The Pleasure Boy 16

All in all, demanding as it was, I remember my geisho apprenticeship as one of the best years of my life - the richest and most formative, at any rate. More than any other after earliest childhood, (when I acquired, quite unconsciously, the rudiments of a language and a culture), its training made me the man that I became. It shaped my sexuality; it gave me a profession; it taught me a working philosophy and a set of good habits; it made possible everything that followed.

As you will read in later chapters, the path that my mother had set me on was a straight one which took me directly where I wanted to go. In due course, I worked as a professional submissive, and put myself through university and grad school - in the history department as I'd intended. I found an area of research, wrote a thesis, and served a Mistress. But, as it turned out, I eventually declined an academic career.