I was in a part of the country that I didn’t know. Sitting on a pew with strangers in a church I had heard much about but never visited. As I looked around the packed building I saw his friends, family and fellow parishioners. People acquainted with each other shared hugs and tissues. But not with me. Nobody knew me and I sat feeling lonely among the mourners. I gazed at the religious statues and the paintings on the walls. All of this would have been so familiar to him. Up ahead was the lectern where he had surely stood hundreds of times as a reader. Then the doors opened, and they carried him in. The big man with the big laugh now quietened, borne on the shoulders of his nephews and friends towards the altar for his final service. For everyone present he represented something different. An old school friend, much-loved uncle, or neighbour. My relationship with him was nothing like that and not something I could discuss with anyone present, because the man lying in that coffin was the man who had taught me how to cane.
I sat tearfully through the tributes delivered by friends and family members, each one a testament to the warm-hearted person he had been. As I listened though, I knew that there was a big slice of his world that nobody else knew about. Something that could never have been spoken aloud at such an occasion, but that needed to be witnessed somewhere. It seems that finally, that place has arrived here in this blog piece, and seventeen years after he was carried away in his coffin to be cremated, the missing piece of his eulogy can finally be delivered. So, without further ado, here it is.
I first heard from him in the summer of 1997 when there was no internet, and initial contact with me was made through letters sent to my PO Box by men who had discovered me in top shelf contact magazines.
He was in his late forties, and in his introductory message he told me that he had been reporting for the cane since he was 27 years old. His letter also included a passport photograph of a balding man with glasses and a rather sombre expression. What I didn’t know as I looked at his picture is that he would gradually become a good friend and a much-loved subject.
I describe him this way because he didn’t see himself as a submissive. He did however identify as a serious (very serious) aficionado of the cane.
Of all the professional women in the contact magazine where he had found my advert, there was no reason why he should have chosen me, because at the time I wasn’t at all good with the cane. I was offering a variety of domination services and was only four years into my Mistress journey. I was far better equipped to provide bondage and CBT than to deliver a skilled thrashing. I was also some distance from where he lived.
When he first visited me, I had a growing collection of implements for impact play and a vertical wall cross. I had been experimenting with a new gantry hoist to suspend my subs. I had plenty of CBT equipment but no dedicated punishment bench, and my only cane was one of those useless things that could be purchased from vanilla sex shops, short and pale, stripped of its outer layer and with an almost comically exaggerated crook handle.
Fortunately, he brought a few canes of his own and after introductions he was soon without clothes and balanced in an awkward posture across a chrome-framed dining chair with a wicker seat where he received a very inaccurate caning. Years later he showed me a picture of his bottom after that first session, taken by me using a Polaroid camera. It was terrible. The sort of thing that I am very particular about these days. The strokes were everywhere. Above the top of his bum crack. Wrapping around his hips. Creeping onto the tops of his thighs. If I misplace just one stroke these days I am displeased. This photo showed a bottom where most of the strokes were misplaced.
“Why did you ever come back for a second visit?” I asked, horrified at what I was seeing.
“It was the connection between us” he told me. “I felt something that was worth developing.”
His next visit saw him arrive with a home-made bench that he could rest on as I caned him. He was by no means a carpenter (but hey, back then I was by no means any good with the cane!) and he had obtained the wood from a school where an old gymnasium was being dismantled. Some of the wood from their ladders ended up being vandalised in his garage and turned into a rudimentary whipping bench.
My workspace in 1997 was a small reception room in a terraced house in east Bristol. He placed this new bench onto the floor in front of the gas fire, and we regarded it for a while. I wasn’t too sure. It was extremely low, and he was a big man. Nonetheless, we shared coffee and a chat, caught up with each other’s news and in no time, he was naked and somehow perched upon it on all fours. The spectacle resembled an enthusiastic animal attempting to copulate with a very unresponsive partner.
Eventually I managed to control my laughter and was soon learning the art of the cane.
Over the course of his next visits, I learned where to stand and how much movement to bring to my arm and wrist. How to alternate between heavy, medium and light strokes and crucially, how to balance force with accuracy.
The following year I bought a house, and as my equipment and repertoire were expanding, I decided to rent a flat to work from. My friend was pleased as it gave him the opportunity to take advantage of the new space and make another, more suitable piece of furniture. On his first visit to my new premises, he proudly presented me with what he had made. A whipping bench. It showed nothing of the amateur quality of his first attempt. It was great in both form and function. It resembled a gymnasium vaulting horse with a padded blue vinyl top. Screwed into its legs were various anchor points for wrist and ankle cuffs. There were also straps that could cross over the torso and hold a sub in position. It even came with a dedication, fixed just under the padded top, announcing who it was made for and the date. Perfect! Now I had something really fit for purpose.
About six months later he announced his desire to make a second piece of furniture. I was happy with the plan and as a result his next visit saw him deliver the flogging block. It was a larger piece of equipment which separated into two pieces. It was painted black with a square seat and had a padded red vinyl top. This was where the person I was dealing with would kneel. This section was also very useful to sit on to deliver an over the knee spanking. The second adjoining section was designed to support the upper body supported against a padded surface at a gentle incline, with the head slightly lower than his bottom. This piece also had anchor points to hold a body in place to prevent movement and wriggling while punishment was being delivered.
My friend’s visits to me were always enjoyable. For him it was a big day out and he would pack accordingly. There would be a cool box containing quality ready meals, deserts and champagne. Out of breath from the exertion, he struggled through the front door with bags containing port, coffee, sparkling mineral water, fruit and chocolates. He also carried a lockable canvas bag which his sister had made for him in the belief that it was to hold his Masonic wands. She had unwittingly made a very useful holder to carry his many canes.
There were items that were necessary as part of the process of visiting me which he stored in a lockable case. Among them were an envelope holding pornographic print outs of his most recent masturbatory offences, a timer to time his permitted masturbation, an antiseptic spray to seal his wounds at the end of the session, and, importantly, a pair of pants pre-lined with sanitary towels for his journey home. Once all the necessary equipment was deposited in a corner of the punishment room and the food placed in the fridge, he would go into the bedroom, remove all his clothes and we were off. When I say ‘off’ though, I don’t mean that he was immediately caned. We would make coffee and share news for a while first. Then, when I was ready, I would suddenly become serious and point to the bench or the block. His punishment was announced. At that point his laughter would cease, his large character would somehow shrink, and his face take on a serious expression in the knowledge of what was about to happen.
I liked caning him, because despite years of receiving the cane, he remained responsive. He could take a severe thrashing but there were times when his breathing would change, he might let out an occasional gasp and as the beating progressed the stress in his voice would be evident. After a sound punishment he would return to his seat with a face still serious from the severity of what I had just inflicted upon him. After a few minutes though, he had regained himself and would sometimes seem to have become aroused at what had just happened, or he would be finding something or other amusing, his eyes twinkling as he told me of a recent happening totally unrelated to the world of the cane.
He used to say that he liked our sessions because they were seamless. They were certainly very natural, and I found it hard to see where the boundary was between me as ‘me’ and me as ‘Mistress’. In truth the boundary had been erased entirely. I can remember on one occasion how he exploded into his characteristically loud laughter because, as Mistress and sub, we were discussing the price of cheese. He had a good sense of the absurd and found this very amusing. It was less amusing when five minutes later I ordered him across the block to deliver further stinging strokes across his bottom.
When lunchtime arrived, he would spread my padded torture couch with a disposable tablecloth and then get to work at the microwave and stove top. There would be starters, a main course and a desert, all accompanied by amusing conversation and ending with a glass or two of port and several more thrashings. Throughout the meal he would remain submissively naked at my side.
Back in the early noughties when the internet was really starting to take off, he designed my first website. He had volunteered to go on a training course in web design so that he could build a website for the church where he was a very active parishioner. He found it amusing that after he had designed a website for them, he used what he had learned to then design a website for his Mistress. The site was initially basic, but it served its purpose and soon started to attract interest.
I didn’t get into phone lines until the tail end of their heyday, but there came a time when I got the right contact for a decent premium rate host provider. I purchased all the necessary recording equipment and started to create recordings at home to upload onto phone lines. These were varied in subject matter, including stories of the cane. Of course, when my friend found out about my endeavours, he was immediately excited about writing some stories for recording. Some of them were dialogue, which meant that his visits not only witnessed the unloading of all his food and caning paraphernalia, but also my microphones, stands, plosive stoppers and other recording equipment.
We would stand near a school desk, blackboard and punishment block, trying not to look at each other. Focussing on our lines and doing our best not to laugh as we enacted our roles. Sometimes he was the pleading schoolboy, and I was the Headmistress whose anger he had provoked once again by his many failures. Alternatively, I would be the stern aunt, irritated by his habitual masturbation. I would pick a line out of his story and make it the title. My favourite back then was ‘Wanking again? Time for the Cane!’ The sound files section of this website contains some of those recordings, and the ones where he is being caned are the real thing, not sound effects!
He always said that he would not want to be caned for genuine offences. Nothing that he had done in his real life. However, that wasn’t true because his biggest thrill was to be punished for looking at pornography. But doing this was always a self-fulfilling cycle, because the reason that he looked at pornography in the first place was ultimately not because he enjoyed it (although he doubtless did) but because he knew that he would have to report to me for doing so and be caned for it. I can remember him bringing in print outs of naked women as part of the evidence. I particularly remember many images of a busty woman called Erica. He had a hierarchy of offences for masturbating over these. If the image showed a woman displaying her nipples, he might receive twelve strokes. If there was bush on display, it would be eighteen. The forbidden and private nature of arseholes aroused him more than anything and for that reason they were considered the most serious offences and could earn him twenty-four stingers.
His enthusiasm for anything related to the cane was boundless and in his spare time he would make things to bring to his next visit. One of these was a stroke counter. It was very similar to the boards in churches displaying hymn numbers and consisted of a wooden board with three slots covered in clear Perspex to display the numbers he had printed off and laminated. We had fun with this for a while and as his visits to me would typically last for about four hours, by the time he departed, that board would often display a figure well over five hundred.
I was also amused by his invention of a laminated chart with horizontal lines at measured intervals. The idea was that he was expected to masturbate and shoot up to a certain line. If he were to succeed, it was a sign that he had not been satisfied recently, and he would be let off having to take punishment. A dribble on to the first or second line on this chart, however, was a sign of a more recent orgasm and proof of continued forbidden masturbation. He was often in trouble because of this chart.
It was inevitable that one day he would start making his own canes. He found a company that supplied lengths of bamboo and purchased a selection. It was many years ago that he explained the process to me, but I think that he soaked the canes in boiling water and then bent one of the ends around a home-made mould. He had made this mould from a block into which he had hammered various nails to hold the end in place to create a ‘crook’ end. He would then let the cane dry out over a few days before removing the mould and being left with a crook handled cane. Over thirty years after he made it, I have a cane with dark markings where these nails had held it in place, and even one where he had used a hot nail to etch a tiny ‘S’ for Stephanie into the bamboo. I also have other things that he made, including a cane rack and punishment book.
My friend is no longer in my life to please me and make me laugh with his endless creativity for all things relating to the cane. In Summer 2009 I received an email from him to say that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The space between diagnosis and death was just three weeks and I never got to visit him. I found out that he had died from a notice on his parish website. It seemed very important that I was there at his funeral, as how could this part of him not be there? He always used to say to me “You know a part of me that nobody else in my life knows about”. At his funeral I kept it that way, telling anyone who asked that I had met him one evening when he came to see a theatre performance in Bristol and that we had been in touch ever since.
Several days afterwards, I found the phone that I had used to take phone calls from my subs. At that time, I was six months into what turned out to be a very long break from the scene and I no longer answered it. I charged it and found a voice mail from a man who didn’t introduce himself. He told me that in his last days, my friend had confided in a very small circle of friends regarding his relationship with me, and that circle was now actively working to erase any evidence of his connection with me. The man who left the message gave his condolences as my friend had told him that we were close. He finished by saying that I would understand that he wished to have no further contact from me after he had left this message. I felt relieved that I had not heard this before my decision to go to the funeral. I have always felt that my friend would have been touched that I was there.
While writing this, I began to see the emerging pattern of a man who would turn his hand to anything to enhance his caning sessions. An amateur carpenter, web designer and cane maker, he didn’t let lack of experience get in the way of giving it a go and with very good results. It made me smile to realise that he had done much the same with me. He had visited an entirely inexperienced caner and decided that despite my shoddy attempts, there was the potential to create something better. He saw something that could be improved and as a result he left me with a skill that has prevailed and benefitted me greatly. It’s all starting to sound like the conclusion to a sermon, but as I said at the start, this is the part of his story that couldn’t be told in church. The missing chunk of his eulogy belongs here, to be read by fellow enthusiasts of the cane, and I hope that you have enjoyed it.