I obliged to the best of my ability, however, handicapped though I was through fear of being overheard and the breathlessness which my exertions with the hairbrush entailed. I was beginning to jade, when my client exclaimed, "Let's rest a bit, boy! Shall we? Let's make the good time last."

As he lay on the floor, with my feet on his chest-he insisted on that-and a pillow under his head, he told me as much about himself as conformed to the image he sought to project. I have learned, long since, to separate the wheat from the chaff; but his story, I must admit, seemed to be more authentic than many I have heard.

He was, he said, a medical doctor who had grown up in New England—a lineal descendant of some of its Puritan founders-and had attended several of that region's best preparatory schools and ivy-league colleges. He had had, also, several years of postgraduate work in Europe, including a year in London with one of Sigmund Freud's last pupils. He was married and the father of two children.

Glancing at his wrist-watch-a birthday present from his wife-my client remarked, "Our respite is over. Shall we resume?" Again, he presented me with the hairbrush—which he had fondled all the time he lay on the floor-and his posterior, now a rich, rosy red.

The second session was much like the first, save that my client now requested verbal abuse conjointly with the physical. "Call me worthless trash," he whimpered. "Call me a yellow-belly son-of-a-bitch. Call me anything, just so long as you debase and degrade me.

Somehow I managed to maintain, in position for maximum punishment, the mass of wriggling, tormented flesh which sprawled across my knees. And I experienced an emotion akin to professional pride when he stammered "Excellent . . . excellent . ." through taut lips.

As he lay resting, once more, the doctor spoke of the compulsion which forced him to seek release, above and beyond that which copulation with his wife afforded. The ritual he had devised to secure his humiliation he called the "ten-minute-on, ten-minute off" rule. The ten-minute interim of rest gave him the opportunity, he said, to savor to the full his unique experience. "Introspectively and retrospectively," he added, in pure Bostonese.

The doctor had maintained his composure relatively well in view of the grueling thrashing I had already given him. But he pulled out all stops and vibrated with passion when he stretched across my knees for the third and last time.

A glance at my client's tortured buttocks sufficed. Had I continued to gaze, I doubt that I could have gone on with my grim assignment.

"Flog me, mama, flog me!" he cried, again and again. "Spank me, mama, spank me, but hard, hard! I deserve it."

I sensed that the end was at hand, and summoned my last remnant of strength to give my client that which his frenzied pleas demanded. And then, the relaxed, grateful, "Thank you, mama, thank you! You have loved me in the way you showed, long ago, is best."

My client went out into the night, and away, I assume, to his home and family. "I shall sit on hot coals for days," he said in parting, "a stern reminder of a delightful experience."

I went to bed, satisfied that I had acquitted myself well of an onerous duty. I am more than ever convinced that the law of supply and demand prevails as truly in man's sexual sphere as in the market place. There is a buyer, at some price, for every seller.