My First Spanking: An Anthology

For sex. For discipline. For revenge. For money ... For curiosity's sake. There are many reasons and ways to give and take a spanking, and in this erotic collection edited by Cassandra Park, 13 authors write about their first spanking-the way it happened or the way they dreamed it had happened.

"My First Spanking" recalls younger, slightly more innocent days, days when we knew what we wanted, or had an idea, but were afraid to say the word. Days of meeting potential partners in quiet corners of restaurants, keeping our voices low. Days spent longing to find the person who knew how to take charge, and the nervous excitement when we knew it was about to happen at last.

The characters in this collection are not all lovers, and the spankings are not always delivered with love. But there's always compassion, love, or at the very least lust between spanker and spankee. And in just about every case, they know that their first spanking is definitely not going to be their last.

It is worth pointing out here that Cassandra Park is not only a member of the BDSM community in New York City. She is one of New York’s divas of domestic discipline with a particular passion for the spanking, strapping, paddling and caning arts. She often appears as a featured player at most of Gotham’s spanking parties and other events. Her fiction appears in print elsewhere such as the recently published Logical Lust volume, Spank!

Thus Ms. Park has not earned her reputation through mere show, but through the diligent application of learned detail from having adjusted the behavior of hundreds, if not thousands, of wayward bare bottoms. Her book, It’s Supposed to Hurt, is a composite of stories and brief essays in which the two forms tend to merge. That is to say that some of the stories clearly feel as though they are based on personal experience while many of the essays are so intense that they acquire the otherworld feel of fiction. It is an interesting approach to an increasingly narrow field of fiction.

Interspersed in and among the longer pieces are photographs, each sporting a short reflective caption that reflects the spanking significance of each image. Many of the essays end in a question about the merits of what the author reports, rather like Camus’s Stranger wondering reflectively about his own thoughts, feelings and reactions.

Her stories and descriptions sometimes contain elements that will seem extreme to some readers such as a young lady who is given a long, hard paddling OTK [over the knee] with a bath brush. In response to that extremity, we are invited by Ms. Park’s book to remember two things. First, that it is the character’s choice to be thus soundly spanked, and secondly that it is the author’s fantasy, not necessarily an experience she wants or recommends for others. The book pleasantly invokes the reader to think about what they really want from BDSM and life in general.

Erotica of late has taken on a more and more formulaic approach -- as writers look for more sure-fire plotting for submissions -- and publishers seek out niche audiences for both actual books and online publications. Perhaps the profound instability of our times makes the idea of a guaranteed happy ending more attractive. For those who seek more than simple comfort from their reading, Ms. Park has potentially created a new mode of erotic art, in which expression is neither confessional nor instructional, but designed specifically to deliver the sensual experience of the moment. Thus It’s Supposed to Hurt offers the reader a refreshing immediacy.

Review by Steven Hart courtesy of Erotica Revealed