Now that my young body had been awakened to the delights of lust fulfilled, I was eager to learn more, to experiment. Too eager, perhaps.
    My father chose to believe I was seduced by the young man, corrupted by his male desires. In truth, I was curious about how men and women worked together, if it was as passionate as the encounters between Rosa and I had been. So it was I who seduced him. He was tender in his ministrations, which were not unpleasant, although they lacked the fire that Rosa had kindled within me. But I was still ignorant of certain matters. It wasn't long before I found myself pregnant. It wasn't much longer before I miscarried, but by then scandal had broke. My father felt he had no choice but to send me to a special reformatory school for fallen women such as myself.
    The reformatory was housed in a drab brick building in a nondescript part of the city. A great iron gate barred the school building's door, and similar iron contraptions sealed off the windows. What if there were a fire? was my first irrational thought, as I found myself upon the stairs leading to that imposing iron edifice. My second thought was, are the bars to keep criminals out, or to keep the girls in?
    I never reached a satisfactory conclusion to that question.
    The headmistress was Frau Traubst. She was huge, of peasant stock, with meaty hands and a bull's neck. But despite her stern demeanor, I believe she truly cared for her girls. I know that she was childless herself; perhaps we acted as her surrogates.
    Still, Frau Traubst was strict and unforgiving of any breach of the rules, and there were many rules. We all awoke an hour before dawn and attended to our morning ablutions at a shared wash basin. Each girl donned an identical striped uniform, made of coarse fabric, gathered at the waist, and reaching to our calves. Then, it was time for a breakfast of the blandest porridge, no salt, no sausage, no flavoring whatsoever. After that, it was time for our lessons. Then, lunch, then, chores; in the evening we would have a dinner of bread and sausages, and then we would study our religious lessons until dark. After the lights were put out, we were confined to our beds until morning. We slept in a dorm filled with bunks, and every girl was assigned her own berth upon arrival at the school. She was not allowed to trade or move it.
   

Those were the rules -- but those rules were broken every night. After Frau Traubst put out the lamps, the whisperings and shiftings would begin. Girls would clamber from top bunk to top bunk, as if they were jungle monkeys; if they possessed a lower berth, they would slither on their bellies like snakes, extend their arms to the next bunk and pull themselves across. The first few hours after lights-out were a special time, a twilight time. Girls would exchange gossip with each other, and more; they would plait each other's hair, and touch, and sometimes even embrace and kiss. In short, they acted as all young girls do.
    It all seemed innocent enough to me, at first. But Rosa had awakened in me a passion that, it turned out, was not easily quelled.
    She joined the school's ranks only a few weeks after I myself had arrived. Her name was Anna. She wasn't from Berlin, but from the surrounding countryside; her hands were calloused from hard work on the farm. Her hair was blonde, always worn in a single braid down her back. And her body was exquisitely ripe, all hips and breasts and shoulders and thighs.
    At night I would imagine those big, rough hands on my body, and I would lie with my own hand between my legs, unable to help myself, to constrain my imagination and my touch. I would work myself into a delirium, but I was unable to find release. My own hand was too soft, too small.
    Anna's bunk was only two to the right of mine, and up. I began to scheme, to concoct various excuses to worm my way into her berth. I was still rather naive despite my experiences, and I was certainly unused to being the seducer instead of the seduced.
    I knew already that some of the girls found comfort in each other's arms, late at night. I had heard their moans and sighs, and they had made me tingle and ache in my own sweet places. For I already knew most intimately the kind of pleasure the girls were experiencing with each other; I had learned well from Rosa. Now I wanted to share my expertise with Anna. I wanted to initiate her into the Sapphic rites. I wanted to be the aggressor, the seducer, the lascivious one. I would press my need upon her, and her body would respond, surely, as my own wanton body had, before.
    But since I was so inexperienced in the ways of seduction and pursuit, I took my time, made tiny gains as I worked my way toward my goal. I befriended Anna during the day. I could not sit next to her at breakfast, for we were assigned positions at the table according to bunk. But I tried to smile in her direction every morning as we lined up for our gruel. Later, during lessons, I would do the same. At first, she offered me only a confused smile in return, her brows drawn downward in a frown despite it. But soon enough she began to blush, and then finally smile back in earnest.
    I contrived to get assigned to the same chores as she was, or to the same study groups. I threw the ball to her during our exercises in the small gray brick-enclosed yard. I did everything I could to get near her in the most innocent context, so that when I became more bold, it would not seem to out of character. And it worked.
    One evening at dinner, I saved my roll in my apron instead of eating it. After we were marched off to our bunks by Frau Traubst and the lights were extinguished, I waited for the usual traffic between beds to commence, and then I snuck over to the berth across from Anna's.
    "Are you hungry?" I called to her. She looked at me, startled. I could see the freckles across her nose, the ones she no doubt thought were disfiguring and I thought charming. I knew that Anna had a peasant's appetite. I held out the roll to her, but she couldn't quite reach it.
    "Let me climb over," I said, and plopped myself into her bed. I handed over the roll and she consumed it almost immediately, with absolutely no delicacy of manners whatsoever. She left crumbs smeared across her cheek. "Oh, you've made a mess," I said, brushing them away from her face. And then I kissed her quick, before she could recognize my intent and turn away.
    Her lips were softer than I expected; I had guessed them to be chapped, like her hands. She pulled away soon enough, but not violently, and she did not push me away. The taste of her mouth lingered on my lips, and I smiled at her again, my friendliest, brightest smile. It was then that she blushed and dropped her head, but still she did not scold me or make any move to resist. So I kissed her again, on the cheek, and then on the neck. Oh, her skin was like butter and cream, and I wanted to lick every inch of it. She made a little gasp and put her hand on my shoulder. I whispered to her, "Anna, Anna, I cannot say what desires I have for you. Please let me kiss you again, let me taste your sweet lips. Let me kiss you everywhere." At those words, she let out a great shuddering sigh and turned her head back to me. Her eyes were wide, her pupils large, and her chest was heaving as if she were about to cry. "I won't hurt you," I promised. "I will only bring pleasure. If you want me to stop, just say it."
    Anna swallowed hard, and then grabbed my face and kissed me hard enough to bruise my mouth.
    I was on her in an instant.
    My mouth fastened on her large, flat, rosy nipples; my fingers kneaded the pale flesh of her breasts. I thrust a knee between her legs as she hastily threw aside her nightgown and granted me access to her most intimate parts. And I feasted, gorged myself on the musky taste between her thighs, which Rosa has taught me to crave. I teased her folds and whorls with my tongue, pulled on them gently with my teeth, plunged my tongue into her dark places. Anna kicked and squealed and sighed around me, finally grasping my hair and pushing my head forward, clasping her thighs around my ears and howling with pleasure.
    I forgot about the girls surrounding us, watching us, until I lifted my head from Anna's delicious cunt. Then I saw their eyes upon me; heard their breath, which had been stilled with anticipation. It seemed the whole room sighed as one. Now, too, I could see pairs or girls holding hands, or kissing, or, in one case, fondling an exposed breast. I knew then that I wasn't the first girl to embrace these deviant desires. When we kissed girls, when we fondled and licked their soft parts, it wasn't as a substitute for the boys we should naturally prefer. No, it was because we found women as delectable as the forbidden fruit itself, sweet as the first sin.
    Afterwards, I sucked the fingers of her rough peasant's hand, sucked until they were wet and pruned. Then I guided them to my body. Solemnly, I taught her how to pleasure me. The girls around us were still watching, hushed. It was as if we were in a pagan temple, enacting a most sacred rite.
    Only when I began to swoon from the pleasure than Anna was giving me, moaning out my appreciation and delight, did the tension break. And when it broke, it was like a flood releasing. An orgy broke loose in the room, girls gasping and crying out in exquisite pleasure all around us while Anna and I lay in each other's arms.
    It could not last. Frau Traubst heard the commotion and burst into the room. Her eyes fell upon Anna and I, intertwined as we were. She grabbed Anna by the hair, by her lovely corn-blonde hair, and dragged her to the floor.
   

"I see you and Lotte have each earned a whipping," she said, turning her gaze first upon me before sweeping her eyes across the entire room. "Any other girls I catch out of bed tonight shall be beaten as well. I will not tolerate these unnatural carryings on while you are under my care. Make no mistake, I am aware of your perversions, your lewd and filthy conduct with one another. And I am putting an end to it, now."
    Anna was sobbing. I, like the rest of the girls, was frozen in shock. I wanted to reach out and comfort my new lover, but Frau Traubst's large body was interposed between us. I could only watch as Frau Traubst compelled Anna to stand and walk to the door. Anna was still naked, and I clutched her nightgown in fear and sorrow. Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes, but I refused to cry.
    I didn't cry when I heard Anna's howls of pain emanating from beyond the door, and I didn't cry when Frau Traubst used the cane on my tender thighs, back, and bottom, striping me with welts and bruises from shoulder to knee. But I did allow my tears to spill silently over the marks on my lover's creamy flesh.
    Anna let me see the stripes Frau Traubst had given her, and let me stroke her hair and kiss her neck in sorrow and repentance. But she never let my mouth drift below her collarbone again, nor did she ever again let my hand explore the moist folds of her cunt. Whenever I tried, her body would turn rigid, and I would see a look of animal fear in her eyes.
    "Not now," she would whisper tensely, "not yet. Please, Lotte. If you care for me, stop. I couldn't stand another beating like that."
    I tried not to feel contempt for her fragility. The beating had stung my flesh and humiliated my spirit, but I knew I would heal.
    Instead, I vowed that I would find an escape for Anna and I, a way out of this terrible prison for wayward girls. I knew that Frau Traubst only meant the best for her charges, but I knew also that her morals were too narrow for my tastes. I longed for the utter freedom of the social outcast.
    I would soon find it.