Calling On The Spanking Community

OK, folks this isn't going to be my usual post, even though I'll be attending my first MDSS party in three days. No, there's more serious business to attend to tonight.

You folks that read me regularly know that I have become really "into" the Straight Lads Spanked website. Well, one of the guys needs the help of the spanking community. 

This young man, as you may or may not know (depending on your interest in M/M spanking or how much you read this blog), is Patrick Lee. Patrick is 23 years old and lives in London. He's originally from Dublin. He shot a number of videos, usually with his brothers Andy and Dan, for SLS and he was the first model I encountered from that site. So I have a real soft spot for this young man. Three days ago, while he was on holiday in Ibiza, Spain Patrick was attacked, according to his brother, Andy, by a group of guys who left him with a broken back, broken jaw and other injuries. The situation is serious, not just because Patrick is badly injured, but also because Patrick doesn't have medical insurance and he has already received a large bill for his treatment. He just quite simply doesn't have that kind of money. 

So, this is where social media helps. Yesterday, I made the decision to finally get on Twitter (mostly so I can keep track of my favorite MLB team, the St. Louis Cardinals). It was while looking at Andy's tweets that I saw the awful news about Patrick. My first day on Twitter and this happens. Not good. Andy, like any good brother, was thrown into chaos. He started a fund for Patrick here:

https://www.gofundme.com/etf0j0

I noticed right away that not much was happening there, so I decided (after a night's sleep on the matter) to contact Andy and put an idea to him. As much as I complain about Fetlife here, it does serve one useful purpose: it reaches hundreds of thousands of people, all of them kinky to one degree or another. I asked Andy if I could post something about Patrick on Fetlife. I realize that many, many people use Twitter. But a good percentage of them are not kinky and the plight of a 23-year-old spanking model is of no concern to them. But I know the spanking community. I know their generosity and their "community spirit". This past summer, spankos raised over $17,000 for a man in the scene who had undergone cancer surgery and then had a seizure. The check was presented to the man's good friend at the July Crimson Moon party and he accepted the check tearfully. 

While Patrick Lee may not be a member of the American spanking scene and therefor not personally known to any of us, he IS a fellow human being and he did work in the spanking video business, so he's at least marginally well known (and very well known to some of us). Andy was very grateful to me for getting the word out about his brother, who means the world to him. I posted a writing, which prompted Jon and Kim at ASpankoWorld to start a contest in conjunction with Patrick's medical fund. Anyone who donates to Patrick's medical fund, no matter how small, will be automatically put in the running for a $100 gift card from Cane-iacs. Here's the link to their blog: 

https://www.aspankoworld.wordpress.com

Patrick is a young man who never thought that something like this could happen to him. Any of us could find ourselves in his shoes. So I'm imploring my readers to go to Patrick's medical fund page or to JonWelts' blog and give what you can. Let's show the world the generosity of kinky people. Let's show this young man, who just got a front row seat to the cruelty of human beings towards another, that decent, caring people exist in the world. I have a big mouth and I can't just sit back and do nothing when someone needs help. The price of your caramel mocha latte tomorrow morning would be a good donation. Anything you can spare will help get this young man back on his feet. He already has a long, painful road ahead of him and the added burden of medical bills won't help the situation. You readers out there that had someone do something kind for you out of the goodness of their hearts, this is your chance to pay it forward. 

On top of monetary donations, I'm also asking my readers to please keep Patrick and his family in your prayers. I know from experience how helpless the family must be feeling. Pray for courage, strength and healing for Patrick and peace for his loved ones. This is a bad situation and there's a young man who needs our help. Let's step up and come through. Thank you, my friends, for your generosity and giving spirit.

My Life As A Twin

I've mentioned repeatedly on this blog that I'm a twin, and an identical one at that. Me and my twin came into the world on New Year's Eve 53 years ago. My parents already had two children--my big sister, Kathy, who was born nearly four years ahead of us and an older brother, Ray, who is 15 months older (he would have been my "Irish twin" if I hadn't already had one)--and the thought of the family doubling in one go must have horrified them. It couldn't have been easy having three children in diapers in the early 1960's, before disposables came out. Women employed diaper services in those days. Amazingly, the dirty ones were rinsed out and put in a diaper pail and then the whole thing was picked up when the service came around and you were given clean ones. This was an expensive extravagance, but it probably saved my mother's life. I would imagine among other expenses was an increase in the family food bill and the need for a larger car. How my parents managed all of this on my dad's salary alone is a mystery. 

So, I mentioned in another post that my mother dressed Carol and I alike and that my dad couldn't tell us apart. In fact, his whole life he constantly called me by her name and vise verse. A family story has it that on Friday nights when my mom would go out and get her hair done, my dad was put in charge of feeding and bathing us. My mother had a system. She put one dot on the bottom of my foot with an ink pen (because I was born first) and Carol got two dots on her foot. This was the only way they had of telling us apart. For many years, my mother kept the little pink and white ankle bracelets that were put on us at the hospital. Mine said "Baby A" and Carol's said "Baby B". I think that helped them keep us straight for the first few weeks, but I also think my mother realized that we couldn't wear those bracelets indefinitely. At some point we were going to outgrow them. The family story goes that on one night in particular when we were just a few months old, he had washed us too zealously and had washed the ink marks off our feet. I can just about imagine the panic of not knowing which child was which. He spent a very uncomfortable couple of hours waiting for Mother to come home. Of course, any good mother knows her child by sight, by cry and other ways and she easily got us figured out. However, my dad used to like to mess with us by telling me "How do you know you're not Carol Ann?" "It's too late now," I would always say. Whatever the truth about that, my mother always said that we hated being apart. When it was nap time or time to go to bed, we always pushed our cribs together (they were on wheels so they moved easily) and then held each other's hands while we slept. She said we wouldn't go to sleep any other way. One time, when we were about two, Carol tried to climb out of her crib and she fell face first on the floor. She had two black eyes and Dad said she looked like a raccoon. Carol was a daredevil her whole life. Almost nothing scared her; except being separated from me. One of my earliest memories is of being five years old and having to have my tonsils out. Kathy, Ray and Carol were going to stay overnight with our grandparents so that Mom and Dad could deal with me. I remember when we dropped them off and Mom and Dad drove away with me in the car and Carol parted the drapes and watched, the tears streaming down her face, until we were gone. My grandmother told me that Carol "cried for her sissy" all night. I still get choked up when I think about that.

The fact that my mother dressed us alike and cut our hair alike caused quite a few problems in the family. First of all, because Carol was a terrorist. I say that with nothing but love for her and respect for her memory. But she was a naughty child. She always made sure that, if she got in trouble, that she took someone else down with her. That "someone else" was usually me. She would misbehave and then go stand by me and since my dad couldn't tell us apart, we would both get spanked. Usually, when we were very little girls, he would put one of us over each knee and spank us together. He did this because one of us was sure to run away while he was busy with the other. When you have twins you have to improvise. And you have to be fast. And you have to have eyes in the back of your head. So Dad would spank us both at the same time and he would always say "I'll get the right one this way." It probably never occurred to him how many times I got spanked when I didn't deserve it or when I hadn't even done anything. I remember once being at a family reunion when I was about sixteen or so and I was complaining to someone about all the spankings I got because of Carol and my Uncle Bob just laughed and said "You probably got away with a hundred things you were never spanked for. Don't play innocent." 

Now until now, except for a memorable spanking from my Uncle Carroll (which I discussed in an earlier post), I haven't talked much about my mother's side of the family. Uncle Carroll's sons, my cousins, Lee and Kim, were my mother's age. Both were handsome, with dark hair and blue eyes, like most of the Applegates. When I was seven years old, we had a birthday party for Kim's wife, who I hated. She babysat us a couple of times and she was mean and bossy, everything a kid hates. Because Mother was an only child, the only cousins we had were her cousins. So the only kid our age was Kim's daughter, Gina Marie, who was a year younger than we were. She was everything I wasn't--beautiful, imaginative and talented. I was probably jealous of her, but jealousy, when one is a very small child, is too complex an emotion to articulate, so I simply hated her. Throwing children who dislike each other into a social situation that requires them to be on their best behavior is a recipe for disaster. My mother made sure everyone was bathed and in clean party clothes. Mother laid out our Easter dresses for this party, which were printed over in a floral print of apple green and yellow with matching green coats. It was still a bit nippy and, as I was a sickly child at times, the coats were a precaution. My mother's theory that, one behaves best when best dressed, was thrown out the window that evening. I wish I could remember what precipitated the fist fight between Gina Marie and I that fateful April night, but try as I might, I can't. I only remember us grappling on the grass in Uncle Carroll and Aunt Helen's backyard. Two little girls in crinolines, dirty and grass stained, were pulled apart by my angry cousin, Kim. My father hadn't been able to attend because he was working. My mother wasn't big on spanking us, but would if she had to. My mother's spankings were almost as bad as my father's. 
"Just look at you two!" Kim said, hands on hips. "You should both be ashamed of yourselves."
I have said before that I was a good kid and afraid of discipline, so I'm almost completely sure the fight was Gina's fault. 
"She started it!" I said pointing at her.
I remember at some point during this encounter with my cousin Kim being carried into the house under one of his arms, while he carried his crying daughter under the other. She knew full well that this entire debacle was her fault. Kim stood us on our feet side by side and demanded that we apologize to each other and to his wife, Stacy for making a scene at her party.v For once, Stacy glossed over the incident (probably because her little angel was the guilty one), 
"Well, Donna what are we gonna do with these girls?" Kim asked my mother.
My mother looked at us. What a sight we must have been. Our knees and elbows were scraped and I had managed to pull Gina's ribbon out of her hair. I knew what Mother was going to say even before she said it.
"I would spank them both," she said.
So, Gina got spanked by her mother and I got spanked by Kim. Gina absolutely got the better of that bargain. Kim put me over his knee and lifted my crinolines. Then he spanked me about seven or eight times across my panties. Gina got her spanking bare bottom. But Kim was a lot stronger than his wife and I still got the worst of it. Nine years later, at Uncle Carroll's funeral, Kim still remembered the incident. I was a 17-year-old high school senior by that time and I can remember flushing with embarrassment when he talked about it.

But life went on. I grew from a homely, skinny child into a homely, skinny adolescent.

My mother, although she's only in her late 30's here, is completely gray haired and had given up coloring it (probably because, as we kids grew and the financial demands of raising teenagers took more of their finances, there was no money to spare for such vanity). I was 13 when this photo was taken at Shepherd Of The Hills Farm in 1974. My father was still taking his belt to me when I misbehaved. With Carol around, it happened a lot. In fact, the day this photo was taken, my dad belted me for a fight in the car with my brother over ice cream. He pulled the car over, took off his belt and laid in to me right there on the side of the road, with cars whizzing past us. Of course, my brother got it as well, plus we had to clean the ice cream off the seat in the car when we got home. Such was life in those days; a series of misadventures that almost always resulted in a sore bottom. I'm sure that there are younger people reading this who are incredulous that a father would take a belt to his teenage daughter. But he was normally a kind, loving man. He was a "man's man" but wasn't afraid to show his tender side either. So I felt loved and cared for. 

As Carol and grew into fairly attractive teenagers, my parents had what every parent of daughters dreads--that we would start dating. And we did. Carol and I were still best friends, but we began to notice boys more and more. To my parents' terror, I was attracted to older boys. High school boys were so immature. While I did date the boys at my high school, I never got attached to any of them. I much preferred, by the time I was 16 (when the above photo was taken) to date college boys. I always told them I was 18 and they always believed me. If my mother's hair wasn't already gray enough, I'm sure Carol and I added to it. But she was my best friend and biggest supporter. No matter what it was I was doing, she was right there urging me to do my best. And I did the same for her. We made a pact that we would both live to be 100 because we read that the odds were astronomical. But then, we had bucked the odds all our lives. Unfortunately, Carol didn't even live to see 50, though it was her goal. 

We headed into our 20's still as close as ever; "thick as thieves", is how my mother used to put it. And still, even without dressing alike, my dad couldn't tell us apart. Being a twin was the coolest thing in the world. Even our boyfriends thought so. At least, until the night we switched on them. Carol's boyfriend at the time, a real cutie named Tommy, had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to go off roading (before there was a name for it) in his old Chevy Suburban. He wore T-shirts and jeans habitually and favored Old Spice aftershave. My boyfriend, Stan was a year older. I met him through a mutual friend. He was studying architecture and lived in a grubby apartment not far from my place. Stan was studious and serious, which is what I thought I wanted in a relationship. He had a weakness for seeing me in just my panties and one of his shirts.

Like this. This was taken in his absolutely dingy apartment. He never wanted to come to my place. He always insisted that we "study" at his place. But I was 19 here, what did I know? He had an absolute fetish for my legs, which is why we were found out so fast. Actually, as soon as Tommy put his hand down my shirt, the jig was up.
"Hey! You're not Carol," he said.
I laughed.
"Tommy, you see me nearly every day," I said. "You had to know as soon as you saw me."
"Well, I've had a few PBR's (Pabst Blue Ribbon beers)," he replied. "I thought maybe that was the problem. But no amount of beer is gonna make your boobs as big as your sister's."
"Well, you can't blame a girl for trying," I said with a laugh.
"Naw,I guess not," Tommy said. "So do you still wanna have some dinner?"
A free meal? Why not. He laughed about the deception and I had a great time with him. Carol, meanwhile, didn't fare so well with Stan. He was furious about the joke we'd played. He had no sense of humor at all and I can't believe I dated him as long as I did. At the time this happened, in September, 1980 I had been trying to get Stan to spank me for more than a year. He loved seeing me parade around in my undies, I didn't think a spanking was that big of a stretch. Like it or not, he refused to take the hint. Carol told me that Stan's idea of a "date" was to take pics of her in her underwear and order a pizza. He must have known all along that it wasn't me because, just like I didn't have Carol's boobs, she didn't have my legs. And he knew every inch of them. 
"I suppose you think that's real funny?" he said as Carol laughed.
"Come on, Stan, can't you ever lighten up?" Carol replied.
"Don't you have any shame at all?"" Stan said.
"Don't act all moral with me," Carol said. "You think I don't see those photos you take of her? You're nothing but a pervert!"
With that, he out her across his knee and spanked her. She had gotten him to do in one hour what it had taken me a year of begging and coercing and to no avail. She told me all about it when she got home.
"I don't believe you," I told her.
With a saucy smirk, she dropped her Lee's and showed me her red bottom. I stayed with Stan only another week or so. As far as I was concerned, he'd been intimate with my sister. I didn't blame her though.

This was Carol and I on our 23rd birthday. We were old enough to have affairs, drink in bars and dance the night away in the underground clubs that were all the rage then, but still young enough to enjoy blowing out the candles on our birthday cake. We had decent jobs (though Carol had recently moved back home) and decent lives. But we were both courting disaster. As we moved on into our 20's, we both became enmeshed in booze and bad relationships. In a couple of years' time, I would probably sink to my lowest: working fast food and enduring an abusive relationship. 

My life changed completely the day after this photo was taken. On June 22, 1983, I was involved in an accident with a drunk driver. I wasn't critically injured, but I was injured badly enough that I only drove sporadically over the next thirteen years and haven't driven at all since 1996. That accident changed me; more than that, it scared me. I can remember Carol, trying to put on a brave face, but tears were standing in the corners of her eyes. She told me that, right when the accident had occurred, she'd had the strangest feeling she'd ever had in her life. She said the worst feeling of dread had come over her. I told her it was because she'd made the goat horns behind my head in the photo. That was bad luck; as bad as rocking an empty rocking chair or walking under a ladder. My outward wounds healed up, but inside, I was a mess. 

The 80's plowed on. We stayed close to home, even in our individual lives. I still couldn't stand to be separated from her. This photo is scratched from being carried in my purse for a year after she died. We were both drunks by this time, but you wouldn't know it to look at us. We were going to a club that night, I'm sure. No matter how bad things got, we never forgot family. Our parents and siblings and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins still meant everything to us. We were proud aunts, too--Kathy had two boys, Sean and Andrew and Ray had two girls, Rachel and Dawn. 

This is Christmas, 1988. Carol is holding Andrew, the younger of Kathy's two boys. He's fourteen months old here. Even though we'd gone out the night before, we made sure we were up and dressed when Kathy brought the boys over (minus her husband) to get their presents. Mother was sick cancer and Alzheimer's by this point, so family became even more important. I knew Kathy wasn't happy in her marriage, but those boys were everything to her and she endured a lot of unpleasantness and frustration for their sakes. I'm pretty sure Andrew appreciates it. Sean, not so much. No matter how bad things get, I used to tell him, always put your family first. Yeah, it was old-fashioned. But in the end, who's going to love you more than family? Who's going to put up with your crap and repeatedly forgive you? Really, only family will do that. 

By the time this photo was taken, on Father's Day, 1991, things were bad. Mother had slipped away from us into her own world and Dad was struggling to cope. He had promised never to put her in a nursing home, but it was a promise he couldn't keep. Carol was caring for both of them full-time and she asked me to come back and help her. At first, I thought I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. But looking back, Carol needed me. As horrible as those days were, I'm glad I didn't desert her when she needed me. We were 30 years old by this time and I felt like my life was half over. But there was Carol, being my rock as she always was.

This photo was taken on Christmas Day, 1992. It was our dad's and mom's last Christmas. Dad did Christmas big that year, spending lavishly on everyone. He had always loved Christmas and I think he knew it was going to be his last. Carol had sobered up by this time and wanted me to do the same. The problem was that I hadn't yet admitted that I had a problem. That would take another year and a half.

Yes, my life has had some sorrows. Who's hasn't? But I was lucky enough to come into the world with my best friend. Not a lot of people can say that. They say that the twin bond is unique and can't be broken, even by death. I firmly believe that's true. A part of her is still with me, urging me on ("nagging" I would call it in my less than stellar moments). My life as a twin had ups and downs, like all lives have. But I never had to go through anything alone. And for this, I'm so grateful. I always had someone to whisper secrets to, to commiserate with in my losses and celebrate my victories. She was always my biggest fan.

Be Cool, Or Be Cast Out

I know how some people who read this will take it, really I do. It will look like just another rant from a bitter old woman about how the scene isn't the same blah, blah, blah. And if that's how certain of you reading this want to take it, that's fine with me. Take it any way you want to. But there have been things happening on Fetlife recently that have totally proven my theory that a double standard exists in the spanking scene. 

Let me start by explaining a couple of things to those of you who don't frequent the spanking party circuit. I have been attending spanking parties for a long time now (like, more than a decade) and so I'm not merely speculating here. I've witnessed things firsthand. So before you get your ass hairs up, hear me out. Within the spanking party realm, there are two groups of people, the Cook Kids and the Not-So-Cool Kids. If you're in the first group, you have it made. Congratulations. This means that you can move in the highest echelons of the spanking community at large. You are popular everywhere you go, not just in your local group. People flock to you and want to play with you so you probably have to do some juggling to fit all your play in. Cool for you. You'll probably never know the sting of rejection (and anyone who wouldn't want to play with you is just not even worth thinking about, right?).Everyone will agree with everything you say because to do otherwise would be social suicide. You will more than likely never know the frustration of being disagreed with, at least publicly. And if you do happen to see something negative, you can count on all your cool friends to shame the other person into silence so that you need never fear hearing from them or about them ever again and everything will just be rainbows and lollipops in your world. Awesome. 

If you're a Not-So-Cool Kid, well, let's just say your life in the scene is a lot different. First of all, your lack of coolness will be noticed by the Cool Kids so you won't be able to bluff your way into that vaunted group. No matter how many plaid skirts you buy, no matter how many cute pairs of knee highs you own, no matter how many tattoos you have or how much you show you can drink and cuss as well as they can, you will never be one of them. Nature has conspired against you and you're doomed to spend your spanking party life on the periphery, hoping some of their coolness will radiate onto you. You will never be invited to their "private" parties. You will never be photographed with them. One may actually deign to play with you. But know ahead of time that it won't elevate your status. I have played with tons of Cook Kids (and fun it was, too!) but here I am, still in the Not-So-Cool Kids group. They may hug you and greet you and say how nice you look if you meet one at a party, but that Cool Kid is simply not going to invite you to come hang with the other Coolies. Just not gonna happen. 

Now, if you're a member of the Not-So-Cool Kids group, does this mean you can't have fun at a spanking party? Heck no! You can have a great time even if you're not on the A-List. It just won't be the kind of fun the Cool Kids are having. You might end up behind a Coolie in the dinner line or get into an elevator with one. If he or she is feeling particularly magnanimous, they might even speak to you. But no matter how nice you are or how much you flatter them, don't expect an invitation to play out of the deal. I'm not saying that Cools and the Not Cools don't mix at parties. This isn't the Jets and the Sharks. But you'll never be welcomed in and shown the secret handshake. 

Nowhere is the line between the Cools and the Not Cools drawn more clearly than on Fetlife. Having been on it for six years and seen the changes that time has wrought, I know what I'm talking about. One thing that is the most obvious is that the Cool Kids get responded to--in the groups, on their writings and most of all on their photos. They never miss a party, no matter how far flung the location so they have been everywhere and done everything and looked really...well, cool...doing it. They know all the right people, wear exactly the right outfit at all times, and never miss a photo op because there's always someone there who wants to take pictures of them. So their pics on Fetlife  get a lot of attention, which spreads their coolness even further. Their writings, even when they're being acerbic, are met with "Love ya!" and "Hugs!".  Let a Not Cool write the same thing and you'll be met with "Stop bringing your negativity here. Go be negative in private." And that's the nicer stuff. If a Coolie posts a writing about how bad their day is going and how mean everyone is to them, you can expect their Coolie friends to fill the comment section with "We all love you!" and "F$&k those losers. They don't count in the long run." Let a Not Cool person post the same thing and you will be told to throw your pity party in private. Because you know, no one likes a Debbie Downer. 

This might all seem terribly unfair and yes, it is unfair. But life is unfair. I bought my helmet a long time ago. I'm not crying over it. I'm simply stating how things are. Would I want to be one of the Cool Kids? Heck no. There's a certain, shall we say...shallowness to them. That's not to say that the Cool Kids can't or don't form substantial friendships or that they don't really care about each other deep down. But a lot of things surrounding the Cool Kids are surface, it's the illusion that's important. I'm not saying that the Not Cools can't be shallow because believe me, they can. 

I hate to use the word phony but there are a lot of them in the party scene, whether Cool Kid or not. But I pride myself on being in person exactly how I am on Fetlife. What you see is what you get. I know I rub a lot of people the wrong way and some of those people are pretty well placed. Do I care? Not really because I'm not going to be someone I'm not so people will like me. I'd rather be myself and risk not being what everyone is into. Being a Not-So-Cool kid has its advantages, too. I don't have to be what others want me to be for fear of not being seen as cool. I'm already seen as not cool so there's really no pressure on me. I don't have to live up to other peoples' expectations of me. My friends know what to expect from me and they know the "real me" so I don't have to constantly be trying to impress people with my coolness. 

So I guess I'll finish up by dispelling some of the "myths" about me that have sprung up from time to time.

1) I didn't get my tattoos so people would think I was cool. I got them because I like them. Most of the actual Cool Kids I know don't even have ink.

2) I don't act younger than I am to try and fit in with the young Cool Kids. I have always looked and acted younger than I was. I got the Student Discount on the city bus until I was almost 30. Unfortunately, I was also carded a lot.

3) I use the fact that I don't drink, smoke or swear to make myself seem superior to others. Not true. I did a great deal of all three of those things in the past, I just don't do them anymore. Feel free to do what feels right to you.

OK, you get the picture. I'm not cool and I can live with that. It's the fact that no one admits that these two groups exist that I'm not OK with. It ought to be as plain as the nose on one's face. There's no point in denying the reality of this situation. Bringing this subject out of the dark and calling it what it is might actually help the divisiveness that seems to exist in the spanking party world. 

The Masochist's Conundrum

"If only pain weren't so painful!"- Albert Fish


It has taken me a very long time and a lot of soul searching to finally admit to myself that I'm a masochist. Even three or four years ago I was still in heavy duty denial that that was the case. I've been a hard player for years and when tops (or even other bottoms) would tell me "Cheryl, you're a masochist" I would say "No, I'm not!". Somehow, enjoying the pain of a good spanking wasn't the same as masochism. I always pictured masochists in chains and a collar being tortured while blood dripped from their wounds. Perhaps that's an incorrect assessment, but that's how I felt. No way was I one of them. I have enjoyed being strapped over fresh cane welts, being paddled hard over already bruised flesh, and a lot of other things that would make most people cringe. But, because my first love is spanking, people call me "practically vanilla". But would a vanilla lady enjoy having the fronts of her thighs caned? Or being strapped for an hour or so with an Arkansas prison strap? Not very likely. 

Most vanilla women (and most men for that matter) that I know would turn tail and run if a big 6'4" cowboy named Bubba walked up to them carrying one of those things. Yet, I love it, as my smile surely attests. 

But why pain? Why not something else? Even to someone who loves it, pain hurts. Pain is what I love, what I at times dread, what I need. I don't think of myself as someone who needs to be constantly punished because my existence is an abomination. I hold down regular jobs, have normal, non-kinky interests, and hate humiliation (something I used to incorrectly think that all masochists were into). There are times when I'm afraid of just how much pain I can take in the right circumstances. Outwardly, I make the same faces that most spanko bottoms make when something connects with their bottom.

But inwardly, I'm in total masochistic heaven. Even the bath brush, which I hate with every fiber of my being makes me push my bottom out to meet it. So here's the conundrum...I love pain and even love the marks that show up afterward. But emotionally, I wonder if it's not time to dial it down a couple notches? Physically, I have no problem taking just about anything the sadistic bastards I play with want to dish out. But sometimes, my emotions get the better of me afterwards and, after the sadist packs his toybag and heads for the door, I sometimes find myself either feeling angry or crying my eyes out. I don't feel like it's something I can ask about on Fetlife because people would all have something to say on the matter that has nothing to do with what I'm asking. I also don't feel like it's anything I can talk to those sadists about either. Though I know a couple of them would be more than happy to hold me until I get out all the stuff that needs to come out.

So here's another thing that sticks in my throat. When I first started in the spanking scene, I just wanted my bottom beat. I didn't want any of that other stuff--like cuddles or talking time. Just lotion was sufficient. Now I find myself needing more than that. I do need to be held sometimes and given chocolate and a cold drink. I don't want the guy to just beat me and leave. So broaching the subject is hard. I have always considered myself a lady who has no problem coming out and saying what she needs. But it seems to be on everything except my need for some kind of comforting after a really intense scene. I think some Chinese food would be very comforting indeed. Or maybe just a chocolate shake or something. But I'm afraid it would be regarded as me "going soft" by the people who have known me for so long. 

Eventually, I'm just going to have to put on my Big Girl Panties and bring it up the next time I get together with someone.

Playing Hard

From the very start, I've been a hard player. I don't apologize for that. Light play has rarely done anything for me. I've always needed hard play; the kind that leaves bruises and welts and occasionally, blood. It's not because I'm out to prove something to people nor do I want any kind of accolades for how hard I play. A good friend once told me "They don't give you the keys to the city for playing hard." That's certainly true. Back in my newbie days, it seemed like a lot of people played hard. This could just have been my perception being skewed, but it really did seem like most tops spanked harder and most bottoms wanted it that way.

But even then, I was a bit of an oddity. Although it seemed we all played harder back then, my reason was different than most. Most of the ladies I knew were submissives and they took those hard spankings because the person they were playing with wanted them to. I did it because I loved the pain and I loved having a bruised bottom the next day. I've had to come to terms with my masochism. Yesterday, I did something quite a bit different than anything I've ever done before. I did a quasi-disciplinary scene with a top friend that I trust completely. We set up the camera and tripod and figured out how, in the limited space we had, we were going to set this up. I explained to him the kind of scene I wanted--a 30-stroke caning with my medium Smoked Dragon cane while I was bent over a chair and made to stay in position. Usually, when I'm caned, I'm lying on a nice comfortable bed with some pillows under me and I can just relax into it. But standing up is a whole other matter. I wanted to see if I could still take a hard caning with my head space altered. 

I have long maintained that I don't do real discipline of any kind, whether it's a spanking or lines or having soap in my mouth (yuck! what a horrid experience!). But I've done those things during what we call "funishment" (except for the mouth soaping...I don't see myself ever doing that). I had a switch taken to me during one funishment scene and the marks were there for almost a month. I also enjoy having the fronts (or backs) of my thighs caned. These scenes usually leave the most dramatic marks.

For me, if it doesn't leave me marked and sore, it's not worth it. Of course, a red bottom is nice. I love to get photos of it when it's been spanked red. But aside from the pretty color, I usually come away disappointed in a scene like that. Unless my bottom is throbbing sore, I can't say I fully enjoyed it. Yesterday's scene was so severe that just pulling up my pants was painful. 

The thing about yesterday's caning was that we had to film it twice, so instead of taking 30 stokes, I actually took 60 (and we had played with an assortment of straps, too between filming). The first time we did it, the video failed to load for some reason. I was disappointed because I thought it was just about perfect. When we made the decision to re-shoot the caning, Clayton (the top I was playing with) asked if I was sure. I told him not to hold back just because I was sore. The result left me bruised and bloodied, but happy to have "proven" to myself that I could take it.

The thing about playing hard is this: people who don't play hard nearly always think we do it to shock people or to get attention. That's not true, at least, it's not in my own case. Like any kind of play, there's usually a deep seated reason why a person would willingly choose to put herself (or himself if you roll that way) through a scene that would leave most people feeling traumatized. After I play really hard, I always come away feeling focused and re-centered. For me, pain is a purifier and only spanking gives me the kind of pain I love. Even within the realm of a masochist, I don't consider myself extreme. There are people who go way beyond anything I would enjoy. I'm talking about hook suspension (where meat hooks, like they use for hanging sides of beef, are put into the back and the person is lifted up by them) and studded paddles and bullwhips. I'm actually pretty tame compared to those folks who enjoy that kind of stuff. I'm OK with the occasional drop or two of blood, but I would never want to be covered in it. I know people who enjoy that. I say do whatever blows your hair back. 

I got the fronts of my thighs properly caned in Atlantic City this past spring by a real Englishman. I have already described the scene in another entry so I won't elaborate here. Anyway, when the scene was done, I went into the bathroom to get a look at the damage.

The scene had been a public one, with a mostly appreciative audience. When I went into the bathroom, a lady who had witnessed the scene asked me "How can you like that?" She was incredulous. "We all like what we like," I told her. I was absolutely flying and to be honest, that lady's judgmental comment was ruining my high. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those hard players that goes around belittling people because they don't play as hard as I do. If I see a scene where someone takes a spanking that, for me, would have been nothing but a warm up, I'm not going to yell "Amateur!" at them. Pain is a lot like beauty. It's in the eye of the beholder. If that person thinks they took something that challenged them, then they have the right to feel proud about what they took. It's not mine or anyone else's place to tell them what "hard really is." To them, it was hard and so that's valid.

I get kind of impatient with people who tell others "You don't know what a hard spanking is!" My pain tolerance is very high and it takes a lot to get me to saturation point. So yes, I need a harder spanking to get me to my "happy place". But not everyone is like that. For some, just a hard hand spanking gets them to the saturation point, where they begin to exhibit avoidance behavior, like putting their hands behind them or wriggling or squirming. When we did that 30-stroke caning yesterday, I was so proud of myself for staying (mostly) in position. I know there are people out there who could have taken more or taken it more stoically than I did, but this was my scene so I was happy. What other people do or what they take is their business. Which leads me to comments on photos. I have seen it repeatedly on Fetlife where someone will post a photo of their bottom with a caption like "Wow, was that intense!" or something like that. And at least one person will say something stupid like "Now that you're warmed up, I'll break out the barbed wire flogger!" or something just as stupid. Even I have posted photos of my bottom and had someone comment that it could be "a lot redder".

Take this photo, for example. I actually had someone post a comment saying "I could do a much better job!" So I explained to this person that this was my first spanking during a three-day party and that on the first night, most of us admittedly play much lighter than we do on the last night. I explained to him that we do that because each of us only has one bottom and if it gets bruised up on the first night, then we might as well go home because no one is going to spank on fresh bruises. I don't think he bought it.

I also dislike the implication that really hard players are unsafe, that they just want their thrill without worrying about the consequences. While there are people out there who do play unsafely, most of us, even edge players, play with every safety precaution in place. Yes, I've been injured. Twice, I had to go to the ER because a spanking went wrong. But for the most part, I usually only end up needing arnica and not a doctor. Do accidents happen? Absolutely. But accidents can happen anytime, anywhere. Accidents can happen crossing the street or having sex or cooking your holiday turkey. Just because an activity carries risk is no reason not to do it. Not every person who crosses the street gets hit by a bus. Not every person cooking their holiday turkey burns their house down. And not every person that has sex has a heart attack. These things can and do happen, but is that any reason not to engage in an activity you enjoy? Weigh the odds of something bad happening and then make up your own mind. That's what SSC (Safe, Sane and Consensual) and RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) are all about. Know what you're getting yourself into before you agree to do it. Even then, if the scene goes wrong, you can safe word out. I know there are hard players out there who play without a safe word (because, you know, it's all about trust and if you have a safe word, you must not trust me...blah blah blah). But even a safe word isn't a guarantee. Because a safe word is only good if it's respected. There are no guarantees in the BDSM world that nothing will go wrong.

I won't deny that being a hard player has its pitfalls. But I wouldn't give up how I play for anything. The physical and emotional rewards are just too precious to me to even consider it. I'll continue to be cautious and to play with people I know and trust, whose reputations precede them. I won't be shamed or called a "freak". We all have to do what makes us happy. Another person may not understand my need for pain the same way I don't understand their need to have a bedtime forced on them or being made to stand in the corner. But we all live in this "community" of kinky folks and while we may not understand each other, we should make an effort to tolerate each other.

Opinions

Author's Note: Today's entry is me venting my spleen on a subject I should have addressed a long time ago. It has the ability to turn into a rant. So this is fair warning. If you can't bear the thought of a person saying what they really think on a subject, go read something else.


There's a saying: "Opinions are like arseholes. Everyone has one and they all stink." Yesterday, I was taken solidly to task by someone I considered a friend simply for voicing an opinion. I have been told before, actually, that my opinions aren't welcome on Fetlife, which is why I post the majority of them here. I thought that the scene was supposed to be all about acceptance? I thought people welcomed and tolerated differing opinions? Well, here's the truth in black and white. It doesn't. The scene is as cliquish as a middle school and as gossipy as a hair salon. And if you have an opinion that differs from the majority (no matter how trivial the subject) you run the very real risk of being silenced, as I have been. People really don't want your feedback on their posts unless you're goose stepping with them. Granted, I've seen a few that can and do offer civilized debate with people who have a dissenting view. I pride myself on being one of them. But the majority of the people who post on Fetlife might as well preface their journal entries and notes with "I only want people who agree with me 100% to respond." That way, there's never any "drama" from those of us whose opinions are diametrically opposed to theirs. 

I have stated here before that I was bullied as a child. It took me many years to learn to stand up for myself and I'm not about to go back to being that scared little girl who was afraid to open her mouth for fear of reprisal. My father used to say "Cheryl wouldn't say 'shit' if she had a mouthful of it." And he was right. I would rather have borne the worst injustice imaginable than speak up in outrage. When I was raped at 16 by a family friend, I told no one except my mother and I only told her because she was a nurse and I had a head injury. At 16, I kept a violent, humiliating rape to myself. And people wondered why I became an alcoholic? I knew if I reported the rape, it would cause trouble; not just for my family but for his as well. I learned to keep my mouth shut about things that annoyed or bothered me because it wasn't worth the blow back I always seem to experience. 

So here's what I have learned from almost six years on Fetlife:

1) I'm a "negative" person. Apparently, if you voice an opinion that differs from the majority, you're bringing your negativity to the group. I guess we're all supposed to march in line.

2) If you're having a bad day and you reach out to friends, you're throwing yourself a pity party.

3) If you have a falling out with a friend and you tell your side of the story, you're "playing the victim".

4) If there's disagreement between two people who are friends of yours, you will be expected to choose sides.

5) Never, ever under any circumstances should you ever mention, no matter how casually, that you're not into something that other people are into. Again, this is construed as negativity. Gone are the days of "your kink is not my kink". Apparently, we all have to not only like what others like, but we have to embrace it as well.

6) The "if-you're-friends-with-him/her-you-can't-be-friends-with-me" mentality is alive and well on Fetlife. I haven't seen this kind of behavior since grade school. And I thought Fetlife was an adult site.

7) "Conflict resolution" on Fetlife is accomplished by unfriending and blocking.

8) If you aren't "in" with the popular crowd, expect to be invisible to them. If you cross them, expect a massive helping of public humiliation.

9) It's OK to have Christian or conservative beliefs. Just don't voice them, especially when it comes to opposing same-sex marriage. For God's sake, don't ever mention that.

10) If you hold unpopular opinions on subjects held dear in the so-called kink "community" it's OK for people to call you names, flame you on threads and judge you for your views. You just can't turn around and do the same to them.

11) LOL or :) doesn't always fix things. I've learned that putting these at the end of a sentence doesn't always convey that I'm joking or that there are no hard feelings. I've been absolutely crispy fried by people who only saw my words and not the intent behind them.

12) I'm a lot stronger than I thought. When I first joined Fetlife, the thought of someone disagreeing with me mortified me. Now, my first thought is usually "meh". 

13) A lot of the friendships formed on Fetlife are superficial. Everything will be great as long as you're convenient. Ask a favor or need a shoulder and you can forget about it. Of course, some very close friendships have been formed, too. But the majority are the going-to-parties or going-out-drinking type of friendships.

So in the sea of humanity that is Fetlife, if you don't know how to swim against the tide, you better learn how or develop a thick skin. Thankfully, I've been swimming against the tide for most of my life. But don't be looking on Fetlife if you want to know my opinion on something. Just look here. This blog is now the only place I feel safe enough to voice my opinions. 

Random Memories

Yesterday's blog entry, in which I discuss the old-fashioned punishments I received as a child has me thinking now about other times when I was punished. Usually, the punishments were deserved, but sometimes they weren't (at least in my eyes).

My twin sister, Carol and I came into the world during the bleak winter of 1960. My father was 29 and now the father of four children. My mother was 26 and beginning to show the effects of all that childbearing. At his most exacerbated moments, he would ask my mother "Donna, why did we have so many kids?" My mother grew up Catholic and Catholics were supposed to have large families, preferably with lots of sons. My mother was an only child, as I've said before, and I think my grandmother was horribly disappointed by this. Her own mother had had six children, three boys (Noel, David and Carroll) and three girls (Velda, who was my grandmother, Viola and Ruth, the baby of the family). My Aunt Ruth was married to my Uncle Clyde, a cattle farmer from Corpus Christi, Texas. One of his neighbors were the Fawcetts, whose daughter, Mary Farrah, my mother sometimes babysat for. Later, when Farrah Fawcett-Majors was on the wall of every pubescent male in the country, my mother would describe her as the "prettiest baby she'd ever seen". Anyway, getting back on track, my mother dressed Carol and I alike and my dad couldn't tell us apart to save his life. Carol was by far the more outgoing of the two of us, a trait that never changed during our lives together. My father's sisters, Esther and Mary Ellen, both married brothers named Worden. When Carol and I were born, both Aunt Esther and Aunt Mary had their own births eminent. My Aunt Mary gave birth to our cousin, David, on January 15th and Aunt Esther had her son, Paul (called Punkin by the family, even when he was an adult) on January 31st. So in one months' time, my grandparents welcomed four new grandchildren.

This is Carol and I on Christmas morning, 1993 with three of our cousins. On the left is Denise, then Paul and David, Denise's older brother. I can't even begin to recount all the mischief the five of us got up to together. We were all so close in age, with Denise being David's "Irish twin", as she was only 19 months younger than him. We were thick as thieves and partners in crime, but we were never hateful or malicious. We were just rambunctious kids. 

Because we were all so close in age, we got up to a lot of no good together. It started at a young age, too. My Aunt Mary had five children--two sons and three daughters--so her hands were always full. My Uncle Dale had left her by the time Denise, the youngest was about three or four years old. My Aunt Esther was still married to Dale's brother, Dave and they had three sons together. I was petrified of Uncle Dave. He had a metal brace on his ankle from an undisclosed injury (which many in the family said was caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to keep from having to go to Korea) and it clanked when he walked. He was a strict disciplinarian, too. I recall an incident when I couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old. David, Paul, Carol and I had been visiting with Aunt Esther and Uncle Dave, who lived in a duplex in a somewhat seedy part of town. There was a vacant lot across the street where we were expressly forbidden to play because it was unsafe. Neighborhood rumor had it that a boy had been found dead there a few years previously. More recently, a couple of boys, out looking for bottle caps, had found a loaded gun in that lot and now all the parents were forbidding their kids to play there. Unfortunately, we were caught because the vacant lot was right across the street from the house and when Aunt Esther came out to hang some laundry on the line, she saw us. Or rather, she saw asses and elbows as we tried to hide. She called us in the house, where Uncle Dave was waiting, belt in hand for his sons and a house slipper for us girls and the other boy in this group,David. I thought it grossly unfair that my cousin, Mike, by far the oldest at seventeen, was going to get a thrashing when he wasn't even there. Apparently, he was supposed to be watching us. 
"I told you to watch these kids!" Uncle Dave said. "What were you doing instead? Tinkering with that dirt bike?"
Mike looked at his feet.
"Yes, sir," he mumbled because, when you addressed Uncle Dave, there was no other response acceptable.
"Bend over that chair," Uncle Dave ordered, "and show these kids how to take a whipping. The only reason those jeans aren't coming down is because there's girls here. Otherwise, they would be hitting the floor."
Mike's face was covered in acne, for which he was profoundly mortified, and when his face blushed red it stood out. I still can picture his lanky frame bending over the chair and Uncle Dave wailing on him. He bore the blows solidly. He had always been a favorite cousin of mine because he could always be counted on for piggy back rides and trips to the ice cream shop. But now my admiration for him really grew. When Uncle Dave was done, he beckoned his other son, Paul to take his big brother's place. The middle son, Jimmy had been smart enough not to be with us that day. Paul was a wuss and took his licking badly. I bet even I could have taken it better than he did. 
Since my other cousin, David, wasn't his child, he opted not to belt him. Instead, he sat on the chair and beckoned David.
"Come here, David," he said taking up the house slipper.
"No way," David said shaking his head.
"You want the belt instead?" he asked.
"No, sir," David replied.
"Then get over here," Uncle Dave said.
So David walked over to him. Uncle Dave was a tall man and he had no problem putting David across his knee. I was embarrassed for him. His face bore an expression of sorrow and defiance. Uncle Dave took that slipper to the seat of his pants with gusto. For his part, David took it pretty stoically, despite the fact that Uncle Dave really wore him out. Then he beckoned me.
"You next," he said.
I walked over to him, my head held proudly.
"I'm tellin' my daddy about this," I said as he bent me across his knee.
"Oh you are?" Uncle Dave said. "Well, I'm glad. Tell him what you did to get this."
As I was just a little girl (and small for my age) he took it pretty easy on me. When it was all over, there was a group of very sorry kids rubbing their sore bottoms. Such was life back then; when a kid had to decide if what he was about to do was worth the spanking he was going to get. And, as I've shown time and time again on this blog, girls weren't immune. I said before that Aunt Esther and Uncle Dave lived in a duplex. At the time, no one was living in the upstairs apartment so we kids used to play up there. I remember one night when the adults (my parents, Uncle Dave and Aunt Esther, and my Uncle Bob and his second wife, my Aunt Julie, whom I hated) were sitting in the kitchen playing cards. I think it was gin rummy. There were kids running all over the place, even though we had been instructed to stay upstairs. Someone dared my cousin Darla, who was the third of my Aunt Mary Ellen's kids, to sneak down and shut the light off. Darla, who had a thing for Tom Jones, was light on her feet and was the best person for the job in my estimation. Her older siblings, Butch and Debbie (who had been the flower girl at my parents' wedding) were both old enough to date and were out for the night. I knew Butch well enough to know that if he had been there, Darla would have had to face the ire of her big brother, who wasn't above taking them over his knee if the situation called for it. With his father out of the picture, he was the man of the house and he took his responsibilities seriously. Like my cousin Mike, Butch (or Dale, Jr.which was his real name...but no one ever called him that) was lanky and had acne. They could have passed for brothers and not cousins. Anyway, Darla was about to chicken out when David held up the bait, a Zagnut candy bar. It was right after Halloween so there was a lot of candy around. Darla loved Zagnut bars and couldn't resist them. So the decision was made. Darla would sneak downstairs and flick the light switch. She was superb. All the grown ups thought that a fuse had blown and my Uncle Bob, being a fireman, was sent down to investigate. I guess it never dawned on them to try the light switch. Anyway, eventually someone did because the lights went back on and the game resumed. Having gotten away with it once, of course, we couldn't leave well enough alone and another kid was soon recruited, my older brother, Ray. Unlike Darla, he didn't need to be bribed. He would do it just to be able to say he had done it. So off he went, the rest of us stifling our giggles as best we could.
"Listen, you guys," Paul said, "we gotta be quiet. If my dad ever knows we're doin' this, we might as well dig graves and crawl in. Now be quiet!"
My brother was well practiced in tomfoolery. He slid down the narrow staircase sideways and hit the light switch, then covering his mouth so he wouldn't laugh, darted back upstairs. The adults were onto the game now, however.
"Knock that off, whoever's doing that!" came Uncle Dave's voice.
We just giggled in response and sent Uncle Bob's older daughter, Gretchen (who goes by Greta now for some reason) to do it next. Uncle Bob always referred to her as "Hurricane Gretchen" because destruction usually followed in her wake. She broke more things and broke them faster than any person I've ever known. She was scared, no doubt about it. I had been treated to one of her father's hard spankings, so I knew her fear was well founded. But she proved to be a natural and again, the trick was pulled off.
"The next kid who does that will be the sorriest kid alive!" came the usual threat from Uncle Dave.
Not being the kind of kids who would let a mere threat deter them, we had to do it again. We decided to send Denise, who was only about 5 or 6 at the time, because if she was caught, Uncle Dave would take it easy on her. She was his favorite niece and everyone knew it. Even though she was barely tall enough to reach the light switch, she did manage to do it and ran back up the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her.
We heard the familiar sound of Uncle Dave's belt being unbuckled as he charged up the stairs to confront us.
"Who did that? he demanded. 
Since no one 'fessed up, you can imagine the scene that followed. There were kids being chased in every direction and even though we all got thorough spankings, it remains a fond memory of mine because I was so close with all of my cousins. I remember my father managed to snag Gretchen and gave her bottom a series of smacks that probably wouldn't have hurt me, but made her burst into tears. Her dad, my Uncle Bob, was the one who caught me. Believe me, I got the short end of that stick because Uncle Bob spanked hard, even harder than Uncle Dave. My cousin Darla had the misfortune to get caught by Uncle Dave. I don't know to this day how that happened because Darla was quick on her feet (the result of years of dance and gymnastics classes) and Uncle Dave had a brace on his ankle. Boy, did he wallop her! He only used his hand on her, while my unlucky big brother got the belt. When it was all over, the room was filled with crying, sorry kids. 
Uncle Dave put his belt back on.
"Now stay up here and behave!" he said as all the adults headed back downstairs and the gin rummy game continued. 
It was a strange experience for me because I had never seen my father spank any kid who wasn't his. We had dried our tears, but we all stood around rubbing our bottoms. 
"Whose idea was this?" Cousin David asked.
"Yours!" we all shot back.
My mother, who had the kindest heart of anyone I ever knew, popped her head around the corner. She had heard the round of spankings from downstairs.
"Is everyone alright?" she asked.
We all said we were, but my brother needed lotion on his bottom.
My last two blog entries have been odd to say the least. But I have a ton of memories of growing up in an era when spanking was a cure-all for whatever ailed a kid. Even when we played "house" or "school", someone invariably ended up over someone's knee. This happened because that's simply how things were done. 

I have mentioned my friends Trudy, Julie and Sally on my blog before, but that was quite a while ago so I'm going to relay a story I've never told anyone before. It's a story of heartache and revenge. OK, not really heartache, but definitely revenge. Sally's mother dated my Uncle Bob for a while after he and Aunt Julie divorced. It shames me a little bit to say that we made Sally "prove" herself before we would accept her into our little circle. To be perfectly frank, Sally was a wimp. She was afraid to break rules or get dirty. Because of the latter, she was useless on our baseball team. And because of the former, she was useless when it came to pranks. But in one regard, she outshone us all: she could charm the birds out the trees. This talent alone was sufficient to get her out of some pretty serious scrapes. Trudy, Julie, Carol and I spent one entire rainy afternoon trying to come up with something sufficiently daring but not too dangerous that would prove once and for all that Sally was worthy of inclusion. This still shames me when I think about it because I know how bad it feels to be excluded. We should have just taken her in without the silly "initiation". 
"We could make her go to SuperX and steal make up for us," Trudy suggested.
"She'd get caught," Julie said dismissively.
"How about making her ride no-handed down Suicide Hill?" I asked.
"We don't wanna kill her," Trudy said. 
"That's what you guys made me do," I reminded her.
"You're a better bike rider than she is," Julie replied, "and you almost broke your neck."
While my friends were busy discussing among themselves what should be done about Sally, my devious mind was at work. I had been trying to get revenge on Doyle Collins since February, when he knocked me down and washed my face in the snow. Doyle was a bully and rarely went anywhere without his right hand man, John Ufen. These two all by themselves could make a person's life miserable. A year later, these two boys would do something to me that I've never forgotten. But I already blogged about that. Doyle, however, needed to be dealt with. It had to be embarrassing, it had to be memorable, and most importantly, it had to be done by a girl. Doyle lived on the next block over from me with a divorced mother and a younger brother. I think it's possible that Doyle had been held back at least one grade, maybe two because he seemed a bit older than we were. 
"Hey, you guys what about Doyle?" I asked.
"He's an idiot," Trudy replied. "What about him?"
"We could have Sally do something to his bike," I said.
"Are you still mad about what he did to you in February? Julie asked. "Give it a rest already. You survived."
"Maybe I did," I replied, "but there's pride involved here."
"I don't know about you," Trudy said, "but I'm not going anywhere near Doyle's bike."
So we opted for a "girl's revenge". It was childish and immature, but it got Doyle back good. Because I value my good name and I'm still ashamed of myself for coming up with this idea, I won't say what we had Sally do. But suffice to say it was underhanded and wicked and we all knew it was wrong. Sally, to her credit, pulled it off without a hitch and her incredible charm kept her from getting into too much trouble.

That's how life was though; a series of misadventures and punishments. But we managed to laugh through most of it. We lived by the motto "Laugh now, cry later." The problem was with the way the system worked back then. In those days, any adult had the right to discipline you if you were a kid. So the deck was almost always stacked against you. But I still say we had more fun in those days than kids today have, even with all the electronic gadgetry that they have now that we didn't have. It was a way more innocent time. I miss it badly.

Old-Fashioned Punishments

A little earlier on, I touched on a subject that I  want to expound on here. In one of my earlier blog postings leading up to the Crimson Moon party, I mentioned that there were a lot of young people in the spanking scene who enjoy role play; role plays that include punishments they never had to face in real life. I'm talking about school paddling, getting spanked at home for getting in trouble at school, writing sentences or having your mouth washed out with soap. These are viewed by many as very old-fashioned punishments, with no place in our modern, more civilized world. If you listen to the liberal rhetoric, we're a much kinder and gentler world now and such barbaric punishments that hurt and/or humiliate children have no place here. Even Great Britain, that lover of corporal punishment, took the cane out of its public (state) schools thirty years ago. The result of all this coddling is that on both sides of the pond, we now have a generation that has grown up without rules or consequences for breaking them. Young 20-somethings then come into the spanking scene having never (or rarely) experienced such things firsthand. So to them, it's all fun and games. To those of us who grew up with the threat of such horrible punishments, these are not laughing matters and even forty years after the fact, I still shudder at some of the punishments I either received or witnessed. 

Let me give you an example. The infraction I'm about to relate to you was a serious one back in the day and the punishment the perpetrators received was severe. You can debate with yourself whether or not this was abuse. To me, it was justice. Even as a child, I understood that, though a kid might rebel, in the end, the adults would win. They always won and it was right that they won. I was 11-years-old and in only my second year in public school (I'd gone to Catholic school before that). My  teacher was a very tall (6'6") Irishman named Jack Donnelly. He was the kind of teacher that most kids liked. He was friendly, always willing to help a student who was lagging behind and took the job of educating us seriously. However, he brooked no challenges to his authority. Because of his size, he intimidated all of us. Even the toughest boys in the class, the ones who could easily beat older boys in a fight, were afraid to push him too far. Now, Mr. Donnelly wasn't the sort who enjoyed spanking children. He saw it as a necessary tool for controlling his large class. One thing he hated was a bully. It was one thing for the toughs in our class to fight with older boys, but he hated bullies who preyed on the weaker and smaller. And, as hard as it may seem to believe now, back then I was the weaker and smaller. I have related before that I was bullied as a child. Most of the bullying came from the other girls in my class, but every so often one of the boys would get it into his head to try his hand at it. School had only just started, which meant it was the time of year (late summer) when we always experienced a drought. Because of how dry it was, the grasshoppers were out in droves. You could hardly walk anywhere without stepping on one. I had and still have a fear of bugs. Things that fly are especially scary to me. So as you can imagine, I hated grasshoppers with a passion One day, I was walking past the field on the playground because the bell was imminent and you didn't want to be late coming back from recess for any reason. A couple of boys who were in my class (and who had terrorized me and others in the past) came and sidled up to me. They spent about a minute making small talk with me before I realized that they had steered me back to the field. 
"The bell's gonna ring," I said trying to get around them, but they had my path blocked. One of the boys held my arms while the other one put a grasshopper down the front of my dress. I shrieked like I'd been shot. I can still remember it to this day. Then they pushed me down and walked off, laughing like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. I jumped around trying get it out, not realizing it meant me no harm and was probably just as afraid of me as I was of him. I finally worked the hated bug out of my undershirt (I wasn't wearing a bra just yet) and walked back to class shaking like a leaf. I never told anyone what those boys did to me. Instead, I set about planning my revenge. I was a quick thinker and I had a somewhat devious mind for such a docile, well-behaved child. I didn't quite know what my plan was, but I knew something had to be done. Four days later, contrary to our normal weather patterns for that time of year, we had a bad rainstorm, which turned the field into a sinkhole of mud. The announcement went out that all students to stay off the field during recess that day. That morning, as I ate my breakfast, I thought of the perfect revenge. I knew before I ever got to school or heard the announcement that it was going to be an "off the field" day. I grabbed a plastic bag from my mother's pantry and set off for my bus stop. I hid the bag in one of my school books and no one was the wiser. That morning, when the announcements were read and, sure enough, we were being told not to go on the field, I knew I had the perfect way to get them back. At first morning's recess, I took my bag and filled it with mud (making sure not to be seen). Then before the bell rang, I snuck back inside and smeared mud on the boots of the boys who had bullied me. I knew whose boots were whose. I also smeared some in the hallway leading directly into Room 6A. Then I ran to the rest room across the hall and washed my hands. Sure enough, Mr. Donnelly spotted the mess and asked whose boots those were. The two bullies readily confessed that those were their boots, but had no idea how the mud got on them. Of course, Mr. Donnelly wasn't fooled for a moment. He had the boys on their hands and knees cleaning up "their" mess. All the while, I sat there with a shit eating grin on my face. They now knew who the culprit was and they lost no time in telling Mr. Donnelly just who had done the deed. He was aghast. I was supposed to be a young lady. I then relayed the tragic tale of how they had put a disgusting bug down the front of my dress and how much distress this had caused me. Mr. Donnelly lost no time in getting the boys in front of the class. He loved taking kids who thought they were tough guys "down a couple of pegs" as he put it. He put each boy over his knee in front of the whole class and worked the seats of their jeans over with his enormous right hand. Those boys, who thought it had been just hilarious to watch me jump around tearing at my clothes were now getting a taste of what it meant to be in an uncomfortable position. Then he stood them up and ordered them to apologize to me. Standing there rubbing their no doubt stinging bottoms, they mumbled their pathetic "sorries" to me.

Now the above photo is from a website I mentioned in another post called "Straight Lads Spanked". The young man getting spanked here is named Ben and he's ended up in this position (across the knee of "community spanker". Mr. X) because he's a bully. He picked on a boy who was smaller than him by, according the the write up for the video, lacing his drink with Viagra and locking him in the bathroom during an awards banquet (the reason the boy is wearing a suit). Karl, the boy that Ben bullied, has no way out and his frantic parents have called the police. But instead of going to jail, young Ben is given a choice. He can choose to report to Mr. X for a proper spanking. Of course, Ben chooses the spanking and thinks it's a small price to pay. What the photo doesn't show is that Mr. X has invited Karl to come by and watch his tormentor's humiliation. Mr. Donnelly would have approved, bless him.

Unfortunately, we now live in an age where such punishments are seen as the products of a different era. Humiliating a student because he's a bully is seen as revenge and not discipline. Who in their right mind would prescribe such a punishment? More than likely, the little bully would be sat down and asked if everything was OK at home. My father taught me that the way to handle a bully is to give them a taste of their own medicine, which I did every chance I got. This time, I got off Scot free. I wasn't always so lucky. But who among us doesn't savor the sight of a bully getting the tables turned on him (or her)? I know I did.

Now about writing sentences...this was a popular punishment when I was in school. Teachers who believed more in busy work than sting backsides as a deterrent to mischief often prescribed 100 lines for students who misbehaved. I had one those, too and she made me wish I was back in Mr. Donnelly's class. Believe me when I tell you that the pain from a few swats is nothing compared to a writer's cramp. This is exactly the reason that teachers gave out sentences; because they knew how bad writer's cramp hurt. Kids would do almost anything to get out of having to write sentences. I remember a teacher who made me write the same sentence 200 times and then, when I turned in my neatly written lines, ripped the papers in half and tossed them into the trash can without even looking at them. It was probably at that moment (or a similar one) where I realized why people kill other people. Everyone hated sentences and almost every kid I know would rather have taken a paddling in front of the whole class than write them. 

Mouth soaping is something I have a little experience with, too. Parents in my mom and dad's generation swore by this remedy for "potty mouth" the same way some parents do hot saucing today, although it was way less controversial. My Uncle Carroll gave me a mouth soaping I'll never forget when I was about eight years old. I can't imagine it was because I swore. I don't even think I knew any swear words back then. I think it's more likely I was "soaped" (as we kids called it) for the alternate reason: lying. My Uncle Carroll was actually my mother's uncle. He was the older brother of my grandmother. Since my mother was an only child, all of my aunts, uncles and cousins were actually her aunts, uncles and cousins. Anyway, Uncle Carroll lived with my Aunt Helen about four blocks away from us. I loved going over there, especially in the fall when their apple trees were full of ripe fruit and I knew a pie was in the oven. She was quite an astounding cook, as were all the women on my mother's side of the family. Anyway, on this day, I had just popped down to ask Aunt Helen if she and Uncle Carroll wanted to come over and play bridge with Mom and Dad that evening. She asked me to wait in the living room while she spoke to my uncle. While I was waiting, I occupied myself with my new Duncan yo yo, which I had purchased only a few days previously with money earned at a highly successful lemonade stand. I wasn't very good at yo yoing at that time. In fact, my older brother had just shown me my first trick the day before and I was eager to practice. While I was occupied, I underestimated the length on my string and the yo yo slammed down on a souvenir ashtray on the coffee table. It was one of those big ceramic ones that had some destination stamped on it. It was so heavy that instead of smashing to pieces, it broke clean in half. I held my breath, waiting for one of them to come see what had caused the crash, but no one did. So I just pushed the pieces back together and it looked like nothing had happened. My aunt reported they would be over right after dinner and did my mother want to borrow her punch bowl for a baby shower they were throwing the next day? I figured she probably did because I had never seen a punch bowl at our house. That evening, after my older sister and I had done the supper dishes, the four adults played bridge. We had to stay out of the way and entertain ourselves the best we could. It's a good thing we were imaginative children because we were often left to our own devises like this when our parents had company. The three of us girls were in our room playing Mystery Date (who remembers that game?) when there was a smart rapping on our bedroom door then it flew open. My dad stormed into the room the way he only did when someone was in trouble. 
"Cheryl Kay, come out here," he said pointing to the door.
Now, in our house, when you got called by your first and middle name, you were in deep trouble and it was best to just obey and not ask any questions. I followed him out to the living room where the card table was set up and the punch bowl Aunt Helen had bought was sitting on the bar in our dining room. 
"Uncle Carroll has something to ask you," my father said.
"What?" I asked.
He stood there with hands on hips.
"Did you break something while you were over at our house earlier?" he asked, fixing me in a stern gaze made all the more menacing by the fact that he had a glass eye.
I put on my best innocent expression.
"No," said, lying through my teeth.
Now, I was raised by saved parents and we studied the Bible together so I was well aware of how bad it was to lie. 
"Well, that's funny," Uncle Carroll replied, "because that ash tray was fine when you got there and cracked in half when you left."
"Maybe you broke it?" I said.
My father stayed out of it. I think he was just waiting to see how deep I was planning to dig this particular hole? 
"I didn't break it," my uncle said.
"Well, I don't even smoke," I said in a smart ass tone of voice that caused my father to raise an eyebrow, a warning to tread lightly.
"No, but you yo yo," Uncle Carroll said. "Your aunt said you had one with you when you came over."
"I'm not supposed to play with it indoors," I said. 
"That doesn't mean you didn't!" Uncle Carroll replied, getting his Applegate blood up.
The Applegates were well known for their short fuses and even as a kid I realized that I had probably taken this confrontation past the point of no return. Unfortunately for me, there was also French blood on their mother's side (my great-grandmother's side) as the Vaniers were also known to have a few hotheads among their number. 
"I did no such thing!" I said, proving that I could get just as angry as my grown up relatives.
"You're lying, young lady," Uncle Carroll said. "That ash tray was from a trip your aunt and I took out west the year before Lee was born."
My mother's cousin, Lee was the older of the two sons from this marriage. Kim was the younger. They had also had a daughter, Nyla who was the youngest and quite spoiled. I found her totally glamorous because she had her ears pierced and wore make up. 
"I didn't break it," I lied again.
Before I knew what was what, my uncle grabbed me and carried me under his arm to the kitchen sink. My mother was going to nursing school at the time and had developed a mania about soap from which I have never really recovered. She kept a large bar of Lifebuoy soap at the sink for hand washing. My uncle hoisted me up and turned on the water. Then he picked up the beige colored bar of soap and ran it under the faucet. Meanwhile, I can clearly see what's coming so I tried to wrestle out of his grip. I was a skinny kid then, nothing to pick up and nothing to cart around. He brought the soap to my mouth and forced it between my teeth, where the bar hit ever uneven crevice of every tooth in my mouth. I recall I was barefoot, but that didn't stop me from giving his exposed ribs a couple of solid kicks. He put the bar down and sat on one of the nearby bar stools, where he put me over his knee, pulled down my pants and gave me such a hard spanking that now, 45 years later, I can still remember how bad it hurt. My parents, seeing that I got what I had coming to me, didn't protest this indignity to one of their offspring. 
"Now you can burn at one end and bubble at the other," Uncle Carroll said, giving my bare bottom a couple of parting whacks and setting me on my feet.
I was wretched, you can believe that. I ran to the bathroom sobbing and slammed the door. The commotion, meanwhile had brought my siblings from every corner of the house to see what was left of the floor show. 

As you can see, lying and destruction of property were frowned on back when I was a kid. For a parent, the only thing that came close was forcing a teacher to stop the lesson and deal with you. The old rule about "spanked at school, spanked at home" was adhered to in our home, at least in the circumstances that my dad discovered it. 

The young man over the knee of his "dad" in this picture is Karl. And yes, this is another one from the Straight Lads Spanked website (in the interest of having some kind of pictorial accompaniment to my awesome words). Karl got the cane at school and so his father is doing what my father would have done in that situation. To show how much they strive for realism on this website, Karl was indeed given the cane (spanking models often shoot more than one film a day) so that the cane marks are clearly visible on his bottom. When he's not making spanking videos, Karl is a scrappy amateur boxer. Clearly, this kid has a thing for pain. Anyway, he gets a hard spanking from his dad because he "copped the cane" at school for skipping class and also getting caught kissing a girl behind the bicycle sheds. Two punishments in one day seems awfully unfair but Karl endures both a very hard caning and then a slippering from his old man, poor kid.

I suffered just such an indignity when I was in eighth grade. Well, except that I wasn't naked, but you get the idea. I hated my homeroom teacher, Mr. Jorgenson with a passion. I can put his name up here now because he died last year. He was my worst nightmare--a person in authority who loved to torture people. If you had a weakness of any sort, he would exploit it. When he discovered that I was hard of hearing, he deliberately seated me as far in the back of the room as he could. When I complained I couldn't hear him, he said he would get me an ear horn for Christmas. What a lovely guy he was. Anyway, we had just returned from Christmas break and you could feel the melancholy in the air. We knew there wouldn't be another break until Easter. I'd had minor surgery about a week earlier (right before my birthday) and I was still feeling a bit tired and out of sorts. I was in no mood to take crap from anyone. But, unfortunately, my bullies were still at it. The PTA was meeting in the gym that particular day (where we normally ate lunch) so we would be eating at our desks. Mr. Jorgenson, as always, would be eating in the teacher's lounge. One of the lunchroom monitors was sent to keep an eye on our class. That day's meal included a chocolate chip cookie (and not good ones), which most of used as Frisbee's or hand grenades. A girl in my class, Debbie Hale, chose to crumble hers over my head. 
"That's the way the cookie crumbles," she said as her sycophants laughed. 
I wanted to deck her, but I didn't. The lunchroom lady was no help. I walked right up to her with crumbs falling off of my hair and she acted like nothing had happened. Well, OK, I guess I'm on my own here. I managed to get most of the crumbs out of my hair, but not all of them so I was met with "You have dandruff!" by several kids in my class. I thought to myself how Mr. Donnelly would have settled their hash. But Mr. Jorgenson was a bully himself and so not likely to find my plight all that compelling. So of course, being somewhat cagey, I waited for my chance to avenge myself. When lunch was over (but the bell hadn't yet rung for recess) Debbie lifted her desk top to get something out of her desk and I saw my chance. I made like I was going to the pencil sharpener and as I walked past her, I closed the desk on her head. It's not like I slammed it really hard or knocked her out or anything. I just gave her a headache. When Mr. Jorgeson returned, he was immediately told by the lunchroom lady what had happened. But she conveniently left out the part where Debbie smashed her cookie over my head. Mr. Jorgenson appeared shocked. Now he had seen some of the bullying I had been subjected to firsthand, but for some reason he acted like this was the first time he'd heard anything about it. Both Debbie and I were walked briskly out into the hallway and paddled. Being accustomed to physical punishment, I took the four swats pretty well, despite how hard he paddled me. Debbie, being a spoiled rich girl made a big fuss about it. He took it considerably easier on Debbie than he did me. 
"The next time there's any kind of physical altercation in my class room involving either of you, you'll regret the day you were born," he said angrily. "I went easy on both of you, remember that."
Oh yeah, buddy, it sure felt like it. The worst part was that he gave me a note to give to my parents, telling them that he had had to punish me for "assaulting" another student. I wonder to this day if Debbie got a similar note. Anyway, I knew better than to not hand it over. He instructed me to have one of them sign the note to prove that I had showed it to them, so there was no way I could just drop it in the trash and forget about it. If I had done that, I could forget about ever sitting down comfortably again.I spent the rest of the day in misery, both physically and emotionally. My stomach churned from the stress of having to face my parents. I didn't think my father would be particularly mad because was the one who had told me "Don't ever start a fight, but make sure you finish it." But my mother would be mortified. I was a young lady now and I was expected to act like one.

When I got home that afternoon, my mother had just woken up. She worked third shift and so the time we were at school was her time to sleep. Dutifully, I handed her the note.
"What's this?" she asked, taking it.
"Read it for yourself," I told her.
She did and looked at me like I wasn't her daughter, but some devil spawn that had been swapped for her daughter.
"It wasn't as bad as he made it out to be," I said.
"You slammed a wooden desktop down on a girl's head because she crumbled a cookie over your head?" she asked. "You could have seriously hurt her."
"It was the last straw," I replied. "It wasn't about the cookie. It was about a lot of stuff."
"When your father sees this, he won't be happy," she told me.
"You could just sign it," I said. "He doesn't have to see it."
"Oh he's seeing it, young lady," my mother assured me. "You can just go to your room and wait for him."
Normally, my mother wasn't a "wait till your father gets home" kind of mom. She normally handled the small brush fires that occurred during the day. But this was serious. So I went to my room and I waited for my dad to come home from work. I knew he would be tired and would just want his dinner and some peace and quiet. My sisters sat in the room with me (we shared it, after all) and gave me moral support. When we heard Dad's car pull into the driveway, my sisters ran for the hills. I couldn't hear distinct words, but I heard my parents having a conversation. I heard my dad's footsteps and he jingle of his belt being unbuckled. Oh man, was I ever in for it.

The young man getting the belt across his bottom is Wayne. Straight Lads Spanked does a series called "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home", which is really popular with fans who like domestic scenes. I like Wayne because he has a tattoo on his bottom. But, at any rate, Wayne has been a very naughty boy. He was caught smoking pot at school. Very, very stupid as I could have told him from experience. At least his "dad" positioned him nice and comfy with a pillow under his hips (I have a feeling that this was done more for the fans, since putting a pillow under the spankee's hips raises them up and creates a very nice visual, as we see here). My dad charged into the room like a bull elephant.
"Tell me what happened," he said.
As calmly as I could, I told him about how this girl had been picking on me all year and I had just had enough. He seemed to soften a little. Well, as much as a Marine with a belt in his hand can soften. 
"I don't think she'll bother me again," I said.
"But your teacher had to paddle you," he said, "so you know what that means."
"He didn't have to," I said. "He wanted to. And she didn't get near what I got."
"Her butt's probably not as tough as yours," Dad said. "You know what to do."
"It really wasn't fair," I said, trying any way I could to get out of the agony that was coming.
"Turn over," he said.
"I'm still sore," I told him.
Now, keep in mind I had just turned 14 years old. I thought the time when my father would spank me was past, but I guess not.
"I'll count to five and you'd better be turned over," he said, beginning to count.
Knowing this was a lose-lose situation for me, I turned over. Without a word, my dad gave me a dozen or so licks with that awful belt of his and then put it back on.
"I went easy on you because you already got it once today," he said.
That was the second time in one day someone had told me they had taken it easy on me. 
"Your mom signed the note, so we're square," he said. "Now come eat dinner."

I guess, in a role play scenario, any of the above scenes would be good, as they were in the spanking videos I cited. But getting any of them non-consensually as I did as a child, well, that's another matter entirely.