The movie put her in the mood for discipline, though I didn't know that at the time. I thought the candy bar got her in trouble.
The picture was soft core, less than soft core, really. We saw one spank, one slap of a hand against a buttock. Continuous swatting did not occur. A grin, however, accompanied the one slap, and the camera had caught that grin, on the face of the woman getting smacked. But spanking wasn't the point of the movie. The point was that behaving hedonistically was more fun than earning a Ph.D. I couldn't argue with that. Still, the butt slap was what stuck in my mind.
After the movie, she said, "Today, I ate a candy bar."
"A whole candy bar?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"That's very bad," I said, "a very bad thing to do."
Sugar was hard on the teeth, and calories encouraged weight gain. The candy bar's nonorganic ingredients, its chemicals and additives, could not be good for the health. I would have to punish her for snacking.
I tried to speak softly, because that was the best way to proceed. Bluntness was not called for. Insistence was to be avoided. What I didn't want to do was to sound insensitive or impersonal. I didn't want to treat her like a masochistic mannequin. I wanted to compliment her, build her ego, make her feel good about herself. So I said, "I'm going to have to spank you a little."
"What do you mean by a little?" she asked.
"Just a few whacks with the horse paddle," I said.
"What am I?" she asked, "chopped horsemeat? How about one smack, like in the movie?"
I didn¹t understand her response. After all, I'd always enjoyed spanking myself. Not my monkey, though I spanked that, too. I liked spanking whichever body parts I could reach with a handheld flogger. I remembered pleasant times, from when I was an adolescent, when I first went fetish crazy. The horse paddle had sentimental value for me.
I had acquired my first such implement at a harness shop. I grew up among plain folk, farmers mostly, and I bugged out when I saw that they used buggy whips, riding crops and horse paddles in their daily lives. In short order, I learned to whip myself into a lather. This froth extended to my monkey, which was always ready to get lathered up.
It took years of preparation before I graduated from spanking myself to spanking another person. I hung around birthday parties to get my fix and kicks. At some point during the festivities the birthday person, usually a girl, would get spanked. In fact, some birthday girls wanted to be spanked. They were exhibitionists, in love with their own derrières. If I were lucky, everyone in attendance would get a turn at administering correction. That was how I lost my epidermal virginity. I stuck out my knee, bent the honoree over it, and whaled away.
Bachelorette parties were also good places to find some paddling. Unfortunately, due to my gender, I was never invited. The closest I got was one time on a city street, in a bar neighborhood, when I saw a group of people in formalwear approaching me. One of the women was wobbling on her heels. She was wearing a blindfold, her hands were behind her back, and her friends were holding her arms. When she passed, I saw that her hands were cuffed together.
"This is humiliating," I heard her say.
"She's getting married," one of her friends explained.
I suspected that at that party, there would be some toplessness, some picture-taking, followed by sharp teasing, simulated groveling and, most likely, real spanking.
But my days of random spanking were over. Now, I wanted to focus on paddling my committed target. We'd been together long enough to be happy with slapping, to communicate in a way that went beyond skin deep.
Paddle in hand, I lowered my voice to a whisper and said, "Assume the position."
"What position?" she asked.
"The standard spanking position!" I exclaimed, not quite ejaculating.
She turned away from me and bent over. I knew this was not the only spanking position. There was the hands-and-knees-on-the-floor pose, reminiscent of a donkey before a cart. There was the basic over-the-knee position, favored by birthday celebrants. There was the handcuff predicament, preferred by ecstatic bachelorettes. And there was the spread-eagled exposure, practiced by recipients of the hardest-core inquisitions. But the basic toe-touch position was fine with me. "Grab your ankles, please, with your fingers," I murmured.
She complied, and I de-pantsed her. I unhitched and pulled, until her outer waistband was at her knees. Then I grasped the inner elastic and peeled off the fabric, so that her gluteus maximus was bare.
The act of de-pantsing triggered a wave of nostalgia. I remembered girls getting paddled when I was in junior high school. My biggest educational thrill, bigger even, than acing a spelling bee or exhibiting in a science fair, was seeing girls' rumps roasted in class.
All of my teachers owned paddles; it was a school rule. Some of the pedant/disciplinarians just waved their whackers in warning. Others actually applied the hickory. It was boys, mostly, who felt the board. On rare occasion, though, girls also tasted the shellack.
Whenever a girl committed a school crime, such as note passing, gum chewing or toenail clipping, she would be instructed to step to the front of the room. She would be told to face the blackboard, bend over and grab the backs of her knees with her hands.
She would gather her skirt, if she was wearing a skirt, as if for protection. But there was no way to prevent the slap of wood on bottom. As a topper, the girl would have to stand in a corner, nose to the juncture, ears to the plaster, and keep her hands away from her stinging keister.
In a way, I was now rewriting the curriculum. At the sight of the unprotected, heart-shaped target my monkey, normally a slow learner, was ready to move to the head of the class. Or rather, the head of my monkey was ready to behave without class.
I started with the old horse paddle. I swung it like an angry jockey, first through the air, then in the direction of the untanned hide in front of me. When I heard the first whinny (a note of near protest) I realized I would have to proceed differently.
I would have to start at the bottom and teach the three R's of spanking: rapping, reddening and 'rithmetic. These were the principles practiced in any European boarding school (I knew this from studying a wealth of material on corporal punishment on the Continent. I'd seen countless films, Swedish titles mostly, with more than one spank in them.)
The rapping and reddening would be easy, but the 'rithmetic wouldn't be for retards. This was the European way.
I set the horse paddle aside for later use. For the rapping, I began with a ruler. At the first thwack, my ambivalent apprentice said, "Ow!"
"You know," I said, "European women don't say 'Ow' when spanked. They say, 'Ai.'"
"Ai!" she shrieked as I swatted again.
But this wasn't a class in European women's studies. It was a lesson in the three R's of spanking. I proceeded with the ruler rapping, which led to a rosy glowing, then a deep reddening, accompanied by some crowing, as well as the jumping of my monkey. But when my whack-ee started bucking, I knew I would have to administer a stricter tanning. We would have to concentrate on 'rithmetic.
I switched from a ruler to a yardstick. "Do you know the proportion of a yardstick to a ruler?" I asked my unruly compadre.
"A yardstick is three times as long," she said.
"What does that mean?"
"You can deliver a harder smack with a shorter swing."
She had been studying her spankology. As a reward, I applied the wood.
"How many strokes should I give you for eating that candy bar?" I asked.
"Ten?" she suggested.
"That was a chocolate bar!" I reminded her. "Underpaid, nonunion workers harvested those chocolate nuts! Your consumption prolongs their poverty! That's worth ten squared."
I made her count, then, down from a hundred. To keep track, she sang a classic counting song, modified for a thrashing: "Ninety-nine bottles of spunk on the wall. Ninety-nine bottles of spunk. You take one down and squirt it around; ninety-eight bottles of spunk on the wall." And so on, with a percussive stroke and an "Ai!" at every change of verse.
My monkey danced the whole way through the aria. At times, though, my arm got tired, so I had to switch implements. I tried a hairbrush (it worked well both ways, bristles and backside, on her backside), a fly swatter (slapping with the flap was easier than swatting a fly), a wooden spoon (more fun than tossing a salad), a wire hanger (when straightened, the perfect shape for flailing), a fishing rod (had to cast about to find one), and a spatula (the flapjack flipper was springy and stingy). Then I went back to the trusty horse paddle. I put her through her paces as I worked on her haunches. The only thing I lacked was a meter stick, for the full European effect.
As she approached zero in her countdown song, I moved in to give her a monkey whipping. When excited, my monkey was a harsh master. He was King Dong. I held the creature by the tail and clubbed the butt before me. The monkey's head peppered the chocolate glutton's heinie, covered every inch of global territory, and came to rest at the gluteal entranceway. Then, like a primate possessed, my monkey dove right in.
When I heard my spank-ee reach zero, I let my chimp go ape.
Originally Published June 2006: Sexy, Strange & Strangely Sexy