supplicium post mortem

I read The Narnian, by Alan Jacobs, a C.S. Lewis biography I heard about on the malespank forums, which said the book contained references to Lewis’s supposed tgi interests. I considered these claims doubtful, but ordered the book from the library anyway. One reference is to Lewis’s discussion of “Eros” in the chapter by that name in The Four Loves. He alludes to a kind of role-play (first full paragraph on text page 145, or “149″ in the embedded media) :The Four Loves

Jacobs says that Lewis “insists strongly that such play must really be play, accepted as such on both sides, both fully voluntary and very temporary” (Jacobs 287). This revelation increased, exponentially, my feeling of connection with Lewis, a connection already powerful via his writings about his bereavement in A Grief Observed. I thought, He knows everything that’s true! How I wish I’d been alive when he was. I have the strangest crush on him. I think this is my first crush on a dead author, I mean a romantic crush. I want him to read my book. It wouldn’t be intellectual or rigorous enough for him, but I wish he’d read it. We have a lot in common, I feel.

The other reference was to some early letters with an Oxford friend in which he signed himself Philomastix (whip-lover) and opined about girls he’d like to spank (Jacobs 56). If only he’d met Casey Morgan (ho ho). The more I read about this man, the more I feel he was a fellow traveler in every possible way, separated by time. How nuts am I to be crushing out on a long-dead writer? Jacobs is a good writer, smart and sensitive, someone who understands and appreciates both literature and religion. He makes me want to try the other Narnia books, and he makes me cry at times. I often cry around C.S. Lewis. I often cry, period.

I had this idea for a story with a character like Father Darrow (from Susan Howatch’s Starbridge series) for Casey. Like, maybe he comes to look after Home School pro tem? When I thought about writing it, though, it felt like cheating. Because, Casey protested, it wasn’t true! The truth was that RP and Marky died in a plane crash, Home school was disbanded, and TL scarcely even exists anymore – or is it Casey who scarcely exists? How could we write about a new character coming into that world when there is no one? Then there is the problem that Casey traditionally refuses to step aside and allow any other bottom characters to emerge, so it’s no good writing about Father Darrow taking charge of some other semi-orphan. Boo.

TGI has always meant something else to me. It’s a term that developed early in my correspondence with M, short for “the topic of greatest interest”. It became an all-purpose noun. (Now the tgi category maybe makes more sense to you.) So here, on this Friday, let us talk of tgi.

What is my tgi? Broadly speaking, an interest in corporal punishment, so tgi can be synonymous with whacking. Thus its verb form, used in the negative: de-tgi. As in, de-tgi the apartment – my dad is coming to stay! (i.e. put all implements well out of sight).

So what kind of tgi do I like, mainly?

• domestic cp of a semi-con nature [by semi-con I mean that the recipient doesn't like it, but basically accepts it]
• English school cp (semi-con)
• enemas

I could get very tedious laying out what appeals to me in what contexts, suffice to say that things I’m interested in doing RL (or have done) are only a subset of things that appeal to me in fantasy or in well-written stories. There are lots of things that turn me FW that I would never want to do RL. [If I'm abbreviating too much, try the glossary page.]

It is massively distressing to admit this, but here it is: I can’t clearly remember the last whacking I gave or the last I got. The last I got was in RP’s study, across his knee on the couch, unprotected, hand spanking, which was usual. I don’t exactly remember when it was (other than between New Year’s 07/08 and May 08) or what it was for. There had been a dry spell. We were both wrapped up in work and miscellanea. MISTAKE. As for the last I gave, I’m even less clear. I’m guessing it was an on-the-fly application of the “persuader” or the slipper, given in the kitchen around dinner time to encourage better attitude. Or it might have been otk (him naked) in bed during a commercial break with THBTNFK (the hairbrush that’s not for kids). [pictures another day, kids.] I hate myself that I can’t remember. I really don’t remember the last time Casey got That Thing [enema], except I think the bulb finally was breaking and leaking a lot. We hadn’t got another one yet, but the prospect of going together to the surgical supply store nearby and getting another bulb was both mortifying and a little exciting. Who knew what RP would have said to the man? We’ll never find out.

I was trying to write something fun that would cheer everyone up. FAIL!!

Ok, well, this isn’t strictly tgi, but it made me laff lots, from the Fail Blog:

On a tip in the “Book chat” area of the MMSA forums, and after previewing it on Google books, I borrowed from the library Novel Gazing, Queer Readings in Fiction. This ridiculous waste of time considers itself a very serious academic tome, an anthology of “queer” readings of literature. [Politically incorrect opinion #1: Queer, Feminist, Marxist, whatever-ist readings of literature are bullshit, self-absorbed, and entirely miss the point.] The essay of interest, “Flogging is Fundamental: Applications of Birch in Swinburne’s Lesbia Brandon,” was very silly but had good subtitles and quotes and was grappling, I think with a worthy question, namely: if Swinburne’s flogging scenes aren’t dismissible (as many literary critics over the ages have dismissed them), and if they are compelling and somehow powerful, what is that power and how does it work? In other words, why is Swinburne so hot? Now that would be a worthy essay.

I did enjoy the quotes from Swinburne’s letters, particularly the one that “addressed” deSade and explained why Justine was so tediously over done – ha, ha, I agree! So, why is Lesbia Brandon so f-ing hot?

1. The massive pent-up emotion of it all; the heart; the transferred and frustrated love and lust.
2. The heightened tension of talking about it all. The dinner party, for instance, is hot because it is so excruciating for Bertie to have his flogging (and his heroism) discussed and alluded to in public. Reading it, I enjoy seeing the sensitive, pretty Bertie squirm; and, I also relish being him and experiencing that pleasing, burning shame.
3. The relationships are all so intimate and raw, unlike the endlessly-discussed, endlessly-analyzed relationships of today.
4. The birch itself is severe without being brutish. It cuts and draws blood (especially from sensitive Bertie), without wounding or injuring deeply. It’s rather surface. Anyone can recover from a domestic birching. In some contexts (sauna?), the birch can even be stimulating and therapeutic.
5. The bareness required is also hot. The birch nicely combines spanking with caning – sharp, uncounted strokes; necessariliy undressed application; area and point weapons, as Marky used to say.
6. There is also, in Swinburne, the powerful bonding relationship between the one who gives (here the tutor) and the one to whom it’s given (Bertie). It’s a big event between them. Not all big, intimate events involve sex.
7. The lushness of the language also makes it hot (as the queer essay author remarked, the use of flogging language for everything else, the sea, etc).

But the pent-up emotion is the nub of the matter. Imagine, for instance, that Bertie were merely flogged a la Charlie Collingwood (which is sillier and less hot; its only charge, imo, comes from saying forbidden things – bottom, birch, etc.) by someone who didn’t have feelings for him (even displaced feelings like Denham has). Imagine it was like deSade – hundreds of yelling strokes, blood all over, etc. SNORE.

And what if no one spoke of it? Or if they spoke endlessly and directly of it? Oh yes, sister, I was flogged today, on my bare bottom, oh hundreds of strokes well laid on. Did it hurt? dear me yes, how I howled the place down, the blood oh my did it run, and it still hurts most frightfully even now. — Ah, Mr. Denham, tell us all about it. — Certainly, sir. I began with ten firm strokes to the left flank, then I switched sides and gave ten to the right (the ambidextrousness, you know), Bertie howled thrice, “yelped” he would term it, but I gave him a stoke to draw blood at last, that raised the pitch but also likely signaled some release, if only of blood, ho ho. ETC…

Tedious, we say, esp. when you can have this:

The magnetism of the sea drew all fear out of [Bertie], and even had there been any discomfort or peril to face, it was rather desire than courage that attracted and attached him to the rough water. Once in among green and  white seas, Herbert forgot that affliction was possible on land, and in his rapture of perfect satisfaction was glad to make friends with the man [Denham] he feared and hated in school hours. The bright and vigorous delight that broke out at such times nothing could repress or resist; he appealed to his companion as to a school fellow and was answered accordingly. “He was a brick in the water,” Herbert told young Lunsford [a friend]; “like another fellow you know, and chaffs one about getting swished, and I tell him it’s a beastly chouse and he only grins.” This intimacy was broken by one tragic interlude; bathing had been forbidden on all hands one stormy day before the sea had gone down, and Herbert, drawn by the delicious intolerable sound of the waves, had stolen down to them and slipped in; having had about enough in three or four minutes, he came out well buffeted and salted, with sea-water in his throat and nostrils and eyes; and saw his tutor waiting just above watermark between him and his clothes. Finding him gone, Denham had quietly taken a tough and sufficient rod and followed without a superfluous word of alarm. He took well hold of Bertie, still dripping and blinded; grasped him round the waist and shoulders, wet and naked, with the left arm and laid on with the right as long and as hard as he could. Herbert said afterwords that a wet swishing hurt most awfully, a dry swishing was a comparative luxury. He did not care to face again the sharp superfluous torture of these stripes on the still moist flesh; and from that day he was shy of facetious talk in the water or out: thus the second stage of his apprenticeship began.

A. C. Swinburne, Lesbia Brandon, ch. II

*sigh* always wanted a whacking like that…

except he’d have to follow through on the whacking front instead of leaving it to Uncle Jack…

perfect dad, perfect lap

A dream I had before Christmas about the father in Ripping Yarns’s series of stories about the Aken family. The “In…” series…

It was like college, and I was living with roommates. Mr. Aken, the dad from Rip’s stories, turned up. He found some glass shards on the carpet, evidence of a broken light, and this was an expensive and important light in some way. He looked to me and I had to admit I’d known about it. It wasn’t clear if I’d actually been involved with breaking it, but I had known of it and done nothing, which was wrong. I was flooded with guilt when he looked at me.

He walked by me and touched my face with his finger (long, slender, feminine), under my right eye and then just below my eyebrow, as if tracing the contours of the black circles there. Then he was holding me on his lap and I was 7 or 8, like Dan in one of the stories. He was wearing a plaid flannel work shirt and so was I. Mine was over-sized and both were soft, and he was holding me in that hugely protective way, and I was weeping because it just felt so safe and so good on his lap, even though I was in trouble – especially because I was in trouble. He told me he’d be able to deal with this matter even though he couldn’t be everything to me that I needed and wanted. Still, I cried in his lap because at that moment it was perfect. Even though I wasn’t his son, and couldn’t be his son, he could treat me the same as his son for this brief time while I was on his lap and while he dealt with me for the broken light.

When I had this dream I had been tutoring Othello heavily, in particular Act V, Scene 2: “put out the light, and then put out the light,” (1) the first light being Othello’s candle, of course, and the second being Desdemona’s life. I may not have put out M’s light myself, but am I guilty, in my heart, in some way, for not catching it, for all the uncountable failures that preceded and maybe led to his death, for all the times I didn’t love him enough, for fighting about taxes, for all the forever left undone? How can I ever be truly forgiven all of that unless I can be allowed to have him back and redeem it, put it right with him, love him fully like I always really have? How can I truly and really redeem anything without him?

(1)

Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me:–but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.

• Anonymous. Frank and I
• Anonymous. The Yellow Room
• Anthony, E. Thy Rod and Thy Staff
• Dahl, R. Boy
• Kipling, R. Stalky & Co.
• Mack, A.C. Public Schools and British Opinion
• Nin, Anais. Delta of Venus
• Raymond, Ernest. Tell England
• Rice, A. The Sleeping Beauty novels
• Swinburne, A.C. Lesbia Brandon
• Swinburne, A.C. Love’s Cross Currents
• Waugh, A. The Loom of Youth
• Waugh, E. Charles Ryder’s Schooldays