On August 29, 2004 I was flogged indoors in Ben Lomond, CA by 
Al (Leatherback) at his home.

When my alarm went off at 6:45 AM, I felt an eagerness to get 
going, and not the usual desire to go back to sleep.  At that hour 
it would still be about 7 more hours before I was to be spread-
eagled for my punishment.  That meant plenty of time to ponder my 
fate or my pleasure.  

I was still on a major high that began a week earlier, when I made 
arrangements to be flogged.  A delicious mixture of excitement
mixed with butterflies, concern and mostly happiness made the whole
week for me.  A few days earlier I talked with Al on the phone and 
suggested he call the shots on how, and how long he wanted to flog 
me.  I also suggested that it might be fun if he would treat me 
more like a prisoner and further punish me -- by adding additional 
strokes -- if I displeased him in any way.  He agreed to try.  
Something about that made me very excited.

To get to his place I took a cable car, a subway, then a train from
San Francisco to San Jose, where I would catch a bus, from which I
would connect to another bus.  For most of the trip I was enjoying
the rush of anticipation.  Then when I got on the second bus, I 
could feel my muscles tightening up and my mind and body seemed to 
take on a certain uneasiness and part of me wondered why I was 
doing this.  I have taken this same bus to his house before, but 
somehow I missed my cue and got off a few stops too early and once 
the bus pulled away, I realized I wasn't sure where I was.  I 
found a phone at a store and told Al where I was and he picked me 
up.  Jokingly, I said, "I owe you one for this screw up."  And in 
my mind I meant I owed him some skin off my back.

As in previous visits, I had my usual uneasiness as I got close to
the place of my flogging and in sight of the various whips he had
lined up to use on me.  He shaved my normally hairy back (I'd
shaved my chest the night before).  Since he knew I wanted it, he 
acted authoritative, and ordered me to stand under the chains with 
my arms stretched out.  Then he put leather cuffs on my wrists and 
attached them to the chains so I was in a spread=eagle position, 
and then put a helmet on my head to protect me from any stray 
lashes, as he knows I always want some lashes to be wrapped over 
my shoulders and around my sides.  I could hear him starting up 
the video camera and I knew what was coming.  Some of my 
nervousness went away when I was cuffed, and I just was determined 
to take it well, whatever he planned to do to me.

Then he took on a very stern voice and announced, "Before we start
with the warmup, we have this matter of you getting off the bus
at the wrong stop and you must be punished.  You'll get 10 hard 
ones for that."  Because of the helmet I was unable to see what he
was going to use on me, but I later found out he would start with
a cat that was made with 9 bootlaces for tails -- more severe than 
his oil-tanned flogger, but not as severe as a nylon cat he would
use later.  The 10 were delivered full force, in a steady rapid
succession.  The first lash shocked me at how hard it was, but as
they progressed I actually felt good about receiving them, and 
that I needed this punishment.

Then he did my warmup with the oil-tanned flogger.  That consisted
of cycles of 4 hits, with 3 just mildly brushing against my back 
in a massaging fashion and then the 4th would be moderately heavy.
I think this cycle repeated about 6 times, and then he started
mixing the "brushing" strokes with severe ones so that I got about
27 hard ones mixed in the with light ones.  Then he laid on a
series of 21 hard ones, one after the other.  By this time I was
no longer feeling any apprehension, and was actually enjoying 
feeling the hard ones on my back.

Then there was a pause and I could hear him go pick up another whip
and soon he dangled in front of me so I could see it -- the 
bootlace cat.  Trying to be a good "soldier" I said not a word and
made not a sound, except to answer him with "Yes, Sir" or "Thank
you, Sir!"

He then laid 6 moderately hard strokes on my back with this cat,
followed by 27 hard, deliberate ones.  Then he used the same whip
to flog my chest 10 lashes from my right and 10 from my left.  He
started out moderate and quickly built up to very severe.  By the
end of these 20 on my chest, I was, for the first time, audibly
reacting to the pain with groans of distress.  After that he 
started doing figure-eights on my back, with light strokes
alternating with hard ones.  Ten steady hard ones followed and
then 20 extra hard ones.  Though they were extremely painful,
punishing and stinging blows, I was actually enjoying them and was 
not anxious for it to be over as I often had been in the past.
 
There was another pause and some photos were taken.  Then he 
brought out a can of water but it was not for drinking.  Rather
he was dipping the tails of one of his most severe cat o'nine
tails in the water, sort of like they did for naval floggings.
However, he did not use brine or salt as he did not want salt to 
spray onto his nearby computer equipment.  This cat has tails of 
nylon which are pretty unforgiving.  Though smaller than a hemp 
naval cat, I find it far more severe.  I knew I was in for some 
really severe pain.  He announced he was giving me 50 hard ones, 
and he gave them at approximately six second intervals.  While 
they really stung badly, I guess I was into it enough that I 
accepted the pain without minding and was able to take it all 
silently.  I think the last 4 or so were wraps over my shoulders.  
As the tails of a whip wrap around a body part they pick up extra 
force and the ends can really dig in wherever they land.  At 
least one of them wrapped over my shoulder and landed on my pec 
and bruised me quite nicely.  When the 50 were finished, he held 
the cat in front of my face so I could see the blood.  Then he 
announced that while he was flogging me, one of the tails had 
started to unravel and I had to be punished for this.  He quickly 
gave me 10 hard ones with a scourge which scraped and cut me so 
there was some more blood.

I fully expected more whips would be employed, but he then 
unfastened the cuffs from the chains and turned me around so 
he could work harder on my chest.  He picked up a home made 
switch with rawhide tails and started working my chest lightly, 
but soon was doing figure-eights with hard, painful strokes 
mixed in with some very light ones.  I'd say I got about 8 
moderately hard ones on my chest, some of which got me to 
groan or scream, then 8 moderate lashes on my abdomen (I always 
ask for those).  Then I got 10 very hard deliberate lashes on 
my chest and these had me screaming and grimacing in pain.  It 
was cutting and scraping and I was bleeding.  

Then he picked up a whip with 3 plastic tails at the end of a 
long narrow handle.  That could be called a dressage whip or
possibly a mini-scourge.  He proceeded to work my chest very fast 
with this, first making very light strokes, then gradually 
getting harder and harder and I got around 55 pretty hard strokes 
that were nicking and cutting my flesh with each pass.  When that 
was finished, he quickly picked up the same scourge that he'd 
last used on my back.  This one has the same kinds of tails as 
the "dressage" but instead of 3 plastic tails, there are 27.  He 
gave me one really hard and painful one to my chest and then 
stopped.

Fully expecting to be turned around to get more on my back, I was 
surprised to see him turn off the video camera, and he started to 
clean and disinfect the whips.  Was our session over?  Or was 
there more?  It seemed to me to have gone by very fast and I 
really did not appreciate how much punishment I'd taken until we 
sat down and watched the video of it.  When I used two-way 
mirrors to see how marked up my back and chest were, I was quite 
surprised.  It was almost as if I had slept through some of the 
flogging or had been in an altered state of mind.  There were 
some things he did to me that I didn't remember until I saw the 
video, and the video seemed to take considerably longer than I 
perceived the actual flogging to take.  However, before the 
first lash hit, I recalled the words of some of my internet 
friends who used phrases like "eat the pain" or "embrace the 
pain."  Maybe by repeating these phrases in my mind, I 
subconsciously convinced myself to love the pain that I would 
normally hate.  Usually I don't love the pain until the flogging 
is over, but I remember somehow enjoying the severest strokes
on my back that in the past had me in unbearable pain.  I can't 
really explain it.

We must have spent an hour and a half or possible two hours with 
not only my video, which was being saved to disk, but also with 
Al transferring the photos from his camera to his computer and 
then making up a disk for me.  During this time he also sprayed 
my front and back with alcohol.  Later I asked him if he was 
interested in dinner and he was.  I went into the bathroom and 
noticed that my marks had "developed" a bit more distinctly and 
asked if he'd like to take a few more photos, which he did.  
Then he motioned for me to position myself between the chains he
cuffed me so I'd be spread-eagled.  He took several photos, then
said, "Wait a minute, I want to try something."  He went into 
his bedroom and came out with a 4' snake whip, and without 
saying a word, he started cracking the single tail whip on my 
back.  By now I think all my endorphins had worn off and my back 
and chest were in a lot of pain.  He just nicked me a little at 
first, but soon he was cracking the whip quite hard.  Sometimes 
he'd crack it without making contact with my back, but I'd 
flinch anyway at the sound of the crack.  He managed to get 
several really hard and painful cuts on my back.  The video 
wasn't running and I wasn't counting, so I can only guess that it 
was somewhere between 15-25 hard, painful lashes that cut.  
Unlike the cats or scourges which are more painful to take 
overall, the impact of the single tail when it is cracked in 
this manner, with him standing behind me, is much more intense, 
but concentrated to a small area.  I feel a lot more pain from 
the cats, but I feel I can take it easier.  Conversely, whenever 
I have had a single tail laid on me flat with the top standing 
either to the right or left of me, I have felt more pain, but 
found it easier to take as the pain is distributed across my back.  
Al also gave me several "wraparound" strokes with the snake whip 
where he wrapped the whip around my back, sides, chest and the 
end of the tail landed on my back.  These actually did not seem 
as severe as the ones he cracked directly on my back.  There was 
some impact on my chest and sides, but it seemed as if my back 
took the brunt of it.

After these were finished, Al applied some antibiotic ointment 
to my reopened back and chest and took a few more photos and 
then transferred them to the CD for me.  I really hated putting 
on my shirt.  I wish that just once I had the guts to display my 
welts, bruises and blood to folks on the street, and wear my 
beloved "medals" with pride and honor, but most of the world
would not understand.  It turns out that it was a good thing I 
brought a second T-shirt as the first one was already getting a 
little bloody in the back.  I put another over it and we went to 
dinner.  Afterwards, I had much time on the trip home to 
privately celebrate a great flogging and to enjoy the aftertaste
that will last for several days.  

For the record, I was flogged in my favorite "flogging uniform" 
of blue jeans, shoes and socks on, but obviously shirtless.  
People have asked me why I don't do it naked or, for that matter 
get flogged on the butt.  For me personally, it goes back to my 
earliest images of naval and prison floggings, in print, movies 
and TV.  The sight of a man stripped to the waist, suffering 
under the lash, has always been the hottest thing in my mind, and 
I always wanted to be him.  Also, I have a thing for Levis, and 
it just feels more exciting to me to be stripped to the waist.  
Being naked or even in shorts for a flogging just doesn't feel 
as exciting to me.  Different strokes for different folks.

Photos of some of my flogging sessions are in the photo album "jsnaw" 
of the Yahoo group mcpf.  A direct link to them is:

Many more photos are in my profile photo album at:
http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jeans_noshirt_and_whipped/my_photos


Sincerely,
jeans_noshirt_and_whipped
"Bob"