supplicium post mortem

I did this once. It must have been the second summer of M living here. My mother had rented a cabin in the woods of Pennsylvania for a month. He and I were up there alone with my dog, isolated and surrounded by trees. Makes you long for the birch, it does. We cut a whole bunch of rods and marky was made to sit on the porch and fashion birch rods out of them (i.e. strip them to an appropriate shape and bunch them together, binding the grip with string, which became duct tape because it held better). It took all afternoon, it seemed. We were both wearing denim overalls and white t-shirts, not from any particular plan, but because it made us happy. Like a lot of cabin-type houses, this one had a double storey “great room” with double fire places. Unfortunately, from an aesthetic point of view, it was carpeted. But there was a cellar. So a scene developed in response to all these birches (there were 12-15 of them, I think), and the house: Orphanage, with me as a mean prefect-type boy in charge of birching marky.

Night falls. Costumes: both of us still in overalls and white t-shirts. Me, boots. Marky, bare feet. At this time I had short hair. I tucked M’s packet of Marlboro’s (he still smoked one or two in those days) in my t-shirt sleeve, matches in my pocket. Before we started, we realized we wanted to get pictures. It was such a great setup in the basement, dark, a long row of birches against the wall. We didn’t have a camera, so I decided to drive to the gas-station 10 minutes away for a disposable camera. Marky went to prepare and wait in the basement. It was dark, remote, mist streaking across the road. I started to get scared, though I can’t remember exactly why now. Axe murderers? What if I had an accident? Ghosts? It was just very dark, misty, creepy, and ominous. I drove as fast as I could, bought the camera, and sped home. The house was deserted (marky in basement). I felt a deep dread – fear from the drive combined with fear about the scene I was about to do. Objectively, there was nothing to fear about the scene. I wasn’t going to harm him, or he me. I guess it was a kind of stage fright, and also the beginnings of the alchemy that elaborate scenes always brought.

We had both worked in the theater, me since I was five. For both of us, scenes (whether in private or on stage) were reality. We both entered the play with a commitment that created the reality. So, in actuality, I was about to become this sadistic guy in an orphanage. I was afraid of the atmosphere, and I think I wished I didn’t actually have to go through with it. Before going downstairs, I took off my overalls and put on the strap-on with the flesh-colored dildo. In my pocket with the matches, I slipped a tube of KY. Tucking my new cock into my white boxer-briefs, I pulled up the overalls, braced myself, and clumped downstairs to the cellar.

Cement floors, lit by a dim overhead light. Along one raw wall stood all the birches, arranged in descending size. Overalls down, marky bent over – what was it? Not an actual A-frame, but something like it? In his hands, I knew he held some keys. We had never played with a safeword, but since he wanted me to pull out the stops with the birches, and as I’d never wielded them, we decided to use the keys as a safeword (if he dropped them, it meant stop).

Why had we not used safewords? They were and are stock-in-trade for the world of playing. Maybe in the first few scenes we did during his first visit to Gotham there was a safeword. But, if there was, I can’t remember it. Neither of us used it. I suppose it felt artificial, like a violation of the playing contract. How can you be inside a created reality and also be evaluating whether you want to stop the creation? Either you trust your partner or you don’t. Maybe that’s the issue – safewords are probably most useful when playing with someone you don’t entirely trust. By the time we met face-to-face, I knew him better than anyone I’d ever met in my life, including my family. So, for us, safewords, though we might have had them, were something external and extraneous. Did we use the keys in this scene because I was uneasy topping? Probably. At any rate, to spare you the suspense, he clutched the keys hard the whole time, desperate not to drop them. Ha ha.

birches looked rather like this one

So, in walks my character. There was some short dialogue, and then I picked up one of the birches and started in with it. Slowly, building strength with confidence. He marked well, then, and the little welts started to raise. I tried various birches and then took a break.

I came up behind him and felt his bottom. Then I unzipped the fly of my overalls and tried to take out my cock. It had come loose from the harness, though, and fell down my trouser leg to the floor. Undaunted, I picked it up, turned my back, and put it back in place.

“This is the point,” I said, “when most boys ask me to fuck them.”

“Please will you fuck me?” he said.

“Since you ask.”

It was awkward buggering him with a strap-on through the fly of overalls, but I managed it for a little while. Afterwards, I put it in my pocket and zipped up. Then I lit a cigarette and stage-smoked. I don’t remember if there was much more dialogue. I think the scene was fairly quiet. I’m pretty sure I told him he’d have to be punished further for letting someone bugger him.

I didn’t make it through all of the birches, but I used more of them until I was drawing some blood. By this time, my strength to sustain the character was waning. Marky had had a lot. I wrapped up the scene and went upstairs, leaving him bent over naked in the cellar.

He was ecstatic about the scene. Absolutely loved it. This was a relief, because there had been a scene early in our relationship, a big scene with me topping, that he hadn’t liked so much at the time. Maybe the ghost of that scene was still haunting me, making me anxious about this one. At any rate, I was very relieved that the scene was over and that he was so happy with it. Did it turn me on to do it? No. Did I hate doing it? No. It was interesting using the birches, and it was a theatrical challenge, but I wasn’t doing it because it excited me; I was doing it because it was a cool idea and I loved him.

A couple of moments lived on afterwards. One, the moment of my cock falling off. I wasn’t sure if he’d realized during the scene, but it turned out he had, and had struggled to keep a straight face. We laughed a lot about it afterwards – zip, clunk, o wait… He also adored the line “This is the point where most boys ask me to fuck them.” I don’t know where it had come from. It was spur of the moment. He quoted it for years afterwards, though, and he found it a big turn-on until the day he died.

The birches are still in our [my] basement, in black garbage bags. I said years ago we should throw them out, but he insisted we could just soak them and use them again. In fact, they got used again at another time with another top (this time I was a Victorian governess), another scene that went down in history for us, sans buggery, though.

He would probably hate me telling our secrets like this…