Whatever Happened to the Cyclist Girl?

Whatever happened to Josephine? A reader asked me that recently, after I very briefly mentioned her in part three of my behind-the-scenes report on Mood Pictures. Those who have been following the blog for a while will know that the subject of the inquiry is a kinky friend of mine, whom I've done some private play with over the years. I wrote about her a couple of times:

The Perils of Josephine
Careless Cyclist Caned
Conventional Weekend
School Report Time
The Fantasy of Real Life

The short answer to the question is that Josephine and I are still good friends and still in contact, but we don't play together anymore. The reasons for this are a bit more difficult to put into words. Basically, we have both moved on in different directions. She's a bottom, I'm a top, and we both have a fondness for hard, painful CP. But beyond that, our kinks were always quite different, and these differences have grown over time as each of us developed. Eventually, we realised that we had taken the play relationship between us as far as we could, that there wasn't really anything more we could explore together, and that it was time for the two of us to go our separate ways.

It was not a conscious decision as much as a discovery with hindsight, after we had drifted apart over a period of time - and found that, truth be told, we didn't feel an overwhelming urge to get back together. So we said: "Alright, it was great while it lasted, and there are some truly special memories, but we are both looking for something else now - let's say goodbye and wish each other well." We parted on good terms and are pretty busy with our own activities these days. We are on the phone semi-regularly to chat and find out what the other one is doing, but it's been a few months since I last saw Josephine in person.

The last time we played was half a year ago - actually, only a week or so after my post The Fantasy of Real Life. Josephine had finished her first semester of economics and performed below her expectations in the exams. It fell to me, as her "motivational coach", to give her the six canings for the six written tests, with the number of strokes determined by the formula we had agreed on. In a nice turn of symmetry, she'd had two good grades, two mediocre ones and two that were decidedly unsatisfactory.

(Picture courtesy of Spanking Photography)

We ended up doing four of those sessions eventually, but they were overshadowed by a nagging feeling that had already been there the last couple of times when I spanked her - the feeling that, somehow, it simply wasn't as exciting as it used to be. Neither of us was fully "there" in spirit and there was a growing sense of simply going through the motions, accompanied by the knowledge that the problem was more fundamental than just a series of bad days. The truth was, we had lost the interest in playing with each other. We had both felt like that for a while and silently hoped that it would change, but it had become impossible to ignore. After the fourth exam caning, we had to take a longer break because of our respective schedules, anyway. When we got in touch again after a few weeks, we agreed that it was a good time to call it quits and move on.

It very much felt like the right thing and we didn't have any second thoughts afterwards. The bottom line was, even if we rediscovered the spark between us, there wasn't really anything left to do - we had already exhausted most of the fantasies and scenarios where our two kinks overlapped, and both of us wanted to go on to other things which we couldn't get from each other. Therefore, it was a natural and largely painless parting of ways. Of course, there was some sadness about the fact that our path together had come to an end. But it wasn't like we were giving up on each other prematurely. Our play relationship had simply run its course, we had explored all the avenues, and now it was over. The overwhelming feeling was one of looking back happily, with gratitude and a bit of nostalgia, but without regret.

Well, almost without regret - the one thing that annoyed me was that the relationship had "fizzled out", so to speak, instead of ending with a proper occasion. But alas, episodes in our lives don't usually have neat, crisp endings. The same goes for epochs in history - we only construct their boundaries with hindsight, which is part of my job as a historian. I wanted such a boundary, saying: "From here on, Josephine and I went separate ways." I wondered if we should play one last time, as a celebratory farewell of sorts. We would wrap up the exam punishments, and then I would blog about it... But obviously, that wasn't a very compelling rationale for intimate, kinky play. Yes, the top in me disliked the "loose end" of not finishing my stint as motivational coach with all six sessions. But there simply was no point to it anymore. We had lost the desire for it.

So I came to terms with the "fuzzy" ending. What really mattered was that it had been a good phase of our lives, one that left us both with fond memories. Maybe if I write about some of them here, it will be the proper celebratory farewell I wished for. I think it's a good idea, at what I feel is an appropriate point in time. In another post, the final one in the Josephine saga, I will tell you how the two of us met, how we started playing, what we found out about each other and about ourselves along the way, what worked for us and what didn't... The full historical overview, if you will, and a prequel to The Perils of Josephine. Stay tuned for that next week.