Learning It At Her Knee

By Sacchi Green


How can something be punishment if the punishee wants it? Maybe it's a matter of nebulous guilt feelings left over from stressful toilet training, or the series of "noes!" and "naughties!"that are inevitable in the process of being a child. Maybe punishment can, for a while, be felt as expiation for those vaguely sensed guilts.  I can’t explain it any better that, but I do know that there are some people who don’t enjoy it unless they can convince themselves, on some level, that it is punishment. Even unfair punishment. The only “true” story I ever published about myself (in Rachel Kramer Bussel’s First-Timers anthology, several years ago,) involved just such a situation.

Learning It At Her Knee

     "Spanking," the girl in the scarlet shirt told me firmly. "Spanking, all spanking, and nothing but. That's what I'm interested in. Strictly spanking."
     "Very strict spanking, I presume?"
     "Very strict indeed," she agreed, laughing. Her wide mouth inspired considerable regret that her tastes were apparently so narrow, but her expressive face and sturdy, compact body appealed to me enough to make expanding my boundaries seem more than worthwhile, even with limitations.
       "And the more unfair and undeserved it is, the better," she added. "I'm not a submissive bottom; I just like to be punished and feel righteously angry about it."
     "A real connoisseur." I hoped my own knee-jerk aversion to displays of anger didn't show. Research, I told myself. Gotta research my smut-writing craft.
     The other members of the women's BDSM club had got well ahead of us on the way to the restaurant where they always convened after meetings. V and I were new here, both introduced to the group by friends met in other circumstances.
     In front of us a cluster of cute young baby-dykes and femmes thronged so thickly around my old friend Q's tall, impressive form that only her brush-cut steel gray head showed above them. V, to my delight, seemed happy enough to keep me company, though her gaze did stray toward Q from time to time. Well, hell, so did mine, and always would, no matter how completely I understood that the friendship she needed from me had nothing to do with sex.
     "I guess you could call me a connoisseur," V agreed. "It's not that I have a one-track mind, it's just that all the tracks seem to lead to the same place."
     I hung back a little to get a view of the seat of her jeans. "And a very nice place it is, too," I said--at least I might have, if the comment hadn't waited until a day later to occur to me, as they so often do.
     When Q e-mailed to ask how I'd liked the group and whether I'd seen anybody I was dying to play with, I was overjoyed to be able to report an intriguing prospect. I confided my doubts about being able to concentrate purely on sadism, and she tried to share the philosophical underpinnings of the attitude and role she'd mastered, but the fact remained that the masochistic girls lining up for punishment at her hands wanted those hands to thoroughly fuck them, as well. And I doubt that they felt much need to philosophize about it.
     V did need to. It made some sense, I knew, to "process" for a while, since she didn't know much about me except that I was Q's friend, a published writer, and very new to the BDSM scene. She needed to be sure that I was neither too crazy to be safe, nor too safe to be just crazy enough.

[a big chunk snipped, moving along to the BDSM group’s play party at a Fetish Fair in Boston]

The party had become so crowded that it seemed impossible to find anyone. I was both keyed up and cast down. The back of Q's familiar steel-gray head rose visibly across the room, so I edged my way toward her. Maybe she'd seen V.
     And then I saw V myself, gazing up at Q, face animated and lips moving quickly in a conversation that clearly went beyond asking where I might be. The red leotard rising out of black jeans accentuated her body in ways the cotton shirt had only hinted at. I knew very well how much Q was enjoying the view.
     Before I had time to work up a good head of jealous steam, though, V saw me and waved. "Guess what!" she said, when I was close enough to hear. "Q is willing to help us out with some spanking instruction, if that's okay with you."
     "Sort of a master class?" I asked. "Sure, that would be great." I meant it, too. Working with both of them would provide double the fuel for fantasy.
     "I can't do it quite yet, though," Q said, looking longingly toward the door where her girl waited. "I had something else planned just now. Maybe in an hour or so. You two could find some space and get in some practice."
     "Space is going to be a problem." V peered around through the crowd. "We need a good chair, at least, and a couch would be even better, but they're all occupied."
     That was an understatement. Two of the three couches supported activities that vied with the sling for the status of center ring in a kinky three-ring circus, while the third was packed with avid voyeurs.
     "My room is down the hall," I said, "and there's a couch in there just going to waste." V looked hesitant until I added, "the air conditioning is top-notch, too," which could no longer be said of the party suite. No system yet invented could cope with that many people breathing that heavily in a space that size.
     "I suppose I could leave my book bag in your room," V said a bit shyly, bending to pick up the heavy pack at her feet.
     "Books?" I asked, edging her toward the door. "I thought it must be your toy bag."
     "Well, there are a few toys, too," she confided as we went down the hall. "But it's mostly books I'd loaned to a friend and picked up on the way. That's why I was late."
     Once in my room, as she looked around with approval at the space and the couch, I asked her to show me the contents of her bag. Exploring toy bags was, I knew, a time-honored ice-breaker on occasions like this, and besides, I was genuinely curious about what books she was carrying.
     A hairbrush (of course), several wooden paddles, a braided leather belt--and half-a-dozen children's and YA fantasy books, some of them classics I had loved in my long-ago youth.
     "The books just happen to be there," V said, somewhat flustered, but it seemed to me that they were the perfect accessories for the age-play she had a taste for. I managed to infuse a mock-stern note into my voice.
     "'Just happen to be there'? That was careless, wasn't it! Seems to me that a girl who carries Jane Aiken Hodge and Madelaine L'Engle in the bag with her kinky toys deserves some pretty severe punishment!"
     She ducked her head, but couldn't conceal a grin. "Yes, Ma'am," she murmurred, stripping off her shoes and black pants with practiced speed. Her red leotard ended in a thong disappearing between her very available buttcheeks.
     I sat down heavily on the couch. "Come here," I ordered, patting my lap, and she obeyed immediately, wriggling herself into optimum position across my knees. I gave her ass an experimental slap, and then a harder one.
     "Go ahead, as hard as you want," she said, "just not too high, not too near the tailbone. You could damage something that way."
     So I hit harder, open-handed, over and over, not minding that my "authority" was necessarily somewhat diluted by the fact that she was the expert and I the beginner. "Hold me tight with your left hand," she panted after a while, "so I can't get away. It's okay to be rough!" So I gripped her right hip sharply and found that I gained the leverage to put more force into my spanking hand. A little rocking motion let me swing all the way from my shoulder and even put my back into it, besides intensifying the sensual pleasures of feeling her body writhing and pressing into my lap. I wondered whether the invisible thong was forced harder against her clit and lips as I spanked her.
     I'd worried about getting tired, but once I got into a rhythm that I could control and vary enough to startle V from time to time, it seemed like I could go on forever. She wasn't giving directions any more, just moaning and grunting and occasionally gasping sharply when I surprised her with a syncopation of the pace.
     Finally she began to murmur a few indistinguishable words. I remembered guiltily that I was supposed to be scolding her enough to arouse her righteous indignation at unfair punishment, but I was too immersed in physical sensations to think of words. Her voice strengthened, though, until I could clearly hear her chant, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" at every stroke.
     It was clearly a ritual familiar to her. I hoped it meant that I had taken her to the space she really wanted to find, even if it wasn't the one she had claimed to be looking for. I spanked even harder, tirelessly, until her ass glowed nearly as red as her leotard and she was clearly running out of breath. "Do you need a break?" I asked softly, not knowing where to go from there. My natural urge to progress toward other sensory stimulation was, I knew, forbidden. Strictly spanking. She had trusted me, and I wouldn't betray that trust.
     "Yes..." V said breathlessly, "we'd better rest some before going back to the party." Then, when she'd rolled sideways on my lap and I was gently stroking her inflamed thighs and buttocks, she added, "I had no idea you'd have so much endurance!"

[the rest snipped, including the actual spanking lesson from the expert, which is when it gets the most fun]

I’ve condensed the piece considerably, besides snipping out large chunks, and it still seems too long to include here, but what the heck. If you don’t like it, punish me.

If you can catch me.