In the screening room I shuffled up next to Rosie and Dimitri while Jasper and Trix messed about with computers at the back. Trix fed her password into the site and a big, bright, colourful screen came up with the Spanking Dreams logo and lots of tantalising photographs. Unlike so many of the fetish sites, it wasn’t wall-to-wall bare bums, displayed without much reference to aesthetics, but people dressed in various costumes, re-enacting different fantasies. The effect was alluring and made me want to explore.
‘So, this pirate film, then,’ said Jasper, and Trix scrolled down the page until she arrived at a still of a man with impressive flowing locks in a big shirt, brandishing not a cutlass but a flogger.
‘Here it is,’ said Trix. ‘Are we all sitting comfortably? Because my character won’t be.’ She laughed and clicked the “play” button.
Jasper came to sit beside me, keyboard on lap, while Trix perched herself on the other side of Dimitri. I heard his bangles rattle in the semi-darkness, then the film came to life.
A room had been decorated to look like the interior of a pirate vessel, with various props on display, although closer inspection revealed it to be someone’s garden shed with a velvet curtain over the window. Still, it had been cunningly and lovingly transformed and I was impressed. Most spanking films I’d seen paid little attention to detail and focused on the bare bones – or bottoms – of the scene.
Two piratical gentlemen strode on to the scene – the aforementioned owner of the flowing locks, followed by an older man with an eye patch and a silk scarf.
‘Stowaways, you say, Preece?’ said the hairy one – the Captain, I presumed.
‘Aye, sir, in the empty rum barrels in the hold.’
‘We’ll do what we always do with such vermin,’ said the Captain. ‘Have ’em walk the plank.’
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ said Preece, but he hesitated instead of turning to carry out the order. ‘But before I do … I should mention that the pair of ’em are women.’
The Captain stared and tossed his mane of hair.
‘What’s that you say? Lasses aboard a vessel of mine?’
‘I fear so, Captain.’
‘Bring ’em up,’ he growled. ‘I’ll show these wenches what it means to cross Captain Jake Pegg.’
The scene ended, and the next one opened with the Captain seated behind a big old desk while a pair of women in white camisoles and petticoats stood before him, heads bowed. Preece lurked in the corner, holding a rather ominous-looking sack. One of the women, the fuller-figured one, was Trix.
We all turned to smile at her. She avoided our attention and stared straight ahead at the screen.
‘Strange cargo we’re carrying,’ remarked the Captain in opening. ‘I’ve had all kinds in my hold, but never wenches. What the devil do you think you’re about? Eh?’
Not-Trix dropped to her knees.
‘Please spare our lives, sir,’ she begged. ‘We are running away from unwelcome marriages and seek only to make new lives for ourselves in the colonies. We are willing to do anything you ask, if you will only let us sail to Barbados with you.’
‘And what do you think my crew will make of that?’ demanded the Captain. ‘Poor beggars don’t see a pretty piece of female flesh from one month to the next and now here it is, right in front of them. Didn’t you think of what might become of you?’
‘We hoped for your protection,’ she said, and the Captain laughed heartily.
‘My protection? You’ve heard of me? Or no?’
‘Your reputation is alarming, I’ll grant you,’ said Trix, still on her feet at this point. ‘But we judged the danger to be worth facing, in order to avoid the fates that awaited us at home.’
‘Bold wench, aren’t you?’ said the Captain softly. ‘I have a remedy for boldness in wenches.’
‘And I have spirit!’ declared Trix, and, from somewhere out of shot, she lunged to grab a long pointy sword, which she swiped about in front of the Captain while her companion screamed and hurried back into the corner with Preece.
The Captain swore a piratical oath – ‘God’s wounds,’ or some such – and leaped to his feet, pulling his own sword from its scabbard.
‘I had to take a fencing course before shooting this,’ said Trix.
She was quite impressive, jabbing and parrying away while the Captain circled her menacingly. It was pretty clear from the outset that the Captain would win but was granting her a chance to show off her prowess because it amused him.
In the meantime, Preece had one arm closed around the other woman, while she did that kind of bosom-heaving struggling so popular in this kind of movie.
The swords clashed properly at last, and the Captain got hold of Trix around her neck, forcing her to drop her weapon. She cried out in defeat and let herself be pressed close to the Captain’s chest, her eyes still defiant as she looked up at him.