Turned Inside Out

[This letter came to me in July 2004, written in imperfect English. It contained some French phrases and words, and sometimes needed explanations, which are provided in brackets so that the reader can interpret further if he or she has the desire or knowledge. I have made a few little free artistic amendments for all our pleasures.]

Dear LF,

I will be to my 65 birthday soon and I have been alone for the some time when my wife died in Septembre 2003. I am deciding to tell to you some part of my life story that I was not telling before. I think that you will be taking an interest in my personal story.

I have to be truthful and say I am not sure if I should tell you my story because it is scandalous and it may be seen as the worst kind of pornography. However, it is being true and all the people are now dead, but not for myself. I do not wish to be just l'exciter but it may agree with your interests.

For myself, I am retired from professor of European Literature at a French university but I spend most of my early life in England. My English is usually good but I am not in practice as you say. My father was killed at the fall of France in 1940 when I was very young. My mother brought me up until I did go to university in 1957.

My mother was the senior nursing sister in a private hospital in Paris. They were specialised in plastic surgery at a time when such treatments were experimental and required official approval from the Ministry of Health. In her spare time, she ran a private clinic in our house which I thought at that time was an extension on her real work. In fact, she offered the fetish service for the wide range of sexual perversions. Today, many of them would not be regarded as perversions. She was not a prostitute and offered none of personal sexual services but she provided opportunities for fetishists to experience their interests in private surrounding. I was discovering the truth by accident and it may be of interest to you.

On the occasion, one man client came with a small case and spent I think maybe three hours in the clinic and my mother seemed very satisfied with the business of it. I think that maybe he paid a whole week of her normal wages. I did not know what was happening but I knew it was secret and not to be mentioned among family or friends. He came some few more times and they seeming to develop the satisfactory business relationship. He was the regular visitor every few weeks for six months and almost the friend. He would bring me small presents and things to eat.

In September 1950, he made one of the regular visits and I was playing at home for some reason during the day. He arrive at the usual time 10 hours in the morning. My mother went with him into the clinic and closed the door. From my experience, I expected them to be in the room for two hours, until lunchtime. Then he would have spent 30 minutes alone in the shower room and then we would all have the drink and some bread. On this occasion, all went to the usual pattern but then my mother dashed from the clinic and went to her nurse's bag. She was in the panic, I could tell. Her hair and her eyes they were wild. I whimpered with apprehension and she saw me.

"Keep out of the way, go to your room Phillipe," she said, "I've turned him out. [Je l'ai tourné hors de l'homme.] I warned him not to take so much."

She was hysterical. None of it had the meaning to me. She got her nurse bag, went back into the clinic, and I was hearing she locked the door. For an hour or some more, all was quiet apart from the sound of exertions and someone straining. To do what, I was not knowing at that time. After that time, she came and told me he was resting. He would be sleeping for some time, so I was told not to make the noise. I never did see the man again. He must have left when I was in another part of the house. I never guessed what that episode was about but my mother told me many years later, when she herself was very ill.

The man had come to our house to be laced into a tight corset about his waist. He was a fit man and not overweight and he liked to have his waist reduced to the minimum. Over a period of some months, maybe two years, he had been training himself to take a reduction of 40 cm [I think 16 inches] in his waist during the sessions with my mother's clinic. The more often he was visiting, the greater was the reduction he was attaining. She said that he was exciting him and I know now that she was meaning the bondage or the fetishism of the corset aroused him sexually. She did have the selection of belts and corsets, and she would be fixing him into the frame while she was reducing him. Then she could apply a number of the twist devices to the fastening of the corset [elle pourrait appliquer un series de remonter d'appareils à l'attacher du corset]. I do not know what they were but she said that she could be crushing easily the coconuts with her equipment; it was so strong.

On the day of the incident I remember, he was asking her to reduce him for even further for his excitement, and she was setting up the equipment to reduce his waist by 48 cm [19 inches?]. This she did agreed for him after he had obliged her to do it, she said. She said that it was taking only the few minutes to reduce him to his previous small size, because he was visiting two times in the week already. When she was applying the more pressure, he did ask to be silence with the gag so that he should not be making the noise, which she did for him. As he was approcher the figure he was requiring, he was also beginning to shiver and went to the spasm of his muscles. Before she was knowing what did happen to him, in only a few seconds, his intestine was to push out of his abdomen, until nearly one metre was exposed in the room. She had "turned him out", as she said to me on the day. The corset pressure was pushing his intestines out of the space inside him. By the time she reduced the pressure and got close to help him, above two metres of intestine were dépasser from his body and she is believing that he would be seriously injured. He was being unconscious by the time she release him from the frame and was lying him on the couchette.

She told me that she was making for him the dose of muscle-relaxant and also morphine, before she was also to struggle for replacing the bowel into his body. She was attaching his chevilles [ankles] to a wheel in the ceiling and she did turn him upside down; he was being unconscious all this time. Then she slowly was pushing the bowel back into him and at the finale made for two sutures across his anus, to keep him in. The man did sleep for two hours and she called the taxi for him to be getting home. She said that he was not visiting her again but that she had others who asked for the same corset treatment. I think she was frightened by the incident but did not stop offering her treatment.

During her "career", my mother was providing many special services to fetishists and she was then telling me about a woman whose waist she had reduced by 50 cm [20 inches] until she measured only 35 cm [14 inches]. She said that she was operating upon the woman [l'opération sur la femme] every day for a week, until the final tightening [resserrer] on the Saturday. At the end the woman had held her own waist in her fingers and had brought herself to orgasm by just rocking back and forward. I think that is what my mother meant. She said "brought herself to the height of excitement" [elle apporté à la hauteur d'agitation]. She said that the woman came regularly to be bound tightly at her waist, and always "brought herself to the height of excitement". My mother was believing that the woman had no other form nor opportunity for "the height of excitement". I think now that this must have been an extreme form of fetishism and have come to accept that it was my mother's business to provide such a service.

She was telling me of the many other strange fetishes or perversions in her pittoresque elderly way, but I will mention only one. A man client was visiting once each month to have his anus tendu [stretched] over the period of the day until she could place the big size orange into his rectum. She was to then leave him alone to excite himself. After that time, he would leave the house with the orange in the place in him, and he would void it when it had become soft and was decaying inside him. He would then return the week to follow for the repeat "treatment". I have not heard of any such activities since I left home and now I wonder if my mother was unique [je me demande maintenant si ma mère était unique].

I think that this memory of mine will be of the interest for you.

Phillipe