strong, pianist’s hands,” she added ingenuously, for Mr. Johanson was considered the most gifted musician on the faculty.
“I wish you were the naughty one, Miss Oliver,” Mr. Johanson mused. “You’d be fun to spank!”
“Me?” Miss Oliver blushed all over and hid her confusion by lighting a cigarette. She wore a white blouse, a light grey cashmere cardigan over her shoulders and a charcoal wool straight skirt. Her pumps were high enough to feel best when she removed them, but they set off her elegant legs to perfection. Miss Oliver had creamy white skin, a long, high, blonde ponytail and a 24” waist. Taken all together, she was far too young and lovely for Mr. Johanson to flirt with, but for the fact that he had never felt so attracted to a girl in his life.
Miss Oliver was only 24, fresh from graduate school and in command of her very first class. Mr. Johanson was 38, had been teaching at Crescent for 15 years and was thought by all of his associates to be a confirmed bachelor.
“Yes, you, Miss Oliver. Why, you’re probably the most spankable girl I know.”
“Me?” she laughed again. “Why?”
“Because you’re so cute.”
“I could be naughtier, Mr. Johanson,” she suggested flirtatiously.
“You wouldn’t know how to if you tried, Miss Oliver.”
“I am tediously well behaved, aren’t I?” she lamented. “It’s always been that way with me, Mr. Johanson.”
“Don’t feel badly about it, Miss Oliver. You’re going to make some lucky man a splendid wife some day.”
“Oh, I’m not sure I’m going to get married,” she told him seriously.
“Not get married?” Mr. Johanson had never heard such a statement from a young schoolteacher before.
“Oh no, Mr. Johanson. I believe in free love,” Miss Oliver replied.
“I see! Miss Oliver is progressive, even radical. I suppose that on the weekends you migrate to the coffee houses of Boston to listen to beat poetry and jazz?”
“How did you know? Do you like beat poetry, Mr. Johanson?”
“Indeed I do, Miss Oliver.”
Miss Oliver waited for him to speak again.
“Miss Oliver?”
“Yes, Mr. Johanson?”
“Perhaps we could go into Boston together some weekend to listen to jazz.”
“Oh, Mr. Johanson, that would be so wonderful! Sometimes when I go alone I get approached by the most inappropriate people and I don’t know how to get rid of them.”
“They’ve probably guessed your views on marriage.”
“You think so?”
“Don’t all girls who hang around coffee houses share those views?”
“I don’t know. I never manage to talk to any girls,” she reflected. “But many of my classmates at college did.”
Mr. Johanson looked at the clock and saw it was time for them to claim their classes from recess in the schoolyard. They walked out together and continued to talk, this time about Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
“What a splendid girl,” thought Mr. Johanson as he watched Miss Oliver walk across the yard to find her little ones. Miss Oliver turned to wave at him, and in turning back, walked into Mr. Albrecht, the stern Vice Principal. Mr. Albrecht was in his middle thirties, lean, sandy-haired, nattily suited for a man in his position and handsome in spite of his perpetually unsmiling visage. He terrified all young children.
“Careful, young lady!” he scolded, deftly sidestepping a full force collision with Miss Oliver.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Albrecht,” cried Miss Oliver, blushing with embarrassment.
“That’s all right, Miss Oliver,” he replied, a fraction of a smile tugging at the corners of his thin lips for an instant before he continued across the yard.
“That man would be so much more attractive if he’d only smile now and then,” thought Miss Oliver, gathering her class into two lines and shepherding them back into the school building.
If Miss Kranz was Mr. Johanson’s least favorite faculty member, Mr. Albrecht was certainly Miss Oliver’s. She hated the way he bullied the little boys, dragging them into the bathroom and roughing them up to frighten them. Miss Oliver had no idea what Mr. Albrecht did to the little boys in the bathroom, but she suspected it involved some form of corporal punishment. She didn’t think that it was spanking; Mr. Albrecht’s was more the shake-and-slap type.
Once Miss Oliver had been both shocked and ashamed to see Mr. Albrecht pick a little boy up by his ears for violating the no-talking rule during a fire drill. She had never seen a child’s face get so red. She wondered what she would do if Mr. Albrecht ever dared to lay his hands on one of her small charges. Indeed, she knew that she would not allow it. To his credit, she had never seen him concern himself with the behavior or discipline of little girls. To be sure, there was no need as little girls always behaved flawlessly in his dread presence.
Miss Oliver resolved to discuss Mr. Albrecht in great detail with Mr. Johanson when they were alone in the city. A delicious thrill ran through her as she remembered Mr. Johanson’s flirtatious remarks about spanking.
“I’ll bet I could get him to spank me one of these days!” thought Miss Oliver, while she put the children in their cots for their nap. Then she sat down at her piano in the back of the room to pick music for the day’s singing lesson. As Miss Oliver picked out three simple songs, she reflected upon how beautifully Mr. Johanson played the piano. It wasn’t everyone who could play Gershwin’s Concerto in F. The sound of his piano wafted intoxicatingly out the windows of his fourth floor classroom every lunchtime.
“Imagine Mr. Johanson knowing about the beat poets!” Miss Oliver reflected, putting on her smock for finger-painting. “He is truly a man of many abilities,” Miss Oliver thought. “And he isn’t all that old. It’s just those dowdy clothes he wears. I wish I could do something about that!”
Miss Oliver had very little personal experience of spanking. She had received a few spankings from her father as a child, but thought of these as scary and humiliating rather than exciting. The kind of spanking that interested her the most was the kind she saw in movies and on TV, where a handsome man spanked a grown-up lady. Just seeing a wonderful movie spanking was enough to make Miss Oliver flushed and restless for weeks.
Miss Oliver often fantasized about spanking before she went to sleep at night. She was not a virgin. She had a boyfriend in high school, a boyfriend in college and another in graduate school. She had been a free thinker since reading the autobiography of Isadora Duncan at age thirteen and did enjoy making love. But she didn’t fantasize about it the way she did about spanking, which seemed so much more delightful.
Once or twice she got one of the boyfriends to spank her, but the resultant experience had been somehow lacking. Miss Oliver wanted a man who would think of spanking her naturally, like in the movies. Mr. Johanson seemed as though he might be that kind of wonderful
