I had watched him grow up. He and his mother, the prototypical yuppie, had lived across the street from me for ten years. He had always been a good-looking kid. Now, at eighteen, he was strikingly handsome. He was a natural athlete. His body was muscular and beautifully proportioned. His gluteal muscles were especially well developed and filled out his jeans enticingly. With his short blond hair he was the epitome of boy-nest-door good looks.
Although we had always been friendly, I had thought it best, for obvious reasons, to avoid becoming too friendly. He had been in my house only once, several years earlier, when my nephew was visiting and the two boys had spent some time together.
His request, therefore, surprised me. He asked if he could live with me from Christmas until June. He did not want to change schools in the middle of his senior year, he explained, and his mother was moving to Tuscon to take a new job after Christmas. She was selling the house.
I talked to his mother. "He'll be leaving for college in the Fall anyway," she said, "so I don't know what the big deal is. But if you're willing to let him stay with you, it's all right with me. He's eighteen. He can do what he wants."
Given her indifference, I felt free to invite him to stay with me. I warned him, however, that he would not be free to come and go as he pleased. "Eighteen or not, Bob, if you stay in my house, you'll be subject to my authority."
"That's cool," he said. "I understand."
He moved in two days after Christmas. I enjoyed having him around. I also liked the friends who came to visit him from time to time.
One was a kid named Jim, whom he seemed to admire. Jim was an innocent sort of kid from Indiana, a little taller than Bob and, I suspect, a better athlete.
One evening I overheard a conversation between the two of them.
"I can't believe that Righetti," Jim said. "He got suspended for three days for smoking, and this afternoon I saw him driving around in his old man's car."
"Suspension's stupid," Bob said. "Those guys don't care if they get zeros."
"Zeros would be the least of my problems if I got suspended from school?"
"You mean your parents would get all over you?"
"Get all over me? My old man has a paddle, and he knows how to use is. My ass would be black and blue for a couple of days if I got suspended from school."
"I've never heard of anybody in high school getting spanked," Bob said.
"Well, now you have. You guys around here hardly ever get hit, but where I come from guys get it all the time."
"Don't you get pissed?"
"Not really. I mean, I don't like it. But it's always for a good reason."
Bob was becoming increasingly interested. "Like what?"
"Well, I got it last week for coming in late two nights in a row. That wasn't too bad—five swats through the pants. But over Thanksgiving weekend I got caught in a lie. I told my mother I was going to the library to study, and instead I went with Rick to the mall. We ran into my dad. He dragged me right home. He made me drop my pants and lean over his workbench and gave me fifteen swats on the bare ass. That hurt like you wouldn't believe. _s_h_i_t_, I was crying."
"Why did you let him do it?" Bob said. "You're bigger than he is."
"He's still my dad. I'd never think of trying to take him on. But I knew this kid in Indiana who came home smashed and started to tangle with his father. His father called the cops, and they held the kid down while the old man blistered him good. It was all over town the next day. That kid sure settled down for a while."
"I guess so," Bob replied.
Soon after that conversation Bob started behaving in ways he hadn't behaved before—leaving his clothes strewn all over the bathroom floor, coming in later and later, and generally becoming a problem. I talked to him about his behavior, and he listened politely enough; but he ignored everything I said.
Then he got suspended from school for making an obscene gesture at one of his teachers.
I concluded that consciously or unconsciously he needed a licking, and that I was going to give him one.
"What do you think would happen to Jim if he got suspended from school?" I asked him.
"He'd get walloped," Bob said without hesitation.
"Maybe you should, too," I said.
"Maybe so," he answered, looking both excited and frightened.
I went into the bathroom and grabbed a short-handled boar-bristle bath brush that I had bought from the Vermont Country Store. Then I sat down on a straight-back chair and called him over "Drop you pants and put yourself over my knee," I ordered.
He complied without protest.
I laid that brush across his broad, muscular backside a dozen times. I hit him hard. I'm certain that the spanking hurt him much more than he had thought it would. He howled first, then sobbed, and tears ran from his eyes. His rear end turn a brilliant red, and white circles appeared momentarily wherever the brush made contact. He grabbed the legs of the chair tightly, using all his resolve to avoid getting up before his punishment was over. Finally I gave him permission to get up, and rising myself, I said, "What do you say?"
"Thank you, sir," he answered, and losing his reserve, he threw his arms around me and cried as I held him. Then he stepped out of his pants, and I led him to his bed.