For a couple of years just before the First World War broke out in Europe, I worked for a diamond and jewelry wholesale company in Midtown Manhattan. I was only twenty-years-old when I started there.

The owner, Jacob Timmerman, had a notable policy that he never would have gotten away with nowadays. He believed that wayward female employees should be disciplined through the use of corporal punishment. About four to six times per year he would handle the task himself.

He would take them into a back room and put them over his knee. Then he would punish them, usually quite severely, on with their bare behinds with his hand or if the transgression was serious enough, a wooden paddle.

If they had “open-bottom” bloomers, he would separate the two halves of those to reveal their rears-ends. Sometimes they had drop-seat drawers, and he would lower the panel so he had access to spank their bodies. Then he would whack away at them, sometimes until they broke down and cried. Even then, he would give them even more strokes to get his point across.

The door to the room was closed, of course, but employees outside would still hear the sounds of the resounding smacks on bare backsides and the groans and sometimes yelling of the unfortunate females. Often the others would find some excuse to pass or linger near the door to better hear the activities going on inside.

There were about forty women working there, and several of them would go over Timmerman’s lap more than once. I think the youngest girl he beat was only sixteen, and the oldest one was in her forties. He had been doing this for years and through employee turnover, he always had new groups of careless or sassy girls to correct.

For some reason, in the late summer of 1912, he passed the job over to me. Maybe he had gotten simply gotten tired of the repetition. Perhaps he choose me because I was young and he assumed I had a strong arm to inflict a hard spanking on the victims.

Before my first assignment, I was somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing. I supposed it wasn’t gentlemanly to inflict pain on those women. Deeper down, I would have preferred to have pleasure with them, but I was still a virgin. In those days “heavy petting” and what is now referred to as blowjobs were hard to get from “nice” girls. The idea of visiting a prostitute repelled me.

The whole point of male-female relations back then, at least as I understood them, was to court a good girl and marry her at an early age. Only the lower classes, I assumed, had libertine males and slutty females. I had no idea what the upper classes were doing, but I now suspect they were getting away with a lot more than I had imagined. For a “regular” guy like me, there were strict codes of behavior to follow.

Yet I admit that the idea of finally seeing bared female bottoms appealed to me, although I admitted that to no one.

The first one I had to spank was a short, plump girl named Julia Levine. She was only seventeen at the time. As instructed by Timmerman, I took her over my knees, lifted her skirt, and opened the back of her drawers. She had been excessively tardy when arriving both in the morning and when returning from lunch. My job was to give her a good, long beating on her bare behind with my bare hand.

As I prepared to discipline her, I couldn’t help but notice how large, round, and pale her buttocks were. I knew enough to imagine that her flesh would be a deep red when I was finished with her.

To the surprise of both of us, it turned out that she enjoyed the experience. It wasn’t until much later that I heard the word “masochism.” In any case, her cries of pain soon turned into moans of pleasure. As I spanked her, I saw fluids dripping out of her vagina. In fact, she seemed to spread her legs further so that I could get a better look at her genitals.

In the end, she had an intense orgasm right on my lap. I sometimes wondered if that girl had ever had a climax before. In those days, masturbation was frowned upon for both boys and girls, and some young people ignored the prohibition but many others followed it. Sometimes they were spanked or whipped into submission if they were caught. That could have the unintended effect of increasing their sexual desires and thus resulted in even more masturbation.

We were both embarrassed by the results of my attempt to discipline her, and we never spoke about it again. Maybe I had some unsavory predilections of my own because I got a huge erection during her punishment. Later that day, I masturbated while imagining rear-entry intercourse with little Julie.

Over the next several months, I had to spank two more girls. I found I enjoyed it again, and I had to repeat the masturbation about it later. If possible, I would pleasure myself in an upstairs bathroom instead of waiting to be in my bed that night.

The two young ladies, however, definitely didn’t like it. For the first one, I took her over my lap again. The next second was a chunky blonde named Roberta Kimmel. For some reason, Timmerman ordered a harsher fate for her.

He had given me a bundle of birch rods to inflict the punishment upon her behind. It seemed best to have her stand up and bend over a desk. Her ample exposed buttocks stuck out of her open-bottom drawers.

I remember her saying, “Please Sam, don’t use that thing on me. Just spank me with your hand.”

“I have to do it this way, Roberta; Timmerman specified it. Now stay bent over and take it like a brave girl.”

Roberta initially did take her whipping pretty well. I had heard that some girls needed to be restrained in position for a birching. However, she did an inordinate amount of yelling during the proceedings, more than the previous girls. I’m sure lots of people in the office heard her, but there was nothing I could do about that.

I could understand her dismay as I saw the results on her backside. At first, the swipes from left to right left parallel red marks across her body. Eventually, the marks came together so that her behind was a solid area of pain. There were even a few purple welts from the hardest impacts. Did I feel it was my duty to hit her so hard, or did I simply like it for its own sake?

At one point she collapsed onto her knees and she was sobbing uncontrollably. I considered ordering her back up, but I took pity on her and decided against it.

“All right, Roberta, that’s enough. You have suffered enough for whatever you must have done.” Timmerman hadn’t told me what her transgression was, but it must have been serious if he had requested that level of thrashing.

She was crying too much to answer, so I let her kneel there and I sat down on the couch. I was feeling somewhat rattled, and I wished for a nice glass of bourbon with ice. Yet I was excited too, and I knew I would jerk-off later imagining her. I didn’t yet know what the fantasy would be. Either it would be about coupling with her or maybe I’d replay the whipping scene I had just enacted.

I said, “Would you like my handkerchief so you can dry your tears?”

She nodded and I gave it to her. I gave her some time to calm down. When she could talk, she said, “Oh God, it hurts so much, and it was so humiliating to expose myself to you.”

“Well, I suppose feelings of shame are part of all this.” I wondered how I had figured that out. It was just obvious, I supposed. “Roberta, honey, listen to me, it’s corner time now. Stand facing the wall and hold the back of your bloomers open.”

She bitterly replied, “Why? Is that so you can examine your handiwork?”

I supposed that she was right, but I didn’t want to confirm it. “Just do as I say. Corner time always follows a spanking.” The only time it hadn’t was after the first time, the time of Julie’s intense pleasure earlier that year.

As I sat there examining her deeply red backside, I thought, this poor girl, it’s going to be difficult for her to sit down for several days. But I guess that was the point; it would be a reminder to her to behave herself. She could get some pillows to put under herself when she sat in a chair.

After a bit, I stood up and said, “Okay, get your clothes together. You may go now.” For some reason, I had to add, “You came in here as a very bad girl, but I think you’ll be a good girl from now on.”

Even I thought I had struck a false note by saying that. Roberta must have thought so too because she lashed out at me. “I think you enjoy beating women. I could tell from the – well, from the intense way you applied that awful thing on me. You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

She flung the door open and left it that way as she went out. I was shocked because in those days I had never heard a woman use profanity before.

Then I remembered the masturbation I always did after these events. I had heard the word “sadist” somewhere Is it possible that I’m one of those?

For a long time after that, Roberta glared at me whenever she came across me in the office. She never said anything, but her look was venomous.

It wasn’t until the spring of 1913 that Timmerman sent his next misbehaving female to me. She must have also done something unusually bad because he gave me another implement to correct her with.

This was a thick leather belt, and one end was split into two “forks” or segments. I found out much later than this was usually referred to as a tawse, but back then I didn’t know the word.

The victim this time was nineteen-year-old Charlotte Mancini. While Julie had been short and Jewish, Charlotte was tall and Italian. She wasn’t chubby like Julie, but her body did have some ripe curves.

Also, Julie had been sweet and good-natured, while this girl was abrupt, even haughty. She presented, or rather simply faked, a regal bearing, and the staff called her, behind her back, Princess or even Queen Charlotte. To me, she was simply a “bitch.” I wondered if she had gotten sassy with Timmerman and had thus earned her belting from me.

On the appointed afternoon I was standing in the room with the belt in my hands. I heard a knock on the door, and I said, “Come in, it’s not locked.”

She swept in with her royal demeanor and closed the door behind her. Her dark hair was pinned to the top of her head, and she was wearing a long blue dress. She wasn’t truly beautiful, but she projected a strong sensuality. Surprisingly, she smiled at me. Usually, girls facing their punishment were visibly nervous.

I got in the first words, “Well, Charlotte, you know why you are here.”

She went in another direction. “Actually, Sam, I have a counter-proposal to make to you.”

That made no sense to me, so I said, “The only thing being offered today is the lively use of this belt on your exposed backside.”

“But Sam, you haven’t heard yet what I have to say.”

I should have kept my mouth shut, but my curiosity got to me, “All right, what is it you are talking about?”

She folded her hands in front of herself and coyly said, “What I was considering – instead of whacking me with that nasty belt, we could do things to give each other that would give us mutual pleasure.”

As I have mentioned, except for the lower classes, it was a very prudish era. I got an inkling of what she meant. I doubted it would be full intercourse – that was far too risky – but I had heard of other acts that men and women could do to each other.

I was only twenty-one, a virgin, and at the peak of my sexual prime. Again my mouth betrayed me, “I’m listening; what are you proposing?”

“You see, Sam, instead of whacking my bare bottom, you could use it to your benefit. I will expose myself, but you have to then expose your own crotch. Then I will rub myself against your front until you have an ejaculation, I think that’s what it’s called.”

Later I found out that such activities were called “frottage.” Yet, even though I couldn’t name it, I could vividly imagine her doing that to me. I was too stunned to reply, but she had more to say. “All I ask of you is that you then help me reach my own climax.”

I managed to say, “And how will I do that?”

“Oh, you’ll find out when the time is ready.”

God, this girl is so bold, so brazen. I had never heard a female talk like that before. Back then it was a common belief that women – except for the most depraved - didn’t even experience sexual pleasure. However, I had seen it myself while spanking Julie Levine the previous year.

Charlotte must have intuited both my hesitation and my interest too, because she cleverly exploited them. “Here, I’ll bend over the desk and reveal my lovely behind to you. Then you have the choice to – let’s say either ravage it or relish it. The decision will be yours.” She laughed as if she imagined herself to be very witty.

Rather than waiting for me to make up my mind, she went over and raised her skirt above her waist. Her undergarment was different from the ones I had seen on the other girls. Rather than opening in the middle, it had a full drop-seat panel in the back. She undid the straps holding up the white cloth, and it fell down to her thighs. She bent over and presented herself to me.

Then she looked back at me and smiled. “I have a very fine-looking bottom, don’t I, Sam?” It was indeed impressive. As opposed to Julie’s pale skin, Charlotte’s flesh had a rich creaminess.

“It’s really very beautiful.” My God, why did I say that? Well, for one thing, I had a huge erection pushing out the front of my pants. Biology had overtaken my thoughts.

I heard her saucy laugh again. “I’m sure you have decided by now. Come on, silly, let’s do it on the couch.”

She went over there and got on her hands and knees, facing forward. To make it easier, she lowered her drawers further until they were resting on her knees.

Perhaps I was paralyzed about what to do next because she gave me instructions. “It’s not that complicated. Just drop your pants and kneel behind me. Press yourself against my body and I’ll supply the motion if you wish.”

I did as she had requested because lust had taken over my mind. As I knelt there, she moved back and collided with me. My upright cock was resting on her butt crack. Then she began to move – gyrate really – against me, and the sensations were delightful. It was the first time my cock had ever touched a female body.