Calendar Girls

by April Hill

  “Would you listen to yourself,” Hank groaned. “We’re talking about a lot of little kids, here, Lisa, not the mafia.”

  “Exactly my point,” I shot back. “And our little kids are about to get screwed over. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

  “If you don’t stop making a scene, I’m taking them both home—and you, too, Miss Piggie.”

  “Miss Peggy, counselor,” I corrected him. “Trademark law. Did you get a look at Sandy’s outfit, by the way?”

  Hank nodded. “Yeah. Cute.”

  “Cute, huh? Well, if that’s a chicken, I’ll eat my stupid snout. Count on Sandy to find a chicken costume that shows off her ass.”

  “Just a little bit of it,” Hank remarked, a little too appreciatively for my taste. “That little swell of cheek at the bottom of her…”

  “Shut up, Hank. Like most men, you obviously can’t you tell the difference between real and fake.”

  “Sandy’s ass is fake?”

  “She had it lifted. Close to twenty thousand bucks, I heard, including the tummy tuck—which she really needed, by the way.”

  Hank looked again at Sandy’s rear end, which she was busily waving at shoppers, now, and when he’d had a nice, long look, he gave a low whistle. “Worth every penny, from what I can see from here.”

  I swatted his arm. “Are you trying to be annoying, or does it just come naturally?”

  “Just stating a fact,” Hank said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Looks to me like Stan got what he paid for. I can’t see any scars, can you?”

  “I wouldn’t know, darling,” I replied icily. “I haven’t looked that closely. If you’re so interested in Sandy’s ass, why don’t you go over and ask for a private viewing?”

  He grinned. “Hey, yours isn’t bad, you know. Have you ever heard me complain?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, telling a woman that her ass isn’t bad is not exactly a compliment.”

  At that point, Hank began to lose his sense of humor. He had been up all night, after all.

  “Let’s just drop it, all right?” he suggested.

  “I don’t want to drop it,” I hissed. “First, she squashes our beautiful eggs, and now she’s prancing around pretending to be a chicken when she looks like the Sugar Plum Fairy—if the Sugar Plum Fairy was a stripper.”

  “One more time,” he warned. “Just knock it off. Besides, they probably need you over there by the booth. I think the egg hunt’s about to begin.”

  “I can’t!” I whined. I look like Miss Piggie, for God’s sake.”

  Hank leaned closer, and whispered in my ear. “And in about one minute, this little piggy’s going to get her butt roasted—in public.”

  “Sure,” I grumbled. “Like I’d feel anything, with all the foam rubber padding I’ve got back there. Good old Sandy’s the belle of the ball, and I get to waddle around all day with a bright pink ass the size of a Volkswagen.”

  Hank reached back and patted the area under discussion, then grinned as he gave the costume’s corkscrew tail a quick twirl. “Two Volkswagens, and a cute little squiggle of a tail, too. Try thinking about how great it’ll feel tonight, when you take the damned thing off. I’m already thinking about it. A slow strip routine, maybe to The Entertainer?”

  “Very funny. If you only knew how hot it is inside this getup! The first thing I’m going to do is get in the shower.”

  He rubbed my rear again, a little more firmly this time. “That works for me.”

  “Alone!” I growled. “Just because I’m a freaking pig doesn’t mean I’m a pushover.”

  Finally, I left Hank standing there and joined the other farmyard creatures presiding over the Easter egg hunt. While I watched the littler kids line up, a kid of around nine sidled up to me and studied my costume. I reached into my basket and handed him my last marshmallow egg.

  “So, what are you supposed to be?” he asked.

  “I’m a pig,” I said. Funny, but after having repeated this phrase at least seven hundred times in one day, it was getting easier.

  The kid shook his head. “Whoever heard of a talking pig, anyway?”

  “Haven’t you ever read the Tales of Beatrix Potter, little boy?” I asked sweetly.

  “Who’s that? So tell me, piggy,” he added slyly. “Do Easter pigs ever sit on their eggs to hatch them?”

  No, wiseass, I thought, but they sometimes sit on obnoxious brats, so shut up and take the damned marshmallow egg before I eat it myself.

  * * *

  Close to three-dozen little kids under the age of five showed up at the Easter egg hunt. Now, guess whose kid found the winning egg? Yep, you guessed it.

  When the mall closed that Sunday afternoon, all the sweating farmyard animals cleaned up the booth area, while Sandy pranced off to present the money we’d earned for charity to the proper person—and to get her picture in the local paper, of course. Carol Manning was nice enough to volunteer to take our kids home with her, so Hank could help take down the booth. He was still up on a ladder, disassembling the roof, when I slipped out of the side entrance mall with three-dozen reeking, squashed eggs I’d fished out of the trash.

  I had almost finished defacing Sandy’s midnight blue Mercedes with the smashed eggs when the Easter Bunny himself appeared. Stan, minus his big white head, and screaming like a maniac.

  I didn’t get arrested—really arrested, that is. The mall is private property, as it turns out. But I was invited—none too politely—not to return there in the foreseeable future. By that time, Hank had finished taking down the booth, and did what he could to mollify Stan, who, having gone through the entire interview with mall security while dressed up like an Easter bunny, seemed more interested in making an escape than pressing charges.

  “You know, Farrell,” he said, wearily, wiping some of the egg mess from the Mercedes’ windshield. “I know that my wife can be a bitch, and I’m planning to do something about that, but if you want my opinion, that wife of yours needs…” He didn’t finish the thought, probably because Hank already looked like he was about to spit nails. Luckily, our own minivan was parked not far away, and with the lot virtually empty, Hank didn’t have to wait long to do what he thought was needed.

  The back of the pig costume had a long zipper, which made access to my rear end a fairly simple matter. Hank took a seat in the back of the van, unzipped me in one deft motion, and two seconds later, I was draped over his knee, with my panties down around my ankles and an explanation on my lips. Not too surprisingly, Hank wasn’t interested in explanations. He wrapped one arm firmly around my waist, landed one really hard opening swat on each cheek, and started spanking everything he could reach in such cramped quarters.

  But then, right in the middle of a long and no doubt very well-deserved spanking, something odd happened. I can only presume it was the middle, of course, since the actual length of my spankings is never decided by me, the squirming spankee, but by Hank—the stern-faced spanker. And what happened—not to be too indelicate about it—was that I had an orgasm. A rather dramatic one, which caused Hank to stop what he was doing, dump me off his lap onto the seat, and exclaim:

  “What the hell?”

  Please be assured that on that day, my reaction to being spanked was unusual. And the reaction surprised both of us, but for different reasons.

  Now, as we all know, being spanked on the bare buttocks by an irate husband for punishment purposes is supposed to be at least a moderately painful and disagreeable experience, and being aware of this, I did attempt to subdue my moans of pleasure and the accompanying spasms, lest Hank realize what had just happened. This is not something I’ve ever been good at, by the way—subduing myself— which is why we never have sex while visiting either of our parents homes.

  Afterward, Hank and I sat and discussed my odd reaction at some length—although I kept breaking out in giggles at inopportune moments. Hank, being the analytical type, was of the opinion that my joyous response to something meant to be thor
oughly unpleasant was his fault. Over time, he suggested, he had probably gotten careless, and not attended to spanking me with the proper enthusiasm and/or dedication. Or, to put it a bit more bluntly, he hadn’t spanked me hard enough.

  At this point in the dialogue, and for reasons I’ll never understand, I opened my big mouth and made a revelation—one I had been keeping from him since the very first day he spanked me. As a child, you see, I had entertained a certain obsession with spanking. My parents, being of the modern school, had never raised a hand to me, so I can only assume that my interest in such things was inborn. Whatever the reasons, I spent many guilty moments in my early years thumbing through books, searching for spanking scenes, and was positively delighted when one of my movie heroes turned a bratty lady over his knee for a sound paddling. The fascination waned as I got older, and I hadn’t thought much about it in years. Until Hank began spanking me.

  “You never told me any of that,” Hank said in an accusing tone.

  “Yeah, well it’s not the kind of thing you go around telling a guy,” I pointed out. “Not when you first start dating. He might get the idea you’re weird or something.”

  “You were weird,” Hank observed, sounding a bit cranky. “You were the weirdest girl I ever dated. You had a terrarium full of tarantulas in your bathroom, four holes in both ears, and you picketed everything.”

  “Not everything,” I said primly. “Only fascism and political injustice, and I inherited the damned tarantulas when my roommate went to jail for trespassing on a nuclear waste dump and impersonating an official of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

  Hank sighed. “I rest my case. Now, tell me something, and I want an honest answer. Have you been faking all this time? When I spanked you, I mean?”

  I hesitated, since I was about to enter dangerous territory. “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m never actually faking,” I stammered. “It always hurts…sort of, but…well, I guess you could say it never hurts as much as I kind of…indicate.”

  “Because you’re turned on by it?” he asked bluntly.

  I made a face. This whole conversation was getting very embarrassing. “Not always, and I’ve never had…what I mean to say is that I’ve never had what happened just now happen before. But I guess you could say that it sort of takes the edge off…off what you’re doing.”

  After this long and definitely humiliating discussion, during which my occasional sarcasm was rewarded several times with a solid swat or two from Hank’s ready hand, he laid out the way it was going to be in the future. It being my spankings, of course. I had sort of hoped, after this unexpected turn of events, and after finally confessing my little secret, that Hank would decide that spanking me had simply run its course as an effective tool. Maybe it could be replaced by grounding me, or taking away my TV privileges, I suggested sweetly. Maybe even cutting my allowance, or not letting me buy a new dress for the prom.

  It took Hank only a moment or two to rummage through the drawers and come up with a couple of suitable weapons—a gigantic wooden spoon and a very short extension cord. (Oh, did I forget to mention that we normally use our van for camping, and not as a spanking venue?)

  I learned a couple of things that Easter afternoon. I learned that lying to a man who never lies himself is a bad idea. I also learned that there is a vast difference between a mildly erotic spanking and a real one. I also learned that I wasn’t a genuine, dyed in the wool masochist, and nowhere close to being what is called a pain slut. Every swat Hank laid on that day hurt like hell, and there wasn’t a single second of it that I enjoyed—on any level. I went home with a lot of loopy marks on my scalded butt (from the little extension cord) and (appropriate to the holiday) even more egg-shaped marks—from the big wooden spoon. That night, I had to sleep on my stomach to be comfortable, and there was no romantic make-up from Hank, either.

  As a precaution against any further erotic responses on my part, Hank made it very clear that all of my future spankings would be delivered with me lying over the end of the bed, or bent ignominiously across an article of furniture of a convenient height. He never used his hand again, for obvious reasons, and switched to using his belt, a wooden hairbrush, ruler, or whatever other awful device suits his needs at the moment. The safe word was summarily eliminated, and every spanking thereafter continued until Hank was satisfied with the flame red color of my squirming butt, and/or with the volume of my anguished howls. The party was definitely over.

  The following afternoon, I returned the stupid pig costume to Sandy. She was as bitchy as ever, but I did learn that I had my job as party planner back—if I still wanted it.

  “Stan says it’s taking too much of my time,” she explained haughtily. And then, something wonderful happened. Something almost wonderful enough to take my mind off the lingering sting in my behind. When Sandy reached for the costume, she dropped the pig’s plastic snout. And when she bent to pick it up, I was treated to the sight of her own, astonishingly well-spanked backside. There were even a few pretty nice welts—small, but still a divine shade of pink. If I had to guess, I’d say that Stan, the exasperated Easter Bunny, had used a bamboo school cane to give his beloved’s newly lifted buttocks the same “twelve of the best” he’d been given as a boy. All of which made me very, very happy that my own husband had gone to public school in Ohio, and not at some stuffy, upper class institution in England. Old habits, especially the ones a mischievous lad has learned the hard way, so to speak, are apparently difficult to break.

  THE END

  April—Callie in: The Last April Fool

  The thing about April Fools’ Day, Callie had learned, was that no matter how much you love a person, or how much he loves you, there’s no absolute guarantee that the two of you will always find the same things equally funny. She and Matt were a case in point. He had been in the shower that morning—the morning of their very first April Fools’ Day together—when she dashed into the bathroom, shrieking hysterically and waving an “official letter from the government” that said Matt was being recalled to service by the U.S. Marine Corps, and ordering him to report in just three days. What Callie found wonderfully funny about the very authentic looking “official letter” was that she had forged it just twenty minutes earlier, as an April Fools’ prank.

  Funny, how Matt didn’t think it was even the least bit funny.

  As he read the first few lines of the fake letter, Matt’s face went pale, causing Callie to wonder if the phony letter was quite as hilarious as she had first believed. In the next instant, though, Matt reached the two words she’d scrawled at the bottom of the page—in bold black letters followed by a string of exclamation points—“APRIL FOOLS, DARLING!!!”

  What happened next wasn’t funny, either, from Callie’s point of view, anyway. Still holding the soggy letter, Matt stepped from the shower, took Callie by her left elbow, and pushed her facedown over the bathroom sink, with her head under the dripping faucet. And then, with one firm yank that felt a little too rough to be simply impetuous and romantic, he dragged her pajama bottoms down to her knees. All this happened before Callie understood what was actually happening—they were virtual newlyweds, after all, and Callie could recall quite a few highly enjoyable moments in this particular position over the past few months, though this was the first time it had involved the bathroom sink. It wasn’t until Matt reached across her bared rear end and took the bath brush from its hook that she, who had never in her entire life been physically punished, began to realize that his intentions had more to do with discipline—or payback—than they did honeymoon hijinks.

  Callie’s first spanking was memorable not just because it was her first, and not even because Matt was naked and still dripping wet (which would probably have made everything much, much better, but because being spanked hurt a whole lot worse than she had ever thought it would, and because he used the big green plastic shower brush she’d given him when he was still living in his ta
ckily decorated “bachelor pad” at the beach. The plastic brush was shaped like a leering turtle, with moving, googly eyes, and a distinctly leering expression. The turtle-brush had been a joke gift, but now, the joke gift didn’t seem all that jocular—or funny.

  It seemed even less funny after a half-dozen well-placed swats to Callie’s right buttock, and the same number to her left one, all of them delivered while she was struggling to get up, and failing at that, pleading with Matt to stop. He did stop, but not until he had applied a few additional stinging whaps to the tender backs of her thighs.

  “Geez, Matt, what happened to your sense of humor?” Carrie had whined, afterward, rubbing her throbbing backside. “It was just a stupid little joke. For April Fools’ Day.”

  “Stupid is right,” he said. “And not funny. That’s all we need right now, for me to get called up and maybe shipped out—with me only three years on the police force, a new mortgage we can’t afford, and still trying to pay off a car and your student loans.” He picked up the turtle-shaped bath brush and looked at it again. “This, on the other hand, is pretty funny. Have a look.” He took Callie by the shoulders and turned her around so she could see her rear end in the bathroom mirror. A series of reddish blotches was still visible—vaguely turtle-shaped, right down to the reticulated design of the plastic shell. “Hilarious, huh?”

  “Not especially,” she said sullenly. “And I hope spanking the hell out of your almost new bride isn’t your twisted idea of an April Fools’ Day prank.”

  He grinned. “Sorry about the marks. Looks like I don’t know my own strength. It’s the first time I’ve ever spanked a woman, after all.”

  “And the last,” she growled, pulling up her pants.

  Matt smiled as he returned the brush back to its hook. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. As that old song goes…” And at this point, he began to sing. “We’ve only just begun…” Callie shot him an evil look and marched from the room, with her pajama bottoms tangling around her ankles.