I went to Chicago Spankopalooza this year, and I knew at least half of the people there, including several I’d spanked before. On Friday night one of them asked if I was available to play, and we went into one of the suites to do so. I spanked her over my lap with my hand, and then she bent over a chair so I could use the new strap I bought at GASP. I haven’t practiced with it as much as I’d like, and this particular person has a low tailbone so there’s an added layer of care needed while spanking her, but I got into the swing of things fairly quickly. I strapped her for a few minutes at a medium level, until she said (I thought) “you can start ramping it up.”

So I did. I strapped her harder for another minute or so, and she kept saying “ow” (as you do when someone hits your ass hard with a leather strap). I said, teasingly (we’re friendly enough that I can do this), “you said ramp it up.”

She looked over to me. “No, I said ‘wrap it up’.”

I felt awful. Fortunately, as I said, we’re quite friendly, and she wasn’t mad at me or anything. I just misheard her. We finished the scene, did a little aftercare, chatted, hugged, and then she went off somewhere while I headed into the hallway to watch a scene that mixed handstands and spankings.

Some people have legitimate hearing loss, and in those cases you need to be clearer and sometimes louder. But I don’t have any more hearing loss than anyone else my age — and, in fact, considerably less than someone who worked in radio for as long as I did (because I never turned my headphones up very loud). There were no real extenuating circumstances like there might be in a dungeon where there’s loud music, and there was no one else playing in the suite at the time she told me she wanted to wrap it up.

What’s the lesson here? For tops, listen carefully. For bottoms, if you say “wrap it up” and the person doesn’t, you might need to say it again. Maybe they misheard you.