Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Ludwig's Story II: Video Voyeur

As I wrote in the first part of my story, my interest in depictions of spanking and corporal punishment started when I was no older than eight or nine. Needless to say, I had never heard of BDSM or sadomasochism at that age. I only knew that I had strange fantasies which were somehow "grown up" in nature and which none of the other kids seemed to share. I did not talk about them to anyone. In secret, I wondered whether I might be the only person in the world who had this fascination with spanking and CP.

My kinky fantasies had started before I even had an interest in sex (or a clear understanding of how it worked). A few years down the road, however, I did start having an interest in sex. More precisely, I started being interested in naked women. My parents had a handful of issues of Playboy magazine, which were lying around in our living room amidst a pile of various other magazines. Previously, I had not paid them any attention. I had known that they were there, but wasn't interested in them. I would rather look at the other magazines which had articles about computers and science. But at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I suddenly became very curious about the Playboy magazines. I would sneak down to our living room at night to look at them.

(By the way, here is something worth thinking about in the discussion about censoring adult content. The self-appointed moral guardians love trotting out their old canard about "the necessity to protect minors" from the evils of porn. However, as a number of psychological studies shows, there isn't any danger to minors, because 1) in order to find adult content on the internet, you have to actively search for it, and 2) children simply aren't interested in adult content until they reach the age of puberty and start becoming adults themselves. My own development would seem to confirm this.)

The magazines must have made an impression, because several decades later, I still remember the name of one playmate from back then: Celine Huber, who was "Miss October" in 1989 (the magazine must have been a few years old when I looked at it). She had a cute face and a rather spectacular figure, with a petite bottom that seemed destined to inspire spankophile daydreams. The other readers must have shared my enthusiasm: they voted Celine playmate of the year.


(Celine Huber, Miss October 1989, German edition of Playboy)

The late 80s and early 90s were also the time when the German "Privatsender", the privately financed TV channels not owned by the state, would show erotic films late at night during the weekend. Some of them were softcore productions that had been made for TV to begin with, others were hardcore productions with all the explicit bits edited out. Again, I would sneak down on Friday and Saturday nights, when my parents were already in bed, to watch these films. I watched quite a few over these years. Many were utterly awful garbage, like the upight petty bourgeois fantasies of the German School Girl Report series. Some others I found pretty hot, like the French sex films with a Marilyn Monroe-lookalike named Olinka. The stories in the latter were just as silly, mind you, but at least they had good-looking women, and despite the cuts, you could tell that people were having real sex. At school, chatter during recess revealed that other kids were watching these late-night films as well, including most of the boys and some of the girls. One female classmate of mine complained that more was shown of the naked women's bodies than of the naked men. She certainly had a point there.

(Another tidbit worth thinking about: anti-porn crusaders claim that men are "pornified" by watching adult films, turning them into misogynists who see women only as servile sex objects. For what it's worth, I can report that no such transformation took place in my case. Just as I understood that films like Lethal Weapon or Die Hard were not accurate portrayals of the life and work of police officers, I understood that what was shown in soft porn films on late night TV was not an accurate portrayal of how people have sex in real life. I understood that the bodybuilder and the two gals with the supermodel figures having a threesome by the waterfall was simply an erotic fantasy. It did not change how I thought about women. I daresay that if men grow up to become misogynist jerks, there are other factors at play than pornography.)

After I started being interested in "normal" sex, my spanking fantasies subsided somewhat. One reason was that while there was a lot of sex in late night erotic films, scenes of spanking and CP were much more difficult to find. There were a few scenes like that in the school films and pirate films I already knew, but almost all of them were male on male, and none of them were made to be erotic. So I kept wondering whether I might be the only person in the world who would want to see spanking with an erotic "buzz" to it, and preferably with the opposite sex involved. I received the answer to that question one weekend night when I had once again snuck down from my room to watch an adult film on our TV.

What turned out to be a revelation began inauspiciously. As a matter of fact, the film looked like utter crap. It was an older production from the 1970s. The story was about a boarding house run by a stern and puritanical widow. When a young and attractive pensioner from Norway moves in and does gymnastics in the nude, the other guests one by one get naughty and start having sex. It was daft even by porn standards. What was worse, the film's cast, except for one actress, was unattractive, and the sex scenes were lame. I had half a mind to stop watching and go back to bed, but I held out hope that there would be at least one good sex scene with the one attractive actress.

Towards the end of the film, the widow who owns the boarding house has thrown out all her guests. Depressed, she sits by the fireplace and starts looking through a large pile of erotic photographs and magazines left behind by one of the guests, first with revulsion, then with mounting curiosity and excitement. This leads to a weird (and clumsily edited) fantasy / dream sequence mixing flashbacks from the film so far with snippets from other 1970s erotic films. It was this fantasy sequence where things suddenly became very interesting, because many of these little snippets showed men and women whipping each other.

I was dumbfounded. Then ecstatic. The segment that made the biggest impression on me showed a man, who appeared to be a monk judging by his robes, lifting a woman's dress and thrashing her bottom with a short whip. I thought it was probably the sexiest thing I had ever seen. As is often the case with such Eureka experiences, it seemed as if someone had read my thoughts - rather, my erotic fantasies - and put this image I had always dreamed about right there in front of me, into the film. But the fact was, it wasn't me who had created that scene in the film, it was someone else. In this instant, it was clear that I was not the only person in the world who found depictions of spanking and CP erotic. Whoever had filmed this scene had the same fascination.

In the mainstream films, the whippings of sailors and other such CP scenes were not made to be erotic. But this scene clearly was. The young woman was whipped on her naked bottom. The monk was obviously enjoying it, grinning with sadistic glee. It was plain as day that this was intended to be an arousing scene, conceived by someone and produced for an audience who got excited by depictions of spanking and CP. There were other brief snippets of whipping in the sequence, including some F/M, but none were as good in my mind as the monk and the sexy lass.

Fortunately, the film was shown again the next night, at an even later time. I nicked a blank video cassette from my parents (they had so many that they did not notice) and recorded the scene so I could rewatch it whenever I wanted. One or two house moves later, I lost the cassette. I've been trying for years to find that whipping scene again. It is brief and very average, nothing special at all really, but it was the first glimpse of erotic corporal punishment I ever saw and held tremendous nostalgic value for me. But I did not remember the title of the film and it was such an old, obscure production that I searched in vain for a long time. Only recently did I finally find out which film it was (I browsed through old German TV schedules which are available online): La pension du libre amour, France, 1974. It was shown on German TV under the title Pension zur freien Liebe.



 (Whipping scene from La pension du libre amour)
 
In the following years, I found a few more decent spanking and CP scenes on television. I recorded them on my precious video cassette, the seed of a collection. I learned from passing mentions in magazine articles and books that some people had what was called an inclination for sadomasochism and practiced what was called BDSM. It was all rather simplified and superficial and left open a lot of questions. Was sadomasochism a sickness or not? Did it apply to me? I recognised that my faible for spanking scenes in films had something to do with this strange inclination, but I wasn't sure if I would like spanking in practice or if I ever wanted to try it out. So I probably wasn't a "true" sadomasochist. In any case, I was a virgin at the time and hadn't even experienced "normal" sex. The possibility of ever trying out BDSM seemed so remote and improbable that I never seriously thought about it.

By the turn of the millennium, I was an adult and online. The internet made finding kinky stuff so much easier. Not only were there websites listing CP scenes from mainstream films, like the fabulous Whipping Scenes in Movies Database. There was also a huge amount of porn showing real spankings, strappings, canings and so on. I was astonished by how many such videos existed and how widespread they were. Even porn paysites that featured mostly mainstream content often had some CP clips as well. Apparently, the number of people who were into this was much bigger than I had imagined.

This was the time when a video file of 10 MB was considered large and took a significant amount of time to download. Consequently, most of the CP I saw consisted of clips 10 to 30 seconds long. I found out later that many of my favourite snippets from that time were from California Star's English Discipline Series. Over the next couple of years, my internet connection gradually became faster and the files bigger. I discovered the Beach Girl Spankings videos by Raven Hill, which were interesting because of their "reality TV" vibe. Then, another major Eureka moment as I stumbled upon my first Rigid East film. The Czechs, who later became Lupus Pictures, made exactly the kind of CP video I had long fantasized about: very severe canings, great-looking girls, good stories, professional production. I wrote about the impact their videos had on me in my post The Company of Wolves.

While my video collection grew to be quite vast and I saw more and more CP action on the screen, I still had no practical experience of any of this. I became increasingly aware of a feeling of discrepancy, for lack of a better word. For a very long time, I had been perfectly happy with just being a video voyeur. But now I began to seriously consider trying out spanking and CP for myself, if only to get an insight into how it felt like for the spankees in the videos I so enjoyed. But how to go about it? I did not know anybody in the BDSM scene. Online, I had chatted with a couple of fellow video collectors who were just as clueless about real kink as me. That was the full extent of my acquaintances.

In the next instalment, I will tell you how I progressed from gray theory to the green of life's golden tree (to abuse Goethe's phrase). In the meatime, if you like, you can share your own story in the comments section. Did you also wonder if you were perhaps the only person in the world who was fascinated by corporal punishment? How did you find out that there were others? What was the first great, erotic CP scene you saw in a film? How did your kink develop while you were a young adult?

8 comments:

Bob S said...

Lethal Weapon not true ?

Spearthrower said...

I think I have always had spanking fantasies -- at least from a very young age, well before puberty. I was only spanked lightly by my mother with a wooden spoon. My Dad only spanked me once (I deserved it). At high school, I was caned a couple of times. But I had these spanking fantasies prior to high school. As with many others I am sure that any corporal discipline I received had nothing to do with my fantasies. Even now beyond my middle age I have spanking fantasies.

At University, I looked up the library catalog and was able to retrieve some books that covered the field. Amazingly, they had "Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries from the Earliest Period to the Present Time" on the shelves. I moved it from its correct position so I could retrieve it and read without fear of it being checked out. And then "The Pearl" came on sale at the bookshop. I could not get enough of the Victorian flagellation erotica. And thanks to the Saxon site, can still read Miss Coote's confessions and the other classics of the period.

Like Ludwig, the RGE/Lupus videos were a revelation. I find some of the later material too severe. But the earlier videos were great -- particularly the Headmaster's Study series. And like Ludwig, I downloaded some of those earlier videos over very slow connections. When Lupus went out of business I bought up many of the videos at a discount. And now I regret not buying more. I watch them often. I've not found too many other producers that can bring together a good script, staging, acting and nice thrashings of very attractive young ladies as Lupus did. Of course, they are not anywhere perfect but they are still much superior to a genus that is largely pretty poor. I was very sorry to see them go.

Ramon Herzog said...

I think that the starting phase of the kink is always the same or similar, regardless whom you ask.
My case, Ludwig, was very similar to yours, only 40 Jears earlier. As a boy I discovered an "unhealthy" interest in female backsides. It did not even occur to me to try slapping them. But I used every occasion to watch them moving, undulating, rolling, wobbling. The idea of spanking them came later. At that time TV was "Stahlnetz" only. My first movie spanking scene I stumbled across accidentally in some Dalas suburban movy house: Come and play with me. It was a strapping scene which I would - even today - rate at the top. I was never able to find a copy of that flick. But when I came into my pants, I knew I was home!
Of course, I thought of being the only pervert around. The one difference between the two of us was that one: As an adult you could go straight into the internet. I had much more difficulties to find out whether I was the only one interested in spanking. It took me nearly 30 years to discover the first spanking brochure on a business trip to Denver. Since then, adult shops have been about the same as brides in every harbour for sailors. I know all of them in every major city.
From the first book, to the glossy magazines like Janus, Februs (which cost me a fortune) to the first 8mm films, then the first videos (copies of copies knowing that I was ripped of in Soho), then the vast quality improvement by digital videos and the advent of Rigid East (I own nearly all of them).
Now our ways into live spanking unite. I had my wife as the only spanking partner, but at least that was live! But my first public event was 2006, very close to your coming out, I guess.

Kaelah said...

Another great piece of writing, Ludwig! There is an interesting difference between us when it comes to kinky scenes – I think I was always more interested in finding scenes that showed formal spankings, canings and so on (preferably between two male participants). I didn't feel the strong desire to find scenes in which the spankings were closely connected to sex (even though the formal scenes aroused me). Maybe that's one of the reasons why it took me much longer to search the internet for kinky erotic stuff and why it also took me longer to find out that I wanted to try spanking for real as an erotic experience...

@ Bob S:
I am sorry, but I have looked it up and it seems that Lethal Weapon is not true. If you want to learn something about real police work, though, I can recommend "Police Academy" (I am sure that this is 100 per cent real)! ;-)

Peter8862 said...

My earliest memory of CP is a tete-a-tete I had at the age of ten with my best friend Tommy. We were lying on our tummies on the sloping roof of my uncle's chicken house, hiding from my aunt at bedtime when I confessed to my chum that I would dearly like to be strapped on my behind just to see what it felt like. Tommy, whose father used a strap on him for real, was not so sure. I never got my wish, apart from a headmaster's caning when I was sixteen which was wholly undeserved and convinced me of the injustice of this world.
I developed a growing interest in erotic CP however during my six years at sea during the war, sparked off in my imagination by those excitingly ballgowned girls at the officer's club called Delmonica's on 5th Ave, New York. Later, as a mature student at a summer ball I remember telling my partner how much I would love to spank some of the other girls in their long dance frocks. She was very shocked, but married me nonetheless. Sadly she branded all CP as perversion, so I explored it with professionals from time to time when funds became available. Once in Hamburg's Club de Sade, I recall my partner wearing a long red satin nightdress while I whipped her and tore the garment to shreds. She was so excited she showed the ripped dress to all her friends. "Just look what he's done !" More anon Ludwig, before you finally shut up shop . Peter

Peter8862 said...


To continue, I found that most UK professionals would only give whereas in Germany and Belgium, it was much more 50/50. So during a dozen whippings, I became a "switch". Long silky dresses on the girls and thin running shorts for myself each played a role and were sometimes destroyed as part of the action. Fifty or so strokes with cane or whip were normal but only once broke the skin. The resulting bloodstains on my white shorts had to be preserved for posterity. I hated the secrecy of all this but no penetration or oral sex was ever involved and I never felt that I had betrayed my marriage vows.
Final part anon.

Peter8862 said...

One very black day in 1990, I was arbitrating in London when I received a call from my dear wife saying that she had that morning been diagnosed with lung cancer. The parties very kindly agreed to a two day adjournment and I rushed home. One unexpected side effect of the resulting trauma was a much increased sex drive on my part. I allowed myself a sixty stroke whipping for a cost of sixty pounds and this carried me through the three sad years until my wife died. Loneliness followed and led to my responding to a couple who had advertised for a cp playmate in Kane magazine. This contact in turn led to a couple where the wife was a true masochist. Once a year ever since, we have had a most successful CP party lasting three nights. I feel I've made up for lost time.
With hindsight, I wish now that I had discussed erotic CP more openly with my wife. Much might have been different. But at least I kept my wife vanilla happy and together we fathered two first class sons. In the end this is really all that matters. Peter

Kaelah said...

@ Peter8862:
Thanks a lot for sharing your story! Even though we know each other for quite a while now, some aspects you wrote about were new to me. I think a relationship between a kinkster and a vanilla partner can be quite difficult at times. But as you rightfully pointed out, other aspects of life are much more important for a happy marriage.