Probation Officer #109: Sa’afia’s punishment night 4

Posted on November 13, 2013 by jaime

Sa’afia lay across her bed, her arms and legs spreadeagled. I’d tied her wrists and ankles to the bed’s legs. I don’t think she’d been thinking about how easily she could be tied to it, when she’d bought her bed. Or perhaps she had thought about it, alone in the dark sometimes. The bed did well enough. She looked great.

When I’m introducing someone to submission, I don’t usually have much of a plan beforehand. I pretend there’s an agenda, but mostly I just have a few ideas to fall back on if I lose the flow. I try a direction and see what she responds to, and watch the responses carefully. Submissive responses are sexy and beautiful in their own right, and they show where I should go next.

The rod was one of our fixed points. I’d promised Sa’afia she’d get a thrashing with that polished wooden stick, and it had to happen. I thought it would lead to her being “made” to suck my cock while her ass burned. That would be a new experience for her, though not a new thought, full of new meanings, sensations and potentials.

I put a pillow under her ass and ran some cord over her hips and thighs, tying the cord to the sides of the bed. It wasn’t so much to restrict her movements, but so she could feel it against her skin when she moved. I wanted her to feel bound. I was being a good host, I hoped. A strange thing is that it would be hard to tell which would give me more pleasure, guiding Sa’afia into that new place, or feeling her mouth on my cock. Still, I didn’t have to choose.

Sa’afia made her little noises of pain and concentration while I striped her upper thighs with the rod. Her ass was already well striped, with some of the red lines raised a little into welts. Her skin was hot to the touch. It was time to re-visit those lines across her buttocks. I raised the rod, and the ante. Time to go harder: we were going to take her flogging up a couple of notches.

That’s the memory. It’s the moment when I was certain Sa’afia was flying, that we were in tune, and that I could take her further than we’d expected. It was wonderful that Sa’afia was tied, and that I was slowly building up the heat in her ass. But it was a psychological moment.

I’d paused at that moment. I knew she’d moan at the extra pain that the next stroke would impose, and that a second after the rod had landed across her buttocks the pain would turn to something floaty and sexual. I can only ever know that state of mind by imagination. I watched her, reading what I could of her sensations. I couldn’t go to that place myself, but it felt good to take her there.

Probation Officer #108: Sa’afia’s punishment night 3

Posted on November 12, 2013 by jaime

Tableau 3: Sa’afia lay on her belly, hands still tied, cunt still stressed, just inside her lips, by two tight strips of soaked silk. I had three fingers in that silk-lined and sensitive cunt, while with my other hand I spanked her, quite hard, in time with the movement of her hips. Her bottom rose to meet my hand, and, freshly stung, fell again to stretch the silk and press herself onto that glistening knot just below her clitoris.

She was working on her orgasm, and we both knew that she was one movement, or at most three or four, from going over. Her breathing was fierce and fast. But the instant I remember is the second before she came.

She looked up at me, washed in sweat, and there was terror in her eyes.

The orgasm she was building was too big. It was like surfing and finding, just as the wave was going to break, that it was as high as an office block.

I know that a second after I’d seen her fear I’d said to her something like, “I’m holding you, love. You’ll be fine.”

After I’d spoken, Sa’afia screamed and came. Not because of what I’d said.But she screamed again, and her contractions felt like they were going to break my fingers.

But the vivid memory isn’t her orgasm. it’s that look of fear and amazement at her own sensations, and her nervousness about letting go as hard as she wanted to.

That moment stuck, with the sounds and smells, and the discomfort of my left hand cramped wetly in her cunt, and my right hand warm from smacking her.

But it’s that terrified look that fixed that instant in time. The eyes have it.

Probation Officer #107: Sa’afia’s punishment night 2

Posted on November 11, 2013 by jaime

2 Sa’afia had put her wrists together behind her back. I’d told her to. She liked obeying very easy orders. I’d wrapped two old silk ties – nice fabric, but unfashionable cut, so they were only good for low-budget bondage – round both wrists, then round each wrist, with a non-slip knot. I took the long ends and slipped them down between her buttocks, then between her thighs, pulling them tight against her cunt.

Sa’afia had pressed and rubbed the silk, breathing hard, until the ties disappeared between plump lips. I’d smacked her bottom as a kind of reward, and told her to get her ass up. While she complied, making a rounded tripod of her chest and her parted knees, with her ass at the apex, I’d run the ties under her.

Not quite like this. But it's a pretty [picture anyway.

It wasn’t quite like this. She was prone, not sitting. But the emotion is right, and it’s a pretty picture anyway.

I knotted the two ties just below the nub of her clitoris, so she could press against that nice hard gathering of silk. The knot allowed me to separate the two ties, so each came back up a different hip. Then I tied the ends to her wrists. Her movement wasn’t much restricted, apart from her arms and hands, but she could turn any move of her ass or any micro-movement of her wrists to pleasure.

The moment at which this memory still is centred is when her fingers felt for mine while I tied the silken ends together.

The silk, where it re-appeared below her cunt, was already wet. She smelled of arousal, and cocoanut oil and soap and spices, a red spice I couldn’t name. She had turned her head so her eyes were on me. I amused her, I think, just then, but she didn’t smile.

Probation Officer #106: Sa’afia’s punishment night I

Posted on November 10, 2013 by jaime

1 Sa’afia lay long and strong across my knee. She wasn’t being spanked. She expected to be, since she’d asked so sweetly to be punished. I couldn’t remember what it was that I was supposed to be punishing her for. It didn’t matter because I knew Sa’afia didn’t remember either, and she wasn’t going to ask me. Anyway, she’d expect that if she asked I’d be sure to punish her for forgetting.

She wasn’t a remotely silly or gullible person, but in that moment she believed that I knew everything important about what was happening, that I was in charge, and that all was well in the world because I cared for her and was just.

She could feel that way because it was a sexy thing to think, and because she could rationally know that if I could help it I’d do nothing to shatter that faith.

Her ass was raised a little, not to much to invite the spanking she expected but because I had the lips of her cunt held firmly between my right thumb and forefinger. I had to hold and squeeze very hard, because she was very wet. She was getting wetter, demanding a tighter grip. Her buttocks trembled slightly, with the effort she put into being still.

She’d drawn in her breath and was still holding it because a few seconds ago I had twisted her lips hard to the right, as if they were a key, before relaxing back to vertical. She was expecting another twist. She was not wrong.

Probation Officer #105: Tableaux vivants and memory 3

Posted on November 7, 2013 by jaime

So this old man I’d talked to had performed in tableaux vivants, which is showbiz of a kind, because a British official called the Lord Chamberlain said naked people could appear on stage but not move or talk. It was an odd kind of erotic art, and censorship created it.

Ken Tynan, right hand on prominent display.

And he got pushed out of showbiz again because Ken Tynan and others succeeded in getting rid of the office of Lord Chamberlain and getting theatre censorship relaxed. There was no more demand for performers whose only talent was keeping still.

This was a lesson in how life works. I can’t think of any time that lesson was actually any help to me, but at least it gave me some philosophy.

Well, it gave me one other thing: a thought about memory.

I hadn’t had much sexual experience at 17, but I wasn’t a virgin. It occured to me, later, that the way I remembered my first time, and the other times, was exactly like a tableau vivant sequence.

My first time, the girl had kissed me, and shown me how to kiss for longer than I’d been doing till then. I remembered how to do what she showed me how to do, but I can only recreate the experience of one instant of that lesson.

In that moment there was her hair on my face, my tongue in her mouth, the arch of her back under my hand that told me I was getting it right, the taste of popcorn warm and salty in her mouth (we’d been to the movies), and a sound she made, that I thought might have been desire. I’d never heard that from a girl before.

He’ll never forget the first time he held a tit in his hand.

Then there are things that must have happened, but the next memory I can entirely recreate is having her right breast in my hand, her nipple hard against my palm, and thinking how odd that hardness was, and how uncomfortable my cock was, trapped in underpants and tight jeans. I remember her breast and her collarbone.

I vaguely remember that there was a process by which I’d got to that point.

She’d had a shirt on so I’d unbuttoned it. I hadn’t wanted to embarrass myself fumbling with the bra so I’d tugged it aside. But that isn’t a clear memory and I will have made some of it up, something plausible that fits the gaps in the real memory.

But the feel of her breast in my palm is a real, tactile memory.

And so on. I’m not going to tell the whole story of my first fuck, because it’s not very different from anybody else’s. I’m making the point that what we think of as vivid memories aren’t vivid all the way through. They’re really a series of vividly remembered instants.

By the way, the next remembered instant, or tableau, is when I’d just undone her jeans. She’d lain back because she’d done with teaching. it was my job to be the man, as she saw it. She smelled warm and her lower belly was pale, and the floral cotton of her knickers. Which had to come down and off, fast. I felt some fear, but more excitement.

That’s enough of Jaime’s Virginity Story.

But Sa’afia’s Punishment Night is a similar kind of memory. Bits of it are immensely clear: still pictures with sound, feel and smell. Bits of it are a bit vague, and some of the time I don’t remember at all.

So that’s why the story of Sa’afia’s punishment night is told in a slightly odd way. It’s the best I can do, to make sure the things I say about that night are only true things.

Come back tomorrow. Y’all.

Probation Officer #104: Tableaux vivants and memory 2

Posted on November 6, 2013 by jaime

Two girls would place themselves in front of him so his reaction to their solid, real, unglamorous and beautiful femaleness was placed between their bodies and out of sight of the audience. Most of the audience weren’t there to see his willie.

But hiding an erection between two pretty girls does very little to make it go away.

8 lovely ladies enacting the three graces, the rape of the Sabine Women, etc. The guys about to rape the Sabine women have prop Roman shields, helmets and swords. High budget!

8 lovely ladies enacting the three graces, the rape of the Sabine Women, etc. Note that the guys about to rape the Sabine women have prop Roman shields, helmets and swords. Hi, budget!

In this club the tableaux vivants, viewed consecutively, told a story. There was a compere who actually told the story, but each time the lights went on, the tableau vivant performers would be posed to represent the next stage in the story.

It wasnt the sort of place that enacted classical or historical scenes. Their audience wasn’t interested, and wouldn’t get the references anyway. And it cost too much.

Instead they’d do domestic comedy. Like this:

Tableau 1: A working class father tells his daughters not to go out. (Man in cloth cap, loose overalls and moustache. Girls half-undressed, draped about and putting on stockings, facing the audience, or lipstick, with their asses to the audience.)

Tableau 2: The girls go out anyway. (Girls only. Their clothes have got caught in the doors, windows, furniture etc, as they sneak away.)

Tableau 3: They get into trouble. (Man, mostly or entirely naked, pretending to chase naked girls, who are pretending to run away.)

Tableau 4: Policeman makes them go home. (Man in policeman’s hat and carrying truncheon. Blowing inaudible whistle. Girls slumped and miserable. Two of them are between the audience and the “policeman’s” penis.)

Tableau 5: Girls try to sneak in, at home. (Girls only. Lots of ungainly nude posing, climbing through windows, up stage trees, etc.)

Tableau 6: But father catches them. (Outraged father with night-cap on head and belt in hand. Girls mock-cowering, two of them keeping his penis mostly out of sight. Later, they’d drape one of the girls over his lap. It did nothing to reduce his erection, but at least it made it easier to hide.)

See? Comedy! But the clubs would do it with less clothing.

That was a typical story. The “discipline” theme wasn’t quite bdsm. It was what passed for comedy at the time, and the idea of girls getting thrashed bare-assed by their fathers didn’t seem as abusive to a middle-aged 1960s audience as it would to a modern one.

But it wasn’t entirely bdsm-free, either. There was always a market for spanking and discipline themes, and it you did it as comedy you could get away with a lot that you wouldn’t get away with if you admitted it was erotic.

This is no time to be all knowing about “the English vice”. American television producers discovered the same thing at about the same time, which is why you got things like the wife-spanking scenes in The Lucy Show.

So that was my ancient drinking mate’s job, and one of my sources for knowledge about tableaux vivants. I’m back to the story of Sa’afia’s punishment night tomorrow.

Probation Officer #103: Tableaux vivants and memory 1

Posted on November 5, 2013 by jaime

The first time I went to a pub I was 17. I was breaking the law by being there, and I expected it to be incredibly adult and decadent. The funny thing was that it lived up to my expectations. I met a decadent adult, an old guy who saw someone wide-eyed, naïve, and a bit poetical, and thought, rightly, that he’d found someone prepared to listen to his stories.

"You're 20, right? Right. Well, if you are, then I am. Beer?"

“You’re 20, right? Right. Well, if you are, then so am I. Beer?”

But first he complimented – politely – the shirt of the girl behind the bar and made her laugh, by way of establishing that he wasn’t interested in my 17 year old arse. I only realise that bit now. At the time it hadn’t occurred to me. The barmaid didn’t have any interest in my arse either, and I did mind that. I liked everything about her, so it hardly seemed fair. Still, she poured me a huge handle of beer when I ordered one in my deepest, butchest voice, so she was all right.

His first few stories were good knock-about stuff about working in factories, and workers versus bosses. A couple more beers, though, and the stories got older and more lecherous. He claimed that when he was “a good-looking young feller like you” he’d worked as a model in tableaux vivants.

That was in some dingy club in Greek Street, in Soho. People mainly cite the brighter, more up-market theatres when they talk about tableaux vivants, but this wasn’t one of those. He told me the name of the club as if I should know it, but I didn’t, and I’ve long ago forgotten what it was.

He said it was great being straight in that world, because the men in that world tended to be rich but old and fat and very unattractive. “You get the face you deserve, son, and their lives gave them faces like baboon’s arses. Yeah, I’d say they deserved it.” He said that the better looking guys at the club tended not to be interested in the girls at the club. He called those guys “queers”.

It’s odd how the word “queer” has changed. The emotion behind it is different, because it was a hate word, but the only people I hear using the word now mean it as a compliment. Along the way it’s also changed its meaning: it used to mean “homosexual”, but now it means anything sexual that isn’t mainstream. I could say I’m queer because I’m into bdsm and polyamory. If you’re reading this blog you can probably claim you’re queer for one reason or other. If you want.

I tend not to self-apply the word, though. That’s partly because I don’t think I’ve ever faced discrimination that involved personal, physical risk, as many gay men have. I’ve been snubbed by people who found out that I’m a dom, because of my sexuality, but no-one’s ever threatened to beat me up for it. So it seems cheap to take on a word, with a hint of martyrdom to it, that I haven’t earned. The other reason I don’t self-apply the word is that “queer theory” writing tends to be tedious, self-regarding wank, and no matter how bad my writing may be, I can’t identify at all with the for/war/d slashes and (b)rackets of queer texts.

Anyway, when that old man said “queer” he meant “homosexual”. He wasn’t a bad man, so he didn’t mean it as a hate word. He used it with a kind of amusement: live and let live, to each their own, we’re all broadminded, and so on, but with a hint of dismissal (“just don’t frighten the horses”) behind it. That won’t do now, but his youth was back in the Golden Age for queer-bashing, so he was probably fairly advanced for his day.

Anyway, he said the other young men in the club weren’t all that interested in naked girls. He’d originally been hired to knock out a wall, and the manager had noticed he’d be strong enough to lift a girl so she could pretend to be flying, and hold still. So that was how he got into theatre.

So as a young, good-looking straight man he was popular with the girls at the club, and he got a rapid education. But as a straight young man, when he was naked on stage with a group of attractive, naked girls he found he had a presentation problem.

I’ll leave this anecdote here. Come back tomorrow.

Probation Officer #102: Tableaux vivants

Posted on November 4, 2013 by jaime

So that was Kenneth Tynan, the theatre critic – an enthusiastic man with the back of a hairbrush, but mostly only cruel in his reviews – who campaigned for the end of Britain’s bizarre theatre censorship, and celebrated his victory by putting on Oh! Calcutta! Originally, Oh! Calcutta! included bdsm sequences he wrote himself. These have been quietly dropped from the current revival.

By the way, Tynan’s Diaries were published a few years ago. I read them after they were remaindered. Whoever thought they were worth printing didn’t do the man’s reputation any favours. On a day-by-day basis Tynan comes across as silly, self-satisfied and a bit boring. He must have been more interesting in person than he was on the page, or they wouldn’t have put him on television so he could say ‘fuck’ to everyone.

Anyway, before Tynan’s fine work getting the Lord Chamberlain out of the British theatrical censorship business, there used to be some extraordinary performances in the clubs that catered for gentlemen who wanted to see naked ladies on the stage while they enjoyed a quiet drink in semi-darkness with a raincoat across their lap. Theatrical censorship created a new theatrical art form: the erotic tableau vivant.

That’s lovely, darlings. That’s Art, that is. Now, don’t move!

In erotic tableaux vivants, naked women and the occasional naked man would enact erotic scenes from classical myth or literature: The Rape of the Sabine Women, or The Birth of Venus, for example, or Hot Nymphs Bathing by a Sylvan Pool. Or they could present “historical” scenes, like Brutal Cossacks Whipping a Naked Female Anarchist. You could have nudity, simulated sex, rape, flagellation and other stirring scenes on the stage, so long as the “actors” kept perfectly silent and never moved a muscle.

This happened because a theatre manager – Mr Crommer, of The Windmill Theatre in London’s Soho district, pointed out to the Lord Chamberlain that he couldn’t logically say that he thought nudity itself was indecent. If he thought that, he’d have to ban nude statues and paintings.

The film "Frank and I", also released as "Lady Libertine", includes a scene in which the hero, Charles, visits a brothel and is shown "tableaux vivants".

A still from the film “Frank and I”, also released as “Lady Libertine”. The film includes a scene in which the hero, Charles, visits a brothel and is shown “tableaux vivants”.

Therefore the Lord Chamberlain couldn’t consistently claim that nude actors on stage was indecent: it must only be indecent if the actors did what actors usually do: walk around, talk, do stage “business”. So British stages were allowed to present nudity, so long as the naked girls were perfectly silent and still, as if they were statues, or the human figures in a painting.

The rule was that if the performers moved or talked, the performance was obscene, but if they kept still, it was artistic.

We are working our way back, I promise, to the night of Sa’afia’s punishment.

Probation Officer #101: Oh! Calcutta!

Posted on November 3, 2013 by jaime

There was a time – more than two hundred years – when the English theatre was censored by an official called the Lord Chamberlain. The rulings the Lords Chamberlain made on what could and could not be shown in a theatre were weird and occasionally wonderful. We’ll come back to them in the next post.

The position of Lord Chamberlain, and his strange rules for theatres, were abolished in 1966. One of the principal campaigners for abolition was Kenneth Tynan. When someone mentions Tynan these days, he usually gets this one-line explanation of who he was: “the first man to say ‘fuck’ on television.”

"Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta!" by Clovis Trouille. The title is a pun on "Oh! Quel cul t'as!" (in English, "Oh! What a lovely ass you have!".) Ken Tynan borrowed both the image and it's title for his show.

“Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta!” by Clovis Trouille.
The title is a pun on “Oh! Quel cul t’as!” (in English, “Oh! What a lovely ass you have!”.) And maybe, just maybe, there’s a joke about the Black Hole of Calcutta there, too. Ken Tynan borrowed both the image and its title for his show.

But one day he’ll be remembered for being the man who celebrated the relaxation of theatrical censorship by putting together the revue, Oh! Calcutta! and writing two playful bdsm sketches for it.

One of these sketches is a schoolgirl spanking scenario, the only twist being that the audience is asked, half-way through, to vote on which girl gets the slipper at the end. (There were four “schoolgirls”, so four different endings were written.)

The other sketch is more interesting. It starts with two women on stage, one in bondage, and one kneeling submissively.

A man walks on-stage holding a cane and contemplates the two women. He points out to the audience that the two women both represent images of submission, but there’s a difference. Once the bound woman has agreed to be bound, she doesn’t have to choose to stay. The other woman has to choose to remain, moment by moment, whatever happens. So he rules that the bound woman is less interesting, and orders that she be picked up in a net and carted off-stage.

Scene from Oh! Calcutta! 1870s discipline; 1970s hair.

Then he tells the audience that the other woman is an actor pretending to be a Victorian maid, who is about to be caned by her master for, oh, stealing some plums. The woman prepares herself for punishment, turning her back to the audience and pulling down her skirts to receive the cane on her bare bottom.

The man then reminds the audience that this woman, submissively waiting for the cane, isn’t really a Victorian maid but an actor. He even tells the audience the actor’s “real” name. And he says the woman doesn’t really have to stay to be caned. He invites her to leave the stage if she wants.

She stays.

He walks over and lines the cane up against her bottom.

They probably black out the stage at that point. I’ve never actually seen this sketch, and I read the script more than ten years ago. This is from memory.

These days they still revive Oh! Calcutta! but without Tynan’s two spanking sequences. That’s interesting, because it suggests that bdsm, even in light spanking form, is still seen as too transgressive to be “safe” theatre. Somehow I quite like that.

This will bring us back to my night “punishing” Sa’afia, really it will.

Probation Officer #100: “Please punish me”

Posted on November 2, 2013 by jaime

I put my hands on the bed now, so that my body was poised over her. My cock hovered, just about touching her cunt. It was a moment when nothing was at all unclear, but I wanted it to be noticed and celebrated. “You want to be fucked now, don’t you, girl?”

I hoped that would would be a hard question for a modestly brought up girl to answer. It turned out not to be difficult at all. Though she didn’t use words, the little cheat. Just more of the sound she’d made while I spanked her. She stretched, underneath me, trying to raise her cunt, trying to touch my cock.

“But you remember I’m going to punish you first?” Sa’afia breathed and nodded. She didn’t mind being punished. It led to her getting fucked. And it seemed to be inexplicably good for its own sake. “Good. So ask me. Nicely.”

“Please.”

I smiled at her. “No.”

There was nothing either of us could do, in that mood and moment, that wasn’t sexy. I was curious about whether she would ask to be punished, or to be fucked. I said, ambiguously, “Not unless you ask me properly.”

Sa’afia shook her head. Talking was hard. “Please. Please punish me.”

Jerusalem Mortimer: Between the Lines

Jerusalem Mortimer wants a word

Monthly Archives: November 2013