I explained about the survey and its importance for predicting future local needs for waste management and energy consumption. I did this on his doorstep and it was only after a few agonising minutes during which he looked me up and down that I was invited into the hallway. Contrary to all the other domesticated men I had encountered there was a more dominant air about him. I felt for a few moments that I was going to be given a telling-off, which would have been ridiculous as, of course, I’d done nothing wrong but it was made known without anything being said that my presence was an inconvenience to this man. I didn’t get a telling-off, but he completely ignored my survey and wasted no time in alluding to what he saw as an irregular situation.
‘Do you usually enter the homes of strange men in the afternoon?’ he asked. ‘I thought there were laws about that sort of thing these days. Hmm?’
He raised his eyes at me and cocked his head to one side as his voice lifted to a questioning tone, which had about it a trace of mockery.
I laughed it off and instead flicked my manicured nails over the leaflets and questionnaires.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re not that strange,’ I countered, brandishing the information pack. ‘You certainly don’t look strange. In fact, you look like one of my old teachers.’
‘Is that right?’ he said, continuing to peer at me as if I were from some rare species of plant life. A thick lock of grey hair flopped over his face and his wry smile told me that he was finding it very amusing to put me on the spot, as if young female humans were fair game for sport. His eyes flashed with intelligence. He wasn’t going to be impressed with my usual flighty act, so I knew I’d have to be every inch the concerned professional if he was going to even look at the survey.
He invited me into the bright and airy living room, which was spotlessly clean and tidy. A piano sat with its lid up and sheet music was open on the stand. A glass bowl of pebbles and a neatly stacked pile of magazines were placed on a long low table and two brown leather sofas of modern design were positioned at right angles to each other. He motioned me to take a seat and I accepted, my eyes casting around the room for some evidence of female occupation. It was difficult to tell; it was a rare man who kept such order in his house, unless of course he was gay, but I doubted he was. His slightly predatory demeanour conveyed his heterosexuality. The air around us crackled with curious electricity.
I launched into my spiel about the new council initiatives for garden waste collection and efficient uses of rainwater but he looked thoroughly bored by the whole thing. Throughout my cheery address he sat opposite, watching me intently, one elbow resting casually on the arm of the sofa and one long leg thrown up onto his left knee.
After a few minutes he sighed. ‘My dear, I fail to see the point of all the effort when China is building a coal-fired power station every two days, or whatever it is.’
‘Oh, but you can make a difference locally, and that contributes to a better sense of civic pride,’ I returned. ‘If we all made an effort to change just one of our habits, it would contribute so much, like turning your TV completely off, rather than leaving it on standby.’
‘Is this what excites you? Recycling?’ he said, in the most patronising voice I’d heard on the whole job. ‘Because to me you look like the kind of girl who gets very excitable about all sorts of things. What we call a sensationalist.’
He hadn’t moved, but he had delivered the first probing question that would take the conversation away from the survey and into more personal territory.
I maintained the pretence of not realising his question was so loaded as I answered that I got excited about holidays and going out with my friends, but I felt my face flush and I immediately started playing nervously with my hair and giggling. I knew it was not the answer he wanted. And I began to feel uncomfortably self-aware and warm.
‘So, I’ve got a little giggler in my front room, have I? I can just imagine you creating merry hell with that teacher of yours. You know what excites me?’
I knew it. I knew something inappropriate was about to be revealed.
‘Let me guess … er, classical music?’
‘Isn’t that a little obvious? Try harder.’
‘Your garden?’
‘Yes, my garden. And something else.’
My face was burning. I was being brought to book. He’d sussed me out from the moment he answered the door – that I’m used to getting my own way where men are concerned, knowing all the right moves to get them in a state of anxiety. He was cleverly calling my bluff, and I was playing along with it. I began to find the situation extremely exciting. I’d never previously had any kind of sexual communication with an older, intelligent man. It suddenly felt naughty and wrong, being in this man’s house, and I felt the atmosphere between us become drenched with erotic energy. I could already feel my sex becoming slippery and, as I looked him in the eyes, I felt a dart of pure lust shoot through my core. It settled as a dull ache that spurred me to carry on the playing, taking the game towards some kind of conclusion. But what exactly? Would I really let this man, who was old enough to be my father, touch me?
‘Something to do with … girls?’ I suggested.
‘How very delicately put. Yes, something very much to do with girls, especially girls like you.’
‘What like me?’
‘Spoilt pretty girls who drive men crazy and get away with murder.’
I affected an expression of fake shock and gasped to make some defensive retort but I couldn’t muster the words. Instead I sat there with my mouth open, not knowing how I was going to claw the interaction back to a professional level.
‘I think girls like that should go over my knee and have their knickers pulled down for a spanking. Don’t you?’
Still he didn’t move from his insouciant posture and that confidence made him all the more infuriating, and attractive. The salacious image he had created reverberated around my head and brought on a fresh and stronger wave of arousal which attacked me between my legs. I desperately wanted to touch myself, yet could I really let him know how he was making me feel? Supposing I’d misunderstood and this man was really just having a little joke. Or worse, that he was some kind of a lunatic and I was playing with fire. I logically concluded that an educated man with a passion for Mozart would not be the most likely profile for a psychotic and stayed exactly where I was, fiddling with my hands, my eyes darting around the room.
No one had ever mentioned spanking to me before, yet the thought of it was all at once wildly inspiring, enough to make me giddy. It was a eureka moment; a light of realisation was turned on at that thought and, right then, I registered that there was nothing I’d rather experience than to be brought across that man’s knees and dealt with – whatever that would entail.
Before I could gather the words that would form a passably coherent sentence he fired another question at me, drawing me ever closer to the moment of shame and reckoning which I so urgently craved.
‘Do you think you are a girl like that? A pert little know-it-all who likes to get her way all the time?’
It would be foolish to deny this glaring truth but I knew I had to protest my character, even if I made some exaggeration for effect. It was so very very different from the kind of flirting I had experienced with men of my own age or only slightly older. Yet I felt curiously safe in his company, as if I could confess everything to him and unburden my most private thoughts yet suffer no real judgement. I intuited that I could play ‘let’s pretend’ with him – an adult game infused with a sense of childish glee.
‘I’m a girl who is usually right and my way is always the best way,’ I proclaimed with a theatrical air of superiority.
He got up then and came to stand before me. I froze, wondering what was going to happen. Then, looking me straight in the eye, he took the pamphlets and dropped them onto the glass-topped table so they landed with a slap.
Was this it? Was he going to flip me over onto one of the sofas, push my skirt up and pull down
my pants? Was he going to hurt me?
‘OK, I’ll think about it,’ he said casually. ‘Come back tomorrow about the same time. I might be in. I might not. If I’m in, I’ll let you know if I can be bothered to fill in your little survey.’
My stomach became an empty chasm then. I was mortified to be strung along and then have my playful retort cruelly cut off in mid-air, just as I was beginning to understand the rules. I must have got it all wrong.
‘Yes. Yes, of course, sorry, I, er … about the same time, you say?’
‘About the same time, yes.’
It was if I had imagined the whole thing. I had never known such a sense of disappointment and rejection as being ushered out of that man’s house, ashamed of my cheeky attitude, my little playing around. As I walked away, towards where my car was parked, I considered that I’d had one of those strange episodes where people drift off into trances and all sorts of bizarre subconscious thoughts float to the surface. But no, he had definitely started the conversation along a flirtatious route. And as I lay in my bed that night unable to relax, was I still experiencing the thrill of hearing him talk about spanking. I knew my intuition was correct. He was into it. So why did he not take things any further?
I didn’t go to any more houses after his that day but – and this felt really odd, as if I had suddenly turned into some kind of a pervert – I went straight home and looked at spanking sites on the internet. Some pictures showed girls’ bottoms glowing red and I wondered how much it hurt. They were dressed in kilts and white knee-high socks or old-fashioned schoolgirl outfits, while other sites that were more downmarket just had girls with their jeans pulled down.
There were women in stockings and flimsy panties being spanked by other women dressed as nurses, strict schoolmistresses and in uniforms. The majority of the photos showed girls being dealt with by older men, though, and it was these pictures that, against my better judgement and beliefs, began to arouse me sexually.
I wanted to go over the knees of some stern patriarch and feel the full force of his attention. Most prominent of the curious psychological aspects of this new-found interest was the feeling that I knew it would turn the man on as much as me. He would pretend to be all cross; and I could hide my arousal behind shouting out in heat and pain, but if and when it happened to me, I knew that I would instantly get so wet. I knew I would have to masturbate or have the man do it for me. Hopefully he would want to do it to me really slowly. It could be a kind of reward. Surely the man – whoever he would be – would be hard in his trousers and ready to fuck me. Wouldn’t he? Is that what it would all be about?
I was confused, yet in an exciting way. I so, so wanted the classical music man to act on his flirtatious chat. But if he was just joking, and not really into spanking at all, then I couldn’t very well ask him! He could report me to the council, and then what kind of a reputation would I get? I bit my hand when I realised my dilemma. Yet I was so turned on after a couple of hours of looking at websites devoted to erotic punishment, that I slid shamefully into my bed and abused myself in a frenzy, until I came with a violence which propelled me into a new maturity of sexual desire. I had always played the little girl act to no real end but teasing men and feeling smug about being desirable. Now I saw my charms could be used to some other effect; that I could know the pleasure of real adult games, where teasing could lead to sexual chat, could lead to spanking, could lead to …
*
The next day I took even more care about my appearance, although I couldn’t be bothered any more with stringing along the usual suburban househusbands that I encountered. It was strange, but I felt I’d moved up a level from ordinary girlish teasing. I wanted something on a more intellectual level. So, instead, I affected a breezy professional tone, whizzing through about ten households and completing as many surveys in record time. I was saving all my creative energy for when I would, once again, present myself on the doorstep of my kinky stranger.
As four o’ clock approached I sat in my car, checking my hair and make-up, feeling all the anticipation of first-date nerves. It was ridiculous. I was going to collect a survey from a man in his fifties who was as boring-looking as one of my dad’s friends. There was absolutely no need to be fussing so much about my appearance, but still I had dressed for ease of access to my … oh God, to my bottom, my sex, anywhere else he might want to touch me! I was wearing a wraparound dress in pale blue, which would fall to the floor with the pull of the waist-tie. I had on shiny tan hold-ups, pale-brown peep-toe shoes with enough of a heel to give a sway to my walk and very pretty white knickers with a cherub pattern on them and satin bows at either side. I released my glossy long straight blonde hair from its ponytail and was ready, all bar a slick of transparent lip gloss.
‘So, the lady from the council has come back,’ was his opening line to me as I stood on the doorstep once more. The cheek! It made me sound terribly dull and old, so I immediately found myself on the defensive.
‘I don’t work for the council!’ I blurted back. ‘Gosh, that’s far too boring. I’m actually freelancing for a while to get some experience of public relations.’ I realised as soon as I was speaking that he was being ironic. Irony is so apt to desert me when I’m anxious or self-conscious.
‘Very public indeed, I’d say. Don’t you want a nice office of your own?’
‘Oh, one day,’ I said, flicking my hand in the air to show a spirited devil-may-care attitude, but he was right – I would like my own office for a while. ‘I’m planning to go travelling for six months, so I don’t want anything too permanent at the moment.’
‘You youngsters,’ he said. ‘You think nothing of flitting off to Australia, South America. You don’t know how lucky you are. That would have cost a fortune when I was your age.’
‘Well, it may well cost a fortune again, once they put tax on air fuel. It will happen, you know. But anyway, talking of environmental matters, what about the survey? Have you made a decision?’
He stood aside and opened the street door wide to welcome me inside his house once more. Again, we went through into his living room where I could see the neatly filled-out survey sitting on top of the pile of magazines. He picked it up.
‘I’ve done this for you, then,’ he said. ‘I took a break from music practice and found I’d finished the bloody thing before I knew it. Didn’t take long at all. In fact, it’s quite interesting. I might even consider having a wormery in the garden.’
‘Oh good. You’ve changed your attitude from the other day I see. But I do appreciate you taking the time –’
I was stopped in my flow by the magazine uppermost on the pile he had revealed. Facing me was something I’d not seen before: a glossy publication devoted to, of course, spanking. His eyes had locked on to mine; he was watching my every move: the nervous moistening of my lips, my increasing respiration rate, my dilated pupils. He took a step closer to me.
‘Oh look, I’ve forgotten to clear away my more private magazines. Does that bother you? You look a little flustered.’
I’d not wanted to, but I immediately went into a flush of embarrassment. I brushed at my hair, put my hand to my mouth, looked at him and I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself.
‘Yes, I guess I am a little flustered. I’ve not seen any magazines like that before.’
‘That’s not surprising. But I must tell you that lots of women are turned on by the subject. Do you think you might be like that?’
Oh, gosh. He was forcing me to admit my new-found shame. I would have to find gargantuan amounts of courage to confess my interest but, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.
‘I, er, well, it’s certainly different!’ I managed, cheerily.
‘That’s not what I asked you, sweetheart. Shall we try again? I can see you’re a little nervous. I do like it when young women get all shy. Why don’t you come and sit down next to me on the sofa? We can look at some pictures together. You can whisper to me quietly what yo
u would like.’
I went over to sit down, glad to have something to do, albeit for a few seconds. It dawned on me how useful it was to be given orders. I instantly liked that. I was meek, complicit. I felt I would do anything for him. I was, again, already wet underneath those cherubic panties.
I made myself as comfortable as I could with my arousal levels going off the dial as this tall man with his professorial air plonked himself down next to me, so matter of fact. So close our legs were touching. He could feel me trembling. His large hand went onto my knee and I felt his fingers start to circle the inside of my lower thigh. He then put the magazine in my lap and told me to look through the pages, to tell him which pictures I liked best.
It seemed like an hour passed as I flicked through those pages, so self-conscious was I of him waiting for me to speak. There was one spread that appealed to me: an air hostess in a uniform similar to my dress was being roughed up in the cockpit by the pilot. It wasn’t particularly well photographed, but the combination of his uniform and her creamy buttocks, poised for his hand, set me aflame. I managed to croak out a small confession: ‘I, er, quite like this one, actually,’ I said.
‘Like uniforms, eh? You girls are so predictable. But no more so than us men. The female form is such a distraction to us. Is that something you would like? To be spanked by an older man?’
I nodded my head. I couldn’t speak. I could barely accept the situation I found myself in, in this stranger’s house.
‘You are very quiet compared to your first visit. Cat got your tongue?’
‘No. It’s just that I … I’d never thought about this stuff before. But I can see you’re quite an expert. I don’t know anything.’
‘My dear, you don’t need to. And I think I’d call myself an enthusiast, rather than an expert. But I can’t spank you if you sit there all perfect and well behaved, can I? Surely there’s something you want to tell me.’
Sex with Strangers Page 15
