I had an important goal when I entered the City College of New York in the fall of 1973. Of course, I wanted to earn a degree. However, I had no clear career ambitions, so I just took whatever courses interested me. I figured I’d “go to college” and decide what to do with my diploma by the time I graduated.

The other goal was to lose my virginity and finally get laid. I wasn’t looking for just casual sex, but I guess I would have accepted that had it been offered to me. I had decided against Fordham University, not merely because it charged tuition and the city university didn’t. The former was run by the Jesuits, and I was trying to get away from my Catholic upbringing.

My immature eighteen-year-old mind assumed that a public university would have wilder girls among its female students. I hadn’t had a single date in high school, but I figured that was because it was a “specialized” city school and it had only about 400 girls in my age cohort.

CCNY had over 4,000 female attendees, and I figured one or two of them would surely give me a roll. When I got there, I realized how big and impersonal the place was. Plus, it was a commuter school, with no dorms, and people didn’t hang around much after class.

In about a month, I took further action and joined one of the five student newspapers. The one I chose, The Salient, had a reputation of being the school’s “counter-cultural” publication. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but to me that meant “sexually liberated.” Indeed, they had published some material that was downright pornographic and gotten away with it.

Hey, student activities, that was the way to go!

Things didn’t go the way I had expected. One problem was that, at any one time, there would be about six women on the staff out of a total of thirty people. They were already going with other guys or they weren’t interested in me.

Also, to stay on the paper, I had to do some actual work. As a newcomer, that meant writing news stories, not the essays I dreamed I would be doing. It happened that the news editor that year was a junior named Lilith Wheeler.

That was the woman who I had the most contact with as a freshman. She had a disdain for me as soon as she met me. Maybe she thought I was sexually inconsequential, or maybe she had a problem with all men. I, in turn, grew to dislike her intensely.

She wasn’t unattractive, but she seemed humorless, a harsh taskmaster when it came to her job. I couldn’t understand what the big deal was because there was no money at stake. The students funded all activities on the campus with the annual fee they paid.

Lilith was of medium height, and she had dark hair that she wore in pigtails. What, is she in elementary school? Her eyes were strange, especially when she was giving an evil look at somebody who had displeased her.

She was not loud that often, but she could be quite intense when something on the paper wasn’t going her way. I quickly found out that the other males on The Salient weren’t fond of her either. The newer, younger guys who were directly under her thumb were the most extreme in their feelings.

The business manager, Frank Webber, told me his Lilith fantasy. He was another “professional virgin” like I was. His desire was to lie on the main table in the newspaper office and have her on top giving him a cowgirl.

I said to him after that revelation, “Except she doesn’t seem to like men that much. Maybe she’s a radical lesbian like that crazy Valerie Solanas.” A few years earlier, Solanas had attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol at his Union Square studio.

Frank was a mild type and he shrugged, “I wouldn’t know about that. All I know is that when she wears a sleeveless top, you can see that she often doesn’t shave her armpits.”

Somehow that intrigued me. “Yeah, she sounds like the kind of girl who doesn’t trim her pubic hair either.”

After that moment, I brought Lilith into my masturbation rotation. I too wanted her on top of me on that table. Her panties and jeans would be lying next to us, and I would hold her hips as she bounced on me.

It seemed that both Frank and I imagined balancing the power dynamic she had by having sexual relations with her. That didn’t mean we liked her; we just wanted to fuck her to see the look on her face. I went further into my negative emotions by picturing her over my lap as I spanked and paddled her bare backside.

First, I would pull down her jeans and her panties and gaze at her thick dark pubic bush. After that, I’d pull her across my knees. Lilith, sweetie, I’m going to put some color into that arrogant ass of yours.

It didn’t help that I was getting nowhere with the other college ladies – frankly, I didn’t know how to approach them. That winter, I was whacking off more than I had even in high school. Now I had the stalls of the men’s restrooms to use if I had an urgent need to ejaculate.

Lilith, baby, your problem is that you need a big cock which I can certainly provide for you. I especially enjoyed imagining her kneeling and blowing me until I fired a big load into her face.

Yet I stayed writing news during all of that time and thus suffered under my editor’s demands. She had the authority and I was stuck with her. I was especially displeased when she rewrote one of my stories to satisfy her need to insult the college’s president. Yet by spring, I had been given a couple of assignments by the features editor. At least The Salient gave me something to do on campus besides attending classes.

Then, in May 1974, after nearly eight months there, I ran afoul of Lilith’s anger, and man did she make me pay for it. And it was in a way that I had never expected.

The story I failed to write was a typical boring, unimportant assignment that college newspapers seem to thrive on. It was necessary to interview a certain professor, and it seemed that I could never get an appointment with him. It turned out that my old friend from high school, Jeff Kimmel, had also blown a story and he too was in the doghouse.

Lilith was upset that she had to fill the “news hole” with canned articles from a couple of leftist news sources. What was the point of publishing a paper that had little exclusive content in it? That was the way she saw it.

At the first staff meeting after that issue, she huffed a bit at the two of us but she remained fairly calm. Then, as I got up to leave, she said, “Hey, D’Amato, I want to talk to you.” She sat behind her desk and I sat in a chair in front of her. The many jerk-off scenes I had about her kept intruding on my mind as she spoke.

She didn’t say much. “I want you to meet me Wednesday afternoon at this address.” That was two days off. “Can you be there at three PM?” She wrote down a location on Convent Avenue, a street that ran through the campus from north to south, and then she gave me the note.

I tried to appear neutral, respectful even, as feelings of hostility and a nasty kind of lust went through me. “Yeah, I can make that time. Ah, what is this place?”

“It’s one of those stone row houses north of the campus. I’ll be on the first floor. You’ll find out the rest when you get there.”

I had to force myself not to say, Fuck you, you nasty little twat. If you won’t tell me, then I’m not going. But I had never confronted her before, and I lost my nerve to say more. She had a final statement. “That’s it. You can go now.”

My body felt like it was tingling as I left Finley Hall. I was mad as hell, but I still thought, wow, it would be great if I got there and we screwed each other to exhaustion. That would be after I gave her the belting she so much deserved.

The urge was strong enough that I had to go to a restroom in Wagner Hall and beat off a couple of times while imagining the possibilities.

On the appointed day I went to the row house a couple of blocks north of the campus. It was solidly built of white granite.

The building contained a branch of some organization that I had never heard of, The Center for Academic Justice. At least, that’s what the little sign on the outer door said.

I went in and knocked on a door on the first floor. I heard her say, “Come in, it’s not locked.” I entered the room and she was sitting behind a desk.

Two other women from the staff, Kathy and Martha, were also there sitting in chairs. Both were on the short side, but Kathy had short dark blonde hair while the other one had long brown hair and steel-rimmed glasses. I think they had joined about a year before I did.

As soon as I came in, Lilith said, “Don’t sit down Paulie, don’t say anything. You’re going to hear me out first.”

She had never used that nickname before; in fact, no one did. But I didn’t like its implication that I was immature. I preferred when she had just used my last name, which was insulting enough.

Yet some instinct told me not to complain about it. I had the feeling that something important was going to happen, and I should know what it was first. In any case, she consistently used the name from then on.

“You know what the problem is. It’s that story you failed to write. You made me and the whole paper look bad by leaving a huge gap in what we had planned to publish.”

I started an explanation of why I hadn’t done it, but she cut me off. “I don’t want to hear whatever lame excuses you have. But there have to be consequences for such irresponsible behavior – call it sheer laziness, perhaps.”

I could have asked what she meant by consequences, but I knew I should wait for her to tell me.

The botched issue was opened on the desktop in front of her. “Look at this disaster. Instead of a newspaper, it’s just a reprinting of canned articles. It’s like a supermarket flyer. You and that other loser, Jeff, are responsible for this.”

She was exaggerating how bad it was. There were still feature stories, music reviews, and even some news. I assumed that she would have more to say, so I didn’t reply.

She continued, “What I want is for you to resign from the paper immediately. Go write for The Campus and fuck up things there. Or write for City PM, nothing there matters anyway.” City PM was supposed to be for part-time evening students, although I couldn’t figure out why it even existed.

“If you don’t resign, I’m just going to just fire you.”

That one I did protest. “You can’t do that. This is not a job; I don’t work for you.”

“On the contrary, you do work for me, even if no salary is involved.”

I felt flummoxed, and I didn’t have a coherent defense. Instead, I inadvertently admitted that she did have power. “The other staffers will support me over whatever you want.”

“You’ve overestimated what they can do. I have ways of persuading them.” I wondered what she meant by that. “And if you do try to stay, I’ll make sure that anything you write doesn’t get printed.”

Martha and Kathy were sitting there blank-faced. Lilith went on, “Now Paulie, I’m willing to give you a second chance, but only if you accept a punishment from me first.”

I couldn’t grasp what she meant. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean a corporal punishment. You must know what that refers to.”

I did, but I still asked, “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“It’s quite simple. We’re going to take you down to the basement. There, we will spank your bare backside, and quite vigorously I can assure you. If you submit to that, then you can stay on the staff, assuming you don’t screw up again.”

“That’s completely ridiculous.”

“For once, be a man about it. You’re not afraid of what we three women can do to you, are you?”

Kathy broke in, “Let’s take him downstairs so he can see the setup. That should help him decide.”

Lilith said, “That’s a great idea.” She stood up and came out from behind the desk. Her outfit consisted of casual warm-weather clothes: a sleeveless top, blue jeans, and sandals. I could see that she was trying to control her fury. “Come on Paulie, you first.”

I guessed that she was concerned about me looking at their own rear ends. Kathy had a similar outfit to her boss, while Martha had a sleeveless but long dress.

We went down a flight of stairs to a basement room with a single window facing an areaway. There was a big piece of wooden furniture in there. Even though I could guess its purpose, I wanted to hear Lilith explicitly describe it.

“What is that thing for?”

For the first time, she seemed to be in a better mood. It was obvious that she enjoyed talking about my punishment.

“Well, it’s a spanking bench. Since you asked, you are going to bend over it. It’s set up so that your head and torso will be down, and your backside will be the highest point in your body.”

She smiled. “Paulie, you’ll be in an ideal position that way. Now notice the leather straps. Those will be used to restrain you and make sure that you don’t chicken out and try to avoid your discipline. There are two to hold your legs, two to hold your arms, and a big one that will go over your waist.”

That was a succinct but complete explanation. I hadn’t expected that they would propose tying me down, which made me think, just how severe is this going to be, anyway? It seemed ominous. I had expected that she would spank me over her lap as I had imagined doing the same to her several times.

Kathy suddenly had her own suggestion. “He should get up there and try it out, see how it feels. That will help him make a decision.”

Lilith shook her head. “No, Paulie, once you get on it, you’ll stay on it until we’re done. Otherwise, you can just walk out and you’re automatically fired from The Salient.

“Who is we?”

“Kathy will deal with one of your butt cheeks, and I will do the other side. Martha meanwhile will photograph everything so we have a record of it.”

That struck me as worrisome too. Once photos of the event existed, it was no longer just in the minds of the four participants. I grasped that Lilith wasn’t just doing that for trips down memory lane. The pictures could be used to blackmail me if I ever got out of line in the future.

Lilith sounded bubbly. “Keep in mind that there will be no safe word. This is a real punishment and once we start, we’ll continue as long as I think necessary.”

I said, “By the way, what are you doing about Jeff?”

“Oh, that little coward quit already. He was here yesterday. One look at this bench, and he walked out, never to be seen by us again, I hope.” Then she threatened me. “Don’t you dare comment to him about any of this.”

Or what? I said, “I need some time to think about it.”

“I’m generous. I’ll give you three minutes to make up your mind and get over there, or you’re history like Jeff is now.”

I didn’t know what to do. I almost wanted to quit on the spot. While doing that, I’d have the chance to call her every nasty thing I could think of. You know Lilith, after I go, I’ll think about putting my cock up your ass whether you want it or not. You’d know what my hot splooge in your anus feels like.

Well, no, I wouldn’t go that far. I knew that merely saying that could be construed as an illegal threat, and she wouldn’t let it pass unchallenged. She might not go to the police immediately, but surely she knew people in the college administration who would take her seriously.

She encouraged me to take her option. “Come on, Paulie, it’s just a little spankie. Once it’s over – well, you’ll still be on probation, but otherwise, everything will be reset to as it was before.”

Her arrogance was stunning, and I felt more anger within myself. Yet, in the three minutes allotted for my decision, I had several thoughts.

For one thing, I didn’t want to leave the paper. It had become a very important part of my life, and I didn’t want to write for that stuffy old Campus. I hated her pressure on me, but I believed she probably could force me off if she put her mind to it.

On a deeper level, she had inadvertently tapped into one of my kinks as she had revealed one about herself. I had never told anyone about it or actually done anything yet, but in my mind, I was a “switch” when it came to spankings. I had wanted to punish her, but I also wanted to be punished myself. I didn’t know much about dominatrixes, but I knew many men hired them. My urge was to find out what these three would do to me and what it would feel like.

Maybe you’ll actually like it to some degree. At least you’ll find out.

And finally, she had directly challenged me. I didn’t want to look like a coward.

But I had underestimated my antagonist. It’s just a little spankie, she had called it. I assumed they’d just hit me with their hands. That didn’t jibe with being restrained, but we all can ignore what we don’t want to know.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Then get over there and stand on that footrest.”

I hoped that it wouldn’t be so bad. I’d still have to deal with Lilith afterwards, but there was only one more issue due out that semester. By the time September came around, I might have figured out how to handle her and maybe even get some payback.

I just went to my position and bent over the trestle. Lilith and Kathy were quite efficient in getting all the restraints in place. Had they done that before? Lilith had been the news editor for about nine months, but I had never heard of her doing that. If so, who were the unlucky guys she had coerced?

Once I was tied down, I knew a line had been crossed and I couldn’t go back. A surge of both fear and anticipation went through my body. For one thing, I had never been restrained before. It was very strange to be fixed into place like that.

My tormentor said, “Good. Now his ass is up as a good target.” She came around in front of me and said, “Has wittle Paulie ever had a spankie before?”