Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 The story you are about to read is a work of fiction.  Certain elements are
loosely based on real people and real events however they've been
embellished for dramatic effect and all names of people, places and other
identifying details have been changed. 
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   Diary Entry: June 4, 2003

   I realize diaries are generally considered to be accounts of things
recorded for posterity more or less as they happen, and to some extent this
will be true for my diary entries made here.  However, I'm aware that many
people reading this might think, based on what has been posted in the past
week since the group began, that a day in my life is one great whirl of
hedonistic, thrilling adventures.  Alas, nothing could be further than the
truth.  I won't bore you with the dull, everyday things that happen unless
there's some way to relate them back to something that you'll enjoy
reading. I'm sure nobody wants to see entries that read like shopping lists
and are twice as boring.

   Interesting events in life seem to go in cycles with long intervening
periods of nothingness where one has time to look back and reflect.  Being
a person that finds a lot of pleasure in daydreaming gives me plenty to do
in these times, like now, when nothing much seems to be happening.

   Have you ever found yourself looking back and seeing your life as like a
parallel to everything else?  Maybe like one of those small dirt roads
which runs alongside railroad tracks in the country.  Sometimes they
stretch for miles and while there might be glimpses of more interesting
sights on the other side of the tracks, crossing over can only be done at
junctions when they appear along the route.

   Often these junctions appear suddenly, without flashing warning signals
or anything to slow the rapid crossing you make and before you know it
you're speeding along on the other side of the tracks.  I know what you're
thinking.  You're thinking for heaven's sake!  Get to the point!

   Okay, well I'll try and explain it like this.  This may take a while so
you might like to make yourself comfortable before reading any more.

   When I was in high school, and it was an exclusive girl's school I'm
talking about and not some liberal minded public school, the strict
formalities and rituals of everything were every bit like those people who
never went to one of these school might imagine or hear in anecdotes. 
There were rules for everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, and the enforcement
of them was harsh and often unjust.

   It's been a bit over twenty years since I finished school so I can't say
things are still the same, but when I was there most of the rules - the
dress and behavior codes in particular - were enforced, not by the teachers
but by "Prefects" who were appointed from the ranks of the senior year
girls by the Headmistress.  They were a law unto themselves.

   Now, being a diligent young student and certainly not a rebellious
teenager by any definition, you might think I sailed through my final year
at school without any trouble whatsoever.  Wrong.  I committed that
greatest sin of all in a private school: I admitted I had no interest in
sport.

   It wasn't that I was inactive or anything, I was.  Like every young girl
my age at the time who was being groomed to become "a lady" I had private
tuition in tennis, though I never developed any playing skills, and
swimming lessons which I eventually gave up when it became clear the only
way to become a proficient swimmer was to put my head under the water.  I
might have even had lessons in horse riding if I hadn't been so terrified
of being around horses.  It was the "team sports" that I found
objectionable and I made the mistake of admitting that in front of a school
Prefect.  I've never been one of those competitive types of people and for
me the concept of wasting weekday afternoons and entire Saturdays running
around with a group of girls, most of whom I had nothing in common with
anyway, just seemed incredibly pointless.

   I no longer remember the exact details of the transgression because it
wasn't immediately brought to my attention when it was said to have
happened.  All I remember is this.  I was in the school library at the
time, as I often was during my lunch hour, and a small delegate of Prefects
approached me and handed me a "Red Slip".  These were small docket-like
notices, written in duplicate in a small carbon copy book, and issued much
the same way as a parking infringement notice might be issued.  They were
the most feared pieces of paper in the school and more than one girl I knew
withdrew from school rather than face the consequences of having received
one.  Actually, I think both girls I'm thinking of were on second offense
notices which was tantamount to being suspended from school - a punishment
that could be prescribed by the Prefect body but which had to be ratified
by the Headmistress.  Suspensions were usually rubber-stamped by the
Headmistress.

   On receipt of a Red Slip girls were directed to present themselves to
the next convened meeting of the student Prefect body, usually held on a
Friday afternoon immediately after school.  For me this meant I only had a
few hours to dread the appointment as it was already a Friday when I was
served with the notice, but some girls had an agonizing week of waiting. 
You must remember I had no idea at this stage what it was I was supposed to
have done.  The Red Slip didn't ever make any mention of anything except
that you were required to attend and if you didn't, the matter would be
referred to the Headmistress which immediately meant the consequences would
be dire if you failed to attend.  Naturally, having never before this been
in trouble at all, I had no idea what to expect at the meeting.  None of my
friends had ever been in trouble either and of the girls I knew of who had
been, none would speak of the experience.  I think it really was a case of
you don't want to know.

   I presented myself promptly at the time specified on the Red Slip.  The
Prefects, all of whom were borders at the school (day students like me were
excluded from the Prefect selection process), convened their meetings in
the recreation room of their dormitory building.  It wasn't a very large
room and it was windowless which added to the overall gloominess.  It's
austere, wood paneled walls were adorned with portraits of the sombre faced
women who established the school in the late nineteenth century and but for
a polished chrome and glass trophy cabinet - the only decor concession to
the modern age - I felt like I was in another world.  Another time period
even.

   I'd been ushered into the room by a girl who I remembered had herself
been "Red Slipped" the previous week.  She didn't speak except to give me
directions, telling me I was to stand immediately in front of a large,
ornate mahogany desk which had three antique, buttoned leather chairs
neatly positioned on the other side of it.  The carpet of the area on which
I was to stand was almost threadbare from years of girls who'd been, like
me, told to stand there.  I stood where I was told, nervously patting down
my skirt and dusting my blazer with my hands to ensure there wasn't so much
as a speck of dust on the sleeves or shoulders.  The girl who had escorted
me into the room disappeared back out of the room, the door was gently
closed behind me, and I was left standing there alone to silently
contemplate the situation.

   I must have stood there for, I don't know how long.  At least twenty
minutes but maybe thirty.  Anxiety turned to impatience and impatience
turned to annoyance at being kept waiting like that but, as always, I kept
still and silent, obediently waiting just as I'd been instructed to wait.
When a door behind the desk in front of me finally opened, I fought back my
instinctive nature to smile and acknowledge the entrance of the three
Prefects who in turn sat in the chairs, settling themselves comfortably as
yet more Prefects filed into the room after them.  The junior Prefects each
gave me a disdainful look as they passed me to take their seats in the less
ornate brown leather Chesterfields scattered around the room behind me. 
The room immediately took on the air of a courtroom and I still distinctly
remember the peculiar feeling that came over me when I realized it wasn't
so much a meeting as a trial and it was me in the dock.

   The charge I was facing still eluded me, probably more so even after it
was read out to me.  It was read by the Prefect sitting to my left at the
table.  She read it in a monotone, slowly and deliberately speaking every
word with the clarity that only comes from a private girl's school
education.  I listened carefully to every word, trying to comprehend what
she was saying.  She opened with a statement I still remember.  It is as if
it's been etched indelibly on my mind: "Ingrid has no school spirit."

   I had started to shake my head, not to deny the charge, but because she
may as well have been speaking another language for all the sense it made.
For a start, I couldn't remember reading anywhere that this lack of
so-called school spirit was against any school rule.  I'd never heard such
a ridiculous thing and I would have burst out laughing if the situation
hadn't called for the utmost propriety.  She went on to detail the charge,
reading from beginning to end of the short paragraph without looking up
once until after she'd intoned the final few words: "...is not a member of
a single sporting club within the school."

   It made no sense whatsoever.

   "Ingrid has no school spirit."

   The declaration repeating the charge against me came from the girl who
until this point had sat in the middle of the other two, listening to what
was being read out but gazing off, I think, at the trophy cabinet.  When
she made the statement she and the other two girls gave me one of those
pointed, serious looks that only girls can give each other.

   I desperately wanted to say something in my own defense but I didn't
know where to begin.  Not that I really could have said anything at that
point even if I knew what to say.  The rules about addressing Prefects were
strict at the most casual of times and this certainly wasn't one of those
times.  So I just stood there doing everything I could to reconcile in my
mind everything that was happening.

   There was a long silence with me standing there, now rigidly tense with
a knotty dread which had taken hold in the pit of my stomach, and with the
three Prefects, all sitting relaxed and just staring at me.  The Head
Prefect in the middle eventually broke her gaze on me, leaned forward,
clasped her fingers together on the desk and rocked forward onto her
elbows. There was an implicit expression of power in her action.  At my
school, to put one's elbows on a desk was the equivalent of a person in a
managerial position in an office putting their feet on the desk.  It just
wasn't done except by the most powerful girls in school.  To this day I
remember her name - Corrine - and she was in that enviable position of
being the most powerful girl in school.

   It's a paradox that things like "justice" and "values" were taught in
classes at my school and yet there, right there at that moment when both
these ephemeral things were needed, I was witnessing none of them in
practice.  I had expected to be allowed to say a few words in my own
defense but it became apparent I was not going to be given that
opportunity. Corrine, who I recall displayed the hint of a smirk when she
said it, said "now read out the punishment."

   The girl with the monotone voice slowly read from her prepared sheet.  I
could hear the hushed titter of some girls sitting behind me when the word
"nude" was mentioned and some more when the room was informed I was to
receive twenty strokes of "the cane", to be applied to my bare backside by
the two girls sitting either side of Corrine.

   Now, you're probably thinking that something like this would never
happen in reality, but I assure you it did happen and I've since learned it
not only happened at my school but was common practice everywhere in
schools such as the one I attended.  It wasn't just a punishment.  It was
the continuation of a tradition which had gone on for years, if not
centuries.  Institutionalized and ritualized.

   I knew better than to get myself into deeper trouble by speaking out
against my punishment.  I should add that I was given this option but it
was put to me in a way that either I accept the punishment exactly as
prescribed or I be sent immediately to the Headmistress with another Red
Slip informing her of the Prefect's decision to suspend me from school. 
This I knew would be the worse of two evils as I'd never be able to explain
myself or the reasons for my exclusion from school to my parents, who I
feared even more than the school Headmistress.

   The borders at school, which as I've already mentioned included every
Prefect present, were rumored to share beds with each other at night and do
all sorts of things that an innocent girl like me (yes, I was completely
naive and innocent back then) didn't completely understand but intuitively
knew weren't supposed to be done between two girls.  That was something I
always remember about the borders at school.  They always seemed far more
sexually advanced than a girl like me whose parents didn't even allow to go
on dates with boys until I was nineteen and in my first year at university.
So you can imagine my fear of removing all my clothes in front of a room
full of these types of girls.

   I still get a tingle when I think back to the way I undressed.  Nervous
and shaking like the proverbial leaf, I slowly removed every item of my
school uniform, folding things neatly and making a small pile of them on
the floor beside my feet.  As I was undressing the two girls whose sombre
duty it was to cane me selected their implements from a cupboard behind the
desk; a cupboard I couldn't help but notice was filled with all manner of
bizarre paraphernalia that looked like it belonged in a museum.  In the
medieval inquisition exhibit at the museum!

   Corrine remained in her seat, now leaning back in it and relaxing as she
watched me step forward to bend over and place my hands on the edge of the
desk.  I couldn't look as the other two Prefects took their positions
behind me and awaited their command from Corrine to begin punishing me.  I
had expected something like a sign or a "begin" from Corrine but instead
she informed me that it was custom before a caning for the wrongdoer to
accept a few "warm up" hits before the real discipline began.  It felt like
a trap to me.  I was given the option of bypassing the warm up and going
straight to the punishment part although there was also the implied threat
that if I went this route the two girls caning me would feel more inclined
to cane me harder than they might if they were allowed this preliminary
ritual.  Reluctantly because I knew I had no choice, I agreed.

   Now, this is where I recall things started getting really strange.  I
flinched each time I heard the whistling sound of the canes whizzing
through the air; a high pitched sound abruptly cut short by a light
sounding slap when the cane struck my backside.  To my astonishment, even
though I had steeled myself for something really painful the blows, despite
the sounds being made, were actually feather soft.  A small sting, perhaps,
but nothing at all like I was expecting.

   This continued for, I don't know how long.  Stroke after stroke falling
with a gentle and rhythmic sound on my behind.  Of course, if one strike
was to land where another had just fallen, I'd tense up and feel a slightly
hotter burning sensation, but on the whole I found it quite pleasant. 
Almost like a massage.

   I remained leaning on the desk, keeping my eyes fixed on a spot on the
desk for a while before eventually realizing I wasn't looking at anything
at all anymore and had my eyes closed.  It was a surreal moment, lost in a
world of giddy emotions which I'd never previously experienced.  Corrine
had been saying something to me before it actually registered but I
remember her saying something like "see, this is what team work is all
about" referring of course to the concerted efforts of the two girls caning
me.

   But this feeling of sublime bliss was short lived.  Corrine's soft
spoken but commanding tone broke into my thoughts and she announced it was
time for the punishment to begin.  She may have even winked at me, which I
thought was a clear sign she knew she'd enjoy what was about to happen as
much as I'd been secretly enjoying what had been happening to that point.

   I could tell from the sound of the canes whistling through the air that
the strikes would sting, and sting they did but still not as much as I
could have predicted.  After each I was expected to loudly count its
number, something I remember feeling more embarrassed about doing than any
other part of my punishment.  By the time I got to ten I could really feel
the burning sting of every blow.  I guess I must have endured it and
counted the full twenty strokes, but I really don't remember much past
eleven or twelve.  My head was somewhere else entirely by that stage and
even though I twisted and squirmed after each biting strike my bottom, as
if possessed with a mind of its own, continued to remain propped back and
ready for more.  I do however still remember "that look" in Corrine's
magnetic green eyes.  A hungry, satisfied look as she watched me taking my
punishment.

   I began this little tale by talking about roads that cross back and
forth across railroad lines and you might be wondering what any of this had
to do with the story I've just told.  That metaphorical road I spoke of
recently crossed the tracks and took me face to face with somebody else who
has that very same look I saw all those years ago in Corrine's eyes.  It's
a look I never realized I'd ever be so excited to see again...
   END