Dr. Manoff had explained it all clearly enough. I was to begin to work with the boy as soon as he Raine arrived. My son.
"You'll find him most challenging," Manoff had told me, stroking his neatly-trimmed silver goatee.
"Oh really?" I had always wanted a son, preferably a teenager I'd worked as a high school teacher for years, loved the vast majority of my young wards, loved them like children. So, why not...
"Twenty-two," Manoff gazed over Raine's chart. "Twenty-two years old, but I think you'll find in him what you're looking for."
"What does that mean?"
The Center at North Winslow specialized in Behavior Modification mostly placing troubled, fatherless boys with permanent father figures. At the core of the Program was the three-way relationship between the boy, his new "father," and his psychiatrist.
Manoff rolled a bottle of prescription pills between his long, thin fingers. "These will help. You're to administer one in the morning with breakfast, and another before bed each night." I stared into the clear plastic tube. "The judge requested that I prescribe these for Raine upon his release from Juvenile Hall."
So there was yet another dad in this configuration I wondered how many fathers it would take to finally reach this boy.
"They're anti-depressants, but they're blended with a new compound which," he hesitated, looked off above my head, "I think will be eminently helpful in achieving our goal."
"And what exactly is that?"
He smiled, not unkindly. "I call it: Breaking the Boy." He placed the bottle of pills into my palm. "It doesn't matter that Raine is twenty-two. Inside, he's still about fifteen completely lacking in self-control. That's where you come in. First we get him under your control firmly." He pressed his thumb into the mahogany desk. "Then we train him so, little by little, he approaches his true emotional age."
I stood, walked to the window where I peered out through the metal bars.
"Perfect example," Manoff continued, "I prescribed these pills for him two months ago. He took them faithfully for about a week, then once in awhile, and finally not at all. Your first job is: see to it that he stays on schedule. Morning and evening. They'll help him with the pain, and make him bend more easily to your will."
I wrapped my fists around the bars, pressed my forehead into them. I tried to imagine what life had been like for him, in and out of prison hospitals and juvenile halls for the past five years.
"Don't worry, Tom," Manoff said gently, "I know you'll get the job done."
When the doorbell rang, I was at the kitchen table, preparing a chart which would, I hoped, facilitate the transition we were both about to make.
"Raine," I said upon opening the door, without really looking at him.
"Yeah, it's me." He stood, seemingly unsure of whether he should enter or not. Over his shoulder was a large duffle bag. I examined him carefully: loose chino pants, a white t-shirt tall, thin to the point of being gaunt, his skin absolutely the whitest shade I had ever seen on a living person.
"Come in," I nodded my head and led him with a hand on the shoulder. "You have a good trip?" I closed the door behind him.
"It was alright."
Mostly, I saw it in his eyes that fifteen-year-old the doctor had spoken about. "You okay?" I chuckled, "You look scared." I placed both hands on his shoulders.
"I'm not scared of anything," he shrugged them away, looked off into the living room as though he was inspecting.
"It's simple enough," I spread my hands across the chart which lay on the kitchen table. Raine sipped his root beer, didn't say a word. "The infraction is in this column, the number of points in this one." The chart had a long list of offenses: Sloppy Room (2 Points), Cutting Class (8 Points). I handed him an index card. "You keep this card on you at all times. Your boss at work knows all about this, as do your college professors. They'll be making notes on your card anytime you step out of line."
Raine rolled his eyes. "_f_u_c_k_ing demeaning," he mumbled.
"What?" He looked at his shoes. "See, that's gonna cost you. Right there," I pointed to the chart, "Foul language: two points." I pulled the index card from my shirt pocket and made a note. Then I returned it to its place. "Remember: ten points earns you a spanking. We'll be reviewing your card on Sunday nights, right after dinner. Doctor Manoff said he explained all this to you."
"He did."
"Then I don't think you'd be wanting to earn so many points quite so soon." He shrugged. "You take your pill yet this morning?"
"Yeah."
"You did?"
"Yeah, Manoff made me take it."
I pulled the index card from my pocket again. "Now, see, that's not good. You already earned two points today, and now you've earned..." I glanced at the chart, "five more for lying."
"What? I didn't do anything!" Raine slammed his fist into the table. I placed my hand firmly over it.
"I called Doctor Manoff before you got here. He told me to make sure I gave you your pill because you hadn't taken it yet."
"So then what did you ask me for?"
"I wanted to see if you'd tell me the truth." I marked the points on my card, "Apparently you haven't."
"What's this?" Raine suddenly seemed interested in the chart, as if he hadn't really seen it before. "Five points for breaking ten o-clock curfew? Ten o'clock?"
"Open up," I ordered. I'd removed one of the small, white pills from the prescription bottle, and I stood over him. He eyed me angrily. Doing just as Manoff had shown me, I placed the pill on the back of his tongue, then closed his mouth, making a muzzle with my hand, locking my fingers over his cheekbones to keep it shut. "Swallow." The look in his eyes changed, from anger, to shock, and finally to helplessness. There was something infinitely tender in there, too, although by the time I removed my hand, it blinked away like the flipping of a light switch.
"What did you do that for? I would have swallowed it on my own."
"I know sometimes you're not exactly faithful about taking your pills. From now on, we're gonna make sure they get where they're supposed to."
Raine hung his head against his closed fist. "Demeaning," he said.
"No not demeaning. Demeaning is the way you've conducted your entire life to this point. What we're all about is giving you some self-respect."
Before the morning was out, we had our first conversation about spanking. Manoff told me this was an important topic to discuss early on, that it would establish the background for a successful first disciplinary session, that it would lay the notion clearly in his head as something he should expect to happen and that we should have the discussion right in his room, sitting on his bed, to firmly mark the place all spankings were going to be administered.
"Tell me about your last one."
Raine shrugged his shoulders, "What do you want to know?"
"Well, you've told me your mother stopped spanking you after you turned five or six, that there was no father or anyone else around to spank you after that. So, does this mean you haven't been spanked in what is it? seventeen years?"
I already knew the answer. But I wanted to hear it from his lips. He dissatisfied me by merely shaking his head no. "So..." I continued, "how long ago was your last spanking?"
"About a week ago," he looked down at his shoes.
"Oh really? What happened?"
"Broke curfew at the Clinic. I also cursed out a cop," he glanced over at me and grinned.
"Get that smile off your face," I glared at him over my wire-framed glasses. "And who administered the spanking?"
"Manoff." He spit the name out like a dirty word . "Excuse me, young man?" I reached over and grabbed him firmly by the chin. "Don't you mean, Doctor Manoff?"
He nodded slowly, my wrist going along for the ride.
"What did he use? How long did last? I want to hear everything."
"He uses his hand in the beginning."
I nodded.
"He usually goes on like that for about...I don't know, five minutes, I guess." It was a good estimation. In fact, Manoff goes for exactly five minutes by hand; there's a clock on the wall of the room where he administers spankings, he told me, facing the hardback chair he sits in. The doctor explained, once a patient has received his first few hand spankings, he becomes slightly more adapted to the feeling, and he finds it necessary to begin varying his implements.
"Then after that..."
His voice trailed off. "Go on," I folded my hands, "what did he have to use on you after that?"
Raine eyed me directly so directly that I almost jumped when I saw the fear in his eyes. "He used this...hairbrush. It felt like a wooden paddle on one side....the other side was bristles."
"what kind of bristles?"
He looked at me; he was starting to realize that I already knew the answer to every question I was asking. I held my gaze, waited for him to answer. "Metal."
"Now," I shifted over to him and placed a hand gently on his back, "I'll bet that hurt a lot."
He nodded.
"You don't like to talk much, do you?"
"I say what I have to when I have to."
"But what about when you don't? Rumor has it you've used your mouth on a couple of occasions you probably shouldn't have."
"Yeah, well, that was different."
"How so? Y'know, I really do want to hear what you have to say."
This comment seemed to confuse him more than anything I'd said to that point. He half-smiled, but didn't turn to face me. "What am I, a girl or something?"
I stood. "You think that's what makes you a man? Not speaking your thoughts?" He fiddled with the metal I. D. tag which hung from his neck on a long, beaded chain. He'd downed two Blue Slurpees from 7-Eleven for breakfast that day, his lips were the color of Windex. "You better do some long, hard thinking about that one." He folded him arms across his chest and looked away from me.
The events which led to Raine's first official spanking were, in a word, pathetic. Having already earned seven points in the first morning, he was only three away from the big ten to begin with. He earned another point the next morning for not making his bed before work.
"What? You didn't tell me I had to do that!"
I held up the chart, and pointed to where the infraction was clearly written. "I didn't realize you'd lost the ability to read overnight."
"But...I didn't even look at that after yesterday! How was I supposed to know?"
"By looking at it," I nodded evenly.
Raine threw his knapsack on the floor he never went anywhere without that knapsack. "Man, that's not fair. I didn't mean to screw up."
"But you did."
"But I didn't mean to."
I considered the thought. "You're right," I pulled the index card from my pocket. "Life isn't fair, Raine. The sooner you get used to the idea, the better. Consider that Lesson Number One." I scrawled another demerit onto the card, bringing his total to eight.
The days that followed were relatively good ones. We settled into a routine, both he and I heading off to our respective jobs each day, he to his college classes two mornings and Wednesday afternoons. In the evenings, I made sure he studied, and questioned him when he insisted he was "done." Twice that first week, he asked if he could go out and meet some friends. I let him go, and watched the clock until he returned which he did, each time, under curfew. I told myself, if he was going to cooperate like this, I might even be able to have a social life myself once again.
There were moments just moments where I began to feel a real bond growing between us. I teased him on one of our first nights together about his hair he wore it in short, jagged spikes, some of which were dyed an angry brownish-red.
"I call them my Tongues of Flame," he smiled. The remainder of his hair was a soft, light brown, a perfect complement to his blue eyes.
"What if I said I didn't like them."
"I'd say I didn't like your mustache."
I laughed out loud at that although I probably shouldn't have. I'd grown it in recent months, thought it looked pretty good.
"Why not?" I begged the conversation.
"Makes you look like a porn star, dad."
It wasn't the comment, but the name he called me, that affected me in the moment.
"What do you know about porn stars?" He drew in a breath to answer, but I beat him to the moment with a finger in the air. "Eh-eh watch your step. Unless you really want to get your butt smacked tonight."
At least in that moment, I was kidding.
I noticed, as Sunday night approached, that Raine was looking progressively more nervous. This nervousness had begun on Thursday night; he'd come home from work in a lousy mood, walked past me without comment and went straight to his room.
"Everything okay?" I knocked on his door.
He was stretched out, his long legs projecting straight across the bed; his eyes were closed. "Fine," he said without opening them.
I knew something had happened. I wished he'd come forth with it, but I was getting to know the boy called Raine and getting to know that he didn't speak until he was good and ready. I figured if it was anything serious, I'd know soon enough anyway. If not sooner, than by Sunday night, when it was time for him to hand over his index card for the week, so I could review what infractions if any his boss and his teachers had noted for him.
After dinner on Sunday, he asked if he could go out again. He'd been skulking around nervously as I'd been preparing dinner. I half-expected he was going to request this.
"Not tonight, Raine. It's Sunday, right? We have some business to attend to."
"Oh yeah," he shuffled nervously, standing before the dining room table.
I laid my hand out flat, palm full out. When he didn't move, I said, "You have something for me?"
After a moment, he clucked his tongue, pulled the index card from his pocket and placed it in my hand. Without even looking too closely, I could see it had been crumpled and flattened out again.
Late for work, 8/12/99, 7:55 p. m. 3 Points
Below the single line of text was his boss' initials, RL.
"You want to tell me what happened?"
"It wasn't my fault!" he immediately moved away from me, "There was traffic, what was I supposed to do?"
I looked at the card again. "7:55? You were supposed to be at work when? 7:00? That's a hell of a lot of traffic, Raine."
"There was an accident."
"Where?"
"By Exit 5 by the college."
"At 7:00."
"Yeah."
"Funny thing, Raine. Did you forget, I teach a class there Thursday nights? You wanna guess what time my class begins? You wanna guess how many students were late that night?" He stopped pacing and looked at the floor. "Do you want to tell me the real reason you were late?"
"No."
Outside, I could hear a car passing quietly down the street.
"Oh. I see Raine the Silent is back." I took a pen from my shirt pocket. "Okay, so that's twelve for this week, plus four more for lying to me, which means you start next week with six." Then I stood and approached him, placing both hands on his shoulders and peering straight into his eyes. "I want you to go to your room and wait for me'
"hold on a minute."
"I'll be up in a little while."
We remained deadlocked for a moment; I could see in his face, he wasn't ready to accept what was about to happen.
If I had taken a picture, it wouldn't do justice to the look on Raine's face when I entered his room twenty minutes later, with Doctor Andrew Manoff trailing behind me.
"Why's he here?" Raine bolted to the edge of the bed.
"Oh, I think you know why I'm here, Raine," Manoff said, calmly pulling the chair out from behind Raine's study desk. He unzipped his leather briefcase and pulled out a lined notepad. "I'm here to observe."
"The doctor is here to supervise," I said. Remembering his terror of the hairbrush, I added, "We're going to do this right."
"Can't we talk about this?"
"Oh, you want to talk now?" I took a wooden chair from the corner of his bedroom and placed it in the center of the floor. "It's a little late for that now, Raine. The doctor has left his Sunday dinner to join us. I think we'd better get moving, we don't want to hold him up any longer."
Raine remained frozen in position. "C'mon, PLEASE...."
"Let's go, buddy." I took his right hand in mine and led him to the chair. "I want you to loosen the top of your pants."
"Hold on," he placed his palms in front of him, "Can't I have anoth"
Before he could finish, I sat in the chair and grabbed him by the waistband of his jeans.
"Please, dad!"
I undid the top button and pulled down the metal zipper.
Across the room, I heard Manoff's pen click into gear. "Raine, I want you to understand my purpose here. I won't be administering any part of tonight's spanking from now on, all discipline will be rendered by your father."
I ran my thumbs around the inside elastic of his boxers, eased the tightness where it had bonded with sweat. Manoff raised a hand to halt me.
"Do you understand?" he asked.
"Yes," Raine answered, a little unsurely.
"I won't be saying much," the doctor continued, "I'm here mostly to observe your reactions. I might offer a point or two where I deem necessary, but for the most part, I'm here to listen." I held my boy firmly by the wrists. "You're to think of this just like therapy feel free to speak any time you need, just let out anything you're feeling inside or out. I'll be listening and taking notes. Are we clear?"
Raine said nothing, but I could feel the pulse pounding in his forearms.
"You want to tell me how you're feeling right now?"
"What the hell do you think?" he scowled.
Manoff signaled me to begin the spanking.
Gripping him firmly by the upper arm, I lowered him across my lap. "The first thing we're going to do is get rid of that tone," I dug my fingers into the back of his boxers, drew down the elastic waistband, letting my nails scrape against the skin of his backside. "Now..." I leveled into him with a solid stroke of my flat palm. "...when you address an authority figure..." SMACK "...and by that, I mean especially Doctor Manoff or myself..." SMACK "...you are to speak" SMACK "with" SMACK "respect." SMACK-SMACK-SMACK-- "Do you understand?" SMACK
"Aw," he cried out, "yes!"
SMACK "Say, Yes SIR!"
"Yes, Sir!"
SMACK
"You think it's okay to speak disrespectfully?" SMACK "You think you're the big man around here?" SMACK "You don't have to listen to what others tell you?" SMACK "Is that what you think? Say, 'No, Sir.'" SMACK
"No, Sir!"
Pause. SMACK.
"Who's in charge here? Say, 'You are, dad.'" SMACK
"You are, dad!"
Another pause his body shook in my lap.
SMACK
Manoff nodded to me from across the room.
SMACK
"Awww!" Raine cried out.
"What's the matter? Does it hurt?" SMACK "Good: it's supposed to hurt." SMACK-SMACK-SMACK I rubbed my fingers into the red marks on his skin. SMACK
"PLEASE" His hand shot up involuntarily to cover his backside; I returned it to his side, holding it in place by the wrist.
We continued in this manner for the remainder of five minutes, me rendering blows by hand, Raine whimpering in pain, and Manoff watching calmly from his chair in the corner. Occasionally, he'd jot down a note or two, but for the most part, Raine wasn't giving him very much material to work with. I knew all that would change, however, when the first five minutes were up.
Manoff raised his hand for me to stop. I pulled Raine upwards to sitting, looked carefully into his tear-stained eyes. All of the defiance was gone, all the _c_o_c_k_iness suddenly he looked to me like someone I had never seen before. "You managing okay?" I asked. He wiped his nose; I reached up and cleared the tears from his eyes with my thumb. "Because we still have a way to go yet."
He shot a look over at Doctor Manoff, who had reached into his leather bag and pulled out the hairbrush.
"Please!" Raine cried looking at it. He looked back at me, clenched his fingers around my shoulder.
At once, Manoff stood and crossed the room. Without a word, he placed the hairbrush into my hand his manner (for Raine's benefit, no doubt), perfectly ceremonious.
I rubbed my hand across Raine's upper back. "It's time to continue," I said.
The hairbrush spanking was significantly different from the earlier hand spanking. Instead of whimpering, Raine had begun to howl now, in a way that at once satisfied me and broke my heart. I perfected my technique as we went along, in the manner prescribed by Doctor Manoff: three strokes with the bristled front of the brush, followed by three with the wooden back, and so on. It seemed to me the front was more effective, as each time I returned to it, Raine grew progressively more talkative.
"I swear from now, I'll do whatever you say, I SWEAR! PLEEEEEEASE! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"
SWAT "Oh yeah? I don't believe you." SWAT "I don't think you're sorry because you screwed up, I think you're sorry only because you're getting your butt worked on." SWAT
"No, I swear, you don't understand!"
"What? What don't I understand, Raine?"
"I'm sorry because....."
SWAT "Yes?"
"I only screwed up because..."
SWAT "Go on...."
"I only screwed up because I wanted you to love me!"
I paused, just long enough to see Manoff scribbling like a madman in the corner. "If you want me to love you," I said, "there are other ways to go about doing it." SWAT "You have a mouth: ever think about using it to communicate?" SWAT "Or is that too girly for you?" SWAT-SWAT
"No!" he cried.
"Y'know, you've been with me only a week, and I'm already sick of that big _f_u_c_k_ing mouth of yours." Manoff glanced up at me, a look of mild surprise in his eyes. "Here: y'know what?" I continued, "You want to be a little boy for the rest of your life, you can do what little boys do" I popped my left thumb into his mouth, as I continued to spank him with my right. "Little boys like to suck on their thumb; let's have you hold mine in your mouth for awhile, maybe that'll keep your big mouth shut."
I could half make-out his garbled words. "Plea-se, dabdy..... Ub so soree...I luf you"
"Twenty-two!" I hollered. "It's time you started acting like a man." SWAT "Taking some responsibility." SWAT "Showing some respect." SWAT "For others, if not for yourself. SWAT-SWAT-SWAT
"Oh, PLEASE!" he cried, gagging over my thumb.
"You think you're a big man?" SWAT "I'll show you exactly what that means." SWAT "Goddammit, Raine, I'll show you good."
When another five minutes were up, and his body was limp as a puppet's, I lifted him gently off my lap and half-carried him over to his bed. I turned to hand the hairbrush back to Manoff, but he raised his palm, in indication that from now on, it belonged to me. He shoved his pen and notebook back into his briefcase, and I led the doctor quietly down the stairs.
"Very successful," he noted. "Raine's been a difficult case, but I think from this point forward, things are going to be quite different." I walked him to the front door. "Nice touch with the thumb," he added.
"I was inspired."
"You'll be sure he gets to therapy on time tomorrow night," he said, buttoning his suit jacket.
I shook his hand and closed the door behind him. Turning to face the stairs, I wasn't sure how I would proceed from this point forward. Luckily, Raine made it easy for me.
When I reentered his bedroom, he was sprawled out on the bed, face down. I could hear him sobbing softly into his pillow. I sat beside him, put my arms around his shoulders and rested my head against his. He finally turned to face me; I had no idea what he would say.
"Christ," he finally mumbled, "you're worse than Manoff."
The comment disappointed me, for once again he'd failed to use the doctor's full, proper title. Just the same, I decided, he'd been through enough for one night. There would be tomorrow to repeat the lesson, if I had to. I was pretty sure I'd have to.
He let me hold him after that, for a long time. I ran my fingers through his wilted spikes, and rubbed his back, careful to avoid the area of his backside.
"We're gonna have to take care of that," I said at one point. He held me harder, letting me know he wasn't quite ready to let go yet. From time to time, he would cry; I'd hold him tighter and ask what was causing the fresh round of tears. He said, he didn't know.
I didn't know either, really, but I was sure I'd find out in days to come.
"How about it?" I said, tugging on one of his locks of red-brown hair. "Why don't we do something about this?"
"Oh, come on, dad not my spikes." His eyes were gentle and not a little playful, too.
"Okay," I chuckled. "You can keep the spikes for now." I placed his head against my chest, let him be nourished with the sound of my heartbeat. He closed his eyes, and I stayed with him until he fell asleep.
I made sure, when he arrived at breakfast next morning, he found a father waiting for him with a plate of bacon and eggs, a tube of skin cream, a copy of the latest Rolling Stone, and a face without a mustache.
************
NOTE: As this is my first
story for MMSA Stories Archive, I would very much welcome any thoughts,
feedback, responses you might have. Feel free to e-mail me at
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