It’s mid-afternoon on December 24. My children are in town for the holidays, but at the moment they are busy with friends and I have some time alone at home.
Steph just texted to ask how I am; I replied “feeling happy and lucky.”
Steph was here last weekend for our Christmas (December 20 or so). We saw The Messiah at the Houston Symphony (it was very good). We spent some time working, some time relaxing, and some time spanking.
It was last Sunday that Steph told me she wanted me to spank her. I asked her for details, and she said she wanted to be restrained in the strait jacket and she wanted me to use the sorority paddle on her.
I fastened the strait jacket around Steph, then I sat on the couch and took her over my lap and gave her a long warm-up by hand. Warm-ups make any spanking easier to tolerate, and I was planning on making this a real punishment. The warm-up is mild and anyone who loves spanking will enjoy it. The paddling is severe and I do NOT recommend it if you are not totally comfortable with intense punishments.
It’s been a couple of years since Steph and I had a safeword with each other. We still use the concept of safewords within our scenes now and then, but it’s to augment the punishment, not to curtail it. For example, I might be spanking her and she might be begging me to stop. Sometimes in this circumstance I invite her to use a safeword. She knows what I have in mind, but she hopes against hope (or perhaps she just humors me) and says “yellow” or “red!”
I keep on spanking, and tell her I’m sorry, but the safeword isn’t working. During Sunday’s punishment, I told her that her safewords were right over on the bookshelf – too far away for her to reach, of course.
A word about playing without safewords . . .
This is the kind of play that can work between people who know each other very well and trust each other implicitly. Many people have no desire to give up their safewords – safewords are an important part of safe play for most people. And those who do want to give them up are well advised to do so only when they are experienced and know their partner very well. If you are not sure if you’re ready to play without safewords, you aren’t ready.
Most people should use safewords all the time!
Back to Sunday . . .
After the warm-up was over, I helped her stand up (it’s hard to move in the strait jacket) Then I paddled her bare bottom for a long time.
This was a genuinely severe punishment. If you have any misgivings, if you think it might upset you, please don’t listen to it – Steph’s cries of pain are harrowing; my sadism is on florid display. The warmup is OK -- it's just the paddling that you may find too intense.
Four days later I’m still not sure if I punished her too hard or not. Part of me thinks I did – and if you listen to the sound file you’ll understand my misgivings. But in the end, it’s not my call, it’s Steph’s. If this is the punishment she wanted, and if she is happy that I paddled her this way, then it was a success. (As I write this, Steph has told me she had a wonderful weekend, but she hasn’t said anything specific about her paddling.)
This note is not just about safewords; it’s about the appropriate intensity of a punishment between consenting partners.
Steph once flogged me with a thick delrin cane. That was a punishment I never want to experience again, so some could see that session as a failure. But I see it as a successful exploration of one more niche in the nearly boundless savannah of our sadomasochism. I didn’t enjoy it, but we learned from it and it’s part of our shared history.
So if Steph isn’t glad that I paddled her the way I did on Sunday, it won’t be a failure. It will be one more learning experience for us both.
Steph was exhausted by the end of her punishment. I released her from the strait jacket and held her tenderly until she had calmed down somewhat.
Afterward …
That evening, sitting on the same couch, she opened a box from Almaza Jewelers in Houston. Anyone else would have thought it contained mis-matched earrings. But Steph recognized at first sight her safewords, captured in one yellow sapphire and one red sapphire.
She’ll have her safewords forever.
This post is dedicated to Steph with love, in gratitude for our shared Christmas and our years of joy together, on this Christmas Eve of 2009.
Doc
(For Steph's feelings about this punishment several days later, see YR Steph Reaction). For the sound files, transcripts, and pix themselves, see the links below.)