SSC 2009: Balancing Act, by Jen

I'm a bad girl. The problem is that knowing that makes me hot. I know I should want to be a good girl, and I do, but hearing him call me a bad girl and getting spanked for it makes me even hotter. It's difficult to follow rules and do what I'm told. I'm stubborn, which makes learning compliance a problem. Embarrassment is effective, but also a turn-on. It's all such a balancing act, be good and don't get spanked except for good girl spankings, or be bad and get punished. Punishment spankings are a deterrent, but again, a turn-on.

He urges me to be good, to do what I'm supposed to, and I want to, but I don't want to. Being punished is hot, after the spanking is over. He likes it when I'm a good girl, but he also likes to spank me hard. I know it turns him on when my butt turns red and I'm fighting against the spanking, to the point of crying. He likes the good girl in me, but punishing me is something he likes too much to want to give up completely. I don't think either of us could give it up, so even if it's been months between punishments, we always go back to it. His threats and growls of impending doom for my poor bare bottom give me a shiver of delight and fear. When I feel his hand on my back, pushing me down on the bed for a spanking, that thrill/panic goes through my whole body. I love those moments, before the pain becomes too much, pushing me over the edge into remorse and tears. The remorse lasts longer than the tears, but not long enough. I become submissive for a short time, the good girl he wants, all compliance and willingness to do what I'm told, but it's fleeting.

Being a bad girl is part of what makes me who I am. I need what comes with that. The helplessness and vulnerability that comes with allowing myself to be punished for being bad give me a surge, heighten my senses.

Being a good girl gets me rewards, spankings just because, but those lack the emotion and intensity of being spanked hard until I break. They don't offer the release I get from being spanked until I cry. I want to be a good girl because he wants me to be, but we both like the bad girl, so we have this balancing act, and it works for us.

C.K. email

This story's title is quite accurate, it describes in first-person narrative an individual female with conflicting desires--to be good and earn the approval of her lover and disciplinarian or to be bad and end up receiving severe punitive spankings from him. She even gets good-girl spankings for approved behavior, but apparently they don't fully satisfy her spanko-submissive desires. The reasons for this dissatisfaction appear to be psychological rather than physical, the narrator getting gratification from being dominated and spanked to tears, so more physically intensive playful spankings obviously wouldn't be a total solution.

Still, there's nothing inherently wrong with this figurative seesaw between proper behavior and misbehavior, it may seem incongruous but both partners clearly get satisfaction from the changes in their domestic relationship that apparently occur regularly.

As an old ungrammatical country saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Pablo email

There's a lot to like here. First-person is always a good choice for a story of this length, since the voice can't help but spring out. The ambivalence is also nicely captured in the fragmented, back-and-forth style - the prose style matches the purpose of the story, which is a neat touch.

Myself, though, I miss a sense of narrative motion. This is basically a description of how things *are*, and that's static, fixed. The ambivalence does help a little, but there's nothing here to push things forward: no plot, no conflict, no character progression, no drama. Nothing really *happens*. This would be a terrific example of certain types of writing (a thoughtful blog-post, for example), but for me it misses a crucial component of a *story*.