[Based on the date this was originally posted – September 2009 – this Punishment Book entry was written my last year of graduate school, before the final burst of dissertation writing. Like so much else, I’d forgotten about this. In retrospect, without these sorts of days (and nights), I don’t know if I’d have been able to defend my diss that May.]
I got tawsed tonight. Not for discipline, not to remind me to be a good girl, but as a punishment for not doing what I’d promised to do today. You see, after a week of cruising along, doing more work than I’d even needed to some days (this included working after coming home from a day working on campus), I was supposed to transition to the next stage of my work. This next stage is writing. Not writing ideas of others, but laying out my own.
Fear stalled me. Not fear of punishment, as some out there who don’t think What It Is We Do is good for me, but my ever-present fear of not being good enough.
Instead of fighting through my fear and forcing myself to work, I let myself get caught up in the fun of the first day of fall on Twitter and the Mad4Plaid day some of us were having. It was great fun, marred only by the gnawing guilt I occasionally (but only occasionally) experienced as thoughts of my neglected text passed through my mind. There was time for both, but I didn’t want to do the work and it didn’t get done.
That was all well and good until the clock chimed 6:00PM and Paul got home. I looked like a good school girl in my plaid skirt and a pink oxford cloth shirt, but it quickly became clear as we talked about our respective days that I’d accomplished no school work today. Paul talked to me, in the process of figuring out where the problem was. It wasn’t just, as I first declared, that I didn’t do my work today. It was partly because I hadn’t thought about how to accomplish what I’d promised (an outline) and had no idea where to start working on the task.
We broke the problem down, bit by bit, teasing out what was insecurity and what was confusion. And, of course, the overarching issue of why I’d stopped dead rather than try and work through any of it. The talk was exhausting — any criticism of my academic work makes me defensive and cranky. I know Paul must have put on his best armor to even talk to me about it. We curled up together on the sofa, my head in his lap.
And then he said something along the lines of “I think we need to go into the bedroom and talk about this.”
My heart sank. Even though I knew it was coming. Even though part of me wants to be held accountable (well, all of me does, just not all the time) I didn’t want this tonight. The bedroom meant the hairbrush and I was already sore from Sunday (a caning and tawsing) discipline.
So I held on tight and asked for a few more minutes of being held. Paul agreed, saying he wanted me to change into ankle socks and school shoes (I was wearing ballet flats on bare feet) and to find him four safety pins. After the snuggle ended (it was now tainted with dread, so not quite as nice), I went and changed my shoes and went on the hunt for the safety pin box. During the interval, Paul changed his mind. He lifted the Ikea footrest onto our coffee table and went to fetch the tawse, explaining he didn’t feel like fighting/struggling with me across his lap.
I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he was right. It’s still summer weather here, despite it being the first day of Fall. And I do always struggle over the knee, despite my best efforts to be still. On the other hand, otk is informal, childish, and intimate. The caning (despite the make-shift block) is more formal and distant. But even more importantly, it’s in the living room — a room separated from our building’s public walkway by only sheer curtains and our small patio.
Before I could argue much, Paul told me not to argue, that this was his decision.
Of course.
I just wanted it over. I quietly bent over the block so he could tie first my hands, then my feet together with school ties. Being tied makes being punished much easier for me. The headspace of accepting the punishment and loss of control comes so much more easily. Paul took my panties almost to my knees before fetching the tawse.
I tried to be calm, but I felt a bit panicked, especially when I realized he was going to use the tawse rather than the cane. The tawse in question is one of Ian’s1The late, great, and much-missed Ian Head, founder of London Tanner, maker of many evil things. creations and of heavy leather, not even broken in after several years of ownership. When it makes contact, it makes a lot of noise. Meanwhile, I could hear people walking by, laughing and chatting, as clearly as if they were in the room. I bit down on the leather of the footstool, knowing Paul wouldn’t care who heard me.
Neither of us knows how many strokes he gave me. Somewhere between 36 and 40 is the best guess. Enough so I had to stop it in the middle because I’d somehow twisted my tied hands into a numbing position. Part of me hoped it would be over after he fixed the tie, but the thrashing continued for at least another 12 strokes. And I was still quite tender from Sunday’s thrashing. Finally, I was untied and stood so he could pin my skirt to my shoulders, front and back, (-er, that would be to the shoulders of my shirt — we’re never going to pin anything to my actual shoulders) and had to spend 10 minutes standing still in the corner. Finally, I had to have dinner with my plaid pleated skirt still pinned up.
But then it was over. Except for losing this coming Sunday as a “free day.” Instead, I’ll be working, writing. Probably in plaid yet again.
- 1The late, great, and much-missed Ian Head, founder of London Tanner, maker of many evil things.