Hands on

A recent discussion got me thinking about hands. I’ve never done any hand work, either in private or public. It’s not an idea that has ever excited me, either – when I was small, references to that CP style (such as in the 1989 film of Danny the Champion of the World , which I watched in junior school) filled me with the same aghast, cringing horror as any other public mention of caning, but with none of the secretive, embarrassed, guilty thrill.

I’m not going to attempt to psychoanalyse myself at this stage. Sure, of the three times my dad ever slapped me when I was small, the first two were on the hand, and not particularly interesting fantasy material. He was firm and calm and not really trying to hurt me, I was tiny and miserable and ashamed. (The third and last time was on the bottom, in anger, and intended more to shock me into shutting up than to actually hurt: my tantrum escalated to fury as I ran to my room, and I remember sitting on my bed afterwards, the tears and rage conflicting with a sort of strange incredulous excitement, thinking he spanked me! he SPANKED me! and wondering why it hadn’t been more interesting. He came up afterwards to apologise and I felt overwhelmingly ashamed.) So maybe it makes sense that being punished on the hands is less appealing, in my head, than being punished on the bottom. It's connected to actual memories of shame and remorse.

But I don't think that's it, really; I think my tastes would probably be the same if my bottom had suffered more as a child. There's something intrinsically sensual about being punished on the bottom; being upended helplessly and hurt on an area that's unmistakably erogenous. The anonymity of being facedown is strangely liberating. Being hit on the hands is more cringing, more humiliating; having to hold the trembling hand still, your face visible for all to see, and the stinging pain having far less flesh to diffuse into.

Which is another point: being hit on the hands hurts more than being hit on the bottom. But (as several of us ended up debating) it's a tough call as to whether hands hurt more than thighs, or calves, or feet (ouch! I'm too ticklish for that to ever appeal), and I've been caned and switched on my legs on several occasions. It hurts a lot, and it's sexy as hell. There's a warmth, a sensuality, to being punished on the legs that being hit on the hands lacks. While I've never done it, the very idea of it seems somehow cold. Frightening in a particularly bleak way, with no physical or emotional cushioning to support you through the pain.

Which is why, I've decided, I definitely want to do it. If anything's going to get a real reaction out of me on camera, real fear and real tears, it's going to be hand work. Who am I to resist an opportunity like that?