The drunken neighbour

It was at least nine o’clock at night, but it was still light. I was standing at the bedroom window and I watched him stagger down the street. He was drunk. Or on drugs. He lurched against my front gate leant over the low fence and vomited into my flowerbed.

He was the boy from next door. I say “boy” but he was easily in his mid-twenties. There were three of them in the house. Sharing. People move about a lot at that age. They certainly did in the house next door. I think the boy might have lived there for a few weeks before our encounter.

Next morning I went to inspect my roses. The vomit was gone. Dogs or urban foxes probably ate it. I wasn’t sure what I should do about the boy next door. Should I make a fuss?

My friend Geoffrey was clear. I call Geoffrey my “friend”. I’m pushing sixty years old and from an older more reticent generation. Today’s youngsters would say “partner”. You can get married now so some of them would be “husbands”. I can’t see myself ever calling Geoffrey my “husband”.

Geoffrey said the boy next door needed a good spanking. Geoffrey would say that. That’s how we first got together. Geoffrey is about twenty years younger than me. He was a post-grad student at the university where I taught. Heaven knows how he got such a good first degree; he was pretty feckless. He had no self-discipline.

That’s where I came in. There was some older-younger man chemistry. He needed a mentor to take him under his wing. To give him a guiding hand, as it were. And that’s what he got. My guiding hand across his backside.

Geoffrey was in his twenties at the time, about the same age as the boy next door now. Mostly I kept Geoffrey on the straight and narrow by regular use of a heavy wooden bath brush applied with some energy across his bare buttocks. I would sit on a straight-backed chair, make him take down his trousers and underpants and put himself across my lap. He would always be submissive.

It wasn’t a sexual fetish. It was genuine punishment, applied to correct the misbehaviour of an errant young man. It worked. I haven’t had to spank Geoffrey for ten years or more.

The boy next door certainly needed his backside toasted, but I wasn’t so sure he would see it that way.

I didn’t know much about the boy. I knew he worked as a “community policeman.” What exactly is a “community policeman?” In my day we had “special constables,” who were volunteer policeman. Are community policemen like that, only paid?

Whatever they were, surely they were supposed to be responsible people. They shouldn’t be getting drunk (or worse, high) and puking into the neighbour’s garden.

I made it my business to be pottering in the garden the next afternoon so I could “accidently” meet the boy. I knew it was no use in the morning. He would still be in bed.

It was the height of summer and a hot sticky day. When he eventually left the house he was wearing running shorts and nothing else but a pair of training shoes. He looked very sheepish when I called a cheery “hello”. How much of his behaviour last night could he remember?

I watched him run down the road. He was taller than average and clearly physically very fit. He was also “fit” in the way youngsters use the word these days. I couldn’t see enough spare fat anywhere on his body to fry a sausage. He was so unlike most of the flabby obese youngsters you see hanging around the shopping centres today.

It was three days later, a Friday night, when we had a repeat performance. This time there was no vomit in my garden, but I watched the boy bounce down the street. When he got to his house, he stumbled for his key and was so out of it he couldn’t get it into the lock. I expected one of his housemates to open the door and let him in, but after a few minutes it was clear to me that there was no one at home.

So, I did the neighbourly thing. I went down and I let him in. He staggered up the stairs and I heard the door to the bathroom crash open. It was time to vomit again.

I was about to leave the key on the hall table and go home when I had a thought. Instead I pocketed it. He would have to come to me for it. There would be a price to pay for its return.

I spoke with Geoffrey about it. Yes, he agreed the boy needed a damn good spanking. Geoffrey was utterly convinced of it. He said the spankings I gave him at university turned his life around. He would have been a waster without me. Instead, he got a doctoral degree and went on to become one of the most respected economists in the country.

We agreed the boy needed a spanking, but for it to be effective he had to accept he had erred and needed correction. He had to take his punishment submissively. There was little likelihood of that happening. Corporal punishment was no longer in use. The cane had been abandoned in schools thirty years ago. The boy was not going to put himself over my knee.

It was conceivable that together Geoffrey and I could force him across the dining room table and tie him down. But what would be the point of that?

Anyway, if we did, the moment he was released he would call the police. Then where would we be? Two queens assaulting their cute next door neighbour. We’d get jail time.

Next day the boy appeared on my doorstep. It was a cooler day and he was dressed in a t-shirt and the enormous baggy pants the kids wear. He was not gracious.

“You got my key,” he snarled. It was an accusation disguised as a question.

I have worked with surly teenagers most of my life and I know how to intimidate them. The boy next door was easy to handle. Before he had realised it he was inside my house and the door was closed behind him.

He pouted when I demanded an explanation for the previous night’s behaviour. I could read his mind. Who did I think I was? It was none of my business.

“Give me my key,” his eyes glared. He wasn’t going to take lecturers from an old poof.

“What will you do? Call the police?”

“Ba..” he started to say something, but stopped himself just in time.

I told him I knew he was a community policeman. I lectured him on role models and setting an example. Then I played my ace card. “What will they say at the police headquarters when I report your drunken behaviour?”

I had expected him to get angry. Youngsters today are full of themselves. They think they are the centre of the universe. They are not about to take lecturers from anyone about anything.

But, he didn’t. He seemed stumped for an answer. He was silent. His blue-grey eyes told me I had hit a sensitive spot.

I knew from experience youngsters often bottled up their worries. A small problem was allowed to grow. In time it became a crisis. It was better to get things out into the open. I was sure the boy had something to tell me.

So, I said, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

So, he said he was in trouble at work and was on what they called “probation.” If there were any more problems he would be out of a job. He was drinking too much, but that was because of the job.

“If only I could sort myself out,” he trailed off rather miserably.

“I can help you,” I said and moved from the hallway into one of the large “reception” rooms in the house. The boy meekly followed.

Geoffrey used to tell me that I had a “powerful presence,” and that I was “masterful.” This was especially so when he was younger and saw me as an older authority figure. I had never recognised this in myself before. I was, I thought, just “myself.”

I told the boy he needed help. Structure. He must sort out his priorities. Set objectives. He should strive to meet them. If he failed through lack of endeavour, laziness, slothfulness, he must be punished.

He listened attentively. Those expressive blue-grey eyes confirmed Geoffrey’s opinion of me. I was masterful.

The boy opened up. We spoke for several minutes. But, it was mostly him. He said he had never thought of it before, but everything I had said was true. It all applied to him. He had never been given boundaries. He had done poorly at school because nobody – his parents, his teachers – seemed to care. He had been left – and this was his exact word – “rudderless.”

Geoffrey who had been listening from the shadows piped up. “Mr Hamilton here can help you with that.”

The boy looked at him disbelievingly.

Then Geoffrey smiled, “Believe me. I know.”

The dam had been breached.

I had never heard Geoffrey talk before to anyone about our discipline arrangements. He told the boy everything and with great enthusiasm. To my astonishment, he finished, “You should let Mr Hamilton take care of you.”

“You mean…” the boy couldn’t quite find the words.

“Yes,” Geoffrey confirmed. “You should start right now.” Then he turned to me, “Isn’t that right, Mr Hamilton.”

I too was lost for words. This wasn’t how I expected my meeting with the boy to have been. I managed to nod.

Geoffrey took this as a cue to leave us. I heard him running up the stairs. I had a good idea where he was heading.

He returned a minute later holding a large heavy wooden bath brush. It wasn’t the same one I had used to blister Geoffrey’s backside all those years ago, but it was petty similar. It would make a mightily effective spanking tool.

Geoffrey made great play of testing the brush’s weight by smacking it into the palm of his hand. Then he passed it over to me.

The boy’s deeply suntanned face blanched. I could tell from his eyes he was having second thoughts.

I gave him a lifeline. This would only work if he consented; if he understood that this spanking was to be for his own good.

“It is your decision. You can stay and be spanked or you can take your key and go home.”

I couldn’t have been any clearer. The boy was equally clear in his response.

“I want to stay.” Then he added pleadingly. “Please.”

Geoffrey had been very explicit in his description of my methods so the boy knew exactly what he was letting himself in for.

I cleared some newspapers from our large couch and sat down in its centre. The boy’s breathing had become shallower. I suspected his heartbeat was racing.

“Come here,” I stretched out my arm and took him by the wrist, pulling him closer to me.

“I think you understand the drill,” I said quietly. It was important to stay calm. This spanking was to be part of a well-organised structured disciplinary process. It wasn’t a wild uncontrolled beating given on the spur of the moment in anger.

“You must take down your trousers,” I said, in case he had forgotten.

By now, I am sure the boy had convinced himself that he must go through with this. Geoffrey had sold him on it benefits.

I believe his hands shook a little as he undid the drawstring that fastened his trousers at the waist and let them fall to his feet.

“Come lay across my lap.”

The couch was long enough to fit the boy. His legs were stretched out behind him on the seat cushion and his chest, head and arms were ahead of him. His stomach and bottom rested over my lap.

He wasn’t quite in the perfect position. Willingly, he moved back and forth until I was satisfied that his bum was at the exact angle I required.

Spankings should be about punishment and not humiliation. However, to be truly effective a spanking must be delivered to the bare buttocks. Spankings should be painful; clothing, even just cotton underpants, gets in the way.

To be naked in public can be a humiliating experience for many, especially young men who are asked to display their private parts. To reduce the embarrassment, I never asked Geoffrey to bare his backside prior to going over my knee. I always allowed him to keep on his underwear. When he was securely in position, head low, bum high, I would then myself pull down his drawers.

That was how I treated the boy. He wore loose-fitting Calvin Klein’s.  I caught hold of the waist and tugged at it, but because so much of the boy’s body was across my lap I couldn’t get his underwear over his buttocks and down to his thighs.

The boy then did something that reassured me that we had made the right decision to spank him. Without my instruction, he lifted his body an inch or so off my lap to allow me to bare his backside. He was telling me that he accepted this spanking. He deserved it. Maybe even he wanted it.

The twenty-something young man lay expressionless across my lap, waiting. I took a grip around his waist to hold him in place and let fly with the bath brush. The boy’s buttocks were surprisingly springy. The heavy wooden head of the brush was about the size of my palm; it covered almost the whole of one bum cheek. It struck home, sank into the flesh and emerged a second later leaving behind a dark pink mark, a perfect imprint of the brush’s oval head.

I whacked six or seven smacks into his bum in quick succession, not letting up for a second. Then I paused to admire my handiwork. The whole of both buttocks was now deep pink. Later I would turn my attention to the thighs.

The boy wriggled from the moment the first blow struck. Involuntarily, I think, he clenched and unclenched his buttocks to try to ward off the blows. It was useless as any spanked boy would tell you. Indeed, it is best to keep the bum as relaxed as possible during a tanning. There will be fewer lasting bruises that way.

I battered the boy’s behind for about a minute: maybe ninety seconds, I wasn’t keeping time. By now the whole area from the top of his cheeks near the spine, across the centre of his mounds, into the crease at the bottom end and right down the back of his thighs was bright red and raw.

I had always supposed this was the boy’s first spanking. If it truly was, he took it very well. Of course, he struggled. How could he not? The pain would be intense, even for an experienced spankee. But, he mostly kept his cool. He gasped every time the heavy wood met with his flesh and he mouthed silent “owws” and “owches” throughout. His blue-grey eyes were moist, but he stopped himself short of actually crying.

He held on tightly to a scatter cushion, rather as a young child does with a cuddly toy.

It was never my intention to “break” the boy. I did not need to see him wailing and begging for mercy. I did need to feel that he had been sufficiently punished for his drunkenness and vomiting in my garden.

I whacked on for a further minute. The slaps were rapid, like machinegun fire. By the time I was finished I had probably laid two hundred or more whacks into the boy.

One technique I had developed with Geoffrey was to smack three or four times one after another in the same spot. The pain it caused was incredible and it left severe bruises. The boy’s bum must have been softer than Geoffrey’s, or it had not been toughened up by repeated spankings. The rapid same-spot spanks opened up the skin and blood rose to the surface. His bottom reminded me of raw hamburger meat.

That decided me. It was time to stop. I still held the boy face down. He was breathing heavily into the dusty cushion. Tears flowed down his cheeks, but he was not sobbing uncontrollably. He had taken the spanking well. It remained to be seen if it would have any effect on his future behaviour.

I released my grip and the boy rolled off my lap onto the floor. From a kneeling position he looked me straight in the eye. I do not think I am deceiving myself here: it was a look of gratitude. He got to his feet and pulled up his shorts and trousers and tied them up.

I wasn’t sure how to end the session. I supposed a lecture was in order. But, I had no time to deliver it. Geoffrey wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder and guided him into the kitchen.

It was five minutes or more before I heard the front door close.

Geoffrey came into the reception room. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of him. He wants you to be his mentor.”

I blushed and reached over to the cocktail cabinet and poured us each a whisky.

I was going to change his life for him. I would be the most important person in his world so far.

I sipped at my drink. It was at that moment I realised I didn’t know the boy’s name.

 

 

More stories about neighbours who take action that you might like. Click on the title.

That Connor boy!

The dope smoker

The man across the hall

 

 

More stories from Charles Hamilton II are on the MMSA website

Charles Hamilton the Second

charleshamiltonthesecond@gmail.com