The Circle - a Dangerous (?) Shape (Part I)


by Karl Gatt <Kbouwde@hotmail.com>

If you are someone to whom masturbation and, particularly, mutual masturbation, is anathema, or if you are horrified at the prospect of boys getting their bare tails well beaten for this and other "offences", please hit your 'Exit' button NOW, as that is what this 99% true incident from my own boyhood involved; the remaining 1% relates to the names of ALL the participants, which I have changed for obvious reasons. However, I remember the Housemaster concerned with the GREATEST respect and affection, in spite (or, perhaps, because,) of his having thrashed me soundly on many occasions, of which the following certainly produced the worst (or best?) (in every respect) hiding of my school life. If you are STILL here, read on and if you then enjoy this account of my personal part in our comeuppance, please e-mail me to say whether you would prefer the second, more vicarious part, to contain similar, or more or less, detail:

Most of my school life was spent as a Day-boy, which, as I lived barely two miles from my all boy, Catholic, all-the-way-to-Matric (Grade 12) school, was understandable. However, I did have to spend most of my last 'Prep' year and part of my first High-School one, aged 11 and 12, as a boarder.

I had discovered, much earlier on, that, in among the excruciating agony which I never failed to experience, there existed real and very considerable physical pleasure in being caned or strapped (on my backside only - it was unadulterated torture on my hands!).

Thanks to spending most holidays on a farm with my 4-family tribe of husky, naughty, khaki-clad, barefoot, cousins of both _s_e_x_es, I was in trouble, with them and on my own account, often enough for this predilection to be gratified quite frequently, on the receiving end, usually, of a springy quince stick or a doubled stirrup-leather. These were mostly applied to the (often threadbare) seats of khaki shorts, but, now and then, if we were brought to book at bath-time or while swimming, bare, wet tails made perfect targets. As we boys and the girls not only bathed and swam naked, but were also punished, together and without distinction, I grew up with few, if any, inhibitions about my body or submitting it to chastisement.

As a result of 'enjoying' my hidings, I always and from a very early age, developed an erection (which I knew, from my older cousins, was called 'getting the (or 'going on') bone/horn', at the mere prospect of receiving, or even just witnessing, a bum beating and had also learned how to deal with the phenomenon, MOST enjoyably, by the time I was nine, not that I had anything to show for my enjoyment at that stage. However, I am sure that this pleasurable two-way stimulation of the mid section of my body caused my precociously early puberty to begin a few months before my 11th birthday. So, by the time I became a temporary boarder, eight months later, I already had hair in the three places where it mattered and a sturdy, uncut, 3+ inch _c_o_c_k_, which stiffened at the slightest, or no, provocation, to a respectable almost 6 inches.

I had enjoyed my entry into adolesence and had watched, in awe, as, almost day by day, the interesting, sensitive purple knob on the end of my _c_o_c_k_ reached higher and higher up my stomach, arriving at my belly-button four months after I turned 11, although it receded again later, during a growth spurt at nearly 13.

My early, pre-boarding, school career had been inconspicuous. I was small for my age and not very good at team sports, so I was regarded with the good-natured tolerance reserved for the harmless, clever 'twerps' in any boys' class, which didn't worry me, as I had my own circle of friends and was more 'farm' than 'school' orientated, anyway.

There had, of course, been quite a bit of _s_e_x_-play on the farm. My cousins' ages ranged from slightly younger to considerably older than me and, as the most willing member of the gang, I was in great demand with the (much) older girls as a naughty/ignorant/disobedient pupil in their school games, sometimes ending up getting my usually embarassingly bare little bottom playfully and often quite vigorously, spanked, which was how, at 6 or 7, I had discovered that I liked that sort of treatment, and soon became able to handle far sterner applications of it, with enjoyment rather than distress.

Then, too, the bigger boys, seeing that I 'got the bone' VERY easily, willingly and with no embarassment and could keep my mouth shut, involved me in their naughty games, finding out, in the process, that I had what were much later to be termed "voluptuous hands" as well as a lively, inquisitive, imagination, which led to several innovative ways of 'doing it', to the great amusement and satisfaction of all concerned.

However, as a boarder, given that sort of outlook, and with equipment like mine, which, while neither full-grown nor remarkable, save, possibly, in the context of my age, was very serviceable, I could hardly go unnoticed in the immaturely _s_e_x_-charged atmosphere of our dormitories and I soon began to enjoy a popularity, especially, again, among the older boys, beyond my wildest dreams.

I won't pretend that I, at 11, made a huge impact on the burgeoning _s_e_x_uality of my peers, but I did, I think, help to make it fun and, on occasion, introduce into it elements of excitement or danger, which, sometimes, led to awkward results.

One of my best-received suggestions was something I had learned on the farm and was called THE CIRCLE, which was, of course, nothing new or original, save to us, but then, almost every group of adolescents re-invents at least a part of the _s_e_x_ual wheel, doesn't it?

'Our' Circle, as an ongoing activity, was memorable, not only for the pleasure it gave, especially to those less popular kids who didn't make friends or contacts too easily, but also for the unprecedented disaster it caused one Wednesday afternoon.

'Circles' usually came together quite spontaneously in the changerooms after sport, when we were all quite legitimately naked. They were fuelled by our often lewd and ribald horseplay and especially by the excitement caused by frerquent opportunities for the inspection and admiration of recently thrashed bums. Boys as old as 15 were as keen to join in as were those of my own age group and, frankly, were much more fun to have as partners.

Our modus operandi was to congregate behind the 'Seniors' wall', which no longer served its original purpose of shielding more mature genitals from young eyes, as the Seniors had their own ablution block by then. This was at the far end of the shower area and there we would sit, crosslegged and stark naked, in a close circle, with knees touching and right hands holding ones neighbour's, by then always rigid, 'joystick'. A bit rough on the Southpaws? Maybe, but I suppose that this is one activity at which most boys are ambidextrous, as there were never any complaints. Then, at a signal, everyone would set about 'tossing his partner off', producing two-way 'kicks'. Sometimes the object would be to bring ones partner to his either dry or messy climax as quickly as possible; at others, it would be to defer that point for as long as both were able to. In either case, the entire activity, being at once sociable and competitive, was not deemed to be in any way 'queer', as doing the same thing 'one-on-one' could easily be taken to be. Half the thrill of these sessions lay in the knowledge that 'self-abuse' (also called 'self-defilement') was one of the seven deadly sins at our strict Church School and that even just 'going solo' was virtually a hanging offence. What the penalty for a group 'go' like ours would be, defied the imagination, but, of course, with our sentry and all, WE could NEVER get caught.......

The day disaster struck, it was due almost entirely to a mixture of negligence, carelessness and sheer impatient, adolescent lust. Three BIG boys, from our under 16-A Rugby Team, had been caught smoking (another deadly sin) behind the 'bogs' before practice and were soundly thrashed in front of all of us. The operation was, to our disappointment, carried out on the seats of their football shorts, which offered them negligible, but, from OUR perspective, rather view-spoiling, protection. In the result, the rest of us were all agog to have a look at the damage, which HAD to be spectacular. After the practice the culprits good-humouredly offered their still hotly-ridged bums for our admiration (I must admit that they had all taken their very stiff doses of a leather-covered swagger stick extremely bravely) and submitted to the tracing of hard, smarting welts by tentative fingers, with quite good grace, before dispersing, with their fellows, to find consolation in a less juvenile atmosphere.

That left our usual core of almost daily under 12 and under 13 'Circlers', augmented by three of the under-15's. All of us were sporting VERY stiff _c_o_c_k_s and just couldn't wait to get on with it. Of course, no-one wanted to be left out that day, so we didn't post a sentry, but all dashed off to the Wall, stripped and got down to business without even checking the immediate vicinity - big mistake.

Unfortunately, our Housemaster, Brother McMahon, was looking for a few juniors to help him move some equipment and, seeing that Rugby practice was over, came to the ablution block in the hope of picking up a couple of stragglers; he had no idea, I think, of what had already transpired and was probably amazed to find 10 piles of hastily discarded togs, no boys and no sounds of showering in progress. He was, as luck would have it, one of the staunchest members of the anti-abuse brigade and, probably smelling a rat, discarded his sandals and walked up to the Wall on silent, bare feet, catching us all flagrante delicto and in such compromising positions that no explanation of what we were doing, save the obvious, was at all feasible.

I am still at a loss to understand why this universal and apparently harmless, boyhood pleasure should attract such violent condemnation, but there was no doubt but that we were all in the gravest possible trouble. Bro. Mac offered us the obligatory option of having our 'disgusting conduct' reported to 'The Boss' (our Principal) and when this was declined, proposed to inflict condign and immediate punishment, himself. I remember thanking God, at the time, that we had not been interrupted a few minutes later, as I, for one, would have had great difficulty in taking what followed with any semblance of fortitude, hot on the heels of an orgasm.

One of the three bigger boys, who knew his way around, was dispatched, still naked. but no longer erect, to 'get the stick'. Bro. Mac's 'stick' was a legendary 2'9" length of three-eighth inch malacca cane, which was reputed to be kept permanently soaking in a mixture of salt water and vinegar. Most of us had felt it now and then, but always with at least some protection, which had been painful enough, whereas, in view of our current state of undress, it would have been unrealistic to hope for our imminent thrashings to be inflicted other than on bare tails. It was, accordingly, a very nervous group of pre- and mid-teenagers that awaited the arrival of the dreaded 'stick'. I was no less apprehensive than the others, notwithstanding the fact that my erection had revived, rather inopportunely, this time, as soon as I had realised that not only was I about to get my tail whipped, but that it would probably be done bare and with all the other trimmmings that I liked and fantazised about, like having spectators and seeing others 'get it'. too. I was, of course, trying desperately and not very successfully, to hide my 'bone', which was fitting snugly, with its concave back against my still slightly protuberant 'little boy's' tummy, from Bro. Mac, who could easily have taken its presence as sheer defiance. Luckily, he was more concerned with how he was going to administer his mass flogging than with how we were reacting to the prospect of receiving it and either didn't see, or chose to ignore, my signs of arousal. I also expected, confidently, if irrationally, to be regarded as one of the ringleaders in the escapade and to get my bum beaten with corresponding severity.

By the time the messenger of doom returned, bearing the formidable stick, ingenuity had triumphed and we were lined up with the smallest (me) at the back, under orders to "go 'piggy-back'on the boy in front of you and let him hold on to your hands", when our times came. This method, amounting to 'horsing' each boy on the back of a slightly bigger one, had the multiple advantages of rendering each victim immobile in the grip of a larger and stronger fellow-sufferer to be, presenting the target area to best advantage and, by reason of the 'mount's' stooping stance and the victim's helplessly dangling legs, drawing his naked rtump just taut enough to ensure maximum bite and sting when the cane was applied to it.

I, obviously, was to go first and with a silent prayer that my usual relative immunity to being REALLY hurt by a thrashing, would see me through this time, I gritted my teeth and hopped up on to Eric's bare, nervously sweating back as lightly as I could, considering the need to avoid buckling my by then inconveniently jutting _c_o_c_k_, or crushing my balls, painfully, against his unyielding hips.

At first I had to hold myself in position, jockey-style, with my knees, but, once Eric found my wrists in front of his chest, he took a firm grip on them and I was able to let my legs hang down, with my feet in space and, I realised, my whole backside wide open to whatever was coming its way.

In fairness, Bro. Mac didn't prolong the agony. He rested the cane across the middle of my bum for a second or two, to get his aim and distance and then let me have it, good and hard. The first cut made a noise like a high wind and ended with a loud snap as cane met bare flesh. I had made a private decision not to even try to be heroic about this hiding. Not only did I anticipate that these canings were going to be severe enough to really roast EVERYONE'S tail, so no one would think any less of me if I allowed myself the luxury, on this occasion, of giving vent to my feelings and 'yipping' and 'yeowling' with the rest of them (which actually makes it easier to bear and, in my case, a bit more enjoyable as well); also, by doing so, I would take the pressure off the others and, particularly, the three bigger boys, to be at least as stoic about their thrashings as 'that little squirt' had been about his.

That decision proved to be a wise one, as, from the moment that first cut landed, I realised that I was in, or , rather, under, the hands of an expert and that I was due for a tough few minutes. The stick must have connected fairly low down and on the outside curve of my left cheek, curled around the rest of that buttock in the horrible way canes have, bridged my tightly-clenched crack and, still accelerating fast, bitten into the fleshy lower curve of the right one. Many caners use too much cane for the size of the tail being thrashed, having anything up to six inches of 'spare' stick where the far cheek starts to curve away. While the tip MAY wrap around and inflict a half to three-quarter-inch open cut right round the flank or on the upper leg, this is not nearly as painful as it would have been if those last couple of rapidly moving inches of cane had sunk into the fleshy part of the cheek itself, which, I suspect, feels much the same as being branded with a red-hot iron would. Bro. Mac made no such mistake and my naked bum felt every burning inch of that and each subsequent, stripe.

The sensation produced by that first cut was unique in my experience. I heard, but did not feel, the stick meeting bare flesh and the silence that followed, was deafening. Then I became aware of liquid fire in my veins and powerful electric shocks running up my spine to pound against the top of my head, and surge along my arms to the ends of my finger nails and down my dangling legs to the very tips of my by then anticipation-splayed toes. Then everything rushed back, to concentrate in a single narrow band of white-hot agony, somewhere below the middle of my backside.

Let me make it clear that my 'enjoyment' of my hidings never implied any exemption from pain. It was a cerebral, erotic, thing, a million miles removed from the blinding physical agony which I always felt, with my backside burning like a furnace and stinging as if it had been set upon by a whole swarm of angry wasps.

On this occasion, the pain was particularly and inexplicably sharp. It wasn't just that I was being thrashed with a bare tail (which had happened often before), nor yet the mere force with which the cane was being applied. There was something in the WAY the stick was being laid on that was giving it a penetrating, biting quality and making me feel as if it was ripping right into the muscles of my arse and burning up everything in its path. It was not until I had witnessed a couple of the subsequent canings that I realised that our 'horsed' position eabled Bro. Mac to hit upwards into our bottoms, nipping sensitive bare skin between cane and tightly braced muscles.

To make matters worse in the short term, I had no idea of how many cuts to expect and to have to brace myself for. While I was still battling with No.1, the second stroke whistled down and burnt a new line of fire into my rear end. I judged that it had landed close to but rather below the first one, and the combination made me conscious of the tremendous heat that was building up down there - it was like a sneak preview of what it must feel like to be burnt alive.

No.3 followed quite quickly and with an almighty snap. Bro. Mac was definitely concentrating on the lower half of my bum, down in the area which even the most case-hardened boy finds tenderest, the soft, unmuscled fold of skin and flesh where tail meets leg. Had I not known exactly what WAS happening to me, I could have sworn that thin streams of boiling oil were being poured across my bottom, sticking to my skin and frying the flesh beneath.

The first cut had been hard and flat, but the next two seemed to plough into me, as if Bro. Mac had been aiming at Eric's bum, not mine and had dragged the cane through me, on its way to him; in addition, it felt as if the force of the strokes was driving me up Eric's sweat-slicked back and enabling the cane to get at my under-bum more easily each time.

That third cut made me squeal and caused my hips to buck as high off Eric's as my aching muscles could propel them. It occurred to me that it must feel very strange to him to have my stiff _c_o_c_k_ pounding against his back, until I realised that it wasn't stiff any more; either the pain was just too intense to be overcome by my quirky reactions, or else, the available blood supply was more urgently needed for damage control round the back. The strangest part, though, was that, although every nerve and fibre in my body (and especially in my bum) was screaming for the thrashing to stop, I was actually terrified that it just MIGHT!!

By then I was halfway through the traditional 'six of the best', but wasn't surprised when a fourth scorcher hit me, right where my crease would have been if my hanging legs hadn't stretched it quite flat. The burning agony across the very tops of my thighs was far worse than anything that had gone before and I was on the verge of sinking into the ultimate pit of humiliation by begging out loud for mercy, when the beating stopped. I KNEW it couldnt be OVER yet and it wasn't, but the pause gave me enough time and willpower to adjust to the intense heat and to assess the implications of seeing Bro. Mac's (again sandalled) feet marching round to the other side of my body. At least I then knew that I was in for a total of eight and to my own surprise and horror, I found myself pressing my knees against the backs of Eric's thighs so as to push my backside up and out, to meet the cane when it next came down. The combined effect of the first four had been to make me feel as if my legs had been amputated just under my tail, with all the pain of the surgery left above the amputation. I was also re-discovering something that I had known before, namely that, when one is caned really hard and bare tail, there is not only no numbing, but also that, whereas the number of cuts just adds up, the overall pain of the thrashing multiplies, sometimes logically but sometimes in huge leaps; so, two could be twice as sore as one, but three could easily 'square' that. In addition, my immediate problem was that the next, (and, I devoutly hoped) last, four would bring the vicious tip of that cane into direct contact with my left cheek, which had seldom been a direct target and certainly never under such exposed conditions, before.

Waiting, with buttocks clenched, for my whipping to continue, I took stock and realised that in spite of all the pain and the force with which I had been caned, I had not yet even once experienced the feeling, familiar to any barefoot farm kid who has stepped on something sharp; you know that you have cut your foot, without having to see blood. Somehow Bro. Mac had thrashed the entire bottom half of my tail to what felt like pulp, but without having broken my skin. In actual fact, I believe that that condition was making things worse, not better, for me, as the pressure in my swollen, throbbing hindquarters seemed to be threatening to burst my right buttock, in particular, like the skin of an unpricked, frying sausage.

The resumption of the caning was not long delayed, but the texture of the second half was totally different from the first, producing a brand new type and quality of torture, which had to be absorbed in a completely different way from the straightforward biting sting of the first lot. Hitting right-handed and from the right, Bro. Mac could no longer drive the cane upwards into my backside, with the result that the next two sizzling strokes assaulted the top half of my naked cheeks in quick succession and without any warning, forcing their new waves of pain downwards into my already bruised and battered underbum. They came fast and hard, giving me no time to catch my breath, and were well spread out, across the crest of both cheeks, the second falling, as far as I could tell, right across the tops of my buttocks, almost, but not quite, where my crack flattened out into my back; not quite as stinging as the cuts in the lower crease, but producing a deep, bruising pain all their own.

I recall thinking that by then there must be weals all over both cheeks, from hip to thigh and - Oh, my God, he surely wasn't going to do THAT to me??

Oh yes, he WAS!!!

I sensed, rather than glimpsed, a change in Bro. Mac's position, so that he was standing in line with my waist, instead of my bum. Knowing exactly what was coming, I screwed my aching, throbbing tail muscles up as tightly as I could and buried my face in Eric's neck. He seemed to tighten his hold on my wrists in response. I wished that someone had also been holding on to my feet, as I felt sure that the next few moments would see them kicking wildly and all I was short of was for Bro. Mac to end up with a mouthful of toes. To my surprise, that mental picture excited me again and I was very relieved to feel a familiar, reassuring, tug in my groin, just as the cane slammed down for what, I prayed, was my second-last cut. This time, it must have met bare backside a good 15 to 18 inches from its tip. Angled sharply downwards from high up on the right cheek, it tore hotly into my rock hard, swollen, welted, right buttock, seeming to stretch, like a striking snake, down, across and around that cheek, with its hot, stinging adornment of thick, smarting welts and over the glowing top of the other one, where its deadly tip exploded against the lowest and outermost point of the union between tail and thigh, making me yell in protest as my whole tail seemed to explode in multi-coloured waves of fierce, burning pain.

THAT stroke produced the 'barefoot' feeling, with a vengeance, as the skin of both sides of my bum was stretched to splitting point under the pressure of the cane and I yelped loudly at this new level of agony. Apart from the fierce sting and burn of the stripe itself, it felt as though a board with long, red-hot nails through it, had been hammered into both sides of my arse, identifying each place where the fresh weal had crossed one of the earlier ones; spots of raw, bloody agony, which subsequently proved to be two livid diamonds of raw flesh and broken skin on my right cheek and three on the left one.

I felt my whole body become rigid as I waited for the last (I hoped) cut. I dreaded it, but wanted it and would have felt cheated if Bro. Mac hadn't moved to level with my mid thigh to deliver it diagonally in the opposite direction, setting all the welts which the first fours' tips had raised low on my right cheek, as well as the two new ones high on the left one, ablaze all over again - more bright, technicolor spots of pain, more heat, more sting, more 'barefoot' cutting sensation. By then I had REALLY had enough. Eight cuts may not sound like a very terrible thrashing compared with some you can read about, but, in real life, when your tail is bare and the man at the other end of the cane knows what he is doing, it is hell. One of the Prefects, telling us about some of his brushes with authority as a junior, once said that none of the Brothers believed that 'you little guys' should receive any mercy or consideration, solely on account of age or size, the theory being that, as boys are at their naughtiest between about 9 and 12, their tails should be best able to cope with the consequences then, too. That theory had just been proved to its limits on my bare backside.

Someone, probably Bro. Mac, said "Let him down". Eric's grip on my wrists relaxed and I wriggled free of the almost hermetically sealed bond between my sweating body and his and slid stiffly and cautiously to the ground, the slightly damp cement making the soles of my bare feet the only spots of coolness anywhere on my entire body.

TO BE CONTINUED.


More stories byKarl Gatt