Der Flokati
Der Flokati: Das Nackedasein is a German novel by Henriette Staudt from 2010. Set in the 1970s, it features the topics of nonsexual nudity, play spanking and playful forms of light and consensual BDSM among teenagers and preteens. It is considered a mainstream novel although its many spanking references inevitably brought it to the attention of spankophiles (it was added to the German Wikipedia article "Spanking" in January 2011). The book can be called a unique example of a mainstream spanking novel.
Plot
The book takes the reader back to a German childhood in the mid-1970s. The protagonist, Annette, is 13 years old. Her parents are both working full-time. When Annette is alone at home in the afternoons, she begins to discover and experiment (asexually, as far as her awareness is) with how crazy, special and nice it feels to be fully nude while doing all kinds of things at home. (It is apparently a hot summer.)
Annette is an only child, but her schoolmate Heike, who lives a few houses down the same street, has two younger twin brothers, Frank and Florian (nicknamed Fix and Foxi, after the popular German comic strip). Heike's parents are also both working. When Annette visits her friend to do their homework together, she discovers that Heike, who is responsible for preparing lunch and looking after her brothers in the afternoons, has not only the regular habit of making her brothers play and scuffle fully naked around their house and garden but also the habit of spanking them a lot playfully, with only pretended protests and much laughter. The boys do not mind this at all, they find it fun and they like the attention they are getting. The age of Frank and Florian is not stated explicitly, but they are second-graders, so they must be eight to nine years old.
Annette begins to develop a crush on 15-year-old Roland who also lives in their street. Another important character in the book is Petra, a neighbor girl who is just a little older than Frank and Florian, but clearly younger than Annette and Heike, and soon becomes very interested in spanking.
Spanking and other play
The spankings are never severe and always happen in playful pretended "punishment" contexts. The perhaps most recurring spanking position in Der Flokati is the head-between-legs position. The implements used vary from open hand smacks on a clothed or bare bottom to a plastic cooking spoon or a light stick.
Games that include elements of power play to make a subject unable to continue bratting and to playfully "punish" them, besides spanking, include bondage, gagging, blindfolding and teasing them after making them in this way helpless.
Language
The language used in Der Flokati is easy to follow, transporting the reader skillfully into the mind of the 13-years-old protagonist, and into life as a child in West Germany of the 1970s with many cultural details. Certain trigger words appear regularly in the text, for example terms for younger and mischievous children:
- Bengel
- Brüderchen
- Brüderlein
- Büblein
- Bürschlein
- Frechdachs
- Kerlchen
- die Kleine (Petra)
- Knirps
- Landplage
- Nackedei
- Nacktfrosch
- Plagegeist
- Racker
- Übeltäter
One linguistic peculiarity is Staudt's heavy use of the diminutive form when referring to body parts and clothing of especially the spankee characters. In German, the diminutive is formed by the suffixes -chen or -lein. Examples of diminutives heavily found in Der Flokati, besides some already listed above, include:
- Bäckchen
- Beinchen
- Frottierhöschen
- Hinterbäckchen
- Höschen
- Kleidchen
- Pimmelchen
- Söckchen
- Turnhöschen
Staudt also uses the diminutive in other words such as:
- Stöcklein (making the implement Stock (stick) sound less harsh)
- Stöckchen (ditto)
- Grübelstündchen
- Plauderstündchen
The difficulty of having no good word in German for "to spank", "a spank", "spanking", "spanked" is overcome in Der Flokati by a variety of idioms that convey well the author's light-hearted tone:
- abstrafen, Abstrafung
- bestrafen, Bestrafung, Strafe
- den Hintern voll geben, den Hintern voll bekommen
- Klapse geben
- (auf den Po) klapsen
- draufklapsen
- Popoklapsen
- abklatschen
- draufklatschen
- Popoklatsche
- Popoklatschen
- hinten drauf klatschen
- auf den Po klatschen
- auf die Pobacke klatschen
- den Po verklatschen
- klopfen, Klopfen
- ausklopfen
- auf den Popo (drauf) klopfen
- auf den Po draufhauen
- drauf hauen
- den Po verhauen
- Patscher
- auf die Backen patschen
- verhauen, Verhauen
- verdreschen, Verdreschen
- versohlen, Versohlen
- übers Knie legen
- was draufkriegen (in passive voice)
- warmgeklatscht (adjective)
- rosageklatscht (adjective)
Staudt thus demonstrates a sensitive handling of language to convey the intended images. One of her creative expressions is also found in the boot's subtitle: Nackedasein is a made-up, but understandable, word that means something like "the quality of being naked". Despite her verbal skills, and largely owed to the slow pace of narration and the length of the novel, Staudt is limited by the means of verbal variation and the book tends to feel repetitive.
Certain expressions in the book (e.g. the verb piensen on page 76) suggest that Staudt might be a central to north German author. The publisher is located in Aachen.
Editions
The book has 492 pages. It is not yet available in other languages.
- Henriette Staudt: Der Flokati: Das Nackedasein. Aachen 2010, isbn 978-3-8422-3909-8.
Henriette Staudt
Not much is known about the author, Henriette Staudt. According to the blurb, she was born in 1956. In the mid-1970s she was often looking after her younger siblings and cousins. Due to her young age, her charges did not consider her "full adult" and entrusted her unbashfully with many of their personal childhood fantasies. In the years after, Staudt would often reflect over these, and they are now, in turn, reflected in Annette's ponderings (often when she is lying naked on the Flokati rug). Staudt emphasizes that Der Flokati is a fictional world in which things happen that did not happen for real back then, but which had happened in young minds of the time.
External links
- Der Flokati: das Nackedasein on Google Books (with many sample pages)
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