From the Top Shelf - Spanking Encyclopedia

The back cover of Spanking Encyclopedia by Kenneth Harding describes the contents in this way:

Erotic pain . . . .

Spanking as a preliminary need for sexual satisfaction is a phenomenon that has swept the North American continent. Kenneth Harding peers deeply into the enjoyment of flagellation...whipping as a way of life, both in our own country and in Europe where the practice has been happily employed for centuries. Is Spanking and Discipline a deviation from the norm? Or does it serve to fulfil a natural need in man? A search for an answer to the growing passion for punishment.

And on the front cover:

A comprehensive study of spanking for discipline and for sexual arousal. An erotic impulse that cries out for satisfaction.

Spanking erotica thinly disguised as research? A clever idea, and it works for me. The book was published in 1969 and remains one of my favourites. Here is one of his research observations. I hope you like it.

This beautiful zoo [in Honolulu] has spacious grounds with many exits, and it was near one of these at the opposite end to the main entrance that I observed this duplication of penance following a domestic spat. In this instance, the young couple were Filipinos. I was sitting smoking a cigarette on a nearby bench under a towering coconut-palm tree, when I heard the sounds of a quarrel, in voluble Spanish, arising from the bench to my left.

The young man was slim, black-haired, possibly in his early thirties and certainly no older; the woman beside him wore an attractive multi-coloured rayon print dress and thong sandals, her sleek black hair drawn away from her forehead and fashioned at the back of her neck into a thick, spreading sheaf with a barrette to fix it at the nape.

I caught the word "novio" from the girl, indicating that the young man beside her was evidently her betrothed. I understood enough Spanish to understand the tenor of their argument; she was reproaching him for having made eyes at other attractive girls during their walk through the park, and he was retorting that they were not married yet and that there was no harm in looking.

She continued to harangue him until suddenly he exclaimed in Spanish, "if you wish to see how I behave as your novio, perhaps I should show you too how I shall act when I am your esposo!" Whereupon he seized her by the shoulders, drew her across his lap, rolled up her dress and slip--while I stood by in astonishment--and unveiled her bare buttocks. The unbroken symmetry of her lovely chocolate-sheened flesh was unbroken from ankles to waist, as she wore no stockings either.

This discovery surprised him even more than it had me, for he took her to task for the lack of lingerie, saying it was not proper for a fiancee to go about like a puta. He then used his hand on her bare buttocks and on her thighs until she wept and pleaded with him to spare her, promising that she would never do it again and least of all would she dare to cast aspersions on his habit of looking at other girls.

Justice done and his sense of male authority happily satisfied, the young fellow quickly drew her skirt and slip down over her flaming buttocks, whereupon her arms went around his neck and she returned his kiss with a passionate fervor. By this time, needless to say, the young couple had a breathless audience, but they paid them no more heed than they had to my own proximity.

I will be sharing more excerpts from this excellent publication in the coming weeks.