My stepbrother had clearly ordered me to take off all my clothes. Habit and experience adduced that that always prefaced a spanking. Feigning a hearing-challenge, I extended my arms to him and attempted another embrace. I sought his understanding shoulder, my head upon it seemingly helpless, as I used to do growing up.
"It's so good to see you, First Brother," I cried shamelessly, "I've missed you ...."
My oldest stepbrother pushed me away. "Cut out the melodrama. You have missed me you say? Sure could have fooled me," he scolded.
"I forgot, Mishka," I said sorrowfully, "I've been so busy. I'm sorry."
"Busy with what?" he asked. "Does it have anything to do with your coming in at this unearthly hour?"
I turned from my brother to evade his question but he caught me by the sleeve of my anorak. He glared deeply into my eyes, so that I felt compelled to make a deferential response.
"I was with someone," I started, "someone new I met. He's very good to me and you just have to meet him to know this about him."
But Mishka had interrupted me, saying that if this were going to be another one of my long-winded tales, it would have to wait till later.
"Besides," he theorized, "one never really knows anything about anyone else. One can only ever be sure of oneself. Nothing is certain anymore."
I wondered about Mishka's parenthetical solipsism, when or why he had become so tragically cynical, but he was reminding me that he had ordered me to take off my clothes.
"And do it quickly," he continued his tirade. "I want you completely naked. You're getting spanked."
"Why, Mish?" I wailed, "I already said I was sorry."
"Sorry doesn't quite make up for the eight hours of anxiety you had put me through," Mishka said, "or for the trouble I went through searching for you. Sorry isn't even enough for breaking the promise you had made to me to meet me at the airport. If you recall, I had said I would take a cab to you, but you had been the one that insisted on meeting me. So that's three offenses you're being spanked for. I should also mention the state you've let this apartment get into, what a slob you've become, but that's for later. Now get on with it. When did you learn to be so rude to your elders?"
Having learned to interpret First Brother's moods, I hastily put his order into action. I removed my anorak and exposed the Halloween costume I was still wearing. For the first time this early morning, I was in earnest to shed my clothing. But Mishka had caught sight of the hideous Spiderman tog, and was now holding my shoulders firmly.
"What the hell are you doing wearing that leotard?" he laughed sardonically. "Have you joined the ballet?"
"It was Halloween, Mishka," I cried, feeling humiliated and ugly. "It's a Spiderman costume."
Mishka regarded me incredulously. "I know what it is," he maintained, "I've been reading comics before you were born. But it's still ridiculous on you. Do you realize how obscenely it displays that wealth of yours down there?"
"Well then, let go of me and I'll take it off," I pleaded.
Mishka released me and watched me remove the costume. I peeled it away as if it were second skin. It was that tight. Afterward, I stood facing my stepbrother in just my white jock strap.
"Take that off too," Mishka ordered. "I've said already, you're getting spanked naked."
I gripped the top of my thong and then attempted to get out of being punished. "Mish," I started, "couldn't we do this tomorrow? I'm sleepy. I want to go to bed."
"Well," my brother replied, "you weren't too sleepy or tired to have stayed up all night and most of this morning, were you?"
Mishka then decided he'd had his fill of my verbose balderdash, approached me where I was standing in my underwear, and then swiftly yanked it down to my ankles. And ere I knew what was going on, he had sat down on the couch and pulled me across his knees. My strap was soon separated from one ankle.
"I'm 22 years old, for crying out loud, Mish," I protested, "you can't do this."
But expostulating, however respectfully advanced and elegantly worded, was sure to get a spanking man going. I never learned! Mishka was all wound and fired up to spank me as good as it got.
I felt now Mishka's leg wrapped around my left thigh, pulling my legs apart. I felt my penis squashed against his strong thighs. And then his massive hand began to beleaguer my naked bottom.
WHAM!
Wah! I cried.
Mishka went on to modify my attitude and coerce me to toe the etiquette line through pummeling my naughty bottom for about five minutes before he let me up. He studied my genitals on his palm and appeared to be obtaining confirmation about something amiss there that he had noticed before. It must be my pubic hair that had disappeared from my crotch as per Bryce's instruction. Mishka shook his head but kept mum about it.
"Give me your underwear and go bring me your hairbrush," he ordered me instead.
Sniffling back the mucus that was parlaying on my philtrum, I did as told. I located my dirty hairbrush in my bedroom and my heart sank. Mish was bound to give me flak about it, I knew. But I had no other hairbrush.
I returned to my stepbrother and handed him the implement. He glared at the lint and thousand strands of lost hair loop-the-looped like psychedelic Pucci swirls around the bristles and his eyes rolled to the ceiling. I blushed deeply, feeling ashamed at my inadequacy in the grooming and hygiene management department. I used to be quite a little tidier-upper, but lately I had turned into a slob. Failing at love had never been my forte, never brought out of me anything positive.
Now, there were three men who had always been able to make me feel delightfully boyish whatever my age, and Mishka was one of them. I felt boyish and dependent as I stood naked in front of my half brother. I waited with bated breath while he studied my dirty hairbrush.
"All right," Mish whispered, sighing at the dilemma of my hairbrush, in that exaggerated but endearing way of his. I widened my eyeballs, pursed my lips and smiled sheepishly at my half brother. How I loved his tender ways.
"Put yourself on my lap again. Quickly," he went on to say.
I made myself comfortable on First Brother's lap. I might as well, for if I were not going to get out of the punishment I ought to make the most of it. Ordinarily I would have been eager to embrace the moment. I was on my beloved brother's lap, I was being given adult attention, withal through being disciplined, and I was naked and loving being naked. But this morning was not an ordinary day. This morning, I was in love. I wanted to catch some sleep so that I would look fresh and alert for my next shoot with Bryce who had said that he would be shooting me naked on an outdoors setting, preferably somewhere wild like the woods.
"It's going to be the juxtaposition of nude virgin landscape and raw pristine landscape," Bryce had predicted.
Moreover, my bottom was sore from all that self-flagellation. I was astonished that Mish was also reticent about my bottom's looking like the relief of a cityscape at twilight.
But now I felt my penis being pulled out. Mish was slipping it between his thighs, entrapping it. I groaned.
"Add this dirty hairbrush to the latest list of your offenses," he said to me. And not wasting another breath, Mishka tested the offensive implement on both my bottom cheeks. I howled. I also swore at my stepbrother and he was glad that I had given him just cause to deal me a heftier blow next. After that I showed him some respect and meekly accepted my stepbrother's disciplining me.
By the twentieth blow, I had come to terms with the fact that I was going to be spanked whatever my age, as and when I needed it, as and when the men, who regularly spanked me, felt I needed it. I no longer felt 22 at this point. Mishka had, from the moment he forced me to remove all my clothes, made me feel I was 13. I was just a boy, his boy, my underwear subject to being removed whatever the time and reason. Even this thought could reduce me to tears. How could it not? I was being treated as a little boy. I would behave as a little boy.
Or did I have it backwards? Had I always had it backwards? Could it be that I had always behaved like a little boy and so was getting my comeuppance the way a little boy should?
No matter. My tender backside ached while I was laboring to reproduce the physical manifestations of its pain on my face.
"I want to sleep, Mishka," I bawled tearfully. "I have to sleep now."
Mishka bought my tears and soothed me on his shoulder. "All right, sleep then," he cooed. "You earned it. But we're going to resume this tomorrow."
I sprang upright. "What?" I cried. "Why?"
Mishka said I knew why. My punishment was hardly proportionate to my offenses. I wanted to say that we could not resume this tomorrow. There was not going to be time. But Mishka's arm was around me leading me to the bedroom. He laid me on my bed, the bed I shared with Ky, and then quietly went to the bathroom. He returned with a soaked wash cloth and sitting down at my hip, began to wipe my private parts and _s_h_i_t_hole. It was completely relaxing and I was grateful and somnolent in no time.
The first sign of sunshine announcing daylight awoke me. I was on top of my half brother. I wasn't sure how or when I had ended up in that position, my face buried in his crotch, but I liked waking up to the gossamer softness of his man-hair and dewy lightness of his man-scent. Mishka was also rousing from sleep. I quickly lifted up, embarrassed, and hoped that he did not know I had been sniffing at him. Mishka smiled, seemingly innocent, so I felt relieved, and then heard him say we must bathe together.
Mishka and I stood under the shower until he was certain I was absolutely clean. I remembered then the last time that my half brother had bathed me: I was not yet eighteen and it was just before my historic American invasion. I was a wreck, coming out of a drug-dependence. But I was a wreck now, too. In hindsight, I had always been a wreck, emotionally, and needed my brother to mend me.
"You recall that I said I was going to spank you this morning," Mishka said to me while he toweled-dry my crotch.
I nodded. "I remember," I said, wincing already.
"Let's get it over and done with then," my brother said.
I glanced up despairingly at the clock. I had an hour to make it to Bryce's apartment. I worried about the risk of Bryce's misconstruing that I had lost interest in him. I had made up my mind the night before, while I was snoozing cozily against Bryce's chest, to pursue a relationship with him, for that was in his plans as well. I didn't want the opportunity squandered now by circumstances within my control but I hadn't the foresight to control.
Mishka had asked me a question but I had not heard.
"Han," he called out to me, nudging me in the arm, "did you hear me? I asked you a question."
"Huh?" I grunted.
"Your hair," he repeated for my benefit, "down there. Why have you shaved it off, and don't get coy and say it's personal. You do worry me so."
"I shaved it for Bryce, Mish," I answered immediately.
"The new lover you were starting to tell me about?" Mish asked.
I nodded. From hereon, Mishka sat me on the bed, close to him, and we engaged in a discussion of my latest beau.
But Mishka approved of nothing he had heard so far: Bryce's work and involvement in the Gay and Lesbian Club, his mid-western roots or his twice-divorced mother and thrice-married father. Nor of his having spanked me, his prosthetic leg that substituted for the one he had lost to bone cancer, his Aryan ancestry, nor even his retrousse nose.
"You're prejudiced, Mish," I accused my stepbrother. "The sum of all Bryce's parts is greater than the whole."
Mishka maintained that snobbery was hardly the common denominator in the way he felt about Bryce. There was just something so apparently decadent and impetuous about the whole of our unorthodox social arrangement. But it was when he heard of Bryce's photography and my posing nude that he rose from the bed enraged.
"I've heard enough," he bellowed. "It's going to end right here and now or you're coming home with me on the next available flight."
I got up too. I was flabbergasted at Mishka's demand laced with that unreasonable ultimatum. "Don't now start trying to control my life and decisions," I screeched at my half brother impertinently. "I have a date with him in less than an hour and I'm going."
"You've lost your mind talking to me like this!" Mishka retorted. "And going! Exactly where are you going, and what are you going to do? Take more pictures? Is this why you shaved off your pubic hair? He made you?"
"All right, yes," I cried, "I took it off for his pictures, but he didn't make me. Nobody makes me! I wanted to do it. I like Bryce. Which is more than I can say about how you feel about Yazmin. You don't love her. You don't even like her very much. You know you don't. Your marriage to her is nothing but a front. And you're not being true to yourself. You like men, you know you do. I know you do. And I know you love Cousin Niki. You're a whore, Mish! A whore!"
In that moment of unreined-in passion, I wanted to retract my words. I felt so sorry for the derogatory name I had used to call my best-loved stepbrother, but then I saw a hand raised above my head. Mish was about to strike me. I ducked and then saw the anger in his face. It was murderous. I actually believed that time that my brother would commit murder. I would have run out of the apartment had I not been naked. I quickly found the only safe place to hide from my brother, under my bed. I crawled under my bed, found the farthest corner I could cower at and stayed there. I found myself shaking as my mind kept reconstructing images of that murderous look in Mishka's face. I was devastated and hurt. My brother had looked like he absolutely hated me.
But Mishka seemed to have cooled down after an hour for I spotted him unspinning cobwebs in search of me. And then I heard his tender words.
"Come on out of there, Han," he cajoled. "I'm sorry I frightened you. I didn't mean to frighten you. Please, little brother, we can talk about it."
Then he had sat down on the carpet with his legs folded under him, his back leaning against my bed edge.
"You were right, I do love Nikita," Mishka continued. "I'll always love only him. But think about the place we come from, Han. The culture we come from. It'll never be accepted. Marrying Yazmin is the only way. I guess I'm going out on a limb, leaving Nik to marry Yazmin. I'm not cossetted by the kind of choices you have. I am Father's firstborn, his first heir. There are duties, obligations, roles that come with this. I have to submerge my preferences for the good of family. I'm sorry I scared you, milksop. I love you, always will. Hey, I carried you as a baby. I watched you grow, held you when you were sick or unhappy, or frightened by the lightning, remember? I could never, ever harm you."
My stepbrother was still trying to coax me out when I arrived at the detritus of my fear. I crawled out and found my brother weeping. I lay on the floor and put my head on his lap. I wept, too, remembering the Mishka that had shared all the crisis points in my life. Mish cradled me. Not long after, I rose and laid my body across my brother where he was still sitting and had not moved. It was time for my spanking. I wanted it badly for I had been so mean to him.
"Please, Mish, please spank me," I whispered.
My oldest stepbrother spanked my naked bottom with his bare hand only, but he had not held back. He was spanking me for the previous infractions, I knew, it had nothing to do with how I had insulted him just moments ago. But as far as I was concerned, he was spanking me for the insult. We were even, I thought.
Later, Mish and I took a taxi to Bryce's. Bryce was still at home. He had waited, testing his IQ on an acrostic. But he had taken off his prosthetic limb for he had just come out of the bath. Thinking I had come alone, he had greeted me in the nude. And then he had seen Mishka and there had been plenty of red faces and apologies tossed about. Bryce then made us a scrumptious Cajun meal. My stepbrother had been noticeably enamored of Bryce's beauty and courage. Mishka might be getting married, but there was no denying the _s_e_x_ he favored.
After lunch, Bryce drove us to his great grandfather's property near the coast. It was a primordial but scenic property on an island. Bryce stripped me naked for my newest weekend shoot while Mish watched intently to keep me safe. I felt self-conscious at first, posing while my own brother was observing protectively.
Bryce laid me on the bough of an aging elm, coaching me to slither on it like a python. Mishka had stood under the tree to remove any physical danger if I slipped and fell, or if the bough broke. Bryce was relieved that this was the only time my stepbrother had been interactive.
After that, Bryce nestled me between huge rock boulders, positioning my bottom cheeks in a way that was conterminous with the rocks in a gracefully symmetrical and harmonious juxtaposition of spaces. Later I played in the water with a retinue of ibises, diving for fish among the ibises. I hung from a series of cromlech, lay on my back on the edge of a promontory and simply walked down a weathered jetty. I careened on an overturned boat beached on the sand and helped ants the size of my thumb to build their home. It was the best shoot I had ever taken part in, even with the Fall drizzle on the lee of beginning, and Mish was relieved that it had all been tasteful and harmless. Family portraits ended the shoot but Mish remained mostly clothed. He did bare all for one shot in which I had lain on the summit of his buttocks on the sand.
My stepbrother stayed a fortnight, just time enough for him to gain a favorable impression of Bryce. He had also seen the results of my modeling debut, admitting that they were indeed miracles of talent and cleverness. He had been satisfied that the portraits would not put my morality in a position that compromised family, integrity and safety. He had been concerned about libertinage and later blackmail. On the other hand, he had liked a number of the black and white vignettes sufficiently to ask for them as keepsakes.
"It's time to burn the bridges," I explained to Mishka about my pursuit of Bryce. We were at the airport. I was sending my stepbrother off. "I have to stop hankering after what isn't mine, Mish. Ky may never come back; you're getting married. I must give myself a chance with others."
"This is really what you want, I know," Mish said. "I won't try to change your mind. Bryce does seem to care for you."
I nodded, but I was clinging on to my half brother. I didn't really want to let him go. He was getting married in December and things were going to change between us. I didn't bear to think what these changes might be. I felt I was losing a limb to let Mish go.
"You do know I'll always be there for you whatever the outcome," Mish added. "But Bryce appears to be serious about you. Perhaps this is it, huh, baby? Perhaps this time it's for real."
"Doesn't mean it'll work out with Bryce better than it had with all the others," I said to Mish. "Doesn't mean he won't end up hurting me or getting hurt. It's a risk for Bryce, too. I'm not exactly the easiest person to know or live with. But it's all part of the deal, you know, taking risks. But they're risks I'm willing to take and Bryce seems prepared as well. Just as the risks you're taking with Yazmin. I need someone in my life, too, Mish. I deserve to be happy, too."
"I know, Han," Mish said. "Of course you deserve to be happy. This is all I ever wanted for you. Don't you ever doubt this. And I'm always going to be your brother. Don't you ever doubt this either."
Mish and I walked towards the restricted boarding area. In parenthesis, he added: "You know, milksop, you've really grown up a fair bit. I'm proud of you. Makes it easier to go ahead with the wedding. I had been concerned about you, particularly after you'd told Papa on the phone that you weren't going to be there. And then that letter from you accusing me of disloyalty to you. You're always in my heart, silly girl, don't you know?"
Mishka hugged me for a long time.
"Don't for one minute think that just because I'm going to be a family man, I won't be spanking you anymore if I ever hear of your misbehaving," he said, at last pulling away. "You behave yourself now."
Mishka's chastisement was poorly concealed nostalgia, I knew. But I nodded and then watched him step into the boarding room.
I took a deep breath, suspending my urge to buy a ticket to join my half brother. I had to let go of him. I had to move on. He had already.
Outside I found Bryce waiting in his Chrysler.
"You haven't lost him, you know," he assured me.
"I know," I smiled, "he told me."
Learned reader, this boy's tome ends here, Ji-han, October, '97.