Interview: Niki Flynn

Niki Flynn burst onto the spanking video scene in 2004 like a comet appearing in the sky. Her debut The Exchange Student marked the first time a Western model braved an encounter with the infamous werewolves from the East, Lupus Pictures. That film and everything that followed truly became history in the annals of kinky erotica - a history that is now recorded in Niki's autobiography Dances with Werewolves, in her not-blog, and of course in countless videos and photographs.

As if that wasn't enough for one kinky lifetime, it was recently revealed that Niki is also none other than Fiona Locke, much-celebrated author of spanking fiction. Actually, one should rather say that Fiona is also Niki Flynn, because Fiona really came first... Either way, she is certainly a woman of many talents, this Werewolf Girl (Who Also Writes Pretty Good Stories). Or as I like to call her, my crackpot American friend. In her various incarnations, she has entertained, inspired and affected the lives of kinky people around the world, including this author.

Two weeks ago, she retired. And we got together for one last interview.

(I should point out that roughly half the questions, especially in the "Reflections on spanking modelling / the Scene" and "Reflections on personal kink" parts, were thought up by my girlfriend Kaelah. She adds a welcome different perspective because she never met Niki personally, and they are some of the best questions of the interview in my opinion.)

Well, here you are! You've made your decision to retire from the world of spanking modelling, you've posted it on your blog, said your farewells... Life as Niki Flynn has come to an end. How do you feel?

Niki: Great, actually. I've been feeling burnt out on the pro side of things for a while and needing more and more frequent breaks from everything - shooting, writing, email, blog, etc. I thought it would be really painful to say goodbye and slip away, but I'm kind of re-learning how nice the Outside World can be when I'm not glued to my computer all day. And it's WONDERFUL to be out doing things without thinking, "Hey, I should blog this!"

How has the fan reaction been so far? Do you think that some of them, the real close followers, saw it coming? Or was it a total surprise to everyone?

Niki: I suppose it didn't really occur to me that anyone would be surprised. I figured most people would have seen it coming and been expecting it. But when I outed myself as Fiona Locke and then took a huge break from being online, so many people kept assuming I must be writing another book. (For the record: I'm not writing any more books and both Niki AND Fiona are formally retired.)

In your farewell post, you talked about how you worked your way through all your original spanko fantasies, how you've taken enough pain and punishment in your life, how you feel a sense of completion now and want to move on. Are there other, accompanying reasons for retiring, and for doing it at this time?

Niki: Well, things change, you know? People change. Life changes. Et cetera. I'd had my fill of "public" life, so to speak, and I was finding it less fulfilling as time went on. I started to feel like I'd already got the things I'd wanted from the Scene, that I'd done all the exploring of that particular arena I needed. I started wanting a quieter existence, more privacy and most of all - less pain!

You wrote: "I feel like 'Niki Flynn' has done what she came here to do." What, exactly, did "Niki" come here to do, what was her "mission"? Can it be put into one single sentence, you think?

Niki: How about: "To explore the further reaches of psychosexual experience and to come back changed but not damaged." I don't know. I've always been a bit reckless, just diving straight in at the deep end when I want to try something. I haven't always been successful, but falling on your face from time to time is part of the trip. What I AM good at is dusting myself off and trying again.

Can you talk a bit about the process? When did you first start feeling that Niki would reach the end of her path soon? And was there a specific moment someday, when you just thought okay, that's it?

Niki: I hear a "What happened?" question in there, but the truth is there was no bad experience or major event that made me want out. I'd been finding less and less fulfilment in Scene play for a while and I knew I certainly couldn't make films forever. I really do feel like my Scene self just grew up. First I stopped liking ageplay. Then I stopped liking school play. Then I stopped wanting and needing punishment and pain. I discovered the joys of pleasure - yes, what a revelation! - and have been evolving in different directions over the past few months.

Speaking of different directions: you talked about wanting a quieter life and more privacy, so you probably won't want to answer this. But can you give a small hint at least, about any plans you might have for your post-Niki, post-Fiona existence?

Niki: Sorry, but a lady has to keep something for her private life!

Looking back on career

Alright then, since this is your last interview, let's start by looking back on your life and your career as a spanking model. Professional victim, 2004-2009! What is your most prominent emotion when you look back on those five years today?

Niki: Fulfilment.

What are you most happy with? Is there a single aspect of having been Niki Flynn that you are proud of in particular?

Niki: Having faced so many fears along the way - not letting shyness or insecurity stand in the way of me doing what I wanted to do. Well, except for that moment when I froze onstage at Night of the Cane when I was asked to speak to the crowd about Dances with Werewolves. LOL

What is your biggest regret? If you could travel back in time, would you do anything differently about your career?

Niki: Started earlier!

If my count is correct, you've done 12 full-length films, exactly a dozen - with producers ranging from Lupus Pictures to Shadow Lane to China Hamilton. I'm going to ask you to pick some superlatives. One, which film was your favourite to make? Two, which one was the hardest one to make?

Niki: Oh dear, I always hate having to choose favourites. But here goes. Favourite to make – Wheatley Manor [by Northern Spanking]. That one covered the spectrum for me – having some creative input, doing a film with so many good friends, scenes with emotional moments, sexy moments, dark moments, offbeat moments… and being paid in banoffee pie! Hardest to make – probably Stalin 3 [by Lupus] because it was so physically and emotionally gruelling. Not that “hard” is bad in this context and really, it’s just what I needed and wanted at the time. But it certainly took the most out of me.

Which one do you think is the best of the bunch, artistically speaking?

Niki: Oh, now that’s the question I really hate. LOL I’m going to pick one that’s not even properly a film but a series: What the Dickens by Firm Hand. Amelia-Jane [Rutherford] and I had so much fun being victimised Victorian ladies in a historical melodrama, alongside the “behind-the-scenes” vignettes of us being total modern divas. That series stands out partly because of all the personal input we had and the work we put into it (especially Amelia-Jane, who wrote the whole convoluted story with interwoven timelines!) and partly because of the professionalism of the whole team. We really TRIED to make it a good one artistically, so I'm giving it the recognition it deserves.

As an act of courtesy towards our producer friends, I'm not going to ask you which one you consider to be your worst film. But let me ask you this: if you could do one film again, and do it perfectly, which one would it be?

Niki: I know you’ll approve of my answer: The Spy [by Pain4Fem]. I’d definitely brush up on my German so I could improvise the dialogue better! My character was supposed to be a TRANSLATOR, for god’s sake! LOL

Let's look at your whole body of work now - not just full films, but also shorter video clips, photo shoots, everything. We're going to pick five pieces of work, and we'll bury them in the ground so that archaeologists of future generations can find them and say: "This was the life of Niki Flynn!" Everything else gets destroyed, but these five things survive. Which pieces of work would you pick?

Niki: My werewolf transformation (by Drew Miller of Draconian Artworks)
Trial by Ordeal [by Strictly English]
A photo of me by China Hamilton
The haircut scene from Crime & Punishment [by Lupus Pictures]
The NSI clip of me reading the Shipping Forecast whilst being whacked by Paul [Kennedy]

My final "superlatives" question: now that it's over, what are you going to miss most about being a professional victim, and what are you most glad to be rid of?

Niki: I’ll miss the fun of shooting, certainly, and of just hanging out with friends in between takes. But I’m already enjoying being out of the limelight, having more privacy and being less tied to the computer.

Reflections on spanking modelling / the Scene

Let's move on to some general reflections about the profession. There is a saying that, if you make a job out of a hobby, you lose a hobby. By analogy: how does it change your life, and your relationship to your own sexuality, when you make a "job" of sorts out of something as intimate as your erotic fantasies / desires?

Niki: It does often happen that you lose your enthusiasm for something when it becomes a job and if I’d had to do a lot of shoots I didn’t want to I imagine I’d have started to resent it. I’m very lucky in that I always had the freedom to choose what projects I would do, so it was never a full-time job whose income I had to rely on. And as a result of only doing the projects I was personally involved in or otherwise excited about, it actually enhanced my private play.

As a spanking model, you sometimes had to interact and get "in tune", emotionally, with a top whom you only met for the first time at the shoot. Were there instances in your career where you found that difficult?

Niki: Oh yes! First of all I’m rubbish at meeting new people. I’m far more scared of that than the physical pain. Again, I was very lucky in never having any truly bad experiences (though I certainly heard horror stories from others). There were people I didn’t really click with and others I knew I probably wouldn’t even have a cup of tea with if we didn’t have to work together. And of course with Lupus it was always extra scary not having a language in common, which makes negotiating very difficult.

I remember Jan Zlatousty, the torturer in Stalin 2 being very aloof throughout the scenes leading up the canings. He didn’t speak any English but even when I tried to engage him in Czech he seemed distant. As a result I was even more intimidated and frightened. However, once the caning was over he was absolutely lovely! LOL What an ice-breaker, eh? Turns out he doesn’t really LIKE having to thrash us soft little females at all (he’d rather beat boys), so he was truly “just doing his job” and keeping his distance until he could relax. I think that’s brilliant.

I think they should have let me do the job, because I do like to thrash soft little females! Anyway.... To what degree does the personal chemistry have to be absolutely, fundamentally right, and to what degree can you substitute for it with experience and professionalism?

Niki: Honestly, professionalism ought to be able to sustain it 100%. Fun and intimate as it is, shooting is still a job, bottom line. You still need to be a professional. It’s always more enjoyable and satisfying when there’s some “magic” involved, and it probably makes for a better film overall, but you don’t always have the luxury of working with people you click with perfectly.

Of course, you not only did a lot of professional "work", but also a lot of play at parties, gatherings, in private... What were your impressions of the scene in general compared to the filmmaking / modelling scene?

Niki: There really isn’t a lot of difference between pros and amateurs when it comes to the shared love of the same activity. After all, most pros started out in private play or the party scene.

But what is it that makes them become "pros"? Some kind of additional exhibitionist streak that the others don't have? A love of spanking porn films? What was it in your case?

Niki: I can only speak for myself, but for me it was a bit of exhibitionism and a bit of my old acting bug.

What about the video audience compared to the literary audience? I imagine that Niki Flynn got quite different fan mails than Fiona Locke.

Niki: Oh yes - that’s one thing that always really struck me! Niki frequently got emails like “Hey Niki, u r hot – I want to slap your sexy ass”, etc. while Fiona would get “Dear Ms Locke, allow me to express my appreciation for your writing …” I guess it’s just the nature of the two different mediums and the different impressions they produce. One person’s a “porn star” who presumably won’t be fazed by crass over-familiarity while the other is an “author” and therefore “literary” and more formal. Go figure!

So, after everything you did (and saw others do) in the scene: what can you tell the closeted spankos out there, who are thinking about trying it out for real? Any advice on what to do, what not to do, how to avoid negative experiences?

Niki: Most important of all: MAKE CONTACT. Read the forums and blogs and literature so you’re informed. Write to people, post on forums, start a blog. Make yourself and your desires known and don’t get discouraged by setbacks or scenes that don’t go exactly as planned. Like anything, it takes practice to get it right and a lot of trial and error to find out exactly what you WANT in the first place. You’ll never know what something’s like unless you try it. And each positive experience is a memory to look back on one day and savour.

And what about the gals - and guys! - out there who might be thinking about a career as a spanking model?

Niki: Again: make contact! Write to your favourite model or producer for references. I answered several emails from people (mostly girls) wanting info on the pro scene and where to start. I know some of my fellow spanking models have too. We’re always happy to offer advice. The pro scene is really very small and incestuous, so a dodgy producer would get blacklisted pretty quickly if they tried anything funny. And models ALWAYS share info on who’s good to work with and who’s not. My rule of thumb was always – if the company has a big web presence and you see a lot of familiar faces on their sites, chances are they’re well known, trusted and safe. But don’t be afraid to ask. Any reputable producer is going to be as concerned about your safety as you are, believe me.

Reflections on personal kink

On to some private reflection. When you look back on all the spanking experiences you made as Niki Flynn, and before: now that you've done all that, do you have a clearer idea about what the main "drive" behind your fantasies was, and what kind of fulfillment you gained - specifically! - from living them out?

Niki: The Kafka quote I use at the beginning of Dances with Werewolves (“My fear is my substance and probably the best part of me”) really does sum me up. Psychologically, eroticising pain and fear has always been a coping mechanism for me. It grew into a fetish over time, but the basic primal drive was, I think, fear and the ways to conquer it – ie, face it! I think I’m a stronger and more confident person as a result. Not just for having “suffered and survived”, but for having chased down so many dreams and fantasies, met so many different people and made so many friends, all while battling the same fears (pain, trust, loss of control, strangers, language barrier, exposure, etc.) that once used to cripple me.

You played with many different people, in many different environments - in private, at parties, at shoots. What meaning did this variety have for you?

Niki: I think I just enjoyed the hippie-esque “free love” feeling of being casually intimate with so many people. In a way it’s how I learned to trust.

Our fantasies evolve and change over the years. You talked about how you went from schoolgirl roleplay and such to exploring a darker, more "grown-up" kink. Do you think that there were underlying desires or "patterns", though, which stayed the same?

Niki: I keep coming back to “survival”. Maybe a part of me was just trying to prove to myself that I could handle anything that scared me or intimidated me.

Now I'm basically going to ask you the same question, about life as Niki and life post-Niki. You said that you've had enough spanking, punishment and pain. You've discovered the joys of pleasure. But again, do you think that there is an underlying constant here that *hasn't* changed?

Niki: Wow, that’s a tough one and not one I’m sure I can answer without consulting my psychiatrist! I don’t think I’ll ever lose my natural affinity for the extreme; it just doesn’t necessarily have to be painful.

So, when you keep all that in mind and look at your own story, from childhood to today: do you think that the erotic desires we have are mostly "inborn", or that they are mostly a product of our environments and personal histories? Scientists haven't figured that one out yet, but maybe we can!

Niki: Oh, the German desire to quantify and classify! LOL The frustrating truth is that it’s unique to each person. Some people have a single defining moment when their kink was “awakened”, though we’ll never know if they had a predisposition towards the kink or not. Others feel it’s something you’re born with. Both are true.

Alter Egos

You juggled with several alter egos during your career. Niki, Fiona... Now that you are retiring, you are laying these characters to rest, so to speak. Are you mourning Niki and Fiona? Sure, you are glad to move on, get out of the spotlight. But is there are part of you that will miss having "them" around, in your life?

Niki: I’m definitely not mourning them. As they were aspects of me, they’ll always be there in some form. I have a sense of completion for each, so in a way it’s like putting the seal on a book or a film. I’ll always have their creative endeavours to revisit, but I don’t need to “be” them any more.

You once wrote in an email to me, years ago: "I think of Fiona as Niki's 'real' name." Do you still see it like that? What was their relationship with each other, from an "inner" point of view?

Niki: Fiona was my first Scene persona when I came out in the UK scene, so I always felt she was a kind of “core” personality while Niki was the public persona. That was also partly defined by the natures of the different mediums – Fiona/writing was more introspective while Niki/performing was more extroverted. That was reinforced by the perceptions of others. People wrote to Niki like they would to a playful party girl while Fiona was treated with more deference and seriousness. So it was very easy for Niki to become my shield to wear in public. I couldn’t go out as Fiona because as a shy reclusive writer I didn’t have the confidence, but people saw Niki differently, which gave me the courage to be more outgoing.

It's interesting that you speak of Niki as a "shield", because that was going to be my very next question: do these alter egos also offer a kind of protection? I don't just mean protecting your real name and such - that is obvious. I mean emotional protection.

Niki: For me they really only offered protection in the sense of being able to do things "in character" that I couldn't have done if I were "just me", if that makes sense. People assumed Niki would be confident and outgoing, so being Niki *made* me more confident and outgoing than I normally was.

Was there also an element of "protective compartmentalisation" to it? What I mean is, was it easier to be outgoing because, if you had a bad experience, it was only happening to "Niki" and not really to you?

Niki: Goodness me, I feel like I'm on the analyst's couch! It's certainly a good coping strategy, but no. All of "Niki's" successes or failures were entirely mine and she was never a go-between for real feelings or a gatekeeper for the "real me". A persona like that is simply a magic feather. I could have met strangers and done other scary things withOUT being Niki; I'd simply have been a lot more anxious and neurotic about it.

I got to know you personally, and other spanking models. I always felt that "Niki Flynn" was much more of an artificial character than most of the others. I'm not saying that she was fake - quite the contrary. But "Niki" wasn't just a scene name. She really was an alter ego, a second self, wasn't she?

Niki: Yes. Using that Myers-Briggs Scale we love so much, my core self (whoever she is!) is solidly INFP. Fragile, insecure, creative, dreamy and not wholly in touch with the Real World. Niki could be flirtatious and interactive in a way my core self never could. It helps to have a name to wear as a mask, but in my case the mask felt more like the “real me” than my more core (vanilla) self did. I took the Myers-Briggs test once AS Niki, trying to imagine how I’d answer those questions if I were on stage at a party, in “performance” mode. And I was surprised to find that Niki was an ISFP. The differences weren’t huge, but Niki was certainly less introverted than “I” was and much more impulsive and spontaneous when it came to experiences.

Do you think that this "separation" was more pronounced in your case than with most of your spanking model colleagues? Do you think that the personality differences between "Niki" and you were bigger than the personality differences between, say, "Amelia-Jane" and the woman known as Amelia-Jane?

Niki: I never really thought about it before, but you're probably right. I've always been good at compartmentalisation, but not everyone is. And not everyone is comfortable with different names/personae. Ultimately, it's just an extension of the roles we all play without thinking about it: Daughter, sister, employee, neighbour, etc. My ISFP "business suit", so to speak, just took on a life of her own.

Was there also a conscious element to it? You were a writer before you became a spanking model, and you just said that retirement felt "like putting the seal on a book or a film". Did you ever consciously think about Fiona or Niki in these terms, like an author would about a fictional character she created?

Niki: Did I set out to have MPD, you mean? LOL I think I CAME to think of Niki and Fiona as separate people (or at least personae) over time; that's the nature of having alter egos. But I didn't intentionally create a character in being Niki. She was just the me who could be 100% out about all things kink, so I was bound to feel freer and more secure in her skin.

Closure

How did your career as a spanking model shape the person you are today, at the end of your career?

Niki: I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to do so many crazy (occasionally even glamorous!) things and work with so many talented people. The person I am today is one who has a treasure trove of memories to cherish in the years to come. I'm going to be an eccentric old lady someday, in purple velvet bonnets and Victorian bustle skirts, with no regrets and no feelings of "Oh, if only I'd said yes instead of no."

Now that she's gone, what would be the most beautiful thing your colleagues and fans could say about Niki Flynn? What would you like her to be remembered for?

Niki: Honestly, I'd just like for people to have enjoyed having me in their life, whether as a friend or entertainer.

We certainly enjoyed that! Thank you for the interview. And let's give the last word to "Niki": if you were to write an epilogue for Dances with Werewolves today, what would it be?

Niki: Beware the Moon, September 2009

You never know what's waiting for you out there on the moors. Or what transformations are in store for you. I say: DON'T stick to the roads. No matter how forbidding the night may seem, don't let it scare you into playing it safe.