Corner time: standing, waiting, being left

Nose to the wall, hands at your sides, nothing to look at and no idea how long. It is the cheapest device in this whole business and the one most often run badly, usually by being run for four times too long by someone who has wandered off.

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.

Someone is put in a corner and left there. No talking, no phone, nothing to look at but the join between two walls. Nothing is done to them and nothing is asked of them except staying put. Everything on this page is between consenting adults over 18.

It costs nothing, needs no equipment, and produces a reaction out of all proportion to how little is going on. It is also the thing I see run most carelessly, because it looks so harmless that people stop paying attention to it.

What is actually happening in there

Take away everything to look at, everything to do and anyone to talk to, and attention has nowhere to go except inwards. That is the whole mechanism. Roy Baumeister argued in 1988 that much of masochistic practice works by narrowing focus down to immediate sensation and shutting off the self-aware commentary that runs in the background. Corner time does the reverse. It turns the commentary up.

Which is why people describe it as more exposing than a spanking, despite nothing happening. There is no sensation loud enough to hide behind, so what you get is several unbroken minutes of your own opinion of yourself and of what you are doing standing in a corner at the age of thirty-eight.

The second thing, and I think the more interesting one, is that corner time is continuously voluntary. Nobody is holding you there. Every second you remain, you are choosing to remain, and there is no restraint or force to credit the compliance to. That is very different from being held down, and it is the reason corner time produces such a distinct flavour of submission. You cannot tell yourself you had no choice, because you visibly do.

Before impact it works as anticipation with nothing to distract from it. After impact it holds the state open and stops the scene deflating the moment the last stroke lands, which is the use I reach for most.

What to negotiate for this one specifically

Beyond the general negotiation:

• Duration, and whether they are told it. Being told is much easier. Not being told is much stronger, and should not be the first version.
• The exact position. Facing the corner, nose touching or not, hands at the sides or held out in front. Holding the arms out is a shoulder endurance exercise and gets hard within a couple of minutes, so treat it as a separate and shorter thing.
• Whether the top stays in the room, and whether they will speak at all.
• Whether moving, shifting, crying or speaking is permitted, and what actually follows if it happens. Decide before, not during.
• Clothing, and whether anything is displaced. This changes the scene from quiet to acutely exposing and should be agreed rather than sprung.
• The signal. They cannot see you and may not be allowed to speak, so agree what turning round means, or a raised hand, or a word. See safe words.
• Whether they are being watched, and whether they will be told either way. Believing you are being observed when you are not is its own experience and some people find it unpleasant afterwards.
• What happens if they need the lavatory, which sounds trivial and ruins more corner time than anything else.

Left displaced

The other lever, and a much bigger one than the arms. Corner time can be done fully dressed, and it can be done with clothing deliberately left out of order, and those are two different scenes wearing the same name.

The usual forms, in rough order of severity. Knickers lowered to the knees, which is the half state and is worse than being bare, because it is undignified rather than neutral and it makes walking impossible without a shuffle.

Knickers taken off altogether, handed over, and kept by him or left folded on the arm of a chair across the room where she can see them. A skirt turned up and tucked firmly into its own waistband so that it stays up by itself, which is the version that removes the last thing she could pretend was an accident.

What makes it work is that she has to maintain it. Nobody is holding anything in place. If the skirt slips she has to put it back, and putting it back herself is a small ongoing act of compliance repeated for as long as she stands there. That is a very different experience from being displaced by somebody else for two minutes while something happens to her.

Who does it matters as much here as it does anywhere. Being told to arrange yourself and then stand facing the wall is compliance, and most people find that harder. Being arranged by him and then left is helplessness, and some people need that instead. Neither is guessable, so ask. There is a whole page on this at being bared, exposed and inspected, including the arousal that often arrives with the shame and what to do about mentioning it.

Left displaced after a spanking rather than before is the harder version, and it has its own section below.

Practical matters, none of them optional. Curtains, blinds, front doors, glass panels, and anybody else in the building. A person standing exposed in a corner cannot get herself covered quickly, so the room has to be genuinely private before it starts. Heat the room, because bare and still means cold within minutes and shivering ends the scene for the wrong reason. And no photographs, ever, unless that has been agreed well in advance and in writing.

Finish it deliberately. Either tell her to put herself straight, which makes the ending an instruction like the beginning, or hand her the clothes yourself, which is warmer and reads as the first move of aftercare. What you should not do is let the scene end while she is still standing there displaced, wondering whether it is over.

After a spanking: on display

This is the version people ask about most, and the one I would keep for later. The spanking is over and the evidence is not. She is standing facing the wall with her bottom bare and red, she knows it is visible, she cannot see it herself, and the person who put it there can look for as long as they like.

It works because nothing is being done to her any more. The sting is fading, there is nothing to brace against, and the only thing left to attend to is the fact of being looked at. For a lot of people that is when the spanking actually lands, several minutes after the last stroke.

Agree the rules beforehand and keep them few. No rubbing is the one almost everybody uses, because the urge is strong and resisting it is a small act of obedience in itself. Add a position for the hands, from the choices in the next section, and a skirt tucked up so that it stays out of the way without being held. Then keep still. That is plenty.

Keep it short. Five minutes is a real dose and ten is long, and the skin gives you a natural end anyway, because the colour fades as it cools. Standing still straight after impact is also exactly when people faint, so soft knees and feet slightly apart, and you stay within earshot.

What the top does is mostly nothing. Look, and say little. One remark about the colour, made once in a level voice, does more than a running commentary, and which words land is worth agreeing in advance: see the words you share. Use the time for a proper look at the marks as well. It is the easiest moment to spot anything beyond the redness you meant, and marks and bruising covers what to look for.

Being seen by anyone else is a separate decision and never a surprise. If a third person is going to be in the room, both of you agreed it in advance, and the details are on being watched.

End it like any displaced corner time: tell her to put herself straight, or hand the clothes back yourself, which reads as the first move of aftercare. A cool flannel, or a hand resting flat on the warm skin if she wants it, does the rest.

What to do with the arms

The most underrated decision in the whole device, and the one that quietly sets the difficulty. Three versions, and they are not interchangeable.

Arms at the sides is the standard and the one to use for anything longer than a few minutes. It sounds like nothing and it is not, because a person standing with her hands hanging at her sides has nowhere to put them and no way to cover anything, and after a while the arms themselves start to feel like a problem she is being made to solve.

It is sustainable for twenty minutes or more, which is what makes it the workhorse. Fingers straight rather than fists, and no fidgeting with the hem of anything, is a standard to set out loud because it gives her something to fail at.

Arms held out in front, palms up, is a substantial escalation and most people have no idea how fast it stops being trivial. The shoulders begin to burn within two or three minutes, the arms start to sag without her deciding to let them, and she will need telling to put them back up, which is where the whole thing stops being passive waiting and becomes an endurance task with a visible failure condition.

It also opens the body up completely and is far more exposing than arms at the sides. Five minutes is a lot. Ten is a great deal more than most people think.

Hands behind the back, one wrist held in the other hand, sits between the two. It looks formal, it pulls the shoulders back, and it is more comfortable than holding the arms out while still removing the option of covering anything. What it is not is safe for long stretches, because the hands are not free to break a fall, so keep it to short periods and never combine it with anything that has been agreed as restraint.

Whichever you pick, say it in one sentence when you put her there and then hold her to it. The correction, when the arms drop, is a single flat word rather than a discussion. That correction is most of what the position is for, and if you are not going to notice and correct, use arms at the sides and let her stand.

Putting them there

Physically put them there. Walk them over, place them, say what the position is in one sentence, and either state the duration or say that you will tell them when. Then stop talking.

Set a timer for yourself on silent. This is not atmosphere, it is because losing track is a genuine hazard, and there is nothing that kills a dynamic faster than being forgotten in a corner while somebody takes a phone call.

Ending it and dropping the frame

Go and get them. Walk over, put a hand on a shoulder, turn them round yourself, and say plainly that it is finished. Do not shout that they can come out. The physical retrieval is doing something the words cannot, and it is the difference between a scene that ends and a scene that merely stops.

Then sit down together for a bit. Corner time in particular tends to leave people wobbly out of proportion to what happened, partly because they have just spent five minutes alone with their own thoughts and partly because standing still, then moving, then being spoken to kindly is a lot of transition in ten seconds. Water, warmth, ordinary conversation. See aftercare.

Common mistakes

• Far too long. This is nearly universal. Whatever number you first thought of, halve it.
• Wandering off and losing track. Set the timer, stay in the flat, and do not start anything you cannot interrupt.
• Adding time for every fidget. It escalates without limit and ends with someone genuinely distressed over a rule they were never given.
• Using it as filler while you decide what to do next. People can tell, and it hollows the device out for next time.
• Restraint that would stop someone catching themselves if they went down.
• Treating it as the soft option and skipping negotiation. For some people it is much harder than being hit.
• Running it in a cold room after impact with nothing on. Chilling and standing still is a bad combination for a body that is already dropping.

Variations

Corner time as the wait. Five minutes facing the wall before anything else happens, with the implement placed somewhere they saw on the way past. It turns a straightforward scene into an anticipatory one for no extra effort.

Corner time as the hold. Straight after impact, three or four minutes with the sting still building, before any comfort arrives. This is the most emotionally intense version and the one where the fainting precautions matter most, so keep it short and stay in the room.

The thinking version. They stand there with one question to answer and have to give the answer out loud when they come out. It gives the mind somewhere to go, which makes it easier for some people and much harder for others, and it sits well alongside a written imposition as described at lines and impositions.