Over the Knee (7 page)

As soon as I could, I filled in the university forms to get access to the online spanking community. I claimed it was necessary for my research. But my thesis was the last thing on my mind. I had to find my kink’s companion.

It was surprisingly difficult to type the word into the search engine.
Spanking
. It looked so plain, so matter-of-fact. But it was a potent word; it had the power to weaken me and make me writhe with dread and delight. The cursor blinked unhurriedly while my finger hovered over the ENTER key. I was on the threshold of a discovery, one I knew would change my life forever. I made myself savour the moment, drawing out the suspense until the word began to lose its meaning.

At last I pressed the key. Immediately a list of URLs appeared. Millions of hits. More than I could ever hope to investigate. There were websites filled with stories, photos, fantasies, drawings, discussions and personal ads. Newsgroups, forums, messenger services and chat rooms. Of course, there were countless porn sites as well, but the sites for true spanking enthusiasts weren’t hard to spot. The discovery brought back some of the euphoria I’d felt after the catharsis in the priest’s dusty office.

Gateways demanded to know if I was old enough to enter and I felt like a knight on a quest. I clicked my way in, delighted and amazed. I’d found them at last: others of my kind.

Within the spanking world I was intrigued to discover two distinct camps. There was an erotic contingent for whom sex and spanking were inextricably linked. The one had to lead to the other. Spanking was a sexual act, intended to arouse and designed for mutual pleasure. Though I’d enjoyed playing with Paul, I still couldn’t quite
get
my head round the idea of a mutually pleasurable spanking.

I’d heard someone say once that whatever you thought about while you masturbated to orgasm was what you were into. Well, the only thing I ever thought about was being spanked. Sex could be enjoyable, but it just couldn’t compete with a well-smacked bottom.

The other camp was where I belonged. They were into punishment. Pure and simple. And punishment wasn’t meant to be enjoyed; it was meant to hurt. To teach a lesson. To correct and reform. The enjoyment came afterwards – in the warm glow of sore cheeks and the sense of relinquished control.

One of the most fascinating websites was a vast archive of factual documents and personal accounts of corporal punishment around the world. At first sight it looked like a purely objective resource, but it had all the hallmarks of a fetishistic mind behind it. Likewise, the overinterested Wikipedia article on spanking had clearly been written by people who shared my predilection. I was overjoyed. Here were my Victorian flagellants, strutting their stuff in the guise of detached reportage.

I didn’t waste any time; I registered with a site for personals and posted an ad of my own.

DEAR SIR,

I’m waiting nervously in a queue outside your study, listening to the awful SWOOSH-THWACK! from within. All too soon the wait is over and a tearful girl rushes out. Now it’s my turn. I’ll fidget while you scold me, flexing the cane in your hands. When you order me to bend over I’ll be shaking so much it will be impossible to keep my legs straight. But you’re accustomed to girls being frightened. You’ll instruct me to raise my skirt and tuck it well up over my back. Then you’ll hook your fingers in the waistband of my white cotton knickers and pull them down to my knees. I’ll shudder as you lay the cane against my bottom. ‘Count them, girl,’ you’ll say sternly. Then the cane will draw back and land sharply,
painfully
. ‘One, sir. Two, sir.’ All the way up to six. Twelve if I’ve been especially naughty. How long will you make me wait, sir?

Yours respectfully,

Angie

I got more responses than I could have wished for. And there were some frighteningly clueless ones. Guys who had obviously read too much of John Norman’s Gor series and taken every word literally. ‘True masters’ who didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t into whips and chains. I couldn’t possibly have been clearer about what I wanted. I didn’t have anything against D/s or BDSM in general; they just weren’t my kink. And if these guys were truly into it themselves, they ought to have known that.

Some of the emails I got were as much an assault on the English language as on me. I deleted them. The grammar and spelling were so appalling I marvelled that the writers were able to operate a computer at all. I knew I was being a snob but, if these men couldn’t be bothered to proofread three lines of text, why should I bother to read it? The stern headmaster of my fantasies would never write, ‘wow u sound hot, send me a pic of ur ass and im me for cyber!!!’

I likewise deleted anything with the phrase ‘On your knees, bitch’. There were dismayingly many of those. But I wasn’t alone there either: the forums were filled with rants about swaggering, posturing wannabe doms. ‘Lord’ this and ‘Sir’ that. Social invalids who wouldn’t know what to do with a vanilla girl, let alone one with my needs and desires. It wasn’t the titles that bothered me; it was the profusion of blustering men who mistook domineering for dominance.

Even the sincerely kinky ones could be frustrating. No sooner would I enter a chat room than an instant message would pop up with some crude Gorean sex command or graphic description of how I would serve them. The presumption of not capitalising my name and expecting me to call them ‘Master’ on the basis of their self-proclaimed dominance really rankled.

‘Oh, but spanking is just part of S&M,’ one man insisted.

I pictured a naked slave girl kneeling at the feet of a headmaster brandishing a plastic Ann Summers whip. ‘Sorry,’ I replied, trying hard to be polite. ‘The physical act may well be, but the ethos is completely different.’

He changed tack, assuring me that slaves got punished too, that it wasn’t all about pleasure.

‘I’m not a slave,’ I bristled. ‘Nor do I want to be.’

But he wouldn’t give up. He was the leather equivalent of a Jehovah’s Witness, determined to convert me from schoolgirl to submissive. I finally had to slam the cyber door in his face.

Most surprising of all was the number of people who were seriously conflicted by their feelings. In my naivety I had assumed that anyone ‘out’ enough to admit being into spanking was as unapologetic about it as I was. But for some the fetish was a sickness, a morbid fixation, a kind of self-inflicted torture. Compelled to find ways of justifying their offbeat sexuality, they agonised over the guilt they experienced for not being normal. I’d had my moments of doubt too, but that was ancient history now. The kink was too large a part of me to try to quash it. It defined me.

Day after day I haunted the chat rooms and forums, gushing about how wonderful it was to find a community of fellow enthusiasts – people I could share my fetish with. It was like being in love for the first time.

The librarian commented that she’d never seen me so engrossed in my work. I was at the library every day when it opened and had to be chucked out when it closed. Thinking quickly, I explained that I had just come up with a new angle for my thesis and was very excited about what my research was uncovering.

If she doubted my story she didn’t let on, but I considered it a warning nonetheless. I tried to be good and focus on my naughty Victorians, but the lure of real spanking chat was always there and impossible to resist. I slipped into an unproductive cycle: I’d write a few words, decide I needed to look something up, surf the kinky sites,
glance
back at my thesis, declare myself uninspired, indulge myself with some spanking chat for ‘inspiration’, look again at my thesis, respond to email …

And so on. My thesis languished.

‘And how many words have you written today, young lady?’

The instant message gave me a jolt. I cast a surreptitious glance around the library. When it was available I always used the computer at the far right end of the long table. I could angle the screen away from the one beside it and have relative privacy. No one could see what I was doing. I had mentioned in chat that I was working on a thesis, though I hadn’t shared any details about the topic.

‘Who wants to know?’ I wrote back, trying to convey a challenging tone.

A few seconds later he replied. ‘Someone who takes an interest in the education of young ladies.’

I blushed. I didn’t know what to say to that. Luckily I didn’t have to respond.

‘Is your research proving fruitful, Angie?’

I wasn’t surprised he knew my name; I’d used it in my personal ad. Rash, perhaps, but it was hardly an unusual name. ‘So far,’ I replied. ‘But you have me at a disadvantage.’

‘I’m Peter,’ he said, adding a smiley. ‘I was about to write you an email, but then I saw you were online.’

‘Yes, I’m supposed to be working, but I’m a little blocked.’

‘I don’t let
my
students get away with that excuse.’

My fingers hesitated above the keyboard as a little flicker of warmth went through me. But before I could formulate a reply he wrote again.

‘Would you like to chat?’

Would I ever.

Peter was in his early forties. He was a history professor and self-admitted pedant, both of which appealed to the intellectual snob in me. He wasn’t into erotic spankings; like me, he favoured discipline and punishment.

‘I’m not interested in the slutty schoolgirl look,’ he wrote. ‘I believe in proper school uniform.’

‘What about underneath?’ I asked.

‘Regulation school knickers, of course. Anything else would be inauthentic.’

Oh yes, we would get on well.

Peter had been in the scene for many years. He’d been in spanking relationships and had friends who shared the fetish. He told me he was a keen roleplayer, which was something I’d never considered. I had my fantasies, but in fantasy you were already whoever or whatever you wanted. You weren’t playing a role. I had never imagined acting out my fantasies. But Peter piqued my curiosity.

He was away on business, but would be back in London in a week. We agreed to meet for dinner on the Friday. Over the next few days, when he could escape from work, we exchanged email and played in the chat room.

I was amazed that simple chat could push my buttons so easily. And Peter could talk the talk. I constantly found myself looking up from the screen, blushing and shifty eyed, paranoid that someone was reading over my shoulder. I worried that Paul might turn up to try to entice me back for more consensual spanking play. But I knew who I was now.

In one email Peter asked for my measurements. I sent them, nervously wondering what use he would make of them. I was a kid counting the days, the minutes, the seconds until Christmas.

I gave him my mobile number, hoping he’d oblige me with the spanko equivalent of phone sex. But instead he sent me an email telling me to be careful.

‘You must be more cautious, young lady,’ he scolded me. I could just see him wagging his finger at me. ‘I know it’s thrilling to find where you belong, but you need to be careful about sharing sensitive information with people you haven’t met. I could be Jack the Ripper for all you know.’

‘He’s probably not much of a threat any more,’ I wrote back cheekily. ‘What’s the big deal? I’ll be meeting you in a week anyway.’

‘And if I had bad intentions it would be too late then.’

‘Yeah, but maybe it will have been worth it!’

‘Young lady, do I need to set you an essay on internet safety? You’ll find it difficult to concentrate on writing it with a sore bottom.’

I writhed in my seat, my cheeks burning. I lived for his words and I printed out every squirmy email. They were my bedtime reading.

When he asked me if I’d ever been spanked, I told him about my recent experiences. He especially enjoyed the story about Father Michael. ‘I have a friend who will want to go to confession when she hears about that,’ he wrote.

I also told him about the terrible emotional crash I’d suffered afterwards.

Peter diagnosed it instantly. ‘Sub-drop,’ he said. ‘It happens to lots of people. You’d just been through an extremely intense emotional experience. The elation can’t last forever and, when the endorphin high wears off, it triggers a sort of grief. It’s like a holiday you never wanted to end. Suddenly it’s over and it’s back to reality again. You’re not equipped to cope with the mundane after that.’

That made perfect sense to me. And just knowing I wasn’t alone in it was a comfort. I wondered if I would suffer it again after meeting Peter.

He directed me to several websites I hadn’t yet found and my education progressed. I was amused to discover that America in the 1950s had its own equivalent of the Victorian correspondence column.
Your Romance
, a magazine for teenage girls, boasted its famous ‘Pats and Peeves’ column. Nearly all the letters were about spanking. Husbands who took their wives in hand and over the knee. Boyfriends who’d caught their girlfriends flirting with other guys and were keen to teach them a lesson. Bosses who knew how to deal with their secretaries’ misdemeanours. All in the innocent chirpy voice characteristic of the period. All this could go into my thesis and I was relieved to have justified my quest.

He also sent me pictures and stories he’d scanned from old issues of
Blushes
. The magazine depicted another world – one where lecherous old goats were free to indulge their
penchant
for punishment with shop girls and nieces and maids. In the
Blushes
world, the girls expected no less and submitted, embarrassed but compliant, to whatever humiliating chastisement was inflicted on them. It was everything a modern, sexually liberated woman should scorn and despise. I loved it.

There was one thing I was dying to ask, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. At his age, he must have some interesting school stories to tell. He’d mentioned boarding school but, when I asked him where he’d gone, he was coy.

‘Oh, a place in Shropshire,’ he responded glibly. ‘You’d like the town, though. A maze of small streets filled with half-timbered houses.’

I was pretty sure I knew where he meant.