by Penny Birch
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘No? He’s based in Kayserberg, a few miles outside Colmar.’
‘Kayserberg I know.’
‘His wine is very much in the new style, delicate, with the emphasis on balance rather than power. Perfect for lunchtime.’
I ordered, feeling thoroughly pleased with myself for demonstrating my superior knowledge. Also my buying power, as the bottle cost thirty pounds, twice as much as the one she had suggested. If she thought she was going to play dominance games, she had picked the wrong woman.
‘I was there in the spring,’ I went on. ‘Have you been back recently?’
‘I was there last Christmas,’ she said, ‘but I do not go often. My family are very traditional. They do not like what I do.’
‘No? I’d have thought they’d be proud of you?’
‘It is not so. My mother is very religious. My father is in local politics. Both think I should have married by now, and be producing children to carry on the family. I am an only child.’
‘Me too, but Daddy’s not like that. He’d do anything for me . . .’
I trailed off, realising that she had already made me admit one of the most important things about me, along which lay the key to my sexuality. I’m spoiled, and it’s from there that I get my need for punishment. Not only that, but a lot of my confidence and security comes from being able to rely on Daddy, which I did not want her to know, especially as her own seemed to be innate.
‘They find my rejection of Catholicism difficult to accept,’ she went on. ‘Impossible, in fact. I have been an atheist since my adolescence, yet they still think I am going through a phase.’
She laughed, a very light, carefree sound. I smiled and shrugged, now cautious of her easy, intimate manner, not wanting to get pulled in again.
A waitress appeared with our bottle, in an ice bucket, and glasses. I sat back, deliberately letting Gabrielle pour for me, which she did without any sign of selfconsciousness. I sipped the wine, which was excellent, although it would have had Percy complaining about modern techniques, and she continued.
‘It was not easy to shake off the imprinting of my childhood, even though I understood it. Meaningless guilt, in particular, was difficult to overcome. You know, the guilt of breaching conventions and taboos, when there is no victim. In particular for sexual acts.’
I sat silent, aware of exactly where she was trying to lead me. She would convince me that I should feel no shame for what I did, and I’d tell her everything. Her manner was so confidential, almost conspiratorial, and it would have been easy to go along with her. It wasn’t going to happen.
‘In our culture there is a shame of femininity, deeply ingrained,’ she went on. ‘Woman is sin, as represented by Eve and, as such, if she is to even attempt to be pure, she must feel ashamed, merely for being female.’
‘I know, it’s disgusting,’ I agreed.
‘Disgusting, true, but a reality. One must face reality. To deny it because it is wrong is not a solution. In my work I seek to bring women above their ingrained shame, to an understanding of themselves as a rational animal, responsible to themselves, to society, but not a conceptual being, a principle function of which is their repression. By the way, Ami is all right. I have explained to her.’
‘You have?’
The question had slipped out before I knew I’d said it. She had been talking as if she was addressing a convention, then suddenly changed, to something very personal and very immediate.
‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘she came to see me yesterday. I explained her reaction to what you did, both physically and mentally. She understands now and, I think, has benefited from the experience. I didn’t know you took colonic hydrotherapy?’
‘I don’t . . . I mean, I do, obviously . . . not . . .’
‘Not as therapy?’
‘No . . . Yes . . .’
‘For pleasure?’
‘No! Yes, of course I do, you know I do. Ami told you everything, I suppose?’
It had come out in a rush and my temper had risen with it, until I had to choke myself back from telling her to mind her own business. I expected to see triumph in her eyes, maybe amusement, but she had put her wine glass to her lips, hiding her emotions, a trick I’ve used myself a thousand times. I was still trying to decide what to say when she put it down.
‘Do you also feel shame? You seem insecure about it.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I answered. ‘I’m fine about it. I don’t feel the need for help, or therapy, or anything. The feeling stimulates me sexually, and it did the same for Ami. It’s not a big deal. I’m in control, completely.’
‘Perfect,’ she said.
She was going to continue, but at that moment somebody called out my name and I turned to see Damon coming towards us. Gabrielle immediately stopped talking, and I caught the look of irritation on her face for an instant before she buried it behind her glass.
‘Let me join you?’ he said, pulling a chair up to our table.
‘Do,’ Gabrielle answered, although I’d been hoping she’d tell him he wasn’t welcome.
I couldn’t, because I’d already made too much of trying to bring our relationship to a close and I didn’t want him to think that he was that important to me. For the next half hour we made small talk, with Damon trying to ingratiate himself with me. Eventually Gabrielle went, and I made an excuse not long after, gaining some small satisfaction from leaving him to pay the bill.
I needed to think, and I was feeling just faintly tipsy, so I walked home. I felt I’d managed quite well with Gabrielle, being friendly but firm. What I wasn’t sure of was where the conversation had been going when Damon had interrupted us. Once she’d got me to admit I got a sexual kick out of taking enemas I’d expected her to become detached, analytical. She hadn’t, and she had said just one word before stopping – ‘perfect’.
As always with her it had been impossible to gain much from her tone of voice, but it certainly hadn’t been analytical. It hadn’t been gloating either, which in any case would have been far too obvious a reaction for her. If anything it had seemed very genuine, as if she was happy that I took such perverse enjoyment. That seemed possible, after the way she had been going on about getting rid of shame and guilt, but it didn’t really make sense. Anyway, she had been so open and friendly when I knew perfectly well it was all carefully staged to draw me into an admission that I wasn’t going to trust anything she said anyway.
She had managed to lead me though, for all my efforts at resistance, a piece of knowledge that gave me the same familiar shiver I’d felt after putting the phone down the night before. It was impossible not to think about it. She was a manipulative bitch, but the same skills could have been put to much better use to dominate me sexually, if only she’d been a slut. Not just that, but she had the look too, with her short cropped hair and her steel-grey eyes. The way she held herself was good too, very straight, so that she seemed really tall despite being perhaps an inch above me, no more. It was certainly easy to imagine her giving me orders.
I resisted a bit at first, not really wanting to make a fantasy figure of her, in the circumstances. Unfortunately it was just too good to hold back, and by the time I reached Regent’s Park I was wondering what sort of role she’d fit best. My first thought was a wardress in an old-fashioned prison, picking on me by forcing me to perform the most menial tasks. Inevitably I’d fail to complete them to her satisfaction, which would give her the perfect excuse to punish me. It would be done publicly, in the exercise yard. I’d be dragged out, screaming and kicking, but to no avail. There would be six or seven other wardresses, enough to control me easily, and I’d be stripped, stark naked, my clothes torn off despite my pathetic struggles.
My beating would be really popular, because I’d be a tell-tale, a grass, or whatever the term would be. There would be other prisoners watching, hundreds of them, thoroughly enjoying themselves at my expense as I was strapped, nude, over a trestle, still kicking an
d screaming, pleading for mercy. I would already be blubbering my eyes out as I was forced down, bum high, legs wide, with my pussy gaping to the crowd, bumhole on show, bare boobs hanging down.
I’d be thrashed, really hard, by Gabrielle, with her standing over me with a really vicious switch, slashing it down across my bottom, over and over, until I was screaming with pain, until I wet myself all over her, in front of all of them, until there was blood running down my poor ruined bottom, until I passed out. They’d bring me round with a bucket of cold water, right in my face, and the first thing I’d see was Gabrielle, her skirts lifted, her pussy bare, so that I could lick her to climax in a gesture of beaten, defeated submission.
It was good, but it lacked the element of realism that I like. Anyway, I could hardly sit down on a bench and frig myself off, however much I wanted to. For a moment I considered her in the role of traffic warden, only to abandon it. The role might be authoritarian, but to a confirmed car addict like myself it was much better to imagine a warden in a submissive role, getting a bare bottom spanking from some angry motorist. I had actually been made to dress up as a traffic warden before, and punished, but it was such a lower-middle-class role, not really me at all.
Gabrielle needed to be something grander than either role, something to suit her intelligence. It came to me suddenly, a fantasy so obvious and so cruel that I knew I would have to masturbate over it the moment I got back to my flat. It involved her as she was, a therapist, but running a sort of perverts’ equivalent to Alcoholics Anonymous, where dirty-minded sluts like myself could go to rid themselves of their nasty little habits.
The humiliation would be agonising. I’d have to stand up in front of a group of other women, maybe men too, and admit I liked my bottom spanked. Most of them would be nearly cured, and guilty of lesser perversions anyway, so they’d look down on me, full of satisfaction and piety because I was about to get it. I would get it too, because the cure would be for Gabrielle to bring home to me just what physical punishment is really about.
I’d have made my confession in the nude, to show proper contrition, and I’d have stayed nude as I was lectured by Gabrielle, told how I was a disgrace to women, and how awful I was for enjoying having my bottom smacked. They’d tie me to a chair, strapped up really tight so that I couldn’t move an inch, with my bare bum stuck out and everything showing. They wouldn’t be cruel at all, but smug, full of self-righteousness as they lashed my hands tight up behind my back and forced me to spread my knees.
It would be Gabrielle who did the beating, really hard, with a thick, knobbly cane. I’d scream and struggle in my bonds, whimpering and begging, but nothing would make her stop, because she would know it was for my own good, to cure me. She’d make a real mess of my bottom and, when she’d finished and I was snivelling brokenly and mumbling apologies with spittle running from my mouth, she’d tell one of the men to fuck me, not for his fun, but because it was necessary to complete my lesson. He’d do it, and they’d all watch with smug satisfaction, faces set in solemn approval as my beaten bottom was fucked from the rear and spunked over.
When I reached my door I was so urgent I couldn’t get the key into the lock. In the end I managed, tumbling inside, up the stairs, into my flat and on to the bed, pulling up my skirt one-handed as I scrabbled in my bedside table for the vibrator. I got it, and twisted it on, sticking it down the front of my panties without preliminaries. The sensation was glorious, and I was on the way to orgasm immediately. For one thing I could feel the bruises Monty had given me with the spoon, and imagine them inflicted by Gabrielle, in that awful, cold room, grey painted, soulless, with me strapped down on a chair, howling and thrashing my way through my punishment with every eye on me and Gabrielle above me, beautiful and stern . . .
As I came I got the most wonderful image of her face, with all calm, confident strength, stern and dominant, the face of a woman to whom I ought to be grovelling naked as she thrashed my bare bottom.
When I’d finished I just lay on the bed, with my skirt still up and the vibrator sticking out of the top of my panties. It had been a good orgasm and, if I felt a little cross with myself for coming over Gabrielle, then I had to admit that it had been worth it.
Masturbating over Gabrielle was all very well, but it didn’t alter the fact that our conversation had been inconclusive. I needed to see her again, and hammer things out. I might even tell her a little, if she was prepared to treat me as a rational human being and not some sort of loony. With luck that would satisfy her and, after all, if she felt that getting excited over taking enemas was OK, then maybe she felt the same over spanking. After all, as a psychologist, presumably with some sort of degree, she had to know about endorphins. Whether she could handle what went on in my head was a different matter, but I didn’t have to go there.
That was clearly the most sensible thing to do. Explain to her how I enjoyed the physical sensations, and leave out my feelings. With luck she’d swallow it and that would be that.
I intended to call her that evening, but she beat me to it, saying that she was going for a detox at Haven and inviting me to join her. It seemed as good a place as any, besides which, after my fantasy, the chance to be naked in front of her was too good to pass up. So I accepted, arriving shortly after eight to find that she had booked one of the private rooms.
I went up, to find her stark naked, piling up huge pots of what looked like some sort of preparation on a bench, beside several rolls of cling film. I’d seen her nude before, but not close up, and it was impossible not to admire the smoothness of her skin, which was very pale and pretty well flawless, like polished ivory.
For a while we made small talk, mainly with her explaining the basis of whole-being therapy and how it was intended to blend physical and mental techniques to give an all-round sense of well-being. It made sense, in a way, although like so many of these things it basically boiled down to putting yourself first. I’ve always done that anyway.
In due course she got on to the subject of enemas which, as I knew, she didn’t see as a purely physical technique.
‘Physical and mental processes are inextricably linked,’ she was saying as I finished stowing my clothes in the locker. ‘To cleanse the body is to cleanse the mind.’
‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a bit old-fashioned for you? Victorian, almost.’
‘The truth holds,’ she replied. ‘What has changed is society’s definition of sane. Take Dr Kellogg, for instance, who was obsessed with the repression of natural sexual feelings, yet gave himself regular enemas. Did he use them as a substitute for sex? If he did, was he aware of it? Certainly he never admitted it. The same is true of other common Victorian practices: flagellation, electrotherapy . . .’
‘Flagellation?’
‘Undoubtedly. It can be an experience both cathartic and stimulating. You know, I think?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, really quite boldly. After all, there was no point in denying it. Not with the spoon bruises still on my bottom.
‘You possess unusual self-awareness,’ she went. ‘You should treasure that, as a quality. Indeed, self-awareness is a central consideration of whole-being therapy.’
‘Thank you,’ I answered, cautiously.
She had wrapped a towel around herself, but I stayed nude, enjoying the feeling of being naked while she was covered. From what she had said I could finally be sure that Jo Warren had told her about my love of being spanked, and she seemed to approve, which had made my desire to be dominated by her stronger still. I knew I was going to have to admit to it soon enough, yet I was determined to be firm, and not to have a case study made of me. She could lie with the best of them, I was sure of it, and I wondered if she might even say she liked it herself, even offer me a spanking, to gain my trust. If she did, it was going to be hard to resist.
‘Sex and shame have no place together,’ she went on. ‘Feelings of shame should be for acts that harm others, not for acts that bring pleasure.’
‘To admit the pleasure you find in acts we are taught to think shameful is a great liberation,’ she was saying. ‘Not that we should assume that all those who use such techniques for their physical benefits necessarily find them sexual, or even pleasant. Take the case of enemas. In many cases an enema may be used simply to provide more direct access to the internal system than straightforward ingestion. Coffee enemas, for instance . . .’
‘Coffee enemas?’
‘Yes, they are particularly effective in cleansing the liver. Some also take them as a precaution against bowel cancer, although the evidence is not clear. Red wine, again, for the absorption of resveratrol, although one must be careful in the case of alcoholic solutions. Alcohol is absorbed very rapidly through the lining of the lower gut and can be potentially dangerous. I imagine you’d rather just drink it.’
I smiled, trying not to blush at the memory of the not infrequent wine enemas applied by Percy, more than one of which I’d been made to taste.
‘My own choice is for a combined preparation,’ she went on. ‘It is an essential element of my detoxification regime . . .’
‘You’re going to do it, now?’
‘Certainly I am. Will you not do so too? It is easier with assistance.’
‘Well I might. What do you do?’
‘Apply the preparation to the skin,’ she answered, gesturing to the pots on the bench, ‘with a little taken internally.’
‘And the cling film?’
‘To hold the preparation in place. As I say, it is easier with assistance.’
She was pretty keen for me to help her, and again I wondered if she wasn’t trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Not that it mattered, so long as I was careful. It seemed harmless enough, so long as I kept my feelings to myself. Besides, I’d be helpless, so I wouldn’t be able to get carried away and try to jump on her. Afterwards, back in my flat, I could work the whole experience up into a nice submissive fantasy.