It happened forty years ago. Forty years; I can scarcely believe it. Almost to the day too. It could never happen today. The world is an entirely different place. Even as I start to write this down I wonder if it really happened. Was it just a dream?
I wasn’t quite twenty-one years old and I was studying for a business degree. We had to spend an entire year working in industry and my college sent me to a small company in a town not far from London. I needed somewhere to live and digs were hard to come by, but a colleague called Simon said he knew of a place in a village nearby where they could give me a room.
Was there a glint of devilment in his eye when he told me this? I can’t be certain, but later I was damned sure he knew more than he was letting on.
We drove to a small village about four or five miles into the countryside. It was a typical English village of the time; a shop, two pubs and a church. The church came with a vicarage attached. It was a large rambling pile and far too big for the vicar to live there on his own. I’ll call him Rev. Jones, because, in fact, that was his name. He was well into his fifties at the time and I know he shuffled off to meet his maker some years ago (so I’m safe from the lawyers).
He was a large man, tall and despite advancing years he stood like a ram-rod. He had once captained his county at rugby union, apparently, and was still as strong as an ox. The afternoon Simon and I arrived, he was busy in the kitchen baking bread if the aroma that wafted throughout the house was any clue. He left us in a room he called his study while he went and turned the oven down or what not.
It was an imposing room; bookcases lined two walls and an open and unlit fire dominated another. The fourth wall was an impressive glass sliding door that opened out into a well-mown lawn and flower beds.
I perched on the edge of a large leather Chesterfield couch. I had never been in such a room. I had been brought up in a small council flat in London and had lived in a tiny room in the students’ halls of residence since going to the polytechnic. Simon, who I knew to be a former public school man, strode the room as if he owned it, peering at the books.
A broad smile split his face and he plucked a volume from a shelf. He was about to tell me about his find when the door flew open and Rev. Jones strode in. Sheepishly, like a small boy discovered with his fist in the cookie jar, Simon replaced the book.
“Well Richard,” Rev. Jones picked up his jacket from the back of a chair and struggled into it as he spoke, “You probably know that Andrew, another boy who worked at ______, lodged here,” I nodded agreement, although it was the first I had heard of this.
“Yes, a very good boy was Andrew,” Rev. Jones seemed wistful, “I rather miss him …” he trailed off.
He sat in a plush leather chair opposite me and stretched his legs wide. The armchair seemed dwarfed by his size. He told me about the house and the other two lads who were also his tenants. I hardly heard a word, I was mesmerised by the reverend’s deep blue eyes, peering at me over the top of his half-moon glasses. I could imagine him as a schoolmaster quelling twenty-five noisy boys with a single glare.
“Well, Richard,” he leaned forward and grasped my knee and held his hand there for what seemed an eternity. “Shall I give you the grand tour?” He climbed from the chair, flexed his shoulders and headed for the door, fully expecting me to trot along at his heels.
“Well, Richard, this is the kitchen …” He had the annoying habit of calling me by name at the start of nearly every sentence. “Richard this; Richard that.” I had told him when I telephoned for an appointment that my name was Ricky. I hated being called Richard. I thought Ricky made me sound more interesting. More American, perhaps.
We toured the house, the room that could be mine was huge. The rent was low. A match if I might venture to say so, made in Heaven. I agreed to move in the following day. Simon, I noticed, beamed brightly when I announced my decision.
My two housemates were at the door to greet me when I arrived. Ian was my own age and worked in a bank in town. Colm was a year or so younger and a labourer on a nearby farm.
“He’s alright when you get used to his ways,” Colm ventured an unsolicited opinion.
Ian blushed deeply.
“Just don’t break the rules, thas-sall,” Colm said as he disappeared up the stairs carrying one of my suitcases, leaving me standing in the hallway a little puzzled at his remark.
The very next day I got more than an inkling of what he meant.
We had breakfasted and I was heading back to my room when I heard a strange thud noise. I paused and sniffed the air. Thud. There is was again. It seemed to be coming from the study. Thud. This time followed by a slow hissing sound, rather like a snake.
Intrigued, I moved closer to the study. The door was slightly ajar. Thud. Thud. Thud. I could contain my curiosity no longer, so I inched it open. I can’t be sure if my mouth did literally gape wide open. If not literally, then at least figuratively. I had never seen anything remotely like it before in my life.
My new pal Ian was dressed in a white singlet and tight red football shorts. He was bent across the back of a straight-backed wooden chair. I had the perfect view of his muscular buttocks as Rev. Jones whacked what looked like a block of wood into them with some vigour. The teenager winced each time the punishment paddle connected with his bum. Air escaped his tightly closed mouth, but other than that he made no sound.
I counted a further three swipes before the vicar commanded, “You may stand,” and Ian shot to his feet. He turned and faced Rev. Jones. I saw his face was scarlet (I bet his bum was too) and his hair was wringing in sweat. I could tell he desperately wanted to rub away the sting from his buttocks but he was too proud to show he was hurt.
Suddenly, he looked over the vicar’s shoulder and saw me standing at the door. The vicar saw his look of humiliation and swivelled on his feet to see what had caused it.
“Richard!” he trilled. I didn’t wait to hear more. I turned on my heels and didn’t stop running until I was a hundred yards from the vicarage.
All day I couldn’t figure it out. What had I seen? Ian had allowed the vicar to spank his backside with a paddle – very hard indeed. Why? What had he done to deserve that? What right did the vicar have to whack him?
I couldn’t get the image of Ian submissively bent across the chair in very tight shorts and gleaming white singlet; his muscular buttocks absorbing the sting of the paddle.
Instinctively, I knew I had not heard the last of this. Rev. Jones was wild when he saw me snooping. I would have to answer to him when I returned to the vicarage that evening.
Simon came to my office, “How are you getting on with the vicar?” a Cheshire cat could not have grinned so widely. That was when I realised that he knew. Had he set me up? I never found out, since Simon left the company that week to return to his own studies and I never saw nor heard from him again.
Of course, Rev. Jones was ready to pounce the moment I walked through the door.
“My study. Now,” he snapped.
He made me stand on the carpet and he sat behind a rather grand desk. I felt every inch the naughty schoolboy up before the headmaster. His blue eyes stabbed me. All rational thought drained. I couldn’t hear the words he spoke, my heart thumped like it wanted to escape through my chest.
His voice wafted through the room as if they were part of a rather poor shortwave radio broadcast. I caught something about rules and there was a little about setting objectives. Rev. Jones stood and walked from behind his desk until he stood directly in front of me. I could smell stale tobacco on his breath.
Another voice spoke. I was astounded when I realised it was my own. “I was late back to work at lunchtime,” I was saying, “I stayed too long at the pub.” There was a hanging silence. I filled the void, “I do it quite often.”
His penetrating eyes narrowed perceptively. “I see Richard. This will not do at all.”
He moved across the room and picked up the chair I had seen Ian bent across that morning. While he did this, I tried to fathom why I had told him such a silly lie.
He put the chair down in the centre of the room. Then, without saying a word, he sat down and spread his legs wide. Instinctively, my eyes went to his crotch. I was no connoisseur of men’s cocks, but even hidden under a generous layer of cloth, his seemed larger than average.
He gestured that I should stand directly in front of him. I did.
“Richard, put your hands on your head.” I did that too.
He reached forward and expertly unbuckled the wide leather belt around my waist. We wore enormously-flared trousers with high waistbands in those days. He had to undo six buttons before the front of my trousers flapped open. This gave me more than enough time to punch him in the mouth and make my escape.
I did no such thing. I stared over his left shoulder at the bookcase behind him. I saw the book Simon had found the other day. My eyesight was good when I was twenty-one. I could read the title, “The history of corporal punishment.”
I felt a draught against my thighs when the vicar pulled my trousers to my knees. The weight of the belt and gravity took them to nestle in a puddle over my platform shoes. Still, I gazed at the bookcase. I had no courage to look my punisher in the face.
He spoke no words. What was there for him to say? I knew what he was intending to do. I knew also that I could prevent it at any moment. I was twenty-one and he was an old man. True, he was strong, but I needn’t look to beat him to a pulp. All I had to do was pull my trousers up and run from the house.
I gasped audibly when he took hold of my mustard-coloured briefs and gently pulled them down. My cock flipped over the elasticated waistband. I remember, even after forty years, that absurdly I wondered how much smaller my dick must be compared to Rev. Jones’.
“Richard,” the vicar spoke gently, “Bend over my knee.”
Of course, I hesitated.
“Richard, please do as you are told.” He spoke more sternly now. It was important to him that I show my subservience. I must in effect say, “Yes please Rev. Jones. Punish me. I have been a naughty boy. I deserve to be spanked by you.”
I said none of these things. Instead, I took up position a yard from the vicar’s right thigh and gently lowered myself across his lap. I had never been spanked before, nor had I seen it happen to anyone else, but I suppose some kind of instinct took over from me. Was it primeval? Do all young men by nature know how to be submissive to an older man?
I stretched my hands in front of me and placed my hands palms down into the thick pile carpet. My shoes had five-inch heels and a two-inch sole and felt remarkably heavy as my legs dangled in mid-air. My bare bottom was raised across Rev. Jones’ thigh. It was, I was soon to learn, in a perfect position to receive the punishment he intended to deliver.
He took the tail of my shirt and calmly folded it once, then twice, so that it was clear of his target area. I felt his palm caress my right cheek. My buttocks clenched. It was a reflex action. He smacked me gently.
“Richard, relax,” he purred.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was headed for unchartered territory. I had no notion what to expect. I was bent across an older man’s knee, bare-arsed. He could see right into my crack and up my hole, if the mood took him. Is it possible for a young man to be in a more humiliating position?
He cupped his palm and petted and patted both cheeks. When he was done doing that, he turned his attention to the backs of my bare thighs. It was surprisingly soothing.
What happened next was far from that. A searing storm of spanks thundered into my bum at great force and high speed. Within seconds not a square inch of flesh was left untenderized. He whizzed across the peaks of my mounds, into the most sensitive under-curves and across the top near the spine. Over and over and over again.
I twisted and turned this way and that. My legs kicked out behind me. It was like I was trying to swim away from his lap. He gripped my middle with his left arm and with his right hand he continued his assault.
At first my bum felt warm, rosy even. But, that glow quickly intensified into hot throbbing. I felt like I had sat in a bath of too-hot water. My flesh was scolding.
My hair was drenched with sweat, blood rushed through my body; my ears hurt so badly I was sure the drums would burst.
I have no idea how long the spanking continued. Looking back, I don’t suppose it was more than a minute or two: his hand must surely have been hurting as much as my bum. To me it felt like hours. At last he stopped. He released his grip on my body and I slithered from his knees onto the floor. I was winded, but in seconds I had scrambled to my feet and tugged my pants and trousers up. I daren’t look at the vicar and concentrated on getting all the buttons in place.
It took an age. While I did this, Rev. Jones lectured me.
“Richard, I hope you understand why I felt the need to punish you.”
I truly did not, but felt it wise not to argue the point.
“Richard,” he continued as I stared intently at my feet, “I am sure that I can help you to become a fine young man. But, you need to learn to obey the rules. If you are unable to do so. You must be punished.”
The pain in my bum had almost completely vanished by now. My head was clearing. I just wanted to get out of that study.
“Richard,” the vicar was about to finish. “I hope you feel able to accept my rules and I would very much like you to stay. But, if you cannot, then I’m afraid you must leave the vicarage.”
I nodded sagely and without a word, I returned to my room.
I sent much of the next year admiring at close quarters the carpet in the vicar’s study and sniffing the leather of his Chesterfield couch; I suppose you would have to conclude that I wasn’t very good at obeying the rules.
