News and stuff

Hey folks.

Well, an unexpectedly busy work schedule and the fact that neither my computer nor I have been feeling the best have conspired to put blogging on the back burner. The rest of the London adventures are coming, but in the meantime, two neat things have happened.

a.) The second part of my 50's spanking is up on Sound Punishment. Whee!

and

b.) The lovely Mr. Brushstrokes of The Spanking Spot fame very graciously asked me for an interview. As I've spent more hours than I like to admit being interviewed by myself in my own head, I took to it like a fish to water.

I hope to be back to blogging regularly soon when things get back to normal. Thanks for your patience!

The first bit of London

Well, I'm back from a great Nimhneach but no time to discuss that. I missed Pandora's deadline for writing about London already. I'll have to sweet-talk her back, but in the meantime, let's get down to business.

I kissed Frank goodbye at the airport, feeling quite guilty leaving him behind and going off gallivanting in London, especially when he as still all sunburny and peely. This wasn't helped by the fact that I messed up my booking somehow and he had to pay a completely unnecessary fee for me. (foreshadowing!) But I was looking forward to this trip so much, and once I got through security and onto the plane I was already buzzing. I had some very friendly and curious Londoners on the plane beside me who saw my foreign passport and asked what I was traveling for. I amused myself making up imaginary friends "from school" all meeting up after we'd scattered to the seven winds and my various imaginary adventures as I "backpacked" through Europe. Eventually they turned to each other and left me to stare out the window in peace and focus on everything I had to look forward to. The emails had been flying thick and fast ever since Graham announced that she'd be making a kinky pilgrimage to London and I hopped on her coat-tails. I couldn't believe the roster of people we were going to meet and the fabulous kinky events that were popping up like mushrooms. The original plan was for me to share a hostel room with Graham, but due to certain unforeseen events conspired to make that un-possible, so at the last moment Pandora stepped up with an offer of lodging. I was so grateful! But nervous, too. It changed things. I'd imagined being all mommy-ish and minding Graham and helping her get to this or that place or, in other words, distract myself from myself. Now I was going to be just plain old Caroline Grey for a good part of the trip, instead one half of CarolineandGraham Grey. And also, staying at Pandora's house? For reals? (!!!!!!!!/squee/OMG) [/fangirl]

Once I landed, the first order of business was to find our meeting-place. I surprised myself by finding the right train with very little trouble, and I made it in good time, too. I found the appointed pub and instantly recognised Thomas Cameron sitting at a table, waiting for me. Pandora was a bit late after work, and poor Graham was wandering around London, lost. This was unexpected and I was a little flustered at first, but both Tom and I are enthusiastic talkers and it wasn't long until we were chattering along like old friends. Pandora and then Graham arrived, and the chattering kicked up several notches. I was smitten with all three of them and couldn't believe my luck. How often do imaginary online people turn out to be awesome 3 for 3? But by the time we got back to Pandora's and dressed up (I always have to dress up. It's the law.) I was seriously wound up and exhausted at the same time. New people nerves and delicious beer and travel conspired to make me good for little more than sitting on the bed and grinning helplessly at people. And making a stuffed otter do a very sexy dance. And giggling. I kept wondering if we should play, but I didn't have the wherewithal to push it, and when everyone left me to fall gratefully asleep in Pandora's bed, I was grateful. I had a big day coming up.

Well, Natalie did, anyway.

I woke up early, my heart already thumping. Lowewood! Lowewood and nearly a dozen new people and where's my uniform and what if I get lost and Graham has no phone and aaaack! Eliane and Emma had given me instructions on how to get there, and Pandora had shown my sleepy-stupid self how to use her computer, but the underground line I needed was out of order that day and I was having technical difficulties with the computer. I started Freaking Out, but took a deep breath and turned my thoughts to my uniform. If the uniform's okay, then everything else will be okay too. And it was. I gathered all my things, doubled checked that I had all my socks and shoes and far too many pairs of underpants and called Emma for backup. Between the two of them, she and Eliane guided me onto the right bus to the right train to the right station, where I met Graham. We were both quite early, obviously eager. I saw my own face in hers: frazzled and ecstatic and petrified. She had much more right to feel that way than I did, so I sucked it up and started being very brisk. We made it to the final train and babbled at each other, and laughed and wondered. Before we knew it, we were buying bags of penny-sweets and piling into Eliane's car. Lowewood bound!

We rang the doorbell at the school's entrance and waited. Caroline, Graham, Emma and Eliane had disappeared. Natalie, Cassady, Caoilfhionn, and Jemima had arrived.

People you can blame for me not having blogged properly

Well, the thing is, whenever I've been away from the internet for more than say, 3 hours, the only thing I can think is ZOMG what have I missed!?!?! My list of must-read blogs grows steadily. I'm completely spoiled for choice, but I don't wanna have to choose, damnit (*stomp*) And what's more, not only have all my regular reads been posting fascinating, thinky, compelling posts over the past two weeks of my internet starvation, and not only do I want to comment on all of them, but I somehow got sucked into several new blogs, each with an impressive and compulsively readable archive.

I am usually officially the last person to find the stuff on the internet that everyone else has known about for yonks, but I'm going to share these anyway, just in case you haven't heard of them yet. Because they are just that freaking good. And also because compulsively reading their archives all freaking day yesterday kept me from writing about all of the spectacular things I've been up to. (Happily, Pandora, Emma, Graham, Eliane, and Jessica have written their own versions of parts of the week. Go read them for a bit.)

The first blog, and I don't know why the hell I've never seen it before, belongs to "Casey Morgan", called supplicium post mortem: whacking, bereavement, God, etc. This woman writes like nobody else I've ever encountered. Her spanking stories burrow right to the coiled up center of my kink--even ones written more than a decade ago. But oh, oh, oh, as beautiful as the fiction is, she writes about her real life, about tragically losing her husband, her soul-mate. I sat at my desk yesterday, reading, crying hard.

She manages to bring you right to the edge of her grief and I felt less like a voyeur and more like...I don't know. She writes:

I used, often, to fear he’d die, usually in a plane crash. Sometimes I’d dream he had died, but when I woke up, he was there, most merciful reprieve. Whenever I went out – to a friend’s play, to a party, to a family gathering – I always felt such relief that we had our life to come home to. This was the real reality – him and me and our dogs and our apartment

I've never hurt that badly, but I have loved like that, I do love like that. I have those nightmares, I know that relief. I'm crying again thinking of it. Her posts are so open, raw, honest, without melodrama, that I got a little taste of that pain. She has an eye for God, a love for C.S. Lewis, she feels like a kindred spirit.

Next is Bitchy Jones. Oh my goodness, I laughed so hard. She's so smart, so funny, so evil, so human--she's a sadistic, dominant woman with so much brain and such a way with words. Layered and nested sarcasm turns me on. (example, the delicious Glossary of Perverted Sex) I don't know if I agree with everything she has to say, but I sure as hell agree with the way she says it. Part of what makes it so wonderful is the expansiveness and authority of her generalisations mixed with acid self-depreciation. Very original, which is so much harder than it sounds. I'm still no where near finishing reading her archive (I get off on the fact that she calls anyone who wants to do that a "text-based masochist". Oh, if you only knew.) and the comment threads are golden and long, so it's going to require a lot of my attention over the next few days.

And there are others, too, but I'm tired of blogging now. Will share them later. Well, here are two schadenfreude-tinted quickies that cheer me up to do end and also eat hours and hours of my life: You're Doing it Wrong and FAIL.

(I am easily amused. It's a good thing Big Brother blows monkey chunks this year or you'd never see me.)

But I will, I am sure, write about me. (me me me!) Soon. I am still telling myself the stories of the scenes I had, kind of treasuring them, and going over and over them in my mind, telling them to Frank, processing them. I'm also taking some time to reconnect with Frank. I missed him, lots. A few weeks of travel and sunburns and exhaustion and business took their toll. Not in any dramatic way (we never stop nuzzling/molesting each other to one degree or another. We're sickening like that.), but just enough that it's kind of wonderful to spend a little while remembering how crazy stupid in love with each other we actually are.

A big tease and an announcement

Am back from London, it was practically perfect in every way, and I expect to blog about it till my fingers fall off.

Soon.

In the meantime, it was brought to my attention that I've had my own email address listed INCORRECTLY in my profile for ages and ages. Some poor patient girl named Caroline Grey (and it's probably her real name, too) has been getting all my lovely filthy spanking communiqués instead of me. I've fixed it now, but for the record, my email address is

carolinegrey15 at gmail dot com, though of course with an @ and a .

The 15 is very important!

Now...must find tea.

Hello lovely patient people!

Good heavens, so much to post about. I've been recovering from the happy madness that was the FMS beach party while preparing for the madness that is to be the Greys' Great Kinky London Adventure. I am seriously spoiled so rotten with these back-to-back kinky trips it has almost struck me speechless.

What to say about FMS? Well, it was an incredible location...the gulf was warm as bathwater, there were umbrella drinks galore, free cabanas, soft white sand...and spankings. Tragically, Frank's Irishness outed the very first day and he managed to get the worst sunburn I have every seen. He was very very sick, and he's still crippled by it. It put a bit of a damper on things, but he was the world's best trouper and managed to socialize and crack jokes and even play. I'm still a bit in awe.

Highlights? I had some super play sessions, and caught up with a few friends I miss terribly. I took things pretty easy (for me!) but still managed to feel very well-spanked by the end of the party.

There was a model reception, which was quite cool. Frank, ever the good sport, agreed (even in his lobstered condition) to serve as a handsome waiter to all the models, making sure we never ran out of mimosas. I got to meet a bunch of really cool girls, including Keagan and the glamourous girls from Amateur Spankings. We posed for photos like reverse Santas (we were the ones on knees) and were generally treated like the high-powered A-listers we are. :)

Right before leaving Richard Windsor and I managed to get together for a much-postponed spanking (5 years in the making!) and caught it on film. Both of us were rather the worse for wear, and I had a massive fit of the giggles, but I enjoyed making the little clip and would love to work with the Houndog again some day in a more professional capacity.

I can't recommend this party enough. The organizers are experienced, involved, and so generous with their time and inspiration. It's tremendous value for money, and if you can only make one big spanking party a year (like us) this may be the best one out there. I already can't wait to go back.

But I haven't had any time to get wistful yet. Tomorrow I leave for my first ever trip to London, where along with my sister-in-arms-and-scene-name I'll get to meet a veritable who's-who of the spanking literati, including (among others) Pandora, Eliane, Jessica, and Haron and Abel. And the whole thing will include, wonder of wonders, a trip to Lowewood for the probably insufferable but soon to be reformed Natalie Taylor-Meade. I'm so excited!

I'm also on my 4th day of quitting smoking (only one slip-up!) and feeling pretty proud of myself.

And, last but not least, my first photoset is up on Northern Spanking!!!

I wonder what the long-suffering but short-tempered Mr. Lewis is about to do to his poor, well-meaning, overworked secretary?

Wow

Well, that was some party. I'm finally up after hibernating, and I have so much to say but very little cerebral function. I'm still trying to work through the pages and pages of emails and the billions of blogs I missed while I was off frolicking.

I am also on day 2 of no smoking and my concentration is suffering. But I really think I am going to make it this time.


Etc, etc, etc, excuses. A real post tomorrow.

Party Pitfalls

Warning, there may be ranting ahead.

As I said in my last post, spanking parties are incredible. It's such a heady experience, whether it's your first time, or whether you consider yourself an old hand (I'm somewhere in between). But there are things that can wreck the mood, and it's so unnecessary. Example:

1.) Obnoxious Bratting/Intrusive Topping or "Wait, have we started the scene?"

There are a plethora of great posts/threads on Rad's blog that address and discuss this, (well, the bratting side at least) so I'm just going to do the lazy thing and link instead of trying to define it here. What I'm interested in are the causes and responses to this type of behaviour.

I was in an SSNY chat the other night (a rare occurrence, what with the time difference) and noticing Rad in there, I was encouraged to bring up a topic that I'd seen discussed on his blog a few times--obnoxious bratting, what to do about it, and who's responsible for quelling it, and how.

Rad suggested a "no play/out of character zone" where it was understood that any communication that goes on inside the magic circle is real, serious, no-not-messing conversation. I have a hard time imagining it actually taking off, but it's such a good idea, even in theory. It was all so easy in my old dweeby internet roleplaying games. Whenever we had something to communicate with each other we just typed OOC in front of it.

The specifics of the question have been discussed at length elsewhere, but what I'm concerned with here is somewhat larger. It's about consent, and about adult behaviour. It can be so eye-bleedingly frustrating when people just won't break character (like that South Park episode where the boys go to "Pioneer Town" and the reenactors refuse to break character and use a phone when a hostage situation develops). It happens on both sides the equation: the obnoxious Top who thinks he's topping you all the time. The dialog usually goes like this:

Top:Is that a beer young lady, tsk, tsk, I'll have to spank you for that, come with me...
Caroline: Hi, my name is Caroline.
Top: Ah HA! Avoiding the question. You get more with that. Come with me.
Caroline: What's you name?
Top: Still dodging, I see! Yes, 12 of the best for you.
Caroline: Oh, um, I think Frank wants me.

Inside I am thinking: Yes it's a fucking beer, I don't know you, I'm an adult, it's a party, it's 10pm, I'm not getting drunk, it's none of your business, I haven't consented to play with you, now go away.

And it's the same with the obnoxious bottom who interprets any attempt by a Top to have a conversation with her as part of an extended scene and license to respond brattily. That conversation goes like this:

Top: Please stop that.
Bottom: Ooh! Oooh! Is Mister Cranky Pants getting cranky?
Top: Sorry, I'm trying to talk.
Bottom: Nyah nyah nyah, you'll never catch me!
Top: ???
Bottom: Whatcha gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?

I'm talking about the more extreme behaviour in these categories. A little bit of gentle unsolicited bratting or topping can be a good way to suss out a potential partner. It's a type of spank-flirting. It's a dynamic. And that's fine. But it should be done gently, tongue in cheek, allowing either party to decline or withdraw easily.

I understand the motivation behind this type of behaviour. It can be hard for people to switch in and out of character, and people are very protective of their headspace--they want to just lose themselves in an immersive experience of being that person they've wanted to be for so long. But in real life, in real time, it is annoying and counter-productive and prevents any real communication between players. And we're always saying that communication is paramount to this scene. We should be able to introduce ourselves like human beings, talk about what we like and what we don't like, about limits, about fantasies, about the weather, all of these things. There seems to be a commonly held belief that this kind of negotiation spoils the moment, takes the spontaneity out of things. I was partial to this point of view for a while, but I'm here to tell you it's not true. Having frank, adult, out-of-character conversations can only add to future scenes. True spontaneity and chemistry are actually based (like most magic tricks) on a solid scaffolding of reality. It's when you've taken time to get to know a partner (and it doesn't take years, you can sketch it out in a weekend) that things go well.

To me the main issue is this: we are grown ups and equals. All of us. Even the age-playing, bratting, untameable schoolgirls. And we should be able to let go of the fantasy long enough to act like grown ups when we need to. Nobody is responsible for policing us, or making us behave, or "disciplining us" into acting like polite grown-ups. This cuts both ways. I know you are a top and I'm a bottom. It says so on our nametages. But please don't approach me as if top and bottom are the only dimension. Approach me like another human being. I'm not asking for long heart-to-hearts. Just a little negotiation before we dive into the "roles" we know and love so well. All of that stuff is for inside a scene. And as magical and wonder-land as these parties can be, they are not all scene all the time.

I'm kind of annoying myself with my preaching here. You'd think this stuff would be completely obvious. But sometimes it's not. And I will admit that in my earliest days of spanking parties I didn't quite grasp it. I wasn't sure how to turn it on and off, when it was appropriate to be "in character" and when it wasn't. What I'm trying to say, in all goodwill and friendliness, to my fellow bottoms, is this:

It is a GOOD THING to step out of character on a regular basis, to save the bratty little-girl goofy stuff for your scenes and sessions. I remember feeling this enormous (self-created) pressure to be cute and silly and spankable all the damn time. I'm afraid that at times it may have made me a bit obnoxious. It took me a while to learn that as lovable as my spanko "character" may be, the people worth knowing, the people that I really wanted to play with, were interested in knowing the intelligent grown up, every-day person that I really am first. Being the real me was not a liabilty. I didn't actually have to act like some caricature of a spankable little girl to be likable or get attention or spankings.

And to all the Tops out there: again, we admire you for your force of character, for your authority, for your ability to spank us until we squeak. (among other things) But you don't have to be macho/Alpha/caveman/in charge/on Top all the time. Just hanging with us out doesn't ruin the illusion. We're capable of appreciating you on more than one plane. Take a deep breath. We like you when you're lounging by the pool in your burmuda shorts, being one of the guys. You can relax.

Okay, I have lots of stuff to say. But it's getting late, and I still have to repack my suitcases at least 3 times. So this is it for now!