Much of this story, including the characters, is fictitious. The establishment and the punishments it administers is fact. I know, I have been there, and I thank them for allowing me to use the school’s actual name for verisimilitude. – Alfred Roy
There were five of us there. Three other boys, one girl, and me. We were all dressed in the smart maroon and grey uniform of Whipstock Grange School and stood rigidly to attention. We probably looked a little strange in our colourful blazers, dark grey jumpers, crisp white shirts and matching striped ties but we didn’t mind. We minded even less the dark grey school shorts, or in one case pleated skirt, the long grey socks and black shoes. They completed the picture we all desperately wanted to create. Fourteen year olds back in the classroom of an age long gone. And we were there. The distinctive badge, menacing crossed canes, emblazoned the school logo and said this was the 1950s. And the imposing sixth presence removed any doubt. I said there were five of us, actually there were six and the last was the most important. We might be playing fourteen or fifteen but she, Miss Jenks, was a real nearer fifty than forty. She was the deputy headmistress and was taking our class for a day. She was quite tall and well built and, dressed in a long black gown, looked very imposing. Even more imposing was the long, thickish, brown cane she held by her side. It was rich with an unspoken promise. As we sang the school song to the sounds of a distant piano, my bottom twitched and I contemplated on how I came to be at Whipstock Grange on a very ordinary and dull Wednesday in September.
It all started out in a very silly manner. There is a programme on the radio called, I think, ‘I Have Never Seen Star Wars’. In it a celebrity comic experiences things they have never done, like reading Jane Austen or eating Kangaroo. All very amusing and occasionally interesting. One comic underwent colonic irrigation and another, both names escape me, experienced some very personal body waxing. But generally it is pretty safe. The subject came up at a friend’s club where four of us were having dinner. One of my companions, who I only knew slightly, brought the topic up. Apparently he knew someone who was loosely connected with the show and had complained to him that it never did anything too outrageous. Couldn’t really, BBC and all that. But it led to a discussion on what the comics could experience if the show had an unrestricted remit. I can’t remember the details, the dinner was over a year ago and the drink had freely flowed, but we finished up setting our own personal challenges. The idea was that we should each have our own ‘Star Wars’ moment and report back. It eventually got dismissed as being nonsense but not before we had put four of the most outrageous ideas in a hat and drawn lots. The four decided on were Being Kidnapped, Taking part in a Porn Film, Attending a Discipline School, and Going to a Gay Sauna. I like the idea of two of them and the one I drew, the Discipline School, was my most favoured. But it was all a laugh and never intended to be taken seriously.
The action didn’t take long to start. The music stopped and Miss Jenks made the formal morning inspection of her five pupils. We all failed her cursory, but detailed, check on our attire. The girl, Shirley, the youngest of us at no more than thirty five, was admonished for wearing the wrong shoes and at least one, I can’t remember which, was reprimanded for having a stained jumper. I failed on two counts. Inappropriate shoes and a shirt more cream than white. It didn’t matter. We were all going to fail this test. That bit was clear. And we were all going to be spanked for it. What I did not know was how. I soon found out. Maybe it was because I was a new boy but, whatever the reason, I got my spanking last. By then I knew the form. I watched four others take their shorts down, skirt for Shirley was lifted, and bent over Miss Jenks ample knee. All got lots of vigorous spanks to their pants or knickered covered bottom and, after about thirty or so, this last bit of cloth was peeled away and the spankings continued on bare nether cheeks. So when I bent over the Jenks’ sturdy thighs I had no illusions. To start with it was all very pleasant and then she increased the tempo. I started to squirm and did so even more when I felt the sensation of my underpants being pulled down. As her stinging hand connected with my bare behind I thought what on earth have I got myself into. Club lunches, pleasant as they are, were a long way from my thoughts.
It was as we were leaving the club that the companion with a BBC connection voiced a few thoughts. Pity the challenge hadn’t been taken seriously he said, he rather fancied being ‘Kidnapped’ by some Amazonian women, and this might have given him a nice excuse. I made some negative comment about all of us having secret kinks and waited for my taxi. My friend and the other dinner colleague were staying at the club for the night and we were alone. Maybe it was the drink, maybe it was the heady conversation, but out of the blue he asked which of the propositions excited me. I was tempted to say none of them but I knew that would not be true and, fuelled by the same drink, I told him that a visit to a discipline school appealed. So we made a private pact. He would be kidnapped and I would sign up for a day at a private thrashing school. And over an equally private dinner at the club we would discuss it all. Whoever gave the better report would be treated by the other. All very courteous and civilised. But as I saw his taxi disappear in the distance I could not help thinking how I was going to find a place which, for a fee, was willing to provide someone to smack my bottom.
It was the second piece of scholastic discipline which wired into my mind the reason I had willingly volunteered for the unlikely pact. I was standing at the front of the class with my shorts around my ankles. One of my classmates was bent over a padded gymnasium horse. His underpants were down and Miss Jenks was giving him nine whacks to his bare behind with a vicious looking strap. A second classroom boy was waiting his turn, eleven strokes, and after him would come me. Fourteen strokes. We had all failed the geography test and for each wrong answer the Jenks’ leather strap would extract retribution. Each action alone may not have had the desired effect. But Miss Jenks was a Mistress of considerable power, both physical and emotional. As the first was punished the second waited and the third, me, watched them both. I could see the strap hit the bare backside, I could see the second boy waiting for eleven more, and I was aware of myself waiting a further three. Conscious of shorts down and underpants in the open and soon to be removed for my own fourteen. I could not wait. I wanted it. I welcomed it. My secret fantasy of so many years was being brought to life. However much it hurt I knew that when she lowered my underpants and strapped my bare backside I would, with each sting, say a silent thank you. This was to be a total surrender to my inner self and when that strap landed into my naked bottom I would not help wondering why I had denied myself for so long.
It was the lack of being in control that was so wonderful. However much the strokes of Miss Jenks’ strap cut into my bare skin, and I registered every one with an involuntary flinch, I knew that this experience was meant to be. How many times in my life had I fantasised about such a situation? To be bent over and disciplined on my bare bottom by a vengeful school mistress. It had happened once when I was a real twelve year old and I had never forgotten it. But for thirty years it had remained only a dark thought, buried and unspoken. Now it was happening, in a school room with a school mistress, and each unrelenting thwack into my hitherto virtually unblemished rear brought forth intermingled tears of both pain and joy. I could not avoid the exposure and the humiliation. I could not avoid the pain. I was in the helpless position I had always desired and the past thirty years were expunged with each fall of that mistress strap. In spite of, or because of, the throbbing pain in my bottom I was calmer and more serene than I can ever remember. Whipstock therapy worked.
I pondered our after dinner conversation for quite a while. The long journey home from the club in the taxi, a special treat, enabled me to sober up and reflect on the strange turn of events. Could I take up the challenge? Did I want to take up the challenge? Initially I dismissed it. My companions desire to be kidnapped by Amazonian women would disperse with the cold light of day and my own, peculiar, fantasy would retreat to where it had been buried for so many years. By the time we joined the motorway I had filed it all away as an amusing after dinner conversation. But as the taxi approached Watford the interest returned, at Bedford I was considering the possibilities, and by my destination I convinced myself I would go through with it. I slept heavily that night but in the shower the next morning, the previous night returned in full blaze. I dried myself thinking that he might not get kidnapped but I, sure as mutton, was going to get a beating. I talced myself and turned my back to the bathroom mirror to look at my behind. Just at that moment my wife came in and remarked that for my age, forty two, it still looked school boyish. She could not have done a better job of giving me the final push if she had given me a contact number.
I was twelve, a real twelve, and I was in real trouble. The deputy headmistress at my private school said that my stupid actions could have resulted in the school being closed. I didn’t demur. I didn’t think that placing a very small firework, hardly more than a sparkler, under the school choir would cause so much disruption. I only did it for a dare, a stupid dare. How was I to know that they would think it was a bomb and that the ensuing chaos would dwarf my miniscule intentions at minor disruption? No I didn’t demur. And I didn’t protest when she said, in her study, that she had decided to give me the ultimate punishment. I didn’t protest when she said I was going to get six strokes with the rarely used school strap. And I didn’t demur, or protest, when she said it would be applied to my bare behind. Such an action deserved no less. Her words. So I undid my pants, took them and my underpants down, and bent over her desk. Six times she whacked my twelve year old bare behind with that strap and I was crying by stroke three or four. But I deserved it and it was all caused by a stupid dare. And I never forgot it, never forgot my naked and painful submission, and now, thirty years later, another stupid dare was going to get me its recreation. The question was, where?
We broke for lunch at Whipstock Grange at twelve and I took the opportunity for the first of two welcome cigarettes. That one passed without notice but when I broke for the second after a sumptuous helping of homemade steak pie I was not so fortunate. Miss Jenks arrived outside just as I was finishing it and her look of disapproval spoke volumes. She said nothing, she didn’t need to, but the schoolboy vibes returned. I had transgressed big time and it was going to be an interesting afternoon. One of the other boys, or it may have been the girl, said that the cane would be coming out and I was sure to get lots. I went back to the classroom with a heavy but anticipatory heart. I am not sure what I was expecting but had not considered being ignored as one of the options. But for nearly an hour I was. Miss Jenks set two tests. The first was mathematics and I sailed through that with ease. Two boys got the strap for scoring less than fifty per cent and, disappointed at not being involved, I made sure that I screwed up on a number of important history dates. Careful to place Bannockburn and Flodden in the wrong centuries was sure to get me thrashed. And if that didn’t work no self respecting teacher could ignore a boy who put Mary Queen of Scots decapitation around the time of Trafalgar. Nelson might only have one eye but even he would have seen through that transparent ploy. I came last, none of us scored very well, but only the other four got six of the best. I watched and waited as a collection of pants were taken down and the dreaded cane landed on trembling and welcoming cheeks. But I didn’t get any. Miss Jenks just smiled and said that the ‘new boy’ had been noted. For a number of transgressions. My heart lurched and my loins surged as we broke for afternoon drinks.
I stumbled across Whipstock Grange almost by accident. The day after the club dinner and the intriguing conversation I spent half an hour on my private computer surfing the internet for possibilities. Trouble is there is so much out there and seeing your own particular tree in an overfull wood wasn’t easy. But eventually I found one. It ticked all the boxes except it was two hundred miles away. But a link took me to another site and a couple of nervous e-mails and a phone call led me to Whipstock Grange. One week later, fee paid, I was in schoolboy pants and blazer with logo and waiting to be caned. And that was about to happen. Miss Jenks disapproving look at my smoking habits and her enigmatic comments made that a certainty. The drink in the break was water, or tea for the more refined. At that moment, heavenly as it was, I would have paid fortunes for a whisky.
I did not have long to wait. The final test was on music and my knowledge of that could be written on the back of a semi quaver. I know what I like, Bach and Beethoven and Sinatra, but can remember nothing of the details. She played us lots and I scored abysmally. As did all the others. Except Shirley, who in spite of her desire to be walloped could not resist showing off her musical expertise. So she missed out when the three other boys got caned for their ignorance. But I didn’t. I had been called out first and bent over the gymnasium horse for twelve strokes of a heavy strap with my underpants around my knees. They stung, but not as much as her following words. I had to stand in the corner as I was, hands on heads and pants down, while she caned the others. They would get six, I was to get twelve. Six for poor test results and six, extra hard, for smoking. All with her heaviest cane. I remember standing there in the corner hearing the thwacks as her cane hit a variety of bare bums. I remember thinking that I could not wait until it hit mine. And I remember my shuffle back to the disciplinary horse for a bending over and, shirt and blazer lifted, awaiting the savage attack on what was revealed. And I most of all remember glorying in the strokes that hit an inviting and naked behind displayed for all to see. The pain was excruciating, the strokes were hard and penetrating and some were so low they remained as a badge of dubious honour for a number of days. But I would not have missed it for anything in the world. I was twelve or fourteen again and Miss Jenks and her cane had taken me there. I left Whipstock Grange with the overriding impression that the experience of an expertly wielded cane on a bare backside defied understanding. It would make for an interesting club dinner discussion.
I met that companion about four weeks after my visit to Whipstock Grange. After opening drinks in the bar and general chat on the ways of the world and business he hinted that he had finally fulfilled his fantasy. The women weren’t of the Amazonian variety and the kidnapping was so respectably conducted it hardly qualified. By the time we were seated for our starters of grilled goat’s cheese salad I was well aware that there were many organisations that catered for men who desired to be captured and hunted by predatory women. During the main course of succulent roast beef he created many images of the exhilarating and expensive day he had spent with like minded souls. It sounded very much like paint balling with twists. The twist being that he and the other men were stark naked except for a pair of sturdy shoes and, for some reason, black balaclavas. He did not go into too much detail, he didn’t need to, but as a steaming sticky pudding was placed on our table he was clearly expectant of something in return. He didn’t get it. I chickened out and said I had lacked his courage and my interests would remain just a fantasy. He looked disappointed but remarked that at least he had the compensation that I would have to pay the bill. I did that cheerfully but with a slight tinge of guilt at my deception. But I could not tell him. If my experience had ended in the classroom I might have. My being beaten by a mistress was little different from his own ordeal. Or so it seemed to me. But I had opted to go a step further and, having done so, was not ready to use it as amusing post prandial conversation.
There was a final option for the role playing kids of Whipstock Grange. For those who desired it, the one false note of this elaborate fantasy was that we had a choice, a departing visit to the headmaster was arranged. He would discuss your day at the school and as a parting gesture make you touch your toes for the inevitable valediction. Grasping ankles, shorts and pants down, he delivered twelve venomous strokes to bare skin so tight and taut that the rebounding cane suggested more damage to him than to you. I had ticked the box that approved it. I welcomed it. I enjoyed it. A caning. Bare bottom. From a man. I could not tell that in the club. Dinner companions have their limitations. Even in fantasies.
Alfred Roy (2011)