“Funishment,” or play punishment, is this week’s Kink of the Week. Surprisingly, I haven’t had much experience with play punishment in my kink relationships. “I don’t need a reason to beat you,” was W’s usual response to it. And as I mentioned here, I’ve never been one to play act, either, as play punishment usually requires. Uncontrollable giggling during a scene notwithstanding, I tend to take my BDSM seriously, and roleplaying just isn’t my cup of tea.
There is a type of play that I’ve always done, though, enlisting most, if not all, of my play partners in, that could maybe be considered a type of play punishment and that I (and, from what I can tell, they) really enjoy.
Playing for Whacks
“Playing for Whacks” isn’t its official name – or maybe it is, now that I’ve named it here. LOL It started way back in the Before Times, one evening when W, Ad and I were playing Scrabble. I admit that – as is often the case with these kinds of games – I was the instigator. Yes, it’s true, as much as I liked my big bad serious scenes with the Mean Guy, I also liked a bit of fun occasionally. Also, in pondering what appeals about these games, part of the appeal is that I have a sense of (at least nominal) control. They are almost bottoming scenes, rather than submission.
Hmm, now that I’ve said that, I want to dig a little deeper into what that means to me. But first, what Playing for Whacks is.
Basically, it is any game that the guys and I play against each other: board games like Scrabble, Cribbage or Sequence, or physical games like bowling or Putt Putt Golf, or even a bar game called Pass the Pigs, that ends up with a numerical score at the end. Then, no matter who wins or loses, whatever the difference between the my score and the other’s is, those numbers are added together and the tally is the number of whacks I will get. Not always right away, and the whacks can add up from different games. So, the tally sheet the other night looked like this:
Bowling for Whacks
Start: 202 (from a previous night)
Game 1: 88
Game 2: 61
_____________
Total: 351
Pigs for Whacks
Total: 323
______________
Grand Total: 674
Then I took 380 that night so it was
674 – 380
_______________
Total: 294 left
This was only a small portion on that 380.
I keep a running tally and at whatever time any of them choose, I “work them off” with whacks from all the various instruments. Sometimes we do the whole amount, sometimes only a portion. That’s (mostly) up to them, although they will check in with me to see that I’m still with them.
So hmm, back to that comment about control. It’s not that I am in control, but that I know there is a beginning and an end to things. It creates a very nice box, and it is easier for me to be in control of myself from within this box. I know I only have x number of that whip or this cane left, and surely I can make it til then.
Can’t I?
Of course that “security blanket” falls apart when someone (K) says (as he did last time) “Well you can finish counting all you like…” and then just leaves that hanging there for me to interpret. And yes, my little sub-maso heart starts to beat all that much harder, and my pussy starts to drip, because we all know, no matter how much I like to play at having some kind of control, what I want is to not have it; to have it taken from me, even with psychological headgames.
So, yes. I guess that’s a type of funishment. I’m not being play punished for an infraction, but we are creating a set of conditions by which I am meted out physical punishment (again, using that word lightly) but from which I can’t escape. Once they’ve been added to the tally, eventually they will happen.
