Trouble in America II

“And lend your voices, only, to sounds of freedom...”

Kirsten wasn’t sure what to make of “The South”: there were too many conflicting opinions, and questions of cheekiness in her imagination to fully take in the view from the window of her tandem-wheeled Greyhound aquarium. (Do you know when The Civil War ended? WRONG! It was in 1649, or perhaps 1921, and in both cases the northern armies were comprehensively routed.) Subjects best avoided in the state capital of Georgia.

Kirsten had hoped to visit Savannah, as a Methodist of sorts she had long desired to visit the place where the Wesley brothers had come as missionaries, where they had mixed with the Moravians, and where they had been set on the road to transformation: but it was first to Atlanta that the bus from Connecticut had come, and it was here she had chosen to stay with a friend from home: so now here she stood in a street lined with peach trees, little bottoms everywhere, as far as the eye could see, waiting for her friend’s arrival. Kirsten looked around, in every possible direction, then offered a quick and quiet, “oh I do declare!” in her best Belle accent; and was still giggling when Julie arrived.

Julie Malham and her American half-sister, (they have the same “mommie”), shared a small apartment just down the road from Georgia Tech, although neither girl studied there. Kirsten’s attention was drawn to the school as they drove past it on the right side of the road, (which is, of course, the wrong side of the road); remembering with equal parts pride and shame the 1996 Olympic Games and the victories, then disgrace for being found as drugs cheat, of Michelle De Bruin. Not that Kirsten really cared that much, (Antrim is in Northern Ireland, the UK, so she had been supporting the oddly named “Great Britain” team), but as a swimmer herself she hoped she may be able to get a few laps in; and asked Julie if that might be possible.

“Oh, I’m sure I could find you a few laps; if you’re interested. Here we are.”

“My hands are small I know/But they’re not yours...”

Kirsten was ushered in to a guest room the likes of which she had never known. In Antrim her friends had all had rooms filled with duvets and pillows and curtains, it was a fight to find a place to lay without disappearing princess and the pea style into a mound of linen. At the house Julie shared with Sly, all was simple and functional. And very welcome. Kirsten collapsed across the bed and dozed off while Julie went to fetch her sister.

“We have some special visitors tonight ma’am, apart from yourself, I hope you don’t mind but it’s a regular appointment. We’ll be quite active.” Kirsten immediately decided she liked Sly. Sly was beautiful in so many ways, (to be honest Kirsten had been quite scared, by the things Julie had told her Kirsten wasn’t sure what she’d find), and Kirsten found herself giggling every time Sly called her ma’am, it seemed so polite and respectful that for a moment Kirsten forgot that Sly was actually older than her.

“No, that’s fine. I’ve had a good sleep now, and to be honest I quite enjoyed the long bus ride anyway. To be honest I don’t feel like sitting down for quite a while yet.”

Sly grinned wickedly. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy this then.”

The special visitors turned out to be Sly and Julie’s “accountability group”. Kirsten had heard of these, something similar had been mentioned to her by her friend Katie, (who also lived in Atlanta), and she knew they were popular in both California and British Columbia. The basic pattern was that once a month the group would meet for dinner at the house of one of the members, for “fellowship”, and then each would list targets for the next month before giving an account for how well met the targets of the current month had been. Sanctions, both positive and negative, would then be offered by the group, or by chosen representatives. That was the idea.

In simple terms it meant that once a month Sly and Julie received a good spanking from the couple upstairs, in the company of four other couples, (two married, one de-facto, one “rainbow”), and three co-ed students from the college where Julie was studying “to be a troglodyte” as Sly put it.

“Here are those laps I promised you,” whispered Julie as Kirsten helped her to remove the pudding dishes from the table. Kirsten smiled; she had hoped to see such a group in action. The discussion passed quickly, because it was so interesting: again Kirsten was amazed by the things she heard. Far from being a group for spankos, (although undoubtedly these people were that), this was a place where ordinary people felt able to share their hopes and dreams with likeminded people, seek comfort, reassurance, and a pooled bravery to ascend to the next level.

Methodist Girls’ Fellowship had nothing on this!

And then the accountability started: as hostesses Julie and Sly were required, by convention, to wait until last. Both were involved in the hugging and the praising aspects, and even Kirsten had been asked to offer words of support to one of the co-eds who was about to embark on a six month visit to England, her first trip away from the safety of home; but the negative reinforcement had been left up to the group males and the oldest of the wives. Finally it was the turn of the sisters, and their little Irish buddy.

Kirsten found that she was able to speak freely of herself, of her excitement at soon travelling on across the USA and then up to Canada, before flying from Vancouver to Sydney and on to a year of travelling across the Wide Brown Land. She was enjoying being away from home, and being out from under the thumb of her firm-but-fair parents, happy to have to show responsibility for herself but somehow missing the structure of a disciplined household. She was a good girl finding her way, ever more curious (and curiouser), eyes wide shut. The group all offered her encouraging sounds and a small round of applause when she sat down again. Julie and Sly both offered goals and shortcomings to the group, each effectively promising the other to be more polite to her half-sister, (to load groans of “no” from the group: the light-hearted banter between the girls being the highlight of the company), and admitting the need for a jolly good seeing to as Sly offered in her best British accent.

All three girls, it was decided, would receive a spanking.

Julie went first. As had all of the other young women in the group, (the three co-eds, the youngest wife, and both “rainbows”: who had done so face-to-face from opposite sides of the dining table), Julie turned her chair so its back was to the table, whereupon she knelt on its cushion and lay herself on the table, forming a neat “Z” shape. Sly giggled, “it serves you right for calling me an egg, nice zee there Julie!”

Kirsten offered, just a bit too loudly, that the final letter of the alphabet was actually called “zet”: and immediately regretted it as she knew her own spanking was to come for her confession of being “bossy about other people’s grammar and spelling.” It seemed to her every eyebrow in the room was raised at that point, just as Julie’s panties were being lowered.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Julie gasped as twelve solid strokes of the cane cut her naked buttocks into neat yet unequal segments. Tears and welts were both forthcoming before the end, although to her credit Julie herself did little more than gasp.

Kirsten was next, and, anxious to please, she was quickly into position. “You’ll not get far in America if you take a British attitude to grammar and spelling Kirsty-Lou,” offered the voice behind her, the same man who had just finished caning Julie. Kirsten admitted that this was true, as she slid her own knickers down and leant forward across the back of her chair.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Twelve solid smacks of a wide-backed hairbrush came as confirmation that Kirsten was indeed getting a little too “big for her britches”, and it was enough to bring her to real tears of embarrassment.

Sly, as chief hostess for the evening, was last. Kirsten wasn’t sure why it was that Sly had been recognised as “chief hostess”, since it was Julie who had done all of the cooking, perhaps it was the recognition that as the American in the home it was she who was most settled. Still, it seemed as though the whole evening had been building to this point: Kirsten wondered whether something even worse would be coming Sly’s way than had come her own.

Sly stood and turned her chair around, and knelt in the way the other women had done, having first unlocked her belt and lowered her trousers. (Kirsten still laughed when she heard Americans refer to trousers as “pants”, as a British girl she knew that Sly’s pants were still up at this point.) Sly slid her knickers down wordlessly, (but somewhat impatiently it seemed), and bent herself across the table with something between a sigh and a moan. For her at least the night truly had been building up to this point.

Kirsten was surprised to see that the gentleman who had spanked her and Julie had sat down, and had been replaced by his wife. Julie whispered to her that Sly had asked, at the inception of the group, that in return for agreeing to eighteen spanks rather than twelve she would be spanked only by women. Kirsten nodded as the woman stepped forward and raised a thick leather belt behind her friend’s naked bottom.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Sly alternated her gasps with moans and squeals, she almost seemed to be enjoying her punishment, (more than “almost”), and appeared disappointed when it ceased at eighteen; indeed she remained in her position, bent over the table, bare bottom on display while the gentleman made some closing remarks and sent the group on their way, standing only to bid them all a safe journey home.