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Chapter 11: The Laying On Of Hands
An important part of the process of behavioural adjustment is the release of the student from the tyranny of self-concern. I bring this about by providing opportunities to endure discomfort and pain which serve as a distraction from lesser, more existential, matters. My students sometimes report heightened pleasure during some of these sessions. This is not, however, the purpose behind them. The purpose is to create in the student a separation from abstract concerns of self by focussing the mind on concrete matters.
To this end, I start and end each student’s day with the administration of some punishment or other. Sometimes this has been earned (my students soon discover that there are many ways in which they can transgress and so earn retribution) but, equally, on occasions it is arbitrarily applied.
In line with my usual practice, then, I found myself seated in the room at the rear of my house, looking out at the bright morning sunshine and the glowing colours of an English summer garden with the largely naked Miss Amanda Tusker draped across my lap, the globes of her buttocks presented pleasingly for my attention. Since the girls had started wearing their maid’s uniforms, the only time I was certain which I was dealing with was when they undressed and, in Amanda’s case, I could see her lower heels and the lack of padding in her corselet.
I say largely naked in two senses. She was both mostly naked (she still wore her corselet but her drawers had been lowered) and large in her nakedness. Although I feed my students adequately, I did not imagine that her diet would sustain the bulk she carried when first she presented herself to me. I was wrong. She was still wearing her maid’s corselet and hose but she had been stripped of her uniform. She still wore the hood with its doll face and slightly startled expression. She was about to undergo a paddling for a failure by her or her sister to complete the morning’s laundry. As she spread her weight face down across my lap, I wondered if I would need to arrange for greater padding in her sister’s costume to maintain the illusion of identicalness.
I had chosen a round leather paddle as the most suitable on this occasion. The paddle delivers a thick, widespread sensation of pain, quite unlike, say, the sharp, almost metallic sensation of being caned.
“Hands!” I ordered.
Amanda knew that she would be held while being punished and set her hands behind her back. I gripped her wrists with my right hand, pressing her down against my thighs. With my left I stroked, patted and pressed her buttocks, assessing how best to apply the punishment. I picked up the paddle and began.
Slowly slapping the thick leather down on alternate buttocks was not initially painful. Amanda wriggled on my lap, her buttocks and thighs rippling with each blow. As the strength of the blows steadily increased, the level of pain increased, the pinkness of her buttocks began to redden and her struggles increased. Although the gag muffled her cries to a series of inarticulate grunts, it was clear, from the way that she was shaking her head, that the blows were causing the required response. Although a cropping or whipping is useful for many punishments, I must confess to taking pleasure in the physical sensation of a struggling young lady across my lap. The erection was, I suppose, unfortunate but inevitable. Amanda, her attention focussed on the repeated impact of the paddle, appeared not to notice it.
After twenty heavy strokes, I could feel the heat of pain in her buttocks with my hands. Her own struggles had weakened as she had become disoriented, lost in sensations of pain. I released her. She stood and curtsied as I require at the end of each punishment. Normally I require my students to thank me for the benefit of correction but, of course, with her hood’s plug gag so firmly in place, she was unable to do so.
I told her to dress and watched as she became transformed once more to the appearance she shared with her sister. She curtsied once more when I told her to return to work and disappeared just as Estelle presented herself for the same treatment.
Beatings of various descriptions form an important part of the adjustment programme. I had imagined (correctly, as I later discovered) that corporal punishment had been a feature of the girls’ education prior to my arrival on the scene. I believed that its continued use would benefit from drawing a direct line back to their earlier formative experiences. Of course, such punishments did not represent the entirety of the measures that I employed, the wide range of behavioural adjustments needed meant that an equally broad range of training approaches have to be used. Even so I needed to ensure that punishment and restraint formed an important part of the girls’ daily routine.
One example is in the area of posture. I had noticed that, in common with many other young people, both girls were slack in the way that they carried themselves, slouching when they walked and sprawling when they sat. To overcome this I use a combination of measures. Of course the process of corseting helps. In addition to the corselet that the girls wear during their daily maid service, they each have a period wearing an outfit developed at my request by the remarkable combination of Madame Genoux (an expert corsetiere) and an expert leather worker of my acquaintance.
The outfit in question is a long-skirted, high-necked dress in thick leather. It incorporates a boning scheme of Madame Genoux’s to hold the waist and to keep the body straight. It includes a similarly boned arrangement for the neck which holds the head still and erect. The skirt is tightly laced at the rear and the boning of the corset extends over and below the hips to allow the wearer only the shortest of steps. The upper parts of the sleeves are attached to the bodice so that movement of the arms is only possible below the elbow. In combination, the constraints placed on the wearer encourage a general improvement in posture by requiring considerable attention to be paid to every movement.
The dress also had the amusing feature of openings for the breasts and buttocks, allowing appropriate punitive attention to be applied in the event of the required care in movement not being demonstrated.
As well as providing a physical restraint on the wearer’s posture, the garment added to the set of psychological conditioning processes that I employ. For the wearer, there is an increased emphasis on the fact that they have very little control over their appearance and their movements. This adds to the sense of self-effacement that I wish to inculcate. The fact that they can see the positive effect on others’ views of them (certainly my own response to the girls so dressed has been encouragingly priapic) adds to the positive feed-back that they gain from accepting that which is done to them.
Other measures in my programme are designed to combine this sense of self-effacement with increased self-esteem gained from a realisation of being valued for the performance of a service or duty valued by others. Too often in our society, self-esteem seems to be driven from a sense of being rather than achieving. We see this in the quest for celebrity and the idea that celebrity for its own sake is of value. This concept I try to reverse by providing the opportunity for my students to be of service in ways that are entirely independent of any personal attribute that the student may possess. To this end I have formed an association with a small group possessed of highly specialised interests.
One of the features of the New Victorian landscape has been a revival in the many and rich forms available for the expression of sexual desire and gratification. Fortunately the institutionalised prudery normally associated with the first Victorian era has not been seen in our own times and the range of clubs and associations celebrating, practicing and promoting obscure sexual practices is wide. Many put this down to the obviously loving and physical relationship between our monarch and her consort, Prince Albert the ninth of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha1. Some claim that the Prince has been a breath of fresh air to the institution of the monarchy. I would agree that his promotion of British industrial interests has been most beneficial but I still feel that the informality he has encouraged at court is to be deprecated. When Music Hall performers are dedicating performances of “You Can Call Me Al” to the Royal Family, you have to wonder if the boundaries of respect are being stretched too far.
There are those that believe my own methodology owes much to a personal interest in sado-masochistic scenarios. I say only that I use that which I perceive to work. Because of my work and the interest that it arouses, I have found myself in contact with many on the outer fringes of human sexual interest and occasionally I have been able to turn their enthusiasms to my own advantage.
Gordon Beckwith, the founder of the National Forum for Forniphilia, is one contact that I have found invaluable. The son of a master cabinet-maker, Gordon was brought up appreciating the fine lines of classic English furniture. His enthusiasm became a fixation through his adolescence and now the lines of a Hepplewhite chair or the fine marquetry and joinery of a George Seddon piece are as arousing to him as another man might find the glimpse of an ankle beneath the hem of a skirt or a flagrantly bared breast. But, to give the man his due, he decided in middle age that this fixation was unhealthy and sought treatment from an associate of mine at the Fritz Freleng Institute.
The cure was only partial and in some ways it is not a particularly good advertisement for the techniques of my colleagues. Nevertheless Gordon has embarked enthusiastically on a new life in which he is determined to fulfil the desires that his therapist has convinced him are his right. Now he recognises the potential for sexual interaction with women but he has not lost his love of furniture. He now combines the two desires and has found that there are many (well, some) like him, who enjoy the objectification of women as pieces of furniture.
(Actually, Gordon, in his own defence, claims that he is not interested in the objectification of women; his enthusiasm is for the sexualisation of objects, but it is probably not worth the quibble.)
He has been of help to me in the past and I was happy to oblige him when he asked if I could possibly supply additional furnishings for a planned meeting of the Forum members. Since an evening or more spent as simple components of a room’s furnishings seemed to exemplify my idea of a situation that allowed my charges to benefit from the self-effacement, I was inclined to agree to his request. Since he had further proposed that I would be reimbursed for any expenses incurred, and for my own inconvenience in the matter of the sisters' participation, I was happy to send them to him. I arranged for the girls to be despatched to the venue of Beckwith’s meeting as he had requested.
The event was to be a reception to celebrate the visit of the Viceroy for the Greater Levant. The Viceroy was an influential man and his planned visit had prompted a revival of interest in the artefacts and culture of the Middle East. The Greater Levant runs across the region from the Nile Valley to the two rivers of Mesopotamia and north to the edges of the Ottoman Empire. The newly discovered deposits of liquid coal in the southern extent of the Arabian peninsula offered the dream of economic growth. Together with the unification of the Arab nations under the banner of the British Empire, the Greater Levant represents one of the most formidable territories over which Her Majesty reigns.
Of course Gordon had not succeeded in actually getting the Viceroy to visit his event but this was not, he assured me, going to interfere with his group’s enthusiastic demonstration of support. He intended a splendid party celebrating the best of the region and a series of forniphiliac installations would show off the Forum’s ingenuity. He assured me that no harm would come to the girls. I was confident that this was the case. There was probably no group in London less likely to place the girls’ virtue at risk, even if they were not padlocked into their chastity belts. I handed the girls over to his transport contractor in the morning (they were dismayed but then I had not informed them of my plans for them) and looked forward to seeing just what he had done with them at the evening’s event.
Gordon had managed to persuade the Russell Square Museum of Empire to allow the use of its Egyptian Gallery as the venue for his event. Fortunately he had not suggested (as so many do these days) that the affair would require ‘fancy’ dress, so I was able to attend in my normal garb, a dress tail coat and breeches.
For the most part the guests were soberly dressed. Gentlemen mainly wore dinner jackets, although a few appeared in lounge suits; ladies were for the most part in formal evening dresses. The sober theme was not continued in the exhibits contrived by the members of the Forum. The extraordinary nature of the evening was apparent at once in the cloakroom where two girls, clad in the costumes of New Kingdom princesses, held aloft the rail upon which the guests’ coats were hung. Further princesses were standing, trays suspended from neck collars, serving drinks around the Gallery. I took a glass from one of these trussed and silenced dispensers and mingled with the group.
I am not a naturally sociable individual but there is always the chance of discovering a new client at such events and besides I was hoping to discover just what had been done with the two sisters.
It was as I put my glass down on an ingeniously designed table that I found Amanda first of all. She, too, was wearing the costume of a New Kingdom Princess. The pleated skirt, bare midriff, wrap-over covering for her breasts and the cobra headdress were all redolent of the mid-thirteenth century BC. She had been laid on her back in a mummiform coffin (the label suggested that it had been used for one of the many concubines of the Pharaoh), facing upwards, her arms crossed on her chest clutching the crook and flail familiar from Pharaonic burials. I could see that where her wrists were crossed, the ‘bracelets’ were in fact securing them one to the other. The lid of the coffin had been replaced by a single sheet of glass, providing the convenient surface on which I had placed my drink. Amanda could only look upwards as others came and went using the glass top to deposit drinks and plates. She seemed perfectly still; conscious but perfectly still. I was intrigued as to whether this had been the result of some soporific administered to make her docile for the purposes of her role in the event or was simply the consequence of being confined as she was. I went in search of Gordon to enquire about this and also the whereabouts of her sister.
I threaded my way through the gallery between impressive statues in basalt and granite of long dead pharaohs and their gods. Feeling the effects of the glass of wine I had drunk earlier I decided to take advantage of the museum’s toilet facilities and headed off through the door marked ‘Gentlemen’s Washroom’.
I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that Gordon had arranged for some of the facilities there to be equipped in the unique style of his organisation. To one side a pair of kneeling, bound girls offered a boot cleaning service; one had a selection of polish tins positioned in front of her and a stiff-bristled brush strapped to her face while the other had a soft polishing pad strapped to hers so that by bending forward in turn the two girls could apply and then buff off polish leaving the shoes of their customers gleaming. Standing beside the wash basins was another girl with a large ring hanging from the strap that gagged her. Threaded through the ring was a soft towel, readily available for anyone needing to dry his hands after washing.
Another girl, of uncertain function, knelt beside the urinal, seemingly awaiting the arrival of a gentlemen needing to use its facilities. I approached intending to ask her purpose but, as I reached her, she reached for the fly of my breeches, deftly extracted my member and held it steadily pointing at the porcelain. A very convenient service, I felt as I took advantage of the facility and relieved myself. As soon as I had finished she took great pains to squeeze the last drips from me before gently licking and sucking my member clean and returning it to my trousers. She bowed, obviously expecting no thanks, and then went to clean herself ready for the next client.
Returning to the gallery I finally found Gordon and congratulated him on the event. It was, he said, unfortunate that the Viceroy could not attend but he took great trouble to point out some eminent members of his staff and three respected members of the archaeological community, Evans, Carter and Woolley, who had all recently joined the Viceroy’s historical and cultural mission.
“Can you tell me how you keep the ladies who play such an important part in all this so docile?” I asked. “I am most impressed with the quiet acceptance that the girls are showing. It is quite uncharacteristic for any of my students to remain at rest for any length of time, I find. Are you using some chemical to achieve such levels of compliance?”
“No, not at all,” Gordon seemed hurt by the suggestion. “It was the great gift of the people at Freleng that helped me to realise that powerful influence is all that is needed. A quiet insistence on the desired behaviour is sufficient.”
“And where,” I enquired, “can I find Estelle Tusker? I see that Amanda is making her contribution.” I waved across to where her mummy case table had now become almost buried beneath a pile of half-empty glasses, ash trays and plates of partly eaten snacks, the usual detritus of such events. “However, I have failed to discover what you have done with my other student.”
Gordon smiled. “Of course, of course, old chap. She is here, do not fear. One moment please.” He reached into his jacket and took out a small notebook. Flipping it open, he flicked back and forth through the pages before at last alighting on one. “Ah yes!” he exclaimed, “Of course! Come with me.”
He led the way back across the gallery to one corner where a small group of armchairs, surrounding a girl-supported table, provided a quiet haven away from the rest of the party. A group of three men were sat in quiet contemplation of large glasses of brandy that sat on the glass plate held aloft on the back of the crouched girl beneath.
“The lamp,” he said, pointing.
I would not have realised it without his intervention. A dark skinned figure of an athletic-looking woman, naked from the waist up, wearing a white kilt-like skirt, stood stock still in the corner of the room. From the figure’s muscling and small breasts I took it to be Estelle, though the colouration of her skin would have fooled me.
“A simple vegetable stain,” Gordon assured me. “Artistic licence.”
Her face was covered by a black, jackal’s head mask with long upright pointed ears. In her hand she held a staff from which hung a lantern that cast a soft pale light over those seated around. It was only on close inspection that I could see she was quite unable to move, her legs locked in position by the way in which her shoes were secured to the base board on which she stood and by a stiff, vertical, rod fixed to her waist and neck rather like the posture device that I had used myself on the two of them.
“Anubis,” Gordon declared. “Rather good, don’t you think?”
Behind the jackal’s head mask, Estelle’s eyes flickered towards Gordon and myself but she made no move nor did she try to speak. I was content to let her continue in Gordon’s service for the remainder of the evening. He, in his turn, declared himself more than happy with the help that the two girls had provided.
© Freddie Clegg 2012
1 I was most intrigued to learn, during the writing of this short account, that the Prince's family had been enthusiastic supporters of the Confederacy during their successful confrontation with the Union. I was invited to present to a conference in Atlanta only recently but was unable to accept. More details of the family can be found here.
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