7

It’s not easy to put into words what I feel when I spank a girl, because the sensations are visceral, atavistic. Mostly, it’s a feeling of power, the heady pleasure of being able to do as I please with another human being. But why is spanking the thing I choose to do, rather than any of the other things I might choose? I suppose the easiest way to know you are really getting through to someone is if you can see and/or hear their response to your actions. So as she squirms and squeals I have instant feedback, I know without a doubt that the strokes of whatever implement I am wielding are having an impact, on her mind as well as on her bottom. That makes me feel strong, in command. I want to exercise my power by playing with her, testing her, teasing her, giving her pleasure but only on my terms, because the pleasure she is getting comes at a price, the price of total surrender and the price of accepting as much pain as she can bear.

However, you could get not dissimilar responses, wriggles and whimpers, from bringing her to orgasm, and indeed I enjoy that just as much. I think one of the things that most excites me about spanking is the knowledge that she perversely gets pleasure from the pain I inflict. Girls aren’t supposed to want those sorts of things. They aren’t supposed to enjoy the humiliation of being put across the knee, aren’t supposed to enjoy being tied up helpless, aren’t supposed to get pleasure from having their behinds beaten until they beg for mercy, until the bruises show. One of the great satisfactions for me is in making girls admit just how much they like forbidden delights, how much they enjoy perversity. I’ve always wanted to corrupt girls, to debauch them, to make them own up to guilty pleasures they wouldn’t dare confess to their mothers, or their friends, or to their vanilla partners. Making girls admit to the enjoyment of pain is a particularly perverse pleasure, and a very powerful one for me.

When it’s good I get into a kind of Dom space. I don’t think Dom space is exactly the same as subspace. The submissive girl wants to be transported, taken out of herself, put in another place, a place where she can scarcely articulate any longer what she wants, even though there’s a safe word there if she needs it. She has entirely lost control. But the Dom, I think, can never lose control. He is the one who is responsible for her well-being. I can just about imagine, if I try hard, becoming so excited with giving a beating that I want to go on and on. I can imagine myself disregarding her wishes, taking no notice as she cries and screams. I say I can imagine this; but I would never do it, because I’m a responsible grown-up, and I care about the girls I spank. I would never ever harm them. So I need to stay in control, not just of the girl but of myself.

Nevertheless, there is a kind of place I get to where the intensity of my pleasure in spanking her is an almost spiritual experience. What I seek is the moment when she thinks she’s had enough, really can’t take any more, and you hold her and stroke her neck and whisper in her ear that you want her to be a good girl for you, and what would please you more than anything is if she would take just a little more. Another six strokes, you whisper, and then I’ll stop if that’s your limit. And she hesitates. She wants to please you, she wants to be made to take more, but the cane really, really hurts. And then she nods. That’s a magical moment for me, to know that I have led her beyond what she thought she could endure, that I have put her in a place where pleasing me is more important to her than the relief of pain. A place where the pain becomes pleasure because it’s endured for your pleasure, which is hers.

In that state, I often want to delay fucking the girl, because I think that would bring me out of Dom space. (I find it hard to explain why that should be so.) I’d sooner, when the time comes that she really cannot take any more, hold her and whisper in her ear and give her the care she needs.

***

Let me describe some of my feelings when I’m being cruel. It might seem to the outside observer that from my attitude and tone of voice I am unemotional. If I tell her to put a clothes peg on her nipple, it’s in a measured tone of voice, matter-of-fact rather than expressive. When I ask her if it hurts, it’s not in a gloating sort of way, but nor is it solicitous. It’s simply a request for information. If it hurts a little, that will dictate one course of action. If it hurts a lot, another.

Let me make it clear. I’m not the least bit sorry for her if she’s in pain. Of course, I have a general regard for her welfare. She knows that, but when she wriggles or whines or whimpers, or even begs for the peg to come off, I’m not thinking, poor little thing, how she is suffering. I’m not even particularly thinking, isn’t she wonderful to do this for me; how much I admire her and cherish her for being willing to suffer for my sake. Of course I do think those things, I think them very strongly. But it tends to be afterwards. At the time there are rather different thoughts and feelings in my head.

Make no mistake, I’m not indifferent to what’s going on. Quite the contrary. Why would I make her strip off, even tie her up if it’s going to be really bad, and apply pegs and clamps to her nipples, or elsewhere, if I didn’t very much want to do it? It’s madly exciting for me, make no mistake. But it’s a very particular kind of excitement. At the time, when the clamps are going on, I’m not possessed with an urgent desire to fuck her. It’s a strangely dispassionate kind of thrill. My cock might not even be hard, though at some point it probably will be.

So what sort of excitement is it? As I say, I’m not sorry for her, even though she groans with the pain. The way I see it, she wants this. At one level it’s true she doesn’t want it. She wants it to be over. She wants to have done it, but she doesn’t want to be doing it. And yet, I know that she does, really. I wouldn’t do these cruel things unless I was sure that she wanted them. I am certain, not just that she is willing to suffer for my sake, but that she actively wants to do it. She wants to offer me, freely, eagerly, everything I could ask of her. It isn’t always apparent. Sometimes it’s too much and she tries to run away. But deep down I know that not only does she want to offer me her pain, she hopes that I will require it of her. That’s the point I am trying to bring her to. That’s the goal of all the talking and the training, to get her to the point where she will want me to make her do all the things she cowers from, the humiliating, the painful things that make her cringe, and make her wet.

So when I put on another peg, or twist the one that’s on already, and she grimaces, I’m calm. I don’t suffer with her, because I know I am helping her give what she wants to give. It’s her greatest pleasure, to please me. So I’m content to see her pain. I ask her questions not because I’m going to stop if she says how much it hurts, but because I need the information to calibrate just how much pain she is offering me, and then I calculate how much more I think she can give. I’m in control, don’t you see, and that’s what she needs. She doesn’t want a Dom who lets her off easily, who takes pity at the first sign of tears. She wants a Dom who is calm, meticulous, and implacable, a Dom who knows how to bring out the best in her.

“Five more minutes, and then I’ll take them off.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“But only if you are a good girl. No whining.”

“No, Sir.”

“And when they come off, they are going on again after another five minutes. For as long as I say.”

I can see she’s struggling with this.

“Good girl,” I say.

You see? I’m not inhuman. I give credit where it’s due.

A Dom’s Definition of Submissive

What do I mean by submissive? Let me put it as succinctly as I can. If a girl is submissive to me it means I can put my hand up her skirt any time I please. She isn’t going to say, “Stop it! There are people watching.” She isn’t going to say, “I’m not in the mood.” She isn’t going to say (worst of all), “Don’t you ever think of anything else?” Because, being submissive, she has always already said yes.

Do girls have any idea what an incredible sense of freedom and power a man gets from knowing this? It’s so amazing that I wonder why every man isn’t a dominant. Who wouldn’t want to feel this way? Occasionally I’m even tempted to think that all men must in fact be dominant, it’s just that some lack the nerve to come out. And then I remember girls who’ve told me about trying to explain to their partner what they want, what they really really want. And being met with blank incomprehension, or even downright hostility and disgust.

So, it seems, it’s only a few lucky guys who feel this way, who get to have sex the way they want it, when they want it, who don’t have to negotiate, don’t have to beg or wheedle, don’t have to pretend to feelings they don’t have or be nice in dishonest ways.

The great thing about D/s is that the sex issue is settled. You don’t have to start from scratch each time, jostling to put yourself in the most advantageous position to secure what you want. There’s no trading or negotiating. Sex isn’t a reward for good behavior, or denial a punishment for bad. She’s already said, just tell me what you want and I’ll do it. Sex isn’t standing in for something else. It’s for and of itself, and each of you has decided that what works for you is when one party takes control.

But let there be no mistake. Being a Dom isn’t a license to be an asshole. I don’t see that a Dom has any less obligation than a vanilla guy to be all the things that girls like. To be charming and well-groomed and attentive, and a good listener as well as a good talker, one who doesn’t head for the exit if she starts to cry. And, yes, one who does his share around the house (cooking is such a domly thing, don’t you think?).

I’m not sure how relevant this is, but Jane Smiley has an interesting description of one of the characters in her new novel, Private Life. “He was one of those sorts of men that women were wiser to stay away from, men who took an interest in women, and observed them, and knew what they were thinking.” Why should women stay away from such men? Maybe it’s because women can lose their hearts to such men. And that’s always dangerous. But I think that’s what women want, really; someone who knows what they’re thinking. Don’t they?