I’d been stripping for twelve years when it felt like time for a career change. I didn’t want to become a joke, lugging my tired old tits out of my basque decade after decade.
I’d heard the sneers when some of the older women danced: ‘Brought your granny along for a day out, have you?’ Women who, I now realised, were barely older than me. I didn’t fancy becoming a comedy turn, not just yet.
Aged 30, I had a degree, but much good that would do me with a blank CV and no skills to mention. I started applying for random jobs, lying brazenly on every application form: I didn’t get anywhere, and didn’t fancy any of them anyway.
Something had to change, and fast — but I didn’t have a clue how to do anything else.
As a single mum to a six-year-old son, I realised how extraordinarily lucky I’d been to have had a job that involved my leaving the house only one evening a week, which still paid all the bills.
Luckily, The Stage newspaper provided the answer. In the classifieds at the back I saw an advertisement calling for spanking models, no experience necessary.
It seemed innocent, and required a lot less nudity than my current career,so I sent off some pictures and was booked for a £200 shoot the following week.
It was a small, budget operation, we spent the first hour taking photos of me being spanked by a woman called Cara. Not hard: just enough to show the impact on my flesh and I soon discovered there’s a knack to taking a spanking.
Think of the heat as something pleasant, like a tropical sun beating down on your glistening buttocks. Use your breathing too, like midwives teach you.
Over lunch Cara told me she also worked as a dominatrix, making money from bringing someone else’s fantasy alive. It sounded enticing, and well-paid. She had two daughters at boarding school, a huge detached pile and a Range Rover on the drive: that was me sold.
On the drive home, bottom throbbing, brain buzzing, I decided to swap my g-string for a riding crop.
I set up a profile on In The Corner, a site devoted to domestic spanking. My advertisement was simple: elegant, educated disciplinarian seeks like-minded individuals to train, and, where necessary, punish.
Five minutes after it went live, my inbox was flooded. By making myself so mysterious I’d inadvertently piqued their interest all the more.
I was asked so many questions I didn’t have the answers to. Have you always been into spanking? What will you do to me? How hard can you cane? What will you do if you find me wearing frilly knickers or getting an erection?
I bluffed as much as I dared, taking a strict, threatening tone at first but this proved exhausting, so I tried my usual friendly self instead.
They responded to this better, but the problem was I wasn’t getting much closer to making any actual money. They loved the chat but were way less keen to talk cash.
I planned to charge £100 an hour, which seemed pretty average. Finally, I got a sensible email from a John (they are, by and large, all called John, or Peter), who fancied being my first, and had a date in mind.
Suddenly, this was happening. A real life pervert knew where I lived, and planned to visit next week. Could I really do this?
I knew the first one would be a bit traumatic and weird, but no worse than the first time you rip your knickers off in a club… So I ordered a cane.
It came discreetly wrapped in a poster tube. Excited, I ripped it open and gave myself a few practice swots on the hands and thighs – jeez, it hurt, but that was splendid: that’s what they were paying for.
Then I placed a cushion on a chair and practiced whacking. I learned to line up the implement and give a few practice taps in the right place first, like a golfer, before properly letting rip: to bend the knees, swing from the hips, raise the beast high above my shoulder, then bring it down without breaking the light fittings. At least, I did after a few goes.
I was so nervous when John finally turned up at 6pm a couple of days later. I liked the sound of him and felt confident he wasn’t a psychopath, yet I still had my mother hiding in my bedroom with a baseball bat, just in case.
He was slightly shy and chubby, with a long brown fringe, through which he peered at me anxiously as he came through the door. Sensing my nerves, John very quickly set me at ease, as it turned out he was an old hand who had seen everyone and done it all, several times over.
In his seventies, just recovering from some scary operation with the whole of his torso tattooed with a jagged purple scar, he spent most of his hour giving me a tutorial on what tools and implements I desperately needed, the positions most often requested, the idiots best avoided – and he paid me for the privilege!
John let me practise my few pathetic implements on his backside, coaching throughout. ‘Bit to the left. Avoid the whip round. Accuracy before intensity. That’s it! Now try again, but harder…’ I couldn’t have been more thankful.
Over the course of the next three months I gained more clients and experience. I was soon getting bookings for five sessions a week, earning over £2,500 a month – plenty to cover my mortgage in 2006. It was exhilarating to cane someone for cash and lots of them stayed on as clients.
My lovely John came to visit me every six months or so after his first session. He liked to go to parties and be spanked by lots of different women, so I couldn’t expect to monopolise his playtime.
I always looked forward to his visits. He was full of ideas for how to keep our sessions interesting, suggesting new and different role plays and positions, ideas gleaned from his obsessively seeking out different spanking experiences.
‘Caning should be available on the NHS,’ he would say. ‘Coming to see you does me more good than any medicine!’
About three years after we met, his emails stopped, and I heard my worst fears confirmed on the spanking grapevine: life had called time on John’s escapades.
I’ll forever be grateful to him.
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