Position

People spend hours choosing an implement and about four seconds deciding where the other person will be. That is the wrong way round, because position does more to a scene than the implement does.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

What it means

Position is simply where the receiver is and how they are arranged. Across the thighs of a seated partner, over the padded arm of a sofa, bent over a table, standing against a wall, lying across a bed. Each one does three separate things: it decides what part of the body is presented, how stable the whole arrangement is, and what the scene is about.

In practice

The geometry first. Standing more or less upright presents the fuller upper curve and tucks the sit spot away. Bending right over at the hips stretches the skin, flattens that curve and presents the sit spot, which is the most sensitive area for this and the one closest to bone. The same stroke to somebody bent double is considerably sharper than to somebody standing, and nobody swung any harder.

Then stability, which decides what you can safely use. Over a sofa arm or across a bed, the pelvis is supported and nothing is moving, so a strap or a cane is reasonable. Standing against a wall, everything shifts on impact, which is how strokes land in places nobody aimed at. Over the knee is stable but short on reach, so it is a hand position and at most a hairbrush.

And the meaning, which is the strongest of the three. A hand across a bed and a hand over a table are the same physical event and two entirely different evenings. The habit worth building is to choose the position for what you want the hour to mean, and then let it constrain the implement, rather than selecting a cane and hunting for somewhere to use it.

Where people go wrong

Assuming position is a technical matter and therefore does not need negotiating. People have strong reactions to being put over a knee, and to being made to stand facing a wall, and those reactions have nothing to do with pain tolerance. Somebody entirely comfortable being caned over a desk may find over the knee genuinely difficult, or the other way round. Ask beforehand.

The body is the other thing people ignore, because the person in the position will not mention it. Head below the heart for a long stretch makes people dizzy on standing. A trapped arm goes numb. Locked knees make people faint. Move them every fifteen or twenty minutes whether or not anyone has complained, because somebody deep in it will not notice her own arm has gone dead until she tries to use it.