Good Books: Riding
I’ve just finished an awesome novel, called Riding! It’s set in a fictional English Public School, 1931. There’s a fair bit of m-m whacking, particularly the cane. The narrative at times deals explicitly with the issue of punishment – different boys’ relationships to it, attitudes towards it, attractions and fears for it. It’s also well-written as a piece of fiction. Has anyone seen it? If not, the author’s website has links to sample pages. It’s a long novel, split into two volumes. Disclaimer – the author is an acquaintance of mine, but I don’t think that influenced my liking it. I’d put this in the category of mainstream novels that mention or treat tgi, but it’s not erotica or anything.
I liked this little essay on the cane, in chapter 4 “Something to Remember”:
What does it mean that Halton will get something to remember? The sentence belongs to a family of stock phrases referring to Public School rituals of corporal punishment. Its siblings include he’ll get six; six of the best; a quick sixer; so-and-so won’t let him down, et cetera. When a person gets something to remember, it means the punishment will make an impression, however recalcitrant he may normally be. It means he will sit up and take notice. It means this something will be more memorable than other somethings.
Halton will be told to bend over. He will remove his jacket and bend over the back of the prefects’ chair until his head touches the seat. Feeling a stretch in the back of his legs, he’ll grip the chair, lock his knees, tighten his jaw. One of the eighteen-year-old prefects will take up a rattan cane, a quarter of an inch in diameter, three feet in length, yellow, well-worn, whippy. He will flex it while he paces, building suspense, working on the nerves. When he sees a sufficient trembling, he’ll back away from his target, raise the cane, and, with one or two steps for momentum, cut through the air with a swish—punctuated by a gunshot crack. Halton will gasp at the impact. He’ll regain his balance, and as his breath returns he’ll feel the burning, stinging ache, the paralyzing flood across his latter end. All his cells will abandon their habitual swimming and dividing to attend this stunning event. Nothing for him in the world besides this physical happening, this bottled breath, and this skewed perspective of fireplace upside-down between chair rungs.
The prefect will strut back to the mantle, giving Halton time to think. Halton might think about what led him to this uncomfortable position; he might wonder whether or not he can make it through without yelping; he might ponder certain myths about the cane, such as the one that claims it takes a few seconds for the pain to register, and conclude that anyone who says such a thing has been reading about the cane, not experiencing it. The prefect at the mantle will have ample experience, both giving and receiving; therefore, he will know exactly what Halton is feeling when he delivers the second cut with a force and precision equal to the first. For this is what it means to have a good eye. Wielders of the cane actively cultivate the aim and timing needed to deliver a second stroke just beside a first just reaching its peak. Those who have mastered the gentle art are showered with respect for their good eye.
Mr. Grieves’s prefects had unswerving eyes.
Which means that just as Halton’s backside is howling in earnest, a second stroke will descend and heighten the pain to a pitch that is breathtaking. Halton will gasp again and brace himself for the third, already slicing through the air. With it comes the compression of universe into body, skin, nerve endings. There, dead center of a caning, all intellectual distance collapses. All mental chatter stops. Halton’s full attention is riveted to the dialogue between screaming backside and whizzing cane. The body has incarcerated the self; and three more, three more, three more to go.
So when it is said that Halton will get something to remember, it means that this ritual will be administered to his thirteen-year-old frame with especial force. It means that even if he chooses to erase other punishments from his memory, this one will be grafted to him, like the stripes that evolve from purple to yellow over the next three weeks. It means that even though he’ll stop wincing by tomorrow, even though the precise memory will be filed away in unnumbered warehouses, still something will remain. It means there are some punishments one never forgets.
– Riding, volume one, by H.S. Cross
