Some Kind of Attitude

My internal monologue

I was looking for my Tide pen. It wasn’t where I usually keep it, and I know that I only return it to that one specific drawer. “Where is my Tide pen?” I asked Esquire loudly, slamming the drawers in the laundry room open and closed.

He came out of his office.

“I didn’t do anything with it,” he said.

“You did, because I always put it in that drawer!”

“Do you need it right this second? I’ll go get you another one later.”

I did need it right that second. I very stupidly reupholstered our couch white earlier this year, and then I ate a piece of chocolate on it this morning and of course a tiny crumb had gotten smeared on one of the cushion and made a big mess. This was all, of course, entirely my fault, but that wasn’t stopping me from making it his problem, too. I’m not a brat, and I am not skilled in the gentle poking of the beast that so many of you have mastered. Instead, when it has been many months since I’ve gotten a spanking, it comes out as snips and barbs, a needling attitude designed to get under his skin. Am I proud of this? No. Does it work often? No. But will I get over myself and just tell him what I actually want? Also no.

It didn’t take him long to find it in a completely different place than usual, somewhere that I wouldn’t even think to put it. I huffed.

“Do you think that maybe you left it out the last time you used it, and that’s why I put it away?”

“Probably, but why wouldn’t you ask me where it went instead of throwing it in any random place?”

I took it and blotted the spot on the couch. He continued to stand there. “Well,” he said. “Are you going to apologize?”

“No,” I told him, not even looking up from what I was doing. He stayed for another few seconds and then went back into his office to take a phone call.

I was asking for a spanking–begging, even. But he doesn’t speak the language. In my imagination, he would have put me over his knee right then and there for my attitude, and it would have been a sterner correction than I was angling for. I tested a boundary and found that, while it was there, it wasn’t in the way I wanted. Without the spanking bug, Esquire doesn’t sense the underlying reason for my behavior, and even someone who does have it would be well within their rights to respond with frustration here instead of spanking. I’m not a rude person in general, and I know that I owe him an apology when he gets off the phone. If I had the guts, I’d ask for a spanking while I do it.