by W. Arthur
When you're standing in the corner with your tear-streaked face against the wall and your bare backside glowing like a heat lamp, your mind begins to wander, to think (which is, no doubt, the point). Naturally, the first thing I think about when in this position is the spanking itself. More specifically, just how bad was it?
As I'm standing here mulling over the pain and humiliation I just experienced at the hands of my crusading and ever-vigilant wife, I would rate this particular spanking an eight (on a scale of one to ten) - very serious but not intolerable, at least by Katie's standards. In other words, I've had worse.
Next, I ask the question: Did I truly deserve the spanking? This is a simple question to answer. Of course, I deserved it. I knowingly broke a rule (more than one, actually) and was foolish enough to think I could get away with it. But I didn't get away with it; I never get away with it. Katie is too smart and observant to let me get away with anything. And, most importantly, she loves me enough and believes in me enough to make an effort to try and correct my behavior when it veers off the course she has set for me.
As the pain recedes and my discomfort at standing here begins to escalate, I flash back to the spanking, almost as though I were reliving it. Like most of the spankings Katie has administered over the six years we've been together, this one originated with her discovering my indiscretion - in this case, a maintenance issue I inexplicably blew off, then lied about - and taking me to task for both violations.
She ordered me to go to the spare bedroom - or my punishment room, as she has dubbed it - strip off my pants and briefs, and wait for her. This evening she made me wait nearly half an hour, wait with my face pressed against the wall and my as yet unspanked bottom on full display.
When she did arrive in the room, I could hear her sigh. I don't think she minds punishing me - she's certainly done it enough times - but it's not something she necessarily seeks or looks forward to. To Katie, administering a punishment spanking is simply another chore, part of the cost of loving me, a part of punishing my lapses in exchange for my good qualities - the ones she values and cultivates.
As she is very business-like regarding the administration of punishment, she doesn't like to waste time. Once she was in the room, she clapped her hands one time. This is the signal for me to get into position, which, in my case, means bending my upper body over the surface of the bed. I am not permitted to make a sound, especially to speak. I'm not supposed to look at her either. However, I usually sneak a peek just to see what she has in her hand.
Katie keeps five different spanking implements in a locked cabinet in her home office: a paint paddle, a hairbrush paddle, a split-tailed tawse, a three-foot rattan cane, and a school paddle. She will also occasionally use one of the wooden spoons in the kitchen or my leather belt, if the spanking is to be quick and spontaneous - like if I forget myself and utter a curse word or neglect to put a dish in the dishwasher. My wife lets no slip or violation go unpunished. Break a rule, no matter how trivial, you get spanked. It's that simple.
This evening, she decided to use the split-tailed tawse, a decidedly wicked implement, if there ever was one. Not quite as bad as the school paddle, which she reserves for the most severe spankings, but very effective in provoking repentance nonetheless.
As she approached, tawse clutched tightly in her right hand, she summarized the reasons for the spanking, emphasizing the fact that I lied to her about what I hadn't done. Katie understands and accepts that men make mistakes; however, she firmly believes that when we do make a mistake, we need to own up to it. To Katie, there are few sins worse than lying. She also reminded me that I should have learned that lesson already, having been severely punished more than once for it.
The brief lecture concluded, she then proceeded to whack my bottom as hard as she could with that leather tawse - over and over and over again. I don't know if she counts the strokes or times the spanking. In fact, in all the times she has spanked me over the years, I still have no real idea how she determines when she has punished me enough to impart the lesson.
Still, regardless of the actual criteria she uses, she always seems to know when I'm at the breaking point. I have a fairly high tolerance to pain, which sometimes causes her to work a little harder to maximize the punishment.
On this particular occasion, she and the tawse worked well together. Two or three minutes into the spanking, I could feel tears form in my eyes and spill down my burning cheeks. The pain in my backside traveled rapidly up and down my spine. My hands balled around the bedspread. I was definitely feeling every stroke and was extremely sorry for having done what I did (or didn't do, in the case of the maintenance issue). I silently vowed never to lie to her again - a vow which sometime in the future I will be foolish enough to break.
And, just seconds before I was going to plead for mercy (a forbidden act), she stopped and put the tawse on the bed next to me. She took a step back.
"Tyler, get up and stand in the corner with your face against the wall," she ordered in an eerily calm voice. "Remain there until I give you permission to move. Do you understand?"
I pushed myself up slowly from the bed. "Yes, ma'am." Without looking at her, I scurried to the designated corner. I heard her soft footsteps as she left the room.
So, now, I'm still standing here, waiting and waiting and thinking. And, as I wait, my thoughts turn toward how I got myself into this relationship in which I get soundly spanked for every error and indiscretion. I wonder, especially when I look at other men my age and see them out having fun and sleeping with a different woman every month, apparently not at all concerned about making a mistake that will earn them a trip to the punishment room.
Of course, as I'm thinking, I realize that only seven years ago, I was one of those men - out there doing whatever I wanted and not caring about much of anything other than a moment's pleasure. What in me changed? Or, maybe this is something I was subconsciously looking for. What do I know? I barely passed the only psychology course I took in college. Katie's the real expert in human psychology. No doubt, she's tried to explain it to me over the years. But it's only at times like this when I'm truly interested.
And then she will embrace me with forgiveness in her eyes, and I forget all about it. However, this evening, Katie is not here yet, and I haven't forgotten anything.
I grew up in a rather strange - or at least unconventional - family situation. I am the youngest of five children and the only male. My youngest sister is seven years older than I am. I guess my parents decided to try one more time for the boy before it really was too late, as my mother was forty-three and my father was fifty when I was born - certainly past their prime according the standards of the time.
My father was a workaholic - and that's being generous. As a prominent attorney and litigator, he generally worked all the time. When he wasn't at his main office, he was in his home office or out with clients. When I was thirteen, he died suddenly, just slumped over at his desk, victim of a massive heart attack.
Of course, I cried at the funeral, but I'm not sure why. After all, I really didn't know him. He very rarely spent any time with me. I mean, isn't a father supposed to teach his son to fish or take him on camping trips - make a man out of him, so to speak? If he devoted five minutes to asking me how I was doing in school, I would practically shrink into a shell. He was a great man in our community, and I was the unworthy son destined to remain forever in his shadow.
On the other hand, my mother, who was a proud homemaker, served as the family disciplinarian. However, with four rambunctious daughters to manage as they entered and successfully navigated the awkward teen years, she had little time or energy for me.
Then, after Dad died and my sisters more-or-less left home to carve out their own futures, she became sullen and withdrawn. Her husband and her family were her life. Apparently, I, by myself, wasn't enough to give her the fulfillment she needed. She developed breast cancer and died a week after my high school graduation.
So, now I was an orphan. My oldest sister, Sarah, who was by this time married with two young kids and was also a prominent attorney in her own right, served as executor of the estate. After the sale of the several properties and the cashing in of Mom's substantial life insurance policy, my share of the inheritance was enough to allow me to attend college and live rather comfortably for at least two years, possibly longer, if I was careful.
This was an opportunity not afforded to everyone, so naturally, because I lacked both discipline and direction, I squandered it. For two years I lived a life of overt dissipation and managed to blow through nearly my entire inheritance while barely passing enough classes to earn an Associate of Arts degree - virtually worthless in today's market.
But I was still young and full of juice, not yet ready to concede that I had messed up. So, for the next three years, I worked at a succession of menial jobs, each one less satisfying and fulfilling than the one preceding it.
The last job I had was that of assistant to the maintenance manager at a very large apartment complex. It wasn't a particularly stressful job - at least physically - and I learned quite a bit. However, the tenants weren't always polite or patient in their requests for service. And, because I was still abusing marijuana and alcohol on a regular basis, I would occasionally give back more than what I got. Once, in a drunken state, I lashed out at the wrong tenant in front of my boss and was fired on the spot.
Losing my job in such a way woke me up and made me face reality. Now I had no money, no job, and no place to live. In desperation, I turned to my four sisters for help, but they were too involved in their own lives to offer more than token assistance. All said it was time I grew up. Sarah even told me I needed a good hard spanking - something I never got as a boy. I wasn't in a position to argue with either assessment.
Just as I was about to break down completely and head for the nearest military recruiting office, my sister Rachel, who was a psychology professor, referred me to one of her graduate students who had recently inherited a twenty-unit apartment building.
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