SPANNER IN THE WORKS - November ‘94
by Sally Barrett

When I sat down to write this book four years ago I was a very angry person. On December 20th 1990 a judge at the Old Bailey declared that sex games my husband and I enjoyed in the privacy of our bedroom were, in fact, criminal. On that historic day Judge James Rant decided on a surprise new interpretation of existing laws ... and it changed our lives. I wouldn't mind, but we weren't even on trial ... it was nothing to do with us ... but there it was in black and white in THE NEWS OF THE WORLD: Consenting adults can't consent to all sorts of things that until then we didn't think were anybody else's business but our own!

So ... I won't go back over the whole depressing, disgusting, sick-making, infuriating disgrace to the British Judicial System called the “SPANNER” trial ... because, as you can see, I've calmed down a lot in the past four years. If you don't already know about it and you're a real masochist, you can read more about it all on page 51 ... but it's very depressing. The main outcome being that a single judge without reference to me (or to Parliament) decided that my husband and I weren't intelligent enough to decide for ourselves what was and was not good for us nookie-wise.

At that time we felt very powerless because so many of our basic rights had obviously been bludgeoned to death by the Good Judge Rant. We decided that we should try and do something positive. But what? Well, such a lot of rubbish was talked and written about S&M and fetish games in general during the trial ... that gave us the idea. Even the so-called Quality papers trotted out every misconception and popular prejudice, so we thought “Time to stand up and be counted.”

Now, my Malcolm has never been one for letting it all hang out, but he agreed with me that we were at least in a position to tell the other side of the story: that kinky sex and SM games may not be everybody's' cup-of-tea, but they are certainly not something for the great British Judicial System to make an ass of itself about. As my sister Ethel says “Don't knock it till you've tried it” (she's famous for such platitudes), and Judge Rant and subsequently the Law Lords (God bless their silk socks and silk frocks) did seem to not have a very clear picture of the reality behind the lurid myths about S&M for pleasure.

Anyoldway, we decided to tell it how it is because, whether the disapprovers like it or not, there's a whole lot of us intelligent, responsible but sexually uninhibited people out here in the real world and we manage to live full and fulfilled lives without disturbing the neighbours or corrupting our kids.

For what it's worth, here goes with the story of two of them.

MORE 'Spanner' information

 

Chapter One:
IN THE BEGINNING.

When I first met Malcolm he thought he was king of the Orchid Ballroom, Purley. At 18 he was your typical early sixties Jack-the-Lad. Elvis hair and Elvis trousers. Legend had it that he wore a salami down his pants leg for effect. That wasn't true - it was all his very own. Of course me, I was five years older and light-years wiser than him then but not exactly experienced sex-wise. You see if you've got a mother who talks to you about sex it may take away some of the delicious mystery and excitement ... but it also makes getting it a bit less desperate. My Mum's always been a lady who knew exactly what she liked and got it regularly. And, because she was never furtive or saw reason to hide things from us girls, I suppose as a child I was well informed but managed to remain totally objective. Adult sex seemed as natural as enjoying a game of tennis or hopscotch. No she didn't corrupt me. She enabled me to approach the practicalities of sex more calmly than is usual in British family life. Maybe, unintentionally, she did exposed me to some early experiences of men's sexual overdrive. But, as she put it, information is power. As a young teenager when any of her admirers attempted some minor slap and tickle with me ... they were left with very red faces. I'd seen the way she could handle any situation and I learned by observation. So, I suppose you could say that early in life I'd discovered that sexually I could not only look after myself, I could take it or leave it.

Unlike me, lusty Malcolm (“Big M” to his friends would you believe) had a lot of notches on his gun at 18 but very little idea of subtlety. He won't mind me telling you all this because he was a very different person then. In those balmy days of Beatles and the last of the Milk Bars, for a boy to pull a bird five years older than himself was like doing rude things with your granny. I'd seen him around of course (you could hardly miss him), but I'd never spoken to him till I took my mini into this garage in the Brighton Road . He was working there: bright red Pit Stop overalls with zip open down to the crotch, picturesquely torn vest underneath and more grease on his hair than in his grease gun. Well, I don't remember what sort of smart crack I made as I drove away ... but he remembered me next time he saw me at The Orchid. With a couple of other girls we were all looking cool and unavailable in the Stardust Bar when in swaggers 'Big M' attended by several of his courtiers. Two of his cronies nearly came to blows over who would buy him a beer, and his gaggle of girls giggled nervously imagining what death by impalement might feel like.

He gave me a smile that wasn't meant to look sincere and drawls “Oh ... where have you been all my life?”
“23 Marguerite Villas,” sez I quick as a flash, adding in what I hoped were sexy tones, “Why? Are you looking for accommodation?”
He sensed the challenge and so did his groupies. “Oh ... would you like to accommodate me ... cuddles?” he purrs.

Now, if it hadn't been for this reference to my slightly fuller figure I might never have pursued the matter. “I have a bed that would accommodate you nicely,” I smiled, “It's in our front garden and all ready to be planted.”
I'll skip over the subsequent verbal fencing and two months of sporadic sniping, but the garage he was at did good work, and when I noticed that he always managed to be the one to come over and deal with my car when I drove in ... I began to warm to him. Two years later we got married in a hurry.

The parents of this ballroom Lothario were more conservative than Winston Churchill. They'd had Malcolm late in their lives and his three older brothers were all already up and away before he was twelve. So his slightly lurid Hollywood Pop star image was his defence against suburbanites as he put it. Anyway his poor old Mum and Dad were relieved that he would be safely married off and moved out by the age of 20 so they could enjoy their old age in peace. God love them they've been good Grandparents and will soon be Great-Grandparents if all goes well.

We'd set up house just in time for our Melanie to arrive and a year later almost to the day our son Todd followed in. There we were, as ideal a young family as the Christian Family Association could wish for. The fact that Daddy was emotionally immature and randy as a buck rabbit and Mummy less than ecstatic about being a life member of the Pudding Club didn't promise well for our long term future. In addition, super-stud Big M's self-image was developing in a distinctly un-lovely chauvinistic direction. So with the danger of a population explosion plus our need to be a two salary family something had to be done. Our sex life was terrific ... predictable but terrific, but I knew something had got to change.

Now ... I don't think it was exactly what my mother had in mind when it was first suggested: After I'd talked to her on the quiet about the problem, she just happened to remark in passing to Malcolm that there were alternatives to good old straight forward penetration. She's like that, my Mum. I thought he'd freak out ... but he was just vaguely mystified. To him sex had always been as natural and uncomplicated as loading the washing machine ... and he wanted his oats about as regularly as a household with two infants runs its washing machine. But anyway, he adored my Mum and loved it when she talked about sex because of course his parents never had. Well, there's nothing kinky about our Vera (that's my Mum) so all she was really suggesting was that perhaps there are things a man can do that make it last longer, perhaps without quite so much wear and tear on the merchandise, and not result in too many unwanted little strangers. God bless him, poor Malcolm was totally out of his depth. I think he wasn't all that far from asking her to show him what she meant. But I stepped in and told him I'd explain it when we got home.

It wasn't easy. Big M was used to taking what he wanted when he wanted it. Physically he was powerful enough to control any situation. He welcomed a good fight but in bed nobody had ever put up much of a struggle. So when I tried to show him that if he would only hold back a bit and let me regulate the build up ... but it wasn't what he was used to. It was too easy for him to take over whenever he felt the urge. The cellotape was my idea. We'd both got quite giggly while I was trying to get him to hold back and control himself. I trooped out of bed and down into the living room and came back with a roll of cellotape and said “If you can't keep you hands to yourself you'll have to let me help you”. So without any protest he let me tape one hand to the bed head. He was in a stupid mood and said in an Irish accent “I can fight any man with one hand tied behind me back!” So I said I'd tape the other one as well. He laughed as he let me, shouting “Help! Help I'm being accosted by a sex mad female!! Help! Rape!” and he was laughing and struggling ... and I don't think he realized how strong cellotape is when it's wrapped round a few times.

It was ever so dramatic. He's a big feller and for the first time in his life he wasn't in physical control of the situation. He did his damnedest to break free and I waited for him to convince himself that he was well and truly fixed. His legs were under the bed covers and I was sitting on them so they weren't too much of a problem. We both had an incredible time. After I'd teased him a bit he was getting so worked up he told me to cut him loose so he could take control and I said no way. He was all steamed up and at first he didn't believe I was serious ... but I was having a ball like I'd never had before. It was the hottest sex we'd ever had together and it went on and on and on. We were both deep into new territory, with new rules, new possibilities ... and before that night was over we both understood that there were places we'd never even dreamed of. It was fabulous.

Next morning he wasn't so sure. Ever since I'd known him he'd sniggered about perverts and people who needed 'kinky' sex. Same with his attitudes towards homosexuality: Prejudice based on total ignorance. He'd always been dismissive but at the same time very defensive about Queers as he called them. Only, with his silk shirts and tight pants at The Orchid it wasn't only the women that gave him the eye. But then if any man ever looked at him twice there'd be ugly incidents and punch-ups. At times I almost felt he invited the trouble. Let's face it The Sixties may have been swinging in Carnaby Street and Liverpool , but in Croydon horizons were still pretty limited. Our local Borough Council wasn't actually top of the league table for Sex Education. No, our Malcolm was your typical provincial macho, chauvinistic, Daily Mirror reading penis-brain. Why did I let him marry me? Apart from him being highly sexed and incredibly good looking he had a sense of style and a sense of humour and inexhaustible vitality ... and I was slightly plump and twenty five years old. Now, if you ask him why he married me ... I don't think he knew at the time but he knows now: We're well matched. From the first time we met we've been good sparring partners. Two halves of the same coin.

Getting back to how little we knew about non-conventional sex; whatever preconceptions and misconceptions either of us had at that time about “kinkiness” had been obtained through school yard mythology, adolescent jungle telegraph and the more sensation-mongering newspapers. We'd all heard about it but nobody we knew admitted to actually having done it. Sound familiar? But the social conditioning was deep and effective. Unlike today when fetish clothes and bondage imagery are commonplace in the Pop Scene, at that time imagery of so-called Bizarre Sex was thinner on the ground ... particularly in Croydon.

So even after that one great night, the inhibitions that 'Civilized Society' had so subtly tangled us up in prevented us from escaping. For me the altered balance of physical power had opened up new vistas of tactile, emotional, sensual and imaginative possibilities. For Malc his brief experience of powerlessness had (he admitted much later) broken down so many barriers and made him realize how potentially destructive to our relationship his limited sexual horizons had been.

But speaking chronologically the cellotape stayed out of the bedroom for over two months. Then, one night when Malc was trying to persuade me to let him go off on a six week deep water diving course, in wheedling to get me to agree he said he'd let me tape him up again. Ho-ho, I thought, he's been thinking about it too. Our second bout was even more fantastic than the first because I taped his ankles as well that time. Purely a practical measure because with his weight training he could throw me off or trap me with his legs. The progression of the scene that I improvised took him through excitement, frustration, real impotent anger, desperation and eventual physical exhaustion to a point where he'd have agreed to anything to get me to stop teasing him.

Somehow he grew up five years in that one night. For the next week he smiled a lot and we were closer than we'd ever been. Then he went off to learn deep sea diving and I was left with two screaming kids to contemplate what the rest of my life might hold in store.

END CHAPTER 1

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