Eve Howard

As a renowned scene author, editor, video producer and party organizer, and as one of the founders of the spanking products company Shadow Lane, Eve Howard has played an enormous role in advancing the concept of female-friendly CP play.

I graduated Vassar with a B.A. in English in 1975, but didn’t obtain my first editorial job until 1978, when my then-husband, a graphic designer, went to work for one of the largest adult magazine publishing companies in California as a paste-up and layout artist. When the one editorial position at that studio became available, my husband

introduced me to the office manager and I was hired to write the blurbs and captions for the many hardcore magazines printed and distributed by Academy Press monthly.

In the same building as the hardcore publisher was the softcore magazine company Parliament News, which some of your older readers may remember as the execrable producers of such depressing "spanking" magazines as Crack and Sting.

My bosses at the time, who were kind enough to allow their in-house staff to freelance at other associate adult publishing concerns (and there were many at that time) gave me an introduction to Lyndon Distributors, longtime publishers of a whole line of fetish publications. One of my first assignments for Lyndon was to edit a publication they put out called The Bondage Buyers Guide. This was basically a magazine full of free publicity for the various fetish producers at the time, the mid-1980s. Of these, only one stood out as a genuine spanking company: Nu-West.

Lyndon’s Letters to the Editor columns were filled with references to Nu-West from avid enthusiasts, praising this company as the only real spanking video producer in America. I went to several adult book stores on Hollywood Blvd., in which neighborhood I then resided, in search of Nu-West materials. No luck. (And no fun. I got followed after leaving one of them.) Nu-West videos didn’t appear to be carried in any store. It was frustrating to say the least.

Finally I wrote my first letter to Nu-West, describing my interest and inviting the owner, Ed Lee, to contribute some material to an article on spanking that I was writing for our flagship hardcore publication Squeeze. I should add that by now I was divorced from my husband and working closely with another artist at the porno factory, Butch Simms, on upgrading our magazine output and bringing as much style as we could to the rudimentary hardcore photography we had to package. Butch had been trained at Cal Arts and his ambitious layouts were what eventually led to us both getting laid off a few years down the line.

Ed Lee, the owner of Nu-West, took a generous, immediate interest in me and we began to correspond. There weren’t that many real women in the scene coming out at that time, due to the scarcity of networking resources, so I was probably something of a novelty among his readers. (The fact that I was also a hardcore porno writer probably didn’t hurt my case either, as this pretty much precluding prudery as a character trait.)

Meanwhile, I had become editor of Spank Hard for Lyndon, writing under the name Lizzie Bennett (the name of my favorite character in literature, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice). I took over Spank Hard with issue four and edited all the subsequent issues through 16. I edited letters, wrote articles and stories and tried my best to enliven their dreary photo spreads with some original spanking input. Spank Hard became one of Lyndon’s best selling magazines, second only to Bondage Life, which had been established for years.

But Lyndon Publications, with their limited budget and tacky photo sets, was never going to be able to produce the sort of spanking magazine I could truly be proud of, one with attractive male models as well as female ones and higher production standards in every respect.

The Nu-West approach was also no-frills, but real enough to immediately rivet the attention of any true enthusiast who had had to make do with fake imitations of spanking erotica in the past. The name of their publication was the Home and School Discipline Review and the photography was traditional to a fault. The editorial columns, written by Ed Lee, had the ring of someone who was really into spanking and had a good deal of experience spanking women. So naturally I wrote effusive fan letters and sent away to Nu-West for as many back issues as were available. I even sent $90 for my first spanking video, Debbie’s Fantasies, which I loved and watched over and over again. Finally I had found a producer who understood about over-the-knee spanking.

The next thing I knew, I was visiting Nu-West to make an audio tape. While there I did a sort of test spanking video tape with Ed Lee, all improvised and about 10 minutes in length, in order to see if I might be right for a Nu-West video. The test tape came out well. I took a spanking from Ed Lee, kicked, cried, didn’t look at the camera and handled my dialog competently.

I was fairly petite at the time and took a medium hard spanking well, a hard spanking kicking and screaming. Since Nu-West had pretty much pioneered the girl-next-door style spanking actress, I was well suited to join his troop. Over the next three or four years I visited San Marcos at least a dozen times to perform in spanking videos at the Nu-West studios, being spanked by both men and women and in one video, spanking a boy. For my Nu-West videos and all subsequent editorial writing I dropped the name Lizzie Bennett and instead became known as Eve Howard.

Soon after meeting Ed Lee I placed an ad in his personals publication. I was one of three women in that issue with a personal ad. I was uncannily lucky in that that particular issue, the only one in which my ad appeared, was purchased by my now partner, Tony Elka.

I got over 60 responses to the ad I placed and met just a handful of the men. Fate placed Tony about five minutes away from me by car. He’d just gotten divorced from his wife. He was five years younger than me and the younger son working in a thriving family business. We played and became lovers in the first hour of our first date.

Probably our immediate comfort level with one another was due to the fact that we already had a relationship of sorts prior to meeting. Tony had been reading my Lizzie Bennett stories and columns for several years. When he met Eve and found out she was Lizzie, he was instantly predisposed to care for me.

Pretty soon Tony and I were going to Nu-West together to do videos. On one of these shoot days, Ed Lee munificently allowed us to trade our services in a Nu-West video for his filming our first independent video. This video was Tony and Eve, A College Fantasy, still one of our most popular tapes. Ed Lee also gave Shadow Lane invaluable publicity in his magazine several issues running, exposing his incredibly loyal and dedicated mailing list to our products for the first time. Because these customers had already seen me take hard spankings in Nu-West videos they knew I was real enough to trust with their patronage when I subsequently developed into a producer.

Working at Nu-West so often, I learned a great deal about the process of spanking videography and its challenges. Editing Spank Hard, I discovered the real wants and needs of the greater spanking community (particularly of it’s unconnected single men); and dating Tony I found out what it was like to live my real spanking fantasies out for the first time with a dominant male. The final facet of my professional education was meeting Stephanie Locke.

Tony had taken me to her club in Hollywood to play one night. It was midnight by the time she was ready to see us and a 12-hour day had fairly exhausted the leggy, voluptuous, bespectacled brunette. I loved the glasses of course, along with her soft voice and charming turn of phrase. Stephanie’s warmth and friendliness toward another intellectually-oriented woman in the scene was all-enveloping. I couldn’t resist coming back the next day to talk to her about working at the club.

To my astonishment, in the afternoon sunlight, I saw that Mistress Stephanie was a very young woman! She was only 23 at the time and was running one of the busiest clubs in Hollywood like a summer camp or kinky sorority. I knew this was someone I could work under and learn from.

How deep our friendship would grow I could never guess at that time. But who could resist a beautiful young lady capable of both paddling a grown man to tears and delicately discoursing on Madame de Staal?

Stephanie’s knowledge of the B&D arts was encyclopedic and she could hands-on apply just about anything she could describe, but she was also a voracious reader, essayist and diarist, with a rich fund of both scene-related and literary anecdotes. As with Tony, fate seemed to bring me to Stephanie’s door and no other.

I began to work at the club as one of the preferred spanking submissives. I even publicized my presence there covertly in an issue of Spank Hard, hinting that there was one true spanking enthusiast on the staff to request. This little squib brought me many dear friends in the scene, several of whom began their relationship with me in sessions at the club and now perform in my videos. But when it comes to the spanking scene, the circles within circles are endless.

I played with numerous dominant men while I worked at the club, sometimes receiving up to five spankings in one day. I got so seasoned to spanking that the Nu-West videos no longer made me scream (as much). In addition to spanking I also participated in light bondage and tickling fantasy fulfillment and joined Stephanie in dozens of female dominant-male submissive scenarios, most involving corporal punishment.

While at the club I learned about corseting, boot and foot worship, sensory deprivation and other esoteric variations on the B&D arts. I even lived out fantasies so embarrassing that you wouldn’t want to do them with anyone other than a complete stranger whom you’d never see again. (That was fun.)

Needless to say, one year of concentrated activity in a popular B&D salon can provide a lifetime of material for a fiction writer in this genre and I consider the time spent in the capacity of professional submissive as the most textural portion of my scene education.

Just before starting at the club I began my Shadow Lane series of novels, of which Volume Seven has just been released by Blue Moon books; and started the publishing and production company, also called Shadow Lane, with my partner Tony. A few years later we induced my best friend and ex-associate from the porno factory, Butch Simms, to join us as our Art Director and third partner.

Tony laid out and edited the first seven issues of Stand Corrected with love. But when Butch joined us our publications began getting a little slicker and we started to establish our own graphic identity within the industry. (Butch learned about spanking by accompanying me to Nu-West and being in several spanking videos with me. We even did a spanking and hardcore video together which I think is still available from Nu-West.)

At this point in time we were lucky enough to meet Chelsea Pfeiffer and Brian Tarsis, the later of whom has furnished us with so many lovely original spanking illustrations over the years and both of whom have enlivened our videos with their talent and sparkle. Chelsea now owns her own spanking production company Goodspanking.com and Brian Tarsis runs the Chastenwood spanking social group in Seattle.

Other delightful scene friends who began their performance careers with Shadow Lane and then went on to form their own companies include Jennifer Brooks and Bobbie Tawse.

I know Shadow Lane prides itself on being female friendly. What does that mean exactly?

I mentioned above how mesmerizing it was to watch a real spanking video for the first time. But something was still missing, at least for me. It seemed to me that all the major producers were directing their product mainly at a male audience and that no one was making videos for women, specifically female submissives, to enjoy.

Nu-West featured hard, disciplinary spanking, Kurt Stevens focused on hard, punitive spanking, and the English companies concentrated on hard, school spanking and caning. Since no one else was offering any romance with their discipline, it seemed the perfect opportunity for Shadow Lane to do so.

Not that we achieved romance every time we shot, either then or now, but even without the romance, we do set forth our female players differently within our scenarios than do most of the spanking videos companies, even the female run ones of today. With some notable exceptions, our female submissives are, by and large, entitled to a bit of dignity, even while being spanked, and are seldom if ever, objectified in any way. Certainly we prize personality above body parts, if that explains better what I mean.

A notable exception would be the scene in Our Sorority Part 2, when Alexis Payne makes Kiri crawl to Stephanie, with her pants down and her bottom exposed, clamping a note from Alexis to Stephanie between her teeth. This video was mainly scripted by the popular spanking actress Kiri Kelly and the crawling with the pants down business was entirely her idea. I’d never come up with something like that myself, though it did make for a highly titillating scene. I do sometimes have models stand in the corner within a scenario, but wouldn't insist upon it if the model wasn’t comfortable with the idea.

Part of being female friendly is presenting sexy, sensitive, intuitive male dominant actors to play off our attractive ladies. Not that all of our guys have been pin-ups, but we have featured more good-looking, well-dressed, well-groomed, well-spoken men in our productions than any other company of our kind. And when our guys aren't quite so cute, they're often charismatic. Either way, we choose them to appeal to our female viewers.

Other aspects of production which differentiate us from most other spanking videos companies include shooting with three cameras, television-style, so as to capture a variety of angles on the scenes, including those all-important face shots, which establish personality and character.

Our editing has always been professional and our sound and lighting have been fine-tuned over the years to the point where they are as near to broadcast quality as is possible to achieve on a very small budget. We also pay as much attention as possible to properly coordinated outfits, fine lingerie and ambient set decoration.

Tailoring each script to the talents and proclivities of our performers has given us some classics of spanking drama and fun over the years. Truthfully, every set of models have not been equal to the complex dialog or scenario set-ups I’ve thrown at them, but when it has worked, it has worked beautifully.

We've also introduced some of the most daringly explicit videos into private spanking libraries around the world. Our spanking and foreplay style videos, like Bedroom Discipline and Spank Thy Neighbor are exactly what many of our female viewers most enjoy dreaming about. They want some masterful male not only to discipline them firmly, but to sensually and methodically arouse them in one way or another. It's a powerful fantasy.

We don't seek to break any one’s spirit or set any records for extreme severity in our videos. Yet we do expect our performers to take an honorable spanking. In most cases, their gameness exceeds our expectations. And all of our models have been incredibly good sports about the rare instances of going home marked from a video. They realize that this is an occupational hazard.

Many of our models and actors come from our own customer database and they bring with them the matchless enthusiasm of the true spanking fanatic. When I’m shooting a video with all real scene people, rather than simply willing and obliging scene-friendly models, it’s an entirely different dynamic on set. It’s more like a Shadow Lane party only with three cameras and a crew. And the most obvious cause of this mirth? The submissive being truly into spanking extinguishes any random doubts which the conscientious producer may experience in subjecting a non-scene model to equivalent corporal punishment.

While our attitude is pleasant, our spankings are realistic, so I’d much rather work with a woman (or man) who loves to be spanked. When the model is happy, we’re happy. Happy players submit to long, hard, satisfying scenes. Few cuts for direction are needed as the pure spanking energy propels the scene along until its logical conclusion. Though the model may kick, whimper or sob, a lifelong spanking enthusiast will often view her first video experience is a milestone in her odyssey through the scene and in most cases, get a real kick out of becoming a star within our little universe overnight. I think our viewers of both sexes pick up on these points of personal involvement and relate to them.

The spanking scene has changed immensely in that back then, most of us were isolated, with only our fantasies to keep us going, whereas now, we can actually enact those fantasies with others of our kind, often establishing beautiful and long-lasting friendships as well as loving relationships with other compatible enthusiasts along the way.

The first level of networking that caused the change was the profusion of cottage industry spanking publications which featured personal ads that flourished in the mid ‘80s to mid ‘90s. There was C.F. Publications, Sassy Ladies, Sassy Bottoms, Strictly Speaking, Cal Brat, The Bottom Line, Nu-West’s C.P., our magazine Stand Corrected and others, all offering people a way to get in touch with one another.

The first spanking party was held under C.F. Publications auspices in Connecticut and hosted by Alexia. Tony and I attended, became inspired and afterwards decided to begin throwing our own parties on the West Coast. We’ve just held our 18th event, this time in Las Vegas with 300 spanking enthusiasts in attendance.

People gradually began to meet through all these various personal ads publications and in many cases, make friends with others in their area. Couples began to form as well as area groups who met for private spanking parties. (Not swingers parties -- over-the-knee spanking parties.) People began to attend our parties year after year, making new friends and conquests along the way and actually partaking of a socially active spanking lifestyle.

When the Internet came along, it obviated the need for personal ads publications and most of the spanking people promptly went online. Then even more people began to find one another. Communication was instantaneous. Fantasies could be written and shared in a few minutes. Confidences were exchanged, hopes and dreams discussed. More people began to come out of the closet online, some of them only to chat, others to meet and play. Scene relationships were begun and in some cases, non-scene relationships dissolved as a result of this massive overload of sudden spanking exposure to a previously well strained public.

Recall that for years you had to almost stumble accidentally on an ad from a spanking producer or enter a forbidding adult book store to buy an inferior spanking magazine. The days of mail-order erotica and subscription personals carried us to the door of the future, but the Internet blasted us into spanking outer space as far as the limitlessness of possible connections now extant.

The scenarios I once considered the most outlandish fantasies, such as being able to collect together enough spanking people of both sexes in one room to throw a major party, are now reality. Spanking pen pals now think nothing of crossing oceans to meet and play. Spanking couples living in the same town or village may socially interact, vacation together, sometimes even consensually swap mates for private spanking interludes. The secret ingredient that caused all this magic is nothing more mysterious than the networking that’s been going on since the 1980s, which finally brought all the women out of the closet and into the lives of their male counterparts.

At this point we no longer publish on paper, but exclusively online, hosting a complete, interactive spanking website that virtually replaces our magazine, with voluminous editorial and graphic content, moving video, lively chat rooms, bulletin boards and personal ads.

Among other positive aspects of this change is that I now have unlimited space to post all the stories, letters and articles sent to me by enthusiasts, without having to ruthlessly edit down my material to fit into 48 or 64 or 96 pages. This allows for reader input of every stamp to be sampled and appreciated. Our story departments are a very important feature of our Web site and encompass a diversity of editorial voices ranging from the most exquisitely refined to the hardest boiled.

Back in the day I was lucky to unearth one real female contributor a year. Now I’ve got dozens of women writers, explaining in their own eloquent words, what the romance of discipline means to them. As a result, men no longer need to wonder if there really are real women into spanking or guess at what these women want and need.

I don't think there's much difference as long as the focus is corporal punishment, which along with spanking includes: whipping, strapping, birching, tawsing and caning. Most spanking enthusiasts graduate sooner or later to incorporating a little light bondage now and then, such as leather wrist cuffs or a leg spreader bar. Some enjoy visiting a dungeon occasionally to utilize the esoteric equipment, such as whipping posts, leather bondage beds and spanking benches. Others explore companion fetishes such as erotic humiliation achieved through "forced" exposure, dildo insertion, enema administration and "punishment" orgasms. Still others explore the sensuality of spanking not only the bottom, but other erogenous zones on an eager partner. In some cases, when corresponding philosophies and compatible chemistries meet, sexual servitude may also be added to the disciplinary mix.

Among male submissives popular companion B&D fetishes include: forced feminization, cross dressing, bottom worship and smothering (where a mistress sits on the face of her submissive).

All the variations mentioned above combine to form an enormous portion of the BDSM scene, actually more than people realize. Of course there are facets of extreme BDSM that may well seem silly, dangerous or just plain irrelevant to strict spanking purists, such as gags, collars, hot wax, foot worship, piercings, cuttings, strangling, sensory deprivation, immobilization, scat, and golden and Roman showers.

I should also mention that although anal eroticism is catnip to many spanking enthusiasts, just as many find it completely unacceptable, so make sure to run this by any new playmate before shopping for retention plugs.

Subtracting all these esoteric variations, and based on the mistresses I've spoken to, the letters I’ve received over the years and what I observed first hand when I worked at a club, I would judge at least a third of all B&D play to be solidly anchored in the corporal punishment mystique. Rather than differing from BDSM, I would consider spanking a major portion of it.

In your opinion, what percentage of the general population has an interest in erotic spanking?

I couldn’t even begin to say. It would be different if spanking companies were allowed to buy billboards or advertise on national television, but in most cases when it comes to fetish, the more mainstream the media, the more restrictive the editorial policy.

Television, movies and the fashion world shamelessly pillage the B&D subculture for titillation, but the attitude of the general establishment toward genuine erotica for its own sake is invariably condescending to hostile. For example, the National Lampoon in the autumn of 1975 ran a full color Norman Rockwellian illustration of a coed being spanked by her professor on its cover, but refused to accept our modest spanking classified ad 10 years later.

It was a fabulous illustration that sent me into a tailspin my senior year of college. But like thousands of others who bought the issue, I was bitterly disappointed at the positive dearth of spanking within it. We were grateful for the illustration of course, but also felt a surge of cynicism at the sheer exploitation of the spanking fetish to boost newsstand sales without the corresponding content to fulfill the promise.

Their representations certainly occur profusely throughout 20^th Century popular culture, so spanking must have been and must still be on some people’s minds. There’s a tremendous spanking presence in the current indy film Secretary. We saw a bungled spanking on Ally McBeal a few seasons back. Madonna used to pretend to be into spanking. Comedians are constantly making jokes about spanking. (“I understand the doctor had to spank me, but did he have to call me a whore?” Sarah Silverman) Malcolm in the Middle got an aborted spanking on Fox. A gay boy got a bare bottom spanking on Queer As Folk. Spanking is joked about on Buffy, discussed on talk shows, and now it’s even showing up on Gucci billboards, and boy spanks girl no less. How un-PC is that and how welcome!

I think all of this must be indicative of either a lot of people still being into spanking, or a lot of media moguls and Madison Avenue ad men thinking that we are. As a result of this re-breeding of spanking iconography and culture, a whole new generation of spanking enthusiasts may well be nurtured in our midst.

I think it mainly has to do with becoming unconsciously stimulated by spanking activity or witnessing spanking activity as a small child and associating spanking with warm fuzzies thereafter. I can’t say why I was compelled to try to get my little friends to play spanking games with me at age seven, but even then I knew it was something both fun and naughty to do that gave me a sensation I can only describe as butterflies in the stomach or a pre-orgasmic thrill.

I would get the feeling when I saw a spanking on a television show or even if I heard a spanking threat or reference. If I read about a spanking in a novel or in a newspaper article, it would preoccupy me for days. I would fall asleep at night thinking about it. Or I’d stay up to watch the late, late, late show, just in case there was an old movie with a spanking or spanking reference.

This very early fascination with spanking as a sort of dramatic performance was beautifully expressed in the short independent film Dottie Gets Spanked by Todd Haynes, which traces a little boy’s spanking fetish to the influence of an I Love Lucy-style TV show of the late ‘50s and neighborhood spankings witnessed and discussed. The little boy dreams about spanking, fantasizes about spanking, voyeurs spanking on his favorite TV show, The Dottie Show, and finally begins drawing pictures of spanking, which finally get him busted by his parents.

The little boy ends up burying his spanking drawing in the garden, just as I one day tore up a sheaf of spanking stories which were discovered by my mother and shown to my older sister simply as an interesting specimen of a 12-year-old’s fiction. I’m not even sure if my nosy parker relatives noticed that they were spanking stories, but it was a terrible sensation all the same and I recall being quite disturbed by the idea of my intimate stories being read by persons for whom they were not intended.

In those days there were plenty of stories about spanking in tabloids like The National Enquirer and teen fanzines like Tiger Beat. I remember getting immensely turned on by an article entitled, Ringo, the Night I Spanked My Wife. It was obviously made up by the editor but my junior high school girlfriends and I adored the idea of Ringo spanking his wife.

Then there was the famous Cary Grant, Dyan Cannon divorce, where allegations were laid against Cary Grant for spanking the young enough to be his daughter Dyan in front of their servants (for wearing mini skirts) and forcing her to take LSD with him, which sounded like splendid fun.

I began compiling lists of spankings and spanking references in films, TV, books and magazines. Wish I had those lists today, but even an anal compulsive has to do spring cleaning once in a while.

In 12th grade I started my first spanking novel and hand wrote three volumes of 1,000 pages each. I’d read the chapters aloud to my best girlfriend over the phone each night. I also played spanking games with her where we’d take turns acting out my stories. (This went on until I met my first boyfriend at age 14.)

I still keep in touch with this lady, and though she is not actually into spanking and isn’t completely sure why she played those games with me, she still remembers listening to my stories with pleasure and insists they were entertaining.

Obviously, I have an extraordinary interest in spanking. Not each and every spanking enthusiast is going to present as relentless a spanking history. Yet I have met many people like myself in the scene, who have similarly researched spanking lore and customs, written out spanking fantasies and tempted or teased their juvenile companions into playing with them from early childhood. I always have to smile when I run into a man who proudly claims, “I’ve been spanking girls since I was in kindergarten.” Because I know he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it.

We have all sorts of customers, from all walks of life and all age brackets. You might ask who is the typical fetishist? The answer is: anyone and everyone.

We generally hold a vendor faire on Friday night and a dinner dance on Saturday night. There is usually some spanking as well as dancing, in the public rooms on each night, but a good 80 percent of all play at a typical party takes place by invitation, behind closed doors. That’s why we hold our parties at hotels, where our guests can book rooms and relax.

The ratio of men to women at our parties is still not even, but it’s getting better all the time. In fact, I didn’t hear the “not enough women” complaint once at the last few parties.

There are no guarantees you’re going to play at any given party. A certain amount of social ease is required, as in any mixer situation, particularly if you’re going in cold. But if you wisely use personal ads, bulletin boards or Web sites to make some connections beforehand, how that changes your prospects! I always stress that the more networking you employ prior to an event, the better chance you’ll have of connecting and actually getting to play upon attending it.

The idea is to email with people you might be meeting at the party to the point where they’re looking forward to meeting you. Establish your identity or exercise your charm through chatty exchanges or longer correspondences. I can’t tell you how many women get turned on by men they are about to meet at their first party because they’ve been intelligently and sensitively pre-courted through email letters and shared fantasies.

People should think of the parties as the place where they can be themselves about spanking in the midst of others like them. Single women enjoy our parties because they are discreet, well-chaperoned events. And by that I mean the ladies have dozens of reliable big brothers (in the form of dominant males) around to turn to for a quick rescue, should anyone attempt to force their attentions on them.

Attire includes: cocktail and prom dresses, evening clothes, traditional preppy style school outfits and every other sort of dressy casual as opposed to flamboyant fetish. You might see a PVC dress, a corset, Goth ensemble, or a pair of leather pants here and there, but for the most part, we simply look like a group of well-bred, well-behaved celebrants who happen to like spending most of our time spanking one another.

Marvelous things do go on behind those closed doors at our parties. Groups and couples get together, intimate friends reunite and spank for hours to commemorate the reunion and there’s plenty of verbal camaraderie to counterbalance the physical horseplay.

For many of our customers these parties are the high point of their season, fun wise, and post-party let-down is an oft-reported malaise amid our attendees.

People can sort of feel like playful kids again, getting together with their favorite friends to make mild mischief or mad love. It can be a tremendously liberating and exhilarating experience, or it can be a flat disappointment. A lot depends on how much you bring to the event. Sometimes it takes a couple of years or more of persistently answering ads and joining online groups to get connected to the point where real people are looking forward to meeting you specifically at a future party.

Eventually, most pro-active enthusiasts manage to penetrate the scene, begin to feel a sense of encouragement and see a glimmer of hope that their spanking frustrations are near to an end. But don’t expect it all to happen overnight. Be patient, maintain a positive attitude and above all, utilize every networking tool at your disposal until you’ve made the sort contact you crave.

As a woman, what advice would you give to other women interested in exploring their spanking fantasies?

Utilize personal ads. If used judiciously, they will bring you everything you want and need. I’ve seen people who despaired of ever finding a soul mate happily marry in the scene. If you’re a woman into spanking, there’s a partner or playmate out there for you. You just have to let them know you’re seeking them by advertising.

Not exactly. I have spanked others at certain times and places and for various reasons, but never from an erotic inclination to Switch. The truth is that there are many more Switchable men out there then there are dominant ones, and sooner or later every submissive woman has to learn how to spank some of them, if only to be a pal.

Occasions upon which I might spank a man would include party situations where the person approaching me to play is either appreciably younger or physically smaller than myself. In these instances it simply seems more appropriate for me to spank them than the reverse. Or, I could run into a deserving man of any age who desperately wanted or needed a spanking. Since I do know how to spank, if I was in the mood, why refuse? But that is not the same thing as feeling a definite urge to spank.

I think that for most submissively inclined women in our scene the notion of “turn around is fair play” is an example of convivial sophistry. It sounds good in theory and makes perfect sense from the Switchable male’s viewpoint, but in practice the last thing that most traditionally acculturated female submissives want is to neutralize our men in this manner.

Certainly I am capable of administering a good and thorough spanking when I have to and have Switched on the level of friendship or for harmless sport at a party with a number of male friends in the scene, but to me this is not the true definition of a Switch. To me, a real Switch sincerely craves to experience both sides of the scene, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout his or her life. And obviously, with a real Switch, both giving and receiving spanking imparts equal stimulation and excitement.

Occasionally, if a secretly submissive dominant really steps out of line in the middle of a session, spanking or whipping too hard, aiming improperly or taking rough liberties, in the interest of self preservation, a deft submissive can turn the session around and take control of him instead.

Agree on a key word such as “mercy” and determine to use it if the spanking becomes unpleasantly or unbearably severe. This word means: lighten up, I need a break or I’ve had enough. On hearing the word, the spanker should politely pause to inquire of the submissive’s state of mind. Only the submissive can judge how much is too much. The dominant should always be attentive, responsive and sensitive to the submissive’s limits.

Eve, thank you for putting so much effort into this Q&A. Do you have any parting thoughts?

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences with your readers. You can find out about our next party by visiting our Web site at www.shadowlane.com. Anyone with questions may email me at eve@shadowlane.com or call me at (818) 985-9151.

04/22/07