The Pirates' Curse

Today, we want to tell you a bit more about the caning which I gave Ludwig recently and which, in combination with my marks from my LOL Day Switching, led to this partnerlook picture. As we have done several times already, we have written this post as a joint venture. Ludwig's comments are the ones in brackets and bold letters.

The whole scene started with a bet proposed by Ludwig. Now, one would think that Ludwig by now ought to know better than to indulge in any bets, especially those that lead to a spanking for the loser. But apparently, he was so sure of himself in this case that he decided to take the risk despite of his former negative experiences.

We were talking about the Pirates of the Carribean series. A rather innocent topic one might assume. But then I mentioned that, to my best knowledge, the German title for the movies was “Fluch der Karibik” ("Curse of the Carribean"). I had only seen excerpts from the films, though, so I wasn't 100 per cent sure. Ludwig insisted that I must be wrong and that the German title must be “Piraten der Karabik”, which is the literal translation of the original title. I became more and more sure that I had never heard that title in German, though. But Ludwig was sure that “Fluch der Karibik” was wrong.

[I had never seen any of the films, either, but I remembered from reading about them that the full title of the first one was "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl". I thought that Kaelah must be mixing up the "curse" element of the subtitle of the first film with the title of the series. After all, it did not make any sense whatsoever to translate "Pirates of the Caribbean" as "Curse of the Caribbean". I thought that not even the German film translators could be that dumb. Obviously, I was wrong.]

And so Ludwig proposed a bet about who of us had the German title right. The loser would receive 25 cane strokes from the winner. Now, normally I am not into betting. I hate losing, especially if there is something at stake. But I became more and more convinced that I was right. Ludwig's guess, on the other hand, seemed to be based mainly on the fact that he couldn't imagine why any reasonable translator should not to use the literal translation in this case, since it sounded good in German. So I finally decided to take the plunge and agreed to the bet.

It didn't take us long to find out that I was right. Rational considerations have never kept translators from making up completely strange new titles for films where the original title could easily have been translated. And so, Ludwig was in for 25 strokes of the cane!

[It really was a surprise to me. I had been so confident about my pick for the title. When I lost the famous football bet on this blog some years ago, it was simply bad luck. In sports, anything can happen - even if one team has a winning record over another, you can never be one hundred percent sure who will win. But in the movie title bet, my own hubris was my downfall. With hindsight, I found it fitting that it should be punished with a caning. And besides, Kaelah and I had wanted to get her some practice as a caner, anyway, for a big scene we are planning to eventually do on video.]

We didn't get around to settling the bet for quite a long time, but finally we decided that the caning would take place the next time we would be together. I had practised my caning technique every once in a while during that time and I practised again when we had settled the date for the scene. We had agreed on some general parameters. For instance, that Ludwig would be bent over a table and that we would film the scene, but only for ourselves, not for the public. Of course, I was free to bring some additional elements into the scene, though, that weren't explicitly planned beforehand. We had talked about the one or other possible thing that might happen, but Ludwig had no idea how exactly I would finally set up the scene.

After Ludwig had helped me to arrange the heavy table, I sent him to another room with the order to prepare himself for the scene and to wait until I called him. Then I dressed in my long black skirt and a Chinese style top. I set up the cameras, positioned a chair nearby, selected the cane that I wanted to use and another one in case the first one broke and put a large mirror behind the table. I wanted Ludwig to be able to watch me and himself during the caning.

[The mirror was the one thing I was totally sure of in advance. Kaelah loves mirrors, and I just knew without a shred of doubt that she would not be able to resist using one. We all have our predictable elements when we arrange a "big" special scene as a top - I certainly have mine, Kaelah has hers. And that is fine, I think!]

When I had finished my preparations, I fetched the singing bowl that we had already used for our very first play and struck it. The clear loud tone could not be missed. Ludwig came into the room and I told him to come over to me. I began by asking him why we were there. Bit by bit, Ludwig repeated the whole story that had led to the scene. After he had done so and I had reminded him that he was in for a severe caning, I told him to position teh chair next to him.

Ludwig did as he was instructed and I explained to him that I wanted him to strip naked, slowly and consciously. And I wanted him to fold each piece of his clothing carefully and diligently and put it on the chair next to him. Ludwig took off one piece after another, until he only wore his sexy black underpants. I told him to step out of those as well, only that this time he was also supposed to look at me throughout. Again, Ludwig did as I said.

I told him to put the chair away and fetch me the cane that I had selected and placed on a table nearby. Ludwig took the cane and came back to me, holding it with both hands. He handed me the cane and I ordered him to bend over the chair. When Ludwig had assumed his position, I put the cane back into his hands, telling him to contemplate the fate that was awaiting him. While he was doing so, being able to watch himself in the mirror in front of him, I arranged the cameras for the action.

[One of the peculiarities of being a top that switches is that I get caned so rarely that I never have an exact sensory memory of how the last time felt. The intervals between scenes where I bottom are so long that these details tend to fade a bit and it becomes more of an abstract memory. So whenever I do bend over for a caning, it is something of a re-acquaintance.]

[What I knew was that, in the last few scenes I had done as a bottom, one for the football bet video with Leia-Ann Woods and Kaelah and some shorter canings from Kaelah, I had struggled with the pain more than usual. I had taken the thrashings well in terms of restraint, but it had cost me a bigger effort than usual. A bigger effort, actually, than during longer and harder canings like the Ludwig's Comeuppance video I did with Niki Flynn. I was wondering why that was. Was my pain tolerance getting lower as I got older, or was it simply a case of me not having been in the right mental space for the more recent scenes, having perhaps underestimated these "smaller" canings? I thought that the upcoming 25 stroke caning, my longest one since Ludwig's Comeuppance in 2008, might help me solve that question.]

I went back to Ludwig, took the cane from him and positioned myself behind him. Now he could not only see himself in the mirror, but me as well. I carefully took aim on Ludwig's so far unblemished bottom. Finally I drew back the cane and brought it down hard. The stroke elicited a suppressed but visible reaction from Ludwig and a red stripe started to build on his bottom. Slowly and deliberately I placed stroke after stroke, taking the time to have a closer look at the marks every now and then.

Parallel stripe after stripe was added to the picture, their colour dark red and even slightly purple. When I reduced the severity a bit in order to fill in the blank gaps in between the marks, one stroke went a bit too high. Fortunately, it was still on the upper part of Ludwig's bottom, and while he felt that it was too high, his backbone didn't get injured. When I had more or less filled in the gaps, I again increased the severity for the last strokes, trying to put as much velocity behind the full-arm swings as I could. Because, as I told Ludwig, I had to make sure that he wouldn't one day loose “Haus und Hof” (house and farm) in a bet. Not that he is a guy who would ever do that...

[As it turned out, I found the caning easier to bear than I had feared. It was painful alright, but not as big a mental struggle as the last few scenes I had done as a bottom. Even though this one was longer and harder in terms of the actual force of the strokes. The difference, in my view, was all down to being more focussed and better mentally prepared in advance. For the video with Leia-Ann, we had to rearrange the cameras in between takes, and there was a lot of switching back and forth, first some M/F, then FF/M, then M/F again. Which made it difficult to fully focus on my scene as a bottom. And in the short, private scenes with Kaelah since then, I had perhaps also never been in quite the right mood. But this time, there were no distractions for me, and we had caught the right moment to do the scene.]

The last strokes came down quite hard, especially the very last one. Ludwig's reactions where still visible and slightly audible, but he managed to keep them under control. As he told me afterwards, my strokes had been hard, but not ultimately severe, even though I used my full arm. First of all, the cane that I used was rather light and rather short, which obviously reduced the impact. And secondly, I still need to improve my wristflick for that purpose. I am sure that the fact that I gave Ludwig enough time to recover in between the strokes also played a role here.

[Kaelah is a very good caner already, amazingly good, actually, in light of how few opportunities she has had to practice on a live target. But as with everyone, there are areas where she can still improve. The wristflick is one such area. It is what Niki used to call "the great equaliser", a technique that uses finesse rather than force and allows a petite woman to hit just as hard as a big strong bloke. On second thoughts, perhaps I should be careful with what I teach Kaelah... I might come to regret it eventually.]

Despite of the lack of ultimate severity, the caning had created a nice set of marks which we treated with lotion during the next days. After I had admired the result of my handiwork, we took some pictures for the memories and the scene was over. Obviously, the experience of still being able to take a caning of that severity level so well confirmed to Ludwig that switching from time to time wasn't so bad after all and that it was a nice idea to do a severe fifty strokes caning on video soon. I am not complaining at all about that result!