There was a moment years ago during my husband's student teaching, when he wasn't sure if he could handle being a high-school teacher, in a position of authority over near-adult girls.

A teacher has to not only resist, but disguise any temptation he might experience. He was never really worried about actually making a sexual advance on a student, but he was concerned about maintaining a poker face. If his thoughts were to drift in the wrong direction, or if his eyes were to drift in the wrong direction, his students might see it and that could compromise him.

We made a deal. If he became a teacher, and if he was ever tempted or even had thoughts about any of his students, I agreed to do whatever he asked of me - any fantasy, anything sexual, anything at all - in order to relieve whatever sexual frustration he might have.

It gives him an outlet that is very useful at school. If a student starts flirting with him or just "gets to him", he can remind himself that the moment he gets home, he can indulge whatever fantasy he wants with me with no consequences.

As he describes it, it gives him a serenity that allows him to rise above the frustration.

Of course, he could abuse my promise. He could tell me he was having thoughts about a girl in his fourth hour class and tell me to do whatever he wanted, not because he was tempted by a student but because he was in the mood to do things to me and have my absolute obedience.

And sometimes I suspect that that's exactly what he is doing: taking advantage of me.

And I don't care.

If he uses it as an excuse, then at some level, perhaps unconscious, his thoughts are wandering in that direction. Or, perhaps, what I see as "an excuse" might just be his embarrassment at having to admit that a seventeen-year-old was sexually frustrating him. So I never question him when he asks. Even if he thinks he is taking advantage of me, I know that I am satisfying a need and re-enforcing his ability to resist.

Sometimes he just wants to talk about a particular girl and have me turn it into a story while I stroke him. Sometimes he puts me on my back and talks about her - in explicit detail - as he's screwing me. Usually he wants me to create the image in his mind of what she would be like in bed, or over his lap or on her knees.

Sometimes he rubs my face in it, telling me how easy it would be for him to have one of them and not tell me about it - and how young and pretty they are.

Other times his fantasies can be truly perverted or disturbing.

And sometimes he "puts it" where I don't want it to go.

And sometimes he releases his anger at the situation - that he can't even enjoy looking at them. He releases his anger on me in a physical way, punishing me on behalf of all womankind.

But that's OK. The darker the fantasy, the more unpleasant or disturbing it is, the harder the fuck, the harder the punishment, the more I know that he needs me. There is a deep intimacy in experiencing the darkest side of your lover, and thus knowing that you have all of him.

And sometimes, I initiate it.

A couple of times a year, I get to meet some of his students. I talk to classes on career days, bring him lunch during parent conferences, and sometimes sit in on a day of his classes.

It's amazing how some of the girls flirt with him, even when they know that his wife is in the room. Some of them don't even realize that they are doing the hair-toss or shoulder-wiggle or that their body-language and voice-inflection are charged with sexual signals. And some of the girls who are aware are counting on the fact that he is "safe".

Of course, it doesn't happen every time, but it happens often enough.

Most of it goes right past him with no effect, but occasionally I can see something in his demeanor - something that says that a particular girl is affecting him. He shuts it out, but I can see traces of it.

It's so subtle that other people wouldn't notice. But I'm his wife and I know him better than anyone. I know what his sexual frustration looks like, even when he has it buried under layers of self-control.

It's not the prettiest girls who affect him. Not even the smart ones get to him all that often. It's the rare smart girl with a spark of insight and maturity and poise and who is really attractive in a way that he likes. It takes a very special girl to get inside his head.

On those occasions when I do see it happen, I can't blame him. I understand why. And since the girl herself doesn't pick up on it, there's no harm done.

But that doesn't mean I let him off the hook.

I don't mention it on the way home. In fact, I usually tell him how much I enjoyed being in his class and that as soon as we get home he can have that Italian-looking girl (me) who seemed a little too old to be in high-school.

No, I don't mention what I saw right away, but after a couple of weeks, if he hasn't said anything, I'll take him to task. Of course I also take him to task at other times for thinking about things he shouldn't but it's much more fun when I know exactly who/what I'm dealing with.

There's one girl from a few years ago who sticks out in my mind. I'll call her "Kristin".

As usual, I waited a couple of weeks after seeing him in class - until I was in just the right mood. I called him at work, at about noon, and let him know to come straight home - that I wanted to have a word with him. That gets him in the right mood: anticipating a punishment for something.

Once he came home, he looked for me. I was upstairs in the guest bedroom. He looked around for me. When he arrived in the bedroom, he saw what I was wearing.

There are a number of different outfits that I alternate for punishments depending on the mood I'm in. We've done it enough times that I don't remember exactly which one I was wearing on this occasion, but in the mood I'm in as I write this, I'm thinking that the skin-tight leather cat-suit, four-inch heels and riding-crop would be my choice.

The riding-crop is the one thing I am sure I remember from that day.

Using the crop, I pointed to the bed. He knew the routine and knew that anything he said would just get him in more trouble. He took off his clothes as I watched.

Sure, I could describe the disrobing process in detail, but I'll let you imagine it for yourself. Suffice it to say that I like watching him take his clothes off. The one detail that is relevant at this point is that he was somewhat erect but not entirely.

I had him lay over the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. The guest bed has two mattresses and a box-spring. The edge of the bed is about waist-high so he can lay over it and not have to bend his knees.

With him in place, I put the end of the crop on his backside, right at the point where it joins his leg, and started questioning him as I tapped him.

"You've been having thoughts about one of your students lately, haven't you?"

"No," he said.

I took a full swing, connecting right on the bottom of the curve. Well, at the bottom of the muscle. He doesn't have an actual curve, more of a delightful, strong bulging...

Where was I? Oh yes, I took a hard swing at the point where his butt joins his leg.

"Liar!" I said.

"Ow!" He twisted in pain. The crop hurts. Believe me, I know.

"Alright, mister," I continued as I tapped the end of the crop on the spot just above the one I had struck. "I want a full accounting of all of your perverted little thoughts about her."

"Who are you talking about?" he asked.

Another full swing, just above the where I landed the first one.

He shrieked in pain and almost stood up, but I put the crop between his shoulder blades to remind him to keep still.

"You know perfectly well who I'm talking about." I resumed tapping him on the next spot, this was on the muscle itself - all of it, so far, on the left cheek. "That girl that's been driving you nuts all semester. The one you haven't been telling me about."

At that point, he realized that I had seen something during my class visit two weeks earlier and that I somehow knew about what was going on in his head.

But then he had a dilemma. When I'm in a classroom watching him teach, he knows that I have my eyes on him. It makes him conscious of "leaks" in his body language or facial expression and it reminds him to not think about anything or I'm going to catch him.

Of course, as soon as he tries to not think about it, all of the thoughts come flooding into his mind. So, every single girl who had even the slightest effect on him becomes a potential threat to his carefully constructed mask of propriety.

He had probably had small illicit thoughts about several girls the day I was watching and couldn't be sure which one(s) had caused him to slip in a way that I might have caught.

In that situation, I was hoping that he would give me a name other than "Kristin". That would have given me two girls to torture him with. Unfortunately, he named her right off the top, which means that he really had been thinking about her. She was a "special" one.

"Kristin," he said.

I gave him five mild strokes on various points on his behind. When he's honest with me, I make it hurt just enough to punish him for his impure thoughts, but when he lies about it I give him a full stroke.

He took the mild strokes with only a little "ugh" on each one.

"Tell me about her." I told him.

He told me what I had suspected. That she was one of those rare students that really gets it - the kind that every teacher wants to have, who sees more than just a test to be passed at the end of the term.