The First Time I Got Caned (M/m)

This is a new story, only recently composed. Total fiction but fun to create when my social life was at a low ebb. I confess I had a small incentive, other than the fact that Christmas preparations generally mean blogging neglect in the early winter months. Sometime ago I posted a small and inconsequential piece on the red letter day I did receive my first actual experience of a cane across my bottom. I was about eleven and, other than the fact that it was the first time, that caning was definitely not memorable. But I posted it when feeling idle, purely as a small blog, and called it, unoriginally, My First Caning. There must be something in a title because it vey quickly went to the top of my hits list and has remained there ever since posting. To my constant puzzlement it still gets more hits, by a long way, than any other blog or story of any ilk. So this, a detailed fictional account of a fourteen year old boy's first caning, trousers down, is a bit of a response. And the title is, hopefully, the hook for all those googlers who key in certain words. But, however or whoever finds it, I hope they and you enjoy....

The First Time I Got Caned

I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It is as fixed on my mind as indelibly as any event in my childhood. No, more so. Much more than any Christmas, much more than the day my parents separated, and so much more than when my favourite pet died. It is a day that is etched on my memory, a day in which all the small details still reverberate, it is the day I got caned. For the first time. And it was not any ordinary caning, not that I know what an ordinary caning is, or didn’t then all those years ago. It was long drawn out, in circumstances, in sentence, and in execution. Especially execution. I was fourteen, I had been warned, I ignored the threats. With two others I suffered our school’s final sanction, our headmaster’s ultimate punishment. It pained him, so he said, to have to do it. But do it he did. To me and two others, partners in crime, authors of our deserved downfall. So he said. For them, both of them, it was nothing new. They had been caned before. But I had not. Their fear was of the pain, the expectation, the humiliation. Mine was of the unknown. And nothing anyone said could ready me for it. My first caning. And I had no illusions. He, the headmaster, had made that clear. I was going straight into the big time for my initiation to scholastic discipline. Six of the best, how strange that phrase sounds, six of his very best with his very best cane. With my trousers down. There would be no gentle learning for this miscreant boy. I had seriously transgressed and there was no alternative. My first caning was to be my best or worst, depending on your point of view. And nothing anyone said could ready me for the experience. My only saviour would be myself.

 

I wondered, as he gave out the sentence, what it would be like. My stomach lurched, my legs trembled, and breath seemed not to come. But the words were absorbed. The cane, six strokes, across our backsides. Nothing less would do for our heinous crimes. Heinous, I am sure that is what he said. He would wait an hour or so, to allow his anger to subside. But when it did we would be summoned. Singly. He emphasised this. Singly. One at a time. As if to do what he intended to do, six strokes across our bottoms, other than separately would dilute the punishment, lessen its importance. So we would be called, separately, to have what we must have. To suffer what we must suffer. After an hour or so. And then, all anger spent or most of it, we would be caned, six times, for our most heinous of crimes. With our trousers down. My companions flinched, I remained silent and still. The enormity of the sentence I could hardly absorb. Six strokes. Six strokes of his cane, delivered in a manner my fevered brain could not imagine. My fear compounded as I realised that my companions, familiar with such scholastic matters, were equally afraid. They had been here before but knew this would be worse. This caning was to be high on the disciplinary scale. When we were dismissed, dismissed only to await our fateful summons, I had not one jot of consolation. We would all be treated equally, we were all equally culpable. The headmaster looked at me as he said this, I am sure he did, there will be no concessions. I don’t expel fourteen year old boys, he said. They deserve a second chance. A second chance, the price of which was something I could hardly bear to imagine. We all went our separate ways, desperate to fill our allotted time in personal ways. None spoke, there was nothing to say. Our deed had been done, we had been caught and, sentence passed we awaited retribution. Our second chance. I hoped it would seem like that, a second chance, when I bent for a vengeful cane.

 

It was all so innocent, or so it seemed to us. Boys are naturally curious and that curiosity, at a certain age, encompasses girls. But life was strict all those years ago and girls with all their mysterious complications and temptations were kept well away from fourteen year old boys. Never the two shall meet was our schools mantra. A policy which fed the curiosity and increased the fascination. The segregation, the seclusion, the distant shepherding of the strange female species only enhanced their attraction. And two days a year, spring and autumn sports, the two species gathered in proximity. A healthy interaction or a test designed by authoritative minds of a Machiavellian bent? I still, at this distance, do not know. But the rules, oh yes those rules, were clearly defined. Scrupulously outlined. It is inter-school sports, parents and guardians and friends and hangers on watching and cheering, and it is important. But there are rules, rules that must not be breached. Five schools may come together in the one suitable venue but our school, our boys, know those rules. When not running, jumping, throwing javelin or putting shot, we stay together. Shepherded, segregated, distant. Those were our school rules. Immutable, rigid, promulgated. Breach them at your peril. We listened, we absorbed, we understood. They were said every six months, every time before the big day. The day that five schools in the area came together in healthy outdoor, inter active sport. But for three boys, me and two companions, our thoughts were not healthy. And for that we were due to be caned. Singly. In an hour. Trousers down.

 

I had regrets, I remember that. Not regrets for what we had done but regrets, many, for being caught. My hour was passing and I awaited my inevitable summons with increasing dread. We had showered on that interactive sports day, my companions and I only being involved in the team events and suffering early elimination. Showering schoolboys were closely monitored but on this fateful day clearly not closely enough. We found ourselves left to our own devices and, instead of returning to the school bus to await departure, we decided to explore the hosting school. A girl’s school. We had no particular plan, I remember that, and no particular intent to do mischief. But all that day was conspiring against us, or so it seemed as I awaited my summons. We explored the impressive grounds, skirted the outer walls of the equally impressive building, registered the various classes and outbuildings. And then we heard it. Familiar sounds of gushing water and, less familiar, thin female voices. Voices echoing around an empty chamber, briefly filled. The sound of girls. Girls showering. Naked girls.

 

Someone has just told me that Baker, a companion, has been sent for. It will not be long for me.

 

I wonder how long it will take? How long will it take Baker to walk down two flights of stairs, cross two corridors, knock and enter? Or knock, wait, and enter. How long will it take for the headmaster to say what he has to say and for Baker to bend down? No, before he bends down he must fumble with his belt, undo his trousers, lower his clothes. Then he will bend down, then he will be caned. Six times. And I wonder, as I visualise it, how long it will take.

 

We tried to look, to reach the small high windows and peer down on those unseen naked, female, bodies. They were just, tantalisingly, too high. The windows, not the naked females. Nothing around us suggested a solution and then one of us, the tallest, said we could stand on his shoulders. But not for too long. I eagerly, remembered now with shame, volunteered and after a couple of failed attempts managed to get my head level with the first window. It was open and, if I risked putting my hands on it I could lever myself and glimpse my first sight of, hopefully, naked female flesh. The temptation was too close, the prize too immediate for me to relent. I risked all, fleetingly, for a few seconds and when I fell to the ground, giggling, I convinced myself that I had seen what I desperately wanted to see. Baker was now equally eager to take my place. He desired to see what I had seen, or what he and I were convinced I had seen. I think he did. He was an inch or so taller than me, usually unworthy of comment but crucial in our adventure, and he stayed longer at the window and saw more. Or at least he convinced himself he did. His laughter on the ground was louder and longer than mine, indicating a challenge accepted and achieved. We should have stopped then. The chattering, thin, female voices had dropped slightly in volume, lessened in the intensity that communal nakedness induces. Even amongst girls. We should have noticed, as we giggled in our collective guilt and clandestine shame. We should have stopped then.

 

Baker has gone to his dormitory. He was crying, or had been  so I was told, he was distressed. He lay on his bed and said nothing, other than indicating that Mallon, the tallest of us, had been summoned. It had been twenty five minutes. Twenty five minutes since Baker himself was called. Allowing for a two minute walk to the headmaster’s study and a two minute walk back, perhaps it took three in his suffering, which means at least twenty minutes in the headmaster’s study. Twenty minutes to do what? It only takes a couple of minutes to lower your trousers and bend down and surely no more than three or four to take six strokes. Five minutes at the most if the headmaster spaced each stroke to his behind at sixty second intervals. Almost fifteen minutes when nothing was happening. Did Baker take all that time to recover and pull up his clothes? Was he made to wait whilst the headmaster considered what he was about to do? Neither option, due soon for me, appealed. I calculated and feared that nothing almost as much as I feared all else.

 

Mallon, the tallest and heaviest of us, was determined to have his moment. The subtle changes in the naked girl’s camaraderie had not registered. It took both Baker and me to lift him. Perhaps it was the moment, perhaps it was the sight of frightened naked girls staring at the window, perhaps it was the unfamiliar surge of incipient testosterone surging through a fourteen year old boy. Or perhaps it was none of these things. Perhaps it was just pure boyish devilment. But seeing and being seen, we should have registered that shower room change of atmosphere, released a charge in Mallon which compounded our situation. We would be caught, that was even now decided, a sturdy sports mistress was alerted and acting. But Mallon, our tallest and heaviest, proved to be also our most stupid. Our offence registered high on any boy’s school scale, he now pushed it to unseen limits. He lit a firecracker, a jumping jack, and threw it amongst the naked girls. He was laughing uproariously as we all fell on the ground, his companions were not.

 

Mallon went five minutes ago. He should be there by now. Will he be made to wait or will he go straight in. What is worse, the journey, the waiting, the going in, the instructions? The undoing of one’s pants or the bending over? Then further waiting, further adjustment of clothes? All this and then pain, unfamiliar pain, searing and excruciating pain. A pain never experienced, never imagined. Until now. Imagined by me, experienced by Mallon. Our firecracker. The boy who notched a misdemeanour, a silly prank, to a heinous crime. So the headmaster said. Heinous, a word, a word worthy of taking down anyone’s trousers. Soon for me but, for now, Mallon. He should be there by now.

 

Baker is recovering so someone said. He won’t say much, except that it hurt. The hardest caning he had ever had. Someone else asked him if he got it with his trousers down. More than that he said. Heinous. I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It is as fixed on my mind as indelibly as any event in my childhood. A day that is etched on my memory. It is the day I got caned.

 

And Mallon, the Mallon now bending over and receiving his caning, his heinous caning, was to blame. Or so we said. As we collapsed on the ground, one laughing, all things changed. A track suited woman appeared, girls screamed, a series of explosions echoed beyond the wall, more screams, girls appeared. Some naked, some wrapped in towels, some clutching feet in pain. Real or imagined. Another adult, also track suited, male, some shouting, more screaming and, in the distance, a firework gradually being spent. Order was gradually restored and we were returned to our own school on the earliest bus. And then the headmaster, appraised of all the facts or the ones that mattered, and the lecture, the anger, the sentence, the dismissal. For an hour. All to be encapsulated in s single afternoon. From idle schoolboy thought to busy scholastic cane was merely the blink of an eye in a lifetime. But as I waited, waited for Mallon to follow all the rituals of Baker, it was a thousand million blinks. And all, everyone, seemed longer than a day.

 

He has been back for over five minutes. I heard him pass along the corridor, shuffling, slow and deliberate. Soon it would be me. I have rehearsed my speech, if asked for anything in mitigation, but suspect no words will be needed. We should not have been there, that in itself is enough. Mallon’s stupidity merely compounded. It made me angry but I could not totally absolve myself. My only uncharitable thought about him was that if, if no firecracker had been deployed, if no girl’s foot had been injured, perhaps my first caning would have been with my trousers up. No words were really needed and the few that were uttered were merely to confirm what I already knew, or suspected. My journey to the headmaster’s study was slow and nerve wracking. Mallon had also cried, or so someone said. But, like Baker, he refused to confirm any of those details fellow boys desire. Now all waited for me. I remember knocking on his door, the headmaster’s, tentatively at first and then with courage I did not feel. I was not called in but, after a moment, the door opened and the headmaster stood aside to allow me to enter. I had never been in his study before, except in the summer before I became a pupil, and the surroundings were unfamiliar. The room was small and furnished just as you would expect such a study to be. I registered little except on a shiny brown desk rested an equally shiny lighter brown cane. It screamed at me Mallon and Baker and I averted my eyes. The headmaster wasted little time, he may have caned unmercifully if others were to be believed but he had no wish to prolong my obvious distress. Except in the way he intended. Preliminaries were therefore to be kept to a minimum. There were no excuses and no reason to treat me differently from the others. Not being caned before was no excuse for what we did. I would therefore suffer the same fate as Mallon and Baker. I flinched and did so again when he told me to take off my jacket, undo my trousers, and bend over the back of the small chair he had conveniently placed. As I did so he spoke again, and I flinched again, and the words he spoke is what I remember to this day. They were what made my first caning very special. Trousers all the way down he said. And your underpants. I rarely cane a boy’s bare backside but this, I am afraid, is truly earned.

 

It is truly earned. The phrase still haunts. My first caning, on my bare backside, was truly earned. That is what he said. I trembled as the words intermingled with my nervous fumbling. Until that moment, until he uttered the fateful words, I had hoped against hope that it would not come to this. Allow my first caning some semblance of dignity; allow me to absorb the proffered, unfamiliar, strokes to my tender bottom with a degree of decorum. Not bare, not naked, as they did in Victorian times, as they did in prisons. As they did with juvenile felons, with birch and tawse. But it was not to be and I sensed that any unnecessary delay would fuel the earlier anger. I allowed my trousers to drop to my ankles and, with little fuss, pushed my underpants down to my knees and then, belatedly, to my ankles. Without bidding I bent over the back of the small chair and held on to the sides of the upholstered seat. It was a classic position and even though I was not familiar with it in reality it had a strange natural order. Perhaps all boys are programmed for such matters from birth. I closed my eyes and closed them even tighter when I sensed my shirt being lifted and rolled up my back. There were no illusions now. My bottom was upturned, naked, and waiting. My twin cheeks twitched slightly in nervous anticipation. I sensed him standing slightly to the left of me, adjusting his position, moving his feet, absorbing a view that many headmasters over many centuries had seen and dealt with. And then the cane, the cold stiff wood, touched my naked skin and threatened its attack. It tapped twice, gently across both my cheeks and I steeled myself for a pain I had never experienced. Only imagined. Six strokes, he said. Six strokes. Do not get up. That was all he said and I sensed nothing in his voice other than a desire to complete the task. I willed myself to bear it, willed myself to suffer the pain, to not cry out, or rise, or beg. I willed myself to take the six strokes decreed across my naked bottom, six strokes of the cane that I had, for the first time, truly earned. It was a few seconds after that desperate willing that I uttered the first of many screams.

 

As boys do we compared our stripes the following day. Our bottoms may not have been very resilient but our spirits were and all of us, Baker and Mallon and me, had recovered much of our composure by the morning. We took the opportunity between two lessons to visit the toilets and see our respective damage. I still think to this day that if we had been seen, by any knowing master, they would have guessed and understood. It is the way of such things and even those no longer boys remember their own canings. And ours was pretty high on the school’s scale so would be well known to many. But no one challenged us and in the cloister of an outlying toilet we lowered our pants and displayed our damage. Mallon’s and Baker’s marks were black and bluish and I was convinced they would never fade. All six strokes were evenly spaced, no more than two or three inches from top to bottom, across both of their cheeks. If I thought Baker’s looked the most severe, his bottom was smaller and whiter than Mallons and the marks created a vicious contrast with his untouched skin, I gleaned an utmost respect for the wielder. There was nothing wild about these chastisements. Unsurprisingly both agreed, comparing with each others, that mine looked far worse. As I had probably cried more than either of them the previous day I took this as some comfort, a belated and bizarre certificate of achievement. They said I had probably been caned harder, a first timer is still saveable if you truly lay it on was their opinion. Perhaps I was but, equally, I have an even smaller and softer behind than Baker. Or did so then. And like me, they admired the wielder of the cane. My marks were evenly spaced across both my cheeks within that short raised area of every boy’s bottom. Or so they said. And they were the blackest and bluest of the three of us. None touched the ridges of any other, all had fingered our own in ceaseless fascination, and as we collectively pulled up our pants it was clear we held no grudges. Neither against each other, or the headmaster who induced our discomfort. Such are the rituals of boyhood.

 

I screamed as the fire blazed across my behind. If I had any breath in my body that first stroke of the headmaster’s cane expelled it. How I resisted the burning fiery line as it invaded my brain I do not know. I should have risen, clutching my bottom and begging for no more of a cane I had long imagined but, until now, never felt. Tears were already filling in my eyes when the second stroke of the headmasters cane flashed across my bottom. Any shame I felt at the lifting of my shirt and the baring of my lower body was eclipsed by the intensity of my caning. I gripped the sides of the chair and, in some strange form of relief, howled with intensity as the third stroke cut across the centre of my cheeks. Anyone passing the headmaster’s study would be well aware that a boy was being caned, and caned severely. I steeled myself for the fourth lash of my chastisement but, for a moment, it did not come. Instead there was a gentle tapping against my burning and lacerated backside. Perhaps he sensed, given my rising distress, that a further stroke delivered too readily would undo any remaining resolve. Therefore he waited, waited until my agony subtly subsided. I had no illusions that I would be let off the last three, the gentle tapping of the cold wood against my skin signalled that there would be no reprieve. But the slight hiatus heightened the shame of my position. Bent over a chair, at fourteen years of age, with my trousers and underpants around my feet and my naked bottom exposed and beckoning. A bottom, until those first three strokes of his cane, that was as pure and unblemished as the petals of the softest pink rose. And now, as a rising and ceaseless throbbing indicated, it was marked for all time. Marked in the time honoured way of all schoolboys. The tapping ceased and I screwed my eyes and held my breath. It only took a second or so but the fourth thrash of the cane seemed to capture my entire behind. Pain shot through all my being and I screamed, I am sure I did, I screamed and screamed. The last two strokes quickly followed, no more than a couple of seconds apart, and tears fell copiously as I struggled to stay in position. It was all so quick, this last three, it took me a few moments to realise that my punishment was over. I think he had sensed that I would not remain bent for much longer, and a boy rising and clutching his bottom before completion would indicate failure for both. The man doing the caning and the boy on the receiving end. So if the start was slow and deliberate, the end was quick. But quick or slow each descending arc of his cane had found its intended target. Six fiery strokes across my virgin behind. I would not be sitting down for a while.

 

He said that as I was dressing. You will not be sitting down for a while. I had remained in position for a few moments, convinced that my caning had ceased but unwilling to risk any further wrath. The sting in my behind seemed to grow in intensity and the unfamiliar and involuntary throbbing in my cheeks echoed the uncontrollable sobs I continued to emit. He tapped my shoulder and I hesitatingly rose to a standing position. Thankfully my risen shirt, of which I was strangely unaware, fell to cover my nakedness. I pulled up my underpants, still in the grip of my uncontrolled sobs, and then slowly did the same with my trousers. It was only when I was fully dressed did I allow my hands to rub my now covered behind in the vain hope of easing the stinging pain. It brought little relief. It was then he said that I would not be sitting down for a while. I mumbled something, I do not know what it was, I only know that my fervent wish was to be elsewhere. As I was leaving he repeated something he said earlier. Not with any relish or malice, his demeanour had been with classic head masterly demeanour throughout my chastisement. Or seemed so to me. It was just a statement as I was heading for his door. I rarely cane a boy’s bare backside, he said, but this, I am afraid, was truly earned. I trust you will learn from it. If the stinging in my behind had been less, if the constant throbbing and burning in my nether cheeks had subsided a little, if my sobs had been under control, if all or any of these things I might have said something. Something profound and manly. As it was all he got from a boy who had screamed and howled not five minutes before was a weak smile. I had nothing to say, just then, to a man who had just given me my first caning. Trousers down.

 

I left the school four years later to go to University and in the interim period never got caned again. Trousers up or down. Whether Mallon or Baker did I do not know. Mallon, I am sure, our firecracker lad, would be unlikely to escape unscathed. But I did learn my lesson and, even though I came close a couple of times before my sixteenth birthday, I never again suffered scholastic pain to my backside. But I never forgot, you cannot totally expunge from your mind a first and only caning of that intensity and in that manner. If it had been with my trousers up, or even just on my underpants, the memory may have faded along with the marks. But not being caned on the bare behind. That is the ultimate, and I experienced it on the first and only time I bent over in the traditional manner for the traditional schoolboy justice. I saw that headmaster many years later. We both attended some civic function and he, although by now quite elderly, still retained that special aura that his chosen profession imbued. He didn’t recognise me but I felt it would be churlish not to remind him who I was when our paths crossed during the proceedings. He smiled at the mention of my name but whether in remembrance I did not know. Someone, I cannot remember who, realising we were erstwhile schoolboy and headmaster asked him if he ever caned me. He looked at me and I think then he did remember. I think he remembered it all. Me, Mallon, Baker, caned on our bare backsides. Trousers and everything down. It wasn’t that common, even if those days. The look he gave me told me he did remember. I smiled at him and he smiled back.  Possibly, he said, possibly I did cane him. We did such things in those days. And then he smiled again.  And if I did, he said, I am sure that it was truly earned.

 

Alfred Roy (2014)