Slaveholder

Jim McMurty:

I was born in Bow, where my parents still live, which make me a true cockney. I happily left school at fifteen, and went to help my dad. He is a tattooist with a little parlour just off the West India Dock Road. Those of you who remember the Young Friends Chinese restaurant, where like many others, I discovered the pleasures of dim sum, will know just where I mean.

Dad's clientele were almost all seamen, and many were the four-masted schooners, naked ladies and British bulldogs that I helped ink into broad, hairy backs and hairier arms. I could draw pretty well freehand so I brought a new skill into the shop. Up to then, Dad had bought in his patterns, but I could make stencils, making designs from scratch, or copying pictures, stripping down the complexities under his critical eye.

By the time I got my call-up papers, I was a dab hand with the needle. I was taking on straightforward jobs on my own -- I can't tell you how many times I had the tedious job of blocking in LOVE on the knuckles of the right hand and HATE on the left -- but if that was what the customer wanted, it is what he got. I worked with men almost exclusively until a creepy-looking guy who must have been going on for seven feet tall brought in a rather pretty girl one Saturday.

"Go on Denise", he said encouragingly, "Tell him what you want him to do."

Denise smiled up at him adoringly and, to my astonishment, said in a bright, matter-of-fact tone:

"I want a dotted line around my throat, and in the middle it has to say Cut here. So Billy never forgets that he has my permission to kill me if he ever wants to get rid of me. I know I would not want to go on living, so it would be an act of kindness."

God! What a nutcase! Does she know what she's getting into? I cautioned her:

"You do know that it will show, whatever you are wearing, and, although it will fade a bit, it is totally permanent, don't you?"

"Yes, yes, I know all that. This is his birthday present" she simpered. "It is entirely my own idea. It's what I want, and nobody has talked me into it, and I am doing it of my own free will."

There was nothing more to say.

"Take off your blouse and bra," instructed her lover, "let's give the young man a thrill". Denise blushed and giggled, but she stripped off and lay back on the table with a smile. I now know that if he had told her to let me fuck her, she would have complied with the same smile.

I put a couple of pillows under the back of her neck to tilt her head back and stretch her neck. She lay there, round, pink-nippled breasts complacently smiling up at me like plump, ripe fruit. I swabbed her throat with rubbing alcohol and followed up with dilute dettol, a mild antiseptic, then marked out the simple design in blue. I had a ceiling-mounted mirror above the table, and I adjusted it so that she could see the result. She approved it with a bright smile.

"I shan't do it all today, I'll do one side and let that heal up, then do the other in about a week. Is that ok with you?" Punctiliously I addressed all the questions to her, disregarding her companion. She looked a little put out.

"But why can't you do it all today? It is such a little thing, just a few dots and two short words."

"Yes, but it will be sore for a few days, so we do one side first and let that heal up, then do the other so you have a side to sleep on that does not irritate."

"No! Do it all today. I want it straight away. Is that all right Billy? I don't care how much it hurts. You are trivialising the whole thing by worrying about a little bit of discomfort."

So I began. I think this was the first time I met someone who seemed to welcome pain as a testimony to commitment. Later I was to find that they constituted a small but distinct sub-species, that I grew deeply involved in. I worked steadily, changing needles from time to time as required, and in forty minutes it was done. I wiped away a couple of small pearls of blood where a capillary was close under the skin, swabbed the slightly reddened skin with a little methylated spirit and followed up with more dettol. Before I dressed her throat with a couple of pieces of boracic lint, I showed her the effect in the mirror. I took the money; it was done. I never saw the pair of them again.

Soon after my seventeenth birthday, I got my call-up papers and railway warrant.The problem was that I had just come off a friend's motorbike and got myself a badly crushed foot. I got a doctor's certificate and was given a deferment. Nine months later, after a medical examination, I reported for basic training.

I went through the usual eight weeks of sleeplessness, strenuous exercise, unremitting pressure and thoroughgoing behaviour modification. I was not very different from the other blokes in my training platoon, except for being a year older. Not among the best, nor among the worst; middling in most things. But I found I loved learning to strip and clean, load and fire my Lee Enfield. Although I never fired a shot in anger, I seemed to have an aptitude for rifle shooting, and I have gone on loving it from then to now, competing at Bisley for eight consecutive years.

I passed out into the Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derbys) and was speedily shipped to Germany. On the off-chance I took along my tattooing kit and a supply of needles and inks, thinking that they might come in handy some time. When we got to the depot at Detmold, a long, long way from the East German border, We started to settle into a dull routine.

One evening in the barrack room, for something to do, I got out my gear and started tattooing my regimental crest onto my left forearm.

It's a rather pretty badge, a Maltese cross surmounted by a crown, with a stag couchant on a blue ground, Sherwood Foresters on ribbons alongside the stag and Notts and Derbys on a ribbon below. Sorry I've forgotten all the heraldic terms, but I hope you get the picture. I had shaved my forearm to make the job easier, and made a stencil of the badge to keep it straight and in proportion.

Every tattooist is his own first customer, and that was certainly true of me. There I was pricking in the outline, when I became aware that I had a crowd of spectators who watched in awed silence. I looked around and grinned, which gave them license to speak.

"How long is it going to take?"

"Does it hurt?"

"How many colours can you do?"

"Where did you learn it?"

The question nobody was asking, was the question on everybody's lips. Will you do one for me?

"It's gonna take a while. I'll ink in the outlines and the lettering, but I can't do the badge until I get some light grey. My Dad will send it asap, but I'm a bit boracic right now, and I shall have to build up the inks bit by bit."

It took a Geordie to request clarification.

"Hoo jer mean brassic, bonny lad?"

Determined to keep my end up. I hammed up the cheeky chappie. "Boracic lint, my old China. You know, skint; sometimes yer wiv money, sometimes yer between money. I'm seriously between money right now."

Corporal Symes summed the whole thing up.

"If you can do that sort of work, I don't see shortage of money being one of your problems. You'll have a waiting list a mile long..."

He was quite right. The National Servicemen, many, like me, scarcely dry behind the ears, could not imagine anything more macho than a regimental crest tattoo. I work neatly and have cultivated a light touch. Soon I had a range of small colourful tats on offer. I wrote the whole lexicon of girls' names from Aileen to Zinnia over their hearts in decorative cartouches, Sergeant Austin, the burly PT instructor, had Tower Bridge pot on his back, open with a string of barges going through, and suddenly seemed to be going around shirtless a lot of the time. But that was not all.

As the months wore on, squaddies started bringing in their girlfriends. ATS girls, nurses and a string of German lassies were offered or offered themselves as subjects. This was a whole different market, one I had not encountered on the Isle of Dogs. The female taste, as mediated by their boyfriends, was for small, discreet, feminine butterflies, hearts, flowers and colourful birds, in locations usually covered by bras and knickers. Who was I to say them nay?

I had not had a very extensive sex-life up to that point -- well, not to put too fine a point on it, I had no experience at all. Not that many of us were budding casanovas. The two or three generational family in the two-up-two-down terraced house was still the norm where most of us came from. Privacy was an alien concept. I had done little more than snatch a few kisses in the back row of the flicks before I was called up. The allied occupation of Germany provided a wealth of opportunities, so much so that the venereal disease rate was high enough to make our masters issue free condoms; much to the scandal of certain Members of the two Houses of Parliament who were maiden ladies, or the next thing to it.

It was classic carrot and stick. Put the rear of God in us with gruesome filmshows about the perils of the pox, make condoms readily available, and, thirdly, make the treatment of VD as painful and humiliating as possible. It was not a whole-hearted success. The army was dealing with a pool of intractable stupidity, and the situation only eased as the standard of living of the German population rose off rock bottom. But this was 1948, and we were in the thick of the Berlin airlift. My fellow squaddies were only too pleased to introduce me to girls we were up for a bit of hanky-panky, and I was raring to go.

I was discovering that it pays to win friends and influence people. My name came up for a forty-eight-hour leave pass, and I wanted to get to London to buy inks, needles and a better tattoo machine. No problem. Even before my leave began I was on my way to Northolt courtesy of RAF Transport Command. All it cost was the promise to put RAF wings on a couple of arms. And Bob's your uncle.

Mum and Dad knew I was coming, and I was home as fast as the London Transport could carry me, with a promise that a lorry would pick me up at Ruislip station. How's that for service?

Dad had contacts everywhere. In one jam-packed day I was fully kitted out and, for a moderate fee, I learned all about piercing nipples, noses, tongues and even more delicate parts, from a well-preserved lady instructor and a couple of very willing volunteer subjects. I was even offered a master-class in how to insert a Prince Albert, but that was, and remains, a step too far for me.

Yes, in Germany I was seeing a side of life scarcely dreamed off in the Isle of Dogs. Pretty frauleins wanting intimate art or jewellery, and very prepared to offer to play rather than to pay. It was a coming of age for me, and I appreciated every aspect of it. Of course I carried on my day-to-day occupation as orderly-room clerk, and, like everyone else, got roped in to load the cargo planes running the Soviet gauntlet into Berlin, but my spare time was spent in work that was play and play that was work.

All good things come to an end, and the following Summer my demob came and I was back in London, richer in experience as well as money. Shortly afterwards I became as you see me now, an accidental but contented slave-holder.

End of part one.

Sylvia Hughes (Twatti)

My parents owned a boarding house in Islington. It was made up of two early Victorian, four storey houses knocked through. Mum's parents had run it for us during the war, whilst Mum supported the war effort by working for the Ministry of Food. When Dad came home from Burma in 1946, they opted for her to stay in her job, which was well paid and pensionable, whilst Dad ran the boarding house. I left school in 1943 and went straight in as a chambermaid, occasional receptionist, waitress and general dogsbody.

I never had a boyfriend, although I had plenty of offers. I just found boys silly. My Dad and his two brothers were my idea of men, strong, enduring, sweet-natured, full of humour, but unwilling to stand any nonsense. One day, I dreamed, I should find a man like that.

I'd been doing the job for about three or four years, and settled into a routine that got best results in the minimum of time. I hardly regarded the ever-changing tide of guests, usually men staying for a night or two, maybe Monday to Friday, seldom longer. Sometimes, not often, they did something to disgust me, but even then I was largely indifferent. Then came Mister Horrabin.. I took his reservation by phone. His dark, chocolate-velvet voice sent a thrill through me. I was prepping vegetables when he arrived so Dad checked him in. That evening, for one reason or another, I never saw him at all. In the morning I served his breakfast and he smiled at me. His skin was smooth and olive-tinted, his eyes a warm brown, his hair black and tightly curled, thinning at the crown, with a touch of grey at the temples. His smile made my stomach lurch. And then he left, presumably for work.

We have a routine. First of all, breakfast, laid overnight, cooked and served. Then Dad mans the desk to deal with the departing guests, whilst I clean the public areas, the lounge (what a fug of smoke, brimming ashtrays, spilt drinks and rugs kicked all over the place) the hallways, the downstairs toilets. Dad cleans and tidies the desk in between speeding the departing guests whilst I change into my overalls and start the daily round of cleaning. I clean the stairs, then the first floor landing, then the top stairs and the second floor landing. Most of the windows are in the guest bedrooms, and I'll come to them later. Then I make a start on the bedrooms that are being vacated. Top down to the ground floor, then back to pick up the couple of rooms that are vacated late. Then it's our dinner. In the afternoon I clean and tidy the rooms with sitting guests, and that's how it was about half past three when I came to Mister Horrabin's room.

His was the last room on my duty list, and it was close to the time I stopped work to rest for an hour or so before the evening jobs took over. Dad would not be looking for me since I usually go to my room to read or knit. In this case, I was, for the first time I could ever remember, curious to see what sort of things he had brought with him. Frankly, I wanted to know more about him.

His room was immaculately tidy, bed made as well as I could make it myself, suitcase closed a buckled up, suit, shirts and ties hanging in the wardrobe. On the bed was a magazine called Swish, and on the cover was a black and white photograph of a rather plump, busty girl stretched over a man's knee, he with hand raised to deliver a hearty slap. Underneath was another magazine with the title Girls under Restraint, which, I noticed, was published in Copenhagen.

I was riveted. I could not take my eyes off them, and moments later I was lying across the bed, poring over the pictures and the linking text. I leave you do imagine why I was reading one-handed.

Swish was poorly printed, and held together with staples, but it was utterly engrossing to me. Article after article described spanking and being spanked, caned, strapped and tanned. Knickers were "taken down", "strokes" were counted and the disciplinarian was punctiliously thanked for each one. It was an ordered universe, steeped in ritual, and something about it called out to something in me. I knew that what I was feeling was pure sexual excitement, and I loved it.

The bondage magazine was professionally produced and beautifully shot. Here too was an ordered universe, in which the girls were submissive and the men dominant. Thinking about it later, when the shock had died down, I guessed that there were other magazines to cater for submissive men and dominant women, but that was when the shock had died down.

I was imagining myself tightly bound, unable to escape, and happy in my imprisonment. Some of the positions would become severely painful after a time, and as I stared at the bondage photoshoot I pretended that I was dependent on my master to free me, and to free me at his will, not at mine. Even the big ball-gags, forcing the mouth wide open would become painful. Finding, to my slight embarrassment that I had removed my knickers at some point without even remembering doing so, I screwed them into a ball and crammed them into my mouth.

Just at that moment, as if he had been watching and waiting, the door opened wide. What a moment for Mister Horrabin to return. I was terrified, and excited beyond description.

He opened the door wide, and looked down at me, smiling. He said not a word. I gazed up into his brown eyes close to panic. He gestured for me to get up, I stood, head down, the picture of submission. He sat on the bed and gestured me to lie across his knee, and I complied. There was no reason for anybody to be in earshot, so our silence was a part of the unspoken compact between us. If I had not been reading the magazines with such avidity, no contract would have been in force between us, but I was, and he closed the trap around me.

My overalls covered a full-length petticoat, and a bra; no stockings and, of course, no knickers. The position I was in hid nothing from him, and I could not see or guess how he was reacting to what he could see. His fingers brushed the wet lips of what I have learned to call my twat. He began to slap, alternating from one buttock to the other, crisply, sharply, deliciously.

Since I have been with my true master, girls have told me that they knew they were submissive, even masochistic, as small children. One friend says she discovered it when she was nine years old, in a game of cowboys and Indians. I must be a slow learner, because I found it out that afternoon, when I drank in those magazines and longed, viscerally, to be the one who was being spanked, caned, bound and chained.

He stopped too soon, He always stopped too soon, before I could climb right into the pain and lose myself. He spoke:

"Now Twat. Get down on your belly and kiss my feet. Acknowledge your master."

Yes, yes, all I wanted to do was to prostrate myself and own myself his to do with as he wills.

After a few minutes he sent me away, telling me to come back at bedtime. I had never dreamed of responding to the invitations of the male guests, but nothing would have kept me away. I slept with him each night he was there, and on Friday afternoon, when he departed, I left a note for Father and left with him. I never went back.

I thought later that the greatest piece of good and bad luck in my life was that he did not see me until the morning, when my hair was freshly brushed and dressed, and I was bathed and dressed in my black waitress dress and starched cap and pinny. Otherwise, he might never have noticed me, let alone desired me.

He called me Twat, or sometime Twatti when he was pleased with me. Having spent the past few years as a shapeless, formless lump in overalls, headscarf tied in a turban and worn bedroom slippers (except when I was on the reception desk), my new name gave me something to live up to. I was identified with my most intimate part, the seat of pleasure and the essence of the female.

I was his slave for almost three years. He taught me everything, introduced me to everything. He had to teach me almost everything about sex, and I was a slow learner. Luckily he discovered that the rhythmic application of a strap on my backside gave my memory much-needed stimulation. I found that my mouth and my back passage were of as much value to him as my twat. He could take me to the heights by plying with my nipples, and he had subtle devices that could keep me on the edge of orgasm for an hour at a time. He punished me when necessary, spanked or caned me for his pleasure and mine, and worked with talent and sophistication to give me sexual pleasure, as well as to train me to please him.