Truth or Dare - Reflection of Self

The game Truth or Dare was kind of a last resort on late summer nights, which was 10 bells for me, after playing as many rounds as possible of Flashlight Tag and Kick the Can. I never understood why those favorite games of mine had to be such a personal competition instead of just a physical one, but I had a couple of neighborhood friends who wanted to fight about the rules and who tagged whom, but you only touched my shirt, and then they'd stay mad for 2 days -- You know, kind of like a peri-menopausal submissive wife puts up walls after her dominant husband forgot to dominate a time or two (or she misperceived this), otherwise known as every other weekend (until you get into your D/s groove, that is, I am sure.)  So it felt like Truth or Dare was a necessary evil during childhood because we had to have something to do in our open garages at night when it was raining outside. 

Truth is that I didn't have many confessions. I didn't party or have younger brothers and sisters to tease with pranks that went a little too far and we weren't Catholic so when my older sister made me eat a mothball, she didn't have to confess it to a priest.  We were Evangelical, so she could just go straight to Jesus. Jesus was forgiving, you could talk to Him all you wanted at any time day or night, He had no choice but to listen, it was free therapy, and your long distance phone bill was never charged.  My mother, however,was not so quick to let us off the hook and we feared her wrath more than God's, although admittedly, we were not born and living in the Old Testament times when God used to just roar at people from heaven and set stuff on fire from space.  

For me, the worst  part of Truth or Dare was probably just admitting that I had a crush on someone, and in most cases, that is something I eventually wanted that person to know anyway to see if the feeling was mutual.  So I mostly opted for dare which usually involved giving a boy a quick kiss or choosing the scariest house in the neighborhood in which to play Ding-Dong ditch. (resists BDSM pun here.)   I was fast, so it wasn't truly a risk for me, and sometimes I felt bad for pranking the neighbors like that, but not enough to stop doing it.

Truth is I also wasn't sexually active nor was I ever sexually curious when it came to the intimacy between myself and my body.  I thought that was only something guys did even though they weren't supposed to.  I didn't even know I had a clitoris except for the fact that there was a mysterious something between my legs that sometimes made my leg kick out involuntarily when I would accidentally hit it on the bar of my pink Huffy girl's bicycle. Brrrtzz!  What the heck was that?   I am sure that the Church was glad that I did not know what it was and what it was for even though I'm sure now that some of them still don't know themselves.  Sex was for marriage, no one was supposed to pleasure themselves, and that was that.  

Truth is I never pleasured myself until after we were married.  I was scared and I felt guilty and I told Storm.  He just wanted to hear about it.  He wasn't offended. He just wanted details.  

Truth is when it comes to our power exchange relationship, I need to let him do it his way, even if it drives me up a wall. I am discovering that when I intentionally keep my unnecessary opinion to myself, he actually does just fine.  Then I can save my input for when it truly matters, put it as a suggestion or a request to soften it, make it a question instead of a suggestion, and wrap it up with a respectful please.  The truth is that feels much better.  Sounds better to my own ears as well and I am still working on putting that kind of thing into practice. 

Truth is....... I have a long way to go when it comes to being settled in my own submission to the point where I don't let a simple misunderstanding, or even bigger ones, disrupt what we're trying to build.  I don't know why I find it so hurtful and although I'm not going to blame Menopause and not take the discipline that is coming my way, it is definitely playing a very challenging emotional role for me. 

Truth is that this is hard. 

Truth is that we might fail. 

Truth is I have spent a lot of my life afraid of many things.  Dare I step out and change some of that?

Mindset of the Discipline/Punishment Spanking

 As a result from reading, writing, and analyzing that I am doing as part of  Missy's Tell Me About Submission Reflection Series, I am realizing that for me, much of it fits under question number 2 regarding  submissive growth.  All of the above plus talking with others has let my mind open up and has lead me to the following personal revelation that I want to share with you below:

Many have had spanking on our minds since we were young. Who knows why certain images or memories that we didn't understand made our tummies flip as such young kids.  As adults, some of us seek this out while others suppress it. Many of us turn spanking into fun, some of use it as erotic activity, some for pain, for stress relief, discipline and some for punishment.  I'm sure I left some possibilities out.

When spanking comes in the form of the fun, the erotic, and the play part, all of that, to me, involves the use of one's imagination.  The spanking is whatever one's brain wants to turn it into. Maybe a guy or gal has made a scene out of it with lots of forethought as he/she imagines what it will entail.  (Storm and I haven't tried this yet, but our wheels are turning!)  Also, instead of fantasy or as an addition to it, we may just

automatically be turned on by the feeling of impact since our bums are near our sex organs and nerves and all that.  Alternatively, for me, when it comes to a discipline/punishment spanking, the whole thing has to be real in its origins whether it eventually leads to sex between Storm and me or not.  I can fantasize all I want when we are making love about the things that we might do or have already done or recall certain kinky dom things he has said to me over the years, but I cannot at all when it comes to a discipline spanking.  I think I finally figured out at least one component as to why -- all of you experienced gals who know I will have some other theory 6 months from now can just zip it. Ha! 

 I started thinking back to what most of us knew about spanking when we were young - it was a punishment.  In my elementary years, a teacher swatting kids with a paddle was fairly common. I was never the subject of such punishment, but I was a witness to it, in part.   I had sort of a fearful fascination of the whole atmosphere - knowing as a pupil that my classmate was heading for trouble when he somehow did not recognize this himself because he kept pushing it. We would all watch as the teacher got mad at the student. Our eyes would widen, his verbal warnings would buzz around in our little brains. My heart would start pounding in my ears and my tummy would do this a little flip.  We found ourselves holding our collective breath as the classroom went dead silent except for that slow fed-up/you're-gonna-get-it slide of the teacher's desk drawer -- you know that thing of wonderment that we imagined certainly held the school's top secrets and other things like confiscated toys such as super balls and jacks of years past, his favorite brand and flavor of gum, 37 ketchup packages stolen from the cafeteria, and the legal record of his actual first name.  He reached in to grab his weapon of ass destruction.  He had at least 2 paddles.  If he chose the one with the holes, I feared the kid was gonna get propelled all the way into the gymnasium.  In the few seconds that the teacher made his decision, the senses of the rest of us were on high alert in silent anticipation. We could detect the lingering nauseating scent of hours old mayonnaise dried on Ham Sandwich Kid's shirt front, in the corners of his mouth, and under his fingernails. Moms didn't know or care about ice packs back then.  You either got peanut butter and jelly or took the risk of salmonella with some kind of lukewarm lunch meat and mayo or bologna and mustard.  Those fools ended up missing the garbage can after lunch and threw up all over the floor.  We prayed for the janitor to arrive, but often they would just pour this sawdust type stuff over it and we'd have a hard time differentiating for the rest of the day between the odor of barf and that of Ham Sandwich Kid.  Our eyes flicked back to the teacher angrily standing up in his chair, paddle in hand. 

 We found ourselves internally restless though we dare not move.  Suddenly we were overcome with thirst and longing for a classroom exit to the ice cold water fountain -- my favorite part of that being a line of antsy, dancing, fussing children waiting for their turn to stand on the step stool in front of the big water fountain, finally make it there, only to have some toothy kid in line start yelling, "Save some water for the fish!" to get you to hurry and make their turn happen sooner rather than later.  But, no such luck right then because that boy was in the hallway now with the teacher.  Suddenly, all our thoughts came to a halt as we heard the lightning THWACK! and its echo in the hallway.  We waited to exhale our breath because sometimes there were 2 swats.  We'd slowly let out the trapped air when we'd see the kid slink back into the classroom.  We'd watch everything in reverse as order was restored by the teacher's definitive closing of his drawer to put away the paddle.  Thunk.  Well, that was the end of that. 

See? No imagination necessary to the build up and delivery of that kind of spanking. That's how it was every time.  I didn't know that what I was feeling was at least partially sexual in nature because my brain just was too innocent to make that connection.  But many years later, becoming sexually active somehow triggered some of those memories for me.  From anticipation through completion, the punishment/discipline spanking has to be real and serious in nature. 

Here's the second thing that just occurred to me as I was writing this. I was in 5th grade when this happened the most often. If you hadn't already noticed the pronouns, the teacher that spanked the most in the whole school was male and this never occurred to me until now.  Maybe it is much more common presently for teachers of the younger kids to be male, I don't know the statistics, but in my elementary school back in the late 70's and early 80's, he was the only male teacher.  Male teachers were plentiful in high school, but it was rare in grade school.  This teacher was strict, male, had large hairy hands, was clean - he smelled like soap and coffee, and he was masculine. He was a major authority figure in our lives for almost an entire year - one where some of my classmates were starting puberty, but for others of us, like me, it would be another 2 years until I started noticing physical changes in my body.  My "self" was still forming and thus impressionable. And, no, I do not have a teacher-student spanking fantasy. I was not attracted to my teacher.  I wasn't repulsed by him either, I just didn't think of him as anything other than my teacher that was a man and he often used spanking to discipline in his classroom. 

Our dynamic is very much one in which we recognize that our male and female selves have stark differences.  For example, his physical strength compared to mine.  When he spanks me, for us and for now, it isn't the pain itself that I seek or that Storm seeks to give to me. (Fine if you and yours do, and this may change for us or elements of that might already be there.)  But, right now, I want to feel the differences between us. I want to feel his authority, and for him to grow in his exercising of it and me submitting to it.

 Windy, don't you feel a bit stupid, humiliated, humbled, by that?  I would only feel stupid if I when I expressed my submissive desires to my husband he would have rejected them.  Never, ever has he done that. As far as the humiliation goes with a discipline spanking, yes, although not erotic in the moment, it can definitely result in erotic expression toward one another afterwards.  And humbled in a submissive way, yes, I feel that, too, willingly putting myself under his authority.  But, I am learning that apparently that is often what some  D/s feelings are about.  And there's no shame in that.  Or is there?  ;)

The Precarious Bridge of Uncertainty

The last bridge I can remember standing on as a teenager was a railroad bridge.  I was with adults and I couldn't believe they lead us up some kind of metal lattice tower of steps a hundred feet up in the air. Then they walked across these oily wooden planks that ran under and along tracks, a dizzying world visible below through the cracks.  What were we doing here? Was this even legal?  DO NOT LOOK DOWN.  Who wants to take this kind of risk? I felt dizzy, shaky, and like I didn't trust anyone around me lest they run into me and push me off the ledge either by accident or.... Wait!  Am I on a bridge and afraid of heights, or have I just found myself in my very first BDSM chatroom?  

I glance at the first two screen names of who has entered the room so far. Well, fuckbunny16 and her Dominant 16TimesADay seem nice and well suited, and uhhm, prompt anyway. Gosh, what am I doing here?  I swallow hard.  I'm here to learn, I remind myself.   Don't be scared.  DO NOT LOOK DOWN.  And then I go against my own orders and look down at my vanilla name and that of my partner and I feel like the most vanilla-ist sub that has ever vanilla'd.  I'm as  naked as store brand vanilla ice cream with no chocolate sauce, sprinkles, or nuts.  But then I remind myself that certainly about half of us here love a certain kind of nuts especially if they're a bit lopsided and come swinging in a kiwi looking sack and are attached between the legs of our Doms.   Yeah, I'm in the right place. 

The thing is, I'm truly trying not to look down and by that I mean I'm not looking down on anyone even if do feel a bit shaky and intimidated.  I try not to judge.  I don't want to be judged.  Been there done that, walked that emotional bridge, and burned it down on my way out. Eventually a little focus in the group comes around to me because I have asked a few tentative questions here and there and thrown in half a dozen sincere LOL's.  The group's sense of humor is the very first thing that puts me at ease.  I find the answers interesting.  And I don't wonder if anyone is lying, but I do wonder if they know what they're talking about because the last time I trusted someone when I was new to the environment.......eh. I get a little dizzy.  And even if they DO know what they're talking about, is anyone going to present themselves as knowing it all?  Because last time ........... eh. The memories are painful and I swallow thickly as I blink back a tear.  But, I keep going, and  I watch a little more, read back what I have missed, get every sub mixed up with their partners so I'm constantly having to double check if I am talking to a sub or dom or a man or a woman.  Subs often acknowledge their Doms in some way so that helps me assimilate.  

I don't want anybody to push me off the ledge and so far that hasn't happened, which is good because it took a lot for me to openly cross over to the WordPress Blogs bridge and I'm still a bit surprised I made it here for more than just a few minutes at a time.  Before the chat, I had looked around.  The buttons, my God, the rectangular buttons and the drop downs and the links and the writing prompts. I'm learning and treading the hyper-planks click by click.  Time for the chat. 

 I have been in other chatrooms in my life where the tension and competition is palpable and even a novice can see the patterns of who is siding with whom, who is leading, who is quiet, who might be a bit snarky, who is the one seeking the most attention when the first words on her lips after this meeting will be who she thinks the attention whore is......when the poor gal isn't that at all.  And what an awful term. And that was the vanilla internet almost 20 years ago. Sometimes even plain old vanilla is toxic. But that is not happening here.  Whew. 

I wonder how I'm being perceived.  I'm coming in with a spanking background, a little bit of D/s mixed in with DD, and a monogamous relationship with my partner of 3 decades.  Old to some maybe, but I don't feel old enough to where that bothers me much just yet.  I myself appreciate mature seasoned couples and organically lean towards them to inexperienced young chickens. Mostly I want to represent well.  And by that, I suppose I mean Domestic Discipline even though our dynamic is not simply that nor exactly that, and much more (or less) than that depending on how one looks at it or practices it themselves.   

Above all, I don't want to be stereotyped because while I might be in part a spanko, I'm not purely that.  We don't practice DD in a way that makes us feel like we live in the era of Madmen when women were fighting for our rights while others were getting their grandchildren's hands stuck in a washtub wringer because the little one said she wanted to "help."  All I have to do is turn on the news for less than one 24 hour news cycle to see that many folks want to throw us women back half a century at least.  Believe it or not, I was writing this paragraph just before I heard about the SCOTUS draft in the United States regarding women's rights in Roe v. Wade.  Ugh. 

My partner and I are not weekend ass slappers and I know this because we spank on Wednesday nights as well.  Laughing.  And I know that term because I have a kinky friend or two who have been around the BDSM block, and probably tied to the block, and displayed across the block.......Anyway, we have more than one kind of paddle, one of which we rarely use and I named it THUD. We do more than spanking and I often have more than just a freshly spanked pink/red ass.  I'm not sure a session with the Loopy Johnny is even considered a spanking and may send a few running..... but, I can't explain all that and more in a few group chats let alone my first.  I don't have all the answers to what DD is for everybody, but I enjoy sharing what it is and isn't for us and I am eager to discover all the delicious and connective things that my husband and I might be able to add to our dynamic. 

But I've got to cross that D/s bridge of uncertainty and vulnerability if I want any answers -- what's on the other side and what develops as I walk one plank at a time in search of a deeper understanding of myself as a woman, a sub, and of my partner (and he of himself). It doesn't matter whether it's considered DD, D/s, TTWD, or AthruZ.   Along the way, I hope to discover more about myself as a friend to others who may or may not do many of the things that I do and vice versa, but who empathizes and lifts other women up instead of tearing them down.  There may be hurt and dishonesty that await me somewhere out there in my future, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it and I'm willing to take the risk.