Remembering the Woodshed: The First Gay Spanking Meeting Board
by Justin
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| Public Domain Images from the Noun Project |
Picture it, very early 1990’s, …the night is young and you’d like some spanking play. Or, at the very least, you’d like to see some spanking-themed pictures. It’s been on your mind all day. You sit at your desktop computer waiting for the menu to appear. You select the QMODEM program and wait for it to load.
You select The WoodShed from the BBS listings (short for “bulletin board system”) and press Return.
For those who remember bulletin board system (BBS) technology, I hope that this is a nice trip back in time. For those who do not, I hope this is an interesting history of how we once accessed spanking content, before it was available on what we now recognize as the World Wide Web!
This early online technology marked an important step forward in our ability to find others into spanking. In the 1980’s, the main tool for meetups in the United States was the variety of magazines produced by video companies (the subject of a chapter in Bad Lads, Strict Sirs, and the World of Adult Male Spanking on pages 380-384). These magazines featured personal ads that could be answered first by mail and later by personal telephone messaging services. However, as online services became a presence in our lives, they became the natural next step forward for building our adult male spanking community, and the Woodshed stands out as a pioneer in doing so.
I’ll return to the specifics of The Woodshed in a moment, but first I’d like to extend thanks to its founder, Robert P (Calvin on First Impressions Gay BBS aka Corey on the Woodshed BBS, 1989-1995). In 1989, two forces converged in Robert’s life. As he explains it, “When I was just coming to terms with being gay, I was also very into computer bulletin boards (pre-internet), which allowed you to connect with others modem-to-modem.”
BBS’s were a dial-up network that predated what we now know as the World Wide Web, so set aside visions of web browsers and streaming media. In those days, in order to connect online you needed a literal phone book listing specific numbers to dial via your computer’s modem. The correct number would connect you to a message board system where you could post text messages and image attachments (like a virtual bulletin board - hence the name). Only a limited number of users could dial in at any one time, depending on the number of lines available, so you may have encountered a busy signal, or identified the “best” time to call and get through, such as the early hours of the morning. When you connected, in addition to viewing what was posted, you could also engage in live chat with others who were on the other lines. To the modern internet user, this may sound fairly basic, but rest assured, to those of us at the time, it was wonderful!
Robert frequented a BBS called Bruce’s Bar and Grill. With 40 lines to dial in, this was one of the largest in New England at the time. It was also a local call for him. The computer was his whole life, as he was fascinated with computer programming and being able to chat with others modem to modem, looking for other gay people. And, just as the internet does today, the BBS facilitated face-to-face meetings. Robert recalls, “I made some of my closest - or should I say all of - my friends through there. New people would appear and chat. It was amazing. We would set up face-to-face meetings at bars. We became a large group of friends and I would see that a few were gay and met their gay friendly friends. So, this is how I met the first gay people in my life. I met my first boyfriend there. I got my first spanking through there.”
So, it was also through this system that Robert discovered the joys of spanking and, like so many of us, he instantly got hooked. “I ended up having my first gay spanking experience with a guy I met through there. It was so different from my past experiences that I have been turned on to spanking since that point.”
There is one theme that shines through from many interviews that my co-author Trevor and I conducted with those in the community who have created internet sites, magazines, videos, events, artwork, stories, and other points of connection with the community. That theme is a willingness to put in hard work, for limited financial reward, in order to help build community and spread the good word about spanking, and we appreciate them for that. Robert is no exception.
Let’s return to the story of the Woodshed. Robert met all his gay friends through Bruce’s Bar and Grill BBS in late 80’s, even though it wasn’t a gay BBS. As he explains, "There were no gay message boards or gay message threads on Bruce’s. It was just Connecticut people of all ages (male and female) chatting with each other from all walks of life. The only BBS with gay content was Lifestyles Gay BBS in New Haven and that was a long-distance call, racking up charges minute-by-minute." So, Robert wanted something in Hartford for his local gay friends. In 1990, Robert created the First Impressions Gay BBS, which operated on eight lines out of Hartford, Connecticut. He started it with four lines and then grew it slowly to eight lines which was the maximum he could put in his computer without making the next major cost step. The BBS was a success, attracting many callers, even if the local phone company didn’t quite understand why one condo unit needed so many phone lines. “I had to explain to them that I was running a ‘computer system’,” he recalls, "without sharing just what it was for."
Being into spanking, it is no surprise that Robert created a section of the First Impressions BBS for spanking-themed content. That also became popular, so Robert thought, “why don’t I create a back-door to this BBS and call it ‘The Woodshed’ and move the material over to there?” If someone dialed the back-door number, it would take them directly to the spanking-themed context at the Woodshed.
And it became popular.
Robert recalls, ”We had a guy, he went by Chucko from Boston, who was very into spanking. He would dial in very early in the morning and connect at our only 33,600 baud modem [this allowed an exchange of content at approximately 36K per second] and just dump pictures to both boards. In fact, I met him and he spanked me a number of times! The beauty of the system was that everyone else could download these pictures, even if it took one minute or even more per image. I would just wake up in the morning before work and it was all there for me. Chucko had a scanner and uploaded it all. I don’t know where the pictures originated, but he seemed to know where to get it and he would dump megabytes of content every morning that I would look at quickly.”
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| Artwork by Copper |
In addition, the BBS allowed users to communicate with each other, and much more directly than letter-writing or telephone-messaging systems. Users could post profiles, like “Hi, I’m Calvin from Hartford. I like to be spanked hard by a dad type,” and so on. Others could respond privately to engage in conversation or to set up meetings. As Robert summarized it, “The Woodshed was a spanking hookup site, really.” And, it was the first of its kind!
Robert remembers one of his own memorable meetups from his site. “There was a guy who was coming for business and was traveling the Turnpike, from motel after motel after motel. I went there once to meet him. He took me into the lobby and made me stand there while he got the room, like I was his son. We went to the room, I was spanked and corner timed, and it was such a hot experience I’ll never forget!”
The Woodshed BBS drew a national audience. “People would just keep dialing in checking for messages from all over the place. First Impressions was a local, general gay BBS, whereas the Woodshed BBS got calls from all over the United States. The only way you would know about it was by seeing the “spank” password in the national GAY & LESBIAN BBS LIST.”
The only cost of using the system was whatever it cost for the phone call. With this, it was much less expensive than the Compuserve system, which was one of the few outlets for accessing the nascent World Wide Web and which could be expensive, with rates sometimes as high as $10 per hour.
However, as technology advanced, other providers began to offer free and inexpensive services, the most notable of which was AOL. While AOL did charge for subscriptions, they also distributed free-of-charge CD’s (that’s compact disc’s) containing the necessary software and login codes for one-month trials. You could pick them up almost anywhere - especially places like grocery stores and computer stores - and they would even mail them out as solicitations. Those of us who didn’t want to pay monthly fees, or who wanted to maintain some anonymity without linking profiles to our credit cards, could simply cancel and create a new profile every month or so. And, AOL had a vibrant set of chat rooms, one of which was the “DisciplineM4M” room, in addition to gay-friendly rooms for most major metropolitan areas (we remember this in the book on pages 337-341).
Robert explained, “When AOL came, people seemed to move off of my BBS. AOL had chat rooms of 40 people, while we were at a max of 8 incoming lines. We would see the modems become less busy around 1995 to a point where we didn’t even need all eight lines anymore.” The Woodshed played a valuable role for many spankos, but in 1995, it closed up shop. However, this was not without having previously helped many spankos find one another, find some fun images, and build a sense of acceptance and community.
Technology changes and time moves forward. Robert still is part of our wonderful community, attends events, and offers some good advice to those who are newly discovering it. He suggests, “Communication is the most important - way before it starts. Everyone is different, and everyone's take on spanking is so very different.” Perhaps this advice is no surprise, as Robert’s Woodshed BBS helped to do exactly that - build communication and showcase the diversity of the spanking community.
Thanks again to Robert P (Calvin on First Impressions Gay BBS aka Corey on the WoodShed BBS 1989-1995) not only for sharing these recollections, but also for building a system that played such an important role for so many spankos.
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P.S. Even with these wonderful memories, Robert laments not having artifacts relating to the Woodshed BBS. “Hindsight,” he said. “It’s so funny how we never see the historic value in anything [until after the fact]." My co-author Trevor and I have also felt this, ourselves, and have heard from many others who do. Watch for an upcoming post in which we formally announce a source for preserving our history, through the Adult Male Spanking Collection at the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, Illinois.
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