Jeff's Journal
Just when I thought it had merely been a figment of my imagination, or an hallucination induced by Stoner's drugs, my headless-body-on-Brad's-lap paid me a visit recently. That time, it was Tristan who had provided the motivation to coax it out of my veiled memory.
The imagery had been on the lam, psychologically. Something about it had given me a tattooed sense of reference of where I came from: that I was the body, that being on Brad's lap was a posturing I liked, that my relationship with Brad wasn't normal, at least not in the conventional idea of normalcy.
Knowing that this had used to be my lifestyle in the past, if my interpretation of the imagery were accurate, I could start to create my future. Even without all my memory restored to me.
What's the story, you ask? I suppose, as always, the best place to start is the beginning.
I had needed some variety in my life after 2 uneventful weeks of adjusting to Matthew and Tristan's homogeneous brand of therapy. Don't get me wrong, diary, I've no complaints about therapy. Although a stigmatizing word, it's also a stabilizing one. It gives me some assurance that I'm being helped to remember all of my past and identity.
And as Tristan maintains, therapy's a status symbol, the preserve of the august.
But as I said, I had badly needed variety, so when Friday drew on the week, my fifth week back with Brad, and I'd overheard Tristan telling Brad that he was needed at home to defuse a delicate situation involving his boys I begged him to bring me along.
"I'm a human being, Tristan," I said playfully, invoking Pauline Kael, "I need social and aesthetic diversity."
I wore him down with my pleas but before he consented to my following him, he'd forsworn me against interfering in any of the actions he was going to take to produce an entente for the homefront intransigence. I gave him my word.
"Remember," he said, "not a squeak from you. This is not a social call. Neither is it going to be pleasant. My boys are about to get their bottoms smacked, but maybe it'll do their attitude some good to have you witness their spanking."
He was talking about Shannon and Blaine, his and Sean's 12-year-old twin sons. Actually they were Sean's sons from a failed first marriage to his high school sweetheart from his home country in Wales. I was to find out that it was, in fact, Viveca who had walked out on the marriage and toddlers 10 years ago. She'd been loathed to live much longer with Sean's peculiar attitudes and qualities of mind that had led him to be intimate with another man.
A few years later, a job transfer booked Sean and the twins on a transatlantic passage to the United States, settling them down in New York City where Sean would raise the boys as a single parent. Four years ago he got together with Tristan. They married not too long after and set up a domicile with the boys.
So much for the recapping of history.
This afternoon Tristan was about to be reunited with Sean whereupon they would make their separate contributions to the transformation of their sons' attitude.
Their house, cozy and homely, was exactly what I had pictured it to belong to a psychiatrist and his geologist husband. The landscape for coziness had been outfitted in wood panels where the colors of nature and neutrals prevailed. A few pieces of red and yellow chairs were the only polychromatic variants allowed.
We found the two boys on the stair landing, undoubtedly sentenced to take corner time while they waited for their stepdad's arrival. This – Tristan's arrival, I mean – would prove a momentous occasion, an irrevocable turn in the boys' fortunes.
Sean was kissing both my cheeks while telling Tristan in an exasperated tone: "You deal with it, Trist. I've had enough of their brain arrest. This is the third time they've been caught playing hooky. I can't keep being interrupted at work like this."
A scowl of disapproval for Sean's temper and harangue swept across Tristan's face. Ostensibly the more patient of the fathers, he fell quickly into his role of family man. He mounted the stairs while suggesting I made myself at home.
"Bad day, huh?" he said, reaching the boys.
I thought his gambit was a cool one, non-judgmental and ahead of his generation, but it failed to find an audience. He sighed quietly. Mute defiance, I guess, was an exasperating heart of the American youth culture, any generation.
Continuing to exercise civil control, Tristan gently swung the boys around. He approached Blaine. He'd made no comment or command, but lifted up the younger boy's T-shirt. He found the waistband and fly of his baggy shorts. Showing a talent for the notions department, he fluently unfastened every existing hook, button and zipper there to loosen the shorts and lower them down to the boy's ankles. The white briefs followed swiftly, exposing the crying boy's private parts.
All through the stripping ceremony, Tristan had remained fundamentally unchallenged, squarely in charge of the boys. While the T-shirt was still lifted to the boys' armpits, he let his eyes roam over the nude anterior. He found nothing there that was amiss, nor on the boy's posterior, so shifted his attention to the next boy.
Shannon endured the same discreet strip and search treatment. I had spied his penis through the open fly of his pants before Tristan had even pulled them down. This boy hadn't worn underwear.
But like his brother, he too passed Tristan's examination. The stepdad put on a look of relief afterward for both his sons' unblemished skin. I suppose he must have been overwrought on suspicions about playground bullying or abuse.
But the boys were still reticent. Tristan restored them to their corners.
"You will stand here for another hour," he explained, "to think about why you shouldn't tell Dad and me the reason you're playing truant again. In any case, after the hour, I will return to you to give you your spanking."
He abandoned them and gathered me into his bosom. He'd left me alone long enough. We joined Sean for our midday meal.
"I love them equally," Sean maintained, his eyes narrowing, "but I can't handle them anymore. Particularly Shannon. I don't want to make allegations that may be false but I'm concerned about the way he's influencing Blaine."
Tristan demurred, warning against hastily devised resolutions. "There's more to it than meets the eye," he said. "Those are good boys, Sean, and what they need is a bit of our time. Leave them to me, please."
We finished our meal and returned to the living room. It was time for Tristan's patience philosophy to be put to the test.
"Okay, Shannon," he called out in a tight voice, "you're first. Come over here, please."
The boy sulkily descended the steps, the pants around his ankles impeding any gracefulness he might have in his movements. He made his way down without tripping himself.
As soon as he was seated on Tristan's lap, his pants were completely removed. He was subjected immediately to Tristan's inquisition, designed to get at the truth once and for all.
"All right," Tristan said, "I believe you've had enough time to think about what I said earlier. Now here's the question once more: Was it your idea to cut school?"
"Yes," the boy answered with some impunity though his voice was weak, "so what?"
"So I want to know why," Tristan replied.
"School sucks, that's all," he replied, his eyes not making contact with Tristan.
"Is this really all, Shannon?"
"Okay, okay, I wanted to watch that skin flick. All right? Big deal."
Tristan nodded. Then raised up the boy. "All right," he said, "it's apparent I'm not going to get much of the truth from you."
I thought that was that but he went ahead to strip Shannon of his remaining clothes – his T-shirt and canvas sandals. I marveled at the boy's augmenting penis, pointing toward the ceiling.
"Your hair's starting to grow," he continued. "Go into the bathroom with your father. You're getting a shaving."
The boy blushed. "But the guys will laugh at me, Dad," he protested.
Too bad for him, Sean's hand was already gripped round his slim elbow, tugging him along in totalitarian acquiescence with Tristan. That helped to pull focus on who was in charge. Father and son disappeared together up the stairs.
"Okay, Blaine," Tristan commanded the other boy. "It's your turn."
Now, this one was a bit more disposed to deferential behavior. He removed himself prompty at Tristan's fiat. However, he'd caught sight of me and frozen. Tristan kindly went up to relieve him of the awkwardness. Then sat him on his lap and took away his shorts and underwear. His three-inch was sticking outward, just as his brother's had been.
Tristan cupped his genitals with his palms and began.
"You know what, Blaine," he said, "I don't believe Shannon at all. I think he's bluffing. Don't you?"
The boy turned pale but kept mum, casting his eyes the whole time on his lap. Tristan forcibly turned up his chin.
"You know what I think?" he pursued. "I think you were the one that had wanted to cut school."
The boy seemed beside himself all of a sudden, the veins reddening on the whites of his eyes, and then he threw his arms around his stepfather's neck. He sank his head on his shoulder, instantly reduced to tears.
In fact, the tears were so long-winded as to attack the reasonably no-fault circumstance imputed to him.
"Are you going to let your brother take the rap for you?" Tristan provoked again. "You know he's in for a severe spanking and grounding. So are you, but he's getting it worse. Is this what you want?"
Oh, how easily the boy was able to be broken. He shook his head. "No," he cried, "that's not what I want at all."
"Well, if that's really the case, why don't you tell me exactly what's been going on?" Tristan continued.
But a caustic vocabulary out of nowhere arrested the interchange. Sean had returned with Shannon, still naked and now crotch shaven.
"I said shut up, Blaine," Shannon carried on, his fingers scratching the razor rash already spreading over his crotch. "It doesn't matter, okay, Dad? Just forget it."
He was fighting against his other parent's grip.
"All right, Shannon Read," Sean scolded, a faint mix of irritation and puzzlement registering on his handsome features, "it's enough, the both of you. What's got into you, Shannon? Where's all this anger coming from? It's just so unlike you, the attitude, the truancy. You used to like school."
"Well, I hate it now, all right?" the boy spat.
"Don't you use that tone with me," his father warned.
I think Tristan couldn't help but become drawn into the dispute by this time. I think he felt he had to show Sean some support. That must have skewed his patience theory. It now remained with Blaine to restore some semblance of civility in the quarrel.
He rose to the task.
"Please, daddy, don't question Shannon any longer," he cried. "It's got nothing to do with him. It's me. It's my fault. He was only protecting me."
"Shut up, Blaine," his brother yelled.
"No, you shut up," Blaine shouted back. "Why should you get all the attention? Please, daddy, don't blame Shannon. He just didn't want to hurt your feelings, both your feelings."
"Hurt our feelings?" Tristan replied. "Honey, the only thing that will hurt our feelings is seeing either of you boys hurt. Now it seems to me that it's your feelings that got hurt. Is this it, Blaine?"
The boy nodded, his inclination to truth and justice reviving, and before long we were hearing him confess to the whole unhappy tale. He did this over Shannon's diehard terrorist declarations.
"They called me a faggot," he complained tearfully at the end of his confession. "Because a couple of .... faggots were raising me, they said."
"They .... do you mean those boys' parents?" Sean asked.
He nodded. "Yes, Derek and Jerry's parents, at least their daddies did. They said it's immoral for two men to be raising us. They said we shouldn't be in the school, being a bad influence. I hate them. And I hate school."
He threw his head against Tristan's chest. "And I'm not going back," he added.
"Look at me, Blaine," Tristan said, holding him by his shoulders. "You can't not go to school. It's important to have an education. It's education that prevents the kind of bigotry you just described in Derek and Jerry's daddies. Oh, Shannon, please stop the raving, for Pete's sakes. Come over here and sit on my other lap."
He did. Tristan helped him to hop on and then slapped him affectionately on the wrist.
"No scratching, Shannon," he advised. "Now listen, the both of you. Dad and I love you. I think you know this. I think you also know that we're not going to let you come to any harm. As for these other parents; tell me, how many of them do you know still stay together?"
"Maybe one couple out of two," Shannon replied.
"That's 50% of marriages riven by separation or divorce, would that be correct?" Tristan asked.
"Yes," they both said in unison.
"And is that any more moral than what we have going in our family?" Tristan asked.
"No," they replied, again in unison.
"But they don't see it that way," Shannon added intelligently.
"No, honey, they do," Tristan opined. "Don't let appearances fool you. They do see that being a good parent has little to do with being a man or a woman and a lot to do with commitment. But they put on blinders. Many people need to take out their comforts by the light of others' perceived weaknesses. It's an aerie from which to view our own shortcomings with a little less guilt.
"Now, listen to me, both of you: our society operates under a system that assumes that the only possible human relationships deserving marital recognition are those between a man and a woman. It's too simple an assumption to make that love can only exist between a man and a woman, and so only a man and woman can consummate a union through _s_e_x_ and later parenthood. But forgive society its frailties and prejudices, sons, because we can't ignore the weight of our patriarchal tradition, and we're not individually called upon to dish out moral dispensations to others. Okay, boys?
"My, you guys seem very quiet all of a sudden. What's the matter?"
I heard myself chuckle. It was a nice touch, the cerebral convolutions and closing irony, but it was too removed by sophistication from the boys' understanding. They were understandably gaping at their stepdad.
They shrugged their shoulders at each other and then sank their heads against their stepdad's chest.
"How much longer are you going to stay with Uncle Brad?" Blaine asked, some puberty-induced voice change taking form but not nearly obvious.
"Just a bit longer, darling," Tristan answered.
"Do you have to?" Blaine asked again.
Tristan nodded sullenly.
A gloomy nimbus had fallen on the gallery of the hommes fatales. It seemed as if a lifetime of physical affection was being proffered to the boys before Tristan finally sat upright.
"Okay, dry your eyes, Blaine," he commanded, assuming a softer, gentler voice. "You have a lot more crying to do after your spanking. Yes, Blaine, you're still getting a spanking. You, too, Shannon. It's for cutting school and not telling the truth. Let the spanking be a reminder to make truth and honesty something both of you can strive for. Now then, baby brother will have his spanking first."
He raised Shannon from his knee, informing him to wait and watch. Shannon's penis was now latent at one and a half inches.
"Place both your hands flat on top of your head," Tristan instructed him. "And if I catch you scratching your crotch again, young man, I'll increase the severity of your punishment. Look at you. You're going to be covered in scabs and that'll really bring out the laughs. Sean, I think you'd better bring in the talc."
He was in the meantime helping the younger boy across his knees, pulling him down to his doom. Blaine's body didn't seem at first comfortably in position. Some adjustment was profitably made and after that the boy was a little more cozily molded into his stepfather's lower flank.
Tristan's dark shirt was a menacing backdrop to the menace that was about to happen in the foreground. He raised up his boy's hip, lifted up his bottom and flayed apart his legs. The boy turned back to steal a glance at me. He scowled uncomfortably at the idea of being watched. I sneered and he swiftly shifted his gaze on the rising curvatures of his own bottom cheeks. He had to know that his anus was exposed to me.
As soon as he cast his head to the floor, blond mop cascading to the carpet, his spanking was commenced. No less than ten minutes was consumed by the exercise that had been necessitated by various purposes.
Shannon's spanking was just as long and no less painful, for sure; however, I detected some restraint encrypted in the way Tristan had swung his arm. He'd certainly found an emotional equilibrium many parents sought but missed.
As for Shannon, early in his spanking he'd demonstrated the kind of strenuous play of young buttock muscles and puckering anus that always accompanied a rigorous attempt to obstruct the path of a spanking hand. And by the end, his bottom had been burnished to a shade in all our favor.
The painful punishment had reduced each of the boys to tears, Blaine for the umpteenth time this evening till he resembled a beautiful and remorseful pre-pubescent boy, and the tough-veneered Shannon for the very first, his sobs of contrition providing his spanking a hallowed text.
When it was all over, the boys flew into each dad's arms, Blaine in Sean's and Shannon in Tristan's. Hugs and kisses ensued. The appeal of the feel-goodism before me had been too fatiguing to take in such a large dose, so I went away to take care of my elongation.
The boys had later refused to let Tristan leave, creating quite a scene about it. I had feared another windy show of their histrionics. I had also felt extremely guilty: Fatherhood was a 24-hour enterprise and I was responsible for its being made an offering on Tristan's sacrificial altar. Then when Tristan prolonged our stay a few more hours for their sakes, I had felt a touch out of bounds.
Fortunately, Brad's arrival later in the night had coincided with the boys' bedtime. We were spared any ongoing tension between them and Tristan.
"How did you know?" I asked him on our way home. "I mean, that Shannon could be protecting Blaine?"
He smiled. "After four years you'd think I know these boys very well. But it was Blaine's tears throughout corner time, and before his spanking had even begun, that gave him away. He wouldn't be crying if he hadn't been shouldering the burden of some guilt. I felt he was the one that was encumbered by something. Shannon was calm throughout. Of course there was anger inside him, but he wasn't a boy who knew he had done wrong. Blaine was. When you've dealt enough with problems of the emotions, you'd know that guilt gives you more clues to work with than anger."
The men in front of me stole looks at each other. Something seemed to be conspiring between them. There was apparently some subtext left to be described of the day's event.
Tristan turned to me. "You were quiet as a mouse throughout the boys' spanking," he began. "What's on your mind now? Do you think I'd been too harsh, considering the boys' motives?"
I shook my head. "'Course not," I replied. "After all, they did lie. They did cut school. Oh, and you don't have to worry about being likened to Coutts and Stoner. What they did, spanking me and the other boys – it was totally different."
"How was it different?" Brad asked.
"What they did, it's criminal. It's hardly even a poor mimicry of family life," I replied tersely.
I pressed my nose against the window to read an ad on a blimp. An urchin was soliciting an Asian tourist in front of a pub.
"Is this all you have to tell us?" Brad suddenly asked.
I nodded.
"Sure?"
"Mm-hmm. Scout's honor."
Of course that had been a lie. I'd never been a scout, for one thing. For another, there was indeed something else I could have told them – the matter of my headless-body-on-Brad's-lap. Memory of it had come to me some time during Shannon's spanking.
But that's going to have to stay in my depository for a while longer, diary. There isn't anything about those images that's new to them anyhow, and I need more time to make a distillation of their meanings.
A thought came to me while I was stretching across the back seat to enjoy the rest of the ride home. What would happen if I told Tristan that I was lying? Would he strive for a hattrick and spank my bottom, too? Or would Brad?
A delicious thought.
© 1998, 2001, JRK & BWK.