Ask any teacher what the worst day is, and surprisingly few will remember the first day of work. The rumble in their tummy as they stand before a blackboard for the very first time, alone and without a supervisor seems to fade for them. It has never faded away for me, and I recall it vividly.
In my case it was even worse than average. I had come back to my hometown after graduating college; disappointing my parents who had expected me to move out and be a big success “away” somewhere. I explained that I’d come home to “give something back to the community”, but it was complete balderdash. What I was really doing was burying myself in my work, trying to avoid admitting something that no-one else knew.
In college I had become Mistress to a lithe blond tart named Jacqueline “Tennisball” Turner. In some way, we’d been very much in love. I’d revelled in every whipping or spanking I gave her. She gloried in the loving abuse I heaped on her. But eventually I’d convinced myself that this wasn’t what I wanted.
I was a “normal” woman, with normal desires. I wanted a husband and kids and. . . .And I wanted Tennie, or piggy, as I’d sometimes called her, crawling to lick a pair of black leather boots with four-inch heels that clung so tightly to my legs that my slave often had to yank them off me while I broke the suction with a shoehorn. I wanted her head bobbing vigorously between my thighs as the little electric shocks of pleasure shot from my clitoris. I wanted to hang her from the ceiling beam of my little house and beat her ass raw for breaking dishes, to set her impossible tasks and punish her for failing at them.
But I wanted other things too: the touch of her breath on my neck when I let her sleep in my bed; the soft look in her eyes when she knelt at the foot of that bed with my morning coffee; the contented hum of her when all the happy violence was over, the sweat and sometimes tears dried, and she cuddled into my arms during decompression.
And I wanted all of this while leading a June-Cleaver-with-a-career existence? It was too much, and I knew it. But while I sorted all this out I still had rent to pay, first to my parents, then to a landlord, and finally to a mortgage company. I found a job at a high school in town (not the Catholic school I’d attended, but a newer secular school called Park West Secondary).
On the first day of classes, I was way too early. Only the school custodian was in the hall as I entered the Old Building (the one built in 1976 was the New Building) and made my way to room 108 West. The classroom was empty, and I unlocked the door but left the light off. Instead I went to the door at the back of the class. In other days it would have been a storage space. The teacher I had replaced, one Mr. Carruthers, had been in the habit of smoking a pipe quietly in there while grading papers, and the room had that lovely “gentleman’s club” smell of old leather armchair, shoe polish, and pipe tobacco. It’s a smell I’ve always associated with luxury.
There was a little narrow window facing the soccer field, and long shelves of dusty textbooks along the wall with the door in. I put my necessary things into the desk and cupboards, my clipboard, a pack of marking pens, chalk (any teacher will tell you, you bring your own and hoard your supply), and my coffee mug.
My coffee mug.
