You’re not going to believe this story; you’ll think I made it up. You’ll say that because it does read a bit like one of those stories you see on spanking websites, but it isn’t; this really happened to me back in 1974.
I’d left school when I was fifteen and had no jobs to talk about for a few years. There were no jobs; we didn’t have all the supermarkets we have today and there were no Uber Deliveries either. When I turned 18 they gave me a bit of a money to go to Brocklehurst Technical College. If I’d stuck with it I could’ve ended up a bricklayer.
I was lazy and just not interested so after a few weeks I more or less stopped going altogether. I palled up with a lad called Billy and he was as idle as me and we would hang out together. There wasn’t much to do. This was the seventies and we didn’t have computer games and there were only three television channels. They didn’t show programmes during the day, only those ones they did for schools.
If the weather was okay we’d hang out with other truants in Widdicombe Woods. There weren’t the drugs around then so all we did was to smoke ciggies and drink tins of Double Diamond. I’d forgotten how innocent those days were.
We’d sometimes hang out at Billy’s place. He lived in a council flat on the same estate as me. We hadn’t been to the same school and I only met him at the college but we had the same kind of lives. The flat was small like ours and they had the same furniture, all bought on the never-never hire purchase from Henderson’s in the High Street. Working people didn’t have credit cards back then, nor bank accounts, nor any money to talk off.
We were lazing about one afternoon smoking fags and watching People From Many Lands on the telly when Billy’s ears suddenly twitch and he jumps up from the settee and stubs his ciggie out and starts waving his arm about trying to get rid of the smoke. He’s heard the front door go, ‘It’s me dad,’ he says with a real look of alarm on his face.
Seconds later the living room door opens and his dad is standing there with a face like thunder. Of course, he sees straight away what’s going on. but he still says to Billy, ‘What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at college?’ Billy goes bright red and starts blabbering on about it being closed. He’s a quick thinker and says there was a burst pipe and we all got sent home.
He’s dad’s not daft and he’s not having any of this. ‘I’ve told you before about hopping off college,’ he says. So, it seems Billy’ been caught before. ‘I told you what would happen if I caught you again,’ his dad says and by now Billy’s gone from bright red to ghastly pale. ‘Oh no Dad,’ he says looking over at me, ‘no, no, no.’
His dad leaves the room and Billy and me stand around in silence, Billy’s totally embarrassed and I have no clue what’s going on. A few seconds later his dad comes back in and he’s carrying a stick in his hand. It was a couple of feet of bamboo cane. He points it at Billy and he says, ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Billy looks like he’s going to melt into a puddle with embarrassment when his dad swipes the cane through the air. I think that’s when I realise what he’s going to do. They still used the cane at school back then, although I don’t remember anyone getting it. This cane wasn’t like a school cane, ones you sometimes saw in films or on television. I can still remember Jimmy Edwards bending a whippy curve-handled cane and saying stuff like ‘Bend over boy!’ Billy’s dad’s cane was nothing like that, it was just a length of stiff bamboo like you buy for the garden. God only knows where he got it from, there were no gardens around where we lived.
‘Right,’ he pointed the cane at a small table. We called them ‘coffee tables’ but no one I knew ever had coffee at home. ‘Bend over,’ he says to Billy. Then, as if he had noticed me for the first time he says to me, ‘You too.’ What a cheek! He’d never seen me before that afternoon and he didn’t even know my name and now he was wanting to cane my backside.
I could’ve walked out and left them to it. Honestly, who would blame me if I did. He had no right to cane me, he wasn’t my dad, he was Billy’s. I knew damn well that my dad would never hit me. He never had done before. I don’t know if he knew I was skipping college and if he did find out he probably wouldn’t do anything about it. I don’t think he cared much about me one way or the other.
Billy’s dad was different. He cared about his son and wanted the best for him. He didn’t make a speech or anything but that’s what I reckoned when I thought about it afterwards. Billy leans forward and rests the palms of his hands on the table so that his back’s arched and his bum is sticking out. Obviously, this isn’t the first time he has done this. I stare, unsure what to do. Clearly, I haven’t legged it and I am thinking about what I should do.
I don’t know about pals’ codes of honour. You know: one for all and all for one, or whatever. Something clicked in. Billy and me had skipped college together. We’d both been caught bang to rights and now Billy was bent over the table waiting to get his arse caned. And what about me? Why shouldn’t I get the same?
There was no reason, but I don’t remember that I spent much time having some debate with myself, because when Billy’s dad said to me, with a little more aggression this time, ‘I said you too, now bend over,’ I meekly went and stood by Billy and assumed the position, as they say. We were so close together I could smell the tobacco on Billy. Blood had moved back to his face and he was blushing bright red again. I don’t know about me. I suppose I must have been embarrassed but I don’t remember. I wasn’t ‘humiliated’ and what was about to happen wouldn’t haunt me for the rest of my life. But, I suppose it was a bit daft. Two eighteen-year-old lads bending over meekly so that Billy’s dad could whack us on our bums with a cane. Like I said earlier, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
I remember we were both wearing jeans. We had Wranglers in those days. Do they still make Wrangers? I’m not sure kids these days even wear jeans.
It was a tiny room and we were hip to hip bent over the table and Billy’s dad stood behind us. There was hardly space to swing a cane. Looking back, I don’t think Billy’s dad was very old, just in his forties, probably. He worked on a building site and was a lean, strong man. As I was about to find out, he had a lot of strength in his right arm.
Billy and me looked down at the table and waited for his dad to get on with it. I might have closed my eyes waiting for the pain to start. I’d not been caned before, nor spanked as far as I can recall, not even as a toddler, so I didn’t know what to expect. Billy, it turns out was a veteran, nothing that happened that afternoon was new to him.
I felt a hand grip the waist of my jeans and then tug so that the the denim fitted my cheeks more tightly. Then the cane tapped away for a couple of seconds before, WHAMMO! A crack like a pistol shot bounced off the wall and a searing line burnt across my bum. My God, it hurt. I could feel my arse glowing while Billy’s dad moved an inch or so and gave my mate his first stroke.
I was sweating like a pig – the room was as cold as ice – when the cane started tapping me again. BANG! More incredible pain. My knees buckled and my hips swayed. I might have gasped, or yapped or something at this point, I just don’t remember. Then, Billy took his next stroke without a murmur.
Then, another whack, this one a bit lower than the other two and by now I could swear my bum was throbbing twice its natural size. I so wanted to jump up and give it a bloody good rub. I didn’t, because even I knew there were some ‘rules’ to this and you were supposed to meekly submit yourself and let the Old Man whack you and you had to pretend that it didn’t hurt and you couldn’t cry or anything like that. Besides, my pal Billy was taking his whacking without fuss and I didn’t want to show myself up in front of him.
So, I gritted my teeth, pressed my palms into the tabletop, shut my eyes and took my caning like a man (or so I like to remember it.)
He gave us six strokes: one for me, one for Billy, one for me, one for Billy and so on. ‘Stand up,’ Billy’s dad tucked the cane under his arm, rather like a sergeant-major on parade duty. ‘Now, back to college and don’t dare let me catch you skiving again.’
We didn’t go back to college; it was too late in the afternoon, so we went to Widdicombe Woods instead and we took down our trousers and pants (a dangerous thing to do since the Woods had quite a reputation for cruising) and inspected the damage. The caning didn’t stop me hopping college, but I never went back to Billy’s flat again. Eventually, Billy became a plumber and probably made a fortune. I failed my course and have drifted ever since.
So, there you have it. A simple story about two lads getting the cane. No headmasters in caps and gowns and oak-panelled studies. No trousers at the ankles and Y-fronts at the knees. No mucky goings-on in the dormitory afterwards. As I say, not something you’d see on a spanking website.
Picture credit: G.I.F.
Other stories you might like:
New experiences
Perils of drink-driving
Encounter with the vicar
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Traditional School Discipline
https://traditionalschooldiscipline.blogspot.com/
More stories from Charles Hamilton II are on the MMSA website
Also writing school stories as Scholastic here
Charles Hamilton the Second
Male on male spanking stories 