The book emerged from a
9,500-word story that I originally posted on this blog; the novella is 37,500
words and has been significantly revised, edited and developed from its shorter
version. I have now taken the original story down, but if anyone would like to
read it please do contact me and I will send you a pdf version.
The story is a sensuous
spanking romance—and I hope one that is moving, arousing, intelligent and well
written! It consists of a Prologue, ten chapters and an Afterword; below are
the Prologue and first chapter. I hope you enjoy them enough to want to read on…
Prologue
A
few weeks after Charles and Susan had shown initial, albeit cautious, interest
in my idea of writing about their experiences, an incident occurred which convinced
me that I had to tell their story. I was at their house, ostensibly to talk
over the project and gather information, but primarily as a friend (and in
Charles’s words, a ‘kindred spirit’). Having already drunk our way through a
couple of bottles of wine, we had just uncorked the Bordeaux I had brought
along. We were talking freely, and with increasing inebriation, on all manner
of topics: politics, novels, films and, since we all shared a devotion to it
and for Charles and Susan it was the world in which they operated, art. Susan
had been bold, occasionally provocative, in her views all evening, and she
became noticeably animated in an argument over portraits and the work of one
artist in particular (Lucian Freud, I think, though I cannot now be sure). I
remember her standing up to refill her glass, demonstrably annoyed.
“God,
Charles, you can be such a dick!” she suddenly and loudly pronounced, directing
an irate glare at him.
The
atmosphere abruptly tensed for a few seconds. Charles seemed taken aback; Susan
aggressively filled her glass almost to the brim; I nervously smiled and stared
hard at my hands. Typical of the man, it was Charles, his reassuringly steady
and confident demeanour quickly restored, who assumed control of the situation.
“I’m
sorry, Susan, what did you just say?” he asked in a measured and calm tone, laced
with a hint of amusement.
Oblivious
to his calmness, Susan remained enveloped in agitation. “I mean, I know you’ve
read loads of books and been to loads of shows, but sometimes you talk such
shit. Jesus, just because other people wank off to what you say doesn’t mean
I’m going to. It’s fucking boring, this whole ‘everybody else is wrong and I am
right’ thing you do. It fucks me off big time.” She was gesticulating
carelessly and I watched in horror as a miniature tide of wine climbed the side
of her glass, looped over the brim and splashed onto the wooden floor. “Oh
Christ!” she gasped in annoyance and shock. She set the glass down on a coaster
and dashed out of the room.
“Well,
that’s livened things up considerably,” Charles said, turning to me, his manner
utterly relaxed.
“Would
it be better if I left?” I suggested uncertainly, simultaneously unnerved and
excited by these developments.
“God,
no! Absolutely not! This sort of thing happens from time to time. It’s nothing.
It happens and then it is dealt with. In fact, I think it’s interesting for you
to observe it.”
Susan
returned to the room carrying a damp cloth and a handful of kitchen towel.
Averting her eyes from Charles, she spoke to me. “I do apologize, J___. You
should never have had to see us behave like this.”
Before
I could respond Charles leapt in. “Us?
No, Susan, you. You’re the one who is
behaving badly.”
“There
you go again…” Susan began as she knelt down to clean up the spillage.
“That’s
enough Susan,” Charles interrupted sternly. “Do you understand? We’ve had
enough of your tantrum.” Susan made a childish face, sighed petulantly and
turned her attention to wiping the floor while Charles concentrated on her
watchfully. I gazed at my glass intently, but with mounting curiosity about
what would happen. At last, after a protracted effort to mop up the wine, Susan
stood up.
“Have
you wiped it all up?” Charles inquired. Susan nodded sullenly. “Good,” he
continued. “You’ve had far too much to drink, you’ve been ridiculous and your
behaviour is embarrassingly bad.” He paused for a moment, weighing up what to
say next. “You need to go to your room and calm down. I’ll be up shortly to
deal with this.”
Susan
looked genuinely surprised. “Oh come on, Charles, you can’t do that. Not now,
not here. I mean…” She subtly gestured towards my presence.
“Yes
I can. You know I can. Now go to your room.”
“Look,
I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “I shouldn’t have said what I said, but it’s just that
sometimes you can be…”
Charles
authoritatively raised his hand to stop her. “I’ve already said that’s enough.
I don’t want to have to tell you again. I’ve put up with you being tetchy all
evening. But I’m not tolerating infantile and rude outbursts. Now do as you’re
told.”
She
became desperate. “But J___ is here,” she appealed, looking at me, hoping I
might intervene on her side. But scarcely believing what I was witnessing, I
wanted simply to observe matters taking their natural course. I flashed her a brief,
sympathetic smile, before turning away to look at Charles.
“Yes,
I am well aware that J___ is here,” he replied. “But J___ knows full well that
I discipline you. You don’t mind that he’s even writing about it. I see no
reason why he shouldn’t witness this. Indeed, I think it’s probably good that
he has some first-hand evidence.” He paused briefly, and I marvelled at his
unflustered, commanding composure. “This is the final time I’m going to tell you.
Go to your room and reflect on your behaviour. I’ll be up in ten minutes. I
expect to find you bent over the bed, dress up, panties down, with the leather
paddle beside you. Now go!”
Blushing,
Susan opened her mouth to say something, then immediately shut it again. She
looked humiliated and for a moment I thought she might be about to cry. Then,
in a rapid burst of defiant activity, she smacked the wine-stained cloth and
paper towel onto the table, turned without looking at either Charles or me, and
walked briskly towards the door. She stopped, half turned back towards us, and,
her voice fractured and upset, angrily shouted “You’re being fucking unfair!”
Then she marched out and I found myself craning slightly to hear her footsteps
as they stomped up the stairs.
Charles
turned to me with a smile. “I hope you’re not embarrassed.”
“Well…”
I started, but without knowing what to say.
“It
will be fine,” he reassured me. “You’re a kindred spirit. You know that, on
some level, even if she’s not fully conscious of it, this is something she
wants. That’s why she acted as she did. Really. So it’s all good. And I meant
what I said, about this being good for the book. You know, we’re both very keen
on the book. We loved the writing you sent us.” Then he laughed and gave me a
conspiratorial look. “I probably shouldn’t say this—you might use it as a quote for the blurb—but it
turned us on reading about ourselves!” He got up to fetch the bottle of wine.
“Anyway,” he said, as he refilled our glasses, “I think we’re all a bit pissed.
Let’s have another glass, then you can watch me give her a spanking. Maybe, if
you’d like,”—the conspiratorial expression returned—“you can even spank her
yourself?”
* * * * *
What
happened next is a story I will tell another time. But the scene I have just
recounted, still vivid in my memory, not only amazed me at the time but also
turned me on hugely—and still does. It persuaded me that what was then only a
vague and half-formed idea to write about Charles and Susan was worth getting
serious about. The book that follows is the result.
Before
getting to the story itself, readers may well be interested in a few further
points relevant to it.
Although
they are real people, Charles and Susan are not their real names; and while
this is a true story, I have consciously fictionalized it, for example by
creatively reconstructing dialogue or by altering some details. For obvious reasons,
it was important to disguise the true identity of Charles and Susan. Moreover,
all three of us agreed that the story would be more interesting if presented in
a novelistic form than in that of, say, reportage.
I
have known Charles and Susan for eighteen months, during which time we have
become good friends. (It was not, incidentally, via any spanking-related
interests that we came to know one another; that I share their interest is a
happy coincidence and there was an element of fortune in the discovery of this
coincidence—another story I will relate elsewhere.) They knew I was interested
in writing, and when I proposed, not entirely seriously I must admit, the idea
of telling their story, they were immediately intrigued. By then I knew the
main outlines of how they met, so I wrote up something based on that (this is
the ‘writing’ that Charles refers to in the scene above). They told me they
loved it; enthusiastically, they encouraged me to progress with the project. We
agreed that I would conduct ‘interviews’ with them, and that I would fashion
the story from these interviews.
It
may seem odd that, despite the care taken to conceal their identities, Charles
and Susan would so readily agree to this aspect of their lives being made
public. But they have both told me how exciting they find it to read about
themselves (“not that we’re self-obsessed!” Susan jokily commented) and equally
arousing that their spanking life is in a sense now ‘in the open’ (“nor that we
are exhibitionists!” Susan added, to which Charles replied with mock grandness,
“no, we just love the idea of immortalizing something so important to us”). We
agreed that everything I wrote would first be approved by them. The following
story is, therefore, published with their full consent and approval.
Finally,
what attracted me to their story is not only that I find it intrinsically
interesting and worth telling, but also that I am curious about so-called
Domestic Discipline (or Taken in Hand) relationships. Despite my own love of
spanking and discipline, the idea of DD as a 24/7 lifestyle choice has never
appealed to me. (In addition, I have enough of a ‘submissive’ side not to be
interested in an exclusively dominant role.) Nor was I convinced that these
relationships ever really worked as some DD couples claim. Although Charles and
Susan are not part of any DD network or scene, they recognize, even if at times
grudgingly, that their own relationship might be characterized as a DD one. So
I was eager to discover more about it, and to gain greater insight and
understanding from learning about their experience. The story told in this book
does not trace their full journey (it is intended that this will be picked up
in future books), but it does present the essential background of how Charles
and Susan met.
Above
all, of course, my hope (and one shared by Charles and Susan) is that the story
both moves and excites you!
___________________
Chapter
One: Charles
Susan
first contacted me in the spring of 2010, a couple of months after I had seen
Meredith for the last time. For nearly a decade, three or four times each year,
Meredith had come to my house, removed her clothes, placed her stocky naked
body over my lap for ten minutes of spanking and paddling, and then bent over
for twelve strokes of the cane. On that final occasion, as she hurriedly put
her panties back on, covering up the red stripes across her fleshy bottom that I
would never see or feel again, she informed me plainly that “I’ve just been
offered a new job up north.” She hooked the clasp of her bra and put on her
blouse, habitually checking her watch, the one item she never removed. “I can
be with my fiancé again. It’s been ridiculous that we’ve been so far apart for
the last few months. And we’ve finally sorted out a date for the wedding next
year. So this is probably the last time that I will visit you.” And that was
that: no suggestion that I would be invited to the wedding, no mention that we would
remain in touch however remotely, just a formal, polite thanks and goodbye from
a woman whom I had been spanking and caning from her undergraduate days,
through her years in law school, to her besuited life as a solicitor in a
branch of law she never did reveal to me. Five minutes later she was briskly
walking away from my house, checking her watch again, her mobile phone clamped to
her ear. I watched her, wondering if she would turn her head, until she
disappeared around the corner at the end of the street. Then I went to my
living room, stood at the French window and stared vacantly at the scruffy
flower beds and unkempt lawn of my small garden.
I
felt miserable. Not so much because of Meredith, with whom there had never been
any intimacy or connection, just an increasingly functional routine of undressing,
spanking, caning and dressing. Nor because of any one of the others who had
gone the same way—and at one point, during my ‘golden period’ as I sarcastically
and sardonically thought of it, I had had six regular spankees. Barbara and
Lisa had sent Christmas cards a couple of times, but the rest had simply
dropped out of my life completely. They moved abroad, or got married, or had
children, or felt guilty, or lost interest; sometimes they said goodbye,
sometimes, without a word, they ceased contact. Meredith, Barbara, Lisa, Aysun,
Katya, Jennifer—they were just names I had said, and arses that I had spanked,
and, some of them, mouths and cunts that I had tongued and fucked. But what
else? Just spanking and fucking, slippers, paddles, straps and canes, lips
around my cock and the taste of pussy—and now not even these things.
I
sat down at my desk, opened my laptop and checked my inbox. There was an email
from Jessica requesting that I look at the attached proofs of the catalogue for
a forthcoming auction. I replied that I would do so and return them by the end
of the week. Nick had sent a couple of scanned images of an etching with a
query whether it was a genuine Boucher print or a later copy. I began replying
to arrange a time to come to his shop, but then decided I would phone him
instead, to catch up with our lives and perhaps to arrange lunch too. I made a
note on my pad. There were no more new emails. I stared for a moment at the
nineteenth-century erotic print over my desk, then I got up, poured myself a
whisky, and logged on to a spanking website I occasionally visited. I browsed a
few images before clicking on the ‘Personals’ page and then on the ‘Submit new
personal ad’ button. I quickly composed a few sentences describing myself,
emphasizing my education and interest in culture, briefly outlining my
experience and stating that I was seeking ‘to meet women of all ages interested
in receiving traditional spanking, slippering, strapping and caning, over
clothes, underwear or on the bare bottom’. It didn’t feel right. I pondered the
text for a moment and then altered the first part to ‘I am looking for
friendship and meetings with a woman of any age (but preferably 25-45)’.
Finally I added: ‘Ideally I would like this friendship to grow and develop over
the long term.’ Then I clicked ‘Submit’, opened up Jessica’s catalogue proofs,
and immediately noticed a typographical mistake in the dating of the second
item.
* * * * *
For
a few weeks the only responses were from women who wanted to be paid to be
spanked. Tempting though one or two of the attached photos of bare behinds were,
I had no interest in this type of arrangement. But, at last, after the ad had
been up for two months, I received the following email:
Dear Charles, I
am very interested in your personal ad and I wonder whether you may be able to
provide me with what I think I am looking for. I have never been spanked
before, but it is something I have been curious about for a long time. I am extremely
nervous about taking this step. I look forward to your reply and to discussing
this further with you. Susan
Previous
experience has taught me how many such replies are not genuine, and that even
the genuine replies, after a promising start, often lead nowhere, either
because the woman eventually reveals that she is a professional or more usually
because she develops second thoughts. For all the intentions to bridge the gap
between fantasy and reality, for many people interested in spanking it proves
too daunting a challenge. So I remained no more than cautiously optimistic that
anything would come from Susan’s email. I endeavoured to reassure her in my
reply: I told her how common her interest in spanking was, how normal it was to
feel nervous, how I had experience of dealing with spanking novices, and how I
would be more than happy to discuss this further and to take matters at a pace
with which she would be comfortable. Finally I wondered if she might elaborate
on her interest.
For
a few days I heard nothing and assumed that she had, like so many others, taken
fright at her own initial boldness. But then another email arrived in my inbox:
Dear Charles,
Many thanks for your email. I am sorry for the delay in replying to it, but I
have been very busy at work. Also, I am still nervous and uncertain about this,
so I hope this is something you are used to. Spanking is something that I have
thought a lot about for many years, and often I think I would like to try it. But
it also seems a bit… weird. (I know it probably isn’t, and that it’s quite
common as you write, but I can’t help feeling this.) I suppose also that I
think I need to be ‘punished’ occasionally. I’m not sure I know how to explain
that idea, even to myself… Perhaps we could email for a while at first, and
then see what happens. I hope that seems OK. Susan
It
was hard to rein in the excited anticipation generated by an email like this,
despite the high chance that the only outcome would be wasted time, but I
resolved to be stoical. Over the following weeks we exchanged several emails.
Early on we discovered that both of us worked in the art world, which led to a
sprinkling of discussion about artists and galleries throughout our
correspondence, something which noticeably helped to relax her. I told her more
about my own fascination with spanking, how it went back as far as I could
remember, how I was fortunate when younger in meeting an older and more
experienced woman who helped remove my inhibitions, and about how erotic,
although not necessarily sexual, I find it. She was curious about my
experiences, and she seemed pleased not only that I had been spanking women for
a long time but also that I was older than her by nearly twenty years. She
admitted (although adding that ‘it was probably a bit of a cliché’) that she found
confident, dominant men who took control to be attractive, and that most of her
spanking fantasies involved significantly older men. I cautiously tried to
tease more information from her, and, although she would occasionally go silent
for a week or so, gradually she became more forthcoming about her curiosity. When
I asked her how she imagined her first spanking, she replied:
I worry that it
will hurt a lot, and I probably worry more that it will be hugely embarrassing.
You ask me what type of spanking I have in mind. As a first spanking, I think I
would only be interested in a hand spanking over the knee, over clothes and
then maybe over knickers. I suspect that anything more than that would be far
too embarrassing! (Although I do think about it…)
I
sent her a photograph of myself, and in return she sent me a slightly blurry,
indistinct head-and-shoulders portrait, enough to reveal a pretty young woman
with pale skin and light brown, possibly reddish, hair. And finally,
hesitantly, after much deliberation, she agreed to my suggestion that we meet
for coffee with no other purpose than to talk and become better acquainted.
* * * * *
I
arrived a few minutes early at the coffee shop, bought myself a large Americano
and found a small, secluded table at the back of the shop. Foreseeing the
possibility of having to wait, and even of being stood up completely, I’d
brought along a copy of the New Yorker
to read, but my nervous anticipation made it almost impossible to concentrate.
Checking my watch, I noted that she was already ten minutes late. I made
another attempt at reading, trying to dispel the fear that she had decided not
to show up.
“Charles?”
I
looked up and there she was: a petite, slim woman with shoulder-length ginger
hair and a youthful complexion. She was casually dressed in jeans and a light
green top. “Susan,” I smiled, standing up to offer her my hand. “How great to
meet you at last!” Her handshake was nervously weak. “Let me get you a coffee.
Please, I insist.”
I
brought back the latte she had requested and sat opposite her. I tried to make
small talk about her journey, about the disappointing May weather, about the
dismaying proliferation of Starbucks and Costa, but she was clearly tense:
avoiding eye contact, she sat leaning forward, either clasping her hands
together or gripping her coffee, her conversation brief, clipped and guarded. Even
when I mentioned a couple of major exhibitions that I had visited, hoping that
the topic of art would ease her tension, she was hardly forthcoming. The
stilted conversation was not helping me conceal my own nerves, so I decided to
adopt a more direct approach.
“So
Susan, you contacted me, you’ve remained in contact, and now you’re meeting me.
Are you having any regrets?”
She
glanced at me and then focused her eyes again on her coffee with an anxious and
barely audible laugh. “No, but… I mean… it doesn’t really feel like a normal
situation.”
“I’m
not sure how one might define normal,” I replied. “I’d say that we are two
people, with a shared interest, meeting for coffee in order to get to know one
another. I think that probably counts as fairly normal. Maybe we should talk
more about our interest. How would you feel about that?”
There
was a long pause before her response: “A little embarrassed.”
“I
understand that,” I said. “But perhaps embarrassment is the point. It’s
something you want to avoid, because it is uncomfortable, but—if you don’t mind
me trying to read you—it is also something that in some way you want. The
feeling of embarrassment can sometimes be exquisite. But really it is about the
sexiness of power and powerlessness. When someone is embarrassed they have lost
power over a situation and over themselves, in such a way that they feel
ashamed and exposed. Embarrassment feels like a threat. The psychologists and
evolutionary biologists tell us that we respond to this with one of two
options: fight or flight. But maybe there is a third option: to give in to the
feeling, to explore how potentially exciting it is, and in doing that to
embrace it and gain a kind of power over it.” I noticed her looking at me
attentively as I spoke and how she smiled as if to signal that she understood
completely. “You once wrote to me that sometimes you feel as if you need to be
punished. What did you mean by that?”
“God,
you see it’s embarrassing that I wrote that!” I drank some more coffee, not
saying a word, letting her find her way to an answer. She looked upwards as if
in deep thought for a minute, before continuing. “What you just said about
embarrassment, I really like that. I need to think about it more, but I think I
get it and that I agree with you. So I will try to give in to the embarrassment,
so to speak.” She paused to take a sip of coffee. “Sometimes I feel so frustrated
with my life, as if I have no control over it. I’ve got good qualifications, a
job I find interesting, nice friends, but I don’t think I’m realizing my
potential. I don’t see where my life and career are going. It’s as if I just
drift at times. Like there’s no proper structure. And then other times I think
that I make bad decisions, stupid choices. Really stupid choices that hurt
people. And hurt myself too. There are things I’ve done which I shouldn’t have
done, and I regret them.” She shook her head and suddenly looked sad. “But I
don’t want to talk about that. Only that I feel I often do stupid, bad things,
that everything is out of control, and that’s why I think that… why I wrote
what I did. So I suppose I think this might be a way of dealing with it… I
don’t know, perhaps it is really silly.”
With
utter clarity I recognized that this was the moment to be decisive, assertive
and confident—to seize the initiative and take control of the situation.
“It’s
not silly, for the simple reason that you think this might be worth trying. I
suggest you value your instinct that following this course—the one that has led
you here, sitting and drinking coffee with me—may help you. Because I think I
could help you. You say that you need some discipline in your life, and if
that’s what you think then you’re almost certainly right, because you know
yourself better than anybody else does, and you have a better idea than anyone
else what it is you need. And I can give you that discipline, and I can do it
in a way that I suspect you will find enjoyable and personally fulfilling as
well as useful.”
Shyly
she murmured: “Possibly, maybe.”
“What
you need,” I continued, leaning my head towards her, lowering my voice and
making as much eye contact as she would allow me, “and I have a feeling you
know this, is for me to put you over my knee and soundly spank you.”
Susan
blushed and nervously laughed. But something in her eyes, in her expression,
told me that my words had pushed a button inside her. “Yes,” she said, “I think
so… I’m not sure.” She smiled uncertainly: “I need to think about it.”
I
kept my eyes locked on her and adopted a tone of calm, clear, authoritative
detachment: “Of course, you should think about it. But you’ve been thinking
about it for a long time, for many years in fact, so I think you need to ask
yourself when you will begin taking control of your life by taking control of
this desire, by understanding that this is something you need to do and then to
do it. Trust me, this desire, these thoughts, these fantasies, they’re not
going to go away. They’re an important part of who you are—you and lots of
other people too. So ask yourself: are you ever going to act on something that
important to you? Are you forever going to leave it as a fantasy, burning but buried
away deep inside you? You could try to repress it. Or you could start acting on
it, you could start exploring what is important in your life, and in doing so
you may find that the structure you say is lacking may gradually appear. You
seek discipline. Well, the first stage in that quest is the discipline of
understanding who you are and acting in accordance with it. And your desires
are at the heart of who you are.”
I
sipped some more coffee and observed the way she carefully and attentively
considered my words. “Not now, not this instant,” I resumed. “Now, we will
finish our coffees and go our separate ways. But then you have a choice. You
can choose never to write to me again. Or you can contact me again. But if you
choose to contact me, then it will be to indicate that you accept the need to
address practically this question of discipline and to arrange a meeting during
which you will be spanked.”
She
seemed to have fallen into a reverie. Then she nodded and, in little more than
a whisper, said “Okay”. As we finished our coffees and left, I made some jokey
small talk, and I mentioned a small exhibition that she ought to check out. I
smiled at her, and she smiled back. She seemed relaxed now, even a little buoyant
as she thanked me for meeting her and said goodbye. With how much finality, it
was hard to tell—but my instinct was that she would be in touch again.
However,
in the two weeks that followed I heard nothing from her, and had reached the
point of supposing that my instinct had deceived me and that I was never likely
to hear from her again. And then I received the following email:
Dear Charles, I
really enjoyed meeting you. I have been thinking about it a lot, about
everything you said. And so much of what you said was incredibly helpful and
useful and… wise. I am still apprehensive (as you know, because I have emphasized
it so much, this is all completely new to me and it feels like a HUGE step),
but I am more convinced than ever that I need to be punished. I think you
should punish me. (In the way that you suggested.) Please send me your address
and suggest a day and time. Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment