This was originally intended to be a chapter in the "Bronx Park East" series, but I never got around to finishing it until recently. It probably fits between Chapters 5 and 6, just before Labor Day weekend. The young couple in the story attend different schools by they live in the same building. They use her apartment for their affair during the daytime when her Aunt Julia, the only other occupant of the unit, is at work.
Lenore Rojet is a year younger than Paul, and she is tall and dark-haired.
Somehow Paul got seduced by the aunt too and he continues to visit her periodically when Lenore herself is at school.
******
One weekday in late August 1974, Lenore and I were sitting around in her apartment. I had quit my job and school hadn't started yet, so we were at loose ends. Neither one of us could work up the energy to go somewhere.
Out of nowhere, Lenore said something that broke my lassitude, "My aunt is quite kinky, you know."
I didn't know what she was talking about, "Okay, how so?"
"For one thing, she's interested in BDSM. I don't know if she's ever done any of it herself."
In those pre-Internet days it was hard to gain sexual information outside of one's own narrow social circle. "What does that stand for?"
"It means bondage-domination-sadomasochism. Have you ever heard of that?"
"I've got some glimmerings - but no, I basically don't know much about it."
She leaned forward and smiled at me, "All right, Julia's got a whole bunch of magazines from England that explains it a lot better than I can. Let me get some of them, and we'll have a look." Julia's porn collection was not particularly well-hidden - in fact, it wasn't hidden at all. It was just piled up inside different drawers and other pieces of furniture around the house.
I agreed to have a look, and so for the next couple of hours, Lenore and I sat there and examined Julia's stockpile of BDSM porn. It was a bigger topic than I had ever imagined, and I got quite an education that day from looking at those publications. Rather than try to explain everything I saw, I'll summarize my impressions of a bit of it.
As Lenore put it, "For people like Julia, the punishment part is really just a pretext. For them, it's a kind of a sexual game. Sometimes they prefer to inflict the pain, sometimes they prefer to receive it, and some people are 'switches' who like doing both. They often take turns at which activity they do."
"So that's the sadistic or masochistic aspects of what we're talking about."
"Yes, that's exactly it."
Of the various combinations of genders available for perusal, Julia seemed to prefer females getting disciplined. That was often by men but sometimes by other women like a teacher or headmistress. Anything involving males being submissive or "bottoms" didn't seem to appeal to her and nothing of that sort was depicted in her collection. Lenore assured me that it existed, but one had to seek out a different set of periodicals if one wanted to see it.
I saw that some of the material consisted of drawings, and other segments were photographs, either in color or in black-and-white. In any case, I noted that Julia had never mentioned her seemingly offbeat interests to me. I guess I was surprised that Julia had never asked me to participate in such a session with her. I tried to get info from Lenore, "Does she ever bring this topic up with you?"
"No, she never has, but as you have seen, she just leaves her stuff around where I can find it and look it as much as I want."
For my purposes here, I'll just summarize a couple of sets of photos that I saw during my time sitting there with Lenore. Both had the BDSM trope (at that time unknown to me) of the English schoolgirl who gets into trouble with the mean headmaster - or occasionally headmistress - at her school. In the first group of photos, he has the girl bend over a stool in his office and then he takes down her panties and applies a cane to her bare buttocks. The implement leaves some red stripes on her bottom but, in these pictures, they didn't look too extreme.
In another set of photos, another girl - she might even be the same one - incurs the ire of two headmasters, or whatever they were. (Maybe it was just a very strict school,) Her beating is more intense, and there were impressive red patches from two canes on her unlucky rear end.
I guessed that the unfortunate you lady was actually about twenty or so but I thought for the sake of the plot that she was supposed to be younger. She had white knees-socks in the first group of illustrations, and gray ones in the second.
I asked Lenore, "Is that supposed to be the same girl? They both have short reddish hair."
"I'm not sure, anything is possible in these photoshoots."
Then I asked her, "So why are you showing me all of this stuff?"
"Think about it; why have I shown you Julia's porn materials in the past?"
I didn't want to answer that immediately, although some obvious clues occurred to me. Lenore continued, "That's so we have, call it a template, for actions we can try out ourselves." I must have looked blank, because she said, "You see, I have wanted to be those punished girls myself."
"But it looks like it hurts, I mean quite a bit."
"I'm sure it does, but it's very exciting to consider it anyway."
"What makes you think you'd like it at all, getting caned?"
She rolled her eyes at me, "The usual way that these things go. To be honest about it, I've masturbated while looking at this stuff and I've had orgasms while imagining being in it." She was definitely being her usual blunt self.
"But that's just a fantasy; it's not like you've really been punished."
"Well, before we try it ourselves, we'll invent a 'safe word' that I would use to call it off if I really don't like it. Then we can look at it as an experiment that didn't work out."
"What kind of experiment are we talking about?"
"Do I have to spell it out for you? I mean one in which you spank me. I think a cane would be a rather extreme first step - and it does take some skill to use one properly - so just spanking me with your hand would be fine to start with." Then she laughed at me, "So what do you think? I can tell by the look in your face, and the tone of your voice, that you find this quite intriguing."
"But I don't want to hurt you in any way."
"The way this works, I think, is that the pain and the pleasure are mixed together. I know it sounds contradictory, but if it goes that way I expect it to, that is what will happen to me."
"Those girls in the photos; is that really what they feel, that they are actually liking what is happening to them?"
Lenore said, "We've talked about this regarding porn before. Some people get paid for it, some are willing amateurs - it's virtually impossible for us as the audience to truly know what is going on behind the scenes. The only thing we can be sure of is our own reactions to it. One aspect I'm sure of is that the whole thing - call it a scene or phenomenon - is that it is an extremely common interest among many people."
"Then how come I know so little about it?"
Lenore found that amusing, "Let's face it, Paul, you've lived a rather sheltered life, sexually. It's not easy to find this stuff unless you know where to look for it. Go easy on yourself; don't try to grasp the entire situation in one swoop. It's much more complicated - and a lot more popular - than you can probably understand at this point."
Much later, like well into the second decade of the twenty-first century - various BSDM themes, from the mildest spankings to the most extreme bondage actions - would be a staple of porn, but in 1974 that wasn't true for the average reticent person like me. Aunt Julia seemed to be well ahead of me on the curve for that.
For a bit longer, I sat there and pondered some of the illustrations in the magazines. Then I said to Lenore, "So what exactly are we going to be doing about this?"
"Your Lenore has already thought this through. We're going to stage a little role play, right here in the apartment, with the two of us in the starring roles." She moved over to me and put an arm around my shoulder. "We're going to base it on the trope of the naughty employee, or intern really, who gets disciplined by the stern boss. That bad intern, of course, will be played by me and you'll be the boss."
I must have seemed rather dense as I said, "Which means, well, what?"
She sounded quite calm as she described it, "You'll bring me in here as if this really was your office, and you'll chide me for my bad behavior. Then you take me over your lap, pull down my panties, and spank me on my bare behind. Possibly first you'll give me some smacks on the seat of my drawers before you lower them and expose my ass."
"And what is it exactly that you've done wrong?"
"It doesn't matter; just some dumb corporate mistake."
She blinked at me, and I knew she was teasing me even though it was a serious proposal. "Sounds interesting? I'm sure you'd like to try it." I had already gotten an erection just from imagining whacking her backside, but I didn't tell her that yet.
Then she said, "We'll do this, let's say, tomorrow. I'll fill you in on the details as to how I see the event unfolding."
I heard from her how it went from punishment to become, for some people, a sexual fetish. She commented, "That probably happened about the same time Cro-Magnon man or somebody invented discipline. Then some kinky people found out they liked it, either doing it or receiving it or both.
I had to tell her, "You yourself seem engrossed by this."
"I admit, I am. I think I'm actually a switch, but I've never experienced anything yet. I've imagined getting a spanking myself. Yeah, it would hurt but I think there would be pleasure in that too."
"How could you possibly know how you'd react?"
"Well, I don't know. I know I have had fantasies about it. As I've said, I've masturbated during those and had orgasms. I'd say that's pretty good evidence."
I was aware of being even more aroused now. I tried to control my voice as I asked, "And why did you imagined me doing this to you?"
"Well, you're an obvious candidate because you're right here." She described one of her fantasies to me.
"I imagined one of my professors doing it to me. I'd get a bad grade, say, and then I would have to lower my jeans or lift my skirt, and I'd get it a spanking or paddling on my bare behind. I'd be over his lap or kneeling on a chair, or something. Probably it would be in his office - or let's say it's your office."
She looked closely at me. "We can do that later. Right now, I want to do the boss thing. Man, this is really getting to you. I see it in your face; I can hear it in your voice too."
She sort of waved her hand around as she talked to me. "Now, people who do this often set up 'scenes.' That's like a role play, where people act and pretend to be someone else. We did one of those before if you remember."