In quiet moments alone I’d often found myself wondering how different my life might have been, had I not been so afraid of myself.
Until something happened on a train, whilst I was being lulled into a most pleasant slumber by the journey’s gentle rocking.
I became dimly aware of motion nearby, and opened my eyes to find someone had occupied the seat opposite. The newcomer returned my genteel smile with a tentative hello. Even though we never actually introduced ourselves, we were soon sharing our stories, as bored strangers on long journeys often do.
We laughed at the similarities in our backgrounds, but every revelation made me realise they were so much more accomplished than me. It wasn’t just the newcomer’s career, which they seemingly pursued with an irrepressible joyous zest, or the subtle signs of their affluence. Their anecdotes revealed an enviable social life, with a cadre of companionship who hung out to have fun together.
I dared not admit my own paucity of friends, or that I was often too busy, or just too worn out, to socialise. It was a shock to realise we’d walked such similar paths through life, but where this stranger had been so bold, I had been shamefully timid, and our lives had diverged in ways I never would have imagined possible.
Without a shred of embarrassment, the familiar stranger had casually mentioned a kinky party they’d recently attended. I felt my cheeks blush hot, yet still asked to hear more. They breezily described how they’d been part of a group of friends seated on the plush cushion-covered benches of a ‘70s style sunken conversation pit. My desperation for more details must have been obvious. I was not disappointed.
I was told there was a spinning pointer on the table in the middle of the pit, and every fifteen minutes, a little chime would signal it was time to spin it three times. Whoever was pointed at after the first spin would be the spanker, who’d choose an implement from the wide selection on the table. The second spin would decide who would be the holder. The third spin would select who’d be getting their bare bum spanked.
Once all three were chosen, the spankee would stand in front of the designated holder, who’d be responsible for lifting or lowering whatever they were wearing until their bottom was bared. The spankee would then lean over whoever had undressed them, placing both palms on the sitting holder’s thighs, who’d grasp their wrists to hold them in position.
The designated spankee and the holder would then stare into each other's eyes as the spanker delivered a dozen whacks with whatever implement they’d chosen. Sometimes, I was told with a sly smile, if the two were affectionate they might share a long extended kiss as the spanks rained down. I imagined the spankee moaning little gasps into their holder’s mouth with every stinging smack.
It’s hot to watch someone you don’t know being spanked, the stranger confided in a whisper, but it’s even hotter to watch those you care about get it.
I expect everyone would watch in appreciative silence, whilst thinking about who they’d like to hold, or spank, or be spanked by. A dozen smacks wouldn’t be enough to satisfy, so it would leave all present eager for more. The spanking over, the pit would fill with excited chatter, everyone eagerly waiting for the chime to ring again - then tingling on tenterhooks as the pointer of fate spun three more times.
As the stranger revealed all this, I felt both extremely aroused and cruelly ostracised. Like I was an trespasser spying from outside, my nose pressed up against the window, peering into a separate reality. My imagination could witness every detail of what they described, but I was adrift and excluded, only able to gawk and stare.
My deepest longing was to join in. I yearned for not just companionship but soul friendships, deeply fulfilling relationships with those who understood and accepted me. I wanted to be the kind of person who attended kinky parties, but also felt like a vampire, one who could only ever enter if I’d first been invited inside.
It was only then that slowly began to realise just how much the stranger resembled me in appearance too.
A cold chill crept across my body. What if Hell was an eternity spent in the company of the most accomplished version of you that you could ever have become? What if the train had crashed whilst I’d been sleeping, and this was my afterlife, being shown all the possibilities I could have enjoyed if I hadn’t been so scared or complacent?
I awoke with a start. The train still quietly rumbling. The stranger was gone. At least, I couldn’t see them any more.
For months afterwards, I replayed what I could recall from my mysterious encounter. I could remember what had been described with surprising veracity, far more real than the hazy recollections of daydreams. Each time I thought about it, I wondered if I ever met that stranger again, would I ever have the courage to ask to join them.
My challenge was easily stated. I knew I needed to start asking for what I wanted. It wasn’t as if any of my desires were outrageously greedy or implausible. I didn’t covet a windfall of wealth, celebrity fame, or everlasting love. But asking would require coming out of my hiding place. It required risking rejection, with all its shame and hurt. Fear makes fools of us all, and I’d inadvertently built a comfortable prison around myself.
For years I’d lived in a little paradise of solitude, but now I was coming to resent it as a folly, an isolated desert island of complacency. There’s a line in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment - a book I was greatly disappointed to discover was not about misbehaviour and smacked bottoms: “Your worst sin is that you betrayed yourself for nothing.”
That’s how I’d come to feel. Wracked by an insidious guilt because I knew I was betraying my inner purpose by never realising it. I’d spent my adult life reading and watching things that turned me on, but so rarely acted to make them real. In an effort to avoid getting hurt, I’d ended up hurting myself far more. I had settled for a life of bland exile on the shores of my secret island, whilst longing for the waters to rise and sweep me away.
Then one day I happened upon some intriguing flotsam on my beach. It was a magazine article that jauntily described a new service that could plant unshakeable beliefs and convictions into anyone’s mind. The writer had compared it with the movie Inception, but really, it wasn’t anywhere near as complex. It wasn’t quite hypnosis either, as apparently there were no words or cheesy commands to obey.
Once, my typically cynical self would have dismissed an article like this as the usual self-improvement porn. The kind of aspirational titillation that aroused readers’ imaginations, letting them envision the wonderful alternate reality possible if only they had the courage to act upon it. Like all porn, the fantasy would induce a short burst of enthusiastic excitement, followed by a dispiriting refractory period of deflated disappointment.
But at the time I was still thinking about my strange encounter on the train. I often fantasised about holding the hands of someone being spanked, or being the one who got their bottom warmed. Even when I was chosen to deliver a whacking, I found it unexpectedly arousing to have to do my duty. Each rumination left me increasingly convinced I was trapped by my own sexual shame, and new beliefs were needed to liberate me.
I don’t know if it was hope, or even desperation, that eventually made me visit the clinic’s website and fill in its consultation form. Still, I prevaricated, until I became fixated on a single thought - like tucking into a pirouette, it only made my mind spin faster: What if it worked?
My finger was trembling as it hovered over the appointment booking button.
That’s how I came to be sitting in the clinic’s waiting room. I was grateful it was much less intimidating than I’d expected. Its walls lined with natural stone, its floorspace festooned with verdant jungle plants. I’d chosen a seat under the massive leaves of a banana plant, as if subconsciously hoping to hide away beneath its glossy emerald canopy.
I hadn’t been waiting long when a consultant appeared, pushing aside the overhanging leaves like a proper jungle explorer. The woman grinned as she discovered me, with a look that made me wonder if this hideaway was a popular spot, the natural habitat of the shy and reticent. She was wearing a banoffee-coloured business suit, creamy white with a yellow hint of soothing caramel. I received a handshake, a warm genial greeting, and a beckoning invitation to follow her on a little adventure.
I hurried to keep up with her purposeful stride, venturing along a boulder-fringed path surrounded by ferns, ducking beneath overhanging foliage, and skirting the curtain of raindrops from a moss-covered waterfall. We entered a passageway behind the cascade, lined with the same roughly hewn rocks, which gave the impression I’d stumbled into a secret cave. It was illuminated by ambient lights like constellations of glow-worms. A few metres further on, a frosted-glass door was incongruously set into the crumpled rockface.
Beyond the door was a much darker space, lit by fainter recessed lights. There was an abrupt transition as my footsteps ceased to echo off the stone tiles, and were immediately muffled by a deep pile carpet instead.
As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw there was a large black armchair in the middle of the room, and two smaller black leather pouffe stools. My guide sat on one and - for one electric moment - I wondered if she was about to order me across her knee. Sadly, I was merely invited to sit on the other.
My host studied her tablet, its glowing screen providing another faint source of light. There was little need to ask me much, I‘d supplied all the necessary preliminaries when I initially registered.
So she looked at me kindly, and simply enquired: “What new belief do you want to believe?”
Her voice sounded strange, weirdly muffled by the room’s acoustics.
I blurted out my rehearsed answer, before I had a chance to change my mind.
“I don’t want to be ashamed of spanking any more”.
Even though I’d practised that sentence repeatedly, saying it under my breath for weeks like a secret mantra, it sounded completely ridiculous when I finally admitted it aloud. I heard myself instinctively apologising for choosing something so trivial.
I was grateful for her spontaneous reflexive giggle, and the dim light that made my rapid blush invisible.
“No belief is ever trivial!” she reassured me, reaching forward with a friendly pat to my knee. “Removing sexual guilt is one of our most common requests!”
Her expression changed, serious for a moment.
“You do know: we can’t undo this,” she warned, “if we proceed, it’ll be as if you’ve believed your new conviction all your adult life.”
“It’s OK,” I replied, “this belief is useless to me.”
I had no idea where my sexual shame had come from. I’d come to regard it as an infection, some weird mind virus picked up from others. An obstructive belief that had somehow made it into my head and stubbornly lingered, despite bringing me absolutely no benefits at all. It was time to delete it, and upgrade to a better, more authentic version of myself.
My shame was so obviously different from my fantasies. Deep down, perhaps fuelled by my fear of taking control of my own life. I’d come to eroticise rules. For as long as I could remember, I’d fantasised about strict guiding hands, and corrective smacks on my poor little bottom. But that never felt like a fault within me. I would never want that precious part of me removed. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell others what I needed.
Our eyes met, and I saw her reciprocate my nodding. Even admitting my kink to another soul was a huge step, and I was relieved she hadn’t attempted to psychoanalyse me. It was also unexpectedly reassuring that she’d accepted my answer so casually, and regarded my huge revelation as no big deal. She simply passed her tablet across to me, and I pressed the large green button that confirmed my permission to proceed.
As an inveterate sceptic, I’d read all I could find on this place when I first discovered it. Articles described its process as a scaled-up modern-day reimagining of a rotating lantern called a Dreamachine - an archaic invention from the ‘60s that utilised the effect of strobing lights. But whilst the name suggested a futuristic laboratory, full of buzzing wires, sizzling sparks, and bubbling vats, the reality was far more prosaic. Just a comfy chair in a dark, soundproof room.
My guide invited me to stand, take off my shoes, and move across in the larger armchair. Once seated she pressed a button, causing the backrest to tip backwards and a bumper to extend to support my calves, so I was soon reclining slightly with my feet off the ground. The seat was soft, probably a memory foam. I could feel myself sinking further into it as my body heat warmed it, sculpting a perfectly shaped hollow like a warm hand in snow.
Her final act was to place a halo on my head, one so light it was like being crowned with a ring of smoke. I’d been told its sensors, resting just above my temple, would communicate what I was perceiving to the AI systems controlling what I was about to see. Through this feedback loop, they would be able to subtly steer my mind.
“Now relax and close your eyes,” she requested. “It won’t work if you open them, the light needs to shine through your eyelids”.
There were no lights in front of me, I had worried I’d arrive to find some fearsome device pointing at me, like the muzzles of robotic laser weapons, or the kind of blinding spotlight one might see in a movie interrogation scene. I kept expecting cuffs to spring from the armrests, capturing my wrists, but that was just how my mind worked, as if my superpower was seeing kinky interpretations everywhere. I knew it was time I embraced this, and stopped denying it.
The lights were actually in a thin wide disk mounted on the ceiling, hidden behind a skin of taut white fabric. It began to pulse, like a flying saucer hovering above me, readying to fly.
I did as I was told, and closed my eyes. Despite this, I was still aware of light beyond me. Flashes like distant lightning hidden by clouds made me doubt I’d closed my eyes properly. I screwed them shut tighter, with no effect on the scintillating light permeating them. So I let my eyes relax, moving a finger to my face to confirm by touch they were actually shut.
Her voice nearby reassured me: “It can be disorienting at first, we’re not used to seeing with our eyes closed! Relax and focus on your breathing. Let whatever happens beyond you just happen. I shall leave you alone now. I shall return when the session has ended. Enjoy your journey!”
I smiled my acknowledgement, and was left alone with the slow pulsing lights.
Music emerged from the silence, with a beat like the patter of raindrops, and long floaty ambient tones that progressively grew in volume as if a speaker was being carried towards me.
From behind my closed eyes, I was surprised to see shapes like triangles, squares, and circles.Then I was moving, I flew into them, like tunnels, as if travelling through hyperspace. The shapes constantly spun and twisted, even though my inner ear told me I was perfectly still, but it never made me motion-sick.
At the beginning, my logical mind was continually searching for meaning, trying to decipher and understand each sight of this strange unfolding spectacle. But after a while, that part of me seemed to disengage, and I was free to appreciate the abstract sensations that surrounded me.
I was immersed, completely bathed in light and sound. The familiar difference between my central focus and peripheral vision completely vanished. I could see everything on the vast canvas before me with universal clarity. Yet I was actually seeing without seeing. All the complexities I was perceiving were created by my own imagination. The lights were just the prompt, and no one else would ever interpret them in the same way as I was doing now.
The colours were extraordinary. Sometimes I would emerge from one of the scintillating tunnels into a cloudless sky of vivid lemon yellow, or a rich dreamy tangerine. Others plunged me into a sea of deep blood red, like my consciousness was swimming in my own capillaries.
I saw peculiar things, like sparkling dots bumping into each other, as if I was able to witness the Brownian motion of the air all around me. I saw pulsing abstract canvases, as if walking from room to room in a modern art gallery where I was the sole exhibitor.
It was an experience of complete disembodiment. I remember wondering if my eyes were still closed, but soon even the notion of eyelids seemed quite preposterous. All that existed now were sights, sounds, and rhythm of my own breathing. My initial bewilderment had vanished, replaced by meditative feelings of safety, empowerment, calmness, and curiosity.
The surrounding light settled into a steady rhythm, brightening, then fading to black, like the sun was rising, arcing over my head, and setting. A whole day passing in the time it took to inhale and exhale. How quickly we breathe our days away.
Then I heard a voice, quiet as a whisper, as if I was an actor on a stage, and being prompted with my line.
“I don’t want to be ashamed of spanking any more,” I told myself.
It felt like a rather incongruous reminder, given I didn’t feel like I even had a body any more. I was just a disembodied mind now, floating amid a scintillating star-field. Tunnels of light and geometric patterns throbbed in front of me. Why was I talking about spanking anyway, it seemed like such a silly thing to be worrying about, given the vastness of existence. I was beginning to notice that every time my rational mind tried to spin up, it was being smothered by a sense of wonder and awe, like a dark cosseting blanket thrown over a bird in a cage.
I sensed my view tipping forward, and looking down to see I was standing on ice. Hairline cracks were spreading outwards from where I stood, glinting in the ambient light like shards of glinting glass. I was aware of an abyssal blackness beneath my feet, and was filled with a sense of my own precariousness. I knew at any moment, the ice supporting me could give way, and I’d take one final terrifying plunge into a bottomless void.
I felt the yearning inside me that I’d long suppressed. How shame and the expectations of others had silenced me. I realised I was frightened of moving, lest the fragile ice beneath my feet fatally fracture.
Yet I also realised I had no weight. It did not matter if I shattered the ice, somehow I knew it was impossible to fall. Emboldened, I felt myself yell. I felt myself disturb the universe. I felt the ice disintegrating beneath my feet.
The light around me faded, smothering me in a frightening darkness, as if an unseen sun had set. In the infinite black, my only reference was just a tiny glowing point of light. It seemed so tiny against the expanse, like a firefly fluttering in the void.
My notion of self was dissolving, as if I didn’t really exist any more, and was only actually a memory of myself. I sensed the outlines of larger truths, that we were all voyagers in the darkness. That everyone alive owed their existence to the adventurousness of our ancestors. I felt a primal urge to reconnect with the instinct for risk-taking that smouldered deep within my mind, to reconcile with a nature I’d spent a lifetime denying.
I stared at the tiny point of light, which seemed to expand with my attention. It flickered into life, flooding the surrounding space with a warm and comforting glow. It illuminated hints of a landscape all around me, previously shrouded by the darkness. The flames rose, growing as if shouting, casting long shadows across the emerging world.
The flames were like an artist’s impression of a fire, patches of magma red and royal gold. I sensed the fire was trying to tell me something. How cold and unseen this world would be without their light. How boring and uninteresting it would be. I realised what my greatest fear was not what the fire might reveal, but that this still feeble light might flicker out and be extinguished, marooning me in this perpetual night.
I stared at my precious guardian fire, my only means of fending off the encroaching darkness. Once upon a time my fire had burned so bright. Back when I was so bold and fearless, absolutely unafraid to speak my mind, or bend the rules. Once I was so comfortable being me, but then I grew older, and became self-conscious. I let others decide what was right and what was wrong. I lost confidence in the fire within me, and was lured away by the distant siren lights of others.
Now it seemed so foolish to have neglected my own precious fire in favour of the flames of others. Somehow I'd bought into the belief that there was a mystical group of adults who had figured everything out. I had sought to gain their favour, in the hope of joining their hallowed ranks. But really, their fires were no different from mine. Everyone was just making it up as they went along. We were all just oversized children putting on a show.
I admit, there was something in my inner nature that craved a guiding light, just as ancient navigators oriented themselves by distant stars. While the bright fires of strong strict authority figures would always turn me on, it had been my cruel misfortune to be simultaneously attracted to those I was afraid of approaching. But I had continued to fantasise about being naughty, turned on by the thrill of jeopardy, yearning to dance on the knife-edge of strict rules and consequences.
As I mentally asserted my needs, I noticed the blaze of red, yellow, and gold grow ever larger. Just being beside its warm radiance made me feel so much more daring. The fire was my truth, the destroyer of doubt and uncertainty. I watched its light creep across the surrounding landscape like a sluggish flood of treacle. I impatiently urged it onwards, eager to see what new territories it would reveal.
The expanding reach of the fire felt exciting. I recognised it as the feeling of anticipation, the contagious energising expectation of imminent joy. It was the impetus that drives us on, to strive and do hard things. It was so much more than idly enjoyed pleasure, it was that particular kind of euphoria that must be chased. It can’t be an accident of biology that we’re all wired to pursue excitement. Excitement was the feeling of pursuing our desires. Excitement was The Way.
How ironic I’d spent so much energy avoiding being uncomfortable, but discomfort was what I truly found exciting. Given a pair of cuffs I’d want them closed around my wrists. I’d prefer a slipper was used on my bare bottom than put on my foot. I’d far rather be sexually humiliated than ignored. My purpose was to chase discomfort, not hide from it. I resolved to do more of the things that excited me.
I knew it was the disapproval of others that was inhibiting me, the fear of being considered perverted, sordid, or slutty. But human civilization flourished because the fire of sexual adventure burned hot within us. It made us want to improve ourselves and engage with others. Without it, we’d have all died out long ago, anxious and alone in cold little caves.
I watched the fire flicker and glow, feeling content and excited. It reminded me of the rare and precious occasions when I’d experienced subspace. More than a state of submission, it had seemed like an altered state of consciousness. So turned on, yet willingly surrendered into another’s care. A looking glass world where pain was pleasure, and shame was joy. A place where I was the most authentic version of myself, free from guilt and worry at last.
I stared into the beautiful flames, my only ally against the dark, and fell in love with myself again.
I woke, immediately feeling like an immense weight had been lifted from my mind.
Inside I sensed the echoes of euphoria, as if I was coming down from being tied up and flogged. Naturally that prompted me to start thinking about spankings, something that normally would have triggered feelings of intense yearning, followed by a toxic procession of shame, self-recriminations, and finally frustration. But my desire felt different now, as if it had been somehow purified by an industrial process, just the thrill of anticipation without the sickly fear of being discovered.
The consultant entered the room, and asked how I felt. Unexpectedly awesome, I told her. Like I wanted to run out of this room, and shake up the whole world. That’s great, she’d replied with a wide smile, but do stay for a nice cup of tea first.
She escorted me out of the faux cave, past the trickling waterfall and into a chill-out lounge filled with pastel-coloured bucket seats. Someone else was already there, a lady who must have experienced the same procedure. She was cradling a cup of tea, staring into it deeply, as if it contained the revelation of a new and powerful truth. We gave her the space she needed.
I accepted my own drink, and the consultant completed the formalities on her tablet, and expressed her sincere hope that my new belief would bring me the happiness I’d been seeking. I thanked her, and we parted with a little embrace, leaving me alone to contemplate what I had experienced. It wasn’t long before I realised I had an urgent message to send.
When I fetched my phone, the first thing I realised was my hands weren’t trembling. I opened the message app, and stared at the glowing text, wondering if I truly did dare type what was blaring in my mind. But I felt my fingers typing nevertheless, and words appeared at the bottom of the screen. And then there was a tick beside them, it seems that I had sent them. I looked back at what I’d written.
“I need you to spank me.”
It would have to be a hard spanking. On the bare. Very sore. Until I was kicking, perhaps even crying. But I didn’t have time to write that, because the pulsing dots already told me a reply was being composed. Once, I would have been sick with worry, horrified I’d been outed, anticipating the disgusted response my revelation was about to elicit. But now, I felt none of that, just an inexplicable serenity I’d never felt before.
A reply materialised on my screen.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Hours later, I was so glad I did.
Today is the first anniversary of my visit to the clinic.
So much has happened since the strange procedure subtly changed something within me. My sexual shame had been a manifestation of a deeper malady, the fear of asking for what I wanted. There was something blocking my way, and it turned out it was me all along. Afterwards, I found the power to trust myself, and now I make a habit of asking for whatever I want - and because I’m a pretty reasonable person, more often than not, I get what I desire. This realisation changed my life.
To celebrate, I’m attending a rather special party tonight. My friends and I are sitting along the sides of a large sunken conversation pit. A kinky DJ is playing an ambient low-tempo soundscape, enough to provide a rich background to the ongoing conversations, without ever drowning them out.
Occasionally, the music fades away to silence, and the DJ invites another one of us to step into the open space in the centre of the pit. One of my new friends bounces forward eagerly to be blindfolded. This makes them less self-conscious, resulting in a better show for the rest of us.
The music resumes, growing louder as the beat gradually quickens. My friend weaves her body sinuously in time with the pulsing rhythms, swept away by the flow, dancing despite everyone watching.
New sounds begin to emerge. Sexy and erotic sounds mixed into the beat. We can hear moans and panting, begging and pleading, and regular smacks and slaps from numerous spanking implements. During the course of a set we might listen to the sound of a woman masturbating, or the lyrics of a thorough scolding. Or the grunts and gasps of a passionate fucking accompanying the words of the tenderest love songs.
Only at a private party like this would one ever hear such eroticised music. It would be far too much of a risk to common decency for a public night club full of strangers. But here amongst trusted friends and acquaintances who respect consent, our skilled DJ is free to mix and experiment with disparate erotic sounds.
The music tells stories inside the audience’s imaginations, each listener constructing their own unique story from the fragments being played. Just like my experience in the clinic, everyone begins to see what is unseen, but this time it’s like listening in on a fucking in a nearby room.
I’ve always found the sounds and rhythm of intercourse tremendously exciting. As a student, I used to be woken up in the early hours of Saturday night by the sound of my housemate and her boyfriend fucking. They always put on quiet music to try and mask what was going on, but my room was above theirs, and the floors were little impediment to their noise. I used to lie awake listening to the rhythmic squeaking of their bed, and their muffled moans as they both got close.
They had inadvertently created the most erotic mix. It was the most arousing thing I’d ever heard. I would play with myself in the dark to the rhythm of his thrusting, trying to imagine what position they were in, and picture myself alternately in his place, or in hers. How naughty I was, if only they knew, I’d deserve such a good spanking. I always paced myself to come when they did, feeling like a participant in a secret threesome.
That’s what I’m thinking about as my friend is carried away by the music, caressing her breasts and gently stroking the ache that’s building between her legs. When you go with the flow you cease to care who might be watching. Or what others might say of you. I learnt that sitting beside a fire somewhere.
As my dancing friend gyrates, rubbing her bottom as if she’s just been whacked there, it makes me appreciate how the motions of dancing to a beat and responding to a spanking are so alike. The flailing arms, the squirming hips, the twisting legs, all classic moves of the spanking dance. It goes without saying that our DJ also loves to tease. It’s not a good set unless the dancer sits down with a stiff bulge in his trousers, or a mess between her legs.
Later, I’ll get the spinning pointer out, and bottoms will be smacked for real. Three spins. One chosen to spank, one to receive, and one to hold them.
We’ll carry on all night, until every bum is tingling.
My party, my rules.
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@spankingtheatre 2024