Last night I caught myself chewing my nails. I haven't done it since I was about - oh, six or so - and decided that coming back to the habit twenty years later wasn't something I wanted.
"Uh-oh," I said to Abel, with my mouth full of nail. "I think, I need a beating."
This is exactly the sort of matter where any initiative from Abel would have been firstly, impossible, secondly unwelcome: if he had seen me nibble on the nail, and forbidden me to do it under the threat of a punishment, he would have been invited to take a hike. However, helping me with an issue that I brought to his attention myself is a sort of husbandly duty. (The poor guy is so exploited.)
He sat on the bed, bent me over his lap and tugged down my knickers, and gave me a few experimental swats with his hand.
"Ouch," he said. "This hurts."
Hmm, no bloody kidding. I nearly said "this is supposed to hurt", but I didn't want to convert a sort-of disciplinary spanking by my own request into a solid walloping for untimely cheekiness. In the meantime, he reached out to the night-stand and grabbed a hairbrush.
It was the same brush I had been tearing through my hair five minutes previously. It's a fine, effective brush in both senses. I yelped and owwed for a few strokes, and cursed myself for turning his attention towards my nails. There are so many things with which I can deal without any painful encouragement from him, I thought - why not this? It was too late, though. A dozen swats into the punishment I gave up trying to contain my wailing, and howled in earnest.
"What are you crying for?" asked Abel in a very surprised voice.
I couldn't work out whether he was being evil, or genuinely didn't understand just how much a hairbrush spanking can hurt.
"I'm letting you know the spanking is working!" I squealed.
"Oh."
I would that all questions were so easy to answer.
Abel gave me a few more whacks, and put the hairbrush away.
"Up you get," he said. "What do you have to say?"
I scrambled onto my feet and yanked my knickers back up. "Um. I won't bite my nails again? And thank you for punishing me?"
He nodded. "Good girl. Get ready for bed."
On the whole, that was probably the most effective spanking I've ever had. I have no doubt that I really won't bite my nails again. Whatever fluke had urged me to chew on them in the first place seems a thing of the past now. So does the pain of the spanking, for that matter - but the memory of it remains, as does the warmth from the hugs I got afterwards.
I wish spanking worked the first time for every kind of behaviour I've ever wanted to change.
