I didn’t catch Sa’afia’s eye just then. She couldn’t spank Ana, partly because she now thought of spanking as sexual and she wouldn’t do sexual things with girls, or with her cousins. And she was submissive.

What do you mean, ‘harder’? I’m using both hands, aren’t I?

Once, having found my way into a threesome with two submissive girls (I damn near sabotaged it, with my own disbelief that something so wonderful was going to happen, if I let it), I’d tried to get one of them to spank the other. I’d thought it would be sexy, and how could it not be fun? But it had turned out to be almost impossible to get either girl to give the other anything but the lightest of love pats.

I’d persevered, but it had turned out to be as exhausting as trying to teach a cat to balance on its front paws. I’d realised that my attempts were only spoiling the mood. So I’d done my Homage to Brian Blessed act. Brian Blessed was a big burly, shouty, English actor, a bit like Oliver Reed without the vicious edge. My Brian Blessed act involve  lots of ranting and roaring and slapping. It brought the mood back to where it should be. Since then I haven’t tried making one submissive top another. Not all submissives are quite so averse to trying the other role, or at least play-acting it. But I knew that Sa’afia was. I’d just given Ana a completely empty threat.

But Ana wasn’t so sure she was safe from Sa’afia. “Aw no! That wouldn’t be any fun!” 

“Then behave yourself, Ana.” I said it as though I’d won a point. I wasn’t sure that I had.

Ana pretended to be shocked by Sa’afia’s slap on her arm. “Ow!” she said, not very convincingly. “Hey, you can’t smack me. You’re the only girl who gets smacked around here.”

Ana looked at me, then, to see my reaction. I said, “Ana, you definitely deserve a spanking. Beyond belief. But you know I can’t do it.”

“Why  n-“

“Ana, you know why not. And stop being a brat.”

“Brats get spanked. Sa’afia gets spanked. She showed me what you did to her bum. Aue!”

“Aue indeed. Sa’afia?”

“We’re cousins. We tell each other things.” 

“Hmmm.” Sa’afia realkised I wasn’t entirely pleased about that. She put her hands on the table in front of her, palms down, fingers interlaced, and stared down at her knuckles. The minx. So I said, “I’ll deal with you later.”  I was pretty sure she’d like to have that sort of thing said to her. And for it to be true. And she smiled, a little smug. 

I was worried that Ana would like hearing it too, a little too much. To Ana I said, “brat, you don’t get spanked by me. But Sa’afia isn’t your probation officer. She can spank you till you can’t sit down.”

I took Sa’afia and Ana to the Gurudwala Bangla Sahib, a Sikh restaurant near my place. It was my favourite cheap celebration restaurant, with dishes that were more like everyday Indian food than banquet meals, and therefore excellent, and low mark-up on the drinks. There was also an element of showing off, because I knew that when Mr Shergill, the owner, saw me come in with not one but two pretty girls, he’d come out to shake my hand, show us to our seats and generally make a fuss.

So Sa’afia and Ana were seated, properly overwhelmed by the formidable charm of Mr Shergill’s vast, genial, magnificently moustached and turbanned self. He knew exactly how magnificent he looked, and he was perfectly aware that he was doing me a favour.

I told Sa’afia and Ana the greeting was because I’d brought two amazingly pretty girls into his restaurant, and that Mr Shergill had an eye for that sort of thing. It sounded true, because one look at his waiting staff, all of them young Indian students from Cal State Long Beach, confirmed Mr Shergill’s appreciation of human beauty. Sa’afia and Ana were ebullient enough just then to believe that the greeting was for them, and in any case they were exceptionally beautiful that night. They glowed. Happiness and celebration suited them.

The truth was that Mr Shergill had started coming out to greet me when he learned that I was a probation officer, and his enthusiasm had been even greater once he realised that I was in Jock’s team. Jock had once done him a good turn, and it must have been something important. I was the undeserving beneficiary of his gratitude.

Anyway, Sa’afia ordered vegetarian, Ana went for fish, and I ate goat. I was paying for the meal, but Ana insisted that she’d pay for drinks. That meant she got to dismiss my wine request and go and have a long, whispered conversation with the handsome man behind the bar. He became very attentive to our table. Ana was pretty, and happy Ana was immensely engaging. And whatever she’d whispered to him had been interesting. He brought out a series of silly cocktails as the evening went on.

There seemed to be some sort of theme to it. Sa’afia and Ana kept getting cocktails with lots of cream, like brandy alexanders and White Russians. Not me, though. I was brought, in order, a piña colada, a Singapore Sling, a blue booty, and a drink that Ana had to go back and explain to the barman. 

I said I couldn’t see why it took much explanation, since it seemed to be just pineapple juice, something crimson, a bit of white rum and some cinnamon powder.

Ana grinned until her eyes closed. “It’s a pele fia mea. It’s a traditional Samoan cocktail.”

Ana was pushing for attention, so I pretended not to know those words, though Sa’afia had taught me them. The name means something like, “fuck me, darling”, and while that doesn’t sound too incredible as a name for a recent cocktail, there was no way a drink would get a name like that in a conservative place like Samoa.

But Sa’afia laughed, then pretended to be shocked. She smacked Ana’s arm.

The drive back from the office wasn’t as uncomfortable as I’d expected. Jock wasn’t happy with me. But I’d got most of what I wanted, and I knew that Ana would be ecstatic to hear the outcome, which was good in itself, and meant that Sa’afia would be pleased with me too, and wanting to please me.

Happy women make my marker and definition of paradise.

That sounds patronising. One part of it is. Many doms – I’m certainly in that group – take on subtle kinds of care for many of the women around them, not just the submissive women they’re involved with. I’m concerned that the women around me are happy, and I have a tendency to feel smugly pleased with myself when that seems to be so. That’s certainly patronising, or paternalistic, and although it’s a relatively benevolent strain of male chauvinism, I still try to keep myself aware and wary of it. 

Peace, comfort, flowers, food, sex: that’s where I want to be

The other part isn’t quite so patronising. It’s that I like a lot of the things that most women like, but I’m bored shitless by a lot of the things that most other men like. For example I can watch babies for hours, and talk about them, because they’re fascinating. I’m not as convinced as most women that babies are beautiful, but I am convinced that they’re clever, and watching them try things and figure things out is perpetually astonishing.

On the other hand I’ve watched a couple of the big, hugely popular sports games, and I had a massive failure of interest: I still had the television on at the end of the game, for form’s sake, but before half-time I’d be reading a book. I also have an empathy failure: try as I might, I can’t imagine the state of mind in which you’d actually give a fuck who wins or loses a sports game. (Unless it’s one you’re playing yourself, like beach baseball.)   

Womanotopia is the place for me.

So environments in which women are happy tend to be places where I’m happy too. So I was looking forward to getting to Kempff, Hsang and Cowper, where Sa’afia would be sexily happy and Ana exuberantly happy. 

I’d have to fend Ana off, of course, but I quite enjoyed the necessity. And she’d inspire Sa’afia. I guessed I’d take them both out to dinner. And drop Ana off and take Sa’afia home. 

Jock did ask me how I’d thought it went. I knew he was hoping I’d say it had gone well, so he could bawl me out and tell me how I’d broken a long-term relationship, and I had no idea of the consequences that would come from that, or how long it’d take to repair. So I said I’d thought it had gone terribly. It was a disaster that the police didn’t like us any more, and Dwane was still going to jail, so I’d fucked it up. Jock had grunted and held off his lecture, even though he wasn’t completely sure that I wasn’t winding him up. Which I was.

I’d driven on, two souls in a government car, one of whom respected the other, failing to communicate.