Ritual versus Punishment

Spanking is something I’ve been interested in for a long time. I now recall an incident when I was about ten or eleven regarding spanking that I might relate at a latter date, but spanking has been on my mind for quite a while.

I remember trying to introduce F/m discipline to C a few years into our marriage. I was on a business trip in Monterey, California. I had a dead afternoon. I was driving around Monterey when I noticed an adult store so I parked and went in to see if they had any interesting toys. We didn’t have such stores where I lived.

As I perused the store, I came across a locked case containing leather floggers and other leather implements designed to use on someone’s bottom. One of the floggers caught my eye. I imagined C whipping me with it, and the fantasy caused me to go into a mild state of arousal. I had to really screw up my courage to ask the only sales clerk in the store to open the case for me so I could examine the flogger. Finally, I thought what the heck, these people will never see me again, and the stuff is there to sell anyway.

I told the clerk that I would like to see the flogger. He said he was helping another customer, but he would be over in a few minutes. I went back and stood by the case.

A man in the store, who had apparently overheard my brief conversation with the clerk, came up to me and said “Who’s going to be whipped with that, you, or your wife?”

I was a little taken aback. I was young, in my thirties, and I was a bit embarrassed about being in the store in the first place. I wasn’t quite sure whether this man had some type of motive in approaching me. However, I kept my composure and said, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe a little of both.”

“Well, it’s all a game anyway,” he said. “As long as everybody has fun,” and he moved on.

I bought the flogger for forty dollars, which I thought was a pretty stiff price, but I fantasized about C using it on me, and decided it was well worth it.

I got C some other nice presents as well (not in the adult store though). When I got home I was showing her the things I had bought for her, and I finally brought out the flogger.

“What’s that?” C exclaimed.

“It’s a flogger. I was hoping you would whip me with it, because I’ve been a very naughty boy.”

“In your dreams,” C said.

I was very disappointed.

C did actually use the flogger on me once when we were having a hot weekend in a hotel somewhere. And, I actually used it on her once. However, two whippings with a forty dollar flogger makes it twenty dollars a whipping, which is not a terribly good value.

When we moved ten years ago, C was cleaning things out, and tossed the flogger along with a number of my other kinky things I had collected over the years. Fortunately I noticed and recovered all of the items.

Well, that ramble dates my interest in discipline to the early years of my marriage to C. There were other things I came upon over the years. I found a very nice broad backed, flat wooden hairbrush with a very nice handle for gripping. I purchased it. It was never used to brush hair even though it sat on the bathroom counter in plain sight for many years. C knew what the implication was, and I may have been explicit, but she chose to ignore my desires.

Eventually, out of frustration, I just laid it out for C. C listened and said O.K., but never initiated anything. If I requested a spanking she would comply, but never really got into it.

I then posted to this blog my ideas on spanking being a submission ritual and emailed a copy of the post to C (C never reads my blog). At that point she seemed to understand a little better where I was coming from and our spanking interaction improved and increased.

Everyone says that in a spanking relationship or an FLR, communication is the most important element. I am certainly not in and FLR at this point in time and my communication skills are not moving me in that direction very fast. One of the main problems is that C seems to be very uncomfortable discussing anything about spanking, FLR or our sexual interaction. When I try to start a dialogue on such topics nothing comes back, and C changes the subject as quickly as possible.

So with that background I will describe the past Saturday to you. I got a spanking on Saturday morning. Both of my live-at-home children had volunteered to help in a school science event that required them to travel to another town – at six in the morning. C came into the kitchen when I was cooking dinner on Friday night. She put her chin on my shoulder and patted me on the bottom and whispered, “I’m afraid there is going to be a spanking tomorrow.” I just smiled.

C plays this as a game. She doesn’t really grasp my real need for her control, her discipline and my desire to be submissive to her.

In any case the children left at six the next morning and at eight I got spanked.

I took a shower and put on punishment panties, and then climbed back into bed where C was reading the paper, and having a cup of coffee that I had served her.

“Don’t get back in bed,” C said. “You need to do your corner time and think about how bad you’ve been.”

“O.K.” I said. “But, you know C, this isn’t exactly a game to me.”

“It’s a game,” C said. “Go do your corner time. I’ll take care of you in a few minutes.”

C eventually took me to the couch in the living room. She read out the infractions that I had written in the punishment book, lowered my panties, and put me over her lap for a moderate spanking. She then held me for several minutes, the part of spanking I like best. My panties were still around my knees, and I realized after a while that I had an erection. That doesn’t usually happen. Finally, she took me back to the bedroom and we made love. I had an orgasm, she did not.

Latter in the afternoon, I drove C into town to have lunch, and run some errands. While in the car I decided to have some dialogue with her about our spanking session.

“That was a good spanking session this morning,” I said. “I like your control and the bonding rush I get after you spank me. You should spank me more. You should really spank me anytime I screw up.”

“Hmmmm,” C said.

“For example,” I said, “you should really have spanked me when I had that meltdown three weeks ago over the magazine you threw away. You should have hauled me back to the bedroom and told me that as soon as the kids were out of the house I would get a spanking, and ordered me to put on my punishment panties to remind me of my impending fate.”

“Hmmmm,” said C.

“You know C, I really need your control and your discipline. You really are the better half of this marriage. I screw up all the time, and I should be disciplined for it, you never do. You’re older than I am, a little bit; you earn more money than I do, you work harder than I do, and you are just a better person. You deserve and need to express some real authority over me, and I will submit to it.”

“That is ridiculous,” said C. “You don’t screw up all the time and we are equals. I want to be equals. I’m six months older than you, I made a miniscule amount more than you did last year for the first time in our marriage, and what does that have to do with anything anyway, and I don’t work harder than you do.”

“Yes you do. You work all day and then come home and write reports all evening. I never do that.”

“I don’t want this spanking thing to be our whole relationship. Anyway, where do you want to have lunch? It will have to be somewhere fairly fast. My hair appointment is at two.”

That is what passes for communication in a thirty year plus marriage. I didn’t press it, and we had a nice afternoon.

Now, after that very brief discussion of screwing up, I screwed up. I did not do it intentionally, I never do. It was simply a lapse of judgment.

C was planning to go out of town for two days to a conference with a colleague. Her colleague was going to drive, but had gotten ill. C thought she might have to drive, and since the children were out of town with the other cars, I was to be stranded in the boonies all Sunday. This impacted my grocery shopping strategy. For the evening, I bought a bottle of cabernet for C, because she drinks red wine, and I got two bottles of chardonnay for me, one for the evening, and one for Sunday. However I did not want C to know about the second bottle of chardonnay, because she gets uptight about my drinking. I separated the bottles and left one in the trunk of the car when I took the groceries in. Latter I went out to retrieve it, planning to hide it in the bin that we use to recycle bottles. The bagger at the grocery store had wrapped the bottle in a brown paper bag. Just as I was lifting the lid of the recycle bin, C came into the garage for some reason, and surprised me.

“What are you doing?”

“Just throwing some bottles away,” I said as I dumped the bag wrapped bottle in the recycle bin.

C looked suspicious. I knew I had been caught, but I went back into the house.

A bit latter I walked into the kitchen and there was C holding the wine bottle.

“Why are you hiding wine from me? What are you doing?” C said with a good deal of irritation in her voice.

“I just wanted some wine for tomorrow, and I thought I would be stranded here all day,” I said.

“But why are you hiding it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was very embarrassed.

“I have a good mind to make you write this down in your punishment book, but I guess that would just reward you!” C slammed the bottle down on the counter and walked out.

I felt very bad, but I was stunned by her statement. Had punishing me with a spanking for a real offence momentarily crossed her mind?

Latter I was building a fire for C as she reclined in her leather chair in the den.

“C,” I said, “if you want to punish me for what I did today, you may.”

“Why would I do that, you like spankings?”

“I don’t like spankings. I like the ritual in the ritual spankings we do. You don’t have to do those things you do in a ritual spanking. I’ll submit to your discipline. I want your discipline.”

“Just build my fire please.”

And that was the end of a very strange Saturday.