Bad Girls (17 page)

Furthermore, the plan would depend entirely on my discretion. I would be in a highly corruptible position, he pointed out, what with desperate, guilty women willing to do anything so I wouldn't report their transgressions to their lovers far from home. He warned that he might test my honesty by sending a woman to me who professed to be in such a situation. I assured him that I would be unimpeachable and asked if he would like to witness the trial run of his plan that coming Friday.

He accepted my invitation and that Friday he and Laura arrived in the afternoon, my last appointment of the day. Previously, I had turned a butler's blind eye to the nature of the relationship between the gentlemen and the ladies they brought to me. Furthermore, I had always been certain to act with a tailor's trained indifference to the body upon which he is fitting his clothes. I had pretended not to notice the sometimes conspicuous age difference between the men and their feminine company. I had never inquired as to the background of the women with whom I spent my day, nor had I made any effort at conversation at all. I acted as if each were the highest born lady, responding to them when they were alone and let their accents slip the same way I did when they spoke like the queen in the presence of their gentlemen escorts. In short, I had never done anything to make the women anxious or inhibited as I spent many hours so near to their exposed bodies that I knew every freckle and every hair on it. I had never done anything I thought might imperil my privileged position in the employ of their gentlemen, for I knew that a whisper from the lady about me would cause them all to go running to another tailor.

But that refined indifference to the bodies and the position of the women upon whom I sewed stockings was bound to change with the appointment that Friday. I was to be their gentlemen's proxy. I was to violate the body of the women on the gentlemen's behalf, and I was to be the custodian of their feminine flesh in the gentleman's absence. I was the enforcer of her virtue. My stitches, a fashion accessory the previous week, were to become an instrument of the gentlemen's sadism and a marker of his property. The status of the women was to become pierced into the flesh of their soft, alabaster buttocks: they were property, privileged chattel. I was the groundskeeper of the gentleman's domain.

Moreover, the bodies I had previously been so careful to ignore were to become my focus. My cultivated sense of indifference, no matter how dishonest, to the fine, private parts of the body would be shattered, as I would need to direct all my attention, plus an extra degree of personal sadism, to fulfill my duty. I would be far from indifferent as I pinched the fleshiest crown of each buttock and pierced it with my finest needle, pushing inward towards her crack and under the surface of her skin until I brought the needle out a fraction of an inch away, creating a stitch unlike any other I had ever seen.

I had been imagining it all week. I speculated on the consistency of flesh under my needle. I even wondered if I should practice first on myself, but in the end my disinclination to feel pain won out over my desire to feel well prepared. Laura's flesh was the first I ever pierced with a needle. It was lovely flesh that belonged to an equally lovely woman. Laura had always been friendlier with me than most. She joked and smoked and chatted the hours away when I would be sewing her stockings. She understood her position and did nothing to pretend to be something she wasn't. So, on that Friday, when she mounted the platform upon which she always stood when I sewed her stockings, it didn't surprise me that she lowered her knickers without hesitation, pulling them down below her knees and then lifting her feet one at a time before handing me the small, luxurious bit of silk and lace to put aside. She wouldn't need them again until she returned to me after the night out. I admired them and put them aside, smelling distinctly the traces of excitement emanating from them, an excitement that could only have been a fraction of my own.

It seemed to take forever for my seam to climb the length of her legs. Finally I was higher than I had ever been before, above where her suspenders would have been and up to where I couldn't help but touch her where I'd never touched her before. Each time my fingers grazed the hair between her legs I had to discreetly dry them on my own trousers. I could only conclude that my patron's sadism was matched by his mistress's affection for her ordeal. I fitted the stockings around her waist, stitched up the seams that linked the various pieces of silk between her legs, and proceeded with the seam that went up the crack of her bottom. The piece of loose mesh I placed in her crotch would serve its purpose well, letting urine through without offering even the least endowed man the opportunity of entry without tearing it. Finally I was done. The moment had arrived. I paused and she looked down at me, took a long drag on her cigarette, exhaled, and waited.

‘Well, go on then,' she said.

I lowered my eyes to the flesh of her buttocks and swabbed it with the alcohol like I'd seen doctors do. Then I took her flesh between the fingers of my left hand and guided the needle in with my right, as smoothly and gently as I could. I felt her gasp and struggle not to tense her buttock.

‘Almost done,' I said. It was a lie I would repeat endlessly throughout my medical career. A spot of blood trickled from the point where the needle entered and exited. I had a scrap of clean cotton on hand to dab it. When the blood continued I pressed the cotton on the flesh and held it there on her buttock for several minutes, all the while reflecting on the dizzying reality of attending to the most intimate parts of this woman's body and the most private parts of her life. After repeating the procedure on her other buttock and helping her dress without unnecessarily disturbing the healing wounds, we awaited her lover's return. Then after a long silence she said something I would never forget.

‘Once he's gone you'll be the only man who can give me what I need.'

I was so young and inexperienced then that I didn't know what to say. Was this something her lover had told her to say so as to test my behavior? What was it she needed? What would she ask of me? Her lover arrived before I could get answers to any of these questions, but over the next months I came to learn the answers many times over. Indeed, I have Laura to thank for my understanding of the intricacies of a woman's anatomy. She was a far better teacher than any in medical school.

She must have found me equally satisfying, because word spread about these additional services as well. Indeed, there were many women who had unmet needs now that their men were at war. The most unusual thing, though, was the nature of these needs. If they had simply needed sex or money or attention, they could have gotten them anywhere, but what it seemed they needed was something a good bit more specific. They needed the ritual of their untying – even more intense now that it involved unbinding their flesh itself – to get them off, to prime them, and once primed, they needed to fuck to come down off their frantic high. They had come to pair the untying and the sex so tightly that one without the other became quite unimaginable. No man without my skill at stitching and unstitching could satisfy them.

Far more frequent than the occasional woman who came anxious to pay me off to cover for a tryst with another man (I never accepted such bribes anyway) were the women who had behaved well throughout the night, knowing the many layers of supervision put in place by their possessive and jealous men, only to beg me to fuck them after I had delicately undone their seams. By the time they stood on my tailor's pedestal dreaming of what used to be done to them after those stockings came off, they were quite beside themselves with desire. It was after the evening of restraining their every urge that they arrived on my doorstep, knowing I was the one person so deep in the trust of their gentlemen, so unsupervised, and so corruptible. If they were going to get their needs attended to, it would be by me. And more often than not, I acquiesced.

At first I was nervous that one of the men would try to entrap me, but that turned out to be an empty threat. Maybe they didn't have the resources to finance it or maybe they couldn't find a woman willing to get her ass flesh sewn just to inspect the workings of my shop. Indeed, apart from my own indulgence, I adhered more-or-less strictly to the gentlemen's requests, enforcing the women's fidelity and inspecting their stockings for any sign of mischief. The ones who claimed a toileting emergency were subject to the sort of examination that might detect sexual activity. The first exams I gave, like the first sutures, then, occurred in my role as tailor, not medical student. The ones who didn't show up at all or who showed evidence of sexual activity got reported to their lovers at war, even after all the tears and pleas to forgive her just this once. She didn't know what had gotten into her. He had practically forced her. She hadn't had a choice. It didn't matter.

On the rare occasion, if I like a girl, I would let her off with a harsh spanking and a warning never to let it happen again, but generally I knew that this sort of leniency would come back to bite me if offered too freely. So as much as I enjoyed administering the spankings on the already wounded bottoms, I generally restrained myself and did as I'd been instructed.

Sometimes a woman would disappear entirely. I would later hear that she had gone off with another man and had no wish to try to deceive. In fact, some men took great pride making women break their vows: ‘to unthread', ‘to come undone', or ‘to undo' came to mean that you had convinced a woman to take out her stitch and fuck you, at the expense of obvious discovery. The four small spots of blood that stained the sheets when she'd been fucked on her back were kept as mementos by these gentleman. ‘To tie the knot' and other expressions took on a whole new meaning as well.

When the war finally ended these practices were among the many things that suddenly became outdated, obsolete, and truthfully, better forgotten. I had become quite good at sewing a suture, though, and easily got a job at a veteran's hospital. There I learned enough of the basics of anatomy, pathology and medicine to apply to medical school and be accepted. But I never forgot my time as a tailor, and I consider the gentleman's stitch to be the greatest fusion of my two vocations.

He finished to a round of hearty applause and enough additional toasts that more bottles of port had to be fetched. We wanted him to tell us more, but it was getting late. Finally, after years of distinguishing himself with his tireless energy, Dr Weaver showed his age and fell asleep right where he sat. The hint of a smile that remained on his face suggested that his dreams were continuing where his story had left off. The rest of us, too, were left to dream about having a youthful secret as delicious as Dr Weaver's.

It's really nothing short of a miracle that I'm still married. Twenty years now, nineteen of them unhappy. What happened? It's said that small things make a big difference in a marriage, and that's certainly true for us. There was no way of knowing it at the time, but it all began with what our daughter Rachel brought home from school one day.

It was just a plane envelope, addressed to me. I didn't know what it was, but Rachel was clearly mortified by what she was holding. She offered it to me with a few mumbled words. When I opened it and unfolded the enclosed papers, I saw the words
Corporal Punishment Policy
written in bold across the top of the first page. As I began reading it became clear that this was the release parents signed to give permission so the teachers could paddle their children. To tell you the truth, I was shocked to learn that they spanked students in schools. If I hadn't read it myself I would have thought the practice had died out years ago. While I was taken aback, poor Rachel was positively beside herself, her hands trembling, her face red with shame, and her voice reduced to a whisper. I could tell that putting her never-been-spanked backside at the mercy of a bureaucratic form was nearly more than she could stand. I couldn't blame her. Her mother and I didn't believe in spanking her, never mind allowing some rogue at the high school the pleasure of laying a finger on her. I would have sent a letter of protest to the school board, but I didn't want to cause Rachel anymore embarrassment.

Instead, I did a little investigating and found out that the issue had come before the school board several years before. There had been a gang of vigilante teachers who fought long and hard to retain corporal punishment. The release forms had been a compromise solution. It pained me to think that there were spanking zealots out there devoted enough to their cause to stand up and give speeches extolling the virtues of corporal punishment. It pained me even more to think of the students who had to live in fear of them. It is one thing to be paddled and quite another to know you're going to get it from someone who is so fanatical about it. People like that aren't the type to have any sympathy for the poor teenagers. Would letting these kids enjoy their adolescence without fear of a brutal beating be too much to ask? Aren't the teenage years hard enough without adding a caustic mix of shame and sadism to them? The thought of Rachel at a school where certain of her teachers would eagerly make her classmates cry with pain nearly caused me to send her to a more progressive, private school.

Yet it might surprise you to find out that I never completely dismissed the value of spanking. Indeed, I have since found them to be highly useful when used in the correct setting. Don't get me wrong: I still think that paddlings should be forbidden in high school, for they are almost always given to those who either don't deserve them or won't learn anything from them anyway. In fact, it wouldn't be overstating my position to say that I'm against the spanking of children under most any circumstance. Children are bound to make mistakes and should be given the latitude to do so without fear of parents who beat their own flesh and blood. I still remember my friends' tears when they heard they were going to ‘get it' when their fathers got home from work. Even as a child, I knew it was wrong that a father's return should cause such terror, even if it was a consequence of having stolen some candy from their sister or failing to do their chores. I remember thinking there had to be a better way to teach right from wrong.

And the failure of the pedagogic component of spanking doesn't even begin to touch on spanking's inevitable sexual connotations. The baring of a bottom, sometimes by the parent of the opposite sex, sometimes in the company of other children and adults, often for the purpose of causing humiliation as well as intensifying the pain, just seems sick. It's simply unnecessary to teach a child that their bottom is something to be ashamed of, to be beaten, or to pay the price of a mental mistake in physical pain. As they grow, children will recognize that many of their body parts have special significance – most of all those body parts that we cover with clothes and hide from the opposite sex. But until then, let them be free with their bodies. The fear and shame will catch up with them soon enough.

In short, spankings aren't fit punishments for the inevitable misdemeanors that pepper a child's life. No, a punishment that causes erotic shame and humiliation at the same time it causes physical anguish should be reserved for those who inflict those forms of pain on others. With people like this, getting a spanking may be the best way to teach them how their actions make others feel. They might require a taste of their own medicine. Paddling at high school is no remedy, for these are the ones who would never get paddled in high school. They were the golden ones, the ones who could do no wrong. Even the teachers were scared of them.

In my high school experience, it was the fairer sex that administered the cruelest blows, so it was for girls that I reserved most of my thoughts of punishment. The sort of girl who came to mind didn't just reject you but held you in contempt for deigning to ask. Their words said no, but their tone says who the hell are you to talk to me? They were the ones who would ask me for help on their homework or copy my tests and then tease me because my grades were good. They could kill me with a single word, and I don't think I ever fully recovered. Even when I was old enough to have a daughter in high school, I was still haunted by my own high school years. Ultimately, I think this was the reason I had an unhappy marriage. Coming out of high school I married the first girl who said yes to me – Jane Miller – and took a job in quality assurance, where I could tell others what they had done wrong and not vice versa.

It might seem like a lot to conclude from Rachel's school's corporal punishment policy, but that was only the beginning. In the end it didn't just help me understand what was wrong with my marriage; it helped me understand what I had to do about it. It got me wondering about payback for those girls who had made me feel this way. What would happen if the ghosts of all the boys they made feel small and worthless came back to haunt them? What if they had to feel as bad as they made others feel? Once I thought of it, the idea of teaching them a lesson made more and more sense. Soon punishing them became something of a fixation. Hurting them wouldn't be enough. It would require that I strip them of their dignity, shame them, draw them in and crush them, just like they did to me. I would spank them, hard and long, like they should have been spanked in high school but never were. I would give them what they deserved plus interest, because pain like that doesn't fade, it compounds.

Though there were many who deserved it, two girls were clearly at the top of my list: Ashley and Rebecca. They were the big ‘no's' of my life, the duo I would never forget.

I still saw them around, too. Rebecca worked at the high school and never married. Ashley married a former football star who became a lawyer, but her marriage ended in an acrimonious divorce. At the time mine wasn't officially over, but it was as good as dead. Jane had finally left to live with her family a thousand miles away.

We were theoretically still working on it, so we hadn't told anyone, but if working on it required communicating more often than once a month, there wasn't much work getting done. Ironically, the route back to my marriage took me through Ashley and Rebecca.

I don't know what suddenly gave me the courage to put my plan for payback into motion, but once I began I found it far easier than expected. The coy teases of high school were the burgeoning sluts of the divorcée set. They weren't all that now, and far less discriminating in the attention they accepted. They needed to feel good about themselves and if they couldn't do it by making others feel bad then they would have to do it in some other fashion, often on their backs with their legs spread. They saw how much they mattered reflected in the eyes of others – seeing the look of injury in the eyes of those they bested was good; better still was seeing the look of hunger and need in the eyes of men. I wasn't going to be gotten the best of, nor was I going to need them. No, in my eyes they would see their own contempt reflected back. I would only give a shit as much as was required to get them bare-bottomed across my lap. In games like this, turnabout was fair play.

It began one day during a chance encounter with Ashley at the grocery store, but even I had no idea how it would go until the missing piece fell into place. I could neither have foreseen nor premeditated anything as awful as what I actually did. It is only with enormous regret – and because it is essential to understanding the rest of the story – that I even relate it to you now, for the lie that made it all possible was something I had never in my wildest dreams thought I would tell. But at that moment it was too great a temptation to resist. With a simple, undetectable lie, I could get the upper hand with Ashley once and for all.

I was on the produce aisle, reading the little how-to instructions that accompany pineapples.

‘So, Bruce Harris can't even cut up a pineapple?'

‘Ashley?'

‘Don't you remember me? You had such a little crush on me in high school. You were so cute.'

Little? Cute?

‘Are you okay?'

She sensed the pained look that crossed my face the way a shark senses blood. At that very moment I thought of the only way I could possibly avoid yet another humiliating encounter. I didn't have time to weigh the moral sacrifice against the psychological gain, nor did I have time to assess the risks and rewards. All I knew was that I could finally win. I could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I think the temptation would have been too great for any man to resist.

‘It's nothing,' I said, crossing the point of no return.

‘What?'

‘Really. It's nothing.'

‘No, Bruce, you can tell me.'

I was still having qualms about the plan. Pangs of conscience were making me hedge, but she was merciless, coming in for the kill under the guise of caring concern. The bitch. I began my final approach. Mate in six.

‘It's just that the pineapples…'

‘Bruce, are you okay?'

‘Well, they remind me of her.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘She used to cut them up.'

‘Who?'

‘Jane. She always cut them up and that's why I never learned how.'

‘How sweet. You miss her. Is she out of town, Bruce?'

I welcomed her condescension. Pile it on. She was right where I wanted her.

‘Oh, no. You haven't heard?'

‘Heard what, Bruce? Oh, my God! She hasn't left you, has she?'

Enjoy your
Schadenfreude
while it lasts, Ashley.

‘She's gone.'

‘You mean?'

‘Yeah. Cancer.'

There. I'd said it. Game, set, match.

‘Oh, my God, I'm so sorry.'

‘It's been a hard year for Rachel and me.'

‘It's been that long? I didn't hear anything.'

‘There wasn't any fuss. You know Jane. She wouldn't have wanted any.'

‘No, I guess not.'

Her voice faded and she looked very small. What's it like to be had, Ashley? What's it like to be the one who feels like a fool for a change?

‘It's just too hard,' I said, putting the pineapple back.

‘No, no, no, you should get it if you like it.'

‘It used to be my favorite fruit, but now…'

‘You'll be able to cut it up. It's easy.'

‘I don't even know where Jane kept a knife like this.' I gestured to the curved knife in the little brochure.

‘Oh, I have one.'

‘I just…'

‘Wait, I have a great idea. Why don't you come over? I'll show you how to do it.' Ashley brightened as she offered herself to me, as if she had come up with a way out of feeling bad.

‘You mean it?'

‘Yeah, why not?'

‘Well, Rachel does have extra band practice this evening. I'm free for a couple of hours.'

‘Sure, let's forget about the groceries. We'll buy the pineapple and go to my house.'

‘Ashley, you're such an angel.'

‘Really, it's nothing. You can follow me. I'll be driving the…'

‘The SUV?'

‘How'd you know? Oh, Bruce, you haven't changed a bit. You always were the funniest guy in high school.'

She let me in the cavernous house her ex had bought to show what a man he was, led me through the marble-floored foyer and into the kitchen. Her Vulcan stove, stainless utilities and cherry cabinets looked mostly unused; only the inside of the microwave was coated with enough grime to look like someone actually lived here.

‘Oh, my poor dear, you must be so lonely.'

She stroked my chest. I knew I was a charity case, but she was walking right into the trap. Pretty soon ‘no' wouldn't be a word she was capable of uttering.

‘I've been managing.'

‘It's okay, Bruce. My first year without Ted was just awful. It gets better, though.'