In the stories, this is how it works.

There are two people, each with a back story, often both troubled, her with some major character flaws that are childish (lack of self control, no sense of self preservation, an inability to think though consequences) but not overwhelming. She does not, for example, have a vile temper that frays at the most imperceptible of provocations; or as my favourite line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez reads, “flatulence that could kill flowers.

His flaws are the loneliness of the long time repressed male, and slightly too much rugged sexuality for any reasonable girl to be able to resist. He is over big, over powerful and the kind of controlling that would normally necessitate a short term stay in a mental facility.
They meet, and theirs is an unrequited or unrecognised passion. She expresses her flaws; he saves her from herself and spanks her. This pattern is repeated with occasion acknowledgments of his intense isolation and the burdens of responsibility until the author has completed the word count and a portrait is painted of a blissful, sore bottomed future.

Do I mock these tales? I do not.

I have sought them out and devoured them for as long as I can remember. They are burned in my brain, scenes selected at will for my own personal perusal when I need inspiration (not for writing, you understand.)

But I thought it worth mentioning that none of it is quite like that. I would like it to be.

This is what it is like.

They meet. They talk, laugh and circle each other warily.
Between them they have enough character flaws to people a small colony but no flaw too dangerous or burdensome. They work hard and do things like the washing up and read work emails that make them sigh and say, “No, nothing” in a clear expression of irritation when the other asks if anything is wrong.

They leave piles of clothes in the other’s house. They engage in spankings that are tremendous and sometimes too short because they can’t remember when they supermarket is coming to deliver or because they promised to meet friends in the pub.

They share their little histories. They share them in asides, short stories over coffee; tales of “When I went to France”; snippy explanations of why they don’t like the tea things set out like that; and then the other kind. The kind in the dark when skin to skin they explain how they really got here, their genuine journey, the one they tell only a few times in their lives.

In the stories this comes out after a car accident, or the barn burning down or when he arrives home to see a police car parked outside. He goes pale with fear, sorts out whatever the incident was and after checking her safety, he spanks her with such thoroughness that any number of clichés might be true. She cries. They understand each other. The past hurt is resolved, understood, a line is drawn under it and they make love. (Not regular making love but the kind that has a sound track and you could film it without seeing any wobbly bits.)

How beautiful. How magical. How completing of oneself.

I have waited, me, the reader of spanking fiction for this moment. I have used words like, “yearn” and “finally understood.”

This is what I know. When you finally let him in, after spankings, shared meals, at least one minor illness, several arguments, some late working nights, some serious discussions of how one tidies a kitchen and the other rituals of getting to know someone, then there is the moment.

There is seldom an exciting prelude, just some time and a feeling of trust and it happens. You tell him all the rest, well not all of it, but a significant real truth, the personal account, the heart truth. And, if you have found a hero of spanking reality he does not take you over his knee and spank you until the pain goes away. He does not make a speech about how all the pain is over now. He does not withdraw leading you to seek him out on a stormy night days later.

He listens. He hears how you hurt. He cries with you; big, strong, manly tears because he feels it too.

But later, when you squabble about the dishwasher or leaving towels on the bed he spanks you; a hard little spanking, and he squeezes you extra tight afterwards.

That’s how it really is, just so you know.

Would you like another?