Caneability - Part 1

by Mike Ward

�

�

There was a very satisfactory shriek of pain from the bent-over boy at the completion of the first stroke. There was an equally satisfactory and audible intake of breath from the two others who were standing by watching their friend receive what was possibly his first ever punishment caning. Once again I lifted the cane into the air over my right shoulder, paused for a moment, and then brought the cane gracefully, swiftly, and forcefully downwards towards the awaiting bottom in front of me. His school shorts were gorgeously short, with the grey worsted material stretched extra tight as he bent right over, his hands gripping his ankles, his legs held straight; taking his caning in the traditional posture that can only be really properly achieved by a strong and fit young man.

And at nineteen years of age this lad was certainly at the peak of caneability. Only four more strokes to go. I paused again, it certainly would not have done to have rushed this occasion. The extra time would help ensure that the boy's mind would register the full pain of each stroke. That extra time would also allow me the moments needed to fully appreciate this wonderful experience. After years of secretly playing about on the adult schoolboy roleplay scene, here I was, caning a nineteen year-old youth who was wearing a very traditional short-trousered uniform as two similarly clad youths watched and trembled in expectation of similar treatment. And the most incredible thing of all? This wasn't role-play, this was for real. Of course the fact that this was real meant that I had no choice but to limit the number of strokes to a traditional six for this, their first round of punishment canings. But there would be other occasions, of that I was certain, and I had a deep sense of contentment. What could be finer?

The third stroke was absolutely perfect, even if I say so myself. The lad's spine responded with a beautiful arched spontaneous reaction, his hands breaking free of his ankles. But to give him his due, he bent back into position immediately, and as I was feeling merciful there was no real harm done. One has to expect that sort of thing during a boy's first caning. Next time we do this he will find that breaking from the required posture entails penalties; for now I was happy to let it go. I readied myself for the fourth stroke. This time there was another yelp and, if I am not mistaken, a little sniffle, the sound of a very sorrowful boy struggling to hold back the tears. At that moment I was grateful for the excellence of the tailoring that had gone into the suit I was wearing. It really wouldn't have done for any of these lads to have gained the impression that I was actually enjoying this. No, that wouldn't have done at all. What they needed to think was that I had had to overcome a deep-seated moral reluctance to do what had, so sadly, become necessary for their own well-being and comfort. I was standing comfortably on the moral high-ground and they were going to suffer for it.

I glanced over at the two watching youths, the look of horrified expectation on their faces somewhat compromised by the obvious erections bulging against the tight material of their grey shorts. No need for the finest tailoring when it comes to school uniforms, I thought. There again, perhaps the designers of school shorts went to considerable lengths to make sure that they accentuated the physical attributes of the older youth. Whatever. In a few minutes the next one would be assuming the position for his own share of my displeasure. I must have been distracted by my thoughts for the fifth stroke seemed to have happened without any conscious effort on my part. But it was obviously all the better for that. This time there was a very real scream and an agonised, "please, Sir".

I took my time again for the sixth stroke hoping that my own face was conveying a deep sense of concern and distaste for the task that I had been forced into administering. How could it please me, a middle-aged, well-educated, professional guy, to have to wield a cane and inflict the most traditional form of corporal punishment across the backsides of three young men, undergraduates in our local university? Bright, intelligent lads, devoted to sport and student revelry, who had gone just that bit too far. Of course I didn't choose to do this without having given the matter much thought. And of course there was the simple fact that they had been warned. All of this pain was so unnecessary, they could so easily have avoided it. But they hadn't. Oh dear, dear reader; please imagine how I truly felt as I eyed up my target for the sixth stroke.

The short trousers in front of me had been cut extremely short, and bent over like this there was an inviting portion of exposed skin at the very top of the thighs. I know it's a clich�, but it had to be done. He took it amazingly well. There were three or four loud intakes of breath that petered on the very cusp of sobs as his whole body trembled and shivered in shock. But he remained in position, not actually something that I had told him to do but an act of submission that I appreciated all the more for that. Very quietly I told him to stand up. Sure enough his glistening eyes betrayed the tears that he had just about managed to control. He thanked me for punishing him so rigorously, for not holding back in what must have been a distasteful task. I sent him over to his comrades in crime and beckoned for number two to walk the slow steps of doomed youth into the middle of the room.

I looked into his eyes, trying to convey my deep sorrow at having to do this. Then, stepping back, I told him to bend over and readied myself for the next scene in this regrettable incident. Again before me bent a lithe and fit young man, well able to present his backside for punishment by bending right over and grabbing his ankles. A few seconds passed before I asked the question, "ready?" There was a slight nod of the head and a barely audible, "yes Sir", but it was enough. I let the cane hover over his tight short trousers, then brought it up into the air. Another pause. And then the awful whistle as it cut through the air and bit deep into the worsted material. The boy released his breath with a rather charming "ha", not a laugh, just the involuntary sound of one who really didn't want to let himself down by screaming and yelping like his predecessor. I admired his courage but I knew that I had both the strength and experience to make sure that he wouldn't be able to hold out until the very end.

I decided to lull him into the hope that he might be able to take it, leaving the most severe of the strokes until the fourth and fifth. Number five really did it for him. It had taken quite a lot of control on my part to give the appearance of dealing fairly, but there was definitely more force in that stroke and he broke position, standing up straight, clutching his brutalised bottom, and actually snivelling through tears as he begged to be allowed off that final sixth bite of the cane. I simply waited in silence, looking apologetically at him, conveying the utter impossibility of letting him off now that sentence had been agreed between us. It took him a while, but he got his breath back and forced himself to bend over for that last stroke. What he couldn't have realised was that this time his shorts had ridden up that little bit further and he had now exposed that most desirable of targets, the crease of skin where buttock meets thigh. There could be no mercy. There wasn't any.

He stood immediately and, head down, went over and stood with the others. It took a little while before he looked up at me and completed the ritual of thanking me for giving him the punishment he deserved. I hoped that my face conveyed a suitable image of disappointment at his lack of composure and self-control. He looked like the comic-book stereotype of a freshly punished schoolboy. I allowed myself the pleasant thought that if he thought those six strokes were bad he would have difficulty thinking of a way of describing the awfulness of the next time we had to do this. And there would definitely be a next time, of that I was sure.

Number three did not wait to be summonsed. I suspected that he wanted to bend over quickly so that I might not notice that simply witnessing the punishment of his friends had scared him to tears. Well, what is the point of the corporal punishment of boys if they do not fear it? He knew full well that he could have avoided this unpleasant interlude, the rules were not complex, nor many, nor particularly oppressive. In fact the rules had actually been composed by the three miscreants themselves. I had simply agreed that they seemed to form a reasonable basis for our continued coexistence after the unfortunate events of that night when my three young lodgers had breached the trust I had so willingly offered. No, the rules were not the rules of some tyrannical sadist. They were simply a guide to reasonable behaviour. Even the penalties had been ascribed by the three lads. Nobody could have accused me of having forced them into this; rather it was obvious that I was the one who had been left to pick up the financial costs of their exploits and reluctantly accepted the argument for this set of rules as a way of resolving a very difficult situation.

If I had attempted to engineer this chain of events myself I would probably have ended up deeply embarrassed at the very least. But the fact was that I had always kept my kink well-hidden from my youthful lodgers over the years. They were usually pleasant company, keeping my mind stimulated with their enthusiastic attempts at scholarly debate, making this over-large townhouse feel lived in. I had a holiday cottage down in the southwest and it was there that I kept the instruments of punishment that I used on guys of like mind who would join me no more than once a year for a few days of adult schoolboy roleplay. My city life was a model of rectitude and professionalism. I placed a high value on self-control, and anyway, the kink stuff was only part of my life. I genuinely appreciated the energy and zest for life that each of my lodgers over the years had brought into my home. They were usually second or third year undergraduates, occasionally one would stay on for postgraduate work. I had achieved a lot in my own career, but nothing made me more proud than the fact that some fifteen young people had benefited from the low rent I was able to charge and the secure and comfortable home that I was able to offer.

But this year had been different. These three lads had certainly demonstrated a much more energetic approach to sports and partying than any of my previous lodgers. They were all second-years but in different departments. There had been no obvious dedication to study shown by any of them, but their enthusiasm for clubbing was incredible. Every second night seemed to involve lots of grooming and preening as they readied themselves for the hours of hedonism ahead. I was on the verge of suggesting that we might have a little chat about how I felt about offering what was in effect a subsidised rent to students who did not appear to be heading towards degrees of any sort, never mind the proudly won firsts that some of their predecessors had achieved. But you can probably imagine how thoughts of such a discussion became compromised in my mind when I first saw them attired for a night out at a club that was running a weekly school disco event.

Picture, if you can, the sight of three older teenage lads wearing grey short trousers, white shirts, and matching school ties. The socks were a bit of a let-down being ordinary grey or black short socks, but all the same the guys certainly looked the part. Let's face it, between swimming, cricket, and football, as well as all the clubbing, they were using up a lot of calories and they were three very fit-looking slim young men. But in school uniform! I very much doubt that they really understood just how young and cute they looked. And that's how it was every Thursday through that first term and into the second. You can be sure that I was at home on those evenings, quietly appreciating the strange circumstance that had brought those bared legs into my home. And as the weeks passed things improved. Coming up to Christmas they had managed to get their hands on pairs of school knee-sock with the traditional coloured bands on the turnover tops. Then, perhaps influenced by the bitter January cold, they would appear in a mixture of school blazers. I would sip on a glass of whisky and savour the moment.

But that was back in the earlier part of the year. Here we were on a Saturday morning in the middle of April, and I still had one more lad awaiting his punishment. You may take it that I had saved the tastiest little morsel until last. This young man must have been hoping that despite being nineteen years old he might yet have a final growth spurt that would bring him up to at least average height like his two friends. But he was still no taller than about five feet four and as for being slim, well you will just have to believe me when I tell you that his school shorts had been sold as being of a size suitable for ten year olds and even so they weren't particularly tight on him. In fact I had thought him too thin to be good looking, his usual jeans or combats looking as if they were under a strange sort of stress at the waist as the cloth doubled up on itself to achieve some sort of fit under his belt. But where the cut and fit of clothing designed for young men looked rather silly on this lad, the manufacturers of school clothing for boys obviously had him in mind as a model when they went to work. Here was a lad who should really have stuck to buying his clothes in the boyswear department, and I had already resolved in my own mind a sly determination to keep him in boyish short trousers throughout the forthcoming summer term.

He bent over in imitation of his two friends and, having sized up the somewhat smaller target in front of me, I went to work. He had been psychologically wrecked by having to stand through the previous two canings and watch each of the others break down and lose control under the pain of the cane. I had no intention of going any easier on him just because of his size; they were all the same age, they would receive the same punishment. Two strokes in and I had the satisfaction of hearing him repeatedly sob out the words, "I promise, I promise". After all those roleplay encounters it felt like a whole new experience to be delivering a sound caning to a lad who was genuinely repentant and wishing himself far away his disciplinarian's authority. With number three he was crying and it took every ounce of my own self-control to summons up an appearance of empathy and distress at having to go through with this awful punishment.

But he had known full well the outcome of breaking the rules that he and his friends had formalised and agreed. I had to do my duty without fear or favour. The tears and sobbing increased with the fourth stroke but amazingly the youth stayed resolutely in position. The fifth stroke was just that little bit stronger and I could actually see it bite more deeply into its target. The boy was in total agony while I, on the other hand, felt as if I had broken through to a state of complete meditative calmness. This lad's shorts had not ridden up to reveal that most delightful of targets so I settled for a nice diagonal across his buttocks as an appropriate way of finishing off his punishment. As I placed the cane down on my desk he still managed to remain in position, his hands gripped tightly around his ankles.

I almost felt sorry for the kid but then I had a flashback to that fateful Friday morning. I had been away at a conference and had flown back into the country in the very early hours of the morning. The pool of vomit on the corner of lawn by my front door was a rather obvious clue to the scene of total chaos that I was to find inside the house. There was a murmur of conversation coming from the kitchen and when I entered I found two of my lodgers along with one other boy and two girls, all dressed in their school disco outfits, all looking blearily up at me as if I was some sort of dreamlike figure. There were opened wine bottles all over the place, and on the kitchen table stood the remains of two somewhat indifferent single malt whiskies and one ancient and outstandingly expensive bottle of whiskey. A broken glass was lying in fragments on the counter, its contents of red wine still dripping slowly into a pool on the floor.

The incredible thing was that I had come home at exactly the time I had told them I would be back. This was not some surprise return planned to catch them out. I had even written the details on the kitchen calendar where we tried to keep track of days away from the house. A flash of pained realisation seemed to strike all five of the kitchen's drunken occupants at the same moment. My eyes were drawn to the authentic-looking school cane that was hooked over the back of one of the chairs. I picked it up, flexed it and examined the ends. Sure enough it was genuine rattan and for a brief moment the kids must have sensed through their hangovers the very distinct possibility that I was about to use it for its intended purpose. But I managed to hold back and control myself. Instead I hooked the cane on a cupboard handle and left it swinging menacingly as I walked through the rest of the house.

A boy was lying asleep on the big sofa in my study. Someone had had the presence of mind to have left a basin on the floor by his head and he had made good use of it, although there were the inevitable splashes on the surrounding carpet. The sitting room carpet boasted the biggest red wine stain I had ever seen, as if someone had simply upended a bottle of wine and poured it out. Glasses were strewn about the place, at least six of them bearing the remains of what I guessed had probably been some pretty decent first growth Bordeaux. Upstairs in my own bedroom I found the third of my lodgers who had rather charmingly managed to fall asleep in the middle of sixty-nining another lad. They actually looked so cute that I almost allowed myself a laugh but there was serious work to be done and a rather sneaky little plan had started to formulate in my mind. The other bedrooms contained as many combinations and permutations of boys and girls as could be imagined. One lad, who I recognised as having been previously introduced to me as one of the rugby-playing fraternity, seemed to have fallen asleep in the happy situation of being surrounded by three girls, their blouses unbuttoned and their short little school skirts ruffled up over their waists. But it only seemed that way. A closer inspection revealed the fact that one of the girls was in fact a boy and it was this charming young specimen who had drowsed off face closest to the great prize of the young stud's pretty impressive cock.

I felt that so memorable a night needed to be recorded lest the young participants would have nothing to remember it by, so naturally I made a second tour of the house with my digital camera in hand. Down in the kitchen the muffled conversation had obviously taken on some urgency as the five young people tried to think of a way of negotiating their way out of what was obviously going to entail trouble for someone. But when I re-entered I forestalled them by telling them that I had a plan of my own. I was going to take my bags back out and book myself into one of the local hotels. I would come home again on the Saturday evening after six o'clock, and I expected to find my house in reasonably good order. The wine and spirit bottles would be lined up on the kitchen counter so that we could make an assessment of how much this night of debauchery had cost. And my three young lodgers would be waiting to present themselves for a rather long and difficult conversation about reparation and their future intentions.

So it was. I returned home late on the Saturday evening having joined some friends for dinner at a local restaurant. The three culprits were in the kitchen, scrubbed and spruced up and looking very bashful. Things seemed to have been cleaned up and as I wasn't feeling particularly rushed I sent them off to bed. There would be time enough on Sunday to come to an agreement on how they were going to deal with what was at least a thousand pounds worth of fine wine, to say nothing of that staggeringly expensive bottle of Irish that they had managed to get through.

The details needn't worry you. Naturally they couldn't afford to pay for the damage. Naturally I was generous and magnanimous. I suggested that each of them should sit down and write a letter to me explaining what he thought should happen next. They must have spent some time together talking through the possible scenarios for they all suggested that I should evict them but, if I was feeling merciful, I might perhaps use that dreaded cane on them or ground them for a month or so as had happened to two of them at their parental homes. I told them that I didn't think that corporal punishment was appropriate but that, if they considered themselves grounded for the eight or nine weeks until the last of the summer examinations, and if they really applied themselves to some serious study, then I might be persuaded to let them stay.

In their relief they were happy to further agree with me that as they had behaved with the immaturity of schoolboys, and indeed in the attire of schoolboys too, it seemed appropriate to me that a set of rules should be agreed that reflected the fact that they could not be trusted to act like men.

And here, just a week later, I found myself having to deal with them in accordance with the penalties and rules that they themselves had decided upon. I told the last of the three that he could stand up and return to stand with his friends. He managed a smile as he held out his hand to shake mine. He thanked me profusely for having punished him so well and expressed the sincere hope that I would not have to cane him like that again.

I knew that his hope would be fulfilled. I would not cane any of them like that again. Next time it would be bare-bottomed and with a brand new senior cane that I had ordered. I dismissed them and told them to go and focus on their studies. Sinking into my old armchair I started to deal with the rather pressing matter that had come to hand. With my free hand I picked up the walkie-talkie style baby alarm receiver that was linked to the unit I had concealed in my lodgers' bedroom. Sure enough they were reviewing their recent experience.

It was going to be a fascinating summer term.

� Mike Ward 2005

Tell me what you think by email .