Comment of the Month: September

One of the joys of story-writing is learning about the times when your words came vividly to life inside a reader’s mind. And one of the joys of erotic story-writing is that those same words can not only excite and arouse readers’ imaginations, but their bodies too. 

So thank you to all those who have reblogged and shared these stories, and a special mention to those who’ve sent messages expressing their enjoyment. My favourite comment this month came from thefilthyunicorn, who wrote this when reblogging the story Abstract Art:

“Holy shit this is exactly what I masturbate fantasizing about. Naughty girls being spanked in front of their class…maybe a little more.
Maybe a school that specializes in anal punishment.
Public humiliation is a great disciplinary tool, right? Right?
Edit: I just came so hard to this.”

We all love a story with a happy ending.

Never too old for fairytales?

I do love fairytales.

Not the bland, colourful fast-food served up by Disney to fill its theme parks, but the dark, archaic gothic tales that have been told and retold around the glowing hearths of Europe over countless cold winter nights.

One Christmas, long ago, I read a tale that haunted my dreams. About a boy with a splinter in his eye and ice in his heart, imprisoned in an ice castle by the imperious, domineering Snow Queen, pitifully arranging ice blocks, trying to spell ‘eternity’ before his heart froze.

Then – just in time – a girl arrives, his childhood sweetheart, and the ice melts.

I was too young to understand all the story’s layers. Like why I found the frigid, stern, unfeeling Queen so fascinating; I wondered if she spanked the poor boy’s bottom with her icy hands before sending him to bed each night. And back then I didn’t understand the redemptive, magical power of love.

Fairytales fascinate because they are abstract stories, they tell of a world that never was, but one we can conjure effortlessly into being in our imaginations. Fairytales are not histories, but fables – stories about morals, archetypal characters and aphorisms.

Carl Jung believed these archetypes came from our common psychology, the thoughts, dreams and values we share with every human being ever born. These universal stories form the foundations of our shared culture.

And I believe fairytales have a special, secret magic: that each story shares the same words with its darker twin, hidden in plain sight, which we can see if we read the tale just slightly differently. Through a glass, darkly.

If your mind is so attuned, you’ll see the secret world that others can’t. You’ll begin to watch for it, you’ll learn to recognise the covert clues, even when it’s in disguise. Where others see an innocent fairytale, you’ll see a tale of submission and dominance, obedience and rebelliousness, subjugation and eroticism.

Perhaps you’ll develop a special fascination with the stern, domineering characters, you’ll imagine their dungeons as places of taboo excitement rather than despair. Maybe you’ll see the story not as good versus evil, but as a banal, rule-bound world being rattled by iconoclast upstarts. What is wickedness, really? Seeking to corrupt innocence and virtue, or seeking to impose it?

The idea of two stories, light and dark, coexisting, waiting to be untangled by the reader’s mind, motivated my story Throne of Shame. This is a deliberately ambiguous tale; is it a story of escape or desertion, capture or salvation?
Do you see ravishment or submission?
Do you see an abduction or a rescue?
Do you see love or lust?
And does the story end in agony or ecstasy?

As the nights grow longer, and frost begins to creep across the windows, perhaps you’ll snuggle into bed and have someone read you a bedtime story.

Because you’re never too old for fairytales.

Witnessing

Imagine wandering aimlessly through an old country house.
A soft burgundy carpet muffling your footsteps.
Out of the silence you hear something… a faint slapping.
Curiosity quickens your pace, the noise gets closer.
Now you can hear smacks, and gasps… and moans.
All coming from behind a sturdy wooden door.
You lower an eye to the keyhole.
Beyond, a young lady over a man’s knee.
Her pink summer dress pulled up, her knickers lie discarded.
One arm pinned behind her back.
You watch agape as her legs kick and flail.
And her bare bottom is warmed by his cruel leather slipper.

So what would you do?
Knock on the door? Intervene? Rescue her?
Or kneel beside the keyhole, and watch her bum turn pink?
As you feel yourself tingle.

Or imagine you’ve been sent to fetch some books from a classroom store.
Suddenly, a teacher and pupil enter the adjoining room.
You hear the teacher scold your classmate for her misbehaviour.  
You stifle a gasp as she’s told to lift her skirt… and bend over.
You tiptoe towards the edge of the annex.
You daringly peer round the corner, hardly daring to breathe.
Just in time to glimpse her panties being slowly tugged down.
And teacher’s wooden ruler tapping against her naked cheeks…

What would you do?
Cough and step out from behind the corner, apologise and leave?
Or stay and risk an occasional peek at her shameful dance?
Every stolen glance increasing your chance of discovery.
But intensifying your disgraceful excitement.

* * *

Erotic stories are like witnessing a spanking through a keyhole.
We eavesdrop as a miscreant is scolded.
We catch glimpses of a forbidden scene, letting our imagination fill in what we can not see.
We indulge in illicit imagineering.

By contrast, porn leaves nothing to the imagination. Porn is a performance piece. The past is perfunctory, porn is about the present, the moment, gratification. Who cares how the washing machine broke, when the hunky plumber has such a satisfyingly large tool. Porn has no drama, no ambiguity, no need for imaginings, we know a happy ending is inevitable, and we won’t miss a thing.

But stories require the reader’s participation. In the gap between reading words and understanding them, words magically condense into images, creating a world coloured by the reader’s unique mind. Stories inspire a one-off piece of theatre, conjured up and played out in the space between each reader’s ears. Even if a story is read by a billion people, no-one else will ever imagine those same words in exactly the same way.

Stories have an ambiguity, a subtlety, that the visual image lacks.
How fitting that reading a story about submission requires you to first submit your imagination to the story.
And the very best stories inspire a yearning…
… to be on the other side of the door.