The red room

The door is plain varnished wood, the kind of cheap fire retardant door used in low-rent housing and offices. It has a chrome handle and a deadlock. The room beyond it is about twelve by twelve feet, but has no window. It’s too large to have been intended as a cupboard, suggesting that either a window has been boarded over, or the room has been created by partitioning a larger space. Illumination comes from a single florescent strip light on the ceiling. Depressions in the ceiling paper, however, suggest that there was a previous circular light fitment. The vent of an air conditioning unit is positioned high in the far right corner as viewed from the door. The controls are fitted to the wall below – a small white box with two knobs, one marked with an off position and five fan speeds, the other marked ‘Temp’ and with nine graduations of which only ‘Min’ and ‘Max’ are labelled. The controls are off and the temperature control is set to ‘Min’.

The ceiling and walls are papered with a woodchip paper, emulsioned in red. The skirting boards have been painted the same way.

Some areas of wall have a different treatment. A section from the skirting board to about four feet high and seven feet wide, behind the bed, has a tiger-print paper. A section from floor to ceiling and about four feet wide, on the left-hand wall as one enters the room, is padded in black faux leather. It is held in place with two lengths of timber, one either side, each with an eye bolt at the top and bottom. Directly opposite, on the right-hand wall, is a cheap floor-to-ceiling mirror, silvered behind a slightly fogged acrylic or plastic. In the ceiling, between this mirror and the door, there is an eye bolt. There is another similar, but smaller, mirror behind the bed above the tiger-print paper.

A similar mirror is attached to the ceiling above the bed.

Electric sockets are to either side of the bed.

The carpet comprises red carpet tiles, the kind that might be used in an office or shop. The four carpet tiles under the ceiling eye bolt, and those next to the lower of the bolts on the timbers next to the faux leather, are significantly more worn than the others. The floor has not been recently vacuumed: there is a small amount of visible hair and fabric lint.

The bed is a standard double in size, four and a half by seven feet. It is of robust, probably handmade, construction: the four corner posts are waist high and could easily have been made from recycled telegraph poles; the sides and headboard are joist timbers, lengths of five by two inch wood. The timber has been planed and varnished to make it smooth. The mattress is slightly concave. It is either old or has seen a great deal of use. The sheet is red, a shade brighter than the walls and a little rumpled. There is one pillow with a red cover.

The corner posts of the bed each have an anchor point set into them – a metal D-ring welded to a small square plate and secured to flattened areas of the posts with four screws. The D-rings all have chains padlocked to them, about eighteen inches in length; and the other ends of the chains have heavy cuffs attached, again with padlocks. The cuffs are similar in style to those used in some custodial settings – brown padded leather, closing with buckles but with a design that enables the leather tongue, once fed through the buckle, to be secured also with a smaller padlock.

The keys to all the padlocks are on a keyring which lies on the carpet under the foot of the bed. With them are four additional padlocks and three lengths of chain, each of around thirty inches. Also under the bed is a small grey plastic waste basket. This is empty and therefore condom wrappers, used condoms, tissues and, perhaps, other waste such as pill bottles or the wrappings and packaging of other stimulants are entirely absent.

The pillow has traces of pink lipstick, streaks of black mascara and a saliva stain that is still slightly damp. The bedsheet has several small stains, three of them seminal fluid from two different men and two of them vaginal secretions, both from the same woman. Three others are from perspiration, situated underneath where a person’s shoulders and buttocks would lie if they had been spread-eagled on the bed. There are in total eight hairs on the sheet of which four are black, probably dyed, and eight to twelve inches in length; two are grey and one inch in length; one is brown and about three inches; and one blonde, six inches long.

Analysis of residual auditory impressions on the walls reveal the following:

– a series of muffled moans and shrieks, probably from a female.

– a series of impact sounds that could be either clapping, or slapping or spanking of bare flesh.

– the words ‘What’s Britney going to do now?’, probably from a male voice.

– the words ‘You worked hard to get punished, bitch. Now enjoy it!’. The voice is male and deeper than the previous one.

– metallic sounds that could have come from the chains, with soft grunts and what are probably footsteps.

– the words ‘Oh fuck. Ohhh… fuck. Fuck!’ spoken slightly breathlessly and ascending in pitch.

Analysis of residual light retention in the mirrors reveals the following:

– in the full-length wall mirror, the nude body of a woman standing. The view is of her front and runs from mid-thigh to just above her mouth, which appears to be filled with a ball-gag. Her age could be anything from late teens to a woman in her late thirties who has retained her figure. The position suggests she may be chained by the wrists to the overhead eye bolt but this cannot be confirmed. An undetermined event causes her to shudder, a sideways movement of her hips followed by the muscles tensing around her stomach and then a slight bounce of her breasts.

– in the full-length wall mirror, an image of a woman seen from behind. She is on her knees. She has shoulder-length black hair. She faces a stocky figure dressed in black, presumably a man. He is out of focus and the image, as with the previous one, does not include his face. The position of the two figures is suggestive of oral sex but this cannot be confirmed from the image.

– in the mirror above the bed: a complex image that may be a composite of several time periods. It shows one person, from the physique presumably female, cuffed and spread-eagled to the bed but not much of her apart from the limbs is visible. There are two superimposed figures, from the back and their physiques presumably male, lying on top of her in what, in a sexual context, would be a missionary position. One has short grey hair and the other brown hair. There is a fourth figure visible only as the top of a head with blonde hair, shoulders and breasts, kneeling in the position that would place her on the face of the woman tied to the bed. And there are five others in the room, standing three on one side of the bed and two on the other. Whether these are the same figures at a different point in time, or observers of a scene being played out on the bed, is open to question. At least one of the male figures on the bed could easily also be one of those situated to one side of the bed but this can only be speculation based on hair colour and breadth of shoulders.

***

Those of you who have a literary background may have come across something known as 'thick description'. Those of you who haven't come across it in that context probably know something about it from the postmortem scenes in TV crime series, which often give detailed descriptive detail of bodies. Those of you who have any interest in narratology are probably aware that the discipline makes a distinction between description and narrative, among other literary forms, but also recognises that the distinction can be fluid. But then I guess most people who read newspapers or watch TV would be aware of that, because the choice of words used in news reports that 'only give the facts' are often intended to convey information that links the story to a wider context and to the media's beliefs, values or preferred narratives. And TV crime series, again, offer the idea of a detectives constructing a narrative out of physical and other evidence.

So here you have some thick description that is also, through the use of a retrospective and 'evidence based' perspective, offering a narrative of 'what happened' - though it relies on some science-fictional techniques that, oddly enough, may soon be feasible and are currently being investigated by physicists.

If you're interested, the description is based on a room that used to exist, though probably no longer does. It was in the chambers of a pro domme I used to know, which took up the upper floors of an office building. Because it was close to the city's business district, most of the clients came on weekdays at lunchtimes or early in the evening. Hence she sometimes used it to host fetish events at weekends. And the description could have been even thicker - if I remember rightly there was also a small CCTV camera in the room so someone at reception could see what was going on in there.

And I haven't bothered to describe the corridor leading to the room (white and green tiles on the walls up to waist height, I believe, and then painted cream), the staining on the woodwork from hands clutching at it or running along it, the epithelial traces on the walls and carpet, or the streaks on the ceiling left by the use of whips. Or maybe I'm misremembering that last bit. The marks were more likely those I left on the ceiling in a studio flat I used to live in, which wasn't quite big enough for the 7-foot bullwhip I occasionally employed in play sessions.

Prevalence, origins and habits of post-decease animates ('vampires')

'Discovered' document sheds light on government involvement in managing the vampire population.

Weird enough stuff that it could be the basis of a story. Given the mention of sexuality and sado-masochism it could be an erotic story. Like this one (also on Amazon.co.uk).

The Innocent Schoolgirl Test, Revisited

I thought the title might get your attention. And there is an innocent schoolgirl test involved in this post, but that's because it's a post about obscenity, moral standards and censorship.

If you live in the UK you will no doubt be aware the government is doing things about preventing pedophiles from searching for images of children online. Among other things it's getting search engines to block certain searches.

David Cameron has stated search engines should stop results from 'depraved and disgusting' search terms, and entered into discussions with Google and others. Bing has already introduced warning pop-ups to tell you if you use search terms or phrases that are on a blacklist prepared by CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency. Other search engines seem likely to introduce these in the near future - possibly they will already have been introduced by the time you read this post.

But this is all rather sad and familiar territory. CEOP of course is unlikely to publish a list of those search terms any time soon. We can concede that a few pedophiles do start their exploration of the internet by using the major search engines, especially if they don't have other resources at their disposal - though it appears the majority of file-sharing of objectionable material is via private peer-to-peer networks. We also know that some pedophiles groom potential victims online in a range of ways, and that major social networks have become much more savvy about how that happens and how to help prevent it.

But we also know that many if not most parents don't use content filters on their own computers to prevent children from seeing pornographic images online.

And we know the wider culture, including advertising and fashion, has sought to sexualise young people in problematic ways. My own small example of this comes from being in a queue at an airport behind a couple whose young daughter, maybe 5 or 6 years old, was wearing a T-shirt that stated she was a 'Porn Star in Training'. What??

And we know that young people are affected my this in all kinds of ways, including pressure on girls to sext and send explicit 'selfies' to boys they know, some of which end up being shared around or wind up on the internet.

But there's also a wider reaction to the prevalence of sexual material that isn't problematic. Amazon, as you may know, has been messing with its own search engine and effectively now hides a lot of erotica from searches on its own site. Those of us who write erotica found out about this in April when we found our sales had dropped overnight by over 50%.

While this has spawned a new genre - books about how to find erotica on Amazon and elsewhere - my point is that there's a reaction to the extent of sexual/erotic/pornographic material available on the internet, and it goes beyond specific concerns about the kinds of sex almost all of us are shocked by. It is, I think, a new prudery.

[Updated to add - another example of this, though not internet based, came today in the form of a demand by a major retailer that 'lads' mags' such as Loaded, Nuts and Zoo should now be sealed into modesty bags so as not to offend customers. Loaded has been on sale without modesty bags since 1994.]

And this is where the innocent schoolgirl test comes in.

A legal case in 1868, R v Hicklin (LR 3 QB 360 if you're interested) began with the prosecution of one Henry Scott for selling copies of an anti-Catholic pamphlet titled 'The Confessional Unmasked: Shewing the depravity of the Romish Priesthood, the iniquity of the Confessional, and the questions put to females in confession'. The pamphlets were determined to be obscene and ordered to be destroyed. Scott appealed to to the Court of Quarter Sessions, where the Recorder (i.e. judge), Benjamin Hickling, revoked the decision. Hickling's decision in turn was appealed by the authorities to the Court of Queen's Bench were it was heard by Chief Justice Cockburn.

Cockburn's view was that an appropriate test of whether material had a 'tendency to deprave and corrupt' should consider those whose minds were open to immoral influences - such as an innocent schoolgirl.

Remember this was 1868. Education was not compulsory, many girls never even became 'schoolgirls' and there were quite different standards then in relation to sexual morals anyway. So the interpretation of this test proved repeatedly problematic right the way up to 1959 and the Obscene Publications Act which tried to clarify the situation.

The idea that anything that could offend 'innocent schoolgirls' was obscene remained in popular culture, though, as exemplified by the 'Oz' trial of 1971, an obscenity prosecution related to Issue 28 (May 1970) described as the 'Schoolkids issue' and guest-edited by readers aged 15-18. At one point the defendants arrived at court dressed as 'innocent schoolgirls'.

As a side note - those who appeared for the defence, and thus as advocates of freedom of expression, included DJ John Peel, comedian Marty Feldman and jazz musician George Melly - all well-known figures of the time.

It seems to me that despite, or maybe because of, various laws on the publication of sexual material since then, and a widespread desire to protect children from material that could 'deprave and corrupt' them, we're moving back to applying a newly constructed 'innocent schoolgirl' test for the internet [and ebooks, and probably in print as well].

And that creates three problems.

Firstly, it may create a stereotyped 'innocent schoolgirl' that doesn't actually exist and can't exist in today's society for reasons including our awareness of pedophilia and the need for education about it; and because of the sexualisation of so many aspects of society in ways that aren't explicit.

Secondly, it creates problems for anyone who wants to use the internet for purposes that are appropriate to their own adult sexuality - which at various points is probably why most us do use the internet.

And thirdly, it creates the possibility of a 'slippery slope' in which government agencies can decide what we should be able to see on the internet and not tell us what they've tried to stop us seeing. It's a case of 'OK, they have a reason for doing this now - but what might they want to ban by secret means tomorrow?'

I'm not sure what the answer is. More public debate? More explicit recognition that adults need a space to be themselves? More openness about what the policies are and how they're being implemented? Probably all of these.

But in the meantime I'd guess that those who find their interests are being blocked by internet searches will start to develop new vocabularies and search terms pretty quickly, so that there will be a cat-and-mouse game of blocking new search terms and a quickly-evolving vocabulary of sexual terms.

I don't know if all of this makes much sense. Or if any of it makes sense. But I'd be interested to hear your views.

Free until 28 July: Voodoo Fetish

Voodoo Fetish is free on Amazon until 28 July, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

It's the second novella in my Vodou Trilogy. The first book, Ridden (or go here for the UK version), details Eloise’s experiences in the Caribbean. A car accident near a cemetery in which she's possessed by the lwa and Baron Cimitiėre. Their use of her as a channel for supernatural healing. The discovery that these powers require her to undergo bdsm sex so that her pain and orgasm can channel away another person’s illness. That's the backstory.

Voodoo Fetish is set in London - a world city that's home to members of the vodou diaspora. She’s called upon by the lwa to carry out a healing ceremony for the daughter of a work colleague. Among other things this involves supernatural sex, discussions with crows and a dead witch, sex with a pagan couple she meets who are recruited to her healing project, a relationship with a houngan (male priest) who comes from the slightly different New Orleans tradition of vodou, a bass guitar with interesting properties, and discussion of the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics.

There will be a third novella in due course, which explains how the various people she’s healed are connected together and what the longer-term project of the lwa was. And, yes, bdsm and sex are involved. Extensively involved.

For now, though, you can download the second novella, Voodoo Fetish, for free. Hope you enjoy it.

Catching up with myself

First Day at Work - new cover

I haven't been on here for a few weeks, because life doesn't only happen online. Among other things I've had to do a lot of running around on behalf of a relative who's not particularly well. I've also been earning money writing stuff that isn't remotely erotic, because since Amazon messed with their tags, search settings and ranking algorithm earlier this year, stuff hasn't sold as well as it used to - and a lot of other erotica authors have found the same thing. If you're interested in reading erotica, you probably need to get more creative about how you search for it. And those of us who write it increasingly need to see it as a hobby rather than a livelihood. Such is life...

However, while I've been gone, Xcite have won a prize: ETO Best Erotic Book Brand 2013. The ETO is Erotic Trade Only, the UK's magazine and annual exhibition/event for all erotic trades. They award prizes at their annual event, and the complete list is here.

Vampire's New Plaything - new cover

In recognition of this (or something like that - I'm making assumptions here) Xcite have been redesigning some of their book covers. So my First Day at Work and Vampire's New Plaything short stories, and the Tricks For Kicks collection that has my story 'Filthy White Dress' in it all now look like the pics in this post (the other links to these scattered around this blog that show the old covers also still work, of course).

Meanwhile, I've managed to do a short story - it's a bit longer than flash fiction at a shade under 1500 words - that I've posted on my other blog, deliciouslydeviant.wordpress.com. It's inspired in part by reading some stuff on narratology - don't laugh, it's a proper academic subject that's part of a wider cultural studies subject area, and I do take the craft of writing seriously enough to read academic papers on things like literary structure.

Tricks for Kicks new cover

The story is a rough cut of a couple of ideas about ageing and sex - the character is in her sixties and remembering her hippie youth - and about how it's possible to interpret a list of a character's reactions to something as telling a story. Or alternatively, to tell a story in the format of an apparently stream-of-consciousness set of reactions to a single event in the narrative present.

It's also, I guess, an acknowledgement that the 1960s were culturally and socially an important period in England, and probably most other countries: it was the beginning of the hippie period, the sexual revolution that began with the contraceptive pill, a widespread drug culture, and of course a range of other things the story doesn't reference. And those who were young at that time have become the new generation of retired and elderly people.

Have a read of the story on the other blog, see what you think. I may revisit the theme and indeed that story, rewrite it, and maybe include it in a collection of 60s-inspired erotica at some point later in the year.

International comparisons mapped!

I was recently alerted to existence of two maps, and thought I'd pass them on.

One is a world map of penis size, at targetmap.com.

The other is a world map of breast size, also at targetmap.com.

If you just go to the main targetmap.com website and view maps listed under 'other', you'll find a whole bunch of salacious data mapped on a global basis - 'easiness of girls', prostitution, sexual activity per week, prohibitions on sexual activities, 'inbreeding' and others. I have no idea how the statistics were collected (or indeed whether they were collected) and some of the maps are entirely imaginary, such as the one that shows the spread of the zombie pandemic of 2087.

Butm you know, you're an adult and everything and you can make your own mind up about whether the maps are real or imaginary. Have fun!

Sex Art and Aromatherapy - free 27th May-9th June

Here's a heads-up: my short story Sex, Art and Aromatherapy will be free on iTunes from tomorrow, 27th May, to 9th June.

I can't give you a URL for it because the old way of constructing URLs for iTunes products doesn't seem to work any more. Just search on the title, or my name.

Brief details: Ruby is already experienced in BDSM and fetish, but she’s surprised to meet an older man in an art gallery, of all places, who also seems experienced in that world. He tells her stories about how, in his youth, BDSM was simply one part of a wider spiritual quest. Ruby lets him take her on a journey of enlightenment…

I think the cover used in this post is the right one! It replaced the original cover (which featured a woman's hands bound in red rope) when it first went onto iTunes because the bondage was deemed too racy for iTunes cover guidelines. That said, I think it's a pretty neat cover image.

I'll also just mention that at various points in the past (it's been out for a while), this story's apparently been among the most popular erotic downloads on a range of iTunes country stores.

Erotica, but not as you know it

I’ve just self-pubbed something you might or might not see as erotica: Filthy Money, and other stories of sex in the gutter.

The publishing process itself was a steep learning curve. First edition not sufficiently well proofread; second edition lost a bit of formatting in the Smashwords 'meatgrinder' (their term for the automatic conversion processes for e-publishing); third edition good, but failed Smashword’s premium catalogue submission due to not using markers (three or four asterisks) at section breaks, and having no first line indent at the beginning of each section – this part of the process isn’t automatic, but down to review by an actual human. Previous humans hadn’t seen these as problems, but never mind. The fourth version is ok and I wanted to get to that stage before promo-ing the collection.

Having got it on Smashwords and their premium catalogue - which distributes to Diesel, Ebooks-Eros, B&N and several other places - I don't have any enthusiasm for going through the same process with Amazon yet. Maybe some time in the future. 

What it is: eight quasi-erotic stories of desperate sex, sexual perversity and moral degeneracy from the margins of contemporary society. It’s set in a dystopia that actually exists – in social science literature it’s often called the underclass, though how the underclass is defined is a variable quantity. Political writers like Charles Murray turn up their noses at those who are ‘welfare dependent’, ‘feckless’, having kids outside marriage and so forth. Other more liberal writers point to the role of international capitalism and neoliberalism in reducing the life chances of the poorest, to the point that many are not only unemployed but excluded from much of what we might reasonably describe as civil society. They also, incidentally, point to the increasing dependence of the middle classes on welfare as 'professional' jobs become deskilled, and the prevalence of births outside marriage and 'reconstituted' families following separation and divorce in the middle classes; these trends don't just define the underclass any more. Or alternatively, more people with middle-class backgrounds are becoming members of it. If you want to know, I tend to side with the more sympathetic view of what 'underclass' means.

Over the years I’ve known a lot of people who qualify for the ‘underclass’ tag. I know their world and as the blurb for the book says, it’s an unstable world where anything can happen, reality is perverse and perversity is normal. People in that world find their pleasures any way they can, and it’s often a way that’s chaotic and wild. They often end up having desperate sex in ways that can sometimes lead to trouble and more chaos. I have, frankly, edited out parts of the chaos that involve alcoholism and serious violence, but left in – and, in fact, substantially toned down – the bits that involve drug use, the police, and psychological problems including self-harming. Much of what I’ve seen first-hand would frankly be more suitable to a horror collection rather than an erotic one.

And, yes, there’s a fair bit of BDSM in the stories. Not because it’s a major part of that world, though it does happen, but because that’s my particular bent. Even so, many of the scenarios in the book are based on stuff that I’ve either seen first-hand or been told about by those involved. It’s fiction, but there are factual threads running through it.

It doesn’t, by the way, include the story of what happened to someone who was kidnapped by a drug dealer because their boyfriend didn’t pay a debt. And it doesn’t go into any detail of the sexual dynamics of couples where both parties are self-destructive and manipulative. Maybe those are for an even darker collection.

I wrote most of the stories as a form of exorcism, because I'd had the ideas running around in my brain and didn't know what to do with them, other than share them with you. It hasn't completely exorcised them, but at least I feel better now...  I don't know whether the collection will be attractive to readers, if only in a tight lipped 'Eeew, that's really nasty' way. Possibly not. I'd be gratified if you did like it, but you may not want to encourage me. 

I published them myself because I wanted to get a sense of what that involves, and now I've done the learning curve I might selfpub some stuff that's a little more conventional eroticism. Or less unconventional eroticism, anyway. I have a few ideas I'm working on.

So what would be your motive for buying this collection? I’ve described it as quasi-erotica. It has a high urban grit content, plus a lot of sex. It has a lot of irresponsible and dangerous sex entered into by people who really, profoundly, don’t care about the problems it will bring because the world’s unpredictable anyway. It has sex between people whose fantasies are utterly against the norms of political correctness and polite society – though as we already know, many people’s fantasies from all walks of life are politically incorrect and brutally transgressive. It has sex that is chaotic, perverse, pleasurable, and pleasurable because it’s perverse.

And remember, in reading this, that morals are an affectation of those who have the financial resources to afford them. Read responsibly, and if any of what you read troubles you, just remember that it probably has really happened somewhere, sometime, pretty much the way the story tells it.

The link again: Filthy Money, and other stories of sex in the gutter.

On demand? TV-like? Backdoor censorship?

Here's an odd thing for people in the UK. It's caused a stir in the video community, especially places that offer 'on demand' style video services that can be deemed to be 'TV-like'.

There's an authority you may never have heard of, ATVOD - the Authority for Tevevision on Demand, which was set up as part of the implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2009 and 2010. 

Recently it's been flexing its muscles in various directions, presumably testing the boundaries of its powers. The head power it has is that the provers of 'TV-like' services are required to notify ATVOD of what they do and then adhere to its rules.

It's fined Playboy TV and Demand Adult for repeatedly failing to implement access barriers to under-18s. The fines were actually levied by Ofcom under the Communications Act 2003, since essentially Ofcom has delegated some of its powers to ATVOD but then acts as the administrative body able to levy fines for breaches of ATVOD's rules.

It's tried, though failed on appeal, to have the BBC Food and BBC Top Gear channels on YouTube defined as TV-like. This determination was based on relatively technical issues such as production values, brand name, continuity and narrative, opening sequence, music on the soundtrack, length of clips and the extent of bricolage in the presentation of individual clips. If the detail interests you, read the Lexicology.com article referenced at the end of this post.

For various reasons I won't go into here, Ofcom's decision seems to have pitched the definition of what 'counts' as on-demand TV closer to streaming TV services that might compete directly with TV, than to user-generated content of the kind you might expect on YouTube or Vimeo.

But ATVOD has also started to get interested in places such as Clips4Sale and the individual (adult) videos posted there. ATVOD has started to contact some of the people who have material on Clips4Sale asking them to consider whether they should register as on-demand programme service providers (and thus pay registration fees). If they consider they don't need to register, they are required nonetheless to complete a declaration explaining why they don't need to register.

This has become a hot topic on Fetlife (because some of those involved have published all the emails) and does raise questions, not so much about general principles such as stopping under-age people from watching porn, but about the way they're being enforced. Should anyone who wants to make a reasonably proficient and thought-out video on any topic have to register themselves as a service provider? Should they, if they upload their work, have to contact an authority to declare they don't need to register?

In fact, given that technology now does mean someone can sit at home with a camera and a PC and make videos that do have TV-like characteristics, and put them out on the internet to compete with TV - and users can download them to watch on their TV - how valid is the distinction between what is and isn't TV anyway? Why shouldn't people seek to compete with established TV? Shouldn't regulation ignore the question of how material gets streamed or made available, and just address matters such as whether adult material is reasonably protected behind warnings, and whether video services are provided via commercial services that have, for example, significant third-party advertising content as opposed to 'cottage industries'? Should the burden of regulation fall - if it needs to fall anywhere - on the 'service providers' such as Clips4Sale, YouTube and so on rather than individuals or groups who upload their materials? How would ATVOD cope with someone who uses Google Glass, for example, to stream everything they do and see to a website (including ads for services and products that may appear on the Glass screen) and then have edited clips - perhaps with embedded ads - available?

This seems to be a situation where the developments in technology are happening very quickly and the regulatory regime, albeit only a few years old, is already several generations behind what's feasible and what's happening now. There may yet need to be a debate about whether the regulations are too much of a blunt instrument to avoid getting labelled as 'backdoor censorship' due to declaration and registration requirements, if ATVOD's interpretations of these are maintained.

Watch this space.

Useful further links: 

Lexology.com article on Ofcom rulings

ATVOD's website

Free Voodoo Fetish

It's true. My Voodoo Fetish novella is free on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk from today, 8 May, until 12 May 2013 (these links open in new windows).

It's a novella with paranormal, bondage and bdsm themes that follows on from the earlier Ridden. In place of a blurb or plot summary (which you can get from Amazon and its 'look inside' function) I'll just point out that apart from sex, bondage and whips you get post-structuralist philosophy, fluid dynamics equations, a reference to the film Cat People, a discussion of the 1832 Public Cemeteries Act, a small and intimate orgy, a dose of syncretism, a demonic possession and an anvwar mo. And sex and bdsm, did I mention those?

Enjoy. If you get your free copy, please do me a favour - take a minute to review, rate or tag it on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you please. And if you like it - please remember I have others you might like to buy...

Museum of Deviant Desires cover

If you notice a difference from the original cover, a slightly more medieval and handwritten feel to the title - that's because Sharazade at 1001 Nights Press had it redesigned using a new font. I feel a blog post on fonts coming up sometime...

The stories in it are still the same, though:

• Poppy Seeks Pain
• Waiting
• Something Different
• Burnout
• The Plastics Factory
• Fashion, Intent, Desire, Choice
• Don’t Mess With the Author
• Sex and the Giant Squid
• >Voiceover
• The Museum of Deviant Desires
• $2.99

And the places to buy remain the same: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk,  Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, Diesel, Ebook-Eros and some other places, like iTunes, I don't have URLs for.

You may also like to know this is the novella-length collection that was reviewed as 'sexy and cerebral; breezy, thought-provoking, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly addictive', establishing 'fascinating new paradigms for the next generation of erotic fiction', and 'gritty, modern, playful, and strange.' And now, depending on how quickly the new cover propagates through the interwebz, with new wobbly and weird handwriting on the cover (the writing inside remains weird, but that's down to the stories themselves and not the choice of font).

Tense

I've been thinking about BDSM and tense over the last day or so, because the story I'm writing at the moment seems to have different elements in it that require different types of narrative based on breaking down the 'BDSM experience' into different components.

There's a future orientation: the pleasure one gets from imagining, planning and perhaps discussing what the dom/me and sub will do (or have done to them) in the future. The thinking about how it would work, what it would feel like, the force of the desire to carry the plan into action and so on.

There's a near-future orientation: for example, in a kidnap scenario, knowing that one is about to be kidnapped or will carry out the kidnap. The sense of tension and enhanced emotions that come from knowing it will happen in the very near future, perhaps on a specific journey back from work.

There's the 'in the moment' orientation, and this could be a mix of different emotions. For example what the sub may be going through could be painful. The level of pain may be high and subs may not - because not everyone does - have an inherently sexual response to pain itself. The pleasure may come from other elements, discussed below. Of course the mix of sensations can be, and often are, so overwhelming that the sub ceases to be able to evaluate exactly what they are feeling, and as endorphins kick in they may have a different response. And so on.

Then there's the 'prolonged moment' that may come from a scene designed to take a long period - perhaps several days. Play of this nature can be intense and disorientating, feeling (for example) like a highly realistic imprisonment/interrogation scene to the point that the sub believes it to be genuine and takes a couple of days afterwards to re-adjust to normal life.

Often, there's a comedown from a scene – perhaps a sense of loss that it's ended and a certain amount of time that is needed to come back to reality.

After the experience, there's the euphoria (hopefully) of knowing you've done/experienced it; the moments where you remember some aspect of the scene and grin like a maniac. It may not always be euphoria, though: in some instances submissives, in particular, feel that what they've experienced is a kind of spiritual ritual or a catharsis; those I know whose kink is more towards a sense of 'slavery' or servitude may feel something different, which they sometimes describe as a sense of calmness or inner peace. Your mileage may vary, but there will be some emotional reaction to the scene that kicks in a few hours or days later and may last several days.

Another aspect of post-scene emotional reaction, incidentally, is something that can feel like withdrawal symptoms; a need to experience that intensity again, or at least some parts of that cycle of imagination, anticipation, experience and reaction again.

And as the experience becomes part of your (joint) biography, it becomes something you might comment on as a point of reference in the relationship. If other people know about it, it might be something they want to discuss with you. If it's something you keep as a shared secret, it may be an aspect of your personality you have to guard, so that people you don't want to know about don't get to find out.

None of these future/present/past perspectives are unique to BDSM. They might apply equally to almost any other aspect of human life. But the implication in BDSM is where they blend together they can do so in intriguing ways. For example someone might want to be caned: they might anticipate it, plan it and discuss the scene - not because they expect to enjoy the caning itself but because they want to have the post-caning euphoric moment of knowing they've been there and experienced that.

I guess the key point is that people want to go through (or give) physically painful and perhaps psychologically difficult experiences for a range of motives. Some of these may be because people do have a sexual response to the pain and/or to sex after the pain, etc.

But even if this isn't the case people may want to experience these things because planning and anticipating them, and having had that experience, bring their own emotional and sexual highs. In the case of submissives, depending on the nature of their submission - because there isn't just one type of submission - they may seek to experience the pain even if they don't enjoy it sexually, because that's their gift to their dominant, or a ritual they need to have performed on their flesh, or literally a part of a shamanistic or spiritual ritual. Some subs need to feel 'broken', i.e. to experience overwhelming force that coerces them to do or consent to whatever their dominant wishes. And I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface of motive at this point.

The issue I have with the story I'm writing, incidentally, is that it starts mid-scene and has to track backwards and forwards to explain the context - why this scene, the motivations for being involved in it and the expected post-scene state of mind.

Any thoughts on BDSM as a process and the stages people go through in relation to a particular scene, scenario, play session etc. are welcome!

Guesting on billierosie's blog

Just so you know. I just did a guest post for billierosie's blog.

It's my take on being a dominant - a personal point of view because one size doesn't fit all, so make of it what you will.

Voodoo Fetish

Voodoo Fetish. My latest novella, out with Xcite Books now.

It follows on from Ridden, the story of Eloise - a language teacher in the Caribbean who has paranormal experiences following a car crash, and finds she's been given supernatural healing powers - which can only be exercised through extreme bdsm sex.

If you think that's weird, by the way, bear in mind I know a few people whose own experiences with sex magic - as both practitioners and recipients of healing - are close parallels.

In Voodoo Fetish,

Eloise is back in England, believing she’s left behind her the weird sexual experiences and voodoo rituals that shaped her time on “that island”. But an encounter with a dead witch in a London graveyard lets her know the spirits still have need of her, and the miraculous healing powers she can channel during intense, BDSM-themed sex. Can Eloise and a group of like-minded fetishists help save the life of a girl who’s tried to raise a demon, and can she free herself from her obligations to the mysterious Baron Cimitière?

Well of course she can't. The third part of the trilogy will be out mid-year. I don't guarantee she'll be freed of those obligations even then. But in the meantime you might be entertained by what happens in London. It involves meeting someone who was bathed in the blood of a chicken at midnight, on a lonely crossroads outside New Orleans. It involves gas masks, a fetish nurse, four-way bdsm sex, and the use of a whip to drive a demon away. It involves a new hairstyle and punky pink hair. And it involves, more than anything, using sex and bdsm to drive her intent to make something happen in the real world.

Buy it at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

If you like it and want the backstory, it's in Ridden - here are US Amazon and UK Amazon links.

Where she was going (flash fiction)

She knew where she was going. She’d dressed for it. Dressed for action. The urban-camo pattern skirt that was fourteen inches down the side seam, and six of those were a split. The schoolgirl-style white blouse with no buttons that she’d tied in a tight knot at the front. The guys would go for it.

She knew what she wanted. She was planning on getting it. She headed for the address she’d been given.

The address that was, for her, synonymous with sex and violence.

Abused as a child? Check.

Dysfunctional family life? Check.

Used to accepting violence as normal in a relationship? Check.

Presenting difficult and challenging behaviour as an adolescent, acting out, doing drink and drugs, struggling to find her identity, her authenticity? Check.

But this wasn’t about any of that. She could have been brought up in a wealthy, caring home with no worries, no arguments, a dog and and a pony. She could have been driving up to the house in a Ferrari bought for her by mummy and daddy. She’d still have been wearing the fourteen-inch skirt and the schoolgirl blouse with the buttons pulled off. She’d still have been rocking up to that address, expecting sex and violence.

That was her identity, her authenticity.

What happened in that house was what her dreams were made of. 

***

I might at some point turn this into a longer story, for a self-published collection. For now, the short version will have to do.

Sizzler announce revamp

Sizzler just announced a revamp of their website, which will be temporarily closed prior to a relaunch on 1 April 2013. See Renaissance Sizzler's announcement on their Tumblr account here.

This only affects one of my books, the story collection Hanging Around - which is still available from a bunch of other places including Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk; Barnes and Noble (Nook edition), AdultEbookShop and Fictionwise.

I've written a bit more that explains how the cover image came about - it's on my other blog, DeliciouslyDeviant. The key to it though is this: turn the cover on its side and you'll see it's actually a full body suspension.

As a writer with multiple titles to my name, I shouldn't play favourites. However if I had to name a single publication I had the most fun writing, I'd say this would be a very strong candidate.

Oddly, though, it hasn't been one of my best-selling titles. Maybe the cover isn't as stereotypically 'erotic' as some others? Maybe the Amazon 'Look Inside' function, which shows most of the first story, is off-putting to some people because it's set on an indie film shoot for a zombie horror movie? There are plenty of other stories that follow it, though, set in locations as diverse as an artist's studio, a library, a lesbian club and a picnic.

What do you think of the cover? Does it suggest erotica to you? Is the fact it's in a different orientation off-putting? And would an erotic story that mentions zombies make you purse your lips and move on quickly?

It's had some good reviews, though - like this one at BDSM Book Reviews.

Its time will come... give it 20 years and someone's PhD will probably cite it as an important turning point in the development of postmodern erotica. Or something.

Stuff I don't understand no. 63

Daddy porn.

I don't understand why it's become so popular in the last 1-2 years.

I'm guessing, since the readership for most erotica appears to be female, that it's primarily read by women. Which suggests it strikes a chord in the psyche and, presumably, the desires of many North American/European/Western-orientated women.

My initial thought when it first rose to prominence, around the back end of 2011 and early 2012, was that it might be a reaction to the economic situation.

The idea that a strong daddy figure could bring order to an unstable life, that the world could be reduced to a sexualised version of a father-daughter relationship that might serve the needs of adult women whose own lives were complex and chaotic, that it would simplify issues of identity, security and sexuality in one psychological archetype - that kind of made sense as a place where many women's heads could go.

And then we started having sex scandal after sex scandal. Women (and occasionally men) describing how they'd been traumatised through abuse by those who were, if not parent figures, then having some combination of being in loco parentis, having some kind of authority, or misusing influence and celebrity status that had resulted in their being trusted if not idolised.

Did that change the context of daddy porn? Does it mean we're looking at writing that tries to negotiate a way through the idea that some form of sexual relationship based on the authority, privilege and control of older males - and the dependence and voluntary subjugation of younger women, who are expected to not grow up - might be acceptable and even desirable to some women?

I don't know the answer to these questions. What I can say is that:

- in the sociology of literature there's a strand that considers the writing of any particular era as reflecting the 'zeitgeist', the spirit of the age - and its problems (though the how, why and what of this is contested).

- in the sociology of literature there's also a strand that says the 'zeitgeist' approach is reductive and that writing is always exploratory and imaginative, actually constituting new ways of being.

- in any psycho-analytical approach to writing, you have to recognise that there can be no legislation of desire. Desire is never subject to minor details such as whether the things held to be erotic are legal, moral, acceptable, and so on. In fact the reverse is often the case: things acquire erotic fascination and strength because they're illegal, immoral and socially unacceptable. Because they represent an 'other' that isn't part of how we live our day-to-day lives.

I'm sure there are many other literary, sociological, psychological, semiological, psycho-analytic and, for all I know, astrological and pataphysical theories. Not to mention post-structural variants of all of the above. So I wouldn't want to say this particular kind of porn is a direct consequence of the economic climate, nor that it's a conscious and deliberate working through of issues thrown up by abuse. But the ideas that there's some kind of link, something that underlies and explains the growth in this particular kind of porn, is tempting.

Then again, maybe it's just that one of my kinks is a need for theory.

What do you think?


***

In case you didn't know: 

- pataphysics is 'the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments'. It was invented, if that's the right word, by Alfred Jarry, one of the forerunners of surrealism. The quote is from his book Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician.
- post-structuralism is not pataphysics. Or at least it's only a distant relation.




  

Relieving the stress

With the demise of Oysters and Chocolate last month - its owners/editors have moved on to other projects - I remembered I had one story published there back in 2010. Rather than leave it to die quietly I thought I'd put it on here.

While I think of it another old favourite of mine, the UK-based fetish social network Informed Consent, has also ceased operation though there is now an Informed Consent group on Fetlife. That's the thing about the internet - nothing lasts for ever and people's interests change.

On the plus side, there are new sites opening all the time. You might be interested in Erotica Ebooks and DangerLust, both erotic book blog sites of differing styles.

By the say, the story refers to three books, all of which actually exist. Including the novel by Fulani (look in the right-hand sidebar for a link).

But I'm digressing, as normal. Here's the old story.

Relieving the Stress

It had been a tough week but a successful one. Jodie had bested the alpha male in charge of Marketing. The restructuring would have seen her department gifted to him, but she’d undercut his position. Marketing was now part of her management role instead. By seven on Friday evening, at the end of the deluge of memos and spreadsheets dealing with the changes, she was massaging her temples with slender fingers. The accumulated tension wouldn’t shift. Then a vision of what she’d be doing in a couple of hours flitted through her brain, and her stockinged knees slid together involuntarily. But of course actually doing the things she imagined would be the ideal way to relieve the stress...

Most of the large open-plan office was in darkness. Her team had left promptly at five, with excited chatter about which club they’d be going to and how much vodka they’d consume. The cleaners had been through at six. Since then she’d been alone in the office.

Gathering her things, Jodie headed for the ladies’ rest room. It was time to prepare.
The plain white work blouse could stay, though she decided there was no need for the bra. The blouse was tight and with her breasts free, her nipple rings were clearly outlined through the material. She experimented with the buttons. Leaving three undone was overkill. Two would do.


I’m going to feel like a slut however I look. That’s the point.


She removed her knee-length black skirt, and took another one from the overnight bag. A short, pleated, tartan skirt in blues and grays. It looked like a schoolgirl outfit, and that was because it was the actual school uniform skirt she’d worn, ten years ago, aged sixteen. It sat low on her hips, so that every stretch or twist of her body revealed skin between the waistband and the bottom of her blouse. It barely covered her ass cheeks and left a two-inch strip of bare thigh between the hem and the top of her stockings. Back in the day she’d worn it with ankle socks and heels.

I don’t remember it being that short. No wonder I was a boy magnet!

Why did she want to revisit her schooldays? She had no trauma, no obsession, that came from that time of her life. On the contrary, it had been a period of freedom and coquettishness. Yet it was a perfect scenario to play the fantasy that had gradually insinuated itself into her brain: being sexually dominated.

Being overpowered and fucked. Having no choice, no responsibility, no social niceties and manipulative game-playing and one-upmanship. In short, being a world away from the stuff she associated with her high-salaried professional life.

Underwear or not? Jodie was wearing a thong that had cost more for the barely-there style than for the amount of material in it. But Sir would almost certainly rip it straight off her, so it was sensible to go without. She took it off. Her fingers found the clit hood ring that had inspired tonight’s session. She’d had the piercing last month.


Feels nice. There’s time for me to bring myself off... No, I want the anticipation.


She re-applied eyeliner and dusky gothic eyeshadow, blood-red lipstick, put long blonde hair in a high ponytail, approved her look in the mirror. The other parts of her preparation would be done on the way. Putting on her long leather coat and grabbing the overnight bag, she headed out of the office and into the night.

Jodie parked close to her destination; a couple of refinements to her look were necessary before ringing the bell of the quiet suburban house. From the Merc’s glove compartment she extracted a packet of cigarettes, placed them in her left stocking top. She didn’t smoke, but that wasn’t the point. She opened the screw top of the wine bottle that had been on the car’s back seat and took two deep slugs. Unlike the people she worked with, Jodie had no intention of being drunk this evening. But she wanted the smell of alcohol on her breath.

One final thing: reaching into the glove compartment, she extracted a crumpled page torn from a notebook.


Homework. Done badly, because that’s part of the game.


Leaving her coat and overnight bag in the car, she walked the last hundred yards in the cool night air, feeling deliciously exposed and brazen in the microscopic skirt.

He kept her waiting at the door.


I know his nicknames, his online names, but after all this time I still don’t know his real name…


Jodie was very aware of her nipples, tight under the blouse, and her labia, just hidden under the skirt – both were tingling in the autumnal night.


God, look at me hopping on the spot with anticipation! Like a slutty teenager who’s decided to go all the way on a first date. Was I really like that when I was sixteen?


On a moment’s reflection Jodie remembered she had been. More than once.

Behind the door was a man perhaps in his early thirties, a tweed jacket and bowtie making him seem significantly older. He looked down his aquiline nose at her.

“Young Jodie.” He consulted his watch. “A little late, aren’t you?”

“Sorry, sir, I had to...” Her mind went into overdrive. “I had to finish something else. But it didn’t have anything to do with cybersex.” Tell the truth, offer a distraction. The technique always worked.

“Hmm. Well, make your way to my study. You know where to stand.”

The study was done in a period style, dark wood and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There was a desk and a small rug in front of it. She was supposed to stand on the rug. Beside the desk was a tall, ornate plant pot. Instead of a plant, it contained a selection of canes. She knew from past experience the desk drawers held rope, handcuffs, gags...

Jodie ignored the rug, looked at the bookshelves. Chastisement Across the Ages, by Gervas D’Olbert. The Whip and the Rod, by Prof. van Yelyr. The Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation, by Fulani. She shivered with anticipation.

A cough. Sir had come in the study behind her. “You really can’t follow instructions, can you!” He sounded amused. Jodie half-turned but he was too quick. Rope slid easily over her wrists, pinioning them behind her back. Hands pulled on the rope, dragging her four steps to the centre of the room, standing on the mat.

“Obviously you need some encouragement to stay where you’re supposed to be,” Sir said. Jodie felt her hands pulled upwards.


Of course. Remember there’s a hook in the ceiling beam? The rope must run over it.


As her arms were raised, Jodie had to bend forwards to relieve the pressure on her shoulders, take a wider stance to keep her balance.

Sir was standing very close, securing the rope with one hand while steadying her with the other. The slightly doggy smell of his tweed jacket mingled with his cologne – a fresh scent with notes of cinnamon and leather. It was a heady combination that added to her sense of anticipation.

“That displays your ass very nicely,” Sir observed. He patted it proprietarily. In this position the back of her skirt hid absolutely nothing. She felt one finger slide across her flesh, exploring between her legs and tweaking her clit hood ring.

“You’ve committed quite a few infractions, I see.” His hands continued to rove, unbuttoning her blouse and feeling the warmth of her breasts – and the hard metal of her nipple rings. “Arriving late. No underwear, as I notice from your pose. No jewelry allowed at school, and I think these count as jewelry.” He pulled on the rings, enough to make her gasp. “Smoking.” One hand slid up the inside of her thigh, stroking the smooth material of her stockinged leg. It reached the cigarette packet, extracted it from the stocking top. “Drinking, since I can smell wine on your breath. That’s quite a collection of misdemeanors. I’ll enjoy punishing you for those.”

“But it’s not fair to have me tied like this, Sir! Surely that’s not approved practice?”


Any position where he can fuck me is definitely approved practice, but I’m staying in cheeky brat mode tonight...


He snorted. “My school, my rules.” The palm of his hand connected with Jodie’s left buttock. The noise of the slap resounding in the room made her wince more than the slap itself. Even so, she felt sure it had colored up her ass.

“Ow! Sir!” But it was a token protest, said with a pout. The real pleading would come later.
Another spank, this time on her right ass cheek. “This, by the way, is not the punishment. It’s just to improve the circulation so the cane won’t mark you as much.” Another half-dozen slaps and her backside was feeling distinctly hot. The warmth was seeping from her buttocks to the crevice between her legs, and she could feel a slight tingling vibration from the clit hood ring at each blow. She began to twist, flex her legs, but the ropes holding her wrists high behind her back were unforgiving. Any attempt to offer his hand a different part of her ass just put more strain on her shoulders.

Jodie found it in herself to relax and let the spanking happen. She focused her attention on her nipple and clit piercings, feeling the echoes of each blow at the three points as shock waves travelled through her body. Hot and moist feelings pervaded her. Whimpering sounds followed each blow, and to her surprise she discovered she was making them. She was vocalizing her need.

When Sir finally stopped, Jodie felt her rump glowing. But she was also intrigued to note that he was breathing hard.


Hah! Is that just from the exertion or because his trousers suddenly feel a lot tighter?


“Now let’s see if you’ve done your homework properly. If it’s of a distinction standard, I’ll be more lenient with the punishments. If not, of course, I might be tempted to treat you more severely! Where have you hidden it?”

It was tucked into the skirt waistband. Sir took his time about finding it, running his hands over her belly and under her skirt, until Jodie was unable to suppress a moan of desire. In this bent-over position, her mouth and her slit were both at the right height for– But Sir wasn’t going to let her off so lightly. They both knew that she needed the ritual and the punishment that would inevitably follow.
“I want you,” he said, “to read your work to me.” She felt the rope holding her wrists slacken and sank to her knees, grateful that the strain on her shoulders had ceased. Carefully, Sir repositioned her still-bound wrists in the small of her back and wound the tail end of the rope around her body, over and under her exposed breasts. The small amount of pressure they created drew Jodie’s attention to the gentle swelling of her pierced nipples.

With her “homework” on the floor in front of her, she began to read.

“Little Red Riding Hood is a metaphor for the female sexual organs, the clitoris and its hood in particular. It’s a warning about the danger of going with a strange man who might be a predator, but it has a happy ending because she finds the woodsman who’s supposed to be a good honest man. Though he makes his living with his big chopper, which is maybe a bit strange, but he can satisfy her...

Do you have a big chopper, Sir?”


OK, I already know the answer to that one!


“No reference to the history of the story? Perrault, or the Brothers Grimm?” Sir was not easily pleased. “How about the feminist revisionist versions in the eighties?”

Jodie shook her head. She knew the arguments but had deliberately left them out. Deliberately, because it would make Sir treat her more harshly. From her kneeling position, her impulse was to open her mouth, lick her lips and reach out for his cock with her tongue. But he didn’t make it easy. Sitting on the edge of his desk, Sir stayed just out of range of her mouth. She wasn’t going to get any cock unless she begged for it – or until she was delirious with pain.

“If that’s all you have,” Sir said, “I should teach you a little more about the story. Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t have a choice, you see. Wolves can be so very charming, with their big teeth and their smiles. And woodsmen can be so very skilful with their choppers. Either way, she’s going to get taken. Men. They can’t be trusted. It’s something you’ll experience in just a while, but there’s a small matter of chastisement first. So let’s get started.”

He grasped Jodie’s ponytail, used it to pull her up and forwards, and bend her over the desk. Her breasts met the cool wooden surface, caused her to gasp.

“Now, we had five infractions I counted, plus the homework wasn’t up to standard. That makes six.” He stood back and she could hear him suck his teeth reflectively. “I’d say that’s half a dozen strokes apiece, thirty-six in all.”


Shit. That’s more than I’ve taken before.


Her heart raced with excitement – and with dread. Thirty-six was a huge number. She didn’t know if she could take it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sir said. “You don’t know if you can take that number. Of course you can. It’s just a question of whether I need to tie you down first, and whether you need a gag to stop you screaming. We’ll do a dozen here and the rest in the gym.”

She knew the cane was light and thin because Sir swished it in the air. She had ample experience of the different noises the various canes made. The first couple of strokes were stingy, made her squirm, but also made her hot. And he was barely even trying. The second pair were harder, and made her gasp as much with desire as with hurt. And the next pair were distinctly harsh.

“Owww... Ahh!” Jodie was aware she was giving out mixed messages: a response to the pain stimulus that was also an expression of excitement.

She sensed his breath, cool on the lips of her pussy. “There’s nothing quite like that scent of delinquent, writhing schoolgirl,” he observed. He was taunting her. She writhed more.

The next cane had a lower pitch as it whistled through the air. Jodie registered this and knew, a split second before it connected, it meant a thicker, nastier implement. It took another split second for her ass to register the impact and the pain to kick in. Jodie felt the blow reverberate through her body, throwing her an inch further forward on the desk. But at the same time it created a familiar vibration of need in her cunt.

“Jesus!”

“Stop squawking. If you do it again, I’ll use a gag on you.”


Do I care? At least I won’t need to worry about keeping quiet!


He allowed her half a dozen deep breaths to re-focus, and the second thwack found its mark, an inch below the first. She’d be tiger-striped with bruises by the time he finished. She was able, just, to stop herself screaming by biting hard on her lip.

“Think yourself lucky I’m not making you count the strokes out loud. In Swedish.” He’d pulled that trick before. She could count to twelve in eight languages.

By the fourth strike she’d worked out he was making a “five bar gate”: five parallel strokes, evenly spaced an inch apart. The sixth would be a diagonal stroke that crossed over the others.

The fourth strike was also her undoing. The pent-up energy she’d been trying to subdue broke out of her in a howl of anguish.

Sir just opened the desk drawer and extracted something that went in her mouth – a thick rubber ring that was drawn just behind her teeth by its tight leather strap, forcing her jaws apart. It wouldn’t block much noise, but with her mouth wedged open it would, she realized, have another use.

After the final stroke, Sir allowed her to collapse slowly to a kneeling position. He perched in front of her, on the edge of the desk.

“There’s a reason I used that particular gag,” he noted.

When he pushed into her mouth, her reaction was to try to close her lips around his shaft but that wasn’t going to happen. She had to accept that Sir was the one in control, determining how far down her throat he went. He held her by her ponytail, so she couldn’t bob her head or rock her body, though somewhere in her mind she knew that moving too much would cause the flaring pain in her ass to become an inferno. All she could move was her tongue, though the faster it moved the more he seemed to like it. Saliva drooled from her lower lip and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. It felt dirty, perverted. It felt great. She detected the waves of pressure building in his shaft, had a ten-second warning of the torrent that flooded her mouth. Some she swallowed, but he left strings of it across her cheek and on her chin. With wrists bound behind her she could do nothing to wipe them, and Sir seemed not to care.

“So now we do the other two dozen strokes in the gym.” Damn, she’d hoped him coming would make him feel more lenient. She’d been good. It must be worth half a dozen strokes off the total, at least?

“The piece you wrote was on Little Red Riding Hood,” Sir pointed out almost casually. “You said the name refers to the clitoris, which of course is important for sexual pleasure. You said the Wolf equates to a bad man who tries to seduce the girl and the Woodsman is someone with a big chopper who saves her. But in truth they’re just two aspects of male identity, and they’re two different ways of capturing the clit. This is where I teach you about nasty Wolf sex and nice Woodsman sex. And look, you even have a way for me to start the Wolf part of the lesson.”

Reaching back in the desk drawer, he produced a leash – and parting Jodie’s thighs, placed its clip on her clit ring. The leash hung slack, the weight of the thin chain pulling on her. He let her absorb the information, then took in just enough slack to give her a sense of what it would feel like if she tried to pull away. “Stand up. You’re going to follow me to the gym.”

It was a surreal experience, even for Jodie. Her arms were still bound, the gag still in place and Sir’s cum drying slowly on her face. And she was being dragged, literally by the cunt, to the scene of her next “lesson”.

The gym was a converted garage. It contained a weightlifting bench, a couple of exercise machines and a set of parallel bars on one wall. And it doubled as a very effective dungeon. Like the study, a selection of canes protruded from the mouth of a large china vase. Unlike the study, a couple of bullwhips hung from a hook on the wall. Sir could be extremely cruel when he chose.

“No whipping horse,” Sir observed. “But we can improvise.” He bent her forwards over the end of the weights bench, which was just high enough to meet the length of her legs. Spreading her ankles he slapped cuffs on them, securing each one to the bench supports. Then he began to unwind the ropes.
She wondered what he was intending, but the gag put a block on any conversation. Working quickly and methodically he stripped her of her blouse, cuffed her wrists, and extended her arms forward; a series of metallic clinks signaled the cuffs being attached to the head of the bench, where the weight bar would normally rest. She concentrated on trying to relax in this position, breathe slowly, and ignore the burning sensation as the flesh of her ass was stretched by the position he’d placed her in. It wasn’t easy.
Sir carefully rearranged the back of her short skirt, lifting it to expose her buttocks and tucking the hem into the waistband. And then he left here there, unable to move or protest. There was no reason to panic, but she had to fight to stop hysteria taking hold.


He’s doing it to increase the anticipation, raise the tension. Damn him, it’s working.


The leash was still threaded through her clit ring. Every tiny movement of her ass, as she tried to pull against her restraints, transferred itself to her clit.

When he returned, he was humming to himself, and dressed now in leather jeans and an open-necked shirt. His hair was damp and the smell of cologne as he moved closer to her was spicier.

“This one, I think.” She couldn’t see what “this one” was, but he’d tied her down for a reason...

The first half-dozen were little more than playful; he’d pushed her hard already. Then he ramped up the pressure. There was more force to the stinging swipes and Jodie writhed in genuine agony. She could feel it most where the blows criss-crossed the five bar gate, raising welts on skin that was already bruised.

The next series switched to a heavier instrument, one that tested her to her limits. The torment made her feel light-headed, almost out of her body. She knew that the beating should hurt, and yet her body had ceased to recognize pain. Instead, each new blow was another step on a road to ecstasy. An ecstasy that she voiced in muffled cries from behind the gag.

The remaining dozen blows were like the Stations of the Cross. Three from the end, it was too much. She came, hard.

It was only when she collapsed limply against the restraints that he entered her. Her body was ready for him, her slit quivering. He felt huge inside her, pumping remorselessly. Her mind and senses were already spinning out of control and the fucking, after the thrashing had taken her to orgasm once, pushed her into a trance state. She lost sense of time, place, wouldn’t even be able to remember her own name if Sir had asked. Yet it was a trance state in which she moved seamlessly from one climax to another. It wasn’t so much a multiple orgasm as a single long continuous orgasmic fugue.

Some time later he released the bonds, allowed her to sink to the floor. Carried her to the lounge and wrapped her in a blanket, lying on the sofa. Removed the gag, though it didn’t restore her powers of speech. Semi-conscious, she shook silently, taking her time to recover. In a way she didn’t want to come round, because as the trance state left her, the burning and throbbing in her ass became stronger.
Eventually she recovered the use of her mouth. “Sir? Thank you for my lesson. It was… hard. But fun at the same time.”

Sir laughed. “I was a bit rough at the end. No doubt I’ll have to go easier on you for the rest of the weekend.”

She stretched gingerly, wincing as skin moved against the fabric of the sofa. It had been a hard lesson. And she smiled. “Not that easy, I hope. You’ll just have to find different ways to punish me...”

“Hmm. Well, for tomorrow I have in mind the myth of Persephone. Abducted and forced to serve Hades in his underground lair…”


Jodie smiled. “A whole day being held prisoner and ravaged in your basement? Sounds good to me!”