Good Vibrations Magazine

“I want you to practice with me,” I begged Justine.

“What do you mean?” my friend asked, yelling to be heard over the music. We were at her annual pagan Halloween party, and the music was loud. I had on a toga and my black hair was loose down my back in my version of Aphrodite. A silly costume for me — the Goddess of Love? I don’t think so. Justine was dressed like a nurse, and from the glances she was receiving, it looked as if several partiers were desperate for their yearly examination.

“I need to know what it’s like first,” I said, “you just don’t understand.”

“You’re right,” she said, “I don’t understand at all.”

Closing my eyes, I tried to think of how to explain. When I was in junior high school, I’d amazingly been the first of my friends to go to a school-sponsored dance. Amazingly, because I was so shy I could barely raise my hand in class. Once at the dance, I stood with my back solidly pressed against the wall, petrified. Finally, a boy I’d known since kindergarten, sidled up to me and asked what was wrong.

“I don’t know how to dance,” I confessed.

“There’s nothing to it,” Kevin told me, leading me to a dark corner of the gym. “All you need is practice.” When the Police came on with “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” he moved me to help me find the beat. He taught me how to move, shimmying and swaying in that dimly lit corner. Boys I’d turned down earlier in the evening stared at us. Why had I said yes to Kevin and no to them? It was an easy answer. He’d let me work it out before taking me to the center of the room and dancing with all the other kids.

Now, squeezed on a sofa between my naughty nurse buddy and a friendly-looking Frankenstein, I told this story to Justine, trying to get her to comprehend what I wanted from her without having to actually spell it out. Justine took a sip of her drink and said, “You want me to dance with you? Should I search my CD collection for ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’?” I caught the sparkle in her eyes, though, and understood she was teasing me.

“Please,” I said, and Justine seemed to stand up slightly straighter at the way I said it. Her buoyant breasts continued in their gravity-defying lifestyle, pointing straight at me.

“You want me to spank you,” Justine said now, not asking, but telling. The Frankenstein looked my way and I blushed.

“It sounds ridiculous, I know. But I need to practice before I experience it with Antonia. That’s just the way I am. If I don’t know what it’s like, I won’t be able to let her do it to me. And she wants to spank me. She said so.”

Justine grinned. “If you tell her afterwards, she’ll probably punish you even more.” I got the sense that she was really enjoying the image of Antonia disciplining me.

“Once I know, it won’t be bad. It’s the not knowing that kills me.”

Justine shrugged. “I’ll meet you in your apartment in twenty minutes.” Justine lowered her voice, “You’re such a bad girl, Katrina. I never knew you had it in you.”

And then she was downing the rest of her martini, stalking across the apartment to the hallway, and disappearing around the corner. I finished my own drink, then left the party, walking across the hall to my own apartment. I was very aware of how wet I was growing in anticipation of my first paddling. I didn’t care if Antonia punished me worse. I had to know.

In my studio, I paced back and forth: from the bed to the window to the bed again. I stared at my reflection in the mirror on the back of the closet door. I saw my flushed cheeks, my trembling lower lip. I thought about how my father had taught me to drive, taking me anywhere I wanted to go ahead of time, so I could learn the route. Driving with me as the passenger first, then allowing me to take a turn behind the wheel. We drove in all kinds of weather: rain, wind, hail, until I was competent. This type of practice is ingrained into me. Try it out first. Test the waters. I’m the type of person who never just jumps into a swimming pool.

While waiting for my friend to arrive, I posed in front of the mirror. Then I turned around, lifted my dress, took my panties down, and observed my naked ass. I pictured handprints decorating the pale, tender skin. I wondered if Justine would only play with me, or if she’d give it to me hard. I wondered if she’d make me cry. I tried to imagine exactly how much I could take before that happened.

Where was Justine? I wondered. I thought about calling her to ask what was taking her so long. Then I thought about calling her to cancel the whole thing, to tell her it all had been a joke, a sick joke, that I was over it now. What the fuck was I doing? Who was I trying to kid? I didn’t have it in me, did I?

But even as that voice in my head tried to convince me to back out, I knew I wouldn’t. My mind took me on a quick trip, visualizing Justine striding in on her amazing heels, standing right at the door and looking at me. Her curves barely reigned in by the white nurse’s outfit; the stethoscope still around her neck like some piece of alien-looking jewelry. I heard her telling me in her lilting voice that I’d been naughty, awfully naughty, and I was going to have a hard time sitting in the future. Telling me to lie face down on the bed and hug the pillow, that she’d be more than happy to mete out a bit of seriously needed discipline to a wayward girl like me. That’s what friends are for, right? To help out pals in need.

A knock at the door announced that Justine was finally coming to join me. I walked to the door and opened it, revealing not my neighbor… but Antonia, dressed handsomely in a cowgirl’s costume, chaps over jeans, vest over a tight, ribbed white tank, handkerchief tied around her neck. Her hair was pulled back from her face. She looked like she’d stepped out of the wild West, and I scanned her body quickly to make sure she wasn’t holding a whip in her hand. What would I have done if she did have one? And why did my panties get all clingy and wet at the thought? At the image of her riding me, the way someone would ride a hard-to-tame filly, her spurs digging into my sides.

“What…?” I started, confused, my mind trying to work quick enough to explain the situation to myself.

“Justine paged me,” was all Antonia said at first, walking into the room in her black cowboy boots, forcing me to retreat toward the bed by her sheer presence. I didn’t feel her hands on me, just her eyes, and they backed me up until I was against the edge of the mattress, until I sat down and then continued to scoot backward on the bed, until my spine was pressed up against the headboard.

“She explained the situation,” Antonia said. I tried to figure out how she’d gotten here so fast, imagined Justine paging Antonia at some Halloween fiesta downtown and saying, “Climb onto your Harley, kiddo, and get here now. Your brand-new girlfriend is ready for her first spanking. You don’t want to miss this.”

But why wasn’t Antonia saying anything? Why was she just looking at me like that? Because she wanted me to explain myself. Antonia waited. I looked her over. No, there was no weapon. No paddle. Looked closer. She had a worn leather belt coiled around her waist. While she waited for me, she stroked the silver buckle, started to undo it, to pull the sinuous black leather from the loops. Her movements were well choreographed. I leaned my head back against the painting and swallowed hard.

“Tell me about it, Katrina,” Antonia said gently. “Tell me all about it.”

Don’t blow it this time, Katrina, I told myself. Don’t flail. In my mind, I saw Kevin dancing with me under one stark bulb in the gymnasium. Moving to the music of the early ’80s. Learning the steps before I had to work through them with someone else: the story of my life.

“I wanted to know,” I said, finally, watching her fold the belt in her hands, double the leather up between both hands and snap it. The sound was louder than I expected, but I was proud that it didn’t make me jump. I just stared at her and waited for her response. Without speaking, she undressed me, a simple feat seeing as I had on only a white, diaphanous toga-style dress. She left me in my silky panties, stepping back to appreciate the way I looked before sitting on the edge of the bed and dragging me across her lap.

“Look over there,” she said, indicating the mirror on the wall across the room. I looked. I saw. “Tell me the rest,” she said, pulling my panties down my thighs, but leaving them there. That little bit of fabric around my ankles making me feel more naked, more exposed, more naughty.

“Tell me,” Antonia said, slightly louder. “I’m not going to ask again.”

She knew all the answers, but she still wanted to hear me confess. “Justine was going to practice with me,” I said, the words coming out in a rush. It felt good to come clean, even if she already knew what I was going to say. It seemed that saying it was the important part.

Her hand slapped against my skin. Connecting once. Hard. That sound. I shuddered. I wanted this. Why did I want this? Why did I need it, crave it, desire it so badly that my body was shaking all over? Why couldn’t I shut my mind off, shut off the voice in my head that insisted on analyzing the situation, continuing to analyze it as she continued to spank me. Just using her hand now, not her belt, which I could see in the reflection, coiled menacingly at her side on the white comforter.

“Why couldn’t you trust me?” she asked, rubbing the heel of her palm over my sparking hot flesh, pressing hard where the violet-tinged handprints were already standing out in stark relief. I wondered if her handprints would leave marks, handsome beet-colored bruises. I wondered if, afterward, I could stand in front of the mirror and look at my ass, reddened and pretty — yes, I thought it would be pretty — and admire it. Would those prints last?

“Why?” she asked again, and then, in a softer voice, “you need to start answering me when I ask you a question. That’s the first rule you should memorize.”

“I do trust you,” I said, my voice not sounding at all like my voice. Lying. I was lying to her now. What was I thinking? Upturned, over her lap, her sturdy thighs below me, her hand now truly punishing my blushing skin. She spanked me to make it hurt. Lying wasn’t getting me anywhere, was it? Sure it was, because I wanted this, and lying was going to get me exactly what I wanted, as quick as anything else I could imagine.

But still, my voice, that inner chastising voice, would not be quiet. My mind wondered what Justine had said on the phone. “Come here quick and spank my naughty friend.” The thought horrified me, and how had Antonia responded. Shut up! I screamed inside my mind. Lose yourself in this, because this is what you want. Pay attention to your fantasy as it comes to life.

“Bad girl,” Antonia said between clenched teeth. “Come clean with me.”

Her hand was now wrapped around the belt. The cool metal buckle pressed deep into my hot skin. I stayed silent, watching her hand come back, move high up, and then forward in a blur, the leather slapping against my ass as hard as anything I could imagine.

I didn’t know what to say.

Somehow Antonia understood this. Pushing me off her lap, she stood and walked to the dresser, pulled it opened and grabbed a pair of nylons from the top drawer. She came back to the bed and quickly bound my wrists above my head. Threw me back down on the bed, on my stomach, my head on the pillow, her body behind me. I hadn’t known she’d be so strong. Hoped it, perhaps, but hadn’t known it. Though I should have, right? I should have known from her stories of scaling the walls at the climbing gym, of scaling the mountains in the desert outside of L.A. Strong upper body, tensed muscles ready beneath the skin.

I was tied to the bed. My arms were fastened over my head with silken bindings; my legs spread wide apart, my ankles tied, as well. She stood before me. She looked untamed, intense, as if she were nowhere else but in this room, in this moment, with me at her total mercy.

Being tied was hard for me, harder than I ever thought. In fact, it was the opposite of what I thought. Bound to the bed should have been easier, since I had no choice in the matter. Instead, I felt as if my brain were going a hundred miles a minute, while my body was unfairly contained. I couldn’t get away, and she knew it. I had nowhere to go but down.

I kept silent, watching her pick up the belt and play with it between her hands. “Don’t you trust me, Katrina?”

I nodded.

“That’s important,” she said, “you need to trust your partner when you enter into a relationship like this one — a relationship that is based on power and rules. That’s the second thing you should memorize. The concept behind what we have. The balance of our connection. Do you understand that?”

I nodded again.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

“I thought we would have started differently,” Antonia said, her voice holding a note of faux sadness. “A ride on the back of my Harley to get you wet, drippy and vibrating. Instead, we’ll go at it a different way — ”

The belt was still in her hand, but now she stood to the side of me and I could not watch, could not see it in the mirror anymore. And in this new position, she plunged me into pain. The belt connected with my burning skin. Once. Twice. Three times. With these few strokes, she striped my ass, my upper thighs. Then she paused and said, her voice low and powerful, “You’ll get the pleasure part later, you know. You’ll feel all of it later. But I want you to know, now, right now, what it feels like to be punished. Seriously punished.”

She lined up the blows right next to each other. She was good at this. I was conscious enough to think that before my mind turned off, that voice turned off, finally and as concretely as if I’d turned down the volume on my stereo. And I let myself be washed in the fire of it, the thrill of it, pulled for once out of fantasies and into the absolute present with each stroke of her belt.

In all honesty, I can’t say what I was thinking during the thrashing. I know that it hurt, and that it hurt in a way that no pain has ever hurt before. Thinking back, it made me remember the time when Justine got her first tattoo. Standing outside on Sunset, I asked her how it felt, even though I’d seen her grit her teeth through it, sitting by her side in the back of The Sunset Strip Tattoo Parlor. Watching her hold her breath each time the needle came close to her skin. Listening when the tattoo artist said, “Relax for me. Breathe for me.” Justine had told me, “It hurt…”

“But how much?”

“You can’t compare it to anything,” she had said matter-of-factly. “I wanted it, so it hurt in an entirely different way than any other type of pain.”

That’s what this was like. I wanted it. The pain was astounding, but I bore it because I wanted it. The belt on my skin hurt in an entirely different way than anything I’d ever felt. Antonia strode onward, I’m sure knowing instinctively how much I could take. Not pushing me to the limits, but pushing me to the first ridge. She gave me everything I wanted, and everything I needed.

Even after only really knowing me a short time, she knew my innermost cravings. Antonia rewarded me with lines that I could admire later, standing in front of the mirror and looking over my shoulder at my ass and thighs. She gave me memories, so that when I pressed my fingers into those berry-striped marks, I could immediately call up the pain of the moment, step right back into the feeling of being tied, of being her captive. She gave me every fantasy, every daydream, night dream, yearning desire come true.

“No more games,” Antonia said, when she was finished. Finished with the punishment portion, anyway. She pressed her body against mine, her clothed body, thighs in chaps, against my naked one. “No more tests and no more games.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “I promise.”

Antonia wrapped her arms around me, letting me feel the bulge in her slacks where she was packing, moving back to undo her fly and letting me actually feel the synthetic cock against my throbbing flesh. Rubbing back and forth against me. This was real. This was here and now, as she wet the tip of it between my legs, as she pulled back once, then plunged inside.

She sighed when my wetness met with her skin, with the lower part of her belly, with the hidden lips of her pussy. She sighed because it was proof positive that she and I were matched, that the way she had taken care of the situation was perfect for us both. The deep stroking of her cock inside me made me moan. She pushed it in and pulled it out, and I shivered and squeezed against her synthetic tool.

“That’s right,” she said, “that’s the girl. Fuck it for me. Make it happen. I need you to make it happen.”

I needed it to happen, too, and I did just as she told me. Embracing the dildo with my cunt, I held onto it, trying to keep her inside me even as she pulled back, teasing me, taunting me. Each stroke of her cock made me whole. She pressed into me until her thighs were against my thighs, the flatness of her belly against my ass. She pounded into me, saying over and over, under her breath, “Make it happen, girl. Reach for it.”

I reached. I pushed. My eyes squeezed shut tightly, echoing the contractions of my pussy. Her hand came down between us, tickling fingers finding my clit, slipping up and down on either side. And finally, when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take any more, when I felt strung out and beat up from her driving cock, I came.

“That’s my girl,” she said, sensing the exact moment. “Perfect girl, my perfect girl.” Her hands stroked my naked body, fingertips trailing over me, running up and down my spine. She let her nails bite into my skin and I shuddered, still coming as she pulled out, unbuckled her harness, rubbed her pussy against my dripping cunt. Antonia came that way, her delta of Venus against mine, bumping and rubbing until she reached her climax, holding onto me tightly, biting into my shoulder as the waves took her away.

When we were finished, after I’d spent long minutes wrapped in her arms, she untied me, and I rolled over to look up at her. She stroked my face gently, her fingers warm on my hot skin. Then she bent down and kissed my lips, deeply kissed me until I was hungry for more, desperate for more, whether it meant more pain or more pleasure, I no longer cared. They were entwined in my mind. One and the same.