Why I Got “Stuck” / Getting “un-Stuck”

Looking, I see it’s been twelve days since I posted anything to this blog. I also haven’t posted to my other blog ( http://demystifyexperience.wordpress.com/ ) since before Christmas. This was starting to worry me and I was bothered by the fact that I’ve been letting readers down.

One concern for a writer is writer’s block – that agonizing feeling that you can get starting at the blank screen/page and not being able to think of ideas. All of a sudden you don’t have anything to say. But I knew that really wasn’t what was happening to me this time. I have plenty of things to say and plenty of ideas for stories. But for some reason unknown to me, they wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t bring myself to type or write any of it. It just wouldn’t come out.

Now one thing that occurred to me, which wasn’t the “big” thing, was that I do sometimes fall into a bad habit of not releasing anything I don’t think is special in some way or in worst cases “brilliant”. I’ll get an idea, start to work on it, realize that everyone’s done a similar topic or story, “realize” I don’t have anything special to bring to it, and give up. But then I don’t get the opportunity of expressing myself… my Self. And that, I believe, is the purpose of our lives, to express our own uniqueness out into the world with loving intention. I’m ashamed to say that, when this happens to me, I’m wrongly comparing my expression to others’ expressions and not keeping the channel open.

This time though, there was an additional dimension to my “stuck-ness”, my ambiguous and conflicted feelings about collaboration. I began writing this blog on my own, inspired by Pandora Blake’s blog and other’s that I came across when I first began exploring the Internet for examples of personal experience related to spanking/kink that were also intellectual, creative, and had a humanist, egalitarian point of view. I assumed at the time I began writing this that I would have a small audience of readers who had similar tastes and I never really expected it to grow. It is still “small” but the readership has grown at times, particularly when I’ve posted a “hot” story or personal experience. This happened because the “hot” stories garnered mentions on other higher-readership blogs and the experiences I’ve had were with my Ren. So the increases were both due to working with others.

I know that’s not much of an “aha”, and I really knew all along that working in cooperation, especially in a teamwork framework is a way to effectively magnify everyone’s voices who are involved. And being part of a team or network is very personally satisfying to me. Then came the audio posts like Friday Quai-day, which came from interaction with friends on Twitter, and even evoked a response from Pandora Blake. All this really really raised my cooperation spirit and put me on the path of creating “Quai Franklin Radio”, which is now in the process of being set up.

But then, subconsciously the struggle within me began. It’s a simple conflict between my desire for control and to avoid feelings of rejection, versus my strong desire to work with others in collaboration and within teams. Clearly teamwork is going to be necessary to do what I want to do with “Quai Franklin Radio”. At the basic level, I simply don’t have the time to create enough content – original music, discussions and interviews, topic posts, spanking stories, etc. Not to mention that interviews and discussions obviously require input from others. So basically I’ve made the career and artistic path decision that requires me to go outside of my comfort zone and work with others. It’s exciting and scary. Add to that the fact that Ren and I have decided to merge our various worlds and this is a very heady adventure we’re on. But, dammit, we’re on that adventure now and it makes no sense to turn back.

Life is not a dress rehearsal and my job is to be and express who I am. Success is an arbitrary concept. I’d love to make my living doing these things, but who knows if that’s possible. We’ll see… In any case, that doesn’t matter ultimately to whether I pursue this or not. It is simply who I am.

Now, to work on a proposed story that a couple of my wonderful blogging friends have offered to collaborate with me on…

“Play On“!

 

The Story Today – “Masochism Test” – the “Whipping Girl” saga continues…

The story begins here.

Melanie found it surprisingly easy to get her first job as a whipping girl. Tom Hanagan answered her ad on CreativeServices.com, a well-known go-to spot for the super-rich to get their super services and special needs met.

He had been talking with his friend, Buddy, on the golf course about his decision to hire a whipping girl for his daughters. Tom talked about how they had become more and more rebellious lately and he thought he ought to get more strict with them. He really just wanted them to learn a lesson and not actually have to feel the punishment. After all, they were rich, and why have all that money and still have to deal with the consequences of your behavior?

Buddy had agreed with his friend about this approach, but being a “man of the world” he had a word of caution to give about the situation.

“You’ve just got to be sure she’s not one of those masochists,” Buddy had said. “If you really want your daughters to see her suffering, they won’t really see that if your whipping girl is getting her jollies from the pain.”

Tom thought about this for a moment and asked, “Well what am I supposed to do? Just ask her if she’s a masochist?”

“No no no,” Buddy continued. “You can’t do that. She’ll just lie. They know most customers don’t want masochists, so they lie.”

“Okay, then what…” Tom asked.

“Masochism test,” Buddy answered.

Tom considered the idea for 3 more holes before he finally asked Buddy what a masochism test consisted of. He wasn’t sure he liked the answers, but it all seemed plausible, so he made up his mind to act on the information he was given.

A couple of days later, Melanie now found herself tied down to a soft leather padded spanking bench in Tom’s home study. Tom looked on as the professional dominant he hired as a tester, paced slowly back and forth, observing alternately Melanie’s face and once again her bottom. Her bottom already had a rosy blush as a result of some carefully placed spanks.

The brown-skinned, dreadlocked dominant ran a hand across Melanie’s bare back and down to her bikini-clad bottom. When his hand reached her bottom, he began spanking her again, each spank strong enough to cause her to arch her head back and draw deep breaths, which she then blew out in little puffs as if she were blowing out candles. The spanks were just hard enough to make her eyes watery and she began to pout. After about 40 medium, rhythmic strokes, he stopped and rubbed her bottom for a brief moment. It was now a dusky red and Melanie was unconsciously swaying her hips from side to side, as much as the bonds would allow.

The man traced a path with two fingers up one of her inner thighs, to the thin fabric covering the mound of her pussy. He pressed the area and waited a moment. Melanie’s eyes widened and she blinked rapidly as her mouth opened slightly. Shaking his head, he then begin unbuckling his belt and pulled it out through it’s loops.

As he folded the belt he said, “So far I don’t think she’s a masochist. I’m getting know signs of arousal, despite my use of classic spanking techniques. I’m going to try the belt now, because it seems to be such a hot button to press among spankos. If she doesn’t get aroused from this, she’s not in it to get off.”

He drew back the folded belt and whipped it squarely against Melanie’s bottom. She moaned and wiggled her hips with more energy now. The little pout she made formed into a full frown as she felt another stroke of the belt whip into her. “No fair,” she thought. He hadn’t waited til she had fully absorbed the pain of the previous stroke. He was whipping her like it was a punishment. This spanko dominant was giving her a “good old fashioned” style butt whipping. She would be spanked like a delinquent or a workhouse urchin from a previous era.

As typically happened when a woman is whipped with a belt at this certain rate, it’s not enough to get her screaming, but too much for her to resist crying. So she just cries and sometimes begs and sometimes curses. As visible belt-stroke lines appeared on either side of her bikini bottoms, it became clear that she was taking a real belting. Tom thought for a moment about his daughters seeing this, knowing this is what he would do to them if he hadn’t been as soft-hearted as he was. They would have to know he was serious.

Upstairs in Tom’s younger daughter’s room, Becky and Maggie sat looking at their laptops and the feed from the tiny cameras they had planted in their father’s study. These units fit inside the erasers of pencils and they transmitted sound as well. The two realized they were in trouble when they accidentally overheard their father’s phone conversation with this person whom he later referred to as a “whipping girl”. They simply had to “look in” on this first meeting between her and their father. How angry was he at them? As they watched the belting of Melanie and counted past 80 strokes, their mouths began to fall further and further agape. It was quite a frightening and heady experience realizing that this is what their father would have done to them if he had the heart.

“That would hurt so much,” Becky said, not taking her eyes off her screen.

Maggie nodded, watching this severe belt-spanking, and found herself in rare agreement with her sister. “Yeah, it would.”

“Would he really spank us that severely if he could,” Becky asked.

Maggie continued nodding, eyes glued, and said, “Yeah… he would.” She winced, remembering the only spanking her father had given her. He apparently had never thought about when to stop a spanking, and so continued for six or seven minutes. When he had finished with her, she barely had the strength to stand up. And when she did finally stand, all she could do was rub her bottom and look at him in disbelief through wet eyes.

In the study, the dominant put his belt back on while Melanie sobbed and pulled against her bonds. She wanted so much just to rub her bottom, just for a while, but she couldn’t just yet.

He performed the same test as earlier, checking for wetness between her legs. Finding none, he looked suitably impressed.

“She’s not a spanko or a masochist. I gave her more than 120 strokes with the belt. After that many, if she were inclined to be aroused from spanking, she would be by now.”

Tom smiled, “Very well then. Thank you for your help.” He handed the dominant a check and showed him out.

He then turned back to the crying, wiggling girl in the bikini, tied up in his study. “I suppose I have to untie her now,” he thought. He wasn’t sure why he would doubt that it was time to untie her, but he recognized a primal feeling growing within him as he watched her red, striped, scantily clad bottom moving around and trying to work out the pain it was helpless to do anything about.

Sounding Out Loud @_Lunargirl_ @freestartammas @pandorablake

My new audio interface arrived today. According to my new really cool soul friend, Lunargirl, it’s going to work! I say “going to” because I have yet to fully test it. I had to go to Sam Ash music store to get some interconnection cables and adapters. I came back home, had dinner with Ren, and haven’t gone back to work with the setup.

It’s not that I’m not excited. But maybe I’m a little too excited. I keep thinking “I will be podcasting and webcasting soon” and it feels like home and it feels like embarking on a long voyage at the same time. ‘Home’ because it is my path. I really feel that in my heart. And ‘long voyage’ because I am a fairly shy person and the idea of just being myself and being “on the air” is really a stretch for me, to say the least. I am definitely challenging myself. The few “Friday Quai-day”s that I’ve done have both confirmed the fact that it’s a challenge as well as the fact that this is the kind of thing that I should be doing.

Things I love to do – singing, writing songs, writing fiction (especially spanking fiction), discussing intellectual and creative subjects… things like that. And I used to wonder how could I ever … or even could I ever… combine these things into a career. Running a broadcast ‘network’ with programming variety seems like the very thing, custom-designed for me. Besides, I will need help. And this feeds my need to work as part of a team.

I’ll want/need contributors, correspondents, discussion and interview participants, musicians/composers as well as other podcasters/webcasters. I can’t imagine a more (potentially) fun “team” to work with.

And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that this thing should be mostly listener supported. I don’t like the idea of loading up my site with noisy, indiscriminate ads. I do like the idea of being underwritten or in an affiliate program with ethical content producers (ethical, by my standard – it will be a benevolent dictatorship…). I do like the idea of listeners knowing my honest need for money to support this network and its… ahem… crew. And I like the idea that they can freely give or not give and still get the content. I will sell things for profit, but for those items, that will be clear up front.

I also have come to realize that I don’t want to restrict myself to the spanking/kink world. My recent visit with Ren to the Second Life Florida Sunshine Jam confirmed to me that I do need to be involved with the world of music in general. So I’ve decided that there will be general original music programming as well as music shows by and for kinksters.

Throw some philosophical and political commentary and you basically have more content than I have time to produce. So, again, I do want help.

Pandora, as any good friend would, asked some smart questions that prompted me to look into music licensing. So I did some preliminary research and found out some potentially good news. The licensing schemes that (I believe) I would qualify for with the big three music licensing agencies (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), would cost around $300 each or probably under $1000 altogether per year. So this means I am not restricted for the most part in whose music I can feature. This is really good to know. Thanks again, Pandora.

Now I need to focus on contacting other audio content producers and artists like maymay (who produces “Kink Radio” I believe) and others who I’ll try to work out sharing agreements with. But absent that, or until that happens, it’s just me and the occasional Ren most likely.

Anyone want to collaborate?