feelings

I haven’t done a Kink of the Week topic in a while. I looked at the list, and discovered that I’ve missed two full two week cycles, but that Jade left them open (possibly by accident, but I’m willing to take advantage of that). Both the topics that I missed are ones that I have a lot to say about. So, like the horribly naughty girl I am, I’m just going to slide this homework into the bottom of the pile and hope that my teacher believes it was there the entire time.

The kink of the week topic (from a while ago) was Dacryphilia, or the fetish surrounding crying. Without further ado, I shall now address this!

My most read post on this blog is one from 2012 entitled “On Being Spanked to Tears.” In it, I outlined the different ways in which a spanking could lead me to cry. Three years later, I’ve grown and learned and experienced many more things, and I’d like to add some new thoughts on the topic.

Why crying?

Crying is something which carries a great deal of importance for many spankos. I get the impression that spanking is one of the fetishes which most embraces, or even focuses on, dacryphilia. When I started crying on one of my first spanking video shoots, I felt almost embarrassed by it, but the producer called my tears “liquid gold” and told me that a tear covered face was “the moneyshot” of spanking videos. So what is it about crying that is so central to a large number of people’s spanking kinks?

The first is the idea that tears are tied into the “realness” of a spanking. I hear this often in comments various places where I post spanking photos on the internet: “It’s not a real spanking unless you make her cry.” I haven’t spent enough time immersed in other kink communities to know whether or not they have a similar obsession with verisimilitude as the spanking community presents, but I know that for spankos, we talk about what makes a spanking real all the time. Tears are very tied into this.

Part of this obsession with making spankings real comes from the fact that a lot of our fantasies are based on things that actually happened in the past. I don’t knock this at all, and totally embrace that many of my core fantasies are based around the recreation of school, institutional or domestic punishments that used to actually take place. So, sometimes the word “real” is meant to mean “similar to a historic/real life spanking situation.” And in our conceptions of those scenes, tears are a key part. The first hand accounts of these punishments that we read or hear almost always end with the spankee bawling, sobbing and crying uncontrollably. Of course they would: these punishments were painful, embarrassing and, whether we want to focus on this or not, non consensual.

Before I was ever spanked, I read as much writing about spanking as I could, and I remember being deeply engulfed in the fantasy of being helpless, overpowered, intimidated by authority, stripped, held down and thoroughly chastised. These fantasies always ended with me in tears. Now that I spend my life actually enjoying spanking play, I like to recreate these fantasies. I like to make them as realistic to what I imagined as possible. I buy uniforms from school uniform suppliers, or even better, find vintage ones that were being worn at a time when corporal punishment was actually practiced. I get implements that are also vintage, and which were actually used in the original situations. When I can, I like to dress up the setting, finding places to play that look like I’ve stepped into my fantasy world. And I like to be spanked hard and, if it’s possible, pushed to cry. My tears are part of what makes it feel like I’ve truly created the scene from my fantasy. In this situation, “realness” can be better defined as “authenticity” and tears add to that. [Author’s note: I do not actually support non consensual corporal punishment of any kind, and fantasizing about recreating something in a way which is positive and consensual is not the same as supporting the original institution from which my fantasies stem.]

Another thing which I believe has influenced the spanking community’s interest in tears is the way which spanking pornography evolved. In the pre-internet days, before the first spanking videos were even available, spanking porn was delivered via magazine. It was much harder to find a like minded partner at this time, so spanking porn carried even more importance: for many people with spanking fetishes, those magazines would be the only way they’d ever get to interact with their kink. When you look at spanking in still photographs, it is very hard to tell whether someone is actually being spanked or if it’s just a picture. It’s even harder to tell if the spanking has been severe or “transient and trifling.” One can easily use acting to make a facial expression that depicts being in pain. There are only two things that can make a still image show that a hard spanking is actually taking place: the presence of marks and the presence of tears. Admittedly, neither of these things is actually a good litmus test for the severity of a scene, since some people simply never cry, others can cry from a light hand spanking, some people will be bruised purple by the same hand spanking but others can take a good, hard caning and have only a pink bottom to show for it after. But these visual queues at least suggest to us that a spanking is actually happening and that it actually hurts. Even now that our spanking pornography is primarily videographic, we often continue to identify the severity of a scene based on these two visual queues, hence the fact that my tears were liquid gold to the producer in my earlier story. Both tears and marks send us a strong visual message: that a spanking is happening here and it’s real: here, realness can be defined as a spanking carrying any level of severity.

Leaving aside realness, there’s another thing that makes tears very appealing to many spankos: vulnerability. No matter who a person is, they’re vulnerable when they cry. They’ve let their guard down and they’re showing you their inner emotion. They aren’t fighting against you or resisting you as you spank them. They are, in a way, letting you in. This is the draw of tears for many spankos. Tears are a sign of intimacy. Tears are a sign that your feelings are genuine. Tears are a sign that lessons are being taken to heart. Of course, a person can be vulnerable without crying, but tears give you a tangible sign of this vulnerability. For the person crying, tears can be refreshing. They can give an emotional release. They can get something out that words can’t articulate. Communicating this way can be very emotionally intimate and draw people together.

Of course, no matter the reason, not everyone likes tears. For some, the presence of tears makes them worry that they’ve really upset or truly hurt their partner. Others find tears or being made to cry triggering, as a reminder of a time when something non consensual brought about that sort of emotional state. Others don’t like to be that vulnerable, and that’s entirely okay, too. Despite all the reasons why tears may make something feel more authentic or more real, a scene can be perfectly wonderful and very real without them,

What makes a spanko cry? 

Personally, I cry all the time. Outside of the spanking world, I cry when I’m sad, lonely, scared, hurt, even angry. I’ve always cried a lot. I was made fun of for it throughout most of my life, often being called a crybaby or other similar taunts. As an adult, I was made to feel that crying was something I should find embarrassing, that it was a mark of lack of self control or that I wasn’t a “real adult” (another concept that has caused me a lot of struggle).

The first time I was ever spanked, I didn’t just cry, I sobbed. I cried until I shook, in a way which was extremely disproportionate to the severity of the spanking I was receiving. It took me a long time to unwind the tight ball of emotions that I felt there, but the primary one was relief. I was relieved that after eighteen long years of carrying around this seemingly dark secret, my most precious fantasy was coming to life. And, once I started crying, I was relieved to discover that it was perfectly acceptable in this situation to cry when I felt the impulse to.

Crying from a spanking isn’t something rare for me. I’d say that it happens about 40% of the time that I have a serious scene. It’s not uncommon for someone to specifically ask to make me cry, either in my personal play or during a video or session. Other people have asked me to make them cry when I was Topping them, or to teach them how to make someone cry. It isn’t this simple. Everyone is different and every spanking presents a different set of emotional and physical stimuli. Like during that first spanking I received, the cause of what brings one to tears can be hard to unravel. It can be caused or hindered by a variety of things. Here are some of those that I’ve discovered.

Crying fueled by regret for bad behavior: 

This was one of the causes of crying which I identified in my post three years ago. This is one of the causes of tears that people most often think about when imagining a punishment spanking. You feel bad about what you did, so, aided by the scolding words and pain associated with your punishment, you cry. It’s important to point out that just because someone isn’t crying during a disciplinary spanking, that doesn’t mean that they don’t regret whatever they did to earn the punishment. Everyone expresses their emotions in a different way. This reason for crying is something which the Top can influence to a degree, especially with the words they choose when scolding, and by creating an environment in which the bottom feels safe to be vulnerable. For me, sternness, seriousness and calm are important in creating this sort of atmosphere.

One thing I noted in my original post which I highly agree with is that if someone is crying due to regret for bad behavior during a scene which isn’t meant to be disciplinary, then something isn’t right. Sometimes, the differences between funishment or play punishment and real discipline can get blurred, and it’s important to make it clear to the person that you’re playing with what kind of spanking you’re really giving them.

Crying fueled by letting someone down

I realized recently that, to me, there’s a difference between the feeling of regretting having misbehaved and feeling bad that I’ve disappointed someone that I respect. In detangling the feelings that I have when I get a real punishment spanking, I’ve realized that a large part of what makes it emotional for me isn’t just the fact that what I did was wrong and needs to be corrected, it’s also the fact that I’ve let down a person who I love and respect. This is part of the reason that I only have an interest in doing these kinds of scenes with someone who I know well and feel these feelings towards. Because, really, we all know which stings more: a hairbrush or the words “I’m disappointed in you.” Just knowing that I’ve let my partner down will almost always bring tears to my eyes, without even the need for anything else.

Crying fueled by stress relief or emotional release

Sometimes, a person who gets spanked just needs to be spanked. They have too much bottled up emotionally. They are having trouble focusing because their mind is full of distractions and they need something to center them. Life is just wearing them down, and they need to not have the responsibility of being in control all the time. This kind of crying can come from any kind of spanking, and I think that’s it’s actually fairly common, although you can intentionally try to create this atmosphere for a person who needs it by providing a safe and secure emotional environment surrounding the scene. For me, this works best when it’s a mixture of caring and sternness, and when the spanking slowly builds up to a place where I can’t resist it anymore and I *have* to let my vulnerability physically manifest.

Photo by Assume the Position Studios, still the most cry-face photo of me I have!

Crying fueled by submission or surrender

This is another one of the types of crying that I identified in my much earlier post. I wrote that post when I was a fairly new submissive, and when subspace was something which remained very alien to me. Here’s what I had to say:

Some bottoms talk about subspace- going off into some floaty, magical, trance-like, trippy state from getting a very hard beating which pushes them towards submission. They sink into the bed, they stop feeling pain, they float on endorphins, they get high, they can’t talk properly…

This doesn’t happen for me (although it did once). I’m a very cerebral person, and I’m uncomfortable letting go of my awareness. Instead, when I’ve been pushed to a place where I cease my fighting, I get to a point of submissive crying. It’s a calm sort of sobbing where there’s no urgency in the sound. I’ve given myself over to the spanking that I’m receiving and I have no will regarding when it will end. It’s certainly not as exciting to talk about, or as filled with mystery and intrigue as traditionally described subspace is, but the land of my submission is just a place where I lie still and take a lot of hurt and cry about it. It probably sounds pretty pathetic to a listener, and it doesn’t feel “good” in a traditional sense, but it’s a very peaceful place where I feel incredibly safe and loved.

Nowadays, the more traditional subspace is no longer illusive to me the way it used to be, but I still find myself getting into this kind of “submissive cry space” (that’s a technical term :P) on a pretty regular basis. “Traditional” subspace doesn’t actually feel so submissive to me: it feels passive, and I identify those two things as being related but different. When I’m in a deep subspace, I don’t really feel things the same way. I’ve let myself be taken to a place where spankings don’t actually really hurt. When I’m in this space, I still feel everything, but I’ve given up my resistance to those feelings and I’m willing to let them happen. This is a place that one should only go to with someone they truly trust, since it basically means that you’re just going to let someone do whatever they want to you and not resist, but it can be a very beautiful thing in the right situation.

Crying fueled by physical pain
When I wrote my original post, I said that I felt like it was taboo to admit that I sometimes cry because spankings hurt that much. I don’t know if I think that anymore. I think that’s dangerous for a Top to believe that crying is the *only* sign of physical pain, or that by increasing the amount of pain that you’re causing someone you can *make* them cry, but I do think that it’s very common for people to simply cry because something hurts. I have to feel safe in order to do this, and I have to feel some sort of connection to the Top that I’m playing with, but this is honestly a very common reason for me to start crying. This hurts: that’s what this is all about. And sometimes, this hurts enough to make me cry. Nothing more complicated than that. That’s okay. There doesn’t have to be some grand and difficult to explain background behind everything. Sometimes, it’s just that someone is hitting you with a piece of wood and that hurts enough to make you cry.

Bad tears
The spanking community puts so many positive associations on crying that it can sometimes be easy to forget that crying isn’t always a good thing. For some people, crying is a sign that they are upset and that the scene needs to stop. If someone starts crying in a way that you don’t expect from them, or from a scene that wasn’t meant to be that intense, it’s a good idea to check in. Sometimes, when a person starts crying, it’s because the spanking isn’t fun anymore. The scene isn’t working for them. But if they’re already in an emotional place where they feel particularly passive, it can be hard to use their safeword. While it might break up the scene in a way that isn’t ideal to check in with your partner, it’s better to be safe than sorry in this case.

Other times, a person cries during a scene because, to put it in the vernacular, the Top is being a dick. Using people’s fears, playing to their insecurities, saying insulting or hurtful things and other forms of emotional sadism certainly get inside someone’s head and make them cry, but it isn’t creating the kind of safe vulnerability that I talked about before: it’s just being abusive. The bottom is crying because they’re hurt in a bad way. It’s entirely possible to do consensual emotional sadism/masochism scenes: there are people who are into that. But this is something that has to be very explicitly negotiated before playing. Additionally, it’s important that if you are going to play this way, that the people who are around you (if you’re playing in a public space) know what you’re about to do and that what you’re doing is consensual: probably not the best scene for a suite party.

So, bottoms, do you cry when you get spanked? Tops, do you like it when the person you are playing with cries from a spanking? Do tears carry a certain emotional weight to you? What do they bring to the spanking? Let me know in the comments section!

[Final author’s note: I used the term “we” a lot in this post. I do not mean to speak for everyone in the spanking community: this is just shorter to say than “many people in the spanking community.” I hope this was not offensive to anyone.]

For those of you who don’t know, Kink of the Week is a biweekly prompt which opens up a conversation between bloggers across the kink and sex writing spectrum, each focusing on how they feel about a particular kinky topic. ❤︎

Check it out here:
Kink of the Week

This post has been delayed because of the insanity that life has been recently, but I’m finally finishing it! 

I went to bed the night before New Year’s Eve feeling pretty down. I had no plans for the following evening except sitting at home on the couch with my family, when I would have much rather been having an exciting, partying adventure. I felt glum.

I woke up the next morning early afternoon and opened up my laptop. I knew that the results for Spankee of the Year were going to be announced that day, and I wasn’t sure if they would be up yet or not, but I had been dedicating way more time and attention to this contest than was really necessary.

I discovered that they were, in fact, posted. John’s blog is set up so you can’t see the full post when you visit the homepage and have to click on the image to continue, which made the suspense of opening the page higher than it would have been. Honestly, I was expecting to not even place in the contest, and I was happy to be among only ten girls nominated. All of the girls who were in the running are absolutely gorgeous and talented performers. Some of them are my very good friends of mine. I had a faint “wouldn’t it be awesome if I won?” thought process in the back of my head, but it seemed like a pipe dream to me.

When I clicked though to the page, I saw this:


I just kind of sat there with my mouth hanging open staring at it for a long time.

Despite not actually believing that I was likely to win, I really wanted to. I’ll be perfectly honest– I’ve always wanted to win this as long as I’ve been a spanking model. I feel a little bit silly about it, like caring this much about winning an award is somehow childish, but that’s the truth. It’s a dream come true for me, and I feel so much gratitude towards everyone who voted for me.

Continuing with my vulnerability for a moment, I find this award extremely validating because I’ve always worried that people don’t actually like me as a model and are only putting up with me because I’m there. I know that there are always going to be some people who don’t like me, but it makes me really happy to know that there are quite a lot of you who do. So thank you for liking me! You put a smile on my face!

I’ve been a spanking model for a little over three years now, having done my first shoot in September of 2011. I’ve done hundreds of videos, shot for 40 some spanking sites and clips stores, worked in three countries, lived out of suitcases for up to two months at a time, met almost almost all the people who I idolized in videos before my modeling days began, made great friends with many of them and, of course, fell in love. I’ve learned so much about myself, and I’m proud of the ways that I’ve grown throughout the process. It still sometimes feel surreal to me. I feel so fortunate to get to have all these experiences, and I can’t wait to see what the coming years will bring me.

I love what I do so much, and I love connecting with the spanking community. Thank you all for making it possible for me to do this. I will do my best not to get too mushy, but I appreciate all the support that I’ve gotten over the past couple of years. Whether you left nice comments on my pictures and videos, bought my content, listened to me spazzing out when traveling was stressful, rubbed lotion into my butt after a tough shoot, calmed me down when I worried that I was the worst spanking model ever, gave me a place to crash when I was on the road, encouraged me to be myself, told me you were proud of me or any other amazing thing you did, I appreciate it so much.

As an interesting side note, I did a little bit of research as to who else has been Spankee of the Year and I discovered that it’s actually a very small group that I’ve joined. Since 2007, there have only been five different models named Spankee of the Year: Samantha Woodley in 2007 and 2010, Amelia Jane Rutherford in 2008 and 2009, Ten Amorette in 2011, Sarah Gregory in 2012 and me! This makes me feel even more honored to have been selected.

At the end of the day, I know that this isn’t a huge deal, and the world is no different than it was before I was given this award, but it still helps to cheer me out of most funks to think about it, and I still can’t really believe that I won. I feel a little overwhelmed by all the things that have happened recently. My book has been well received, I won Best Creative Spanking Blog again and now this! I keep worrying that I’ve been asleep since December and this is all a dream!

I hope that 2015 is a great year full of lots of spankings! It’s been off to a good start so far, having already shot for Good Spanking, and having four more shoots booked for the coming months already, so I have no plans to slow down.

Thank you again if you voted for me. As soon as I get a chance, I’ll be making you guys a special thank you gift. ❤︎

Christmas was a thing, wasn’t it?

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas! I hope you were all warm and safe and happy, and surrounded by the people that you love.

Personally, I had a kind of quiet Christmas at my family’s home.  I got a couple of really nice gifts, a couple of very strange gifts and my aunt entirely forgot me and gave everyone else really nice gifts while giving me nothing. My mother and I fought because I wanted to use seasoning in the food during Christmas dinner and she wanted to serve a lot of bland and boiled things and she ended up winning.

My grandmother, who is ninety three and not particularly well (and a large part of the reason that I’m here for such a long period of time) spent a lot of time introducing herself to me. She insisted that I’m not Alex and wouldn’t believe anyone who tried to tell her otherwise. At one point, she told me that I must be the same age as her granddaughter, but that she doesn’t come visit her much and she hasn’t seen her in a long time. She did recognize me once, on Christmas morning, and that was a relieving feeling. It was shortly followed by her asking where basically every deceased member of our family was. We simply responding by telling her that they aren’t here, but the the reminder that they aren’t was bitter (especially G, of course).

I got to talk to Paul on Christmas Eve, which was the best part of the holiday for me. My mom is very invasive to my privacy, which is part of what makes being at home very hard for me, but I was able to steal away into the room where I’m staying to skype with him. It was similar to the way that I used to sneak off into my bedroom in our old house in order to watch spanking videos as a teen, except now this whole world isn’t just a fantasy one for me: it’s where I live. It reminded me of how hard it would be for my teenage self to believe just how awesome my life is these days, and how lucky I am to get to do something I love so with such wonderful people. Despite my great dislike of this situation, it was also strangely hot to whisper “Shhhh! My mom will hear you!” when Paul said inappropriate things to me.

In other spanking related news, and in what seems to by my family’s time honored tradition, I received something that would make a very good implement. This time, nestled among a few bath products, I received this gem:

It’s actually the only wooden hairbrush I’ve ever found to be good for hair! We’ll see about the other use soon enough, I’m sure.

It’s always awkward when you get a gift like that from a family member. I later opened it up to look at it and had to sort of clumsily run it through my hair like The Little Mermaid encountering a fork at dinner: I *think* this is what people use this for, right? I had to resist the urge to smack it against my hand, which is the only thing that felt natural to do with it!
I got sick shortly after Christmas and haven’t done too much, hence the fact that it took me five days to finish this post! I don’t mean to make it sound like I don’t care about my family or enjoy spending time with them: it’s just challenging right now. I apologize for being so glum, but things will perk back up soon. I’m hopeful that I can steal away from my family to visit a few friends in the coming days. And soon I’ll be back to Los Angeles, where I’m planning to see a bunch of my wonderful friends there right away. I’ll be shooting with Chelsea Pfieffer for Good Spanking upon my return, too! I haven’t shot for Good Spanking since my first month of spanking modeling so I’m really looking forward to doing that!

I hate to be a bother, but if you haven’t voted for me as Spankee of the Year yet, please consider doing so now! It would certainly cheer me up if I won!
A much more spanking heavy post coming soon! ❤︎

As you all know, in the past year and a half or so, I’ve become really shitty at updating my blog. There are tons and tons of reasons for it, which I think I often explain when I’m talking about this. There are two main ones, though.

The first is time. I’m a busy girl, and I’m glad to be. I pack my days full of doing administrative work for myself, shooting, sessioning, house keeping, cat cuddling, writing, visiting friends and working on two projects that I don’t want to mention until they are finished but are very time consuming. I spend half of my year with Paul, visiting with him for three months at a time before he’s gone for another three. This ends up meaning that when Paul *is* here, I get wrapped up in wanting to spend all my free time with him, which I honestly think is totally legitimate. And in addition to Paul, I’m lucky enough to have Rafa and Z nearby, and, in case I haven’t mentioned it here, to have Z as my girlfriend again (we dated, broke up around the time that I was moving to South Dakota and recently started to date again). Having three significant others in one city means that I spend a lot of time with at least one of my partners. I have to learn how to build blogging into my daily activities once again, and it’s been a slow process, but I’m going to keep trying!

The second reason is vulnerability. When I started this blog, I was happy to sit down and just talk about everything that was going on in my life. This was something that slowly changed. My ex didn’t want me to write about certain parts of my life. Others seemed off topic. Others seemed to personal, too vulnerable. Things got to a point where my style changed and I only wrote encapsulated little stories or thought pieces. I love writing those things, and really, they’re always going to be my best posts, but I’ve decided that I want to start writing about my day to day life more.

There are some things that I strictly won’t talk about: what happens during sessions, for example, is strictly confidential, even if it’s funny or poignant. Similarly, I won’t share stories that aren’t mine to share: I won’t talk about things that are going on in my friends’ and partners’ lives unless I have their explicit permission to discuss it.

But, after that header, I’m ready to launch into talking about things. So, in other words, very little of this post is actually about spanking, so you might possibly find it boring.

Paul went back to England on Monday. The last week of him being here was mixed between trying to get as many things done as possible and me wanting to spend about 90 percent of my time like this:

 

Paul didn’t mind, of course. He wants to cuddle me just as much as I want to him. We snuggled and he spent a long time reassuring me that everything is, of course, going to be alright. I do require a lot of that, and it makes me feel silly sometimes, but that’s just me. Paul also spent a lot of time sitting in the yard and reading. The weather has been warm recently, even for Los Angeles and it had been sunny. He said that wanted to load up on sunshine to save for the long, gloomy winter in England that he had ahead of him, and I told him that he was being like Frederick the mouse. He was unfamiliar with this story, so I told it to him.

On Sunday, Paul obviously had plans for me. He had woken up earlier than me, as usual, and I laid in bed longer than I needed to listening to the sounds of him moving around the house. I was keenly aware that soon, I would we be waking up to quiet, and I took comfort in the reminder that he was there with me for at least a little while longer. When I got up, I discovered that he had laid a school uniform out for me. It was one of the ones from the Northern Spanking wardrobe, complete with a cute pink and blue striped tie. I hadn’t made the bed that morning because The Baby Monster was sleeping on it, and he looked particularly cute and I didn’t want to disturb him. Not making the bed is one of the most common reasons for us to segue into a play punishment spanking scene, and so it began, with Paul pulling me over his lap and lifting my rather short and form fitting navy blue skirt.

He began to spank me with his hand, no harder than the usual for fun spanking, but within a few moments, I burst into tears. I was in a state of total and complete vulnerability, and I couldn’t handle very much playing. He spanked me for a while, letting me cry out what really should have been all my tears. When he finished, he pulled me up into his lap and cuddled on him desperately. “How do you feel?” he asked me, as has done from time to time since the very first day that we played together off camera. This time, for the first time, I didn’t have an answer right away. I did feel happy to have been spanked, and to be existing in the comfortable bubble of being taken care of. At the same time, though, I felt sad. That was the only word for it. I was sad. I knew that Paul had to go, and I really didn’t want to make him feel guilty about it. I just couldn’t keep myself together, as much as I wanted to be able to put everything away.

Paul had planned to spend most of the day playing together, but he altered this plan when he realized that I just wasn’t up for it. Instead, he spent the time looking after me, and doing everything he could to make me feel safe and secure. We decided to go out to eat at one of our favorite spots (Curry House, for those of you who want Los Angeles restaurant recommendations from me and like Japanese food). Before we ate, we went into the Japanese bookstore, where Paul looked at some historical books and I found the section where they keep the “non nude erotic art”, which is essentially tease erotica, mostly focusing on school uniforms and upskirts. The first book I had purchased from that section, School Girl Complex, didn’t actually include any pictures with panties in it, much to my disappointment, but it was incredibly suggestively erotic and very beautiful artwork. This time, though, I found one that while it didn’t include any explicit nudity, had lots of underwear photos in it. I happily showed it to Paul, who said “That’s coming home with us.” I would take a picture of the book to show you, but Paul took it with him to England.

Dinner was delicious, as always. We always have the exact same meal there: hamburger curry for and a fruit punch, chicken breast katsu curry for Paul, and a Sapporo. My mood was significantly lighter as we ate, and I focused on the fact that we’d get to talk a lot and that I would keep myself very busy while he was away. Once we’d finished eating, we stopped into the local market, where Paul bought me candy and a Re-ment raccoon figure for my collection of little chumbly animals. From there, I noticed that one of my favorite stores was still open, and dragged Paul over to it. If there’s one store where the majority of my dresses comes from, it’s this one. Besides selling cute, girly things, they have a cat in the shop, and I always want to go in and pet him. It’s a very good business technique, really. I’m friendly with the shop keeper, and we ended up talking for a while. She knows that Paul is my boyfriend and that he goes back and forth to England, and we talked about this for a while. She asked how old we both were, and we joked a bit about our twenty year age gap. I’ve been coming to this store since the first time that I lived in Los Angeles, so over five years. The store keeper told Paul “Before, she was really miserable. You could see it in her face. Now she’s always smiling, look at how happy you make her.”

It’s true. Even when things aren’t easy, I feel so overwhelming lucky to be so in love– and so loved! I ended up buying a cardigan with cats on it (obviously) and then we headed home, where we had some “alone time” and then snuggled up for bed.

The next day, I made us brunch before we had to leave for the airport. I had worried that I was going to come completely undone, but I was alright. Paul had successfully brought me back to feeling secure and focusing on being loved, not on the distance that was about to separate us. I was surprisingly fine as I drove home. I was maybe a little bit numb, and I took the evening to myself, fucking around and playing video games while wearing my bunny suit (because that’s what you do when home alone, right?)

I have a sleepy, no makeup face here :3

The next day was a busy one: in the morning, Maddy Marks and I went hiking, then we met up with her boyfriend, Siq, to go get lunch. After lunch, Maddy and I went to get our nails done, which made me feel tidy and pretty again after having felt slobby for a couple days while I had broken nails. Maddy hung out with me right until I had to leave for a bondage shoot, and after shooting I went out for delicious sushi. I was overjoyed and well fed, and I came home, where I did a bit of work and then went to bed.

Except it didn’t work. I have spent most of my life with circadian rhythm issues. For whatever reason, despite having a sternly enforced bedtime, it’s very hard for me to go to bed if there isn’t someone else there to remind me to. When Paul is here with me, he doesn’t even need to tell me to go to bed a lot of the time: I just tell him that I’m feeling sleepy and go get ready, sometimes before my bedtime. But for whatever reason, in an empty house I just don’t get sleepy. I grow tired and weary, but my brain remains awake. I was still awake when the sun came up the next day. I ended up dozing a little bit, then getting up and making myself something to eat, after which I pretty much immediately decided to go back to sleep. As soon as I got there, though, missionaries knocked on my door and woke me up. I hid under the blankets. Eventually I fell into a weird, groggy sleep full of strange dreams (those have been plaguing me recently) and I got up around 3:00 PM. I woke up with a headache, thinking it was caused by my weird sleep pattern. I soon realized it was a garden variety migraine, though, and medicated myself accordingly. Eventually, I perked up and got a bunch of work done.

Besides being sad about Paul heading back to England, I’m melancholy this time of year because it’s the time of year when my brother passed away three years ago. LOL day made me sad: I remember writing my first LOL day post while my brother was in hospice, just a couple of days before he left us. I’ve accepted that he’s gone and moved on, but that doesn’t mean that my heart will ever stop feeling like part of it is dead, too.

Fortunately, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in the next few days to keep me distracted.

PS- when I went to label this I was overjoyed to discover that there was already a tag for “bunny suit.” I’m the best. 😛
❤︎

Well, today is LOL Day. It’s the 7th annual, and it’s my second.


For those of you who don’t know, LOL day is Love Our Lurkers day. It’s a spanking bloggers’ holiday focused around bloggers appreciating their readers and readers coming out of their shells and “de-lurking”: going ahead and hitting the “comment” button and letting us know a little bit about yourselves, why you enjoy reading et cetera.

I want to take a quick moment of your time to talk about reaching out.
For the first five years that I was getting spanked, I didn’t reach out to anyone besides my own, personal community. Having met SF and his wife in the vanilla world, and having one other vanilla friend come out to me as a spanko, I felt that I was “all set.” I had a wonderful Top, a strong, female bottom as a role model and a peer with whom to commiserate. I knew that there were other people out there who were into spanking. I read a few blogs and looked at videos from time to time, so I knew I wasn’t all alone in the world anymore. But the idea that these people could become a significant portion of my life never crossed my mind. I hid behind the computer screen, shy and afraid. When I first joined Fetlife, I would literally shake with nervousness every time that I posted to a group or commented on a photo. I worried that I would look stupid, or that my take on spanking was somehow wrong. I even tried to be bratty because that seemed to be the way that the girls online were connecting, even though that’s really not me. (Sarcastic? Yes. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Bratty? Very rarely, and only when it’s clever.)
Eventually, though, I found my niche. I gained confidence. I made friends. I began to explode out all over the internet, and then all over the real world. My life is now deeply intertwined with the spanking world, and I love it that way. I’m by no means suggesting that others get as involved as I did. That’s not for everyone. But taking that first step and not being afraid to reach out can be a turning point.

I’m very thankful for the people who helped me to make the transition from a lurker to a member of our community. My friend Al, who suggested that I sign up for Fetlife and who took me to my first munch, PrincessToy who was my first peer in “the scene,” the people on Fetlife who accepted me into their community, the first friend who encouraged me to reach out and build real relationships and, of course, Malignus, who, among countless other things, taught me how to safely navigate the scene, to make a place for myself there, and to fully accept and celebrate who and what I am.
So. Much. Love. ♥

It’s your turn, now! Go ahead and comment! Make my day. 🙂

I’m going to get a bit personal here, for a moment, and talk about things that I normally keep to myself. 
At 5’8″, I’m of fairly average height for a woman. I’m not particularly tall. At a 150 pounds and a dress size eight, I’m really quite average all around. 
I’ve never felt like it, though. I’ve always felt like this: 


Maybe it comes from the fact that I was told by doctors that I would likely grow up to be over 6′ tall, and I began intentionally stunting my growth for fear of that when I was just a little girl. Maybe it’s the fact that I was taller than my mother by the time that I was ten, and that I reached my current height before I entered middle school. Maybe it’s the fact that one of my childhood best friends was so tiny that in third grade, our teacher couldn’t see her over the desk and thought that she was absent on the first day. Maybe it was that I grew up in a small house with low ceilings and tiny rooms that gave me a sense of claustrophobia. Whatever it is, I never, ever wanted to grow. I always felt that I was too big. 
I’ve done various things to make myself seem smaller– I wear lots of vertical stripes and clothing which is cropped in a way that shortens a person, I choose prints and patterns which are cute, dainty and diminutive, I slouch as much as I can possibly get away with (which I was doing fairly well for myself with, I felt, until Malignus decided that I needed to improve my posture) and I’m never seen wearing heels. I did bring a pair with me to TASSP, and it was the first time that I wore heels in as long as I can remember, certainly at least a year. 
There was one thing which I always took comfort in, sort of an adage that I’d come to love: “All girls are the same height when they’re over a lap.” I really, truly believed in this, and it did wonders for me. While being spanked OTK, no matter by whom, I felt truly small. I don’t mean that I felt “little” or that I felt “young.” I felt like a small thing, and it was an absolutely beautiful feeling. 
Recently, I was talking to one of my Tops about these feelings, and about how badly I wanted to have a smaller body, and I said “At least I can take comfort in the fact that when I’m over your lap, you can’t tell!” “Well, you know that’s not actually, true, right Alex?” he asked. I shook my head. I thoroughly believed that it was true. “I can still tell how far you stretch out to, and your center of gravity is still in the wrong place.” 
I never believed in Santa, or in the Easter Bunny, or any of that stuff, and I originally didn’t believe in God, then forced myself to, so when I stopped believing, it wasn’t painful. As a result, this was the first time in my life that I really experienced having something which had previously been rather sacred to me taken away. 

You’re sure? I’m still too big? 

I still haven’t recovered from it, entirely. It never mattered to me what my size was compared to the person spanking me, but suddenly, it’s become something which is on my mind. I know I’ll get over it. I know I’ll let go and stop worrying and let myself feel safe and good while being spanked. I’m just still a little heart broken. 
The day that I had that conversation, I called my doctor friend and my scientist friend and asked them if there was a way that I could be shrunk. When they promised me that there was no safe way, I started doing research on my own, JUST IN CASE. 
I know that I’m just going to have to find a way to accept myself. 

For a while now, I’ve been dating a boy here in Sioux Falls. He’s clever and funny, he gets my sense of humor, and on our first date, we spent most of the time discussing Hume’s empiricism. He’s also 6’5″ and extremely strong because he does physical work. For the first time since I was a teenager, I felt small beside him. I could put my hand up to his and feel like I had little, tiny fingers. He could pull me down with the tiniest of efforts on his part. We were just “getting there” romantically, but I had high hopes for it. See, I don’t need all of my relationships to satisfy every part of me. That would be very against the point of Polyamory for me. I was hoping that if I had, for the first time since I was a girl, someone who made me feel small sometimes around, then I would get over the complex that I’m big in general. I imagined that having someone who made me feel small would make it so that I never felt “too big.” I thought that it would make me alright with my body.

Sorry, not happening!

Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I imagined might happen, because he met someone with whom he wants to have a monogamous relationship, so we won’t be seeing each other anymore. 
I realized tonight, that this may actually be a good thing. There are no “drink me” bottles floating around, and I’m stuck with myself for the rest of my life. The truth of the matter is, I don’t need someone else to make me feel good about myself. I have to rock what I’ve got and be truly confident in myself in order to be happy and successful. The way that I look or appear to others or seem next to them shouldn’t influence the way that I feel. 
The truth of the matter is that I’m the only one who thinks that I’m so large that I take up the entire room and I’ve got my head on the ceiling, but as long as I’m seeing myself this way and acting like that, people *are* going to see that I’m not fully comfortable with myself. 
So, I’m going to be alright with myself, no matter where my center of gravity is. I’m not going to surround myself with environments that make me feel better about myself. I’m going to feel okay with myself.
I’m not entirely sure *how* I’m going to get there, but I know that I will, because I am nothing if not determined. 

Oh, Hai!

Alex

Los Angeles, California, United States

First and foremost, I’m a girl who loves being spanked. It’s at the very center of my being. I’m also a professional spanking model, which means I get to do what I love for my job. I’m twenty six years old, and currently located in Los Angeles when I’m not traveling around on my adventures. My vanilla interests include poetry, film history, academia, Pokemon, indie music, baby animals, baking and cooking, collecting vintage clothes and lots of cuddling.

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