The first three weeks of my six-week stint in France as a language exchange student had been the strangest of my life, chiefly due to my chronic bed-wetting habit and my distinctly unimpressive anatomy. The second three weeks would be even weirder, and would mark me both physically and psychologically for the rest of my life.
I was staying with the family of a dance-school owner in a picturesque little port in Brittany. I had my own, comfortable room in this tall, narrow town-house - but privacy was not among the amenities I had enjoyed so far, even though, at 18, I was a fully-grown adult - well, in all but one very embarrassing respect.
In fact, as readers of the first instalment of this story will know, I had been subjected to almost daily humiliations inflicted by Mme Arnaud, in a futile attempt to curb my infantile habit. Or rather, I was now certain, as a punishment for being an inadequate male: the last thing Mme wanted was for me to stop wetting myself, because if I did, she would lose her excuse for tormenting me.
My position was strange and difficult. The work side of my trip was going quite well: each day I gave English conversation classes to large groups of French teenagers at the local college, and would have been a popular figure in this little society if it was not for one thing - they all knew about my humiliations at Mme Arnaud's and the sources of my shame.
To cut straight to the harsh facts, I was forced, each morning, to remove and wash my soaking wet bed-clothes and pyjamas in full view of the rest of the household, and allow Mme Arnaud to mop me down with a cold flannel while I stood in a tin bath.
The household, I should add, was currently all-female. Monsieur Arnaud and his only son were in London for the summer, so it was Madame and her three daughters, twins of about 20, and one slightly older, who inflicted punishments and observed my shame.
Often the daughters would have their friends to stay, and they too would take part in the morning ritual. Sometimes even some of Mme Arnaud's classes would stumble into the kitchen just when I was being stripped, or having my nose rubbed in the stinky sheets, or my bottom smacked with a leather slipper because I had disobeyed some order or other.It became a bit of an attraction for the young and not so young women of this pretty little town - something they whispered and winked and giggled about. The dirty Englishman and his tiny, weeny little birdy - his p'tit oiseau.
The tiny little thing, the size and colour of a piece of cold macaroni, that danced and bobbed around on my walnut-sized scrotum as each blow descended on my plump pink buttocks. How they loved to look at it, especially when it stiffened up to its full two and two-fifths inches, jutting up rudely and almost vertically towards my navel, its peanut-sized pink head straining to poke itself out of the skin and into the clammy air of the kitchen.
People were now signing up for Mme Arnaud's morning yoga classes specifically in the hope of being called in to one of these sessions - and they were nearly always rewarded with an eyeful, and sometimes a Polaroid photo, of a naked, snivelling me. It was always, always, strictly, females only.
Two things changed in the third week. Firstly, five professional dancers from Vietnam, members of a group performing in a local arts festival, came to stay in the house, with their dragon-like minder. There was not really room for them but that did not stop Mme Arnaud collecting the generous payments offered by the regional arts organisation for their board and lodging. The three daughters and I were dislodged from our beds for the week, and a fourth bed - mine - was squeezed into their large room.
Secondly, Mme Arnaud decided to up her campaign of cruelty on me. After breaking the news of the Vietnamese dancers, she told everyone: "Sadly, our English guest has not mended his ways. We have to stop him wrecking our house with his urine, especially now that we are going to have important guests."
"So I have decided that each night, just before bed, he must bring his pot in here and empty his bladder into it, so that we can be sure he is not lying about it. I would like as many of you as possible to be here at 11pm to witness this."
"Our Vietnamese guests will be spared viewing this gruesome spectacle," she added. "However, if, even after this, he continues to wet himself, then he will of course continue to undergo corrective treatment each morning in the breakfast area, in the presence of all guests."
Now, I was approaching the coming week with a mixture of fear and excitement - for I was already learning to extract some strange, twisted pleasure from the depredations I was subjected to. Above all, I adored the way these young French women seemed to find my body rather fascinating and entertaining, and not simply mockable as had been the case back home.
I began to wonder, what on earth are these Vietnamese dancers going to think?I didn't have to wait too long to find out. The minibus arrived that Saturday afternoon, and five petite young women clambered out. They seemed impossibly slender, almost fragile, in their loose-fitting black outfits. All but one had jet-black hair, and they all had that perfect, pale ivory skin. The were talking and laughing quietly among themselves, some flashing shy glances into the window of the house they would stay in.
The French girls in the windows waved and clapped, and some ran down to welcome this exotic party. I was just going out to take my last conversation class of the day and passed the new guests on the stairs. They looked at my 6 ft plus, slightly punk figure with my spiked up hair and made what I thought were appreciative noises. I explained I would be back later and one of them actually smiled and bowed her head!
To be honest, I had never seen such beautiful creatures. I adored the French girls despite the cruelty of their mother, they and their friends were vivacious and funny and clever - some were naughty and very sexy. But these young women from the other side of the planet were - or so it seemed to snooty me - in another league of attractiveness.
On Saturday evenings after classes we often went to the beach for an hour or two's sun and swimming. I always used to hate beaches, but now I enjoyed them. I would wear my old tight speedos, and walk up and down the beach into the sea, in the secure knowledge that everyone on that beach already knew about my shortcoming.In other words, they knew that I had what might now be termed a micro-penis. Because many of them had seen it at Mme Arnaud's, or had been told about it or seen Polaroids of it from their friends or their big sisters.
In the UK I would have been the laughing stock, bullied and jeered off the beach. Here, no-one seemed to mind, everyone was friendly, offered me drinks and spliffs, and wanted to improve their English talking about punk music and so on.
Of course, I did sometimes notice girls giggling and making that "tiny" gesture to each other with their fingers and thumbs, while boys would also mutter obscenities to each other and tended to ignore me.
Today was different: the Arnaud girls and their friends were not on the beach, they were home preparing the house for their new guests. Mme Arnaud tyrannised over her daughters just as she did me. In most ways they were typical young women, free spirits, rebellious even - but when it came to her, they went quiet, subservient; they conspired in her bullying of me, no question. And I didn't blame them. There was something seriously scary about Mme A.
Back in the house, I quickly learned that I would be sleeping on a thin mat on the kitchen floor. The sisters had taken over my room, leaving their big room free for the five Vietnamese dancers.The dancers were already making themselves at home - very politely asking in French, where the bathroom was, where to buy cigarettes, and so on. One of them, unusually tall by Vietnamese standards, seemed to like talking to me rather than to the French girls. Her name, she said, was Mai, and she came from Hanoi.
We all sat down for a supper, at which Mme Arnaud introduced the dancers and made each of us explain our reasons for being here. When it came to my turn, I started to tell them about my teaching, but Mme Arnaud interrupted me and said - yes, but first you must tell them about your little problem.
I was appalled - surely this was not the time? I mumbled something about my bladder problem and how Mme Arnaud was kindly helping me to overcome it, but I could not make them understand, I fear. Mme asked one them what I was - she said, "he has small balloon?" - and everyone laughed. "Well, he might well have, but the real problem is he pees in his bed every night, so we have to clean him up every morning, and try to help him stop this dirty habit," she said, in very slow French. She reminded me of Mrs Thatcher.
The Vietnamese girls still looked puzzled, but began telling us about themselves - how they were all graduates of a famous dance academy in Saigon, which we now call Ho Chi Minh city, how they'd already danced in Moscow and Havana and Canada and Edinburgh, and how they wanted to show us western imperialists just how good the Hanoi regime was to its young people.
