author's note: this is one of the later stories from my "corporal punishment autobiography," a work-in-progress. There is no spanking in this story but it is rather an account of the spanking I never got and that I perhaps am still seeking.
A storm had arisen that I failed to see brewing and was unable to escape in time. I knew that reconciling the checkbook could be a frustrating experience for mother . I had seen the envelope from the bank when I collected the mail on my way home from school. She was occupied at her sewing machine when I came in and I greeted her with the perfunctory peck on the cheek. As always the house was neat as a pin and the smell of dinner cooking reached my nose before I even got to the door. As I passed through the kitchen, I saw a cake that was already cooled and ready for frosting. Mother seemed to be in a serene state as she pinned and clipped and pressed some shiny pastel fabric that she was turning into bridesmaids' dresses for a June wedding. With the bleak late February day and the cares of my career as a high school sophomore safely on the other side of the door, such times seemed truly golden. Sewing was a meditative exercise for mother as well as a way to supplement the household income. With the tiny widow's pension she received from my father's union plus the income from the investment of the insurance benefits and proceeds from the sale of our house in Baltimore, we lived comfortably without this extra income but mother was an expert seamstress who seemed to enjoy her work; any doubts I had about whether she worked out of some perceived necessity or pleasure have long since vanished now that she is nearing 70, remarried and still stitching away.
Uncle Fred was expected home around 5:00, so mother put away her sewing for the day and started to read the mail before dinnertime. As she sat at the kitchen table, spreading out the cancelled checks, she asked me to fetch her purse, in which she kept the checkbook. Usually, balancing the checking account was a matter of two or three tries, correcting faulty arithmetic or entering a forgotten check before the thing was wrapped up and put away for another month but for some reason, it stubbornly failed to balance. After fifteen minutes and two cigarettes, she was swearing and working herself into one of her terrible states. I hoped to cool things down by kindly offering to see if I could find the problem but I had misjudged the situation. Instead of the usual gradual crescendo to full hysteria, she had already worked up a full head of steam and blasted me with a string of invective that destroyed all the goodwill I was feeling and made me long for the day I could once and for all get away from that crazy woman.
She continued complaining about every lazy, inconsiderate thing I had done for the last few weeks and finally looked at me coldly and said "why, you haven't even set the table, you bastard, WHY NOT?" My usual response would be a meek "right away, mother" and her usual response would be to continue her abuse while I worked, telling me how I was worthless and stupid and cost money and didn't give a _d_a_m_n_ about her and never did a _d_a_m_n_ thing. This would culminate with the threat, "wait until your uncle gets home" more often than not. Only, something had changed: it wasn't her; it was me; and we both knew it.
"It's impossible for me to lay the table with your _s_h_i_t_ spread out all over it," I yelled back at her.
This provocation was all she needed to escalate her voice to its most shrill and loud. 'You go cut yourself three switches--no... five--, young man, now!' I ran out of the kitchen and slammed the door and automatically started the familiar walk to the poor willow tree that sacrificed so many of its lower branches to my poor frame over the years. I was so upset and so angry that I wasn't even thinking about what I was doing as I selected a few stout but supple branches and ran them through my hand to strip off the leaves. They really were first-rate switches which I proved to myself as I held the lot of them in my right hand and without thinking gave a stinging blow to my left palm. The sudden sensation brought me back to my senses and I realized that my violent impulse was actually misdirected and that I wanted to hold mother accountable for every time she found an excuse to punish me when a sales clerk had been surly or the washing machine broke down or the car wouldn't start or any other of a dozen things, such as the checking account being out of balance, induced a foul mood in her.
Just then, one of the neighborhood kids passed by at the end of the block and saw me with my little bundle of switches and snickered condescendingly "'you're gonna get it."
"Like hell I am" I yelled back as I threw the switches in the burning barrel, stormed back through the kitchen door confronted mother, and hoping the tremble was not detectable in my voice, yelled as loudly as could,
"GO CUT YOUR OWN _d_a_m_n_ SWITCHES!"
The sugar bowl that she hurled at me chipped the enamel on the door before a couple of bits hit me on the arm. Sugar and pieces of china littered the shiny lino and mother was screaming incoherently. I quickly closed the door and stood outside, in an adrenaline induced stupor. I was unable to think beyond what to do next. I found a book of matches in my pocket and went over to the burning barrel, lit a match and then set fire to the entire book before tossing it in. I watched in satisfaction as the flame caught some rubbish in the bottom of the barrel and didn't step back until it was a raging fire and the smell of my hair starting to singe brought me back to reality.
There I was, stuck outside without a coat and not about to go back to that crazy woman who through some misfortune of biology had become my mother. I found a couple of beach towels in the laundry room and draped them shawl-like over my shoulders. I climbed the stairs to the deck outside Uncle Fred's apartment and leaned against the railing, feeling exhilarated and completely unrepentant. At that moment I was confused and upset and frightened and very angry but at the same time gloriously triumphant and ready to take on the world.
The many times over my childhood and adolescence that I had been banished from the house to wait until Uncle Fred got home to 'deal with me' I always used the time to fret over what would happen and to compose and rehearse in my mind what I would say to Uncle Fred to make my behavior seem not quite so bad. It was tricky to do this without without committing the additional offense of denying my culpability or justifying my behavior, so I concentrated more on making my contrition--real or faked-- seem as sincere as possible.
This time, for the first time ever, it was different. I was certain I had nothing to be sorry for and wasn't about to pretend that I was. No matter that Uncle Fred was my court of last appeal, I would make him see the injustice here. He could beat me black and blue but I was resolved not to yield one iota. I would not say I was sorry when I knew I wasn't even guilty.
In flashes I recalled earlier, similar incidents of false accusations, unprovoked blowups, extreme overreactions, when mother had whipped me herself or sent me to my uncle for punishment. Even if I had no hope the old bitch would ever atone for these outrages, I had let her know that she could not get away with it any more and I was not about to back down.
Although he was barely old enough to be my father, Uncle Fred was a member of the older generation and always supported my mother--sided with her against me--when he was in my presence, whether mother was there or not. Of course he couldn't know just how impossible she could be, since she never completely flew off the handle except when the two of us were alone. All my childish protests about my innocence or mother's unreasonableness were dismissed as "excuses" when Uncle Fred held court from his green chair. If I had minded my behavior, mother would not have been provoked to anger. I had learned that attempts to defend myself often brought a more severe punishment, so I would hide my resentment and act as contrite as I could in order to win a more lenient sentence. His only concession to reality as I saw it was his occasional admonition that "you just have to learn to stay out of her way when she gets like that."
As the physical manifestations of my rage--shaking, heavy breathing, warmth and sweating--subsided and I became aware of the throbbing discomfort of the self-inflicted wound on my hand, I started to give serious thought about my short term future. I knew it would be ok for me to spend the night on Uncle Fred's convertible sofa. I had never been unwelcome at my uncle's no matter how bad I had been. The tourist season, when there was an abundance of work for boys my age, was still eight weeks away. Could I move in with Uncle Fred in the meantime? Even if mother wasn't ready to throw me out, she had to understand that if I continued to live with her it would no longer be entirely on her terms. What about school? I knew I could finish the semester but then what? Worries about my future, memories of past injustices, my continuing anger, the waiting outside in the cold were drawing me into a horrible vortex of confusion that at that stage of my life admitted of no other remedy. I slipped one of the towels over my fly, unzipped, jerked off into the towel and had just finished rearranging myself when I heard my uncle's car pulling into the driveway.
It was his habit when he worked days to go right into our kitchen through the back door. As he came around the end of the driveway toward the door, I leaned over the railing of the landing and delivered a phrase I had recently learnt and found appropriate and, I thought, witty for the occasion, "All ye who enter here abandon hope."
As he looked up from the back yard, I think he smirked at the lump in my trousers caused by my subsiding erection and I wondered if a stain was showing but didn't dare look. "What have you gotten yourself into now, young man?"
"Just be sure she knows it's you when you open that door, or be ready to catch the coffee pot when she throws it." By the time I got to the end of the sentence, I heard my voice tremble as if I was going to cry but hoped this was concealed by my cynical tone. "And don't expect me for dinner," I said, prepared to resist even if he insisted that I come down.
"Come here" was all he said. Somehow, Uncle Fred sensed the gravity of my resolve and decided not to push the issue, even though my being present or absent for dinner had never been a matter of my personal choice before. He took off his jacket and handed it to me saying, "if you're going to hang out here in the cold like some refugee, you don't have to look like one too." As I mounted the steps back up to the landing, he gave my behind a firm but playful swat before turning towards the door. I wondered if it was a harbinger of things to come.
I was pretty sure what he would find on the other side of the door. As soon as mother calmed down, she would have set about erasing every sign of her violent overreaction. There wouldn't be a single granule of sugar out of place. The only thing she could not immediately restore was the nick she made in the door when it served as my shield against the flying sugar bowl. Until a more permanent repair could be made, she let down the hem of the window curtain to cover the blemish.
I imagined her explaining to Uncle Fred in somewhat agitated tones about how wickedly I provoked her and how disrespectful, arrogant, lazy, and disobedient I was being. I wanted to hear how she would tell him, if she told him at all, about my surly refusal to accept correction. I wondered how much he would accept and how much he would recognize as exaggeration. The clincher would be when she told him, and I had no doubt she would, that I had addressed her using bad language. I was sure to get a few licks for that. How I wished to be in his apartment, where there were a couple of prime listening posts.
I remembered I had a couple of cigarettes stuffed in my sock and regretted my earlier prodigality with the matches. Perhaps tobacco wasn't an option but there was another, more certain cure for my adolescent anxiety. I went to go to the shower/laundry room under the stairs and jerked off, more slowly this time, into the same towel. Then I took a long drink of water from the washtub spigot. After returning the other towel to the place it would remain until the first day at the beach in May, I grabbed a few paper towels and used them to coax the embers in the burning barrel back into flame, then stirred by some ritual impulse, immolated my shot rag in a sort of pagan holocaust offering.
The intensity of the fire was a satisfying complement to my own inner turmoil. As I concentrated on the flames, the light and warmth, my own jism going up in smoke and feeling somewhat spent from jerking off a second time in half an hour, I lapsed into a euphoric, drugged-like state. All thoughts of past and future vanished from my mind and I was just there, in that moment, in as pure a state of being as I have ever known.
It might have been twenty seconds or twenty minutes later when I felt Uncle Fred's hand on my shoulder. He gave me the queerest look. Had he been calling me? As I hung up his coat , he sat down, kicked off his shoes, lit a cigarette and said "bring me a beer...and get one for yourself."
This was unprecedented. He had always let me have sips of his own beer and there was never a time when I didn't enjoy it. Knowing that mother would disapprove made it all the more delicious. We occasionally opened a bottle of wine with Sunday dinner but mother's experience of growing up in an alcoholic home made her wary of alcohol's destructive power. I pulled a couple of Ortleibs from the fridge and carefully opened them with the church key that was magnetically attached to the door.
I brought in the beers and at his gesture of invitation as he moved his feet to one side, sat down on the ottoman facing him. This same ottoman had been the site of countless beltings from the time we first came to live in my uncle's house when I was five. Even today, twenty-five years later, the combined smell of sweaty socks after a days work, cigarette smoke and beer evoke the memory of that old green chair and ottoman, my Uncle Fred and his belt on my poor butt; it can still induce an involuntary twinge in my buttocks.
Several seconds' silence ensued. As a child, these times were always acutely uncomfortable for me, if I thought I might have a punishment coming. As I grew up, I learned to endure them more easily. They always seemed to me intended as a psychological torture; but now that I have lived with my own grown-up cares, I realize they were just his way of collecting himself, shifting gears as it were.
Uncle Fred took a drag on his cigarette and looked at me with a stern and slightly bemused expression. I thought of lighting up one of my own but decided not to push matters. The first clue to his assessment of the situation came when he looked at me with a questioning expression and a nod and quietly said "nu?" (Had he said something like "have you anything to say for yourself?" it would have meant he had already passed judgment and not in my favor.)
With my resolve as firm as ever, I started telling him that I had endured mother's insane rages for the last time. Mother had once threatened me with boarding school (the 'threat' was withdrawn when it was clear I liked the idea) and I now mentioned this as a possibility. I also said I was prepared to quit school and set out on my own if it was impossible for me to continue living there. Against my strongest will, I felt tears stinging my eyes as I continued protesting the abuse I suffered.
As I finally ran out of steam, I was quite unprepared for my uncle's quiet response. "I was wondering when this would happen," he began. "Your mother is a type of person I see all the time. She can be mean as a swarm of hornets but once somebody stands up to her, she will back down." He went on with a candor that was almost shocking about how the hardships my mother had faced in being widowed young and coming from such a _f_u_c_k_ed up environment as she did it was a wonder she managed as well as she did and how things could have been much worse for me. I learned that at the time of my father's accident, he was already talking about divorce. If he hadn't died when he did, I could have ended up in Baltimore, perhaps in the same household as my sociopathic older cousin. This made my lot seem not quite so bad.
He told me that my relationship with my mother would continue on its new basis as long as I didn't back down but cautioned me very sternly that if I ever abused my new position, I would have him to deal with and I had better not test him on that. He then said that mother reported that I had sworn at her and he reckoned that called for a few swats with the belt. I was about to go to his room to fetch the belt when he motioned for me to stay. He told me that if I would apologize to mother for swearing at her, he would remit the punishment. I asked if I could stay the night with him and he said ok then picked up the telephone and dialed mother to tell her he and I had to do some serious talking and if it was alright with her, I would return downstairs in the morning. He then told her I had something to say and handed me the phone with a no-nonsense gesture. I made my sincere-sounding apology to the old bitch, whose voice had returned to its non-raging sunshiney sweetness.
It was still quite early in the evening but I was feeling worn out by the events of the past few hours. I reluctantly admitted to myself that a few licks of the belt would help to bring this whole thing to a neat conclusion; but I couldn't rescind my aplogy to mother and I'd feel really stupid actually asking for a belting. Besides, I didn't really like to get my ass whipped but this was one of those occasions on which I would at least have loved to hate it. This ambivalent attitude towards corporal punishment is one that has carried over into my adult life but more about that some other time. Sometimes it seems like my later experiences have all been in search of the licking I needed and never got.
That evening, we drove miles out into the New Jersey Pine Barrens to a little dump of a bar that was run by some distant relatives that I called Aunt Nelly and Uncle Butch. They both remarked how much like my old man I looked. The old woman everyone called grandmom had lost some of her marbles to a stroke a few years back and kept addressing me by my father's name. We had the best pizza I ever had and I listened for hours to stories about my father and the old days.