This Post Makes My Hands Hurt.

Before the party, Mike Tanner had written to ellee and I and asked us if we’d be willing to participate in a sales contest during the vendor fair. Due to our nature as good, helpful girls (captains of the Good Girl Society!) we were excited about a chance to help out and started planning ways to do the best job at this ever. This involved wearing matching outfits, of course, since ellee is my most beloved twinsie and we’re very good at matching. She picked out some adorable pink sweater tops for us to wear with school uniform skirts, and she also got both of us and Beth matching heels that look like bunnies. They’re basically the greatest thing ever created by science (science OBVIOUSLY goes into making shoes. Duh). We got ready and looked incredibly cute, if I must say so myself. In a horrible turn of events, no one took a photo of us. WTF. I don’t even have a response to that. Oh well.

We went down to the fair, where we found out that we were vending for Strictly Spanking, which was kind of an honor since it meant that the organizers trusted us enough to assign us to their table. Miranda explained what we were to do to help the sales and then we got to work, chatting up everyone from friends to strangers, bouncing around energetically, suggesting to the bottoms that the soothing lotion was indeed the most soothing and telling the Tops that they could test evil implements on us. I was bruised and sore from my scene with Stephen just a little while earlier, but I was still full of bounce, so I didn’t really mind the fact that I found myself bent over the front table with my school skirt lifted again, and again and again, often next to ellee (ok, who could mind that?!)
Doing this forced me to be outgoing, which isn’t always my natural state (I’m technically an introvert who learned extroversion, and now I can happily exist in both states). At one point, I re-met someone that I had met briefly at Shadowlane: the aforementioned Mr. Allen. I didn’t remember that I already kind of knew him, but once I made the connection, I realized that I found him very enjoyable and I was happy that he was there. We chatted for no more than one minute before I had a strange, almost out-of-body experience. I heard my voice, as if coming from somewhere other than my mouth, as if controlled by something other than my muscles and breath: 
“Would you tawse my hands later? I was told that you’re good at that.” 
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Brain! I thought to myself as soon as I had finished speaking. Now is not six months from earlier! Now isn’t even six hours from earlier! What’s wrong with you? You can call it morbid curiosity. You can call it a lack of self preservation. You can call it the inability to deny what I want, an obsession with pushing limits, insanity, whatever you want. There’s just a certain… something about me at times like these. 
Mr. Allen gladly agreed to introduce me to this time honored practice and instructed me to find him later. I was then swept up in the whirlwind of whatever it was I was doing at the moment and didn’t have time to worry too much about what I had gotten myself into. 

As the vendor fair came to a close, we were instructed to walk around and encourage people to come to the table who may not have otherwise. I was feeling pretty good about the work that ellee and I had done. ellee was amazingly chipper and outgoing, and she really kept me at my perkiest as we strived to compete against the other tables. Besides, she looked really good in her sweater. 🙂 Now, I split off from her and went around to talk to strangers by myself so she could cover different territory. At some point, Bad Alex came up and started following me around like a lost puppy. Instead of being useful and encouraging people towards my goal, she started being counter productive “Don’t buy anything!” she told people. “We want them to lose!” “I want to see Alex get spanked on stage”– that was the punishment for losing, and I wasn’t all that concerned about that, nor was I all that interested in the physical prize for winning (a bottle of lotion). I just wanted to be a winner. I can get horribly competitive. I wanted ellee and I to win and that was all I really cared about. I started to get pretty annoyed at Bad Alex, and I insisted that it wasn’t funny. As I took a moment off to socialize with Lucy and Stephen again, she came up and started telling them not to buy anything from me. “Alex!” I shouted. “Stop being such a cunt!” 
And that was how in one single motion I found myself no longer on my feet, and instead over Lucy’s lap, getting scolded about how she KNEW that I wasn’t supposed to talk to my friends that way and that such language was most unladylike. She was, of course, correct on both counts. Bad Alex was FAR TOO SMUG about this turn of events, though: a trend that will continue throughout the story of this adventure. 
General advice: there are certain words that it’s just not worth saying to your friends at a spanking party. 
Soon, the contest was over and the winners were announced, with me and ellee bringing our team to the winning position. There was much rejoicing, and ellee did her patented bounce. 
I don’t remember if the next part of this story actually happened in this sort of chronological order, but it seems that way in my memory, so it’s going that way in the post. 🙂
That evening, I was in and out of suite parties, running around, playing with friends and visiting with others. I got to know a few new people and did the sort of stuff I usually do at a party. At one point, I was running around on a mission to find Stacy because she had something that her husband needed, and I ran into Mr. Allen. He asked me if I was ready for that which I was due, and I politely explained that I had to run and find Stacy, then disappeared again. Just seeing him refreshed my memory on the subject that I had previously put out of my mind. Later that night, I walked into a suite in which he was hanging out, accompanied by none other than my worst behaved counterpart, Bad Alex. Part of me wanted to come up with some excuse for why I wasn’t going to get my hands tawsed. I had to go somewhere. I wasn’t feeling well. I had suddenly remembered that I was REALLY REALLY SCARED of this. But I knew I wasn’t going to chicken out. I knew that I could be calm about it. If I wanted to do this enough to ask for it, I wanted to do it enough to go through with it.
Holy hell, I was scared though. I’d heard all sorts of stories and had talked to various people, and everyone said that nothing compared to the pain of that. Nothing. It was the worst. My “big game” that I talk about my ability to take pain is all about spanking. I seriously tear up if someone high fives me too hard. Somehow, though, I agreed that I was going to have my hands tawsed, and some of the process was explained to me. I originally thought that a girl I had just met for the first time, Em, wanted to get her hands tawsed again and was volunteering to go before me, but I later discovered that Mr. Allen had conscripted her to serve as a demonstration. Somehow we ended up in a line with Em at the front, me in the middle and Bad Alex ended up behind me. (Em is extremely nice and I’m glad I got to know her over the weekend, but I feel a bit guilty now that she got tawsed on my behalf! Awww!) 
The idea of the three of us lined up to get this made it a lot more comfortable for me, because it ritualized it beyond that which already existed. It was explained that Em would be getting one on each hand and that the Alexes would each get two per hand. The tawse that Mr. Allen had for these purposes was an authentic, old one, stamped with an H for “heavy” and it had clearly been used many, many times before. I shuddered just to look at it. At this time in my life (not at present, any longer) the tawse was the one scary implement that I wasn’t really well acquainted with. There will always be strange new things that pop up, legendary implements, particularly cruel versions of something familiar, but this was all around strange to me, and only accompanied by a whole host of stories. I could see it there, mocking me. I knew what Mr. Allen was going to do to me with it, but I didn’t know how it would feel. I could imagine, or so I thought. My heart pounded hard. I was sweating a little. 

Fear.

Em came forward and put her hand out, supporting it with the other one. She had obviously done this before. Mr. Allen lifted the tawse and brought it down against her palm in a motion that didn’t even look particularly aggressive or violent. There was obviously finesse involved in it, but the thing seemed to be mostly carried by gravity. Em reacted much less strongly than I would have expected, shaking her hand a bit, and exclaiming verbally, but then she swapped her hands and took her second stroke, repeated the same level of reaction, thanked Mr. Allen and then went to spectate. I was trembling as I walked forward to take the position at the front of the line, even though her reaction hadn’t been all that bad. Mr. Allen instructed me regarding how to position my hands, then he said:
“This is going to hurt very, very much. Don’t move your hand.” 
There’s nothing like telling me that something is going to hurt to get into my head. Such a simple thing, usually the honest truth, but I have almost no defense against it. It melts my toughness. My heart pounded and pounded. Then Mr. Allen raised the tawse and brought it down on my palm.
Then I exploded. 
Or so I felt. I at least screamed a little.  I had never, ever, ever felt something that hurt so much. Not the longest, hardest caning in my history. Not a heavy ebony hairbrush on my thighs. Not being smacked on the tender areas near the backs of my knees. Nothing hurt like this. It was nauseating.  It was disorienting. I don’t remember moving, but I discovered that I had my hand clutched between my thighs, because it was the sort of pain that I simply had to apply pressure to. There was no other choice. Holy. Fuck. I trembled. 
“Other hand,” Mr. Allen instructed. I looked up at him pleadingly, but he had a stern and serious face. That confidence and his unbending nature comforted me, pacifying me enough to stand up straight again and put my other hand out. I forced it as far away from my body as I could, looking away to avert my eyes from what was going to happen.
Pain.
That’s what happened. I crumbled, sort of bent in half, rocking and rubbing my aching, burning, terribly sore hands together. I knew that there was a crowd of people around, that we were playing in a suite, but I wasn’t aware of anything around me. Just the hurting. It was all that my mind could process. I didn’t even feel entirely in control of the parts of my body that I normally am, unsure of how to breathe or move my muscles. 
“I can’t take two more,” I told Mr. Allen. This was huge. I’m horribly proud. It’s rare for me to beg, to protest, or try to get out of something. I am, after all, the kind of girl who intentionally gets herself into situations like this. But here, I felt that I had met my match. This hurt too much. I wasn’t tough enough for two more. I just couldn’t. There was no way. I shook my head, tears soaking down my face and gathering on my sweater. 
“You can and you will,” Mr. Allen told me. “You’re going to. Put your hand out.” 
I wanted to protest more. I couldn’t. I might die. I might *actually* explode. My hands might come off. I was entirely beyond rationality. Instead, I felt comforted by his statement, and my panic started to fade. I felt the tranquility of being out of control, feelings of comfort in the inevitable that I had been taught to embrace long ago. I could do this. I could. 
I put my first hand out again. It already felt about twice it’s usual size. I closed my eyes and tried to relax into what was going to happen. I shrieked anyway, quickly devolving into sobs again. 
Somehow, I got my other hand up without having to be coaxed, with Mr. Allen praised me for before bringing the tawse down the last time. This one felt like the worst one, both my hands swollen and red and sore, my world illuminated with a white strike of agony. I fell to my knees with both hands clutched between my thighs, trying to press the hurt out of them, trying to squeeze them back to feeling their normal size. I was concerned for a moment that I might throw up, but I recovered remarkably quickly as a powerful, almighty rush of endorphins came and took me over. Mr. Allen went away for a moment and returned with a bowl of ice. I buried my hands in it, and I felt infinitely better. 
“You took that well,” he said as he comforted me. I laughed. “No, I really didn’t.” I think it was the least well I had ever taken anything.”Well, you took it. That’s something,” he said with a supportive smile. 
He told me that he knew that there was no way that I was going to be alright with myself if I didn’t take the second half of the tawsing, which is why he had been so insistent.I didn’t feel like weakness left me and afterwards, that hollow space left was inflated with strength. I felt all the things in me, the feelings and the vulnerability harden into an unbreakable, positive core. I felt safe. I felt like myself. I felt like everything that had been dark had been illuminated.  I was very glad for this. I needed it. I needed that extra push. I was proud of myself in this moment, although I did acknowledge somewhere that this was no longer a limitation in my mind, and it could potentially happen again, but I tucked that away in case I ever needed something to be afraid of. 😛 
To give insult to injury, it was now time for Bad Alex to get her hands tawsed. She took her four strokes without event, without struggle, with hardly even any sound. She gave 0 fucks about the exact same experience that had just knocked me off my feet, literally. Fuck you, Bad Alex. (Note: I love Bad Alex. She’s a wonderful friend. But fuck you for having a better pain tolerance than I do, and for your ability to get me into trouble no matter what.) At least she didn’t gloat. Much. ♥