Besides my father and boyfriend, Ky, Kirin was my other figure of authority. Twelve years my senior in the year I was seventeen and went to my fourth summer camp, Kirin was also my camp leader and the motivation behind my adventurous spirit.
In any case, the way I felt about Kirin had been foreseen. Growing up, Kirin, who was my father's grandnephew, was often abandoned at our home when his parents were on some overseas business trip for long spells, and this was quite often.
Despite the wide age disparity, Kirin and I got along like the proverbial house on fire, right from the beginning. Boyhood with Kirin was filled with treasured moments of bathing together, watching him swim in the buff and playing 'Cannibals'. Kirin was the one that would be simmering in a make-believe hot cauldron while I looked longingly at the water and at his lithe body caressing the water. The stage was being set for one of my first-ever crushes on a boy. However, Kirin had not felt the same way about me, for he was straight as an arrow, but that was fine. I was contented with looking glass distance admiration.
The oldest of three boys and two girls, Kirin was a natural born authoritarian and moralist, who wore his philosophy printed across his forehead. He could be playful and was the first to get down for a good time, but there were limits. And stepping over the bounds of these limits meant a trip over his knees, he had apprised me so many times. It was the way he was raised and the way he believed young children should be raised. Kirin's authority was compelling but enacted through symbolic behavior, seldom through strident words. People responded to the flicker of his brow muscle or the crook of his upper lip with knowing and positivism.
When I was eight, I had my first taste of a man's hand, Kirin's to be precise, on my vulnerable little bottom. Indeed, before Father, there was Kirin. He was the first person that ever spanked me. It was warranted but I had not been responsible.
It was a time of emergency. My country was on the cusp of a vastly inconvenient armed strife with a neighboring country. Many of our men had volunteered for civil defense, and this included Father and my beloved First Brother, Mishka. So while the males of our families went away to perform their tours of duty, and the women busied themselves assisting at the rations tents, all the younger ones were placed in the charge of Kirin and my Second Brother, Kishern. Needless to say, our parents had given them jurisdiction over our discipline. I was to discover that our older brothers' ten-rule decalogue was more binding than that of our fathers.
It was Kirin's baby sister Shuqi that got me into a very real cauldron of hot soup that time. It was evening and Kishern, then twenty-one years old and a novice of Father's finishing school of discipline, had caught me allowing Shuqi to peek into my underwear. Shuqi and I were in the midst of a seemingly innocent tryst. It was all Shuqi's fault really, for, at eleven and looking quite grown up, she had been curious about a boy's private parts. In retrospect, I had always felt I had been a victim of molest as soon as I grew to understand the meaning of _s_e_x_ and _s_e_x_uality and would recall that eventful moment which had led to Kirin's spanking me.
Upholding the prescribed duties of family, rank, age and position into which they had fallen, Kishern and Kirin pronounced us both naughty brats guilty of an infraction and equally deserving a spanking. So Shuqi was placed on Kishern's lap and her bare-naked plump bottom made to endure five hand spanks while I was laid over Kirin's knees to endure my four, two on my underwear and two on my bared bottom.
It had been Kirin's idea, to trade siblings.
"I think," he had opined, telling Kishern, "we'd be able to deliver a more resounding message if these brats were spanked by a relative, someone they are not quite as used to as immediate family. This should add further to the embarrassment."
The apostate Kishern, the first in my family to convert to Christianity, had been more than acquiescent.
"All right, Shuqi," Kishern commanded, "you heard your big brother. Come over here and stand in front of me. Han, you go over to Cousin Kirin. Quickly."
We obeyed, trembling in our sandals while we stood before our sitters. Our other siblings had also gathered around us in the living room. I heard a number of them giggling.
"Now, Shuqi," Kishern continued, "remove your sandals, T-shirt and pedal pushers. But leave your underwear on for now."
Shuqi paled and almost fainted. Suddenly she didn't look so grown up anymore. She appeared to be in tacit rebellion of the circumstances falling so inexorably around her and my half brother swatted her bottom to get her moving. In no time Shuqi was standing in just her white training bra and skimpy white panty that was so thin I could see, through it, the traces of wispy black mound above her pleasure portal.
It was my turn to be stripped next. Assuming that because I was only eight and therefore might not know my underwear from my socks, Kirin went on to remove my overalls and T-shirt for me. I was soon accompanying Shuqi in just my underwear as well.
Kishern and Kirin exchanged nods and then Kishern proceeded to remove Shuqi's underwear. The white panty was rolled down to her knees. No sooner had I filled my senses with the image of Shuqi's developing vagina than I was hoisted up and I suddenly found myself staring at the floor and Kirin's feet. And then I heard Kishern's lecture about the reason we were about to be spanked.
Naughty. Incest. Sin. Defilement. Waste of time. I heard these words and more but only a few had made any sense to my unsophisticated cognition. Besides, this was all Shuqi's doing. I had only been complying to play her stupid game because she had had her fingers around my earlobe.
But I kept all these things in my heart.
While I continued to put the blame for my misfortune on my evil cousin, I was delivered to Kirin's hand's tormenting my backside. Kishern had already ended his diatribe. I felt Kirin smacking my underwear-covered bottom and at each smack felt the loose leg openings of my knickers ride up my bottom cheeks. By the second smack I was certain most of my underwear was wedged into my crack. I was let up thereafter and then Kirin yanked down the knickers. He swung me around to inspect his handiwork.
"Very nice," he boasted.
I wanted to flee into Kishern's arms but for some reason didn't dare. Perhaps it was deference to an elder before me, and this behavior had not been out of character.
Sobbing and sucking on my thumb, my knickers pooled around my thighs, I waited to watch Shuqi get her spanking. Unlike the disrespectful way I had been handled by Kirin, Shuqi was invited over Kishern's lap. Kishern had left her panty still scrunched up around her knees while he delivered to her naked bottom three hand swats.
WHAP!
Oohh!
WHAP!
Wah!
WHAP!
Aahhaha! Aahahahahah!
Shuqi had been quickly reduced to a cry-baby. I stared at her wide-eyed and horrified. I had never seen or heard such an overflowing of sorrowful and tortured emotions as that from Kirin's sister. Not even from my half sisters, when our father was spanking them, had there been such a frightfully noisy display as that being expressed by Shuqi.
I thought it was all over when Kishern lifted Shuqi from his lap, but I had another thought coming. Now both our sitters had bent down at our feet to pull our underwear down to our ankles. We were then ordered to step out of our underwear. I felt mildly sorry to lose my knickers altogether, while my fingers were pinching at my own penis. And this behavior was not out of character or habit either.
But Kishern was now reaching out to Shuqi's chest. All of a sudden, she let fly a stentorian scream that assaulted our senses as repulsively as a disgusting halitosis.
"Kimmy," she yelled to her older sister behind her, "don't let them take this off me! Please, Kimmy!"
And then she was wailing once again.
But Shuqi would learn quickly the vanity of her attempt at haggling over a punishment with Kishern. Ignoring Shuqi completely, my half brother unsnapped her white bra and removed it quite deliberately ruthlessly. Shuqi's tiny pre-pubescent buds were all exposed. Now we were both completely naked.
Placed once more over our sitters' laps, Shuqi and I endured two more hand swats on our naked bottoms. This was carried out in tandem and very swiftly, effectively turning the event a painfully tearful one for everybody, for the spanked as well as for the observers watching it.
It was over for real now. As much as I adored Kirin, I pulled away from him and flew into big brother Kishern's open arms. Shuqi had torn away from Kishern and was bawling into her big sister's bosom. Our tears dried up after a windy and exaggerated display of resentment and then penitence, but just long enough to be sent next to take corner time. Our reddened bottom cheeks were thrust outward in full view of our siblings, as a sore lesson on the simple exercise of obedience.
Of course my spanking had hurt and I had bawled like the baby that I was. And Shuqi's histrionics had given me wonderfully nostalgic memories of her humiliation at her treasure chest's being all exposed and trespassed. But it was a pity that my second oldest stepbrother, Kishern, had not also given me a more tangible legacy than just the memory.
And that was the one and only time Kirin had needed to spank me. One morning, I woke up and it was time for Kirin to go to college. Time was to separate us and I was to see Kirin only on public holidays or family reunions once a year.
Now, despite all his landed wealth that surpassed even King Solomon's, Kirin was a humble and unaffected person. Economic rationalism amidst the political standoff had led Kirin to delay furthering his education. So he was twenty-five when he finally went away to college, but I continued to nurture my crush on him. He studied a business management and psychology course and every summer worked as camp counselor at one of the many camp concepts that were mushrooming as a bourgeois diversion in our prolific hillsides and valleys. He had found so much fulfillment in his role that after he graduated he went on to set up his own summer camps.
In the year that I was seventeen, I had requested that Father allow me to go to Kirin's camp. It would have meant a half-day's journey to the valley and so I had not expected Father to consent. But Father had given his nod without much hard-sell pitching on my part. His seventh son was in seventh heaven. To think - fourteen glorious days with Kirin, and there was going to be plenty of swimming to do!
PART 2
Alas and aleck, no one had been prepared for it. It had been a grand and warm summer at the start of my two-week camp, but on the third night the weather took an inclement turn. There had been no forewarning. It had started as drizzle, and the gentle patter had lulled us all into a deep and comfortable sleep. In the morning, it was still raining but by afternoon, we were being pitted against the forces of vengeful nature. The storm brewed tempestuously and rose menacingly to pelt down rain unlike anything we had ever seen. We became trapped in our cabins while all around us the land was becoming clearly inundated. The smaller children were panicking and crying, and hungry. Everyone was wailing to go home or eat.
Kirin had no choice but to wire for outside help. He informed the camps' main headquarters that we needed assistance to reach dry land and higher ground.
Help was immediate but limited. Two military trucks were swiftly deployed our way but by this time we were all thigh-high in flood water. The campers were helped into the two trucks, a dozen at a time in ascending order of their age, with at least two counselors as oversight. Being one of the oldest, I was one of the last to leave. I waited in Kirin's cabin, keeping afloat on whatever sturdy furniture I could find, with a few of the other older boys and girls and our counselors. At long last, more trucks came for us to deliver us to the makeshift shelters on the hills. The specter of fear that had hung over us for eight hours was removed. But it was evening already and all of us had been cold, hungry, exhausted and waning in hope.
And then I heard the awful news. They were going to have to leave Kirin and some of the counselors behind until the next truck could be available. All the trucks mobilized for our use were still making their way to the shelters. To wait for another truck could mean another hour's anxiety, and the water was rising by an inch every minute. I felt immediately overcome by fear and distress once more at the news. I pleaded that Kirin allowed me to wait with him. I simply could not bear to leave his side.
"No, no way," Kirin replied, shouting at the top of his voice above the pandemonium made by the storm outside. But the strong gusts had ceased blowing off the zinc roofs and asbestos eaves of our cabin, or uprooting the aging palms.
"In that case," I argued, "I'm not leaving either. I'm not going to leave you here. I would be glad to trade a lifetime of safety for five minutes of your company."
Kirin said I was being absurd and insubordinate and ordered me into the truck, and only then did I remember his Four-by-Four. It was built like a monolith and parked a short way from his cabin. I mentioned it.
"Can't it take us out of here?" I asked him.
"It's probably too small," Kirin answered. "It won't make it through all that water."
"We can try," I urged. "It's better than leaving you here."
I persuaded Kirin further by which time the last truck had given up on us and decided to depart without me. Kirin yelled after the driver but to no avail.
"We have to try, Kirin," I said once more, referring to the 4-WD, "we have to. Besides it looks like it has tyres the size of a bull tusker's head. It can be used. I know it can."
"Okay, wise guy," Kirin said, studying the morose faces of the three teenaged camp counselors remaining with us, "but the key's in the ignition, and anyway, there's no way we're going to be able to get to it. It's at least a mile from here."
Kirin was exaggerating, of course.
"No it isn't," I said in demurral. "It's not that far from us. We can wade over."
"No," Kirin objected, "it's too dangerous. Your safety and theirs are what's important, and it's safer to wait for the next truck to come for us. This is all. I don't want to hear another word from you, young man."
Kirin's mind seemed made up and he had turned from me. At that moment I took a mental measure of the distance that separated life and us, and then I jumped from our perch atop a double-decker bunk. I felt someone pulling at my anorak but I had shaken free and the next thing I knew I was covered in water. I had never felt as engulfed by stench and putrefaction as the short moment my body sank into the murky cauldron, but my head was above the surface. I started to wade toward the jeep.
The entire time I was in the water, I thought about the votive candles I often saw being offered up to the Virgin Mother in those imported television shows which always seemed ready to hype about the perils that beset civilized culture. I didn't understand why but it was all I could think about, besides my father and Mishka.
I battled with the wind and the odds stacked against my youth to reach Kirin's jeep, which I did with a lot of fear and silent prayer. I had no doubt about being able to reach the jeep. Floods were not uncommon in my village and I knew about them. I had just never been trapped in one before. I found the key in the ignition as Kirin had described. I turned it in the hole. I had some difficulty starting up the engine at first but after a few more tries, I managed. I revved up the engine and the jeep started to move. I had driven Mishka's car illegally around the family estate before, so I knew how to manipulate a vehicle, albeit through trial and error.
I arrived back at Kirin's cabin in mere seconds. Kirin had been in the water, coming after me, but now he was scaling the altitude of the bunk again. I saw his arms outstretched to me to receive me. I took one more pseudo-heroic leap, but this time, into his arms.
"You fool!" Kirin yelled at me. His display of anger, had it been any more potent, would still have been poorly-disguised concern, I knew. "You could've got yourself killed. Don't you ever disobey me again!"
And then Kirin pulled me into his chest and hugged me really tight. "You had me really scared back there," he continued.
"Why?" I asked innocently.
"Why?" Kirin replied. "What kind of question is that? I care about you, that's why. I always did."
"You mean you love me?" I asked with bated breath, my heart palpitating in me.
"Don't push your luck," Kirin said, "and you're getting a sound spanking for this."
"Sure," I said disbelieving, and then, in what I perceived was the penalty for my unbelief, Kirin was tearing away my effluent-soiled clothes.
"Wait a minute," I protested.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, this is all wet and you'll catch cold," Kirin chided. "Stop being so difficult."
Kirin started to remove his soaked outer garments, too, when I suddenly felt something moving inside mine. I started to feel as if I was being pricked with fine sewing needles. I looked down on myself and screeched.
"Ants!" I said, tearing away desperately at the stinky clothes.
Kirin and I realized that I had picked up red ants from the flood when I was wading waist-deep in the water. The illustrious predators were wiggling on most parts of my body and feeding off me.
"They're in my underwear, too, Kirin," I screamed.
"Well, we'll just have to take it off," he said urgently.
"Right here? Now? In front of everybody?" I winced.
"This is no time to be concerned about modesty or sense of occasion," Kirin scolded while at the same time ripping off my briefs. I was embarrassed about how socially undesirable I must look completely naked to a salacious onlooker, but that was only for a second, for I realized that there was something else more riveting than my exposed nakedness. Those ants were gnawing at my crotch. Kirin and I swatted and smashed and scattered away as many of the ants as we could from my groin. Particularly dicey was trying to disperse the insects from my genitals without causing me grave harm and pain as well. I started to cry hysterically at the few that had found a snug niche in my pubic hair. And then I succumbed to nausea and fever, and my legs gave out.
When I came to, I found myself on dry ground. I was told that I had been brought to the shelter in Kirin's 4-WD.
"Thanks to your act of courage and sacrifice," Kirin said, his beautiful and tender face hovering above me where I was lying on a warm and dry straw palliasse, "we're all here safe and sound."
The cacophony of children's crying and whining reminded me of where I had been and what I had been through. I panicked. I lifted up the blanket and examined my groin. No more parasitic critters. Relieved, and surrendering to the effects of streptomycin, I fell back against the pillow.
Our ordeal was almost over. We were safe and on higher ground now even though we had still to wait for the rain to ease and the water to abate before we could all go home. Nor could our parents reach us at this time, but they had all been communicated of our safety in our temporary shelters. We were on course to write the classic happy ending to our tale.
But I almost didn't get my happy ending. Kirin had not forgotten his decision to spank me, and had made me wait a full week for it. The anticipation had been effectively agitating.
It was a Friday evening when Kirin finally came by the house, as he had done so many times, before he went away to college. He had wanted to spank me in the sanctity of privacy and had picked my bedchamber as the most obviously suitable context. Father had already given him concessionary permission to spank me in any way he deemed appropriate.
An odd sense of déjà vu settled on me when Kirin made me stand before him to remove my clothes.
Take off those sandals, he ordered. Good boy. Now take off your shirt and pants. Okay, now remove your underwear. All the way. Yes, you heard me. I want you completely naked when I spank you. Now fold your clothes neatly and place them on the bed. Very good. You're learning to obey me again, I can see. Are you still sucking your thumb? What a baby. Give me that hand of yours.
It was indeed Kirin's power of authority that had compelled me to obey. In just a matter of minutes, I was made completely naked and embarrassed by my cousin.
"Over my lap now," he said next.
I lumbered across Kirin's lap, hearing him sigh, and then felt his palm on top of my bottom cheeks. While Kirin kneaded my cheeks, he gave an abbreviated admonition about obedience and the importance of trusting one's elders enough to obey them.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, I heard, and then at last Kirin said: "I'm spanking you so that you'll remember to obey instructions. Do you understand me?"
I nodded. "Yes, sir," I said.
I felt Kirin's palm simultaneously leave my bottom, where it had been in a position of rest throughout his lecturing me, only to pummel down again on my right bottom cheek. I yelped at my first swat. Thereafter Kirin spanked me ten times in rapid succession, using the moment to illustrate with pantheistic staunchness his philosophical truisms.
And this was the second time I was spanked by my grandcousin. I was relishing the intimacy that was ensuing between us while his hand, and thus his emotions, made connection with my body and emotions, but after he was done, I rose from his lap and shifted sorrowfully to my bed. I plopped down on my stomach, threw a pillow over the back of my head and gave myself up to my need to cry. Obedience, I thought to myself, was it all that mattered to Kirin?
I was a long time weeping. I hadn't heard Kirin leave, so I knew he was still hanging around. When at last I decided to pry myself from my pillow, I looked for him. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, at my hips.
"Everything I did was for you," I whined. And then I blushed at my own _s_e_x_ual-social aggressiveness.
Kirin touched my shoulder tenderly. "I know," he whispered, "I know." After that he hugged me until I became placid.
Supper drew nigh. Kirin had been invited to dine with the family. We both heard the bell signaling for our assembly at the dining table ringing downstairs.
Just as Kirin and I got up, he continued: "By the way, about what you had asked before, the answer is yes. I do love you, as anyone would love his own brother."
And then he reminded me to clean up first before I went down.
Kirin's revelation, though not exactly what I would have completely liked to hear, left me stunned. Wow, I sighed. It was the only manifestation I could invent to express my exuberance, but I was certainly a happy lad when I made my appearance at the dining table.
In hindsight, I have to say that our great watery adventure had been a wake-up call to our collective consciences. Family had never been more important, and Kirin decided to sell his camps in order to helm his family's successful antique triptych business. He was also to start being my father's regular houseguest as he used to be so many years ago.
Father was convinced that I wasn't always his irresponsible scion but had enough auto savvy to obtain my learner's permit ahead of the legal age. I was euphoric to celebrate a major milestone in my otherwise chaotic life.
Me? I just lost my appetite for summer camps. I had decided that if I lived long enough to see another summer, I would just as soon spend it honing my swimming skills with my siblings in our backyard pool.
THE END