What Does One DO To A Naughty Girl?

One spanks her, of course, at least in this writer’s worldview. “Naughty girls are spanked, and all girls are naughty.” That’s a tag line I used in back cover notes on one of my books, but please stay with me because there is more to this ramble than a belaboring of the obvious.

A few weeks ago Michael suggested I do a riff similar to the ‘A Bottom By Any Other Name…’ bit, only he said I should talk about the words we spankophiles use when we discuss our favorite activity. So I did.

I wrote almost 5000 words on the subject, which took about a week and a half, owing to extensive, jaw-clenching rewrites, and THEN, just as I had got to a point where I was fairly well pleased with what I’d written my steam-powered computer crashed and burned – okay not literally, Michael – and very nearly gave up the ghost, just as I clicked to save the final draft.

As you can imagine, I was totally frustrated and ready to fling this mini Micron off my balcony into the canyon below, but I persevered and got the blasted thing back up and running, more or less. The draft, however, was nowhere to be found after the dust had settled.

What does one DO with a naughty computer? One gets the damned thing fixed and carries on as best one can, I suppose, even though it’s taken me some goodly while to get past my anger and reconstruct this ramble. Fortunately for me naughty girls are much more fun to deal with than computers, like I have to tell anyone here that, so I cobbled together a few thousand more words regarding some terms we use in reference to the fun we have dealing with them.

I began to write this, way back when, in response to a list of terms Michael sent me. All these words, these activities, these things we do, or think about doing, or write about doing, end in –ing. An –ing word can be a verb or a noun, depending on its usage.

When one says, “He was spanking her bum,” one uses the past participle of the verb ‘to spank.’ If one were to say, “He gave her a hard spanking on her bare bottom,” then ‘spanking’ is a noun, a gerund. So all the words I discuss below can be considered not only the action but also the activity itself, the ‘thing’ we’re doing. I tell you this because in the first version I listed the terms thusly:
‘Beating (past participle of ‘to beat’); beating (gerund) …’

Doing it that way is not only pedantic and maybe pretentious, but also tedious to type so I won’t do it this time around, if that’s all right with you. Also, I sort of promised SOMEbody I would make this bit somewhat less encyclopedic. (Hi, Princess!)

Further, we will take as read my admonition against using the same word over and over again that appeared in the ‘A Bottom By Any Other Name …’ ramble and carry on from there. You did read the ‘Bottom’ ramble, didn’t you? If not, here you go:

http://devlinoneill.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/a-bottom-by-any-other-name/

We’ll wait while you catch up with the rest of the class.

You’re back? Splendid. And just by the way, I don’t often use –ing words when I write novels or stories, or –ly words either, because they slow a sentence. Occasionally one might have a reason for slowing down a sentence, for instance if one wants the reader to fully and completely appreciate the squirming, heart-pounding, deliriously tender ouchiness in a girl’s bottom, but one should do this by design.
(I am NOT blathering, Princess – this is important professor-y stuff for the benefit of our readers who want to be writers, so just hush and go find some squirming, heart-pounding, deliriously delightful photos to go with this rant, okay? There’s a good Kitty Eyes.)
Where was I? Oh yeah … the words …

BEATING – I don’t use this one often except in the bodice rippers. It carries too much vanilla baggage to be equated with spanking, at least for me, as in, ‘beat up,’ ‘beat down,’ ‘a savage beating,’ etc. I never ‘beat’ a girl, except perhaps as one ‘beats’ a tattoo on a conga drum, although a girl in real life, or more usually in fiction, might accuse her spanker of beating her. Then of course it’s up to the spanker to dissuade her of this illusion, and to convince her that she was in fact spanked as any naughty girl ought to be, and not in any way beaten.

There are, however, places in the world where the term does equate to spanking, though only one instance I can cite with surety. I worked in a bank in Boise, and one of my colleagues, a very pretty young woman with a nicely plump bottom that I’d not have minded having across my lap, once told me about her two mid-teenaged kids, a boy and a girl, who had come home after curfew and then been sassy to her, or at best less than completely apologetic, when she confronted them.
Normally I keep my predilections to myself in the vanilla public, but she acted so distraught regarding the incident I may have overreacted, and I said something like, “If they were mine, those kids would have gone to bed with sore bottoms.”

She sighed and shook her head, and said, “I know I should beat them ….”

A client interrupted our conversation at that point, but I got the idea she could no more have ‘beat’ or even spanked her kids than fly to the moon, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the ease with which she used the term. I spent relatively little time in Idaho, only five years, but I picked up on several linguistic variations. Perhaps ‘beat’ is consistently the equivalent of ‘spank,’ or perhaps not, but I am absolutely sure that the word ‘rig’ in local parlance always describes any sort of wheeled vehicle, from a bright red convertible to a banged up Range Rover to a shiny new GMC pickup to an 18-wheeler, or a John Deere tractor hitched to a hay wagon for that matter. But since I no longer live in Idaho, I’ll say ‘spank’ when I mean ‘spank’ in most cases, and ‘car’ and ‘truck’ where appropriate.

BIRCHING and CANING – I will address these together, since the implements are similar, and in any case what is meant by the terms is ‘a spanking with this object,’ at least usually. Canes and birch rods also can be applied to other parts of the body – the back, the hands, or the legs for instance – but in my circle these are applied exclusively to a girl’s bottom.
Birches, or birch rods, are simply bundles of switches (Merry Christmas, Princess!) designed to impart an outrageous level of ouchiness to a girl’s behind, and should therefore be applied cautiously. Then too, the switches should be fresh, or else the tips will break off and carom back into the spanker’s face, as Gwen can attest. I wrote a couple of birchings, more or less, in Maid Volume 1, first with Lisa and then with Beth as recipients, but they were nowhere nearly as harsh as some I have heard about or read. A birching is meant to hurt a lot, in historical real life and in much of the genre fiction I’ve seen, and to cause welts, bruises and even bleeding.

I have seen a few dramatic birchings, i.e., performed for the camera, and I must admit to approach/avoidance issues when viewing them. Lupus Pictures has done several videos of such punishments, and they truly are punishing, and for me it’s like watching a train wreck – I can’t look away, though I’m always disturbed and yet amazed at how anyone can absorb that kind of brutality. I have it on good authority, however, that the serious, skin-welting sessions the Lupus models endure aren’t given all at once, and even though the damage to their bottoms is quite real, the girls are given breaks during the ordeal and then the video is spliced for continuity.

On the other hand, the worst depiction of the procedure I ever witnessed was in a general release film version of ‘Moll Flanders.’ The heroine was bent over a table, fully dressed, and a woman beat her on the back with a long bundle of thick branches. There was nothing the least bit erotic in the scene, which apparently was the director’s intent. At least the Lupus folks bare their girls’ bottoms – well, they expose quite a bit more than that in fact – so despite their excesses they have that saving grace. And to give them their due, I did see one Lupus production where the Headmaster used a birch, a spray of slender twigs actually, and rather than bash the girl’s bottom as if with a club, he whisked the implement down and across so that just the ends of the switches struck the flesh, which caused a scratch-and-sting sensation, I would imagine, rather than the more common whack-and-yowtch!

Many of the same comments as above will apply to ‘caning,’ although here I will mention that both ‘birching’ and ‘caning’ are very British (perhaps even English – hi, Goatweed!) terms, borrowed informally by American spankophiles though never used officially in America, at least to my knowledge. Okay, maybe I didn’t do my homework, but I like to think that we in the Colonies left all that behind (!) after the Revolution. Sure, kids still got spanked, were given corporal punishment, or “got a licking” as Tom Sawyer did at school, and probably another one at home when the kid’s Ma and Pa found out about it, and on rare and limited occasions they still might, but canings and birchings are like totally Ancien Regime, ‘K?

So here in the States, jumping ahead in the list a few entries, the switch replaced the cane for use on naughty bottoms, large, small, or intermediate, female or male. A SWITCHING can be done with any limber twig, plucked from a tree or bush, or found in the backyard or on the sidewalk, although it’s my understanding that the very worst sort of switch is the one a girl is told to go and get. When a girl’s Dad, or her professor, or Mr. Swayne, or Uncle Devlin for that matter, tells a girl to go cut him a switch, she knows things are going to get icky and ouchy and awful real soon, once he has her bent over with her skirts up and her panties down.

But then too a switching can take different forms, just as might a caning or birching. In real life I am not fond of these implements, mostly because I prefer using my hand, but a short switch, cane, or even birch – something that can be applied to a girl’s bare tushy while she’s lying across my lap – isn’t out of the question.

The problem arises when I am forced by the length of any implement to put the girl at arm’s distance in order to apply it. I mentioned in my ‘Position Ramble’ a few months ago that this isn’t my preference, to have a girl so far from me, let alone to have her bent over a desk, her bare bottom the strike zone whereat I hurl a sidearm slider, because that isn’t me as a spanker.

Still I am impelled to talk about other preferences than my own, and there have been occasions when my own taste hasn’t been uppermost in my mind, so switching, caning, birching, again all variants of spanking but with a tool, are and have been for centuries methods used in our distinct activity.

FLOGGING – This term is almost vanilla in its application, except for the advent of ‘floggers,’ which are modern, custom-made whips, cats-of-many-tails, that when used on a bare heinie and other girlish anatomy can imbue anything from a light sting to a seriously ouchy and welty heat. Daria swears by the deerskin model, though I suspect she also may swear at it, and perhaps even at its user, on occasion.
Of course the vanilla usage of the term imparts a much more brutal and visceral image – bloody sailor’s backs in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” prison punishments like the ones in “I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,” the vicious caning of the hero in “If,” or name your own poison. I’m not fond of the term, though I used it several times in the bodice rippers. I couldn’t very well help myself since it’s so very English, and I set both bodice rippers in England. Also, in English schoolboy parlance, a ‘flogging’ can be anything from six of the best with a cane on his bum for cheating on an exam, to a few smacks on his hand with a pandy bat for staring out the window. This applies to English schoolGIRLS as well, but to a lesser extent.
So why is the word ‘flog’ a synonym for ‘sell’ in British slang, as in, “Nigel pinched a lorry full of tellies and flogged ‘em to his mates”? Perhaps now that Goatweed is hanging about I’ll get an answer to what in the original version of this rant amounted to a rhetorical question.

I should mention here that Twain used the terms ‘flogging,’ ‘thrashing,’ and even ‘flaying’ when he referred to Tom Sawyer’s punishments, although in dialog Tom usually called what happened a ‘licking.’ Twain never was too descriptive of these beatings, but my assumption has always been that Tom and other children he characterized were spanked on their bottoms with switches and other implements, perhaps more severely than we would like to think about, and I have always hoped that the use of ‘flogging’ and ‘flaying’ was Twain’s hyperbole.

HIDING – “A good hiding…” is a phrase I used often in the bodice rippers, and elsewhere, instead of “a good spanking,” simply because I needed a less modern idiom than spanking. (If anyone can show me where Shakespeare or Marlowe used the word ‘spank’ other than as a nautical term, I’ll send him the complete works of Devlin O’Neill, autographed and inscribed.)

The phrase derives from the fact that the process of tanning an animal hide involves the beating of the skin. This term is unusual for this listing in that it isn’t a verb – one can’t really write, ‘I’m going to hide you, young lady’ without the verb being totally ambiguous – so the phrase ‘tan your hide’ became a more than acceptable substitute for ‘give you a spanking.’ But regardless of its current anachronistic appearance, the phrase still is very much in common usage, or was fairly recently in Idaho.

Some while after the previous Idaho episode I mentioned, I moved to a different bank and happened to work with a very young, very pretty, and very (usually) professional woman. Okay, she was 19 going on 27, cute as a Yorkshire terrier but without the facial hair, and almost as cuddly – or so I thought from a respectable distance. In any case, one day I was deeply immersed in whatever I was doing and this cuddly little cutie turned from her desk in front of me and asked a question that I thought I answered calmly and completely, but then a few seconds later she turned again, and in a very bratty tone asked the same thing again, and then followed up by saying, ‘or are you gonna tan my hide?’

I can be a curmudgeon, I can be cranky when I have six dozen incomplete loan files on my desk, but I do not ignore junior staff when they ask questions, and honest-to-Pete I have no idea where that ‘tan my hide’ remark came from, so the little girl was obviously operating from her own agenda and perhaps yanking my chain for her own amusement. And of course I did want to tan her hide, since she had easily the cutest denim-clad tushy in a lending center replete with more or less desirable young women, but I simply answered her question again and went back to work. I can only hope she was as disappointed as I was, but that’s how it goes, and we did have a second chance, sort of.

The lending center eventually was absorbed into another, i.e. shut down, and all the employees were under pressure to close the office and tie up loose ends, and one day toward the end of our tenure the little miss was sitting at her desk about a half hour before quitting time. I had things under control, more or less, and she was obviously, to me, tired from all the craziness and upset, and ready to go home, so I told her to do so. We didn’t punch a time clock so that wasn’t out of line.

I said, “Hey, get your stuff together and get out of here.”

She said, “I’ll stick around and help.”

I said, “No, really, go home. You’re tired. We’ll hit it again in the morning.”

She pouted and got a bit huffy, and said, “I can’t go ‘cause it’s not time yet.”

The huffiness did it for me, and I said, “Okay, you can do this one of two ways – get your stuff together and get out of here, or I’ll tan your hide and THEN you get your stuff together and get out of here.”

Her eyes widened most adorably, and she bit her lip and blushed as she turned toward her desk, and said, “I think I’ll get my stuff together and get out of here.”

Yeah, I was disappointed though not surprised, because there were several female witnesses close by, every one of whom laughed, a bit giddily to my ears. I liked Idaho.

But back to the discussion of terms, a HIDING and a TANNING are more or less equivalent, although I don’t recall ever using the latter, even in the bodice rippers.

LARRUPING – This one wasn’t on Michael’s list and that isn’t surprising, city boy that he is, and I can see my Princess’s eye roll (dramatic eye roll) at this moment, as in, ‘Oh boy, more Texas stuff,’ and of course she’s right. ‘Larrup’ actually is a word, and it means exactly what it sounds like – “To beat; flog; thrash.” – though the only usage I’ve ever heard had to do with a horse’s rump and a coiled lariat, and I have never written any form of the word before now, not for publication at any rate. But I might, given the right characters and the right circumstance, for instance:

“Gwennie Mae, where in tarnation do you think you’re goin’ dressed like that?”

“Like what? Oh, Daddy, they’re just shorts, for cryin’ out loud!”

“You’re gonna be cryin’ out loud if you don’t get back to your room and put on somethin’ decent. God’s sakes, girl, I could see half your heinie when you bent over!”

“Nowhere near half, that’s ridiculous, and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with daisy dukes, and anyways all the girls are wearin’ um, and….”

“Don’t you backtalk me, little girl! Now you go do what I said before I skin down what there is of them britches and give you a larrupin’ you ain’t never gonna forget!”

“Dang it, I’m 18 and I ain’t a little girl anym … okay, okay! Set back down, okay? Please? No, Daddy, not the belt!”

It’s all about the context, you see.

LASHING – Very similar to WHIPPING, this term has many of the same problems that FLOGGING poses for me. It is excessively violent in most cases, though I have used it on occasion, mostly in the bodice rippers, and a few times in sci-fi pieces.

It has the further disadvantage of too many alternate definitions. In nautical terms, ‘lashing’ is to tie a furled sail to a spar. (And just by the way, ‘whipping’ is what you do with twine when you put an eye-splice on a hemp line – wrap the twine round and round at the base of the eye to make it permanent.) And again, leave it to the British to use it colloquially to mean something else, as in “lashings and leavings,” indicating “more than enough and leftovers too.”

But what I could do very well without is that annoying Dear Abby-ism as a mea culpa – ‘so give me ten lashes with a wet noodle.’ If I never hear that again it will be too soon.

PADDLING – Apart from its canoeing and kayaking applications, this word is almost universally accepted as an alternative term for a spanking on the bottom – if you apply a paddle anywhere else, that would be CLUBBING, and we don’t even want to go there. (Unless it’s ladies’ night. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.)
I find the word quite useful, especially in schoolgirl scenarios, although nieces, girlfriends, maids, executive assistants, and the occasional naughty nun aren’t immune from the sting of a hard, flat paddle. As stated in other rants, I prefer a small leather one because I can apply it while the girl is over my lap, but a PADDLING can be administered with the recipient in a variety of poses, from the classically simple schoolroom hands on her knees stance, to elaborate and fantastic bondage-and-apparatus positions.

I created, in the literary sense, several of these devices, such as the paddling stocks in ‘Corporal Idaho,’ and the Mexican jail punishment block in ‘A Maid for All Seasons – 1,’ all of which are specifically designed to present a girl’s bottom conveniently and more or less immovably to receive its punishment. A paddling, and indeed a spanking with any implement, usually involves a higher discomfort level for a girl, so again, caution is strongly recommended, and as always, communication lines always should be kept open.

SLIPPERING – This is another veddy British word for spanking, and one that has been warmly (!) adopted by American practitioners of the art. In its most basic usage, it refers to employing a house slipper or light gym sneaker, both common items in schools and homes, to smack a girl’s bottom when more intensity than a few swats of the palm is indicated. However, the use of a common shoe, especially one that’s been walked around in, is less than desirable simply because of the dirt issue, which is why I, and Professor Travis, and Michael all have leather shoe soles, never trod on, which only and ever have been used to raise a hot, stinging glow in girls’ sit-upons.

So in essence, a SLIPPERING is merely a PADDLING with a specific implement, except of course for certain British variations. (I really am not picking on you, Goatweed, so bear with me.)

My favorite movie of all time, “The Man Who Would Be King,” is based on a Rudyard Kipling story of that title. In the movie, Peachy and Danny blackmail the Rajah of Degumbar over an incident in which the Rajah hung his mother-in-law over a beam, ‘filled her with red peppers and FLOGGED her to death.’ In Kipling’s story, the Rajah ‘SLIPPERED her to death.’ The movie was filmed for American release, and John Huston, the director, undoubtedly realized that his audience would squint in incomprehension at someone being spanked to death with a shoe. On the other hand, I have to guess that Kipling engaged in veddy British understatement, and that his audience would understand that by ‘slippered’ he meant to imply a much more intense sort of beating.

And just BTW and totally off topic, Danny was played by Sean Connery and Peachy by Michael Caine. Huston originally planned to make this film 20 years earlier, with Humphrey Bogart as Peachy and Clark Gable as Danny, but they both got sick and died. I doubt that version would have been any better, though I would have liked to hear Bogie fake an English accent.

SPANKING – As in, ‘a spanking breeze;’ ‘a brand spanking new 1992 Firebird;’ and that oft-quoted truism, ‘a spanking a day keeps the doctor away.’ (Not you, Dr. Ken.)

Spanking is … what? The most fun a guy can have with his pants on? He doesn’t necessarily keep his pants on but I nearly always do, simply to keep from being distracted too much by other issues. Spanking is good exercise even if you’re not flailing away like a trip-hammer with the safety off. I always go for the controlled burn, warmth without overheating, both in my arm and in the girl’s tushy, and that takes mental control, strategy and tactics – which bit of her bottom to spank when, how hard and how many times – not to mention the ongoing challenge of repartee and/or scolding that accompanies a good over-the-lap session.

Spanking, for certain girls, is the best, most direct, most honest way to show you love them. Not all girls get that, of course, though most understand on some level that even your spanking threats are meant in only the kindest and most nurturing way. Just don’t push it. Spanking is intimate attention, one person to another, so use your common sense and sensibility, and keep your hands off her tushy until you’re absolutely sure the attention is welcome.

Spanking can be punishment; it can hurt. Use your common sense there too, and don’t go overboard, or forget to forgive her and hold her and love her after it’s done. Spanking clears the air, cleans the slate, and offers a new beginning. Take advantage of it.

STRAPPING – This is just spanking with a strap, of leather, rubber, or even some weird new pliable plastic product. I like leather, so I’ll throw TAWSING in here too. A tawse is just a short strap split into two or more narrow fingers designed to more easily curl into a young lady’s tender cleft. That’s what I always thought anyhow, but as Dr. Ken implied recently, I’m a bit of a pervert.

And of course I always smile a little when women comment on some big, STRAPPING man, and wonder if she recognizes the double entendre. But a strapping can really sting, burn, and hurt, especially if it’s of the schoolroom or prison sort. There’s little difference between a strap and a whip if the user’s intent truly is to punish, to hurt, to leave memorable marks. So of course when a girl gets a strapping from me, she can always count on none of those things – though perhaps a little extra aloe lotion and arnica to erase any accidental tramlines.

WALLOPING – There was a time when I thought this was a great synonym, actually euphemism, for spanking. That was when I began to write the first bodice ripper and was casting about for a word more suited to the time than spanking, and I have to say that Lady Bess and some other young women got walloped quite a bit in the early chapter drafts. I got the word from ‘My Fair Lady,’ Prof. Higgins’ threats that Mrs. Pierce, the housekeeper, would wallop Eliza if she didn’t work hard and behave herself. Fortunately my coauthor hated the term and called me on it, so no one in any of my books ever receives a walloping. Enough said.

WHIPPING – Like FLOGGING, LASHING and THRASHING, this word has a myriad of meanings, none of which I find particularly suitable in reference to what I like to do in regards a young lady’s bottom. This isn’t to say I abhor whips and whipping – to each his own after all – I simply have other preferences. But like BEATING, the concept of WHIPPING is perceived differently depending on regional usage.

I grew up in the Deep South, as SOMEone frequently reminds me, and there is a significant age gap between me and my younger sisters. A few years ago I heard one of them tell the story about the last WHIPPING she and another sister, who is not quite two years older, got from our mother. She related this story at a fairly recent family reunion, and it was news to me, since it happened after I moved away from home. But I had to hide a smile at her use of the term, since I’m quite familiar with our mother’s version of corporal punishment.

In any case the two girls, aged around 7 and 9 at the time, had gone to visit a neighbor down the block without bothering to say anything about it to Mom. This transgression occurred during a much different era, in a very peaceful middle-class suburb, which was perhaps even safer and certainly much quieter since my teenaged cronies and I moved away, but the fact remained that the girls hadn’t told Mom where they were going, and she was worried at their absence.

When they finally did return, the girls were marched to their shared bedroom, made to bend over the bedside, and received several sharp smacks of Mom’s hand to the seats of their shorts, along with a fairly intense scolding. My sister said they both cried, but that it was more embarrassing than painful, which I recall as a hallmark of Mom’s punishments. Perhaps I’ve repressed the memory, but I don’t believe that, while growing up, I ever thought of my own or anyone else’s parental discipline as WHIPPING. Then again, one reason I left the Deep South was that I speak the language so poorly.

That is all.

Devlin out.