Life, Death....

Not too very long ago, a very close friend of mine died. I wrote this several days later when I was having trouble grieving his death. The language is a bit stronger than I normally use.

Life, Death, Fucking and Spanking

I believe humans have an impulse for life and the continuation of life that arises in the face of death.

I remember being shocked as a nursing student when I was doing psych clinicals the first time a woman told me that she had fucked her single next door neighbor just a couple of days after her husband died. Her guilt over that incident certainly wasn’t something that I was in any way prepared to handle. I brought it up in post-conference where my instructor was very judgmental about the woman’s behavior. Not a lot of answers there, either.

A few years later it came up with a therapist friend of mine, who suggested that I research everything I could find on Irish wakes. Talk about an eye-opener! I’d read/heard about the drinking, eating, story-telling that went on, but somehow had totally missed the amount of fucking that went on as well. It’s been a very long time ago now, but I kept on reading. (I think the librarian thought I was nuts; I love the Internet, except for big brother, if he happens to be watching, no one knows exactly what you’re up to. That’s also true of a big city like Houston. This was in a much smaller town in the conservative Midwest.) And, of course, what I discovered was that in many cultures, this kind of behavior is accepted, sanctioned or otherwise accommodated.

With the death of my friend recently, I found that I was incredibly amorous. But for me that is also, almost always, accompanied by the need for a spanking. And in this case, I found that it was mixed with the need to express the hurting and grieving that I felt in physical pain.

At that time, there were no options for dealing with what happened, so I went to my back up sublimination attempts of gardening. I could support life, deal with the death of some things I planted, cause the death of some weeds and I at least got good and sore from lifting, raking and shoveling too much. But there was no fucking or spanking…Sigh!

The Last Harry Potter

I finished The Deathly Hallows at 5 pm on Saturday. The story seemed to wrap up all the loose ends. Lots of people died, some good, some bad. And, no, I won’t tell you who. I guess I must have a little bit of the sadist in me after all!

A random thought occurred to me as I was reading. I think we are the equivalent of the wizarding world and the vanilla type people are the Muggles. The spanking persuasion at whatever level is it’s own kind of magic. We are the ones who have the ability to transmute pain into pleasure. That’s real magic!

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I'll be MIA for a day or three, while I'm reading The Deathly Hallows. Two or three books back, I was flying out very early on a Monday morning after that particular book was released. Somewhere between a third and a half of the men flying were sereptiously reading the book, trying to hide it by reversing the dust jacket or covering it with a newspaper. I boldly carried my copy with me onto the plane and by the end of the flight, most of us were talking about it as we deplaned. I'll be back shortly.

Submissive...Who, Me?

When I first began, less than five years ago, exploring spanking on the internet, it seemed that all of my searches either turned up domestic discipline and/or dominant/submissive relationships. And since the major difference that I could see (at that time) between women involved with DD and submissives was a marriage license, I assumed that because I wanted to be spanked, I was, ipso facto, a submissive.

At that point, I did what I’ve always done, I pursued all the learning I could get about how to be a “proper” submissive so that when the right person came along, I’d be ready. Of course, there wasn’t a dominant anyplace on the horizon, so I eventually started looking for that on-line as well. I got burned a couple of times-a so-called Dom who wouldn’t meet me until I called him Master-I had sense enough not to go there. Another who claimed to be a Dom but was really looking for someone to spank, probably Domme, him. Both of these made me somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of being submissive, especially to men who didn't have a clue!

Eventually, I did find someone who had a significant number of mutual interests besides the interest in spanking. As we spent more time together, we played some at Dom/sub, but neither of us was able to sustain that level of relationship for significant periods of time. Whenever he had something he really wanted to do, he might pull that card out of the deck, but mostly it didn’t seem to fit.

Besides, I’m a very independent, strongly opinionated woman; one who’s lived on her own, raised two children as a single mother, had significant career successes. But I do like being spanked, or if not always the actual spanking part, certainly the aftermath. So the pendulum swung the other way, I was not, therefore, a submissive, but just a masochist. Right.

Over the last year and a half or so, I’ve been reading The Heron Clan in which there is a Master, a submissive (non-spanked) wife and a (spanked) slave. It’s a wonderful, loving family that anyone could envy. Swan’s comments there have given me much food for thought. Following the links from there has led me to a number of other thoughtful blogs from the entire spectrum of submission and slavery.

And now the pendulum is swinging once again. I am not ever going to be a full-time submissive, much less a slave. But on the other hand, there is truly an element of giving up and letting go in surrendering yourself to another in order to be spanked. Yes, it is a safe, sane, consensual relationship. But letting him take you across his lap, actually willingly going there is an act of submission. Ceding control, even if just for the duration of the spanking, is submissive. His being able to hold you in place because you both know that you won’t be able to stay in position while he paddles you is a temporary form of slavery.

Submission to slavery now appears to be not so much an either/or but a continuum that reaches far in both directions. There is more than a bit of the dominant in me, though I have no desire to spank anyone. (I’m no longer willing to say never, either.) But it also appears that I do have a submissive side to my nature, that there are times when letting go, submitting, ceding control are the healthiest things I can do.

Thoughts About Pain

Recently I got to thinking (that’s always dangerous) about pain. I knew that what I’ve felt in the past, a few hours after a session, has not been at all unpleasant. So I began to wonder if those sensations should really be considered as pain. When I got on-line and looked up pain, this is what I found:

Definitions of Pain:
1. physical suffering or distress, as due to injury, illness, etc.
2. a distressing sensation in a particular part of the body: a back pain.
3. mental or emotional suffering or torment: I am sorry my news causes you such pain.
Dictionary.com
1. An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder.
2. Suffering or distress.

American Heritage Dictionary

Based on the above definitions, I really have not experienced any pain beginning a couple of hours after I’ve “played”. What I experienced was sensations that were not unpleasant and did not cause significant suffering or distress. The sensations I experienced lead to (possibly euphoric) recall that I smiled about and enjoyed.

Now the actual sessions can be a different story. When it moves from a hand spanking, even a very hard one, to a hairbrush or a paddle or a cane, what I experienced was significant pain. Up to that point, it hurts, but by the above definitions even that wasn’t truly pain. It did hurt, but was not what I would call “suffering” because on at least one level, maybe more, I really was enjoying it.

Afterwards, it isn’t usually long before the pain begins to somehow transmute for me. It would occasionally catch me off guard and hurt when I didn’t expect it (like sitting down in heavily embroidered panties) but even that was a good, turn-on kind of hurt.

Now I realize that this is really nit-picky, but I find that in order to communicate clearly what is really occurring, I need to be very specific. If I were not a masochist, I probably would consider that what I’ve experienced to be significantly painful. It probably disappoints the sadistic side of any sadist reading that I’m not in pain. But you have to take the good with the bad. You’d get a few minutes to give me a lot of pain that lasts for just a couple of hours and then makes me feel good. I endure a lot of pain for a short time to enjoy the more pleasant after effects for days. And there are times when the enjoyment can be even more immediate for me. Somehow, I think looking at the total picture, I have the better deal.