STRICT UPBRINGING IN SHORTS
My parents married late in life and I was the only child. They were extremely religious and believed every single word in the Bible and the house was littered with tracts and texts. On the wall of my sparsely furnished bedroom was a copy in tapestry, worked by my mother, of Solomon's famous adage, 'He that spareth his rod hateth his son', and decorating tne living room was yet another text, 'The rod and reproof give wisdom', and hanging beneath this text, in ominous readiness, was a long, black, supple, leather tawse.
Both of Solomon's ad-monitions were vigorously, assiduously, and indeed almost lovingly followed by both my father and my mother, and from the time I was quite a little boy until I was well into my late teens I was thrashed for any and all infringements of my parents' many rules and regulations. In fact, as these rules and regulations became more numerous as I grew older, I found that at sixteen and seventeen (when I was acutely aware that boys my age were normally no longer thrashed by their parents) I was having to pull down my short trousers and 'go over' for a thrashing much more frequently than when I was little. The only falling away from the precise 'letter' of Solomon's wisdom was my father's preference for the tawse. He had bought this broad, thick tawse when I was thirteen and we were on holiday in Scotland. The landlady of the boarding house at which we were staying complained to my mother that I had bullied her ten year old son. I had to be punished, but the cane had been left at home. When my mother asked the landlady if she had a strap or cane, that worthy sug-gested a tawse which could be bought quite cheaply at a shop in the town. My father bought the most expensive in the shop and I was given a whipping that evening in the presence of the landlady and her son. So impressed was my father by my frenzied reactions and the way the four snapping tails enabled my mother to give my bare bottom a keen and sturdy whipping without feeling in the least exhausted, that the tawse was always used on me from that day on, and hung below the framed text in place of the prescribed 'rod'. Obedience was the watchword, and a thrashing the infallible and inevitable consequence of a fall from grace. I never once remem-ber being let off a beating no matter where I was or who was present, and many were those who witnessed the painful ceremony and could enumerate the welts they had seen flare up across my big bare bottom or chronicle my _s_e_x_ual development, and after I was dressed, joke about the danger of my trousers catching fire or swear they could see steam coming down the legs of my little short pants. Accordingly, I had at all times to pay careful attention to my school work, to watch my manners and deportment, to see that Iwas punctual and tidy and keep myself neat and clean. The least departure from the high standards demanded from me would immediately result in the tawse being taken down, my short trousers and underpants being removed and my backside being soundly whipped.
Although my parents were not mean they held austerity in high esteem and had no regard whatever for convention. Fashion in clothes was an unimportant frivolity and they were com-pletely out of touch with the 1940s. But even if they had been more with it', I am certain that their deeply ingrained sense of economy and their preoccupation with seeing that I developed clean, strong, healthy limbs would still have induced them to keep me dressed in brief short trousers. The fact that at seventeen I was dressed very differently from other teenage boys, that there was no way I could hide my bare legs and thighs or prevent the tight front of my shorts trousers exaggerating the conspicuous contours of my privates, were matters of complete indifference to my parents, who, in the line of duty, frequently saw very much more of me than my bare legs, and had chosen to ignore my _s_e_x_ual reactions to my punish-ments which had become increasinly evident to others since I was fifteen. And in any case they regarded the wearing of short trousers by a big boy as a valuable lesson for him in the virtue of humility.
I was a tall boy, even at fourteen, and throughout my teens I remained willowy and girlish in appearance with completely hair-less legs and unusually smooth skin. Also, for a boy, my legs were exceptionally long and my knees big and broad, and, perhaps because my little grey shorts thrust their glossy bare expanse upon everyone's attention, the inordinate length and smoothness of my legs and the ample breadth of my great knees was continually commented upon. As a result I was mercilessly teased at school where I was a complete freak from the age of about fourteen. I was sent to school in specially cut down short trousers (to allow as much sun and air to my limbs as possible) and out-grown threequarter stockings, whose banded coloured tops had to be always neatly turned down over elastic garters. The boys never tired of inventing names for me of which 'Betty Grable', '_s_e_x_y legs', 'baby pants', and 'feel me quick' were the most innocent, as they also never tired of flicking ink pellets at my bare thighs or 'snap-ping' at my legs with ties and towels. When I was sixteen and seventeen, and my short trousers had disappeared under my blazer, they started to gang up on me and a group of big boys would hold me down while a first year boy was told to feel up inside the leg of my little shorts to see if I had any hair round my _c_o_c_k_ and then to bring it out from under the hem to prove I was really a boy. I never told my parents how I was tormented at school because I wore short trousers, but if I had, I do not suppose for one minute that it would have made any difference. They heard the whistles and jokes about my bare legs when I was out with them, and merely told me to take no notice. Yet even at seventeen, when I had been finding _s_e_x_ual satisfaction in my blatant exhibition for about two years, going out in my best suit was always an embarrassing experience. At that age, when I was five feet eleven inches, I still wore for 'best' a beltless boy's short-trousered suit in brown herring-bone tweed. It had been made to measure with neat, brief, ample-waisted little knickers when I was fourteen and simply would not wear out. Accordingly, for going to church, trips to the theatre, visiting relations, or going on my father's improving tours of museums and zoos, I had to cram my seventeen year old body into that absurd, ugly, out-grown suit. It may have pleased my mother's sense of economy, but it made me a figure of public ridicule. My arms protruded a good third of their length from the sleeves of the jacket, which was so drawn up at the back that it finished above my waist and revealed the braces that my mother considered it proper to wear with a suit. These unyielding braces pulled the matching short trousers so tight in my groin and so high up my flanks that my skimpy airtex underpants showed at the sides, and walking or standing I was constantly pushing the hem of my underpants out of sight and plucking at the legs of my shorts to prevent them riding up and showing the lower curves of my buttocks.
My mother also thought that it was a nice change from my school uniform stockings for me to wear ankle-socks with the suit, and so white or fawn ankle-socks were always worn with my suit and at such times I did seem to be, as a cousin once remarked, nothing but bare legs right up to my armpits. If the question of why I was still in short trousers was ever put to my parents, a complete belief in their healthy, Spartan ideals usually led to those that broached the subject being rudely snubbed.
When I was fifteen such unwarranted intereference got me a good whipping. Without any prompting from me, my formmaster wrote to my father suggesting that, as I was the tallest boy in the form and maturing rapidly, I should now be allowed long trousers or at least, as he put it, 'short trousers of a much fuller length'. He received a curt reply telling him to mind his own business and I received ten strokes with the tawse. My father was certain I had encouraged my formmaster to write, and for daring to question the good management of. the home and for not showing proper pride in the healthy, brown limbs that God had blessed me with, I had to take down my shorts and underpants, have my shirt-tail tucked firmly in my collar, and go across for a thrashing.
I particularly remember that punishment, as it was while I was getting dressed afterwards that I was told It would have to remain in short trousers for as long as I was at school. Even now I can remember my father taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves while I got undressed and handed my shorts and underpants to my mother, and the shiver that always went through me as my father hoisted up my shirttail and tucked it out of harm's way in my collar. I can recall too my father telling me to straighten my legs and 'get tighter', and most vividly I can remember the ten searing strokes. Immediately after my whip-ping nothing of course was said, as my parents were involved with assessing the effectiveness of the thrashing and I was involved with the pain. My mother sat tightlipped with my shorts and underpants neatly folded over her knees, my father stood, redfaced and breathing heavily, while I hissed and stamped and heaved and yammered and smacked together my great bare legs, jeiking and twisting my painwracked naked body in front of them. No longer conscious of my half-erected state I had clamped my hands to my blazing bare bottom and thrust forward my belly while my _s_e_x_ waved and gesticulated in front of me like an obscene Priapus, aware of nothing but the broiling mass of thick swollen ridges, which my father had raised across my bottom and the tops of my thighs, and which furrowed the once smooth boyish skin beneath my hands.
Only after what seemed an age of writhing and twisting in front of my mother and father did the pain subside sufficiently for me to become sensitive to the unseemly exhibition of my person and allow me to free one hand from its comforting work and allow it to come shyly round to my front in an attempt to cover my _s_e_x_ while I regained my clothes from my mother. It was while slowly getting dressed and pulling on my short trousers to leave bare my still trembling and quivering legs, that my father told me I would have to wear short trousers while I remained at Grammar school, and I better make the best of having to show my bare knees for the next two years.
Bare knees! ! If that was all I showed I might have passed through the years from fifteen to seventeen without being particularly affected, but the shorts I was made to wear left my lissom legs, and thighs the colour of new pennies, bare to the point of indecent exposure, and it was this enforced showing of all my long, girlish legs that made all the difference.
At fifteen I began finding an outlet in _s_e_x_. I had been masturbating secretly since the age of thirteen, but at about fifteen I started finding excitement from my own unusual state and a thrill in exhibiting myself. Whereas previously I would sit in trains and buses with my knees close together and my hands down the sides of my bare thighs, I started letting my legs loll wide apart and not caring if my shorts rode up at the sides. When boys or men ogled at my little short pants or stared at the great bars of my thighs bursting from them, I found my embarrassment being overtaken by pleasure and as I became erected I would slide a little forward so that my shorts became even tighter and the increasing shape of my penis more conspicuous at the front of my school short trousers. About this age too I reverted to pulling up the leg of my shorts when I went to urinate, and in any public toilet I would notice the immediate attention as I brought my penis down the leg of my shorts.
Before fifteen it had been important for me to keep the fact that I was still thrashed at home very secret, but as I got more involved with my narcissistic masochism, I began breaking rules on purpose when people were visiting my parents, so that I could enjoy masturbating after the thrashing at the thought of what they had seen, and would increase my own excitement by begging my father not to beat me or not to take down my trousers, getting him more angry so that he would smack my bare legs with his hand and sometimes even take down my shorts himself.
On the morning after a whipping, particularly when I was sixteen or seventeen, I would pull my shorts up as high as possible and sit with my legs crossed on the train to school so that the people sitting opposite had a clear sight of some of the marks of the tawse; and if I had moved a lot during the whipping and the tawse had left its telltale weals on the backs of my upper thighs, I would take the crowded bus back from school and stand on the lower deck hoping that someone was noticing the edges of the red welts below the hem of my shorts.
When my parents went out to one of their many church meetings, I would immediately go up to my parent's bedroom and sit in front of the big mirror and go through the actions of the day and watch the image of the big bare-legged boy in front of me and the way his shorts rode up past the sides of his buttocks and revealed the strips of paler skin at the tops of his thighs and the almost white skin of his flanks. Then I would let my legs fall apart and see the movement of my penis under the thin grey worsted and get very excited as I saw how big was the bulge of my erection. As my excitement grew I would bring my penis down the leg of my shorts and masturbate furiously watch-ing the contractions of my long, smooth legs and thinking how I could show more of myself the next day and reaching a climax when I thought of the thrashing I would get if my father came in and caught me masturbating.
So for three years the whippings I received and the short trousers I wore, held me in an exhibitionist world of my own creation, and when I went into long trousers at seventeen-and-a-half, and my father gave me my last thrashing at nineteen, I knew a great void that took many years to fill, and the memory of those years of extended boyhood can still awake a sensual reaction and cause me to bring out the tawse which I still have to this day.