Monday, May 13, 2013

True Punishment

By Lisabet Sarai


There's no warm up, no sexy leather thongs trailed lightly across my bared ass to make me imagine what's to come. He doesn't tease me about what a naughty sub I've been, excitement obvious in his voice despite the mock sternness.

He doesn't speak at all. He simply brings the whip down, fast and deliberate, slicing into my skin and triggering pain that makes me cry out despite my determination to remain quiet.

No reaction from him - just another stroke, precise and vicious, and two lines of fire now searing my butt. This time I choke down my moan – I don't want to make it worse for him – but tears already leak from my eyes. I hate this.

When he beats me in a scene, the pain is real, but pleasure almost drowns it out. Not physical pleasure, at least not at first, but the deep satisfaction that arises from knowing I please him. The sense that we're partners in deviance, that I fulfill his darkest needs, arouses me more than anything else. The beatings we share are sweet and intimate, no matter how extreme his challenges to my endurance.

Today is just the opposite. I've disappointed him, and I know it. Each stroke hurts doubly, because he's not enjoying himself, not at all. He beats me out of a sense of duty, because he is in some sense responsible for correcting my bad behavior. And he has shuttered his mind, disconnected himself from me as he performs this disagreeable task.

The loneliness and the shame are far worse than the whipping itself.

Thirty lashes, he has decreed, and I deserve every one. He hits me like a metronome, like an automaton, the whip each time landing on a new, unpunished area. The pain builds and builds. He adds to it with his apparent disinterest. My cheeks are wet; my cunt is dry. I silently bear it, waiting for this trial to end.

Some submissives, I've read, crave pain for its own sake. Not I. I want his touch, his attention, the sense that his instruments of torture are extensions of his will and desire. If he requires that I suffer, I'll do so with a glad heart, to the utmost of my ability. His lust, his heat, the tenderness he lavishes upon me after he's done his worst, make it all worthwhile. I love to feel his cum spattering my whip-streaked skin, marking me as his. I honestly don't need to climax myself, though he usually ensures that I do. The thrill of surrender is enough.

This, though, is not surrender, though of course he asked my consent after I'd admitted my guilt. I am indeed willing to accept this beating. If I refused to be punished, I would irreversibly damage our relationship. He might even send me away.

That terrible notion makes me forget the pain for a moment, as my mind spirals down into a black pit of loss. I've endangered the magic by disobeying, by being thoughtless and lazy and sneaky. I thought he wouldn't notice if I slipped those oh-so-juicy details about him into my story; I was of course wrong. He pointed out my lack of respect, too. Did I really think I could fool him?

He's not mad at me, not anymore. Too responsible a dominant to beat me in anger, he made me wait for my punishment, contemplating my faults, until he had calmed down. Now I sense only weariness in him, though his strokes are as powerful as ever. Distance yawns between us. His whip chastises my flesh, but his spirit is far, far away.

I'm in agony, my ass and the backs of my thighs so raw that I know I won't sit for days. I can't safeword out of this, though, even if I wanted to. To an outsider this might look like just another S/m game, but we both know better. This is true punishment – the administration of physical discipline, cut off from the emotional connection.

He'll forgive me after this trial, I hope. Our love is strong enough to survive this infraction. My punishment will be prolonged, though. Because I know he won't beat me for his own pleasure until the welts he's creating now have healed. No matter how much I tempt him by being naughty.


15 comments:

  1. thanks for starting things off with a bang, Lisabet. i found your post both fascinating & stimulating. the power dynamic between those in a D/s relationship is hard to understand for many. you have offered insight into such a relationship.

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    1. Thanks, Amanda!

      I hope I got it right. In fact I've never been in exactly this situation. But I have suffered from my Master's emotional distance after I've done something to hurt or displease him.

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  2. Well done, Lisabet. I think I've learned something here.

    This may be a tough subject for me to write about next week.

    As many times as I read (and love, and am stimulated by) D/s, S/m stories--actual physical punishment is off the radar for me. I wouldn't hit a child (if I had one) or anybody else for that matter unless I or someone else was being hurt. I can understand how people need these things on an intellectual level, but no matter how I am able to intellectualize the reasons, I have trouble feeling any kind of sincerity (within myself) as to effect. The 'within myself' is key here.

    But perhaps this is why we write. To express with our words how this does make sense to those who can't comprehend, or to determine if the seeds of connection to another way of being are already within us.

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    1. I can't explain why, in some situations, physical pain can be sexy. It has something to do with the dynamics I've tried to express above, the sense of enduring for the sake of devotion.

      It's a weird experience, to simultaneously want to be whipped and want it to stop. Jekyll and Hyde.

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    2. i highly recommend reading Remittance Girl's fabulous novel, the Waiting Room. she deals with the subject of wanting & not wanting pain very well. my dominant husband has suggested that wanting to be punished comes from a conflict submissives have over accepting their submissive nature. i'm a sub myself, but i don't crave punishment or pain in any way. i live to serve & to give pleasure. i don't disobey or have to have a manufactured disobedience arranged. punishment doesn't do a thing for me. to me it would seem silly, a dynamic between parent & child rather than lovers. i don't like that at all... i respect those who want to have this kind of dynamic, who in fact, need this kind of dynamic, but it isn't for me. hmmmm perhaps that's what i should right about.

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    3. I read the early chapters of The Waiting Room when RG first started posting it - when I first met her - seems like eons ago. Now that it has been officially published, I definitely want to read the whole thing.

      I've never personally resonated with the "bratty sub misbehaving to get punished" scenario, though it's pretty popular.

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    4. me too. that was one of the first works of RG's that i read. back when i started at ERWA in 2004, i believe...

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  3. That's such a odd thing to think of, a dominant in a way sulking, or withdrawing his emotion even as he continues to beat you. And yet the beating continues to be desired. It's a way of thinking which is so unusual I can only imagine it. whoa.

    Garce

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    1. I didn't intend to imply that the beating was desired. In fact that is the point. The beating with the emotional connection is fulfilling and desired, but without the emotional connection - horrible.

      Also, I didn't mean to suggest that the dominant is sulking. More like hurt and displeased by the submissive's infraction. Responsible dominants try not to take out their own negative emotions on their subs (though that's a tough challenge).

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    2. in fact the withdrawal of a dominant's emotion is a very common technique in a lot of D/s fiction i've read. to control one's emotions is considered to be an important trait or a dominant. i'm going back to our personal library at home for all our intro BDSM books to see if i can talk about some of the psychology behind corporal punishment in a D/s relationship.

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    3. I think that withdrawing from one's partner is something that occurs daily in real (not fictional) relationships across the board - vanilla or otherwise. It punishes the other partner and/or creates distance. The woman who withholds sex. The man who withholds praise or attention. Interesting scene showing that here between a Dom and sub. Love it, Lisabet!

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    4. couldn't agree with you more, Normandie.

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  4. It's all a learning process! It really pulls the mind~ ..and I love reading about it, of course!

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    1. We're all learning together...

      Thanks for dropping by!

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