You could see clear across the entire stretch of the grass field at the center of our development--even when the rain swept in thick sheets over the neat rows of tract houses. Maybe that was how my dad caught me kicking a soccer ball around with my buddies from way past the other side of the field, and it was certainly how I could see him, marching through the pelting rain that glued his shirt to his body as he came steadily closer to me.
"Oh _f_u_c_k_, Sam, your dad saw us playing!" my next-door neighbor Greg screamed to me in a voice that cracked even worse than mine did.
Yeah, I thought, and now not only would my friends witness the humiliation of my dad taking me home to punish me, but all of the kids who had been kept inside today because of the storms would see my dad walking toward me with that cold glare and firmly shut lips. I wanted to search the houses and stare back at the audience I knew peeked out at me from behind their tightly closed windows, but I couldn't stop gaping dumbly at the tall figure of my father and his wet tee-shirt framing his massive biceps.
"H-hey Dad," I stammered as he reached us on the field. "I uh....uh...."
"Hey, boys," my dad said coolly to my friends. He put a hand on my shoulder as if in a sort of playful hello, but the hand remained fixed to my shoulder.
"Hey, Doug," Greg managed. My buddies called my dad Doug because he was only twenty-nine and at least ten years younger than the parents of the other twelve year-olds. He treated them like an older brother would, and he even treated me sometimes like more of a brother than a son--well, yeah, sometimes. Times when he'd round up his scruffy band to play for my birthday parties or balance the weights for me when he showed me how to use the equipment at the gym he managed. He'd grin and brush the hair out of his eyes and then he'd say, "We'll get you _s_e_x_y, kid. We will."
But there was no trace of a grin on his face now. He looked at me with calm displeasure. "Sam, I thought I told you not to play in the rain," he said evenly.
"Well, uh, yeah Dad, you did, but Greg came by with Ryan and Christian and it was only drizzling." I kind of gulped as I said it and stared helplessly at my friends. A flicker of amusement danced in my dad's eye for the first time as he looked up at the looming storm clouds and wiped heavy drops of rain from his cheeks. He didn't reply.
"Dad? Am I in trouble?" I knew I was.
"Yes, Sammy. Yes you are." His expression still hadn't changed.
"Is Sammy gonna get spanked?" Greg blurted. Both of our faces blushed furiously as he said it. Ryan and Christian shifted uncomfortably but my dad suddenly broke into a wide grin.
"Well, you are, Greg, when Joe finds you trudging into the house sopping wet. You don't worry about Sammy. Now go home, you guys--right now." Greg's jaw dropped open and my dad actually reached a finger out and shut his mouth closed. "I said now, boys."
Greg and Ryan and Christian turned and started walking the other way across the field, Greg forlornly pushing the soccer ball along like he was absently kicking a rock on the ground. Ryan turned back once as if to say goodbye as the three of them split up and headed towards their separate houses. By the time they hit the pavement my dad's hand still hadn't left my shoulder.
We marched home in total silence. It wasn't exactly that I was afraid of my dad--I just didn't know what to say. Nothing seemed right, so I just shut up the whole way. Finally as my dad slid the key into the rusty lock on the front door, I turned and looked at him directly.
"Dad? Are you gonna spank me?"
My dad looked hard at me for a moment before he replied. "I'm thinking about it, Sam," he said before he walked into the house and left me standing in the pouring rain. I just stood on our front porch and watched him peel off his tee-shirt, his soaked denim jeans, his old tennis shoes, his socks, and even the white underwear that gripped the skin on his thighs. He dropped his clothes in a wet heap by the front door and sauntered into the kitchen, completely naked. I watched the rippling, defined muscles on his back glide against one another as he walked down the hall and out of sight.
See, the tough draw on having a dad who manages a gym is that he spanks like a pro. Even when he didn't pull down my underwear (which stood little chance today being soaked through) his spankings were like a terrific work-out for his triceps and his delts. He didn't spank me often--I hadn't been spanked for seven or eight months--but then, he didn't have to; I was a pretty good kid and took pretty much every word my dad said as the word of God. To me, he was God--except, of course, God couldn't play bass guitar like my dad could.
My shoes squished with water as I climbed up the stairs and went into my bedroom--just next to my dad's room and across from his study where he stayed up late reading his textbooks from night school and listening to the Stones. My mom had gotten pregnant with me when Dad was still in high school, so he never went to college--he took a job as a mechanic to support us. After a year or two, she quit Illinois (and us) for Los Angeles and some hot Hollywood producer. Sometimes my dad took me to see his movies. The only remnant of my mom was a little snapshot of her I'd taped to the wall.
I glanced at the picture as I yanked my clothes off and hung them up in the bathroom to dry. I'd just slipped into my bathrobe when I heard my bedroom door creak. I swiveled around to find my dad standing in the doorway, wearing his faded denim jeans and a loose oversize sweatshirt, holding two hot mugs of tea.
"Hey, Sammy. Brought you some tea to warm up." Dad handed me a mug and relaxed into the armchair we'd stuck in my room because we didn't have place for it anywhere else. I gulped the tea and felt its warmth rush down my throat. I tried to force a smile through my nervousness as I sat down on my bed.
"Thanks, Dad."
We sipped in silence awhile and listened to the sound of the rain splattering on our roof shingles and splattering against the glass on the windows. Finally my dad spoke.
"Well, Sammy, I'm trying to decide how to punish you."
My heart leapt at the chance of avoiding a spanking, but I decided to remain quiet. I just didn't have anything to say.
"See, buddy," he continued, "you're getting a little old for going over my knee. You're just not six years old anymore." He sort of grinned. "Hey, you remember when you recorded over my band's demo tape? Your very first spanking."
"You say it like I lost my first tooth or I hit my first home run," I said, slightly annoyed.
"I guess I just have happier memories than you do, kiddo."
"Yeah, sounds like it," I said, sullenly.
My dad looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and sipped his tea.
"So, how am I going to punish you?" he half-asked and half-mused. My annoyance at him fondly remembering my first spanking stretched into subtle resentment.
"Do you want me to suggest something?" I replied in the voice my dad and I reserve for telemarketers and car salesmen.
"Well, Sammy, I've been trying to decide. Since I can't put you over my knee anymore, we either graduate to bending you over for the belt or we just do away with spanking you altogether. You'll lose privileges instead--maybe, in this instance, you can't play outside for the first week of the summer. So what do you think? Do you still need to be spanked?"
"I don't know, Dad." It was the only honest answer I could give, and my stomach knotted tightly as I said it. I wasn't just weighing bending over for the belt with being grounded; I really didn't know whether I still needed to be spanked anymore.
"I've always respected you for taking your spankings and knowing you deserved them," my dad replied in his usual thoughtful, careful manner. "Somehow I've always felt that you understood when you got spanked--you really learned."
"I dunno," I said glumly. "I guess so."
"But since you're almost a teenager now you might feel too old for that kind of thing. Do you?"
"Well, sort of," I admitted. "It's just....humiliating."
"I'll leave the choice up to you, Sammy. Either you get the belt now, or the first week of summer, you'll be grounded. No telephone, no TV, no music, no going outside."
It wasn't so much the thought of not being able to play with my friends or watch TV that frightened me about that punishment. I knew I needed to be punished. But it felt so impersonal, such a distant thing for Dad to do--and I didn't want to feel totally alone. Dad and I had been alone enough. And yet--the belt. I stared at my dad's thick brown leather belt, supple from the many years he'd worn it loosely threaded through the straps in his jeans, and the thought of bending over for it, staring at the carpet, terrified me. It too felt far less intimate and reassuring than my memories of my dad guiding me over his knees, holding me in my place--close to him.
"Dad?"
"Yes, Sammy?"
"I'm afraid. Of the belt. And of....I dunno, of sitting in my room alone for a week. I don't want to be alone."
"Oh, kiddo. Come here." My dad reached for my arm and held me in a tight bear hug. "You're not alone."
"I feel like I am," I said simply, looking down at the floor.
"Tell you what. Why don't you come over my knee one last time, okay? I'll be right here holding you. I promise you that I'm going to make sure you don't go anywhere," my dad said softly, with a light grin on his face at his joke.
I hugged my dad back for the first time that afternoon. "Okay, Dad. Thank you."
My dad smiled at me and brushed the now-drying hair out of his eyes again. "Love you, kiddo."
"You too, Dad."
"Okay, Sammy," my dad said as he sipped the last of his tea and put the empty cup on my desk. "Let's get to it. You know what to do."
My dad moved me gently to his side and stood up from the armchair. He relaxed onto my bed for a moment before he sat up on the edge of the bed. I walked to his right side and just stood there, suddenly a little apprehensive of getting spanked again. My dad put his arm up on my shoulder and winked at me.
"It's okay, don't worry. You know what this is."
His arm fell from my shoulder to my lower back, and he pushed gently to bend me over his knees. I let his hand guide me and I sort of fell onto his lap. I felt my dad shifting his right knee up to raise my bottom, and then the slight pull as he lowered my pants and my boxers along with them.
"Can't believe this is the last time we're going to do this," Dad said softly, as though to himself. The soft touch of his hands rubbing over my bottom tingled, and then I felt nothing but the cool breeze of the room. The sound of the rain falling outside seemed to tighten the circle around just the two of us, me and Dad, totally alone.
Suddenly I felt the first blow--the first rush of stimulation, as though I hadn't quite registered my dad lifting his palm and preparing to slam it onto my backside. My dad's hand fell onto the crown of my bottom and I clenched my fists and my bottom in tense anticipation. As much as I felt the sting of the spanking ripple through my body from my bottom to my brain, it felt gentle--almost, well, sweet and....kind.
Another whack. And another. And another. Dad picked up force and moved into a steady rhythm, a series of precise repetitions as though he were expertly working the equipment in the gym. I started kicking and pleading, and he just spanked and spanked, the heavy, thudding blows falling in counter-rhythm to the constant hush of the rain outside.
I began to twist and struggle against him.
"Dad, please! Daddy!" I breathed hoarsely, pushing against his constant spanking--pushing, of course, back up into his hand, as though I were offering him my bottom to punish.
"Love you, Sammy," Dad said as he landed five blows squarely on the underside of my bottom, quick, stinging blows. Sharp, precise, quick.
Dad spanked and spanked until I imagined that my bottom had turned the deep, dark red color of the plums we had eaten for breakfast that morning, and the intimacy of that breakfast shot to mind as I held tightly onto my dad's jeans, gripping the denim with all the strength I could summon as tears began to well up in my eyes.
Dad grunted softly and repositioned me over his lap. He always did this when we were almost done with a spanking. Then he said, right on cue:
"Okay, Sammy. Move your legs apart for me."
I complied quickly--a lesson my dad had taught me well in the past times I'd been in the same position. Trying to stay still and brush the tears out of my eyes, I spread my legs apart and tried to balance them on the ground, which I could barely reach.
Six searing shots covered up the inside of my one cheek and down the other side. My tears soaked the denim of my dad's jeans and I lay on his lap, shuddering softly.
"Why did I just spank you, Sammy?" my dad asked quietly.
"Because....I....because I played in the....in the rain after you told me not....not to," I said between sobs and gasps of breath.
Dad nodded his head and looked down at me, and then he carefully stood me up and hugged me to him so close that I could smell the lingering scent of his aftershave. I buried my head in his shoulder and he stroked my hair softly and gently. I stood there like that, my pants and my underwear yanked down to my knees and my bottom glowing bright red, and through my hiccups and the few tears that still streaked down my face, I looked my dad straight in his soft brown eyes and we both smiled at each other in a way that made us look like a weird mirror image of the same face--a face that we shared between us.