From the ages of six to sixteen, I attended a girls' school run by Catholic nuns. They were wonderful teachers, as well as being beautiful, stylish women-- still wearing the full habit, and culturally reflecting the European origins of their order. Not being Catholic, however, I did not really see them as role models. The first teacher I sought to emulate was one of the few lay teachers, Miss K. I did not study with her until I was fourteen, although I had seen her in the galls and and admired her for her beautiful posture, her soberly elegant clothes and her long sleek black hair which gave almost the impression of a nun's veil. I am sure this was a deliberate effect: everything about her seemed deliberate.
Miss K. was not only the first teacher I admired in a personal way: she was also the first to spank me. I suppose this was somewhat unusual, statistically. As you walked around the school on any given day, you would think someone was always being spanked, either in a classroom or more frequently outside in the hall; bending over with skirt raised for several licks of a thin wooden paddle or stretched across a teacher's lap for a thorough hand spanking on the seat of her regulation white nylon panties.
For years I was terrified of being spanked at school. Early in life my governess had often spanked me, but it was different. She would lay me face down on the bed; sometimes but not always pull down my knickers; and smack my bottom hard. It always hurt, and my main feeling was usually regret that I had done whatever prompted the spanking. But a school spanking seemed a perfectly horrific experience, to be avoided at every cost. Partly it was the public nature of the event. Very bad, if happened in a classroom, of course; but even if one was taken into the hall there was always someone walking by.
Not only that: with some thinking, I realized it was the position which upset me most. In fact, my occasional nightmares about school spankings often stopped before the first swat fell. The truly fearful part was having to bend over and humiliatingly offer that part of the body: either precariously on one's feet, or else over a lap-- less of a strain, but with the alarming contact between one's tummy and the teacher's thighs.
I think I knew there was something sexual about it all-- even before that day when I walked into the big girls' bathroom. It was not forbidden to use the 'wrong' lavatory at school; but the big girls would never use the lower grades' bathrooms with their tiny toilets and low walls. And neither would a little girl want to go into an upper school bathroom and risk some kind of teasing or hazing. But one afternoon, returning from some errand or other, I opened the door of the middle school lavatory. A girl was lying face down on the floor-- or rather belly down, because her head was raised and she was yelping in protest, but only softly. Two other girls crouched on either side of her. They had turned up her skirt and pulled down her panties. They were spanking her with their hands: spanking a bottom so red that it must have got that way earlier, under a nun's paddle. One my presence was noticed the two spanking girls moved apart and I got a full view of the spanked girl's big red bottom.
As I went up through the grades I learned that this was a common enough scene: a girl who had been paddled by a teacher would be caught in the lavatory and spanked again, over the panties or even bare. It was considered kind of a fun, friendly thing to do, which I found really creepy.
All this time I escaped being spanked, to say nothing of (somthing else we found out about as we got older) special punishments variously called 'strapping' and 'whipping.' administered privately and supposed to be terribly painful. I avoided any of these, then, until I was fourteen. In the autumn of that year I moved into Miss K.'s German class.
I had seen Miss K. around the school; in fact once or twice she had been into our class to help the woefully incompetent Sister M. I realized in mid-August that I was particularly looking forward to Miss K.'s class, even though I thought German was a silly language: it sounded like somebody coughing and spitting. And it did worry me, this looking forward: this was the age when all my friends were developing interests in boys, and I was pretending the same interests.
The weird thing was that as soon as I came into that German class Miss K. -- well, she did not acknowledge my crush, but there was some sense of recognition. Perhaps it began with something as small as my not being Catholic, and her not being a nun-- which put each of us in quite a small minority. Later, when I became a teacher myself (of boys as well as girls) I realized that there are certain students one picks out of a class for no particular reason; learns their names immediately; become familiar with them instead of having to memorize their characteristics as with the others. It is not even necessarily that you like them more than the others: you just notice them. Maybe for Miss K. I was just one of those, at first.
On the first day Miss K. assigned us all to pairs. We were supposed to get together at study time and practice speaking and memorization. My partner, Rosemary, was lovely, and coincidentally a lot like Miss K, with a long fall of dark hair and pale skin. But Rosemary was plumper and less mysterious. Attracted by the general similarity I pursued Rosemary quite a lot in the guise of wanting to practice German. As a result we began doing very well, despite my lack of real enthusiasm for German, and Rosemary's tin ear for languages.
At this point I found myself for the first time in a kind of romantic triangle (although I certainly did not think of that word at the time). Rosemary's reaction to my pursuit of her had been gratifying: Aware of a special interest on my part, but not of its nature, she responded with great enthusiasm: sitting next to me at all times; constantly catching my eye and trying to share private jokes, all in a way which might have irritated me but in this siutation added to my excitement. Because Miss K. obviously found our friendship interesting. She had after all created in, in a way, by making us study partners. But her curiosity, when she intercepted our shared looks, was to me a sign of vulnerability, and this I found electrifying.
I had intimidated teachers before, but only involuntarily: only those teachers who were naturally afraid of students. Miss K. was not weak like these others: just, something had scratched her; intoxicated, I smelled blood. A kind of cyclic struggle for power began in which Rosewary grew more exhilarated by her vague sense of being the center of attention, while Miss K. began to fear a weakening of her hold on the class overall as the relationship between Rosemary and me began to occupy the attention of all the other students.
I knew this for sure, because one Friday afternoon I found myself riding a bus to Boston along with Miss K. I almost decided not to go after all when I saw her there at the terminal, dressed in a suit and holding a briefcase. Intriguing as it was to contemplate, for instance, taking a seat a couple of rows behind and watching her with complete license for an uninterrupted hour and a half, I feared a conversation in which, unprotected by Rosemary and by the routines of the classroom, I might have to hasten my experiment with Miss K. along or else bring it to a halt. I was actually planning how I would call my cousins and tell them I had decided to stay at school after all, when Miss K. spotted me.
'Isabel, how lovely to see you,' she said, holding out a hand. 'Are you going to Boston too? This is very fortunate.'
I followed Miss K. onto the bus. There were very few passengers. I took a seat to myself, across from and behind her. 'Come here and sit with me,' she said firmly.
As we pulled onto the highway Miss K. began talking as if she were resuming a conversation we'd been having before. 'You can afford to play around in class, Isabel, because of your talent for languages. But Rosemary cannot afford frivolity, and several of the other girls can afford it even less.' Miss K.'s voice was so low that I had to lean over and strain a bit to hear. 'Now I appreciate your enthusiasm, Isabel, and I do not want to punish such a good student; but believe me: if you disrupt the class, or defy me openly, I will have no trouble spanking you.'
Miss K. had so far spanked no one this term; I had begun to wonder whether she ever spanked. Now she had said this-- and said it in a tone which suggested she had some idea how drastically it affected me to hear it-- and I still had another hour to ride the bus with her. But she shifted abruptly into German; deciding, no doubt, to turn the hour to an educational purpose. It was a relief to be able to focus my mind on the difficulties on the language, not the prickling under my skirt.
I kept reliving the English part of that conversation, both awake and in dreams. The dreams were often near-nightmares, in which I saw Rosemary bending over and having her plump behind whacked. All my fault. In front of the class, perhaps, with everyone knowing that I was responsible for my friend being spanked. The really difficult part was that I liked the idea of watching Miss K. spank somebody, and there seemed to be no other candidates in our class-- since clearly Miss K. (unlike some of our other teachers) did not spank for slowness or for mistakes, however often repeated.
That conversation on the bus! As I replayed it in my head I grew more sure that when Miss K. said 'I'll have no trouble spanking you' she knew the peculiar effect it had on me.
I knew it was going to happen now; but I had no idea how easily-- in fact how unfairly. A couple of weeks after the bus ride, Miss K. asked Grace (a sadly misnamed girl) to supply the German word for 'horse.' A pause, a shake of the head from Grace. Miss K., who must have been feeling tired or demoralized that day, quickly gave up and wrote on the blackboard 'das Pferd.' Whereupon Grace, who for these two months had accepted everything told to her in class, asked 'Why do they call it that?' Miss K. inclined her head and then answered, 'Because that's the way horses talk.'
This unexpected bit of whimsy forced a laugh from me and when I tried to stop, I sputtered. Miss K. came around the table in what seemed like two steps. 'That's enough, Isabel!' she said. Grabbing my upper arm, she hauled me out of the chair so quickly that I dropped my pencil. Thinking that Miss K. meant to spank me over the table, I started to bend over. She pulled me back up and dragged me from the room. (After the spanking, my upper arm, into which she dug her fingers, would hurt more than my bottom.) We walked down the hall to the the first of the straight-backed chairs which were placed at intervals for just this purpose.
Miss K. sat in the chair. As quickly as I could, to avoid being pulled at and sprawling, perhaps landing with my legs apart, I lowered myself onto her lap. Miss K. lifted my skirt and began slapping: right across the center of my backside, always in the same place. Still, it hardly hurt at all. I don't know whether Miss K. had or ever used a paddle. If she made a practice of spanking with her hand, it was an odd decision, because her hand was very small. Her spanking was almost painless-- which added to the embarrassment somehow.
What I did feel was such an enormous rush of heat and wetness between my legs that I was afraid I was about to pee in my underwear, or else that Miss K. would think I had. The shape of her thighs felt weirdly distinct against my midsection, even through her skirt and my bunched-up clothing. My behind was not tense-- I was completely molten. In fact, I could hardly stand when it was over. I moved towards Miss K. and went to fall into her arms; but she held me at a distance.
Without asking persmission I went to the lav. I stood there until the bell rang, leaning against the partition of one of the toilets and masturbating, rubbing my myself furiously in between pinching and squeezing my own bottom, trying to produce some of the pain and heat with the spanking had failed to give me.
I was never punished for not returning to class. Maybe Miss K. was aware that the spanking was unfair and impulsive on her part. But then, I felt sure she was capable of doing it again. And one day, while she was berating the class for a batch of sloppy essays, in an access of nerves and irritation I held my pencil so tightly in both hands that it snapped in two. 'Out in the hall, Isabel,' said Miss K.
This time, bending over her lap, I lifted my skirt clear of my waist so that my naked thighs and thinly clad belly were pressed against her skirt. This spanking was as ineffectual as the first, but the erotic effect was even greater. I now began nearly every night masturbating to thoughts of Miss K. The fantasy usually began with spankings: over the knee, like the ones I had experienced, but administered with a short whippy stick, or a strap of some kind. Then there would be deep kissing, and then Miss K. would masturbate me.
Meanwhile Rosemary expressed worries that she too would be spanked. I reassured her: 'Don't worry, Rosemary: I really feel that this is something between me and Miss K.' Saying this, I became sure it was true.After a while, I began spanking myself frequently, bending over the side of the bathtub while water ran and reaching back to strike my buttocks and thighs with the plastic bath brush.
By now I wanted so much to receive a truly painful spanking that I considered doing something to attract one from any teacher at all, or from the Headmistress. I was perfectly willing to be slapped again on the panties any number of time; but my urgent desire was to find out what a 'whipping' felt like.
I longed to have Miss K. take me into the storage room where most whippings seemed to take place, and strap or cane me on my bare bottom. I wanted her to flog me furiously, scolding me the whole time. I wanted to cry and scream and be unable to sit afterwards. However, I did not really want to do anything to deserve such a punishment and such anger. I decided more or less to ask for a whipping.
One afternoon I wrote my daily essay on a single sheet of graph paper ripped from a spiral notebook. Large, dark writing on every line and on both sides of the page. Diacritical marks overlapping with the letters above. More or less illegible.
Miss K. drew my wretched sheet of paper from the stack of essays and set it to one side. 'Very well, Isabel,' she said. 'Meet me here at three o-clock.'
I was very tempted to masturbate, thinking about the whipping which was surely to happen that afternoon, and speculating: would Miss K. take me across her lap, or perhaps bend me over some piece of furniture? WOuld she scold me, or be silent as she was during the spankings in the hall? I supposed it was too much to hope that she would bare my bottom. Did I dare remove my panties myself? Most of all, I wondered about the implement. I had heard about both straps and switches. I liked the idea of being beaten with a rod; but what if the severity of the implement meant I would get only a few strokes? My fantasy beatings always involved many whacks, more than I could count. I thought about thses things, sometimes crossing my legs tightly but avoiding masturbation because I wanted to be excited and if possible have an orgasm while I was spanked.
When I joined Miss K. at the door of her classroom, she did not grab my arm as she had when I was to be spanked. She just walked slightly ahead of me, her back very straight. I noticed, not for the first time, that she had a very thin waist, which she exaggerated by wearing a dress which was tight on top but had a full skirt. She walked quite slowly and, it seemed to me, seductively.
The room appeared to have been prepared. There was a leather ottoman in the center, with a cushion, a bed pillow, set on top of it. Still carrying herself with exaggerated calmness, Miss K. went to a cupboard in the corner. 'Which do you want, Isabel? The strap or the stick?'
'Which is worse?' I asked.
'Oh, the stick, I believe. But I would rather not use it, to be honest. It is one thing to give you a red bottom; it's another to leave marks. On the other hand, I want to be sure that you get what you are after, so I will not have to do this again.' Miss K. looked at me in an open, level way as she said this.
Suddenly I felt quite ashamed at having created and exploited this situation. How obvious I had been about it, and how childish! The shame increased my desire for punishment, and my excitement at the prospect. I also wanted to apologize to Miss K., but I feared she might decide not to whip me after all. I would tell her later how sorry I was.
'Please use the strap on me, Miss K.'
The strap was less than two feet long; reinforced with something so that it was almost a combination of a strap and a paddle, and tapered, with a narrow handle and a wider striking surface. Miss K. slapped her own palm with it, quite hard, testing.
'All right, Isabel. Bend over that ottoman, with your knees on the ground. And-- now this is important-- I want you to get the corner between your legs. That will keep you in place and your bottom still. If any stroke goes wrong, it could be terribly painful.'
'What am I supposed to do with that pillow?'
'You can either hug it-- and put your face in it if you want to cry-- or put it under your hips to raise your behind up more. I think the latter is more usual, but I have no trouble spanking you either way.' (These last words brought back the conversation on the bus, and I felt a rush of emotion, recalling how odd and dreamlike the whole thing had been at first.
'Am I dreaming?' I said out loud, the words emerging involuntarily.
'Oh, Isabel,' Miss K. said. She seemed to be affected by the same emotion as me-- was that possible? I went over to the bench and began lifting my skirt. Miss K. came over and helped me gather it up. 'Do you want the panties off?' she said.
'Panties?' I repeated. What an embarrassing word. Miss K. was already pulling them down. Numbly I stepped out. She dropped them on the ottoman and then, in a final amzing gesture, put her arms around my shoulders and hugged me tightly.
I got into position, straddling the corner as I was told and hugging the pillow to my face, mostly so that I would not have to look at my own damp panties lying in front of me. Miss K. spanked hard and fast with the strap. She scolded me gently, however, saying things like 'Does this naughty little bottom need a spanking?'
I had my first orgasm almost at once, thanks to the way that the strap's action drove my mons up and down against the padded leather. However I was also almost instantly aroused again. I raised my bottom up to get the lower part smacked harder, and the strap fell just where I had in mind. Miss K. and I seemed to be in perfect communication.
With the second orgasm a flood of tears began. I was still excited, but not enough now to block out the pain; and my bottom really did hurt. I remembered that I was truly ashamed of the way I had baited Miss K., and I began sobbing 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' I don't know whether she could hear me as I was speaking largely into my pillow. At any rate she kept right on whipping. She only stopped when I became so exhauted that I rolled onto the floor.
Miss K., sat down where I had been, ignoring the very obvious moisture there. 'Come here,' Isabel,' she said, and pulled my head into her lap. Her hands trembled as she stroked my hair and shoulders. I knew she was aroused. I stood and pushed her over so that she lay back on the ottoman, and then I gave her the deep kiss I had always imagined. For one fraction of a second she let me proceed, and then her hand darted around and slapped my stinging behind. 'No, Isabel!'
I was never spanked again, while attending that school. However, once I went to university I did occasionally visit Miss K. On those occasions we both got spanked; we did a lot of kissing among other things. Sometime I will tell you about it in detail.