The French Exchange Ch. 02: The Pain

"For ruining our chaise longue, and damaging a rare silk dress belonging to Mme Dongh, you will be beaten on your bottom, 25 times by me, and 25 times by Mme Dongh," she announced, pompously.

"For soiling the costumes of five of the dancers, you will receive additional punishments which the dancers themselves will decide. You have to learn you cannot get away with this bestial behaviour!"

She turned and looked at me with a mad smile.

"Delphine, remove all clothing from his buttock area."

Delphine looked at me as if asking for forgiveness, then rolled my t-shirt up to my armpits. She then loosened my jeans belt, unbuttoned them, pulled them down to about knee level. I was wearing the old stained white y-fronts underneath. She carefully pulled these down at the back only, to reveal again the plump, girlish and already quite sore-looking buttocks.

My arms were aching, my toes were aching, I was swaying with the clothes rack, pinioned there like a victim in a medieval torture chamber. Mme A picked up one of her leather slippers and took up position behind me. She was not satisfied with Delphine's undressing, and pulled the y-fronts down a further inch, so that now my tiny appendage was covered only by the elastic waistband.

There was absolute silence. I glanced behind to see her hand with the slipper raised high over her head, then swinging round at great speed. It hit my bottom with a magnificent smacking sound, I pitched forward, losing balance, regaining it just in time for the second blow to descend. It hurt a lot but the pain in my arms was worse.

At the sixth slap my left hand came free from the knot, I swung round and nearly ripped the rack from its ceiling mountings. Mme A told her daughters to re-attach me, and tie better knots this time. Then she thought again and said: "Turn him round to face the table this time."

So, I was now staring straight at my strange audience, and they were all staring at my now precariously balanced modesty. A few more hard blows, I thought, and that waistband will shift down. But what did it matter - half the audience had already seen everything I had.

I noticed that two of the Vietnamese - including my friend, Mai, were not staring but had bowed their heads, as if in shame at being made to witness this inhumanity. They will have seen much worse things in the war, I thought.

The French girls were beginning to look bored. Mme was hitting harder and more furiously, it was hurting like hell but I could take it.She reached 25 and put down the slipper. I felt drained and sore. I looked down and saw that the underpants were still covering my so-called private parts, which must have retreated almost completely into my body as there was barely a bump there.

Mme Dongh stood up and sauntered over. I felt a chill descend. She reached not for the slipper but my jeans. She pulled the leather belt out of the hoops, and tested it in the air in such an expert way I knew she must do this regularly.

Everyone was now watching very intently. She adjusted my clothing again, so that the back of the waistband cupped under my soft, plump, bright red buttocks, slightly lifting them. The front stayed where it was.

She raised the belt, and then with the merest flick of her wrist delivered the most stinging blow I had ever experienced. I gasped, many of the audience gasped too. I felt hot tears in my eyes, I heard the creak of a floorboard as Mme D changed her stance and raised her arm again.

I looked straight ahead, out through the window to the house opposite, from which - I now realised - anyone could have a grandstand view of his punishment. Maybe they'll see and call the police, I thought. And then I fixed on a pair of seagulls on a balcony edge, preening themselves and looking at me with their pitiless beady eyes.

As I was looking the second lash struck, exactly on the line of the first, inflicting serious pain - more like a burn or a cut. I felt sure there would be blood, I danced on my toes I released a sort of high pitched grunt, I squirmed, but the pain continued to grow.

And already a third was on its way - no, please, no more - 25 of these would surely kill me. The third hit and now the pain was turning into colours, red and black and white behind my eyes, I felt dampness trickling down my legs, blood or urine or both, I had no idea. The pain in my arms increased in sympathy with the searing, burning pain in my backside, my stomach was heaving.

As she prepared for the fourth I attempted to speak, but my breathing was so fast that I couldn't and then it hit and this time i really did flood my pants. No-one giggled, there was a look of shock on many of the faces.

"He has wet himself even now", said Mme A. "That means another 10 strokes on top of the 25, you imbecile!"

Then she noticed my feet were flat on the ground and got the daughters to heave me up a bit, so the pain in my arms redoubled. Mme D. once again took up her position. She flogged me for a fifth time - the pain was now becoming something concrete and terrible, but I was getting used to, in an odd way - and then she said something to her dancers - I think she was inviting them to take over from her, she was tired. When no-one volunteered, she grabbed the smallest of her dancers by the arm and pulled her up, put the belt into her hand, and told her get on with it.

Now, for this girl, my bottom was rather too high off the ground. She aimed high but the belt cracked over the back of my thighs, not terribly hard. Mme D. came back, took the belt, and went at me with new vigour. I was now yelling and moaning and begging and sniffing and the snot was running down my face, why had I never been told pain could be this bad?

Nothing that had happened to me so far had come near this great continent of pain that found its focus on my backside. I heard someone counting: "neuf, dix..." God, we were not even half way through. I was going to faint.

I did faint, just as the girls chanted "douze".

I came too, feeling something freezing cold on my back. I was face down on a bed and several of the Vietnamese dancers were standing around it. One had a cloth in her hand and was dabbing something on me. I twisted around to see that, although I was still wearing a t-shirt, my jeans and underpants were nowhere to be seen. I was naked from the waist down on this bed and this young Vietnamese woman was dabbing something on my bottom.

"Saigon lady made you hurt, Hanoi girls make it better," joked one of them in delightful English.

One of the dancers was standing at the door, guarding, so it seems, lest one of the Mmes should come up. It seems I had been saved by an impromptu visit by the festival director. Clearly he was not the type who would have been impressed by a scene out of some vile S and M porn movie, so they had bundled me out of sight, straight into the arms of my allies.

The dancer who was comforting me murmured sweet words in a mix of languages, and whatever it was she was putting on the weals, it worked a treat. "Don't be angry, Mme was whipped herself by the soldiers," she said. "Most of us were, it happened, we have scars, much worse."

Then two of them laid their hands at the small of my back and gently, gently massaged in the oil, over the buttocks, down the back of my thighs, back up, it stung like hell but I was in heaven."You cannot stay in here, we will find your clothes so you can go," she whispered. However it seemed my jeans were in the wash, so they found a towel for me.

As I moved to get off the bed, I lifted the towel to cover my modesty: "No need worry, we seen it all, it all lovely," giggled one of the dancers who had so far been quiet. In fact she was the very one who had made such a mess of whipping me!

"Yes, we will see it all again soon, you will come to play with us soon, yes," said another.

I was puzzled and excited: they were surely mixing up their English. Then three of them moved closer and pulled the towel away from my body, and they all looked.

Their eyes widened in wonder - even though what they saw was at its smallest, squished and sad. But it responded quickly to their kind gaze, and rose to form that pale little tea-pot spout, slightly upwardly curved, quivering slightly as the pink tip appeared, almost winking at them, and they were delighted, putting up their hands to cover their laughing lips.

The interest that had been kindled in the middle of the night by flashlight, then strengthened by pity during my chastisement, had now been confirmed - they liked me, a lot, and wanted more. But there was no time.

They formed a beautiful escort and sort of danced me out of the room, hands on my bottom as they moved me, back to the bathroom, left me there, and I had to stumble back down to the kitchen alone. Although much of the pain had gone, I could not sit down. I scrabbled through my bag for clothes, dressed and got out of the house as fast as I could - I could not face meeting my tormentors, and was seriously considering catching a train back to Paris and chucking it all in.

I remembered that Mme A had taken my passport ("for safe keeping") and was also the referee for my university course - and that my poor dad had also put a hard-earned £100 into this educational trip, he was so proud of his son going into higher education! And then I thought of those lovely Vietnamese dancers, and the possibility of some sort of illicit friendship, and I decided that I would stay on - whatever the two Madames were cooking up for me.

The rest of the third week passed, for me, relatively uneventfully. The Vietnamese dancers were out performing every afternoon and evening, we hardly saw them. A minibus arrived each morning to collect them before we were up, and brought them home when we were already in bed.

I had managed to contain my bedwetting with the help of a rudimentary catheter; Delphine had suggested this, and she and her sisters went to great lengths to help me get it right. By now they had seen me naked so often that it seemed perfectly normal for me to remove my clothes in front of them so they could experiment with tubes and elastic bands.

First they tried using a very small condom, a length of plastic tubing, and sellotape. It sort-of worked in a leaky way for a few minutes, but always the condom slipped off - no-one made one small enough for me.

So they tried a 35mm film canister with a hole in the end - that fitted over my entire apparatus easily, but it was far too wide.Then Delphine found a 5ml plastic syringe. She pulled out the plunger and we all sat round trying to fit the narrow plastic tube over my member. The tube was about 1cm across and made for a tight fit - just what was needed.

Just before going to sleep, I attached the tube to the bit where the needle went, and put the other end into the pot next to my blanket. It almost worked - but unfortunately I moved around in the night too much, pulling the tube out of the potty and resulting in large puddle on the floor.

Better than on the bedding, though. Anyway, the two Madames were preoccupied with the arts festival, so my corrective treatment seemed to lapse. I was beginning to think Mme A had forgotten her threats, or had just got bored with it all. How wrong, how terribly wrong I was.

But it didn't matter - somehow I knew I was going to have to pay a heavy price, because, just for those two or three days, I was absurdly, ridiculously happy. The Friday of that week was a sort of climax. It was the Vietnamese dancers' last full day: they had one more performance to give, and then they had a party. Mme A. was, of course, going with her daughters. I had not been invited, obviously not.

On the Thursday evening, I was again sleeping on the kitchen floor. I slept badly there, it was so uncomfortable; and I made a point of staying awake as much as I could, to avoid my old curse.

At some point, maybe 2 or 3am, I felt a slight movement of the air, heard a brushing sound, swivelled myself round and found a piece of paper on the floor. On it was written, in a childish hand, "come upstairs for tea soon".

What the heck? I folded the paper and stuffed it into my book (I was reading the Penguin Classics translation of Madame Bovary, as you do). Then I checked what I was wearing: all my clothes were by now suffering from repeated urine soakings. I decided the best I could do was dressing gown over t-shirt and underpants.

Then I went upstairs, oh so cautiously. There was no light coming from their room - that would have been too much of a giveaway. But as I reached the top step, I could see their door was ajar, there was dim candlelight within, I saw an eye, a hand, a finger, white, beckoning me. Luckily I moved noiselessly over the wooden floor, not tripping - and as I entered the room strong arms grasped my arms and led me onto a bed.

There was a gorgeous perfume in the room, lotus blossom perhaps, orange, definitely, and then a fat candle on a saucer was brought out from behind the curtain and I could see four or five faces, all around me, all smiling at me, they were bunched together like a litter of kittens.

A hand touched my cheek, another hand touched my shoulder, two more clasped around my head and gently pulled me towards - who I do not know, but the gorgeous perfume increased and suddenly my face was touching a body - firm flesh beneath thin cotton clothing, the little bump of a nipple beneath cotton, flashing teeth and eyes, open mouth, a strange smile, silence. I realised that it was my friend, Mai, but as she pulled my head into her breast, I felt many other hands stroking my back.

I did not have a clue why they had me in there, why they had invited me, what they wanted from me. God, they all knew exactly how little I had to offer in that department - they all knew I was not going to be able to give any one of them a good time with that. And yet, here they were, touching me, embracing me, hugging me - maybe they wanted me as a pet.

Then her hand guided my hand under her cotton top, around the ribcage, over the smooth skin, even here you could feel the well-toned musculature of a dancer, and then - and then, what, harder skin, a ridge of something.

A bra strap? No, she was not wearing a bra, I had already established that. Further on, another, smaller ridge. My fingers traced it across her back.Then her hand pulled my hand down, down across the small of her back, which felt almost furrowed. And then she pulled my hand under the waistband of her pyjama trousers, and moved my hand very deliberately, over her firm dancer's bottom, and still I kept feeling these strange hard ridges.

One of the other girls brings the candle closer, and Mai turns her back to me, lifts her top right up, drops her trousers, I see her back, it is covered with dark, reddish-brown scars or weals, some older, lighter ones, almost white, criss-crossing, rather like the vapour trails of jet planes on a clear autumn evening sky.

There are a few fainter scars at the top of her thighs, and then no more.This girl had been badly whipped, many times, over a long period.

And then another girl pulled my hand over to her, to touch her stomach, under her t-shirt, I felt the smooth skin, then much rougher skin, skin that felt dead and brittle. She lifted her shirt and I could see half her from was covered with scar tissue, or transplanted skin - she had suffered terrible burns at some point, long ago maybe. The scars continued beneath her pyjama trousers, but she did not show me how far they went.

So now I knew why I was there - they were showing me that they too knew pain, oh yes, they knew it a great deal more than I did, in fact. But they were also telling me we had this in common, that they trusted and liked me. I looked up into Mai's face, eyes brimming, we embraced, then all four of us were locked in a sort of group hug, no words, lots of kisses.

I was pulled again and my mouth met her mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, and then I felt other hands tugging gently at my shirt, at my dressing gown, it slipped off my shoulders, they lowered me down so I was lying on my back on the bed, and then lips were touching my neck, my ears, my chest. I thought for a joke I would ask them, where's the tea then? But then I felt my underpants being pulled down, and decided to say nothing.

*******

Friday morning, I was back on the kitchen floor, my head still struggling to comprehend what had happened just a few hours ago, upstairs. I did not have to doubt that any of it happened - the smell, the taste of all the things that had happened lingered on my skin, my clothes, in my hair, on my lips and my tongue.

One day I will try to write about that night - but not yet. It is still so clear in my mind, its flavour still sharp and sweet in my imagination, that I do not need to write it down. Suffice to say the pleasure and experience of those couple of hours has kept me going for decades - and I know I will never experience anything like such intense feelings again.

What I will write about soon is the price I paid for this short visit to paradise. The pain and humiliation, the utter wretched shame that Mme and her allies had in store for me, were well beyond my worst imaginings.

And yet I would suffer them all again, a hundred times, just for the chance to feel for 10 seconds the way I felt in that room with these Vietnamese angels.