Caneability - Part Three

By Mike Ward

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It�s the Wednesday after Easter and a very pleasant afternoon sees me out in the back garden pruning back the rambling rose that hides the old wooden shed where the lawn mower spends most of its time. Number three is clearing up the lunchtime dishes in the kitchen and from time to time I hear the rattle of crockery. The poor lad has been very docile over the past few days.

I guess that he can still feel some fading discomfort from the caning that followed the spanking I gave him the other day. Nicely warmed up I had him stretch out across my desk, his bared bottom offering the perfect target. In the end I settled on eight strokes, afterall, his punishment had to have some element of severity given the crime, but I had softened by then and didn�t want to terrorise the lad.

His docility could equally relate to the new clothes he had been wearing since our little trip into the city centre yesterday. Those fawn coloured school shorts were perfect, and teamed with a navy polo shirt one could see that there was something of the uniform about his attire. He certainly didn�t look like a young man who had dressed with an eye to contemporary street fashion. No, he looked very smart and I was pleased. This nineteen year-old university student had become one very tamed teenage boy, and I intended to keep him that way for the two months of the forthcoming summer term.

I heard the doorbell and waved to the dishwashing lad to show that he should go and answer it. I suspected that he was still self-conscious enough about those shorts to feel that he would rather not be seen by anyone else. Well, he�d just have to get over it; he wasn�t going to get the rest of his wardrobe back until the summer term was over. It pleased me to think of him striding across the campus between lecture theatres and the library, his knees bared under the hems of those rather traditionally cut shorts. It would do him good.

This pleasant vision was still in my mind when the lad himself came out and, very nervously, told me that there was a visitor at the door for me. Actually, he didn�t use the word �visitor�, instead he named someone I didn�t know. Or at least I didn�t think that I knew this guy, but when I got to the hallway I had a very clear recollection of having seen this well-built young man lying on the sofa in my study on that fateful morning. He had the grace to look rather sheepish and bashful as he asked if he could have a few words with me.

I was intrigued but I really did not expect the few words he uttered when we got into my study. The poor lad was clearly very nervous and for some reason or other I wasn�t overly inclined to relieve the tension and put him at his ease. I stood poker-faced while he explained that he was ashamed of how he had messed up the other week at that impromptu party here in my home. Every now and then I glanced over at the sofa where I had seen him in the early hours of that morning, sprawled out asleep, a basin on the floor brimful with the evidence of a very heavy night.

He wanted to apologise, he wanted to compensate me for the damage he had done, he wanted to turn back time and never disgrace himself in such a way again. He had pulled out his wallet and proffered a couple of ten pound notes with the hope that perhaps he could pay towards the cleaning up of the carpet, his eyes fixed on the carpet by the sofa.

I was impressed. Here was a young man who was trying to do the honourable thing. I knew that it was likely that those proffered notes meant quite a lot to him; every penny counts when you�re a student, no matter how wealthy your family background. And I guessed that this guy�s family was not exactly underprivileged. His trousers might have been the usual student uniform of blue denim, but they had that freshly ironed look that betrays a reluctance to look like a total slob. His hair was cut in that cropped flop so beloved of generations of public schoolboys, and his accent completed the stereotype. But there was nothing of the sneering arrogance that clouds the personalities of so many of his kind. His face had actually assumed a rather charming blush of youthful embarrassment as he had gone through his little speech. I could imagine him rehearsing it for days before he felt ready to come around.

A nice lad and I suspected that he was the product of one of those very minor public schools that specialise in making gentlemen out of the less-brilliant sons of the upper middle classes. It didn�t take much to understand him then, for was I not the product of such a place myself? And the more I understood, the more I concluded that there might be fun to be had with this young man yet. The memory of him sprawled on the sofa returned to me. Of course the image was over-shadowed by the circumstances, but I remembered that he looked wonderfully cute in his clubbing outfit of white short-sleeved shirt and knee-length school shorts. There was a slight stirring in my own pants and I knew that I was going to have to proceed with caution if I was to have my wicked way with him.

He finished talking and there was silence as he waited for some sort of response from me. I let the silence run on; he clearly felt uncomfortable. He broke.

It all came pouring out. How he hadn�t managed to focus on his studies as he should have. How he loathed (his word) the way in which he found himself lurching from party to party. How disappointed his parents would be if he didn�t do well. How embarrassed he was about his lack of self-control. It all came out in a great torrent of words, tripping over each other as he got everything off his chest.

I wasn�t the slightest bit interested. Well, maybe just a teeny little bit. To be honest I wasn�t at all sure that there was any good reason for me to have to endure this stuff; guys screw up all the time at university, it was nothing to me. But on the other hand, while I wasn�t all that interested in taking responsibility for this young man�s lack of maturity and personal discipline, I was kind of interested in his rather nicely developed backside and the idea of a cane somehow seemed to hover behind him as I sat on the edge of my desk and watched him bury himself in the mire of his self-pity.

He wasn�t mine yet, but carefully played this was a fish I could land. All he needed was a bit more line so that he could take the bait in comfort. I told him that I deeply appreciated his apology, that I honestly didn�t need or want his money, that I hoped he would be able to find some way of getting his life under control. The next few seconds may have passed in silence but there was a lot of communication going on. I just sat there on the desk, sticking with the old poker face routine. He was going through hell. It was there in his eyes. He�d come all the way over here and offered his apology, but there was still some other business on his agenda. Suddenly he seemed to relax a little, and I knew that he had decided that he had nothing to lose by asking the big question.
As he worked up his courage I was considering the big answer. Slipper or cane? Over my lap or bent over? Today, dressed as he is, or send him home to come back with his school uniform? The answer was pretty obvious. Slipper and cane today, dressed or undressed as he was. Then send him off with instructions to return in a few days with his uniform. Why choose when you can have everything?

He started to speak, very quietly. I could hear perfectly well but I didn�t resist the obvious command for him to, �speak up boy�. Had he just guessed, or had news leaked out about how my three unhappy miscreants had been punished?

The young man in front of me was explaining that he wished that someone would take him in hand, mentor him, discipline him. And then it came out, maybe even spank him. He had enough wit to make that last clause come out as if it was just meant to be a light-hearted reference to the way things might have been handled in another time. I pressed him. What did he mean by being taken in hand or mentored, or disciplined? And then I probed further, suggesting that he might want to take care when he made jokes about being spanked. Someday someone would take him seriously.

A completely charming look of desperation shot through his eyes. He really wanted it. Somehow he knew that it would be the only thing that might produce the effect that he needed so much. He was a very beautiful looking young man, it would have been mean-spirited to have left him struggling and torturing himself like this. I am not a mean-spirited man.

I moved closer, put a hand on his shoulder, and looked into his eyes. He didn�t move back, he didn�t flinch, he just stared back at me with eyes that were already tearing up. The time for words had passed but there was one minor problem; I was not equipped with the instruments of discipline. I steered him towards a corner and left him in the traditional position, nose to the wall. Into his ear I whispered that he might want to make use of the next few minutes to think very carefully about what was about to happen. If he was still in the corner when I returned he would not be given the option of backing out.

Do you think that he was still there when I returned with my trusty and very ancient plimsoll in hand? Of course he was. And such a docile and submissive young man you have never seen as I sat on the sofa and pulled him over my lap. It was time to go to work. I left him under the happy delusion that he might be spared the shame of baring his bottom. But that happy delusion could only last for a few minutes, ten or fifteen at most. Those jeans were going to be coming down soon enough. It would be remiss of anyone in my profession if he (we are mostly guys still) failed to make provision for quality assurance and continuous improvement. I worked away with that slipper and felt the tremors and stiffening of a boy who was beginning to feel real pain.

When his jeans came down I nearly laughed out loud at the sight of his ludicrous briefs; bright yellow trimmed with navy. I had intended moving straight from denim to bare skin but these underpants deserved their own punishment and I did not hesitate to apply it. Those buttocks were bared soon enough and I was treated to the sight of two bright rosy mounds. I allowed myself to relish the heat that radiated through the muscle-tissue and as always my thoughts turned over the possibility of patenting the idea of providing sustainable energy through the regular spanking of boys.

It is possible, in my limited experience, to work up a kind of brightly polished surface on a boy�s bottom if one is firm enough in the use of the slipper. It took fifty more strokes, I counted them all, before I was satisfied that the red sheen in front of me was as perfect as it should have been. The lad was biting into a cushion and the contortions of his body suggested that he had long crossed over the threshold of agony. I allowed myself the pleasure of letting my hand caress the heated mass of flesh on my lap. What is the point of a job well done if you don�t take a moment to appreciate it yourself?

The lad had clearly suffered enough. He had endured more pain than he had ever imagined and he was still writhing and gasping from the effects of this torturous experience. It was time to cane him.

There were plenty of �pleases� as he begged to be allowed to leave. But I had accepted the heavy responsibility of guiding him towards a more mature path of self-discipline, and that path was not an easy one, requiring a lot of externally imposed discipline before the self was ready to do its own work. Of course I understood that he needed to escape the pain. I truly knew that he had endured enough. But the point of punishment is that it goes beyond what a boy wants, and I was not going to let this young man down in this time of need.

I walked him across to an old armchair and bent him over its back. It would have been unnecessarily cruel to have exposed the senior cane, that terrifying instrument of discipline, to his already tortured gaze. So not being a sadist I held the cane out of sight behind him and simply told him to brace himself for six of the very best. There was no justification for inflicting more than six on him but I made sure that each of those six left its distinctive impression on both the body and the mind of that young man.

He could hardly stand afterwards.

But that wasn�t such a bad thing I thought as I tousled his hair and uttered soothing words to the lad who was kneeling in front of me and hugging my thighs as he regained some sort of composure. The thought crossed my mind that he was perfectly placed to express his deep gratitude for my dedication to his well-being, and thankfully the thought was echoed in the deed.

It took a while, maybe quarter of an hour, but soon enough both of us were ready to face the world again. I suggested coffee and with that wonderful resilience of youth (a favourite phrase of mine) he was smiling and delighted to accept the invitation. In the kitchen I could see that there was more work needed.

Number three was standing by the kettle and the smile on his face would have betrayed him even if the words from his mouth hadn�t. �So it�s coffees all round is it?�

The look of sheer horror on my latest addition to the disciplinary fold was enough, decisive action was necessary. I grabbed a spatula and pulled number three down with me and across my lap as I sat on a kitchen chair. His shorts and little briefs were the work of a moment and I went to work again. There was no disguising the look of amazement on the face of number four when he saw the marks of previous punishments on number three�s backside (don�t you just love my convoluted way of maintaining the anonymity of these well-tamed youths!). As I whacked away at this freshly presented backside I looked up at the developing smile on number four�s face.

So. He hadn�t actually known. When, sometime around a lifetime ago, he had come around to apologise, he hadn�t actually known that I had resorted to the use of corporal punishment to discipline my lodgers.

Well, he knew now. And if I know anything about human nature, he would be spending a lot more time around my home over the coming months. Perfectly fine by me. I�ve never been one to shirk life�s responsibilities.

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� Mike Ward 2006