This isn’t going to be an account of my first childhood spanking. I was born in 1974, so smacking children was considered a perfectly normal thing to do back then. I’m sure I was smacked occasionally, but I don’t remember it. And anyway, this really isn’t that sort of blog.

This is about the first time I experienced a full-on consensual erotic spanking with another kinkster. And how it took me until surprisingly late in life for that to happen.

In fact, the experience was more recent than some of the posts on Tea & Spanking. (This is because the older posts here are taken from another website I set up to promote some books I’d had published (most of which are sadly out of print now) so I wasn’t setting myself up then as some kind of spanking expert. I still don’t know, to be honest, but I have had rather more experience in such things than I had then.)

This was eight years ago. I had already published two or three erotic spanking romances, but I hadn’t ever been spanked. I thought about it a lot, obviously. I had spent the previous fourteen years being completely celibate, apart from one drunken one-night-stand with a married stranger in the Woking Hilton right in the middle of that period. I regret that. Not so much because he was married, but because it interrupted what would have been an otherwise unbroken streak of celibacy.

From 26 to 40, I just wasn’t in the dating or shagging game. Before that, in my teens and early 20s, I’d flirted with the idea of BDSM in the bedroom, but I was just so shy and awkward about introducing the concept. I couldn’t even bear to say the word ‘spank’; I used to say ‘hit’ if I suggested the idea. God knows why. “Would you hit me?” sounds so much worse.

This was in the days before the World Wide Web, you understand. Hats off to anyone who did get their kink on and find other partners to do it with in the pre-internet days. I barely even had the vocabulary to describe what I was looking for. It got so much easier a decade or so later when I could research everything on my computer.

At the age of 40, I’d written several spanking romances, but I still hadn’t been spanked myself. My daughter had just gone to university, and for the first time, dating was a thing that I was giving some thought to. Not that I’d actually signed up for any dating sites. But it was beginning to occur to me that the world was my oyster when it came to that sort of thing. But, you know, I had been out of the dating game for a long time, so I was nervous about re-entering it. Not least because I’d gotten fat in the meantime. When the last time you’d shagged was when you were a size 12, the idea of getting your size 20 body naked in front of somebody else is quite daunting.

I didn’t meet C, my first spanker, on a date. It was at an erotic literary event. I certainly hadn’t gone there looking to score. I was trying to widen my social horizons, and a live-action version of the sort of community I was already involved in on Facebook seemed like the very thing.

At the end of the events, a group of us went to get food, and I steadily got drunker and drunker. (I don’t drink these days. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’ve been sober for five years. But you know, I can’t knock the booze in this instance. I’m not sure how things would have progressed as they did if there hadn’t been alcohol involved.)

I ended up inviting a fellow writer to stay the night in my hotel room. I hadn’t planned on such a thing. I’d not even shaved my legs. There was sex, certainly. The poor chap had to go off on a late-night quest to procure some condoms, aided by the helpful hotel staff, apparently. But rather, more significantly, there was spanking.

How could there not be? I was at the event in my capacity as a spanking enthusiast. We had been talking kink all day. It was the most natural thing in the world to suggest that he give my bare bottom a damn good spanking. And he did. First with his hand and then, at my behest, with his belt.

We were both much too inebriated to have been doing it, really. I became much more aware of the importance of not kinking and drinking after this. But it was all lovely. Nothing bad happened. And I don’t think I would have had the courage then to ask for what I wanted without a large quantity of pinot grigio sloshing around inside me.

The next morning I had some very satisfying stripes across my arse, a throbbing hangover, and a very nice gentleman in my bed with whom, happily, there was no ‘next morning’ awkwardness.

The details of that spanking are, for obvious reasons, a little fuzzy, but I knew I liked it, and I wanted more. C was happy to indulge me. Our second date (yes, I’m counting the impromptu drunken sleepover as a date) was far more significant. I was sober, I was looking forward to it, and we had a whole afternoon and evening to devote to kinky exploration.

In the week between date 1 and date 2, C had made it his mission to buy a cane. When he texted me about this at work, I was so overcome by kinky anticipation that I had to go outside and stand in the car park in the cold until I’d stopped blushing and had calmed down enough to go back to my desk.

I was nervous before the caning. What if I didn’t like it after all? What if, in the cold light of day, my reaction was just, “Ow! That’s no fun.”

But I did. Of course, I did. It was bloody fantastic. C and I dated for about a month. This was probably a forgettable experience for him, but for me, it was hugely significant. I’d broken my dating dry spell, but more importantly, in those weeks, I’d gotten to explore what a kinky fucker I was. He introduced me to rope bondage, nipple torture and a whole host of other delights.

I was a bit upset when he finished things. Outside of kinky exploration, we weren’t in any way compatible, so I’m not sure where I expected the relationship to go. I was ten years older than C, but in many ways, I was far less experienced. I insisted on exclusivity when we were dating because it had honestly never even occurred to me that there was any other way to do it. (I am much more flexible about such things now.)

I learnt a lot. The most important thing I learnt was that although it was previously untested, I was dead right about my spanking desires and requirements. I knew exactly what I wanted, and when I got it, I realised just how much I had always needed it. Being with someone who wants to spank me is a non-negotiable part of any future relationships.

The experience also kickstarted my dating adventures. I met a lot of interesting people (some were weirdos in a good way, some were weirdos in a good way) and enjoyed conversations, sex and, of course, lots of BDSMiness.

I’ve been with my current partner, A, for six years. He delivers the most amazing spankings. We’ve practised together so much that it’s like he can read my mind, which is handy because, you know. That is exactly what I want from a spanker.

There was never going to be any long-term future with C, my first spanker. That absolutely wouldn’t have suited either of us. But I am hugely grateful that it happened. It was, without exaggeration, a life-changing experience.