It’s hard to admit this. A few playful swats during sex seem fun, while serious spankings seem damaged and perverse. After years of pretending I was interested only in the occasional erotic swat, I finally had to admit it to myself: Although spankings do satisfy a strong sexual need, they satisfy an equally strong psychological one.

On my computer, hidden inside a series of password-protected folders, is a folder labeled “David, If You Find This, Please Don’t Look Inside.” It has my favorite spanking stories I’ve collected online. A small fraction are what you’d imagine: A man spanks a woman, then they have sex. In the vast majority, though, both characters are men, have a platonic relationship, and no sex or romanticism is involved.

This paradox — that my kink is simultaneously sexual and asexual — is one of its most frustrating and intriguing aspects. Perhaps I’d been so uncomfortable with my sexuality for so long that scenes with two men, where there isn’t an obvious stand-in for “me,” were easier to digest. Perhaps I’ll never fully understand.

My kink developed early. As a child, I pored over any book that mentioned spanking, paddling or thrashing. Tom Sawyer went through many reads, as did — believe it or not — key dictionary entries. (Looking up titillating definitions is so common among developing spankophiles that it’s almost a rite of passage.)

BY high school, I’d started to explore my feelings in more public ways. When my best friend and I wrote short stories together, I exorcised my nascent fantasies by subjecting our characters to ritualized, punitive beatings. With classmates, I’d awkwardly introduce the topic with invented references to a “news story” about a “town” that wanted to outlaw spanking.

“What do you think of that?” I’d ask, straining to sound casual.

But when I started college and got my first personal computer, everything changed. In online anonymity I found a community that shared my interest and insecurities. I wasn’t looking for partners to “play” with (as it’s called); spanking, to me, is as intimate as sex, and not to be shared with someone I didn’t love. I just wanted a forum to express my otherwise unexpressible side.