SPANK!

Ah, spank!

The very word excites me; the sound of it on film, the sight of it in a book.

Saying it always gives me a gentle shiver of pleasure. Hearing it makes me tingle with anticipation.

I grew up in a very English family; no one used the word. If you were naughty you were threatened with a smacked bottom (something that my parents never actually followed through on).

I think I first was exposed to spanking (the word) in an Enid Blyton book; I was a voracious reader from an early age (so much so in fact that my school didn't believe I could possibly read and understand as quickly as I did, and placed me in a remedial reading class, for about 10 days, before they realised I really did devour the written word).

A friend from down the street where I lived was strange; his family came from Canada and he called being smacked being spanked. He called his bottom his butt, too. One afternoon, in my parent's veranda, we played a spanking game, taking it in turns to lie across each other's lap for half a dozen smacks, delivered as hard as we could. Still the only time I've ever indulged in spanking with a same sex partner; I honestly believe it's the only time that I will.

I don't know if that's the first time I heard the word; I think not, actually. I have a vague memory of an episode of Jackanory (a daily tv programme where a celebrity read from a children's book) with a spanking at a dinner table.

SPANK! Still awake, eh?

It's such a lovely word, so descriptive. It sounds just like the act it describes. That flat splat of palm smooshing into wobbling flesh; the noise is exactly spank. It manages to encompass the smacking blow and the reverberation and recoil of Newtonian physics.

Spank is the perfect onomatopoeic word.

Just typing it makes me breathe a little more quickly; there is a light glow to my cheeks, and my eyes sparkle.

How can I become aroused at just a word? Just a word that I myself typed? It's a kind of mental masturbation; a hands free jerk off, fueled by a life time of self conditioned response to the idea of slapping a pretty bottom. Or any bottom, really.

I was never beaten as a child; spanking has no negative implications for me. It was a form of sexual expression before I had ever heard of sex. It fired up my sexual fantasies throughout puberty, and beyond. It still does; if I can't sleep I tell myself little stories, and they either revolve around unearned wealth or spanking.

Or fame as a writer, and wealth, and spanking. Or, oddly, as a football manager/tactician (that one has no spanking in it).

I have several Dennis the Menace annuals from the 1960's and 70's, back when spanking children was considered to be a damn good thing! My 13 year old daughter picked one up and leafed through it. After a couple of minutes she frowned, and looked puzzled. Head on one side she looked at me and shook her head.

"All of these stories end with Dennis getting spanked. His parents must have been sadists. He should have yelled child abuse."

We do not believe in striking children; physical punishment, once a child is old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, is an attempt at intimidation, nothing more. Parenting through fear.

Hearing my daughter say this made me embarrassed to hear the word for the first time in my life. It's as though she said "fuck", without understanding what the word means (and she would have had to be much younger for that to be true).

Spank is now, and always will be, a sexual word to me. I love spanking but I hope that neither of my children inherit my pleasure in it. Or, at least, that I never find out it they do.

But, SPANK!

Ah, what a lovely word. But still, not an entirely guiltless pleasure.

All the best

Tim

All pictures this time are from the Tush Spanking Art tumblr site; I thought we'd go vintage tonight.