I have to admit it. I was a loser. At 32, I could not hold down a job or maintain a relationship. Oh sure, I looked OK. I was clean cut with cropped brown hair and clear blue eyes. I worked out. I was on the small side at 5'7", but I was in decent shape, fit and trim, with a butt of which I have to admit I was proud and that attracted a lot of attention. Women liked me. Men too, for that matter. But I was drinking a hell of a lot more than was good for me and was about to get kicked out of my apartment because I hadn't paid the rent in three months. I needed help and I needed it bad. My life had no purpose or direction. I'll never forget the morning it hit me that I had hit bottom (a phrase that will soon take on special resonance). I woke up on the sofa in a drunken haze after a long night at the bars. I was wearing a ragged t-shirt and boxers and my clothes were strewn all over the room from the night before. I was somewhere between consciousness and oblivion, stumbling to the bathroom for a piss. First I tripped over the coffee table and landed flat on my face. I picked my self up off the floor and took a few more steps before I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my right foot. I had stepped barefoot onto a piece of broken beer bottle and cut myself badly. I screamed, but I was too out of it to know what to do about the cut and too full of liquor-laden self-pity even to care. I just crumpled to the floor, sobbed like a child, and bled. That was the lowest point in my entire life. At that moment I started to pray, for the first time since I was a kid. I begged God to show me how to get out of this mess and turn my life around. And he answered that prayer. But not in a way I would have anticipated or chosen, if I had had a choice, which as it turns out I didn't. I am writing this at the request of the man who has become my mentor and spiritual director, and I am writing it while seated on a bruised and battered behind that stings like hell. It is not easy to remain seated this long when your butt is still on fire, but the fact that I am doing it is a testament to the change that has taken place in my life. I have a sense of self-discipline and purpose now. And I found it bareassed over the knee of my new mentor, bawling like a brat and pounding the floor with my fists, while he whaled every inch of my broad, fleshy bare butt with the meanest hairbrush ever to blister a behind. Yes indeed. God does answer prayers. It's a shame he's such a mean bastard.
As it turns out, my new mentor is Ed, the landlord who was about to kick me out of my apartment. I was crumpled in the fetal position on the floor in a crying jag when I heard the sound of someone knocking on the door. At first I just ignored it, hoping that whoever was there would go away, but instead the knocking became louder and more insistent. Then I heard the voice of my landlord. "Jeff, I know you are in there. I heard you come in last night. Or should I say this morning, at 2:30. You left your car in Mrs. Rosenberg's space. Fortunately, you also left the keys in the ignition, so I was able to move it. Please let me in. We need to talk." _s_h_i_t_! I am crumpled on the floor in a filthy t-shirt and torn boxers, blood still oozing out of my foot, my face covered with tears and snot, and now Ed, the last person on earth I wanted to see shows up. But he had said "please" like a threat I could not ignore and I had no choice but to drag myself to the door and let him in. Treading gently on my wounded foot, I opened the door. Ed was several inches taller than me, and an ex-Marine, with close cropped blond hair and piercing blue eyes, not someone I would want to piss off, and it was obvious from the first minute that he was very very pissed. Of course, that made two of us, but in different senses of the word pissed. A third sense of that useful word was also relevant, since I still needed to go to the bathroom and was having some trouble listening to Ed bawl me out while I needed so badly to take a pee. I shifted back and forth from my good foot to my bleeding one, trying to concentrate on Ed's tirade.
Ed looked me up and down with an expression of total disgust. "I didn't just come to tell you about your car. I have given you more chances than you have earned. If you don't pay your rent before the end of the week, you are going to be evicted." I tried to plead with him, but under the circumstances it was difficult for me to make a case for myself as a model citizen. At that moment, I looked every inch the loser I was. I whined incoherently for a few humiliating minutes but then Ed lost his temper and cut me off. "I don't want to hear it Jeff. You are a mess. Just look at yourself. You are in the prime of life and so far have done nothing but waste whatever talents and gifts God has given you. You have the body of a man, but the mind and spirit of a spoiled, selfish brat, and if it were up to me, you would be treated like one. I would love to take control of your sorry ass for just one day. I could turn your life around with one very simple time tested procedure. (He did not for the moment specify what that procedure was. I learned all about what he had in mind later that morning.) I really could change your life man if I only had the chance."
I don't know what made me say it. I blurted out, "Then why don't you? What's stopping you? Do you think I like being a loser? I wish somebody would take charge of my life. I sure as hell don't know what to do with it." I was whimpering and must have looked as pathetic as I sounded. Ed made a move toward me and before I knew it his face was in mine. I could feel his warm breath and I was afraid at first that he was going to hit me. "Do you mean that? Would you let me take control of you for just one day, or even one hour? Think carefully before you answer, because if you say yes I promise that it will be an hour you won't ever forget!" I didn't know what to say. I felt afraid of him, but at the same time something inside me responded to his offer, even though at the time I had no idea what he was offering. "Sure, whatever you want. What do you want me to do?" He stepped back and considered me for a minute before answering. "Right now I want you to clean yourself up and get sober. I want you alert and aware for our little counseling session. As it is, you are still too out of it to benefit from the "words of wisdom" I intend to offer you. I will be back in two hours, and I expect to find you looking like a human being, instead of like a drunken wreck. Is that clear?" I mumbled yes but he wasn't satisfied with the response. He repeated in the threatening voice of an experienced drill corps sergeant, "Is that clear?" "Yes," I repeated, this time with real feeling. "Good," he smiled and scowled. "I will be back in two hours, not one minute more or less. Be ready for our counseling session." Then he turned on his heels and left the apartment, not slamming the door exactly but shutting it with audible authority.
I spent the next two hours pulling myself together in preparation for my "counseling session" with Ed. What the hell kind of counseling did he have in mind? I had no idea, but somehow, when he told me it would turn me around, I believed it. Or else I was so desperate I wanted to believe it. I stumbled into the bathroom, peed, bandaged my foot, took a shower, and started to feel more like a human being. I put on a clean shirt and a clean pair of jeans. I rifled my underwear drawer to find a clear pair. (Why was I expecting him to inspect my underwear? I had no idea but it seemed like a good idea. As it turned out, it was.) I even combed my hair more carefully than usual. I felt a keen sense of fear and anticipation, and more alive than I had in a long time.
Exactly two hours after leaving the apartment, not a minute more or less, Ed returned. I heard a sharp knock on the door, and opened it with some trepidation. For some reason, Ed had put on his old uniform. His manner was stern but not unkind. He sounded like a disappointed but caring father when he spoke to me. He studied me for a minute and then nodded his approval. "Much better. Now you look more like a man. I am starting to have a good effect on you, and we haven't even started our counseling session." I liked the fact that I had pleased him. For some reason, it was important to me. Ed then walked over to the kitchen air, took a straight-backed chair, placed it in the middle of the living room and took a seat. I noticed as he went into the kitchen that there was a bulge in his back pocket. It contained some large object that I couldn't make out.
Seated in the chair, he ordered me to come over to him and stand at attention. I complied without a second thought. He ordered me to stand up straight and pay careful attention to the dressing down he intended to give me. For the next fifteen minutes he gave me a long humbling lecture on what a screw up I was, how I had wasted my life and made it obvious that I could not turn it around without the help of someone stronger and wiser. I needed someone like him to make a man of me. Before he was finished, my lower lip was trembling like a naughty schoolboy and I knew every word of what he said to me was true. "Now, I have one important question for you mister. Did you dad ever spank you when you were a kid?" That question startled and embarrassed me. What did he want to know that for? "No. Mom would never let him. He threatened to a lot but it never happened." I was beginning to get very nervous and my butt cheeks started to tighten involuntarily. I did not like the direction this counseling session was taking. Surely he did not intend to take me over his knee and spank me! I was 32 years old for God's sake! "That is what I thought. It explains a lot. For one thing, it explains why you are such a sorry excuse for a human being, and why I turned out to be a responsible citizen. When I was a boy, I did as I was told because I knew that if I didn't I would end up bare bottomed over dad's knee while a wooden hairbrush had a long meaningful conversation with the surface of my rump." The image of Ed draped over his father's knees, howling in repentant anguish, his pants around his ankles, and his bare butt glowing red while his dad's hairbrush did a tour of duty over his big, broad, muscular rump flashed into my mind and I became conscious of a spontaneous erection. I hoped Ed didn't notice, but at that moment he was occupied with removing from his back pocket the object I had noticed before. It was a large and formidable looking wooden hairbrush.
I started to stammer in panic. "But sir (Why did I call him sir? What else would you call someone who was about to blister your bare bottom with the hairbrush from hell?) you can't do that. It would be assault." "No sir. It WILL be discipline." He underlined the word "will" to make it clear that the decision had been made, I had no choice in the matter, and would soon receive a vivid introduction to what I had been missing as a kid. And he said the word discipline as if it were the word of God himself, which for him (and for me soon enough) it was. "I want you naked from the waist down mister. Is that clear?" When I hesitated he barked, "Now! Not tomorrow! Do you want to make it even worse for yourself? Every second you wait is another inch off your ass and believe me as it is you don't have many inches left!" Looking back it seems incredible to me that I did as I was told, but I did. First I removed my shoes and socks and threw them on the floor, as I was used to doing. "Don't just throw them on the floor! Make a neat pile of clothes over there by the sofa." Needless to say, I did as I was told. I think I was in a state of shock. Part of me wanted to bolt and run, but another part felt as a strange kind of relief, as if I needed and even wanted this "counseling session." Who knows? Maybe I really did need a long hard bare bottomed spanking with a wooden hairbrush. It couldn't make my life any worse. I removed my jeans and underwear, hesitating for a second before taking off my underwear and then doing it hurriedly as if I knew that if I thought about it I would never be able to do it.
I walked over to him on bare silent feet. The hush in the room was like the moments before a hanging, but it was my butt, not my neck, that was in the noose. So there I was, naked from the waist down standing in front of Ed, who was gently tapping the brush against his left palm, staring me straight in the eye. He didn't even seem to notice my nudity, he was concentrating so hard on my face. I felt ashamed and wanted to look away, but couldn't. The magnetic attraction of his stare held me. Then he straightened in the chair and patted his leg with the brush. The moment of truth had arrived. He took me by the arm and pulled me over his lap. I was staring at Ed's polished shoes in a daze. I looked up to see his marine's trousers pulled taut over his butt in the chair. Even his butt appeared strong and determined at that moment, and looked a hell of a lot more comfortable than mine. I could see my bare feet dangling on the other side of the chair and felt so ashamed I wanted to burst into tears before the spanking had even begun. My feet didn't even touch the floor. I felt and must have looked like a child, not a man.
The spanking did not begin immediately. Ed spent several minutes allowing the humiliation to overcome me. I began whimpering. He was also giving thought to how best to spank me. As I would soon learn, Ed considered spanking serious business. You don't just started beating butt with the brush. Spankings are meant to reach into a man's soul as well as punish his flesh. To do that the spanker has to treat each spanking as a unique and unrepeatable experience. Where is the boy most vulnerable? Where is the exact spot on the surface of his butt that carries a direct connection to his mind and heart and soul? Every boy's butt has such a spot. But it takes a real spanking artist to find it, and Ed was such an artist. And he was about to start painting the Mona Lisa on my bare ass. When Ed started to roll up his sleeves, I knew we were about to begin. This boy was about to become a man.
To Be Continued