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The Gentlemanly Art of Spanking

The saga continues.

As we last met, we were discussing San Francisco of the seventies, with a detour, jumping twenty years ahead, to Las Vegas and porn premiers. Not sure how that happened. So let us together scurried through the salient details of the next two decades so we can get back to HoneyBun, the spanking kit empire. 

Married in 1981. Reception at Presidio Officers Club, thanks to Sky King, wife's dad.

Kazoos on dance floor. Better solos than band. If looks could kill. Sky King loved it.

Sons in short order. William, November 9.1981. Nathan, June 26 1983. Every Breath You Take.

Bowie scores with Let's Dance and goes into a blackout for rest of decade. I'm in there with him a lot .

Working south of Market.

Trying to drink less.

Sent out original "Someone You Love Is Flapping" and "Bulboscity in Stasis" cards.

Brother Nate commits suicide at 31. Booze. Coke. Pills. Two notes.

I start drinking and smoking for the both of us. South of market and North Beach and the dive bars on San Pablo in Albany.

Affirming daily the 'One Bar' cosmology: that is to say, my brothers

There is only One Bar: it spans the whole globe and when we drink in one, we drink in brotherhood and fellowship with every other drinker across the world, in our different rooms.  

Wife thrilled with this revelation.

Work, after reading of $100K advance for 68-pg. book, Fup, begins on "Flapping."

Herb garden.

Tomatoes.

More drinking.

One year not drinking.

Then a beer. Then more.

The nineties slammed down on me like a metal gate, O my brothers—the last year of Drunk—a black hole sky from which I could not escape.

Separation.

Moment of clarity vis-a-vis my drinking life.

—Knox, you say, what do you mean 'moment of clarity?'

O my brothers, the day had come we fear more than all others:

I could not get drunk despite my most earnest and expert efforts. The brandy would not work its once irreducible magic.

The pain had gotten too big, the sky too dark.

All friends gone. All hopes gone. Family gone. All promise gone.

All dreams gone.

Everything that I had ever held dear ...

Gone gone gone.

Early sobriety. Meetings. All of it.

I moved to the Oakland pied-a-terre I described in the first chapter.

Divorce.

I plunged into work and composing music: Flight of the Atom Bee my first cd. Eternal thanks to the girls who inspired the songs.

And things got better, as they do.

Having the gift of gab and some technological sense, I made ok bux selling printing. The World Wide Web emerged, surfaced, exploded, much to my delight—I envisioned a great artistic medium in its early development. My potbellied pig Yoshi: the first pig on the web and still the official pig of the internet. I printed a special hand-bound limited edition of Flapping.

I made money and spent it all. I quit smoking two to three packs Camels a day. My heart got broken twice—it is never fun. Women came and went.

Mars, a cat-like creature, moved in with beautiful Anne, a woman. Anne left. Mars stayed. Later girls loved him.

Two of my songs from Flight of the Atom Bee had been chosen to be part of a long-running show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, entering into its permanent collection. I was proud and honored. A little modeling and acting work bolstered my fragile artistic and vain ego.

Sister Megan died of a drug overdose, alone, spike full of speed. Heart attack in a homeless camp by the bay. Long time coming.

Years rolled by. I had stories to tell. Stories of love and lust triumphant. Love lost and lust louvered.

I knew I had what Salon readers wanted.

And then there was my ongoing affair with Heather: the very one who first asked me to spank her. This was the stuff of dreams, my friends, but modesty and a newly re-energized desire to live prevent me from relating many details here. She lived with a drunken, abusive boyfriend who owned guns and pitbulls. This added to the excitement of the whole, I believe.

On the advice of the writer I had met at Beyond Boogie Nights, I wrote "The Gentlemanly Art of Spanking," along with two other sample pieces, which I will summarize later, and submitted them to Salon. They bought the Gentlemanly Art and published it in early 1999. It was one of the fifty most-read pieces of the year, generating a huge amount of email both to me and Salon. Controversy swirled, exciting.

The Gentlemanly Art of Spanking was a simple enough piece, a light recounting of my discovery, thanks to Heather, somewhat late in life that women like to get spanked by their men. And oh yes some men like to get spanked too.

I talked about how, in my early 20s, I bought a book called "The Intimate Kiss," a tract on the art of oral sex, which I studied diligently in hopes of becoming a great lover. This was a goal of mine, as it is for many a young man. Throughout my twenties, I read other books on lovemaking techniques and, you know, applied them as often as possible. [Looking back, it is clear to me that intent was, and is, always more important than any book.]

I had never given spanking much thought and I was totally unaware of the erotic aspects inherent in the act. Although I always enjoyed pictures of women in leather and rubber fetish gear, the actuality of bondage, submission, discipline seemed quite scary. Spanking, giving or receiving, was relegated to "too kinky" whenever I thought about it, which wasn't often.

The first time I had ever spanked someone, it was not out of erotic play or intent. My girlfriend and I were having a terrible argument. Our relationship was almost over -- actually it had been for a while. The passion was gone, she wanted me gone. For some time, sex had been perfunctory at best.

We were in the bedroom. She was being absolutely unreasonable and would not listen to me. Out of sheer frustration, I grabbed her, threw her over my knee and administered a thorough bare-handed spanking ... after which she jumped up and tore off my clothes. We had the hottest, most passionate sex we had had in years. Mind you, I had never layed a hand on her, or any other woman, before. I don't know what had came over me in that moment ... and when I look back on it now, I assure you it is not regret that I feel. [Note: I've caught a lot of flack for the non-consensuality inherent in this anecdote, but it's the truth. In my desperation, I simply felt I didn't have any time for "negotiation." Sorry, love, I can't change biology to make a few lesbians happy!]

The connection between the two acts was not lost on me. But I was soon too busy suffering through breakup to give it much thought.

A couple years before I had met Heather, I had belonged to a small mailing list on the Internet dedicated to analog synthesizers, their upkeep, market value, use, repairs, modifications: traditional Internet geek speak, in other words. For the most part these discussions remained tame and technical, but there came a day when an Australian named Robin Whittle, legendary in synthesizer circles for the modifications he developed for a little synth known as the Roland TB-303, reminded me of my first spanking experience with a rather unorthodox and long letter he posted to the list.
At first the letter seemed unremarkable -- he was describing the genesis of his modifications, the intent and the results. And then, as the piece progressed, odd tidbits began to surface like piquant marshmallows in hot-chocolate.

Discussing the TB-303 as fetish, he wrote: "Some people have to have the pure, original machine, so they can sound like their heroes. This is fetishism of a boring, narrowing kind." He would go on to describe the sorts of fetishism he appreciated, like his bonzai trees and his corset collection, for example.

What had begun as a mild, mid-western synth-geek list, later invaded by a west-coast lunatic contingent, fairly reeled under the onslaught of Whittle's prose—we hadn't seen anything like this on the list before. Whittle developed the spanking/discipline/synthesizer theme for the rest of the piece, stressing the erotic act of pushing one's synthesizer to its limits.

"Investigate feedback loops [in the studio] and tweak them beyond stability. Dim the lights, flex your arms, turn on the tape-recorder, and deliver the punishment your studio/synthesizer needs to find its true voice -- wailing into new musical territory."

On visiting his website, http://fondlyandfirmly.com, I discovered several lengthy essays about spanking, discipline, masculinity, as well as the TB-303 and various and sundry other topics. Whittle's interest was and is not so much in spanking as erotic foreplay, although that is part of it, but as a necessary component of male-female relationships. The implication in his writings is that women by nature get out of line and men must assert themselves for the health of the relationship, because they care for and love their women.

O my brothers, this is rather strange turf we entered at this point -- the turf across which the archetypal cartoon caveman is dragging his beloved, whom he has just clubbed, to his cave. The older I get the less I know about fundamental motivations for human behavior. God knows I can barely explain my own behavior sometimes. Do women act out of line? Without a doubt. Are they testing their mates? Perhaps.

Whittle very eloquently made his case for spanking, for the emotional, as opposed to erotic, leverage it brings to a relationship as a stabilizing force. He posts many letters from women who share his views. Here is an excerpt:

"Women cannot, and will not, respect perceived weakness or any man that will not fight for their relationship," wrote one of his many adulatory female correspondents. "So, I want you to understand that I really believe you have tapped into a pulsing, unseen vein in society that needs to be oxygenated, explored and put out there in print. Spanking is not simply some strange fetish used for sexual arousal and enjoyment! ... I have said for years that spanking was an emotional issue -- a heart issue that has very little to do with sex to start. Now to have a deep need met with a spanking will definitely endear you LUSTILY to the one you now see as a savior of your insecurities, but it still starts, in my opinion, with basic, unmet, emotional needs. Perhaps it is too embarrassing for many to take spanking out of the sexual realm."

This was interesting—fascinating—especially since it was so contrary to much of what we have heard from women over the past 30 years of the "I prefer kind men who can express their feelings" ilk. But it wasn't something around which I was going to plan a new erotic life. On the synth mailing list, we made lots of jokes about spanking synths for a while.

Droogies, a year later, I met Heather, who asked me to spank her during our lovemaking.

Not surprisingly, in retrospect, I really enjoyed watching the crimson flush spread across her smooth white butt, my hand meeting her rounded flesh, the sound of the smack bouncing sharply off the bedroom wall, her gasps, the intensity of her sexual response geometrically increasing with each slap, the heat, physical, emotional, primal, generated, juices flowing like lava, a feedback loop of pure sexual energy, nova time. It was as if a world of intense sexual possibility, hitherto hidden, or at least unexplored, revealed itself to me that night.

Mind you, she had been spanked before, but it was all new to me.

I cannot and will not try to offer any psychological analysis here.

But as a man who has always loved sex and the incredible moments of a woman's orgasm -- being there with it, in it (Tennessee Williams once pointed out that homosexual men never experience that with a man) -- I was amazed by the all-around intensity my bare-handed paddling generated.

Imagine my surprise this late in life.

Was this sadism on my part, masochism on hers? I wondered. I do not think so after much reflection—sadomasochism did then and still implies a real fetishism to me, guilt, transference of real sexual feelings to objects, rituals and other stuff not normally connected to sex. Spanking seemed only an addition to what had hitherto been to my mostly vanilla, but always refreshing and satisfying, when I was getting lucky anyway, sex life.

Cut to my high school reunion around that time. I hadn't seen Cheryl since the last one, five years before. She still looked cute. Single, like me. She asked me to dance, early on. By night's end, we were pretty friendly. We ended up necking at my place. Swatted her bottom lightly. She said harder. I obliged. Things progressed. Nova time again.

Later she explained

—I love getting spanked. It makes my whole body just vibrate. I had a lover who used a belt and just the sound of it coming out of his pants and being folded over was completely exciting.

So I was getting quite interested in spanking, and its practice and appeal, by this time, not that I started going to Bondage a-Go-Go every week—I went once years ago and it wasn't the public paddling that shocked me (after a while anyway)—it was a guy kneeling by the second-floor bar with a line of women in front of him, waiting to have their boots licked clean by him, one at a time, resting on his raised knee, their conversations as they stood there, drinks and cigarettes in hand, as banal as anything you might hear in a suburban beauty parlor on any given afternoon.

I wanted to know more about spanking and its psychosexual implications for relations between men and women : I guess my pride as a great lover had taken a blow. And I also knew now just how hot it got some women going.

I asked a gay friend, quite knowledgeable about sexual matters, gay and straight, why women like to get spanked. He said, without hesitation

—The same reason men like to get spanked.

This didn't quite resonate with yours truly. Nonetheless, in the search for erotic possibility and truth, a short time later I asked my friend Cheryl if she wanted to try spanking me. Yes she did, and did so ... but ... nada ... no heat. No explanation here.

Later, after checking the spanking personal ads on the Web (there are lots), I determined to take a poll about spanking among my women friends.

Although a couple of women dismissed it as "creepy," a large majority of them admitted that they enjoyed it, mainly during the act of lovemaking. A 40-year-old writer at a major daily newspaper confessed

—I was having a fight with my boyfriend. All of a sudden he spanked me, and then took me by force. It was absolutely one of the hottest sexual encounters of my life. It was like my body took over, responding on its own, counter to everything I had believed I would and should like, especially considering my feminist sensibilities.

She then counseled me that if I were going to write a balanced piece on spanking that I had to survey my male friends as well.

So I asked a few. One friend admitted to getting spanked by a dominatrix in public at a fetish club in San Francisco. He said it didn't really turn him on. Another friend will not speak about something that happened at the same club, nor will he return there. None of my close straight male friends expressed any interest in being the spankee, much preferring to be the spanker.

There are men, I know now, who like to be spanked. One woman friend tells me she can spank her fiance to orgasm.

This, then, was everything I knew about spanking when The Gentlemanly Art of Spanking was published.
Women loved the article. In fact, in the original article I postulated, based on my early, informal survey, that perhaps three out of four women liked to get spanked.

After the torrent of mail I received, I would raise that percentage to nine out of ten. And the tenth would be fascinated with the subject. One suburban female friend who kept telling me how weird and kinky the whole thing, and me also, was called me every night for a month and asked me to read whatever email about the article I had received that day.

Robin Whittle, the mad genius Australian, wrote to warn to me that women would write, that I would get offers. Alas, my instant and marginal cyber-celebrity proved to be insufficient in this area, just as being a "Babe On the Web" had many years earlier. See the Salon Rejects sidebar for my experience with online romance.

The S&M crowd couldn't stand The Gentlemanly Art of Spanking and wrote constantly to inform me of my ignorance. Taking their correspondence as a whole, I can surmise that, as a group, S&M people are mostly pompous, predictable, and boring. And kind of sad. Oh, there were a few fun people who liked to wield or taste the lash who wrote, so save your postage. Overall, in terms of culture, intelligence, and personality: S&M crowd = midwestern Rotary Club.

Actually, with all the revelations of the past year or so regarding homosexuality and perversion within leadership of the the Republican party and evangelical communities, I know my joking intuition was spot-on years ahead.

I got a number of emails chastising me severely for the non-consensual spanking of my girlfriend. One person thanked me for pointing out the erotic aspect of spanking as an argument against spanking children. I had no idea I was helping, but I was happy to do so: I am absolutely opposed to the spanking of children.

So here we are, my droogies. End of the old millennium, dawn of the new.

The dotcom bubble floated over the city and burst, scattering sycophants, hustlers, and sociopaths from Wall Street, Hollywood, Texas onto every boulevard and into every start-up across town. Insufferable pinheads and pissants in black swarmed over the seven hills and into the outlying regions, destroying San Francisco one pathetic IPO at a time.

O my brothers ... carpetbaggers milled about on every corner in the city. They craved cover bands and house music, dj's destroying what was left of our once rich and diverse musical nightclub culture. It is said that all good things must end some day.

This was certainly the case of the gravy-train job and the perfumed Heather-bomb that had been exploding so exquisitely in my arms ten times a week for a couple wondrous and fruitful years.

Intermezzo 3

Apr. 19, 2003

From: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

To: [undisclosed recipients]

Subject: Doc was here 2
So I drove down to Big Sur, it was pouring and dark and beautiful. And I slept in a campground in my car ... God bless German engineering. Woke up and went to a quaint bakery on hwy. 1. Ended up sitting with Linda, a therapist from LA who was travelling from San Francisco, visiting missions. We had a nice chat about LA & SF.

Went out and sat in my car, looking at a map, trying to figure out which way to go - I wanted to go to a nice beach. I look up from my car and this very cute pixieish aging raver girl is beaming at me, motioning for me to roll down my window. I do, of course, being a gentleman, and she says —I am hitching to San Francisco, can you give me a ride? I said —I'm going the other way, but I'll give you a ride up the coast a bit if that will help. She says great and hops in.

We drive and now I can see what I was driving thru at night and it is so gorgeous. Green hills, massive rock formations, the Pacific Ocean changing hue as the clouds moved and the sun broke through intermittently, rain on and off.

Fabienne was a healer. She told me about energy vortices in the palms of our hands. She was heading to a trance party up in Marin. She seemed to be carrying everything she owned in her quilted overcoat & shoulder bag (I'm not sure about this). She was very smart and well-spoken, but definitely an ephemeral creature and I felt a certain kinship with her since she did seem to spend a lot of time in another dimension.

I dropped her off in Carmel and went into the downtown area. Jeezus! What trash. It was late morning and the shoppers were just arriving in force. I couldn't find a Thomas Kincade gallery in which to take sanctuary. Attn: that was a joke

Headed back down the coast and arrived at the world-famous Nepenthe cafe. Decided not to eat there - there was no view (rain and fog, so the food was too high).

On a whim, I went into the gift store. I saw they had books, so I introduced myself as a writer. They bought three copies of Flapping. Then I noticed they carried Dirty Girl soap, so I pulled out some HoneyBun stuff - big hit! But the buyer wasn't there so I left a sample kit & I'll be back shortly ... because ....

The main thing that happened at Nepenthe is that I met a woman. Lynne. For those of you who track such things, she is OLD ENOUGH! And gorgeous, smart, sweet, funny, creative ... I could go on. She was working at the shop, so when we kept talking for an hour or so, her coworkers started sort of giving her the eye.

The store manager strode up to the counter just before I left and warned Lynne very loudly that ONLY BAD BOYS were into spanking, because they were always in trouble when they were little. And stomped back to her office.

We said our goodbyes with my promise to return in a couple weeks.

So I can't really think about anything else right now.

In San Luis Obispo, heading for Santa Barbara, 9 p.m. Saturday night. Recaffeinated at the 2 Dog cafe ...

Never a dull moment.

Love to all,

Knox

Comments (1)

Art of Spanking
written by --Y--, February 10, 2008

God Knox how weird, my first intro into sexuality was my girlfriends in Brownies or was it Girl Scouts or just a friends B'day party talking about which young lad did the best spanking. They later went on to become the sochees (popular girls) me well maybe someday I'll come back in a pink Cadillac. Hmm can't say as now I'd be interested in that but . . .

Droogie on friend.

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