught in a hotel I've written poor reviews of many times by an irate manager, played by Sarah. I consider scenes where I'm unabashedly not repentant for me behavior a challenging area for me, but I think I'm getting better at it. When I need clever snark, I ask myself what Erica Scott would say. When I need to be bratty and awful, I borrow a page from The Bad Alex's daily life. I think that the film ended up being great: funny and full of delightful girl/girl spanking action. ^_^

Scene number the third was between Sarah and Paul again, with Sarah playing a second-rate erotic author and Paul playing her irate publisher. This scene ended up being particularly funny, and I had to keep my composure behind the camera and not giggle at their antics (which I did manage to do, thankfully!) Sarah looks lovely in jeans, I have to say. :P

The final scene was between Paul and I, and it was actually the first time that we'd played on camera since the end of March, so that was pretty exciting. This was our original type of interaction, and it was nice to return to it, now bringing the massive chemistry that comes when two people know each other as intimately as we now do. It was also the first time that we did a film in which we played a couple since we actually became one, so that was a bit sweet. Paul was vague about the description of this film's content in his post so I suppose that I had better be, too, but it's a cute story with a delightful caning in it which was hard enough that when it was finished, Sarah marveled at my composure.

I helped pick out some of the images that Paul put up on the forum when he wrote about this shoot, and this was one of the ones that I chose. I like it for the normal reasons: I look scared and vulnerable, Paul looks determined and threatening et cetera, but also because of his shadow on the curtain. I like imagining that we're on a ground floor and a passerby might see this silhouette from outside and perhaps stop to watch the shadow-puppet version of my thrashing. How deliciously voyeuristic!

When we had finished shooting, I had to run off pretty much right away because I had an appointment in Detention! Joe (Drlectr) and Mama Blue were running a series of short "Principal's office" detention scenarios and I was scheduled for shortly after the filming finished. Joe and I have played hundreds of times, and he's one of the people with whom I've played the most intimately and emotionally intensely, but we've never really done any roleplay scenarios. I know that he's fond of school style paddling scenes, and I love any kind of roleplay which is highly formalized, so I figured the scene was going to be good. I take great delight in the embarrassment of having someone else watching me be punished, like Vice Principal Blue!

I was already in my uniform so I ran up to Joe and Ten's room to wait outside the doorway. They were talking to someone in the room, so I had to wait outside.

Waiting in this hallway, knowing that in a minute, I was about to be paddled and that it would be quite severe was something directly from my fantasy life. Everyone on the floor was at the Crimson Moon party, which meant that everyone who passed and saw me stood outside Joe's room in my uniform knew that I was waiting for my detention. This also meant that they weren't judging me, but that didn't remove the squirmy feeling in my tummy every time someone walked by. Finally, Joe, now Principal Lectr, opened the door and called me in.

A lot of my roleplay characters are helpless and innocent, but that was certainly not the case today. The scene that Joe and I had written involved me being in trouble for attempting to seduce my male teachers, and I was full of confidence and eroticism, flirting with Principal Lectr even as he lectured me on my wicked ways. "You seem to think this is alright!" Vice Principal Blue said in dismay. "You're going to have to start seeing the school counselor once a week!"

"Will it be a male counselor?" I asked with a flirtatious grin. The authority figures had had enough of me, so I was bent over the desk for eight paddle swats, which were delivered firmly and on the bare. The paddling wasn't much of a sanction for me, though, and I kept up my act, hoping for a little extra attention. I got just that, in the form of a hard, OTK spanking after the paddling. When the scene was over, Mama Blue took off and Joe and I got to enjoy some time together. Joe is wonderful. I'm so lucky to have him in my life.

After this, Joe walked me back to my room and we told Paul about our roleplay. Then Paul and I took a little time to regroup before heading down for dinner. We hadn't had much lunch, so we mostly used this as a time to socialize and see who was at the party already before heading out to get a bite and some drinks nearby. During dinner, Naughty Freckles asked me if I'd be willing to be a rope-bunny for the "Fit to be Tied and Spanked" demo later that night, which I gladly accepted. Bondage can be a lot of fun, and I do get a little thrill out of performing in front of a group. Between dinner and the demo, Paul and I ran to the store (without me ever bothering to change out of my school uniform!) and then got back in time to be able to socialize a bit before I needed to start. Paul finally got to meet LLB, who is very dear to my heart, and a handful of my other friends.

Then it was time for the demo! Kinkmedic, from 12:11 Kink taught some basic ties and showed how they can be used for spanking. This included tying me up, including in a bent over position where he then balanced a cup of Mountain Dew on my back while I tried very hard to stay still. Afterwards, they passed out rope and people practiced the ties and I allowed people to practice on me, too. It was a lot of fun, and the ties were effective, easy and comfortable. "A+ would be tied up by again!"rating!

After the demo, we snuck out and ate dinner, then ran into about 15 of my favorite people who were entering the restaurant as we were leaving. We headed upstairs, where I probably got changed again and we went to Joe and Ten's suite. There were only a few people hanging out in there, since most everyone else had gone to dinner, but I had a good time talking to everyone, including the person behind Spanking Resource (I don't know if he uses a particular name online or not!) and a few others.
At one point I did something out of line and needed to be spanked (gasp!) so Paul selected one of Big Bubba's Bible Belts and applied it to me. Big Bubba is a friend of mine who does leatherworking, and his belts with "Bible" stamped on them are a perennial favorite. It started out as just a pun, but the belts are fairly lightweight, delightfully pliable and capable of being used across intensities. This instance of the implement belongs to Joe, and it's obvious that he's spanked about 108 girls with it because it was delightfully well broken in and clearly an implement "of joy!" It was stingy in a light and delicious way... dare I say it was even "sensual." I didn't want the spanking to stop, ever! I made Paul promise that we'd buy one for ourselves at the vendor's fair.

The next thing that I wrote in my notes is "Bad Alex is Bad." I have no idea what particular incident this refers to, because that's kind of like writing notes on a day out hiking and saying "The sky is blue." A while before the party, Bad Alex and I were arguing back and forth and I called her some kind of awful insult, as we tend to do to each other. Instead of just responding with one of her signature, creative insults ("your breath smells like Bigfoot's dick") Bad Alex decided to write a long and carefully worded email to Paul, explaining how I had wronged her and how she wanted to keep my "good girl status intact" by telling on me "for my own good." I'm sure she said "I'm just a little girl" somewhere in there, too. Of course I ended up getting caned, because there's no fairness anywhere in the Universe when Bad Alex is involved (remember, I once got 14 strokes of the cane because she punched me in the knee!)
At CCM, she continued this masquerade of being a good girl who is unfairly accused by me by being sweet and polite whenever Paul was around and then turning around and insulting or slapping me when he wasn't looking. He always seemed to be looking when I retaliated, though, and I was soon jumping up and down at the unfairness of it all. I had high hopes of seeing Alex properly punished sometime this weekend, though, and my best bet was at Spanking Court on Saturday night. Bad Alex claimed she had a foolproof defense, but I wasn't so sure. As soon as the box was out in the main room, I filed a class-action case against her as "The Good Alex representing the people of CCM vs. Bad Alex for harassment."

This seems like a good stopping point for this post. I suspect that CCM will be broken up into about 5 or 6 posts total, since I took notes and everything. Please stay tuned! ♥