I'm always sleepy when it's over.Endorphines flood muscles relaxing after tensing through blow after blow. I cuddle with my pillow imagining that it's his chest.
It was just another punishment. And for my customary offense: not going to bed on time. But the circumstances were somewhat ambivalent. I had substantially reduced my melatonin intake Friday night after a weary week under its somnific spell and didn't fall asleep until 6am. When it came time to go to bed on Saturday night upon the conclusion of Saturday Night Live, I didn't really see much point in getting there in a timely fashion. That I got confused about Daylight Savings Time and mistakenly thought I had an extra hour to spare is quite beside the point. I slid beneath the sheets well after 2am but didn't fall asleep until after 3...er, 4am. And since I didn't wake up until after 3pm on Sunday afternoon, it seemed silly to go to bed at 11:30, especially as I didn't even eat dinner until 10:45.
"I thought we agreed you would still, at least, get into bed at 11:30 even if you didn't feel sleepy?"
A. reminded me of this key clause in the bedtime compact that I had regretably forgotten, making him a helpful, if austere arbiter.
"Yes," I sighed.
"Best fetch the ruler (yes! phew!) and the long-handled brush (oh damn!), please."
It would be an odd sight to anyone peering through the gaps of my green velvet blackout curtains. While a muted-Margaret Warner conversing with Gwen Ifill looks on, a grown woman talking into a phone headset pulls down her purple pajama bottoms, lays over her bed and begins hitting her pale and considerable cheeks -- first, awkwardly with a 24-inch ruler. After a minute or two, she stops briefly, resuming again a minute later -- counting this time to sixteen. Whimpering here and there after the ruler lands particularly hard or in a sensitive spot.
I really needed the spanking. The throb of nothingness on my backside has been building for weeks and has been particularly grueling during the last few days. When I woke up this afternoon, I felt impish. I sent a slightly devilish reply to a post on the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup and spent the afternoon doing anything I could think of to avoid doing the physical therapy and meditation that are part of my required daily routine. I was in, as I am apt to say, my Natty mood.
"Tell me when you get to 9," A. directed as I started whacking my bottom with the long-handled (clothes)brush -- nine being the number from one to ten on the pain scale.
After a couple of minutes of whacking and whimpering, my endorphines kicking in and my arm (which was finally in the middle of the procrastinated physical therapy exercises when A. called) beginning to tremble from overuse, I conceded that it was next to impossible to reach nine over the phone.
But that didn't finish my ordeal. I was still required to wallop my hind sixteen, then twelve times, and finish with eight more for forgetting to address A. as Sir during the first half of my punishment, as is entirely appropriate for such a sober occasion. Had he seen the roll of my eyes when I got the order to add those eight strokes, well, I daresay there would have been far more.
Like I said...impish.
"Big cuddle for my girl" was A.'s hearty but tender verbal comfort when it was over. It always ends with that. With me hugging my pillow and my eyelids growing heavy and my bottom smarting. With vows to do better and that strange buzz of penitence and contentment.
Except tonight I only feel a little penitent. And instead of contentment, I'm...hungry.
I find myself even pondering that which should never be pondered, namely, should I go for the hat-trick and miss my bedtime a third Saturday in a row?