I posted recently about going to the A51 Stations event on June 15 (the same day that Holiday Heat: June was released). While there, I had three scenes scheduled.

The first scene was with Partner 1. A friend and I co-topped her; this friend is very creative in her sadism, and discovered some very effective pressure points in Partner 1’s hips. A lot of spanking happened as well, and some shoulder work. When we were done, Partner 1 was barely pink.

Then it was time to spank my friend. She specifically told me to “light me up”; apparently, as it turned out, the last time she’d bottomed for impact was with me, a year prior. I started out relatively light, and then increased the intensity. The first time I went hard, she yelled and writhed on the spanking bench (I checked in, and she enthusiastically consented to continuing). I did her shoulders with my fists and palms to give her a break. Eventually, she stopped making so much noise. That was also when I noticed that, after just using my hand, she was extremely bruised already. This friend has very light skin and always bruises when we play. Of all the people I play with regularly, she is the one who marks the most.

My third scene was with someone new, a friend of Partner 1. We did a relatively light scene, and I’m pretty sure she too was only pink when we were done (the lighting in the dungeon wasn’t conducive to seeing shades of red). She’d specifically asked me not to give her any heavy bruising, so I made sure to go light-to-medium. By the end I had spanked her decently hard with my hand, but not too many times. I also used the GASP Strap, but the stingy side, since she prefers sting.

Three spankings. Three different results.

Look, I love leaving marks as much as the next spanko, but I understand that not everyone marks up the same way. Plus, if you get spanked a lot (as Partner 1 does), it becomes harder to mark your skin. I also think that spanking style plays into it; I did a heavy scene with Partner 1 the last night of TASSP, and she still didn’t mark as much as she did that Saturday afternoon when she played with someone new. Both he and I spank hard, but for some reason I barely left any marks on Partner 1’s backside throughout all of TASSP.

Empirical research on this topic is required.