25 Songs, 25 Days: Babe, I’m on Fire

Day 06: A song that reminds you of a best friend

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Babe, I’m on Fire | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

To understand Samantha you have to understand one thing; she was a spanking aficionado. She passionately loved everything and anything to do with spanking. She liked looking at spanking art, adored watching spanking movies and cherished being spanked herself. She wasn’t a pain slut. That’s not why she liked being spanked. She liked being spanked because she had a genetic urge to have someone smack her (as she called it) naughty little bottom.

So when we met in Adelaide, when I was lost to the nightmare of a manic phase, and obsessed with slapping as many female posteriors as I could, it was a match made in heaven. Within hours of us meeting she had manipulated herself over my knee for a playful spanking session in the middle of an Adelaidian park. But then she left to continue her travels and my manic self moved on to finding another play partner.

Four months later I was sitting in front of a computer. My manic phase had long since ended and I was consumed with a nightmarish depression. I was homeless. I was destitute. I was lost. Waiting for me when I logged onto Facebook was a message and a friend request. Both were from someone named Samantha Campbell. I had no idea who she was or how she found me, so when I read the message, a beautifully written question as to whether I was the same Andrew Lake who spent the evening with her in Adelaide, I was taken aback. I had little to no memory of Adelaide, especially the time I spent when I was manic. I didn’t accept the friend request, but I did respond to her message, asking for more information. Within days she had responded with an equally beautifully written tale of bottom slapping, endless conversation, spank bets and spanking. She even included photos; photos of me, with a ravishingly beautiful woman she identified as herself. After reading her latest missive, I accepted her friend request.

For months we communicated with each other online, exchanging emails, Facebook posts, comments and endless MSN chats. She filled in my missing memories of Adelaide, we discussed my mental health and dissected what I had been writing on my blog. But we also did other things. We chatted about our mutual love of spanking, we indulged our fantasies with cyber-spanking sessions and shared personal, intimate fantasies we had both been harboring for years. Through these online sessions we became firm friends. She was often the first person I thought of when waking up in my park, and the last person I thought of as I bedded down with my blanket for the night. Unlike every other friend I’d ever had, Samantha knew me, intimately, because I hid nothing from her. Not my mental health. Not my fantasies. Not my kink.

Upon returning to the UK in early 2008 I knew what I wanted to do. Samantha was back in Stirling, studying fashion and design, so I wanted to see her. I wanted us to be face to face, sharing ourselves in person, instead of through fibre-optic cabling. It took months to organise. Months that we spent continuing to chat online, email each other almost daily and getting to know each other on deeper, murkier levels. Nothing she learned about me seemed to phase her. She just accepted it. Accepted me. In April of that year we finally matched our calendars and I jetted off to Glasgow for a reunion with someone I had gotten to know so well. It was awkward at first, but within hours we were comfortable around each other, gleefully playing off each others words, happily teasing and playing in the cultural capital of Scotland.

And no reunion with Samantha would have been complete without spanking playing a pivotal role. She had written to me before we met, asking if I would be willing to help her fulfill a lifelong dream. It took me a while to come around, to be confident enough within myself to perform her desire, but I agreed. And in a hotel, late one evening, I took Samantha over my knee and gave her a jolly good spanking. It wasn’t abuse. It wasn’t assault. It was two consenting adults sharing in a mutual passion. And she (and I) loved every second of it.

In order to mask the noise of our indulgence we hooked up an iPod to play music throughout our session. It was Samantha, always with a heavy sense of irony, who chose the song. And it is a song that – no matter when or where I hear it – reminds me of the time I spanked Samantha Campbell.

It is the anthem of our friendship. A song that fills me with warmth, happiness, joy and contentment. A song that reminds me that, no matter what, it is the people we meet who have the greatest influence on our life. Samantha accepted me for who I was. She didn’t try to change me. She didn’t want me to pretend to be someone different. She wanted me to be Andrew; mental health, kink and all.

That’s why she will always be one of my best friends. If not my bestest friend.

You can read more about my friendship with Samantha in these posts:

~ One Night in Adelaide ~
~ One Day in Glasgow ~
~ Dearest Samantha ~
~ [NSFW] If you care about what other people think, you will always be their prisoner [NSFW] ~
~ [NSFW] I don’t have a dirty mind, I have a sexy imagination [NSFW] ~

[NSFW] My kink and its effect on my mental health

I’ve always been interested in the world of kink. How it relates to our personality. How it reflects on who we are. How it impacts on various aspects of our life. And how, if any, it links to the world of mental health. For someone who has battled mental illness since he was a teenager, and for someone who has struggled with his kinky self for even longer, the world of kink and how it relates to mental illness fascinates me.

In this post I ruminate on how my kinky self has impacted, or been impacted by, my various mental illnesses. From the ups and downs of bipolar through C-PTSD via social anxiety and self harm, I cast an eye over how kink has affected my life.

Given the subject matter, it should go without saying that this post is not for familial eyes. So any members of my family who just happen to stumble upon this post, please respect my need for privacy and read no further. Everyone else, feel free to join me on my journey with kink! :)

[NSFW] Butt is it Art or Porn III: The Spanking Art Edition

Today’s prompt in the 30 Day Self Harm Awareness Challenge asks
What is something that makes you the most happy?

This post isn’t going to be for everyone. Some of you may look upon it and think oooo, I’m getting all sorts of fuzzy warm feelings inside, whilst others will look upon it and think that’s absolutely disgusting, I’m going to write a strongly worded letter to this deviant! But that’s kinda the point. It’s meant to be divisive. It’s meant to create debate.

Now I’ll be honest. I didn’t actually write this post. This post is a collaboration between two of my voices, Meadhbh and Shay, but the topic, the content of this post, makes me blissfully happy. That’s why they wrote it. Whilst lost to the flashback and nightmare earlier this week, Meadhbh and Shay took it upon themselves to create something that would make me happy, something that would fill me with the aforementioned fuzzy warm feelings. They didn’t post it straight away because they didn’t want to upset me, they didn’t want to put something out there if I wasn’t comfortable with it being in the public domain, but after careful consideration, and after seeing the prompt for today’s installment of the 30 Day Self Harm Awareness Challenge, I’ve decided to post it and see what happens.

So I will now hand you over to Meadhbh and Shay, who have put together a collection of artwork that depicts a most heartwarming bottomwarming of activities, to ask the question butt is it art or porn?

Under normal circumstances I would password protect this post. However, Meadhbh is not a fan of password protection, so we have reached a compromise. I will post it without a password under the proviso that this warning is inserted: family members of Addy, I politely request that you read no further! Thank you! :)

{NSFW} 30 Days of Kink: The Final Eight

As it has taken me so long to polish off this challenge (coming on thirteen months now!) I’ve decided enough is enough! So, in one semi-epic post, I’m answering the remaining eight prompts in the 30 Days of Kink challenge! Enjoy!

And yes, I’m aware that there were lots of exclamation points in those few sentences…but I’m not apologizing for it. Exclamation points are, after all, the ‘jazz hands’ of the punctuation world! :p

{NSFW} 22. Trust, communication and individuality

This is the twenty-second day of the 30 Days of Kink Challenge, as such it contains adult (and spankolicious) content.

What do you think is important in keeping a BDSM relationship healthy?
How does it differ from a vanilla relationship?

Because it is taking me so long to complete this challenge (it began in November 2012!) and I’ve vowed to finish it before the end of 2013, I’ve decided to freewrite the remainder of the prompts. As such, please excuse any spelling and/or grammatical mistakes that may occur for they are all part and parcel of this form of writing.

{NSFW} 21. A revelatory reading experience

This is the twenty-first day of the 30 Days of Kink Challenge, as such it contains adult (and spankolicious) content.

~ Favourite BDSM related book (fiction or non-fiction) ~

Because it is taking me so long to complete this challenge (it began in November 2012!) and I’ve vowed to finish it before the end of 2013, I’ve decided to freewrite the remainder of the prompts. As such, please excuse any spelling and/or grammatical mistakes that may occur for they are all part and parcel of this form of writing.