You want to know about one of the times, eh? All right, I'll tell you about one. I'll have to change the name, though: I'll call him Jason.
Jason and I had been roommates for about three years and close friends for twice that long. We had the sort of friendship where you know each other's ins and outs, each other's idiosyncrasies and habits of thought, to the point that I could tell when a bleary-eyed Jason was grumbling for his morning coffee and when he was grumbling just to grumble. He could read me just as well.
Jason was 22 years old, already a grad student for two years at the local university. Average height, average build, commonplace green eyes and light brown hair, but somehow it all fit together in a way that gave him a certain presence, a certain _s_e_x_iness. Maybe it was his bright mind combined with his unabashed physicality: here was a guy who was equally at home playing Frisbee tackle football and playing classical music on the piano. He never said hello without a light pat on the back and never said good-bye without an earnest hug. Even our lesbian friends and straight male friends loved him.
Me, I was 23 years old at the time and still a university senior thanks to my switching through three majors before I "found myself." A bit taller than Jason, with the classic blond hair and blue eyes, but somehow my looks never came together like Jason's did. As I think back, I realize how much I sabotaged myself with my worrying. Jason's father had been a success, and it looked like Jason would be, too; my father had failed miserably before he left us when I was eight years old, and I was convinced I would flop just as badly. Hence the three majors in college.
Jason often said that he admired me for my open-mindedness and the way I could make friends with such a wide variety of people. I kept dismissing his praise; I was too busy admiring him for his body, his sheer *masculinity*. He was a year younger, but I still wanted to grow up into a man just like him. Then we'd argue that the other one was more intelligent, and the arguments usually went from insistent to yelling to lively wrestling to laughter. We'd do anything for each other. I guess we loved each other with the sort of unabashedly fierce devotion that only boys-turning-into-men can feel for each other these days without embarrassment.
It was near the end of the first semester of my last year before graduating from the university. I was trying hard to pretend that I wasn't terrified. I had a crucial 20-page research paper due, and I had already convinced myself that I could never get that paper written. I had done all the research I needed, and even had plenty of notes. But as soon as I sat down at the computer, my mind went blank. So I would do something else. I played computer games; I went to the movies; I went out drinking with friends; when I couldn't find anything else to occupy me, I went and slept. Anything to avoid working on that paper which I was convinced I had already failed.
A week before that paper was due, Jason came home to find me sitting in the dark, a wine cooler in one hand.
"Hey, Kyle," asked Jason, flipping on a light switch," what're you doing in the dark?" He smiled broadly, then the smile was eclipsed by a look of sudden concern.
"Jason," I said slowly, without looking at him, "I think you should start looking for a new roommate."
"No way." He slapped me lightly on the arm. "You're just letting Finals Week stress get to you. It happens to me, too." He disappeared from the room to help himself to a wine cooler. "Good God! What's wrong, Kyle?"
It embarrasses me some to admit how much I was falling apart at the time. I had been terrified to begin with, but weeks of pretending to be non-chalant while hiding from that 20-page paper had only made things worse. I'd thought the alcohol would relax me, but just that one wine cooler had made it simply harder to fake it anymore. Tears were running down my face.
"Come on, man," Jason urged, leaning down so that he could look me in the eyes whether I wanted him to or not, "whatever it is, we'll face it together. Like always. I'm here for you, Kyle."
"You have grad work to do," I dissembled.
"My papers are already finished, and I only one final to take, and that one's next Friday. You're not getting out of it. Tell me what's wrong."
With that, I fell apart. I told him how terrified I was, how important this paper was, how I had spent the past two weeks doing anything and everything but work on that paper. He listened to me with open concern, and the few times I choked up on tears too much to talk, he put his arms around me until I calmed down. "And I tried to work on it tonight, because I know there's no time left, but when I tried to work on it, I felt so guilty for having waited this long that I couldn't do anything at all. I don't know which is worse: knowing I don't have what it takes to pass this class, or the guilt I feel about wasting so much time!" By now I was too numb to cry anymore.
"Kyle, your beating yourself up over this isn't going to help you any. Stop it!"
"I know," I conceded quietly, "but I can't help it. I'm guilty and I'm stupid," I added with sincere self-pity.
"Stop it!" he ordered, shaking me, more scared than angry.
"Oh God," I said with disgust at myself, "look at me. I've let myself get so scared, I didn't even feel your shaking me!"
"Can you feel this?" Jason half-asked, half-demanded, hauling me to my feet and pulling me into a tight bear-hug.
"No," I answered helplessly.
"How about this then?" And, still holding me, he swatted my backside in his frustration.
I froze up. "Yes," I said slowly, "I felt that." I looked at him, unnerved by what was suddenly occurring in my head. "I deserved that."
Jason looked hard into my eyes. "Kyle, did your father ever spank you for your own good when you were a bad kid?"
"No, he never cared enough to do anything that would take that much effort," I said with a certain bitterness. "He tried to beat me with a chair once when he was drunk, but that's not the same thing."
Jason paused; then, with elaborate seriousness, he asked me, "Kyle, do you need to be spanked? Will that take care of the guilt?"
I stared at him. It wasn't that I was shy around him, and both of us had given the other the usual birthday spanking hazings, but this was something different. Something I wanted. Something I needed. Yet... I rasped through a suddenly dry throat, "Jason, that is a father's privilege."
"I'm your friend. Tonight I'll be your father. 'Cause that's what you need right now..." and then with a forgiving twinkle in his eye, "son."
Jason downed half of his wine cooler, up till then untouched, then sat down at our sofa. He patted his knee. "Get over my knee, Kyle, and take it like a man."
I walked over next to him, but I still wasn't sure if I could go through with this - I needed so much a father, so much that weird connection between father and son that happens at such times, that I was afraid to let go. "I'm not sure I can take it like a man, Jason."
"Then take it like a boy until you can take it like a man" he quipped, and the next thing I knew he had reached up with one arm and hauled me down over his knees. "Kyle, I'm your friend, and because I'm your friend, you're getting two spankings tonight."
"TWO?"
"The first one is your punishment for wasting time. You're paying off your guilt with swats, young man. 28 swats, two for each day you wasted, and I expect you to count them off for me so I can be sure you know you're getting spanked. Ready?" I nodded.
His hand crashed against my quivering backside, right on the sit spot, and I started with the feel of it. My ass immediately clenched up, which didn't help much, for then he smacked my left cheek, then my right cheek, then my left cheek, then my right cheek. It didn't feel much harsher than a birthday spanking, which surprised me, but my nervousness seemed to make it sting worse.
"Guess what, Kyle?" asked Jason with exaggerated non-chalance as his hand slapped my ass for the sixth time.
"What?" I managed.
"The spanking hasn't started yet," he said as his hand came down for the seventh time. "These swats don't count against your 28 since you haven't started counting yet!"
"One!" I called out as I felt the impact against my backside.
"Good."
SMACK! "Two!"
SWAT! "Three!"
And on until the 20th swat, when I suddenly broke into tears that had nothing to do with the pain.
"What is it, Kyle?" asked Jason with genuine concern, pausing the spanking.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed, "but my father never cared enough to spank me, and now you're doing it... Will this really be enough to stop the guilt? Do you really care enough about me to spank me?" I was more than just his college friend now, I was also the abandoned little boy whose father had left home when he was a kid.
"When the spanking's over, no more guilt," he told me gently. "And yes, I care enough to spank you, now and whenever you need it."
"How many left?"
"Eight."
"Is there any way to stop at twenty?"
"Nope," and I could hear the smile in his voice. "Start counting again."
SMACK! "21!"
SWAT! "22!"
I could feel my ass heating up as the spanking continued, even through my jeans, and I gave up on clenching myself in resistance to his hand. There was an even warm feeling all over my backside, but while I could feel that I was being spanked, I was not in great pain.
SMACK! "27!"
SWAT! "28!"
"All right," he said. "You can get up now."
I gingerly raised myself from his lap, and with the sudden rush of blood back into my ass I could feel the spanking anew. He stood up, grabbed me into a hug and told me that I had nothing more to feel guilty about, that I had paid the price for my foolishness, told me the things a loving father would tell his son after punishment was ended. I nodded, and I started to walk off.
"Uh, Kyle. Come back here." I did so. "You forget: you have another spanking coming."
"Am I still bad?" I asked, and surprised myself with the submissiveness in my voice.
"You've never been 'bad', just done foolish things," he said as he reached down, unbuckled my belt, and calmly undid my trousers.
"What's going on?" I demanded, making no move to stop him.
"Well," he said as he slid my trousers down to my ankles, "this spanking may take a long time, and I'm not going to mess up my hand against those jeans of yours again." I stood before him in just my shirt and white briefs. "If it takes too long, the underwear goes down as well."
"What'm I being spanked for?" I said, lightly rubbing my left asscheek.
Jason pulled me over his knees again, but this time he made sure to arrange my underwear-clad bottom for optimal access for his hand. "It's like this, Kyle. This spanking will be as quick or as long as you make it. I don't care if I don't get a single swat in, but I'm willing to spank you until morning if it takes that long." I suddenly realized he meant it, too. "All you have to do is admit that you are an intelligent person."
"But I'm not!" I growled at him.
SMACK!
"I guess you do intend to get spanked again after all." SMACK! "Look, Kyle, I'm tired of your always saying you're not smart. It's become an excuse for you. I love you enough to be sick and tired of that excuse! So, yes, I'm going to spank you, and I'm going to keep on spanking you, until you admit you're an intelligent person or until dawn. And dawn doesn't come for another eight hours." SMACK!
Those swats actually hurt. I suddenly realized that Jason had been holding back during the punishment spanking, trying not to go too hard on me. But now the time for holding back was over, and all it would take to stop this was for me to stop putting myself down. And I wasn't ready for anything like that.
To the accompaniment of my silence, Jason spanked me up and down my bottom and well across both cheeks. He sent each cheek bouncing back and forth with his smacks against my bottom proper, then sent my cheeks bouncing up and down with his smacks at the part where cheeks met thighs, and when it seemed there wasn't a fresh place left to spank, he swatted me at the top where each cheek curved into the small of my back. His heavy hand didn't ignore my sit spot either. SMACK! SWAT! SMACK! SWAT! I could feel my ass heating up rapidly. I clenched my cheeks, I relaxed them, I tried to ignore them, but nothing helped as he kept spanking away. SWAT! SMACK! SWAT! SMACK! I began to wriggle, trying foolishly to move my backside out of the range of Jason's hand, but he kept on spanking, occasionally taking the briefest moment to rearrange my ass across his knees again before starting anew. I wriggled, I kicked my legs, I gasped, yet somehow it never occurred to me to try to get off his lap: it hurt, it hurt a lot, but somehow it seemed natural, somehow it seemed right.
"Say it!" coaxed Jason, not missing a beat against my bottom.
"I can't!" I confessed. I was now wriggling so hard that I was literally bouncing all over his lap as he still managed to land every swat. I had no idea how long I'd been over his lap, but I knew I couldn't take this until sun-up, and almost without thought my right hand flew behind me to block the swats.
He paused. "Do you have something to tell me?" he asked, and I could hear angry/sad frustration in his voice.
"Yes," I panted. "I'm...I'm... you're intelligent! Not me!" I screamed with a little boy's defiance.
"Remove your hand" he ordered, and I did. Nothing happened for a few moments. Then, I felt his fingers as he grabbed my underwear and slid it off my ass, down my legs and around my ankles. Nothing again, except the sound of my panting in my pain. "You should see your butt, Kyle; I'd swear it glows" he marveled. "Are you sure you won't say it?" I nodded.
Instead of more swats, I felt his hands gently massaging my bottom. The steady fire in my ass began to subside. "You're probably too numb to feel any more swats right now." Carefully, his hands worked on my sore bottom, and I began to relax, not just in my ass but everywhere. I should have known better.
WHAM! I nearly jumped out his lap into the air from the sudden pain of that unexpected swat. WHAP! The pain coursed through me, but it was all centered on my poor spanked backside. WHAM! Now I began really rollicking with the pain, shifting and sliding and writhing. WHAM! WHAP! WHAM! He laid into me, and thanks to the massage and the pause in the spanking, I could feel every blow with renewed sensitivity. "I can do this all night," he reminded me firmly as he began smacking me with both his hands at once, rapid-fire like a machine gun against my butt.
A dam broke, and I began crying again, from the pain and from my own conflicted feelings about myself and from buried sorrows I hadn't even realized I had. I cried as he continued to spank me, cried and cried until I felt like I was dehydrated, and I suddenly realized that he had stopped spanking me some time ago, that he had pulled me up from his lap and was cradling me in his arms, rocking me silently.
"Where the hell did *that* come from, Kyle?"
"I... I didn't realize how much my father's abandoning us still hurt." I sniffled. "Are you going to spank me more?" I asked gingerly.
"Do you need to be spanked some more?"
"No." I leaned into him the way I'd never leaned into my father.
"All right now, say it."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "I... I..." I felt a light swat against my butt reminding me to get on with it. "I *am* an intelligent person." I looked up at him. "Thank you... Dad."
"You're welcome... son."
After that? Well, Jason held me a little longer, then he broke the tension which had almost become pretentious by starting a sudden tickle fight with me. I went on to write that paper and eventually I got my college degree. And yes, I got myself spanked a number of times before the school year was out, and several more times after that. One time I even spanked Jason, when he got into a fight with his fiancée and felt particularly guilty about it. No, I can't explain it any more than that for you. All I know is this: every man needs a good spanking once in a while, from a guy he respects and loves.