It started on New Year’s Eve.
When we were discussing what would make for a good New Year’s, I had, of course, mentioned a spanking to ring in the year. We spent the evening at home together, so as midnight approached, Malignus instructed me to find something that I wanted to be spanked with. Selecting one’s own implement is an ordeal. There’s a certain balance that has to be struck. I’m only ever asked to select implements for lighthearted spankings, so I don’t want to select something which will be excessive for that atmosphere and make me miserable. At the same time, I’m less emotionally vulnerable in such a situation, so I don’t feel pain as severely as I would during other types of spankings so I don’t want to select something which isn’t going to leave me feeling like I was properly spanked. I spent probably too long a time literally weighing my options (picking them up in my hand to feel the heft and weight of them, giving myself test swats et cetera) and finally made my choice. I selected “Ben,” a pretty hefty wooden spoon, since I was feeling rather daring. Once this selection had been made, I brought it to Malignus and he invited me to lie over his lap while we watched Firefly. In case you don’t know, this is my favorite show of all time. I derive the surname of my scene identity from the main character: Malcolm Reynolds.
| I’m seriously in love. Don’t judge. |
I haven’t spent a lot of time lying bare bottomed over someone’s lap when a spanking was not in progress. It was basically the coziest and most relaxing thing I’d ever felt. I knew entirely that I belonged there and that everything was right with the world. Then, right before Midnight, Malignus announced that he was going to hit me 67 times. I found this confusing, considering the fact that Malignus is mildly OCD and really hates prime and odd numbers and that it seemed like an entirely arbitrary number. Soon, though, our alarms beeped for midnight and Malignus began my spanking. It was fairly hard, and I had selected a pretty serious implement, so I squirmed and wailed. He spanked me at an even tempo, but building in intensity. Still, 67 swats isn’t all that many for an OTK style spanking, so it ended at a point where I was gasping for breath and felt very much like I had been soundly spanked but before it reached a point where things had become truly overwhelming. Afterwards, we hugged and exchanged “Happy New Years!” and then went back to the episode.
After a little bit, I asked him why he had selected that number. He told me to figure it out on my own. This lead to me doing a lot of math on the calculator on my phone. The closest thing that I came up with was the fact that 2013 divided by 30 was ~67. I guessed that this was because 30 is the age that Malignus recently turned. He informed me that while my math was correct, the reason behind it was not. He then told me that it was his intention to spank me in this manner every day for the next thirty days, so that by the end of the month (with a little wiggle room) I’d receive 2013 spanks. This idea made me seriously grin, as does any plan that involves me getting lots and lots of spanking.
We worked on the schedule of having a nightly, succinct spanking for the first week or so of the month and then our vanilla lives took over and declared that this was not to be the case. Malignus’ work schedule got in the way of things for a few days, and then I left for my Denver excursion, which I returned from with a serious case of the flu which Malignus then contracted from me, following which he pulled a muscle in his spanking arm… you get the point. Things just kept happening that kept us from working on our celebratory plan.
Instead, Malignus decided that we’d get caught up in the form of clusters. He started giving me sets of 67 swats with one implement before moving on to the next one and the next one. I actually preferred this a bit, since these spankings ended up pushing me further and therefore being more gratifying for me.
On Monday of this week, we still had quite a few sets of 67 to get through and the month was, obviously, coming to a close. The spanking started with “Let’s work on New Years.” I then got into position over a few pillows on the bed as he grabbed a handful of implements from their secret stash (a giant pile under the bed which is kind of flowing out from two toy bags). The spanking started out differently than many spankings do between us: he started using a hairbrush with a very small spanking surface but using it quite hard and at a noteworthily quick pace. It felt like the entire set of 67 swats was delivered in about thirty seconds. Due to the startling nature of this, I did not take this set particularly well. I rolled around a bit, kicked once or twice and cried out “OW,” which always feels a little foolish to me. (Well, duh, ow, Alex! says the voice in my head).
The next two sets were considerably less severe. He used lightweight implements at a fairly manageable pace, and I relaxed into the spanking. The next two implements brought me to the peak of where this particular spanking would hurt: he used this silly joke paddle that I got at Bear Country USA. It’s basically made of plywood and reads “Bald Man’s Hairbrush.” I bought it mostly out of amazement that they still sell souvenir paddles somewhere in the world! I had never actually been spanked with it before. (Un)fortunately, Malignus is a Wizard when it comes to spanking, and he managed to get it to be the most intolerably stingy thing ever. I felt positively lit on fire when the set ended. Immediately after, he switched to my nemesis: our small lexan paddle. He didn’t use it with full force, but it still hurt like nobody’s business. Immediately after that, he used a wooden spoon very lightly.
When that was over, he moved on to use a number of other implements which I didn’t really keep track of, but I noticed an unusual pattern: none of them hurt. At all. It felt like I was getting spanked, but without any of the pain. At one point, I stopped to point this out and Malignus explained that it had to do with my endorphins and the manner in which the first set had made my skin swell and the way that the light set had offset the painful part. That’s not very clear, because it was being explained to me while I was in endorphin land.
What eventually happened, though, was that I was able to take spanking after spanking without blinking an eye. The most interesting part was when he started caning me. He gave me 67 strokes with a rattan cane that usually makes me cry with six. I didn’t feel any of the surface pain whatsoever. I just felt the lingering ache that accompanies cane strokes, and found that without the buzzing, itching (as Pandora Blake described it) sting, it was postively pleasant. I remarked that none of this was hurting, and Malignus sort of laughed. “The beauty of this,” he said, “is that it will later.” He then rubbed capsaicin on my very warm bottom, just to be sure, I suppose.
By the time we finished for the day, I had been spanked with all these things:
My butt was in the following condition:
For most of the day, all I really felt when I sat down was the capsaicin. It was full of it’s usually burning, but because I still had a residual endorphin high, I felt pretty okay with this. Then, around eight PM, I got up, did a few things and sat back down on my computer to discover that I felt like I had been very severely spanked. It was like magic. All day, the spanking had been hiding under my endorphines and swelling and suddenly it appeared.
I guess there are still new experiences for me in Spankingland. 🙂
Since I recently shot my School Strokes interview at Real Spankings, I uploaded a couple of the photos to my Fetlife profile. I tend to do this: I like to show off what I’ve been up to, and I get to direct attention towards the awesome companies that I’m lucky enough to work with.
The inclusion of these caning photos sparked a small conversation: do I like being caned or not? I gave the shortest answer I could possibly give, since this conversation was being conducted via photo comments: “I have a love/hate relationship with the cane.” I guess this didn’t answer people’s questions. I got several private messages asking me to explain what, exactly, that means. I’m choosing to do so here. 🙂
For one thing, caning is a lower proximity activity than an OTK spanking and is therefore less comforting to me. This is not to say that it is uncomfortable. It just doesn’t carry the same warm, safe feeling that being OTK gives me. Caning also has trouble escaping its formal roots, and it doesn’t lend itself to being relaxing because of this. These things place caning farther away from the circle of comfort for me and therefore, for more intense caning scenes, requires a greater amount of trust in my partner.
There’s also the fact that caning lends itself well to intensity and, even when not done severely, it is usually paced in a way that feels concentrated and deliberate. The pacing does a lot for me. It makes each stroke very significant. It slows the world down, and can make a time frame of less than a minute in which six strokes are delivered feel like a very long time.
Canes hurt in a very unique way. They tend to build. A few seconds after the initial impact, there’s that second, deeper pain. Individual strokes feel like pinching or biting combined with a bit of a punch instead of the traditional stinging, swatting, burning feeling of small headed implements like hairbrushes or wooden spoons (the implements that I favor) or the “knocks the wind out of you,” full bodied pain which accompanies a thuddy implement like a frat paddle. Cane strokes often create welts, which may take longer to heal and which hold in the pain for a while in a way that is different than other spankings.
Is all this good or bad? Why can’t you just answer the question, Alex?
It’s both. I feel my heart in my chest when someone that I enjoy being spanked by instructs me to get a cane, or when he holds one menacingly between his hands, flexing it and taunting me. I’ve been brought to tears simply by the sound of a cane being whooshed back and forth or colliding with the mattress as a demonstration. It scares me. It intimidates me. With someone I know and trust, I like that. I like how much I don’t like the way a caning feels. I like being instructed to get into position for an implement that I’d never in a thousand years select for myself if I was given a set of choices. I like it when it pleases Malignus to cane me. He went on a “kick” for a particular cane at one point, and would grab me and bring me into the bedroom for it multiple times a day, just arbitrarily, because he liked hitting me with it. As much as I didn’t actually enjoy the caning (it often brought tears to my eyes), I loved how much he was enjoying doing it. Getting something which sort of scares me, which sort of pushes boundaries, which wouldn’t be my first choice makes me feel wonderfully submissive. The afterglow of a caning is always filled with adrenaline, some level of endorphines and pride.
Another think which I actually like about caning is its ability to overwhelm me. This is something I’ve talked about before. I like it, in certain contexts, when a spanking can overwhelm me and push me beyond my usual level of resistance. I like feeling all my energy used up. I like feeling the fight go out of me. Especially when used after other implements, hard cane strokes can really do this to me. In fact, two of my most significant subspace experiences involved caning, and I’m forever appreciative towards cane-kind for that.
So, in summary, it’s both. Yes, I’ve stomped my foot and thrown a big protest at the announcement that I was going to be caned, and no, I can’t think of a time when I said “You know what I’d like? The cane!” but at the same time, I have nothing but warm feelings… especially those coming in the form of lines.
Head over to Real Spankings to see my interview for more cane-conversation. ♥
Updated 12/21/14: I’ve been re-reading some older blog posts and I came across this one. I want to add a little bit of modern commentary on it, now that I have a perspective from outside of that relationship.
My relationship with Malignus was my first D/s relationship. I had a sort of unformed relationship that involved discipline before that and a play partner, but never a Dominant. I actually didn’t know very much about D/s when I got involved in it, and most of what I knew I was taught by Malignus. At the time that I wrote this, I believed that in order to be a “good” submissive and to “fully” submit, I had to be able to take very severe spankings without warmups, with minimal encouragement, without moving or crying out to any degree and without the necessity of aftercare.
I now don’t think that this is actually a particularly healthy way to approach scenes, and I don’t want anyone new to D/s or to spanking who might read this to think that this kind of play is normative or something that should be strived for. Please read this with the understanding that this scene had aspects of it that were very positive for me, but took place within the framework of an unhealthy relationship. My emphasis on fear of disappointing someone makes me feel sad when I re-read this. It has taken me a long time to get the idea out my head that my natural reactions to things are not something that will disappoint people.
The rest of the text of this post has been left intact with no changes made to the text except this addition.
This afternoon, Malignus decided to give me a spanking. There wasn’t an established atmosphere for it: it simply began with “Let’s hit you with stuff!” He started the spanking with a wooden spoon named Warren (the implement which featured heavily in this very old post and which I thought I lost once). It’s certainly not a kind implement. Once upon a time, I had designated my three least favorite implements as “The Trinity of Terror: Warren, a small bladed but very thick lexan paddle and the nylon cane.
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| The Trinity of Terror, shown with Zelda, which is not relevant to this post. The other three items very much are. |
The spanking started off slowly, but I met it with some level of resistance. I don’t mean I thrashed around or protested or anything extreme, but I let my body be tense, I moved around on the bed a bit and I continually cried out into the pillow. I leaned my body away from Malignus. My hands grabbed at the far end of the mattress in a tense desperation. There are a lot of different ways in which a spanking can go, and recently, for arbitrary or re-affirmative style spankings, we’ve been working on me meeting them passively and fully submitting to the spanking. This isn’t the way that I generally react with other Tops, or in other atmospheres, but it’s an important area that we’ve been working on. It’s certainly been a challenge for me, though.
The spanking was very painful in a fiery, stinging way. The small surface area made one little section take all the force, and then another, and then another. At one point, I did something which is somewhat unusual for me during a spanking and I said something cogent: “This hurts!”
“Yes,” Malignus acknowledged. “It does. But it’s going to hurt less when you stop fighting against it. Let it break you down.”
I tried to do exactly that, but I was just spinning my wheels. I got into a bit of a groove for a while, being still and keeping my body fairly relaxed. Malignus praised me for this, but I didn’t really keep it up. The spanking picked up pace, and I found myself back to a state of struggle against the pain that was building. After things reached a crescendo, Malignus stopped and I took several deep breaths.
I’m going to digress for a moment. I’m willing to bet that you guys have seen Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The first time I saw that movie, I really started needing to pee about halfway through. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t feel like it was about halfway through. It felt like it was almost over. I figured I could just wait until it ended. The movie would seem like it was about to end, and then start to seem like it was wrapping itself up, and then it would GO ON TO SOMETHING ELSE. Then that would wrap itself up, it would seem to be about over and then it would GO ON TO SOMETHING ELSE. Near the end I was becoming infinitely frustrated. I just wanted it to quit fake ending and just ACTUALLY END. In a movie, those moments that suggest that something is almost over when it really isn’t are one of my pet peeves. They make me crazy. (By the way, I totally adore LOTR and I’m really excited to see The Hobbit this weekend. kthnx!)
In a spanking, however, those moments when you think that things are almost over and start to prepare yourself for them to be done, only to find out that you’re closer to halfway through have a really strong, positive effect on me. They make me feel out of control in a very safe and very good way. The length and intensity of my spanking is not being determined by me. That’s entirely up to my Dominant. It puts me in a very secure and submissive state of mind, and speeds up the process of breaking down my resistance. In my head, I call spankings that seem to stop, or appear to be reaching their end, only to begin again in earnest “Lord of the Rings spankings” because of the above story. (Note– I realize I’m going to probably start getting some strange search terms showing up on my google analytics because of this).
Returning to my original story, that’s what happened today. Malignus did, indeed, set down Warren. He had completed spanking me with it, just as I had originally believe. Instead of ending the spanking (which, if I was being honest with myself, I did not really want anyway) he reached under the bed and returned with the small, Lexan paddle pictured above. That paddle hurts a lot. It’s one of the worst things I’ve been spanked with. I tried to be submissive to it, and to let it push me. Instead, I think that my resistance began to intensify (I say “I think” because this is the area of the spanking where my memory starts to get a little bit fuzzy, even though it was just eight hours ago or something). After giving me a handful of swats on my bottom, Malignus tapped the paddle against my thigh. I know that he does not do this to “line up his shot” like some people do. The purpose of pre-swat tapping has always been to get inside my head. I felt very vulnerable for the second before that stroke landed on my thigh, and then I felt a surge of pain that seemed to run through my entire body. And then another. And then another. And then another. I was really reacting to the pain, vocalizing and crying out in a manner that was probably excessive. Despite feeling wonderfully loved and taken care of, and being very aware of how much of my stress was dissipating, I was certainly not reaching my goal of calm and quiet submission. Then, for a minute, it was over.
I was actually quite relieved on some level when Malignus grabbed another implement. I knew that I wanted to give myself over to the spanking more, and I would have been very disappointed in my performance at that if it had stopped there. The implement which he had selected, however, was my nemesis: the nylon cane. I don’t know if he intentionally used the three implements that I once selected as my least favorites or if it just worked out that way, but it was something that didn’t even cross my mind until much later. At the moment, all I was aware of was the fact that I was going to be caned.
He did so rapidly, at a pace that I was largely unfamiliar with. He wasn’t using “full” strokes, but the combined effective was overpowering. At first, I continued to struggle and cry out and then, all the sudden, everything stopped. I don’t mean that the caning stopped– it continued at the same pace and intensity. I stopped. My resistance went away and I just lay perfectly still. I fell silent.
“Good girl,” Malignus praised me. “VERY good.”
The caning continued, as did my passive state. It still hurt, but I was experiencing something which I’ve had limited experiences with: a powerful rush of endorphins. I have no idea for how long things continued. In my mind, it was both very long and very short. I felt really, really good. It was different than the drug-like experience I’d had the first time I fell into subspace, but equally wonderful. I felt entirely relaxed, but I also felt a joyful exuberance in my chest. I was really aware of what was happening to me and I was proud and excited. I felt simultaneously tranquilized and hyper stimulated. My brain was very confused, and it was awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Once things finally did stop, Malignus rubbed my back and comforted me for a long time. The good feeling lingered.
The spanking was still not entirely over.
After I was able to speak properly again (although I don’t remember what I said), Malignus got one more cane– a 1″ acrylic cane that is probably the most weight bearing cane in our collection (strike that, known to man). He gave me six strokes with it, and while I wasn’t entirely silent, I still took them well and felt the same surge of good feelings. After that, he gave me a really lovely cool down. Hours later, I’m still a little bit sore, and I’m still very smiley about it.
♥
Sleep has always been an issue for me. I began dealing with serious insomnia when I was in preschool. Although no one has ever come out and said that the two things are related, I also began to suffer from migraines around the same time. Getting to sleep has pretty much been a constant battle in my life. The other day, when I last wrote a blog post, I was writing after having been awake nearly all night. Malignus had gone to take a nap. I mentioned in my last post that we were going to a friend’s birthday party that night, and the idea was that we would both nap before we went to this, so as to be perky and enjoyable people. I never got my brain slowed down enough to sleep. It just didn’t happen. When Malignus got up from his nap, I let him know that this was the case. We talked a little and did a few other things, then, before I started getting ready to go out, he turned to me and said “Where’s your hairbrush?”
Being a very suave and non-awkward girl, I responded with “Under the bed. What did you ask?”
Malignus told me that I was an awkward penguin before sitting on the edge of the bed and beckoning me to bring him the hairbrush.
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| I basically save my good lines and seamless transitions for when there’s a camera |
Once I was in position, we began a conversation about me being passive. Our very first few conversations about submission had focused on the differences between it’s active and passive forms, and our earliest D/s interaction was about something very similar to what we were about to revisit: me making myself passive, vulnerable and comfortable in order to sleep. This is something that does not come naturally to me. Because I spent so much of my life before Malignus in a state of constant hypervigilance, I somehow ended up with the idea that because I am far more relaxed than I used to be on a regular basis that I was doing “better enough” at this and I therefore wasn’t focusing on it enough. Honestly, though, my inability to be comfortable being passive has caused me three large problems:
1) I don’t sleep because I spend about three or four hours (literally) thinking about things instead of letting my brain fall asleep. I basically fall asleep only when my body reaches a sufficient point of exhaustion, and I often end up getting so over tired that I’m prone to emotional conflagrations because I am just so tired that I start crying all over the place.
2) I don’t experience “headspace” or “subspace” with the amount of frequency or ease that other submissives seem to. At the time we’re discussing in this story, I’d only had a proper subspace experience twice and both times were after I’d been frequently and fairly severely spanked over the course of a weekend before the spanking which put me into subspace, so my resistance had been slowly but surely removed over a period of time.
3) I don’t find many traditionally relaxing experiences relaxing. I actually had to take a freaking class on relaxation in college, during which they taught me ways to actively relax my body, probably because they had given up on me just doing it. Massage used to make me tighten my muscles that much more in response to the stimuli, and my mind kept working pretty constantly even during things like hot soaks or yoga.
Anyway, Malignus gave me a series of instructions about being passive to the spanking he was about to give me and to be aware of these things for the future so that I could use them to sleep. Other times, I’d struggled against the idea of being passive. It seemed too hard for me. This time, I wanted to be spanked, I wanted to be obedient and, most importantly, I wanted to learn what I was being taught. I was tired of hindering myself, and I just let go and passively accepted and reacted. Most importantly, I let my brain go. It was awesome. I got into a circle of gratification, because the more I took passively, the better I felt about myself and the better I felt about myself, the more I was able to take. When the spanking was over, I was quite sore, but I felt a strong sense of accomplishment, and the wonderful sense of closeness that I feel with someone after a spanking which was purposeful and communicative. I can feel their investment in me literally radiating through my body, and that leaves me feeling incredibly loved. I got really good sleep that night. I just chose to do it, and then I did it and I woke up feeling like an awesome person.
I’ve kept this lesson in my mind recently, and I’ve discovered its usefulness in other situations, such as the aforementioned subspace problem. This past weekend I attended a cabin spanking party (more details on that in an upcoming post) during which I found myself able to choose to be passive during some of the spankings which I received, and as a result, I floated off into nice, safe, snuggly parts of my brain with great ease.
I haven’t slept enough recently, but it’s been due to external stimuli and the burden of constantly traveling, but when I have slept, it’s been high quality, sweet sleep.
It turns out that feeling relaxed is a very nice thing.
I’m off to do some more of that, since tomorrow I’m going to Disneyland with Lily Starr and Robert Wolf. Fuck. Yes.
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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