If there was an apt way of describing my life, it must be this: an epic journey of anger, tears and frustration.
I spent half my waking moments fighting with my siblings. I admit I had been puerile starting most of the fights, but if my family was going to maintain that I was the incarnate of the devil himself, I might as well live up to their belief.
Some of my siblings and I often spent the weekends lining up naked in the exercise yard awaiting our turn to taste the bitter end of our cane. It didn't matter whether one was ten years old or twenty, boy or girl, for as long as one was guilty, one was duly punished. My father's discipline was fair and the cane was an effective equalizer for his thirteen scions that ranged in age from ten to thirty-two and IQ levels of 128 to 142. No one dared to act _c_o_c_k_y around Father.
Father would summon us to approach him one at a time and while the rest stood watching in the line, he personally stripped each of us down until we were naked. However old we felt we were or embarrassed by our nudity, we were not allowed even a soupcon of modesty by covering our shame but had to keep our hands beside us. Violation of this meant having to put our hands on our heads, which opened up our vulnerability all the more. Nothing was sacred - not my brothers' or my post-pubescent organs, nor my sisters' developing breasts and vagina barely hidden behind a sparse arrangement of pubic hair.
Then depending on the gravity of our offense, Father put us on his laps and spanked our bottoms with his hand or over a tall stool and lashed us with our cane. Father almost always gave me a double dosage of his wrath but I sometimes wish he would not handle my penis in the way he always did, which always inadvertently made me want to orgasm. The humiliation of getting off in front of the family would set me on a tearful course more so than the pain of the spanking itself.
Then in accordance with house rules, we would spend the next twenty-four hours naked and without food. We had to carry on with life as usual - chores, homework, studies - never mind that we were cold and hungry, and though this was rare, it was not unheard of to be presented sans covering to guests who were visiting on a day we were "on probation", as Father called it. My siblings regarded Father's method of discipline draconian and enough to make them tow the line but it simply fuelled my eros and deepened my diabolical streak.
Some of my teachers at school got me into just as much trouble. It wasn't that I hated school or was no good at it. I just wasn't extremely competitive and besides I felt it was a waste. I already knew I wanted to be a writer. Then there were the EMA - extra-mural activities - which were requisite to graduating school. But my school was small with limited facilities, and faced with such unlikely options as badminton (too hard on the wrist), hockey (too hard on the arms) and rugby (too hard all over), I settled for kickboxing, which had just been introduced into the curriculum this year, my senior year. I felt that if I were going to get massacred to make a point for EMA, then only my legs should bear the brunt of it, sparing the seat of my knowledge and my ability to wield a pen.
But kickboxing wasn't the safest choice I had thought and by the time I realized this, it was too late for me to back out.
About twenty recruits to the sport, including me, assembled at the gym for the first meeting on a Monday two weeks into the new semester. Master Qi (pronounced 'Kew'), the instructor, summarily inducted us into the rules of the sport and its membership. One such rule required members to be weighed-in naked every month. The rationale behind this rule was that the humiliation of being publicly exhibited in the nude and weighed before all and sundry ensured we did not get tubby. The other reason was so that the teachers could inspect our crotch and legs, which must be kept shaved of hairs, for this was another rule of the sport.
Master Qi directed us next to take off our uniforms - our sweaters, shirts, singlets, pants, socks and shoes, and also our underwear, for our first naked weigh-in. I was horrified and felt indignant about the invasion of my private space, and five minutes later was the only student left still clothed amidst a tiny sea of naked teenage boys. Some were gingerly crossing their legs to shrink the periphery of their exposed crotch, others awkwardly crossing their fisted hands in front of it.
I was too conspicuously attired to be missed, and was first to be called up to the weighing apparatus.
"There's no need to be shy," Master Qi said patiently as soon as I stood at eye level with him. "We're all men here."
I quietly pleaded to be allowed to keep my clothes on. He shook his head and said matter-of-factly that rules were rules and not even the son of a high-ranking village official was above them. I wanted to say that it was not my intention to pull ranks but thought better of it.
There was a deafening silence while everyone waited to see what I would do. I wanted no trouble and proceeded to take off my uniform. When I finally got my pants off, I pleaded to Master Qi to let me be weighed in my underwear. I need not have wasted my time.
I must have worn out Master Qi's patience for suddenly he barked at me to get on with it and stop wasting time. When I still refused, I mean I just couldn't, he crooked his fingers into the waistband of my white shorts, startling me, and before I could avoid it, he had yanked them down. A din quickly rose from the small crowd peppered with a derisive laughter which I knew was directed at the unmistakable tell-tale signs of my most recent spanking now presenting themselves as evidence to the crowd. I bit my lower lip to stop from crying but I knew I was already weeping when a tear dropped onto my bare toes.
I was weighed in just the same, as was everyone else, and my teachers' insouciance towards my spanked bottom was little consolation since I was already humiliated before my peers. And then to add the proverbial salt to wound, Master Qi informed everyone that my father should be hearing of my contumacy soon, so they could expect to see my bottom very much redder the next day when we assembled to have our pubic region and legs inspected.
Even so, I left the gym smiling devilishly and something familiar stirred in my groin as I replayed Master Qi's words and pictured myself naked and spanked on my father's knees before the day was over.
Neither my siblings nor teachers could get me into greater trouble than my Religious Instructions tutor. I had been pitted in a contest of wills with him since he started tutoring me in Zen Buddhism two years ago when I was fifteen. Lately I had had to concede to him since he was still blackmailing me with my _s_e_x_uality. I despised his using my body to fulfill his fantasies with the pretext of teaching me about 'karma' when in reality he was living out his own warped version of the Kama Sutra. I refused to believe that I was eternally doomed to be his boy toy.
So later that evening, as he was playing with my anus, plugging and unplugging it first with one finger, then two, then three - it amused him so to see my virgin hole pucker - while I lay bare-bottomed and weeping on his laps, I sank my teeth into his arm. I refused to let go despite bleeding him and he was shrieking terribly. He tried to shake his arm free but that merely aided my teeth to puncture his skin. At the same time he was beating my buttocks frantically and smacking me insanely.
He had finally to be rescued from my fangs by my older stepbrothers who then confined me to my chamber until I recovered from the shock of my own actions and Father returned from performing his public duties. I still could not believe what I had done - I must have been in a fugue state - and I could not stop trembling and sobbing even when Father came for me. He found me cowering at a corner still naked below my waist and bearing the bloody evidence of my tutor's abuse caking in my anus.
I was brought out crying and close to a nervous breakdown before the elders of my family and my accuser who wanted justice for the injury I had inflicted on him. Father read out my offenses including the one at school earlier in the day, and then pronounced my punishment. I was horrified by his judgment.
"No!" I screamed, protesting for the first time against any punishment Father meted out on me. "Punish me, Father, but you cannot let HIM punish me! Don't let him touch me. Please!"
Father ignored my pleas and signaled my oldest brothers to prepare me to be caned by my tutor. I wanted to throw up at the thought of it all and my legs almost gave out under me while the remnant of my clothing was ripped from my body. I struggled and resisted for the first time, and even my erstwhile-passive mother was pleading for absolution on my behalf, as were, to my bewilderment, my two stepmothers. I was further confused at the tears that welled up in Father's eyes as he handed the cane to my tutor. I had never seen Father weep.
My tutor expressed his wish "to see the pain contort your pretty face and watch you scream while I whip you" and so had me lying on my back on a low table. Reluctantly my brothers lifted my legs and held my ankles apart and over my head. As soon as a cushion was propped under the small of my back to further raise my hips, the whipping began. I shut my eyes tight for I was sure that my tutor would relish caning my private parts and watching my anus, which he so loved to manipulate, just moments away from living out his most vulgar fantasy, that of seeing it pucker wildly as it tried to avoid being lashed. I just didn't bear to watch him ogle me in this degrading way.
Father, I thought to myself, feeling frightened, alone and betrayed, what have you done?
Feeble as I was, I screamed from the first crash of the cane against my trembling buttocks and thereafter heard my own endless screams resonate through the hollow walls of the house. For what seemed like an eternity, I felt only the malevolent swishing of the cane slice the air and then rain down ad nauseam on my buttocks and genitals.
And then it was all over. I believe Father had put a premature end to my punishment. My bottom had never been more traumatized and I think my tutor had swung the cane with so much brute force as to have split my skin. He got his justice: my blood for his.
I was inconsolable all night as I lay huddled in foetal position wailing dreadfully into my pillows while my nurse sponged my broken body and Mother massaged home-brewed salve into my buttocks and genitals. I was still hiccoughing and whimpering long after they had left me to sleep.
Much later, I heard footfalls in my chamber. I felt someone sit next to me on my bed, then pick me up and lay my head on his lap. He removed my thumb from between my teeth and held it, keeping it from shuddering violently.
"You have no honour, Father," I said in a broken voice. "You said once you would never allow anyone else to beat me, beat any of us. You promised."
Father stroked my hair while I languished in his arms. "Do you think it does not kill me to see one of my little ones suffer?" he finally said slowly, evenly. "I had to let him punish you. It was that or I lose a son."
As the meaning of what he was saying became clear to me, I wiped my tears and sat up. "He told you then? That I like boys," I said.
Father considered me ruefully, then nodded. "He told me. But he didn't have to. Did I not beget you? You are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood."
Then he sat beside my hips to examine my injury. I recoiled at his touch as much from the pain as from the fear that I might come if he handled my penis or testes. This was hardly the time.
"I have discussed this matter with your mothers," Father continued, "and we feel that this village is not safe for you. At the end of this school year, I am sending you to study in America. Your English teacher, Mr. Pandergast, tells me that you show promise in your writing. If this is what you want, you may study to be a serious writer. You may stay with your Uncle Uen while you're there. I shall wire him about this.
"Incidentally, Master Kohn shall never again menace you to hurt you. There's a name for what he did to you, and I reminded him that the penalty for that was even more severe than for, as you put it, 'liking another boy'."
With this, Father left me to contemplate his words.
Father's decision to send me away had set in motion the wheels of change that must significantly impact my life. I was getting an education in America. I was about to begin a new journey. My years of living in frustration might finally be balanced with hope as my life came full circle.
But I was also about to lose my father and everything about him I held true and sacrosanct. I couldn't help myself but I started weeping again as I realized the enormous sacrifice Father had made to save this son's life and now the son must carry on the sacrifice.
THE END