Punishment Indeed

By J.P. Bowie

The year was 1989, the month, May. I was in London on a short vacation. It had rained every day since I’d arrived and I was tired of trolling through museums and art galleries with a guide and a bunch of damp tourists. In the National Portrait Gallery I had stopped in front of a painting by Gainsborough when I became aware of someone standing much too close to be just another pretend art aficionado.

I glanced sideways, then had to look up. He was that much taller than I—enough to be somewhat intimidating. The outline of his profile was strong, determination—dominance?— in the set of his mouth. I didn’t move away. Our shoulders touched and he grazed the back of my hand with his knuckles.

“There’s a gents round the corner to the right,” he murmured close to my ear, then walked away.

I should have been offended—what did he think I was? Instead, I was aroused. Aroused?, I was fucking aching for more of him. I could still feel the effect of his skin on mine. I rubbed the place where he’d touched me and looked around the cavernous hall for the exit. Gents, I thought as I slipped away from the tour group. He must be British. Why did that make this…assignation…seem even more daring? Any cautionary warning that probably should have gone off in my head, was negated by my dick leading the way like an arrow on a compass pointing to the North Star.

The restroom was empty but a deep voice I already recognized beckoned me to the last stall. I practically fell over my feet in my eagerness to reach the door that swung open as I approached. A hand reached out grabbed me by the front of my T-shirt and hauled me inside. In this confined space he was taller, bigger than I remembered. Huge really… He slammed me up against the wall, and took my mouth in a kiss that could only be described as brutal, and fantastic, and…shit just about any way you could describe it. My senses reeled from the onslaught of his lips and tongue and the fact that he had so easily lifted me off the ground with one hand, and had me pinned against the wall. With his free hand he ripped open my jeans and squeezed my cock and balls with an intensity that had me gasping with pain and moaning with rapture.

Holy God…

“You like pain do you?” he whispered, his breath filling my mouth.

“No…yes…anything you want…”

“I want to punish you, tie you up, smack that delicious bum of yours ‘til it’s flaming red, fuck you so hard you’ll scream until you can’t scream no more, never let you come until I say you can… Would you like that? You would, wouldn’t you? You know you deserve it, don’t you? Deserve to be punished…”

“Yes,” I said, my breath ragged with desire. “Yes, I want all of that…but not here.”

”Where then?”

“My hotel room. It’s not far from here…we can walk.” Or fucking run, most likely…

“Right then.” He planted another kiss on my mouth, almost sucking my tongue out by the roots.

Jesus H. Christ, I was going to have enough pain and bruises on me to remember this trip for the rest of my life. Punishment? It was going to be more like a fucking reward for being the bad boy I’d always wanted to be.

He stepped back, releasing me so abruptly my ass almost hit the tile floor. “See you outside, then.” And he was gone. I fumbled rapidly with my jeans, zipping up and staggering out of the stall, still hardly believing what had happened. Jesus, I couldn’t wait for the rest of it…

The high pitched screech of an alarm filled the air as I exited the restroom. People were milling about, babbling and waving their arms about while a recorded voice told us not to panic, but to leave the gallery in an orderly fashion. Only nobody was listening. A mass of bodies streamed toward the exit, sweeping me off my feet and slamming me down head first, onto the marble floor.

I awoke in Charing Cross Hospital, in a lot of pain and covered with bruises. I’d remember this trip all right, but for all the wrong reasons. Punishment indeed.

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.

O Curse of Marriage

by Jean Roberta

In Othello, Shakespeare’s tragedy about the causes and results of jealousy, the provocateur who plants suspicion in the mind of General Othello that his new bride is unfaithful warns him:

“O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

Iago, the sly underling, resents Othello for reasons that are never clear enough. Iago might resent Othello for not giving him a promotion, or for rising so fast through the ranks of the army, despite his being an outsider in Venetian society. (Othello is a “Moor,” i.e. Moroccan, so he is visibly different from the Italians around him.) Iago also claims that his own wife Emilia has fooled around with Othello behind his back, though the audience never sees this. Jealousy, it seems, doesn’t need substantial evidence.

Iago’s warning about jealousy drips with irony. He, of all people, knows how it can destroy a life.

Othello is newly-married to Desdemona, a younger and whiter woman who fell in love with him when he told her about his military adventures, the battles he survived. He claims to love her because she admires and sympathizes with him, but he can’t trust her.

Here Othello makes it clear that husbands in general can’t afford to trust their wives:

“O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites! I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others’ uses.”

Othello is so much more to me than a dusty Renaissance play that many English majors have studied in university. As a student of literature and new bride in my twenties, I studied this plot AND lived it. As my desperate, ambitious, hard-drinking Nigerian husband grew angrier on alien turf (I had brought him to Canada from England, where we met), I racked my brains to find explanations and solutions. Why was he so upset that I had had other boyfriends before him, even though he knew that when he proposed to me? Why was he so convinced that I was a nympho who had random hookups with men, and when did he think I was doing all this? Was there an Iago among our friends?

Could I possibly prove my loyalty, even while my husband’s behaviour made me so hurt, angry and afraid that I didn’t see how I could stay with him much longer?

This was the most urgent question: Was he going to kill me, as Othello kills Desdemona?

Luckily for me, I was able to escape, continue my education and raise our daughter with no further violence. (Not that any of that was easy.) My ex-husband tried to persuade my parents to kick me and my baby out of their house on grounds that I was obviously a cheating wife -- otherwise I would never have left my home & husband. When his plan didn’t succeed, he went on to marry another young white Canadian whose parents seemed able and willing (at first) to support him financially. That relationship collapsed as well, and my ex-husband moved to another part of Canada, presumably to find a good job (not to mention a relatively well-off family with a daughter).

Like Othello, my ex eventually died in despair, though his life seems to have declined for years before then. On New Year’s Eve 2006, I learned in a surprise phone call that he had died of a heart attack in a town where he was alone except for the patient friend who phoned me because the hospital was asking for a next-of-kin. The reasons for my ex's isolation weren't hard to guess, and I got lurid bits of information on the day of his funeral: apparently he had gone to the local hospital several times with complaints about plots against him and evil spirits in his apartment. He had been diagnosed with a mental illness. (But my opinion of the “mental health” establishment is a whole other post.)

My current female spouse (a better choice!) usually answers my lingering questions about the drama of my first marriage with this line: “You have to remember he was mentally ill.” Case closed.

This epitaph doesn’t resolve anything to my satisfaction, and my own Othello is no longer able to speak for himself. He was definitely the most jealous man I ever met, but he wasn’t alone.

During the “sexual revolution” of the 1970s, I kept meeting guys who expected me to go with the flow and live for the moment by having unprotected sex with them, but none of them seemed to want a relationship with a sexually-experienced woman. Even in theoretical discussions about dating relationships, one guy after another paraphrased Othello’s “O curse of marriage” speech. They hated the fickle nature of women, as they saw it, and their own inability to put a chastity belt on the mind of any woman they had claimed as “theirs.”

This irrational value system has been called the Double Standard, and it seems incredibly long-lived. Trying to argue it away just doesn’t work. Trust me, I’ve tried that. Writing off every jealous heterosexual man as “mentally ill” seems parallel to summing up women in general as “weak-minded” and therefore prone to go to the Dark Side.

There has to be a way to analyze this monster, this curse or this epidemic without resorting to shallow insults.

Like Giselle, I’ve experienced some disturbing little outbreaks of jealousy in my long-term lesbian relationship. Sometimes I wonder about her real motives for being with me; love can be asserted, but never proved beyond a doubt. More often, I think I see jealousy in her eyes. (I have a much more secure job than she does -- with shorter working hours, higher pay, and no crazy-making office politics. Do I deserve all this? Doesn’t she? Who knows?) But then, I can never be sure if I am seeing and hearing her clearly, or overreacting because of the Shakespearean tragedy of my past. It’s complicated.

I’m convinced that no one is immune from jealousy, or the messy soup of feelings that are described that way. The only way I know of to minimize the damage is to think before I speak or act, and not to blurt out the first words that come to my mind.

Respect (for oneself and others) is probably the best antidote.

-------------------

Haunted by Other Monsters

by Amanda Earl

In 2009 I had an out of the blue health crisis which put me on life support in ICU and in an operating room where the surgeon told my husband I was likely to die. Against all odds and thanks to the herculean efforts of a crack medical team and the support of my wonderful husband and dear friends, I somehow survived. I had to slow down my life for a few years afterward while my body grew stronger again but now I am fully recovered. I'm amazed and grateful to be alive. I lead a very full and joyous life. I am fucking lucky to be here.

Consequently, I am rarely rattled these days by the small stuff. I have tried to write a piece for this topic a few times now and I've come up empty.

I have a good life. I have a husband who I'm passionate about and who is passionate about me in return. I am 100% healthy, both mentally and physically, with only minor aches and pains for the most part. I have the luxury of being able to write whenever I feel like it. I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I have remarkable, fascinating and caring friends who were very good to me and to my husband when I was sick. 

I also understand very clearly that this good life could end at any moment. I feel the shadow of oblivion hanging over me and mine constantly. I shiver at the shadows. It's this tension between joy of life and fear of death which drives me to keep creating new work. I am simultaneously haunted and exuberant.

I'm a bit of a misanthrope so I tend not to compare my life with others' lives because I don't really give a rat's ass. If someone is biting their nails in jealous angst over my achievements or experiences, I've never heard about it or noticed. I don't share mainstream society's love of bright shiny objects, fancy cars, big screen televisions, pedigree cats, matching dinette sets or white picket fences. I haven't owned a house in more than a decade and I don't possess a driver's license. I am not much of a traveler. I love good books and good company, strong tea and coffee, the occasional drop of whiskey, a never-ending soundtrack of fabulous music, access to dark and playful art and long, lonesome walks by the river.

As far as my writing goes, I keep my head down and I write. I am working hard to learn how to write compelling and unique poetry and fiction. I grew up with a strong work ethic drummed into me. I was taught that anything I wanted, I had to earn. Those who envied others were considered by my parents to be people who mistakenly believed that the world owed them a living.  It did not. My mother said you make your own heaven and hell on Earth. These values were harped on to the point where it would never occur to me to envy someone else their success. Their version of success isn't usually mine anyway.

What I want these days is to be able to write and explore various obsessions through my writing and to write better. I am tremendously grateful when my work is published, but I can't say it's a primary goal. I am happy for the most part to dwell in obscurity with the occasional pat on the back in the form of publication or recognition from editors, publishers, fellow writers and friends I respect and the occasional writing grant to support and validate my creative explorations.

I don't think I've explored the possibilities of jealousy so far in my fiction. I've run through the list of stories I've written since 2004 when I started to write erotica and the only one that springs to mind with any kind of jealousy involved is the recent Daddy Complex where a main character's kinky taboo is threatened with exposure thanks to petty office rivalry.

I've wracked my memory to think of fiction where jealousy is an important plot point. I remembered there was something about jealousy in Flaubert's Madame Bovary. I never did read that French experimental novel entitled "La Jalousie" by Alain Robbe-Grillet, opting instead for the more approachable "On Love" by Alain de Botton.

Greek and Roman mythology is lousy with jealousy. Zeus' wife Hera took her feelings of jealousy over Zeus' non consensual non monogamy out on his children with his lovers. Poor Hercules.

The fact is jealousy hasn't really interested me or affected me. I feel sorry for those for whom it is an issue and I admire writers who are able to infuse their characters with such feelings. It's something to consider for future stories, but I'd need to become obsessed with it, to study it, to collect stories of jealous folk. Jealousy hasn't become an obsession for me yet and I don't think I want it to be.

I worry that this post is sounding hard or unsympathetic. I don't mean it that way. I understand that jealousy is complicated and can cause a lot of harm to those experiencing the feelings or being the object of those feelings. I just am not in that place.  I'm about to take a trip out in the sun to meet a dear friend for coffee and conversation. Life is sweet.

A Self-centered Bastard

Copyright 2012 Daddy X

It may be cliché to say, but Annie’s ass jiggles like jelly. There’s really nothing cliché about Annie’s ass. It’s not what anyone expects, once she gets it moving like she does.

Often it’s what she wears that sets it off, the bouncy little thing. Mostly halter tops with short little skirts that people want to reach under. The way they hang so low on her hips you can see the dimples on the smooth soft skin flanking her crack. Sometimes they’re stiff denim, other times a flimsy fabric you can see right through, as long as the light’s behind her. Annie seldom wears panties, except for sometimes a dark thong under the mini-sheers, just for the visual. It’s the accessibility deal. She likes that sense of accessibility.

When she bends over in those short things, you can see right up there. Right up her skirt. She won’t shave down there and she’s proud of it. “Why call it a pussy if it’s not fuzzy?” she says. Anyone can feel it if they want; Annie won’t mind. After all, that’s why she’s there. Often Annie climaxes the first few times just from peoples’ fingers. That’s why she bends over in the first place, so someone will feel her up. Sometimes she wears assless chaps.

Annie knows what her bottom does to men. The round buttocks make ‘em crazy. If she just let anyone do her like they’d like, she’d be taking it up there all the time. What an ass she’s got. The way she carries that thing around behind her. How it bounces and quivers with each step. Why won’t she let me put my dick in? One time when I was fucking her from behind she let me do it with my finger.

She’s got wavy, brown hair to go with the dark features, eyebrows and long lashes.  Pretty face with dimples to boot. The way a cock distorts those dimples, they just morph into hollowed cheeks. What a cocksucker. But why not up her ass? It’s not like she’s virgin back there. Her fucking self-centered husband fucks her there. She lets most other guys in her cunt if they want, and she’ll suck off just about anyone in the place. But no ass. I’ve seen guys beg her, and I’ve done some begging myself, but no go.

“Not in my poo-poo,” she’ll say, grinning with one hand craned behind her, covering her backside. The other hand will shake a finger at the wishful sodomist. “You’re too big for that,” she’ll say with a giggle. She does that so the guy doesn’t feel too bad about getting turned down. Annie’s a real thoughtful girl and if she likes the guy, she’ll still blow him, or have him fuck her silly.

I suspect her jerkoff husband can’t keep up with her. That’s probably why he brings her here.

Annie’s ass is fully rounded out. Like somebody’s been pumping it up. Nice, deep divide, just a dusting of a few fine hairs in the rosy flesh between. There’s that subtle concave recess on each cheek, further accentuating the protrusion of her. I could flip a derby and have it land on her ass like it’s a shelf. Sometimes when she’s got her ass way up in the air, I do something like that for fun. Everybody watching gets a kick out of what her bum looks like wearing a hat.

That one time I spit on my finger and slipped it in? Boy, I’ll tell you it’s like velvet in there. Once you get past that hard sphincter--all velvet inside. I can just imagine how all that smooth would feel all lubed up and caressing my dick, the tight ring of her entrance pinching me so. But she always says no, “No cocks in the poo-poo!”

“Shucks.”

“Too thick, you are,” she’ll say. “Plus, I’m married-- and we do respect our vows, you know.”

Her husband fucks her ass with that skinny dick of his. Every week. Pencil dick mother fucker. I guess he saw me with my finger up his wife that time, so he took to bringing her   with something already shoved in there. Butt plugs. One week a clear glass one, one that you could see her living red insides as her buttocks twitched in front of me. Lately, he’s been bringing her penetrated with some sort of thing that buzzes. There’s a remote that he keeps with him. I must admit there’s a thrill to what happens when he sets it off when someone’s in her, whether in her mouth or in her cunt. He says it’s for everybody’s enjoyment, but I know it’s just because he doesn’t want anything up there that he hasn’t put in himself. I know how guys like him think. Nothing but themselves. Selfish bastard, he is.

At all the gatherings, he waits until everybody has had at least one turn on his wife.  After prying out whatever’s in her ass, he’ll align his thumbs between her cheeks and wrench them apart to expose the dusky plane between. She’ll be stretched flat, his cock poking through her dick-starved pucker, right in the center of the mauve for everyone to see. That shows everybody that her ass is his and his alone. What a prick he is. Bastard just rubs it in our faces, right in front of the rest of us. 

Annie’ll be all sexy looking, all sticky with jizz the guys have squirted between her tits and in her hair, lipstick all around her cunt if there’s another woman there. But then, when everybody’s drooling over her, he just goes on to fuck the shit out of her back there. He gets right up behind her and slides the long skinny thing in and out with everybody watching. Her damp flesh ripples and shimmies as he slams his pelvis into her, laughing and slapping her come-smeared buttocks back and forth to get the most from the side-to-side action. Her orgasmic moans override everything else going on in the room. Look at her go.

Could this guy be any more self-centered?

Jealous (envy): One of the seven deadly sins

By Desiree Holt

Jealous‑that evil little monster that eats away at your guts and gives you a sour taste in your mouth. It colors everything you see and say and do. But worse than that, it robs you of the ability to appreciate how lucky you are in so many ways.

Unless you get a grip on it.

I’ve been jealous of so many different people and things in my life. In high school I was jealous of my two best friends who got to be cheerleaders while I was relegated to being an usher at football and basketball games. I was jealous of my girl friend who got a snazzy convertible but at least was grateful she hauled the rest of us around in it with her. I was so jealous I almost missed the signals the really cute guy who played both football and basketball was sending me and might have missed the best date for my senior prom.

I was jealous of my college roommates who got bids to the sorority I wanted. Why them and not me, I asked myself. If I hadn’t shaken myself out of it I wouldn’t have accepted the bid I did get and missed out on making some wonderful lifelong friends. My sophomore year we moved into a brand new sorority house, I bonded with some smart, savvy females who I’m still friends with and enjoyed the best of college life.

As I grew older I learned to put a damper on the impulsive leap of jealousy when someone was in a place I wanted to be and started putting that energy into building an extraordinary life for myself. I would have missed the great years with my three wonderful kids—who now, at this stage in life, are my three best friends—and taking the leap to follow my heart in a number of careers—newspaper reporter, publicity agent, manager of rock bands and country rock musicians. I modeled the band in Joy Ride over my favorite client.

But I learned my most valuable lesson when I began to pursue my dreaming of writing romance fiction and getting published. Oh, sure, I was a newbie and greener than grass in the beginning but all around me I saw people getting those very lucky breaks I wanted. Why them and not me, I asked myself over and over again.

And then I began to realize jealousy can suck the life out of you. It robs you of your creativity and makes you an unpleasant person to be around. My late husband, my hero, thought I could do anything I set my mind to, and ragged at me for wasting my energy on something as unproductive as jealousy.

So I gave myself a virtual kick in the ass and channeled all the energy into my career—writing, learning my craft, learning what happens after a book is contracted (yay!), building a reader base. (And trust me, readers don’t like people who embrace the green-eyed monster.)

And then one day I suddenly realized that instead of feeling jealous or envious or any of those nasty things, I was feeling really good. I had not one but several publishers. I had built a substantial reader base. People liked my books! Let me say again—people liked my books!

I had a career! Holy crap!

And I didn’t get it by being jealous.

And, best of all, I had made some wonderful friends, like my blog pals here at OGG. Holy crap again!

So listen. I’m not preaching here, just trying to give you a push in the right direction so you don’t make all the mistakes I did. Or nearly did.

Appreciate everything in your life. Find one thing every day to be happy about. Remember that you are a unique individual and very special.

Enjoy life. Embrace the bluebird of happiness, not the green-eyed monster.

Just….get a grip!

Let Sleeping Green-Eyed Monsters Lie

By Sacchi Green

Write about jealousy? Nooooooooo…

I’d rather let sleeping green-eyed monsters lie. It’s dangerous to wake them. But, well, okay, let’s see what I dig up.

Am I jealous, exactly? Not so much, if we take that to mean resenting the good fortune of others. At least others who, unlike certain writers alluded to by some of you writing here, seem to have earned their success. The stinging nettles of envy, though, spring up again and again no matter how fiercely I try to beat them back. For all the luck I’ve had, all the unearned privilege, I still envy others for the things they have that I don’t.

More precisely, I envy them for things that I once had, but didn’t take advantage of, chiefly time. To be blunt, I envy youth. Well, no, not adolescence—everybody has to put in their time in that labyrinthine morass, and I guess we come out the better for it, but once is definitely enough. But I do envy that stage of adulthood when the future seems limitless, all things are possible, and there’s plenty of time ahead for what you always wanted to do, even if you don’t have time for it right this minute.

It turns out that there’s never time for it right this minute unless you make the time. Some people do. Even while struggling to survive, even while raising families, some people write novels, many of them, great works that make a difference. Of course some people are supremely talented, and I envy them, but in a detached sort of way. It’s more what you do, or don’t do, with what you’ve got, and how soon you get around to doing it.

Really, I’m not jealous, not even envious; I’m just peeved at myself. Maybe that’s a major component of most envy; not that someone else has something you want, but that you didn’t do what was necessary to get it for yourself.

Today, though,  doesn’t seem to be one of those times I can whip out the stinging nettles for self-flagellation. I have too much to feel lucky about. I spent a lovely weekend in the mountains I love, and the seedlings I’m getting ready for my garden are coming along well,  and there’s even a certain amount of pre-writing going on in whatever section of my brain heats these things to the simmering stage. And to top it off, I just heard that one of my stories will be reprinted in Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12, my fourth appearance in that series. And another has been shortlisted for a gothic-ish anthology. Not novels, not great works that make a difference, but the things I like to write.

Nope. No jealousy today. Not even envy. Maybe next week. If I have the time.