Time was the essence of a boy's life in the Steeltown Juvenile Reformatory.
6.30 AM
The warder-on-duty fished out his blackjack and tapped the youth's bare foot with the end of it. The youth stirred.
"Come on, R13-23," Lustig roared, "we don't have all morning. Get up, I said."
An exceptionally strong bulb on the ceiling stabbed into his eyes. Prisoner # R13-23 squinted at the warder and pulled upright. He brought one foot down on the cold hard floor. While his bones audibly creaked from overnight inaction, he scowled in his usual uncheckable impetus. His other foot soon joined the first, and then he slowly rose to his full five-nine.
"Okay, R13-23, remove all your clothes," Warder-in-charge Kava began giving his orders in a flat tone of voice.
The orders were the same every morning.
Take your shirt off. Do it quickly, boy.
That's right.
Loosen the cord in your pants.
Lower your pants to your ankles.
All right, now lower your underwear to your ankles as well.
Step out of your pants and underwear. Nice and easy.
Leave your clothes on the bunk.
Now clasp your hands together and place them behind your head.
Step up to this line.
Wait here.
The youth, aged sixteen and sentenced to juvenile remand for manslaughter two years ago, had put every one of Kava's directives into action. Naked all over, just like his other fellow inmates, he followed Kava to a white line on the floor and stood behind it. Other boys piled up behind him, forming a long column of delinquent boys worming their way to the shower hall.
It was time for the bath and BM. The bath and bowel movement always took a long time for there were twenty-five boys housed in this southern wing of the reformatory and five shower and latrine stalls to be shared out. These were open stalls so the warders could keep an eagle eye on their charges while they crapped and showered, five boys at a time. Each boy was allowed five minutes to complete both activities.
7.00 AM
The Warden entered the bathroom at the usual time, muster time. Warden Tchividjian inspected the boys and commented depreciatively of a few of their dirty buttocks.
"Your anus is still filthy," he said, removing the surgical glove from his hand and disposing of it into a bin. "You, you, you and you – get back under the shower."
The four errant boys turned their bottoms to the Warden and on their way to the stalls received a smack on their jiggly cheeks.
Later, the corpulent chief of the facility studied his chart and briefed the prisoners about their itinerary. Every week, at least one inmate was due for a caning punishment. It was a regular form of discipline regimen employed to keep the boys under control and offered to society as restitution for their various offences against it.
A boy that was scheduled for a caning was given a card to wear around his neck. Today it was R13-23's turn.
"Nicolai Oustane," Tchividjian called out.
R13-23 responded to the grade shriller, stepping forward at Warder Kava's prompting.
"You have CP today," Tchividjian informed him.
Kava was handed a card on which were the incriminating acronyms CP for Corporal Punishment. He hung it around the boy's neck. This meant Nicky Oustane was under close surveillance till 1500 hours when he was taken to meet the CP executioner. The card was a sort of informant so that wherever a prisoner might be later in the day, at the time appointed for his caning, he would be led back to his warder-in-charge who would proceed to hand him over to the CP executioner.
Except for Nicky, the other boys were handed their regulation uniforms – orange shirt and pants and white underwear and trainers. For Nicky, the orange shirt and trainers would do. The warders lined them back up, Nicky included, according to their identification numbers, and led them out to the breakfast hall. The breakfast hall was a matinal confluent point of the teenaged prisoners and warders from all the wings – the north, south, east and west wings – who numbered 220 people in all.
CP was so common, for there was at least one caning scheduled a week, that to take an interest in a bare-bottomed boy was for the older inmates personality suicide. It was regarded as 'uncool'. This morning, only the unseasoned made any notice of Nicky. Wolf whistles and catcalls were farouchely made so blackjacks were employed on the uniformed buttocks to restore quiet and order. Nicky ate his breakfast alone, standing on the stage exposed and advertised.
The tortuous sense of standing up partially nude while your junior peers ate breakfast and leered at you could only be understood by the initiated. Like Kava, now living vicariously through his charge's embarrassment.
Though slight of build at 133 pounds -- Kava observed -- Nicky had a large penis that had been extending since his nightclothes were removed from him. It was standing up at full mast, in its complete 8-inch maturity, and hanging at both sides of it were his equally large testicles, the size of doorknobs. His pubic hair was dark brown and in full plumage starkly conspicuous against his sun-shy skin. Kava realized he had allowed the boy's pubic hair to grow too profusely, against institution regulations. Later, Kava told himself, when the boy went for his physical, he must direct the nurse to shave it all off.
8.00 AM
The building was quiet now. The boys, including Nicky, had gone to their respective classes where they would be attending lessons in Slavonic, Math and Science until noon. After that they had their midday meal, followed by two hours of elective classes in either the arts or physical education.
2.00 PM
It was now an hour before Nicky's caning was to take place. He was returned to Kava in the middle of gym training, still bareassed and exposed to anyone who came his way, his card still over his neck. By now everyone must know he was to be caned this afternoon.
As required, Warder Kava stripped the boy of the rest of his uniform and ordered his hands to the top of his head. In this posture, Nic began his nude march through a maze-like corridor passing cells and catacombs, bustling with visitors and prisoners who had, of course, turned to ogle at him. His hands were flat on his head so that there was nothing he could use to hide his genitals from the annoying onlookers. His bare feet flip-flopped silently and oft times unsteadily on collapsed arches. He was stopped after a long walk in front of the open doorway to the infirmary.
Kava removed the card from the boy's neck and commanded him to a gurney. He watched his charge kneel on all fours, spread apart his thighs and submit his anus to a male nurse for his shaving. Not long after, the boy lay still on his back, spread his thighs slightly and felt his crotch denuded of its hair.
He disappeared afterward into a lavatory. He would be allowed his second BM and shower today.
The doctor arrived while Kava was completing a short examination of Nicky's just-bathed anus. An anal exam was a compulsory routine of a CP candidate's strip-search prior to his caning.
"Nicolai Oustane?" the doctor said, his eyes roaming over the nude and luminous landscape of the boy's body.
"Yes," Kava replied, "he's with me."
The boy was re-committed to the gurney and slightly toweled. Thereafter, for half an hour, one fiat after another probe assailed his senses. Kava observed the boy's pre-caning examination intently. Nothing was spared; every orifice, his eyes, mouth, nose, ears, anus and piss slit, was subjected to the doctor's thorough examination. As were his feet and toes.
3.00 PM
The time had come. The towel-clad prisoner followed his guardians to the caning room. This was soon after the steel handcuffs had been slapped on his wrists, which were enjoined by two long chains to the cuffs on Lustig's and Kava's own wrists. All three men stopped behind a steel door.
The portal keeper slid in a plastic card and the door opened out to a large room, a portion of it in back separated by a glass window. Seated behind the glass were the spectators. These comprised the officials, the governor, Warden Tchividjian, the sentencing judge, Lupinsky, the press, and the researchers and medical students, as well as anyone else who had an interest in witnessing a caning in progress.
Nicky flinched in the warders' captive. He hadn't been warned that his was going to be a public caning. The governor had described it as public atonement.
They had to drag the boy to the caning horse. The wrist restraints were wrenched from him and the towel around his loin yanked away. They swiftly turned his profile to the glass window, his 8-inch extended out at a right angle from his crotch. The warders conducted him, arms and legs, to the horse, placing him on his back first, and because the saddle was about three feet higher than the legs, his groin was raised and his head and shoulders were lowered. Facing the glass window behind which were the spectators, they lifted up his legs and spread them apart. His private parts and anus were callously exposed while they strapped his ankles to the two vertical poles on either side of the horse. His arms were raised above his head, pointed toward the floor because of his posture, and restrained to the legs of the horse.
He was ready.
His punishment warrant quickly read out, the officials commenced the caning. Everything else was brought to a standstill while the executioner picked up the short cane, made of wood, and swung it in the air a few times. The silence in the room was inflated by the inaudibility of the witnesses' breaths and the swoosh of the cane.
The executioner received his nod and went on to lash the prisoner's feet. This was the first phase of Nic's caning. The soles of Nicky's feet took a beating that covered them with ten uneven stripes, which took their time to convert into angry, red welts.
While the prisoner whimpered, all the muscles of his face distorted into a grimace, Kava released him; but he was no sooner freed than put back down, this time on his stomach. Once again the saddle raised up his hip. Kava brought his ankles down and tied them to the legs of the horse. His head and shoulders were unseen, collapsed behind his raised backside. So all that could be seen were his buttocks, raised to the ceiling and facing the witnesses' window, and his legs, pointed to the floor.
Nicky's last caning, a year ago, had left no more telltale marks, for his backside was smooth again. Those old welts had vanished a few months ago. Kava knew, for he had watched them disappear bit by bit as he daily stripped the boy naked for one reason or another.
[Indeed, nudity was a culture in this reformatory and a natural orientation for its inmates. Prisoners like Nicky were relinquished of the last vestiges of their modesty on the very first day they were committed to the reformatory. For on the first day itself, they were presented naked before the Chief Warden and governor who ordered their body hairs shaved off completely. They were also presented naked to their warders while they crapped and bathed under their watchful eye. Finally at the end of their orientation they were presented naked to the doctors and nurses and like objects on a dissecting table forced to submit to their anal and penile examinations.
Surely the boys had, from the very first day, surrendered their clothes and, by virtue of this, also surrendered their capacities to govern their own bodies. The moral criterion under which nudity was recognized and practiced in the institution was that of utility. It served the warders' purposes.
One such purpose was arresting a mutiny or revolt. Plans for a mutiny or revolt were common with the older inmates. The governor's consternation toward a mutiny always culminated in the culprits' being stripped of all their clothes, which treated of the warders' courses of action to cut off the revolt root and branch. The boys' pants and underwear were removed on the spot to present their bottoms, thighs and anus to the warders' blackjacks or drug-filled needles.
Of course, since being clean-shaven was an institutional regulation, some of the boys, especially the thirteen and fourteen year-olds, were regularly called up to be shorn of their pubic and armpit hairs. Equally common were the urine tests, which were requisitioned by a higher authority such as the governor, so spontaneous stripping of the inmates' uniforms, waist down to sample their urine, was a regular order.
Now and then, a few of the boys were suspected to have received subversive materials and were strip searched for these materials. The usual places they hid these materials, cigarettes, joints or files, were their anus and rectum. Neither space nor time was able to place any constriction on a strip-search being carried out. It happened anywhere the suspect could be located, even while a classroom lesson was in progress. Two warders removed the suspect's pants and underwear while his peers watched, bent him over an object to support him, spread his thighs apart, and then a few gloved fingers examined his anus with a depth of penetration that was unmistakable.]
II
Continuing to prepare Nicky for his caning, Kava dug his fingers under his stomach and pulled out his penis and testes, pointing them toward the spectators. His anus puckered and winked wildly.
The boy swore out nervously a string of mild invectives. Speaking through gritted teeth, Kava suggested that he shut his eyes.
"It's never so bad when you can't see anything," he explained to his charge. "You can pretend you're someone else, somewhere else."
The boy heeded the advice but felt even more naked with his eyes closed. Nevertheless, he kept them closed for the rest of his punishment while he tried to lose himself in the labyrinth of Kava's dialectic lies.
The officials resumed the caning. The executioner had retired the previous cane to its depository and was selecting his next instrument. This one was to be used on the prisoner's bottom. It had to be longer, thicker and sturdier, and preferably made of Asian rattan.
The implement of choice in his curled fingers, the executioner took his position, this time at a distance of a few steps to the left side of the boy's buttocks. It gave the spectators a less obstructed view of the procedure about to take place.
A command suddenly came over the loudspeaker: "Commence caning the prisoner's buttocks."
From the moment of its unleash, the executioner's cane had segued like dancing fire from one buttock cheek to another, sometimes slicing open the skin till it bled.
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK! – whispered the ravenous cane as it connected with Nic's flesh. And although only the buttocks were specified for the caning, Nic's thighs and genitals were inadvertently striped. The prisoner was in agony by the eighth lash.
To few of the seasoned witnesses' surprise, Nic's agonizing winces were seconded by a sudden and accidental leak from his impaled tool. Try as he might, he couldn't staunch the blunder. He arced noisily and uncontrollably to the floor instead, drawing looks of a mixture of glee and disgust from the mostly-male spectators.
Despite it all, the executioner, not one to lend his ear to the laments of the tormented, had not slackened his pace one bit. He swung the cane with augmenting gusto.
It was only after the twelfth lash that the executioner began to swing his arm with a wane. As the caning neared the summit and turning point of its course, the pace slowed considerably and after the fifteenth lash, it ceased in toto. The cane had survived its appointed term.
It was break and rest time. As was in the punishment accord, the officials displayed Nic bent and bruised over the horse. Indeed, exhibiting a prisoner's caned bottom was a treatment that was regarded humiliating but objective in its punishment context. Nic's blood was being wiped off his buttocks at the same time that his piss was being collected into a pan.
Kava stayed to keep vigil. It had been said, and it was true, that Kava had grown rather fond of the youth. Nicky had never had a visitor since his remand here; Kava, venal and corruptible like all his colleagues, readily became his companion and confidante, if only to play out their elliptical relationship a masculine Oedipal scenario that heretofore had been their own little secret. Kava always pictured himself in the presence of a warm female body when his man-sized penis was pistoning the boy's anus.
Nicky had told Kava the first year he was brought here that he was remorseful about killing his sister; it had been mercy killing. Kava had believed him, not because the boy's nature was void of lies and falsehoods, but because he knew by hearsay that his sister had been Mongoloid.
Now, some of the spectators had chosen to remain in the witness room until the boy's torment started anew. All the ongoing drama of human abasement and denigration and the pathos and horror of the maltreated, which were leaping to their eyes, were received from the perspective affected of scientific detachment.
The caned boy's buttock muscles continued flexing and twitching to the last calorie. His anus retained a tightly clenched but puckering posture and then later he became soporific from the numbness in his bottom.
Kava sent the doctor on duty to inspect him.
"Only dozing," the doctor informed the officious warder after a short examination.
4.00 PM
The officials were returning from the brief interlude. Kava roughly woke the boy up. Nic remained tied on his stomach but Kava re-tied his ankles, keeping them even farther apart from each other. He studied his charge's crack. Satisfied that his buttock cheeks were sufficiently prised and the passage of his anus was clear, he nodded to the officials.
The Warden had already abandoned the witness room and approached the boy's upended buttocks. Chief Tchividjian always completed the last phase of a prisoner's punishment. He stood over Nicky's buttocks, standing behind the boy's head, his legs straddling each side of his shoulders. A razor strop was already curled in his hand.
A southpaw, Tchividjian raised the strop and mounted the strapping of the boy's anus. Ten blows were delivered on the targeted spot. Nicky howled only during moments he could feel the pain in his ravished hole – moments of translucent wakefulness, which he alternated with those of indistinguishable apathy.
It was nearly over. Now came the sentencing judge's examination. Judge Lupinsky analyzed the boy's skin microscopically and where pale skin prevailed amid crimson, additional swats with a wooden paddle were delivered till everywhere on his buttocks was a homogeneous color again. This included his anus.
Kava later lifted the boy from the horse and conveyed him to a long table. With Lustig's assistance, he lay Nic on his back, swooning and barely conscious of himself or his surroundings, propped up his bottom with a pillow tucked under the small of his back and then they held up his legs, spreading them wide and apart from each other. They now subjected the boy's inner thighs, groin and genitals to Lupinsky's scrutiny. Once more places that had missed the cane's bite were subjected to the paddle's scorn.
But no one realized that the boy had been long gone, pushed off from tyranny into the spheres of liberation, his cup of humility drunk to the last dregs.
He was later removed on a gurney; he was awake again and rankling on his stomach, the falling register on his emotional-maturity thermometer the lowest point in his institutionalized career.
But the low he felt was sepia, not black: there followed a sense of conquest rather than defeat while his consciousness ebbed for the last time on his way to the infirmary.
7.30 PM
He had awoken in the infirmary. The painkiller had worn off. The orderlies committed him to Kava who delivered him back to his cell.
There, Kava administered to him some morphine. Nic Oustane took it in the oral tradition.
"It was better than last year, papa Kava," he said with a smile that flitted over his ravaged face, his point of view recalling the horrifying lunacy of schizophrenia. He had mentally digested the consequences of his public caning and his head was now clear with a feverish wakefulness.
"I mean the pain and the nudity," he added. "If it means to get better all the time, I ought to look forward to my next caning. But you should have warned me about the spectators."
Kava climbed onto his bunk and gathered his penis into his callused hand. "You're a repellent creature, Nicky," he said with averted eyes.
"Yes, papa Kava," the boy nodded, "but if everyone else's purpose was going to be served at my expense, I should at least enjoy it, too, no? Society's appeasement and my redemption are not diametrically opposed goals, yes?"
"Crazy fool," Kava replied, "why do you talk like this?"
The morphine put the boy into a period of wholesome sterility. He felt leadenly tired. After a caning of this scale, a prisoner like Nicky would be allowed the rest of the night to recover in his cell. This meant sleeping till the next morning when life would go on for him again as normal.
Not unlike many of the boys in the institution, Nicky was going to be doing time for the rest of his youth and through early adulthood. He had nothing much else to look forward to and certainly no means of contact with the outside world. Except for the caning room. Once a year.
© March 2001, JRK.