A BETRAYAL AND SOME BITTERSWEET REVENGE
There is no pain worse than that of being betrayed by someone whom you trust implicitly and it is even worse when you worship that person with the blind, uncritical adoration which only the very young and not-yet-disillusioned can give to their idols; by the same token, though, the taste of vengeance is all the more sweet when it is comes to you on a plate, via a third person and without your being directly responsible for its occurrance.
I was about five years old when my family moved to a smallholding close to, but clear of, town, where my hard-working father intended to make our fortune by growing, of all things, Ginger. (He actually did quite well, but that is another story.)
On the adjoining plot lived a boy called Kenny, who was about four years older than me, but being, I think, rather lonely, as he had to run their small dairy almost single-handed, starting at about 4 a. m. and often not finishing everything, including his homework, until after 9 at night, he took some quite flattering notice of the shy, timid little boy next door and was, over the years, very good for me, teaching me how to ride his [far too big] bike, to roller skate, to swim, stark naked and, at first, very bashful, in their round concrete dam, to overcome my terror of heights so as to be able to whizz down the 'foofy-slide' which he had made from high up in a big Bluegum tree to the far side of the same dam, the fun being in letting go in time to fall into the water with a glorious splash and, finally and best of all, when he was about 13 to my nearly 9, how to 'toss off', the object of THAT exercise probably being so that I could 'do it' to/for HIM, as the results which I, personally, was capable of achieving at that age, were minimal.
I thought that the Sun, Moon and Stars all rose and set somewhere about Kenny's, to me very big and strong, person; he was tough and aggressive and protected me [and his own little brothers and sisters] against all the local bullies and I accepted some of the strange things he did, even when I KNEW they were wrong, simply because HE was doing them.
As everything he had ever got me into and, especially our [very secret] wanking sessions, had always been just as pleasant and as much fun as he had told me they would be, I happily agreed when he wanted to put some clear, although pungent, oil on my scrotum one afternoon, telling me that it would give me a 'lovely warm tickle' and would 'make me shoot' just like he always did when I tossed him off.
He then set about rubbing the oil quite vigorously into both my soft, wrinkled ball-bag and, 'accidently' also on my tiny _c_o_c_k_, which, responded eagerly to his touch, rearing up to its full three inches and in the process, skinning itself so as to expose its smooth, pale purple knob and quivering in the hope that he would carry on rubbing it, which didn't happen, as it was my job to DO and not to receive any stroking that might be available. For a little while the sensations were all he had said they would be, but then, however, all hell broke loose.
The liquid, which was, of course, neat Oil of Wintergreen, had soaked into my tender, pre-adolescent skin and ignited a furnace in my loins which made me sure that I was being fried alive down there and which caused me to pray for death, in between screams of pure agony, with a fervour which frightens me to this day.
And the worst part was that, when I looked up from my minute, bright red, shrivelled-to-nothing little _c_o_c_k_ and balls, I could see by his face that he had known all along that this would happen to me and had fully intended me to suffer as I was doing. So my scream was caused more by rage and disappointment than by the pain of the fire which was still heating-up in my scalded genitals.
Kenny, to do him justice, tried, once he had observed the success of his experiment, to douse the 'flames' by pouring a bucket of dam water over my blazing crotch, but the shock of the cold water on scorched skin merely seemed to intensify the pain and I screamed even more lustily than before.
I don't know what the outcome would have been if matters had taken their normal course, but Kenny had no way of knowing that his father had come home early to innoculate one of the heifers and was on his way to the dairy when I started to scream. Well accustomed to the noises that little boys often make when at play, he at first paid no attention to those I was producing, but when they continued, he veered over towards the dam, just to make certain that all was well. He probably took the entire situation in at a glance and realised that no real harm had been done, but there was, it seemed, an undercurrent between father and son which put the incident in a far more serious light and led to my being treated to some instant and extremely satisfying, vengeance on my tormentor, whom I could happily have watched being boiled in oil at that moment.
Quietly, almost sadly, Kenny was asked if he did not think that what he had done to me was just as bad as pulling the wings off flies or the legs off crickets and when, having made a careful study of his bare toes without obtaining a satisfactory answer from them, Kenny ad- mitted that it was, the big man simply said that, in that case, they both knew what had to happen next.
Ignoring me totally for the moment, my avenger walked over to a nearby fruit tree, whether plum or quince I am not sure and from it cut a straight, slender shoot, as long as his arm and tapering to about as thick as the tip of my little finger. This he carefully stripped of all its leaves and small twigs and then, without another word, gently but firmly propelled the obviously terrified Kenny towards a drinking trough next to the dam, making him bend over it and then telling him to hang on to the sides and not let go.
We had come down to the dam wearing nothing but our skimpy football shorts, as clothing was unnecessary for any of the activities which either of us had in mind. I was, of course, naked when Kenny's dad had arrived, but Kenny was still in his shorts, a situation which was changed by means of a deft tug at their elastic waistband, which pulled the garment down to his knees, at once baring his pale, but, I noticed, faintly striped, bottom and effectively hobbling his lower limbs.
Then bent, bare-tailed, over the trough, Kenny braced himself while his father retrieved his stick, laid it lightly across the quivering, goose-bumped buttocks, raised it and brought it down with a high-pitched whistle to land, with a resounding snap, squarely across the middle of both creamy cheeks, denting the taut flesh sharply and, on being lifted, leaving a double-lined, chalky stripe, which rapidly filled, under the skin, with blood and swelled, as I watched with a mixture of delight and horror, into a finger-thick welt, several inches long, on each cheek.
Then, steadily and relentlessly, Kenny's naked bottom was whipped from hip to thigh. I have no idea how many cuts he received, but judged them to be both satisfyingly noisy and a good deal harder than any I had ever had. I had been spanked many times in my short life, more than once on my bare bum, and I had accepted as axiomatic that hidings were always given over the adult's lap, which was, in all conscience, bad enough. That day, however, I received my first lessons in both relativity and the real world, as I noticed, fascinated and delighted, how small and helpless the body that I had always regarded as the epitome of strength, looked, with that big, stick-wielding man standing over it and also how much more bite it was possible to put into a hiding when the hitter was standing clear of his victim and could use more than just his arm to give power to the strokes.
I almost forgot the smarting burn which was still radiating from my tortured bits and pieces, in the sheer pleasure of watching Kenny's bare tail being progressively covered with an intricate pattern of criss-crossing white stripes, which quickly turned first pale and then dark pink, before becoming bright red welts which seemed to leap out of the smooth white skin as if each had a life all of its own.
This was no artistic, copy-book caning, leaving bare buttocks marked with a classic 'five-barred gate', but a vigorous, almost random, father-to-son hiding, aimed at tanning a naughty boy's bare tail thoroughly and leaving it unfit for sitting purposes for a while, but without doing it any serious damage. I could see that blood had been drawn in a couple of places,, where stripes intersected, but Kenny's bare bum, while well lathered and very red and sore looking, survived the ordeal with a virtually whole, if extremely tender, skin.
Long befire the thrashing was over, the taut bare rump which was bent over in front of me was equally red and, I hoped, just as painful, as my own smarting _c_o_c_k_ and balls still were. Kenny did, however, take his hiding far more stoically than I had borne my ordeal and stayed in position over the trough, hanging grimly on to its edges, although yelping lustily now and then as the pliant stick slashed again and again on to, rather than into, his naked backside.
In retrospect, I an sure that his father actually beat him far more mildly than he could have and that what he received was more of a sound spanking with a stick than a 'real' thrashing. Be that as it may, the operation was, to me, both visually and audially a very satisfying one, which eventually reduced Kenny to tears and gave me a really big thrill and a sense of vicarious power.
Then, suddenly, the hiding was over, the somewhat frayed stick thrown down and attention was being paid to me. I was asked, solicituously, if I was all right, to which I replied that I was. The blazing heat had not yet started to abate, and it felt as though my _c_o_c_k_ and balls had been burnt off my body, but I couldn't very well tell a virtual stranger that I was sure that what was left would never be able to wee, let alone get stiff, again, could I?
So, a few minutes later, I was left alone with an angry and probably very sore, Kenny, whose bright red and quite spectacularly striped and ridged tail and rock hard, upright _c_o_c_k_ were crying out for my sympathy and attention, but who acted as if I wasn't there at all, simply retrieving his pants once he had got the sting in his bum under control and walking off, still naked, towards their house.
I had a swim to try to cool my equipment off, but it wasn't much fun alone and before long I was trudging home, with bare, muddy toes trailing in the dust and my recent triumphant vengeance overshadowed by the bitter taste of lonliness.
This was made even worse when, slightly later on, the burning sting 'down there' changed into a warm glow which was just as nice as Kenny had said it would be and, from being sure that I would never again be able to 'get' what I knew from Kenny was called 'the bone', I began to doubt whether mine would ever subside, especially once it had survived three toss-offs, the first two rather cautious, but the third, in as many hours, 'flat out', without any apparent loss of rigidity, but also, I noticed with disappointment, without any sign of the promised 'shoot'.
I must have drifted into an exhausted sleep, because I woke next morning with my usual stiff _c_o_c_k_, which softened quite normally following on my customary dash for the toilet and made me wonder whether I had not made a lot of fuss about nothing and been a real baby who was not even worthy of Kenny's friendship.
The next ten days or so were rather strained, with Kenny ignoring me pointedly on the school bus and sitting as far away from me as he could. He didn't even come to my assistance one day when some other boys began to bully me, but I had learned enough dirty tricks from him by then to enable me to vent my childish fury on them so vocally and violently that they left me alone and went looking for a softer target; however, my efforts brought no word of praise or congratula- tion from Kenny and I had begun to reconcile myself to having thrown away the best friendship I had ever had, when, out of the blue, I received an almost apologetic, diffident invitation to come over for a swim 'if I liked'.
Be sure that I DID 'like' and one thing led to another, the upshot being that I gave Kenny what he later said had been the best 'toss' of his life, making him shoot clean over his head as he lay on his back across the same trough that had supported him, other side up, for that hiding. However, things were never quite the same after that, as I just couldn't ever bring myself to really trust Kenny again and we gradually drifted apart, which might have happened any way, once he went off to High School.
We never quarrelled or became bad friends and are always pleased to see each other when we meet, but the old spark didn't revive and I still take a certain sadistic pleasure in remembering how much I had enjoyed watching my first bare-bum thrashing and a definite delight in recall- ing the crack of hard wood landing over and over again on the big boy's naked haunches, so it seems to me that any serious act of betrayal leaves a scar which simply doesn't heal and that vengeance can really be sweet.