The S Word

"The Spanking Collection": Porn With A Higher Purpose

2011-08-31T15:03:00.002+03:00

It's one thing to be at peace with one's particular depravities; another to revel in them. And it is quite a rare and other thing entirely to be able to indulge those depravities as a service to the Greater Good.

But with this fine piece of literotica, you can do all three:

The world-famous Spanking Writers Abel and Haron devised a brilliant scheme that brings together imaginative fetishry, charitable kindness and everyone's favorite writers from the kinky internet and beyond. An anthology of spanking stories, with the proceeds going to support cancer research. How many other purchases can make you feel so good in so many ways?

You can read more about it (including info on where to buy it!) here.

All of these stories were written for the purpose of this book and contributed for free by the authors; none of the stories have been previously published. It's new, original, devilishly creative CP fun!

And, I wrote one of the stories.

And, having had the privilege of receiving an advance copy, I've read the whole thing, and can confirm that it is Quality. Entertaining, innovative, rich, well-written and full of peculiar depravities...

What are you waiting for?

Graham Goes West

2011-06-19T17:33:00.000+03:00

It's times like these when I rue not picking the scene name "Fievel."*

Well, the title is true: A change in hemispheres is about to go down in this blogger's life. The tagline "a young American woman currently living in Eastern Europe and writing about the English Vice" will soon no longer be apt. I'm headed for my homeland, and the move will be (for the foreseeable future) permanent.

Probably. I think. We'll see.

I face my approaching repatriation with considerable ambivalence. It's time and all, and there are plenty of people I'm thrilled to be reunited with, but on the whole... Eh. I guess there are cool things about America. Snow Cones n'shit. Recycling bins, gay people, decent Mexican food, racial diversity. As far as countries go, it's a livable one.

I suppose.

However, one area of my life that the U.S. will surely improve (surely!) is kink. Because there will actually be a scene, and a community, and people, and some of those people gay, and all of those people kinky! And I can actually go to kink events and meet kinky friends and go out for decent Mexican food afterwards. So I am looking forward very much to the prospect of regular play. It is definitely time I got me some of that.

And what does all of this mean for The S Word? I'm not sure I know. As of this moment, I have no promises or predictions. I might return to regular updates, I might return to super-slow updating, I might not return to blogging at all. I haven't a clue. But I do want to sincerely thank all my readers and commenters and friends and lurkers, everyone who listened to the American Girl in Eastern Europe obsessed with the English Vice.

Oh, the end of an era!

Here's what I do know: I'm going to be out of internet range through the rest of June and all of July, and probably the better part of August, depending on circumstances. So if the S Word does return in a new Americanized incarnation, look for a Fall premiere.

And, if you're kinky, and you're in America, look for me!

*Probably not everyone gets this reference. This footnote isn't going to explain it.

"Warped," Part III (Final)

2011-05-20T17:42:00.000+03:00

Take a shower. Wash your hair. Remove your shoes. Clip your nails. Wear only black, including belt and socks. Bring no books. Come with your hands empty. Come with your will encased in steel.

Isaac was determined to reclaim what he had lost. Dignity, check. Captured soul and angry girlfriend – these he’d fight for like a fiend. Step one: Clip his nails. As many of Greta’s demands as he could remember, he fulfilled fastidiously.

His mother caught the scent of her husband’s aftershave on Isaac as he clattered out the door. “Did our son get a girlfriend?” she asked. Isaac’s father didn’t look up from the paper. “Good for him,” he said.

Isaac's heart was miles beyond the speed limit, but he pedaled slowly to the Greenbaums’ house. He didn’t want to get sweaty, and he couldn’t bring anti-perspirant because that would be in violation of Greta’s rules. Of course, Drew had told him all about how pharamones attracted mates, at last explaining why girls insisted on dating athletes. Still, Isaac had given up on the dream that the ritual was actually code for sex. Somehow that seemed beneath Greta’s creativity.

Besides, the Warp had its own rituals for that. Did Greta expect him to ask her to prom?

Such were the questions that whirled through Isaac as he made slow progress toward the day’s second destiny.

By the time he reached the Greenbaums’, the sun had set, lending Willow Lane a sense of twilight beauty and menace. He could feel eyes watching him from the shrubs, breezes beckoning him in half-sinister tones. He could hear a music no one was playing – and he could feel, in his bones, the reverberations of the ancient ones who withheld his soul, that he might prove his merit.

Isaac parked his bike and smelled his armpit. Showtime.

No one answered the bell; not the first five rings nor the next twenty. He got no response when he banged the gilded door knocker with all his might. He called for Greta. He called for Mr. and Mrs. Greenbaum. Nobody came.

“Clip your nails… Wear all black… Steel-cased will…” Isaac breathlessly recited his orders, but recalled nothing on Entrance Procedure. Was this the first trial? Launch through a window, shimmy up the drain pipe?

Instead he turned the knob. It gave, the door swung, and Isaac entered to win back his soul.

“Hello?”

The lights were off. He closed the door behind him, and considered switching on a lamp, but he feared the ancient ones might take offense. There were no signs or arrows or stone-carved runes pointing the way. But he knew where to go.

Isaac clambered up the stairs. The darkness did not deter him. He dashed through the attic door and began blabbing — loudly, desperately, without bothering to take inventory of his surroundings:

“Greta! Greta, we have to talk. I don’t know what you saw, but it isn’t what you think — I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can explain the whole thing, it was a counterattack, see, a gambit — and if you had said no I’d never have done the thing but you wouldn’t call me back and I didn’t know what else to do and it was Marisol’s idea and they were going to email it to my grandparents and…”

When breath failed him, Isaac blinked and saw where he was.

Greta’s attic, but not as he knew it. Thick, yellowed candles flickered through the dark. Easels draped in black cloth stood all around him. At the far wall sat Greta, perched on the familiar modeling stool.

She didn’t say a word.

“See, it was all part of a plan to get back at Josh,” he continued. “Actually I never could’ve done it without you. I mean, I never could have just gone and talked to… It was all you, Greta. And that, with Marisol, it was just a show, all it meant was – I don’t know, a preemptive strike. Cause I felt like such an idiot and… God. Greta, no one else is like you. No one comes even close. I’m… sorry. Say something.”

“You haven’t removed your shoes,” Greta said. “I instructed you not to enter wearing shoes.”

Isaac blinked. He took off his shoes.

“Better.”

Greta slid off the stool. The fluid movement arrested Isaac; he was a moth, fastened to a lepidopterist’s trophy case. Pinned forever with eyes wide open. Here was Greta, but not as he knew her. A black dress rippled over her glowing white skin. And oh, the skin! No sleeves burdened this dress; it fell above her knee, dove deeper into her chest than any garment she’d ever worn in public before. Isaac blessed the fingers of the tailor who'd sewn it.

She came toward him slowly, haughtily; the divine enforcer of the ancient code. A piece of Isaac longed to crack the tension with a joke, but a smarter piece of him bit his tongue. The other pieces of him shivered. It was like being under a spell, when everything around you blurred together and reality seemed to slide slightly off its course. It was not a girl who stood in front of him, it was an idol.

They were only a few inches apart. She peered at him – into him – like an oracle. And the world as he knew it dropped away; basketball team, Marisol, Cat’s Cradle and all.

“Why have you come here, Traveler?” she intoned.

It took a second, as the sheen of Greta’s skin was still causing Isaac’s nerve endings to crackle, but the words caught up to him.

“I’ve…” And as he gazed at her in the mystic half-light and breathed words into the ponderous quiet, something shifted inside Isaac. He felt an ember of excitement such as he’d only known at the climax of a Scott Card novel or his first kisses with Greta. It gave him vigor.

“I’ve come for what is mine,” he finished.

“By what right can you lay claim to that which you let be captured?”

“By the right of my will.”

“Your will,” Greta scoffed. “Your will may be your own, but your soul belongs to me.”

Isaac couldn’t remember what came next, so he said, “Like hell it does.”

The smallest grunt of frustration escaped Greta’s throat. She shook her head slightly, but with great meaning. Better ad libbing next time, then.

“Why have you come here, Traveler?” she repeated.

He remembered now.

“I’ve come to test my will.”

Greta circled him slowly, close as a shadow but never touching him. “Can your soul be of such great value?”

“To me, it is.”

“Perhaps you should have guarded it more closely.”

“I didn’t know the rules. I was deceived.”

Greta whirled in front of him. “Willful human!” she spat. “Do you think the ancients will abide defiance? Do you think you can endure the test?”

“I… well, yeah.”

Greta glared.

“Test me with all your might; I’ll show the ancients just what human will is made of,” he snarled. Isaac shook; his ardor swelled.

“The trials are not for the faint of will,” Greta murmured. “Nor the faint of flesh.”

“Only tell me what I must do.”

The strangest, evilest and most alluring smile curled over Greta’s transfigured face. She turned from him and strolled to her stool. She took a seat, leaned back and crossed her legs.

“With pleasure,” she said.

Isaac didn’t recall receiving any lines after this point. This was where the ancients took over; he was blind and powerless. He looked around at the labyrinth of covered canvasses. Might as well take a stab.

“Am I… Do I guess which one holds my — likeness?”

“You do not ask questions!” He was startled by the rage in her command. “You stay silent. You listen. You obey.”

Worked fine for Isaac.

Greta regarded him with a long, lazy look. And then she said:

“Remove your socks.”

Huh. Isaac had been hoping for something a little more climactic, but he did as he was told, quickly and quietly. He didn’t swerve his eyes from Greta’s, and as he held her gaze, a feeling of anticipation and daring blossomed inside. When his feet were freed, he even rolled his socks and placed them neatly in his shoes.

Greta coolly examined her nails.

“Move three paces forward,” she ordered without glancing at him.

Isaac wasn’t sure how long a ‘pace’ measured in Greta-units, but he took three generous steps toward the stool and stopped. She seemed satisfied.

“Kneel.”

He dropped to the floor. Try as he did to stay focused, he couldn’t help thinking, I wonder if she’ll take off her clothes. And, I wonder if she’ll try to sever my ear.

Greta slipped off the stool again. She approached Isaac, and without preamble grabbed his hair and jerked his head up. She searched his face, and, when she found no objection, released him. Then she reached for his wrist. She studied his fingernails before flinging it down.

Isaac was dumb.

Greta moved past him and made for a cabinet in the corner. His eyes followed her, until she snapped her head round and barked, “Eyes on the floor, time-bound slave!”

Isaac bowed his head.

“You have come far,” came Greta’s voice from the other side of the room. “You have done well.” He heard her footsteps approaching. “But you have many trials still to bear.”

The footsteps stopped just behind him.

“Take off your shirt.”

As Isaac stripped off his clothes for the third time, he noted that for a night of supposed trials, this was going remarkably well. Or perhaps this was how she planned to test his will? Pure malevolent temptation? Whatever, if the ancients needed him naked, he’d get naked.

He flung his shirt aside with something close to relish. At this apparent desecration, Greta’s face turned so livid he feared she might slap him. Instead, she swept the garment from the floor, crossed the studio and flung it dramatically out the window.

Isaac’s mouth opened, but didn’t release a sound. A voice in his head uttered: Dang.

“Eyes on the floor,” she repeated through gritted teeth.

She was hovering over him, he could feel it. And then he felt her seize his arms, and soon he learned what she’d been rummaging for in the cabinet. A length of cord. She bound his wrists behind him.

“Tell me why you need your soul back.”

“Because... Because I won’t be whole without it.”

“Of what value is it to the world that you be whole?” She tightened the knots.

The question caught him off guard. “I…”

“Perhaps you’ve overestimated your worth.”

“I haven’t,” he protested. He cleared his throat in an effort to deepen his voice. “I don’t care what the world thinks. I don’t care if I’m the only one it matters to... Maybe the world doesn’t care if I’m whole or half, but I do, and… that’s enough.”

She circled back to the front of him, and despite her repeated commands he lifted his eyes to her face. He couldn’t get enough of looking at it.

“Mortals have such vast egos.”

There must’ve been spiders in the attic cobwebs. Isaac felt hundreds of eyes fixed upon him.

“Rise.”

Easier ordered than obeyed. Bound and unbalanced, he fumbled slowly to his feet. Greta closed the gap between them. Without removing her eyes from his, without expression or the briefest blink, she unclasped the buckle of his belt.

After a prolonged contraction, Isaac’s stomach landed somewhere near his feet. This is actually happening. Sure, his non-subconscious incarnation had yet to experience it, but what could possibly be so trying about oral sex?

She slid the belt through his loops and let it dangle from her hand. And then, instead of reaching for his genitals as Isaac could not help hoping, she loped back to the stool and draped the belt across her lap.

“Why have you come, Traveler?”

Why haven’t I come? Whined a voice that Isaac was fairly certain did not reside in his brain. He shook it off.

“My soul,” he muttered.

“What is it worth?” Her eyes pierced him. “What are you worth?”

Was this the torment? Endless repetition of the same interrogation?

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Anything.”

Greta leaned forward. One hand propped up her chin and the other gripped his belt and swung it back and forth.

“Prove it.”

A sliver of understanding began to prick at Isaac.

The belt swung with the solemn leisure of the pendulum on the Greenbaums’ grandfather clock. Isaac wondered if the pressure he felt inside constituted a phenomenon previously unknown to medical science. Greta’s eyes held an unmistakable question.

“Let me,” he answered.

This was when the clocks wheeled; everything sped up. Swift as a panther, Greta leapt from her perch and carried the stool to the center of the studio. She whirled back and dragged Isaac off the floor with a sharp grip on his upper arm. He followed, hapless, breathless. And he made no protest — no sound at all — when she drew him over the stool.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable, with his hands tied and his body bent. The part of him that was still a teenage boy had vague impressions that this whole thing was getting thrillingly depraved; but the part of him that had given way to the world of his and Greta’s imagination was spellbound and tense.

Greta began to slowly pull off his slacks, and wicked as the sensation was, Isaac no longer expected oral pleasure. He felt her pause and heard her catch her breath. A second later, though, she had assumed her regal tone.

“Beg for mercy and it shall be granted. Beg for release and I’ll let you go. Beg for anything, and your soul stays lost forever.”

Fair is fair.

“On with it,” Isaac dared.

He could hear Greta’s breathing grow heavier. He could hear the candles burning and the stars spying. The molecules around them were alive and watching.

The air hissed, and a lick off a bonfire landed on him. He’d expected it, he’d braced himself, but he gasped from shock nonetheless. It happened again, three times, rapid and strong and sharp.

Greta paced around him, black belt trailing snakily from her pale hand. Isaac’s throat was drier than the planet Arrakis; his eyes were thirsty but he couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away from Greta. He wished she’d stop. He wished she’d go harder.

This sort of thing wasn’t exactly uncommon in the realm of speculative fiction. On more than one modeling-and-reading session, Isaac’s cheeks had colored over a particularly vivid description of physical punishment. He’d never looked to see how Greta reacted.

“Tell the ancients why this soul of yours matters so very much.”

Perhaps that had been an oversight.

Greta whipped his belt down again. And again.

“It just… does,” he gargled.

And yet again.

“I remain uncompelled.” She thrashed him at a rabid pace, her precision unsullied by her fury. Isaac held on and held still. He sucked at the air vampirically. And when she stopped, he felt rather sorry.

“You gave it away willingly,” she reminded.

“I didn’t know how it worked,” he argued. “Just like I didn’t know about this… particular… ordeal.”

Greta laid on another swift stroke.

“The ancients aren’t exactly forgiving of ignorance.”

Her next assault exiled all lines and protests from Isaac’s mind. It obliterated his mind altogether. He was his body more than he had ever been, everything that wasn’t pain and elation and heat and the urgency of skin was zapped up by a vortex.

Isaac was no stranger to abuse. This was new.

Greta knelt in front of him and searched his face. He thought he saw a flash of concern in a teenage girlfriend’s eye, but the cold wrath of an ancient arbiter soon masked it.

“It’s only a soul,” she whispered soothingly. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to give up?”

“Not. Happening.”

A mournful sigh. Isaac clenched his eyes. He didn’t have long to wait.

The ritual possessed him. It was hungrier than before; a cyclone gathering urgency and speed. Valiantly though he bore it, his knees still buckled as each bite gnashed harder than the last. When he closed his eyes he saw sparks and hands and paint and large clear eyes, heard the laughter of goons and felt the unglossed lips of a beautiful oddball; when he opened his eyes, all shapes smeared together. He tried hard as he could to control those parts of his body that proved hardest to control. He tried not to pant like a dog.

A whisper breathed against Isaac’s ear: “I like it when you gasp.”

At that moment, his whole body dissolved into the wooden stool, and the transmogrification of his molecules was complete.

“You’re up for more, then?”

Or not quite.

When the arbiter handed down her next set of trials, something changed. The sensation became less shocking-shuddery and more scathingly painful. There was a hard, ruthless edge now; a merciless progression. Instead of measured strokes doled out like questions in a test, it was a long stream of ritual justice that descended.

“All you’ve got,” he challenged.

She was perfectly willing to oblige.

“But why do you really deserve to be restored?” she started again, landing a particularly vicious cut on the top of his thighs. A vague thought occurred to Isaac: I can’t believe she’s doing this with my own clothes.

“Wouldn’t you prefer – ” another searing crack – “to be invisible?”

“No.” More a grunt than a reply.

“I’ve heard otherwise.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“Really? Well… ” Her fingers latched gently to the seam of his underwear. “Let’s make you a little more visible, then.” She dragged them down, nails lightly scratching the surface of his legs as she did so.

It was Greta’s turn to gasp. A small gasp, but enough to make Isaac realize that his hindquarters must’ve greatly expanded their usual color palette. He felt a twinge of pride, a prickle of concern and a mighty desire to survey his battle scars himself.

“This is hurting you quite a lot,” came a voice that was certainly trying to be the mystic arbiter’s, but carried more than a hint of Greenbaum.

“This? This is like… an ice cream fucking sundae.”

The back of his shins absorbed a swift kick. “Ancient sacred ritual!” she hissed.

“Sorry. I mean… I… Yes. Pain, trials. Very painful trials.”

“That’s it – ” The voice this time was unmistakably Greenbaum, but the stunning collision of blows was without question the work of a wrathful primeval sprite. Isaac gulped back the snark and took it.

“It’s not as easy as you thought it would be, is it?” Greta had developed a rhythm whereby belt lashes served as punctuation. “It never is, you know. Things of value have their cost.”

The leather found its mark once more; Isaac wondered groggily if Greta was attempting to paint a picture on him, in the medium of bruise.

“You thought you could just come here, demand we relinquish what you’d already surrendered, and not even give us a good reason? It’s not enough, Traveler, to say you’ve earned your soul.”

She held the whip still for a moment, and leaned over him in that predatory way.

“Tell us why.”

“I…”

She snapped the belt down, as if to preempt any waffling. “Be… specific!”

“Everyone needs a soul!”

“That smacks of generalism.” Emphasis on ‘smack.’

“I need it to be a person.”

“Is that what you want? You could be a wraith, you know. You could be smoke. You could disappear.”

“I don’t want to be invisible! I can’t be invisible…”

“How come?”

This dialogue, monumentally frustrating to Isaac’s battered nerves, was interrupted by agitated strokes. Sometimes, though, Greta would stop her onslaught to glide the leather softly over his ridged, mottled skin.

“I…”

The pain besieged him; wrapped him like heavy winds that thrust him headlong into a cloud. It wasn’t a cruel pain, though, not like Josh’s fist or Aidan’s laughter; it wasn’t trying to smash him apart or liquefy him. It was carrying him, to a brave new world, a galaxy far far away, a place no Isaac had ever gone before...

The vortex zapped back the sounds. He saw the sun shining, and a girl with loose hair and long limbs look up from a chalk drawing. He watched her crinkle her nose, stare at the sky, examine him, smile, laugh. He watched her laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

“Why do you need it?” Howled the arbiter.

“Because…”

“Why?” With a fierce blow.

“For the girl I love!”

The air around them seemed to choke.

“For her… to be worthy of her…”

“What her?” Breathed Greta.

“Her… She… ” Isaac had endured his trials, but at this point he was heaving over the stool, hanging on with all brash fiery will to his last shred of control.

“A girl you couldn’t begin to imagine,” he gasped. “She has hair like… ” Isaac wished he were a poet. “She has the hair of a genius,” he finished with false confidence.

“A genius?”

“She has the hands of a master. She’s an artist. Everything she sees is… layered, and extraordinary; it’s like she has six extra brains to think with that nobody else has. She can always surprise you. No one knows her. See, she pretends to be this inaccessible little demon, but really – really she’s kind. And extremely hot.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, devastating. And she’s brave. Strong. Don’t you get it? Anything less won’t cut it. She deserves somebody whole, mind and body, will and soul – for her I can’t be invisible and I can’t be half a man – for us. I… That’s why, goddamn it. Us.”

The only thing audible was a cascade of heavy breathing, but it was impossible to tell anymore from which set of lungs it came.

“Then…”

That’s it, this is it, she’s giving in this time…

But instead of the expected victory, Isaac received three more blazing lashes, the most brutal of the whole lot. He choked, he jerked; he did not beg. And then he felt Greta’s shaking body collapse on top of his.

Her hands traveled over his bare, sweating shoulders with a softness belied by urgency. Her breath on his skin felt like balm, like dew on a dry leaf.

“To be honest, the mortification of the flesh interests me far more than the fate of souls,” she whispered.

The fingers wandered down his spine.

“What a very good soul, though… What a quality choice of soul.”

“Greta…”

“Not yet,” she murmured. Her hands found his hips, his cheeks, his bruises. They ran soothing warmth over his goosebumps. The trailed up his arms and across his back; up and down; soft vertical brushstrokes. A longing to touch back throttled Isaac. Finally Greta disentangled herself from her victim.

First he felt her untie his wrists. And then he felt her lifting him tenderly from his prone position, and guiding his hands to his pants.

“Get dressed,” she said. “And close your eyes.”

Isaac did as told – though he only obeyed “get dressed” in as far as his underwear and trousers were concerned. He closed his eyes and tried to listen for Greta’s movements, to wait for her scent to surround him again. But he was still dazed and his senses muffled. Her body eluded him.

This happened. It was real. Ow. Drew won’t believe it. Ow, ow, god. I’m not telling Drew. Drew, get out of my head. Remember, how this actually happened? Ow. Where is she?

And then she was close, the heat was unmistakable.

“Open,” she commanded.

When he did, he found that the heat was caused by a candle flame, thrust precariously close to his chin.

“I’ve restored your soul,” she whispered solemnly. She thrust the candle in his hands, and fell back.

Isaac blinked, held up his light, and took a look around.

His own face surrounded him.

The drapings had dropped from all the easels, revealing a dozen portraits of Isaac, the Once Invisible. On his stool, reading. In the school parking lot, reading. Dashing across a starscape, sabre aloft. In a field with Greta. So this is what the center of a kaleidoscope feels like. He couldn’t blink his eyes.

This was not him. The guy in these pictures was not social refuse or hopeless molecules. He wasn’t a sad-note genre-dork or punching bag or pee-jar target. In one of the paintings he recognized his black eye – she made it look noble, she made it look like a piece to a story. An epic. The guy in these pictures was relaxed and resilient; he had a knowing look; hints of wit around his smile. He wasn’t normal, certainly, but the way she painted him you could tell he was warped in all the right ways.

“You said… You said it was just one…”

“Oh, Isaac.” She smiled kindly. “I finished that assignment an era ago. How long do you think it takes me to paint a picture?”

Now he could blink. “So. All this time. Just a big scam to seduce me.”

“I couldn’t afford to lose you as a muse, could I.”

“These are incredible. You’re a genius.”

She giggled and removed the space between them. “You mean, my hair’s a genius.”

“Shut up!” He kicked her with his toes.

“Did you know you made such pretty sounds when you’re in pain? No wonder those ogres like beating you up so much.”

“But it’s not nearly as fun when they do it.” He kissed her nose.

“Hey. Ritual trials are not supposed to be fun.”

“Well, too bad you suck at ritual trials then.”

She yanked his face down to hers and kissed his mouth aggressively. “Watch it, minion.”

“Wait! I thought I was your muse.”

“When you’re flippant I demote you to minion.”

Everything became quiet then. Greta’s hands were closed around his back, his hands held her elbows, and suddenly he felt very self-conscious as they looked at one another. He couldn’t think of a thing to say, a place to go, a laugh to break the quiet – and she, of course, kept staring with that intensity only she could accomplish.

“I like you a lot, Greta,” he said. He winced at the echo of his stupidity, but when he squeezed his eyes open, he saw that Greta hadn’t found it stupid at all.

“Thank you,” she said. She reached a finger to his face and trailed it gently along his forehead, over his eyes and nose, to his lips and chin, where she rested it thoughtfully.

“Isaac… ” She pulled her finger back to her own mouth, and bit it. “You are wonderful in all the ways that you are.”

He knew exactly what she meant.

“However…”

“What?”

“If you find that you absolutely must engage in prolonged public kissing to uphold your masculine honor, could you arrange it so the lips belong to me?”

Isaac’s cheekbones flushed more startlingly than his fresh welts. He swallowed.

“Yes. Yes, sure. Definitely. I will do that.”

They held onto each other tighter.

“Good then.”

Isaac ran his hand through her brilliant, wild hair. In Greta Greenbaum’s eyes, he saw forgiveness and admiration; he saw fear and friendship. He watched them, the eyes that had always seen him, seen all of him, and all that he could be; he watched them until he saw them glimmer with a different sort of feeling, until they closed from the pressure of craving, and watching became kissing, and kissing became traveling — a starlit journey across the newborn universe that they alone could inhabit.

***

[the end]

"Warped," Part II

2011-05-19T10:00:00.004+03:00

Evan leaned back against the cliff, exhausted by his sabotage of the Temporal Router. He closed his eyes and began to consider his strategies, once the Clock Guards inevitably regrouped. A voice interrupted his thoughts.

“This isn’t the safest place for a nap, you know.”

Evan’s eyes popped open and he instinctively looked behind him – of course, there was nothing but solid rock.

“I’m quite sure there’s no one else here.”

The speaker was a woman, or perhaps had been a woman once. She had the grace of a swan and her hair streamed from her head like trails of light off a shooting star. Beneath magnificent eyelashes shone silver eyes that could have pierced the night itself. Evan gaped.

“How… How can you see me?”

She spoke gravely. “I am Silverlash. My eyes have been washed by droplets from the Pool of Immortal Truth. I see all that is true, even that which men wish hidden. You are as clear to me as children’s lies and villains’ secrets.”

Evan could hardly believe it. None of his enemies, not the Clock Guards or the Wrestling Team Warlocks or the Cyborgs of Pep Squad had ever been able to penetrate his shield of invisibility.

“Whose side are you on?” he croaked.

“I do not follow the loyalties and enmities of men, I am on the side of truth. I came here to right the wrongs being done against nature by the time-meddlers. And you? What exactly are you doing here, hiding from truth itself?”

“It’s not a disguise, it’s part of who I am,” Evan explained. “It helps me in my mission.”

“And what is your mission?” “The same as yours. I’m here to fight the Clock Guards.”

Silverlash suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm. “Then come with me. We haven’t got much time…”

Isaac Levinson had finally found an intoxicant better than sci-fi.

It wasn’t a girlfriend. No, it was beyond that – Greta was a whole new galaxy. For the first time in lightyears, Isaac looked forward to school. To school. Because even though he didn’t have any classes with Greta, he was almost certain to see her in the hall. Out of sensitivity to Drew, she didn’t join them for lunch every day, and never interrupted a comic collaboration or Babylon 5 debate. But school wasn’t important, anyway. School was a bearable monotony, a slightly-sweetened toil, to be endured before afternoons of freedom and fascination in the Greenbaums’ attic.

She painted. He read. She had him read aloud to her, and began to take interest in the mystical worlds to which he traveled. As always, she spoke whatever came to her mind, and soon they were building new worlds together, unraveling stories, finding magical motives behind the most mundane objects and aspects of their lives. Greta’s eyes caught colors that Isaac had never even noticed. There were miracles he’d walked right by. And best of all, there was the beautiful, warm reality of Greta; the living, thinking girl behind the mask of eccentricity that protected her in the Warp.

Making out with her was so awesome.

His parents had no clue. The less time their son spent holed up in his thicket of solitude, the better; and they were hardly over-protective of his virtue. Isaac saw no compelling reason to invite Greta to dinner just so Mom and Dad could not politely as she held forth on severed ears and pickled limbs.

People at school were just as oblivious. Greta wasn’t swimming in gal pals and Isaac remained invisible to the masses. Drew knew the score, of course. He was gracious enough about the physical Greta, but less indulgent of the intrusion of Silverlash into his and Isaac’s mythology.

“Please don’t forget that this is a serious creative endeavor, and not material to keep your left hand occupied.”

“Got it.”

“You know. When your right hand is busy jerking off.”

“I got it, Drew.”

Drew approved of Greta, though, given that she was female, and spoke to Drew sometimes about things like perspective and shadow, and listened gravely when he replied.

The only other person (besides Josh) who observed anything new was the clerk at the bookstore. He gave Isaac a knowing wink when he spotted him browsing the art history section.

It was a new dawn, all right. He wasn’t sure if there were names for this already – it bore no resemblance to the dull rituals his classmates performed in parking lots and on Facebook profiles; he found no models in TV sitcoms or cartoon embraces. Sitting on an attic stool for hours reading The Lathe of Heaven and discussing the Surrealists, kissing goodbye after an evening spent imagining an inter-dimensional space island and the customs of its inhabitants… They shared a Thing, but its replica could not be found inside the Warp.

Fine by me. Isaac couldn’t care less about weirdness anymore. He was challenged and inspired and frightened and glad, and this was the whole point of being alive. As he left his locker and headed for the door, he considered his contentment, the giddy zen of being Isaac Levinson. But a forgotten fray of doubt dangled from the edge of his confidence; as he cleared the flagpole, a pulse of undefined unease ran through him. He tried to ignore it. Contentment. Zen. Greta’s cheekbones. Greta’s everybones. But it remained, persistent and puzzling… Something noted and discarded, something that commanded his attentions, or should have… And then he placed it. Fourth period. He had walked down the English hall on his way to the drinking fountain, and through Mr. Miller’s window he caught a glimpse of something, the meaning of which was only now fully registering in Isaac.

It was Marisol. Mono-free and groomed to perfection, chewing her pencil and texting beneath her desk.

Isaac froze a few feet from the bike rack as the realization hit him. He was there approximately half a second before Josh’s cohort struck.

“Showtime, pissface.”

Josh and Aidan’s minions hoisted Isaac’s arms behind him and held him tight, at an inhuman proximity to their ripe armpits. They dragged, Josh talked.

“We’re kind of hurt by the whole avoiding act, Levinson. We just wanna make you a star.”

“Of course, your sabbatical did give us some time to re-develop the project,” Aidan added. “I’m sure you’ll be impressed by our creative progress.”

“It’s a whole new vision, Princess Leia. We’ve given the script a thorough re-write, and you’ll be happy to hear that you have not only way more lines, but costumes, props – ”

Jeff Clark, a minion of the first order, helpfully proffered a shopping bag. Isaac could only see the topmost contents – a large black dildo encircled by a lime-green cock ring, a pair of furry handcuffs and a gold-sequined bikini.

“…And blocking, stunts… Not to mention production value. Check it.” Aidan flashed a state-of-the-art digital video camera, red Record light throbbing evilly.

“But I think we’re most proud about what we’ve accomplished in the distribution department. See, not only are we going to throw this on YouTube, but we’ve managed to hack the e-mail lists of the entire student body. And alumni. And, uh – what’s that? Ah yes. Staff and parents. So the world as you know it is gonna have the chance to see your breakout performance, sunshine.”

Isaac began to struggle. “What’s wrong with you? This isn’t funny – you’re deranged – ”

The dickheads held him fast.

“Such a diva.”

“Can you just quit the hissy fit and learn your lines? Otherwise, you know, Aidan here is gonna run your dick over with his car.”

“Don’t waste the gas, I bet my little sister’s tricycle would do the trick.”

There were things he would bear. Names, taunts, bruises real and psychological. There were things he could bear. And then there were his parents – and his girlfriends’ parents – watching him thrust a plastic penis under the nose of Marisol Rojas while sporting a sparkly two-piece.

He fought harder.

Josh kicked him and Jeff kneed him in the back. “I see your agent didn’t fill you in on the terms, shitwad. See the thing is, the alternatives to cooperation are significantly worse.”

Marisol was in sight now. Inhaling iced lattes with her girlfriends at the edge of the courtyard. Isaac’s desperation reached Fahrenheit 451. Time to send this story up in flames.

“I get that you guys really like groping me and dressing me up in bikinis, but do you think you could take out your repressed homosexuality on each other, for once?”

It was Aidan who kneed him, in the balls this time, and Josh who delivered the punch to his face. And Ms. Stevens, the Algebra teacher, who called them into the principal’s office.

Even as his enemies’ sentence of suspension was announced, Isaac’s relief was mired in the urge to vomit and the grim knowledge that things were only going to get worse. This was punctuated by Josh’s parting words: “It’s only gonna get worse.” And the promise from Aidan – “Can’t run forever, bitch.”

Contentment. Zen. The abyss of unending despair.

* * *

“It’s almost ready, you know.”

“It is?” Isaac set down the book he’d been reading aloud to Greta, whose head rested upon his leg. “What is?”

“You, you dolt. Your portrait.”

“Oh, right.”

“Do you think I’ve just been inviting you here to engage in juvenile indecency?”

“Well. I would, if we ever did anything my grandmother’s garden club would find indecent.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“An observation and nothing more.”

“Would you rather I paint you nude?”

“Sure, if you don’t think you’ll get too cold.”

Greta sat up, claimed his book and used it to smack him in the head. “Are you going to congratulate my accomplishment or not?”

“Absolutely.” Isaac seized the book and set it aside, and took Greta’s hands in his. “Congra – hey, wait a sec. I haven’t seen the picture yet, how do I know it’s any good?”

“Isaac, I liked you better when you didn’t say words. Remember? Before the verbose, thrilled-with-his-own-wit incarnation of Isaac, there was this shy, unassuming fellow who would politely sit still and be painted, and occasionally kiss me. He’s welcome back anytime.”

Isaac kissed Greta.

“Well. How very literal of you.”

“Are you going to unveil the masterpiece?”

Greta nonchalantly fingered the tangles in her hair. “At some point.”

“Why not the point of now?”

Dismay darkened her eyes. “Isaac. How can you be so cavalier? This moment is the culmination of weeks upon weeks of effort, of… I mean, where is your sense of solemn ritual?”

Isaac caught it now — the glint in Greta’s eye, behind dismay, that meant there were schemes afoot.

“Ritual, huh.”

“Consider all the implications of this… The reveal… I mean… ” Greta leapt to her feet and began to pace, transfixed by visions.

“The ancients claim that whosoever captures your image, captures your soul,” she declared.

“Which ancients?”

She peered intensely into depths none but she could perceive. “Our ancients.”

A hint of light shone on the depths. Tremors of excitement coursed through Isaac’s limbs.

“Then… I’ve got to win my soul back.”

“Yes.” The attic air seemed to shimmer around Greta. An impudent hint of a smile intruded upon her solemnity. “The ritual.”

“What’s the ritual?”

“You must prove yourself worthy to possess your soul.”

“Pain and trials, you mean.”

“Of course.”

“Is my permanently dislocated nose not sufficient?”

Greta scoffed. “That’s not ritualistic, that’s barbaric.”

“Just saying, as far as pain and suffering goes, I’ve had more than average – ”

“No,” Greta murmured. “This will be completely different.”

She bent down to Isaac and took his face in her paint-flecked hands. “Isaac Levinson, are you prepared to prove yourself?”

* * *

The reprieve at school, besides being brief, was also not really a reprieve. Though Josh and Aidan were gone, they had exacted phase one of their vengeance: YouTube was now the proud host of a music video starring Isaac’s photoshopped head, Barbara Bush’s body and Winnie the Pooh in an unspeakable position. Cyndi Lauper’s “Touch Myself” played in the background.

Par for the Warp.

Worse was how the outer circle of Summerville jerks constantly made Isaac aware of his vulnerability. In the locker room, the corridor, during class, the bathroom– they were there, with insults and threats, with crude sketches, with kicks to the shins. Reminders that the show must, and would, go on.

Having reached the definitive conclusion that he could not learn judo, Isaac tried to focus on the Ritual instead.

It absorbed Greta completely. She insisted that Isaac not be privy to the details of his ordeal – “wouldn’t that just completely ruin it?” — yet her urge to give orders had not waned. The date, the time, what he should wear, where he should go, even what he should say. At least she hadn’t mentioned anything about gold sequins.

Marisol was everywhere. The library, the parking lot, the computer lab – always surrounded by girls with glossy hair and glittering lips. The Mocha, of course, outshone them all. She seemed curiously immune to the elements – dirt, dust, oil, static cling, perspiration, pores. It was unadulterated, magazine-grade, CW-style Hotness; and the girl who possessed it wielded a power more fearsome than Josh Elwood’s biceps.

“You could move to Arkansas,” Drew suggested.

“Arkansas?”

“Or Jupiter.”

But Isaac was fresh out of rocket launchers. All his options – staying home sick, hiding, running, fake moustaches, hiding – were but temporary remedies.

“Look at it this way,” Drew consoled, “it’s not like you were cool to begin with.”

When not submerged in mortal terror, Isaac was lost in a fantasy – not of Middle Earth or Caprica or any distant starlands, but of posing on a stool for Greta Greenbaum.

It was the only world he needed.

Evan and Silverlash peered down upon the entrance to the secret lair.

“Once I see through their plan, we can put a stop to this once and for all.”

“You mean, time won’t be warped anymore?”

Silverlash looked straight into his eyes. “No,” she said. “We will be free.”

Evan surged with excitement – could this really be the end of his torment?

Silverlash began heading down the path toward the Clock Guards' cellar door.

“Wait!” Evan grabbed her arm. “What happens when they see you? Don’t underestimate the Clock Guards — they’re dangerous.”

“Truth knows no fear.” Evan wished he could say the same for himself. “Still. Please – be cautious.”

Silverlash wrapped her hands around Evan’s. They were much warmer than he’d expected.

“The time for caution is over.” She leaned very close to the face that only she could see. “So the question for you, Evan Kent, is – are you ready?”

One afternoon, in the middle of American History, a bee sting threw Mr. Kirkwood into anaphylactic shock, cutting the period swiftly in half. This meant thirty extra minutes with Children of Dune. Normally, Isaac spent History reading under his desk anyway, but today he’d been preoccupied with doodling Silverlash in the margins of his spiral notebook. So preoccupied he wasn’t even troubled by Jeff Clark’s presence three rows back. When Kirkwood was collected by the school nurse, Isaac joined the throng of giddy teens who spilled into the halls, and split from them with a turn toward the library as they processed to the courtyard.

A Bueller-esque boldness inspired him as he approached the library. The English lit classroom was just two doors away, and since he’d taken the quiet liberty of memorizing Greta’s schedule, he knew she was sitting near the window at this very moment. There were few things on this earth that Isaac would choose over a chapter of Herbert, and one of them was just behind that classroom door. Experiencing a jubilation unique to adolescents liberated by unexpected bee allergies, he put his face against the glass and tried to grab Greta’s attention through the power of his manly stare.

Instead, he attracted the attention of Ruby Edwards, who rolled her eyes and poked Greta with a pencil. Greta’s expression did not change as she comprehended her muse’s sheepish grin, but Isaac had become proficient at reading her blanknesses. He fell back from the door. In a few minutes, she’d request to be excused, and their kisses would be all the sweeter for having been freed from the grip of clock-guarding authority.

He dawdled at the end of the hall, reflecting on the inanity of his existence before he found his long-haired artist; the mental and bodily torments; the pain of unrecognized loneliness.

On the thought of pain, a finger tapped his shoulder. Isaac took only the tiniest fraction of a moment to realize it didn’t belong to Greta, but to Jeff Clark, whose other hand clutched a murky jar. It wasn’t til the contents were oozing down his face that Isaac understood what it held – Tuna Surprise, floating in what was probably Jeff’s own urine.

Two things happened. A cell phone snapped a picture – maybe several cell phones, who bothered counting – and Greta Greenbaum emerged from English Comp. Jeff-n-pals were jeering and cheering and throwing assorted litter at him, as always. But the sight of Greta sucked all the noise away.

He couldn’t look at her.

Isaac turned back to his tormentors, but came up with nothing — no searing retort, no deft right hook. Not even the chutzpah to laugh. He was liquid. He was vapor. His failure reeked worse than the slop on his face. He shoved past Jeff and dashed down the hall. He was trailed by a promise he barely heard: “Cologne for your lover, Romeo.”

Isaac did not return to class that day. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t return to school the next day, or Ever, or Ever times the universe. But it wasn’t up to him. And this fact pounded at his skull harder than the water that spewed from above, as he slouched dismally in the shower.

I. Am. Fucked.

And not in any way he’d ever fantasized.

Maybe Drew was right – maybe it didn’t matter, because what happened to social untouchables like himself made no difference to anyone who counted. He didn’t have popularity to lose. Play on, dickwads. Let them lead him like a lamb to slaughter before Miss Teen Queen Primadonna and roll tape. Who cared? Why should he? Give up already. Assimilate with the Borg.

And then her eyes dug into his skull, like a pair of spades. That’s why it matters, idiot. That’s why the shiny illusions he’d cast aside in junior high – dignity, mettle, self-respect – were suddenly worth more than the One Ring. For her. A girl who’d just witnessed his enemies cover him with filth.

And watched him run.

Say what you like about Greta Greenbaum: She’d never run. Greta would’ve ripped out his spleen. If they’d hit back, she’d have stood up again. Looked them in the eye. Batty, sure; but a braver bat there never was.

Way to go, Isaac. Way to prove exactly what you’re worth.

Isaac banged his head against the flaking tile. Isaac’s mother wondered aloud to Isaac’s father about their son’s unusually protracted stay in the shower. Visions of Josh, of Marisol, of Silverlash, of shrouded portraits and hidden heroes all bobbled around his brain, a carousel of scorn. Was it finished? Would she be too disgusted to ever look at him again? Would the destiny imposed on him by the Warp – a lifetime of unceasing humiliations – be too heavy a price for Greta’s lofty sensibilities? Did the whole cosmic joke of his existence amount to nothing more than a YouTube reel of shame?

The water ran cold. Isaac slumped lower into the tub. His life was over. Oh, what a life it had been. A quiet childhood of poor eyesight and even poorer hand-eye coordination; an adolescence steeped in crap; a brief jaunt into the marvels of young love. Over. He wasn’t a hero. He couldn’t even stay invisible.

“Isaac, honey? Don’t you think that’s enough showering for tonight?”

Of course it was too good to be true. The Warp didn’t look kindly on lepers finding happiness. And women didn’t look too kindly on cowards. Even the crazy ones.

Isaac stopped the faucet. He started to wean himself from the damp comfort of the bathtub, and then froze.

Crazy.

It was like watching photographs develop slowly under water. Greta brushing a wisp of hair from her face and picking up a paintbrush. Greta coaxing music from an antique gramophone. Slapping Josh’s face. Laughing at his jokes. Breathing fast and ragged as they kissed with the passion of the young, the heroic, the misunderstood. Asking him if he was ready to prove himself.

That night, it occurred to Isaac that perhaps he’d never fought back against the Warp because he’d never had anything worth fighting for.

One thing became clear through the shower steam and blurry snapshots. It was not the time, yet, to give up on Greta or himself. It was time to go completely mad.

***

At school the following day, when he wobbled toward his chosen fate on fish-stick legs, his confidence in the power of crazy had waned.

You are insane you are insane you are insane… The voice of reason sounded irritatingly like Drew. It was time to get his head in the game. Like a dog throwing off a flea, Isaac shook his head, and clutched the strap of his backpack with fury-driven purpose. Things can’t get worse, he reminded himself. The abyss of despair knows no worse. This voice was less convincing.

Blessedly, his feet lacked ears. And his feet moved ruggedly forward, past the gym, the science hall, the auditorium — all the way to the East wing lockers. At which point they stopped. Isaac thought of Greta and pushed them onward again. Then finally, he was there.

“Hi, Marisol.”

The hottest girl at Summerville High shut her locker and stared at Isaac.

“Do I know you?”

“There’s absolutely no reason you should. I’m Isaac Levinson. I… go here.”

At Marisol’s side stood a midriff-baring friend with shiny gold highlights. She spoke up. “I know you – you’re that kid from You Tube. The Winnie the Pooh vid.”

“Could I talk to you for a minute? It won’t take long.” Isaac twitched beneath Goldilocks’ contempt. “Someplace else, if you don’t mind?”

“Maybe he’ll ask you to prom,” the friend sneered. “Look Mari, Jake’s waiting for me– TTYL.” She kissed Marisol’s cheek and disappeared.

Marisol looked at Isaac.

“I’m not going to ask you to the prom.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Just be quick.”

Isaac led her into an empty classroom, and as soon as the door shut behind him he gulped a mighty breath and confessed without preamble. The whole banana — bikinis, cameras, cuffs n’all.

“So… So I just wanted you to know, before it happens, that I’m sorry,” he finished. “If I could fight them off I would, but when they want something…”

“They don’t care about anyone else,” said Marisol. She dropped into a desk and stared at the wall. Her voice was quiet.

“They never leave me alone. Their… jokes and texts and… They send me pictures… Always grabbing me. When I got sick they told everyone it was from making out with Josh Elwood.” She shook her head. “That’s one of the nicer rumors.”

The buzz of a prowling mosquito and distant lawnmower crawled through the silence. Isaac was stunned, not least by the fact that the otherworldly Marisol Rojas was speaking to him. Of her free, non-teacher-mandated will.

“Did you hear how they spiked my drinks at Alyson’s Halloween party? I knew there was alcohol, but this was way more than… I blacked out. Now every guy in the senior class has pictures of me kissing Amy Winterfield.”

“No… I didn’t know that.” Isaac, somehow, had not been invited to Alyson’s Halloween party. “But, I mean, yeah. They are obsessed with you.” Even more so, he realized with no small wonder, than they were with him. “God. That must suck.”

Marisol gave a bitter laugh. “I have a boyfriend in Colombia,” she said. “No one cares. They just act like he doesn’t matter, or tell me he’s cheating on me. Maybe he is. Maybe word’s reached Medellín that Marisol Rojas is a slut.”

They sat for a long time without saying anything, a shared history of torment throbbing between them.

“I wish I was an evil mastermind,” Isaac at last mustered. “I’d go Vader on all of ‘em if I could.”

Marisol caught Isaac straight in the eye.

“Then we will.”

The mosquito landed on Isaac’s shoulder and began to feast, but be didn’t notice. He was listening to Marisol unravel her plan, which was shockingly radical and unnervingly simple.

“Uh. I mean, I see how that could work, but I’m not sure I ought to… It’s just that I, see – ”

“Trust me, Isaac. They won’t bother you again.”

It was a hope more tantalizing than the Dark Side.

“And you?”

Marisol cocked her head back thoughtfully. “Maybe I will also key their cars.”

***

The Day of the Ritual had come. Greta had not approached Isaac since the Unfortunate Incident, and Isaac couldn’t bring himself to face her. Cue much sweating and insomnia. In response to these anxieties, Drew advised Isaac to call her, because “girls generally don’t appreciate when their boyfriends lure them out of class to make out and then run off and not talk to them for three days.” Sound advice, for Drew. Isaac called. She didn’t answer. Then he emailed. His inbox stayed empty. She eluded him at school, and when another six text messages went unheeded, Isaac found himself on the brink of a full-scale Ice-9 apocalypse.

And then, just after first period, he spied a minute scroll of brown parchment poking out of his locker. Inked on the scroll in calligraphic script was a single word: Tonight.

Game on.

A dance took place inside Isaac, involving the music of silver harps and the frenzied dislocation of all his inner organs.

Perhaps it’s what pure joy felt like.

A finger tapped his shoulder. Despite his vows of valor, it triggered a leap of alarm.

Marisol. “Today,” she whispered. “Be at the flagpole after school.” Without waiting for a blink of assent, she disappeared.

His organs started moving again, this time with less joy.

Drew materialized at his side. “Did Mocha Rojas just talk to you? Dude, since when did you become a chick magnet?”

“She thought I was someone else.”

“Oh.” Drew considered. “That makes a lot more sense.”

“Have you seen Greta?”

“Hey, I may be a certified Geekophiliac, but I still ascribe to bros before hos, man. I’m not trying to get with your girlfriend.”

“Right. The question I asked was, ‘have you seen Greta?’ ”

“No.” Drew’s brow contracted with concern. “Trouble in Metropolis? She’s gay, isn’t she. Art girls are always bicurious.”

“Drew. Please shut up.”

He obliged, and though both boys were temporarily distracted by the enthralling images Drew’s assumptions inspired, neither bothered to admit it.

“Look, I just wanted to tell you that I was passing by the computer lab and heard Fields and Elwood talking… I think they might be planning a parking-lot assault after school. I’d go out the back way if I were you.”

“What back way?”

“Find one.”

Isaac endured the rest of his classes with Cat’s Cradle tucked under his desk and The Empire Strikes Back screening on a mental loop. His eyes developed an intimate relationship with the second-hand of the clock. Two teachers noted his inattentiveness, three students tried to trip him between classes. Besides that, he went unnoticed. How he treasured it. The obscurity, the oblivion, the precious anonymity. Invisibility.

In less than an hour, he’d lose it forever.

The bell sounded, shrill and punctual, at 3.05. Isaac J. Levinson zipped his backpack, clasped the tiny scroll in his fist like a talisman and marched headlong into the waiting arms of destiny.

Destiny was a little late. With a gulp of conviction, Isaac planted his feet firmly in the grass at the flagpole and began to count. It took one-hundred-thirty-two seconds for the fates, in the form of Summerville High’s biggest douchebags, to arrive.

They didn’t touch him. They didn’t throw anything at his skull or light any of his possessions on fire.

“Big day, DiCaprio,” Josh grinned.

Isaac didn’t answer.

“I wouldn’t bother running… We’ve got you pretty decently surrounded.”

A peripheral glance revealed this to be true. Jeff flipped on the camera switch. Varsity Forward Number Twelve dumped the props bag on the ground.

“Now, before we take you to Wardrobe and Makeup, we’d like to make sure you’re familiar with the script. So please repeat after me – nice and loud for the camera now – ”

Isaac looked past Josh, desperate for a sign of hope, but all he saw was a crowd of curious classmates gathering; dozens upon dozens of casual spectators to malice.

“Aw. Don’t feel like rehearsing?” Aidan Fields dangled the bikini in front of Isaac’s nose. “Guess we can skip to wardrobe.”

“There could be production delays, from us vomiting at the sight of this.”

“Creative dedication, gentlemen.”

“Hey Levinson, do you know we’ve got your grandparents’ email on file from when they donated to the Alumni Fund? Wonder what they’ll think of your new career path.”

In a flash of emotion certainly motivated by Drew, Isaac wondered which geek traitor taught these dickheads how to hack.

“This is getting boring. It’s go time, Levinson.”

The ring of evil was closing in. Isaac’s palms felt like a swamp. Maybe the plan was canceled. Maybe the plan had just been a joke all along; maybe it was even part of the set-up. It didn’t matter. He was alone.

Isaac met Josh Elwood squarely in the eye, stepped toward him, and said the first thing that hopped into his mind:

“Did you ever cut off your own ear and mail it to a prostitute?”

One moment. Isaac’s question knocked Josh off his guard for one single moment. And this proved to be all the time it took for Josh to pause in his advance, for Aidan to mutter a “wtf” and for Marisol Rojas to emerge from the spectators in a stride of fierce, determined beauty.

Without slowing her pace or turning aside, she knocked Aidan out of her way. Before Jeff’s camera, the onlooking masses of Summerville High and the American Flag, the hottest girl in the Western Hemisphere grabbed Isaac Levinson’s face and kissed him with open mouth.

It was not a quick kiss. It was not a soft kiss. For what could have been five generations of the Starfleet, Ewok and the Mocha made out like lovers reuniting after World War I. She stroked his hair, his arms, his back; she kissed him all over his face and neck. She shoved him against the flagpole, nearly cracking his skull in a display of passion. Isaac gripped the scroll in his hand as if his life depended on it.

When they finally disentangled, Marisol knocked the douche-throng a cheerful smile. She lifted the glittery bathing suit, which had fallen to the ground when Aidan’s fingers turned to stone, and raised an eyebrow at Josh.

“Nice outfit,” she said. She took a moment to survey the various items spilled on the lawn, then looked back and forth between Josh and Aidan a few times. “Oh – oh – ” a little laugh broke loose. “I didn’t realize you two were… Oh.” She bit back another smile.

As she walked away, she tossed a shampoo-commercial glance behind her shoulder. “See you later, Isaac,” she murmured, blowing him a kiss.

Eyes glazed, mouths agape, his former torturers fixed their stares on Isaac. He smiled, and shrugged, gave a shake of his head that suggested beautiful women often inexplicably set themselves upon him and feasted on his lips. Then he hoisted his bookbag and clapped a manly hand on Josh’s shoulder.

“I just want you both to know, I fully support and respect your relationship.”

It took much longer than a moment for the guys to return to reality and register their fury, and by that time, Isaac was long gone.

Triumph (and something like seasickness) buoyed Isaac on his way to the bike rack. He could feel the eyes of his classmates, could hear their whispers, but it didn’t bother him – he sucked energy from it, he barely felt his feet touch pavement. He paused near Josh’s jeep. In the name of the nation of Colombia, he dragged his key along its fresh-painted left flank.

Then he saw it. The tails of an old trench coat, streaming locks of wild hair blown by the breeze – disappearing at a gallop from the parking lot.

“Wait!” He called after her – it was her, wasn’t it? – but he was too far away; he wrenched his bike free and mounted it like a Samurai, but by the time he rounded the gate there was no one in sight.

Isaac sped around in a kind of frenzy, wondering how a human being could possibly outrun a bike and trying to predict where Greta Greenbaum would most likely go – park, coffee shop, art store, abandoned Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He called her – zilch to the power of zero. Finally he went to her house. He banged the door and rang the bell with a zealotry approaching OCD, but no one answered.

The roll of paper had never left his hand. He uncurled his fist and stared at the message: Tonight.

Clinging to hope harder than he’d clung to the scroll itself, Isaac went home to prepare himself for the Ritual.

***

Come back tomorrow for the third and final installment of the Randomly Long And Strange Novella, "Warped"!

"Warped," Part I

2011-05-18T11:03:00.000+03:00

I feel compelled to start this post with a few hundred or so disclaimers. But that seems like a rather hostile way to introduce a work of fiction. And why should I not leave the judging up to the readers, as is rightful?

Here is what I will say: This is the story I wrote in response to This Post. Except, it's not a story. It's what I like to call, "A CP(?) Novella in Three Parts." The riddle of the question mark is yours to unravel.

These were my wildcards: a watermelon-seed spitting contest, kingfishers, a first kiss, "ultimate mocha," a cellar door, a nice but shy-at-first sci-fi geek, a grandfather clock.

I will take the opportunity to also add this: In writing out the list of original wildcards, I realize I forgot to include one of them, and will now be hastening to slip it in somewhere in Part(s) 2 and/or 3. If you read the whole super-long thing, you can guess which one!

***

"Warped"

What’s it like to have the sex appeal of a gay hobbit?

From his thirteenth birthday til the day Greta Greenbaum asked him to sit for a portrait, Isaac Levinson was a hostage in an Impenetrable Totalitarian Time Warp. Also known as high school. Everything before 8th grade he flavored generously with the spice of nostalgia; Little League was all home runs and hot dogs, hardly a memory of wedgies. He forgot that most of his classmates aimed for his ear during the watermelon-seed-spitting contest and recalled only the sweetness of the juice.

Like he can help it, he thinks third base involves LARPing.

The details of the past were beside the point, anyway. Maybe he was never exactly Señor Popular, but still — things would be different if Cousin Phil hadn’t given him a copy of Ender’s Game for his bar mitzvah.

Got any tips for us, Lord Sir Space Fag? You know, moves, maybe some Dungeons & Dragons stratagems in case we wanna score at the next convention?

That damn book. It changed his life. In honor of his manhood, Isaac also received a bike, a digital camera and a sum of cash his mother told him would be impolite to repeat – but those he barely noticed and soon forgot. He spent the Hava Nagila cloistered in the cloakroom, lost. Though his pimples and cracking larynx suggested manhood was still some years off, Isaac had found his destiny.

He finished the entire Ender series in six days. Soon followed Stephenson, Wells, Tolkien, Asimov, Heinlein. The digital camera slumbered in its original packaging. The bike served mainly to transport him to the bookstore.

Like most adolescents who rush full-throttle at that which gives them joy, Isaac soon discovered the price to be paid for passion in junior high.

What’s Klingon for ‘I’m a cocksucking elf?’

He figured out quickly (and painfully) that it didn’t do any good to draw distinctions between Otherworlds for the benefit of certain prepubescent males.

He was Trekkie, hobbit, faggot, Spock, dork-ass, Jew-baca, Java the Butt, and the perennial favorite, retard. They picked him last in gym. Flushed his books down the toilet. Flushed his face down the toilet. Threatened, and sometimes perpetrated, violence against his person. Created false profiles for him on the internet wherein he professed lust for Alien Worm Ladies.

His parents suggested he read less.

“Books are the only reason I haven’t gouged out my own brain with a spork,” Isaac told his parents.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

Life pursued its cruel course for three years. Three wretched, earth-shackled years. His face broke out and his voice broke down, his arms grew too long and his legs too skinny and his hair too shiny, his body developed a keen sense of when and where it could rebel in the most humiliating fashion.

Like today. Locker room. Isaac had been withdrawn in some corner, working on his latest telemolecular transmogrification. That is, willing himself into invisibility. The Others were vulgar and vocal. It had been diverting, calling attention to Isaac’s supposed Middle-Earthly impotence, but they eventually moved on.

“Serious man, Crissy was looking at him like she wanted cock sandwich for lunch today.”

“Whatever, I don’t chase the chubbies.” Such was the assertion of Aidan Fields, the ‘him’ in question.

“Why so picky, Fields? Still holding out for the ultimate mocha?” Josh punched Aidan in the arm, to a lusty roar of approval.

Josh Elwood: Captain of the basketball team, douchebag of repute. Aidan Fields: Second in bro-mand. The ultimate mocha: Marisol Rojas, or more accurately, oral pleasure from Marisol Rojas. She was a Colombian exchange student whose legs and accent provoked what Isaac considered a disturbingly colonial reaction among the males of Summerville High.

Alas, he too was a victim of disturbing reactions. And his charming peers were quick to note them, cracking both jokes and towels.

“Yo, Ewok wants to sip the mocha!”

“Sweet. Let’s go find Marisol and ask her, all right, buddy?”

“Would you like her to dress up like E.T. for you?”

“ ‘Ooh, talk dirty to me Marisol… Tell me I’m sexy like Chewbaca…”

“How’s she gonna talk with her mouth full?”

“Please, it’s Levinson. Her mouth won’t be full.”

Even inside the Warp, there were rules, and one was that gym could not last for infinity. At lunch, Drew tried to cheer him up.

“Want me to ask Sam if he’ll lend us some pot?”

“No thanks.”

Isaac preferred his mind altered by books and films alone.

“It’s supposed to entirely radicalize the experience of Space Odyssey.”

“Maybe some other time.”

Drew believed strongly in geek solidarity. He took such relish in his perceived status that he basically nominated himself for the position of Isaac’s aide-de-camp. Even though Drew was really more comics-and-gadgets and not particularly well-versed in the genres. Still, a friend’s a friend. Isaac didn’t feel very much nerd empowerment. He just liked certain books, that’s all.

“What do you think. Should I learn judo?”

Drew appraised him. “Could you learn judo?”

“I haven’t tried.”

“Your athletic record doesn’t point to probable success, though.” Drew knocked back a tater tot. “You need a lady.”

“Yeah, you’re really the guru there.”

“Hey. I have a girlfriend.”

“For the last time, Drew, Jenny is not your girlfriend. She’s your lab partner.”

“Our love is real.”

“It’s not love, it’s an alphabetical coincidence.”

“She’s into me.”

“You’re like a stereotype of yourself, you know that?”

Whatever Drew’s quirks, he remained Isaac’s best non-fictional friend in the world. They were collaborating on a comic series (“graphic novel,” Isaac told his parents) about a teenager who fought against the wily Clock Guards – a malevolent body bent on manipulating time — with his powers of invisibility. Evan S. Kent: conceived before Drew’s and Isaac’s reading level comprehended the silent ‘c’ in evanescent. What happens to kids who read more than they talk. What with the silent ‘c,’ the pastiche-bordering-on-plagiarism of the surname Kent and the practical difficulties of drawing an invisible hero, they were at something of a creative impasse.

“See, what you need is a theater chick,” Drew continued. “They’re into all the wizards and swords and shit. They put out if you take them to the Ren Faire.”

“Sure, Drew.”

Isaac avoided girls. As a demographic they were generally more subtle than the Summerville males, but Isaac was wise enough to the ways of the hall to know that they were equally capable of malice, and usually far more skilled at it. He had seen too many freshmen shredded like cafeteria slaw at the fangs of the she-pack.

Mostly he hung out with Drew.

And he expected life to continue as such – Drew’s basement, 7 hours a day of state-mandated torment, literary escapism – ad nauseam til graduation.

But that day, the fates had other plans for Isaac Levinson.

“I need a model.”

That’s right – she never really did ask.

Isaac poked his head out of his locker, where he’d been stashing his physics textbook. The words belonged to a female voice, which belonged to a female human. Said human female was currently leaning against the locker next to his, and clutching sketchpads to her chest.

It was a long time before he realized he was supposed to say something.

“Hi?”

“I need a model for a project in art class. I’m a painter.” Her eyes made a quick vertical scan. “You’ll do.”

He didn’t know what to do.

“Um.”

She launched herself from the lockers and headed toward the lunchroom. “Meet me in the lot behind the Drama Hall after Seventh,” she called as she disappeared down the corridor.

That was it. And it was a long time before Isaac realized he was supposed to move.

Every public institution for the education of teenagers has at least one girl like Greta Greenbaum. An artistic waif with a calm, unapologetic eccentricity that fended off both friends and enemies. She doodled naked centaurs in the margins of her math tests, occasionally ate raw beets as snacks and had never been known to throw a birthday party. She carried her books in a carpet bag. It was rumored she wore a necklace made of dead snails. Any objective observer would concede that Greta Greenbaum really was much weirder than Isaac.

And yet, no one ever bothered harassing Greta. She floated through high school in her own little orb; moved through it like a scientist in the jungle, her lab coat impervious to the grime.

Still, though. She was unambiguously a girl, and this was new territory for Isaac. He hadn’t even infiltrated the nerd-girl circles of Summerville. Sometimes a bookish girl with a kindly face would catch his eye, but he couldn’t bring himself to ever talk to one. What would he say? He read a lot, but he wasn’t a genius. He wasn’t handsome or hilarious or dangerous or experienced… He wasn’t anything. Just Isaac, behind a tattered edition of Slaughterhouse V.

A lie about a dentist appointment excused Isaac from comic-book duties with Drew. As soon as 7th period ended, he made for the parking lot outside the Drama wing.

She was drawing on the pavement in chalk. What could have been a fruit bowl, or a sea kraken. She seemed deeply preoccupied.

“Hey.” Isaac felt barely humanoid. A hex had thickened his tongue and all the moisture responsible for sliding words from his throat had migrated to his clammy palms. The sun gobbled his black T-shirt with fetishistic greed.

Greta Greenbaum ignored him.

Should have known. Isaac stiffened, instincts raring to crouch or flee or assume the fetal position, eyes scanning for hidden wolfettes waiting to pounce. Were they giggling behind the shrubbery, iPhones poised to capture his humiliation? He shouldn’t have been so naïve. Not even freakatron art girls would meet with Isaac for anything but a setup. Twit.

“Do you believe in a manifest hereafter?”

Isaac was so suspended by paranoia that he hardly realized Greta was talking. Not until she set her chalk down and twitched her head toward him, a hint of reproach behind her glasses.

“Well?”

“Pardon?”

“Afterlife. Do you believe in a tangible realm of post-vital souls, coexisting eternally in some numinous parallel dimension?”

“Uh… I’m Jewish.”

Greta smudged the edges of her drawing with her finger. Isaac wondered if he should leave.

“Frankly, the decomposition of the body interests me far more than the hypothetical flights of the soul. After all, the soul…”

Greta examined her work, nose precariously close to the pavement, before standing up and turning to Isaac.

“My father’s Jewish, too. But in a hereditary-secular-socialist sense. Do you pray?”

“No. Not really. Like, on holidays I guess.”

Greta stared at him quietly and directly in a most unnerving way. Isaac slanted his gaze to his shoelaces, until his unease turned into annoyance. What was her problem? He stared back.

Her appearance was in no way outlandish, but there was something about Greta that made it impossible to compare her to any other teen at Summerville High. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her lips were somehow as red as dark wine. Beets? Isaac couldn’t come up with a label for the shade of her hair — it seemed to reflect every nuance of brown. It was long, and clean but scraggly. Her limbs were loose as her hair – too long for her body, they dangled from her torso like the limbs of a marionette. She wore big round glasses, an oversized trench coat and clothes that looked like they’d been fished from an old attic trunk.

“You said something about a portrait?”

The lack of response in Greta’s expression filled Isaac with the sudden dread that their conversation at the lockers had been a hallucination. And then, understanding blinked back onto Greta’s face.

“Oh, yes. The painting. I paint.”

“I see that.”

“That’s chalk, not paint.”

“Well. Then that certainly explains my poor performance in Art class.”

Greta’s nose crinkled, her lips widened, and something very weird happened. She laughed. Isaac had never made a girl laugh before. It shocked him so much he thought he might hyper-vibrate himself into a parallel dimension, or something.

“There’s an assignment for Advanced Painting. I’ve decided I want to be ambitious in its rendering. I need a subject for a portrait. I see you all the time, always reading.”

Isaac blushed. This was also perhaps the first time a girl had admitted to noticing him.

“This is good for me. I need someone who’s good at sitting still.”

Pride tingled inside Isaac. “I’m the best at that,” he said, with an enthusiasm that immediately shamed him. Slow down, Skywalker.

“Didn’t anyone tell you it’s not cool to read for pleasure?”

“Oh, it’s definitely cool… The trend won’t catch on for another eighteen months, though. Then I’ll be elected prom king.”

“Then you’re clairvoyant. Or a time traveler.”

“Yeah. The second thing. But currently I’m caught in an impenetrable time warp that won’t break til graduation.”

Greta cast a bored glance at her chalk sketch. “I have a recurring dream in which I’m a wounded medic in the Crimean War.” Her attention returned to Isaac. “A still sitter with plenty of time. You’re the ideal muse, Isaac.”

It startled him, the sound of his own name. So much so that he only half-registered Greta’s ensuing instructions on how to get to her house and when to show up there. She also had wardrobe requirements – “wear that” — and advised him not to consume an excess of fluids before the sitting.

“Tomorrow then?”

Isaac must have answered, because she strolled away without further negotiation, but he had no clue what he said. The same single electrifying chord resounded again and again inside his brain: I, Isaac Jeremy Levinson, just had a conversation with a girl.

Cartoon stars were still twinkling around his head when Josh and company attacked.

“Time to find the Mocha, dipshit. Hope you’re thirsty.”

“Get off of me!”

“You’re getting off on me? Sick, dude.”

“Stop wriggling around and focus on learning your lines.” A wet whisper assaulted his ear. “Got that? Cause you’re gonna repeat that loud and clear for Marisol. Don’t forget to enunciate, either, cause this will be on YouTube.”

Isaac’s molecules were transmogrifying into pudding. He flopped like a fish in Aidan Fields’ grip; they dragged him like bait across the parking lot.

“Oh, yeah, and we forgot… If you don’t deliver, Marisol will have the pleasure of seeing us kick your Klingon ass.”

“That’ll also go up on YouTube.”

Isaac closed his eyes, willed his mind to teleport him to another universe, and thanked all that was holy he’d visited the bathroom ten minutes earlier. Soon they stopped, and after an elapsed pause in which Isaac was not pummeled into the asphalt, he opened one eye. They were standing in an empty parking space.

“Where is she?”

“Hey, Alyson,” Josh called out to a girl climbing into an adjacent Lexus. “Marisol leave already?”

“She wasn’t in school today. Sick. Mono or something.” She cocked her head. “Didn’t you give it to her?”

The arms holding Isaac slackened. “Tomorrow, bitch.” They threw him at the pavement and moved on.

***

“Was into abstract depictions of death and evisceration for awhile. Then summer in England last year was all country lanes and nature hikes… Explains the kingfishers, wrens and sheep series. Please don’t touch that.”

Isaac pulled his hand away from an Uzbeki water pipe.

“Sorry.”

“Who’s your favorite artist?”

“Sorry?”

“You like that word a lot. Your favorite artist.”

“Er… ” A series of uninspiring class field trips and PBS specials flashed through Isaac’s memory. Zilch. “I don’t know. I’m more into reading, really.” Stupid Cousin Phil. “Sorry.”

They were in Greta’s studio. Isaac didn’t know any other teenager who had her own studio. The Greenbaums lived in a sprawling old house with an aura of dilapidated grandeur. Dusty globes, heavy drapes, a grandfather clock. Greta got the attic. It was packed with canvases.

“Who’s your favorite artist?” he asked. Maybe it was time to check out some of the other sections of the book store.

Greta did not appear to be listening. She’d managed to find a canvas-free stretch of floor and had lain flat on her back, nose pointed toward a skylight.

“Greta… You’re on the floor.”

“Verticality can be trying on one’s scope. Not to mention spine. I ought to paint these cobwebs.”

She turned her face to Isaac.

“Van Gogh. But then, who doesn’t have a weakness for melancholic religious types who slice off their ears and send them to whores?”

Isaac started to wish he was back in his own room, reading.

Greta sat up, legs still stretched out in front of her. “Have you ever cut off a body part and sent it to a woman as a romantic gesture?” she asked gravely.

Isaac blinked. “No, Greta.”

“You don’t seem the type.” She started to pull absently at her toes. “I notice people at school aren’t very nice to you. Do you find this character-building?”

“Very much so.”

“In the fourth grade, Luke Sullivan pulled my braid and spilled Kool-Aid on my watercolor. I grabbed his throat and told him that if he ever grew any brains, I’d eat them.”

“Oh.”

“I haven’t had much trouble with bullies since. Of course, it’s possible Luke just had a crush on me. I’ve never had a boyfriend since, either.”

“Since?”

“In third grade, Tommy Walsh and I exchanged vows. So did me and Lisa Farrell.”

Isaac’s eyebrows peaked.

“You know what they say about the third grade,” she shrugged.

Greta got up lazily and began rummaging in a massive wardrobe.

“Am I talking too much?” she asked, muffled by the closet. “My parents say I lack adequate social intuition.”

“My parents say I read too much.”

“Parents are sensitive creatures.” When she emerged from the wardrobe, she was holding a sketchpad and a fistful of pencils. “Sit on that stool,” she instructed.

Isaac obeyed. The second he sat on the stool, he felt his body triple in weight and his sweat go radioactive. What possessed him to agree to this?

“Today will be just sketches,” she explained as she arranged herself several feet away from Isaac. “Maybe the next day too. I take sketching very seriously.” She eyed him sharply. “You’re sitting wrong.”

“How should I sit?”

“Naturally. Be at ease. You’re like a petrified cucumber.”

Isaac shifted painfully in his stool. Greta was not impressed.

“Come on, Isaac,” she goaded impatiently.

“You know I don’t have professional modeling experience, right?”

Greta didn’t answer. She was staring at him with acute intent, chewing her lip. Isaac longed for invisibility to kick in. Maybe Greta would fare better at portraying it than Drew.

Suddenly Greta stalked across her studio to the corner where Isaac had deposited his backpack. Without a word, she unzipped it and began rifling through its contents.

“Hey!” But by the time he leapt from the stool to protect his property, Greta had claimed her prize. She thrust his copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into his hands. Her next action put a thorough stop to Isaac’s protests, and his all-over verbal capacity: She grabbed his wrist and led him to the stool. He sat down dumbly, and continued to gape as Greta arranged him there herself. She opened the book to the page he’d saved and positioned it in his lap, adjusting his hand. His other hand she placed on his thigh. She took hold of his calf and bent his leg such that one foot rested on the top rail of the stool, and the other leg dangled freely over the side. She circled around him and tilted his head down. She stood back and evaluated. After a moment, she stepped forward, and nudged his glasses an inch down his nose.

“There,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

* * *

“No shit. Greenbaum?”

Drew took a hearty swig of Dr. Pepper and gaped. Isaac nodded.

“Man. She’s on mad drugs, you know.”

“What?”

“All the art kids are. They drop acid and go all Jackson Pollack.”

It was Tuna Surprise day at school. Isaac had made it to lunch period without assault from Josh and Aidan’s assorted goons. Marisol was still absent, but Isaac intended to practice invisibility to the full extent of his powers.

“You have no proof that she does acid. You have no proof she does… Pilates, or her math homework, or anything.”

“Well, sorry, I assumed the rumors were corroborated by her behavior.”

“Shut up.”

Isaac slurped his soda, frowning. He was (mostly) sure Greta wasn’t on LSD, but he couldn’t deny a certain quality of… Well. Trippiness. He wasn’t entirely convinced she wasn’t the type to X-acto her own ear.

“Still,” Drew conceded, “she’s got that rebel-art-chick thing going, not bad. You could do all kinds of worse.”

“We’re not, like, dating.”

Drew granted him a half-pitying, half-reproachful look. “Oh, please. ‘Come up to my private attic and let me spend hours and hours painting pictures of you?’ Have you seen Titanic?”

“No.”

“Really? Good god. You know, the effects were totally ahead of their – ” With a shake of his head and grunt of frustration, Drew returned to point. “Look, she is transparently hitting on you. I mean, it’s Greta, she’s not exactly known for subtlety… Remember in ninth grade when she
let that wild turkey loose in school to protest Thanksgiving?”

“Well…” Isaac was about to suggest that it was a fluke brought on by the acid, but at that moment he caught sight of Greta making her way across the cafeteria. She had a way of stepping on the tile as if it were rolling beneath her. Isaac was debating whether to call out or duck when her eyes met his.

“Isaac, dude – she’s coming over here.”

Greta set her tray down on their table. “May I sit here?”

Drew stared at the tray, then at Isaac.

“Yeah, sure,” said Isaac.

Greta slid in next to Drew. “I almost always eat lunch by myself.”

Isaac provided a noncommittal “Yeah.”

With unnecessary flamboyance, Drew shook his wrist in front of him and peered at his watch.

“Oh, shit… You know, just remembered I have a Chemistry quiz next period. Should really study for that. Left the book in my locker.”

He disengaged from the table and winked at Isaac. “Nice seeing you, Greta.”

And then he skidded out of the cafeteria without a glance behind him.

“He’s an odd boy. Who is that?”

Isaac didn’t think Greta had much of a right to go throwing about the “o” word. But he didn’t say so. “That’s Drew. He’s my best friend. He draws, too.”

“All the cool kids do, don’t they. What’s his medium?”

“He draws cartoons, mostly. Com — you know, like graphic novels. We’re actually, um, collaborating on a project. A high school superhero.”

Greta smiled. “Let me guess. He’s a time-traveler.”

“Well… He does contend with certain irregularities in the time-space continuum, but his main power is invisibility.”

Greta crinkled her nose, but did not laugh. “Invisibility? Not much of a power.”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds more like a debilitating condition. Not to be seen? Who’d want that?”

Isaac couldn’t even speak.

“If no one can see you… What on earth is the point?”

Drew must have been right about the acid. He was ready with a retort about entering secret labs, when —

“Yikes, didn’t mean to interrupt the Klingon mating ritual.”

Josh Elwood had stopped at their table to cock a grin of pure malevolence.

“Just use protection, Frodo.” He winked, then eyed Greta. “Wow. Well, that’s definitely outside the species, so I guess she’s just your type.”

He slouched across the caf, back to his adoring posse. Isaac turned to throw a so-there in Greta’s invisibility-doubting face, but when he looked up he found her on her feet, glowering at Josh’s table.

“That is completely intolerable.”

“Greta, no, let it go – ”

But she was off. She stalked straight to his table and tapped Josh on the shoulder. A quiet so unnerving you could taste it settled over their section of the lunchroom. She bent creepily close and spoke in a calm but noxious tone.

“Please listen closely. I realize that you are so pathetically thick-skulled you barely qualify as sentient, and a corroded sewage pipe has more interesting thoughts than you, but speak to me that way again and I will laugh when I watch you suffer. You are a nonentity. No woman will ever find you gratifying and no man will ever take you seriously. I’d wish syphilis to ravage your loins, but then, there’s not much to ravage, is there.”

An awkward laugh broke from Josh’s face.

“God, Greta, if it’s my loins you’re after… Sorry, I’m morally against breeding with mutant.”

Greta pulled back. And then she slapped Josh in the face — with a force that was not merely symbolic. Its echoes seemed to reverberate in slow-motion. There were about eight seconds of total cafeteria silence: unprecedented. Something leapt inside Isaac, perhaps a fear that Josh would take a swing at her – but she marched out of the lunchroom with purpose and without fear, and Josh turned back to his lemmings, muttering about “the psycho bitch.”

Isaac relaxed. A split-second later, he contracted with tension again. No good could come of this. The rules were out of wack. Greta was supposed to be immune from violence within the Warp – half a lunch with him and she was smack in the path of the douche-ray. She can handle herself.

True enough. Could he?

For the rest of the day, Isaac shuffled through the halls, downcast and hidden in a series of inconspicuous slumps. He was nearly marked absent in Spanish class. A sense of foreboding followed him, thicker than the crowd at Worldcon. His classmates flirted by lockers and competed for teachers’ praise and texted each other rapidly from opposite sides of the courtyard. Athletes and artists and stoners and punks and representatives of the student council. All adamant and bitter about things — academic success, sports scores, resume building, rebellion, sex… Isaac couldn’t see where he fit into any of it; even in his wildest fantasies, he was a hero nobody could see.

And Greta – Greta fit into the scheme about as well as Drew fit into his Green Lantern costume.

He was thinking about the enigma of Greta when a pair of steel tentacles coiled around his arms and dragged him into a vacant chemistry lab. Further observation revealed that the tentacles were in fact Josh Elwood’s arms.

“Oh, shit. Look’s like Levinson’s psycho-freak slut isn’t here. Whatever will he do?”

Spit followed. Pain followed. Isaac’s gut absorbed most of Josh’s retribution, but his face won a couple shiny bruises, and one of the stems on his glasses snapped.

After Josh loped off, Isaac lay on the floor of the chem lab for ten impossibly long minutes. It wasn’t a bad view. Fluorescent light installations. Air vents. The abyss of unending despair. Tile.

Later that day, Isaac found himself bicycling around Greta Greenbaum’s block for the third time. You’re an idiot, squeaked his tires from the concrete. Don’t I know it. Here was a quandary. He didn’t have Greta’s number, and ditching their appointment without notice struck him as particularly uncordial… However. Not like he could play model with a fucked-up face. Or be seen, again, ever.

So he circled the block over and over, like one of Asimov’s Eternals circling the centuries.

“Isaac! What are you doing?”

He almost tottered off his bike. Greta was leaning out the attic window. He skidded to a stop and stared up at her.

“Hi, Greta,” he called.

“Get up here.”

“Um, see, that’s the thing – well I sort of came by just to tell you that today isn’t really a good –”

“You’re late.”

As Isaac plodded up the Greenbaums’ stairs, he wondered if he should try just ordering people around. It seemed to work pretty well for Greta. Then, his brain and his feet entered into a heated dispute – his brain commanded his feet to head the opposite of up, and his feet responded with gross defiance. His brain was then distracted by the task of figuring out how to conceal his face in a way both speedy and believable – this was not a fruitful venture for the brain.

He met Greta at the top of the stairs, and words evaporated. He stared at her feet. Moron, creaked the echoes of the stairs.

“Go to the stool. I feel very artistic right now.”

Then he looked at her directly.

“I can’t, Greta.”

She took inventory of his bruises with a placid gravity.

“This?” Her hand reached out, and the tips of her fingers tested the air around his injuries.
“I can work with this.”

Greta walked to her easel and picked up her tools. Isaac didn’t budge. He was transfixed by her business-like movements, by the echo of her hand as it cracked against Josh’s cheek, by the throbbing in his left eyelid and the contortions of his intestines. Keep listening to Greta and you’ll both get hurt, a voice told him. She waved him to the stool. Isaac went.

“Don’t forget the book. Get in place.”

He sat.

“So I guess you and Drew came to blows over artistic differences.”

Isaac smiled. “His aesthetics are way too commercial.”

“True art always requires sacrifice.”

“Plus, his jokes suck.”

He watched Greta’s eyebrows clench in concentration, watched her hands work invisible magic on the other side of the easel. Thought, none of this can really be happening, this is either the Matrix or I finally let Drew get me stoned.

“Greta…”

“Yes?” Her tone carried a constrained indulgence that indicated she was busy.

“You’re not going to – I mean, don’t paint the bruises, okay?”

Greta took her eyes off the canvas and set down her instruments. “Look at the book, Isaac.”

“I will, I just want to —”

“No, I mean, look at the book. Now.”

“Were you born this bossy?”

“What’s it say? What’s it about?”

“This? It’s… ” Isaac turned the volume over in his hand, staring at the cover. “It’s about this guy…”

“A hero, right?”

It was about an android bounty hunter in a post-apocalyptic future, but Isaac felt it best to humor Greta. “Sure, yeah.”

“Fighting against the odds, braving dangers and enemies, standing up for truth, struggling against adversity… Young, untested heroes. Quests and trials. Those are the kinds of stories you like, aren’t they?”

“Well, yeah… And alien battles, and stuff.”

Greta came to the stool and took the book from Isaac’s fingers.

“You’re the hero, Isaac,” she whispered, staring into his eyes in that horrifying unblinking way she had. “Don’t you get it?” She set the book on his lap, brushed her thumb over the bruise on his eyelid. “This is your testing.”

This is not actually happening. “Greta, if you’re on drugs, can I take them too?”

She didn’t take her eyes away. She didn’t take her thumb away. Isaac listened for his brain, but got no reception. So he grabbed Greta’s face, and kissed her mouth instead.

***

[END PART I]

Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow! (Or, you know. Read real CP stories. Do productive things. Your call.)

In Certain Company...

2011-04-06T21:30:00.000+03:00

...The experience I'm about to relate would've been much kinkier. You know, like if I was in the company of these guys.

(This post isn't fiction. I seem to have abandoned the "All-Fiction Blog" concept. But then, I'd also kind of abandoned the "blog" concept, so this is an okay compromise, right?)

Recently some friends and I visited a Fancy University. We were just sightseeing, as this campus is famous for its beautiful architecture and we happened to be in the area. But we were kind of annoyed when we realized there was a fee just to enter the grounds.

First, we argued with the guard. When that didn't help, we wandered around looking for a back entrance or easily-scalable fence. (We've been known to scale things in the past.) Finding none, and realizing we'd probably never be in this town again, we decided to go ahead and pay for the cheapest ticket available. This allowed us to tour the lawn and park. Once we made it past the guard, we proceeded to sneak into all the off-limits areas our limited time afforded us.

I mean, seriously. A beautiful old-timey university campus, and flagrant rule-breaking? Can you imagine the scenarios that would've struck the kinky-minded?

I, however, was just among the mischief-minded. Some things we did:

-Crept up a staircase when the guard wasn't looking and explored a place called "The Marble Hall." Seriously. It was just this hall where everything was made of marble. Did YOUR college have that shit?

-Nearly interrupted a choir concert due to our "go through any unlocked door" policy. Fortunately, one of my friends realized that these doors opened onto the stage before we had the chance to fantastically embarrass ourselves.

-Ran to the basement and checked out the cafeteria and some classrooms (sadly, the caf was closed for the day)

-Heard a class in progress, so crouched beneath the window and tried to listen in on the lecture

-Stole a job ad from the bulletin board because we thought it sounded suspiciously like a front for human trafficking*

-Availed ourselves of the student lavatory**

-Struck up a conversation with some faculty members when we heard the guard behind us and wanted to look like we fit in

Good times, man. And in hindsight, full of kinky potential. What would you do, if you were a scrupulous university guard or venerable professor, and you caught a trio of shameless foreigners gallivanting out of bounds?

*This is actually a serious problem in our area. And the ad was ten kinds of shady -- it asked for "young, beautiful women" who wanted "to travel" and the name and email address looked fake as hell. If it was legit, we're terrible vandals and should be cruelly punished.
**Notable only cause we'd have had to pay to use the public one

Relurking

2011-04-02T11:51:00.005+03:00

"Delurking," if you say it enough times, may be one of the weirder neologisms to arise from the online Scene. Of course, even in my years as a lurker, I didn't consider myself a lurker -- rather, simply a Discreet Member of the Reading Public. 'Lurker' has such a lecherous sound, doesn't it? And of course there is nothing remotely lecherous about me or my internet habits.

Then came the delurking, a process of fits-and-starts that could be said to in some ways mirror the process of coming out as queer/bi/fluid/kinsey 3.84932. But eventually I was fully delurked, with a Fetlife Profile and my own kinky blog and even real-life friends and playdates. Snaaap! An active, somewhat-less-discreet community member at last.

Then came the relurking.

Turns out, you're not 'once-delurked-always-delurked': the process continues. I'm a lurker. I have been for awhile. The blog's fallen into neglect, I let my bloggerversary sail by without a word, I go for periods without checking the internet scene at all (usually due to... a lack of internet) and when I do read the blogs, I don't leave comments. I've reached a state of lurker-complacency, and I can't say how long it will last.

As Abel pointed out not so long ago, I'm not the only blogger who's gone quiet of late: Of course, many of those authors haven't slunk back to their lechery shadows, but have joined the Twittering throng. Twitter! This is all your wicked doing.

Well, not really. My hiatus has more to do with my personal habits and needs than Twitter's ascendancy, I'm sure, but it does make a great scapegoat. The solution to my silence isn't joining up, though -- Twitter doesn't work for me, despite its one-liney charms. I don't have portable internet and I don't want to become attached to portable internet. I think what I really want, if I reflect honestly enough, is a community of in-the-flesh kinky friends and a lifestyle of semi-regular action. Knowing that this is geographically impossible (pending eventual transatlantic relocation), I've opted to pull back rather than aggravate the itch by throwing myself into the virtual world. (I've also opted to mix many a metaphor.)

I recognize that Twitter works well for long-distance friends who want to stay in touch, but I hope it doesn't completely obliterate blogs. Whatever the platform's advantages, it could never do what this blog did for me. I began the S Word because I wanted to start making kinky friends, and to do this I first had to show people who I was. Maybe there are Twitter virtuosos who know how to do this via the Tweet, but I don't think it's quite the same.

Anway. How did this turn into a diatribe against Twitter? What I meant to say was... Well, I'm not sure. That I'm a Lurker? That was perhaps evident from my very shoddy blogging record. I will tell you that the story I promised in the previous post is being written and will appear here at some point... Though I must ask, how long does a spanking story have to be before it's classified as a spanking novella? Follow-up question: How much spanking does said novella have to contain for it to be considered a spanking novella, and not just a very long story with some plot-related CP action? You've been warned.

So. Do you ever find yourself relurking? Is lurkhood an unceasing cycle, much like the tides? Will you be willing to read a long-ass story about a sci-fi geek who may or may not spank or be spanked? Cause, that'll probably be my next post.
...Eventually.

Be The Change You Wish To See In The S-Word

2011-02-03T22:44:00.000+02:00

...My post titles are in no way self-aggrandizing.

Last year, I asked readers to contribute a series of "wild cards" to a piece of fiction I would then write. The wild cards could be anything: plot points, words, topics, characters, sentences. Some commenters kindly indulged me, and the result was this story... Definitely the most popular work of fiction this blog has ever produced.

So, with precedent as my guide, I ask my readers to throw in their suggestions. From which wild cards will I cobble together my next attempt at CP-themed fiction? Anything goes, except direct contradictions (that is, if the commenter above you wrote, "only canes," don't you go writing "only birches," please).

Whaddya got?

A Story Set At A College, Because Remember College?

2011-01-26T22:51:00.002+02:00

I sure do. Good times. In this blog entry, I present to you a story that is longer than 250 words. Comments, titles welcome.

***

"I'll leave it up to you."

My eyes searched for Michael's, but his were intimately engaged with the ground.

So I caught Eli's instead. Blue as lapis, sharp as laser. Waiting.

I took a deep breath and spoke.

***

My love for Eli blossomed early fall quarter.

It wasn't an at-first-sight thing. Otherwise I'd have been hopelessly smitten since sophomore year, when we both lived in Merriman Hall and etiquette dictated that we sometimes nod cordially to one another between classes. It was an at-first-conversation. The Merriman Madrigals, our residence hall theater collective, had just kicked off its season with a campus-wide call for student vision. Eli attended a couple early project meetings, led by myself and my co-chair, Michael. An unexpected interloper in the incestuous realm of undergraduate theater, Eli applied for one of three directorial slots -- and floored us at his interview. Even his handshake had vision.

In our interview, he managed to touch on Aristotle and Stoppard and the situation in Kashmir and particle physics. We liked the same novels. We liked the same music. Forget sight: It was his voice (so deep!) and his hands (so large, long-fingered!) and his mind (so smart, so smart, I didn't know boys came in that brand of smart) and also, Everything. I was startled, allured, humbled by Eli's perfection.

I wasn't the type to want frequently. I wasn't the type to want less than perfection. And when I wanted, I wanted hard.

But professionalism and friendliness reigned. It was all rehearsal schedules and theater reservations and lighting-booth keys between Eli and me. Work-related e-mails. No emoticons. Meanwhile, fellow Merry-Mads and I attempted background checks on the enigmatic Eli. Gay? Girlfriend? Mormon? It wasn't easy. He wasn't downright sharey, like Lily the Makeup Maven, nor did he frequent the cast parties and indulge in drink as was the wont of Stagecrew Dave. He was transgressively absent from Facebook.

So I did the natural thing and auditioned for his play. Not a breach of any rules — program chairs have dreams and talents too, after all. Michael joined me at the tryouts. It was clear from the pitch that Eli's show -- an adaptation of a short story set at a prestigious prep school -- would steal the season.

When I got cast, my confidence in Eli's integrity let me indulge in proper glee. Eli was no suck-up. I thrilled inwardly at his recognition of my artistic gifts. And I coordinated a series of rehearsal costumes designed to ensure recognition of my legs.

Oh, the mystic pleasures of those first weeks. How I'd say things like, "Hey, Eli." Then things like, "Should I move a bit more downstage?" And eventually "Fatimeh's definitley serves the best falafel in town," before a joyous graduation to: "Rousseau's insufferably dogmatic, and why is the Romantic period so underrated, given the bloodshed the Enlightenment has to answer for?"

Eli felt similarly about the Enlightenment.

Ah, to crush. To make eye contact, to take blocking notes, to count on balled-up fingers the number of times he laughed at my jokes. (Twelve.)

As a director, Eli proved energetic and organized, and even though Michael and I were there to observe his work in real time, he submitted all his progress reports promptly.

Because he was perfect. It was all perfect.

It didn't last.

The cast had developed a custom (drama kids are quick to develop customs) of grabbing drinks post-practice. Eli always declined, not out of any perceivable arrogance or austerity, but simply an obvious obligation to attend to matters of great weight; rigorous study, novel-writing, monitoring the situation in Kashmir. Or so we all assumed.

Of late, the drinks ritual had taken on an aura of urgency, because the Merry-Mads were heavily involved in a long-running alcohol-assisted Shakespeare Off. This entailed two thespians confronting each other in single combat with an excerpt from The Folios, and all of us taking a shot whenever one of them bungled the words, missed a line or said "ere." This evening a highly anticipated re-match was scheduled between Perennial Ingenue Sara and Minstrel Mark. Much was at stake, including honor, and the bar tab.

They went with A Midsummer Night's Dream, and by "Ere I will yield my virgin patent up," we'd all forgotten that Eli expected us to be off-book at tomorrow's rehearsal.

" 'And the youth... mistakenly...' "

"Mistook by me, coxcomb! Bottoms up everybody!"

"Huzzah!" We cheered.

"Fine..." Mark grumbled, before slurring doggedly on. " 'Mistook by me... Pleading for a luvrufee...' "

"Lover's fee, milksop!"

"That's what I said! 'Shall we their fond pageant see?' "

"Lord what fools these mortals be!" We cried in joyous unison. And though the line was correct, we all knocked back another shot.

That was the last thing most of us would remember about that night, though Sara, who lived two doors down, assured me I held my vomit until I reached my dorm. The next day I joined the majority in abstaining from class. I spent several hours moaning beneath a damp washcloth.

But we dragged ourselves to rehearsal, even poor Mark. Class had professors and online student forums and other such venerable institutions to sustain it; the Merry-Mads was our holy creation and required nourishment. We did not miss rehearsals.

Alas, our dedication knew its limits. Eli strode in, jaunty and hale, eager to see his vision ascend one plane higher, freed from the weight of scripts. My heart slid toward my socks.

Our headaches thanked Eli for skipping warm-up exercises, but diving straight into disaster was hardly a relief. Scene One was Mark and Michael's, and they made their way bravely through the first page and a half. That's when the edifice collapsed. The next scene was ensemble, and with thespianic perversity we stammered and improvised rather than confess our crime, willing to sacrifice a mortifying fifteen minutes to the monomania that the show must go on.

"Stop."

When did four little letters ever convey so much scorn? One syllable, one second. A calm condemnation, rife with contempt.

We stopped.

"Well?"

His face was impassable, a fourth wall. We took one mass slump toward the edge of the stage, where we drooped in shared dejection.

"Rough night?"

A rueful bobbing of heads commenced, followed by the winces of those too hungover yet to safely bob. Eli, Eli my love! Never shall I betray you again, forsooth! I stared at my shoes.

"What happened?"

No one said anything. Though Eli was a verified nerd in the noblest sense of the word (see above: particle physics; Aristotle), we reached a telepathic consensus that he was not the breed of dork that appreciated drunken Shakespeare showdowns of a Wednesday night.

"I'm really disappointed." Did I imagine it -- his eyes sweeping over me with a flicker of skeptical dismay, of expectations shattered? Ay me, indeed. Love would not flower in soil parched for want of professional dignity. Or something. My head hurt too much for metaphors. My heart hurt too much to bear the sincerity of Eli's discouragement. He walked away, without a word, and no one called after him.

After awhile someone muttered, "That was fucked up of us." There was a grunt of general assent. How could we have broken the covenant so? Theater was our refuge, our passion. We respected the rules we established for ourselves. We respected one another. And Eli... I shuddered, physically repulsed by my own incompetence.

Many glum moments dissolved in the nauseous ether that had suffused the stage. But then Eli emerged, looking envigorated. He hopped onstage with us.

"We're really sorry, Eli," Mark managed gamely. He received a cordial nod. That opened the tides. Apologies, murmured and mewled, echoed around the theater.

"We suck, man."

"That was totally unprofessional... It won't happen again."

"This show is important to us, and you've done such a brilliant job."

"We're sorry."

"We are the worst," moaned Drama Diva Debby. "We should be beaten."

"I was thinking along those lines, yes." I watched Eli withdraw his hands from his pockets. Then I watched him withdraw a long, thin cane from the props table. Where the hell did that come from? I remembered our play was set in a conservative prep school. Eli was very detail-oriented. Then I began to wonder about Kenny the props guy.

"Right now, everyone in this room feels pretty awful." This was not contested. "Wallowing in the situation won't help. For the sake of the play, we need to push past this." Yes, yes, we all felt very head-noddingly Yes about this suggestion. "What I propose is -- well, call it an acting exercise."

I both heard and registered Eli's words, but my attentions were almost unilaterally fixed on the cane as it flexed in his fingers.

"What sort of exercise?" piped Debby.

"By failing to learn your lines on schedule, all of you have delayed the progress of our show. And since you won't be able to memorize your parts in the time allotted for rehearsal today, we'll have to improvise... Some sort of short-cut to make up for lost time. To move the play forward."

We nodded solemnly, we were following, we were so totally on board.

"No lines? Fine. You'll get in character the hard way."

The nods stopped.

"Those of you who want to remain a part of this production are invited to accept six strokes of this cane." We followed his fist as it held up the cane. "They will not be stage strokes, understand. Call it character immersion, call it an exercise in organizational discipline, call it show business -- but that's the price for staying on."

His hands were now behind his back, but they still gripped the cane; his pose bespoke a militaristic confidence.

No one said anything. But no one objected. Members of other campus societies would balk at such a demand, I figured, but these were theater kids. They accepted dramatic humiliation as their due.

"On our hands?" Sara squeaked.

"Not the target I had in mind."

A protracted silence registered the cast's consent.

"Very well."

Eli instructed the cast to line up outside the greenroom and take turns. Michael and I exchanged a glance. Eli was our director, but in the grander college theater hierarchy, we outranked him. Technically, he reported to us. Would we be subject to the same punishment? Would it be appropriate for us to concede? Last night's carousings notwithstanding, I considered myself a good leader. But nothing in my professional archives provided me with a clear solution, there were no precedents. Michael looked equally perplexed. When the other actors had all filed past him, Eli approached the two of us.

That's when he explained that, given our role as producers and program chairs, we were not obliged to go through with this. We could back out now and not be cut. That's when he said, "I'll leave it up to you."

***

I took a deep breath, and spoke.

"I'm with the cast."

Eli turned to Michael, whose neck had snapped up. "And you?" A stiff nod. It wouldn't be good for morale -- to say nothing of cast cohesion -- for us to avoid the fate of our fellow players. Michael wouldn't suffer being thought a wimp.

Probably, if I was not in love with Eli, I would not have suffered it either. As it was, questions of ethics and credibility barely entered my head. I had my own reasons for agreeing to bend for Eli's cane.

Lord, what fools we mortals be.

Michael and I found ourselves at the end of the sorry queue, and we could hear the muffled cracks as they emerged from the greenroom. No one returned to the stage -- later I'd learn that Eli had concluded each caning with a handshake and orders to go home and study lines.

We didn't say anything. Michael seemed sheepish and vaguely anxious, but I was abject. These were to be the circumstances of my first rendezvous alone in a room with Eli? What happened to the crisp forest sunrises of my imagination... To say nothing of makeout sessions in the lighting booth, followed by long earnest discussions of Tom Stoppard? My dreams were about to be thrashed away.

It'd be one thing if my self-sacrificing solidarity with the cast was born of pure martyrly courage, but I was just as guilty as the rest. I was supposed to be better than this. Worthy. Now he'd learn that not only was I imperfect, I was... What, exactly? Irresponsible? Lazy? A frivolous partier, a thickwit that needs to be whacked a few times before she'll take anything seriously?

Pain I did not fear. I welcomed pain, I longed to show Eli a humble but brave dignity in the face of well-earned chastisement. And... and... Was I really about to enter a room with Eli and no one else, and close the door, and bend over? I squirmed, my hangover sopped up by more pressing ailments.

And then Michael and I were the last ones left. The door opened, my co-chair loped to his fate. I heard the cracking -- oh, Kenny the props guy, did you ever think it would come to this? -- but no eeps or ows from Michael. I allowed myself a small moment of pride for the leadership of Merry-Mads.

But as soon as Michael emerged (he slunk toward the exit without a glance at me), all pride vanished; I was a protozoal lump.

Eli stood in the doorway. I tilted my head up to meet his eyes. A moment came into the world, endured its brief life and died.

"So," he said.

In response I oozed off the floor and walked resolutely to the greenroom. The cane was resting against the back of Eli's neck, his wrists dangled casually over the ends. I wondered how I was supposed to arrange myself.

"If you'd just stand with your hands on the seat of that chair, please," he requested politely.

Normal me would have punctured the tension with some comment, a so is this how they did it in boarding school back in the day, anything to suggest I was cheerfully curious and not at all fazed by this sort of procedure. But normal me had been shattered in the crossfire of love and theater.

I did as told.

I heard Eli take his place behind me. I was thankful for his silence, his business-like detachment. There was nothing for me to decide or perform or attempt... My responsibilities amounted to standing still, and that I could yet accomplish.

And then I felt the light pressure of the cane against my ass -- Eli was measuring. Was he practiced at this? It amazed me how the scrim of respect we hung between ourselves and Eli permitted him to hold onto mysteries that we'd have long since pried out, with drama-kid avarice, from anyone else. At the touch of the cane my breathing got heavier -- my will and my trachea were not aligned, it seemed. But I didn't move.

Then the first crack cut a line across my skin -- sharp, and yet, I sensed, restrained. I realized that Eli was still measuring. He was not so righteous that he would not show mercy to those in need of it.

I did not require mercy.

The next was harder, and the third harder still, and I bit the side of my mouth and closed my eyes and suppressed my heaves with an unprecedented show of physical sovereignty. I ran headfirst toward the pain, the pain from Eli. Remembered his deep voice saying I respect your position...

The last three were vicious, and I understood them as a mark of esteem. This, at least, I was worthy of. The strokes burned worse than last night's whiskey, and I wondered if it was possible for one's body to morph into a single throb.

Still and calm as I'd remained throughout the cane's attentions, as soon as Eli finished, my ragged breaths broke free from the prison of decorum. I stayed in position longer than I should have, panting over the chair, unable to join the world of words and people. Eventually I straightened myself and stared straight ahead at the greenroom wall.

I felt Eli take a step closer to me. This did not help the breathing problem. My skin was cold, my insides hot.

"Very well taken," he said.

I could have cried.

"Thanks."

The breathing didn't seem such a bad thing anymore, it was certainly a more pleasant alternative than exploding.

Eli came closer.

I could feel my brain dissolving atom by atom, my pulse drowning out my thoughts. What do I do what do I do what do I do? The welts singed my skin and sent currents of fire up and down my bones and bloodstream; in each sensation I felt the heat of Eli. Surely I would hyperventilate. Surely I would have an asthma attack.

Say something, for the love of deus ex machina... Just not, You caned me, there. Be calm, flirty, seductive; say something!

"So the new particle collider hasn't swallowed the world in a black hole yet," I choked. Dear. God. I slammed my eyes closed. Exploding wouldn't be so bad.

But when my will executed no detonation, I opened one eye and peered tentatively over my shoulder. Eli was... smiling. A faint and wavering suggestion of a smile, yet a smile all the same. I turned around.

Fuck it.

"No border violence in Kashmir, either." It came out as more of a gulp than a sentence.

Eli didn't answer.

"Tom Stoppard has a new play."

Eli didn't move.

"Aristotle... Well, Aristotle is still very much dead."

The lapis eyes shone brighter than footlights. I'd done my utmost to ruin the intensity, the terrifying time-suspended too-close intimacy the cane had forged, but Eli was still looking straight at me. And that's when I realized that whatever mysterious specimen this boy embodied, he was not so unforgiving of my breed of dork, after all.

I said: "Hey, Eli."

Eli came even closer. He was breathing harder, too. His perfect fingers were still wrapped lazily around the crook-handle of the cane; without taking his eyes off mine Eli raised the cane behind his neck again, then lifted it over his head and over mine; he lowered it down and pushed it against my back, pushing me against him.

"Then I guess there's hope," he said. "The collision of particles will unlock a new era."

I wasn't the type to kiss boys frequently. And when I kissed, I kissed hard.

First, A Christmas Flash

2011-01-06T17:51:00.000+02:00

Christmas shouldn't have ghosts. That's what I thought when I read Dickens, when the Muppets reenacted Dickens, and all during this fluttery freak's panorama of yuletide memories.

"Aw, you're an adorable choirboy... Right, the Nativity Play incident. Gosh. And now you're all... Oops, can't talk about you now, that's another ghost..."

"Since I'm not depriving any crippled children of figgy pudding, can I go to bed?"

"Hey Johnny Humbug, I'm trying to help. Obvs. Now be contemplative as we traverse your Christory."

?

"Christmas history! Ugh,clearly you don't Twitter."

Christmas shouldn't have ghosts.

"Why don't you swig some nog and float off?"

"Does anything work with you?"

Back again: Christmas Eve, age ten. Me teaching my little sister about logic.

"Sarah, not only can't there be a Santa, but Mom and Dad have been perpetuating fraud all our lives."

We watched six-year-old Sarah sob. We watched my father walk in, and his mood turn from merry; the ghost observed with interest as he took me over his knee and chastened my logic with a spanking harder than a coal lump.

"Ah. There is something."

"Hang on, Casper -- "

Before I could bolt she'd grabbed a belt from my closet and doubled it -- and me -- over.

"Sorry, dear. If you give your next two visitors this much trouble, they'll think I did some shoddy holiday haunting."

"'Next two'?!"

"Lemme text Christmas Future... There." She cracked the belt down on the seat of my pajama bottoms. "Merry Christmas, Humbug."

[the end]

* * *

Happy New Year, friends and freaks. I considered just posting something kinda kinky and then back away whistling innocently, just to spare us all the meta-blogging about why I haven't been blogging. But I suppose it will suffice to say that The S Word, in addition to being relegated to the lowest shelf of my priorities, was also the victim of extreme Technological Failure in recent months. So the caustic internet wit known as Graham went into hibernation.

And now I've woken up to see it's a whole new year. 2010... not an impressive year for me, posting-wise. (With the notable exception of May.) Made even less impressive when you consider that constitutes half my blogging career. Remember when I wanted to spare us from the meta-blogging?

Anyway, the stat counter reliably informs me that about six or so people out there do check this blog, so hello to you, kind soul. I make no predictions or resolutions about 2011. Will I come out swinging, a la Post-A-Day-May? Will I retreat into my thicket of solitude again? Will I stick to fiction? Will I spontaneously combust? Time alone shall tell.

I do know this: I am and always will be kinky. And that means no amount of hibernation can keep me out of this zany world forever. Here's to a 2011 rich in kinky adventure for us all.

Fliction

2010-09-24T21:41:00.000+03:00

It's flash, it's fiction, it's Fliction. A tale in 250 words or less. Below you'll find today's effort!

* * *

"There's no way that's enough to feed five thousand people."

"Don't interrupt, young man."

"That wouldn't feed my big brother."

"Hence, why we refer to them as 'miracles' — "

"And this 'five thousand' business." Danny ignored Sister Agatha. The rest of us exchanged tense glances. "How'd they all hear him, without microphones?"

"Are you quite finished?"

"It's illogical. Two lousy fish... It's just math, Sister."

Danny was new to Sunday School. His mother enrolled him after undergoing what she called 'conversion' and my mom called 'rehab.' He was used to being the sharpest kid in class — math medal, straight A's. Our regular schoolteacher loved when students showed 'independent thinking.'

I'd been in catechism longer.

"The Lord's Gopsel resides on a somewhat higher level than arithmetic," Sister answered drily.

"I don't get it!" Danny shook his head. "Explain it — you're the teacher!"

"Christ is the teacher."

Sister Agatha did not abide flippant boys. It wasn't so much that she found fault with Danny's logic as she believed all children fundamentally incapable of logic. We watched, faces painted pious, as she extracted Danny from his chair. She arranged him across her lap in a position that plainly affronted him. Then, with martyrly patience, she prevailed upon him in the traditional manner of ruler-bearing catechists.

As Danny struggled, I skipped ahead in our text. The raising of Lazarus. I couldn't help wondering which, in the ensuing battle — of Sister's ruler, Danny's logic, Danny's backside and Holy Writ — would come out strongest.

Explanations, Announcements, Advertisements

2010-09-17T00:40:00.000+03:00

Please read "advertisements" in the snooty British way.

Hello. I see it's been two months since I've posted here. I'm sure my seventeen remaining readers will be happy to hear that I'm alive and such. On with explaining.

I am what's called an "I," and other kindred souls accustomed to thinking of people in 4-letter coded Meyers-Briggs terms will know that means 'introverted.' That is, my energy comes from within. Or whatever. Sometimes when I've been in groups of people for too long my little I will go on a rampage and I'll just sort of disappear into Introvertland for awhile, leading people to wonder why I haven't spoken in the past six hours, or called them in the past six weeks. (Or, cough, months...)

It's nothing personal. It's I, not you.

Turns out this phenomenon is even possible in the mystical realms of the internet. After Post-A-Day May and Kinky Eurotrip III, I was spent. Done. In need of large doses of privacy and hiding and zero exhibitionism. That sounds kind of jerky and I don't mean it to — the experiences were fun and rewarding, but just left me drained. I've written before about how this blog is the result of constant tensions between my reservations and my exhibitionist impulses. Well, this was a victory lap for team None-of-Your-Business.

Oh, and there's the fact I've been busy -- a wonderful, fulfilling busy that's prevented me from prioritizing this. Combine that with my kinky self's hibernation in the I cave, and you get two months' radio silence.

This leads me to my announcement. Given the current state of my kinky energies, I've decided to change things up at The S Word. That's right, I'm gettin all radical-like.

The plan: All fiction, all the time. I don't know how long it will last or how much fiction it will ultimately produce, but for now, that's the format. Fiction blog! Kinky, dirty fiction. Because I don't want the blog to die, and I just haven't got the heart these days to write about the kinky life I'm not leading. (Well, you know. It's not like my sex drive has perished or anything. I still maintain a rigorous masturbation regimen and all. Er.) Besides, exercising the fiction muscles is always good.

So I've got some mini-announcements to go along with that. First being that I don't actually have lots of fiction lined up for this brillz new scheme and updates will still be infrequent for awhile. The ol' Time and Energy are severely rationed at the moment. So it goes.

Next: When I say 'fiction,' I envision (as I so often do) a wide spectrum. Flash fiction, short stories, possible serials... You never know. Requests and suggestions most welcome.

Content will vary. First of all, my CP fantasies are kind of all over the place, and secondly, when I go to write fiction I don't stick to my own fantasies. Expect any and all gender combos. Expect randomness. Expect silly. And don't expect that the things I'm writing about are the same things that get me off — fiction is subject to a whole different set of rules than those my orgasm heeds.

Um. I feel like I've veered wildly from the path of clarity and relevance. So. What else? Oh yes. I love comments and feedback, but please... if it's to complain that the gender combination I've written about isn't what turns you on, please just... you know... shut the hell up. Seriously.

Seriously.

Okay, if you've managed to linger with this long and strange and non-hot and at times surprisingly hostile post...

You've arrived at the advertisement! I think you should all very seriously consider ordering this book:

Why? Well, A, it's all about naked people. Naked people! As God intended. Hurray. B, you may recognize the editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel, as the mastermind behind such collections as "Bottoms Up" and "Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica." And C, the astute among you might even be able to recognize a certain blog author's story among the many fine selections in this anthology. Granted, a certain blog author might have used a different fake name (an actual girl's name), but, I mean, said blog author's proclivities are pretty telling.

So, go buy it. Happy reading, happy guessing.

Summer Vacay, I declare you officially closed.

Summer Vacation

2010-07-06T19:49:00.003+03:00

I hereby issue a formal declaration of Summer Break here at The S Word. So, if there aren't any new posts until the fall (back-to-school theme, what?!), I'm ensured amnesty.

Yes, I have become thoroughly drunk with power. GROVEL BEFORE MY OMNIPOTENCE.

Ahem.

*Here Endeth Formal Declaration*

Happy Summer!

Alternative Couchsurfing

2010-06-27T18:20:00.007+03:00

The philosophy behind Couchsurfing is that travel is an opportunity for cross-cultural exchange with engaging people in exciting places. Plus, it's cheap. Instead of paying for a hotel, couchsurfers find hosts who'll offer up a free bed, couch or sleeping-bag space, and also provide their guests with a local's invaluable perspective. It's customary for surfers and hosts to swap stories, see the sights or grab a meal or drink together. It's actually a great way to see the world, if you find the right people — beats a creepy hostel, at any rate.

It occurred to me that my kinky eurotripping has been, essentially, Alternative Couchsurfing. See new lands, new cities, meet new friends... occasional S&M... On the whole, a very similar concept.

In order to ensure the safety and comfort of travelers and their hosts, couchsurfers write reviews of the people they've met, assuring others that they're respectable and/or cool and/or a good person to visit or invite into your home. So, in support of the official Alternative Couchsurfing movement, I composed some reviews of my own.

***

Emma Jane

If you stay with Emma Jane, you can expect the highest degree of hospitality. She'll likely supply you with a myriad of delights, including but not limited to: direct airport transportation services, hummus, an insider's tour of Dublin, Mexican food (and margaritas!), a spare cell phone, delicious Thai take-out, a visit to the friendly fetish club and 31 strokes of the cane. (Actually, that last one comes requisite with the lodgings.) She's a true Irish gem, if you can get past the pure evil part.

Master Retep and Bandree

If your sleeping quarters are secured but you're looking for a few hours of local company and conversation, I highly recommend dinner with the esteemed Master Retep and his beautiful wife, Bandree. We shared a meal at an amazing Lebanese restaurant that will haunt me during a long potato-flavored winter. It immediately became clear that this pair is friendly, charming and thoroughly depraved. Kindred souls! Except, look out for that Master Retep, you never know when he might tie you up, blindfold you and/or start whacking you with things.

Caroline and Frank

To any traveler exploring western Ireland, I can definitely recommend a stay with Caroline and Frank. They're sweet, laidback, funny and did I mention ridiculously sweet? I dined on Chinese food*, basked under the sun on the glorious Irish seaside, enjoyed their lovely company and was thoroughly charmed by the world's friendliest dog. Although, if you run in to them at, say, an S&M bar, you're liable to be spanked, caned and hairbrushed before they let you in the car...

Miss Marwood and Mr Shaftebotham

At first it might seem strange that visiting this kinky British couple's house involves dressing up as a schoolgirl, assuming a fake name and then pretending you are that schoolgirl, but eventually the weirdness wears off and it's just another day at Lowewood Academy. I mean, this is the only authentic way to experience England: You'll dine on traditional English fish and chips, eat a traditional English breakfast, sleep on a bed that looks like some giant version of a bed from a traditional English doll house, and receive your very own traditional English caning. What more could a cross-cultural explorer ask for? Oh, they're also extremely warm, considerate and kind... Get out your uniform and go!

Pandora Blake

If you're traveling in the south of England, you might be lucky enough to visit Pandora Blake, who lives in the Most Historically Adorable Place in the World. It's every American's fairytale version of England, complete with cobblestones, country cottages, green fields, sheep and hand-made Tibetan dumplings... Right. Basically, visiting Pandora means great kinky company on a backdrop of idyllic countryside, along with delicious indulgences of every kind. Now, if an Unfortunate Medical Situation intervenes, you just might be spared your obligatory thrashing, but I wouldn't count on that happening every time...

Abel and Haron

They beat you with sticks. They feel no remorse. You have been warned.

***

Go forth, adventurers. See the world as it was meant to be seen! (And to all my lovely Alternative Couchsurfing friends and hosts, you know you're always welcome in my small corner of the former USSR!)

*You'll notice a bit of a food theme...

Outrageous

2010-06-19T20:29:00.000+03:00

I have a new definition for this word, and no, it is not 'when somebody makes a huge deal about posting every day for a month and then abandons the internet entirely as soon as that month closes.'

Graham's New Definition of 'Outrageous':

When one turns around after innocently getting ready for the day to find Emma Jane behind oneself, grinning and holding a cane, and promising to cane one 31 times, even though that is like, totally exactly the opposite of the whole blogging-every-day agreement one made in the first place.

I should submit that to my kinky dictionary.

Yeah, so here's an update after going MIA, presented to you in handy list form:

1. Right when June started, my life became busy and crazy in a way that permitted no internet, and even less kinky internet. But look at that long May archive you have to entertain you.

2. I'm in Ireland, as sometimes happens. Actually, it's never happened, which makes this all the more cool. And Dublin is rockin and the weather is amazing. And secret kinky people (and/or leprechauns) dwell here, or so I'm led to believe.

3. Emma Jane did actually do that villainous thing of which I spoke in my definition. Can you believe it? And then she just chattered away delightedly about how pretty and parallel her strokes were and how much canes hurt and how grand it is to cane someone for doing exactly what you asked of them. I would think of ways to exact revenge, but she's been providing me with way too much delicious international cuisine (the kind that's not to be found on my side o' the iron curtain) so I'll maybe let it slide.

4. Met Master Retep and his wife, who are just terribly nice, and who I'm looking forward to seeing again tonight. I have a very high opinion of the Irish kinky community!

5. Going to Nimhneach tonight. I'm guessing people will feel real sorry for me for all the outrages I had to endure this morning and will mostly just buy me Guinness and dance jigs with me, none of that violent beating nonsense. We'll see.

There you go. One whole post for the month of June. Take that, June!

Done.

2010-05-31T23:59:00.005+03:00

Lay on the cane, Emma Jane. Cause I ain't got nothin else for ya.

***

Thanks to you lovely readers (lurkers, commenters and eggers-on) who stuck with me through Post-A-Day May. To show you my gratitude, I'm now going to disappear for much of the summer. When I return, though, I shall bring tales...

Goldilocks Revisited

2010-05-30T23:48:00.001+03:00

This penultimate piece in the Post-A-Day May marathon once more owes its inspiration to correspondent Melanie. She writes:

It always bothered me that the bears are upset about their house being in disarray, and are then magically ok with it when they see how cute Goldilocks is. I mean, you could argue that they weren't okay with it since she runs away, but they're *bears.* I'm pretty sure they could catch her if they so desired.

Very well. Now, allow me to ruin the innocence of someone who was just trying to Google a simple fairy tale...

***

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

When she approached the house on the hill, Goldilocks hoped it was made of sugar and cake. But a preliminary nibble of the porch step proved most disappointing. "That Hansel was just telling tales again," she muttered.

Perhaps, though, there was a kind lady inside who liked to give candy to pretty little girls. Goldilocks perked up and knocked.

No answer. With a flagrant disregard for the Napoleonic Code, Goldilocks turned the knob and pushed. The door gave.

"Hello?" she called out sweetly. "Kind lady? Good witch of the north? Tooth fairy?"

Again, no answer. Goldilocks felt compelled to pout. But the sudden smell of fresh porridge wafting from a nearby room restored her equilibrium. Her spirits rose and she followed the promising aroma, which led her to a cozy kitchen.

Three bowls of unfinished porridge sat on the table. With curious disregard for normal human behavior, Goldilocks grabbed a spoon and dug into the biggest bowl. "Ouch ouch ouch," she cried, spitting out most of her mouthful. "Too hot too hot too hot!" She danced around, sticking out her tongue and wringing her hands til she was able to speak not in threes.

With a strange indifference to precedent, Goldilocks reached into the middle bowl and brought the spoon to her healed tongue. But this time, it was freezing. She spit it out — most landed back in the bowl, some on the walls.

Goldilocks would not be daunted. With determination she took a great gulp of porridge from the tiniest bowl, and she was filled with unspeakable joy when the temperature suited her perfectly. "Yay!" she declared before devouring the entire bowl with a highly questionable disregard for the eighth commandment, and normalness.

After her meal, Goldilocks felt very sleepy. After a series of experiments she found a chair that was just right, but decided after a decent sit that a nap would best be accommodated by a bed. She hiked up the stairs and happened upon two bedrooms.

The master bedroom, most strangely, had two beds. Being innocent, Goldilocks was not threatened by this display of marital eccentricity. She flounced down on the larger bed and nearly cracked her spine. "Too hard! Ick!" She flounced onto the other and almost suffocated. "Too soft!" she cried, though the complaint was muffled by encroaching blanketry.

She crept into the other bedroom, where a child-sized bed practically invited her to curl up in it. Another yay, and Goldilocks was carried off to dreamland.

***

"WTF, who ate all my fucking porridge?"

"I told you we should have waited til after breakfast to observe the solar eclipse."

"Oh no someone did NOT spit up in my porridge!"

Baby Bear, no longer a baby but a growing youth with a hearty appetite, was not impressed. Papa Bear shook his head in somber resignation. Mama Bear could hardly contain her disgust.

"Who left the door unlocked?" she demanded to know.

"Dad," said Baby Bear, at the same moment his father said, "B.B."

"Did something eclipse your brains? I should throw this porridge at you!"

Angry and confused, the family moved into the living room, where Papa Bear was first to bellow, "Someone's been sitting in my chair!"

"Uh, how can you tell?" Baby Bear was even more confused.

Mama tested hers out and gasped with fury. "And in my chair, too!"

"Seriously, how can you tell?" Baby Bear remained skeptical until he plopped into his own, whereupon the nauseating sense of chair-violation overwhelmed him.

"Son of a bitch!"

The bears knew not what to make of it. They investigated the china cabinets and silver drawer, but no valuables had been pilfered.

"Dude, I bet it's that crazy lady with all the cats who lives in the junkyard," posited Baby. "Just looking for a hot meal."

"There's no cat hair on the furniture," Papa reminded him.

Perplexed, upset and anxious, the trio moved cautiously upstairs to see if Mama Bear's jewelry had been taken. But when they got to the master bedroom, they noticed something far more heinous than stolen jewels.

"Someone's been sleeping in our beds!" Papa Bear was livid, Mama Bear gagged with revulsion at the sight of the rumpled duvet.

"Yeah, uh, why do you guys have separate beds again?"

"When you're older, junior," Mama snapped.

Their rage near to the breaking point, they proceeded to Baby Bear's room, wondering what new horror awaited them.

And there, curled up under Baby Bear's blankets, slept a pretty golden-haired little girl.

"Bitchplease!"

Baby Bear's outraged cry roused the little girl from her nap. When she woke, and found three upright fully-clothed bears glaring down at her, Goldilocks shrieked with fright.

"Stop that racket!" Mama Bear commanded.

"You are in my bed. My bed! Who does that?!"

Poor little Goldilocks could only stammer and shake.

"What's your name, girl."

"G-Goldilocks," she managed, seeming curiously unfazed by the bears' ability to talk.

"No way," Baby bear interjected.

She nodded. "Yes, it is."

"Like, that was the name you got when you were a baby?"

Another nod.

"How could you be named that before you had hair?"

A mystery.

"So you're the one who's been ruining our porridge and sitting in our chairs and using our bedding as your personal playground?"

"Please don't eat me!" Goldilocks begged.

"Eat you? What are we, polar bears?"

"Well, she did eat all our breakfast," grumbled Baby.

"I'm sorry," she pleaded. "It was just, everything smelled so good, and then I was so sleepy, I didn't mean any harm!"

"Weak."

"Why would you come into a house without asking?"

"Didn't anyone teach you manners?"

"Or the law?"

"And will you get out of my bed already?"

Goldilocks scrambled out of Baby Bear's bed. In terror, she tried desperately to flee, but Papa Bear caught her and held her firmly.

"Listen, blondicues or whatever your name is, I want to see to it that no other family goes through what we experienced today," Mama announced.

Baby Bear shuddered.

"It looks like we'll need to teach you a memorable lesson." Keeping a tight grip on Goldilocks, Papa Bear led the family down to the living room.

"Baby Bear, fetch Papa Bear's belt."

"Aw, man, why didn't you tell me that when we were upstairs?"

"You want a taste of it yourself?"

Baby Bear did as he was told.

Goldilocks was confused, because she was wearing a dress and didn't require a belt, and neither did Mama Bear, who also had on a dress, and both Papa and Baby seemed to be doing fine in the pants-holding-up department. Puzzling indeed.

Baby Bear returned with the belt, held it out to his father and gave Goldilocks a satisfied smirk.

Papa Bear took his place in the too-hard chair and pulled Goldilocks across his lap.

"Don't eeeeat me!" the wretched child wailed.

"I won't," Papa Bear promised, and doubled over his belt to deliver a sound whipping to the little trespasser.

Goldilocks' wails quickly turned nonverbal. She had read fairytales about the cruelty of bears, but the nightmarish reality was only now becoming clear. Mama Bear looked on with approval, occasionally interrupting to remind Goldilocks that regurgitating strangers' breakfasts was Not Acceptable. After what seemed like an eternity of hearty lashing, Baby Bear spoke up.

"Yo, think you might be going a little too hard?"

"She deserves it," Papa stated.

"No, he's right, I ought to have a go," said Mama Bear. Papa dealt a few more searing strokes and relented. Mama marched to the kitchen and came back wielding a wooden spoon. She sank into the too-soft chair and turned Goldilocks over her knee.

Goldilocks buried her tear-stained face into the welcoming cushions as the business end of the spoon pelted her backside again and again. She had thoroughly forgotten her fear of the bears' claws and fangs; there was nothing more terrifying under the partially-eclipsed sun than that piece of kitchenware.

"Have you heard of 'knocking', little girl? Trespassing? Acting normal and not like you got dropped on your little blonde head one too many times?" Mama Bear whacked away, clearly still appalled.

"I think you're going too soft on her," Papa Bear remarked.

"Like hell," Mama returned, without a break in the spanking.

"Yeah, I think you might be," said Baby Bear. "I probably ought to have a turn, you know. Seeing as it was MY porridge she consumed."

Baby Bear still hadn't quite recovered from the porridge incident.

The sobbing child was shifted to the just-right chair, where the youngest bear's lap was waiting to receive her. Baby Dear didn't bother with implements. He spanked the sorry intruder with his paw, and quite a firm spanking it was.

You might say it was just right.

***

...Here I thought I might write some sort of epilogue, but as I'm racing against the clock here I'll leave that task to the commenters.

New Things

2010-05-29T22:30:00.001+03:00

Despite my grand total of two (2) Kinky Eurotrips, my extensive spanking blog archives and newly updated Fetlife profile, it's important to remember that I'm still a kinky novice.

In the wide world of BDSM, there's a gazillion things I haven't done, and a gazillion more I hope never to do. But in the narrower realm of CP and Other Assorted Things I Find Intriguing, there are still things I haven't sampled, even a little bit.

Consider this an inventory — not an invitation!

Three B's

The birch, the belt and bondage. I recently wrote about bondage, and the responses to that sufficiently piqued my curiosity. Belts sound like nothing but good wholesome fun. As for the birch — well, yes, spring is here and I admit I'm dying to try it out.

Mythical Reptilian Implements

What exactly makes a cane 'dragon'? Does it have scales, breathe fire, etc.? And no, "the stripes it leaves are *like* fire so that's why it's dragon" doesn't count. If you're gonna give me that figurative bullshit, I'm going to refer to dragon slippers and dragon tawses and dragon chili peppers.

Seriously. What the hell is a dragon cane?

Corner Time

Actually, I might've done something like this when I was a Lowewood schoolgirl, but I don't really remember. Anyway, I haven't done any thorough corner time, let's say. Though it makes regular appearances in my fantasy repertoire.

Mouth Soaping

Well, there's a reason I haven't done this, and that would be that cleaning supplies in my mouth = are you kidding me? But there seems to be lots of mouth-soaping / spanking scene crossover. Disturbing, but I guess that's what happens when you step over to the dark side.

Historically Evil Leather

You know, single tails, cat o' nine tails(es), other various tailed whips... The kind used to beat Historical People after they'd been tied to Historical Things.

Switches n' Crops

I don't know why they got to be together in a category, but here they are. I've never been whipped with a switch or a riding crop. True story.

Eh, obviously there's a lot more in the Stuff-I've-Never-Done file, but let's stop there for now. And you can all speculate as to which (if any) of these things I can tick off when I get back from Kinky Eurotrip III...

Ye Olde Fantasies

2010-05-28T23:30:00.002+03:00

It's always pleasant for me when I can steal other people's ideas rather than come up with my own. So when Haron published her podcast about childhood spanking fantasies and Not So Innocent Indy continued the conversation on her blog, I knew I'd been handed post material on a silver platter.

I love books. I love children's books. I don't give my children's books away to existing children that they might enjoy a more enriched childhood, I hoard them all to myself — well, allegedly I'm preserving them for my "future offspring" but since I don't want kids I guess I'll need a new excuse. Anyway. The topic is close to my heart. While my first memory of being aroused by a spanking is from watching a cartoon, I, too, was one of those furtive readers-of-spanking-scenes in children's lit. Laura Ingalls, Caddie Woodland, Roald Dahl, Anne of Green Gables, the various naughty children of the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series and of course the Blytonverse.

I think a good game to play with a group of literary-type spankos would be to call out random titles from the classics or from children's stories and race to see who can identify the spanking reference fastest.

Perhaps my favorite story was Enid Blyton's "The Magic Walking Stick," about an enchanted cane that whipped its little owner whenever he told unkind tales about people. The cane could talk, too, and during the whipping would shriek out 'tattle tale!' or something.

The Anne of Green Gables franchise is fraught with reference to CP. But my favorite spanking moment from the work of L.M. Montgomery is actually found in her "Emily" trilogy. "Emily Climbs" features an amazing chapter called "The Woman Who Spanked the King." It's a spanking story masquerading as a regular old story. Glorious.

And then there are the joys of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. If you're unfamiliar with the series, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is a kindly, eccentric lady famous for her creative remedies for curing the faults of naughty children. While she herself typically suggests more interesting punishments than spanking, in a series all about bratty children readers aren't starved for spankings.

Haron talked about not really knowing what a spanking was at an early age. And Indy said she couldn't remember a time when she didn't know, as it was used at home and school. My fantasies took shape in a world where I had always known what a spanking was, but had no experience of what a real over-the-knee old-fashioned spanking actually felt like.

My ignorance didn't stop me from writing about it. I wrote all kinds of stories. But unlike Haron, who innocently thought her porn was regular ol' fiction, I always had a strong sense of secrecy and shame when it came to this part of me. (What's that about? I blame my parents. Just kidding, parents! Dear god. My parents had better not be reading this.)

Veering away from that disturbing path... I was secretive about my stories. But still prolific. I wrote about all kinds of children in all kinds of situations. I usually wrote from the bottom's point of view, but not always. At first I always wrote wholly fictional persons, but at some point I got in the habit of giving the protagonists my own name, for the added charge. The characters didn't always resemble me, but they got spanked, which was the main thing.

Like Indy, I realized this was all some strange sexual issue when I was about twelve. It actually came as a relief, cause before I had no idea what was going on. Spankings were bad! Violence was bad! Hitting children is bad! So why did I crave it? Now I was closer to an answer.

Anyway. My desire for spanking is older, stronger and clearer than anything else about my sexuality. And while cravings and tastes evolve, some of the fantasies that work for me now were ones I entertained as a kid. You know the weird thing? In my years of knowing I had a fetish but still feeling ashamed of it, one of my reasons for my embarrassment was that my particular fetish seemed "childish."

Go figure.

Flash

2010-05-27T22:00:00.006+03:00

Here's another post that was helped along by S-Word friend Melanie. Knowing that I sometimes compose fiction based on random reader-submitted wild cards, she suggested I write a story that met the following conditions: was M/m, and included bobbing for apples, a musical instrument and the color orange.

I decided to use a flash-fiction model (remember Flash Fiction Friday?), so here is the piece, containing all of the above, in 250 words:

***

Let me be clear: It was Pierce's idea to infest the bobbing-for-apples basin with minnows, Pierce who staged the ambush while Gunther played his tuba and Pierce who sniggered loudest at the ensuing carnage; my only desire was to impress Lydia Maycomb, and at that time my only means of attracting notice was through increasingly reckless feats of insanity. If I had a father, perhaps he could have told me that girls rarely swoon for minnows in their mouths — but I had only my grandfather, who happened to be the schoolmaster, and thus whose time for advice was considerably taxed.

So, yes, I followed Pierce to the pond and suggested Gunther play a Halloween tune, but I took no delight in the melee, uttered no laugh at the minnow-vomit oozing on the black-and-orange crepe paper. My only thought (my constant thought) was for the swing of Lydia's auburn braid. My acts were born of love.

And this, if I lived in a world of choice and sanity and loves returned, is what I would be writing on the blackboard rather than I am a dunce who must be punished; I would have told this to Johnny and Sara and the poor tadpoles who reversed their digestive systems; to my grandfather, who caught me at the nape and heaved me across his lap to administer not advice but a generous dose of his paddle; to Pierce, who craftily escaped out the schoolroom door; and to dear Lydia, who went with him.

Labelpallooza: Fetlife

2010-05-26T23:25:00.001+03:00

Remember that whole Labelpallooza thing I started? Well, I set my cursor scrollin' again, and the results were:

Fetlife.

I've posted exactly one (1) post under that label thusfar, telling people that I'd actually gone and done something with my dormant Fetlife profile.

And I haven't done much with said profile since then, so perhaps the cursor is trying to tell me something.

My dear friends, if you follow the link below, you'll be directed to my recently updated Fetlife profile. Do feel free to message me, friend me, leave random messages on my wall, what have you. Here I am, kinky world. Kickin' ass and takin' names.

Scratch that: Having my ass beaten, making up a bunch of fake names.

The Flaw of the Overnight Train

2010-05-25T23:00:00.001+03:00

I enjoy traveling on overnight trains, as it allows me to feel I've accomplished something in my sleep. But despite the convenience, there are some fatal flaws in the whole scheme. Because, consider...

1) You have room to stretch out...

2) You have blankets and a pillow...

3) You have ample time for daydreaming...

4) Your daydreams may lead to more specific kinds of of fantasies...

5)... But you do NOT have the privacy to properly address them!

And the overnight train bathrooms really will not serve.

If one of my post labels was "classiness," surely this would go there.

***Small Announcement: So I've been away from the online world for a few days, and it may take me awhile to catch up on comments while I'm trying to keep up with the May posting schedule. Bear with me, and thanks as always for sharing your thoughts!

40 Licks

2010-05-24T22:00:00.002+03:00

Why has no one yet concocted some sort of CP extravaganza to accompany the album "40 Licks"?

A) It's called "40 Licks."

B) Have you noticed how kinky those songs are? I'm calling you out, Mick Jagger.

"Under My Thumb" - Self-explanatory, I'm assuming.

"Brown Sugar" - Hear him whip the women just around midnight. A song about whipping slavegirls. Um, yeah.

"Jumpin' Jack Flash" - I was schooled with a strap right across my back. Of course you were.

"Don't Stop" - When you bit my lip and drew first blood it warmed my cold, cold heart... And you wrote your name across my back, boy your nails were sharp... But don't stop! Clearly the stones have a pain-inflicted-across-their-backs fetish.

"You Can't Always Get What You Want" - But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. Barely coded Topspeak, this.

C) Not on this album, but they also have a song called "When the Whip Comes Down." Just sayin.

D) It's the Stones! So, you know. Your extravaganza would have really good music. Which is essential for an extravaganza.

I'm not sure what shape this extravaganza would take... A playlist-themed party in which each song involved a different kind of corporal punishment session? You know, like the kinky equivalent of a power hour? Or maybe some of these tracks should just be required listening at all kinky gatherings, parties, orgies, bacchanals, weddings, etc.

...I have no graceful way with which to conclude this. Go forth and extravaganisize. I mean, it's the least you can do while I'm out in the middle of Lenin-knows-where gettin' no satisfaction.

The Kinky Scale of Hot

2010-05-23T23:00:00.000+03:00

AKA, The Perceived Vanilla Standard of Beauty Spectrum.

Commenter Melanie, thinking not what The S Word could do for her but what she could do for The S Word, recently sent me a list of topic suggestions to help me through Post-a-Day May. Among them was a conversation we had via e-mail about the Kinky Scale of Hot.

Readers who've been here awhile might remember a post I wrote before my first trip to England about my anxieties re: my physical appearance, and how it would be received by new kinky friends and play partners.

In the comments, a lot of people mentioned that the scene is a generally more open and accepting place, one that appreciates diverse physical types and isn't crushingly judgmental or hung up on looks. And after I made the trip and met the kinky people and experienced play, I wrote about how confident and sexy I felt in the afterglow. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever felt hotter than I did in my Lowewood uniform. (I finally realize that my body shape is good for something: bring on the short, high-waisted skirts!)

And though I can't track down the exact quote, I remember Caroline Grey saying somewhere that she gained a few points on the "spanking scale of hot."

So does it exist? Is there a Kinky Scale of Hot, and is it more forgiving than the Perceived Vanilla Standard of Beauty Spectrum?

I do think that women — all women, regardless of looks — are at an advantage in our scene. There's just... not enough of us. Genuine kinky ladies are far outnumbered by genuine kinky men, so our rarity certainly works in our favor. (Unless we're all gay and shit. DAMN IT.)

And then there's the clothes we wear, the things we do — The Activity is designed to make us look and feel our very hottest.

Plus, kinky people might just have an eye for different things. In Vanillaland, people generally seem to prefer how I look without glasses (not that my vision correction is determined by what people think, but still, on Nice Occasions it's expected that I forgo the specs.) In kinky circles those same glasses play all kindsa well.

As I said to Mel, "For some reason I got it in my head that I was going to be surrounded by gorgeous models, and tops who only played with gorgeous models, and they would probably be grossed out by me when they learned the shameful truth that I was not a gorgeous model."

Of course, I was way off. And it's not because the people I met in the UK weren't gorgeous. Because they are. But in a human way, not a creepy centerfold way. And best of all, they don't all look the same.

So for me, I do feel hotter when I travel in Kinky Land. But is that because the standards are different, or because it's the place that gets me hot?

Share your thoughts!

Bondage, Anybody?

2010-05-22T23:30:00.000+03:00

Today's post is brought to you by Melanie, who's decided to help me out with Post-a-Day May by supplying me with topics.

She wanted to know my thoughts on bondage — and regardless of whether any of the rest of you are interested, that's what you're going to find out!

So, bondage.

My fantasy brain — the one that's always conspiring for me and character-versions-of-me to get spanked — is kind of bored by the idea of bondage on its own. Okay, so I'm chillin, you tie me up, I do some more chillin... Without a li'l CP I feel like the whole ordeal kind of lacks drama.

But my rational brain understands that bondage is often much more painful, and more dangerous, than spanking play. Dangerous in that you're rendered incredibly vulnerable — if you're not with a trusted partner, you're at a great risk of being unable to protect yourself if your limits are violated. (Hence, why you should not let strangers tie you up. You probably knew that already.) And then you know, there's all those crazy rope schemes and positions that can leave a victim aching for days.

I'm not opposed to bondage, I think it can be pretty hot. But I imagine it'd take a real bondage connoisseur to show me the delights of bondage for bondage's sake. Otherwise I'd need my shackles with a side of CP.

As for how I'd react to being restrained during spanking — well, clearly I don't know yet. Something tells me I wouldn't mind terribly. As much as I am a paranoid control freak, I kinda don't mind making a top do all the work in a scene. I assumed I'd be a lot more control freaky as a bottom, but turns out, I'm not, so much. Provided I'm with someone I trust, I doubt the presence of restraints would cause panic.

Hmm. Now very much want to experiment. But wherever will I find a place crawling with kinksters who know their way around locks and knots... ?

Why 'Q'?

2010-05-21T22:00:00.001+03:00

Nowadays, the LGBT Acronywich* is often accompanied by a final 'Q.' It stands for 'queer,' which is my orientation explanation of choice — though I realize for some readers, its meaning might not be so clear.

So today I'm going to spend a li'l time talkin about queer.

'Queer' is a word with many nuances, but a widely accepted definition would be 'not heterosexual.' Under our big queer umbrella you'll find gays, lesbians, trans folk, bisexuals, pansexuals and other non-hetero-identified people.

And if you went to some crazy liberal urban college like I did, you're used to this idea. But there are some (namely my mom) who have difficulties grasping why there's now all this other shit besides Gay and Straight, and others who still think queer is a homophobic slur.

It's not! All reclaimed and usable now. So is 'dyke.' Still, be careful of context and company. QUEER DYKE QUEER DYKE QUEER DYKE QUEER DYKE.

Um. Moving on...

So, why do we need terms besides gay and straight? Okay, yeah, those greedy bisexual types, but can't we just go with homo-hetero-bi and be done with it? No? That adheres too rigidly to the conception of a fixed gender binary? Does it really matter? Can I please just take my free juice and leave?

No, no you can't. Because of people like me. Queery McQueerdos like me. Because at the ripe age of 22 I have drawn no conclusions about my sexual orientation other than that it is Not Traditionally Heterosexual. I'm attracted to guys, I've liked guys. Check. Must be straight. Oh, wait. I'm also very attracted to women. Some days I seem more gay, sometimes I'm more interested in males, sometimes I'm more kinky, sometimes less, sometimes I'm crazy horny, sometimes indifferent, sometimes I overuse the word 'sometimes.'

The fact remains that whenever I've tried to 'pass' for awhile as Strictly Straight or Pure Lesbo, my attraction for one or another inconvenient gender gets in the way. But "bisexual" is an awkward fit. It's loaded with negative baggage (I guess you could say the same for queer, but meh) and it implies a rigid binary.

Truth is, I'm what you call 'pansexual.' Able to feel attraction for masculine guys and femmy girls, and then so much more in between. Androgynes, butches, feminine guys, people of all identities and expressions.

Which is not to say I'm horny for everything that moves. It works the same as any other sexuality — just as not all straight girls are attracted to all guys, I'm not attracted to every girl or every dude or every androgynous Joe walking down the street.

Plus, everyone has the potential to slide a point or two on the Kinsey scale. And some people feel emotionally drawn to one gender and sexually attracted to another. There are straight dudes who sometimes like suckin' dick — that's the clientele the whole "she-male" sex worker community caters to. Basically, the spectrum is wide.

And I like all of it.

This, my friends, is why 'Q.'

*You know, an acronym that sounds like a sandwich

Club Scene

2010-05-20T23:30:00.001+03:00

In my short life I've attended girl bars, gay bars, dance clubs, Eastern European discos, gay male strip clubs and naked saunas. But I've never been to a fetish club, or any other public BDSM-themed event.

That will change in about one month, when I'll tag along with the Irish Terrors to the June Nimhneach. What better way to honor the land that bore my ancestors than by running about in a roomful of questionably-clad strangers gawking at sadomasochistic acts?

Seriously, I've seen that line on a brochure somewhere.

I'm stoked to go, but as with all cases of Unknown Social Territory, I'm a bit nervous — what's protocol at these sorts of affairs?

Do strangers leap from the shadows asking for play? Do I loiter at the wall nursing my drink and gazing shyly out at the crowd? Do I just let EJ do all the work of socializing and occasionally bend over to be beaten when the spirit moves me? (Doesn't sound half bad, that!)

What do you say, wise ones? Any advice for a first-timer at the friendly fetish club?

Writing Boys

2010-05-19T23:00:00.001+03:00

Scarlett left a comment on the post below (a piece of fiction with two male protagonists) in which she wrote: "I'd never have known that was written by a woman." And I greedily snatched at the opportunity to turn her comment into today's post!

I enjoy writing male characters. I've been doing it since I was a kid without really thinking about it, but gender switchery is something that readers tend to find particularly intriguing.

Why is that? Because despite what people may caution about writing "what you know," all fiction is an exercise in imaginative projection. I don't just write characters of different sexes, I invent people of different ages, times, nationalities, races, backgrounds, worlds. I write about all kinds of things I haven't experienced. I certainly wrote about spanking before I'd ever felt the swift strike of a palm or cane.

Yet it's gender shifts that tend to surprise or impress people; gender we assume to be the most difficult reality to transcend with our imaginations.

Is it because we, as a culture, assume gender to be our most fundamental and meaningful difference? Is it because people don't do it that often? As one of those shatter-the-binary queer feminist types, I don't like to get all gender-essentialist and shit. (Wow. What happened to that sentence?) What I mean to say is, I tend to agree with the quote that there's more differences "within the sexes than between them."

But. But. As a writer, I do want my characters to be convincing. I want my boys to sound like boys. How's that for gender-essentialist and shit?

Some teacher of mine at some point suggested that girls tend to have an easier time writing male characters than guys do writing female ones. I don't have any Actual Evidence as to what truth that carries, and it's possible that only applies to undergrads in writing workshops... But in my own experience of reading male student fiction, a lot of them don't seem to know what to do with a female character if she's not there to Be Had Sex With by the leading male.

If I were to hazard a theory as to why girls have it easier, I'd posit that girls who write are girls who read, and the majority of the world's literature has been composed by men. Thus we're used to the male voice in literature and aren't so daunted when we employ it in our own work. Whereas guys have a tougher time finding female literary models, especially ones that are well thought out, dimensional human beings. (Though there are certainly some amazing examples of female characters created by men.)

That's really the only explanation I have, given that I have no brothers and went to an all-girls high school and typically spend more time with women than men. And most of my close friends are women.

Either that, or the imagination is a stronger muscle than we assume.

What do you think? If you write fiction, do you have trouble crossing the gender barrier? Is it a fun challenge, or not particularly challenging, or not something you give much thought to at all? And if you read fiction, have you picked up on any particular patterns when authors write from opposite-sex perspectives?

As Promised

2010-05-18T23:17:00.002+03:00

A couple weeks ago, when grasping for post material, I asked readers to submit "wild cards" for a piece of spanking fiction I would presumably compose. Here are the results of that experiment.

Karl asked for an example of a "mutual justification" scenario. And then he also wanted a process of repentance. Nothing tricky or paradoxical there!

Melanie suggested mint chocolate chip and Pandora clamored for "schoolboys getting into trouble. " Meanwhile Emma Jane dared me to post every day for a month... But that's another issue entirely.

I give you mutual justification, repentance, mint chocolate chip and schoolboys. Tell me what you think! (Particularly if you have a good idea for a title.)

***

Nowhere was the silence louder than in the chapel. From the back, as close to the altar as he dared go, he watched the boys praying, ties straightened and heads bowed, praying for tests and scores and football games and divorcing parents and sick sisters and redemption and grace and world peace, praying for peace. A shiver like nausea ran through him. He fled for air.

***

"I think it's curtains, Flaherty. I'm strung up. Noosed. Toe-tagged. I am — profoundly — fucked."

Harper wasn't blinking.

"Harper, could you blink, for christ's sake?"

Harper squeezed his eyes closed. "Suffering can be transcended. If not survived, then transcended."

Drama queen.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Maybe use your non-metaphors. Maybe — Jesus, blink. And breathe. And tell me how you fucked yourself this time."

With something like a shudder, Harper pried his lids loose. Looked at me long, eyes wide and sad.

"You're a noble soul, Flaherty. Worth your whole class put together. Certainly, they're all good eggs, deep down, but you, you're solid gold to the marrow."

"Listen up, Harper. I. Will. Kill. You."

Harper was not rank. He wasn't quite a defector — or at least, hadn't yet lost all the protections granted to the anonymous and normal — but he was definitely on notice. Prone to write poetry, indifferent to sports, dream-distracted, probably gay. And nice to just about everybody. In short, not the most convenient of friends. But since our first day of our first year at the academy, when Harper shook the janitor's hand upon entering the building, I'd had him down as worthy. Deeply worthy. For that I could stand a little inconvenience. Besides, he needed an ally like me, someone sharper-eyed and practical, someone who blended in more easily with the ranks.

And who would issue death threats when he wouldn't stop blathering.

"Sorry. Look..."

He held out his open backpack like it was a bowl of Halloween candy.

"Trick or treat?"

"Tell me what you see."

"Biology. Trig. Spanish."

"Do you see a black leather-bound journal?"

"Negative, Harper."

"Curtains."

I met him at eye level. Until now I hadn't been taking this too seriously — a kid like Harper winds up in his share of clusterfucks — but this just turned valid.

"Harper. Did someone steal your diary?"

"Worst case scenario. Or I left it and it hasn't been found. Or I left it and someone's snagged it already."

"For fuck's sake, Harper, if you left it and it hasn't been found, why in the name of Mother fucking Teresa are we still standing here? Where'd you leave it?"

"Chapel. Or — " a valiant swallow " — football field."

"Fuck all."

The academy was boys only, and thus barbaric to an unspeakable degree. Codes were enforced without clemency or appeals, without due process or 8th-amendment recognition. They'd roll up their prep-school sleeves, they'd grunt, they'd smile. They'd skin Harper, boil him, eat him alive and wriggling.

Today. Tomorrow. Every day for the next year and a half. Harper, who was good and honest in a world of idiots and bullies and soul-vacant poseurs and self-important despots. Screw the codes. Damned if I was going to stand by and watch him get smothered in secondary school hell.

"You take chapel. I'll get the field."

We bolted. From the front steps, through the tennis court and past the science lab, I did my best to force out all conjecture as to Harper's confessions: odes to truth and beauty and autumnal blossoms, analyses of my classmates' souls and psyches, an exegesis on the swim captain's thigh muscles... Mentally heightening the volume on the theme from "Jaws" helped.

The field wasn't empty. Crawling with spare jocks who couldn't get dates and lacked the attention span to study, so used their free time to display their macho prowess to anyone who'd watch. Exactly the kinds of guys who'd plaster copies of Harper's journal in the caf and then snap his legs. Who'd duct tape him naked to the flagpole and demand he read aloud with black eyes. Who'd soak the ink with their piss and feed it to him.

I moved quick with my head down. Made my way through the bleachers, thinking of Harper, and the way he gave a mint-chocolate-chip ice cream cone out of nowhere to Gorman's little sister at the fall play ("Just a peace offering for stage-stabbing her brother, is all"), the time he voluntarily wrote our whole dorm's history essays as a Christmas present, the books of poetry he favored over video games. I thought of Harper carrying his journal along with him to classes as if life were so essential it had to be recorded this minute, leg-breaking witnesses be damned.

My thoughts were interrupted by Slenner's broad, be-shorted ass, which had suddenly launched itself into prominence as its owner bent down. Slenner, a right gem. Famous for defecating in the dorm shower, twice. More to get away from the beacon of his rear end than anything else, I watched his hands. They were fishing something from beneath the bleacher.

I hadn't moved so quickly since Anna Rothenberg gave me the green light at third base.

"Hey, dipshit!" That got Slenner's eyes off the journal, though his hands still coveted it.

"What do you want?"

"That's private property."

Slenner stared down at the book. Something callous and stupid glimmered in his eyes. Shit. I wondered if I shouldn't have left the whole matter to his probable illiteracy, rather than sparking his interest.

"What is it, Flaherty, your dear diary?"

Fuck it. I lunged from my bleacher and decked Slenner hard as I could in his stomach. Had just enough time to stash the book in my bag before a hand gripped my collar and swiveled me roughly around.

***

Trapped, trembling, the boy's every nerve whirred with defiance. He stared up at him ferally, with that particular animal quality, unique to adolescents, that Collins found increasingly distasteful. Flaherty. One of Collins' own residents, lived on fourth Hoben. The sort that preferred to be left alone, one who spoke his mind but generally stayed unseen. His attention hadn't fully rotated, his eyes were still fixed on Slenner.

"Slenner," Collins barked, "Go see Coach Wilson."

"Yes sir."

"You" — he granted Flaherty a clipped nod — "come with me."

As he dragged the boy to a fate Collins found tiresome, Flaherty displayed no sign of fear, or even resentment at getting nabbed. His energies were clearly focused on his own conflicts, from which Collins was barred. Which rendered Collins a mere fly buzzing against the windowpane into his secretive, tumultuous world.

He was the kind of boy who'd treat God to a raised middle finger, who'd hide his wounds from Christ himself if he came with a soothing cloth.

Collins shook his head as if to free it from thought, as if he could empty his head of the idea of God or comfort.

***

The sun was still up, but Collins' office was completely shadowed. A crucifix nailed on the wall behind his desk. All his books seemed gilded. Impressive, almost elegant, but even the furniture smelled stale and the atmosphere was one of terminal unhappiness.

"Was there some reason you took a swing at Mr. Slenner, or is that the latest trend in friendly greeting."

I'd learned a long time ago that when teachers think they're clever, it's wise not to take the bait.

"Well?"

"I guess it was a poor choice, sir."

Collins seemed almost bored. Still. His eyes were alert, and stuck on me.

"Why don't you show me the book, Flaherty."

Cold shot through me. My knuckles grasped tighter on the strap of my bookbag. Closed over it like iron. I met the old man's impassive face with a look just as blank, but all my alarm bells clanging.

"Sir?"

"The black book, Flaherty. Leather, I believe, no bigger than this volume of Sartre." He casually lifted a paperback from his desk, then dropped it down. "You wrenched it away from Slenner as your fist was meeting his solar plexus."

Stood rigid. Thought of Anna Rothenberger, thought of "Jaws."

"I don't know what you mean, sir."

"Flaherty. You're no fool, and neither am I. So rather than waste my time, let's dispense with theatrics. In your bag is a book, very much resembling a diary, which you took by force from Charles Slenner."

A pause.

"I'd like to see it now, thank you."

Sweet Mary and the goddamn saints. I locked eyes with the mournful Jesus slack against the wall, thought of Harper, imagined my ten fingers strangling Slenner. Considered Collins. Officially the staff supervisor of my residence hall, but a committed recluse. Bitter and distant, a widower, enigmatic, unpredictable, known for volatile outbursts in European History class, rumored to have taught many a lesson with whiskey dribbling down his chin.

"Sorry sir, that's not going to happen."

"Does that book belong to Slenner, Flaherty?"

"It does not."

"Prove it to me."

I could have. He could've just skimmed, confirmed I hadn't pinched Slenner's own journal, hadn't secreted porn in its leaves.

"I have nothing to show you, sir."

If it was mine I could have made the call. But if I handed it in now I'd be handing over Harper's handwriting, Harper's poems, Harper's secrets. And among all the unknowns that surrounded Professor Collins was the stone-carved undisputed truth that the man feared his Catholic god, and maybe I'd rather have Harper's balls pummeled by Slenner's goons than expose him to reeducation of the papal brand.

"Is the diary yours?"

I swallowed. "Yes." Bastard was making me lie. I hated lies.

"I hate lies, Flaherty."

"A praiseworthy conviction, sir."

"You can watch your tone, boy."

"Due respect, you can watch yours with me, sir. I'm not your serf. I've told you all I have to tell you and if you want to punish me for clocking Slenner, fine, but we've got no other business here."

Collins arched his eyebrows. I got the impression he would have put forth more effort into looking menacing if he weren't so gravely tired.

"Not my serf. I see." Removed his specs, folded them, sighed. Stared at his desk as he spoke. "Much as you boys like to believe that the lives of your teachers revolve around implicating you in petty dramas — that in fact whole planets are aligned around your infinitesimal fates — I can think of little I'd prefer less than being here having this tooth-pulling conversation with you. I was content to finish my walk, come back to my book, have a cup of tea. Would have gone to bed blissfully imagining this whole building was rid of you and your pubescent cohorts. I'm tempted to toss you out right now just because this is a colossal strain on my time."

Collins slipped rather bitterly into his chair.

"Can't do that, though, can I." He sounded genuinely disgruntled. "So let's get to it. Violence you're guilty of, probably deceit, possibly theft."

"Slenner's the thief."

"If you say so."

"I do."

"Show me, idiot."

"Fuck off."

There came a hiss in the air — it was the sound of us both sucking in our breath at the same time. Well, I certainly seemed ready to dig my grave with a peculiar zeal. But I was allowed to dig my own grave. Harper's was off limits.

"Get the damn book out, Flaherty, and put it on my desk."

I took another breath, looked Collins in the eye, and plunged my spade six feet deep in the earth beneath me.

"I'm real impressed by your moral fortitude, professor. Though I do find it hypocritical from a guy who spent last semester slurring out treaty dates with his left hand clutched on Mr. Jack Daniels' throat. But I guess that's what makes you a good Catholic — pathologically obsessed with everyone's private business, except your own."

Collins didn't move.

And then there was a weird, time-suspended silence, in which it seemed that Collins was about to fall asleep, but his eyes stayed open, fixed; breezes seemed to stop even though the window was still ajar; when Collins spoke, his voice was muffled in the thickness of ominous vapors.

"Drop the bag. Come here."

I'd been at the academy long enough to know what here meant.

"Get yourself in place, and do whatever it is you do to keep from screaming."

And I'd been here long enough to know that meant a round dozen; long enough to know this would be the kind of thrashing sanctioned only in the absence of witnesses.

Without a word I got my pants out of the way and settled over the desk, as per procedure. Collins stayed seated. For a moment we were at eye level, and the moment lasted long enough for me to see something in the professor's eyes that I didn't want to look at — some desperate, bottomless pain. It caught me in the gut and before I could recover Collins sprang back into action, out from his chair and bound for the cane.

I kept an eye on my bag, but it was clear he'd forgotten about the book.

***

How happy for the world were it rid forever of that sort of boy, of boys like Flaherty. Buoyed by unearned righteousness, defiance untempered by compassion, a selfish punk who employed malice when it suited him. It seemed the boys learned malice younger every year; with each passing semester, their skill and dexterity with it grew.

The kid knew the protocols. He'd been wise enough not to entertain hope of sparing his dignity — what dignity did a little shit like him have? — trousers, belt and undergarments lay surrendered at his feet. Palms on the desk. Teeth, undoubtedly, gritted.

"Your confidence in your right to rudeness is encouraging. It's heartening to see a person so smug, particularly a teenage boy who attends boarding school. Refreshing."

And Collins drew back, furiously, accurately, hatefully.

The boy bore the first one with patience.

"What you must have lived through in your fifteen years of privileged existence. The things you must have seen."

He laid on the second cut; this one gasp-worthy, this one certain to inspire fear.

"For what but highest learning — "

Now the third one, a louder gasp, a brighter stripe.

"And broadest, bitterest experience — "

The boy kept still as the fourth flayed into his backside.

"And repeated — encounters — with pain..." The next three Collins lashed down fast, unconcerned with policy, perfect with rage.

"... Could grant you the right to be judge and arbiter and sabre-toothed convicter of others? Yes. I stand in awe of you, my courageous, noble boy. How dearly you deserve our esteem."

At number ten he paused, needing to breathe, needing to revive his arm. Flaherty had choked down his sobs but the pain was evident, his suffering manifest not only in his marks but his muscles, his louder gasps, his gut-wrenched and bitter grunts. His palms were balled up into fists. For one second Collins felt tempted to slash at them, to flatten them out with a slice across the knuckles, this ruthless and entitled youth, his cocksure accusations, yes, lord, let him be the one to condemn us in our dark hours, let him be our confessor, this six feet of angst and fried hormones and casual cruelty, let him wad up my wife and faith in his fists like unfinished geometry homework, and he thought of his wife, and of mercilessness, he thought of her, and infinite mercy, he thought of her, and the cane grew heavy in his hands.

***

Somewhere in the rules and regulations of the academy it's written that six is the maximum number of strokes to be delivered in any one case of corporal punishment. We understood that this wasn't always adhered to behind closed doors, but the rule was broken sparingly.

There was nothing sparing in Collins' application of the rod. It was biblical.

Typically, I was indifferent when it came to thrashings. Didn't go out of my way to earn them, but when my turn came I didn't make a fuss; punishment only meant something to me at the moment the stripes were applied. The threat of the cane never caused me fear beforehand, and following a punishment I wasn't stricken with conscience or shame.

This day was not typical. And it wasn't just the abandon with which he beat me (abandon isn't proper anyway, the strokes were on target, just bloodthirsty). I tried to focus my mind on something else, on Slenner, on Harper, on the bigoted crap old Collins and his ilk tried to shove down our throats all day... Anything but that look I'd caught in his eyes.

He berated me and I bothered to listen. He had me wrong and it grated. I felt an unsettling pull to explain myself, to set things right, make amends. Hands became fist, nails dug palms. And the cane sliced into me, splitting me open, yanking unrecognizable sounds from my bowels.

I couldn't say I hadn't earned it.

By the time Collins paused, I'd lost count. Eight? Twenty? It was all one stroke, one line, one frightful track of brimstone. My shoulders seized up, heaved with every stroke; sweat drops hit the wooden surface of the desk; the grossest facial contortions were watched placidly by crucified Christ on the wall.

Eyes like that, like Collins'. Wounded, exhausted, tormented. Eyes that knew death and chaos and sin and ruin.

He wouldn't have read it. I'd gotten him wrong.

"Two more," I heard him say in a quick strange voice.

I gulped, nodded.

"Yes, sir."

I couldn't open my hands, couldn't make any offering.

"Thank you, sir."

***

He delivered the final pair wearily. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not... A kid, entering the tragedy of forfeited innocence, holding his convictions close, angry for reasons Collins must remember he did not know. And forgo judgment, relinquish wrath.

Forgive me, forgive me, and he didn't know to whom he spoke, to her or something higher, if anything had ever been higher, if he had a right to ask for kindnesses from higher places.

With slow awkward movements Flaherty straightened himself and prepared to turn. Collins watched him listlessly gather his things.

"Would you like to see the book, sir."

"What?"

He'd already forgotten. Yes, some diary, some questioned ownership. Let it be guarded if it was worth it.

"No. Never mind that. Go ahead and express yourself there, rather than on Slenner's abdomen."

"Yes sir. Thanks. I'm..."

An utter and perfect gracelessness overwhelmed Flaherty, his eyes struggled to meet Collins', his foot twitched, fingers drummed haphazardly on the strap of his bookbag. Resilience, bravery, maybe even goodness, but humility not yet mastered.

"I'm sorry I... Well, I was out of line and didn't mean it, Professor Collins. I'm sorry."

"Very well."

They shared a glance, a soft communion. The boy left. Collins sank back in his chair, and began to pray for peace.

Ten Turn-Ons

2010-05-17T23:00:00.000+03:00

In no particular order...

1. Swords

2. Canes

3. Androgyny

4. Long-haired hippie girls

5. Long-limbed geeky boys

6. Accents (not just English ones!)

7. Chicks in T-shirts with hot arms and sloppy ponytails

8. Three-piece suits... all the better if the wearer leans 'gainst a wall, sleeves rolled to the elbow and jacket slung over the shoulder

9. A certain laxness in gait, a composed nonchalance, a lazy confidence

10. Arrogance. (I can't help it. Assholes can be so hot!)

So. What's your top ten?

Conflicted

2010-05-16T23:38:00.002+03:00

We've now reached that stage of Post-a-Day May in which I have published more posts this month than the entire rest of the year combined. Er, go me.

Except I'm experiencing several conflicts of interests. I shall now elaborate on this with the help of my old friend, alliteration.

1. Comments - Let's be frank. Posting every day leads to fewer comments. At least on a wee li'l blog like this one, talking about a rather narrow subject to a rather small audience. I think I would get more comments if I didn't post: a) from people who didn't have time to see the piece on the original day and wouldn't want to be 'late' to a discussion, and b) people pointing and laughing and clamoring for retribution cause I missed a day. (Um. No, actually, I'm aware that probably no one cares that much.) Still, the longer a post stays in that first-post spot, the more comments it gets, and deep down I'm kind of a comment slut. I mean, I want to appear to be too cool to care about how many comments I get, but the truth is I'm not too cool for anything.

2. Content - Should I post for posting's sake, cause I set this arbitrary silly goal thing (which now I suddenly feel desperate to attain, cause I'm creepy that way with goals) even if I don't have much to say? Blogging about blogging = kind of shitty blogging. BUT I'M DOING IT. I'M DOING IT RIGHT NOW. And if you can't tell I'm crazy exhausted and just throwing random-ass words out in not-necessarily sentence form. What about my standards of quality? You know. Like back when I only posted if I had something urgent and significant to say, like this. And this.

3. Canes - Didn't we determine that my punishment for missing a day would be a caning? Like, seriously. I haven't messed around with game theory since undergrad, but does someone wanna bang out a cost-benefit analysis for me here? What do I want more, to meet silly meaningless goal, or be caned for failing to meet silly meaningless goal? Provided the cane's not... spiked, or something.

Argh.

Good night.

Labelpallooza: Nerdery

2010-05-15T22:00:00.001+03:00

A new idea for choosing a post topic: Close your eyes and scroll at random along your list of post labels, and then write about whatever topic you stop on.

I admire bloggers who choose pithy categories and stick to them — me, I haphazardly label my posts or else lump everything under 'thoughts' (seriously, one of my labels is 'thoughts'). Thus, unseemly list of topics.

Anyway. Welcome to the first installment of Labelpallooza. The cursor selected 'nerdery,' so I guess I have to deliver.

I could go ahead and nerd out on you all (spanking and latin! spanking and crossword puzzles! spanking and compound modifiers!) but instead I think I'll address the General Question of Nerdiness and Kink:

Is it nerdy to be into spanking, or is it badass?

In Favor of Nerdocity

1. Face it: A lot of spanking enthusiasts are self-identified nerds. Or perhaps this is just a misconception I have based on the blogs I choose to read and the people I choose to hang out with. Still, I think one would have difficulty denying the geek-kink connection.

2. Oftentimes in our kinky world, grown people dress up in elaborate costumes and engage in role-play, sometimes in period garb. Grown-ups dressing up and roleplaying is pretty nerdy.

3. Period garb is nerdy.

4. And perhaps it's worth mentioning that a lot of people who are into spanking have core fantasies set in schools?

5. Many of us also write blogs. We express our interest in our fetish through writing. I think that might be a little nerdy, too.

In Favor of Badassery

1. Not all of our costumes are adorably geeky. Some of them are legit hot. Some people even wear belts instead of skirts.

2. I mean, what is *not* badass about taking a hard caning, or flogging your partner til he screams?

3. Semi-public semi-nudity; promiscuous touching of ass; sexually deviant behavior — let's just say it's not your high school latin convention. (Um, except we did dress in sheets and hold a Slave Auction... oops.)

4. We have secret code names. Like we're CIA.

5. A lot of us write porn. Some of us shoot porn. Porn stars are definitely badass.

Such is the evidence. Verdict?

The Rub

2010-05-14T22:00:00.006+03:00

A Spanking Scene, as it exists in the minds of devoted fetishists, is a collection of a thousand little rituals. Moments we expect, choreograph and charge with erotic meaning. Catching, scolding, sentencing. Fetching an implement, positioning the chair. Turning the miscreant over the knee. Sending the wretch to the corner.

But there's one staple move that I just don't understand...

The Rubbing Thing.

If you share my proclivities, you must know what I'm referring to. That moment when the poor teary-eyed victim shuffles off the spanker's lap and tends to his or her smarting backside— by rubbing it. With great vigor.

Where'd that come from?

Unless the hands in question are velvety soft and lathered with soothing lotion, applying them to one's hinderparts directly after being spanked does not provide comfort. It aggravates the sore region. It grates, it burns, it just... hurts. It's about the last thing I feel compelled to do after taking a thrashing. So how'd this counter-productive little ritual make its way into the liturgy of spanking?

I'm thinking, conspiracy. Possibly by tops who write stories and draw cartoons featuring this bizarre act, in hopes that one day people who have just been spanked will feel subconsciously drawn to rub their bottoms for relief, thus bringing more pain upon themselves.

Well, it won't work, sly tops! Because no one who's just had a hard spanking feels like chafing their palms against their burning ass cheeks.

Fact.

...Now, all of you pervs who actually do like that sort of craziness can go ahead and contradict me in the comments section, thank you.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

2010-05-13T21:40:00.005+03:00

Earlier this week I called for your questions in a desperate attempt to keep up with my post-every-day-in-May goal. Here are the answers you've been probably not waiting for.

***

Karl asked:

Who are your favourite books and writers?

Books, eh. I've heard tell o' thems. Well, if we're talking twentieth/twenty-first century, give me Salman Rushdie, Chaim Potok, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Baldwin, Primo Levi. And if we travel back to The Day, you can't top the Russians. Rock me, Dostoyevsky.

But then of course there's Les Miserables. I do love Les Miserables. (Some little girls like ponies, some little girls like angry French peasants.)

What are your favourite movies and auteurs?

The Wizard of Oz is an old favorite. And anything Kubrick.

What was it like for young Graham, growing up in the wilds of Detroit?

Pleasant, with occasional gunfire.

***

Commenter Madeline inquired:

For you personally, does typing the phrase "PRECEDENT BITCHES" necessitate punching the air repeatedly in an intense fashion?

Not so much an air punch and more like an undefined but nonetheless ghettorific air stab.

If there was a mysterious nuclear thing that exploded — as these things are wont to do — and everyone was completely unharmed except for the delusion that you are in charge of the world, what would you do?

How do you know you're not all just suffering from the delusion that I'm *not* in charge of the world?

Let's see. I guess I'd have to do a lot of topping from the bottom then, wouldn't I? Course, first I would attend to creating peace in the Middle East by holding their chickpeas ransom. No falafel until I see a ceasefire. Meanwhile I will redirect all hummus to Eastern Europe.

***

And Paul wanted to know:

If you were suddenly to change into a Domme, who would you like to spank?

Gandhi.

... Or, maybe Eliane, for reasons that can best be described by the word 'mwahahaha.'

What is your favourite spanking implement?

I probably shouldn't be allowed to answer that question, given my limited experience, but... let's go with canes.

Is Caroline Grey any relation to you?

I mean, obviously! We're cousins. And sisters. And twins.*

***

All right, thanks for the questions! I'll try not to resort to such desperate measures for the rest of the month. (Blogging every day = Not easy.)

*She is the evil twin.

Midweek Hattrick

2010-05-12T20:23:00.003+03:00

I. I dedicate the following video to my dear English friends in their time of political angst:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Clustershag to 10 Downing - Hung Parliament

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

A CAT, JON.

My feelings exactly.

So, I don't know if people in the UK watch the Daily Show, but I find it very soul-soothing.

II. Wringing out laundry is a bitch. Actually, wringing out socks is fine. Wringing out long pants or heavy hoodies is a raging bitch, is what it is. Today as this thought was crossing my mind (I happened to be wringing, if you can believe it) it was intercepted by a strange new thought... What would it feel like to wring out clothes with tawsed hands?

It's not exactly a pain-free activity in and of itself, so it must be excruciating. It made me think of the woeful landry maid of my last washing-themed perversion — suppose to compound her punishment she was whipped on her hands right before the time came to wring out the garments?

It's thoughts like these that make me grateful I live out of tawsing distance from the Known Sadists. I'm quite sure wringing clothes with freshly tawsed hands would be unspeakably awful; but imagining it makes the task significantly more fun!

III. The polls are still open, ladies and lurkers. 24 more hours to submit your questions! You're nosy folk, I have great faith in you.

Question Call

2010-05-11T22:04:00.001+03:00

Maybe EJ considers this a cop-out, but it's worked before in my hour of need, so...

Welcome to the second edition of The S Word's "Ask Graham"!

In which, because I don't have anything better to post at the moment nor the inclination to invent something, I open up the floor to any and all questions, from the silly to the somber, philosophical to frivolous, kinky to... kosmological? Erm.

You may think this is weak, but I've done it before, so, PRECEDENT, BITCHES.

Yup. We've entered the stage of Post-A-Day-May madness in which I begin to refer to everyone as bitches. When I start replacing 's'es with 'z's at random, then we'll really be in trouble.

Go. Ask. Limit three questions per person. Why? Because I am drunk with power.

...It's gonna be a long month.

19 Years Later...

2010-05-10T21:00:00.002+03:00

Er, just realized that my post title sounds like an allusion to the HP7 epilogue. Which it's not. And can we pause for a moment to remember how crazy lame that epilogue was? Sorry, HP7 epilogue fans. But "everyone-marries-their-high-school-sweethearts-and-grows-up-and-makes-babies-and-lives-happily-ever-after" is not what I call literary closure. It's what I call lame.

Now I'll apologize to all the people for whom I've just ruined HP7.

This post is actually about the film Closet Land, which was released 19 years ago, but which I just saw the other day. So, um, I'm a wee bit late to this party. (And yet another apology: For those of you who haven't seen this film, this post will make approximately zero sense.)

Closet Land, as most of my demographic likely knows already, is a film in which a young Alan Rickman interrogates a pretty American-accented woman in a nightgown for an hour and a half.

Seriously. That's the movie.

So, um, yeah. Obvious enough why I'd find this a valid way to spend an hour and a half of my time. I knew exactly what I was going for as I sat down to watch, and I had no other expectations of the film other than that it would be hot. And I kind of figured that, given the filmmakers chose to dress up young Alan Rickman in a nice suit and give him lines like, "Inadvertent blunders will be treated with firm kindness, and you must trust me to decide the ratio of firmness to kindness," that this must have been pretty much what they were going for, too.

I wasn't disappointed. I found it quite hot — at least, until the end, when it just got Very Awkward, and I was like, really, movie? Really? But while I was content to just revel in the Rickmantasticness, a small part of my brain couldn't help piping in: Why the hell would a non-kinky person ever watch this movie? And if they did, what would they get out of it? And if the filmmakers were not actively trying to arouse their audience, what the hell were they trying?

Because the movie, if taken from a vanilla standpoint of seriousness and legitimacy, is not what could be called Good. And what boggles my mind even more is the fact that apparently, the filmmakers were not intending to produce titillating kinky interro-porn, but rather, send a serious psychological/political message, in conjunction with Amnesty International.

SERIOUSLY.

So, this criticism is coming nineteen years too late, which isn't fair, and I'd like to think that Amnesty is somewhat more sophisticated now. I feel reasonably confident that if they wanted to throw their support behind an anti-torture film in this modern age, they wouldn't:

A) say nothing more besides Torture Is Bad (good to know, thanks)

B) layer their Torture Is Bad message in an Alan-Rickman shaped cloak of OMG THAT IS SO HOT I WISH I WAS ALAN RICKMAN'S POLITICAL PRISONER MMM.

C) be cringingly over-simplistic and romantic about what torture is (you gotta love a film that seriously features the mantra, "You can break my body, but you cannot break my mind!" Right, I guess the solution to this whole torture problem is for victims to just be more strong-willed. Cause the body and the mind, they're not connected. Not at all.)

Anyway. I'm just fascinated by the thought of a person who would walk away from this film thinking, "Oh, the terrible plight of political prisoners the world over!" I'm callin bullshit, Amnesty International of 19 years ago. And on you, filmmaker!

Okay, there should probably be a statute of limitations on message-film mockery. So I'll stop. But there is no such limitation on the hotness of Alan Rickman playing an interrogator, so kinky people are still enthusiastically invited to watch this film, for the only expectations it can successfully meet. Except, not even Alan Himself can make the line "Who is the Friendly Rooster?!" sound remotely unsilly. And the ending is, as mentioned, Awkward. And way lame. Much like the ending to HP7.

Oh yeah — full circle.

Discovering Desire

2010-05-09T21:14:00.000+03:00

It's amazing, sometimes, to reflect on the gulf that lies between what we want, and what we're taught to want.

When it comes to love, sex and relationships, I'm pretty inexperienced for my age. And it's not because I'm unsexual; it's not because I'm sex-negative or heartless or asocial or unattractive. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why it is — but I'm starting to wonder if that gulf might have had something to do with it.

In recent years, I've developed a clearer understanding of who I am sexually, of what my honest desires are, and also a personal philosophy of sex and sexuality. (The tendency to make philosophies of sex rather than having it may also account for some of the aforementioned experience lack.) And I realize that the things I want — while not impossible or radical or deeply deviant — were simply not on the menu for much of my life.

There's so much that's just taken as a given — heterosexuality, monogamy, vanillity, marriage, children. These are the things people do. These are the things people want. These are the things that make people happy.

We learn this from infancy. We learn it so much that we forget entirely that it's taught, we mistake it for intuition. So it can be a long, slow process — that of unraveling yourself from the culturally propagated myths to discover that no, actually, these probably aren't the things that are going to make you happy.

Now, I'm not convinced that the desires I have at 22 will be the ones I carry for the rest of my life, or even the next few years. Maybe I'll swing a couple points on the Kinsey scale. Or it's possible I could change my stance on getting married or having kids.

But I could just as easily not. And it would be okay. Because there's no one-size-fits-all formula for happiness, and you can be sexually healthy without being vanilla, and you don't have to be "in a phase" or "kidding yourself" if you're sexually fluid, and you can still be fulfilled without getting married, and still be a woman without being a mother, and your relationships don't have to be strictly monogamous for them to be meaningful, loving, joy-filled relationships.

It's true. Really.

I'm likely preaching to the choir here, but the fact is, that's a secret we never get from Mainstream Society. Oh, yes, I went there. And I wasn't raised in a very conservative environment, either. My family isn't patriarchal or born-again or homophobic, but still, that mistaken intuition is insidious. It doesn't matter how many miserable straight people or failed marriages or fucked-up children we're exposed to — we still think we know the equation for eternal contentment.

Thank all that's holy for the internet, and for nice, well-spoken people who will gently disabuse us of these myths. I have to shout-out a blog that no longer exists, but does anyone remember the site "Pink Bottomed Girls," co-authored by a kinky lesbian couple who styled themselves Brat and Pink?

The blog's been down for a few years now, I think, but it was one of the most "formative" ones in terms of my kinky self-discovery odyssey. I was so fascinated by the life they led: These queer, kinky, poly girls who had such lovely (read: hot) adventures. They played with males and females, they were into spanking, (they were, I believe, married) and they were so... nice. And cheerful. Healthy. Happy. And reading it I realized, this is what I want. I was finally looking at a model for the desires I had, and it was mind-blowing, because I'd never seen a model like this before.

(Brat and Pink, if you're still out there reading kinky blogs, thank you! And hello!)

Another experience of that kind was when I spent some time with an older lesbian couple, friends of my parents. They were long-term partners, they didn't have kids, and they were busy, fulfilled people. Another model. It was so encouraging. So freeing.

You get a lot of shit when you say you don't want kids — often, people look at you with sorrow and pity. "Oh, the meaningless void that is your future," their sad eyes seem to say. It was heartening to realize that lives like the one I imagine can exist, do exist, and are flourishing as I type this.

It's so important to have these models out there, to be clear that there are different ways of arranging one's life, and they have just as much chance of bringing fulfillment as any other. To all the people who've shown me that — including you, my blogger friends — thanks again.

Now — I also realize I could be getting this backwards. It's possible that if I garnered more experience with vanilla-type relationships early on, I'd have figured out sooner that there was a big gap between the life I needed and desired and the life society was training me for.

But, past is past. Having a firmer grip on my desires, I'm filled with excitement for the future.

What about you: What's it been like, the process of discovering your true desires?

Google Gold

2010-05-08T22:00:00.008+03:00

Come on. You knew when I first announced the Post-A-Day May EJ Challenge that one of those posts was going to be devoted to search-term silliness.

Good news is, I've collected lots of fascinating search terms since last I mocked the Anonymous Googler.

Shall we?

"one room school house" circles noses - The disturbing part is that I know exactly what this person is talking about. They're wanting a hyphen, though.

"six of the best" + "her backside" - If my teachers had just put it that way, I would now have quantitative reasoning abilities.

lure lurkers - Predatory much? Look, if they didn't respond to my gingerbread house or "heeere, lurkers lurkers lurkers," I give up.

masochism sub - It's a sandwich with nails in it.

!22breast whipping!22 - So, "breast whipping" or some variation is now the number-one search term used to track this blog. I felt that deserved mention, and I felt the cryptic exclamatory/numerical palindrome added poignance.

bullwhipped breast - One of the more horrifying variations.

whippin tits - Definitely the best of the variations.

damn the defiant spanking scene - You may damn us, but we shall not waver in our defiance. Rather, we will take great delight in being damned because hell is full of all kinds of good-timey punishments, and we'll be all, "Ooh, what's the condemnation like in your circle?" "Sweet, next weekend let's hang out with the sodomites!" "Don't forget the usurers!" And you'll be all, "Damn them! ...Again! Fuck!"

otk paddling videos like i saw last night!! - There is something deeply endearing about this person's enthusiasm, and deeply disturbing about his/her presumptions re: the capacities of the google button.

what is the word masicist mean - It means Hooked on Phonics did not work for you.

do submission and masochism always go together - It's addressed in one or another of the various Newtonian laws.

"she whipped the cane" handcuffs - This is a captivating use of quotation marks. Did she handcuff the cane after she whipped it? Or were handcuffs just lying nonchalantly on the sidelines, much as they lie here so provocatively outside the quotes?

russian wife defies spouse and she is soundly spanked - Капец.

the spanking you should have gotten - Why would I have it? Why would Google have it? Just... why?

word that starts with sub meaning to put yourself under the control of someone else - You are SCREWED come SAT season.

i beat myself with the tawse - Bless me Google, for I have sinned...

meme schmeme - Now, was Google really the appropriate vehicle for your disdain? How do you know Google wasn't thinking, googler schmoogler, disdain shmisdain?

vanilla words turned kinky - Just add ' -ed your mother last night.' As in, "I curated your mother last night," or, "I jurisprudenced your mother last night." Foolproof.

brothers karamazov spanking - Ah! My soul mate is out there!

reverend spanking — Are you suggesting a nickname or a punishment? Either way, he's your guy.

My deepest apologies to all the innocent search-engine users I may have offended; and to all the disappointed breast whipping fanatics whose dreams my blog must certainly have dashed.

***

I'd like to point out that I'm one-quarter of the way through my May Challenge, and thus far have incurred no stripes. Will I make it? Is it worth it? (I kinda like canes, after all...) Time shall tell. In the meantime, I'll just say that it's kind of insane posting every day, and I'll be glad when I can return to blogging at will. (Oh, and, because I am unkind, I'll also point out that the instigator herself hasn't put up any posts this month! What gives, instigator?!)

Plain

2010-05-07T20:14:00.000+03:00

Faithful followers of this blog will know that I've had some rough luck trying to purchase fancy undergarments.

Still, I'm not one to be beaten down by the past. I decided it was time to jazz up my nether-wardrobe a little so I went to the market to buy what I like to think of as Recreational Underwear. Funderwear, if you will. (Ew. No, don't.)

Faithful followers will further be aware that I have some issues where girliness is concerned, and I'm just about the polar opposite of Eliane on the "Knicker Obsession" spectrum. So anything that isn't basic, black and boring is, by the standards of my closet, Highly Radical.

I made some purchases — purchases that feature colors, bows, patterns and frills. Frills. Hardcore, right? But what does the lady say as I make my selections?

"Oh, so you just want the plain ones?"

Oy!

Show and Tell

2010-05-06T19:28:00.001+03:00

This is less kinky and more meta-bloggy, so move along if the internal debates that accompany public posting don't interest you.

As for the rest of you geeks...

After reading about Kaelah's misadventures with oversharing at a party, I started to reflect once more on the competing interests of discretion and exhibitionism. I guess every writer who speaks on a public forum faces that dilemma. For kinky writers discussing their personal fetishes, the stakes are slightly different.

I've never claimed to write this blog "for me." I write for a community; I write in order to be a part of that community. And I want people to read it, and I'm as shameless a comment-whore as the next blogger. Writers want recognition. Fact.

In accordance with this fundamental principle, I sometimes think of strategies to drive up traffic. Sometimes I consider trying to get linked by more popular sites. But the Guardian of Discretion always intervenes. This blog isn't password-protected. Anybody with an internet connection and typing faculties can find me, as the person who put "why do men like tit whipping" into Google can attest to. That can be a bit scary to think about, given that I write freely about my sexual fantasies and kinky experiences, among other potentially embarrassing bits of debauched nerdery. But, the paranoia wanes when I consider how small my audience is — so I decide it's best to keep it that way.

Audience-control is one aspect of the conundrum. The other is content-control. How honest can we half-exhibitionists afford to get in our public sex-themed diaries? We conceal our real names, locations, professions, sometimes ages. We amend certain identifying details and often refuse to show our faces. (Notable exceptions to that last part, of course.) But how do we decide where to draw the line?

Emma Jane talks about the particular version of herself she presents to her readers: "I am guilty of censorship. I sell you my version of Emma Jane ... Never do I publish anything in haste or in the true heat of emotion. Nothing on here is raw." And then there's Jessica, who ultimately left blogging because her honesty was starting to cause some domestic disturbances. (Terrible shame, as her blog was so engaging.) But blogging wasn't worth it to her if she couldn't be honest about it. Look over there at the blogroll and you'll find a variety of different approaches to blogging, disclosure, honesty, discretion. We all have different comfort levels.

My style is more like Emma Jane's. I'm honest enough, but I fully support self-censorship when it comes to blogging. Or any public writing. There's a place for undiluted rage and unedited ranting, and that place is my journal. (Actually, my journal is pretty even-tempered. The real repositories for my rants are my friends' ears. Poor darlings.)

Now, I have nothing against edited rage and ranting — bring it on. If it's compellingly written and not designed to incite drama in people's personal lives, I'm happy to read it. But full — seriously, inconsiderately full — disclosure on a blog strikes me as irresponsible.

But then, but then. We all want to be honest, intriguing, unique. Sometimes I feel tempted to share random details and truths from my vanilla life. Sometimes I feel tempted to post Very Compromising Photographs. Why? To feed the tiny exhibitionist beast, to diversify my content, for plain old kicks.

Temptation doesn't usually win against the Guardian of Discretion. I'm a reserved, cautious person. It's disconcerting when people know more about me than I know about them. I'm not the compulsive sharey type — you get what you get when I'm ready to give it, and no sooner.

For better or worse, that's how I operate, and it's one of the guiding principles of this blog... But sometimes I do get carried away. Sometimes I can't help but ramble out a few telling idiosyncrasies, a couple revealing anecdotes. It hasn't hastened the apocalypse, and I do have an arsenal of rationality that fires back at the paranoia, but still, I wonder how other bloggers work this out.

Where do you fall, on the Discretion-Exhibitionism spectrum? Do you have any regrets about the things you've shared, or not shared? Has the balance always been clear to you, or is it something you continually negotiate as your blog develops?

Go on. Share your secrets.

Lie To Me

2010-05-05T13:41:00.002+03:00

Every now and again, I read something that isn't a kinky website. Usually this thing is called a 'book.'

It so happened that yesterday, on the bus, I was entertaining myself with just such a thing. And suddenly I found myself reading a rather detailed scene about the administration of a polygraph. You know, two guys, locked room, table n'chairs, interrogation sheet, lie detector test, tensions running high. Nothing special, nothing to make the other passengers wonder why the foreign girl has just closed her eyes and looks so preoccupied...

Seriously, polygraphs. How come it never occurred to me in my years of dedicated daytime TV viewing — "Lamar, you ARE the baby's daddy!" "Britney IS cheating on you!" — that lie detectors are inherently, deliciously kinky?

Those who've done interrogation play are maybe yawning right now, but my occasional interrogation fantasies usually don't employ gadgets any more high-tech (higher-tech?) than straps and canes. But oh how thrilling... You're face to face with your interrogator. You're strapped in, wired up. The officer calmly reads you the procedure, shows you the questions, takes his time. It's dark, it's quiet. It begins. You look into his eyes and lie.

Course, you won't know what the machine is doing. You won't get your results til later... And who knows what might happen then...

Friends, Romans, kinky people, for all that is good and unholy, DO THIS. Yeah, okay, nobody's got an extra polygraph machine thingy lying around. But come on, rig some ghetto thing up, get creative! Or do that human lie-detector stuff, because potential hotness: check.

You know the disturbing thing? I'm not sure what I find more titillating: the consequences of getting caught, or the fun of getting to lie.

Will somebody please interrogate me?

May the Fourth

2010-05-04T22:00:00.000+03:00

So, this is that day on which we are supposed to be hilarious and greet the passers-by with, "May the Fourth Be With You," because, you know, aforementioned hilarity.

But then, I'm one of those random unAmerican oddlings who's *cough neverwatchedafullstarwarsmoviestraightthrough cough* and this day actually holds more meaning for me as Cinco de Mayo Eve, so...

Happy Cinco de Mayo Eve. ROCK ON, BATTLE OF PUEBLA.

...

Emma Jane, were there any stipulations re: quality or relevance in the fine print of the EJ Challenge?

Ain't Nothin But A Number

2010-05-03T17:00:00.000+03:00

How does age play work?

In the world of my kinky mind, as I've noted before, Fantasy Me is constantly morphing. Gender, appearance, time period, circumstance, age — it's all over the place.

So, not alarmingly, I've got a lot of core fantasies in the child-spanked-by-authority-figure department. And I do mean child, not jailbait. Maybe it's just cause my kink developed so early in childhood, maybe I'll have fewer as time goes on. Or maybe not. Point is...

I can't get a picture in my mind of how age play might go down. It's not something I can see myself enacting — perhaps cause it would require a level of vulnerability I'm not going to go to yet, or perhaps it's just that all the womanly curves really aren't helping the suspension of disbelief.

So, you who practice — what does age play, as performed by you, really mean? Is it the same as any other role play, is it more emotionally risky, or just harder to do without laughing and feeling all, wtf am I doing, I have a freaking degree and I didn't even act like this when I was a kid, good lord... etc. ? Cause I feel like it would take a lot for me to get in the right Mood. (I think Pandora in a comment somewhere used the phrase 'headtheatre.' Which she should get a prize for, cause that kick's headspace's ass. Pandora, please collect your prize.) You know, like a lot of attention to costumery and props, and maybe several other people also pretending to be kids thus allowing me to bow to external social pressures, and then a couple shots of tequila.

But maybe others are more loosened up and/or more connected with their inner child than I am. But share, please: because the intimate details of your sexually deviant play is something I and the internet feel entitled to.

Go!

Memories... With Commentary

2010-05-02T12:00:00.001+03:00

Last year on this day, I published a post titled, Wishful Words (aka, How It Might Happen). It was a fantasy about how my first spanking might unfold. On the anniversary of that piece, and approaching the anniversary of my real first spanking (!), I think it fitting to re-post last year's fantasy... With commentary.

Notes are in italics. I hope you enjoy my hindsight.

***

*I know it's not altogether wise to construct very detailed fantasies which obviously can't be met perfectly in real life, potentially leading to disappointment, etc. But whatever. What's the point of having a blog if I'm going to keep all my fantasies to myself?

The constructing of this fantasy did not traumatize me in any way nor did it ruin my first taste of CP. Glad we dodged that bullet!

----

I'm in uniform. I don't know exactly who's there — the names, the genders, even the amount of people present — but there's a small group of us gathered in the living room. At some point, the friendly chatting subsides and the tone shifts. Something serious enters the air.

Well, I guess it did kind of go down that way. A group of us Lowewood girls were gathered in the classroom, and the lesson was about to begin. And then it was announced that I was wanted by the headmaster, and there was a bit of a gasp throughout the room.

It's starting.

Crap.

What exactly have I done? Is it a spontaneous moment of insolence? Am I caught in a lie? Have I brought home a note from my principal that details my breach of the rules this afternoon? Whatever the offense is, it needs to be answered for. And it's clear I have no allies in that room — there'll be no getting out of it.

Ah yes: what exactly had I done? Answer... NOTHING. I hadn't even lost any house points! Actually at that point I could barely move or speak, I was so nervous and ill and on-edge and... point is, I hadn't managed a single little bit of misbehaving, so there.

I'm sent upstairs to wait. Downstairs, as it happens. I'm a little unfamiliar with the surroundings and almost wander into a bathroom, but eventually I find the right place. I close the door, sit on the bed and wait. Wasn't a bedroom, and I got there just fine. Even with my pitiful sense of navigation.

It's excruciating. My stomach is doing nine variations on the Irish jig and my bones have become gelatinous. The hammering in my heart is so persistent, I feel a little bit like I'm on drugs. What have I gotten myself into? It's too late to go back now, but part of me wants to pry open the window and take my chances. Oh, God. What will it feel like? How much will it hurt? What will I do? I'm terrified. I'm turned on. I'm terrified.

I wasn't terrified. I was... Well, it's hard to explain. Everything had gone wrong, you see. Ever since the airport, it had been one disaster after another, and now I was here in this moment and it was supposed to be this big important moment but I couldn't even manage to get excited or be terrified or even misbehave and it was just wrong, wrong, wrong. God. Damn. It. So I just sort of floated toward my fate, feeling kind of vague and petulant and not myself.

Ahem. I mean, I was pleasant and delightful to be around, and always am!

And I wait. I wait so long, my mind starts to distract itself. I barely notice my pulse relaxing, my heart rate slowing and my bones solidifying. And just at that moment when I've practically forgotten why I'm here and what's about to happen — that's when I hear footsteps on the landing.

No waiting, actually. My disciplinarian had to wait for me.

The terror rushes back, convulsive and inescapable. The sudden surge of nerves paralyzes me. I'm transfixed by the turning of the knob.

Whether it's a he or a she who enters is immaterial. Authority stands before me. Justice, discipline and inevitability. The customary scolding commences. Do I meet the lecture with sullen defiance, or willful impertinence? Or do I diminish, hunching my shoulders and staring at my palms with genuine remorse?

Well, I think my greeting was, "There's been some kind of mistake," so... certainly no genuine remorse! There wasn't really any sort of lecture. It was acknowledged that no crime had been committed. This was a wholly preventative measure.

However I behave, soon the time for talking ends. "Do you understand why I have to punish you?" A silent shrug, a muttered "whatever," a polite "yes, sir"/"yes, ma'am"? It doesn't matter how I answer — I'm going to be punished, and soon.

Ain't that always the way.

Maybe the room comes equipped with a straight-backed chair. Or maybe it's easier to carry out the sentence on the bed, where I can hide my face in my hands. Over the knee I go. My skirt comes up, my bottom is bared. And suddenly I'm there, in the moment I've been waiting for my whole life — that moment just before a spanking, when it's imminent and inevitable, the target presented and the hand poised to strike, but the poor punished girl doesn't know exactly when.

It was over the knee, on a sofa. And I had to remove my skirt myself. (Lazy tops!) And I remember feeling curious and defiant and annoyed at myself and at all the goings-wrong, and thinking, hey, I'm over this guy's knee, that's weird.

And it was. It was pretty weird.

Until, of course, it strikes. A crisp, sharp slap upon my backside. It's new, and scary, and amazing and ow. More fall in a steady rhythm. There's more scolding, but I barely hear it. It starts to hurt, and then it starts to really hurt. I don't want to admit it. I want to be a stalwart masochist, I want to be defiant, I want to — Christ, that hurts. I'm gasping and squirming. My eyes water. My legs kick involuntarily. I'm ordered to keep still. I disobey. The spanking continues with relentless vigor. A swift, stern punishment. Finally, when my cheeks are red and I'm on the verge of sobs, my castigator sees fit to finish. I'm a little hesitant — suppose this is just a pause so as to reach for a hairbrush? — but nothing so dreadful happens. It's over. I've been spanked.

Hee hee hee hee hee. 'New and scary and amazing and ow' is a good way to put it. Cause I remember it hurting more than I expected, and I remember me caring much less. In fantasy, spankings don't hurt at all, and they elicit the most intense reactions. In reality it's the opposite.

At the beginning of the spanking, I was still regarding it as a curiosity. Thinking, 'well, okay, that's that, then. Interesting.' And instead of 'lecture over gasping and whimpering' it was more like... casual conversation in a very strange position.

Then I wanted it harder. My frustration was starting to give way to other concerns... pain, for one thing, and the desire for more pain.

Oh, yes.

I'm stood up and straightened out. One last telling off, and I'm dismissed.

Ha. If only. I insisted on a couple could-maybe-be-interpreted-as-semi-disrespectful-dare-I-suggest-cheeky comments whilst in my precarious position, and we all know what happens to girls who do that. I was bent over for a dose of the strap or tawse or some such leathery thing, and I remember thinking something like, "Mmm, nice, and I certainly must arrange to sample the cane..."

Unless, of course, I'm sent back to the room full of friends, and made to stand in the corner...

Room full of friends, check. But I was spared the corner treatment! That first time, though, really was a turning point in a day that started out in a mess of competing anxieties. Afterwards I felt calmer, happier, kinkier... See kids, this thing really is worth doing! ; )

***

There you have it. A little more leather, a little less crying, but the same result: one spanked and happy Graham.

Yay May

2010-05-01T17:00:00.000+03:00

May is a ridiculous month for me to attempt the Emma Jane Challenge. (See under Comments, last post.)

Any month would be ridiculous. I have never been a daily poster, even in the era of me posting semi-consistently. I've never striven to be a daily poster. Certainly not in a month like May, which is crazy and busy, and when not busy, so beautiful that I don't really want to be locked to my computer struggling to type up something kinda kinky and not too boring and with minimal spelling errors.

Alas. When EJ dares, it's tough to back down. A dare from EJ is like, automatically at triple-dog level. So here I am. First of May. And my kinky thought for you?

No way I'm gonna meet this goal. So I guess for every post I miss, Emma Jane'll just have to spank me.

Let's Try This

2010-04-28T13:18:00.003+03:00

Looking at my archives for 2010 is pathetic. The most I've managed in one month is a staggering five in March. Not the kind of record that keeps the FBM happy.

But it seems like I'm not the only blogger who's been in a bit of a lull lately. There are notable exceptions of course (I'm pretty sure the Spanking Writers put some additive in their tea that morphs them into posting machines). But it's the season of General Madness in everyone's work and vanilla lives. Then there are some who may be too busy with play and kink to stop and write about it — while others of us may lack any play or kinky events to recount.

I was working on a story for you all, but I kind of lost momentum there. Maybe we should make some sort of fiction game thing. Casey's good at those. (Casey, wilst thou not enable my laziness by making another fiction game thing?) Maybe the first three commenters can throw out random suggestions for things to include in a story, and I'll have to weave them all together in a piece of spanking fiction?

Sure. It'll be kind of like Wild Cards, but they don't have to be words — it could be a character, an event, an implement, a line of dialogue, anything. And I'll produce something that may be hilarious and / or hot and or lame and I'll post it here and have something to show for myself for the month of May.

What do you say? Go forth and comment.

Rupture

2010-04-20T20:12:00.001+03:00

In which I expound on a theme I like to call, 'The Rupture in the Order of Things.'

Corporal punishment was not a part of my childhood. (Other than being my secret titillating obsession, that is.) It didn't occur at home or school, it wasn't threaded into the fabric of everyday life. For some of my classmates, for some of my neighbors, sure. But I didn't watch or anything. For me, it was all very use-your-words, and/or various degrees of psychological manipulation.

Anyway. I fantasized about schoolrooms and nurseries that ran things a little differently. I imagined worlds where paddles hung on every wall, worlds where chairs and corners and even palms themselves existed primarily for their disciplinary fates. Didn't you?

But that belonged solely in the realm of dreams. Before the whole "consenting kinky adult" thing showed up on my consciousness, I understood that my only shots at spanking involved a) time travel, or b) dying and going to a really open-minded heaven, or c) dying and going to a very age-appropriate hell.

Getting spanked was a delicious impossibility. Getting spanked was tantalizingly unattainable, bewitching in its wrongness, its horror, its abnormality. Getting spanked symbolized a Rupture in the Order of Things.

And this became an element of my fantasies too. Being spanked in public. Being spanked when I'm just slightly too old, or by someone woefully humiliating. What made a spanking particularly horrific, in my mind, was not severity, but situation. The psychological upheaval. The rupture.

Even those fantasies set in worlds where spanking was ordinary played on a backdrop of knowledge that my world was no such place. I still resided within the order.

This is one of those aspects of the kink that can't really be sustained after one has tasted, in real-time, real-life, one's fetish. It's one of the things that gets "lost" in the transfer from fantasy to reality.

In reality, when you go to get yourself consensually spanked, you've already created a new order. In this world, adults engage in mutually satisfying kinky games and everybody has a crazy ol' time. There are limits, there are rules and there is the expectation that some persons will find themselves across the laps of some other persons. It's built in. The spectators will not gasp in horror and disbelief (not genuinely, anyway.) The spanked one will not be appalled, filled with outrage, or paralyzed by terror and shame.

Fortunately, what's gained well makes up for what's lost. I'm content to let fantasies of the Rupture remain in my mind, while the rest of me runs wild in the New Order.

***

On an unrelated note, it's 4/20! And I'm... a fourteen-year-old boy, I guess. Anyway. I hope some of you are observing the occasion as it ought to be observed, because I, alas, cannot. Enjoy!

Mutually Justified

2010-04-13T22:06:00.002+03:00

Some time ago, I commented on Indy's blog about a kind of scene dynamic I find particularly appealing: One in which both parties, punisher and punished, are allowed to feel that they are in the right. It's a seductive paradox to a non-submissive masochistic punishment fetishist who can't stand to be wrong.

Me deserving punishment is just a ridiculous concept. In a world where the sky is whatever color I say it is, that simply would not happen. And even if by some cosmic rupture I were to do something frown-uponable, would that then justify someone hitting me repeatedly with a stick? No. No indeed.

And yet, me deserving punishment is a really hot fantasy, isn't it? It kind of is. Damn. Why must I always want what I can't have?

The righteous-martyr thing gets old, and the villainy top bit wearies after a while too. Likewise the naughty-but-now-contrite lass with her wise and upright disciplinarian is tough for a relentlessly unrepentant creature like myself to manage. Or enjoy.

Not that I can't ever enjoy imagining those things. My tastes tend to be rather catholic (note the small c... though sometimes the larger one applies!); maybe it's a pansexual thing. Nice girls, bad girls, mean tops, justified tops, culprits, martyrs, miscreants, victims, villains, 'good' authorities, caregivers... They all have their place in my depraved heart.

But fantasizing is one thing, enacting is another. And especially if I'm considering things I might one day do, I like to imagine a communal moral high ground. You know. With a cane planted in it.

It may sound complicated to set up, but opportunities for such scenarios are abundant. For example, there's that scene Abel and I played last fall: I was some semi-delinquent schoolgirl and he was some semi-tyrannical headmaster. My crime was something like leading a mass breakout from our institution; I was caught, caned. (So it goes.)

I didn't have to feel guilty about what I'd done. I was just trying to help us all out of oppression and toward a better life, right?

And Abel, in the form of semi-tyrannical headmaster, wasn't out of line for punishing me: flagrant breach of the rules, putting lives at risk, etc.

So he was strict, and I was defiant, and a grand time was had by all.

Anyway. I'd like to hear what other role-players and fantasizers have to say. On what side of the moral high ground do you prefer to stand?

Bottoms Need Boundaries

2010-03-31T09:28:00.000+03:00

Children need boundaries, the experts say. They love rules and secretly crave discipline.

Now, I don't have kids, so what the hell do I know, but I have written before about how I feel my lack of youthful rebellion to be directly linked with my parents' lack of a strict regime. Maybe it's a risky move, but hey. Results. What's the fun of breaking rules if there are no rules to break?

But I do think rules have their place. As the bratlash debate continues, and as uncertain newbies like me wonder how to earn a spanking without disgracing ourselves or boring the tops to death, the concept of Rules offers a perfect and playful out for everybody.

Tops, how can you find reasons for doling out punishments without resorting to the "But you were standing there" excuse or having to be pelted with ice cubes? Set rules. Weird rules, funny rules, challenging rules, practically-reasonable rules. Ban certain words, prohibit certain postures, require that no one step on the third tile left of the refrigerator. Be explicit. Be insistent.

Bottoms, how can you get yourself spanked without having to ask straight out or poke the nearest top repeatedly with a fork? Break rules. All that shit I just suggested above? Yeah, don't do any of it. Who do those tops think they are, anyway?

I'm thinking spanking parties should have lists of Rules read out prior to the festivities. Possibly with scrolls and trumpets involved.

Thanks Again, Dan

2010-03-17T22:30:00.004+02:00

I have a lot to thank Dan Savage for. Even before I discovered the magical realm of the Kinky Internet, it was "Savage Love" that first made me realize I probably wasn't alone in my sexual deviancy... From reading the column, it gradually became clear that most people were harboring some fetish or other. And many were even enjoying it!

And I also must thank him for his highly entertaining (not to mention informative) weekly podcast, which makes doing laundry ever so much more bearable.

But today, I'm thanking him for this recent entry to his blog, which I shall quote here in its entirety:

I also attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago. People don't believe me when I tell 'em that the priest/gym teacher didn't allow upperclassman to wear trunks to swim class—really—so it's nice to have some backup. But that wasn't the craziest thing about Quigley. This was: there were two young priests in their twenties, both kinda hot, who did nothing all day but spank high school boys. Their official titles/job descriptions: disciplinarians. It was written on the door to their office: disciplinarians. Quigley's disciplinarians would sit in their office all day and wait for other priests to send misbehaving teenage boys down to for a little discipline.
Nice work if you can get it, huh?

I mean... really?!

Sex, Lies and Videotape

2010-03-14T20:25:00.000+02:00

James Spader is particularly famous among Us Types for his performance in Secretary.

But even before he became an OCD lawyer who spanked his employees, we all knew he was hot back when he played that asshole rich guy in Pretty in Pink.

Oh, James Spader. Have you ever played a role not laced with creepy sexuality? And have I ever not found it wildly compelling?

I recently enjoyed another compelling-if-slightly-creepy-but-ohmygod-Jaaaames performance when I watched Sex, Lies and Videotape for the first time. If anyone else hasn't gotten around to seeing this film, I'd recommend it... Andie MacDowell is also luminously beautiful in it, and it's just kind of mesmerizing.

Anyway, it's not in any way spanking related, but Spader plays a character named — of all things! — Graham. Allow me to copy-paste this bit of dialogue.

ANN:

Graham. That's an unusual name.

GRAHAM:

Yeah. Yeah, I, uh... I guess it is. My mother is a complete Anglophile. Anything British makes her drool like a baby. So she, you know, I think she heard the name in a movie or something.

There ya go. Unusual, Anglophiliac, heard it in a movie.

James Spader always knows.

A Day In The Life Of A Tweep

2010-03-11T11:10:00.002+02:00

***

@lilemmaj is cajoling me to tweet up. But can I live in a world where everyone's name begins with '@'?

***

Middle of the day, drunk guy accosts me in the street. He wants to A) know where I live, and B) address me with the informal 'you.' Shot down on both counts.

***

I'm not counting to see if these are 140 characters or whatever.

***

If I had a cool internet-phone thing, I'd be sending this tweet from work. But I don't, so I've actually just saved it up til now.

***

Wrote a blog post about girliness. Spent more time ogling pictures of hot chicks than actually writing. This is probs evident to anyone who read the post.

***

@elianech — whenever I see your tweetname, I wanna pronounce it 'elainiac,' to rhyme with 'maniac.' But that's not actually the sound the letters form. Damn.

***

I remember a time when I didn't come home from work and consider a fresh-boiled beet a delicious snack. Dark times, those.

***

Dear March: Please back the fuck off. Thank you.

***

These aren't even kinky yet. Who knew fetish writing didn't lend itself to the one-liner?

***

Just spotted flask with Soviet Union logo on it in shop. What do you think would happen to Cassady if she was caught with one of these at Lowewood... ?

***

I know we already have CP and SM and DS and TTWD, but wouldn't CCV — Creative Consensual Violence — be a great addition to our acronym apocrypha?

***

2nd New Word of Day: 'twalking.' As in, 'twitter stalking.' As in, "I twalked @Indy122 and found out she's going to snuggle up with @caseydamnmorgan and @elianech with a bunch of wine and chocolate, apparently."

***

So I checked and the above is defs over 140 characters. Oh, Twitter. You shoddy vessel for my genius.

***

Shitty day at work. Feel like I've been through all the stages of grief. Except by 'all' I just mean 'Anger.' Remedy: Scheme for kinky eurotrips...

***

@lilemmaj: I want the South Tower, I do, I do! (Now hardened twalker.)

***

Oh Twitter, sweet Twitter, what could be fitter, than for me to sit here, and slowly grow bitter, reading each Twitter, about how so-and-so hit her, and her heart went a-flitter, as each cane stroke bit her, that brave teeth-gritter, and all I have is fucking fake Twitter?!

***

227 characters on the last. I'm not cut out to be a Tweep!

On Girly

2010-03-08T21:00:00.001+02:00

Oh, goodness. My March blogging record isn't looking much better than my dismal January and February — the FBM is gonna give me what for.

Today is 'International Women's Day,' which is so international I never heard of it until I left the U.S. Still, I have no objection to celebrating my womanhood by getting lots of flowers and not having to go to work.

And that means it's a fitting day to discuss Girliness. I'm sure that term conjures up many associations in different people, but we can all agree that being girly is another thing entirely from simply being a girl.

Rebecca wrote an intriguing post recently about the seeming dichotomy in her personality: the very girly half and the tough tomboyish half, "sweet girl v. action girl," as she puts it. I don't have quite the same thing going on — I'm not nearly as girly, nor am I remotely tough.* But I have my own qualms with the issue of girliness.

It probably comes as no surprise that she who chose a boy's name as her pseudonym is not the girliest of girls in creation. I've never been what you call a 'tomboy,' but Traditional Femininity doesn't quite suit me either.

'Course, even if I rarely feel girly, it doesn't mean I can't *do* girly. There's a time and a place for everything, and be not mistaken: I can giggle excessively (if aided by drink), get bewilderingly emotional at the film "Ever After" despite Drew Barrymore's questionable accent, and even though I'm intellectually at odds with the song's message I feel a profound spiritual connection to Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

But it's a departure. Usually I'm my unfashionable, unshaven self. (No, I don't shave my legs in winter. It's not politics, it's laziness. And, you know. Cold.) I'm perfectly content with that self, too. So I hate shopping, feel indifferent to shoes and use baking soda as deodorant.** So I don't know how to flirt and never paint my nails. To each her own and such, etc.

The things I'm mentioning are of course stereotypes, and very superficial ones. And I'm inclined to be suspicious of gender binaries, femininity, the assignation of certain behaviors as 'natural' to a specific sex. So much of gender is performative, and this carries consequences both good and bad.

It seems that The Scene is often a Girlier zone. Or is this a misconception? I admit to having girlied it up a little for my kinky travels. (When I visited in June, I put on makeup for the first time in about nine months. And I wore a dress.) Scene girliness can be very cool: I can see how it's a place where competent, independent women can let go and revel in unrestrained girliness without fear of scorn.

I wonder, though, if there's too much emphasis in the scene on girly bottoms and manly tops. Not every female bottom is coy/bratty/minxy/damsely/vixeny, looking for Strapping Domly Sir Man Dom — and even those that are may be into other things as well.

There's something inherently andro and amorphous about the way my kink works. There's femininity in it (witness aforementioned dress! And makeup!) And there's masculinity. And there's androgyny. I've written about being attracted to all the possible gender combos in a scene, and the attraction of being punished as a male — or better yet, a girl who absorbs punishment in a masculine way.

Can I make any sense out of it? This girl isn't bratty, she's not silly, she's not seductive and she's no goody-two-shoes. She's a casual, self-assured rebel. When the sentence of punishment arrives she greets it with a half-shrug, a rueful smile. She walks to the site of retribution with a relaxed, lazy stride. When she meets her punisher, she gives a subtle nod, as if to say, 'go on,' and when strokes land, she doesn't squeal, but lets out a low hiss...

Er, what was I talking about? The scene described above is very appealing to me, but seems to bear more resemblance to tales of schoolboys than schoolgirls. And while lots of girls have written about their own desires-deviating-from-the-binary (to be punished as a boy, to be punished alongside a boy, to be stoic and rebel, to be punished in drag, to watch m/m scenes, etc.,) these expressions of desire are often accompanied by a lament about some male top's lack of interest or unwillingness to oblige.

Having no male top of my own to cajole into indulging my pansexual kink, consider all my questions and concerns directed to The Scene In General. There's every possibility I'm being judgmental or paranoid, so those of you with more experience in these matters can tell me your take on things.

Part of my quandary is that I'm queer. And while I'm fine with that and fully support sexual liberty and everyone's right to do and label themselves as they choose, there's a lingering suspicion and defensiveness that accompanies this. So, for instance, if I'm dancing half-naked in a big girly pile of girls in front of an audience of sober het guys, I'll feel a twinge of anxiety.

Now I'm not so defensive and priggish that I'll stop myself from doing what I want because —gasp! — somebody else (a hetero male, no less!) might enjoy it too. Hey, the more people happy, the merrier. It would be hypocritical of me to condemn anyone for taking pleasure in the sight of half-naked chicks!

The problem, then, stems from a fear that at heart, the sanction to behave in such a way doesn't come from queer tolerance or sexual freedom or yay-let's-make-everybody-happy vibes, but from the fact that the hetero guys find it hot. How else can we explain why, at many spanking events, f/f play is allowed and m/m banned? (Yeah, cause two guys? EWWW.)

The party I cited above was private and fun and awesome and had no anti-queer policies whatsoever, so it's not really a fitting example and I certainly don't mean to criticize or question the motives of anybody there. (On the contrary, I very much enjoyed the half-naked orgying.) But I don't have the experience of a public spanking event to draw on.

Still, I have been following the scene for several years, enough to form some general observations. And I've played a little in RL. And it's clear that despite the sex-positive rhetoric of the scene, homophobia and sexism can still be found.

And then I guess deep down I still carry the fears of every girl who's felt like an outsider, who's never been fully comfortable with capital-F Femininity, who's struggled with her sexuality.

You know: That I'll be seen as weird or unattractive if I don't dress or act a certain way; that I can be gay, but not *too* gay; that if I'm not cute and cuddlesome I'll offend somebody; that desirable bottoms would brat like this and squeal like that; that it's nice I have these androgyne fantasies but what matters is what the straight people think; that it's uppity to always be calling people out for homophobia; that real girls don't use baking soda as deodorant.

(Okay, maybe not that last one so much.)

I imagine that at the beginning of everyone's kinky journey, they feel a series of doubts and fears. This happens to be the shape my personal questions are taking as I peer into the future of my sexual trajectory. There's a lot more to say on the subjects of queerness, homoeroticism and homophobia in the scene, pansexuality in kink. But I've rambled enough already.

So while I welcome all thoughts on these matters, I'll leave it at this: Is there a place in this Scene of ours for the unGirly?

*Except I am from Detroit, so watch out.

**Don't knock it til you try it. Works better than any brand-name deodorant or anti-perspirant I've ever used.

The Wonder of Words

2010-02-27T07:59:00.000+02:00

Those among you who crave cuteness from this blog, beware. For every sweet spanking fairytale that appears, you get one image of sadistic Mongol hordes.

Just saying.

Anyway. On to the wonder of words, then. Specifically, why we love them so much when they're sexy and foreign. I've blogged before about my foreign-language fantasy — and my insistence on counting cane strokes in a second language — and Pandora recently wrote a breathtaking post describing the thrill of playing with foreign words.

It's a popular fantasy. It's exotic, it's impressive, it can be scarily bewildering. Plus it just sounds really cool. There's a million reasons to embrace the wonder of words from distant lands.

And that's what led me to reflect. What, for me, is the drive behind this fixation? Because I have to say, it's not really the vulnerability aspect. I can see how it could be hot to be kept in confusion by a top rattling away in a tongue you don't know very well. It ramps up the intensity of the power exchange considerably. But I think a scene with that intent would leave me beyond frustrated. Linguistic vulnerability is something I cope with every day. It's just not hot anymore.

Of course, to realize the fantasy I have to accept some level of lingo-submission — I may have made strides with this language, but I'm still quite capable of humiliating myself before a seven-year-old — but I think the pull, for me, lies elsewhere. Part of it is the way I can express myself in the other language. There's a theatricality to it that's not central to English. There are formalities (and obscenities) that would be electric in a CP scene. And playing a scene in a second language in general adds a layer of magic, of far-awayness, surreality, drama. Not to mention the intellectual challenge.

And okay. Maybe a *little* bit of vulnerability wouldn't be so bad.

Go ahead, share what turns you on about sexy foreign languages. Real-life anecdotes most welcome!

This Week In Wacky Fantasies

2010-02-22T16:19:00.001+02:00

You never know where your mind will take you once you let it loose in the Land of Kinkiness. Mine recently wound up on the steppes of Mongolia.

I was envisioning two fierce, bloodthirsty warlords. (A la Genghis Khan.) They were long-time enemies, and one had defeated the other at last. His armies had been decimated and the remaining prisoners rounded up to witness their leader's final humiliation.

Not, as Old Khan once said, a humiliation brought by "vanquishing... and chasing him before you, robbing him of his wealth and seeing those dear to him bathed in tears, riding his horses and clasping to your bosom his wives and daughters." At least not before administering a ritual spanking designed to permanently reduce and discredit the losing general in the eyes of all the land.

Yup — the warlord takes his enemy across his knee, bares his backside and thrashes him ruthlessly before his men and his prisoners. It's hard and painful, but the pain is rather beside the point, Mongol warlords being used to pain. It's the overwhelming, unbearable mortification that thoroughly destroys the victim.

Since we're dealing with Mongol hordes and all, it's probably safe to say that eventually the ruined chief was executed in a most indelicate way. But since that's not my kink, my fantasy cut off before his head did.

And, A Full Descent Into Silliness

2010-02-19T08:00:00.004+02:00

Deep in the wilds of eastern Europe, Graham the Girl sat at her desk and watched a winter storm. She sipped tea, contemplated the snow swirls and tapped her fingers idly against her keyboard. To the left of her laptop sat a stack of work; on her right, a letter to be translated, her cell phone, a novel. Straight ahead, in the glare of the screen, several windows and websites jostled for her attention. But that remained fixed on the storm.

Til an unexpected voice yanked her from reverie.

"Oh, so you are alive. Spectacular. I'll make a note of it."

The voice came from a little lady, no taller than a cell phone. And she was sitting, in fact, right on top of the cell phone, legs crossed and face thoroughly unamused.

Graham the Girl stared.

"Hm. Maybe I spoke to soon." The little lady knocked her knuckles on the cell screen. "Hello? Lights on in there?"

"Um. Am I high"

"Afraid not."

Graham the Girl's fingers had frozen over the keys. Her face was stiff with suspicion, only her eyes shifted. "Who are you?"

"Your fairy blogmother, obviously." The creature flitted over to the laptop, where she perched just above the webcam. At this point, Graham the Girl astutely noted that the little lady had wings.

"This doesn't make any sense. I don't even remember buying anything. How can I be this high?"

Bespectacled and severe, the fairy blogmother was dressed in a skin-tight black suit — closer inspection revealed that her body was covered in a pattern of interlocking urls. She rolled her eyes.

"God. Are we going to have do this all day?"

"Dude. I shouldn't get high anymore."

"Listen, chickpea. Much as you sound like it, you're not under the influence. Go ahead, walk in a straight line or something, close your eyes and touch your nose. But do it quickly, because I have other appointments."

Graham the Girl shivered. She shook herself. She looked around and realized that there was no drug paraphernalia in the vicinity whatsoever.

"Did you say you're a fairy?"

"I did." The stranger looked at her sharply. "And not just any fairy."

She touched her wand (here Graham the Girl observed she was also holding a wand) to the monitor, and immediately a new window shimmered onscreen: a familiar but long-neglected weblog...

"How'd you do that?"

"I told you. I'm your fairy blogmother. The patron saint of your little online diary, if you will. Except with a wand, and no campaign for martyrdom."

"Sweet."

"Not at the moment, no." The fairy blogmother flicked her wand with impatience. "See, you haven't been giving this particular project much attention lately. It seems you've abandoned it."

Graham the Girl bristled at this accusation, rife as it was with fairy-esque hyperbole.

"I have not. I posted like... a week ago."

"Try three."

"But that's not — "

"And those thirty-some days of silence? You have a better word than 'abandonment' for that?"

Graham the Girl sighed, with the slightest trace of irritation. "Okay, I'm sorry about that. But I was gone, and I was busy, and... You know."

"Certainly. I know you started this blog looking for — well, you know what it is you were looking for — and once you got it, you figured that the writing commitment you made wasn't so important."

"Hey! Just hey. I'm sorry if it upsets you that I have a life outside the blog, but you don't get to go around making these insulting allegations..."

"Forgive me. I wouldn't want to be rude. Please, teach me about consideration. Maybe by describing your consideration for your reading audience?"

The fairy blogmother's melodrama was really starting to grate on Graham the Girl.

"Please. My 'reading audience' is hardly at critical mass, lady. I'm sure they're getting on fine without a daily dose of me. Relax."

It was the fairy's turn to bristle.

"I have no doubt that everyone's been able to survive without your snippets of wisdom. But that's beside the point. It's about commitment. It's about responsibility. If you're serious about this, it requires your attention. Even someone with so many competing obligations — " she cast a scathing glance at a nearby Sudoku book — "as you. That's the difference between writing in a blog and writing in a diary."

At that, Graham the Girl felt first squirm of shame. It was true — she had a personal journal that answered to her whims, that would happily wait weeks, even months between entries, that would tolerate all moods and levels of grammatical proficiency. That wasn't what a blog was about. Regular updates did matter to her.

"Well..." She shifted uncomfortably, searching for a defense. "My vanilla blog's been neglected way longer!"

The fairy scoffed. "Your vanilla fairy blogmother is a wuss. Anyway. I don't care about your other blogs. I'm here to talk about this one — " she tapped her wand to the header " — and to make sure something gets done about it."

Graham the Girl thought about her blog. Much as she cared about it, sometimes it was easier not to care about it. When a phase of apathy came to her, she accepted it with relief, fearing that too much engagement might suck her in too deep. And then came a point where apathy and laziness became indistinguishable; where responsibility was completely lost.

"I don't know. I just haven't felt inspired lately."

"That's a lie." Another wand-tap summoned up a document listing hosts of blog ideas, story outlines, half-started articles.

"Yeah, but... " Graham the Girl scanned the room rapidly, hoping something might come to her aid. "I can't spend all my time on the internet, either. I have to have a life!"

"What you have to learn is balance. It's not all or nothing. You have to figure out how to combine the two... Or maybe not call yourself a blogger."

"Harsh."

She shrugged. "I'm a fairy, not the Easter Bunny." The blogmother locked eyes with the girl. "Well then. I suppose we better get to it."

Graham the Girl stared. (Again.) "Get to what?"

The fairy blogmother raised an eyebrow. "Come on. You can't actually be that dim. I have read your blog, you know. Surely you see what's coming."

A cold shiver of realization crept up inside Graham the Girl.

"Hang on..."

"I came here to have a talk with you. And now the talking part's over."

Normally, a turn like this would cause Graham the Girl to panic — but it was difficult to feel panic when facing the three-inch form across from her.

"Look, I'm not exactly sure what you have in mind..." She glanced at the tiny wand and wondered if the fairy intended to poke her into insanity.

"Well, if I must spell it out to you — a good, sound spanking was about what I had in mind."

"I don't think that's necessary."

"Trust me. It will give you all the 'inspiration' you need."

"I guess by 'necessary,' I meant 'physically possible.' "

"Do wipe that smirk off your face. I don't take kindly to condescension."

"And I don't believe in size discrimination, but I call it like I see it — "

Her smirking was cut off. The fairy blogmother had descended from the laptop, and strode from the desk, suddenly full-grown and imposing.

"Oh. Shit."

Without a word, she turned Graham the Girl over her knee and spanked her firmly.

It became clear, in the first dreadful moments, that the fairy blogmother's role was not merely symbolic. Her hand was steady and sharp; her intentions thorough. Graham the Girl, frightened and abashed, struggled not to struggle.

"You know one of the advantages of being a fairy," the blogmother mused, "is that my palm never stings, and my arm muscles never tire." Her pace and force increased ever so slightly. "I could do this all day, and never feel the least discomfort."

Graham the Girl let out her first whimper.

"Well. I suppose I might get bored after awhile." Her pace and force increased significantly. "Though, not likely."

The unhappy blogger squirmed and gasped over the fairy's lap. She tried to soothe herself with what comforts her ragged nerves would allow: It's okay, don't panic, it will be over soon, she's going to finish, she's just about to finish, any moment now she's going to finish... The fairy blogmother did not finish. The poor girl wriggled frantically, but there was no escape. She winced and yelped and bit her lip and felt terribly, terribly sorry for herself.

"Blogging is serious," admonished the fairy.

When at last the vengeful sprite relented, tears gleamed at the corners of Graham the Girl's eyes. She lay in her wretched position, cheeks red, composure shattered, dignity lost, all question of hallucinogenic illusion laid fully to rest. Her backside smarted wickedly.

"You may get up now."

Graham the Girl scrambled off her blogmother's knee. She stood by her desk and clumsily reached for her underwear.

"Okay, I'm sorry," she choked. "I'm going to update the blog right now. I swear. This won't happen again. I'll pre-schedule posts for when I travel, I'll... "

She trailed off as she met the fairy's impassive stare.

"My dear. Did you think we were done?"

At that second, Graham the Girl felt she'd be better off outside in the snow gusts than here in her cozy room.

"Wha... What?"

The fairy blogmother stood up. It took some effort not to cower visibly before her.

"We're not quite finished, is all." She jerked her head in such a way that indicated Graham the Girl should bend over her desk. At this point, she observed that the fairy blogmother's wand had become a crook-handled rattan cane.

"Tempted as I am to give you one stroke for every day of your absence..."

Graham the Girl gulped.

"... In the interests of mercy we'll settle for 12. Next time, I won't be so lenient."

The girl bent dutifully, despairingly. The fairy raised her cane to the already-chastened backside, and took aim. She drew back, then struck with astonishing might.

"Jesus holy fucking christ."

Graham the Girl held her position, but some things just couldn't be restrained.

"If we could continue with no further blasphemy, that'd be much appreciated." The fairy struck again. Her victim sucked the air and clenched her teeth, but managed to successfully keep quiet.

The rest of the caning was not quite so successful.

After two kicks, four "irreverent outbursts" and three extra strokes, a well-marked and tear-streaked lass was permitted to rise. She was afraid to look back at the fairy blogmother, terrified of that cold glare promising more punishment.

But when at last she turned, she found that the fairy had shrunk once more, and was back resting on the laptop.

"I certainly hope I've left an impression today," she said.

Graham the Girl nodded woefully.

"No blogging about how you were unjustly treated, now. You deserved what you got and you know it."

She shrugged. The fairy's eyes sharpened. She revised her shrug to a rueful nod.

"Good. Well. I must be going. Haven't you got anything to say for yourself?"

"I'm sorry."

"Mm. And?"

"I promise to take my blog seriously."

"And?"

"And... Thank you."

"You're welcome." The fairy flew over to the windowpane, prepared to vanish in the frost. Graham the Girl sank with no small agony back into her chair, and rested her fingers atop her keys. The fairy blogmother raised her wand, and glanced over her shoulder for one last look.

"Oh, and I almost forgot — "

"Yes?"

"Happy Blogiversary."

Ode* to the American Schoolhouse

2010-01-31T19:20:00.000+02:00

It's true: I have of late become fully enamored of the English School Scene. I spend more time thinking about canes than is really appropriate for a United States citizen. I get the allure. Still, it bothers me whenever I hear (or more likely, read) that the American (spanking) tradition lacks good school scenes.

My early fantasy days — the formative period of my perversion, if you will — were rich with scenes from the one-room schoolhouse. That quaint, old-fashioned institution where students wrote exercises on slate tablets and discipline struck swift and often.

It's such a magical place, the one-room schoolhouse of my daydreams. So many bonnets. So many spankings. The CP scene of the frontier may not have the ceremony and ritual of its English counterpart, but it's got its advantages. A greater variety of implements, for example. Canes are crucial to the "proper" British scene (not that anyone actually cares about propriety when enacting scenes in RL), but who knows what the school ma'am or master has up his/her sleeve — straps? switches? rulers? All of the above? (Must be really big sleeves.)

There's also more flexibility in terms of gender. Again, we CP folks don't really stick to authenticity so much in planning our play sessions, but we do draw upon a certain literary canon for precedent. And mostly you'll hear about schoolboys, not girls. Plus, pupils being thrashed by teachers of the opposite sex was just Not Done.

But it was done in the schoolhouse! Girls could be whipped by men, boys by women. All the books say so.

I also love the public quality of the schoolroom scene. No private appointments in the headmaster's study, alas. All punishments are administered in full view of everyone — this of course includes pupils of all ages and sexes. Justice happens on the spot. Oh, the humiliation.

True, there aren't any uniforms. That might make some fetishists wince. What can I say? We're just an unruly prairie lot. Our archetypes are found in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Little House series, and Caddie Woodlawn. Among many others. (Though not technically American, Anne of Green Gables must surely be mentioned.)

I do love the English archetype. I mean, I lost my CP virginity at Lowewood! But I haven't forgotten my dear prairie schoolhouse. Americans, I think you should work on setting one up (designed specifically for kinksters, a la Lowewood) so that next time I'm among my countrymen, I can grab my slate and bonnet and go.

*The astute reader will notice I didn't actually write this in ode form.

Bit of Vanilla

2010-01-27T11:32:00.000+02:00

Must post must post must post. Have told myself I must post. Dire consequences to follow if I don't post. Etc etc etc.

But, ech. Can you really force it if inspiration is lacking? I'm very happy to have tamed The Beast that was plaguing me a month or so ago — don't get me wrong, I'm still kinky, just not desperately horny to an incapacitating degree. But being chilled out about kink means I'm chilled out about blogging, and I don't really have anything to say.

Which is what I feared all along in starting this blog — what could I, in my inexperience, add to this part of the blogosphere? What am I gonna write about when I don't have countless play sessions to describe?

Anyway. I know there's more to blogging than recounting play sessions — and I've been lucky enough to be able to recount a few play sessions since starting this blog — so I can't blame it all on the eternal dry spell that is my CP life. It's just... Ech.

Okay, blogging about why I'm not blogging is almost as bad as just not blogging. If not worse. But since I'm a bit sapped on the kink front at the moment, I'm going to have to serve up a bit of vanilla until the tides shift again. (Count them mixed metaphors!)

Here's some vanillity from the other side of the S Word:

1. It's so cold here that when I left the house this morning, my glasses froze over.

2. The new Sherlock Holmes movie — ridiculous? Perhaps. Hot? Oh, yes. (If you like homoerotic tensions between Jude Law and an anglicized Robert Downey, Jr., that is. Which, if you're reading this blog, I assume you do.)

3. Speaking of cinema, I think there should be laws limiting the volume at which you can play German movies dubbed in Russian on public transportation. Particularly when the system of "dubbing" involves screaming over the still-very-much-audible German dialogue.

4. If you asked me right now what I'd be willing to do for some really good falafel, it might reveal shocking things about my moral standards.

5. This is what receiving mail is like for me: I walk to the post office, where my "P.O. Box" is a pile on a table, and the ladies who work there know me on sight because, well... Everyone knows me on sight. So they just go consult the stack and hand me my letters, and most of the time I don't even wait in line. Then the post office lady tells me I need to dress warmer. Then I go, "But I have a hat AND a hood!" And she just shakes her head.

Well. That was not very exciting. Probably you should all stop reading at once and go do something dirty.

Around The World

2010-01-23T19:36:00.000+02:00

So I haven't fallen in a frozen lake or anything — I've just been busy, and this business has involved me being far away from internetland, and/or surrounded by people. See, what we call "the holiday season" lasts a little longer round these parts. (Seriously, what's the point having just *one* Christmas anyway?)

But I'm back! And happily catching up on all the kinky writing I've missed lately. Which has made it easy to neglect my own kinky writing even further. So it goes.

One of the most delightful pieces posted during my absence was this gem from Indy: The Cowboy and the Schoolmaster. She compares archetypal British and American spanking scenes, and given that I have only experienced CP play as an American abroad, it's a particularly interesting topic for me. And that got me thinking about a cool idea for a themed kinky weekend.

Now, one of my stranger ambitions is to play a scene in my other tongue. You know, that Slavic one with all the cases and formal 'yous' and patronymics... I take my cultural immersion very seriously, okay?

Wouldn't it be fun to host a kind of Spanking Olympics — a showcase of CP styles from around the world? You could have different rooms equipped with the culturally appropriate implements and apparel... British canes, American paddles, Scottish tawses, Japanese school uniforms, French martinets, birches plucked from the Russian woods. Maybe even a traditional Canadian bullwhip. Just like the Mounties use.

I can't believe I ever thought my kinkiness was anomalous to my dorky nature. It is so blindingly clear that my dorkiness and kinkiness are one.

New Year's Resolutions

2009-12-31T09:00:00.001+02:00

The kinky kind, that is.

Ever since I was a young, inquisitive, paranoid/obsessive child, I've had a "what's next?" kind of mind. I like envisioning the future, looking ahead, hatching plots and charting five-year plans. I like dreaming. I can't remember a time when I didn't have some goal to aspire to. Sometimes I wish I could be better at living in the moment, but what can ya do.

So it goes for the scene. I figure we all have some new horizon we're working towards — but then, I could just be projecting.

Do you have scene goals? I'm currently dreaming about the day when I have regular play partners and can participate actively in a RL kink community. Last year, I was still waiting for the moment when I'd fulfill this fantasy of mine for the first time.

Some people are still at that point, some are where I am now.* And some others might have steady play partners, but are looking for a long-term relationship. Some might have a long-term partner (or several!) but still keep dreaming about That Perfect Scene, or are working up the nerve to do something particularly edgy or daring.

What are your scene dreams for 2010? Are you seeking love, play, sex? Hoping to write more? Build more relationships? Produce films, sell a story, try modeling? Experiment with a new style or implement, learn new skills?

Or... Are you content and just hoping to stay that way?

Share your kinky hopes and resolutions for the new year!

*Actually, no one is where I am now. Hence lack of play.

Off For The Holidays

2009-12-24T11:34:00.000+02:00

Merry Christmas Eve! Or, as we say in this part of the world... happy unremarkable Thursday.

Distance divides me from my family this holiday season, so I'll be spending "American Christmas" with some very treasured friends. A different kind of family, you might say. I hit the road tonight — so, you know, insert usual warnings about sporadic (or just nonexistent) posts.

There have been a lot of very moving pieces recently about the challenges of this season. I've got nothing to add to what's been said, except silent wishes of peace, and I don't have anything very deep or painful or profound to say myself. I'm a heathen secularist, but since I'll always have the imagination of an over-excitable child, Christmas is magic to me.

Snow, songs, sleigh bells. Candles and wreaths. Dragging trees into your house. (I'm very particular about Christmas trees.) Driving around the neighborhood gawking at lights. Getting tipsy in the morning with mom...

What's not to love?

Besides, I've been having kinky Christmas fantasies since I was a kid. What with all the folkloric mentions of switches in the stockings of naughty children instead of toys, etc. Sigh. I want a switch in my stocking!

Happy holidays, friends and readers. I wish you merriment and glee, tranquility and love. I wish you mimosas and sugarplums and latkes and cake. I wish you snowflakes, and hot cocoa, and perhaps a viewing or two of "A Muppet Christmas Carol."* I wish you joy. I wish you child-like wonder. And, naturally, I wish you switches in all your stockings.

Season's greetings.

*Don't pretend you weren't floored by Gonzo's portrayal of Charles Dickens.

How Does It End?

2009-12-22T18:35:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned last post, I've been having an urge for cozy wintertime spanking fantasies lately. I sent my imagination on a quest for an appropriately "wholesome" scenario and came up with this:

A little house tucked away in the snowy woods (yes, yes, I read Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child!). There's a crackling fire, near which three little girls are happily playing. Mother and Father sit looking on in all their great parently contentment. All is well.

Until... (cue ominous music) the mother casually glances at her daughters' schoolwork and sees that one of them hasn't done a thing. Except, she'd promised she'd finished all her tasks before being allowed to play. So we have count one, disobedience; count two, deceit. Tsk tsk etc.

Here's where I need your help: Does she get a sound spanking right then and there? Or do her crafty parents decide to teach her a lesson by confiscating her books for the night, making it impossible for her to finish the required assignments? They know the schoolmaster is exceedingly strict; he'll be very disgruntled indeed...

I guess there's always the option of 'both.' Just for added wholesomeness.

Tasteless

2009-12-18T13:40:00.000+02:00

Can you fault me much for not having lots of good post ideas? I'm trapped under a snowdrift in Eastern Europe, after all — no debauched escapades, no kinky dramas.

But the snow is cheering, despite my windows being frozen. And it fills my head with the kind of cozy kinky fantasies in which I'm much younger, and live in a simpler time (such quaint times as only exist in nostalgic daydreams), and have a safe and warm little home, where I'm spanked over the knee by loving parents and then tucked into bed.

You know, it's hard to feel like a badass sexual deviant when your fantasies read like a hot cocoa commercial.

So, here's a question that's been rolling around in my head for awhile: When you were new (and not merely newish) to spanking, how did you go about communicating your tastes — or rather, your lack thereof?

There are a couple things that definitely, definitely, nuh-uh-sorry-no-way don't appeal to me, and some things that I know will bring me joy. And between those extremes lies a giant grey nebula of curiosities and fantasies and hesitations and "Well, maybe that could be hot" and "I'll try (within reason) anything once" and "Hey, it all sounds good to me!"

And of course, with time, and experience, and more experience, and then after that more experience, I'll be able to navigate the nebulous region and form specific tastes. Understood.

But before one has that experience, how do you plan a scene? When you're at that stage of infinite curiosity mingled with novice trepidation, how do you go forward?

I've played barely at all, and those I've played with have been vouched for by a zillion other play partners. (Approximately.) And this is how I answer just about every question in the most standard what-kind-of-stuff-are-you-into pre-game briefing:

"...um.... ?" With possibly an "I don't know" or a shrug for variety.

The curses of newness! I'd like to be really communicative and helpful to a play partner, but the truth is that I have little to go on but my fantasies and (almost comically) limited experience — and some things that are fun to fantasize about don't work so well in reality, and some things I've barely considered can turn out to be really, really fun.

So there's not much for it but to state the important limits, take a deep breath, dive in and trust to providence.

Fortunately for me, being told what to do works with the general game plan. It must really, really suck to be a novice top.

Irksome Words

2009-12-15T20:00:00.000+02:00

Some scene-related words that I find inconveniently grating:

1. "Spanko"

Ew. Just ew, and ew again, and then some gratuitous shuddering. I mean... Really??? I remember being none too thrilled, in the formative stages of my online kinky exploration, when I realized that this was an appropriate (nay, popular!) description of me and my kind. Lemme just say, the word doesn't exactly make me go, "Yes, I want to identify as THAT!"

So it's hardly a huge deal, but still. Can we find a word that's not so... silly? Nothing against silliness in general, but the term seems to suggest mental disorder and/or fringe political/religious associations rather than sexual proclivities. A la "klepto," "nympho," "pinko," "weirdo," etc.*

Also, it has the word 'spank' right there in it, and I hate saying that word. And I do believe the nomenclature should be built on a solid foundation of my personal hang-ups.

It's icky. It's not remotely sexy, or even just a little bit legitimate-sounding. Do we call a bondage fetishist a 'rope-o'?

No. No we do not.

2. "Bottom"

Sigh. Another great inconvenience, since in terms of definition, it reflects my own scene interests best. But it's not a label I accept with any grace.

A bottom is something you spank, not someone. It's a) a body part, b) a pretty relevant body part at that, and c) just kind of demeaning and lame. No, I don't feel outraged by the term or anything, I just think we can do better. Plus, you know, it's all ambiguous. It could be used in reference to sex (though come to think of it, I've only ever heard that in the context of gay/lesbian sex... Maybe heteros are supposed to assume the guy's on top. As God intended and all.) Or it could refer to any number of BDSM or sex-related activities... Maybe the versatility is part of it's charm, but, as I've already decided I hate this word, I will refuse to acknowledge it as such.

3. "Spankee"

*gratuitous shuddering gratuitous shuddering gratuitous shuddering gratuitous shuddering*

Moving on...

Words I don't hate, but just kinda feel weird about, like 'wha? [raised eyebrow]":

1. "Headspace"

I don't really have any right to be all bitchy at this word, but, I repeat: still. It always struck me as kind of unnecessary and oh-so-vaguely pretentious. (No, I don't think people who use the word are pretentious. I mean, I'm sure I've used it myself. Okay, that doesn't exactly give credence to the disclaimer, but... still!!!)

Like, what happened to "thoughts"? Maybe "spankos" don't have thoughts, only "headspace." (I can make any word look crazy if I frame it in quotation marks enough!)

If thoughts doesn't fit, what about feelings? Attitude? State of mind? Mood? Temper? Spirit(s)? Spirit's a hearty, full-blooded word. "Headspace" seems oddly sterile, jargony.

Observe:

The scene was profound, shattering and in complete harmony with my spirits.

Or,

The scene was profound, shattering and in complete harmony with my headspace.

Hey, I even gave Sentence 2 an alliterative advantage, and I still like the first one better. I bet George Orwell would too.

In related news: My kinky dictionary defines "headspace" as: the unfilled space above the contents of a closed container.

2. "Kinky"

I mean, I kind of heart this word a lot, I won't lie. I certainly don't tire of using it. But sometimes it makes me cock my head, go 'wha?' and raise my eyebrows. Cause even if we feel great affection for the term, we should at least agree that it is a) ridiculous and b) synonymous with an adjective that describes "closely twisted hair."

Well. We surely are twisted.

...

If you've actually read to the end of this wacked-out tyrade... Thanks, I guess? (Perhaps apologies would be more appropriate.) Not sure I succeeded in conveying the nature of my objections to the words above, but maybe it's just visceral and can't be expressed with words. Oh, the irony. Anyway, I invite you to argue with me and accuse me of all kindsa lingo-fascist prejudices. Give me your questions, commiserations, disagreements, etymologies — anything goes!

*The fact that I *am* a klepto nympho pinko weirdo is immaterial.

Kinky Russians

2009-12-13T18:46:00.000+02:00

Verdict: Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky is a kinky motherfucker.

In my meme, I cited a quote from The Brothers Karamazov as one of my favorite references to spanking in literature; rest assured, that book features plenty more.

Now I'm enjoying The Idiot, and at less than one-quarter of the way through, I've determined that Dostoyevsky must be one of our kind. Cause, really:

1. In the opening scene, behold this excellent quote: "Yes, this is the very same Nastassya Filippovna for whom your father had the honor of caning you."

Excuse me, *caning*? Ah, I believe I'm going to like this book. And how much do you love the phrase the honor of caning you. Perfect. Yes, it is indeed a great honor. The very greatest. (Not sure why, but I like the sound of it, okay?)

2. The young man who was on the receiving end of said paternal caning goes on to recount the mess with the girl that led to the punishment, and then says, "He took me upstairs, shut us in, and gave it to me good for a whole hour. 'That's only a taste,' he says. 'I'll come back again to say goodnight to you.' "

Um, HOT. And how often do you stumble across a parent/child punishment in which the 'child' is actually in his twenties? Not often enough, I submit.

3. But WAIT. On that same page, Guy from Quote Number 2 threatens to beat Guy from Quote Number One. What's his response?

"And if you beat me it means you won't be getting rid of me! Beat me and you'll have me for sure! Beat me and you put your personal seal on me!"

Holy fuck, Fyodor! That's, you know, only about the kinkiest shit I've ever read. Until...

4. A hundred or so pages later, this:

"I have a strong feeling she loves me too in her own way — like the proverb, 'He who loves well, punishes well.' All her life she'll treat me like a slave (perhaps that's what she wants), but she'll love me in her own way just the same."

Allow me to repeat: He who loves well, punishes well. All right, Dostoyevsky. You're officially one of us, you kinky Russian you.

(And these are only the best parts. I left out a threat of a whipping and reference to a "submissive and well-trained husband." K, gotta get back to reading now!)

Friday Hat Trick

2009-12-11T23:02:00.000+02:00

1. On Spanking and Rage

I've read about people using CP play as a form of stress-relief. (You know, if it's not immediately "relaxing," it's still a counter-irritant that can lead to calm, catharsis, peace-and-love, etc.)

Does it ever work when you're just... pissed off?

Of late, I've been experiencing rushes of frenzied hostility ignited by Reading About The World. It happens often enough. But I feel like the sexual energy I was lamenting the other day has morphed into a new Beast, the Beast of Political and Moral Outrage. Currently, I'm most likely to be set off by a story on the progress of health care legislation, or Afghanistan, or perhaps, say, the new Ugandan let's-kill-all-the-gays law (you know, the one tied to prominent American conservatives and the organization "The Family." Cause we're America. We export democracy. Light of the world, etc.)

When I get all coiled up and crazy, I try to find ways of channeling that intensity into something more productive than throwing things. Emphasis on "try." Would a hard, fast caning do the trick? I mean, does that make the least amount of sense... Have you ever found yourself thinking something along the lines of: "Fuck you, Congress, and all your peevishness and gall, you fuckers — now somebody hit me with something, fast." Anybody???

Or is that, like, weird.

2. From My Dream Files

I think this dream might have been loosely based on "The Simpsons," though none of the dream characters were pointy-haired, or yellow, or animated.

It was set at a grade school, on a day that the superintendent was coming to make a Very Important Inspection. Early that morning, the harried principal had pulled a particularly mischievous girl aside and told her to make herself scarce. She wasn't a malicious or violent type, just a rambunctious kid with a tendency to get into scrapes. She happily agreed, and scampered outside to enjoy some freedom.

I'm not sure what went wrong as the superintendent and the principal wandered the halls, but I believe it involved some sort of projectile and broken glass. The culprit, of course, was our young troublemaker.

She was called in and scolded at once, but the superintendent was first concerned with the principal's inability to maintain order and discipline in his school. So the principal gives her a clipped "I'll deal with you later" before following the superintendent into his own office for a lengthy reprimand.

And the girl's heart sinks as she waits outside the door, for she realizes that the worse it is for the principal, the more revenge he'll want to exact on her...

I woke up before the conclusion — care to finish it for me? This was an American institution, I believe the paddle is inevitable.

(As for what any of this has to do with "The Simpsons" — it brings to mind the relationship of Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers, as well as hooligan Bart. In a less animated and spiky-haired form. With kinkiness. Right then.)

3. On Canes

Whimsical Notion of the Day: Do Christmas elves spank with candy canes?

Actually, what I intended to discuss in this space was my strong unfulfillable desire to be caned right now, and to reflect yet again on the strange rise of said implement in my personal kink. WTF, canes? Maybe it all boils down to my still-quite-real fear of the s-word and the fact that it's a lot easier to ask for a caning than a "spanking." Probably not, though.

Point is, the supreme hotness that is canes has been tormenting me lately. Good thing I have my government's gross inadequacy to distract me, or I might really lose my mind...