Cat O'Nine

Not a lot to write about lately. Between the holidays and preparing for Harry to move in, we have not had much chance to play. He did come home the other day, though, with a small leather cat o'nine tails that he'd intended to put in my stocking but decided would scare my sister so gave to me privately instead. He said he likes that it is light enough to use on parts of the body not normally suitable for whipping. I'm not sure I like the sound of that!

Where is my John Wayne?

It happened on Saturday afternoon. Harry and I were out Christmas shopping and my mood was rapidly deteriorating, as it generally does when I have to be around large groups of people not of my choosing. I was already feeling vaguely frustrated with Harry because he claimed that one of the main purposes of the outing was that he wanted to get some ideas of what to get me for Christmas, but every time I paused to look at something he wandered off, generally in the direction of the store's exit so that I had to rush to catch up to him, whether I was ready to leave or not.

We wandered into Bath and Body Works because he wanted to pick out a gift for my younger sister (she and I share a townhouse into which he will be moving in two weeks). After informing me that he would also be buying a gift for my youngest sister, who he only met once for thirty seconds but whose house (my father's) we'll be visiting on Christmas day, he proceeded to pick out these ridiculously overpriced gift baskets. I scoffed at how much of his hard-earned money he was planning to spend on two spoiled brats who wouldn't appreciate it at all and he replied authoritatively, "I always spend $xx.00 on presents for people."

A little history on Harry: he is constantly making ridiculous proclamations of that nature. "I always do this," or, "I always do that," like he's some hallowed institution with long-standing traditions and policies that must be adhered to. It borders on the absurd at times and makes him sound foolish, and it makes me want to wring his neck. That being said, however, it's also pretty absurd to get seriously annoyed at one's boyfriend for trying to be nice to one's sisters. I can't remember exactly which straw broke the camel's back, but finally I blurted out harshly, "Oh, just shut up and leave me alone!" The second it was out of my mouth I regretted it, and in my peripheral vision I saw a couple of heads whip around, presumably in reaction to my tone.

I stalked off to the other side of the store and ignored Harry when he tried to get my attention a few minutes later. He acted like nothing had happened, but a part of me wishes he'd dragged me out of the store or at least threatened me with, "Just wait till we get home..." We split up shortly after that so that he could shop for me, and as I wandered aimlessly through stores and then brooded over a peppermint mocha at Starbucks I couldn't help thinking about what ought to happen. I even promised myself that I'd tell him, maybe even bring him the new bath brush and say, "Look, I behaved terribly and I'm sorry and I deserve this." But of course I didn't. When we got home he went downstairs to wrap presents while I got dressed for his company's Christmas party. We had fun at the party and all was well, and when we got home he said to me (rather drunkenly), "If your sister weren't asleep in the next room I'd put you over my knee right now," but he obviously intended it as a prelude to sex with the thinnest veneer of being annoyed at me for letting some random guy give me his phone number. (What was I supposed to do, wad it up in a ball and throw it back at him?! It's not like I'm going to call.) I told him that he ought to give me a real spanking for having been so nasty to him while we were shopping, but it didn't seem to penetrate his liquor-soaked brain and he was all loving and affectionate.

The next morning I got a very sound "playful" spanking that would have had me in tears only the context was all wrong and we were laughing and horsing around the entire time. Why do I have so much trouble with the notion of having a serious talk with Harry about what I need? He's so indulgent of me that I just know if I could make him understand that I need discipline that he would comply, and yet I can't do it. But it's something I genuinely feel is missing in my life, and ultimately if he won't give it to me, I'll probably have to seek it elsewhere. Ugh.

How We Met

When I first agreed to go out with Harry I had no idea I was getting a spanker out of the deal. We met under tediously vanilla circumstances. My sister and a friend had dragged me into a pub -- the kind of seedy place I'd never been before and would never have chosen -- and sometime after an adequate number of vodka-cranberries had been consumed to put me in a friendly mood for chatting with the natives, he sat down at our table. The first thing I noticed about him was how big his hands were, but idle fantasies notwithstanding, it never occurred to me that he might be like that. I mostly only agreed to go out with him because I was impressed that he memorized my e-mail address without writing it down and then e-mailed me when he said he would two days later. I definitely didn't think he was my type or that anything more would come of it than maybe a pleasant evening and a new experience.

I got my first inkling that he might have potential pretty early on in that first date, though. We were waiting to go into the movie theatre for an afternoon showing of the latest Superman and he was telling me about the earlier installments, which I'd never seen, and this naturally lent itself to an old man comment (he's five years older than I am, and well, I'm a brat). Rather than getting annoyed or ignoring me, he gasped in mock horror and reached over and gently patted my cheek in a way that was totally non-threatening but was nevertheless obviously meant to mimic a slap. In this barely post-PC era I was pretty surprised that he'd have the guts to do something like that, and even more so a few hours later when he reached across the front seat of his car and smacked my leg when I made a similar comment regarding his taste in music.

I spent the next week debating with my then-best friend about the odds that I'd accidentally met a fellow spanko in a random bar that I hadn't even intended to go to, the suspense of which led to an unprecedented confession on my part the following weekend when he came over for dinner, and the rest, as they say, is history.

We were talking about that first date over the weekend and I told him about the speculation that his playful love taps had caused and he revealed that the first time I got up from the table at dinner that night after the movie, he'd had to suppress the urge to smack my backside as I walked by -- that I somehow I just provoked that urge in him -- but that he'd resisted because he didn't know how I'd react.

The only truthful answer I could give to that was, "Heh, I'd probably have slept with you on the first date." You can just imagine what his response was to THAT.

A New Bath Brush

Okay, so the last entry was a bit long. Hey, I'm passionate about my subject! But on a slightly shorter note, Harry and I made a pilgrimage last weekend to the Vermont Country Store. Apart from being a way to kill a Sunday that didn't involve me pretending to be interested in football, our main goal was to acquire the infamous Vermont Country Store bath brush:



After two-plus hours in the car and almost running out of gas because I refused to stop at the one-pump station we passed right after realizing the tank was nearly empty on the assumption that there'd be another (real) gas station nearby (there wasn't) we arrived, weary and restless, only to discover that the store wasn't carrying them!! I looked everywhere, and then looked again, trying not to hover creepily around the makeshift spanking implements in the apothecary section or gaze too longingly at the Mason Pearson hairbrushes, but they were nowhere to be found. They did, however, have a passable substitute in the form of a very sturdy Crabtree & Evelyn bath brush:



And good thing, because my wooden hairbrush met an untimely end the previous weekend and now lies split in two at the bottom of the garbage can. (Poor me.)

Harry was in a bit of a grumpy mood after wandering around the shop smelling pretty soaps for ages and then coasting on fumes back to the nearest gas station, but I was really keen to test out our new toy. In fact, I was going to suggest that we pull off into the woods we were driving through (did I mention how rural the area was?) but remembered just in time that it's hunting season and that sticking a white tail up in the air might not be the brightest move. Maybe we'll go back in the spring. (When I can't torture him with radio Christmas tunes for hours on end, I can hear Harry say.)

Real Spankings for Real Misdeeds

I'm starting this blog in order to record my fantasies and maybe learn to articulate them more readily. See, I have this great boyfriend who is all too happy to spank me and who does it better than anyone I've ever met, but because he isn't naturally "into it" the way I am, the fantasy side is kind of lost on him, so inevitably it ends up happening in bed, in the context of sex, which isn't bad obviously, but it's somewhat limiting. The kinds of things I wish we were doing fall into two categories, really: real spankings for real misdeeds and role play. Tonight I'll talk about the former.

I broached this subject once a few months ago and pretty much got shot down, and I felt mortified and haven't been able to bring it up since. I've wanted a disciplinarian all my life, but my boyfriend -- I'll call him Harry -- said that he wouldn't want to spank me if he was angry with me because he "doesn't feel that way" (presumably sexual) in those circumstances, and he also said that if he was really angry he might really hurt me, and he wouldn't want to do that.

The first argument demonstrates that typical vanilla mindset that believes spanking must necessarily be explicitly sexual and that it's ridiculous to pretend that it's anything else. This attitude is also evidenced when he objects to something I'm doing and I reply coyly, "What are you going to do about it?" hoping for some tantalizing threat involving his belt and my panties coming down, and he instead replies knowingly, "No spankings for a week!" I hate when he does that, it totally ruins the mood for me.

The second argument, however, is a valid one and I think it shows that he's someone I could actually trust in the role of disciplinarian because he's genuinely concerned about my safety and also he isn't someone who wants to control me. What I probably should have done when Harry voiced that objection was explain to him more carefully what I want. Naturally I don't want him taking me over his knee in the heat of an argument when he's really angry with me over something subjective about which I might be right. That would be horrible. No. But being the sort of guilt-ridden, overly responsible and sensitive girl that I am by nature, if I've done something that is objectively wrong, I feel a whole lot better if I get punished for it.

A perfect example would be that when we do argue, he usually remains calm and focuses only on the issue at hand. He's never sworn at me or called me names, whereas I can be downright combative. I generally don't swear at all -- not even mild expletives -- but when I'm angry, I've been known to cuss like a sailor, and I am also somewhat inclined to hurl insults that aren't directly related to the current debate. It's not something I'm proud of -- in fact, I'm ashamed -- but it's something I picked up somewhere along the line and I have a pretty hot temper so sometimes it just happens, and Harry hates it. It's probably his number one complaint about me, actually. Anyway, it's not like it's his responsibility to make me behave like a decent person, and I honestly have been trying not to do it anymore, but old habits can be hard to break and occasionally I slip. In those cases, what I wish he would do is wait until the argument itself has been resolved and we've made up, and then tell me that the way I handled it was unacceptable and that I'm going to be punished for it. (The behavior, not the argument itself.) And even then it's not something he has to do immediately if he's still feeling too annoyed. He could say that it's going to happen at bedtime, or on Sunday, or something like that when he's feeling calm and collected.

And when he does it, he should really do it. Harry is actually really good at giving a spanking. I've known guys in the scene -- well know, "experienced" guys -- who haven't the faintest idea what they're doing and hit so hard that you feel like the wind has been knocked out of you, and even when you complain they still do it that way because they don't know any better. And then there is the other type, the nicer sort, who don't hit hard enough because they're afraid of hurting you. But Harry is a natural. At 6'5" and 230 lbs. of hard muscle he can really pack a wallop, but he seems to know instinctively that the secret is all in the wrist. He can give me a really hard, stinging spanking that leaves me kicking and squirming without ever leaving a bruise. If he were going to spank me for real punishment, all he would have to do is prolong such a spanking until it seemed unbearable to me...and then make it go on a little while longer. That's the trick of punitive spanking in my opinion -- it's not about leaving heavy bruises -- it's about making it last for so long that it seems that the pain will never end, and not giving up until real tears have been induced.

Not that marks are out of the question, mind you. I believe that if a punishment spanking is going to be truly effective, it has to be something that I'll actually dread and want to avoid. Therefore it wouldn't be shocking if he gave me a sound spanking with his hand and then really blistered my backside with a hairbrush or his belt. I draw the line -- and I'm sure he would too -- at breaking the skin or really heavy bruising, but some bruises or welts are kind of expected if you're really going to punish a grown woman who enjoys a casual spanking.

There are other details that he'd have to work out if he were going to do it. Like positioning. Usually if he spanks me these days it's lying face down on my bed (generally because we're already in bed and naked at the time.) That's fine for playing, but a punishment spanking should really be over the knee or bent over the back of a chair, desk, etc. in the traditional way. Actually, what I really like is the idea of giving a punishment spanking at bedtime. That way, he could send me to get ready for bed first and change into my pyjamas while he remains fully dressed, and then he could sit down in a chair, take me over his knee, and pull my pants or panties down while leaving the rest of my pyjamas (nightgown or whatever) on. He would use the over the knee position for the hand-spanking and maybe later if he was going to use the hairbrush. But for the belt, he should either turn the chair he was sitting in around and make me bend over the back of it, or make me bend over the edge of the bed, or just grab my ankles, or something like that that seems more punitive than just lying comfortably on the bed.

Anyway, that's a pretty good description of what I want -- or what I want to hate -- now I just need to sell him on the idea! I honestly believe that if he could be made to understand it the way I explained above that he could see his way clear to doing it. He's not squeamish about spanking me -- he's amply demonstrated that -- so if only he knew that it's something I want and need and that I don't want it in a dangerous, abusive way, but in a very domestic, caring sort of way then I think he would do it. He will really do almost anything to make me happy. And I truly think that it would make our relationship better. Not that it isn't good now, but I think he would feel better if he could hold me accountable for those things I do that drive him crazy. I also think it'd force him to be a better boyfriend because if he was going to take on the role of disciplinarian, he'd always have to act responsible and like an adult to be sure he's being fair. And I know it would make me feel like a better girlfriend because I truly feel terrible when I do something that hurts him, and I love him enough that I would like for him to be the one to correct me when I do.