Washington state, 1913
The ad read:
Disobedient young lady requires strict disciplinarian to administer bare bottom
punishments. Must be consistent, harsh when necessary, and know how to pamper after
discipline is done...
The second after I placed that ad, I wanted to snatch back the paper and throw it away.
I had never engaged in any masochistic activity before. In fact, all of my experiences
came through observation.
One morning, I simply happened to glance out my living room window and into the town
house across from mine. Imagine my surprise when I saw my neighbor tying his lady-love
over the arm of their white and gold-trimmed settee. My mouth dropped quite to my chest
when he lifted up that long paddle and began to spank her until there was no white left in
her poor bottom and all was an inflamed shade of scarlet.
I paid them more attention after that, and it wasn’t long before I noticed that such was
a frequent occurrence for them. And that if I blew out all the lamps, and closed the
draperies to the slightest of cracks, then I could sit quietly in the dark and watch them
without fear of discovery.
I looked forward to the hour when my neighbor came home from work. If there was some
naughtiness that required his attention, then he was always the same. He would toss his
work-day coat haphazardly over the back of a chair and roll the sleeves of his shirt up
past his elbows. When he scolded her, the pretty, young Lady-love would hang her head,
her cheeks hot with shame. Or perhaps it was with pleasure. In the peeping-tom intimacy
of my home, I knelt snared in pure voyeuristic passion, breathlessly enthralled from the
instant he caught her arm and bent her over the settee, to the moment that he tossed up
her skirts and petticoats to thrash a measure of disobedience from the pale, soft curves
of her bottom.
Sometimes he was swift and very nearly vengeful in his ministrations of her, his palm or
belt cracking against her rapidly heating backside, despite the desperation of her
wriggling. At other times, he was very slow and concise, removing her clothing, layer by
satiny layer, baring patches of pink flesh that he kissed and caressed, brushing his
mustached lip over her skin until even I could feel the writhing need for more all the way
into my living room.
But it was not until he had her bared from waist to silk stocking-clad knees, caught in
the humiliating poise of being bent over for punishment, that the real excitement begin to
tickle about my belly. I loved to watch him spank her. It mattered little what he used:
his broad hand or belt, the cruelty of a switch or wicked riding crop or the hard-backed
wooden hairbrush that he would make her fetch for him. But on those fascinating nights
when they enacted for me this primitive scene of domination, it would make my heart race
to watch. My breath would catch in harsh gasps in my throat, and my palms sweat as I
pressed them flat against my thighs... sometimes in between.
I never heard a sound. Neither the swish of the implements as they sliced the air, nor
the whuck of the rod as it burrowed into her bare flesh with force enough to make me jump.
But with the frantic kicking of her legs and each wild toss of her head, heat would stab
up through my loins to my womb, creating an ache that could only be temporarily assuaged
by clever fingers. I wished so much to hear the shrieks I knew must be falling from her
mouth, distended as it was from screaming. There were times that I would whine shrilly
and pretend that it was me submitting so eloquently, so painfully and completely, and such
was enough to send me blissfully over the edge of sensual pleasure.
Sometimes they switched roles and she would be the aggressor while he submitted to her
whims. But on those nights, I went to bed disappointed. Lying sleepless and confused in
the darkness, I wondered what it would feel like to bear the hot attentions of a switch
across my own unprotected flanks. I all but cringed in anticipation for the day when I
would.
I wanted what they shared. But more than just the spanking, I longed for the submission.
I wanted someone to be in control of me. I wanted to be held and allowed to cry when
discipline was done. I wanted to feel the hands of my man cradling and caressing my
bright and fiery bottom on his lap while he kissed me. For my eyes to close in rapture,
my lips to part in contented sighs and sharp cries of discomfort when a particularly
tender spot was touched. I did not want to sit in the frustrated silence of my
discipline-free home and watch all this happen to another, or to think that it would
never, ever happen to me.
But how to go about experiencing all that I witnessed through the cold glass pane of my
window? While I was no raving beauty, neither did my waist-long dark hair and brown eyes
make me a wallflower. Certainly my body was not unattractive to the stronger sex: my
breasts were small; my waist flat and trim with hips that rounded gently into long,
slender legs. I was content that my form appealed to the masculine interest. I had
simply to find one for whom I could safely shed my many layers of clothing and inhibitions
for.
So again, how to go about it? And how to assure myself that the man of my choosing would
do as my neighbor so often did with Lady-love and lay the rod to me whenever I needed and
deserved it? I could not exactly see myself approaching a total stranger, simpering as I
said, “Come home with me and spank my naughty, bare bottom.”
For such an approach to work, one needs to be relatively certain that the listener is a
suitably dominant-minded man. I admit, I did spend some time contemplating it. I even
imagined a variety of responses. Perhaps he might be shocked at my brazen behavior and
give me the sound scolding my heart so desired. Perhaps he might be angry and draw me
immediately across his knee for a swift but public taste of the discipline I would receive
in the privacy of his home later on. But if it were so easy to spot a dominant man, I
would not be in such a quandary about finding one. The sad truth was, more than likely,
the response I’d receive would be a look of disgust just before the man of my choosing
turned and swiftly walked the other way.
And so, dear reader, knowing these, my most secret thoughts, imagine now my reaction when
a friend approached me with a shockingly detailed copy of an underground newspaper she had
found. Had I known my life would never be the same, I might not have reached for it so
thoughtlessly.
The paper was really quite shocking, full of pictures and comics and advertisements from
people anxious to fulfill desires at least as scandalous--and some even more so--than
mine. My friend giggled, thinking it all a great joke. And I laughed with her, wondering
how much it would cost to run a notice for myself. Very little thought went into my
decision. I was too afraid that if I stopped to consider it rationally, my courage might
falter and fail me altogether and I would never in life know the pleasures that dominated
my fantasies.
Finding the building was simple. A librarian gave me the address and I took the common
omnibus to the correct office in downtown Seattle. Placing the ad, however, was quite the
hardest thing I had yet done in my life. I stared determinedly at the counter, my face
fiercely hot as I whispered my request to the clerk who, bless his heart, stoically copied
down every word without comment. Then I painstakingly counted out a few precious pennies
from my purse and received in return a promise that my notice would run in three days’
time.
My first response came less than a week after that. I held the letter in my hand for
several long minutes, trembling with excitement and uncertainty as I read the writing on
the envelope. With my heart pounding in my throat, I carefully cut the seal and opened
the note within.
The letter was from a respectable teacher, from a university not three miles away, and
quite six pages in length. If submission were what I ached for, then I would certainly
find it with this disciplinarian. The punishments that lay in store for me were divulged
in grand detail. I would be ‘spanked without preamble’ for the most minor of offenses and
‘caned beyond bearing’ for the serious. By the time I had read it for the third time my
hands shook and my breasts heaved above the cut of my bodice. I could scarcely catch my
breath for the sudden, unbearable tightness of my corset. There was no denying the tickle
of heated arousal, like the brushing of tiny moth wings between my thighs. However, in
the end, I dictated a letter of polite refusal. The teacher was female, while I sought a
disciplinarian of the opposite gender.
The next letter a few days later was nowhere near as commanding as the first. I did not
want a weak instructor; I turned this one down, as well.
Every few days yielded a new response, sometimes two. One which I leaned quite favorably
toward came in the form of a list of rules, typed neatly out on army stationery along with
a picture of a senior officer holding a leather crop between his hands. He was not
handsome, but he had a kindly expression, almost grand fatherly, while his letter
described a severity the likes of which could not be found outside the military.
I spent several days mulling this one over and probably would have accepted it had not
the mail brought one letter more. The script on the envelope was calligraphy in black
fountain pen ink. Inside, I found a train ticket and step-by-step instructions. It did
not ask, it did not inquire, it demanded.
And I obeyed.
I forgot all about being a military officer’s whipping girl. As the letter directed, I
bought a pair of men’s working trousers to travel in and packed a single, carpetbag
suitcase for what I believed would be only a brief few days’ trip. Bidding my neighbors
goodbye, I left my home in pursuit of a fantasy.
The train trip lasted all of eleven hours and into the early evening, taking me up out of
Washington and into the remotest south-western region of Canada. As the letter
instructed, I disembarked at the tiny depot just outside of small place called Castlegan.
It was dark and the rail station barely populated. There were, in fact, only three
others there besides myself. The station master and two old men, who sat at a small table
on the front porch, playing checkers by lantern light. City lights flickered in the
distance, but there were no other buildings close by and no one waited to pick me up.
Still, the night hours were warm and I made my way down the covered porch walkway.
Holding my carpetbag suitcase in one hand, I took out the letter. Tilting it up to the
lamp light, I re-read the instructions I had been given. It was a nervous gesture and,
though comforting, completely unnecessary. I had read that letter over every mile that
brought me into Canada. By now, I knew it quite by heart.
One embarrassing edict commanded me to the privy, where I found myself removing my
bloomers, no quick and simple feat as I had to climb free of my traveling trousers first.
Even my corset had to be removed and the sensation of moving about unbound was
exhilarating; the sensation of rough corduroy rubbing intimately against my skin, wanton.
As close fitting as they were, the masculine pants were not cut to contain feminine curves
and the material hugged my hips and bottom and left my legs quite plainly outlined for any
man’s imaginings.
Perversely, I was at once flattered and embarrassed to be so scandalously displayed.
Although I was supposed to carry my under things in my hand and wait in front of the depot
to be collected, the intensity of my embarrassment made doing so impossible. Whatever
shreds of modesty I still retained had them quickly bunched in a ball and hidden in the
bottom of my carpetbag even before I left the latrine.
Two steps outside the privy, I froze in my tracks. While I had been busy with bloomer
ties and corduroy sensations, a private car had pulled up to the rail station. For the
first time, I met Thornes.
Expressionless as he watched me, he stood in front of a black Speedabout, his long legs
braced apart and hands clasped behind his back. He was tall and very broad about the
shoulders, his dark hair swept neatly back from his face into a pony-tail at his nape.
Unsure as to whether or not this was the man that had sent the letter, I was hesitant
about approaching him. I needn’t have worried however, for he came to me instead.
Without a word, he took my suitcase and strapped it to the narrow rack at the back of the
Speedabout. At a time when the car waged a bitter battle with the wagon for possession of
the roadways, the opportunity to ride in so dignified a vehicle was no small thrill for
me. My excitement ran so high that I was heading for the front passenger’s door when
Thornes’ hand on my shoulder stopped me. With gentle pressure, he bent me forward until
my palms rested flat upon the rack beside my carpetbag and my bottom thrust up and back in
the most vulnerable of positions.
“Yer bloomers,” Thornes asked as he leaned over me. “Where are they, lass?”
His voice was much softer than I expected, graveled, a deep, throaty rumble that made his
polite inquiry seem almost ominous. This was it. My fantasy come true. And I could not
so much as raise my eyes to his.
Be careful what you ask for...
I swallowed hard. “I-In my bag.”
“And where are they supposed t’ be?”
My thoughts were a whirlwind in my head. I shivered, knowing what was coming. I could
feel it in every pore of my body--my fantasy, about to come to life. “They--they were to
be in my hand.”
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