Failing Math


by Tawser <Rleehistory@yahoo.com>

I was going to get a spanking and that there was nothing I could do to avoid it. And it was my own fault. I hated math. I had come close to failing it before, but this time I had done it. There was an enormous red F on my report card, and as a result, before the evening was over, I was going to have a painful red butt, red with patches of purple. For the next few days, I was going to be sitting on a veritable masterpiece of modern art. That is, if I was going to be able to sit at all. I was thirteen years old, and my stepdad still used the hairbrush to spank me.

I was sitting on the bed in my bedroom, waiting for my stepdad to get home from work. I got home from school about 3:30, and presented my report card to my mother, who was already home from work. She took one look at it, sighed, and told me that I had better go into my bedroom and wait for my stepdad to come home and talk to me about my report card. That is the word she always used. Talk. I dont believe she ever used the words spank or whip, although both of us knew it would be a one-sided conversation between my stepdads hairbrush and my bare white bottom. My mom was really good at avoiding whatever she did not want to face. She hated the fact that my stepdad spanked me so often and so hard, but he was the man of the house and his word was law. Furthermore, she had to admit that I was a much more respectful and better behaved boy since she married him and he instituted the reign of the brush and the belt. And most of the time my grades in school were improved, but I hated math.

My stepdad did not get home till around 6:30, which meant that I had almost three hours to wait. I went into my room, got out of my school clothes, and put on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Most of the time, I sat there staring down at my bare toes, watching them flex and nervously tap the wooden floor. I did not have a TV in my room, not that it would have distracted me if I had. I tried to read a book but could not concentrate. When you know that you are about to get a spanking, it is impossible to think about anything else. I was very aware that my butt was inside my jeans. I sat there on the bed clenching and unclenching my ass cheeks. I stood up and walked around the room, massaging the seat of my jeans and covering my ass cheeks protectively. I felt very sorry for my ass, because I knew what it was about to go through. My poor butt had not failed math, but it had the misfortune to be connected to the blockhead who did, and it would pay the penalty for that unfortunate connection.

A couple of times I stood in front of a mirror, pulled down my pants, and mournfully studied my rear end. I suppose I wanted to get one last look at it in its pristine condition, before the hairbrush turned it deep red and covered it with painful bruises. Before my mom married my stepdad, I never thought about my ass much, but since then it had gotten so much attention that I probably spent more time thinking about it than about any other part of my anatomy. As stupid as it sounds, I had grown very fond of my rear end, but not fond enough to avoid the stupid stunts that caused it to get blistered on a regular basis. I got a couple of spankings every month, sometimes more, and sometimes less, a lot more in the first year of the marriage, when my stepdad was determined to break me into the new order of things, and breaking me in meant blistering my bare backside whenever I stepped out of line. So there I was standing in front of the mirror, staring at my butt, and wondering how bad it was going to be this time. Not that I didnt know the answer. It was going to be bad. Real bad.

Staring in the mirror, I also couldnt help noticing that I was not a bad looking kid. My stepdad insisted that I keep my dark hair cut so short that I looked like a thirteen year old Marine. In his dreams, thats what my stepdad wanted me to become. He loved John Wayne movies, and his favorite was the Green Berets. He must have watched that movie a hundred times, and always with tears in his eyes by the end. I had pale blue eyes and the sensitive, thoughtful expression of a kid who would much rather spend his time reading a book than kicking a football. I was never going to be a marine. If my stepdad spent more time looking at ME, instead of at his dream of what he wanted me to be, he would have seen that. His intentions were good, but like a lot of parents, his saw his kids as projections of what he wished he were himself. Being a bookish kid. I did not get as much exercise as I needed, and was already fighting a lifelong battle to keep in shape. But if I had wanted to (which I did not), I had the build to play football. Maybe even a line backer, as my stepdad liked to hint, not too subtly. I was mature for my age, and looked several years older than I really was. I seldom tried to go into places where kids were not allowed, but when I did, I was never carded. And I definitely had the butt of an older kid. It was large and fleshy, the perfect target, I reflected ruefully, for the all too frequent spankings I had received for several years now from my stepfather. Maybe if I had a smaller butt, he wouldnt spank me so hard, or for so long. Nyeah, I realized. His own sons from a previous marriage both had smaller butts than me, and both of them got it just as bad as I did. I had heard them get it a few times, and it was clear that this was one stepdad who treated his own kids and his stepson equally.

Would you like to live forever? I have a suggestion. Go to your room and wait for your stepdad to come home and spank your bare ass. I promise you that time will pass so slowly that death will never come. After awhile, you will even forget that there was ever a time when you werent in your room, waiting to get your butt blistered. The events of the morning seemed so long ago, like they belonged to another lifetime. Waiting for a spanking forces you into a kind of meditative state, in which you are intensely aware of all the sensations in your body, of them and nothing else. I found myself concentrating on the coolness of the wooden floor beneath my bare feet, the starched sensation of the quilt beneath my jeans covered ass. Nothing outside of my own body was real or important. Memory, hope, dreams, ambitions all vanished. Even the fear was transformed into a localized sensation that I could feel in the various parts of my body. I could feel the fear in the aching numbness at the pit of my stomach, the clamminess in the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet, and in all the nerve endings covering the whole surface of my ass. I could even feel the fear deep inside my asshole. Later in life I would take meditation classes and spend hours working to cultivate the kind of meditative state that as a kid I went into spontaneously and without effort whenever I was told that I was about to receive a spanking. This is one form of yoga I never read about in the books.

I spent a lot of time watching the clock. The minutes seemed like centuries. But finally the inevitable occurred. My heart was in my throat when I heard the sound of my stepdads car turn into our driveway. Numbness very quickly turned into terror as I heard the sound of his firm tread on the front porch and the front door opening. I heard him greet my mother in that gruff, affectionate fashion that was his custom, but then there were the sounds of lowered voices. My mother was wasting no time telling him about my report card. Then, after the long hours that threatened never to end, events moved forward with terrifying speed. Without missing a beat, the next thing I knew, he was in the bathroom, and I knew what he was going into the bathroom to get. I sat there on the bed in that now familiar state of total paralysis, aware that from the moment my stepdad returned home, I had no control over my life or my body. Both were at his mercy.

Before I could even steel myself for his appearance, the door to my bedroom opened and he was standing there, as I expected, holding the hairbrush he had retrieved from the bathroom. He was still wearing his work clothes. White shirt, tie, dress slacks. He had only stopped long enough to slip off his shoes, so that he was standing there in stocking feet. Just your average white collar worker about to turn his stepsons naked ass an angry red. My stepdad was not a bad looking man. His hairline was just beginning to recede. He was in decent shape although he did not work out much. His manner was always masculine and authoritative. He took pride in being the man of the house. But when he was about to give me a spanking, he became testosterone personified. I never saw him look so manly as when he was about to blister my ass, with all the power and the understated anger of a real man. But he did not look angry. Just stern and determined. It was his alert posture, the fierceness of his expression, that conveyed his anger to me. The speed with which he was going about the business of punishing me told me how upset he was and how bad I was going to hurt. This was going to be a memorable spanking. I was too afraid even to cry.

He ordered me to stand up, and then he took my place on the bed. He stared me straight in the face, all the while tapping his leg with the brush. I could not bear the look of disapproval in his face, and looked down at my feet. "Look me in the eye, boy." I forced myself to obey. His expression was burning a hole in my face, but I forced myself to concentrate on it. In rapid patter, matter of fact fashion, he told me how disappointed he was. Failing in school was not acceptable and would not go unpunished. He asked me why I had never bothered to tell him or my mother that I was having problems with math. I stumbled over my words, trying to describe how hard it was for me to admit that I was having problems. I kept intending to tell him, but never got around to it. "And now it is too late."

"Yes sir." I was staring at that hairbrush, still tapping his leg rhythmically and audibly. I could hear the insistent pat it made on the fabric of his slacks. It was the loudest sound in the room, far louder than the sound of his voice, or my embarrassed replies.

My stepdad was not a cruel man. On occasions like this he did not spank me in anger. He did it because it was his duty. He did it because his dad did it to him, and his grandfather did it to his dad. It was how men handled boyish disobedience. He spanked me for the same reason that he went to work and paid the mortgage and loved my mother. It was the natural order of things. He never questioned it. If he had been forced to reflect on what he believed, which he was not in the habit of doing, he would have speculated that God gave boys big fleshy backsides, lined with hundreds of sensitive nerve endings, so that their dads could put them over their laps and burn them long and hard whenever their insolent owners got out of line. And he was not a man to frustrate or question the designs of his maker. He was far too good a southern Baptist for that. What was good enough for God was good enough for him, and unfortunately for my poor rump, good enough for me as well.

Time, which had moved so slowly before, now raced forward at all too rapid a pace, and I was painfully aware that I was not in control of events. He laid the hairbrush down on the bed and ordered me to step forward, which I did with all the freedom of a zombie. He unzipped my pants and lowered them to my ankles. He then did the same with my underwear. I suppose I should have been embarrassed at the exposure of my penis, but at that moment, both me and my stepdad were focused on the part of my anatomy directly behind my male member. One often reads that at this point in the proceedings, boys plead and resist, and try to keep their pants from coming down. I didnt do that. Oh, I had done, at first, when spankings were a new experience, and I didnt know my stepdad well enough to realize that resistance was futile. All I ever got for my pains was even greater pain in the part of me I was hoping to protect. Now, I just stood there and let him undress me, like a condemned man who is resigned to his fate. I felt ruthlessly exposed, emotionally and psychologically. I had felt like that ever since mother first told me to go to my room and wait for my stepdad to get home. The nakedness of my body was sort of like an anti-climax. In my own mind, I had been totally vulnerable and unprotected for hours. Without saying a word he positioned me over his lap and picked up the hairbrush. I was staring down at his feet in their black socks, my butt pointed up, my toes barely touching the floor. For the next several minutes, my bare butt was the center of the universe for both me and my stepdad, and I was achingly aware of its nakedness and its vulnerability.

During a spanking I seemed to become a split personality. My will evaporated into a terrified puddle, so that my body was my stepdads to do with as he pleased. But it was as if my mind and soul became detached from my body, and were standing beside the bed watching what was happening, and screaming for me to try to run, to get away, to do whatever I had to do to avoid the blazing fate that in a few seconds was destined to befall my beloved but doomed rear end. Nevertheless, I was powerless to heed these urgings, and before I knew what was happening, the hairbrush had landed for the first time across the surface of my bare right buttock.

No matter how often you have been spanked, there is nothing in the world like that first impact of hairbrush on rump. You think you remember how bad it is, but you never can. And even worse than the physical pain is the psychological awareness that it is only the first, that it is going to get much much worse before it is over, and that you have no idea how long it is going to last and no power to stop it. There is no terror in this world quite like the terror of a boy getting a long, hard barebottomed hairbrush spanking.

I was not a stoic kid during a spanking. I tried hard not to struggle too much, because I knew that would only make it worse. My stepdad did not care that I shouted or sobbed or pleaded, or kicked my bare feet furiously, provided that my "target area" remained firmly in position over his lap. If I shouted too loudly, disturbing his concentration, he would give me a couple of searing whacks across the base of both my buttocks and tell me to lower my voice. He didnt care if the neighbors heard. I wasnt the only boy on the block who got his rear end roasted on a regular basis, but if the noise level got out of hand, it upset him, and he liked to remain calm and collected while he was working on my rear end. I actually think that in some strange fashion he found blistering my butt rather relaxing. He would never have admitted it, but after a long frustrating day at the office, it was good to be able to take out his frustrations on a pair of boyish buns, especially when it was for the buns own good.

And in a strange way, I also found spankings rather relaxing. Being a kid is very stressful. You dont often get permission from adults to holler and kick and sob. When I was growing up, there was only one place that boys had permission to cry, and that was over their dads knees. In that one safe place (did I say "safe?") it was ok to let the tears flow and water the floorboards. And believe me, I never failed to take advantage of that permission. Not too long after my stepdad started spanking me, I was literally blinded by my own tears, and beginning to drool and spill snot. It was a murderously painful way to experience catharsis, but effective.

My stepdads spankings were always methodical, relentless, and pistonlike. At first he would spank one buttock, and then the next, going back and forth like that for a minute or so. He concentrated on the same spot on each ass cheek. I could almost feel his fierce eyes focusing on the precise patch of ass flesh that he intended to set on fire. It was horrendously painful, but after awhile I sort of got the hang of it, and felt a certain comfort in being able to anticipate where the next whack was going to land. But he was one step ahead of me. Just when the routine had made the punishment marginally less unbearable, he would start igniting different areas of my ass, spanking the same spot again and again and again, before shifting his painful attentions to another spot. One whack to the top of my right cheek. Five whacks to the bottom of the left. I never knew where the next blow was going to fall, which made me almost crazy with fear and pain. If I started struggling too fiercely, he would grab my left hand and place it in the small of my back, and then lean on it, to hold me in place and make me feel even more helpless (as if that were possible). At some point near the end of my punishment, he always turned his attention mercilessly to my sit spots. That was the climax of the spanking, the ne plus ultra of bare bottomed agony. I turned into a boy soprano and began singing like an angel who had been plunged, butt first, into the fiery furnace. By that time I was too exhausted even to scream, and just lay there open mouthed and popeyed, while mingling drops of tears and snot dripped into my open mouth.

I never knew how long spankings lasted. Time really did seem to come to a standstill. I only know that they always seemed to last forever. Eternity, my stepdads hairbrush taught me, is a relative concept, and when you are over a parents lap, getting the snot (quite literally) spanked out of you, it is hard to imagine that you were ever anywhere else or anyone else. Your identity, your whole personality, is reduced to that of "boy being spanked." Nothing simplifies a complicated world like a hairbrush. Perhaps that is why, almost thirty years after the events described here, I still remember them with a startling fondness, and spend embarrassing amounts of time on the internet hoping to relive them.

After he believed that I had experienced sufficient pain for the lesson to sink in, my stepdad would always let me off his lap with surprising tenderness, and let me spend a few minutes sitting beside him sobbing, with his arm around my shoulders. He never said a word, but I dont think we were ever as close as we were at those times. Eventually, he would get up and leave and it was understood that I would remain in my room until morning. I lay on the bed sobbing, and when the pain had started to subside, massaging my aching, swollen ass. It felt as if I were trying to console my best friend, clumsily apologizing in the only way I knew how for some act of betrayal. After a few hours, I would fall asleep and time resumed its normal, tedious, unbearable flow, which would continue until the next time I needed a spanking, which when I was a kid was never too long in coming. Now that I am an adult, it is often far too long to wait between spankings, unfortunately, so that it is good to look back and remember. I spend a lot of time remembering, and hoping for the time when time will stop again.


More stories by Tawser