Role Play: A Means To An End

I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I have actually submitted, by which I mean accepted a “punishment” (real or roleplay) in my head as well as in my body. I will pretty much always submit physically, but in my mind is a different matter. I mentally fight what's happening to me, fight the power that someone has over me, swear to myself that I will not let them break me, and sometimes even have to end scenes if I can feel that I'm reaching that breaking point. I will often exhibit signs of this fight as well, as anyone who has played with me would recognise. I roll my eyes, sigh, talk back, am stroppy in tone and body language. All ways of me making my mark on the situation and proving that you may have my body but you don't have my mind. (Anyone reading this who has played with me and seen me doing that, it's nothing personal, I promise!)

The trouble is that this can actually be awfully tiring, for me as well as for whoever I'm playing with. Sometimes I actually do just want to submit, mentally. To know what it feels like. To experience what I've always thought must be a certain kind of peace. Just to accept something and go with it rather than fighting it every step of the way must be actually quite nice. The problem of course being that as myself, I would find that very hard to do. Especially at the moment. I'm in such a place with work and various other things that it feels as though letting “Eliane” break, submit, would be an exceptionally bad idea. So I had to come up with some other way. And that way was to create a character who could, and would submit.

Thus Alice was born. As alluded to in my previous post, Alice is an 18 year old orphan who has lived in an orphanage since the age of 1, and who is a shy and obedient girl. The worst she's ever beaten for is reading when she should be working, and she's an innocent and something of a loner. She's never had a boyfriend as the boys at school would never have deigned to go near an orphanage girl, and all in all she's something of a throw back to a former era, even though she is based in today's world. Again, as described in the previous post, Alice is being taken on by a Mr Thomas, strict but fair gentleman, to work as part of his staff, starting on the bottom rung and working her way up. In the role play Alice is meeting Mr Thomas for the first time, to be interviewed. She has been told that he is strict but fair, that this is a wonderful opportunity for her, and that she must show him what a good and obedient girl she is.

I was always pretty sure, as I was creating Alice in my head, that very little of Eliane would be left in there. I deliberately created a shy, easily intimidated girl who wouldn't say boo to a goose. But I wasn't sure. Would “I” creep back in to Alice? Would there be flashes of my obstinacy, my fight, or would I actually manage to submit to someone else's will as Alice? I think the answer surprised me a little and surprised “Mr Thomas” more than a little. From the moment I opened the door as Alice, there wasn't a trace of Eliane. Alice was the most perfectly behaved (and to be frank, pathetic) creature you've ever seen. She was petrified of this gentleman. Even though he was perfectly polite at the start, explaining what the job and interview would entail, and asking her questions about herself, she could barely speak above a whisper to answer him. When he started talking about the discipline regime in his household the fear became even worse.

The poor girl's ordeal had barely started, though. She was forced to take a series of tests on arithmetic, general knowledge, history and geography (proving conclusively to Eliane that I forgot how to do long division a long time ago!). Then she was forced to read out the letter she had written to Mt Thomas on his instruction. She had already been warned several time above speaking clearly and loudly, but eventually Mr Thomas lost patience and ordered her over the back of the chair to belt her. That was not the worst though. Punishment at the orphanage had always taken place with the girl leaving her knickers up and legs together. Alice had never been in a state of even semi-undress in front of a man until Mr Thomas forced her to lower her knickers and then spread her legs. She was mortified. But she did it anyway, and accepted the beating without question or rebellion.

Worse punishments than a belting were to come during the course of the interview, but Alice was utterly submissive. She did not question, she did not hesitate. She just obeyed. There was no talking back, no eye rolling, no sulking, no attitude, in fact no sign that Alice and Eliane were in fact one and the same person. By the end of the role play, Alice was so totally under the thumb of Mr Thomas that she probably would have gone and run around the garden naked if he had told her to. Questioning that instruction would not have been within her capabilities. Not because she is a stupid character (only a little pathetic!) but rather because she (and via “her”, me) had submitted to such a degree that it would not even have occurred to her that there was something to be questioned.

And do you know what? It was liberating. And I would do it again in a heart beat. Because of, and in spite of, the intensity. When we had finished I was shaking and crying. Not because I was upset or hurt, or anything, just the shear amount of adrenaline and excitement that was running through me at what I'd done and what I'd achieved. It took a good 20 minutes of talking for me to start approaching normality again. Even given that, using that role to allow me to experience “real” submission was a fabulous idea. Letting go to that degree as myself is still something that I don't think I would be able to do, certainly in the foreseeable future, but having a character, a headspace, to do that through was exactly the right way to do it for me. So long live Alice, pathetic little wretch that she is, and long live role play as a way of accessing emotions and experiences that you can't always access yourself.

Eliza - An Unintended Consequence

Role play can be a funny old thing. I've talked before about how much I enjoy it. The element of being someone different, even if those differences are only heightened aspects of your own character, can be really exciting. In fact sometimes the role play itself and the thrill of being in character ends up being more enjoyable than the CP element of the play. Lowewood is a perfect example of this. Nowadays, I'm not even that worried about getting whacked during the course of the school day. That's not what I go for, I go for the fun of being Jemima, of being a school girl, of being with my friends. What I really love about role play though is the way that characters that you create take on a life of their own without you even intending it. A recent example of this really took me by surprise as it wasn't even the character that I was creating for the role play that became so real. The scenario I was planning with a friend concerned a girl in an orphanage. This was a very particular orphanage in its ways – when girls reached 18, they were taken on by suitable households, who would pay the orphanage back for the cost keep of the girl during her years there, and then the girl would have to pay back those costs through working for their new “Master” or “Mistress”. In order to set the scene for the roleplay, in which Alice would meet her new master for the first time, my friend and I exchanged a couple of notes in character, him as the gentleman, a Mr Ernest Thomas, and me as the director of the orphanage, Eliza Smith. Eliza was never intended to be anything more than the name at the bottom of a note, a spokesperson for the orphanage, not a fully formed character. In fact to start with she was merely Miss Smith, no first name at all. But as the days went by, and as notes were exchanged, the character came to life more and more. She developed a style of writing, likes and dislikes, opinions, none of which I'd planned for. Just by putting pen to paper, or in this case finger to keyboard, this third character, who was never intended to make an appearance in “real life” in a role play, has emerged, and is in some ways more of a person in my head than the poor wretched orphan who is going to be beaten. For now Eliza will stay as she is, a creation of pen and paper, not to inhabit a real life situation (well, you know what I mean by real life!) But who knows? She has become so three dimensional for me, that it seems a shame to keep her locked away in 2-D forever. Maybe Eliza will have her day. Until then, she remains an unintended consequence of my role play.

Free Speech, Oppressed

Dear friends, I want to bring to your attention an injustice that has been committed. A grave injustice. Against the tenet of the right to free speech. For those of us lucky enough to live in democracies this is a right we take for granted, but apparently in our little kinky corner of the world, this is not the case.

Why you may ask? What has caused such a travesty to occur? Well, my friends, I will tell you.
I have several times on Twitter voiced my opinion of the drivers of certain brands of cars. BMWs and Audis, to be precise. Those of you who live in the UK might know what I'm talking about:

They are the ones who drive six inches from your bumper flashing you to move over when you're already doing 80 in the overtaking lane, can't pull back in because of traffic and can't go faster because of traffic. (Um, and the law, obviously).

They are the ones who claim that indicators are "optional extras" on their cars and therefore never use them.

They are the ones who refuse to pull over or let you out at a junction, etc. etc.

All fair comments, I'm sure you will agree. And, even if they weren't fair comments, it is still my right to express my opinion!

But apparently there are certain tops who disagree. Stand up and be counted as guilty, Mr Allen! At the very enjoyable party for the Fifth Birthday of The Spanking Writers yesterday he saw fit to drag me upstairs, and then proceeded to spank me while questioning me on the uses of indicators, belt me on behalf of all BMW drivers, strap me on behalf of all Audi drivers and then give me twelve strokes of the cane to... Well, to be honest, I can't even remember what the twelve strokes were for. To remind me he is the evil oppressor of free speech, perhaps?

All in all, I was thoroughly and unjustly abused. And I think my right minded friends in the blogoshpere should leap to my defence, and join me in declaring that not only are BMW and Audi drivers rude road hoggers, but they are intrinsically evil.

Not Craving

I've not blogged for a while. This is somewhat due to time, but more due to inclination.
My kink is a fragile thing nowadays, easily quashed by the vagaries of real life. New job, illness, stress, all have contributed towards my lack of, for want of a better word, form.
Don't get me wrong, I have been playing over the past couple of months, and I enjoy it when I play, but I'm well aware that my pain tolerance is markedly down on what it used to be, and more frustratingly, I don't seem to crave spankings like I used to. I still have my moments, but those overwhelming longings, taking over my concious to the exclusion of most other things, most definitely seem to be a thing of the past.
Craving a spanking is a funny thing. It's an exciting, butterfly-in-the-stomach inducing feeling. It takes over your thoughts, leaves you distracted and unable to concentrate. Things that really shouldn't inspire rude thoughts in you send you off into reveries for minutes at a time. If I'm being honest, it's an awkward, inconvenient feeling. So why do I miss it?
I know I still need a spanking from time to time. Much as I hate to admit it, it grounds me, centres me, makes me feel like I've got more control on the other stuff that's going on in the world. But I know that on an intellectual level more than on an emotional or visceral one.
It doesn't worry me that I don't really have the same level of cravings any more. After all, I'm still kinky, and I still enjoy playing. It's just that maybe it doesn't obsess my thoughts to the same level that it used to. Which I suppose is only normal.