Take the key and lock her up

A few weeks back I was reading a delightful post over at ZED & ginger's blog about bondage. Ginger muses about her spanking fantasies eventually including bondage when she reached adolescence, and it made me think of my realization awhile back that my first squirmy feeling wasn't when I read the The Story of Ping, but when I played London Bridge at daycare when I was five.

You know the little ditty:

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, Falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Take a key and lock her up,
Lock her up, Lock her up.
Take a key and lock her up,
My fair lady.

Two kids would stand facing each other, hold hands and raise their arms up. The rest of us would join them singing the ditty while walking under their little arch in single file. Whoever was under their arms when the first verse ended would find the makeshift arch slam down around him or her, locking up him or her during the second verse.

When I got "locked up," I remember feeling a twinge of shame. But, the funny thing was, this shame was fun. It made me giggle. As the two sets of arms slung me back and forth, I remember being excited that I was imprisoned. Indeed, I was disappointed when the verse ended and the human arch was raised up again letting me out to start the first verse all over again. Hoping that I'd find myself locked up again when the verse ended.

Of course, my excitement left me feeling confused. I knew jail was bad. It was how grown-ups were punished. And punishment was bad. I certainly didn't like it when my mom or teachers punished me -- so much so that I was almost never punished. So, you know, why would I like being locked up? And that's when the so very not-fun shame started.

I'm no psychologist, but I suspect that dissonance along with the bad sort of shame normally associated with punishment is what caused so many of us to feel so badly about our kink until Google came along.

But now that it's here, I can enjoy fully that delicious feeling that started back in daycare when I played London Bridge.

Bed and Breakfasts for the kinky set

It wasn't enough to have a bed and breakfast set in an old public school. McMenamins, a local chain of brewhouses and hotels here in Oregon, then had to go on to convert a Catholic school complete with nunnery and friary into a brewpub and B&B, and is now going to convert a jail (hit the 'watch video' button to the right) into a brewpub and B&B complete with wedding chapel.

If the McMenamin brothers aren't kinky themselves, they sure know how to cater to the kinky set.

Actually, I've been to Kennedy School on several occasions as it also includes two restaurants, a movie theatre, two bars, and a gym that doubles as a concert venue (or prom venue). The ATM is in the school office which includes the old principal's office, and the first time I went to get some cash there I overheard one of the employees discussing paddles, saying something like, "you know there was a lot of paddling going on in this room -- assume the position!"

Indeed, the history section on the Kennedy School website used to be longer and included a section about one of its more beloved principals, even if she was rather stern. It even included a ditty about her smacking bottoms, but it's no longer there. ::pout::

The B&B rooms at Kennedy School include chalkboards along the walls, perfect for writing lines. In fact, if you scroll through the pictures of the room on their webpage, the one of the chalkboard in the hallway shows just such a scenario. There is a small desk as well should you have to write lines on paper. It's definitely the perfect place for a kinky couple to spend the night. Not that A. and I have yet, as money has usually been pretty tight when he's been here. But I did hang out with an out-of-town spanko friend staying there once. Though, alas, we didn't make nearly as much use of the chalkboard as we had planned.

But just imagine what new sorts of punishment scenarios could occur in a room that is also a jail cell. ::grin::

When pervin' leads to thinkin'

Now that I lead a life of leisure, I've been working my way through my Netflix queue trying to catch up on cultural reference points, one of which was Midnight Cowboy. And not only did it helped me contextualize, "hey, I'm walkin' here!," but it even had something to feed my insatiable inner perv.

There's a dream sequence in which protagonist Joe (Jon Voight) is remembering a traumatic incident when he and his girlfriend are dragged naked from their car by a group of sneering, salivating men. Interspersed amid the haunting event are memories of Joe's grandma, including one in which she is giving him a spanking.




Half the men drag off his girlfriend and rape her, while the other half bend Joe over the front of the car and rape him (totally understand why this movie got an X rating back in 1969). As they pull his legs apart, there's another flash memory of his grandma preparing to give him an enema.




As you might imagine, the dream sequence was terrifically sexually charged for a pervert like me. Rape, spanking, anal rape over the hood of a car, an enema -- it's enough to get a girl rather hot and bothered.

But as I watched the dream sequence again to catch the spanking, it seemed like the boy was naked, which felt odd. I mean, it could have been that he had just gotten out of the bath or something. But the only children being stripped completely nekkid for a spanking I've ever heard of have been in spanking porn. And while it turns out that if you look at the picture closely there are pants scrunched up around his knees, it did make me wonder how much sexuality intermingles with the discipline of children, whether consciously or not.

I think about it a lot in terms of the environment in which I grew up. Not just in my family, but within the Evangelical community I was a part of throughout my youth. In first grade I went to a Fundamentalist Christian school where spankings were a daily occurrence. And on our birthdays the teacher would have us come to the front of the room, give us a traditional birthday spanking, as well as "a pinch for an inch" on our bottoms and "a hug to grow on." That's right, my first grade teacher pinched my ass. Now, I don't think she molested me or anything (though I doubt such a practice exists today at that school). She was a wonderful woman who would never have done anything to consciously harm a child.

Yet sexual awareness can be a lot like eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Though I think there are better ways to teach kids other than hitting them, I also know I couldn't possibly spank any children I'd have because sexuality is so attached to it for me. And I'd feel profoundly uncomfortable playing "spanking tag" with my nieces today, while I didn't at all many years ago before I began exploring my spanking fetish.

I wonder if that's why today pedophilia has become worse than mass murder. Now that we've eaten the fruit of knowledge, it's opened our eyes, but now we're banished from the paradise of ignorance. Don't get me wrong, I in no way condone pedophilia. Those who cross the line from ignorant, harmless bottom pinching to purposely hurting kids to get their jollies should indeed be locked up. Yet, what happens when the line isn't clear? When a person gets her jollies, but isn't always aware of it? Or gets his jollies from spanking young girls, but only spanks girls over the age of consent who look like they're not? I feel safe about where the line is regarding the later question, but not necessarily about the former.

A spanking conversation in the outside world

A month ago I mentioned that I was getting a new laptop, and yesterday I finally got it. Which is good because I couldn't use my old one anymore and for the last two weeks I've been almost completely offline. Yep, that's right. No blogging. No email. No newsgroup.

It sucked mightily.

It especially sucked because not quite two weeks ago, during my appointment with my massage therapist/acupuncturists, L., I had a most interesting conversation that I've been dying to share with you all.

As L. was working on my neck and shoulders, we started talking about pain and dissociation and living in the present. I explained that lately I've been trying to focus more on living in the present, as hard as that might be. When you live with chronic pain, dissociation is an important tool, but I tend to take it too far because the present usually sucks and I have an active imagination.

"So, where do you go with your imagination?" L. asked.

Er...to being about to go over A.'s knee and begging "No, Daddy! Not the hairbrush!"?

Or a naughty turn-of-the-century girl who is about the be whipped with her papa's razor strop?

Or a cruel, wicked princess who makes her servant do all kinds of degrading, shameful, nasty things and afterwards is herself punished severely?

Oh dear.

I froze. I mean, I couldn't tell her any of that, ya know?

Then I remembered that she said she once worked in a sex toy store.

"Um, well, it's sorta kinky," I finally said.

L. busted up laughing.

"That's great!" she exclaimed as she tapped my arm. Then she reminded me that she used to work at a sex shop where they held seminars on all kinds of kinky activities.

That's when I decided to come out.

"Actually, as my massage therapist, I should probably take this opportunity to tell you -- not that it really matters much at the moment -- that I have a spanking fetish." I said it sorta quickly and quietly. When she laughed some more, I notched it up to my normal voice. "So, you know, if you see a lot of bruises, they were obtained totally consensually."

"Right. So bruises down here are okay, " she said as she pointed to my backside."

"Exactly. And bruises anywhere else are probably thanks to the Coumadin."

"Got it." L. paused. "Actually I can go for a little spanking myself sometimes." Which made me giggle along with her. Then she said something about blood sports that I can't remember now because it was two weeks ago. "Though, for all I know, you guys might be into that."

"Nope. Which is good because it wouldn't mix well with the Coumadin," I said. "We had wanted to try single tails but now we probably can't."

"That's right. I suppose you have to be careful with the Coumadin."

"Yeah, certain implements can be tricky. Like, I start bleeding after 8 or 9 strokes with the cane."

"Oh wow."

"And of course, we have to be careful with heavy, wooden implements like paddles or hairbrushes."

As soon as I said that I became very aware of the fact that I was laying there discussing the merits of spanking implements with my massage therapist. You know, someone outside of my spanko world. Was I getting a little too TMIish? I mean, I have been known to at times (I have a spanking blog for gawd's sake). But, well, L. is an acupuncturist, meaning that she's trained to discuss a person's poo in great detail, so I doubt she felt uncomfortable.

"And even though I'm in pain all the time," I added, "It's nice to get the endorphines going, ya know?"

"Oh totally! Gets the blood flowing," she said.

"Exactly!"

Then there was the seven-minute lull that happens in every conversation, allowing me to focus on my breathing and her to focus on my right trapezius before the conversation went somewhere else entirely -- somewhere far less memorable.

And now that I look back on the whole thing, I keep thinking, why the hell didn't I ask her about her liking of a little spanking too?!

At any rate, stay tuned, dear readers. Now that I have a laptop that I can actually use lap-top in bed, I'm about to get a lot more talkative. ::grin::

Three is a magic number

Three is a magic number,
Yes it is, it's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number.

Every time I think of three, I think of that Schoolhouse Rock* song. Though one would think "Naughty Number Nine" would seem more appropriate for a blog about spanking. However, three is indeed the magic number today because it's the third birthday of this here blog.

When I mentioned to A. that the blog is now three years old, he was a bit surprised. "I thought it's been longer." And the funny thing is, I feel like it's been a long three years as well. Maybe because my life has changed so much. When I first started blogging, I was still in graduate school. I was still somewhat mobile. Hell, I could still drive.

Initially, I started blogging because I wanted to give a stable home on the web to my spanking stories and essays that I had posted on the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup over the years. But like everyone who blogs, I quickly discovered that it was a place to make friends. To share all those kinky hijinks and thoughts that I couldn't share with my vanilla colleagues and family (though, I'm not so sure my family is very vanilla).

Granted, there were only a handful of us in the spanking blogosphere back then: Patty, Tarte, Poiesia, Invidia and Bossman, Library Girl, Sparkle, and, of course, our originator, Dan (I know I'm missing others). Suddenly -- sometime in late 2005/early 2006 -- the number of spanking blogs exploded. But in early 2006 my spanking mojo dried up for a few months. When I came back, the size of the spanking blogosphere was overwhelming, and I don't think I've ever really caught up since. Indeed, I'm not sure if it is possible to catch up as there's just so many.

But it's definitely a case of the more, the merrier. I've been quite happy to see old friends from the newsgroup like Haron and Abel, Dyke Grrl, Alex Birch, Ted and now Jen join the fun -- each contributing their intelligent imaginations that I enjoyed so much before blogging. Mija, another newsgroup pal, has been blogging for a long time but has started blogging about fetish stuff more recently, while Pablo has been blogging for even longer (I think), including kink-related posts here and there.

Blogging is also, at times, as sort of therapy, albeit while thousands of people watch. In early 2005, when I had an improvement in my health and could write more, I processed so much about my kink -- how I use it to relate to my body, how it interacts with childhood abuse, how I integrate it into all of me, how it has helped heal old wounds. And, of course, since then when I haven't been writing about getting spanked, I've been writing about how I nourish my kink while dealing with a long-distance relationship, chronic pain, blood clots in my lungs and a debilitating illness. It hasn't always been sexy, but it's real life.

I remember starting this blog during a few-week reprieve between two very painful infections. And I named the blog after a character I wrote about in a non-kink story who represented the healthy, mischievous little girl I longed to be. The little girl that spanking allows me to be. It was also my nick on the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup, so, you know, it made sense.

But I've never been able to escape the fact that I'm not really Natty, at least not the healthy, mischievous little girl. And more and more I find that I'm less interested in escaping. Don't get me wrong, there's always room for a little escaping. I mean, I'll always fantasize about being one of those poor, abused girls in a RGE-Lupus film. And I'll always have a little mischief in me. I mean, it wouldn't be very fun if I didn't.

But I also know that mostly I -- Michelle -- am both a woman and a little girl who thinks too much, is generally very good (indeed probably worries too much about being good), who is both strong and, yes, fragile. And who just needs a spanking every now and then. Or sometimes more. ::grin::

So, thanks for being with me through a lot of spankings -- with canes, straps, wooden spoons and even leeks -- and a lot more.

And on this august occasion, it'd be great to hear from some of you hundreds of nameless individuals who visit every day. Give a quick shout out in the comments section. Maybe share what you've liked over the years. Even a favorite post if you have one (mine is probably the "Under the apple tree" post, though I know a lot of people liked the Grand Canyon spanking). Think of it as NSB's Third Anniversary Delurk Day.

0O0

*For those of you who do not fit that narrow demographic of Americans chomping on Lucky Charms every Saturday morning while watching cartoons in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Schoolhouse Rock was a campaign to educate us during commercial breaks with three minute cartoons featuring songs about math, science, history ::cough:: propaganda ::cough::, grammar, and personal finance. It was way cooler than it sounds because the songs kicked ass.

I hate losing

Several weeks back A. and I got into a discussion about the size of Brazil within the whole of South America. He was certain Brazil takes up over a third of the land mass of South America whereas I thought it was less. As we do with so many things we disagree about, we made a kinky wager. In this case, an hour of slavery was at stake.

Well, A. finally got around to doing the math to figure out which one of us was right. He emailed me the following results:


Brazil = 8,514,877 sq km

South America = 17,840,000 sq km

= 47.73% of the continent = your sorry slave ass


::sigh::

And he was quite keen on me blogging about my geographic error.

Fuck I hate losing...

"Two teenage girls are in trouble today"

The last couple of mornings I've awakened too early, or rather, woke up at the time normal people wake up but too early for someone who didn't fall asleep until 1:30 am and needs a good ten hours or so to maintain a certain tenuous level of health. While I waited to go back to sleep, I turned the radio on to listen to NPR.

Amidst the horrific news from Minnesota (I used to have nightmares all the time when I was little about a bridge collapsing while I was on it), the local feed reported that two teenage girls were in trouble for leading cops on a high speed chase. And they really started with "two teenage girls are in trouble today following a high speed chase involving..."

Now, maybe I've just had too much naughty on the mind lately, but lordy did my ears perk up when I heard the phrase "two teenage girls are in trouble today." I mean, don't you think it just screams "boiler-plate spanking story ahead?"

Needless to say, I couldn't fall back to sleep.

So, about a half an hour ago I started getting very sleepy. And now that Meals on Wheels has just shown up, I can go back to sleep without interruption.

Just you all wait 'til I get that new (used) laptop. You're going to be inundated with all my pent up spanking thoughts -- both here and at the Punishment Book.