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Pre-party
It was one of the first parties I’d been to since COVID. Certainly the first one with more than 12 people. This was a big party, in a big city.
To get the ticket link to the party, you had to text a photo of your outfit. No denim. No street clothes. No exceptions.
I was feeling anxious. I looked at the outfit I had texted just the week before lying lazily on the bed. It felt slouchy. I felt slouchy. I tried on alternatives, each time clicking my tongue and exaggeratedly exhaling. Nothing felt right.
Frazzled, I left the house with just a few hours until we had to leave. Hurriedly typing ‘lingerie store near me’ while trying to stay out of the way of people descending into the subway.
In the aisles of Victoria’s Secret, I was disheartened by $90 negligee sets. At Target, I just kept walking around the lingerie section like when you’re hungry and keep opening the fridge, hoping something else would magically appear.
I settled on shapewear underwear, figuring I could pair it with a decent-looking top my friend had with her.
Performances
We crowded into a room with 100 or some strangers, sprawled about on the floor that was covered in bean bag chairs and carpets. There was a stage in the center.
It took me until midway through the performances to start to feel better. I was putting on a good face but had internally decided it was not going to be a good night for me.
I stayed successfully feeling sorry for myself for a while. There wasn’t a great place to sit, so I was crouched in these big platform heels so as to not block the group behind us. As we watched the performers, it became increasingly difficult to feel sorry for myself about some bullshit body shame. On stage was a person who was doing a sort of strip tease-acrobat routine but with a knife. They had vegetables strewn about the stage, and they were cutting the vegetables with a knife that was between their toes while doing back bends.
Then a pair took the stage. A man bent the woman over his knee and poured electric blue wax all over her ass. He then took some hydrangeas and started to spank her with them, petals becoming embossed on her backside.
To give some time to reset, I suppose, the MC would pull audience members up to share their dirty confessions. People would applaud their naughties.
A woman shared that she divorced her Trump-loving husband (massive applause).
A pair of men that started off as fuck buddies but then turned employee/boss (massive applause).
And then, the story that broke me.
A man, a little timid at first, took to the stage. He revealed that he was bisexual. He then went on to profess his love for a woman who was sitting in the second row—his fiancée. And, with a joy that made my cheeks sore on his behalf, he exclaimed, “We are so in love and we get to suck dicks together and it’s awesome!”
It was the kind of tender, kinky, funny moment that made me certain I could no longer stay in a funk.
I was giddy through the remaining performances:
One of the most enthusiastic dances I have seen.
A pole dance with no pole but a loose chain suspended from the ceiling.
The wax woman getting a ribbon stapled to her (face) cheeks.
SPANK pt 1
At the party, there were a few kinky displays. A woman naked on the table with food on her body. A photo booth that was basically a bed with amazing lighting and rich red sheets. Instead of a static camera, it was a professional photographer so people would have their own little photo shoots. My friends and I watched, mouths agape at these incredibly sexy people rolling around on this bed being photographed.
A woman had stripped completely naked and was yelling from the corner of the bed, watching the scene. Something about it felt baldly out of place, even amongst the nudity and freedom. At this kind of party, there is a palpable etiquette. Some of it is spoken: i.e., you do not touch anyone without explicit permission. And some of it is more naturally emergent. And the woman in the corner, yelling loudly but without engagement from any of the participants, was decidedly not in line with the etiquette.
Opposite the photo booth was the main event: a X-cross where people get strapped in and spanked by two professional doms.
In the corner of the spank station stood a 7 foot tall polar bear statue. Floggers and whips were laid across the bear’s outstretched arms, ready to be used.
A small crowd was gathered around at any time, which also served as the line. I walked up to the stage when it was presumably my turn.
The woman dom had impossibly glossy hair. It was the kind of hair I’d always envied. She wore a tight, slick black latex corset. She was effusive and kind. We started with a little intake:
“Have you been spanked before?”
“Yes, I like it”
“How hard do you like to go?”
“Medium hard, but I need to work up to it, and like to be teased.”
“Is it ok to strap you in?”
“Yes please.
She started to spank me, and I looked at myself in the mirror to the right. As the leather stung my bare thighs and bottom of my butt cheeks, I thought about how anxious I had felt earlier in the night. And how that was now basically completely undetectable.
Not that the insecurities disappeared completely. They felt present, but just not in the way of enjoying my body.
“Do you like stingy pain or thwapy?” She asked into my ear, pulling my hair away from my ear.
“Let’s go stingy.”
Social Butterfly
I hate that term. I really do. I never say it.
Except for tonight. After the performances, I had a real buzz about me. I was feeling voraciously social.
We went to the outdoor area and it felt a bit like being on a quad: groups of people strewn about in circles, chatting. The biggest difference was no backpacks and a lot more glitter and latex.
I met a man who had a name that was hard to pronounce. He said,
“If you remember how to pronounce my name in an hour I’ll buy you a drink”
We kept chatting, and every so often I would stop to say his name aloud.
“You’re really gunning for that drink, aren’t you?”
“Actually no, I don’t drink”
“Oh, is that a new thing?”
Which was an odd question to ask since he didn’t know me. But, it was in fact a new thing, and was part of my anxiety about being at a party like this.
“Yeah sort of, it’s just not for me.”
"So, what will you win?”
I gave a coy smile and we made our way to the dance floor.
We danced a bit together, grinding even. And kissed. It was a perfectly good kiss, but I did not want to pair up for the night. I grabbed his arm and said:
“OK [hard to pronounce name], you’re fun and hot, but I kinda want to be a bit of a butterfly tonight. So let’s just do our respective things, maybe we’ll kiss and dance more, but maybe not. Ok?”
“Sounds good to me.”
I gave him a kiss, and flitted away.
Rando
He was tall and shirtless. He wore a harness (I later learned he had borrowed it from his friend). This was the second time in the party that I had seen him, and we locked eyes. Hard.
Eye fucking is hands down one of my favorite thrills in life.
I went to see my friends on the dance floor which was illuminated by a series of screens with fractal-like projections shining onto them. There was a space behind the screens where people could dance. When you looked at the screens, you would see silhouettes of people dancing.
“Want to go back?” my friend asked.
It was a resounding yes. So, we waited near the stage where the security guard was letting people back.
I turned and there was Rando.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
We chatted while my friends and I waited to go behind the screen. It turned out that we grew up 5 miles from each other on the other side of the country. He was here visiting a friend who was in the kink scene. He had played basketball semi-professionally.
At some point, Rando graduated from someone to kill time with while waiting, to someone who was waiting with us. Without talking about it, it became clear that he would be joining us backstage.
It also became clear that I wanted him.
The woman who had been naked and yelling at the photo station, sprinkling the event with commotion, got kicked out. She was on too many drugs.
It was almost our turn.
We kissed.
We were then welcomed onto this metal ladder and one after another climbed up to the scaffolding behind the screen.
A bright-eyed attendant greeted us. The music was thumping but he spoke loudly so we could hear.
“Hi guys! Here’s how it works: there are 2 stalls separated by a sheet. 2 people per stall. We want you to keep moving so that it’s interesting to look at. No being on your phone. You can dance, play, whatever you want. You’ll have about 10 minutes.”
He led us through. The stalls were about 10 feet long and 4 feet deep, perched on scaffolding. The far stall had a 2 step bench in it. The walls were sheets. There was a plywood floor, covered in a rug that was thoughtfully littered with condoms.
Rando and I took the far stall.
After approximately 40 seconds of perfunctory dancing, we started to make out. Hard. He kissed my neck and my ears. Every so often, I would look to see what our silhouettes were offering the crowd of a hundred people watching and dancing below us.
I asked him what he liked. “I go crazy for my ears being sucked and I really like going down on you.” He told me about this book he’d read, She Comes First and it seemed to really change his sexual life.
I straddled him on the step and sucked on his ears and played with his hair. He took a nipple in his hand and then his mouth. I slid my panties down, and he hovered a bit, asking if it was ok before he slid one and then two fingers into me.
He kissed me then lifted me onto the step and kneeled. He started to lick me while keeping his fingers inside of me.
I kept looking at our silhouettes, cheating out a bit so my nipple was captured. Running my hands on my body and his, through our hair.
The music thumped loudly. It drowned out all of the sounds that I was making, and any sound that was surely coming from the booth next to us. My moans became more frequent, sharper. I grabbed his shoulders and dug my hands into them as I came. My silhouette is visibly shaking.
We switched. He sat and I kneeled. He wasn’t getting hard due to something he ate earlier (read: drugs). He encouraged me to still suck him and use my hands. It petered out a bit, he pulled me back up, went down on me again and then we rose to stand, hugging each other, dancing a bit more meaningfully for the crowd. Kissing, telling each other how badly we wanted each other.
The attendant popped his head through the flap in the back:
“Times up guys!”
SPANK pt 2
After the stage, we rejoined with my friends. We danced for a bit, and I was feeling a little insatiable for Rando. There wasn’t exactly anywhere to go except various corners for making out and some heavy petting. We demonstrated something that resembled discretion when we let our hands drift, but it certainly wasn’t hard to see what was going on. I decided I wanted to return to the spanking station.
We waited in line. Rando told someone else about She Comes First. I tripped a bit and the man with the hard to pronounce name helped me regain my balance, and then saw me paired off.
It was my turn to go approach the cross again. This time it was the male dom.
There was a bit more of an intake session.
“Have you been spanked a lot before?”
“Yes, I really like it”
“How hard?”
“I can take it pretty hard but I need to be warmed up first.”
“Do you want a full Dom/sub experience?”
“Yes”
“Commands?”
“Yes”
“Hair pulling?”
“Yes”
“Choking?”
“Yes.”
I got strapped in.
“What do you want me to call you? Baby? Girl? Slut?”
“Slut, please”
“OK. You call me sir. And you can say yes sir. No sir. Or thank you sir. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He ran his finger down my spine and used his hand to slap my ass. There is a mirror to the right.I could see myself but not him.
Rhythmic slaps begin.
“Thank you, sir”
He started building the pace and it got a little harder. My skin was growing hot. He was using a flogger now, and he ran it along my back. It was big and heavy. It felt like what I imagine it feels like to be inside of a car wash.
THWAP. THWAP. THWAP.
And then I felt him pull back. And heard him reply to someone else:
“No no, you can’t just spank her, it doesn't work like that.”
He returned to me,
“Some rando just wanted to spank you. I told him that’s definitely not how it works.”
I knew immediately though, that it was not a rando. Well, in the scheme of things, I suppose it was, but I knew it was my Rando for the night.
I told sir as much.
“Oh, got it, got it, do you want him to spank you?”
“No sir. He can watch.”
He came up near my head and I closed my eyes. He pulled my hair and whispered how bad I was. He teased my spine, and masterfully applied some pressure to my throat.
I was squirming a bit, getting hot. I wriggled my wrists just to remind myself that I was restrained. He started to spank me again. Harder. I bit my lip, eyes closed.
“Oh, sorry, sorry.”
He stopped once again.
The apologies belonged to the femme Dom. She was peeling floggers off of the polar bear and collecting some instruments that were on a stool at knee height in my eye line. They took turns explaining that she had a bit of a shoulder injury from spanking someone too hard earlier in the night.
She finished collecting her things. He came back up toward my head.
For the third time, we rebuilt from the interruption. The interruptions felt like a sort of existential foreplay. It felt like the teasing was not limited just to withholding a spank or running a fingertip along my spine.
“We are going to count down from ten, and between each number you need to say, “I am a bad slut. OK?”
“Yes sir.” I got an extra thrill knowing that Rando was watching.
10
I am a bad slut
9
I am a bad slut
8
I am a bad slut
The interruptions made me feel, in a way, a little more present. They created a shared intimacy that I really appreciated.
7 THWAP
I am a bad slut
6
I am a bad slut
My thoughts returned again to my anxiety at the beginning of the night.
5
I am a bad slut
My insecurities, and how they felt so foreign to me now, bent over before a crowd of eyes belonging to mostly strangers.
4
I am a bad slut
Not that spanking absolved me of my insecurities, but it did seem to offer some kind of atonement.
3
I am a bad slut
Like the interruptions to the scene, the novelty of the evening and the sting of the spank forcing a kind of presence. That presence is a difficult place for self-loathing to live.
2 TWHAP
I am a bad slut
It invites a sense of wonder at how strange and beautiful it is to be alive. And even stranger and beautiful still, that in this weird complicated universe, two people can find a specific and deep love that allows them to enjoy a cock together.
1