Dad or Mom?

The story about Dad's spanking as a boy came out when we were visiting Grandma's farm in the summer holidays.

A sister asked about an old, flat sofa. It was long, like a bed, and stood in a closed-in porch that ran along the side of the farmhouse.

"Who used to sleep here, Grandma, in the old days?" my youngest sister asked. She had developed an interest in family history at the most basic level- who slept where, who milked the cows and other stuff.

"Oh, nobody slept here." And she put the emphasis on slept. "It was where I made your Dad and his brothers lie when I was giving them a paddle. Lie on their tum-tums, right there..."

I and my three sisters and two girl cousins absorbed this shocking revelation wide-eyed.

"Made them lie down...to be spanked?" asked my older cousin. Her eyes were on fire.

"Right there. Lying on their stomachs, bottoms within easy reach...and in fact I think I've still got that paddle."

"Wow!"

She went to a heavy old cupboard and tugged open a stubborn draw and rummaged. The smell of camphor and stored linen filled the corner of the room. After a few seconds she produced what she had looked for: a rectangular paddle with a long handle, varnished and only a little worn.

"There! Like it?"

The grey-haired 75 year old held it like a tomahawk.

I noticed a flush in the girls' faces I'd never seen before. This talk was stirring something deep in their dormant motherly instincts. Some notion of a female domain, where girls dominate and males, even strong ones like my father and my uncles- farm boys, teenage field hands- lie down meekly to be paddled on their behinds.

Yielding themselves up to be punished by determined females.

Males offering up their vulnerable behinds.

I saw my older sister, eyes ablaze, exchange glances with the oldest of the cousins. The cousin grinned back at her like a crocodile.

Then the two turned to me, grinning. I blushed, looked down.

In fact all attention gravitated to me, the only male. And an awkward, bashful, spotty-faced one at that. With Grandma's story something had changed between us, between me and the girls.

"I see you young ladies like hearing about this but I don't think Tommy does! Not one little bit!" pronounced Grandma.

I turned red as a fire hydrant.

The girls giggled as each tried to catch my eye.

They asked questions of the old lady.

Had she punished her boys often? Always with the paddle? On their own, or together? And always on the sofa? Ever...(and here my sister paused)...over the lap?

Yes, she had paddled them a lot, said Grandma, saying she had to maintain discipline with Grandpa away (he was state chairman of the Minnesota Farmers' Union) so a paddling was a regular occurrence. Mostly she said she favoured the paddle but a folded belt was sometimes convenient. Very often the three boys would get up to mischief together and need to be punished one after the other, waiting standing up, while she finished working the one lying face-down. Over the lap? Yes, sometimes, just to remind them she was their mother and always in charge and they were only boys.

"They hated that. Lying over my knee."

"Why?"

"Oh, the embarrassment. That's part of the punishment."

There was silence, imaginations racing. They and I were thinking of one detail not so far addressed.

"That's why I let their sisters watch."

There was an intake of breath.

There was a reflective silence.

"Our aunts?"

The older cousin asked this question.

"Sure. The boys hated it. Truly hated it. And that added to the punishment."

Grandmom looked at me as she said this.

The girls' eyes seemed to swim with the possibilities.

There was still one question we youngsters wanted answered. The girls and me.

But we were too afraid to ask. I certainly wasn't going to.

As we elbowed our way out they chattered and laughed. Something had changed in the relationship between us. They were straining to catch my eye. A general feeling of excitement seemed to unite them. That day I found reasons to be on my own- hanging around the red timber barn, feeding the hogs, peddling an old bike down a back road- avoiding their company, until late afternoon when we packed into the Pontiac Safari station wagon, us kids crammed in the back seat, for the three hour drive home to St Paul.

I was still gloomy. But they were frisky...all because of that encounter with Grandma and her little revelation about bringing up boys on a mid-West farm in the 1920s.

On the drive past cornfields, lakes and dairies the girls sung songs, asked questions about Dad's childhood and complained about returning to school. Mom asked why I was so silent. I mumbled something about being tired. Dad said something about how I was growing up and teenagers were moody but should try to avoid it.

Something in this exchange- the reference to my being downbeat or my growing up- stirred my older sister.

"Hey Dad, when you were growing up..."

"Yep."

"...and got into trouble with Grandmom..."

"Yep."

"...and she paddled you and your brothers..."

"Ahhh, so she told you about that? Did she show you her old paddle, stored away in that draw?"

"Yes! She waved it around!" There was a burble of laughter from the girls.

Mom said he hadn't told her about that and Dad confirmed, taking his pipe from his mouth, that yes, she was a real disciplinarian and used spanking with relish. So did every matriarch- he used the word- in a farming family. Not a week went by without him and his brothers being called to account. Yep, right up to when they went off to the armed services.

"You mean right up till you were 18?" Mom asked, surprised.

"You bet!"

And the girls asked questions. Dad confirmed that, yes, she sometimes put them over her knee. Yes, she also used a folded belt and, when they were younger, her hand. She punished them as a group, generally.

"That was terrible, standing there, while my brothers' bottoms turned red..."

Us youngsters went rigid at this image. Holy cow, I thought.

We stopped breathing.

He had said, "...while his brothers' bottoms turned red."

Which implied one thing, we all thought...

"...and my sisters watched..."

The earth seemed to stand still. In the back seat, packed in between sisters and cousins, my heart thumped: his sisters watched!

The five girls were enthralled.

Dad chuckled, and continued.

"...and I huddled there, waiting my turn...

"...naked as a jay."

Naked as a jay!

He said it! He said it!

She punished them bare!

But not just their pants down.

Totally nude. That's what "naked as a jay" meant, surely.

"You mean that old dear your mother punished you boys stripped off? Totally nude?"

Mom was astonished by her husband's revelation.

"Oh yeah!" Dad said. "In our birthday suits..."

The phrase made me shrivel. It always did. My sisters and cousins were really excited and turning in the seat to look me over.

"...bare as boards! And kept us that way for as long as she liked afterwards. Yep, buck naked. Gotta tell yer, the sisters kinda liked it!"

He laughed away.

And then my older sister asked the killer question.

"Mom would you and Dad ever punish Tommy that way?"

It knocked Mom for six. But only for seconds. She then thought of her current grievance against me.

"If he disappoints with those mid-year grades next week we'll be reduced to it!"

"You heard that, Tommy, you're in trouble if those grades are bad," added my Dad. He chuckled some more, good-naturedly.

The girls nudged one another.

My older cousin was determined to enter the discussion.

"Aunt Irene, would you punish Tommy or would uncle..?"

"Goodness me, no! That's a job for fathers!"

Dad just chuckled.

"Only let us watch," said my youngest sister, under her breath.

"But where Dad? Where would you paddle Tommy?" My middle sister wanted to mine this for all it was worth.

"Oh, dunno...if he were bad enough...hell...I guess, right over the fender of this car...in our driveway!"

The girls shrieked and jammed my ribs.

My older sister whispered, "Ahhhh! We'll see you in the nuddy! In the driveway...getting walloped on your little botty!"

I blushed and felt all funny. Strange in the pit of my tummy. Humiliated...and stimulated all at once.

"No fella, only kidding!" Dad assured me as we sped along Highway 36.

Hands on the wheel, he chuckled.

"Only kidding. And you girls calm down now! Let's hear some music."

He switched on the radio to the sound of Tab Hunter crooning Young Love.

I found myself with an instant, raging erection. I closed my hands over my lap but feared my older sister had glimpsed the movement behind my flies. My mind was on fire, my fantasies danced.

To be spanked...by Dad!

It was a thrilling concept.

Truth was my mother was distant. Later I would recognise her as the archetypal 1950s neurotic Mom, her gaze far-off, her late afternoon-breath fragrant with gin. Her interest in me was routine, without the slightest hint of warmth. With my sisters she could talk make-up or dresses but found nothing in common with a disappointing son. She had not wanted a son, it was pretty clear. I was also aware of another element in our family life. There was a distance between her and Dad. I did not know what it was.

Whatever it might be I was on his side. He was the parent who had my affection. I was looking forward to him teaching me how to shave and felt embarrassed my facial hair was so wispy. I practised sport hard, yielding up team results and swim reports to win his approval,

For the rest of the journey my fantasies wove and rewoved themselves. My penis stayed hard as a rock.

It was a difficult family supper, the girls all frisky and sly, darting glances at me and one another, whispering lewdly. I was glad to make the privacy of my bedroom and, under the blankets, be able to slide my pyjamas down to my knees. I needed relief from the terrors Grandmom had unleashed. I had a lot to occupy me as I began the familiar rhythm, pleasuring myself and making the hell of my existence fade for a moment at least. How did Grandmom make the boys strip? In their own room...and troop out together in a line, with sisters sniggering in the corridor? The brothers holding their hands in front, over their groins? Or did she order them to stand in that side room- stand in a row- and peel their clothes off in front of her? With their sisters looking?

I was feverish with these images.

So they lay on their tummies. I knew that the males in his family had large, loose scrotums, just as I did. I'd heard Dad joke with the uncles, laughing at a bull in the stables and saying he's got "the Gilles family ballsac alright, only we're tragically short pricked." The uncles had laughed. But for me, lying under the blankets playing with my dick, the point was: did the scrotums show between their thighs when they lay flat and Granny hovered over them? Did the sisters giggle at their exposed balls?

My hand moved along my shaft. Faster. I frowned with concentration.

In my mind's eye- in the movie theatre in my head- the drama played out.

Naked young men...lying face down...being punished by an angry grey-haired ole dame.

How hard had she paddled? Did they howl? Kick? Try to roll over? And if they did, did they reveal their private bits, scrunched up? Did their sisters get to hold them in place- my imagination raged at this possibility- stretching them by ankles and wrists? And when it was over did she make the farmboys stand by the wall, hands on head? Dad and his brothers were athletes and had hauled and shovelled from one end of the farm to the other. They had big veins on the balls of their biceps, corded forearms, V-shaped torsos. They had manes of hair on pectorals, pelts on their stomachs. The girls, and any visiting females- like mothers of their friends, their aunts- would have enjoyed their forced nudity. Especially those balls.

I twisted with excitement. I fingered away.

I summoned up the steamy, ultimate shame, a truly terrific mental picture- namely, that Dad and his brothers might have sported erections when, with shiny red asses, they rose from the sofa and stood to be lectured, and then been made to parade -with those hardons- through the house, back to their room, past female house guests. Gandmom's old friends there for a card party, freckled-faced friends of the boys' sisters...all the females looking up at them, smiling, staring...

...the young men entirely nude, padding past, boners bouncing in front...

Whoosh!

My sticky emission flooded my fingers.

I think it was the biggest of my teenage ejaculations.

Outside I heard Jack Parr bring The Tonight Show to an end. The TV got switched off. The family noisily bundled itself upstairs, to their rooms, the sisters and cousins still skylarking. One by one I heard bedroom doors slam, heard the sound of shoes being flung, the sound of bed springs.

For my part my tummy was still all aflutter.

I was too excited to sleep.

With the smell of my recent ejaculation still in my nostrils I was ready for another round.

My mind wandered.

It tested possibilities. Many.

The emission was still sticky on my tummy, my pants still unrolled. And my imagination was off, raging. My penis was re-inflating.

I settled on something at once lovingly domestic and wicked beyond imagining.

The little narrative was uncoiling in my fevered mind.

In my new fantasy I was in my parents' bedroom. I was completely nude. I stood trembling, knees knocking together.

Dad was seated on the bed.

He too was entirely naked, just as when he was a teenager himself being punished by Grandmom...only now, grown-up, in his adult body: muscular in a man's way, hairy on his chest and tummy and haunches, with his horn-rim glasses. Horn rims...but nothing else.

He was nude.

He held Grandmom's paddle...

He told me to come and lie across his knees.

Thinking of this, lying there, I shook.

But this was something so delicious I was intent on making it last.

Before I succumbed to this second fantasy, gamier than the earlier one, I decided to go to the bathroom and get some cold cream. I tightened my pyjamas and crawled out of bed.

The corridor was quiet. All the bedroom doors shut.

I tiptoed, sticking to the rug. Silent as a burglar.

My older sister had a room to herself. Passing her door I heard a low, insistent moaning. I paused. It became louder. It sounded as if she were thrashing herself.

"Oahh! Oahh! Oahh! Oahh!"

Then it became frantic.

"Oaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!" Accompanied by a furious kicking of the mattress. The bed springs squeaked.

And then again.

And again.

She stopped. There was a desperate panting, as if she had just run a marathon.

I move along the corridor, musing on this mystery of existence just vouchsafed to me.

I passed the room being shared by younger sisters and cousins.

They were busy whispering.

I could make out some words and phrases.

Clearly they were dissecting the revelations of the day.

"...totally stripped off...just think!"

It was the wicked cousin.

Giggles from the others.

"...could see...all...all...their...things!"

"Cocks! That's what they call them. Boys talk about their COCKS!"

More giggles. Questions from one of them.

"(Mumble mumble mumble)...a sausage! A banana!"

Giggles.

"...girls...get...to watch..."

"...bottoms turn red, he said...after spanking...by Grandmom!"

"...not just underpants...EVERYTHING!"

This time, evil, cunning giggles.

I continued down the corridor, careful to stick to the runner carpet and make no sound.

Outside my parents' bedroom, behind the closed door, I heard the persistent creak of bed springs. Mom and Dad at it. Cr...eak. Cr...eak. Cr...eak.

Above the springs I heard Dad pant...then grunt.

Grunt. Grunt. Grunt...coming faster.

"Oh Harry...be careful," came my mother's anxious lament.

And a long, drawn-out grunt...then an exhalation from Dad.

"Ahhhhhhhhh."

I sensed something joyless in all this.

After these performances- the sound of creaking bed springs and the panting- either Dad or Mom sometimes stumbled to the bathroom so I made it there in a few big silent steps, seized the Ponds Cold Cream and got back to my room. I stealthily slipped out of the pyjamas and sat on the edge of my bed.

Naked.

Just like my Dad had been in my fantasy.

As I unscrewed the jar I returned to my mental picture show.

To Dad...

...and me.

Naked...

...in the parents' bedroom...

...the two of us...

...two fellas who happened to be father and son...

...sitting, nude, side by side...

...the Dad, compact and muscular and hairy and brown...

...his son, lithe and athletic, smooth...

...looking down at one another's laps, both their cocks standing rigid...

I scooped the delicious, soft cream and slathered its riches on my member. Outside, right on cue, Mom padded to the bathroom. She closed the door. She fumbled for that hidden bourbon at the back of the cupboard. Then I heard the tap come to life. From the master bedroom Dad issued a luxurious snore. And the girls were at something too. I heard a cousin let forth a moaning noise as her bed springs croaked.

The family had been stimulated by the talk of male nudity, spankings, red male bottoms.

I sunk into delicious fantasy, about a dad and his 18 year old son...

Two nights later with the house empty, on some wild instinct, I entered the forbidden territory of the parent's room. I breathed in the smell of furniture polish, Mom's perfume and Dad's cologne and shoe leather, and...burrowed into my father's cupboard.

What was I looking for? I wanted perhaps to find something secret, something about his private life. The top drawer immediately yielded its treasure: along with his pipe and its cleaners, combs, club membership badges, old receipts and worn-down pencils, I found a box emblazoned "Durex Gossamer For Family Planning," which I recognised as Dad's "rubbers." I knew all about rubbers from fellas at school. We had inspected abandoned crinkled used rubbers in a lovers' lane and had fished them from the grass on the end of a stick.

I handled the packet reverently. Read the small print. Fantasised about pulling one on, preferably after Dad had used it. After it had been stretched by his erection, lubricated by his emission.

I opened the clothes compartment. The hanging suits and jackets gave off a scent of dry cleaning. There was also a smell of moth balls. I saw a pile of magazines on the floor of the cupboard. Copies of Esquire on the top, a few layers down some Playboys. I was curious, dug further. Then- pay dirt! The next stratum comprised nudist magazines! My heart beat as I flicked through the pages of Sun and Health and saw fellas- my age, my father's- stark naked. I hadn't handled anything like this before. Their manly chests and shoulders were as thrilling to me as their asses and groins. I rummaged some more and exposed another layer: male physique mags- Grecian Guild Pictorial, Tomorrow's Man, Physique Pictorial. I had seen these on downtown newsstands but never had the courage to pay the 75 cents needed to gain entrance to the secret world they captured.

I hungrily flicked through their pages. They featured pictures of boys my age decked in flimsy G-strings. They posed in settings that summoned up Ancient Rome, Classical Greece and the American West. The boys stood flexing, wrestled one another, sat on motorbikes, banished spears. Hints of pubic curls appeared above some G-string cups. An outline of male impedimenta was visible behind the cloth. With their backs turned they were allowed to be nude: not even waistband to confer respectability. My eyes glazed at the parade of bare male bottoms, better than any change room or after-game shower- asses fleshy, cleft, brazen.