so excited that you’re doing Kiss Me Kate,” said Amanda, eager to turn the conversation away from the unpredictable photographer to whom Phoebe had been married but a few years and continued to adore. “And with Mr. Newton directing. That must be sheer heaven!” Amanda said, with the enthusiasm of a connoisseur. “That was one of my favorite albums as a child,” Amanda continued. “My mother had a vinyl copy and a stereo to play it on. I would stare and stare at the picture of Alfred Drake enclosing Patricia Morrison in the lash of his whip. And then I loved the music so!”
“Bless Anthony for choosing this project,” said Marguerite, raising her glass to their local luminary, who was in one way or another, the patron of so many of the women present and all of them drank to Anthony Newton’s health.
Each woman haven chosen a dainty lunch, they allowed their glasses to be refilled and encouraged Marguerite to recommence.
“We’ll start with our first honoree, Alison Albrecht,” said Marguerite. “Alison, please tell us something of your history in Random Point?”
Alison took a sip of white wine and began, “First of all, thank you, Marguerite for making me feel so welcome. I’ve never done well with BDSM support groups, but I’m thrilled to be included in this obvious upgrade of one of those.” Several of the women nodded sympathetically, having recoiled from the sometimes creepiness of such groups on more than one occasion.
Alison turned to Amanda and said, “I’m so happy to meet you, Amanda. I wasn’t one of Hugo’s original readers, but like you, my roots in Random Point and the scene go back a long way.” Amanda smiled back at Alison.
“I grew up in Random Point,” said Alison, “as did Freddie, my fiancé. And strangely enough, we both know that our parents used spanking for foreplay before we were born. Freddie found some diaries his mother kept when she was young and they detailed a number of spanking specific incidents.
“My father wasn’t lovable and I wasn’t fond of him. He was an elementary school vice principal, organically authoritarian and harshly critical to such a degree that by the time I was six or seven, he had completely lost credibility in my eyes. My mother’s obsessive perfectionism kept him from picking on her and she managed him better than any other woman could have done. My mother was a true friend to me, and shielded me from my father’s grumpiness as much as possible. Corporal punishment was only a small part of my traumatic childhood, mainly because I was too terrified of my father to ever get caught being less than well behaved.
“And yet, I grew up with a desire to be spanked by some strict male. Not my father, but someone who loved me instead of desiring to totally control me. I tried the BDSM groups and discovered an acute lack of symmetry in the scene in that half the men I met wanted to be spanked and the other half wanted the same thing. They’d always try to introduce the old “turn around is fair play” axiom, which I soon figured out was male submissive code for, ‘Don’t make me admit that I want to be your bitch.’
“I played with the personal ads for a while but so many people would lie about their age. Even the photos they sent were misleading. The dead give aways were those little triangles still glued to the corners of the black and white snap shots they’d pull out of their albums to answer my ad with.
“Then there were the ladies who wrote to my ad who turned out to be guys. And while I’m on the subject of pussy envy, is there anyone else as heartily sick as I am of listening to men dreamily confide that what they most want to be is a lesbian? The best joke is when two girly men wind up writing to each other and finally meet. I wonder, where do they go from there?
“Then there were the masters,” Alison continued, deadpan as the women around the table giggled, grinned and cheered her on in this unexpected routing of the men. “Have you ever met a master who wasn’t an asshole? The mean ones are scary psychopaths and the benign ones are as oppressive as Jewish relatives.”
“Don’t you love the ones who want to boss you over the phone?” Alison continued, “with their, ‘Pull down your panties, kneel on beans, insert ice cubes into your pussy, hop on one leg, sit on marbles, shove your butt out a window, put on red stockings and masturbate for me. You agree to everything of course, while placing orders on-line.
“Or what about those liberal doms who will allow their submissives to be handled by others, provided they can sagely supervise? What the hell is that about?” Alison asked.
“They’ll claim it’s for the safety of their darlings,” explained Marguerite, “but they just like to watch.”
“Yes,” agreed Polyxena, “and also to make sure the other man doesn’t do too good a job and charm their girl away.”
“Well, to make a long story short,” said Alison, “My father finally died, making it safe for me to return to Random Point. Now I could finally enjoy the beautiful house he left me! I got a job as assistant comptroller at Braemar. There I met Paula and David.” Alison nodded at the polished blonde who during the period Alison was thinking of, had been Paula Rohan, soon to become the first Mrs. Ambrose Bartlett, only to subsequently divorce him and finally end up the wife of Sloan Taylor. David Lawrence was the Braemar English teacher who had brought Hope out with him from California several years before.
“I overheard Paula and David talking about spanking and demanded to be let in on their secrets, admitting that I was one of them,” Alison went on. “They told me about Hugo’s magazine, and encouraged me to place an ad in it. I took their advice and was amazed that one of the first people to answer my ad was Freddie Johanson, who actually worked at Braemar, as the network manager. At first he didn’t seem like my type. Too nice for me, I thought, too sweet to be capable of actually spanking a girl. But we worked it out between us,” Alison smiled. “And, well, he turned out to be a very good spanker.”
“Yes, he did,” thought Polyxena Guzman, regarding Alison with an innocently benign smile.
“May I ask a question?” Hope addressed Alison.
“Yes,” said Alison, who in the next breath forestalled the question by turning to Marguerite and saying, “but can we review again, are we supposed to be totally frank or delicately diplomatic here?”
Marguerite replied, “Ladies, what do you think? Shall we speak the truth here for our mutual edification?”
“If we all told all our secrets,” said Susan, “we’d be here all night.”
“You would at any rate,” said Marguerite.
“I haven’t misbehaved in years,” said Damaris serenely.
“You also have the steadiest and most reliable partner,” Susan pointed out, speaking of her once brother in law, William Random, to whom Damaris was now happily wed.
“I’m conflicted on this issue,” Hope admitted, “though I myself was about to pose a volatile question to Alison. The problem is one of female comradery vs. loyalty to our various men.”
“Perhaps we should agree to disclose only the data we feel comfortable about revealing,” suggested Paula Taylor.
“For my part,” said Phoebe Casper Robbins, “I’d want any information available about my husband.” All the others looked at her with interest, for this was the second time she had expressed suspicion of Pascal’s fidelity that night. She squared her creamy, half bare shoulders and added with some warmth, “He’s always snooping around for information on me!”
“I
