Fireworks: Synopsis
Brett Miller lived with his family in a well-to-do neighborhood in California, U.S.A. His daily routine during the school year started by arising early each morning so as to catch the bus to public school. Before leaving the house for school one fateful morning, he was drinking a quick breakfast in the kitchen. Hannah, a young woman from Germany who had come to live with Brett’s family, was always up early and had offered to make Brett something more substantial to eat. He only had time for a brief conversation with the wholesome housekeeper before hurrying out the door.
Brett met his two friends, James and Rachel, on the school bus. The three sat at the very back of the bus, the two boys talking about how they were going to form a rock band, a prospect about which Rachel was equally enthused. Rachel was a year older than Brett, as confident a girl as Brett was shy. Rachel Thomas had passed him a note in class the previous winter, and the two had spent many a lunch together talking. Brett was enamored of the pretty blonde, a California surfer who had made him a trusted friend with whom she could share both her troubles and dreams.
Every morning, after the second class period of the day, the students at Balboa were given a short break period. Typical activities were eating a morning snack, visiting the rest room, catching up on reading or homework, or congregating in groups to socialize. This particular morning break, Brett and four other kids, including James, Rachel and her friend Tracy, and a boy named Greg, were a pack of five roaming the school grounds and with perhaps an eye towards getting into trouble. They were an animated group of rebellious kids, talking about smoking weed, cursing loudly, and getting in a physical tussle over a debate. They had made their way to a far end, less-traveled area on school grounds when Greg showed everyone the cherry bomb firecracker he had brought to school. Hoping to impress Rachel, and with her providing the match to light, Brett ended up setting off an explosion in a trash dumpster. Caught running from the scene, Brett and Rachel were taken to the Vice Principal’s office, and the two were suspended from school until they could be taken downtown for a demonstration of fire safety by the Fire Marshal.
Because her mother worked, Rachel had to spend the day at the Miller house until Mrs. Thomas could pick her up that evening. After having taken the two suspended teens home, Brett’s mother confined them to Brett’s bedroom, with the door open, where Brett and Rachel spent the afternoon trying to imagine their immediate futures. Brett was especially nervous, and Rachel was able to get the truth from him that his father might paddle him that evening. A discouraging word from Brett’s older sister Katie, and some unsettling news from Hannah only heightened the tension.
Brett’s father and Rachel’s mother arrived one after the other that early evening, and after a discussion the two teens were unable to quite make out, the three parents came to Brett’s room to confront their two young brats who had caused such an uproar at school that day. Brett was not at all happy to see that his father had brought the paddle, not only because he feared the punishment he certainly had coming, but because he was quite concerned to have Rachel present. The teens were lectured and scolded before Mrs. Thomas took Rachel home, but not before Brett was told he was going to be getting a spanking. That word always caused him acute embarrassment, and his surfer girl now knew for sure how Brett was going to be punished.
Brett’s father made the boy strip to his underpants before taking him to the living room for his paddling. He had always feared Daddy’s paddle, and that fear was his primary emotion, even as he had to deal with having his mother and Hannah seated in the living room across from the couch where he was to be punished. The 18-year-old housekeeper, whose responsibilities often included taking care of the Miller kids and considered a member of the family, had been asked to take part in the humiliating ritual. One of the Miller kids was being disciplined, and that was a family matter. Brett had to drop his underpants before going over his father’s knee for a licking with the paddle that had him performing like a small, wretched child.
Of note, Katie exacted some revenge, for a previous incident that involved a spanking she got, by coming into the bathroom right as her brother got out of the shower, thus getting a good look at the naked boy with a paddled red behind. The next day, Mrs. Miller drove Brett and Rachel downtown to see the Fire Marshal.
This is the message written by Strict Julie that initiated the role play.
Hi Brett,
I talked with
Katie today. Sorry to hear about your spanking. She says your dad gave
it to you really hard with that paddle I saw him carrying. She says you
were bare as a baby, down in the living room, kicking and crying like a
little girl over your Daddy’s knee. Is that true? She actually said
“like a little girl”. Is that how she thinks of you? She also says that
girl Hannah and your Mom both watched you get your spanking, and Katie
heard it all. She says you were practically screaming across your
Daddy’s knee. I used to think you were so cool, but hearing about how
your parents still punish you, like a little kid, all bare naked and
everything, I can’t think of you that way anymore. So not cool. Sorry. I
was thinking you could be my boyfriend one day, but I don’t think so
anymore. Not a regular boyfriend anyways. What I mean is, when Katie
told me all that, I got ‘kinda hot and bothered, but not the way I
usually do with a boy? Do you see what I mean? I mean, I got hot
thinking of giving you a spanking myself. I know, weird, right? But I
‘wanna do that. Do you think you could maybe sneak your Dad’s paddle and
come over to my house with it? I mean, you wouldn’t want anybody else
at school knowing what I know, right? I want to pretend I’m your Mom,
and give you a spanking with that paddle. A really, really hard one,
because I want to see for myself if your sister is right, and if you do
kick and cry like a ‘little girl’ when you get spanked like that. That
would be so funny for me to see! Oh, and Brett, you should know that I’m
‘gonna want you bare naked over my knee, just like your Daddy made you
do. I mean I’m older than you, and Hannah’s not that much older than me,
and she saw you all bare and spanked. But don’t get any ideas. Just
‘cause you’re naked and I’m going to see ALL your private parts, like
Hannah and your Mom did last night, and Katie too I hear inspected your
butt! Boy you don’t get any privacy, do you? I mean just ‘cause you’ll
be naked and I’ll see all that, and have you across my lap, it doesn’t
mean you’re going to be my boyfriend or anything like that. And you
better not have an accident when you’re over my lap! I think I’ll put a
towel over my knees just in case. But you are going to my little boy,
aren’t you? My really, really bad little boy who I will make good? So
come to my house after school, and bring that paddle, or else, ok?
Rache
Fireworks
Warning: This story is a dramatization of a real-life event of my childhood. It features a graphic depiction of father/son corporal punishment.When I awoke early to catch the bus for school that morning, I had no expectation that my day was going to end so badly. My alarm clock had chirped with the all too familiar sound. I had whacked it like a gnat for the thousandth time. Still half asleep, I had followed the school-day routine—the shower, the brushing of teeth, the selection of a most casual attire allowed at the new school I was attending. The boy I saw in the mirror looked no different than the day before or the week before that. As I made the final touches to an arrangement of dark hair on my adolescent noggin, I heard familiar sounds coming from the kitchen. Hannah was always up early.
To be honest, this all happened a long time ago. Most of the details of that particular day are buried too deep for me to find them—yet the devil’s in the details, or the saying goes. To know the experience. To tell the story. I must create the background as best I can to match the time in which my humiliating day took place.
“Can I make you some breakfast?” she said.
“No thanks, Hannah.”
“You should eat a good breakfast.”
Hannah Köhler was 18 going on 40. The young woman from Germany had come to live with my family in a room off the kitchen. My parents adored her, in part because she got up early every morning eager to help her new employers from America. Hannah spoke perfect English, and that did not hurt her standing any either. Mom needed the help taking care of our big house. There had been other girls in the past, but they had not pleased my mother.
“I’ll just have my Instant.”
“If you got up earlier…”
I sighed.
“Are those cigarettes?”
“Huh?” Two Marlboro’s were peeking out the top of my shirt pocket.
“What would your father say?”
Hannah had been living with us for only a month. She really did not know what exactly he would say, and I was not about to spell it out for her. I had the smokes because my parents were never up before I left for school. I got milk out of the fridge and powder from the cupboard.
“I tried smoking when I was younger.”
“Really?” I was surprised. I could not imagine Hannah with a cigarette.
“Yes. It was very foolish of me.”
“Did you get caught?”
“Yes. My folks were not happy with me.”
I tried to imagine Hannah in trouble with her parents. “It’s okay. I’m not going to get hooked.” I only had the two cigs, just enough to impress my friends.
My glass of Instant Breakfast was no more or less satisfying than it had ever been. I grabbed the lunch Mom had packed the night before and hurried out the door.
The trip to school was typical enough. One school day was a carbon copy of the day before and, in the cool dark of morning, I walked the too-familiar half-mile down the hill, the hill on which our house had been built, where our family had lived for four years, having moved West to a large house on a hill up a long winding road from where a big yellow bus stopped every Monday through Friday. I did not see the large and expensive homes along the way. I did not see the new landscaping that was getting a little fuller each year. The neighborhood was no longer foreign to me. I was the son of a well-to-do man and was not the least bit impressed by it—but then there were expectations. Life was designed to make a boy feel guilty. The nagging-mother area of my brain that handled stuff like homework and studying for tests was chirping at me like my alarm clock did each school morning, but I could not smack this alarm quiet. I figured I could do my math assignment in homeroom and maybe study for history at lunch—yeah, study at lunch—like that was going to happen. At the bus stop I waited with the familiar group of kids drawn from the surrounding neighborhoods like iron filings to a magnet, but I was thinking about seeing Rachel and James on the bus when it got there.
“Dude, I got a bass,” James gushed over the din. “Fender Precision.”
The bus driver always had cool music playing. An old rock song was thumping in the air around where we were seated, one to my left, one to my right on the long bench at the very back of the bus, three kids making their own contribution to the irreverent commotion that characterized the five-mile trip to Vasco de Balboa Middle School each early school morning.
“Where’d you get the money?” I was a little jealous.
“I got friends who got friends.”
“Meaning?” I turned to look at Rachel. Her expression told me nothing.
“Meaning it was free. Now we need to get you a real axe. And us some amps.”
“I ain’t playing no stolen guitar.”
“Don’t be a wuss. You wanna start a band or what?”
“You guys have to start a band,” Rachel said into my ear. Her breath smelled like cherry gum. Having learned to play the guitar the previous summer, I was wowing everyone with my acoustic. It was easy to impress James, who played not a single note of anything, and Rachel… well, she seemed enthusiastic about everything. James was my new best friend, but stealing a guitar did not sound like a good idea to me. James and his family had just moved into the area, down in the flat of the valley where the homes were less expensive.
“What if whoever got his guitar stolen would have been the next Eddie? I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“How ’bout his loss is our gain?”
I didn’t like it. I was unable to articulate a strong argument but my pathetic look, apparently, won them over.
“What about your parents?” James asked. “Your dad’s rich. Can’t he afford to buy you a Les Paul or something?”
I didn’t know about that. Maybe for my birthday. The bus made the sharp turn off the main boulevard and groaned into gear up the secondary street on which our middle school resided, the proud campus bearing the namesake of the first European to navigate the Pacific Ocean, the Spanish explorer and conquistador having lead a successful slaughter of peaceful native Americans, where now in California most everything public is named after someone from a Spanish speaking country. Some kids had started to sing along with an old Doors song. Rachel joined in.
The time to hesitate is throughI was glad to get off the subject of stealing. We were not criminals. Unlike the world my parents had grown up in, we were modern suburban brats raised on rebellion, but the core values were still in place. You did not steal from your neighbor. I believed it. I also knew that getting caught stealing would not be a good situation to find myself in should my parents become involved.
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on… fii-rrre!
I was standing at my locker when I felt a sting under the seat of my jeans, about the same time I heard the sharp smack that had caused the warm sensation. Her giggle recognized behind me, I ignored the girl I knew who thought she was being funny. There was nothing all that amusing about getting smacked on the behind, not even by a pretty girl with a pretty laugh. I remained facing my locker, the blushes felt on my face and under my pants concealed.
“I need to copy your math assignment,” she said.
“I gotta do it in homeroom.”
Rachel Thomas was cool with that. I knew she was not wanting to be friends just because I was good at math. One morning that winter she had passed me a note in history class. We sat together in the cafeteria the same afternoon, talking up a storm, me mostly listening. We had shared many a school lunch since.
“I’m goin’ to the beach on Saturday. Wanna come?” she asked.
“Yeah, maybe.” I had legitimate hope that my parents would allow it. I was finally considered old enough to go to the beach without parental involvement.
“You gotta. I haven’t been since last summer.” Her voice had turned lower. I turned to see the sober expression on her face, one more thing about Rachel Thomas that charmed me, her tendency to play childlike one moment, then act as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders the next. Rache was a surfer girl, which happened to be my favorite State feature, even better than the weather. I wished they all could be California girls, to steal a line from the Beach Boys. Rachel, who happened to be a girl, wore her hair long and straight, most of it tucked behind her ears, the rest falling down the side of her face in two golden streams. From my locker I grabbed books for my first few classes before the two of us walked to homeroom together.
We found seats at the back of the classroom so we could work on our math assignment. Rachel copied off my paper while the homeroom teacher droned.
“Step it up, Miller,” she whispered close to my ear. “We’ve got ten minutes.” My surfer girl had the nerve to tell me to hurry as I breezed through the algebra.
“You want it fast, or you want it right?”
“Both.”
Rachel was a year older than I, behind a year in school, though not because she lacked the intelligence. My parents questioned her maturity, had grumbled each time it was made known that she had gotten in trouble at school, my mother making the confident claim that Rachel would be far better behaved if she were a member of the Miller family. After having passed me that note in class, I had learned many things about Rachel Thomas. Girls sure liked to talk, and this was a girl to whom I enjoyed listening. I felt good that she wanted my ear and trusted me with her personal stuff. She told me about her dad disappearing before she really knew him and about the issues she had with her mom. I did not talk much about my parents.
Every morning, after the second class period of the day, the students at Balboa were given a short break period. The time could be used for anything that fell within the rules of the school. Typical uses were eating a morning snack, visiting the rest room, catching up on reading or homework, or congregating in groups to socialize. The school was quick to discipline any breaking of the rules, and on any typical day, there was no significant student trouble to speak of.
We were a pack roaming the grounds. Wild teens in their native habitat. A pack of five, out on a sunny spring morning, California mild and with the forecast promising a much warmer weekend. Having sat mindlessly through my first two classes, eager for a break, everything had been shaping up as a typical school day for me. The bell inevitably rang, and I knew where to find my only friends. One of the five was my new best bud and future bass player, James Booth, and joining us on the prowl, Rache and her friend, Tracy, and another boy, Greg Altonelli, a kid I had seen around but did not know well.
“You guys should all come over after school,” laughed Tracy. The pack had slowed, the five of us still headed in a direction taking us away from the general congregations of students on break. “We scored some killer weed,” said Rachel. “Sounds cool.” James was up for it.
Much to my own disgust, I knew I would have to beg off. I was expected home on time after school. Greg did not look like he was going to be able to make it to the party. “You can smoke at home?” he asked. “Where are your parents?”
The girls told him their mothers worked.
“Your moms should be at home.”
The question for Greg was, why?
“For one, taking work away from men.”
Four of us were stopped in our tracks.
“Women need money too, jackass.” Rachel’s stance was righteously indignant. I thought my surfer girl looked striking in her long, thin gray coat and black boots. We were standing in the middle of the corridor where the shop classes were located. The grinding of metal could be heard, perhaps a student working after class on a project. Through grades seven to nine the boys took wood, metal, and electronics. The girls had to take Home Ec, a subject both Rache and Tracy seemed to think was funny.
“You sound like my mom,” I said to Greg Altonelli. Is there a better put-down than saying a boy sounds like your mother?
“You sound like a momma’s BOY,” countered Greg.
“You don’t think women are equal?”
Greg didn’t think so, the sentiment being that men and women are different. One needed to be at home, and that one was not the male, a.k.a Head of Household, Lord O’ the Manor. The female, obliged to motherhood, needed special laws to protect her because of her role raising children. Rache got right in Greg’s face saying a girl could do anything a guy could do, maybe even better.
Greg sneered. “Yeah, I’d like to see you have to fight in the army.” He placed his hands on Rachel’s narrow shoulders and shoved her back, not hard enough to make her fall but, seeing red, I moved towards Greg. Rache was tall for a girl but shorter than Greg and a lot lighter. Tracy reached out to grab my arm, but Greg pushed me and with Tracy stumbling backwards, James grabbed her to break her fall, wanting to join me to go at Greg when a blue-jeaned leg and black boot shot out viciously, an impressive kick and, if she had hit her mark, Altonelli would have had to change his name to Soprano. Rachel missed. She and Greg stood for a moment looking at each other, and then the tense moment dissolved as the two would-be combatants came together wrestling and laughing. Just like that, it was over. Everything was cool, other than me still thinking Greg Altonelli was an ass.
Greg was just a big chicken. That was what I thought after he had taken the small object out of his pocket. Morning break was time about to slip away. There was no good reason the party started on the bus that morning should have to end so quickly. That object held real promise. “Why bring it to school if you’re not gonna use it?” I was trying to sound smarter than Mr. Politics. The consensus of the pack was evident. James thought it was cool. Rache was laughing.
On this spring morning, it was still several months yet until the Fourth of July, the holiday date on which citizens of the United States of America commemorate the birth of their nation, the signing of the Declaration of Independence asserting the break from Mother England. Parades, fairs, carnivals, political speeches, family reunions, and fireworks are a few of the traditional events associated with the celebration. So we were young Americans only wishing to celebrate our independence. Laughing, cursing, our small animated party had made its way to the far north end of campus where several rows of old bungalows sagged no longer in use, an area on campus far less traveled, and as we stood talking by one of the old buildings, we were mostly being ignored by the few stray students passing by on the way to their next classes.
“Maybe I’ll set it off after school.” So Greg was being a little smart. I was not thinking so clearly and with thoughts focused on my surfer girl. I liked the sound of her laugh. If only I could possess it. I was ready to act. There was no time to see that action through to all its possible logical conclusions.
“I’ve got a light,” she said. We were reading each other’s minds. Rachel Thomas pulled a book of matches from a pocket of her long, thin jacket.
I wanted to make a noise. A big noise. A celebration. An announcement of our presence to the world and to declare our independence. I was not thinking about safety or rules, teachers or parents, or a shelf at home on which hard consequences sat flat and forgotten. Greg handed over what looked no more dangerous than a cherry tomato. About thirty yards from where we were standing, set against a wall of one of the retired bungalows at the far end of school grounds, I had my eye on a trash dumpster. It looked just about right for what I had in mind.
“You’re crazy, man.” Greg was right. I was crazy. Crazy cool, and Rache would be impressed. She followed me to the dumpster while our three wiser friends stood at a distance, passive, perhaps more intent on the thrill that was going to be provided than in looking out for members of the pack. I did not look back at my surfer girl or at anything around me for that matter. The time to hesitate was through. No time to wallow in the mire. In the heat of the moment, I struck the small flame that would set into motion an explosive confrontation between modern youth and old-world propriety. The fireworks had only just begun.
If my day was a train, it went off the tracks approaching high noon—either that or the train merely switched tracks as I was being marched on a direct line to the Vice Principal’s office. After tossing the lit explosive into the dumpster, Rache and I had looked at each other as if we could not believe the deed was done and then, as two birds flying in abrupt formation, we ran, behind us the sound of the tiny bomb deafening. We never saw the teacher until she had our arms firmly in grip, one youngster in each hand, one left, one right, and it was not possible to look cool or independent while being no-nonsense marched through campus. Though Mrs. Marchand, the teacher who had nabbed the culprits, never said a word, a bad boy and bad girl knew where they were headed. Inside my head, echoes of the explosion. Dread and embarrassment were mixed in such a cloud the future in front of me appeared as only chaos and confusion.
Two rebellious teens were left with Mr. Jones. The Vice Principal appeared to already know everything that had happened. He was a man I did not much care for, with his crew cut and marine sergeant manner. Mr. Jones was less happy with the delinquent students facing him. I had never been in much trouble with the VP before. My small transgressions as a Balboa student to that point had flown under the radar. Being in real trouble at school was not so much fun, made more evident by the imposing figure seated across the desk, between boy and man the desk name plate underscoring the solemn nature of the man’s position. I was not sure what to expect, was terribly anxious, but aware of my surfer girl seated beside me.
We were in trouble. Mr. Jones was not a patient man and wanted to know our version of everything that had happened, as if the truth was not the very weapon to be used against its confessor. It seemed hopeless. While leaving out anything that would implicate the three friends who had stood by watching, I told the story. I plucked up the courage to say I had brought the cherry bomb to school, and that was not an easy confession. I really did not want to be in any more trouble than I was—and what did I really owe Greg Altonelli, the ass who did not even want women to have their equal rights? Mr. Jones wanted to know what part Rachel Thomas had played in the reprehensible act and why she was running from the scene. She admitted to supplying the matches. She was not afraid of Mr. Jones.
Following the interrogation was a short lecture, words traveling past my ears listening instead for the bottom line—the consequences. I wanted detention. I was hoping for detention and as much as the VP wanted to give. I did not dare ask, but my desperate urge was to plead that parents be kept out of this whole unfortunate mess. Did they really need to know? Would it be better not to bother them? During school hours, the school was supposed to act as the student’s guardian, to take the parental responsibility. I was no lawyer and sat helpless as Mr. Squarejaw picked up the phone on his desk. The call home was made.
After our trip to Mr. Jones’ woodshed, Rache and I found ourselves seated on a bench out in the common area of the office waiting for Mom to pick us up. Because Rachel’s mother was at work, an arrangement had been made whereby my surfer girl would stay at our house for the remainder of the day until she could be picked up by her mother that evening. I was trying to get my head around the idea that I had been suspended from school—for the rest of that day and the next, or until I had been taken downtown, accompanied by a parent, to attend a professional presentation on fire safety. A lecture from the Fire Marshal.
I was not afraid of no Fire Marshall, I whistled to myself as I sat silent beside Rachel in the busy waiting area. I wondered if any of the passing students, teachers, or office staff had any idea where my day was headed. Rache surely had no clue. Nobody could see inside my head or could tell what was going on in the pit of my stomach busy digesting my first school suspension. Time was a ticking bomb. I pictured my mother coming to get me and imagined her disappointment and anger. I thought about Rache. How cool that we had caused such an uproar at school together, surely now the talk of the student body, and yet that already seemed a very small consolation, and it was in a silent car, in the back seat, that two suspended teenagers were ushered away from the contemporary world of Balboa Middle School, to be transported in time and space to what was still an old-fashioned home. The Miller house was not a place you wanted to go after being tossed from school that day as a bad boy in disgrace, a disgrace to his family. Mom’s silence was telling me plenty. There was going to be trouble at home.
No sooner had we stepped into the entryway of the house, Mom was escorting us through the family room and down the hall to my bedroom, explaining briefly we would be confined to the room until Rachel’s mother arrived after work that evening.
“Leave this door open,” my mother instructed. Mom stood at the bedroom door in a crisp, long dress, stockings and heels, formal attire to fetch an irresponsible brat from school. “You two behave yourselves. I’ll bring you some lunch in a little while.”
It felt utterly strange to be waiting in trouble in my room with Rachel. I was at least relieved that there would be no fireworks during her stay.
“Your mom’s okay.” Rachel had no idea. Mom was far too calm. Her manner was spooky.
“It’s warm in here. Where’s the bathroom?” It was just the other side of my door, the bathroom I had to share with my older sister, Katie.
I was finally alone. The posters on the wall were mocking me. Our house had been built with generous bedrooms, but my room felt small. The decor was primarily a baseball motif, echoes of the boy I used to be. Settling in was a feeling that I was trapped. How strange to think that only a short time ago I had been so free. Now school and friends seemed a million miles away. The house should have been quiet, but there was activity going on around me. Beyond my window, concrete was being poured to resurface the small courtyard in front. I could hear the voices of workers passing outside. I could hear water running in the bathroom, the sound tinny and small. My mother’s voice could be heard outside, and then the contractor as they discussed the work being done. I had a nagging paranoia that everyone knew I was in trouble, and worse, knew just what could happen in the Miller home to a very bad boy.
“Does your mom really think we’d do something if the door was closed? Like we’re going to get it on in your room?” Rachel, having returned from the bathroom in better spirits, made herself right at home on my bed. Her jacket was gone and her black boots too. I sat awkward on my desk chair, a few feet in front of me my blonde surfer girl siren in shirt and jeans.
“What do you think your parents will do?” I did not want to answer that question. Some family stuff must be kept strictly in the family. “My mom’s going to be a total bitch about this,” said Rachel.
“What do you think she’ll do?”
“Ground me forever.”
“Really?”
“Whatever.” Rachel sat cross-legged on my bed playing with long strands of gold fallen from her ears. “What about you? You’ve been real quiet.”
“I guess grounded too.”
“You look nervous. Would your parents ever hit you?”
I studied a poster on the wall.
“I was worried. Your dad seems nice and everything, but… I don’t know…a little uptight.”
“My parents… they’re like from the Dark Ages. What about your mom?”
“Well, as you know, she can like lose it. We have to go downtown to that stupid whatever tomorrow, so that sucks. Then being grounded. What more do they want from us? Are you worried your dad’s gonna lose it?”
“He won’t.”
“Sure?”
“He’ll be pissed.”
“What are you scared of then?”
I really did not want to explain. Rache waited, her fingers playing with her toes. The house was so quiet. She said softly, “Come on. If you can’t talk to me, who can you talk to?” I didn’t want her to know if it happened, but then I didn’t want to have to spend the whole day pretending nothing was bothering me.
“My dad won’t hit with like his fists or anything.”
“What then?”
“Sometimes he uses a paddle on us.” Now it felt warm in the room, at least on my face.
Mom brought us milk and cookies. Like we were first-graders. Rachel joked that we were going to have to take naps. My mother, however, brought no news, was not talking about what I had done at school or about “teenagers today”—her typical rant. She was pleasant as if this small unfortunate mistake at school had already been forgotten. Let bygones be bygones. I knew better. Calm and pleasant meant Mom, stoic Midwesterner raised on a farm, had no worry about things getting straightened out soon enough and in traditional manner. Did she already know what was going to happen?
“Now what?” Rache sighed. The clock on my desk claimed now to be only two in the afternoon. Two young teens had little to take their minds off their problems. My mother had forbidden music, so my stereo was useless. A few card games had been played for which we had long since lost interest. A book might have been an entertaining distraction, but who could read at a time like this? This was an afternoon made to contemplate possible consequences for misbehavior. I was seated at one end of my bed, back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of me. Face inches from my thigh, Rachel was on her stomach, studying the weave of my bedspread.
“Let’s just think about this. Was what we did so bad?” She looked up at me with blue eyes, face propped up cheek in hand.
“Suspended from school?” I knew that alone was enough to get me paddled. “What about the cherry bomb? It was all my fault.”
“Who gave you the match? I would have lit it if you didn’t.”
“Really?”
She winked and smiled. I thought Rachel Thomas was the coolest girl around.
It was around three in the afternoon when my siblings started to arrive home from school, just as I should have been arriving on any normal day. How I longed for normality. Chris came in the door in typical high spirits. From the direction of the kitchen we heard the ten-year-old’s high-pitched babbling, regaling Mom with everything about a day at Parker Elementary. Katie arrived shortly after, her footsteps heard coming down the hallway.
“You guys are screwed.” That was my older sister spreading good cheer. She stood at my open door for a few short moments before heading to her room. I was relieved to avoid any further discussion.
“What’s her problem?” Rachel wanted to know.
I shrugged. Rache had a funny look on her face.
“Your sister knows something.”
A little while later, Hannah was in my room. I introduced the new housekeeper to Rachel, and Rachel to the older girl.
“I’m sorry you are in so much trouble.” On Hannah’s face was concern. She studied me gravely. “Are you worried about your punishment?”
I shrugged. My face was feeling very hot. Hannah was not like the other live-in girls who had worked for us. She had adapted quickly, had become a member of the family. She was almost like another big sister.
“Did mom say anything to you?” I had to ask. Did I really want to hear her answer?
“She said something about you skating on thin ice this year at school. I’m not sure I’m supposed to say anything to you, but the punishment will come when your father gets home.”
My heart was racing. Hannah gave me her sad eyes. I was praying she had not actually heard the dreaded word from my mother. I needed all the hope I could get. I knew that the incident at school was going to be discussed by my folks when my father got home from work. A punishment would be decided and agreed upon, and I was praying with all my heart that it wasn’t going to be the ritual. Truth was, my attitude had changed that year, and I knew my parents were aware of it. Was setting off the fireworks at school going to shatter that thin ice beneath me?
The house was quiet. Much too quiet. The long afternoon had finally turned to evening. The workers had left, the contemporary world outside, in both time and space, seemed distant. My heart and stomach did flips when I heard my father’s car pull into the driveway outside my window. I strained to hear any and every word spoken after he entered through the front door. I listened to the footsteps across the hard tile that covered the path across the house that ended at my parents’ bedroom. I could not hear, but they were surely talking about me—and in that room was a shelf on which the dreaded item rested.
Not long after another car was heard outside our window. The doorbell rang, loud and jarring. Rache and I looked at each other with wide eyes, hoping to catch even a glint of premonition about our futures.
“You think I could stay here tonight?”
Something was not right. I could see it in Rachel’s eyes. I could see it in the way she was hugging herself as if trying to contain the heat inside. On the area rug covering the hard floor, she dug restless patterns with her toes. We sat side-by-side on the edge of my bed listening to adult voices, the discussion coming from the direction of the kitchen. I needed to know but did not want to know. The voices floated across the house, words, bubbles having burst before they could be captured.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” No laughs or promises to get together for tea. Whatever it was, it was taking too long and did not sound like anything good to me. There was a scenario playing out in my head, and the reality was coming to echo my thoughts. I heard fate coming before it was headed my way. On tile then wood, I heard the clicks of heels before three parents were marching. Before it was possible, I saw my parents and Mrs. Thomas round the corner and proceed grimly down the hall to my bedroom. When they entered the room, the grave expressions on three parental faces were as I had imagined they would be. My eyes, however, were drawn to my father’s hand, and what I saw was a big bad shock to the system. Regarding my punishment, the item held in that hand was the answer to the question I had been asking myself all afternoon. The worst possible decision had been made. What made no sense was the terrible fact that Rachel was still sitting next to me on my bed in my room.
“You two have some explaining to do.”
I looked at my mother with questioning eyes. Her silent answer turned my eyes to pleading.
“We want to know what on earth you were thinking.” Mrs. Thomas added. The parents stood, arms crossed, towering over their shrinking children.
“Yes, what were you thinking?” said my father. “Look at me.”
As the warmth spread on my face, I did not know what to say to my father, whose voice was level and controlled. The son’s mind was chaos. Dad was still dressed for the office, but with his tie loosened and suit coat off. The right sleeve of his white shirt had already been rolled up to the elbow. Under the seat of my pants, flesh tingled.
“Do you think school is now a place for your personal amusement?”
“No.” I shook my head vigorously.
“What if you’d burned the school down?”
“I’m sorry.” I stumbled for something to say. “Um, I wasn’t thinking. It just happened.”
“You weren’t thinking? Is that your excuse?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so? Well, you’ll think next time.”
“Dad, please, I’m sorry.” I was whining. The boy who had been so daring at school earlier that day was no more.
“I’m not interested in your sorries right now, young man. What you did was reckless and unsafe. You put other kids at risk.”
“I know. I won’t do it again I swear!”
“Do you know what Vice Principal Jones told me?” said my mother. “The entire student body almost had to be evacuated because of the stunt you pulled.” Her voice was as controlled as my father’s. Mom was dressed more formally than to be expected, perhaps to play hostess to Rachel’s mother.
“And what’s your excuse, young lady?”
I turned my head to the new voice scolding, relieved simply to have the spotlight off of myself.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said to her mother. “Can we just go?”
“Don’t you dare take that tone with me.” The tone that came from Mrs. Thomas was that of ice on a pond slowly cracking about to shatter. “And you wipe that look off your face. You have no respect for anything any more.”
“I’m sorry. Can we just go now? Mom? Please?” Rachel crossed her arms over her chest. She sat at the center of time stopped altogether.
“We’ve been far too lenient with you lately,” said my Mom. The spotlight was back on me.
“Mom, I’ll change. I know what I did was wrong.”
“There are going to be changes, alright, young man. They’re going to start this evening with a spanking.”
The silence was deafening this time, a dreadful void that filled the room to bursting, poured out and flooded the house drowning all who might be listening. In that silence the echo of a word I did not want to believe I had heard spoken aloud.
“Let’s go,” Mrs. Thomas had Rachel by the arm, and they were leaving. It was a giant relief to see them go. If only it had been a few moments earlier.
Rachel was on her way home, as far as I know to be shouted at, possibly smacked around a bit by her overbearing mother and grounded for a month. Right then I only cared about myself. I had a spanking coming.
“Please, Dad,” I begged.
“Get undressed,” my father said in the voice that allowed no argument.
I was trembling and my hands were shaking as I unbuttoned by pants. My heart knew I was trapped and was knocking at my chest. I hated this ritual. I hated my father’s paddle. It was small like a firecracker. Everyone in the house prayed it would remain on the shelf where it belonged. I was wishing I had never seen that miserable firecracker at school, and any high ideas I had held that this evening was not going to be my worst nightmare had come crashing to earth unable to fly in the face of what I was facing.
I stripped down to my underpants. Dad grabbed my arm and we were headed out the bedroom door. The teenager in trouble was led down the hall, through the kitchen and into the living room, his dazed expression indicating shock at what was transpiring. Mom and Hannah were following us after having shown Rachel and her Mom out the front door. They took seats on two of the upholstered chairs facing the couch on which that boy was going to get his spanking with Daddy’s paddle.
It is difficult to imagine that boy was me. I was not really me as it was happening. The conscious mind, and much of what is described as self-awareness, kind of checks out of the picture during traumatic experiences. I would later try to make sense of why Hannah was where she was. She was an adult. Adults in the house were generally present for a child’s punishment. The 18-year-old girl whose responsibilities often included taking care of us kids, a young woman considered a close part of the family, had been asked to take part in the ritual. One of the Miller kids was being disciplined, and that was a family matter. It’s still crazy, but I was just a kid in shock. A kid covered by only a small pair of white cotton underpants.
With maddening calm, as if I were a fevered child about to have his temperature taken, Dad took a seat on the couch and set about arranging and smoothing the trousers covering his lap. He was seated on one of two long sectionals arranged in an L-shape to define the formal area of the living room, a room established more for its decor than for everyday living. Though our large home was generous of floor space, my siblings and I often complained that “Mom’s show room” was wasted space kept up only for appearances, and as a first impression seen from the front entryway, there was sense in the notion that the living room could be a focal point to express clean and modern living. This evening, the room was indeed going to be for show. Our living room was where old-world demonstrations were given on how the Miller kids were raised. I certainly wanted no one to be seeing. My thoughts took a turn for the worse when my father asked me to drop my underpants.
“Dad, please, I’m too old for this.” I had never dared use that argument before. It had been well established in the past that, in the Miller family, I was not too old.
“If you two had acted your age today, you wouldn’t be in this trouble now,” Mom said from her seat next to Hannah.
Pure and simple logic, and I had been trained well, with an understanding that when my father decided something was going to happen, there was nothing to be gained in daring to challenge that authority. Inside my head swirled a frantic rebellion as I prepared to push down my underpants, keeping my back to Mom and Hannah. This is another part of a spanking I always took for granted. We got it bare. I never knew any other way and simply accepted that this was how spankings had to be received.
What did I look like that evening? I’ve thought of that many times. A slender adolescent boy only just beginning to look like a man. My bottom was tight, smooth and pale. Another thing I’ve thought about many times is what my penis might have looked like. I have vague memories that the fear of an imminent spanking with the wooden paddle gave me an erection. Such were those panicky moments around corporal punishment that memory is punctured full of holes, consciousness is distorted. I believe that was the effect on my cock, at least after puberty. I have a memory of sitting on the edge of my bed knowing my dad was coming with the paddle, my penis stiff and my spank spots tingling. There was nothing consciously erotic about it at all, just an involuntary body reaction to the circumstances buried well under my awareness and overwhelming concern about the punishment I was about to be getting.
It was truly a nightmare, my dignity running out of reach as I grasped to lower my underpants. In the same direction as my stomach dropped, they slipped to puddle at my feet. With only my parents in the room, it had always been awkward to be so exposed. This was light-years beyond awkward.
“I can tell you, son, you are very lucky that no fire resulted from your irresponsible act.”
He might have said exactly that. I would have barely understood what my father was saying.
“Let’s go. You need a lickin’.”
I was only reacting. In times of emotional distress, the mind really can shut down, the body taking over. My young body went to assume the position, face-down over Daddy’s knee, the ultimate position to demonstrate parent and child. I don’t remember as a boy using the word “Daddy” to describe or address my father. It is the word that just fits best when it comes to my spankings. Those deeply embarrassing spankings. My upturned bare behind clenched in anticipation. Who said no fire would result from my irresponsible act?
“I’ll never do it again, I swear.” Is that what I said, or was I capable of mouthing anything intelligible?
“I know you’re not going to do it again.” That was my father’s standard response. He spanked to modify behavior, and my rebellion that day was to be put down by superior forces.
It was amazing how badly the first lick of the paddle could sting. Then two, then three, then four. I screamed each number in my head. How long did I last before I was just screaming? My body with a mind of its own could only writhe in pain.
I was getting a red-hot spanking with the paddle on the bare skin across my lower behind. That was not something I could ever take without a tantrum. It just was not possible to be stoic no matter how badly I would have wished to spare my dignity. If you had ever held this paddle in your hand, and I did many times when no one was looking, I think you would have been very impressed with its potential. It was compact, thin, short, and very hard, a smooth rounded rectangle of flat potent authority. Upon picking it up your first thought might have been that it is heavier than it looks. That’s because the wood was super dense, making the thin blade more dangerous. It wasn’t dangerous in my father’s responsible hand, but it was relentless and merciless on the surface of my Southern regions. I can still hear the sharp cracking sound it made on firm naked flesh, as I had heard whenever one of my siblings got a spanking. The crack of the paddle always impressed itself on my mind, the sound of wasp-sting and blister-burn and with all the hollering and crying that went along with it, the assurance that someone was truly learning their lesson with an old-fashioned dose of seat-pants discipline. That paddle could have warmed the seat of anyone’s jeans to have them hopping. I was getting my licking bare.
The spanking I got with the shingle in the shed describes what this spanking was like. When Daddy punished, he didn’t vary his technique. To repeat, every lick from the first one was like a burn. All were across the cheeks on the bottom of my bottom. It only got harder and harder to take as the punishment was repeated, every spank across the same burning spots. Hannah saw a very bad boy, suspended from school that day, getting every last lick of his comeuppance. I squirmed and kicked like a fish out of water. I was allowed to cry, and holler, and plead all I wanted, but the spanking lasted until my father decided it was finished.
It was such relief to have it over. I don’t remember ever worrying that once it stopped, dad wasn’t through. That was how he spanked. He knew how much to administer and simply completed the task, unlike adult spanking as I know it. When he was done, I got up and grabbed low on my behind where he had set two matching fires. Under my palms the flesh was blazing, and in those overwhelming moments my feet danced to the throb instilled with the paddle. I’ve tried to imagine a thousand times what Hannah saw. As a boy those thoughts were pure pain as I tried to assess the depth of my humiliation in her eyes. As time passed, the thoughts were more like a wound healing that felt good to pick at. In fantasy my shame became an erotic offering to the attractive and sweet older girl under whose feet I would have gladly served. I wanted to imagine that Hannah enjoyed the spectacle of my school suspension spanking, that she played it over and over in her mind as she lay in her bed that night, my suffer by fire, my profound humility a sacrifice for her sweet pleasure.
The simple but devastating ritual ended with being sent to the bathroom to get ready for early bed. When I got out of the shower, Katie was standing in the open doorway with her arms crossed and with an odd smile on her face.
“Turn around. Let’s see.”
I gasped and covered my front. This was payback. The last time my older sister had gotten a spanking, I had “accidentally” gone into the bathroom when she was brushing her teeth before bed. I quickly excused myself and retreated out the door, but I got an eyeful of her naked with a red bottom. I had wanted to see what her spanking looked like, and that momentary image is burned in my memory forever. Katie was pissed about it for days, and I could understand why she didn’t want her little brother seeing her that way.
I was embarrassed beyond belief, but turned to show my bottom to my sister just hoping she would leave immediately.
“Yep, you sure got it alright.” She snorted and left me alone to my misery.
I had seen my siblings spanked bottoms a few times before when we were younger. Mom was much less predictable, but when Dad spanked, we all had the same result. I twisted to look in the mirror again to see what my sister had seen. Out of the shower, so soon after the licking, it looked like I had been stripped naked and dipped in paint. The rounded shape of my lower bottom was highlighted fiercely in cherry and crimson. By the time I got up the next morning, there would be two matching plums on two spots on which I would have to be sitting. I saw those marks several times on my siblings over the years. They were the signature of a paddle-lickin’ from Daddy.
It was the middle of next morning, and the world had changed. A marine layer had come in off the ocean turning everything to gray. My mother was having to assume the role of chauffeur again, decked out for another formal occasion. Up front she steered the Cadillac on shiny black streets. In the back seat, two teenagers were dressed on a school day in their Sunday best, skirt and blazer for her, jacket and trousers for him. Neither had much to say. All the tension in the car that had accompanied us on our ride home from school the previous day had dissipated. We were going to see the Fire Marshal, and it seemed to me we would arrive there floating in a balloon.
The car was a cocoon. It enveloped us, a protective covering against the city we watched passing by our wet spattered windows. I had a recurring sense that I was younger than I had been the day before. Rachel seemed smaller, her powers limited to that of an ordinary schoolgirl. I turned briefly to catch her profile, not to catch her eye. Her golden hair was tied up in a ponytail, pretty face scrubbed clean. I was pinned to the seat, my heart the anchor.
I caught my mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Was it a look of satisfaction? Two young faces in the backseat must have suggested defeat—two rebels had not lost the war, but from the battle, were in full retreat. On me the previous evening had certainly left its mark, emotionally and physically. As the two of us stared out our respective windows at the freeway traffic, we did not want to talk about the power of spanking. No way I wanted to talk about it. Rachel had asked how I was, and it was written on her face that she knew too much about my punishment for our crime. It must have been written on my face, as well. I shifted again in my seat, an adjustment I had performed several times when my tender seat tingled. There was nothing abstract about my punishment, and I was not being taken to my fire safety classes as a victim, but rather as a child who had been managed under strict parental authority. That was the old-world philosophy I had been obliged to accept. We would have to sit through several films and lectures that afternoon on chairs unsympathetic, though I doubt Rachel was as uncomfortable as I, a boy being reminded that he was not yet independent. That the rebellion was at least temporarily over. When we returned to school the next day, we were a different boy and girl.
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