It's the year 2000. But it's still a mad race against time in the wee dawn hours to get things done on the university computer, and this always gets me all out of whack . Two hours is barely enough time for me to edit my stories, submit one, check my email and send away replies.

I wish I own a personal computer but the government seems to have left my village out of the information race. Despite the closing of two millennia, and the last one that has seen technological inclusion or intrusion upon life as revolutionizing one-worldism, my village seems to be holding up fairly well with a life that persists in a vintage culture and time warp. It defies common sense, yet boggles the sense.

My sanity is holding up fairly well, too, in spite of being half an hour late for my English class.

Being late has been the story of my life since I developed a love affair with the art of spinning tales thanks to Tolstoy, whose works I'd take long hours to commit to memory while at the university library. It engrossed me so that I lost track of the time. That got me late for my appointments and in my teen years, my habitual impunctuality would land me trips across men's knees for a spanking.

Nothing has changed much from that first time when I was taught a painful lesson about punctuality. That was nine years ago.

I had arrived at Ky's house an hour late.

Of course Ky was not happy. Of course the cane was curled around his fingers.

"A cane?" I screamed. I was after all only sixteen then and Ky was my sometimes boyfriend.

"You know what to do," Ky reminded me.

I let the tears fall. "Your hand please, sir," I pleaded. "I don't deserve the cane."

Despite what I might have boasted about in the past, I feared the cane, in a reverential way, the way some children feared feathers or birds in an irrational way.

So I clambered to a corner of the room and cowered there.

Ky eventually tossed away the cane. He always did have a tender side, and I always knew how to take it for granted.

I peeped between my long bangs to find a hand in my face.

"Okay, baby bear," Ky said, "not the cane. But you're still getting spanked."

I took the hand and Ky pulled me up. We walked to his settee.

I was stripped. I liked this, having all my clothes removed for me by the man who was about to spank me. I think all boys liked this. A part of me wanted to run and hide, another part to fall upon my man and plead for mercy, and the biggest part to be scooped up naked and cuddled into confidence and security. Yes, we boys asked to be spanked.

But Ky took hold of my genitals and studied my crotch. "Too short," he commented disapprovingly.

"But I'm still growing," I said defensively, thoughts of a place of watering semen stimulating the active places of my imagination.

"I'm referring to your pubic hair," Ky corrected my error. "You know I don't like you shaved completely."

"It's not my fault," I protested. "It's the school's fault. Master Qi's orders."

I was talking about my kickboxing instructor's directive that all members of the club kept their crotch shaved and smooth as a club requirement.

"You know I prefer you to sport some hair down here," Ky reminded me. "Didn't I suggest that you quit the sport and took up swimming again?"

I nodded. "Yes, sir," I said, my watery fantasy dissipating into crystalline droplets.

"You're getting additional smacks for shaving your crotch to oblivion," Ky informed me.

"Yes, sir," I said to my handsome Math tutor.

The spanking was over his knees and kept short. This notwithstanding, my bottom smarted.

It was usual that after a spanking, I was kept naked. No matter what came next or who would visit, I had to remain naked.

Well, what came thereafter was my hour-long Math lesson. I couldn't sit comfortably, and so Ky permitted me to do my sums on the carpet. I lay there on my stomach, all too aware of my red fanny facing the ceiling and Ky, who could be counted on to assess my progress at Calculus over my backside.

However, what I hadn't counted on was a visitor that day. But there it was - a knock on the door.

I sprang upright and went for cover in terror.

"Stay where you are," Ky scolded. "I didn't say you could get up. Your lesson isn't over."

"But it is, sir," I argued, hands flying to cover my naked genitals and anus, and wishing I had three. "My hour's up, sir."

"I'm not talking about Math," Ky explained, "I'm talking about your lesson in punctuality."

Ky ordered me back to the floor. I returned to my books and slumped down on the carpet, anticipating Ky's visitor anxiously.

It was only my oldest half brother, Mishka, too early for me.

But it was bad enough. Mishka had never been told that Ky had been spanking me, usually as punishment for some transgression, but also as improvised foreplay to nascent _s_e_x_. Mish knew nothing about our relationship at all, other than that Ky was my tutor.

"Hi, is he ready to leave?" Mishka asked at the door.

"Hi," Ky replied. "Come on in. You'll understand."

I kept my eyes on my sums. But I heard Mishka grunt.

My two favorite men exchanged words. And then I heard them sit down behind me. Someone placed his hand on my buttocks, patting my recently-tenderized cheeks.

"Yow!" I howled, and was compelled to eyeball my intruder. It was my stepbrother.

"You're too early, Mish," I complained, "I haven't even made my call home."

"Ky said you were an hour late today," Mish said, having his turn at reprimanding me. "Where had you been?"

"At the university," I whispered timidly.

"What doing?" Mish cross-examined further.

"Stuff," I answered cryptically.

"You're beating about the bush," Mish said impatiently.

"Mish, may I have a computer?" I asked. "Do you think you could convince Papa to invest in one?"

"You do it," Mish replied.

"I've tried," I moaned, "he just won't listen. But he'd listen to you, being the oldest and all. Then I won't be late all the time."

Mish then accused me of wasting my time with my stories again.

"It's not a waste of time," I argued. "And I was only an hour late."

That was when Ky pulled me onto his lap and spanked me all over again.

"You deserve to be spanked," Mish chided while I reviled against the outrage, "for back talking and for never listening. Don't you get it? Ky's upset and so am I. And it's not because of how late you were, an hour, half an hour, ten minutes. This is not the point. The point is respect, Han. You don't listen to your elders, which is tantamount to the fact that you don't respect your elders. This is not the first time you have made Ky wait for you, it seems. Making your elders wait for you is disrespectful, besides not listening to them. And by implication, you show your superiority to your elders. Can you understand this, Han?"

I think I only registered bits of Mishka's rhetoric. Besides, lateness was such a cultural commonplace that I didn't yet understand what the fuss was about.

So Mish encouraged Ky to hand me a long spanking thereafter, longer than the first one he had given me. I wondered if that had been a lesson in the value of time as well. The wait for Ky to finish spanking me had been excruciating. It dawned on me how foolish and insulted he must have felt waiting for me to turn up that morning and the many previous mornings before that.

I threw my arms over my head and bawled when my boyfriend finally concluded my spanking.

That certainly had been a long day at Ky's house. What was supposed to be a two-hour stay stretched to four, with twice that time spent being spanked and standing in the corner.

And it was a doubly humiliating day, too: to have my own beloved brother find out that my tutor, who was also my lover, spanked me, and to be spanked in front of my own brother by my own boyfriend.

For all that, I never got the P. C. I wanted, so I kept being late for my Math lessons that year, and for everything else for nine more years to come. Getting that all-important PC had been a battle not just with my father, who saw technology something to be feared, the way I feared the cane, but also with the government, who saw the allocation of funds for the anabasis of my village something of a future anachronism, and thus, anathema to our founding fathers.

So you see, it isn't that I haven't learnt my lesson about respecting time and being punctual. The problem lies with those long lists of users waiting for the terminals at the university. The university is the Information Central of my village. Only there may one find a computer.

Of course I put the blame for my habitual lateness on the government.

And so now I'm going to be late for my English class; only this time round, the person indentured to my tutelage won't be spanking me for it.

(ENDNOTE: The characters, Ky and Mishka, have appeared extensively in this author's previous submissions. Helpful cross references are the series of tales that begins with 'A Boy's Paradox' and ends with 'Will-o'-the-wisp 2'. These stories are in the author's index. This story is copyrighted to JRK, January, 2000.)