This story, working title The Bunsen Burner, is a mixture of fact and fiction. The first part actually happened although whether I got four or six strokes with an unusual implement the second time I bent over time has blurred. The second part is pure fantasy but it is based on what that Chemistry teacher said the second time he whacked me. 13 words which haunted me for years and loosely inspired this piece. Enjoy, but please do not be tempted by rubber tubing. It is not nice. Alfred Roy
Herewith the facts
When
I was about 13 or 14 I had an idiosyncratic chemistry teacher. He was very
short sighted, bottle top glasses, had a rich and comic nasal voice, and avidly
supported Stockport County. Perhaps those facts are related. He talked for
England and was easily distracted. Chemistry lessons regularly morphed into the
respective merits of his beloved County and their league rivals, all it took was
a classroom wag to float the latest football result. I was an arch wag in his
class and, my speciality, was to pretend consummate obtuseness and perplexity
at the simplest of chemical experiments he conducted. How my inane questions on
litmus testing lead to a Stockport drubbing from Plymouth Argyle or Accrington
Stanley only time and history knows. But, believe me, it regularly did. Egged
on by fellows, I and others easily distracted. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew
who those wags were and me, and those others, fairly regularly suffered another
of his idiosyncrasies. That strangeness was his rubber tubing, usually attached
to a Bunsen burner – chemistry’s standard prop, but applied in the 1950’s to a
special purpose. Simply, he whacked us with it. And that was not fun. A couple
of foot in length his special piece of rubber tubing slammed into upturned
behinds frequently, but not excessively by the standards of the time. It stung
like hell and on the couple of occasions I got it, comic class repartee
overstepping the mark, tears filled eyes and burning throbs filled bottom.
Laughter faded quickly on such occasions.
One
whacking I particularly remember is the day that a close friend and I decided
to play at marbles. I need to explain. Chemistry lessons require lots of
paraphernalia and, even in those days, an element of health and safety. So
forty boy classes were split into two and half did physics and half did
chemistry. In the same lab complex divided into two with a linking corridor.
Doors were often left open and, one day, my friend in Physics and I in
Chemistry, went in for a little bit of marble rolling. We could see each other
so something was bound to happen. Silly, but fun. Until we were caught. We were
whacked, not for what we had done – pretty harmless, but for our unspoken and collective
disrespect for authority. That’s my interpretation anyway. The doors were
closed, and always afterwards, and I was summoned to the front. I know not what
my friend suffered but Mr Bunsen, let’s call him that even though he was always
known as ‘Pop’, told me in no uncertain terms that I was to get four from his
favoured implement. Such pronouncements always produced a hushed tone in class,
someone being whacked was serious, momentous, exciting. I enjoyed it. Except
when it was me. I stepped forward, bent down as instructed, felt my coat being
lifted, and waited. It did not take long. That rubber tubing whacked into my
behind with venom. God, he might be comic, with a comic implement, but he could
lay it into a behind. Mine. With stretched trousers fitting tightly to my
boyish curves. I held onto ankles, gritted teeth, and absorbed each of the four
fiery stings. By the time I rose, face flushed and tears welling, the room was
totally silent and the bottom, my bottom, throbbed all the way to Stockport. I
rubbed the rear and listened to the lecture and gingerly sat down, Vowing never
to muck around again, or at least not until the pain and burn in my buttocks
faded.
One
thing I do remember from those far off days, and this will lead later into the
fantasy element of this piece, was that the marks on my behind fascinated. They
were so unlike thin vicious lines from a cane or red splodges from a PE slipper
or paddle. They had their own distinct charm, thick and rich marks evenly
spread across the buttocks. Red and raised with rough edges the four marks on
my backside told a special story. If I did not masturbate to them I reckon I
must have tried. They were so erotic. I remembered that coda the next time I
suffered the rubber sting. I reckon ‘Pop’, Mr Bunsen, was in a particularly bad
mood and I, idiot, had been particularly obtuse. We were doing some strange
and, obviously important, experiment and were all told in no uncertain
circumstances not to pull out a particular glass plug. Red rag to a bull
really. I couldn’t resist. On our table, at our experiment, I of four boys did
exactly that. Just to see what would happen. That was what I said later after
chaos had ensued, that was my excuse. Did me no good. Rubber tubing, on the
behind, six this time. But a little different. Not in front of the class, not
this time. In a separate room. And when he did it, when Mr Bunsen bent me over
and whacked me six times with that strange implement on my little bottom he
said something as I rose. As I rubbed my behind, throbbing with distressing
fire, he said something I have never forgotten. If I have you in here again, he
said, I will take your trousers down. You wouldn’t dare I said through tears.
Just try me, he said, just try me boy. I never did.
Herewith the fantasy
Those
words mesmerised. If I have you in here again I will take your trousers down.
They rang in my ears and tantalised and teased for weeks afterwards. What would
it be like, would he really? Would he really bare my bum and whack me with that
rubber tubing. It scared and fascinated. Trousers and underpants around my
ankles, everything exposed, and his Bunsen burner tubing smacking into my naked
cheeks. So erotic. The experience would be worth the pain. I had to have it. The
incipient fourteen year old masochist would grasp the opportunity and never
regret. A real schoolboy, a real schoolboy’s bum, getting a real school
punishment. On his naked behind. Heaven. It became an obsession. I could think
of nothing else. All my hours seemed to be filled with this heady prospect. I
played out the fantasy. Called into that back room. Undoing my trousers.
Pushing them down to my knees. And then my underpants. Lifting my shirt,
exposing my behind, white and pure, and my penis and small balls. Smooth and
hairless. Boyish in front of a man. A schoolmaster with his weapon of choice.
Designed to mark and pain my bottom. If in those days I could have come, I
would merely at these thoughts. I so desired it. So desired to be thrashed on
my naked flesh. My naked bottom. I could not explain, then or now.
It
happened of course, and unexpectedly so. The young mind is so easily distracted
and one lunchtime I transgressed badly. Three or four of us had been left to
tidy up the chemistry lab. It was an easy task and gave opportunities for
mischief. One boy, not me, decided to search in Mr Bunsen’s desk. He found his
pipe, the man was an avid pipe smoker, and proceeded to smoke it amongst lots
of chortles and noises of disgust. Another boy, not impressed, produced some
cigarettes. Much more suitable. We were all eager to try. We did. We were
caught. Mr Bunsen had returned for his pipe. He raged. Four each he said, four
each across your behinds with my tubing for smoking. Disgusting at your age.
And then he caught my eye. Not you he said. I will deal with you later. After
these he said. So three boys, three fourteen year olds, were bent over and got
four whacks each to their trousered bottoms and, ruefully wailing, summarily
dismissed. They may have been puzzled at my reprieve, if that is what it was,
but they said nothing. Smarting bottoms still tongues. They left and Mr Bunsen
and I were alone. You had better step into the back room he said. Why, I said,
knowing the answer. I think you know what I promised you boy, he said. No, I
said, trying to prolong the situation. Well let me remind you, he said, if I
had you here again I think I told you I would take your trousers down. You
wouldn’t dare, I said. He looked at me and the rubber tubing flinched in his
hands. He was no longer the Stockport fan with the bottle glasses and the
nasally voice. He was a master intent on filling a promise that had obsessed
me. And we were alone and nothing, absolutely nothing, could stop it happening.
And deep down I did not want it to. You said that last time I thrashed you, he
said, we shall now find out. Yes sir, I said. Then go into the back room and
take your trousers down. I nearly fainted.
I
didn’t faint. If I had I would have missed the heady experience. I walked into
the back room and undid my trousers. It was as I was pushing them down to my
knees that he entered, rubber tubing at the ready. My face was flushed with
rising tears, his flushed for other reasons. Bend over he said. What, I
thought. There was no desk or chair to help me so I bent forward and grasped my
knees and, realising this was not enough, my ankles. He lifted my coat, I
should have taken it off given the intimacy, and then my shirt. They hung
heavily on my shoulders and enhanced the weirdness of the situation. I sensed
him coming closer to me, heard his breathing, felt his hands on my waist. And
then he pulled down my underpants. The mesmerising sensation, long imagined,
mingled with his words. My bottom, naked and exposed, felt the surrounding air
and my boyish parts embraced the freedom of exposure. The pain to come would
almost be worth such clandestine schoolboy thrill and his words, rather than
adding fear, merely encapsulated. I warned you boy, he said, I warned you that
if I had you here again I would take your trousers down. I ought to give you
six but I shall give you the same as the others. But on your bare behind. So
hold on to your ankles as these shall hurt. And they did. All four, not six.
His rubber tubing lashed into my bare cheeks four times, and four times I
gasped and vowed never to give him another opportunity. Four times they
savagely kissed my bottom and four times they burned their distinctive marks on
my flesh. How I stayed I never will know, but I did. And when he had done I
rose, sobbing and rubbing, and not caring that he could see all I had. Don’t
test me again he said, it will be twelve next time. And I shall have you
stripped naked. Pervert I thought as I pulled up my pants and trousers. Pervert
I thought as I looked into his flushed face and left, never to return. Looking
back, years later, I reckon he thought the same of me. Alfred Roy