Long Night's Journey

I have a recurring dream in which I am walking down a school hallway, sometimes one I remember from high school, sometimes one from college, when I realize that I've forgotten to attend one of my classes all semester and am now sure to fail.

One lazy Saturday afternoon, my hand idling between my thighs, I unexpectedly remembered this scenario. I then began to imagine the scene in which the grade might be saved.

A female student stands in the small, dimly lit office of my favorite college professor. It's evening, the sun already set and the violet clouds outside the two small narrow windows of the office turning to plum as night sets around the campus. She's come to him after hours in hopes of winning a battle she could not win in the usual light of day. She faces the broad wooden desk, though I cannot remember nor can she tell the color or species of the wood. The wall behind his desk is lined not with literature but with media studies. A framed production poster of Long Day's Journey Into Night is the only decorative piece in the room. "You forgot to come to class all semester?" asks the professor, though I know now it's not the man I remember, nor any man I have known since then, though his voice reminds me of Mr. Williams, as does his lilting, laughing tone.

 The story unfolds: she wants to make up for it, she wants to do the classwork. She wants to pass the class and graduate on time. He wants to let her, to giver her a chance to do an intensive study version of the class in the last two weeks before finals, but this isn't the lesson she should learn on her way out the doors of the Ivory Tower and into the real world. She asks, "What can I do to change your mind?"

"Action and inaction both have consequences. What grade do you want from this class?"

"An A," she answers, indignation unavoidable. "I need an A to maintain my 4.0." He laughs. He says, "You did well while you weren't taking the last class you need for your degree."

"I'm not about to lose my average now. What do I need to do?" She leans forward. Her cleavage is visible, her dark hair falls around her face, she bites her lip while looking up from under the wave of hair, meeting his eye.

He goes to a waist-high cabinet below the poster of the play she knows is his favorite. He opens it slowly, looks back at her, then back to the cabinet and removes a long leather strap, a short wooden paddle, and a cane that I know, even as the young woman's eyes widen, to be the type referred to as the senior cane. "You will take the intensive study, and you must get an A on your coursework, or none of this means anything." She nods. "You will now and at the end of the study receive a test of your commitment. You will receive the full ordeal today. At the end of the class, you will go through the same stages I will walk you through today. You will decide how much you want to endure, and this will determine your final grade." I know, even as my wetness increases at the thought, that this very idea is against everything I stand for in my own being. So why do I want to find out what happens next? Why do I crave to see this unknown young woman bent over this barely remembered desk?  I press the tips of my index and middle fingers against my flesh. We go on.

She's taken classes with this man for four years, and for all four years she was of age, a grown woman, as she perceived herself, doing the things that grown women do. She'd even enjoyed a little pink-bottomed time in the bedroom with a small number of other men her own age, though it had never gone past some hand spanking and a few playful strokes of  one particular young man's belt. "You're going to spank me? And whip me? And paddle me? And...?" She tilts  her head, not knowing the name for the final item he pulled out of the cabinet.

"Cane you."

"Cane me." She breathes in deeply, considering her options. After a moment she knows she only has one choice, one chance. "I'm in. But I can stop at any time and take the failure."

He smiles. "Once we begin, if you ask me to stop, you'll receive an incomplete. The worst that will happen is you walk with your friends at graduation but don't receive a diploma, then take the class during summer semester and receive your diploma by mail. Are you ready?"

This settles everything. "Yes," she says without hesitation. This will be her last class with this man, but she has begun to wonder - but she cannot focus on that now. She wants the A. She, like me at that age, is the first of her family about to graduate a four-year college. This is not the moment to lose hope. He points to the chair at the side of the room. "You may fold your clothes and leave them there. Then you may bend over the desk." I realize for the first time that I've left his desk empty of all the clutter that once covered it. As she begins to remove her clothes, she knows as well as I do that she was never going to say no to anything he asked of her.

The moment she bends over the desk, he is behind her to the right side, right hand on the small of her back, left hand just resting on her bottom. "This is all you must do if you want the incomplete." She can feel him breathing. He doesn't tell her where to put her legs. She spreads them just a little, two inches of space between her inner thighs. Nothing happens. She spreads herself a little farther. She leans forward, reaching for the opposite side of the next. She tries to arch her back to push her bottom into his hand. Finally, she whispers, "More?"

"If you pass your intensive study and this stage, you will receive a D. You won't fail, and you will graduate. You will receive a hand-spanking, approximately 30 strokes. Though we both know this is not the math department." She tries to stifle a giggle but cannot. She can't see his face, but he smiles too. "Well?" She nods quickly, afraid that her voice will break and her sudden excitement over the moment will be all too obvious.

He begins slowly, bringing just a flush of pink to both cheeks, back and forth between the left and right, slowly and steadily. She doesn't think to count until she realizes she doesn't know how many she's received. Ten? Fifteen? He pauses, then his hand flies down at her bottom quickly and sharply and he begins a faster, harder rhythm. When he pauses again, she thinks he's done, but he only switches sides. He begins again and it feels like a real spanking now, the kind I worried about receiving as an infrequently misbehaving teen but never did, the kind she always hoped might happen in the bedroom but it never went as far as she wanted. She's squirming and it's now his left hand that is holding her in place and she's breathing fast, tears in her eyes, but has not made a sound other than the murmurs that escape when one moans between tightly closed lips. Finally, it ends. She knows he exceeded thirty strokes, but even in the moment of rest she realizes she's setting her legs just a little bit farther apart, and she's ready to receive at least a C.

"Very good," he says. "You did so well, I may need to go a little lighter on the next round." Then he picks up the strap. "Or not." I grin along with her.  I realize this fantasy has an incredible repeat value, that each time she goes through what she must receive to get each grade, I can change the requirements. Maybe next time she's less willing, and he begins with the cane. Maybe the time after that he begins by paddling her for a solid five minutes with a floppy rubber paddle, like a spanking clip I thought I'd long since forgotten, turning her strawberry pink and sore for any future implements to come.

"To receive a C, you will receive 24 strokes of the strap. This strap is half of a leather barber strop, its fabric backing removed." This particular barber strop lives in my nightstand, and I love to hate it. "It will whip across your backside with a firm sting, then leave a lasting tenderness to the flesh. I may go lightly on you from time to time. When you feel a light stroke, brace yourself for the next one, young lady. Do you accept?"

She imagines walking at graduation but not receiving her diploma. Her family left wondering in the bleachers why her name was never called. "I accept."

The first stroke causes her to see a flash of white behind her closed eyes. Her jaw is clenched so tightly that she realizes she hadn't cried out. As the second lands, she squeals, not quite the sound she'd been hoping she would make. He allows her a moment to compose herself, then whips her firmly and steadily, allowing her a cry or even, once, a howl, but never attempting to make her scream. After seven strokes she finds the rhythm. Then, with stroke eleven, he lets the leather just whisper past her buttocks. There's a light sting, but nothing worth moaning about. She remembers his warning and holds tightly to the far edge of the desk, which she's finally reached as she's risen up higher and higher on her toes with each subsequent stroke.

He waits only a few seconds to let the twelfth stroke fall, but she is already so aware of its swift coming that she wails and begins to weep, tears falling onto the desk. He takes a moment to soothe her bottom with gentle circles with his palm, and she is grateful for the touch, no matter the circumstances. "Please," she says.

"Please?" he asks.

"Please continue. I can't stop now."

He takes a moment to breathe before continuing. He is grateful for this woman beneath him who for the past four years has enlivened his classes, enlightened him with her theses, and somehow, beyond any hope he had allowed himself to maintain, invigorated him with such thoughts that just last semester he'd installed the cabinet beneath the poster in hopes that a day just such as this would come. It had been left untouched until today.

He lifts the strap. He won't let her down. She'll earn the A through her coursework, and he won't let graduation day pass without the degree he cannot deny she has already earned,  but she'll learn a mighty lesson in this process. Action and inaction both have consequences. It may have taken them four years of inaction to reach this moment, but it's finally time for their scene. Action, he thinks to himself. He lets the strap fall across her backside, anxious already for her receive a B at the mercy of his paddle, to receive an A beneath the savagery of his cane.

She awaits the next stroke, already imaging, having matched the grades to implements, what she might be willing to offer for an A+.

With that, I gave up to the orgasm, unable to continue further. I challenged myself to get the A next time. I haven't yet, but I'll keep trying.