Six weeks after we started dating, I told Emily my secret.

We were in bed, still in those heady, lust-filled days of a new relationship. I really liked her, suspected that I might even love her, which meant I had to tell her the truth about myself. She sat up to listen, and I trailed my fingers over her thigh, eyes down, nervous as a teenager. I was 30 years old and for the first time in my life I was going to tell a girlfriend that I wanted to spank her. No, not wanted to, needed to. And I knew that telling her might mean the immediate death of our relationship, but I also knew we'd never be perfect together unless I looked into her pretty blue eyes and told this sweet, innocent, beautiful woman that I had a spanking fetish.

Let me clarify something: I'm not "into" spanking the way you might be "into" Celine Dion or “The Bourne Identity.” Spanking is a part of my psyche, an essential element of my sexuality. It's not like slavering over cheerleaders, or fantasizing about sex on the beach at sunset. When I was a kid I used to look up the word "spanking" in the dictionary, and I got a visceral thrill when I saw a spanking scene on “Little House on the Prairie” or ...