Schoolgirl against teacher

Last weekend I played schoolgirl again, sitting down to lessons with a small group of friends, revelling in a day of unabashed naughtiness. Although the classroom experience is not new to me, there are always moments of sharp mental pleasure that I can file away as some of my treasured memories.

This time, the day was spiced up with several encounters with one of our three teachers, Mr Basford (also known as my good friend Richard). To the intense discomfort of my schoolgirl alter-ego Sylvie Barnable, he taught art. I’m not just bad at art – I’m inept to the catastrophic degree. After trying for a couple of minutes to master the shading trick that looked so easy when other people were doing it, I gave up. I could earnestly try and fail, or I could just draw something unrelated and borderline obscene in the corner of my sheet, and get into trouble.

It didn’t take Mr Basford too long to notice what I still claim was a cannon (to illustrate our previous lesson on Napoleonic wars). He called me to the centre of the room and administered a quick, efficient strapping. I’m not good with straps, but I took it as valiantly as I could, and returned to my place. “Barnable, if you don’t try, you don’t get better,” Mr Basford said. “If you don’t pick up your pencil and work, I will cane you.”

I didn’t want to be caned right then, and I felt uncomfortable being the centre of attention, so I did pick up my pencil. I also moaned and knocked my head against the wall several times, just to express how unlikely I thought any progress in my artistic skills was. I didn’t expect for a second to get into trouble for this small act of rebellion, but Mr Basford immediately told me to come back into the centre of the room. “But sirrr,” I whined, “I was going to do it, I was!” I thought I was surely in for a caning now, and was glad of a brief strapping that would serve as a warm-up. However, I was ready to take it in stride.

Instead, Richard did something that completely undid me: he placed a chair in the middle of the room, and told me to bend over his lap. My 16-year-old alter ego was struck dumb with the embarrassing horror of it: it’s hardly ever done, spanking a girl over the knee in the classroom, in front of all her friends. “Please, sir,” I whispered, begging uselessly. The teacher was unrelenting, and over his lap I went, half-cringing with embarrassment, half-faint with pleasure from being so expertly derailed.

The spanking was stingy, brisk. I couldn’t help whimpering and squirming around. Richard is a tall man, and I’m a small girl, so my feet didn’t touch the ground; I felt very high up and vulnerable – and when he picked up a small wooden paddle, I abandoned all thought of dignity. It stung a lot, and I kicked a lot, and it just went on stinging. Overall I didn’t take it very well, and by the time the ordeal was over, I didn’t even care.

I was only starting to pull myself together when the next lesson began. All through the day, the girls took turns to be sent out of the classroom for private interviews with one of the free teachers, to pay for random sins committed (or concocted) previously. I’d completely forgotten my turn was coming up soon, but when the immaculate Miss Marwood arrived to teach us etiquette, she produced a pink slip and read it out. “Sylvie Barnable, report to Mr Basford.”

My jaw fell. “Oh, fuck,” I blurted, clutching my head, and knew at once what I’d done, and my heart nearly stopped. At least it got a laugh out of my classmates.

“But first, come out here and bend over,” said Miss Marwood without skipping a beat. “I won’t tolerate profanity in my classroom.”

Thus it was that I arrived at the private punishment session with Mr Basford with my bottom stinging from a freshly delivered dose of the strap.

Here, he continued his effective campaign of making me feel as vulnerable as possible. My sin was lack of effort in my studies, which, he said, was blatantly obvious from my conduct at his lesson. Where otherwise I might have gone for a “But sir, I’m trying!” defence, here I was trapped and exposed: clearly, as witnessed by the art lesson, I hadn’t been   trying at all. “Take off your skirt and knickers, you won’t need them for a while,” said Mr Basford, pushing aside the magnificent whipping bench, and picking up a chair, clearly intent on continuing our conversation from ten minutes before. “You seem hardened to the cane now, Barnable, so let’s see what we can achieve with a good spanking.”

If I’d had any fight left in me, any insolence, a stray smart remark – they were all gone now. I’m surprised I didn’t burst into tears – but that was, perhaps, because in the background I couldn’t help purring with pleasure of being so deftly played. I bent over his lap, and sighed forlornly as I saw my toes leave the floor. He pushed my back down, getting me bent all the way over, and resolutely clamped his right leg over both of mine. “There’s been too much kicking from you,” he said, thus securing me in place.

I can’t describe the sheer delicious terror of being so intimately immobilised. The most secure handcuffs can’t compare with warm physicality of an arm around my waist and a leg over the back of my knees. I was disarmed, turned into a small, submissive thing ready to repent my sins and promise nothing but stellar behaviour. The spanking, when it came, was firm, but still light enough that I could focus on my helplessness, fully savour my predicament. It didn’t grow truly uncomfortable at any point, although it hurt just enough for me to struggle, squirm and yelp to my heart’s content. And I did.

Eventually, there was a caning to finish off my punishment, and Mr Basford had been right: I would normally be well equipped to shrug it off – but I was still feeling small, and vulnerable, and very much susceptible to discipline. It was a good, solid full stop, though: something familiar to bring me back into senses. Sharp, clean pain of the rattan to wake me up and send me back to class almost myself again.

I don’t think I was meant to enjoy my punishment quite so much.