George chuckled and noted this down. He moved on. He bypassed a display offering intimate area shaving kits – 'Dare To Go Completely Bare' – declined an opportunity to sign up for a swinging holiday in south west France in 'a paradise created for liberated couples,' and he passed on a free shoe shine at a booth from west Sussex that offered 'the ultimate leather protection.' "Can I do something nice for your shoes, sir?" a woman had asked him, hopefully. A couple hurried by hand-in-hand, she carrying her shopping bag jauntily over her shoulder, and George couldn't help overhearing a snippet of conversation. "Blow job and a shoe shine at the same time," the man was saying. "Not bad."
He paid scant attention to Really Orgasmic Sweets, instead focusing his gaze on clothes by Naughty Janet, including a baby doll nightie for fifty quid that he would have dearly loved Pem to have worn, although he knew full well she would never have done so and would have been cross with him for wasting his money. 'All Goods Sold As Seen,' a sign said. 'No Refunds.' A young couple, smiling shyly and whispering conspiratorially to each other, popped a Slap Leather paddle into their shopping bag and wandered over to a display of wrist restraints decorated with purple hearts. At Erotic Boutique, a blonde middle-aged sales woman with ample bosoms, most of which were on display, was rhythmically slapping her knee high vinyl boots with a riding crop adorned at the business end with a painted leather butterfly. "Hello, young man," she said cheerily, as George passed. "Would you like to feel my whip?" "No thank you," he had replied, hastily stuffing his notebook out of sight. "Can't say I blame you," she said with a smile. "It's a bit early for that sort of thing, isn't it?"
George marveled at the number of masks, paddles, whips, canes, floggers and handcuffs that were on display at every turn. He never thought of discipline as a national pastime and yet these instruments of every size, heft, hue and texture were flying off the shelves. He thought that some of the products on offer made wildly extravagant claims. The battery powered Monkey Spanker, for example, described itself as 'a vibrator for men,' a 'world famous male G-spot stimulator' promising 'waves of intense orgasms for hours.' George thought that was probably a bit over the top and although he enjoyed a satisfactory sexual denouement as much as the next man, if he had hours to pass he would rather spend them at the pub.
However, work was work and after ninety minutes among the exhibits he had filled several pages of his notebook. He perused a gallery of erotic paintings and photographs and had been charmed by a tall blonde photographer's model who towered above him, naked except for a pair of fishnet tights. Among scores of images of private parts in every possible configuration only one had struck him as mildly interesting, more amusing than erotic. It was a small black and white close-up of a woman's thigh on which were balanced a tea cup and a half eaten digestive biscuit. As a backdrop to these prosaic items a mound of unruly pubic hair sprouted like a privet hedge.
But note taking aside, George soon realized that research required affirmative action and he reached the reluctant conclusion that if he were to broaden his knowledge on the subject of erotica he would have to cast his inhibitions aside and talk to an expert. Taking a deep breath, he dived in.
"Excuse me," he said to a woman who was stocking shelves at Everything Spanking New. She was on the third rung of a small stepladder, petite and very pretty in a vinyl nun's headdress, and when she climbed down he was delighted to find she was half-an-inch shorter than he. She looked to be in her twenties.
"Excuse me," he began again. "Sorry to trouble you, I'm researching for a book on erotic discipline…"
There, he had said it. It was a relief.
"Would you have a moment to talk? Of course I won't ask your name, I quite understand the need for privacy..."
She smiled sweetly at him, smoothed a wrinkle from an embroidered tank top that read Trust Me I'm a Pervert and returned it to its rack with the others.
"I don't mind telling you," she said. "I'm Victoria Barnes. I'm the owner. How can I help you?"
George decided she could help if he got straight to the point. "All this spanking paraphernalia, is it a best seller?"
For a moment she said nothing as if wondering whether to call for security and George fervently hoped she wasn't really a nun.
"It's one of them," she replied, helpfully. "We sell many different things and fetish equipment is one of them. We also educate people on how to use these things, how to have fun, how to do it safely and, out of this whole range, which things would be best for them."
George scribbled this down like a real reporter, and sallied on. "So if I were new to spanking, which, ahem, I am not by the way, my wife and I enjoyed…" He was getting flustered, blurting things out.
"I could help you, yes. I help a lot of older couples. The average age at our events is people in their 50s."
George felt his face blushing. He was definitely in the right demographic.
"Is it true as I read somewhere that women like to be spanked?"
"I don't. I'm a dom. I can't speak for other women."
This was not the answer George was hoping for.
"Meaning you give, but don't receive."
"Correct."
He tried again.
"But in your experience it is probably true that most women…." He was struggling. He hadn't felt so tongue-tied since the very first time he got to his feet to table a report before Putney & District council.
Once more, she came to his rescue.
"I think most people, male and female, have some interest in some elements of discipline, whether it's a fetish, or something different for them, something kinky. We sell accessories to couples mostly, because they enjoy buying these things together. But a lot of single women buy our products either for themselves or as a gift for their partners."
George glanced nostalgically at the inventory on display. He was imagining Pem, probably during her lunch hour, buying them a paddle for Valentine's Day.
"So how did you get interested?"
"I was 18, at university in Paris and I saw a film about it. It looked like fun. I started going to fetish events and thinking 'this is for me. This is something I am interested in.'"
"As a dom, do you spank men and women?"
"I do. My partner is submissive to me, but we both enjoy being dominant with other men and women. Fetish is a great way to meet like-minded people, make new friends and realize you are not alone. Being interested in this kind of thing, you do feel alone at times, feel that other people might think it's weird or kinky. But to me it's something you can enjoy with other people. The secret is to enjoy it in a safe manner."
"Can you describe what excites you about it?"
"It's fun. It's stimulating and I get to let out my bossy side in a liberating way that I enjoy and the person I am doing it with can enjoy too. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have customers waiting."
George thanked her and hurried away. His head was spinning and his fingers ached from trying to keep up with what she was saying so he found a seat in front of the main stage where he could collect his thoughts. He put his notebook and pen on the table in front of him and for the first time since he entered the Great Hall he had time to look around. If he had been worried about what to wear he really hadn't needed to. George had not seen so much flesh on display since he was on holiday in St. Tropez. Bare and barely covered breasts and bottoms assailed him at every turn. After a while he felt like Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party. To his right a quartet of young women, three violins and a cello, were playing a Vivaldi concerto. Behind them, two sales people, also fully clad, were on their hands and knees in the doggy position, demonstrating the use of an "under the bed restraint system." George couldn't quite hear the sales pitch over Vivaldi, but he caught parts of it.
"How many of you enjoy the doggy position?" the man was saying to a small crowd of onlookers. A few hands went up, probably not as many as he might have expected.
George put his in his pocket.
"Okay, so notice how by using this rest
raint we are locked together in the doggy position, but if I pull on these straps, like so, I can change the angle of penetration."
There was a collective murmur of approval.
"Normally, in this position, you have only one angle of penetration, which is basically straight ahead. Am I right? With this device I have four angles."
The crowd pushed a little closer. Four angles, the man said. This they had to see.
Vivaldi drowned the next bit in an exuberance of violins and cello, but as the musical quartet put aside their bows, George heard the climax of the sales pitch.
"Ladies, what's missing?" the man was asking rhetorically as he continued to pump away at his partner.
"It's the clit, right? It's all about the clit. For you ladies we have a vibrating version."
Curiouser and curiouser, George thought, but the strangest sight of all was about to be unveiled. Not fifty feet away at the top of a stairwell under a large sign that read 'Dressing Room', a man was accessorizing a female companion. They were a couple in their fifties, not part of any display as far as George could tell, but visitors as he was. The man was wearing a dark business suit and she was smartly dressed as if they had just popped over from the office. She put her wrists behind her back and he handcuffed them. During this process not a word was spoken. Next, she opened her mouth as if showing a troublesome molar to her dentist and he gagged her with what looked to George like a squash ball. He fastened ball and strap around her head until it was snug, then he leaned forward to whisper something in her ear. George couldn't hear what was said, but she nodded as if to say, 'Thank you, dear, no it's not too tight,' and when it seemed she was good to go he produced from his pocket a dog collar and this he fastened around her neck. It was one of those vicious-looking things with spikes on it, the sort favored by pimps for their pit bulls. Finally, he produced a silver leash which he fastened to the collar and the couple, thus conjoined, started off on their tour of the exhibition. When he stopped, she stopped, always one pace behind. He wore a fixed grin on his pale, pock-marked face, but what chilled George was the look she wore, impassive, mask-like, staring straight ahead through sad, dead-looking eyes.
He had seen enough. In the upstairs gallery surrounding the exhibition floor he found respite in the food hall, treating himself to a Cornish pasty, which he blew on to cool it down while thumbing through his notes. What was it the lady with the whip had told him? "The show has changed in the last few years. It used to be more hard core. Now it's softer. It's a shame really because hard core was what it was all about. But the upside is we get more couples, and a lot of older couples, which is brilliant."
George reflected briefly on the moon-faced man with his partner at heel, like a dog being walked in the park, still out there somewhere under the shadow of the giant inflatables. On the next table was the young couple he had seen earlier buying a paddle and wrist restraints. Their shopping bag was full and George wondered why they hadn't already rushed off somewhere, to a cozy bed-sit in Shepherd's Bush or Elephant and Castle, where they could draw the curtains, conjure up some music, light a candle maybe and play with their spanking new toys. But they hadn't. They were sitting silently across from each other, eyes downcast, playing with their mobile phones.
Time to go.
In a taxi making slow progress towards Pimlico through the shining wet streets of west London, he analyzed what he had learned. Not much. It had all seemed so clinical, more about gadgets and skimpy attire than eroticism, more leather than lace. George briefly wondered if his next step should be to attend a fetish event as the young lady had suggested, but he quickly tabled the motion. A lifetime of council committee meetings had endowed him with a deep-seated distrust for the collective thought process. On the other hand, the young purveyor of paddles had been personally most helpful. He would continue his research on a one-on-one basis and he had the taxi drop him at a newsagent on the Belgrave Road where he picked up one of the racier tabloids.
Chapter Four
When a-punting you go on the river
Two things you must know of your lover
Has he the arrow
To pleasure your furrow
And the wit to be quick with his quiver?
Limerick by CM Jones Cambridge is cool. It's not the university and its timeless colleges, it's the ambience; students on bicycles, corduroy professors strutting around in a miasma of their own importance, townies, market criers, scruffy street musicians, flower baskets, eclectic conversation in the pubs and coffee shops, spontaneous craziness, lazy summer picnics on the banks of the River Cam. I love the history of it all, just being here, being part of it, excites me. This week marks the end of my final term and I know I'm going to miss it.
I am going out with a boy from my poetry group, Ryan Donovan, who truly has the soul of a poet. This afternoon he's taking me punting on the river and I've packed a lunch for us and a bottle of wine. I have plans for Ryan Donovan.
I'm wearing a cotton frock embroidered with baby blue forget-me-nots, lightly gathered beneath my breasts so I don't need to wear a bra. I am not wearing panties either, although Nanny Burton says to always carry a pair in your purse because you never know when you might need them. I am reclining on pillows in the prow while Ryan, standing in the stern, poles us along. Most people, tourists mostly, never venture more than a couple of hundred yards from the landing, but my boy, the would-be rowing blue, is taking us to a place less travelled, beyond the end of the towpath, past civilization as we know it, where the river meanders unnoticed through fields of poppies that nod their heads at us beneath weeping willows. Steering close to the bank, he plucks a poppy, theatrically touches its scarlet petals to his lips and gallantly presents it to me. I thread it into my hair and reward him by laying back, closing my eyes and casually allowing the hem of my frock to ride up until I can feel the sun high up on my thighs. Then I sit up and rub on sunscreen, parting my long legs unashamedly in front of him, ignoring his presence as if he were invisible. He is sweating from the exertion which puts a sheen on his muscles. I can smell him, which heightens my lust, it must be the estrogen or pheromones, or something. When I look up, he is pretending not to notice, but our eyes meet and I can see from the bulge in his shorts that his attention was not only on the river. I sigh. This is so romantic. Mute swans show us that beautiful heart shape they make with their wings as they sail downstream like galleons before the breeze. I have a tiny image of swans tattooed at the base of my spine, a present from Nan for my 21st birthday.
"Easy enough downriver," I say to Ryan. "But what about when they have to swim upstream?"
"They don't swim, silly, they fly," he says, which is so obvious it makes me laugh. "You fly a lot, don't you, back and forth to Ireland? Ever join the mile high club?"
Okay, no subtlety there, you can tell where my mind is. I am so hot I can barely sit still. In fact at this juncture I'm wondering if it's possible to do it in a punt.
"Are you kidding? he says. "In one of those tiny little toilets? I wish. Closest I ever got was standby." This makes us both laugh. "Well, here we are." Expertly he brings the punt alongside the grassy bank and ties it to the branch of an overhanging tree.
Ever her ladyship, I step ashore, Ryan trailing behind with the picnic basket.
We have found ourselves in a grassy clearing secluded by mulberry bushes and elm trees where we lay out our blanket, the gentle swell of the river at our feet. It feels like there is no one to disturb us for miles around. For a few blissful minutes we lie silently together staring at the high summer clouds, listening to the river and the birds singing, breathing in the fresh air and the fecund smell of the countryside. We kiss, at first shyly, then passionately and when I feel his hand on my breasts I close my eyes, my nipples hardening to his touch. I turn on my side while he slides his hand under my frock, stroking my thighs, moving higher, teasing the soft down of my pubic mound, settling on the plump roundness of my buttocks. I moan and move seductively beneath his splayed fingers. Hun
grily, we tear off our clothes and kiss long and deeply. I can feel him hard against me and I sense he is ready to make love. I get to my knees showering him with kisses, my mouth and tongue moving down his body. But before I reach his manhood, he sits up and whispers in my ear, words that make me catch my breath.
"Excuse me, but what did you say?"
"What I said, Catherine, was 'Have you ever been spanked?'"
My heart pounds, and I'm thinking, well yes, but it's been a while. Memories come rushing back of the headmaster's study, on my 18th birthday to the music of flutes and oboes. The magic of it. Somehow I manage to stay calm.
"Well, yes, once, when I was eight," I reply. He would get no more help from me than R.C. Montgomery did. "Mummy thought I was teasing the kitten when I wasn't, honestly. I was just playing dress up. She was furious and..."
"Not what I'm referring to," he said.
I laugh. "I know what you're referring to. And why do I deserve a spanking, pray tell?"
"For flashing me back there. Are you aware that willfully distracting the operator of a passenger vessel while under way is an offence under the Rivers & Inland Waterways Navigation Act of 1652? I might have run into something, we could easily have capsized."
He thrust out one arm striking an oratorical pose:
Full fathom five
Lies Ryan's punt sunk by silken thighs
and thy sweet cunt.
"And exactly what sort of punishment," I shyly enquire, "is proscribed under that rivers thing act of 1652?"
Spank: The Improbable Adventures of George Aloysius Brown Page 6
