Art for Art’s Sake

From Blushes 34

Her peers at school had always told Charlotte how brilliant she was at ‘art’ — and the quality of her life drawings had inevitably extracted praise from her teachers, even when she was younger.

Now she’d taken the plunge and, instead of opting for university, she had decided to attend a particularly good art college on the south coast near Brighton. Despite the tough competition for entry, Charlotte — or Charlie as she was known to most of her friends — sailed through and was immediately put under the wing of the most talented teacher at the college, John Mitchley.

A man with numerous exhibitions to his credit, John drove his students hard, and liked to stretch their talents to the limit in his search for excellence. Occasionally; he had a small number of students to his lovely home on the hills above and outside Brighton, where they would paint, draw, and simply talk about their interest in art. For Charlotte, it was an idyllic existence.

At nineteen, she was what you could call ‘a looker’, and could well have been a model — though her height was against her for fashion and beauty work. A shaggy mane of dark hair tumbled round her shoulders, swept back off her face which was normally devoid of make-up, save a hint of mascara. Her body, of which she was rightly proud but unaccountably shy, was one which had excited more than a smidgeon of interest from the boys in the college, and from the more mature men she met at exhibitions and trips to old houses where the students viewed collections.

Charlie’s one weakness, artistically, was that she found it near impossible to portray suffering. While the background of her drawings and paintings was near perfect, when she was required to portray a figure in torment, wracked with guilt, or pain, or simply the weight of the world on the shoulders, the facial features were invariably wrong. It was a bone of continual contention between her and her teacher.

One afternoon, John Mitchley’s frustration boiled over: ‘Look, Charlie, you’re not going to achieve anything if you cannot express those emotions… do you understand about what that face should be showing? It’s humiliation, humility, pain, angst, suffering, mental turmoil: do you understand what I mean? There’s no feeling in that face, no emotion!’

‘Well, I don’t want him looking like a torture victim, John… I just don’t understand the emotions involved in what he’s feeling… it’s so bloody frustrating,’ complained Charlie.

‘Frustrating!’ hissed John, ‘You’re telling me it’s frustrating: you haven’t got a feel for this at all… I thought you were talented, but this block beats me… maybe you need to experience a bit of humiliation and pain yourself…’

‘Well, I feel pretty humiliated right now, actually,’ Charlie said resentfully.

‘That’s not humiliation, I’m talking about lowering your dignity, something which you don’t seem able to grasp. You’re just feeling resentment now.’ He paused. ‘You know this building used to be the workhouse?’

‘Yes, I know,’ replied Charlie.

‘Well, if you were in here when it was in operation, you learned humility — meekness, if you like, or you experienced humiliation, and pain.’

‘This isn’t a workhouse now, though, John, but I see what you mean. What sort of humiliation…?’ she asked.

‘Well, at your age, you’d have a good chance of being stripped and whipped, probably in front of a lot of other people. Fortunately, they don’t behave like that anymore, and there aren’t workhouses.’

‘Whipped? Naked?’ John nodded. ‘Good God,’ she said.

‘Maybe you need to experience a taste of what the girls in this building went through so you can get your act together and feel those emotions and you can express them on paper and canvas,’ John suggested lightly, with a smile.

‘Why, do you think it would help?’ Charlie asked, in all seriousness. John was slightly taken aback. His suggestion certainly hadn’t been serious, it had merely been a device to make her try and see the emotions she was incapable of expressing. There might be an opportunity for a bit of fun if Charlie would go along.

‘Certainly I think it would help, Charlie. I don’t mean literally a whipping… but…’ She interrupted.

‘But that would be the whole point, John, wouldn’t it?… to actually experience that pain, and that humiliation like those girls did. Then I’d know what it was like, and my work could show it. Do you think it would help?’ she asked earnestly, her eyes shining with a sort of artistic zeal.

Well, if you’re determined to try it, Charlie, I’m sure it will help. But you’ve got to submerge yourself, your personality, and almost play a role… and of course, we’ll keep it to ourselves.’

‘Of course, John,’ she agreed. ‘When can we start?’

‘Well, I suggest you come up to my house on the morning bus on Saturday. I’ll pick you up on the hill, OK?’ Was he hearing right? Had this attractive and talented youngster just agreed to take her clothes off and be whipped… he must be dreaming.

‘Fine. About nine then. Thanks, John. I really appreciate it.’

----//----

The bus was a few minutes late, and John sat in his Volkswagen Golf convertible sunning himself at the side of the road with the roof down. He had gone to considerable trouble to discreetly obtain a selection of implements which he hoped to try on Charlie’s willing flesh, including an alarming-looking four-feet-long leather whip with a handle decorated with silver. He had his doubts about using this, and had wisely gathered a riding crop and malacca cane in case the whip proved a bit too much.

Finally, the green single-decker swung up the hill, and Charlie hopped off carrying a large shoulder bag: ‘Hi, John. Sorry the bus was a bit late. Been waiting long?’ she chirruped.

‘Fine, fine, no problem, Charlotte.’ She glanced at him, noticing the use of her proper first name. He went on ‘I think it would be best to get into the mood of the day right from the start, don’t you, so I’ll call you by your full name, and you can call me…’

‘Sir?’ she suggested.

‘Sir will do fine.’

John’s house was isolated down a longish drive and screened from the road by hedges nearly eight feet high: the property had been left to him by his uncle, and was really far too big for his purposes. They swung into the gates, and round the back of the house into a courtyard surrounded by stables, the fourth side of the square being formed by the rear of the house itself. At the centre of the courtyard was a water trough and, beside it, a tall post for tying up the horses while they drank.

Charlie got out of the car, feeling slightly nervous now, and looked at John. Contrary to the style of most of her contemporaries, Charlie tended to dress quite smartly, and today sported a pair of cream slacks which clung to her nether regions as if glued there. Under them, so that no lines showed, she wore only what she called a ‘thong’, purchased in Fenwicks store in London earlier in the summer. Others might describe it as a G-string. The light cotton top was pulled out of the slacks and tied across her midriff, exposing a wide band of cream-coloured flesh. Her hair was tied back with a single ribbon.

‘What’s in the bag, Charlotte?’ John asked.

‘Well, er… I thought I’d better get some sort of costume, sir, so I borrowed this’ she pulled out a cream top and brown skirt which had a period look to them, ‘from the theatre… oh, and this, sir,’ she said, removing a coiled-up whip from the bottom of the bag, it’s thick finger of leather polished till it gleamed.

John walked over to the entrance of the courtyard, and pushed shut the tall gates so that the square was now sealed from any prying eyes. He stood by the pole: ‘Come here, Charlotte,’ he said.

‘And bring me the whip.’ The girl left her bag on the cobbles and, picking up the bullwhip, walked to the post and held it out.

Taking it, John announced: ‘Charlotte Moor. You have been sent here to learn what humiliation means; what humility means; what pain means; what obedience means. Take that shirt off.’

Charlie didn’t hesitate, caught up in the drama of the occasion, her eyes gleaming again. Her fingers went immediately to undo the knot below her breasts, and she swiftly unbuttoned the garment before letting it fall down her arms and onto the ground. She looked straight ahead. John’s eyes fell to the two magnificent white breasts which were now revealed, as the girl stood stripped to the waist. The two nipples were a deep red which crowned the proud protuberances, lying heavily on her chest.

‘And the trousers, Charlotte…’ he went on. Immediately, Charlie undid the snap at the waist, lowered the zip and wriggled delicately out of the slacks, slipping off her shoes as she did so, finally standing again, still looking straight ahead.

‘Am I to be punished, sir?’ she asked.

‘Indeed, girl, in time,’ confirmed John. Charlie licked her lips. John drank in the sight of this pretty teenager standing proudly before him clad in what appeared to be a G-string. He walked round her, seeing that the white cotton triangle at the front, which barely covered her pubic bush, dwindled to a single string which ran tantalisingly up from her crotch to her waist by way of the deep crease between her buttocks. And what buttocks! Almost oval in shape, they sat full and heavy, jutting in their firmness, twin half-moons of satin-soft flesh. A wasp flew round Charlie’s head and opted sensibly for a landing on her bare right buttock, stimulating a reflex slap from the girl which rapidly left an imprint of her fingers and caused the cheek to wobble alarmingly.

‘Stand up to the post,’ came the command, and Charlie moved the four or five steps and looked up. Now she understood. Without being told, she gripped the two bars that went into the top of the post.

‘Am I to be whipped, sir?’ she asked, a hint of fear creeping into her voice as she recognised her vulnerable position.

John didn’t answer, just walked away to leave her there, almost on tiptoe but not quite, her arms strained high above her head, her bare breasts pushed either side of the pole and her bottom tensed with the effort of holding her position.

As the day warmed up, so the sweat started to trickle down Charlie’s back. She began to have second thoughts about this charade, and nagging doubts about John’s motives. Another drop arrived at the division between her cheeks, forced its way through and arrived at her crotch, gathering in the moist hair and pale flesh which eventually released another drop down her left thigh as she changed position, the sweat now standing out on the backs of her upper thighs as well as her chest, pushed hard against the rough wood.

It was another two hours before John returned carrying, she was surprised to see, a shorter version of the whip she had troubled to bring. So this was it…

John said nothing, merely hung the silver handle of the whip on a convenient nail driven into the post while he walked round the girl. ‘Nineteen,’ he thought to himself, ‘and what a magnificent body.’ He looked up to a first floor window in the house, and walking behind Charlie grabbed her by the hips and pushed her roughly further round the post so that her back was to the house. He picked the whip up and Charlie, unable to contain herself, blurted:

‘Look, are you going to use that on me or not? This waiting is killing me. I’d rather be whipped and get it over with. Sorry, sir,’ she added. John still said nothing, merely hung the whip on the nail again and walked off to the house. Charlie moaned and sighed: ‘Oh shit!’

John trotted up the stairs to the room where he had rigged the video camera he had hired for the weekend, checked the focus and exposure on the ample bare rump in the courtyard, and switched the video recorder to ‘record’.

Three minutes later, any passing walker on the public footpath beyond the paddock would have heard the unusual sound of a near-naked 19-year-old girl being soundly whipped, the noise of leather impacting with bare flesh preceded by a short, low whistling sound and succeeded by a high-pitched female yelp of pain. John laid the whip carefully across the girl’s shoulders and upper back, not beating her at all hard. In fact, the noise of the whip’s impending and actual arrival was a lot worse than the damage it inflicted.

Charlie, realising this, and suppressing her surprise that her backside was not the target, made the most of her protests so that John didn’t feel inclined to make better use of the implement. As it was, the whip smarted cruelly, and brought vivid red welts to life across her back. After ten strokes, John hung up his whip and told her:

‘Get dressed in those other clothes, Charlotte, and you may have some lunch. You will eat in the kitchen.’

‘Lunch’ consisted of a lump of wholemeal bread, a bowl of ‘gruel’ which tasted distinctly like vegetable cup-a-soup, and a glass of water. The rough fabric of the costume irritated Charlie’s back.

Up in the old playroom, John had successfully disguised the video camera behind a curtain, and placed the long wooden table where it was best lit from the large windows, the sun still streaming in and making the dust dance.

He went to the top of the stairs: ‘Charlotte!’ he shouted. There was a pause, then an anxious ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Report to the schoolroom to be disciplined.’

‘Yes, sir,’ came the immediate response. ‘Not again,’ she thought: ‘I’m going to be red raw by the end of the day. He’s making me feel like an object, not a person.’ Charlotte was getting the point.

John waited by the door to the playroom, now dubbed the schoolroom, and looked Charlie in the eye as she passed by. She submissively dropped her gaze to the floor:

‘Charlotte Moor, sir. I was told to report here for punishment.’

‘Very well. Wait outside until we’re ready. You will strip,’ John ordered.

‘Yes, sir.’ Charlie had caught the ‘we’: surely someone else wasn’t going to witness her further humiliation? She shrugged off the top and dropped the skirt to the floor. She was still barefoot. After twenty minutes standing in just her thong on the landing, a slight chill caught her, and she shivered: what was she doing here? Her thoughts were broken:

‘Charlotte Moor’ came the shout, and she pushed the door open to find John standing by the table idly swishing a cane through the air. She had, for unaccountable reasons, expected another whipping. The prospect of the cane was one which brought a sense of relief rather than of fear.

‘You were told to strip, girl. You have disobeyed, and you will receive extra strokes for your obedience,’ John intoned.

Charlie pursed her lips and resignedly tugged the silly little piece of cloth off, revealing the dark triangle of hair which failed to disguise its secrets as she walked towards him.

‘Bend across the table,’ and Charlie bent, holding the sides as she stretched herself out, her legs parting slightly as she did so.

For the next two minutes, the room was filled with the rhythmic swish, smack, yelp of a teenager having her bare bottom caned: hard enough to hurt, but not to wound, the twelve smarting strokes delivering their required tramlines of pain. Charlie remained bent over, afraid to stand, unsure of whether there might be more to come.

Her muscles tenses and relaxed, and tensed again as she fought to overcome the stinging: ‘Mind over matter,’ she kept telling herself. She shuffled her feet a few inches further apart, the fullness of her buttocks decorated with the cane, the marks on her back fading already.

John tossed the implement onto the table, and motioned for her to stand. ‘Return to the whipping post,’ he ordered, and watched as she left the room, her buttocks undulating gently as she moved, quivering slightly at each step. He rushed to move the video camera back to the window, and set it up in time to catch Charlie exiting from the side door, head bowed, naked, walking back to the post where she again gripped the bars and tossed the shaggy mane back from her face.

He zoomed in as close as the camera allowed, and trotted swiftly down the stairs and into the courtyard as the sun lowered itself gently behind the roof, casting a deep shadow across the square. ‘Your disobedience has earned you additional chastisement,’ he announced solemnly. He sensed resistance from Charlie, but finally she agreed: ‘Yes, sir.’

Almost reluctantly, John raised the whip and brought it down twice across her still bare rump, an unseen hand preventing him from striking her severely. Charlie sagged at the post, the sweat dried now, the air cool on her abused body.

She left a couple of hours later, catching the eight o’clock bus back to town while John sat down in front of his TV with his two closest college colleagues, both sworn to secrecy.

‘I’ve only one complaint,’ said one when the video was over, ‘and it’s that you need another camera to give you other angles and close-ups!’

‘What a home movie, John!’

‘And I suppose you’ll operate the other camera next time, eh?’ laughed John.

‘Next time? God, you really are depraved, John!’