I was now beginning my senior year at the military college, and it was a tradition of the school for seniors to use the first two weeks to make sure that all newly-arrived freshmen knew their place and respected the upper classmen. Needless to say, it was two weeks of fun for us seniors, but a horrible time for the freshmen. I know this because I had gone through those weeks of hazing only three years earlier.
A few freshmen found the two weeks of hazing so traumatic, of course, that they transferred to other schools and gave up their dreams of having military careers. But most of them survived and, though they may have had a few bad dreams thereafter, proved to be bold and courageous soldiers when they enlisted in the military services after graduation. The roles of honor for the college included many famous heroes of America's wars. But that is another story. I am here just describing the activities of the hazing season.
The orientation for new students included a lecture by one of the seniors on the do's and don'ts involved in their first year. He told the freshmen that military life was not easy and that they would experience some of its difficulties during the first days at school. He also told them that they should consider all seniors to be of higher rank than any of them, even when a senior had only the rank of a private. He also told them that they would need salute all seniors throughout the year and call them Sir at all times. And he further told them that they would have to follow the orders of any senior to the letter, keep their rooms neat, and be particularly careful to keep their shoes and rifles clean. (All students were issued rifles when they came to the school. These weapons were fixed so that they could never be fired, but they were used in drill practice and for purposes of making the school appear as a military establishment.) The freshmen were told that lights out came at 10:30 sharp, and that they would need to complete their homework by that time or put it away until morning.
All students, freshmen as well as those in the upper classes, slept two to a room in the dormitories. The rooms were small, allowing only enough furniture for two beds and two desks. We each had our own closet built into the wall. It was our only storage space.
With orientation over, the rest of the first day was free time. Classes would begin the next day. The seniors took the opportunity to renew acquaintances with old classmates, arrange their rooms, and do whatever else pleased them.
Most of the freshmen used the free day to wander the building and grounds, acquainting themselves with the school. After supper most of them sat in their rooms getting to know their new roommates and discussing their dreams for a future military life. At 10:30 the bugle sounded taps to remind them that it was time for lights out.
We seniors waited until at least 11 before we descended, in mass, on the freshmen in their rooms. We hoped that most of them would be asleep when we entered, turning on their lights and shouting for them to get out of bed immediately and stand at attention. We worked in pairs, each senior pair going into one of the freshmen rooms.
Most of the freshmen appeared groggy because they were either already asleep or about to become so. They were confused by the shouting and sudden turning on of lights, and they moved clumsily into position. They then stood at attention while we inspected their shoes and closets.
One of the two young men in the room I was inspecting had scuffed shoes. So I immediately ordered him to take off his pajamas and step out into the hallway. There he had to stand with his face to the wall until further notice. I could see that some of the other young men from other rooms were already in that position waiting in the hall. All were visibly nervous.
By the time the inspection was over, we had corralled seventeen freshmen, fourteen of them for having dirty shoes and the rest for having a messy closets.
We marched the naked group down the hall to the row of rooms we seniors occupied. There we instructed them to again stand facing the hall wall while we took one of them at a time into one of the senior rooms.
As each freshman entered, we closed the door behind him and ordered him to bend over and grab his ankles. We then took turns lecturing each one on the error of not having their shoes shined (or in the three other cases, having messy closets). Then one of the seniors would begin to whollop the bent over lad with a two-foot long, five-inch wide paddle. There was never a set number of strokes. We generally paddled each freshmen until his tears began to flow, or if one of them was particularly brave, until his backside was so red we knew he would be sore for at least the next twenty-four hours.
We would then order each miserable youth back into the hall to stand facing the wall, and the next miscreant would be ushered into the senior room. During the whole time one of the seniors would stand guard in the hall to make sure that the bare-bottomed boys remained in position and did not communicate with one another.
When it became my turn to discipline one of the freshman that night, I found my victim to be a tall blond of athletic build, probably a football player in high school. The two orbs that extended into the air awaiting punishment were quite muscular and white. I landed the paddle with as much force as I could muster. It made quite a loud sound as it made contacted his buns, but nowhere near as loud as the scream that sprang from his lips.
I doubt that he had ever been spanked before because he wilted quickly. It didn't take many more of my paddle whacks to reduce this athletic lad to a whimpering mass of tears. I gave him only a few extra whacks before sending him out into the hall again, still weeping.
The purpose of this exercise was humiliate each freshman and turn him into an easily malleable subject. When that point was reached, we knew the young man would need no further chastisement in order to be willing to do whatever we or their instructors commanded. Good soldiers, sailors, and marines are disciplined to obey orders. They do not act independently. The idea of thinking soldier or sailor is something found only on recruiting posters.
After the shock of this first night we didn't have to conduct another such inspection of the freshmen rooms. We knew the shoes and lockers would be in strict order every night before 10:30. For this reason we had to devise other ventures in hazing for the young men who had not yet been punished and the ones who seemed to take their spankings without enough emotion.
One of these hazing ploys was the application of excessive exercise. We would secretly select certain students for such exercises and then have some of the seniors observe them closely on the parade field and in their gym classes to estimate their exercise potential. Then, again after lights out, we would enter the rooms of those young men, turn on the lights, and make them stand at attention.
Next we would order the selected ones to go down to the gymnasium dressing room for some exercise. Again, one by one, we would order each young man into the gym and perform a specified number of push-ups, sit-ups, or pull-ups. The number was always higher than we knew they could achieve, and when they were thoroughly fagged out and panting we would order them to take off their pajamas and bend over to clasp their ankles. Then, for us, the fun began as we turned their white cheeks first into masses of red blotches and then into fiery red mounds.
The sooner a lad broke down and began sobbing, the sooner we would stop the punishment, although none of them realized this. Most of them tried to put up a brave front and those that succeeded became targets, of course, for another night raid.
One of the young men, an intellectual type with little stamina on the playing field, was selected to run around the athletic field two times. And because it was dark out, we turned on the flood lights so that everyone in the dormitories could see him clearly through the windows. We made sure that he was wearing nothing but his gym shoes before he began the run. You can imagine the laughter and rude remarks that soon poured out from the windows of the sophomore, junior, senior rooms as the young man started out on his rounds. The lad could not run very fast and was so exposed in the floodlights that every part of his anatomy was open to the verbal abuse.
By the time he completed the two circuits he was completely humiliated and very tired. We then took him back into the gym and pounded his ass for not completing the run in the time allotted. He pleaded with us to stop beating him, and he offered to do the run again on another night so that he could make better time. But we didn't put down the paddle until he was crying like a baby.
Another hazing game we played, one that we learned from friends who had been through the army's basic training, was that of digging holes in the yard. We would take one or two freshmen in their pajamas out to one end of the athletic field under the flood lights, give them shovels, and tell them to dig holes for some particular purpose we specified. We pointed out that the holes must be one foot around and one foot deep. Of course we provided them with no measuring device and so they had to estimate the right size. At night, tired and confused, such estimates are invariably wrong.
After they said the job was done, we produced a ruler to measure the holes and show them how far off the mark they were. Most of them immediately offered to work some more so that the job would be done right. But, to confuse and humiliate them, we then told them we would have to get a more responsible person to do the job and that they were to fill their holes back up again. We then ushered them back into the gym to take their beatings for doing such a poor job, bare assed as always, until they broke down in tears.
A variation on this game that we invented was the process of furniture moving. We ordered two selected freshmen to rearrange the furniture in one of our rooms according to some designated plan, saying that we didn't like the present arrangement and wanted to change it. For example, they were told to reverse the position of the beds and tables, move all the personal belongings from one closet to the other and vice versa. They had to do this in a set amount of time. Then, when the job was completed, we told them that we didn't really like the new arrangement very much and that they should put the room back the way it was.
Needless to say, it is almost impossible to remember the exact original position of every item in such a moving program. So, when they were done, we pointed out to them which books on the desk were now out of order, which shirts were hung in the wrong spot, etc. Their errors in this event obviously merited the blazing paddle on their exposed posteriors.
Some of the procedures we used were not much to my liking, but they did prove effective in reducing all of the braver and more determined young men into fully humiliated and pliable subjects.
One of these we called the toilet treatment because it took place in the lavatory. After lights out, some of us went to the room where a designated freshman was hopefully already asleep and snapped on the lights with the demand that the roommates jump to attention. We then ordered the selected one to disrobe and march to the bathroom. There we told him to kneel in front of one of the toilets. The hazing worked best if we found and used one of them that was not properly flushed. The victim, of course, assumed we were going to force his head down into the toilet bowl and then flush it. So he would try his best to resist kneeling, and we had to hold him and force him to his knees in front of it. He did everything he could to keep his head from being placed over the toilet bowl and pleaded with us not to push him in. He yelled and wiggled around to keep his head away. But we were many and he just one, and so we were soon able to get him in the right position. We even forced his head down so that his nose was only about an inch above the water line.
But it was not our intention to stick his head further into the toilet. Instead, we held him in that position and ordered him to sing the first two verses of the Star Spangled Banner, still in that bent-over position. The song has four verses, but no one knows more than the first and so it was inevitable that the freshman would fail badly before the exercise ended. Still bending over the bowl, we would whip the young man because he could not remember the words to our national anthem. The humiliation and pain of this gambit was almost always effective in breaking the spirit over-courageous lads. We used the same toilet that night on about ten of the freshmen.
Another somewhat questionable hazing game that we sometimes played was to force a quite nervous young man to play with himself while five of us seniors watched his every move. We would enter his room, usually later in the night than usual so that we could be sure the object of our raid was fully asleep. Then, when he was standing at attention, we would pull down his pajama pants and tell him to step out of them. We would leave his roommate still standing at attention and wondering what might happen next.
"Jack off, you prick," the senior in charge on the night that I participated in this event said to the freshman standing without any pajama bottoms. The young man in this case was relatively small, about five foot five in height, and wiry. He had dark hair and a sunburned complexion, probably produced by much sunning on the beach during the past summer.
"What do you mean, sir," he answered with a quiver in his voice.
"Masturbate. Play with yourself. Do it now, no matter what you call it." the senior in charge demanded.
"But I don't do that sort of thing, sir," the freshman protested.
"Better start immediately, or I'll beat you for lying," was the senior's retort.
The freshman began nervously to rub his penis and pull on it with his two hands. But masturbation in public is always difficult even in the best of circumstances. It is a private act that is usually done under the covers or in a closed bathroom. For the most part it needs to be hidden to be enjoyable. And here were six persons, five seniors and his roommate, looking at his struggle to force his organ to act on command.
"Think of a naked woman if you can't make it expand," said the senior to the gyrating youth. "Hurry up. If you were in battle and I ordered you to shoot a cannon, you wouldn't take so long. If you did, the enemy would be all over you before the cannon ball had time to leave the barrel."
The young man, obviously very upset, continued to try to force his organ to respond, but it only grew a little stiff.
"You must be a fairy," said the senior, and we all laughed.
"No, sir. Never," he said, his face having become quite crimson with shame.
The effect of this remark on the lad was so telling that the senior decided to push his point further. He turned to the roommate, still standing at attention, and ordered him to drop his pajama bottoms and bend over. The youth shook as he did so, expecting to receive some punishment on his backside the way he had several nights before. But, instead, the senior ordered him to move to a position in front of the struggling freshman so that his upraised buttocks were only a few inches from the would-be ejaculator's face.
"There," the senior said, addressing the young man who was vigorously trying to get some action out of his _s_e_x_ organ. "Now maybe you will become more excited when you look at your roommate's asshole, you faggot."
The abuse continued until finally the miserable young man was able to ejaculate, leaving a puddle on the floor in front of him. At this point he was told to lie on his bed. The other freshman was then told to rise from his bent-over position and wipe up the mess on the floor with the pajama bottoms of the boy who had just ejaculated.
Next we four seniors took positions at the corners of the bed and each held one of the young man's feet and wrists so that he was well restrained. He was lying on his back, and the two who had hold of his legs pulled them out and upward to expose his inner thighs to a ruler that the lead senior had taken from one of the desks. The senior then began to apply the ruler with some force to the lads inner thigh. It must have hurt like hell because the boy screamed as he had not at any of the punishment sessions he had experienced earlier in the week.
"Enough," said the senior as he laid down the ruler. "Turn him over on his stomach." The young man tried to struggle out of our grasp, but we were holding him too tightly. He now lay face down with his rear exposed to a strap that the lead senior had been hiding up his sleeve. The senior laid this on with vigor, producing welts with each stroke.
The young man was already so humiliated by his treatment that night, and his inner thighs were so sore, that it didn't take long to drive him into almost incessant sobbing. At that point the whipping stopped and the four of us released his arms and legs. He almost immediately curled up into a fetal position and continued to cry.
"Help him put on his pajama bottoms," the lead senior said to the roommate, who hastened to comply. The bottoms were wet from the victim's semen, but the punished one obviously didn't notice, his rear and thighs were so sore.
When we left the room, we could see that the roommate was trying to comfort the sobbing young man on the bed. We seniors were convinced that this lad would now make a brave soldier someday. After all, the best race horses are the ones that are the hardest to break in and train.
One final form of hazing needs to be mentioned, although it was only used on one freshman that year and I didn't actually witness the event. According to my informants, they entered the room of the freshman about midnight. He was clearly asleep when they turned on the lights because he acted so confused as he rose from the bed to stand at attention. His roommate snapped into position much more quickly.
The seniors left the roommate standing at attention while they dealt with their intended victim. They told the young man to take off his pajamas and get down on the floor on all fours. Then they placed a dog collar around his neck and led him by a chain attached to the collar out into the hallway. There they told him to begin barking like a dog as they led him, crawling, down the hallway and back several times.
Next the seniors led him back into his room and began to question him about the behavior of dogs. They asked him how one dog recognized another one. His answer, of course, was that the dogs recognized the smell of the other beast.
"What smell?" they asked pushing the question further.
"The smell of his behind, sir," the nervous young man on the floor responded.
"We ought to blindfold you and make you smell the assholes of the other freshmen to see if you are a good dog and can identify each one," one of the seniors said.
The freshman just groaned at this suggestion.
"Do dogs ever lick the bottoms of other dogs?" another senior asked.
The youth didn't have any idea how to respond to this question and so said, "I don't know, sir."
"Some do," the senior replied. "I wonder if you are willing to be a good dog."
At this point the seniors ordered the roommate, still at attention, to drop his pajama bottoms, bend over, and pull his ass cheeks back to expose his lengthy crack. "Now," they said to the one being treated as a dog, "lick your roommate's crack so that we can see what kind of dog you are."
"No, I won't do that, sir," said the terrified youth on the floor.
"That's an order," said the senior thrusting the paddle he was holding in the young man's face.
In great despair the young man moved toward the exposed crack of his roommate. Gingerly he began to lick it from top to bottom.
"Put more effort into it," demanded the senior. "And don't forget to get your tongue as far as possible up his asshole."
The suffering youth did as he was told, praying all the time that the harassment would soon end. His roommate was just as anxious for the process to cease, as he was experiencing sensations that he knew nothing about and his _s_e_x_ organ was beginning to respond. Fear gripped him as he wondered what the seniors would do to him when he stood up and they saw the erection that had resulted.
But the seniors weren't really interested in him that evening. Instead, they told the man on all fours that he could stop after he had gotten the full taste of his roommate's crack. They then took off the collar and told him he could stand up again. Next they asked him if he had enjoyed the taste.
The lad didn't know what answer they might be expecting and so hesitated before he finally said, "No, sir, I didn't."
At that response one of the seniors told him that a dog always enjoys the taste and that he was obviously such a bad dog that he needed to be punished. They ordered him to bend over and then they began paddling his bottom until he finally cried because of the pain and shame of the whole experience.
The two weeks of the hazing season came to an end too soon, as far as I was concerned. And after graduation I never got a chance to participate in the ritual again. And I eventually entered my father's business rather than the armed forces for which I had been trained so well.