Affairs. Is Everyone At It?

I was at my parents' house earlier today doing a bit of IT Support for my dad. Over tea and chocolate digestives, Dad mentioned that Mum has recently been demonstrating an impressive knowledge of cricket while they've been satisfying their current addiction for watching every single TV quiz programme ever.

My dad is massively into cricket. My mum isn't. But clearly having been married to a cricket fan for almost five decades has caused a certain amount of cricketing knowledge to seep into my mother's consciousness through some kind of osmosis.

Note for my American readership: Cricket is a bit like baseball.
But with more wickets, "Howzats?" and "Silly Mid On"s.
And stopping for tea, obviously.

I didn't say that, though. Because apparently, when I see a line that shouldn't be crossed, I like to leap across that line with gay abandon. What response did I give to one of my parents saying that the other one knew more about cricket than they realised? I said: "Maybe Mum's having an affair?"

(I would like to say at this point that my mum was actually part of this conversation. I mean there's lines and there's lines.)

My reasoning was that if someone shows an interest in a subject that they've never shown an interest in before, there must be an ulterior motive, hmm? My mum's response was, entirely reasonably, "And when would I have time for this affair? I certainly haven't noticed it happening." My dad mused that if Mum was having an affair then doing so with a professional cricketer would be pretty impressive.

I blame Mumsnet. I have spent far too much time recently reading Mumsnet talkboards. If you spend any time at all on the Relationships board, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that all men are lying, adulterous arseholes. This mistrust permeates the whole of Mumsnet. If anyone so much as suggests that their "DH" has started showing a fondness for Mint Choc Chip ice cream when he has always previously preferred Rum and Raisin, mumsnetters will immediately cry "Leave the Bastard! He's been lying to you! He obviously has a secret life you don't know about!". It's the middle-class equivalent of Jeremy Kyle every day.

Adulterer.

I don't really think there's any extra-marital hanky-panky going on in my parents' marriage. They have been dating for fifty-four years and still quite obviously fancy one another like crazy. If I were an only child, I could claim that the reason that I have never managed to maintain a long-term relationship is because of the ludicrously high standard of coupley bliss presented to me by my parents. Obviously, I could never possibly hope to achieve that so there is no point in trying. Unfortunately, my two siblings' happy long-term marriages throw a bit of a spanner into that particular hypothesis.

I blogged about the Ashley Madison data leak a couple of months ago. There's cold hard statistics which demonstrate that - at least as far as this particular "Adultery R Us" website was concerned - intent to play away is largely a male pursuit. Actual heterosexual infidelity is probably more a 50/50 thing, though.

According to this webpage which I just googled, roughly 30% to 60% of all married individuals will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage. Jesus, really? Is that likely? That's fucking massive. Clearly, my research has been minimal. I would hope that was some kind of biased survey because otherwise I have to consider the idea that of my five closest friends (and their five partners), it's statistically probably that maybe three of them have fucked someone else since whenever it was I turned up in my best dress on their special day, toasted their happiness and enjoyed their wedding breakfast catering.

I want some reassurance here. I've never been married. I absolutely never intend to get married. I'm forty-one years old so I reckon I've dodged that particular bullet. But I want to believe that the married couples I know are doing it properly. I got all teared up during the Groom's speech at your wedding, you bastards. Don't tell me those warm fuzzy feelings were based on lies.

I honestly can't imagine that there is a woman on earth I could love as much as you.
But, you know, if I DO get a better offer, I'm totally gonna go for it.

Clearly whatever other people choose to do with their marriages is no concern of mine. That said, I am probably going to re-activate my online dating account in the next few weeks. I do worry that within my target age bracket of 35 to 55 year olds, there are going to people who, despite saying that they are divorced or separated, are actually still living with partners who have no idea that their partners are cruising for a bit of spanky, extramarital fun without their significant other's consent.

And while I might be absolutely OK with open polyamorous relationships, I have no intention of inadvertently becoming the Other Woman in someone else's exclusive relationship. What percentage of those extra-marital affair statistics involve people who had no idea that they were fucking somebody else's current partner?

I guess if I do start dating again, I shall have to rely on my 'gut instinct'. I'm wary of relying on any of my internal organs when it comes to judging another individual's honesty. And I'm pretty sure my 'gut' isn't really up to the task. It does a fine job of transferring food to my digestive system. I have no problems with its performance on that score. Ascertaining whether relative strangers are on the level? That might be a bit of an ask.

"He's a wrong 'un."

So, reassure me, readers. Tell me that everyone in an exclusive monogamous relationship remains entirely faithful to their partner. And the only married people fucking outside of the conjugal bedroom are fully on-board polygamists who have all read The Ethical Slut and are happy to discuss their extra-marital relationships with their spouses over tea and biscuits.

It might not be true but, fuck it, that's the world I want to live in.

Book Review - Tell Me by Ashe Barker

Want to know more about the book review star rating system? Or find out what other books I've reviewed? Check out this page here.

Tell Me

A friend recommended that I read Ashe Barker's modern-day Yorkshire-based BDSM romance Tell Me. "You'll love it," she told me. "There's loads of tea-drinking in it."

She wasn't being sarcastic, by the way. I really do love me some tea-drinking. I've blogged about it and everything.

Tell Me's heroine Thea is equally fond of a cuppa and the fact that she favours Earl Grey as her blend of choice endears her to me still further. Earl Grey is the King Of Teas (or, I guess more accurately, the Earl of Teas) and is suitable for any beverage drinking occasion. Especially pre- and post-BDSM spanking scenarios. Tea-drinking tends to feature in my real-life spanking experiences a lot - largely because it suits the occasion so much better than, say, a big ol' load of alcohol. Something that Twinings weirdly never seem to mention it in its advertising.

Just been spanked? Have a brew.

This book isn't all about the tea-drinking, of course (although I counted over a dozen separate Earl Grey-sipping incidents, so if you are as attracted to the tea-drinking aspects as I am, you won't be disappointed).

The book's heroine, Thea has a been enjoying a mutually satisfying BDSM relationship with her Dom, Tony diMarco during their frequent rendez-vous at a local Kink Club. The arrangement suits Thea very well as the private anonymous club allows her to keep the submissive side of herself entirely separate from the rest of her life.

Thea's private, public and professional life coincide when she is temporarily seconded to provide business expertise to another company and discovers that the CEO to whom she'll be reporting is none other than her sexy, very dominant playfellow, Tony. This initially sends her into a tailspin as she struggles to reconcile the very different aspects of her personality. That of being both an intelligent, successful businesswoman and also the sort of person who likes to submit to being tied up and punished.

The new situation is just as much a surprise for Tony but he handles the whole thing in a far more relaxed fashion. He is very keen to take things with Thea to the next level and - via kinky spankings, tea-making and generally being bloody lovely - persuades Thea to embark on a romantic relationship outside of the confines of their BDSM club.

While they are busy redefining the parameters of their relationship, Thea and Tony are also sorting out the various corporate challenges that face them at Something-Or-Other Industries. I found the business-side aspects the least engaging part of the book, to be honest. It's Ashe Barker's fault for making all the legal and HR aspects of the business so realistic. I've only recently managed to escape the world of Office-based employment. Corporate meetings in boardrooms do nothing for me.

First Item on the Agenda: Getting some more effective blinds.

The relationship between Thea and Tony is just wonderful, though. They are both beautifully drawn characters. Tony may be a high-powered Leader of Industry and a stern spanky Dominant but he's clearly a lovely bloke with not a whiff of Christian Grey-style dickishness about him. And Thea is great. There's always a risk when writing characters who embrace their submissive side that you can end up with a heroine who comes across as a bit weak and doormat-y. There's no chance of that here. For all her fears and reservations, Thea is a strong, confident, intelligent woman who is professionally at the top of her game. And, despite a few wobbles, she is clever enough to realise that her D/s relationship with Tony makes her a stronger - rather than a weaker - person.

Oh, and did I mention the BDSM scenes in Tell Me are very hot? And delightfully frequent?

Thea knew what he wanted, and that he would continue to punish her poor throbbing bottom until he was satisfied all resistance had gone. She concentrated on not not tightening her muscles, working to accept all that he offered.

The blows all melted into one. Her bottom was on fire, her thighs too as he dropped stroke after sizzling stroke on her unprotected skin. She would inspect later, but knew her backside must be bright crimson. The pain was relentless, building, growing, spreading, consuming her. Thea sobbed and screamed behind the gag.

The couple provide a united front dealing with their developing romantic and business relationship tackling corporate malpractice, industrial sabotage and a very nasty Revenge Porn incident. Even during their trickier moments, there is no doubt that these two people belong together.

Thea and Tony's mutually supportive and utterly kinky relationship made me feel all warm inside. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't just down to the piping hot mug of Earl Grey I was sipping while reading it.

Saturday Spankings - "The 4 D’s of domestic discipline - disobedience, disrespect, dishonesty and dangerous behavior"

Like Saturdays? Like Spanking? Well, you're in luck.

Fearsome

It's Saturday and that means it's another weekly excursion into the world of corporal punishment. This weekly bloghop is orchestrated by the fearsome Headmistress Blake. You don't want to mess with this lady. She has a paddle-shaped tardy board and everything.

This week's Saturday Spanking snippet is Corbin's Bend-themed. This because the release of the fourth season of the multi-author spanking community series is almost upon  us.

Sadly, you are just slightly too late to pre-order the fourth season. (Unless of course, you already have. In which case, well done you! You are all kinds of sorted.) However, you don't have long to wait for some Corbin's Bend Season Four Spanky action. Ruth Staunton's The Man She Wanted is on sale next Wednesday 28th October.

Ruth Staunton's previous Corbin's Bend book Learning to Live Again was absolutely delightful. I am really looking forward to reading her next contribution to the Corbin's Bend series.

My contribution to the Corbin's Bend oeuvre (yes, I did just use the word 'oeuvre' unironically and quite possibly incorrectly*, there) was Season Two's East End Girl.

Available for purchase NOW!
Actually, it's been available for bloody ages. What on earth have you been waiting for?

Logan Barrett is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He comes from a family where Domestic Discipline is the norm and has moved to Corbin's Bend in the hopes of finding the sweet, compliant, submissive woman of his dreams. Instead, he runs into loud-mouthed, opinionated, sweary Londoner, Kirsty Beale.

Logan has attempted a Domestic Discipline-based relationship in the past. It didn't end well.

Talking about Caitlin was still a painful subject. She'd seemed to be everything Logan had ever wanted in a girl - demure, well-mannered, thoughtful. When Logan had suggested that they try domestic discipline within their relationship she had agreed to give it a try. 

They had read domestic discipline websites together and put rules in place; Logan was anxious that Caitlin wasn’t agreeing to anything that she didn’t feel comfortable with and yet the domestic discipline aspect never really worked. On the occasions when Logan had punished Caitlin, rather than the punishment signaling the end of the matter, it had triggered resentful looks and a bad feeling from Caitlin that would last for days. 

During their conversations she had agreed to accept a spanking if she broke one of their main rules relating to the 4 D’s of domestic discipline - disobedience, disrespect, dishonesty, or dangerous behavior and yet whenever the time had come to administer punishments, Caitlin treated him as though he were a monster. Things had come to a head when he had admitted that inflicting pain on her turned him on. 

That was the final straw as far as Caitlin was concerned, she'd had a hard enough time accepting the spankings as it was, when she found out that administering them was a sexual turn-on for Logan, she had ended the relationship.

Do things work out better for Logan this time once he starts dating Kirsty? Well, yeah, obviously they do. It would be a bloody miserable book otherwise. 

Check out Corbin's Bend Season Four's contribution to the Saturday Spanking bloghop below. And check out everybody else while you're at it. Because they are all awesome.

Don't Tell The Children.

Spanky romantic relationships don't happen in a vacuum. Many of my fellow spanky romance writers are happily married wives with a clutch of dependent offspring.

I imagine that maintaining an enthusiastic and abundant sex life is a tricky thing when you have a herd of tiny unreliable sleepers about the place at the best of times. Does this get a whole lot trickier when there's spank-based kinkery involved?

Spanking is loud. I live in an apartment block and worry that my neighbours may have been occasionally subjected to the resoundingly loud noise of a visiting gentleman's hand repeatedly hitting my arse. I do hope not. I never hear what my neighbours are up to. I hope this is because the building is well sound-proofed. Of course, it could just be that all my neighbours are terribly, terribly quiet and I am the inadvertent kinky Nightmare Neighbour from Hell.

"Hand spankings, paddlings, canings, whippings. It went on for hours.
Honestly we had to turn the volume on the television right down so we could listen in properly."

I am a parent, too, of course. Not that I have to worry about my daughter overhearing my spanking shenanigans. She's an adult. Although she nominally lives at the same address as me, even when she's not at university she generally has better places to be. I do have to warn her when popping home unexpectedly might be a bit awkward. "You're not planning to come round next Thursday are you? No particular reason."

She knows I've been dating and she seems to be pretty happy about it. I imagine she thinks it's vanilla sex that I don't want interrupting, though. And while nobody wants to walk in and find their middle-aged mum sexing it up with a gentleman friend, I kind of think it would be worse if she came home unexpectedly and found me tied to the dining room table on the receiving end of a severe caning. Which is why I always bolt the door. Just in case.

I appreciate that locking your children out of the house isn't really a workable option when they are school-age or younger. As a single parent, I got round this by having no sex at all for a decade and a half and only finally embraced the kinky BDSM lifestyle once my daughter had buggered off to live in a different county. I don't recommend this approach, by the way.

Parents have sex. It's allowed. I have a younger sibling which means my mum and dad must have had sex at least once since I was born. It's possible that they have had sex more than once since 1974. They clearly still fancy one another. I am not going to consider it though because parents + sex = ewwwww. Nope. Not even going to think about it.

I do accept that this isn't a healthy attitude on my part. Not only do parents have sex. Frequently they have sex for reasons other than making babies.

Babette Cole's wonderful book Mummy Laid An Egg explains exactly where babies come from. It's written for children and brilliantly - while also explaining about penises and vaginas and sperm and whatnot - tells small people that Mummy and Daddy also have sex for fun. Here are some ways mummies and daddies fit together:
And while I'm delighted that kids who read this book might grow up thinking that skateboard sex, clown sex, helium balloon sex and space hopper sex are a natural part of adult interpersonal relationships, it sadly doesn't cover the option that sometimes a man and a woman who love each other very much may choose to hit one another with sturdy implements and leave a week's worth of bruises.

So, how do you manage it, kinky parents? Does every one-hour child-free window mean a quick sprint to the spanky toy bag so that you can fit in a swift bit of paddling/nipple-clamping/*insert kinky fetish-ing here* before you have to go and pick the kids up from Scouts? Do you just shrug it off if one of your offspring wanders into your bedroom at 11pm and sees Mum bent over Dad's lap with her knickers round her knees? "Go back to bed, Riley. I'm busy inspecting Mummy's bottom. It's a Grown-Up thing."

Recently, Reddit had a thread about "Things You Don't Want Your Children To Know About You". One of the responses was "That daddy and I don't go to 'dinner parties', we hit up swing clubs."

I assume they're talking about swinging rather than swing jazz, here.
Doesn't look much like a sex club, though.

Do kids need to know about their parents' sex lives? Probably not. But do young people need to know as much as possible about sex? Abso-fucking-lutely. I have always had an open dialogue with my daughter about sex, contraception, only doing things that you're OK with and never ever letting people slut-shame you. I know a frankly ridiculous amount about my daughter's sex life. I am delighted that she is she so open about it with me. She probably knows more about my sex life than is usual in these circumstances. Although she does get the vanilla PG version, to be fair.

Maybe I'm just getting the vanilla version of my daughter's sex life. That's fine. I go to munches regularly. I live in a university town so we get a lot of students attending. My daughter's university is only forty-five minutes drive from here. I have a friend who is one of the organisers for munches in my daughter's University town. He's mentioned that they they get a lot of students there too, and, for all I know, my kid might be a munch regular, I'm fine with that. If she does have a kinky side, I hope she doesn't wait until she's forty before she embraces it. As long as we're not attending the same munches or BDSM sex clubs as one another, it's fine.

Sooner or later, every parent has to have the "Where do babies come from?" conversation. And, you know what, you don't get to have it once and then wash your hands of it. You have the "Where do babies come from?" conversation frequently over many years in a variety of age-appropriate ways. And when you have a nineteen year old daughter, the conversation largely consists of you saying "Here, have all these condoms. Please don't make me a Grandma just yet."

I'm just not sure when spanking, caning, nipple clamps, butt plugs and bondage should be brought into the discussion. I don't think it was covered in any of the books I read. Parenting is a bloody tricky business.

Pansexuality

I have been discussing, elsewhere on the web, the concept of Pansexuality.

Nothing to do with this guy.

It was on a fairly vanilla non-kinky forum, and the main question was "So how is being pansexual any different from being bisexual?"

I identify as bisexual and am pretty ignorant regarding pansexuality so I thought it a pretty fair (and very interesting) question.

And as far as I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong. I would love to discuss this with someone with a better understanding of these things than me), there isn't much difference between bisexuality and pansexuality. A lot of it is down to semantics. Using the prefix "bi-" when referring to one's sexuality suggests an acceptance that one's sex is one of a limited number of options. Two options. You're male or you're female. Tick the fucking box.

Life, love, sex and gender are more complicated than that. Potential lovers could be trans, intersex or just downright refuse to align themselves to one particular gender. (Or they could be asexual, of course. Personally, I couldn't date an asexual person. I am a as-much-as-possible-sexual. It wouldn't be fair on either of us.)

Pansexuals seem to want to establish themselves as more accepting than people of other sexualities. It's a fair point I guess. Except, no it really isn't. I have done a bit of reading and it seems that "willingness to date transgender people" seems to be a pretty key point in people who identify as pansexual. Surely that carries with it an assumption that anyone who calls themselves heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual aren't OK with dating anyone transgender? When did that get decided? Did I miss another memo?

I consider myself bisexual because I am really not that bothered whether someone has a vagina or a penis. They could be entirely smooth down there like a Ken doll and that would be fine if they were interesting and funny and really into spanking.

I'm not saying this is a thing of mine, by the way.

Not only that, I actually think that everyone's at least a tiny bit bisexual. There are six billion people on the planet. Those of you who have met your "other half" probably did so at school or university or work. You probably managed to meet someone within a hundred miles of wherever you were in any case. If you subscribe to the idea that there is only one person in the world for you, you were pretty bloody lucky. I imagine that even the most loved-up of you committed, exclusive, monogamous types probably realise that there are a thousand or so people on this planet that you could have loved just as much. You don't need to go looking for them because what you have is pretty damned special. But you know, as much as you might consider yourself heterosexual or homosexual, there's got to be a chance that at least one of those thousand or so hypothetical lovers is a different sex to the one you were expecting.

One of these people wold be perfect for you.

I would potentially be up for dating someone who was transgender. It hasn't really come up so far. Although, I did have a trans woman contact me on OKCupid a few months ago. She was eighteen years old. I don't normally reply to people who are quite so far out of my preferred age range but I was intrigued by her profile picture. She had photoshopped her nose out of all existence. I checked out the rest of her pictures and about two thirds of them had big smeary blurry splodges in the middle of her face where her nose should have been. The other third showed a perfectly attractive teenage girl with an entirely reasonable nose. So, feeling all mumsy, I messaged her telling her that she didn't need to photoshop her pictures like that and that she looked lovely. (And mentioned that, by the way, she was waaay too young for me but, you know, good luck with everything. Because you know, I may be everything-sexual but I definitely don't date people younger than my daughter,) When she responded telling me she was trans, I did have a bit of a panic that my well-meaning "Just be happy with who you are!" comments were a bit insensitive.

Obviously, I think that people should be able to identify their sexuality any way they damn well please. What's the alternative? Some kind of "Sexuality Police"?

Sexuality Police

That said, there was an involuntary eye-roll when I came across the term "Demisexual". Demisexuals apparently consider an emotional attachment more important than a sexual one. Well, bully for you. That's not a sexual preference, that's a lifestyle choice. Do self-proclaimed demisexuals really think that heterosexuals and homosexuals just go around fucking people of the opposite or their own sex indiscriminately?

So, what should I be calling myself? Because as far as I can see, both 'bisexual' and 'pansexual' seem to be appropriate. Fetlife offers 'pansexual' as an option in its fairly comprehensive drop-down list. But if I decide to be pan- rather than bi- in my sexual preferences then I have removed myself from the LGBT in-group and everyone knows that's a pretty cool group to be hovering round the fringes of.

I think when it comes down to it, I have to decide what's really important in my life. And what's most important to me is being a total, fucking grammar pedant.

You see, the prefixes hetero and homo derive from Ancient Greek. (Heteros meaning 'other' and Homos meaning 'same'.) Pan (meaning 'all) is also Greek in origin.

Bi, on the other hand, is Latin. The equivalent Greek prefix is Di.

I have, therefore, decided to consider myself Disexual. For smug dictionary-based reasons. Happy to shag anyone who is as fascinated by the etymology of words as I am. I shall be emailing Fetlife and asking them to update their drop-down list forthwith.

This, apparently, is my sexuality.

Saturday Spankings - "Hand me the cane"

Saturday Spankings. Ensuring weekend spankings since ... ooh ... ages ago.

Happy spankurday fellow spank fans! Today's snippet comes from a short story that I wrote last year as part of the End of Summer Spanks Blog Hop.

It's a school-based story. As was requested by the Blog Hop organisers. I appreciate it might be a bit cheeky recycling it here but I just created a Free Short Stories page (Look! the link is right up there! Directly below the word "thinking" on my screen) so please, just humour me.

Philippa has just started a new job as a History teacher at the exclusive St Neots school. Obviously, being the twenty-first century, corporal punishment is no longer administered to the school's pupils. Philippa, however, is more than usually interested in the canes that were used on recalcitrant backsides in times gone by. Luckily, her boss seems so share her fascination.

Old School Discipline

“Do you know why I came down to the library earlier?”

“No,” said Philippa.

“After expressly telling you to shut the doors properly earlier, you managed to leave not just one but both of them ajar after you left your room. I found it impossible to work with the doors banging and came down to tell you of it.”

Embarrassment flooded her face. What an idiot she was. She had completely forgotten what he had told her about the doors. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled.

“Well, what with that and touching historic artefacts without permission, I believe you have a punishment coming. Do you agree?”

Philippa stared at the tall, gorgeous, domineering man in front of her and, terrified as she was, felt like all her Christmases had come at once.

“Yes,” she said hoarsely.

“Hand me the cane, Philippa.” 

You can read the full story here.

And remember to check out the rest of this week's awesome Saturday Spankers: