I respectfully submit the second episode of my saga of demeaning degradation, spurred on by the plea from the author of the excellent "Team Sports" for more tales with an authentic English flavour.
[In Chapter One, staid English schoolmaster Alan Watson, old beyond his thirty years, unwisely accepted an invitation to his pupil's eighteenth birthday party. During some rumbustious horse-play, handsome student, Richard Mayhew, was stripped naked and hurled into the swimming pool. Teacher Alan, who shared the same birthday, was similarly stripped to his underpants and thrown in too. Here he was forced to address the fact that he found the situation intensely arousing in spite of the humiliation. He hardly dared admit to himself that he was strangely attracted to the young man, his protege. Shortly after the embarrassing evening in question, Alan received photographic evidence of his mortifying arousal followed by threats of imminent public exposure unless he complied forthwith with certain orders. Flustered beyond measure he foolishly agreed and soon found himself even more enmeshed, having to pose for further photographs dressed in somebody else's more revealing underwear. Alan continues his tale of further degradation in Chapter Two.]
THE MASTERY OF TABLE-TURNING - Chapter Two - Brief Encounter
I slept very badly that night. If I dropped off into a doze I shot awake, heart pounding, upbraiding myself for the weakness I had shown in complying. I shook my head incredulously as I recalled how I had been manoeuvred into removing my trousers and underwear in the back of an anonymous van, into posing in obscenely revealing scanty panties for a camera held by a hooded blackmailer. I tossed and turned and groaned and sighed as I relived my stupidity of last evening, and asked myself yet again why I had been vain and foolish enough to attend the eighteenth birthday party in the first place where my downfall had occurred. What troubled me also was the uncomfortable tumescence I experienced throughout most of that night. It served to reproach me somehow, and I found it most unnerving. I lay trying to conjure up wholesome pictures of happier times spent with Rosemary, my late-lamented girlfriend, but soon found myself turning to bury the object of my embarrassment into the mattress as pictures of my handsomely naked and well-endowed pupil, Richard, burned themselves into my mind.
The following morning a brown manila envelope lay on the mat and my heart leapt. This was properly stamped and addressed, however, unlike the envelope from the previous night. I tore it open feverishly, gasping as I realised the contents were yet more photographs. I was temporarily mollified to discover they were photographs of the embarrassing stripper-gram episode together with a short note from Richard's father, Donald Mayhew, saying that he hoped I would accept the incident in the spirit with which it was intended, just a bit of fun. He stated he realised that in hindsight it was thoughtless with a view to my position of authority among the vast majority of Richard's friends and justified himself to an extent in pointing out how he had insisted they left my underpants on to preserve at least a modicum of dignity when I became the object of their birthday horse-play later that same night. He added that he hoped it would not affect the friendship that had been built up with his whole family and me. I turned to look through the photographs he had enclosed.
What a trollop the girl looked. How I had for a moment thought she might have been a real police officer, I could not imagine. I studied the look of distaste upon my face as I regarded her. Even through the outward, if ill-sustained, show of embarrassed amusement, there was no disguising it. The last three photographs set my heart racing again. They were of the pool incident. The first one was of me being carried out above everybody's heads, stripped down to my underpants. I studied the bulge closely. I think it was merely a bunching of the fabric at this stage. The next showed Richard, naked, coming out of the water with me. One arm was under mine; the other was behind my knees. My bottom sagged down concealing Richard's nakedness, but the leg holes of my underpants stretched with water, slightly revealing the crack of my exposed bottom. The third picture was horrifyingly similar to the one I had received the night before, though not quite as revealing of my state of obvious excitement. What did excite me, I must confess, was that, as opposed to the previous night's shot, Richard had moved his arm further up my thighs from my knees, thus raising me, and thereby also allowing a clear shot of his naked genitals. I pored over them, my heart fluttering.
He was gorgeous - an Adonis. I could not help but notice that he was impressively well-hung. I shifted in my seat as I studied him carefully. Shocked and appalled, I started at the reaction I was experiencing. I dropped the picture guiltily as the telephone rang.
"Good morning, big boy."
The voice was unmistakeable. My whisperer from the previous evening.
"What d'you want?" I snapped.
"Now that's not very friendly, is it?" he reproached me in mocking hurt tones
"I'm no friend of yours!" I countered.
"And I thought we were getting on so well last night when you took your trousers off for me and gave me your underpants." I had never heard a smirk before.
I was struck dumb.
"You still there?" he asked after a pause.
"Yes," I snapped.
"Well, I'm just ringing with your orders."
"Orders?" I was utterly bemused.
"Yes. You've got to wear my client's underpants today. Is that clear?"
"I shall do no such thing!" I announced in ringing tones.
"Hmm, pity, that. You see, if you don't co-operate, then the ball is set in motion."
"What ball?"
"Operation Big Boy. Your website, photos stuck up round school, delivered to the Head - maximum humiliation, in fact."
He waited silently for this to sink in to full effect.
"And none of this happens if I wear those underpants?"
"Absolutely."
My brain seethed. This was ridiculous. I was trapped. All my instincts, save one, urged me to resist. The one that didn't urged self-preservation.
"All right," I said in a resigned tone. "I'll wear them."
"Ah, I'm glad you see reason. Er - you do realise, much as I'd like to take your word for it, a check will have to be made at some stage of the day?"
"A check?" I echoed, bemused.
"Yes. At some stage during the day you will be asked to prove you are wearing them."
"You mean I shall be asked to show my underwear?" I asked tremulously, appalled at the prospect.
"Exactly so. Don't worry. We shall be discreet - upon this occasion."
I could see no way out of the nightmare.
"Very well," I had to agree.
I put the phone down and went back into my room, feeling very much like a condemned man, to change out of my sensible white Y-fronts.
Throughout the entire school day I kept my eyes peeled for the white van. One drove right up to school in the lunch hour, and my heart nearly beat its way out of my chest as I waited for what I felt sure was to be a summons to inspection. It turned out it was only a delivery of stationery. The final double period of the day was with my own sixth-form tutor group, the first time - apart from morning registration - I had spent any time in their company since the party. That alone was a cause for mild concern. I wondered how they would react. I was also all too conscious that no attempt had been made to check that I was in fact wearing the luridly turquoise glossy little briefs that were even then working their way more intimately still into the crease of my buttocks. My mind started to leap to horrifying conclusions. What if my group were in on this? What if I were to be called upon to drop my trousers in front of them all? Or worse, perhaps, to be debagged by them at the end of school and left without my trousers!
I dismissed these fantasies from my fevered mind, swallowed the knot of fear in my throat and strode purposefully into the room. I flatter myself I am sensitive to atmosphere and felt that there was an electric air of expectancy which only gradually subsided. In retrospect, I think at that stage it was merely a sense of wonder whether our business-like relationship would have altered at all after the extra-mural shenanigans of the birthday party. That I strove hard to maintain the easy but slightly formal ambience of old, I think they and I both found reassuring. As the lesson drew to a close and only the briefest of veiled references had been made to life-saving techniques and the risks of exposure, at which I allowed myself a sardonic tight little smile of recognition and, glancing at Richard, noted a sheepish grin and a becoming blush upon his handsome face, I was asked, apropos of nothing, in the final moments of the lesson if I had made the team in the following day's staff versus first team charity match. This was a keenly-fought annual fixture for which spectators were charged, all proceeds going to a local charity or worthy cause decided upon each year by the Head. Whilst far from being rugger material, I had been a reasonable sprinter with a fair burst of speed in my own schooldays, and so had made the scratch team as a winger in the past. As I confessed the team had yet to be picked, that reminded me of a meeting for just such a purpose after school which would make my private tutoring session with Richard late.
The bell went and as the students filed out I called Richard over. Explaining about the meeting and the subsequent delay in my getting home and preparing something to eat, I suggested that he might like a free night. He looked quite disappointed, then quickly came up with a solution. His parents had gone up to Town for the evening, it transpired, and had left him a casserole in the oven. Why didn't I drive over to his place straight after the meeting where a meal would be waiting for me, and then we could have a lesson afterwards? It would save time for both of us, and he could still have his girlfriend Alyson call round when we had finished. It seemed so simple.
Safely ensconced in the Senior Common Room with a cup of tea and a custard cream, I listened to the Head of Games draw up the team for the following day`s fixture. I must confess to a sense of relief upon learning that my skills upon the rugby field were not going to be called upon this particular year. Two young hearties had joined the academic staff at the beginning of last term, one of whom played for the local fifteen - in fact, he had a match with them that very evening - so I was graciously thanked for having volunteered and that was it.
With a nervous air of expectation, I made my way through the deserted school to my study. Turning into the main corridor, my heart leapt into my mouth as a cleaner dropped her bucket behind me. I was on tenterhooks, expecting to be ambushed at any moment, pounced upon and my trousers rent asunder. It was not until I was actually in my car that I breathed an enormous sigh of relief, and upbraided myself for having let such an idle threat as that made by the whispering caller that morning ruin the entire day and leave me a gibbering wreck.
With all thoughts of my ordeal behind me, a large portion of a very good casserole inside me and a second glass of vin ordinaire at my elbow, I sat reading Richard's latest essay in a comfortable and relaxed state of ease as my attentive host filled the dishwasher next door. It was really quite good. He was beginning to find a style of his own. While there was maturity and an attempt at forming an opinion clearly evident, he was still a little too easily led at jumping to conclusions. I murmured something to this effect as he came into the room. Glancing up at his lack of response, I saw him, transfixed to the spot, brown manila envelope in one hand, photographs in the other.
I don't know exactly how many heartbeats I missed at that particular moment. From the expression upon his face as he stared at the photograph, I knew unerringly what he was looking at and I didn't know what to say. "How's that for a hard-on, then?" didn't seem right from my lips somehow, though doubtless it would have gone some considerable way towards breaking the tension.
"May I see?" I finally managed to say.
Richard shot a look at me and recoiled, clasping the photos to him, then slowly it dawned upon him with an awful realisation that I already knew what they portrayed. I watched the colour come back to his ashen cheeks. Silently he held them out to me. There were just two. The first was the one where he was stepping out of the pool cradling me in his arms, his own nudity masked by my body. The second was an enormous enlargement of my underpants-clad loins. The translucency of the soaking garment exaggerated what lay beneath and even gilded it with an obscene glossiness. That I was sporting a massive and rubicund erection was impossible to ignore. The picture swam before my eyes, and I blinked back hot tears of shame.
I have never felt happy with exposure of my body if truth be told, being extremely self-conscious, even reneging at wearing shorts on holiday. To be so rudely and publicly divested of all save my underwear was enough of an ordeal for me to cope with. Now, faced with this blatant record of my mortifying arousal blown up out of all proportion in all its crimson-headed glory - and to know that it had been sent to one of my students, one whose opinion of me I valued more than I cared to admit - well, it was more than I could bear. A strangled sob escaped as I tried to exhale silently and my hands began to tremble.
"I'm so sorry, Sir," Richard barely whispered.
It was strange that he had automatically slipped back to calling me by my professional title. Strange, and at the same time, depressing. Something had changed between us; an innocence had been lost. He was eighteen, for god's sake. A man. He could vote, drink alcohol, go to prison - but he was still an impressionable boy to me, and I was worried at the newly-formed impression he had of me now .
"You have nothing to apologise for, Richard," I said very quietly and evenly, avoiding looking up at him, and staring unseeingly at the illustration of my degradation.
"But this is so embarrassing," he persisted.
"For me, I grant you. No need for you to be embarrassed."
I handed him back the photographs. He craned his neck to study them closely again and I was struck once more by a pang of shame.
"You've seen it before? - The photograph, I mean . . ." he added hurriedly.
"Yes, but not as big as that . . . . the photograph, I mean," I added dryly.
"Dad didn't take these, I'm sure," he said earnestly.
"Oh no, I agree. Besides, I received a separate batch from your father with a note of apology for the strippergram incident," I explained.
"Then who . . . ?"
"Then who indeed . . . ?"
There was an uneasy silence. All the while Richard's gaze pored over the scene of my grossest humiliation, taking in every detail and contour. I was squirming inside.
"This is awful," he said in hushed tones after shooting me the briefest of knowing embarrassed grins, returning his gaze to the picture. "Who would have done this?"
"I have no idea," I said flatly.
"And why?"
"For blackmail purposes." My voice sounded full of hollow resignation.
"Blackmail? What on earth could they want from you?"
I attempted a shrug, but avoided meeting his eyes. I could not bring myself to tell him what indignities I had already been subjected to, what in fact I had already succumbed to, in order to avoid the threat hanging over me. We both started guiltily at the doorbell. Hastily he shoved both pictures back into the envelope and gave it to me. I quickly thrust it out of sight behind the cushion as Richard went to attend to the door. I was seething with embarrassment as well as shame. It was clear that no further work should be done by either of us that night. I had decided that the moment he returned to the room I should make my excuses and leave. We would both be far more comfortable. I would, of course, ask if I could take the photographs with me, but I was resigned to the fact that nothing could erase that indelible memory of my complete and utter discomfiture he would carry of me. I drained my wineglass and shuddered. A touch too `ordinaire' for my palate.
"Hallo, big boy!"
I froze.
"Did you think we'd forgotten you?"
The voice timbre was unmistakeable. A startled glance confirmed my worst suspicion. I was struck dumb.
"Been waiting all day for us, have you?"
I have seen nature programmes on television in which the stalked prey becomes rigid with fear, almost trance-like as the inevitable end beckons, unable to flee or save itself. That is how I felt now.
I gazed helplessly at that characterless, and yet somehow sinister, ski-mask.
Of course, my mind was working overtime. How did he know I was going to be here? Where was Richard? Was he all right? Had he been overpowered? Was he being held against his will?
"Waiting and wondering when, or even if, we were going to come and check up on you, were you?"
I suddenly became aware of the muffled sounds of a distant struggle.
I found my voice at last.
"Where's Richard?"
"Never you mind your little head about Richard. He's all right. Now if you just do as you're told, he'll go on being all right too."
"If you hurt one hair of his head . . ." I began, trembling with a mixture of anger and fear.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah - whatever. Look, just get your keks off and let's look at your panties, then we can be on our way."
"But what about Richard?" I asked anxiously.
"Richard's got problems of his own at the moment, and the sooner you drop them, the sooner his problem will be over," came the reply.
Grinding my teeth with impotent rage, and not knowing how many cohorts were grappling with Richard out of my sight, I decided there was nothing for it but to concur. With a deep and shuddering sigh I gave in to the inevitable and moved my trembling fingers towards my trouser fastenings. As I held them suspended about my mid thigh, I was ordered to drop them completely and to tuck my shirt tails up as high as my armpits and exposing my nipples. Shamefully I carried out my instructions. There was a camera flash. Temporarily blinded, I was aware of a fracas as somebody burst into the room.
"What the bloody hell???" It was Richard's voice. "Alan, what the hell are you doing?"
Blood pulsed in my temples with renewed shame at being discovered like this. With a sudden realisation of horror as my eyesight grew accustomed again after the flashbulb's blinding glare I registered that Richard was now clad only in a pair of boxer shorts.
Before I could move or say anything, he added in ringing tones:
"And why are you wearing a pair of my bloody underpants, for fuck's sake?