In the summer of 1972 I was helping to clean out the apartment of one of my neighbors who had passed, Samuel D’Amato. He was a widower who had lived in my Brooklyn building since the death of his wife Victoria a few years earlier.

In one of his desk drawers, I found some typewritten documents that could be called essays. They were reminisces about some events that had happened to him over the years. I wondered if he had ever shown them to anybody, but I doubted it.

One of his stories was surprisingly sexually graphic. It was about an incident that had happened to him when he was a young man, and it was dated October, 1963, which was about nine years earlier.

I have written a version of it which is below. I’ve used some of my own writing style, but I’ve tried to remain true to his original.

In 1912, when I was twenty, I was working for a diamond and jewelry merchant on 49th Street in Manhattan.

The owner of the place, Jacob Timmerman, believed that he had a right – or an obligation – to spank female employees for various mistakes and transgressions. That was always delivered on their bare behinds while they were stretched over his lap. Any female under about forty was liable to get this punishment. This being 1912, Timmerman got away with it.

He didn’t do it that often, perhaps four times a year. This was always done in a back room on the fourth floor. When the door was closed, other employees would find some reason to be near it. They wanted to hear the sounds of the smacking and the cries from the unfortunate lady getting disciplined.

One day in September, he passed the job over to me. The prospect seemed rather exciting for various reasons. For one thing, I’d be able to gaze at exposed female buttocks. I had near seen one, not even in publications. Pornography was rare and hard to obtain back then.

My first assignment was a 17-year old girl named Julia Levine. She had only been there a few months. Her misdeed had been excessive tardiness.

In the afternoon I had posted myself in the back room ahead of time I heard a knock on the door, and told the person to come in. Julia looked in and hesitated. “Sir, I’m supposed to see you today.” I was always a bit surprised yet pleased at that young age to hear myself called “sir,” especially by a girl.

“Yes Julie, come on it and close the door behind you.”

Julie was a short, plump girl with frizzy reddish-brown hair which she tied up behind her head; she wore glasses. On that day she had on a white blouse and a long dark blue skirt that went down to her ankles. Her outfit was typical for an office girl of that era.

I had grown to like her; she had a warm, sweet personality. It seemed that she was fond of me too. She would flirt with me a bit, although being a proper young lady she could only take that so far. Before she had arrived, I had taken off my jacket and rolled up a sleeve to get ready. I said, “Do you know why you’re here?”

“I have some idea, but I’m not sure.”

“Well, Mister Timmerman is not happy with your frequent lateness when coming in to work or coming back from lunch. I’ve been assigned to, I’d call it discipline you. Do you know how that is going to be done?”

“I’ve heard something about it, sir.”

In the four months she had been here, Timmerman had not spanked anybody, so she had never heard the sounds from behind the closed door.

I said to her, “Then I will explain it to you.” I realized that this was going to be difficult. Back then there were unspoken restrictions on what men and women could say to one another at, say, a place of business. Now I was going to use some explicit language to describe what was going to happen to a certain private part of her body.

I thought a bit about it, then I realized I had to continue even if I was uncomfortable with doing that. “I going to use my hand to spank you on your bare behind.”

“Yes, I guess that’s what I expected.” I could see her wince at the prospect.

“All right, then let’s not waste time. I know you have to get back to work and so do I.” Then I had to give her instructions. “Come over here; lift up your skirt and get over my lap. Then I’m going to open up the back of your drawers.”

Women commonly wore drawers that could be unbuttoned and opened in the back. There was usually a strip of cloth across the top that connected the two halves. This was convenient when a lady had to use the bathroom. It also worked well when a boss, teacher or family member used corporal punishment on her.

“Just to warn you, this beating is going to be long and hard.” She quivered a bit after I said that. I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected her buttocks twitched at the prospect of what I was going to do to her.

“Please sir, don’t spank me.”

“But Julie, I have to. You really deserve it.”

I beckoned her over. She came over to my right side, lifting her skirt as she went. Modesty stopped her from raising it above her knees. When she was close enough, I took her arm and gently guided her over my lap. Her body pressed down on mine. I had placed another chair just to the left so that she could brace her hands on the cushion.

I figured it was my responsibility to prepare her clothes for this. I pulled up her skirt and pushed it forward, out of the way. Without prompting for me, she lifted her hips so it could pass under her.

I had seen ads that had illustrations of women’s underwear; I guess everybody overlooked the more risqué aspects of what was shown. Thus I wasn’t too surprised at what I found.

Julie’s drawers were white and went down almost to her knees. The bottom of each side had a lacy design. Below that she had black knee-high stockings and black high-top shoes. There was a gap where I could glimpse her flesh at the back of her knees.

I unbuttoned the back panel so I could open it up, and I pulled the two sections apart. As I did, she made a little noise like “oh.” It sounded like she wasn’t entirely displeased with being exposed.

This was an uncharted area for me because I had never seen a woman’s uncovered hindquarters before. Her buttocks were large and very pale. The sight threw me off from my focus of disciplining her.

I managed to say, “Julie, would you push your bottom up a little more?” She braced her legs and raised her behind. When she did, the opening in her drawers widened even more.

Timmerman had given me some instructions on how to do this. I was to hit each of her cheeks in turn, and keep going until it seemed I had gotten the point across. That was a bit vague, but it was the advice I had.

Just before I started, I said, “Julie, give me your glasses.” Timmerman had told me that girls would whip their heads around and their glasses could fly off. I took hers and placed them on a nearby table.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes sir, as ready as I’ll ever be.”

I did remember one other thing that Timmerman said; I should be “vigorous” in my spankings. “These girls have been bad. They need firm discipline, so beat them good and hard.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this to nice Julie, but I knew I had to. I had never spanked a girl, so I tried two strokes as an experiment. As I held her around the waist, I firmly brought my right hand down on each of her cheeks. There was a loud sound from the smacks, and she said something like “ew.” I noticed the marks on her pale skin where my hand had landed on her.

After that, I began hitting her on each cheek in turn as Timmerman had instructed. Julie took it better than what I had heard about some other women. There was one who actually tried to get up in the middle of it. However, Julie did have reactions.