Beginnings - Part II

I have received many wonderful comments to my previous post regarding my own 'beginnings' into Female Led Relationships and the spanking that goes along with it (at least for me). It has been amazing to hear from several of you who appear to be about my own age with similar beginnings. My sincere thanks to those who have shared their own experiences. If you are reading this for the first time, be sure to look at the comments.

My 'youth' spanned the 1960's. My parents took their yearly vacation during late July and early August and almost always included a trip to the 'big city' where we took in some of the festivities of the 'summer festival' held there. I remember one summer (perhaps 1963 or 1964) that I was becoming rather bored with hanging with my parents. I suggested that I grab a bus and go home and leave my parents to enjoy the rest of their time without having to worry about entertaining me. They agreed and off to the bus depot I went. I had a bit of time to kill and decided to go 'exploring'.

As it turned out, not too far from the bus depot was the part of town that catered to ... well, ... Adult Book Stores! Being the curious lad that I was, of course I succumbed to the temptation and decided to check it out. What was the worst that would happen? I would just get kicked out. After all, I had looked at (and purchased a few) of the 'stag' type magazines in my home town.

Well, I guess my money was as good as a 'real' adult. So, I looked around and pretended that I knew what I was doing. As you can imagine, the material I saw was many orders of magnatude more explicit that the 'stag' magazines I had seen before. Then I saw it! An entire section that was dedicated to BDSM! They called it 'bondage' even though some of it was just pure spanking. It seemed like I had hit the 'mother-lode' and it was also very interesting that there were publications that dealt with 'bondage' and spanking, even Females spanking males (you mean there are other people into this stuff???). I asked for a closer look at some of the magazines (many were inside a glass counter) and ended up purchasing a number of magazines and paperbacks. I still have many of these purchases in my collection including some of the Mutrix books and two or three copies of 'Bizarre Life' (still one of my favorites and still in my collection). Over the years I bought every copy of this amazing magazine I could find and have about a dozen different issues.

I had some more time and did some futher exploration along the same street. I discovered quite a number of these stores and checked them out. It seemed that the first store I entered catered more to the 'specialty' items but found that most of these book stores all had 'bondage' sections. One of the stores in particular, was a classic example of the 'dirty book stores' of that era. This store even had packs of photographs sealed in clear plastic and clipped on wires that spanned the store. Most of these pictures were probably produced by some of the famous photographers in New York. I am sure that pictures of Betty Page were included in some of the selections. I purchased one of these items although it was photographs of a female spanking another female. At least it was a woman doing the spanking!

As the time of my departure was nearing, I headed back to the bus depot. I couldn't resist looking at my 'treasures' on the bus and had found a seat that seemed isolated. I took very careful peeks at what I had purchased. As you can imagine, this was very 'stimulating' reading material. Upon my arrival at home, I made sure I had a secure 'stash' location, and I still have many of these first purchases in my collection.

Reflecting back (its almost half a century), its interesting to note how things have changed. The subject matter is the same but oh how the media has changed. The bookstores were rather sleazy, were usually in the part of town considered 'not so good' and you could mostly buy books, magazines and a few 8mm films (remember those?). While the stores lasted for quite some time, the magazines got glossier and video tape became available. Also, spanking crept into some of the more 'acceptable' magazines. Mr. Magazine and later Penthouse, especially, started to include 'letters to' sections and later Penthouse published a seperate publication (Variations). You could purchase a magazine that included spanking stories from the corner market! Soon, companies sprung up that dealt with spanking exclusively, such as NuWest and Scarlett Hill. Some of the best material out there was only a money order away.

Another thing that developed was the 'female-friendly' shops. During the early years of my 'explorations' you never saw women in the shops. Later in the 1970, you may see one or two but always with a male escort. Then some clever entrepreneur came up with the idea of setting up 'sex shops' in better areas of town and would also target the female audience. In addition to mazazines and DVD's these stores also have racks of rather sexy clothing, skyscraper heels and real stockings. And many female customers.

Watching this evolution has been very interesting to me and I believe really underlines the sucess of the sexual revolution. But, nothing was as revolutionary to the 'scene' as the Internet! The first manifestations of the 'new' technology were local bulletin board services that dealt with sexually explicit subject matter, some of which catered to the Spanko community. This was the time of 300 baud modems (1200 baud if you could afford the latest technology), and the exchanges were mostly all text. Pictures were yet to come. My first recollections of these bulletin boards were probably in the early 1980's. In fact I had set up a bulletin board (although not sexually oriented) on my own computer. This was a Z-80 (8-bit) NorthStar Horizon computer that I had running a multi-user operating system, something rather ahead of its time. My system featured 4 banks of 64K memory and had a 15 Meg hard drive (that's right K and Meg). Later, the internet replaced the bulletin boards and 56K modems replaced the slower ones, and eventually evolved to the high speed sytems most of use today. There is also much better barriers to keep young 'lads' away from this stuff until they reach the age of consent.

I thought it might be interesting to correlate some of this history along with my own beginnings, to illustrate how things have changed in what seems to me, to be just a few years (well, OK, decades). We now have an incredible amount of access to information, and to each other. The Internet has allowed our community rather easily find each other and to join together through Forums, Groups, and yes, Blogs. I am sure that like myself, one of the early 'discoveries' on the Internet was the Disciplinary Wives Club. I also know from looking at the stats on my counter that those of you who read this blog come from all over the planet. We truly belong to a global community. I believe that this is a 'Golden Age' for those of us who follow the Female Led Relationship lifestyle.