supplicium post mortem

Let me tell you about a friend of mine. This friend, like Abel (as he was forced to confess in his inspiring post on the same topic), was a teenager during the 1980s, and, also like Abel, is kinky today. (Imagine!) This friend of mine was raised by fairly straight-laced, waspy parents. Nudity was unknown beyond toddler-hood, and the facts of life were discussed in a way that tried to communicate neutral acceptance, as was the custom, but could never quite conceal her parents’ embarrassment and shame.  There was an excruciating episode–which I will not recount in detail because if you heard it you would have to pull out all of your teeth with pliers–surrounding her audition for a professional production of Lanford Wilson’s Fifth of July. She was auditioning for the part of a pert, over-sophisticated girl whose lines included the words masturbating and cunnilingus. My friend’s parents didn’t really want her to say these words, so they talked the director into allowing her to substitute euphemisms (“Playing with himself” and “uh…..”). However, they also had to explain to her why this change was happening, and this involved explaining what those words meant. This is where I will draw a veil over the episode to save us all the need for Mind Bleach. Needless to say, although she made it to the final call-back, she was not cast in the role.

That was just background for you. I could tell you more stories along similar lines, but we do all need to eat today. Let me tell you instead about my friend’s first sight of a porn magazine. She was sleeping over at her best friend’s house (let us call this best friend Frances). This would have been around 5th grade (age 10-ish). Up at the top of the coat closet, Frances’s dad had a stash of Penthouse. My friend got only a glimpse of this periodical because she reacted pretty much as Poppy described here. (Such a great post, by the way!) This encounter with Frances’s dad’s Penthouse extinguished any interest my friend had in pornography. Thus, my friend looked to mainstream fiction, stage, and film for things to think about while falling asleep at night.

Fast forward to the late 1980’s when my friend was just starting college. Her mother was at this time going through a kind of rebirth, emerging  from a long, debilitating depression occasioned by divorce. As my friend discovered one day whilst poking through her mother’s bedside table, this rebirth apparently included a sexual revolution. Because in this bedside table, my friend found some extraordinary volumes. One, Anne Rice’s The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. Two, a paperback called Venus in the Country, by Anonymous. There were a couple of other books along these lines, but my friend can’t remember the titles.

Now, you may well throw up a little in your mouth at the idea of finding your mother’s secret erotica stash. You might also writhe in agony imagining my friend’s discovery that her erstwhile euphemism-toting mama was a closet tgi enthusiast. But my friend, through some self-protective twist of psychology (or psychosis) managed to close her eyes to the source of these paperbacks and merely borrow them, one at a time, on the sly to peruse in her bedroom with the door locked. When my friend had to put the books back in place, she merely pretended she wasn’t doing what she was doing. Mentally, she went on a little vacation when it came time to borrow or return these volumes, which she did many times at the end of the 1980s. I guess she had a plentiful supply of mind bleach and no qualms about using it.

You may well ask why my friend did not simply jot down the titles and go buy copies for herself. Please understand: this would have been dirty. My friend would never have been able, then, to bring herself to purchase erotica in a store (Amazon.com did not yet exist). And to possess such books, to have them staring at her all the time from inside her own bedside table? Grody! Grody to the Max, in the parlance of the 1980s. My friend could only enjoy these books (thoroughly enjoy them) because they would not be there staring her in the face the next morning. She enjoyed them because they lived elsewhere.

And oh, did she enjoy them. The Sleeping Beauty series took her already wavy imagination and twisted it into tight kinks. And the quasi-Victorian compositions by Anonymous, where to begin? A commentator on Amazon says this of Venus in the Coutry:

I have owned this book for years having stolen it from my father’s dresser when I was a teenager. It is full of non-stop sexual encounters which seem to focus on the need to educate young maidens in the ways of the world.

My friend’s memory was hazy (when I interviewed her for this post) about the plots of these books by Anonymous. She remembers one in epistolary form (possibly the aforementioned Venus). It featured a household where the mistress took delight in corrupting the young girls who came into her service. Their bedrooms were equipped with peepholes, and early on the mistress arranged to catch some young servant pleasuring herself. The poor girl was hauled before the mistress, who threatened to send her back to her parents with a full explanation of her misconduct. The girl begged mercy, and the mistress granted it, but on two conditions: one, that she submit to an exemplary chastisement at the mistress’s hands; and two, that she submit to regular inspection to ensure she never do such a thing again. The poor girl agreed.

The inspection, to save the modesty both of the girl and of the inspector, would be done anonymously. The girl would go into the cellar and bend forward with her head and torso inside the dumb-waiter. The hatch would be lowered and locked across her waist, holding her firmly in place. Shortly, someone would come along, adjust her clothing, and perform the necessary inspection, which more often than not became an opportunity for sensitizing the girl to all of her exposed parts. The girl typically found herself in such a state after the inspections (by she knew not whom) that she was forced to repair to her chamber as quickly as possible to relieve the tension (all of which the mistress observed, delighted, through peepholes).

My friend also recounted a most satisfactory scene in which the mistress permitted her close friend (and governor at a reformatory) to conduct the inspection. This scene involved use of “the school spanking strap” as well as buggery, and afterwords, the girl was taken away, destined for the reformatory or the white-slave markets, my friend could not recall precisely which.

Of course, in later years my friend became more comfortable with erotic literature and acquired a respectable library of her own, but, she told me, she mourns some of those volumes from the unmentionable bedside table, since she cannot recall their titles, and since Venus in the Country, at least, is not readily available.

I told my friend that such lost classics are the spice of life, even more delightful through the confusion of nostalgia and likely improved by the imagination. Upon reflection, she rather agreed.

What about you? What are your Lost Classics?

—God…

—Quite.

—For something so bloody…

—I didn’t think it was.

—Painful, that was bloody terrific.

—It gets easier.

—It’s very wicked, isn’t it?

—Yes.

—Is it the wickedest thing you can do?

—Absolutely.

—And you made me do it.

—I did.

—I didn’t want to.

—No.

—And then you made me spunk.

—I did.

—Is that what happens to naughty boys?

—It is.

—What else happens to them?

—You know perfectly well.

—Do they get the cane?

—They do.

—Then do they get buggered?

—Good and hard.

—Is it very naughty?

—The naughtiest.

—Do it again.

—We ought to have some sleep, you know.

—I don’t see why.

—You’ll look like a raccoon at Chapel, for one.

—Do you suppose there’s something wrong with us?

—The game, you mean? It’s only pretend.

—But other people…?

—Damn other people. Other people do worse, and call it…

—What?

—Ordinary.

—I don’t want to be a pansy.

—You aren’t. We aren’t.

—What are we, then?

—Friends.

—Friends?

—And if two friends can’t be naughty together, what can they do?

—What if we’re caught?

—There’d be trouble.

—Would we be whacked?

—Oh, yes.

—Hard?

—Very hard.

—Before the whole school?

—And their mothers and sisters.

—Not that!

—Oh, yes. And then we’d be sent to Borstal, and you know what happens to boys there.

—Tell me.

—It’s late.

—We can sleep when we’re dead. Tell me…

---

Those schoolboys have been at it again. They really aren’t safe for work. Make of them what you will, but I thought these were the same who appeared in “Dawn,” and they certainly attend the same school as those in last’s week’s “Cricket.” I simply cannot explain their rudeness except to say they appear to inhabit an era different from our own.

Microfantasy Monday is the brainchild of Sweltering Celt. The theme this week was sleep.

They lounged on the chapel roof together, smoking, as a grey light faded up around them. A gradual enchantment, he thought, nothing like the abrupt arrival of Faerie in the MacDonald he’d been reading. Dawn for them was not rosy-fingered, promising sun, but rather suffocating, extinguishing stars.

He pinched the cigarette but refrained from flicking it over the edge. Certain fellow prefects were going through a zealous phase; finding it would only encourage them. He wished such people could wear their power more lightly. His colleagues could never understand the lack of contradiction in delivering a sharp and deserved sixer to a daring-do fourth-former and then passing unofficial hours with him as he just had. Why did people so insist on categories and absolutes? He massaged his jaw. His fingers smelt of cheap tobacco and sex.

Billy (as byzantine nicknaming called him) lay along the leads, his eyes bloodshot but relaxed around the edges for a change. Nothing like a good buggering to dissolve the arrogance and tension.

“God,” Billy groaned, “I can’t bear the hols.”

Mention of the holidays seemed as brash and intrusive as the notion of Latin. How he would himself endure the long, sterile summer he didn’t know. On second thought, he did know – as he had the last four years, with longing. Longing for sensation, charge, the real McCoy. Longing for return of the enchantment now obliterated by the dawn, for the return of good things.

He traced Billy’s eyelid with a fingertip: thin, alive.

---

What is Flash Fiction Friday?

Check out other stories from this week:

• vanimp
• PapaTomLA
• Rafi’s World

- You won’t ever call me Sunshine, or anything barfy like that, will you?

- Never.

- What will you call me?

- It rather depends, doesn’t it?

- What if I’m wearing this?

- Then, young lady, you can go straight across my knee.

- And what about this?

- I’d have to call you Miss then, wouldn’t I?

- It would be wise. And this?

- Ooh, mean babysitter – Miss?

- I think that would be Sir.

- In that skirt?

- She watches Battlestar Gallactica.

- Geek, then.

- Not to her face, unless you want some of this.

- Ah! Sir. Sir! Yes, sir!

- Better. What about when I’m wearing this?

- Only Aunt Amelia would wear that, and it’s always best to agree with her. Now this quite interests me, especially with these underneath.

- What would you call me then?

- Put it on and we’ll see.

- Well?

- Oh…you, boy, are the most impertinent fourth former it has ever been my misfortune to know. You can touch your toes for the cane right now.

- Right now?

- Right now.

- Ah!

- Hold still…right, now get those off. I’m going to have to fuck you.

- Isn’t buggery wicked?

- Very wicked. But you can’t expect me to resist, with a bottom like that, and such straight marks.

- Not that you’re modest.

- Quiet, boy.

- Come here, you. Here.

- Mmm…

- Slower…Here…What will you call me now?

- Darling.

- Don’t go away again. Promise. Promise.

- Oh, sweetheart, as long as I live. As long as I live.

---

Microfantasy Monday is the brainchild of Sweltering Celt. The theme this week was sunlight. Unfortunately, I misread it as sunshine. Oops.

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.

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…