More thoughts on spankos

I’m still seeing clients here and there, if I meet someone I like and feel that the fantasy is something I can fulfill with integrity and a sense of fun. Plus, the money’s good. What can ya do.

The type of client I seem to keep coming back to is spankos. Not because spanking fantasies are particularly un-problematic to me; if anything, I often find the types of activities that spankos seek somewhat disturbing. But in the interest of being non-judgmental and promoting the sexual health of all individuals, I think I probably keep coming back to it because it’s problematic for me, and the problem inherent is one that is not the fault of the spankos themselves, nor even of the professionals they sometimes visit in order to indulge their fantasies. It’s a tweak I have about the rhetoric that often forms around the spanking roleplay.

The sexy idea of “I’ve been baaaad and need to be punished” is probably as old as time; the kinking of punishment into pleasure isn’t what troubles me (much, more on that later), though it’s not really what I go in for personally. Professionally, though, I’ve often found it to be a hoot to play the strict aunt or headmistress or Victorian lady doling out paddlings and canings to irrepressible “young boys.” It’s a chance to do some acting, to stretch my roleplay capacities and hone my quick responses, and often, it’s hilarious.

But what bugs me is what many of these men are wanting to be punished for. Sometimes it’s sassing an elder, sometimes it’s violating someone’s privacy, usually a girl or woman and usually involving a panty drawer or curtains carelessly left open of a summer evening. But more often than anything else, they want to be punished for masturbating.

As a staunch supporter of masturbation (stand tall and salute!), I find this a troubling trend. I think that the healthy habit of pleasuring yourself is the first step of exploring and loving your body, getting to know what you like, and being able to share a healthy sexuality with others. Granted, there are all kinds of things that people fantasize about and enact that would be horribly unhealthy in “real life,” things that they wouldn’t want to happen: rape fantasies are an excellent example, and many people fantasize about being kept as slaves in a cage in someone’s basement, but would hate it were it to really happen, even in an erotic context.

But the fetish for being spanked as a response to natural pubescent impulses troubles me because a lot of the time, it stems from true experience – an experience in which a child was punished for trying to know himself. This fantasy has the tendency to expand, too, into talk about the need for a strong female authority to control men’s wild sexual urges – which in turn recapitulates an irresponsible and misogynist narrative about how men are just beasts who can’t control themselves, and women are the moral, moderating influences who must rein them in, lest they go out and rape every woman they meet. (See also: maybe the way to prevent rape is not to stop women from wearing short skirts and drinking alcohol, but for men to STOP RAPING WOMEN.)

One of my favorite longstanding clients enacts multiple versions of this fantasy with me, and given our relationship and our lunches post-factum, I often have discussed this problem with him. Over time, his detailed fantasy letters began to shift: it wasn’t masturbation he was being punished for, but inappropriate, non-consensual attention to women, or being a cocky, misogynist 17-year-old asshole (one of his more entertaining incarnations), or the classic: going into a female classmate’s room and stealing panties from her drawer. We developed a story over several visits which wound up with the young man masturbating under the caring supervision of a slightly older female intern, which I thought was strangely sweet. In earlier versions of the fantasy, the boy’s ongoing discipline and recidivism ultimately ends in castration. In a later version, over lunch one day, he told me that he imagined that young man finally settling down with one of the imaginary young women we wove into our scenarios, having a healthy, female-led relationship with her. My sessions with him, to a certain extent, mirrored my own attitudes about my work – and, I like to think, began to heal that boy inside him.

I still have trouble with some of these punitive scenarios: for myself, in kink, punishment is a bad thing, so much so that it’s something I don’t really play with as a bottom. Punishment, as in the real world, is something to be avoided. For spankos and some others, the punishment is the kink, is the pleasure. There’s no teasing and denial, no finishing themselves off afterwards. It’s chastisement, smart-mouthing, face-slapping, and butt-reddening with fast, hard strokes meant to cause real pain. It’s something that I don’t fully grok, as it’s not about the pain being transformed into pleasure, or the pain being endured as part of a trial by fire, or even the pain as atonement, though I’m sure that’s part of it. And unlike a lot of kinky activity in the more leather side of the scene, it almost always seems to stem from childhood. As with foot fetishists, it’s something they knew about early and have sought for much of their lives (or began to kink on later in life).

As with the sessions with my old client, with this new client I chose to punish him for looking in his little neighbor girl’s window while she was dressing, rather than for masturbating. I always have this strange need to punish for something I feel is just, rather than for something I want to encourage. I just can’t reinforce that idea that masturbation is bad and sexuality is immoral and wrong – even in the context of a session that’s clearly sexual for the person receiving it!

There is, of course, the possibility, as with some kink, that enacting these scenarios is in part about re-framing and healing the wound. But I just never hear about that from spankos. It just always seems like a somewhat compulsive, likely ultimately harmless, and usually pretty playful thing that got kinked for them at an early age. And probably there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m always bemused by my own reactions to these things.

What are your thoughts?

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The one time I did – Part 2

[Part 1 is here.]

I’ve taken the cuffs off of him and for a moment we’re equals, dropped lightly out of the scene and into a few seconds of friendly conversation, laced with compassion and care.

“I haven’t been to that place in a long time,” he tells me again. “I so needed it.”

“I’m not done with you yet,” I remind him with a smirk. “Are you ready to go on?”

The flogging wasn’t even that severe; it was something about the thuddy pressure, the rhythmic nature of it, his surrender, that made him break. His back is reddened but not welted, and I can tell that he can take a lot more. I take the four-foot singletail out of my bag and order him onto his hands and knees on the bed.

In an instant he is down again, dropped into that swimming pool I know so well, the place of buzzy-headed wordlessness. I start swinging the whip back and forth across his ass, leaving little red trails in perfect horizontal formation. He breathes, managing the pain, arching his back, rolling his hips, letting it flow up his spine. I start throwing the whip and leaving fiery vertical cuts to cross the stripes I’ve already made, throwing it harder, harder, harder, not playing at the speed of sound but getting little low-pitched thaps out of the cracker and sweet whimpers, at a higher and higher pitch, out of him.

I see him start to shiver again, the muscles tense, the breathing quicken. This is the place where I always hedge: do I keep going? I back off a little, slow down, give him more time to process each strike, but then I feel what his body wants, feel that need again from him, and I ramp back up until he breaks a second time, falling face-down on the bed.

I put the whip down and slowly approach. His back is hot, his ass scorching, under my cool hand. I succumb to an impulse I rarely have with clients: to lay my body on top of his, to hold and comfort him. Finally I turn him over, and there’s a moment when I see his cock, hard and short and thick, and think of what it would be like to suck it, to let him fuck me. It comes to mind only because he doesn’t look at me with challenge in his eyes, because his submission is so complete. From the moment we met he has been respectful, classy, considerate, and now he is opened, vulnerable, and more beautiful than I dared to notice.

The moment passes, and again we find ourselves in gentle cameraderie, sitting on the bed together and talking. I ask him if he wants to stop here, or go on with something else; we have perhaps a half hour remaining.

He had told me that strap-on play was very important to him, and I had told him that I don’t do it, but he hired me anyway. On some strange hunch I brought my equipment along, and at the beginning I laid everything out on the bed – “just in case.”

“Please,” he asks me now, not quite back in that submissive headspace but not looking me in the eyes either, “could we play with your strap-on?”

I’m still conflicted about it, knowing the boundaries I generally set for myself and feeling them pushed, but knowing, too, that I deliberately brought it and flaunted it, perhaps in the hopes that I’d get to use it with someone I found attractive. I agree to let him suck it, but don’t make any promises about fucking him.

But having my cock sucked is my downfall.

I strap on the leather harness, with my purple cock through it, and set it in place, feeling the way it connects with my body and becomes an extension of me. At these moments I never feel dominant: I feel exposed, naked and rampant. Powerful, perhaps, but flayed: unveiled in the kind of power that terrifies. With my cock on I feel like a predator in the heat of the kill, and at the same time I fear the foolishness of it, the ridiculous spectacle of a woman wearing a rubber dick. This is another of my secrets about this act, my reluctance in sharing it with strangers: what if they see that I’m like a tiger wearing a baby bonnet – or worse, like a sheep wearing a wolf suit?

But with the object of desire in place he falls into role again as easily as breathing. I put my hand back in his curls and help/force him to his knees in front of me, and he takes the purple cock – my cock – into his mouth and sucks.

Sucking my cock is a sure way to plug it even more deeply into my body: watching someone suck it, suck it earnestly and treat it like it’s real, makes it real. Some part of me extends outward, fills the space the cock occupies, ennervates it and animates it, and all at once I’m not just shoving a silicone cock I have strapped to my body with leather down your throat. I’m fucking your mouth.

I fuck his mouth a little and watch his eyes tear as he looks up at me. I feel the abandon start to rise in me, the wetness and the growling and the fear, the fear of how I’ll let go, coming and snarling and shooting my energy into this person I don’t know, scaring him maybe, giving away my life force, and I pull him back by the hair. He looks at me with that pleading in his eyes that I can’t refuse. “Please fuck me,” he whispers, “just a little. Please.”

I pull him onto the bed and order him back onto his hands and knees. “Back up,” I say, and he backs his muscular ass toward the end of the bed so I can stand while I fuck. I grab a glove and the thick lube I’ve brought and my black-gloved finger finds his hole and pushes, swirls around the opening, finds him warm and ready and yearning.

I slide into him and he makes that sound, that sound that is only made by men who are being fucked in the ass because they want it. That half-whimper, half-moan, that fucking beautiful sound of abandon and pleasure and fear and yearning and taboos busted all over the floor.

He fucks back into me and I hold his hips with one gloved hand and one bare one, guiding him onto my curved purple cock, filling his guts. I start to feel it building in me again, the unreal reality of my cock squeezed by his tight little asshole, the fucking miracle of my cock disappearing inside him, the sounds he’s making – and then he’s asking me if he can touch himself and yes, of course, play with your cock but don’t come until I tell you, and I feel dizzy and tunnel-visioned and I don’t want to come, I can’t come, not here, not with him, and why not, but I want to, but I hold back and keep control, letting him find his abandon without taking my own.

“Please may I come?” he gasps, and what can I say but yes, fucking come for me, and he does, crying out, his sounds like someone dying of sex, and I fear the tears again but there’s nothing, only silence and softness and I pull out of him, humbled, a little embarrassed, happy that I had him that way and not face-up, where he couldn’t see my face, the struggle, the loss of composure.

Immediately I take the harness off and begin to bring the scene down; somehow I can’t cuddle him now, it’s too intimate, but I speak gently and let him recover in his own time. He thanks me and I thank him again, and we slowly recover our roles – or recover from them.

It’s awkward, saying goodbye. I’d like to see him again and I know that that can’t happen except at his instigation. Even if we do, it won’t be me he sees. Not the me who would like to fuck him again, without money exchanging hands, without the need to hold back, to wear a corset while I do it, to play, as I sometimes have to, at loving less.

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The one time I did – Part 1

He was sitting at the chic hotel bar when I walked in: compact, muscular, with a tanned face that bespoke Greek heritage, perhaps, with bright green eyes. More attractive, needless to say, than my clients generally were. Younger, too. The problem with this is that such men tend to be obnoxious, to ask more of me than I’m willing to give, to push my boundaries. Like they’re doing me a favor.

Not this one. He’s kind, offers to buy me a drink, which I decline. He’s well-read, and a Burner. He has a low key but confident way about him that I like. I could tell this would be one of those rare instances where the client is someone I would have happily played with for free, but would never have the guts to approach at a party.

He’s booked me for three hours, and I can think of worse things to do with that time than explore the kinks of this rather yummy specimen. He tells me that he usually tops, but from time to time, he feels the need to let go, to let someone else be in control. I usually worry about this, again with the concern that he’ll be bratty or try to make me switch. But something tells me that this is a different sort of person.

The hotel is downtown, one of the swanker places in the Manhattan style – sleek black and silver, not ornate old wood. The room is spacious and inviting, and now that we’ve had our talk we start right in.

When he undresses I see that he takes care of himself, and also that he is one of those men who is never quite thin: shortish, barrel-chested, thick all over but not hairy. The hair on his head is short and curly and lovely to grab and pull.

There is something beautiful about a usually-dominant man submitting. The sincerity and thoroughness of the surrender, in this case, almost steals my breath. Many men have dropped to their knees in front of me and kissed and licked my boots. It’s all part of the script. Dig me, such subs seem to say, I know what it’s all about, how it’s done. This man knows both sides of the coin, and the way he gives over, drops his eyes, trembles in fear and anticipation, is immensely moving. When I grab his hair he actually whimpers, and is immediately in the headspace I want him in.

I love boot worship when it’s done well; when it’s not, it’s a total bore. It’s hard to say what it is that makes it well-done: I only know that when it is, it makes me wet. It’s something about the way the sub becomes absorbed in the act, doesn’t always have, literally or figuratively, one eye on me to see how I’m reacting. The boots in that moment are me, and the truly gifted bootlicker isn’t doing it only for my pleasure. His head is swimming with desire, his vision is blurred with only the blackness of leather or vinyl in its scope, his nose and tongue are full of the scent, his mouth working slowly and with focus. Most importantly, he doesn’t have that puppy-dog approval-whore thing going on: none of that aren’t I a great submissive? crap. I’m not interested in how well you play your role. I’m interested in you, and how your desires mesh with mine.

This man is with me, in the way that clients rarely are. We have seen each other, in this conversation that we shared. There is spark, here. His need for submission is great, and yet the expression of that need is specific. He is both well-trained – the way he moves is graceful yet without pretense – and totally responsive.

I’m loving this, but it’s time to move on. I’ve found a way to jury-rig dog leashes over the bathroom door and I string him up with cuffs, standing, and begin to flog his broad brown back.

I love to flog, but it’s the rare client that loves it like I do. It becomes clear, quickly, that he is one of these gems, and I go at him with a zen-like yet ever intensifying rhythm. I don’t know how long I stand there, swinging my right arm in figure-eights, harder and harder, watching his back redden and his muscles tighten and loosen, listening to him gasp and whimper and moan. Fuck. Now and then I ease off, rub his back with a cool hand, press my body into his back, my thigh against his ass, between his legs. I think, at one point, that I’ve gone too far, and I check in with him.

“Please,” he whispers as I hold my head next to his, run my nails down over his ass. “Please, more.” He doesn’t, can’t, look at me, but his body tells the whole story and it’s true. I back up and start swinging again, a few strokes to work back up to the level I’d stopped at, then harder and harder. He starts to shake, muscles spasming, hands clenching at the cuffs, and I can feel the energy flowing between us, the way his want draws the blows from me, the way I feel his need, the need I’ve so often felt myself, for just one more, one more, one more…

And then he breaks, and he’s sobbing, half-hanging from the dog-leashes and barely holding himself up. I stop swinging and move to him again, my arm wrapping up under his arm, around his chest, pressing his heart. My body against his back, feeling the waves of his tears passing through me. There is no shame here. Only release. Only love, in that strange sense that it can happen in one encounter, the true exchange between two people in a moment.

When he calms down, he tells me, “That hasn’t happened in a long time. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” I tell him, and we take a rest. But there is still so much time to go…

[Part 2.]

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Play it again, Bill…

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the day with one of my favorite clients. Bill (names changed to protect the strange) is a marvelous older gentleman who brings a wealth of intelligence, experience, and humor to our time together, not to mention quite a talent for roleplay and an old-fashioned kind of chivalrous attitude that I’m convinced he obtained during his upbringing in England. He’s an international businessman who dabbled in the theatre, has a fetish for female doctors, and used to be a spook for the CIA. Or so he says.

Our visits always follow the same pattern: I pick him up at his hotel. During the car ride, he reads me the latest masterpiece he has written: always a letter detailing, not the scenario he desires, but the rich backstory of said scenario as told to my character by one of the other, imaginary characters involved. The prison psychologist may write to me, the Chief Warden and Disciplinarian of the Home for Boys, about young Bill’s continued sexually predatory behavior and the likelihood that his treatment with us will end in castration. The young tutor may write to me, the Dean of Boys, about the complex initiation necessary for Bill, a new student. Whatever it is, he reads it in his articulate and sonorous voice, with a tinge of humor, and I laugh at the best bits while I plan my scene with him.

When we get to the space, I change into some version of 1950’s authoritarian fantasy: shortish skirt, blouse unbuttoned just al ittle too low, jacket, severe hair, stockings and high heels. He waits in the room until I come for him, at which point he turns very young and very small, with a pathetic, piping voice. We talk a lot. I urge him to confess whatever his latest infraction is: stealing a female student’s panties, looking up someone’s skirt, masturbating without permission or supervision, lying about same. I spank him over my knee for a little while, then let him fall at my feet on his knees, whimpering and thanking me and kissing my hands. After a little while longer of talking, I take him to the suspension frame, bind his hands, and cane him.

At the end, he falls at my feet again, thanks me, usually tells me he loves me, and then, with a few seconds inbetween, says in his regular voice, “Wonderful,” and starts getting dressed. We begin our post-production discussion right there, no aftercare necessary.

Afterward, we drive to a local restaurant and have lunch together, and talk about everything: the scene, what it is that drives people to different fantasies, relationships, children, politics, feminism. At the end of this last meeting, he told me that his conversations with me are the most open and free conversations he has with anyone.

Yesterday, when he walked me to my car, he told me he had to sing a song before leaving me, which is a frequent occurrence: he’s a veteran of the stage as well as the business world, and our knowledge of old show tunes is similar. He started in on “As Time Goes By,” and was delighted to find that I joined in and knew all the words, even the bridge.

It’s a friendship we have, he and I: a man probably close to 70 and a woman in her mid-thirties; the man paying for very specific types of attention but the woman enjoying his company in any case. It’s amazing, the strange types of intimacy that this work can engender: it’s little wonder to me, complex person that he is, that I probably know more about him than almost anyone in his life, including his doctor girlfriend, his mistresses, his two children, his ex-wife, his colleagues, his friends. We argue about the relative merits of honesty and integration about one’s life and compartmentalization, the path he has chosen. I live a polyamorous life where everyone knows about everyone else; he has a serious girlfriend who doesn’t know about his other dalliances, nor certainly about his visits to me and other dommes. Witnessing the richness of his life, who am I to say which path is better?

One of these days I’ll post his marvelous letters here; they’re pieces of extraordinary imagination and wry expressions of fantasy. For now, though, I’ll simply dedicate this post to Bill, whom I hope to see for many years to come.

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Talk to her

Today I had an appointment all set up ready to go, but when I sent the directions to my playspace, the client said, “Wait a minute…I saw a domme there a few years ago. Was that you?”

A strange moment for sure. If he didn’t return to see me again back then, it’s likely that if the answer is “yes,” he won’t want to see me now. But sorting my inbox by “from” tells me that yes, in fact, I saw him back in ’05. I was just getting started as a domme then, and it turns out that my guess was correct: he didn’t think we were a match, as the previous session hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped, and he wound up canceling.

I was sad to lose a session, but the incident wound up opening a dialogue, not only about how I’ve grown and changed as a domme since then, but also about how potential clients express their interests and desires to me.

He told me back then that his fantasy was “forced domination,” and that he loved being told what to do. In the session I put him through positions drills, then bound him and applied some electrotorture. He’d wanted a more “sensual” session, and was disappointed.

This time, he told me about wanting things to be sensual, expressed himself more thoroughly (though still rather taciturnly and generally), and I had completely different plans: I’d dress more softly, order him to strip, comment on his body in humiliating ways. Make him wear panties. Probably tie and tease him, spank him a little, maybe let him suck a strap-on if I was getting really into it. Talking in my low voice all the time, finding those words that make him blush and wince.

At this point in the game, I can read people well, but I’m still not a mind-reader, particularly if you are shy and holding back the things that really matter to you. How am I going to know how important, say, face-slapping is to you if you don’t tell me? Unless it’s specifically mentioned, it happens to be something I use sparingly because of the baggage that a lot of people have around it. If you tell me that you want to be ordered around, well okay: am I your drill sergeant, your nurse, or your dominating girlfriend?

My hope is that this conversation will open up the possibility of this client and I being able to session together again, more successfully. I know more, now. But you have to tell me what you know, too.

Talk to me, people. I’ll listen. I can’t be anyone and everyone you want me to be, but I do have range.

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