Cassandra Park

When Wes, the coordinator of the TES spanking special interest group, asked me to do a talk in front of the group on Feb. 1, he also left it up to me to pick the topic. After some hemming and hawing, I came up with “pain processing, pain acceptance.” (Here’s the link to the FetLife event page: https://fetlife.com/events/87499/v2.)

It’s a topic that’s close to my own heart. Believe me, as much as I love a hard scene, as much as I like being taken down a notch, I struggle greatly with the process. It is never easy. I am afraid. I may be shaking, breaking out in a sweat, yelling, sobbing, sometimes screaming. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I just want it to end. I am often relieved when it ends.

But then I come back for more.

There is something about pain that I need. It relieves stress and anxiety, it brings about a positive outlook, it gets me high … It sometimes makes me come. Putting myself into a situation where I “have no choice” is a joyful abdication of the responsibilities of life, the countless ways throughout my normal day where I have to be grownup and do my job and make 1,000 different decisions.

Submitting to the pain of a good spanking eventually brings me to that blissful place where I feel strong and alive.

But first I have to get through the ordeal. And it’s not easy, but I have developed a few techniques along my journey. I’m going to talk about that tomorrow (Weds, Feb. 1) at the meeting, I’ll share what some others have said about pain, and I’ll take feedback from the audience.

I hope to see many kindred spirits, the others out there — bottoms, subs, masochists, pain sluts or however you choose to label yourself. How do YOU process pain? And why do YOU do it?

A few upcoming events/announcements.

1) The deadline for short story submissions (“My First Spanking”) is Tuesday, Jan. 31 by 11:59 p.m. Click on the link at right (under “Latest News”) for details.

2) I’ll be speaking on Wednesday (Feb 1) at the TES spanking group. The topic is how masochists, bottoms and submissives process the pain of a hard spanking. If you’re in New York, please come join us. If you’re elsewhere, I welcome your thoughts on this before (or even after) the meeting.

3) My writing will be featured in an upcoming publication called “The Spanking Handbook,” a non-fiction collection of essays by various writers in the spanking scene.

More details to follow about all three of these topics… have a great week!

This post is just a quickie before bedtime; I may expand on it in the morning.

I was asked to speak at the upcoming TES spanking group on Feb. 1, and the topic I picked was something I’ve been wanting to talk about for some time — how to process the pain of a hard spanking or discipline.

I have a rough outline and my own ideas on how I process pain (sometimes, the answer is “not very well”). But I wanted to ask other bottoms, subs, masochists, etc. — how do you accept a hard scene? Do you have a preparatory ritual? Does it depend on what’s happening or the person you’re with?

I’d really love to hear others’ thoughts on this. You can respond here, on FetLife, or shoot me an email (mscassandrapark@gmail.com). I’ll probably repeat some of them here in a future blog (let me know whether or not you want your name used, and what name to use if so).

Cross posted on FetLife.

In my last post I started to write about the scene I had on Sunday with Spike_NY, my Dom until recently. I didn’t mention that after the bath brushing, after the knife play & the whipping on my inner thighs and pussy, he strapped me with three different straps, the pinnacle being his scary razor strop. Fantasy objects meet reality. It ain’t easy… But there was a reason Spike was my Dom, and there is a reason I still like playing with him. He pushes my boundaries. He creates scary scenarios. He makes me take things I am petrified of. You’re going to use THAT? THERE? Oh, fuck! I am not some super masochist. I don’t lie back & say, “Bring it on.” I am scared. I don’t know if I can take it. I DON’T think I take it well. It sometimes reduces me to a panicky, blubbering mess. It’s at those times, when I don’t say “red” and my top surges forward, that the magic starts to happen. It doesn’t look like magic. Like I said I may be struggling, I may be hating it. On Sunday I was screaming quite a bit. He took a few seconds break, perhaps, & kept going. The whip struck my thighs, my mound, played with the clothespins but didn’t knock any off, at first. I had this hopeful notion in my head that perhaps the clothespins would block the whip from striking my pussy. Wishful thinking. When it first touched down I yelled. No, he’s not doing this to me, he won’t do more … And another scream as it hit the target again, lightening on my cunt. Unbearable, unbearable… I am not a tough girl, I am not … but I am not saying red. The whipping continues. At one point Spike got impatient at the progress, as far as removing the clothespins, and he simply reached down and ripped a handful off all at once. The zipper was not as painful as the whipping, and if it meant I wouldn’t be whipped as long, I was grateful. I couldn’t escape or turn over, but some strikes made me sit straight up and roar. I was encased in the straitjacket & hood, and believe me, I was sweating. It’s hard to think much about anything beyond the pain, while it’s happening. It’s only afterward that I feel high, ecstatic, grateful & full of admiration about how he had pushed me. I felt so close to him, felt a kinship. The two sides of the coin, melded together. I’ve mentioned before that there are only a handful of people who can do this to me. By “can do,” of course I mean “i allow to.” Any garden-variety sadist can reduce a sub to tears. I need them to understand, to have an inkling of what I’m going through … but also, when the scene’s over and the toys are put away, I need them to care about me & I need to care about them.

I posted some pics on FetLife from the session I did on Sunday with my former Dom, Richard (Spike_NY on FetLife). And I wanted to share them here, as well. It is now Tuesday morning and I’m still processing the scene, and still buzzing a little bit from it.

Spike and I played very briefly at a party last weekend, but we hadn’t played privately since December, since we decided to call our D/s relationship quits. I know I haven’t talked that much about that, either, because I wasn’t ready to say much in public. Truth is, things are going well. We are still talking a lot, but no one’s pressuring anyone else. I think we are really morphing into a good friendship. My feelings of jealousy about his other play partner/sub are dissipating as well. I don’t have to share in public now, and it makes it so much easier. It wasn’t even sharing play that had bothered me, it was a feeling that my submission wasn’t special. Truth is, his other girl likes some kinds of play that I don’t enjoy, and vice versa.

I like pain, I like being pushed into taking pain. The clothespins on my inner thighs and labia hurt, but after the initial pinch they melded into a mild throbbing. It’s hard to tell from this pic, but he’d put me into a straight jacket and had put a leather hood over my head, which buckled securely on. He blindfolded me and then shoved a leather gag into my mouth.

I think my scream were pretty audible, even through the gag, when he began to whip my inner thighs and pussy. He was using this thing called a dragon’s tongue, which feels very much like a single tail (I had thought it was a single tail, until he told me later). The pain is very harsh, very much like the single tail whip. Maybe technically it’s wrong to call a dragon’s tail a “whip,” but I was, in effect, being whipped, on a very, very sensitive part of my anatomy.

I was already sore. Prior to this segment of our play date, he’d used a hairbrush and a bathbrush on my ass. Yes, yes, I’m “into” domestic discipline, I’m “into” spanking. As anyone who’s into spanking knows, the hairbrush alone can be one of the nastiest toys around. I personally find it harder to take than a caning. My brush was hard, polished wood, with a slightly convex surface, so that the point of impact is very very small and concentrated. When he switched to the bath brush the impact increased. That implement is thicker and has a longer handle to allow much harder strokes. Spike used it on me while I was making his bed (he likes me to do a few chores when I visit) and it felt brutal.

He laughed and says, “Don’t be a baby!” This is a phrase he’s used a lot in our play, so I actually made him a t-shirt with that saying on it — and he was wearing it on Sunday, to my amusement. My amusement had left the building, however, during the bath brushing. I know he doesn’t really think that I’m a baby. I can actually take quite a bit. I just don’t often take it quietly. I can’t say there’s ever been an occasion that I’ve taken a bath brushing quietly. I will yelp and twitch and eventually cry or scream if pushed hard and long enough. His was a tease, he pushed me just enough to have me jumping and crying out, but then let me focus on finishing up the bed.

The straightjacket, the clothespins, the dragon tail were what he’d planned as the main course. … um, oh, yeah, there was this little bit of knife play first.
This was a sharp knife. He poked me with it a few times, inspiring some vocalizing on my part. I was already bound in position on the bed but had some mobility. I froze when I felt his fingers inside me, guiding it into my pussy. He told me later he only pushed it as far as his fingers could reach. Then he says, “Don’t move.” I was breathing softly. Moving was the last thing I wanted to do. He took a few pictures. (I appreciate that; it’s nice to have memories of intense scenes). I remember at the time thinking in my head, “I wish he would use the knife after he takes it out. I wish he would carve his initials, or maybe “Sir,” onto my stomach or thigh. I think a lot of things when I’m that floating subby place.

I’ll continue this shortly with more details about the whipping and what followed…