The castle is medieval; the computer is current; the woman is timeless. Three ages collide, and make something new and beautiful.
When curved granite and curved flesh are in the same image, of course it’s the human, and especially the erotic, that holds our attention. And thank fuck for that, say I.
The lovely Zoë s the model.
(A thing from a Work in Progress. I should say that many of my stories start as autobiography, before having details changed to protect the depraved. But in this story, Seamus isn’t me. He’s a guy I used to know.)
Then, naked except for her socks, Asuka walked carefully to the door to collect her sandals, and put them on, while he admired the movements of her cane-striped bottom. She shuffled to the kitchen and took a shovel and broom from the cupboard under the sink.
Seamus sat and watched his well striped girl, pretending to read Sei Shonagon while she picked up the pieces of plate.At last she’d swept all the shards and dust onto the shovel and then the kitchen bin. When the kitchen was tidy again, if lacking in crockery, she stood and looked at him, questioning.
“That looks … acceptable. Oh, and bring me the peanut oil.”
Asuka looked puzzled, but she’d accepted that if she was being punished and if her man wanted to cover her in peanut oil, then that was what would be.
She lifted the little bottle from the cupboard, and came back to Seamus, holding the oil in both hands in front of her.
He took it from her gravely. “Now, Asuka, I’m not finished with you. Turn round and bend over again.”
“”Yes, sir.” She wiggled as much as she dared, once she had her back to him, since she was confident that he admired her ass. Then she bent over, and touched her toes as she’d been while he’d caned her.
“Good girl. Feet apart a little more, Asuka.” She shuffled obediently. But he smacked the inside of her right thigh and said, “Further.”
She obeyed, less puzzled. But she made an interrogative noise when he lubricated his forefinger and pressed against her little asshole. Then there was realization, and she said something like, “Whoo.” In wonder.
Seamus pressed his forefinger into her, to the first knuckle, then less slowly to the second. He twisted his finger inside her tight, clinging orifice, and then withdrew, to put more lubricant on his finger.
Asuka held herself very still. Her face, upside down between her knees, was wide-eyed, mouth open. He smiled at her, and smacked her left buttock, then her right, with his hand, and then lubricated two fingers.
When the image is the frame, you give your attention to the essentials. The essential here is power, and its absence: the sense that anything can happen.
The lovely Zoë, framed and bound, is definitely essential.
Ojastara let the landgrave spank her, and rewarded him for it by sucking his cock. It was far from unpleasant. She liked the warmth, and the slight, good hurt, and the way it made the men who spanked her so much more animal, even slightly brutal . There was satisfaction in that. It5 was like having a hard surface to bounce off.
He reached his hand to the back of her head, tightened his grip on her hair, and thrust her forward to meet him as his cock thrust urgently, desperately in her mouth. At that moment they were both focussed on his pleasure, and her pleasure came from her awareness of and sympathy with his urgent need and its satisfaction.
She let him thrust his cock hard and deep into her mouth, sometimes having to will herself to relax when the glans of his penis touched the back of her throat,
She had some control over her gag reflex, but it was not complete control. She put her hand on the base of his cock, eventually, to stop him from going too deep, and used her other hand to stroke his blalls, now tight as if they were clenched.
But after a while he grunted, and slowed. Ojastara guessed he had reached his limit, of how far he could go without coming. And she was pleased that he didn’t want to come in her mouth.
She smiled, his cock still in her mouth, pulsing hard as his heartbeat. He put his hand on her brow, now, and pushed her back a little. He made a high-pitched sound, testifying to the will-power it took for him to put her further back so his cock escaped her mouth and pressed against her cheek.
Ojastara looked up at him and smiled, though she held his balls in her hand. It was insurance for his good behaviour. The Landgrave smiled down at her.
“You’re a dangerous woman and we both know it. But a treasure; we both know that as well. There’s a bed in the next room. If that appeals?”
Ojastara considered. The eve of venues made her less safe, and she had no evidence that he was a good man. But she trusted her instincts – and her skills and pack of attendant foxes. She released his tender, attractively vulnerable oval shells. If he misbehaved she could always use her knee, anyway.
She said, “Sure, Landgrave, and I trust you. Lead the way.”
Arethusa liked her cuffs. She hardly ever took them off when we were together. They were fur-lined and comfortable. And sometimes, when her Master has gone off to make a cup of tea, and toast with jam, they’d keep her feeling held.
And if, as Wordsworth claimed, poetry is the result of emotion recollected in tranquillity, then her sleep and its dreams were poetry.
Recently, because I was too busy to write, I posted some Victorian whipping porn, here and here. And I discussed the style differences between erotic writing from 100 years ago and the present here.
But there are some specific differences between the bdsm porn of 100 years ago and now, and it’s worth taking a moment to consider them.
This is where she cries Uncle.
First, incest was a very popular theme in Victorian porn, and it seems to have been especially popular in bdsm contexts. In The Yellow Room it’s all about an uncle and his two nieces, but in other novels – First Training, for example – it may be mother-son and father-daughter. Lesbian whipping and post-whipping scenes between sisters, in particular, are common.
But someone writing a scenario like The Yellow Room today would probably have the dominant male be a friend of their father’s, and not a blood relative.
Second, consent is not a serious issue in Victorian porn. The young lady isn’t asked if she’s feeling submissive. Instead, she’s stripped and punished, and then forced to obey orders to avoid further punishment.
In a modern storyline the writer would have to make it clear that the submissive enrolled in a special school, or met the friend of her father at some social function, and was intrigued by his promises of strict treatment that she went to meet him privately.
I’ve got mixed feelings about that. Mostly I think it’s an improvement. On the other hand, there are many people who enjoy the fantasy of being overwhelmed, not of their own free will. It’s not “real”, any more than the female rape fantasy is anything like real rape. But in fantasy anything goes, so long as it’s hot. So our care not to send inappropriate messages erases one quite popular fantasy.
This lighter birching, with suspension, looks more fun
I guess overall that our current care is an improvement. But I know submissives who really do want to feel they have no choice, at least sometimes. As a fantasy, it should be allowable. Anyway, those are my mixed feelings, and they’re not the hill I shall die on.
The third thing that seems noticeable to me is blood. In the section of The Yellow Room I quoted, it’s mentioned quite early in the proceedings that the lovely Alice’s bottom is bleeding, under the birch.
I took out the bits where the blood sprays round the room, and trickles down to the floor.
Actually, Alice’s bottom spend many lines bleeding, in some volume, and felt I had to edit most of the blood-flow out, because I think for most people – certainly including me – it would be a turn-off rather than a turn-on.
I once wrote about how hard you have to birch someone to cut their skin, because I did that, once. To draw even a spot of blood you have to whip like a maniac, and though I can be strict, that’s a level of discipline I’m just not comfortable with.
However, the Victorians loved it, both first-person submissive accounts, and from the flogger’s point of view.
By comparison, we moderns are a bunch of softies.
Ojastara crossed the threshold were the Landgrave apparently waited for her. There had been guards, but they made polite gestures, ushering her in. They intended to make it more difficult for her to leave, she knew. But that was a problem to be considered, lightly, later.
She walked through many carpeted and veiled chambers until, in a small room at the rear of his palace, she found the man who must be the Landgrave. He was in bed, while his subjects worked. But when she arrived he rose from his bed, naked, and walked towards her. She stood her ground, neither retreating nor advancing. “Welcome,” he said. He made to embrace her and she backed away.
The Landgrave said, “Please, beautiful lady. I know that you pleasured one of my subjects, but took no pleasure for yourself. Unless you include the pleasure of crushing his balls with your skull. Which would at best have been a pleasure of another kind. I offer you pleasure of the kind you had given him. Nothing more than that, and no less.”
Ojastara frowned. “I came here immediately after dispatching your guard. How could you be aware of that incident?”
“This is a fairy-tale kingdom, though I am only a Landgrave for one district. But fairy tale technology applies throughout. I watched you in a mirror. You might call it a magic mirror.” He was smiling. He did not believe in magic mirrors, or expect her too.
“Or a mirror that can reflect scenes at which it is not temporally present, but where it has been before. Light rays travel in space and time. I may not call it magic at all, that that light reached your mirror, and therefore you. But you’re right. I gave that man sexual pleasure, and then unconsciousness. I took no pleasure for myself. Therefore, as his employer, you owe me.” By now she was smiling. This argument was playful, silly even. But silliness often turned her on.
The Landgrave said, “Well, I’d disrobe, but I seem to be unclothed already. Would you like to come to bed?”
Ojastara, also naked, watched the muscles of his buttocks and thighs as he climbed onto his bed. He turned onto his back, leaning on cushions, and tapped a cushion beside him. Sao Ojastara stepped forward, climbing along the bed on her hands and knees, like a predator; like a fox. She smiled at his penis, which was already more than Hal;f erect, and licked the underside of the head.
She said, “I suppose I do.”
The landgrave moved suddenly, forcefully, and pushed her mouth off his cock, and her body down, face down, to his bed. His right hand smacked her bottom, six times, hard, while Ojastara squirmed and pretended, with becoming hypocrisy, not to be enjoying herself. The fingers of his right hand pushed lower, and touched her soft lips. Ojastara said, as though it meant a great deal, “Oh!”
He liked to pleasure Arethusa, in the middle of punishment. She didn’t always want to admit how turned on she was by the whole situation: his commands, his lecture, the kiss she was required to bestow on the cane, and then the stripes of fire.
But her Master always found her wet, in the middle of any caning. Sometimes that discovery meant the caning was over. There were other priorities, that had just made themselves more urgent.
A slavegirl needs to be pleasured. And, well, being her Master was all duty.
This isn’t an ideal Valentine’s Day post, but it’s a sort of Valentine to Porn of Yore.
Porn usually loses its sexiness over the years, and becomes amusing kitsch. There are people alive today who were shocked by Debbie Does Dallas and Behind the Red Door, two very scandalous films of the 1970s.
You can leave your hat on…
That isn’t even a lifetime away: it’s just less than fifty. But I doubt if anyone could get off on either film now. Body styles have changed, and the actors in those films now seem pudgy, puffy, not toned. Their haircuts now seem quaint, and there’s no getting away from the unintentional absurdity of the dialogue. (That’s probably the part of the porn movie that’s changed the least. Porn people on film still talk tosh.)
But a similar effect also happens in prose porn. People must have gotten off on this, reading one-handed:
Here’s an extract from Pleasure Bound:
“Mr. Silverwood blinked. Little Miss J was very, very pretty, and the ankles which had made him feverish in the twilight on deck, were now supplemented by deliciously-proportioned calves, which swelled up in graceful curves to delicately moulded knees, not quite covered by the lace frills of the pantalons garnis des rubans ecarlates. There was a little bare, pink flesh above each garter which made the Chicago multimillionaire delirious.
Miss J had a very dainty china-shepherdess skin tint, obviously her own, blue and very bright eyes, naturally her own, and a mass of bronze hair which was open to doubt-at least, so Mr. S decided as he noted the gap in the little darling’s drawers which disclosed a forest on her Mount of Venus which was quite a different tint.
She caught his eye, and, with a cheeky grin, put her two bejewelled hands between her thighs.
‘Hullo, hullo,’ she giggled, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Well?’
‘You’re thinking, either my head, or my-what ma’s got-is dyed.”
But Mr. Silverwood didn’t care whether Miss Jepps’s hair was dyed or not. His whole body flamed with desire; he seemed to swell all over, and the buttons on his trousers strained at their cables. He sank on the floor by the side of Miss Jepps and flung one arm round her knees and the other round her waist, pulling her down on to the soft carpet.
Miss Jepps made no protest. She opened her mouth to let his tongue run in between her ivory teeth and laid her pretty bejewelled hand on the throbbing swelling between his legs. Mr. S nearly went mad.”
Somehow, the sexiness up and flew away…
So the prose style is a sort of wordy jocularity, like a lot of not very good Victorian humorous writing. As a result I defy anyone to be aroused by the saucy situation in that extract.
Though it’s nice to remember that drawers were once quite like to reveal pubic hair if the lady sat facing you.
Next week we’ll look at some of the oddities in that slice of Victorian Bdsm porn I used, from the anonymous classic, The Yellow Room.
It’s much better written, and it retains its hotness better, than Pleasure Bound. But it’s still an extremely interesting interesting source on Victorian kinks.
It was bright daylight outside, and there was darker, more intimate and comforting light inside.
My loveslave, Arethusa, was getting the cane. Not for any misconduct, but for her Master’s pleasure, and, though she’d only admit that afterwards, hers. She’d feared it once, but since then it became her favourite instrument. The line of pain was so intense and so clear, like the mark it left for days after.
But she wanted comfort, which is darkness. I wanted her pain, which is bright.
So we did what we wanted together. And we took what we most needed. How, how much I needed her.