Being a Girl

by Chloë Thurlow

  David may have thought he had been in command of the situation up until this point, but there was a definite lift in his director’s baritone as we played out the scene. I did the I won’t be a minute line and wound my way through the hall to the bedroom. The bed was at the far end of the room, a four-poster veiled in sweeps of material like a sailing ship in the dim light. I lit the bedside lamp and doused the glare with the red silk knickers. David took ages to come and, when he did, my clothes were tossed about the floor. I was naked.

  ‘Wow,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a surprise?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Then it will be a surprise for the audience.’

  ‘That’s true, but . . . would she really do that? I mean, be so brazen?’

  ‘I wouldn’t. But Amanda Marshall would,’ I replied. ‘She’s like a snake mesmerising her prey. She is punishing Ricky. She wants him to see and desire what he will never have.’

  ‘Character drives plot,’ he said, as if quoting from a book.

  ‘The story seems to be about Ricky, but it’s not. It’s about the girl. Everything that happens, she makes happen.’

  He stood there nodding his head and I stood there all bashful in my girlie nakedness.

  David’s eyes drifted down to my breasts, my rib cage, the indentation of my tummy button, the curly little creature nestling between my legs.

  I let my head fall to one side as he approached. He put his arms around me as if he were hugging a tree and I wilted, the air escaping in a long sigh from my body. David wasn’t Jean-Luc Cartier. He would need help. His arms circled my waist and his palms strayed cautiously down to cup my bottom. I pushed against his hands, just slightly, rocking my pussy against the swelling in his jeans. I sighed and trembled. David sucked at my lips, he kissed my chin and I thrust back my neck like a kitten waiting to be stroked.

  He stood back and dragged off his T-shirt. He was fit without being too muscular and had soft skin with no hair on his chest. His hands moved away from my proffered bottom and, as he circled my waist in his arms, he looked at me more closely, at my eyes and nose, my pink lips.

  Had he found his leading lady?

  I felt like a virgin and I was in a way. David was a real boy. I felt feverish, so hot and nervous it was like a flame was burning inside me. All the things the girls said about boys at convent school skipped through my mind like the pages of an encyclopaedia, a manual, a novel by Anaïs Nin. My heart was beating like a drum. I ran my tongue over his collar bone and bit his neck.

  ‘You’re not a vampire?’

  ‘Different genre,’ I replied, and he smiled.

  As he unbuckled his belt I had a sudden vision of the shiny black leather uncoiling across my backside and the thought released a loose bead of liquid that leaked into my pubic hair. Was David a spanker? I’m sure he wasn’t. But I was sure he would learn. He unbuttoned his jeans, stripped them off and stood there shyly in his boxers. I took the wide band in two fingers and pulled back the elastic to peep inside. It was stirring restlessly in the folds of cotton like a snake waking in the desert.

  ‘He’s getting up,’ I said.

  He pulled his shorts down and his cock jumped out playfully and poked me in the belly. It was straight and smooth with a shiny pink cap and I knelt automatically to kiss its little nose. I ran my tongue around the eye and looked up at him as it slid into my open mouth. Up and down, up and down. His skin was as soft as velvet. The head of his cock swelled in my throat. I looked up at him as if he were a god on a plinth. His eyes were goggling . . .

  Then: disaster.

  He came immediately, a gush of foamy sperm that filled my throat and ran out from the corners of my lips, dripping on my shoulders, forming little pools in the hollow of my collar bones, warm and sticky like melted ice cream.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he said, and I sucked out every drop as his cock shrank into a little marshmallow in my mouth. I rose from my haunches and as we kissed it was so romantic sharing his bittersweet milkshake on our lips.

  ‘That’s never happened before,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all Amanda’s fault.’

  ‘You must hate me.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said playfully, and he smiled.

  As we looked down at his shrivelled penis, I noticed the leather belt threaded through the loops of his jeans and a shiver of adrenaline ran like an ice cube up my spine. I unthreaded the belt and wrapped the buckle around my hand. I gave a practice swing and, as I brought the belt down on the bed, it made a nice crisp snap like a yacht sail in a stiff wind. I tried again, a bit harder, and his limp cock quivered with anticipation, with new life. His eyes were glowing.

  ‘Here.’ I gave him the belt and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Hard, but not too hard,’ I said.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘You mean . . .’ he asked, and his voice trailed off.

  I raised my shoulders in an innocent shrug. We remained still for several seconds. I could hear the beat of his alarm clock on the bedside table. His bottom lip was trembling. I reached up and took his bottom lip between my teeth and bit down until he flinched with pain. I then pulled back the curtain swags from the end of the bed and made myself comfortable, spreading my legs, leaning forward over the mattress and pushing out my bum. It seemed as if an entire lifetime had gone by since Jean-Luc and Tara Scott-Wallace had disciplined my bottom and in the shadowy light the pink stripes were invisible.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

  ‘And willing,’ I replied.

  There was another pause. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ he added and I looked back at him over my shoulder.

  ‘Neither have I.’

  He waited a few moments, revving himself up. I closed my eyes. I heard a swish of air and took a big breath through gritted teeth. The belt crackled like lightning as it uncoiled over my protruding bottom and I realised that dead leather had more of a bite than a live hand, a sting like a branding iron as it scolded across the mounds of soft yielding flesh. I gripped the bedcover in my fists, I went up on my toes and pushed out my bum, waiting for the second.

  ‘Again?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes please.’

  Crack. Down it came again in an overlapping stitch, the belt like a saw biting into my soft parts and I thought next time I have Binky tied to the bed I’m going to use the belt to beat her. She deserves it. I screamed and buried my head in the bedclothes, pushing out my backside still further, spreading my thighs and opening myself up in the most intimate way possible.

  Binky had asked me why I liked being beaten. It had been hard to find the right words at that moment and now it came to me like a revelation: when you’re naked and sweaty and your bum is receiving attention you feel utterly and overpoweringly alive. You are living that moment before it drifts away. There is just you, stripped to your essence, naked as Eve, sharp as a razor, every nerve end sparkling with verve and feeling. Your bottom is the sun around which the universe turns.

  Crack. It was delicious. Delectable. I could feel all the liquids in my body boiling and bubbling, seeping from my wet pussy, rising from my scalding flesh in showers of sweet-smelling perspiration. The pain was like no pain I had ever felt before. I adored corporal punishment. I needed a master and even though David Trevellick was a mere novice he clearly had a feeling for the role.

  Down the belt came again, the leather biting into my bottom. My knees were shaking, but I held myself steady and absorbed the pain, bringing it into me, up through my stomach and chest, my breasts quivered and my nipples felt as if they were burning. That was four. Two more, I thought. That should wake him up. I gritted my teeth and raised my chin, my back was arched in a bow, flexed and ready, and down the leather came once more, uncurling like a tongue of flame, searing my bottom and sending a wave of heat up my spine, across my shoulders and down to my tingling fingertips.

  ‘God, that must hurt,’ he said, his voice escaping from him in a whisper.

  ‘One more
,’ I said.

  ‘Okay . . .’

  He put his soul into it. David had never beaten a girl before and didn’t know when he might get another chance. The leather cracked like a shaft of lightning, slicing into my flesh. My legs trembled, my body was running with sweat and my pussy gurgled as the oils gushed to the surface and reached David’s nostrils like an invitation to the feast. I didn’t move. I rocked on my toes, waving my red bottom towards him like a little monkey in the zoo, and finally he got the message.

  His cock slid into me and it wasn’t soft any more. It was a rod of steel stoking me like I was a boiler needing to be recharged. I pushed back against him, each slap of our flesh sending ripples of pain over the six belt wheals etched across my white flesh. I thought about his come filling my mouth, my bottom waiting for his belt, the look of fear and desire in his eyes when he first saw me standing there naked in his bedroom. This was new territory for David and I had a feeling that now I had shown him the secret path across the frontier he would make it his home.

  Once you have been spanked there is no way back. You want to be spanked again and again, spanked and whipped and beaten and humiliated. It’s an essential part of the pleasure, more than that, it is the pleasure. It’s just the same for the spanker, they are the reverse poles of magnets drawn charismatically together: yin and yang, identical yet opposites, a perfect fit, the seed of their opposite like an all-seeing eye in the very heart of the other, the soul of the other. No man is wholly man, no woman wholly woman. You have inside you the potential to be everything, to be anything you want to be, and I would never have reached this understanding without stripping away the silly and frivolous and submitting my bottom to chastisement. How easy it is for the yin to become yang and the yang to become yin, I realised, and with that thought I pushed back harder as David released another little squirt of spunk up inside me. A month ago I’d been a virgin. It was hard to believe.

  I crawled up on to the bed and lay there quivering like an eel out of water, my body wet and slippery, trembling slightly. David kissed my bottom, then licked the lines branded over its surface, his salty tongue drawing out the sting. He couldn’t get enough of my bottom and I couldn’t get enough of his tongue soothing the plum-red skin, over the hills and into the dark valley. I pushed up on my knees and waggled my bottom, tempting him to enter the starry opening to my secret place.

  This was new to David, a new experience, a new taste to savour. He licked gingerly around the entrance to my anus before delving experimentally further in, then further still. He took a grip of my hip bones, perfect handles, and pulled me back on to the extended wet tentacle of his tongue. I pushed into his face. He pushed into my bum. Squelching noises drowned the sound of the beating alarm and I cooed with unutterable pleasure. My pussy was leaking constantly, oiling my parts. My body was throbbing, a giant erogenous zone, all feelings and vibrations. This was the first time I’d had a man’s tongue in my bottom and men’s tongues are big and juicy, they reach new heights, new depths, new places. After a spanking there can surely be no greater pleasure than having the spanker’s tongue buried inside you. The master imagines he is the hunter but he is also the prey.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I mumbled, ‘yes, yes, yes.’

  He kept going, in and out, in and out, and I was overcome by feelings of completion and empowerment. Women have through history been made to cover up, shut up, speak when spoken to. They have been repressed and made to feel guilty by men because men lack female spontaneity and intuition, the ability to find pure pleasure in natural things. How often do you see a man walking barefoot on the grass or along the water’s edge, shoes in hand? Girls can’t wait to take off their shoes, loosen their buttons, their hair from ribbons. We go out with bare legs, bare shoulders, we sunbathe in the park, we submit our breasts and our bodies to the breath of the wind, the eye of the sky, the chill ghostly light of the moon. We have been kept in chains and now those chains are our joy and our freedom. Men for centuries have had all the fun. It’s a new century now, I thought. It’s our turn.

  David’s meaty tongue pulsed through all my channels and passageways and sent shock waves of pleasure to the burning heart of my clitoris. I was coming. I was coming. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. I screamed and yelled and shook and he held my thighs and stayed glued to my bottom as the orgasm exploded through me in waves like a tsunami and ricocheted around the walls and across the ceiling and over the oak strips of the polished wooden floor.

  The numbers on the digital clock clicked to 10 and we collapsed on the bed, wet and spent.

  ‘You’re amazing . . .’

  ‘Amanda is so inspiring,’ I said. ‘I think she would have to sleep with Ricky, to justify what they do to him.’

  David’s eyes were spinning round inside his head. He was trying to focus but he wasn’t sure what he should be thinking about, focusing on.

  ‘That was like . . . like the best ever,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ I replied.

  He smiled and I smiled. It was great being a girl. David Trevellick was the first boy I’d done it with, the first boy to do it all. Not that I was going to tell him that, it would be far too embarrassing. Sex with Binky and Tara Scott-Wallace was all very nice, but you can’t really count girls. They’re soft and they smell nice. But they don’t penetrate. With girls it’s just fun. I would never forget Hamish of the Black Watch, of course, or Monsieur Cartier for that matter. But David was a proper boy and I just loved his silky smooth body, his little cock coiled like a seashell against my thigh, his sweet breath against my neck. Boys have a nice smell, too, grass and earthy sweat and walnuts and ambition.

  We lay in each other’s arms, the alarm clock ticking, the lamp shining through my silk knickers making a red moon on the ceiling. I closed my eyes and all the little problems in the script became clear to me. That’s what a good beating does. It makes you think clearly. Should I tell him my ideas? Would it make him angry? Or would he be pleased? You have to go on tiptoes when you approach film directors, they’re so touchy.

  ‘Tell me the rest of the story,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go through the end of Cheats.’

  He looked at me now as if he wasn’t sure whether what had happened had happened because, well, those things happen, or whether I had only stripped off for him in order to get to play Amanda in his film. He shrugged and I suppose it didn’t really matter.

  ‘Well, Amanda has put something in Ricky’s drink and, in the bedroom, he falls into a deep sleep.’

  ‘Like Snow White?’

  ‘He wakes up with a pain in his chest. He’s not sure where he is at first. Then he realises he is back in his own flat, in his own bed. There’s a picture of Older Amanda in a frame beside him. The Girl is nowhere to be seen. He pulls back the bedclothes and discovers that his chest is bandaged. There are spots of blood on the bandages. It’s a total shock. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It’s like Amanda’s a doctor and she’s stolen his organs or something,’ I ventured.

  ‘That makes the surprise even better,’ he replied. His eyes were glowing. ‘Ricky slips out of bed and in the bathroom, when he unwinds the bandages, there are big blue letters tattooed on his chest. It says the word TEACH. He keeps saying it. He studies the mirror for a long time before realising the C and the H are transposed in the reflection. He looks down and becomes aware that tattooed across his chest is the word CHEAT.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said and exhaled a gasp of breath. ‘It’s really a great story. Amanda is such a bitch.’

  ‘That’s what makes her interesting.’

  ‘But how does she know about tattoos?’

  He thought for a long time. ‘She just does,’ he said.

  ‘And she’s a lesbian?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’

  ‘Then maybe . . .’

  He sat there quietly playing catch-up. I’d had my derrière flogged. I was shooting ahead, thinking clearly. Finally he grinn
ed.

  ‘She should have a tattoo,’ he said. He was sitting cross-legged, his hands pressed together in a spire, the diffusion of red light on his face giving him an impish appearance.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said. I was staring into his eyes, mesmerising my prey. ‘She’s like a snake . . .’

  ‘That’s just what I was thinking.’

  ‘If she had a snake on her leg,’ I said, thinking through the sequence, ‘in the bar he would see the tail below her skirt . . .’

  ‘. . . and when she changes into the red kimono,’ he added, ‘he’d see it climbing up her thigh . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  ‘And when she’s naked in the bedroom it would be . . .’

  ‘Wherever,’ I said.

  ‘I can see it all now, of course,’ he continued. ‘Amanda does have to sleep with Ricky.’

  ‘While the drug is taking effect,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘If she doesn’t, then Ricky’s being punished with that awful tattoo when he hasn’t really done anything to deserve it.’

  ‘Cause and effect,’ he remarked.

  ‘It also gives the girl power in her relationship with the other Amanda.’

  ‘Really?’ he said. The creases were back on his brow.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ I replied. ‘If she’s a lesbian, then sleeping with Ricky will be a sacrifice, not a pleasure. She is doing it for the other Amanda, to show her that she really loves her. It’s like Euripides, or something.’

  ‘Wow, yes,’ he said, and gripped my shoulders. ‘Would you do it? I mean, nude scenes, pretending to have sex with Roddy Wise . . .’

  ‘Only if I get the part.’

  He grinned. ‘Roddy will be up for it.’

  We both laughed, and I thought it’s nice when people laugh together, when lovers laugh together.