I had not planned for the following event to happen. Some things are simply outside of one's control.
I had arrived at the end of my tethers. I had spent the last three hours kneeling on the cold, hard floor of my father's Study being instructed on the tenets of Zen Buddhism and the evils of an unrestrained life; my clothes had been withdrawn from me and I had nothing to shield me from the spring drafts or the austere, scrutinizing eyes of my Religious Instructions tutor; I had not eaten close to eighteen hours and was famished and fatigued; and as my father had promised, my once shoulder-length hair had just been shorn, with Father himself personally supervising the traumatizing experience, so now my ears stuck out and my eyes were further accentuated by my shorter bangs. I was naked all over but I FELT naked too. But it was absolutely the last straw when, during an unsolicited moment, my tutor had reached out and grabbed my exposed private parts.
Surprised, I fell backwards and asked what he thought he was doing. When he proved unrelenting and I failed to parry off his advances, I threatened to tell Father that I thought he was a pervert. I had thought that I had finally found a reason to be rid of him forever until he counter-threatened to disclose my homo_s_e_x_uality and amorous affair with my boyfriend Ky. How? Who? How long had he known? My head throbbed with so many questions and I had never felt more frightened than at this moment.
"So go ahead and tell," my tutor said, a smirk beginning to form on his lips, though I thought I also detected the oyster-like twitch at the corners of his mouth. "Tell, and you're finished in this village. You can kiss your boyfriend goodbye. You can kiss your life goodbye. You can also say goodbye to being a writer - or being anything at all - for the only thing you WILL be is fodder for the barnacles deep in the pits of the well."
I felt a vacuum in my stomach and I was ready to cry. Refusing to allow my tutor this satisfaction, I got off the floor, now more than ever conscious of my nudity, and fled towards the door only to find it bolted. Laughing, my tutor jangled the keys in his hand. I pounded on the door yelling to be let out and it was finally opened by Father, agitated by the Sturm and Drang I was raising. I ran past him, ignored my astonished family, fled towards my chamber, found it and fell blindly into my clothes laid out for me, by my nurse, to wear when my punishment for my latest infraction was over.
Two hours later, I found myself in Ky's house which he rented on the campus of the polytechnic he attended. In an aberration of good sense, I must have taken a bus ride into the city and ended up here.
"Nice," Ky commented, studying my new coif. "You look almost respectable."
He took me into his embrace and that was when I saw, over his shoulders, the clothes scattered on his bed, his portmanteau lying open. I pulled away from him.
"You're really leaving?" I asked, almost choking on the words.
He nodded. "I told you."
I started begging him to take me with him, take me away from this hell.
"I won't be a bother," I said, pleading. "I'll keep house for you. Help translate the language..."
"Stop it," Ky said, cutting me off in mid-sentence. Then I watched him pace the extremities of his room in frustration. "We've been through all this already," he continued, his voice steadily rising. "I'm going to America, not the next province. I can't take you. You have your family, school. I thought you've come to terms with my leaving."
I was crushed by his insensitive harangue but told him next that I needed him, and then stupidly, I started sobbing like the women of my village who foolishly believed that their love alone had a monopolistic hold on the feudal lords betrothed to them with nothing more than a geomancer's blessings, of all things!
"And stop blubbering, you sissy," Ky scolded, somewhat playfully.
When I wouldn't, Ky dragged me with him to the settee and the next thing I knew, I was disrespectfully turned over his laps. I felt his hands lift up my tunic and over my head, then reach around to my crotch, loosen the cord on my trousers and pull them off my feet. I put up no resistance. I was getting a spanking from this nineteen year-old child-man whom I had often fantasized as a kind of surrogate father. I wanted to be spanked. I needed it.
I wrapped my arms around his waist as if otherwise he would disappear in a puff of smoke. His bare hand came down hard on my bottom, catching me off-guard, taking my breath away. I never caught my breath while he rhythmically pounded away on my cotton shorts, ignoring my miniscule squeals.
After quite a long time, he stopped but quickly proceeded to take hold of the leg openings of my shorts. He rended my shorts in two, along the seam of the seat, and I knew my buttocks were exposed as a cool draft hit my skin. He chuckled, noting how my buttocks looked like a couple of Fuji apples from my spanking last night, but I was too preoccupied with my sobbing to return a repartee of my own. Then his arms wound up once more, Ky spanked my naked bottom as untiring as the clockwork toy soldier of my childhood, seemingly indefatigable as it whaled away on the gleaming gild-edged little drum glued unevenly to its uniformed belly.
Ky and I were sweating like two dogs on heat when he decided to spank me in another position. He roughly lifted me off his laps and held me by the nape of my neck while he rose from the settee. I took this time to rub my aching buttocks, hitherto always Ky's job after I had been whipped by my father. He stopped me, grabbing my wrists and crossing them in front of me. He gave me a quick hard swat on my buttocks, a suggestion to hand that he disapproved of what I was doing.
Next he lay me on the settee on my back and gripping my left ankle, he lifted my leg over my head. My lower sacred hemisphere was spread wide open to him to do as he pleased. He studied my groin, paying close attention to my genitals and seemed pleased at the sight of my penis standing up close to full mast.
Realizing I must be close, Ky started to spank my penis. By the third stroke I had given up my restraint and all my tension was released in an interminable stream of warm, lustrous semen that spurted on my chest and stomach. Ky pressed my left knee to my chest and fingered my anus, goading me as I squirmed and screamed and then my catharsis was complete.
Now naked from the waist down, Ky draped himself on top of me and in a heady moan, released his own tension. His precious seed mixed with mine as we ground our stomachs together, our mouths locked onto each other. Ky kissed me for a protracted time and so very hard that if I hadn't started to wince, he might have drawn blood from my lips.
When we had pulled away from each other, I wanted to shamelessly pour out my feelings for him. He read my mind and silenced me before I could even start.
"Go home, Han," he said, sotto voce, turning away from me. I was crestfallen.
I trudged home teary-eyed and in a trance. I was insensate to my surroundings save the smarting on my bottom as each movement of my pelvic muscles caused the seat of my linen trousers to scrape against my naked skin. The long thoroughfare was quiet as dusk quickly settled on the town and the tranquility helped to clear my head. Ky would have his dreams - he was right to - I admitted. Besides, it was for the better. Our relationship had been uncovered, and if my tutor actualized his threat, we could be subject to a most dishonourable punishment - even a dishonourable death - from which not even my father, despite holding the second most powerful portfolio as Speaker of Council on my village triumvirate, could save us.
Father had waited up for my return. He met me on the threshold, glared sternly at me and without a word, turned into his Study. I knew what I had to do. I had been trained well.
I stripped naked while a servant indifferently handed me my cane. I held it in my hand which trembled slightly and poised myself to face the consequences of my action. I found Father on his antique chair seated like the Sun Emperor. I was relieved that he was alone.
When I was three feet from him, I presented my cane to him. Then I humbly confessed that I had erred, wondering what my tutor had told him, while a memorized litany of apology spilled from my lips. That done, and receiving no word from Father, I proceeded to the mother-of-pearl commode opposite him and bent over it, spreading my legs wide the way he had always wanted it.
Nothing happened for a while. Then the cane landed about an inch from my bare toes.
"Straighten up," I heard Father command me. "Come here."
I obeyed.
Perhaps it was late. Perhaps he was tired. But tonight Father appeared to have lost the lines of anger and anxiety that had often scarred his handsome face when he was disciplining me. Perhaps I had appeased him tonight by voluntarily appearing for my punishment.
My reverie was broken when I felt him tug my forearm towards him and in a moment he had me lying on my stomach on his knees. He pronounced me guilty but forgiven. I felt his hands feeling the skin of my naked bottom as if he were gauging the extent to which I could handle anymore beating so soon after the one last night. Then as he was wont to do, he pried open my cheeks and silently gave me 150 of the best and hardest swats that his old hand could muster, all on my anus and lower bottom where it was fleshiest and felt the deepest pain. I was bawling early in the spanking as my bottom had not quite recovered from last night's onslaught of the cane in Father's hands, and then tortured again only moments ago in the hands of my soon-to-be-former lover who was farthest from my mind now as I tried to muffle my sobs in Father's trouser legs.
I failed that miserably.
When Father was done spanking me, I collapsed exhausted on his laps, crying uncontrollable tears, and then as memories of Ky and my tutor's indiscretion came flooding back to me, I started wailing in abject wretchedness. Father respectfully let me sob noisily in his arms. And to hell with my ancestors, I swore without words. Why should they not be awakened to partake in my sorrow?
But strangely, I soon found my inner sanctum visited by a joy as inexplicable as my sorrow was profound. As surely as life and everything in it were transitory, some things in my own life were at least consistent. I could always count on the cane, for one thing. For another, I had Father. But most important, I had his wrath which - when one thought about it objectively - was but a veneer that thinly disguised his love. In a way, it was an oxymoron - my relationship with my father - for I always felt most protected when I was naked and exposed before him, safe when vulnerable, loved when beaten to the point where I was no longer me but resembled the little boy I was meant to be and always would be.
THE END