My Crime and Punishment I recognised him immediately even though twenty-two years had passed since that evening in his apartment. The evening I could neither forget nor bear to remember. I never learned his Christian name – he had always been Mr. Brown. He was slightly thicker around the middle perhaps and with some grey hair at the sides of his still thick head of hair. But the broad shoulders, well- muscled arms and the strong, assured stance were unmistakably Mr. Brown. It was just a slight car accident. One of those stupid driving mistakes we all make from time to time. After the traffic light had changed to green I eased my foot off the clutch and let the car move gently forward. My concentration was less than it should be because I had not registered that the car in front of me had stalled. My rented Ford drove straight into the rear of the car in front. Mr. Brown’s car. He gave no hint of recognition as we exchanged insurance details. Although he looked little different to me than he did when I worked evenings in his store, it was with great relief that I realised that I, now a successful lawyer approaching my fortieth birthday, bore little resemblance to the teenager he had once employed. Certainly there was no indication that my name on the rental company’s documentation meant anything to him. “My apologies again Mr. Brown,” I said, concluding our roadside business in as formal a tone as I could manage, hoping that he couldn’t hear the jack-hammer beat of my heart or the thud of my blood battering against the pulse in my neck. Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. He won’t even remember that night so long ago. How many teenagers has he employed since then, I rationalised. Twenty? Fifty? More? “I’m sure the rental company’s insurer will repair your damage promptly,” I said, achieving a voice quite close to normal. “That is perfectly alright Mr. Keyes. These things happen. Please do not over concern yourself.” His voice was exactly as I recalled and he spoke with the same old-fashioned formality. He turned towards his car to leave. I exhaled with relief at his lack of recognition. However, just as he was about to open the car door, he turned around, walked up to me and placed something in the top pocket of my jacket while I stood there, rigid with shock. “The insurers may well deal with the damage to the car, Alan,” he said in a calm, level voice. It was clear now that he knew exactly who I was. My legs turned to jelly and I leaned on the car to stop myself from falling down. “There remains however the matter of your punishment for driving without proper care and consideration to other road users. My address is on the card in your pocket. I shall expect you at seven o’clock this evening.” Well, you’ll have a long wait, I said to myself twenty minutes later in my hotel room, large whisky in hand. I noted with small satisfaction that the tremor in my hands had nearly subsided. ***** It was a Thursday evening, just a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday. As well as studying hard for my “A” levels, I worked two or three nights a week in Mr. Brown’s Off Licence. My job was to restock the store’s shelves and floor space with cans and bottles of beers, soft drinks, spirits, wines, confectionery, cigarettes, etc. etc. This doesn’t sound too hard, but it was a busy store and the sheer volume of goods that had to be shifted from the store room at the back to the front made this a difficult task to complete in my allotted hours. I took pride in my work though and always made a determined effort to see the store fully stocked by the time I finished. It was a decent part-time job. Mr. Brown paid more than most other employers of school-age teenagers and once he’d given me my instructions for the evenings, he trusted me to plan the work and do it my own way for the most part.. As I said, I had recently turned eighteen. This is relevant because in Britain under-eighteens are not permitted to serve alcohol to the public in shops. Thursday wasn’t one of my regular evenings to work but Mr. Brown had called me at home and asked if I could cover for his permanent assistant - a nervous, cheerless woman called Moira - who had called in sick. He asked if I would serve and operate the till even though I hadn’t done this before. He said he could trust me to handle the money. I was flattered and the pay for the extra shift would come in handy, and so I agreed readily. The evening passed quickly. I enjoyed working at the checkout and serving the public. It made a real change from manhandling crates and boxes all evening. The catalyst to what was to follow occurred at about nine thirty. One of my school friends came into the shop, exchanged some pleasantries with me at the till and selected a packet of chewing gum. I guess I was experiencing a sense of bravado at being allowed to handle the store’s products and the customers’ money, and took the opportunity to show off a little. I reached out to the cigarette shelf behind me and discreetly passed him a packet of 20 Benson & Hedges along with his few pence change. My friend grinned at me, said “Cheers” and left the shop. Mr. Brown meantime was helping a customer select a bottle of wine and so couldn’t have noticed a thing. “Goodnight, Mr. Brown,” I said at about eleven o’clock, just after closing time. I reached the door to leave when he called me back. “I wonder if you could spare me a moment upstairs, Alan,” he said. “There is something I would like to discuss with you.” I followed him up the stairs to the small apartment above the shop where he lived. I had been here often enough before to take or retrieve delivery paperwork and such like from the desk in the sitting room that served as his office space, but I had never been invited up like this before. I speculated that he was going to offer me a reward for helping out at short notice, and for doing it very well considering I had no previous experience of working at the front of the store. I was therefore completely unprepared for what was to follow. He sat down on the chair in front on the desk and swivelled it around to face me. “I am very disappointed in you Alan,” he said. “I never took you for a thief.” I felt the colour drain from my face as I realised that he must indeed have noticed me take the packet of cigarettes. Nonetheless, in case he wasn’t certain I resorted to my standard tactic when accused of some misdemeanour or other - denial. “I-I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I managed to stammer out. He brought his left hand down sharply onto the surface of the desk. The resultant loud crack reverberated around the room and for the very first time in our acquaintance I heard him raise his voice slightly. “Don’t lie to me, young man. I quite clearly saw you hand over that packet of cigarettes to your friend.” I could tell from his tone and expression that any further protestations of innocence were futile. Every last vestige of youthful cockiness evaporated from me and it was as much as I could do to utter a mumbled apology. “I’m sorry,” I croaked. “I have no idea why I did it.” “Your apology is welcome, but inadequate,” I heard him say. “I will have to terminate your employment and write to your mother to explain why.” I groaned in despair. Mr. Brown was acquainted with my mother through their membership of the local church committee. In fact that’s how I got the job in the first place. Mum was a widow and since Dad died she had gone back to work to keep us both. Money was tight and she had sacrificed a good deal to ensure that I could stay on at school, get good “A” levels and go onto university. She would be devastated to learn that I had been sacked for stealing. “Please Mr. Brown. Don’t do that. It would kill Mum,” I implored him, my voice cracking with emotion. He looked at me intently for several seconds as if making up his mind about something. “Given your previous excellent work for me and the impact this news would have upon your mother, I will offer you an alternative,” he said calmly. Relief flooded through me as the prospect of a reprieve was presented to me. “Instead of dismissing you and informing your mother, you can choose to accept your punishment directly from me. Here and now. The only stipulation is that I insist that all of today’s events remain strictly between ourselves and are never be divulged to another person.” I heaved a great sigh of relief. “Thank you Mr. Brown. Of course I agree. I fully deserve whatever punishment you see fit to give me.” At this point I hadn’t given a thought as to what form this punishment might take. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that my mum was kept in the dark. “Good,” he said. After a moment’s pause he added, “I should tell you straightaway that I am a believer in corporal punishment.” Corporal punishment? Well that didn’t sound too bad. They still used the cane in my school. Offenders would extend their arms and receive two or four sharp strokes onto the fingers. It hadn’t happened to me for a couple of years, but there were worse punishments. A quick caning was much better than detention, for instance. I swallowed and nodded at Mr. Brown in a gesture of understanding and acceptance. “When I was a young teenager, Alan, my father once caught me pocketing some coins that didn’t belong to me. I was soundly spanked for this transgression and I propose the same punishment for you.” As his words sunk in my throat went dry and I felt my knees buckle. Spanked? Good God! My parents hadn’t believed in smacking and here was I, eighteen years old, about to be spanked? A quick glance showed me that he deadly serious. I took a deep breath. OK, I thought, he’ll put you over a chair and slap your backside a few times - big deal. Infinitely better than the getting sacked and Mum finding out. “Strip down to your underpants,” Mr. Brown ordered. “Now wait a minute…” My response was the instinctive reply of a young male approaching adulthood. How dare he? Did he think he was dealing with a little kid? Little did I know that I had just uttered the last coherent words that I would speak that evening. His response to my protestation was to slap the desk even harder than he had done a few moments ago. With the sound echoing around the small room like a gunshot, his eyes drilled onto mine. He said, “Your punishment has just doubled. There will be no further discussion. Strip!” His eyes bore into mine and commanded that I obey him. I felt every last ounce of defiance ebb from my soul. In a daze I lifted my T shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor beside me. My shoes and socks followed moments later. After a second’s hesitation during which his eyes flashed a silent warning, I unbuckled my belt, unfastened the button and zip of my jeans and lowered them to my ankles. With a little shuffling of my legs they too were lying on the ground. I stood facing my still-seated employer wearing just a pair of white Y- front underpants. Remember them? Plain cotton with the odd-shaped opening and the inch-thick elasticated waistband at the top? Even twenty something years ago they were old fashioned, but that was what Mum bought me and that’s what I wore. A hot flush of embarrassment surged through every cell of my body. Although being quite normal in every way, I was painfully shy about my body. Even my own mother hadn’t seen me in my underwear for years. Of course, I was used to getting changed for sports at school, but everyone was in the same position and we consciously avoided looking at each other. And although Julie, my girlfriend of over two years, and I had started to become more and more intimate over the last few months, we had not progressed to full sex yet and she had never seen me as unclothed as I was now. I can’t describe how I felt to be standing there clad only in my pants. However, a further intense wave of embarrassment and humiliation coursed through me moments later as I sensed another physical phenomenon affect me. Now, I should explain that I was never confused about my sexuality as some teenagers are. It was girls who excited me. It was to the women’s underwear pages in the mail order catalogues that I turned, not the men’s. My masturbatory fantasies were all female, mostly involving Julie - although sometimes her elder sister and, God forbid, even her mother sneaked in there sometimes. Can you imagine my feelings then, as I realised that I was developing an erection? Not the semi-stiffening that is nearly a permanent condition of the adolescent male. No, this was a full blown, rock-solid hard-on. I could feel the tip of my penis trying to poke through the elasticated waistband of my underwear. I sensed my testicles tighten and a wave of heat surge through my groin. What was happening to me? How on earth could my body respond to this situation in such a manner? I have since learned that it is possible for the human psyche to find erotic and sexual stimulation from virtually any situation, but at the time the fact that I was displaying an erection inside my underpants to a man was totally mortifying. A low groan escaped from my throat. His gaze roamed slowly and deliberately up and down my body. I never truly understood the expression “I wish the ground would open up and swallow me” until that moment. I could feel his eyes moving down my chest, past my groin with its very evident swelling, and back again to my face. My humiliation was complete, I thought. I was wrong. “You will be spanked naked,” he said matter-of-factly. “Take off your underwear.” I started to tremble with an emotion I can’t properly describe – a mixture of trepidation, fear, humiliation, shame, and yet I cannot deny that underlying all of this was a frisson of excitement, as the evidence in my underpants clearly showed. “Do it now Alan,” he ordered. I closed my eyes and started to pull down this last garment. I panicked for a moment when the fabric appeared to be caught before realising that the elastic needed to be stretched forward to allow it to clear my erection. I dropped the underwear to my ankles and stepped clear. I risked a glance downwards, hoping, praying for a sign that my penis was softening, lessening my humiliation a degree. Another low groan escaped me when to my horror I saw that it had grown to a size I had never experienced before. Trust me, adolescent boys are intimately aware of the size of their penises, soft and erect, and I knew that I was achieving a lifetime best at this very moment. The purple tip had completely emerged from the foreskin – vibrant, quivering, glistening with moisture, seeming to have its own life form independent from the body to which it was attached. It may as well have done for all the control I had over it. He beckoned me to move closer to him. I took one step forward, whereupon he grasped my arm and with seemingly no effort, pulled me across his knees. Only on tiptoe could I make contact with the floor to his right and I was forced to balance myself with my hands on the floor to his left. My naked buttocks were the most elevated part of my body and I was disturbingly aware of my erection pressing into his thigh. Before I had time to take a breath the first blow from his right hand landed on my exposed cheeks. God it hurt. I mean it really hurt. I had never realised what a tender part of the anatomy the backside was, and its susceptibility to pain. After a moment the initial sharp shock of the impact had ebbed only to be replaced by a stinging, burning sensation that spread across my bum and grew and intensified. I yelped in pain. I made the mistake of placing my right arm behind me, spreading my hand over my bottom in protection against a repeat blow. This was unwise. After a second or two Mr. Brown took my wrist and reached down to hold it together with its left-hand partner. He removed his tie from his collar, looped the neckwear around my wrists, pulling tight. My arms were now bound together in front of me, rendering any further interference impossible. SPANK. SPANK. SPANK. SPANK. His hand continued to beat down upon me with a slow, regular pace. He was clearly an expert at this. He allowed sufficient time between blows for the full excruciating agony to develop across the tender tissue of my buttocks and inner thighs before delivering the next spank to a slightly different part of my exposed bottom. After a minute or so my squeals of pain become a high-pitched moaning sound, interspersed with whimpers and incoherent mumbled words, begging, pleading for him to stop. All at once a long-forgotten memory arose in my mind. An experience I had long buried of a small boy of five or six, having his shorts and pants pulled down by an aunt with whom he was staying for a weekend, of being exposed and spanked in front of his cousins for some long- forgotten mischief, of his misery at the humiliation and pain, of his tears and childish sobs. All at once I was that small boy again. As my tormentor’s hand continued to rain the steady beat of spanks to my agonised rear, I began to cry. Not gentle tears of regret and sorrow. Oh no. I started to howl and sob and wail as the pain and hurt and humiliation and sheer degradation of my situation echoed that of my buried boyhood memory. I was no longer a confident, maturing young adult. I was a naked little boy, shamefully exposed and being punished, spanked, just as I deserved. Gradually my sobs quieted and reduced to a steady whimper. It seemed the crying had calmed me somewhat and I began to feel a sense of acceptance, of submission to my situation. My body became completely limp. Except my penis, that is. Slowly I became aware, very aware, of my erection gently stroking against Mr. Brown’s thigh as each spank pushed my backside down into his lap, only to bounce back to its resting position a moment later. At the same time I could feel an exquisite throbbing as my testicles bounced to the same rhythm. The intense fire in my loins caused by each spank didn’t lessen, but somehow my body and mind came to anticipate it, accept it, even – God help me – welcome it, to actually desire it. I became aware that I was raising my hips to receive each spank in order to increase the sensations. The tempo began to increase slightly and I raised my buttocks still higher to accept each spank, brushing my penis against his thigh even more firmly. The fire in my groin amplified with each motion, flowing into my testicles which were pulsating and throbbing with excitement. Finally the intensity of the physical and emotional sensations completely overwhelmed me and I lost all control. I arched my back and with a loud cry I orgasmed, ejaculating stream after stream of semen into my naked stomach and chest, over Mr. Brown’s thighs, even onto the floor some feet in front of me. I collapsed back onto his lap, drawing great gasps of breath into my lungs. I lay there for what seemed like minutes, incapable of rational thought. “Get up,” Mr. Brown ordered, and he led me by my still-bound hands across the room to a settee. He positioned me across the high armrest, pushing me forward until only the tips of my toes reached the ground. My bottom was once again the most elevated part of my body. My now flaccid penis was nestled neatly between my upper thighs. “This is the second part of your punishment, Alan,” His voice came from behind me somewhere. I could neither see him nor sense his position in the room, but I could hear a rustling sound followed by his footsteps approaching my rear. I feared another beating and prayed that it would be quick. I felt my legs being splayed apart and then my buttocks being spread exposing that most intimate of orifices. I detected a cool, moist substance being applied around my anus. I gasped as a finger was inserted, spreading the same substance inside me. Believe it or not, having had a fairly sheltered upbringing I still had no idea what Mr. Brown’s intentions were. Suddenly I felt a presence pushing against my anus. “Try to relax your muscles, Alan,” he said. “That way my entry will be less painful.” The realisation of what was happening hit me in the gut, and my stomach knotted. Not surprisingly I tensed as he pushed forward. I yelled in pain as his penis entered my rectum. It felt like a red hot poker had just been inserted into me. “Just breathe easily and relax your internal muscles.” His words barely registered as the intense discomfort in my rear was all I could sense. He remained motionless for several moments, trying to allow my body to accustom itself to his invasion. Some instinct made me move my feet slightly more apart, adjusting my body and the position of his member inside me. Magically, the discomfort eased as my rectum began to mould itself around his penis. In its place I experienced a sensation I can only inadequately describe as one of fullness, of having a vacuum replaced with a something. He didn’t move for several minutes, remaining stationary while inserted deeply within me, his hands resting on my hips. My buttocks had been made highly sensitive from the spanking, and I could feel the bare skin of his loins brushing against my naked bottom and his pubic hair tickling and teasing at the tender skin of my inner thighs. My earlier feelings of embarrassment and vulnerability were trivial in comparison to the sense of utter and complete nakedness and humiliation I now experienced. He began to rotate his hips and rock gently back and forwards, his motion lifting me gently. I was aware that my body weight was now supported not just by the armrest of the settee and his hands on my hips, but also by being impaled upon the shaft of his penis. I could feel his erection move inside me and my anus stretching and contracting to accommodate his movements. I adjusted my stance again slightly and the next moment I felt a wave of sensation flush through my body from my hair follicles to my toenails. Some secret, innermost, intimate part of me was being touched and caressed and stimulated and excited and………. I was lost on an ocean of bliss as wave after wave after wave of erotic pleasure flowed through me. I could no longer tell what part of me was being stimulated. It was as if my entire body was one huge erogenous zone being stroked and intimately fondled. I began to tremble all over, quivering with sexual pleasure, moaning in accompaniment to the waves of pure ecstasy that flooded through me. Mr. Brown’s moans joined mine in a bizarre duet as his movements in and out, round and round became stronger, longer and deeper. The world exploded as I began to orgasm. My whole body was racked with tremors that juddered and hammered through every ounce of my being, again and again and again and again. My mind filled with colours, vivid and luminous, a sensual kaleidoscope of exploding fireworks. I could hear choirs exulting their joy in exquisite harmonies. I could detect a delightful fragrance of vanilla and musk. I was no longer a physical being, a mixture of blood and bone and tissue. I was instead an entity of pure ecstasy, and this incredible state of being went on and on and on. It is a cliché, I know, but the very earth moved for me. My orgasms slowly receded. My consciousness returned and I realised that Mr. Brown was motionless and was gasping air into heaving lungs. I sensed his penis shrink inside me and I knew that he must have ejaculated his sperm into me. The sheer delicious, erotic dirtiness of that thought caused yet another orgasm to rush through me. He dismounted from me and I lay there for some minutes as a series of mini-orgasms continued to shudder through me as my internal muscles stretched and contracted as if to return to their normal position. This was in no sense a normal climax. I am certain that I did not have an erection during this entire encounter on the settee and I don’t believe that I ejaculated. To this day I cannot explain the physiological processes that occurred to me. I can only describe it, however inadequately, as I have just done. After some time I felt his hands on my shoulder as he raised me to a standing position. He had dressed. His touch was gentle and his voice tender as he said, “You can clean up and get dressed now, Alan. Go and take your clothes to the bathroom.” I emerged five minutes later. As I headed towards the front door his only words were to remind me that he expected me at work for six o’clock on Saturday evening. I left without reply. On Friday morning I dropped a note through the store’s letterbox. “Dear Mr. Brown. I have decided to resign from my job at your store in order to concentrate on my studies. This is with immediate effect. I apologise for the short notice. Yours sincerely, A Keyes.” ***** Since that fateful evening whenever I read in a novel, or hear in a film, words describing sexual encounters in terms such as “he took me” or “he had me” or even “he fucked me” or “he shagged me”, I knew in a very personal way what that meant. What happened to me that evening was different from “having sex” or “screwing” or any other description suggesting that some sort of collaboration had taken place. It wasn’t at all like that. I had been fucked. I had been shagged. I had been taken and used. I had submitted to my spanking and buggery completely. Although I had not been forced in a physical sense, I had been compelled to submit by the pure power of his personality. And yet there was a corner of me that has always suspected that he would have stopped if I had simply asked him to do so…… In the twenty-two years since these events I have realised my ambitions to escape the poverty of my upbringing. I was now a successful and respected member of my profession. A family man with a lovely wife and two wonderful children. I have a nice home, good friends and neighbours - a pillar of the community. These are the things I had craved, these are the things I have achieved, and these were the reasons I posted my note to Mr. Brown. Because that evening a hidden door had been opened for me and I had sampled the world that lay within. A door to a dark and secret place that existed somewhere deep in my psyche, in my very soul. Inside that door I had perceived an alternative future, one where forbidden, exquisite carnal pleasures would be pursued to the exclusion of almost anything else. A future that was incompatible with my other ambitions. If I had allowed that door to open for me just one more time, I would surely have stepped through and closed it firmly behind me. I had sent my note, and so that door remained unopened. I finished my whisky and glanced at my watch. Five o’clock. Just enough time to write my client’s report which would take me until about seven thirty. Then a leisurely dinner in the hotel restaurant, followed perhaps by another drink or two. I chuckled as I imagined Mr. Brown waiting in vain for my appearance at his home. I opened my computer and began to write my report. By six-thirty I had written just two sentences. At six forty I picked up the car keys and left the hotel.