An Unusual Courtship, Chapter 3

copyright Mael DelaVara


Back at his apartment, Michael felt the need to consult his dictionary. He could not believe he had uttered that word out loud, right in front of Audrey. What had he said? "Do you think I need to be spanked?" He shook his head in self-reproach.

The dictionary fell open effortlessly among the S's, and he had only to turn a leaf to find the familiar page. The word 'spank'. It seemed the most potent word in the dictionary. He had looked it up hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, yet its definition never changed and always disappointed. It seemed impossible to put into words the power of that one word.

He undid the button of his pants and allowed his hand to wander past the waistline of his underwear. He imagined he was a servant in a mansion with marbled halls. The lady of the house had summoned him to her smoking room to answer for a grievous offense. He had been caught in the maids' quarters, an area forbidden to men. Her ladyship was imperiously tall and thin, and her room smelled of expensive tobacco and even more expensive perfume.

"You know what we are obliged to do," she said, as she poised her silver cigarette holder on the edge of an ashtray.

"Over here, young man," she commanded, and with a rustle of silk she alighted on a hardback chair theatrically placed in the center of an alcove. She pulled up her dress to reveal gazelle-like thighs dressed in shimmering nylons. He could feel the textured embroidery of the stocking top against his left thigh; and the tracings of her fingertips around his globes gave him goosebumps. And then a gentle slap, and then another, and another, and on and on as a warm glow began to spread, and more and more . . . .

Michael reached for a tissue.

As his spirits drooped, he advised himself it wasn't like that, not like that at all.

A real spanking was a totally different experience. He had been spanked only once as a child. It was the summer of his mother's final illness--he was thirteen--and he had been sent to his Uncle Harry's farm. His uncle had married a woman from England, a war-bride people said. She was named Gertrude, although grown-ups called her Gertie. To Michael she was simply Auntie. Auntie ruled her brood with repressed fury. It was hard to know how many children she had because the house was always full of kids from neighboring farms, and all were treated alike. The back of many a bare leg bore the trace, on lower thigh or calf, of a single flip of the switch, administered as the reprobate child ran away at breakneck speed.

Michael always avoided the switch. He was a timid child, inclined to stay at the fringes of boisterous play, and therefore well away from the constant trouble. But his inclination to lurk proved his undoing. A piercing scream from the girls' bedroom was all it took. His older cousin Elizabeth was grinning maliciously as Auntie stormed in, grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him downstairs to the dining room. Before he knew what was happening, he had been bent over the table and the room echoed with Auntie yelling orders.

"Fetch the stick." The 'stick' was a switch, freshly cut every few weeks, or as often as needed, and it was to be found in whatever room it was last applied. A scurry of little feet followed the command.

"Hold his arms down, Lizzie." His cousin grabbed both his forearms in a grip that bore witness she alone was responsible for milking Bessie, the farm's only cow.

"Unbreech the lad." Auntie spoke a strange kind of English--the Queen's English she called it. Invisible hands pulled down his shorts, and then his underwear. Michael suddenly realized the uniqueness of his position. No other child, so far as he knew, ever got a bare bottom whipping, and certainly not in front of hundreds of eyes wide with anticipation. He could feel all the peering as if he was being stung by a swarm of hornets.

"Twelve of the best for you, my lad." His sense of humiliation was immediately obliterated by a fireball of screaming, writhing, crying--and the pain, the pain: the pain was indescribable. It was all over in the few blinks of an eye, and the day resumed as if nothing of consequence had happened.

Michael gave a little shudder at the memory. He was not so sure he'd go back to Audrey's this Saturday. After all, Tom Sawyer ran away when Aunt Becky brought out the switch . . . .