Everything
recorded in this story actually happened. I have never forgotten it and still
remember the names of all involved. In fact, push me, and to the insistent echo
of the daily recording from the register of all our names I could probably recall
all thirty eight boys who watched the caning. When writing it I had clearly shelved the swimming pool caning of Tomorrow's Child (see previous story). But then I was twelve. Now I was fourteen and all boys know it is the longest two years.– Alfred Roy.
I still remember the day that first
fixed my sexuality. The day on which was triggered an obsessive journey of
sensual discovery. I didn’t know it at the time. At the time it was merely a
painful, very painful, schoolboy experience. But it took root in my mind and,
honed and developed, it constantly replayed its insistent picture in the
ensuing years. I still remember it today, nearly fifty years later, and every
single detail is crystal clear. It wasn’t just that painful experience, two
strokes of the cane on my bottom, it was the drama which surrounded it. My
caning was a play in three acts. I have never forgotten the actors and I have
never forgotten the three distinct scenes which defined its importance. Taken
alone, the caning was insignificant and routine. Boys growing up in the fifties
regularly touched their toes for a short and sharp shock to their backsides.
But this particular boy was already tipping to the edge of disciplinary
pleasures and those two strokes of a vicious cane finally thrust a confused
mind into a world he would never depart. If ever one wanted a reason for not
caning boys then I am it. When those two strokes landed on my bottom I began a
journey which has never wavered. If there is any pleasure in life which equals
the exquisite sensations of a disciplined backside I am yet to discover it. And
the day it all began is etched in the memory.
I was fourteen. In my third year at a
boy’s secondary school in Leicestershire.
For those reading this in far off lands Leicestershire is a county in
the midlands of England,
known for the hunting of foxes and the knitting of nylon stockings. And famed
for Lady Jane Grey, a queen for nine days destined to lose her head four hundred
years before I lost my innocence. Like most boys in those days I was familiar
with the sensations of a smarting bottom or stinging legs or hands. It was no
big deal. If you didn’t behave at home your dad took a strap to your bum and if
you didn’t behave at school a teacher used whatever method he or she favoured.
I didn’t enjoy it. In fact I cried copiously. But it was fairly infrequent and
I accepted it. It was part of growing up.
I was in that school for three and a
half years and celebrated four birthdays, twelve to fifteen, in a cramped class
of forty. In those three and a half years we all developed at different rates
and in different ways. I can’t speak for the others, except for a couple I knew
very well, but time has taught me that my development was slow and singular. I listened to playground dirty jokes without
ever understanding them and laughed loudly with the knowing boys who told them.
Those same boys, and others, showed an increasing and natural obsession for
that small piece of flesh dangling between seemingly ever open legs and hinted
at its mysterious delights. Masturbatory
races at the back of the geography or geometry class were a giggly highlight of
long and boring afternoons. And naked fumbling in the school showers after
physical education or swimming became almost obligatory. It was all lost on me.
My appendage merely indicated that I was a boy. I took no pleasure from anyone
grabbing at it. There was only one scenario where I displayed any hint of
breathless and internal sensuality. There was only one scenario where I felt a
swimming of my senses and an uncontrollable fever of unexplained desire. And
that was when one of my classmates was being caned.
I was a reasonably intelligent boy and
occupied one of the top places in the school’s top stream. By the time of my
fourteenth birthday I had only been disciplined on a couple of occasions. In my
first year a very young P.E. teacher had whacked my shorts with a slipper for
inattention and at thirteen an ineffectual art teacher gave me an equally
ineffective three strokes of his personal cane for spitting at a classmate.
Neither were particularly memorable except for a pleasantly warm afterglow in
my behind and welcome approbation from my friends. Any whacking at our school
made you a bit special, if only for the rest of that day. And if I couldn’t
avoid that furtive fumbling in the showers I could take a perverse and secret
pleasure in displaying my naked and rosy backside. There was an inexplicable
regret when the signs of my cursory disciplines faded. I did not understand my feelings;
I only knew they were there. And never more so than when a classmate had been
seriously caned and in those same showers one witnessed the savage weals writ
across his backside. We all admired them; all forty of us, but for me the
pleasure went much deeper. I had no desire to be in that boy’s place but his
marks took on a singular fascination. I would go home and dream of having some
of my own.
For most of those first three years it
never happened. Serious canings were a rare event at our school and most that
took place were in the deputy headmasters study. As these were usually to boys
in a lower stream even the visual aftermath was denied to me. But one of our
class was given four strokes of the cane by that deputy head for peeing over a
wall and all of us eagerly viewed the result at the first opportunity. Rumour
gave out that the boy had to take his trousers down for his caning but he
always refused to confirm it. He had no shame at displaying his marks to us but
that confession was clearly a step too far. It merely provided fuel for my over
active imagination and variety for my dreams. But one teacher, our form teacher
in my third year, was not averse to issuing punishment in front of his class
and on more than one occasion I witnessed a classmate touching his toes for a
couple of strokes of the cane. And he could lay it on. It was a long slow
journey back to his desk for any boy who suffered his particular justice. He
didn’t do it very often, he didn’t need to. Every watching boy felt those
strokes as they landed on their classmates backside and the ensuing silence, only broken by
solitary muffled sobs, was thick with collective fear. None of us wanted it to
happen to us. Thankfully it rarely did, the lower streams gave him more reason
to exercise his arm. But one day, about a week or so before the end of the
school year, it suddenly and unexpectedly happened to me. I had gone through
the whole of his year without even the hint of scholastic displeasure. And being good at his special subjects I was
probably one of his most favoured. But it didn’t save either myself or the
other boy involved. An innocent, inquisitive moment brought about my one
serious school caning. And when we both realised it was going to happen the
shock reverberated through the heads of the thirty eight other boys who had
watched in breathless silence. They didn’t believe it and until I touched my
toes some fifteen or twenty minutes later, in my heart neither did I.
I still remember the name of the other
boy and I can still see us standing at the front of the classroom staring at
the door. It was the day when class positions were announced and we were both
convinced we had come top. The teacher had left the exam result book on his table
and in a moment of combined madness we both decided to take a peek. I do not
know to this day whether that teacher had left the result book on his table on
purpose but I do know that as we furiously perused it he came into the room. To
say that you could have cut the air with a knife would be to do the drama a
disservice. You could have cut it with a whole canteen of cutlery and still not
have room to breathe. The silence was deafening. Two sets of fourteen year old
eyes stared at the unwelcome presence and thirty eight other still and fearful
boys drank in the scene. I have no idea how long it was before that teacher
spoke but, caught red handed, we should not have been surprised at what he
said. He spoke quietly but firmly.
‘Go and get the punishment book and the
cane. Both of you.’
That was all he said and, as he held the
door open, two numbed and frightened boys started on a journey which seemed
destined to end in unexpected and unwanted pain. Our departure released a
little of the collective tension in our schoolmates and as we made our initial
walk to the headmaster’s study in search of the weapons of our discomfort a
muffled roar of ‘silence’ cut the corridor’s air. Neither of us spoke. Five
minutes earlier we had been engaged in schoolboy rivalry. Now we were joined on
a mission that neither wanted nor expected. We approached the outer office of
the headmaster’ study preoccupied with thoughts that neither wished to share.
It was the brisk and efficient secretary calmly directing us to an outlying
classroom which released our tongues.
I would be lying if I said I could
remember the details of our conversation but I do know that at some point on
our travels we fearfully mused on what was likely to happen to us. I was
convinced we were going to be caned and I was equally convinced that we were
not going to get it on our hands. My one hope was that it would be limited to
two strokes. I had never seen this teacher give more but, from memory, he
didn’t need to. He hit hard. My companion tried to convince himself that he was
trying to scare us. Make us fetch the cane and the punishment book and then
tell us what he could have done if we were not such good and clever pupils. By
the time we reached the door of the class where the school’s official cane was last
in use he had almost succeeded in his slender hope. Looking back I am certain
that the ritual of sending a boy to search for the implement of his
chastisement was a deliberate school policy. Neither of us had ever made this
tortuous journey and the closer we got to its end the greater our agitation. My
companion had never been caned at this school and whilst I had some experience
of being disciplined, neither occasion involved the official punishment book
and cane. We collected both items as hastily as the large and florid woodwork
teacher allowed and, without looking at anyone in the room, left as nervously
and speedily as we had entered.
I can remember so many details of that
morning nearly fifty years ago but one of the most important points continues
to escape me. I can remember the plump officious secretary telling us that a
boy in the woodwork class had collected the book and cane and it had yet to be
returned. I can remember the name of the woodwork teacher and, when I asked for
the punishment book, I can remember him asking why I needed it and me telling
him that we were to be caned for being nosy. And I can remember telling him the
name of the teacher who was going to do the caning. And I can remember him
saying, when he heard the name, that we had better grit our teeth and pray that
our bottoms were tough. And I can remember that my companion said nothing. And
I can still remember the name of that teacher who eventually made me touch my
toes. I shall never forget him. And with me taking the punishment book and my
companion taking the cane I can remember the long walk back to our class. A
walk made in silence. But I cannot, for the life of me, remember whether or not
I ever touched or held that cane on the long journey back. I can only assume I
didn’t. I cannot believe that I would forget an implement that was to dominate
my later life. So I assume that a companion who was convinced, or seemingly so,
that it was all an elaborate sham to frighten us had the unwelcome task of
carrying the weapon that advertised our distress. Until it slammed into my
behind with devastating effect I had no tactile knowledge of the school’s
official implement of discipline. So, to this day, I have no idea whether it
was thick or thin, long or short, stiff or supple. I only know that it left a
hurt and a mark which turned my life.
If act one is a mixture of devastating
clarity and tantalising mist then act two is writ crystal clear. The summons of
a second teacher to witness the punishment dissolved any hope in my companion
that the procedures were an elaborate sham to teach us a lesson without
actually inflicting pain. The punishment book was opened at the appropriate
page and both teachers dutifully filled in the relevant columns. I didn’t see
it then and I have never seen it since. But I can conjecture what it recorded
for history. Duly signed and witnessed in accordance with the procedures of
June 1959 it would have stated the following:-
XX and YY (Class 3A – 14 years old) –
Two strokes of the cane (each) on their bottoms. Reason – illegal perusal of
exam results.
It no doubt spelt out our names in full.
It could not, in any way, suggest what we were about to endure. And it could
not know, why should it, that for one of those boys the next few minutes would
shape his future life. We were ordered to remove our jackets and picking up the
cane which had dutifully lain on his desk my companion was ordered by our
teacher to face the door and bend over. The witness teacher stood to one side,
close to me, and facing the door as instructed my companion’s bottom was
pointing at all our classmates. The area had a lot of space and was well
chosen. From that far corner of the classroom all would get a perfect view and
that was clearly intended. This teacher was going to make sure that all, not
just the one who suffered the pain, would learn a salutary lesson.
The next few minutes are photographed on
my memory both visually and physically. Our school uniform was a mixture of
light and dark grey and as he bent over the light grey of my companion’s jumper
contrasted sharply with the dark grey of his long trousers. Trousers which I
suddenly realised were very thin. They would offer little protection. He had
quite a small bottom and, bent over, it looked very vulnerable. He held tightly
onto his ankles and even though I could not see his face I knew the distress he
was feeling. All hope had been abandoned and he knew that he was about to get
his first caning. And with the official school cane by a master of the art. And
neither of us knew how many strokes we would receive. That information had been
cruelly denied when the order to bend had been issued. Thirty nine boys watched
fearfully and if thirty eight of them had a mixture of emotions they could not
compare with mine. I prayed and prayed that it would soon be over and, being
over, that we would express relief that it had not hurt that much. I waited,
sweating with fear and desperation. Would he ever strike and get it over with.
But the preparation was all and the boy was bent further down until he was
almost squatting and his small behind jutted out and almost rested on his
ankles. And then the teacher placed the cane across the pointing arc of that
backside and, almost in an instant, gave two taps and then lashed it across the
trousered seat. I jumped in fear and concern as the stroke landed with a
resounding thwack and my friend and companion lurched forward. But the
crouching position, cleverly arranged, ensured no unseemly rising and as he
absorbed the pain and shock of the first stroke the second lashed the very
centre of his bottom. Two vicious strokes issued in quick succession before a
boy had any chance to reflect on the fire and scream. And as he lurched forward
a couple more inches his bottom readied itself for a third stroke to join the
throbbing pain now emerging. But no third stroke came and the boy was told to
get up and go to his seat. I watched him rise and turn to face us all. The two
teachers, the thirty eight boys, and me. And we saw the tears streaming down
his flushed face, we saw his hands furiously rubbing his bottom, and we saw the
small tentative steps he took to his desk. The other thirty eight boys could
only wonder at the misery of it all. I was about to discover the reasons for
it.
I shall never forget that picture. The
taut grey trousers spread over the small squatting bum like a second skin. The
cane tapping the cheeks and then swooping to do its work. The resounding thwack
which echoed around the room. The stifled sob, the shuffle forward, and the
immediate second stroke only an instant behind the first. The two still
teachers, one armed with a cane, and the collective silence as a caned boy
returned to his place. It had happened a couple of times before in this class
and I had sweated with strange emotions. But this time was different. This time
I was to step into his place and experience what I had only seen. This time I
had to step into the picture and, this time, I was devoured with consuming fear
of what was to come. This time the cane had come for me and I was to feel the
pain. It was probably only a few moments or maybe it was five minutes but,
however long, it was not long enough. But as my companion gingerly took his
seat I was ordered to take his place.
I had seen what had gone before and
besides I was a good and dutiful boy. Wasn’t I one of the class stars? I knew
what had to be done and, in spite of my fear, I wanted it over. And it was only
two strokes. At least I now knew that. But he had hit very hard. Savage it
seemed. He had put so much into those two strokes to my companion’s backside I
swear he must have cut him in two. And now it was my turn and thirty eight, no
thirty nine, eager faces were staring at me. And in a moment would be staring
at my small, very small, behind. And whilst all would have some sympathy all
would be relieved it was not them. Pray God if a behind has to be beaten make
sure it is not mine. That is what they would be thinking. And who could blame
them. I was the one who had transgressed. Not them. And as I dutifully bent over
and grasped my ankles and pushed out my small and vulnerable bottom, even
smaller than the boy just caned, I remember thinking that I may be getting it
now but it could be your turn tomorrow. And that small thought gave me some
comfort. I stared at the door and tried to ignore the fact that the position I
was in meant only one thing. I was about to be caned and it would hurt. My
bottom was in the air awaiting the cane and that cane would do to me what it
had done to my friend. It would cut and it would burn and I would cry. It would
deliver excoriating pain to that part of my person that nature had designed for
the purpose. And it would do it to a level that even moments before it arrived
I could only imagine. And all behind me would see, I would only feel. In that
small second of my life I would have paid a fortune to change places with them.
And then I felt a firm hand on the lower
part of my back. A hand pushing me down making me crouch even lower. I bent my
knees and grasping my ankles even harder sensed my bottom jutting out even
more. And still he pushed. He wanted, like before, the lower part of my
backside almost touching the back of my lower legs. This was a master who knew
the precise part of the bottom he wished to hit and, having struck, wanted to
make sure that the boy stayed in place. Eventually he was satisfied and I felt
the cane touch my backside. It caught the only bit that stuck out, just below
the crown of my cheeks. And then he caned me. Just the two strokes, as before.
But two strokes of instant and agonising fire. The first stroke was unexpected,
surprisingly so given the elaborate ritual. I felt the gentle tap and the lash
immediately followed. A line of burning fire struck my behind and I felt myself
springing forward and fighting for my breath. And as I held on to my ankles and
stopped myself from falling over, I couldn’t in that clever position, the
second stroke followed a similar excruciating route. For a few moments all I
was conscious off was the burning fire in my bottom and lack of breath in my
body and, combining the two, the release of tears to assuage my discomfort. By
the time I was told to stand and return to my seat I was sobbing uncontrollably
in some sort of merciful release. And as the tears flowed the throbbing in my
bottom from those two strokes grew and grew. The shock and the pain combined in
an all consuming fiery dance on my backside. I had been well and truly caned.
Only two strokes. But as I made my way to my desk, slowly and manfully, I was
convinced that I would never recover. No boy’s bottom could take so much pain
and allow its owner to live. I sank into my desk and prayed for oblivion.
I have never forgotten the incessant
throb that enveloped my backside for the remainder of that momentous morning.
Initially the pain and the sting cried out for desperate relief. But however
much my agonisingly sore behind begged I dare not offer the desired soothing
rub. Conscious of all eyes upon me I sat in tortuous immobility. Desiring only
to be ignored and forgotten I would do nothing to draw attention to myself. Keep
still and a boy momentarily special for being caned would be allowed to sink
into anonymity. And so I sat, ignoring the grasping throb of pain around my
rear and the occasional furtive glances of my classmates and fervently wished
for the morning to end. I can honestly say I remember nothing else of that day.
If this were a piece of fiction I would paint many pictures; caustic teachers
threatening more of the same on another day, veiled allusions of trousers being
taken down, classmates viewing the results in school toilets, companions in
distress comparing their respective weals. But I can remember nothing else. Not
the teachers’ reaction or comments. Not the other boy who touched his toes
before me. Not how I saw out the remainder of the day. Nothing. All is a blank.
All I can remember is that sometime later at home, it may have been the same
evening, it may have been the following day, it may even have been after a week
had passed. But I doubt it. But at some time after that caning I inspected my
bottom in my bedroom mirror and from that day my life changed.
I did not lower my trousers and
underpants and look with dispassionate curiosity. I remember it was more with a
state of excited agitation and anticipation. Which makes me think it must have
been the same evening. But I do know that as I lowered my pants and turned my
bottom to the bedroom mirror I was eager to see the results of my discomfort.
Something inside me was saying that this pictorial pleasure would make the
violent pain worthwhile. What I saw both shocked and fascinated. My bottom was
small and smooth and very pale and the two cheeks were, at fourteen, extremely
boyish. And blazed across them both, across the centre and no more than an inch
apart, were two of the most savage weals that could ever have been planted on
an innocent behind. They cut right across, stretching the full breadth of the
buttocks, and displayed themselves with angry purple and black fire. Each of
the two weals registered the full width of the cane and were edged with
artistic touches in various shades of red. And against the backcloth of the pale
flesh they flashed as two raised disciplinary beacons and endlessly fascinated.
I gingerly touched them and contrasted the rigid hardness of the purple-black
lines against the smooth whiteness which surrounded. And as my fingers explored
and compared I knew, instinctively, that whatever the pain that created this
picture it would be well worth it. Over the following weeks I must have
inspected my bottom at least once a day. The changing picture of those two
weals never ceased to mesmerise. I saw the blackish purple slowly fade in
stages to a final sickening yellow and then, sadly, to nothingness. Eventually
the marks on my behind were as if they had never been but the mark upon my mind
was indelibly printed. I would suffer anything to recreate them. The final act
of this particular drama would shape the whole of my life.
I have often wondered if the other boy
was as affected as I was by this particular caning. He went to a different
school the following term and I have never seen or heard anything of him since
so I have no way of knowing. But to him it was probably just a nasty schoolboy experience.
Boys are remarkable resilient and unless your incipient sexuality is subtly
shaping on particular lines a whack on the bottom is just an unpleasant
sensation best avoided. But to a few, and I was one, it can tip you over a
willing edge into an all consuming passion. I don’t blame that teacher; my
submissive personality was already forming, he just gave me a violent and
dramatic push along a special path. I often wonder if he is still alive. He
could be as he was only in his thirties at the time. It would be nice to think
he was. In a desire to recreate an experience that can never be truly recalled
he has featured in many of my stories. The man who most devastatingly caned my
fourteen year old bottom has, under many guises, regularly stepped on to my
personal literary stage. My perverse and peculiar nature makes me wish him a
ripe and gentle old age.
Alfred Roy (2007)
