Do you remember the kids’ fable of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch?
I’ll refresh your memory: Brer Rabbit was a bit of a dick, and Brer Fox decided he didn’t like him much. He made a trap in which to catch Brer Rabbit, and Brer Rabbit walked straight into the trap. On catching him, Brer Fox (who thought he was cunning) wondered aloud what he should do with the rabbit now he’d caught him. Brer Rabbit shouted:
“I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t throw me in the briar patch!”
“Anything?” said the fox, and at this point I think he could have benefited from a few lessons in critical analysis and not trusting sources with a huge vested interest. “You’d really want me to do anything rather than throw you into the briar patch?”
“Yes,” said Brer Rabbit. “Hang me, shoot me, eat me, just don’t throw me into the briar patch!”
So our hapless fox, who I remember feeling intensely irritated by as a small child, did the opposite of what the rabbit had requested, and he hurled Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit, who was also a bellend, danced for joy. Burning all of the bridges marked ‘potential future escape scenario’, he crowed that the briar patch was actually his favourite place to be.
“I was born and bred in the briar patch! Hahaha!”
What the fuck has this story got to do with flogging? I’ll tell you.
I rarely play the ‘briar patch’ game. Leather belts, canes, anything whippy with a biting sting is not to be trifled with. I’ll be up-front about my limits, and clear as day when I give feedback. If I’m being bratty and getting playfully punished, a thin cane gives a genuine reprimand. I’ll grit my teeth, bare my arse, and bite back yelps with each stroke.
The flogger, though? It’s my briar patch: I wasn’t born and bred with it, but ever since I started loving BDSM, it’s always been my happy place. My favourite flogger is heavy and thick – purple suede (obviously), with enough fronds that it falls like a thud. There’s a sting if you place it in certain ways – with the tails whipping round to catch me on the hip rather than the bottom. But if you can place it perfectly, right in the middle of one of the cheeks, I will moan and squirm like you’ve just kissed my clit.
The flogger is playing quite heavily on my mind at the moment. For reasons I’ll explain in a future blog post, I’ve suddenly become obsessed with the idea of having a perfectly smooth bum. No spots, no marks, no bumps: just porcelain flesh and a neat crease where it meets the top of my thighs. Naturally, in pursuit of this goal, I am extra-keen to be flogged. Didn’t you know? It’s exfoliating. Seriously, the times in my life when my arse has looked its best are those times when I’ve been most submissive – paired with a guy who gets genuinely hard at the idea of dishing out pain, who’s happy to wield a flogger or a canvas belt with as much strength as he can muster.
The canvas belt works well for this, but the flogger’s even better: unlike the cane (which I am a proper wuss about), the flogger can be swung with more or less full strength before it feels like a genuine punishment. And, like Brer Fox as he threw Brer Rabbit into the briars, the guy who’s swinging it gets to feel like a true sadist.
A cane is a punishment even if it’s tapped fairly gently – it takes no pressure at all to bring my bum out in angry red welts, and have me rubbing at it to try and disperse the heat. The flogger gives not just a gorgeous sensation, but the sound.
Thwack.
Where was I?
Oh yes. As I say – the times in my life when my arse has been smoothest were those times when guys most frequently beat me. Recently, I have not been getting many beatings. Woe is me. Please light a candle in church, pray for GOTN, and do whatever it is you do when you try to muster sympathy for someone who doesn’t deserve it. Thanks to this beating deficiency, not only have I become grumpy, I’ve also lost the lovely smooth bum texture that I used to love so much.
So. After some gentle coaxing (“Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease”) and a probably unnecessary explanation of the bum-texture thing, I eventually wheedled my way into the kind of arm-back, sadistic flogging that I’ve not had in a long time. I stripped from the waist, arranged myself artfully (lazily) over a small pile of cushions, and encouraged him to do his worst. I know, right? You’re expecting hotness, cunt-dripping, those delightfully sexy thwacking sounds, the whole lot. And there was definitely some of that. The thud and crack of the flogger had me squirming with nostalgic glee, and pondering just how red my arse could get before he’d whip off his belt and give a crack or two with that as well. Then escalate to unzipping his flies, and taking advantage of the neatly presented position of my arse to lube me up and fuck me. Maybe with the flogger held taut round my neck, yanking my whole body back to meet each stroke of his dick.
But after about two seconds of the flogging things started to burn. I mean really sting. There was far more pain than I’d ever remembered – so much that at one point I looked over to check he hadn’t switched the flogger for something whippier made of plastic.
*thwack*
“Fucking OW.”
“Gentler?”
“Yeah.”
*whack*
“SHIT.”
“Still too hard?”
“Yeah.”
*tap*
“Better?”
*grumpy voice*: “Yeah.”
Turns out it had been so long since I’d been flogged that I simply couldn’t handle it any more. All the things I liked about the sound of it, and the horny atmosphere, and the visual of a guy drawing his arm back over his shoulder for a particularly strenuous stroke, were only accessible if I bit my lip through the one thing I didn’t like: the pain. Fuck’s sake. I was basically Brer Rabbit going ‘oh no not the briar patch!’ then realising with horror that his life in the fields had turned him into a softcore sack of shit, and he actually couldn’t cope with the briar patch any longer.
I know it’s not the worst thing, but it really pissed me off. I’m sad because I miss the flogger. I’m sad because I don’t get to play with it as often as I used to. Above all I’m annoyed that I have to write ‘acclimatise to pain’ next to ‘exfoliate arse’ in my to-do notebook.
At this rate I’ll never get through my bucket list.
While my regular illustrator is away, I’ve a few brilliant people drawing gorgeous things for the blog. Guest art for this blog post is by the fantastic Tinrobo, who you can follow on Twitter @tinrobo
And if you want to support my blog and do your own bum exfoliation, buy spanky things from my sponsor SexToys – you can get 20% off everything if you use the code GOTN20.
6 Comments
Remember that piece I re-edited as a guest post here? Same kind of thing!
Oh, man. So been here! I’ve the most beautiful horsewhip that gives a divine sting and incredible welts on muscley bits – like the backs of my thighs. Which we lost for about six months. Discovering it behind the wardrobe, we plunge straight in. Face down on the bed, trousers yanked off, ankles pressed together waiting for the swish of it in the air, the crack and bite of it. All bliss and submission and…
ARGH JESUSFUCK.
“I didn’t…”
“That drew blood! That must have drawn fucking blood. Don’t hit so hard.”
“I really wasn’t hitting that…”
*feels for welt* *nothing* *fumes for an hour, unsure where to direct my anger*
And why does that kind of pain always make me such an awful brat?
I do love the pain side of BDSM but the flogger makes me more reluctant than the crop or the paddle; I think I’m definitely more into impact pain than residual pain – aches I can handle, sharp pains I’m nervy about. I handled it well recently, though, so maybe I just need more to get used to.
I’ve been a bit dry on the kink front lately and I’m worried that because of that I won’t be able to take the pain; it’s good that this seems to be a common thing. Wish it was something I could practise on my own; I don’t have the dexterity to spank myself.
…that went a bit ‘me me me’, sorry. Lovely post! x
If you’re looking to experiment, I would strongly recommend Campbell of Renfrewshire -http://www.mccustoms.co.uk/main.php?showitems=2
Perhaps some of the affect that accompanies these leather tawses & paddles will be limited to those who have a lived experience of them from their past – nevertheless, these are beautifully made to order – the leather has a rich, heady, scent; the leather is beautifully finished; & the varieties in weight mean you can choose a tawse or paddle that suits your pain threshold.
At any rate – this is a lovely post – arousing, but also utterly engaging in its honesty.
I had a fear that my quest for kink would lead to ever more extreme pain or proclivities as I got ‘accustomed’ to each pleasure/pain I experienced. I even worried if I ‘loved’ my lelo too much would I ever get off again manually? A reverse Brer Rabbit? So I kinda like the recalibration forced about by a lull, rediscovery of the pleasure of the flogger over time, like finding the sweet spot as it’s falls just so for the first time?
Humbly twigs.
Ps I love the flogger and it’s been ages too, nearly a year, maybe I should be nervous like a sub chained for the first time?
Inspired by this post but lacking a partner currently in-house, I’ve just flogged myself! I always feel so weird and Catholic-shamey when I do that, buuuut the pleasure far outweighs the awkwardness.