by April Hill
By the fifteenth swat, the green flyswatter began to break up around the edges, and the frog started to come loose from his green plastic lily pad. Fortunately, (for one of us, anyway,) the bright pink butterfly was within easy reach.
At that point, you see, Josh and I had never considered the possibility that in our relationship together, I might be getting spanked. Therefore, we had come to no understanding about what was—or would be—permissible during such an event. Later, when it became obvious that “domestic discipline” was probably in our lives to stay, we set parameters, but back then, I didn’t know the rules, so I fought this fresh assault on my dignity and my rear end with everything I had at my disposal—which happened to be my feet. When Josh paused to reach for the butterfly swatter, I kicked the man I loved in the balls—hard. Josh responded with an agonized groan, but with renewed determination and a sense of mission, as well. With a sigh, he picked me up, dumped me on the couch on my back, and with one strong, well-muscled arm, lifted my legs in the air. His other arm–equally strong and equally well-muscled—was occupied with whacking away at the already tenderized expanses of my rear end, and up and down the backs of my thighs. Maybe ten swats later, under the kind of stress it was never intended to take, the pink butterfly broke free of its swatter and flew across the room, its hot pink wings flopping crazily. By this time, I was screeching, swearing, calling Josh every obscene name I could think of, and vowing vengeance if he didn’t stop immediately.
But Josh wasn’t quite ready to give up. He didn’t stop, or even slow down, until just about everything within his reach was thatched bright red, and until I was howling at the top of my lungs. And—oh yeah—until I shrieked an apology. And meant it.
Having destroyed two Chinese flyswatters on my behind, Josh dropped the pink one and walked out the front door to the porch, leaving me to think about things while I rubbed frantically at my throbbing rear end. My butt felt like it was on fire, and had now begun to itch like mad.
When I had recovered slightly, I went to the bedroom, washed my face, and changed into another oversized sweatshirt. After a couple of tentative tries, though, I elected to skip the underwear. Getting even the flimsiest panties in my limited wardrobe up the backs of my legs and across my still-overheated cheeks was daunting.
I found Josh sitting on the porch rail, looking out over the lake. He looked pretty glum, but he didn’t leap to his feet and beg my forgiveness, either, so I just stood there for a few moments, sniffling miserably, hoping to get a guilt trip going. His response wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, though.
“I’m sorry about what happened, in there,” he said finally.
Ah! An opening, at least. I sniffled a little louder, and wiped a forced, sad tear or two from my eyes.
“We all lose our tempers, sometimes,” I said, with a soft, noble sigh. “And I’m sure that you’re sorry for what you did. That’s what…”
“No,” he interrupted. “I didn’t lose my temper, actually. What I said was I’m sorry about what happened, and I am. But, I’m not sorry I spanked you. You had that coming, and then some. I did what needed to be done.”
I stared at him for a second, in disbelief, then exploded with rage.
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I shrieked.
“It means we should have talked about all this, first. About how we’re going to handle situations like this, if we get married.”
“If?” I repeated weakly.
“Do you still want to marry me?” he asked bluntly.
I nearly choked. “Of course, I do, you idiot! I love you.”
“Even after what happened? And knowing it may happen again? Almost certainly will happen again?”
“Again?” I repeated weakly. The conversation wasn’t going at all the way I had hoped it would.
Josh smiled. “Could be. Think about it for a minute, kiddo. You’re standing there, talking about what happened like a reasonable adult, even though I just blistered your ass so hard you’re not going to be able to sit down for the rest of the day. That tells me you took being spanked the way it was meant.”
“And how is that?” I demanded. But I already knew the answer.
And so, we talked about “it.” Neither of us had ever heard the term “domestic discipline,” at that point, but we still talked about it. Me, the liberated arch-feminist, and Josh, the gentle natured guy who had never raised a hand to a woman before in his life. And somehow, for us, it was already starting to make sense.
* * * *
After our little talk at the cabin, I think we were both sort of embarrassed, so we just went ahead with the wedding plans, and avoided any further discussion of what had happened between us. But we knew would happen again—eventually.
We got married on the first of December—the happiest day of my life.
I didn’t get spanked again until the eighteenth of January—when I broke (for the fifth time) my New Year’s resolution to stop smoking. Not only did I break the stupid resolution, I lied to Josh about it. Five times in a row. And since our initial “contract” had included a lengthy discussion about telling fibs, Josh decided that the time was right to start enforcing the “no lying” clause.
I can’t say I blame him. Giving up cigarettes was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. I was a serious smoker. On my worst days, or when things had been unusually stressful at work, being around me was like being locked inside a burning junkyard full of smoldering truck tires.
From my point of view, though, I never smoked excessively, but in moderation. Of course, I tended to use was Mark Twain’s definition of the word “excessive”— meaning that I only smoked one cigarette at a time. As my luck would have it, though, Josh was a fanatic on the subject. If there is someone smoking somewhere in China right this minute, as there no doubt is, Josh is probably hot under the collar about it. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. China’s too far. If anybody in the next county is smoking, though, he’s definitely annoyed. He’s that worst of all possible fanatics—a reformed smoker. Josh had been a non-smoker for five years before we got engaged, and it was a tribute to my devastating sexual allure and sparkling wit that he dated me at all. It was also a tribute, briefly, to my skills as a liar. Lying used to be one of the things I did best. I saw him and wanted him, so I had lied to him. “Smoke? Me? Ugh! Never!”
The façade crumbled quickly, of course, and it was a good thing. Not only was lying to him becoming harder, but by that point, I was swilling down enough blue mouthwash and chewing enough spearmint Lifesavers to poison my liver and give myself diabetes. Josh wasn’t fooled, of course. A reformed smoking zealot can smell a cigarette from a half-mile away. I just kept telling him that I’d “been in a meeting.” After we were married, though, Josh began to push the issue. And that first New Year’s Eve, I made the fateful resolution that would end in my downfall—and to my first marital spanking.
My biggest problem was that I could never seem to remember that cigarette smoke travels and lingers on your clothing. It can also bring on a highly memorable spanking.
I have an idea, now, of what it must be like to try giving up serious drugs. I wanted the damned cigarette more than anything. Enough to lie, and even to steal. Yes, I actually shoplifted a pack of cigarettes once. Josh was with me, and I couldn’t get away to pay for them, so I just slipped them in my purse and strolled out of the store. I made it almost to the car when Josh tapped me on the shoulder, took me firmly by the elbow, and guided me not so gently back inside. It’s not real bright to try your hand at shoplifting when you’re with a cop, by the way. Anyway, he let me save face by telling the clerk that I’d forgotten to pay for them, but when we got back to the apartment, Josh draped me over the arm of a chair, took off his belt, and turned my thieving fanny beet red. Twenty-one stripes, one for each unfiltered Camel in the pilfered pack. And I didn’t get even one lousy puff!
The only thing I can say in my favor, back then, is that I never smoked inside the apartment. In the winte
r, when it was too cold to go outside, I got into the habit of sneaking cigarettes in the garage we shared with the guy who lived in the other half of our duplex. Unfortunately, Josh has the nose of one of those bomb-sniffing police dogs. One night, he came home from work and caught me in the garage—maybe ten seconds after I’d tossed the evidence. He didn’t even say “Hello, how was your day?” before pushing me down over the still warm hood of the car, hauling my jeans and panties down, and going to work on my chilly backside with this big, dried-out paint brush.
Josh always calls this particular spanking a “twofer.” The paintbrush was expensive, and I had let the paint dry without cleaning the damned brush. It may have been ruined for painting purposes, but it worked exceptionally well as a paddle. It did, however, leave a lot of paint flecks in some fairly unlikely places.
Another time, I was smoking in the house, but since Josh had pulled an all-nighter that night, I figured I was safe. So, there I was, in the upstairs bathroom tub, soaking and smoking, with six scented candles burning to mask any lingering odor. My luck being what it is, Josh had switched shifts with another officer and come home early. When I heard him downstairs, I panicked and tried swishing the telltale smoke out the bathroom window, with no success. Josh walked into the bathroom and just stood there for a moment, shaking his head. Then, he pulled me from the tub dripping and soapy, bent me over the sink, and began welting my wet rear with a big plastic bath brush. It was that hardest spanking I’d ever had, until then, and it went on so long that I had trouble catching my smoking-impaired breath in between swats.
Once he had decided that we were now officially at war over the smoking thing, Josh was relentless—and all-seeing. I was still occasionally sneaking a cigarette when I could get away with it, and occasionally paid a heavy price for a habit that was finally coming to an end. Actually, the last “anti-smoking spanking” was more like a “birching.” Just before Halloween that first year, while driving out in the country looking for a pumpkin patch, we passed a lovely old farmhouse with an apple orchard. The farmer had set up a small stand in his front yard, to sell his apple crop.
While Josh was busy paying the farmer and chatting, I took the opportunity to duck behind this rusted old tractor and sneak a cigarette. But Josh, always the alert detective, caught the smell of drifting smoke. Before we left the orchard, he collected several small branches, while the apple farmer watched curiously, and while I turned red with embarrassment. I knew perfectly well what he wanted the damned branches for.
Sure enough, Josh drove down the road about a mile, then stopped the car and parked in the trees next to an old stone wall. It was a beautiful spot, picturesque and woodsy, with birds singing, and a soft, cool breeze. The kind of place that would have been ideal for a romantic little fall picnic, or making love on a blanket among the falling leaves. But today’s outing was not destined to be romantic. He did divest me of my jeans and panties, though—all the way down to my ankles. Then, he made me lean over an old wall, and wore the damned branches down to stumps on my rear end. I howled bloody murder throughout my entire birching. Of course, the branches involved were from an apple tree, so I guess you could say that I was “appled,” more than birched.
And that was the last time I ever smoked regularly. There were a few relapses, on my road to recovery, but for the most part, I was cured. (I recommend this stop smoking plan very highly, by the way. Call and make an appointment with my husband, if you’re interested. We can use the money. Halloween is getting closer, and this year, I have my eye on this absolutely humungous spider web…)
* * * *
I’ve never been what you could call a go-getter, and if I had one wish in the world, aside from the usual ones about weighing what I did in high school and winning the state lottery, it would be that I had more energy. (I would settle for a bottomless container of prescriptive diet and/or pep pills, but you apparently have to be a celebrity airhead to qualify for goodies like that.) I found a diet clinic in the paper a couple of years ago that advertised miraculous results. I went for a month and a half, in secret, until Josh got curious about why I had started vacuuming every day, shad sewn the long-missing buttons on Jenny’s Brownie uniform, and even cleaned the oven.
Astonished by my sudden transformation into Martha Stewart, he ran my doctor’s name through Central Records. It turned out that the quack’s gilt-edged “degree” was from a veterinary school in Guam that had been shut down in 1939 for a series of unspecified “sanitary and educational shortcomings.” I was completely willing to overlook these small medical deficiencies, and protested vigorously when Josh confiscated the magical little pills that had made me a whirlwind of cleanliness and efficiency for six heavenly weeks. I was, I whined, a grown woman, and perfectly capable of making my own medical decisions, thank you. Josh growled back that if I ever called the place again, I wouldn’t be sitting down for a week, and then provided a brief but highly persuasive demonstration of exactly what that threat would entail.
So, why is it that God has chosen to give me two boundlessly energetic children, a four bedroom house, and a two acre yard full of weeds, yet given me no reserves of what it takes to keep up with that sort of lifestyle? Luckily, I seem to come back to life as fall approaches. With the arrival of crisp, cool mornings, the projects that I’ve started but left unfinished all year suddenly seem possible, again.
And as luck would have it, just as I start to feel that unaccustomed surge of energy, the stores around town bring in their annual crop of new fall decorations. The cycle of life begins anew, and I get ready to go shopping for Halloween.
This is where it gets a little tricky, however. Josh, oddly enough, is under the impression that we already have enough Halloween decorations. Every year, he delivers the same tired lecture about wretched excess and conspicuous consumption, about inflation and the sinking dollar, and about why the hell are we trying to keep up with the damned Joneses in the first place. Actually, there is no family by the name of Jones in our neighborhood. What he is referring to is our next door neighbor, Doris Morrison, or as I like to think of her—The Wicked Witch From the Western Side of the Street.
Doris and I used to be friendly, back in the days when she had her own husband, and didn’t spend her time lusting after mine. Josh says I’m mistaken in my uncharitable view of her, but like most men, my husband is a blind, blithering idiot when it comes to recognizing evil, conniving, manipulative females. He’s never understood that to a predator like Doris, who got oodles of money in her divorce but still has the personality of a praying mantis, he’s fresh meat. Josh is six foot four, one hundred and ninety pounds, and gorgeous, even if he doesn’t realize it. He also has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, and dark brown hair with just the faintest traces of gray. Somehow, he’s managed to reach early middle age with virtually no detectable love handles, and his stomach is so hard and flat you could bounce a quarter on it. How this man and I have managed to eat most of our meals together for seventeen years, yet age so differently is a complete mystery, and completely unjust. On the other hand, I do get to sleep with him every night, so I can’t really complain.
Anyway, around a month before Halloween, I woke up one brisk Monday morning, ready to begin my annual Halloween shopping frenzy. My plans were in place, and I’d been collecting coupons and sales circulars for weeks. This year, it was going to be giant spiders, and giant spider webs. I could see it all in my mind’s eye, and it was stupendous. What was even more important to me was that Doris Morrison was going to be puke-green with jealousy.
My bubble of enthusiasm popped when I stepped on the bathroom scales and discovered that I weighed four pounds more than when I stopped seeing the weight loss quack from Guam, and exactly twenty-two pounds more than I had on my wedding day. And since the quack was in jail and the powers that be had now taken all the truly effective diet drugs off the grocery shelves, it was obvious that I was going to have to resort to less clinical methods if I wanted to look like Spiderwoman by Hal
loween. I didn’t know a lot about Spiderwoman, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t carrying around twenty-two pounds of post-baby fat.
“You’re not fat,” Josh said wearily, when I came down to breakfast and dropped the news that I was now officially as big as a condominium. It’s the same discussion he and I have several times a year, and virtually every day during bathing suit season.
“Keeping in mind that this is really just a hypothetical question, darling,” I began, trying to sound as casual as possible. “What would happen if I were to start smoking again? You know, just for a few weeks? To take off a couple of extra pounds?”
No response, other than a raised eyebrow. Josh is one of those people who can do that—raise one eyebrow.
“I’m serious,” I whined. “Could you at least answer me?”
“Okay,” he said, without glancing up from his paper. “And just so we understand one another, there’s nothing at all hypothetical about my answer. I catch you smoking, you get your butt blistered until it smokes. Now, can I finish my paper, or would you like a quick reminder of what’s meant by ‘blistering’ before I go to work?”
“No, thank you,” I growled.
He grinned. “I didn’t think so.”
“You don’t get it, Josh,” I went on, deciding that even the risk of an early morning paddling was worth it. “I’ve gained twenty-two pounds since I quit smoking. I never had a problem with my weight until you made me give up cigarettes.” (Not technically true, but I’ve found that, wherever possible, it’s always wise to try to blame things on your husband.)
“You could try laying off chili dogs and Cheeze Doodles for lunch,” he said mildly. “Or take a walk once in a while?” This last remark was a veiled reference to the fact that I detest any sort of organized exercise, and that I appear to have lost the use of my legs since Jenny was born. (I have a theory that if God had wanted people to walk all over town, he wouldn’t have opened all those gas stations—especially the ones with the little attached stores that sell chili dogs and Cheeze Doodles.)