Tuesday 12 June 2012

Reaching that top shelf


There was the one about the bratty girl who goaded guys until they spanked her good and hard. There was the women who daydreamed about being a governess in Wild West days and whipping her charges. And, if I'm remembering it right, there was the girl who got turned on watching her mother punish her older sister with a cane.
Reading Hermoine's post 'From the top shelf' set me to thinking about the thrill that I felt when I first got my hands on Nancy Friday's first big hit, 'The Secret Garden'. It was published in the early 1970s, but mine was old, dog-eared and was handed to me by a friend a few years later.
When she gave it to me she reckoned it would blow my mind, and she wasn't wrong. I don't know where that book is now. It may be in a box in the attic, or I might have thrown it away. But if it's gone, it's not forgotten.
In those days - when I first read Secret Garden - magazines like Janus were pretty much the only thing that let on that there was such a thing as a spanko, and they were out of my reach. Literally. Janus was stocked by my local newsagent, but safely out of reach of anyone other than tall men.
I could see the covers and was pretty sure what they were about. I had to fight not to look that way when I went into the shop and from the moment I walked through the door I'd be blushing at the thought of being in that space with the shopkeeper - and that magazine.
From Secret Garden I learned that girls heads were filled with all sorts of 'bad' thoughts about sex. Stuff I hadn't even dreamt of, and some that I had (and in a book that was written by a woman who was the same age as my Mum...).
And some of the the book's interviewees, like me, had feelings that were all tangled up and confused with ideas about guilt, sin and punishment - especially corporal punishment. Must find that book and re-read it.  

PS This little collection of 1970s imagery is borrowed from Richard Windsor's Vintage Spanking, which is absolutely fab. He deserves a medal for his work preserving the history of Spankoland.

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