I stand in front of the headmaster’s desk, head slightly bowed, arms straight by my sides like a soldier on parade. The buttons on my blazer are done up and my tie is tightly knotted so that it almost chokes me. I have made a proper effort with my appearance.
The study is dark, it is designed to be formal, gloomy even. The walls are oak panelled, a bookcase with glass front runs along one wall. The desk where the headmaster sits and jaws me is walnut. Behind me is a low table of some dark wood. I know nothing about wood or trees so am unable to identify them further. To one side of the room is a black leather armchair. In front of the desk but to one side are two heavy straight-backed chairs, presumably for visitors. They are so huge I suspect it would take two people to move one. In a corner behind me is another low table, also heavy and dark.
I have been at the school seven years but this is the first time I have been in the headmaster’s study. There has never been reason to visit; until today.
It isn’t so much a ‘visit’ as a summons. The message I received through the head of sixth-form was that the headmaster ‘wished’ to see me. It wasn’t a request it was a summons. The head of sixth-form did not say why I was wanted; he didn’t need to, I already knew.
I stand not moving. The headmaster is detailing my faults. He shakes his head in despair. He cannot believe that it is me standing before him. Me with my history of good scholarship and my success in the rugby and cricket teams. Never top of the class, never captain of the team but a good contributor none the less. A good egg all round. And now this.
He drones on and I switch off. I don’t want to hear him. I realise that I have no feeling. I suppose I should feel shame. I have certainly done wrong. Perhaps I should feel fear, it is unlikely that this visit will end well for me.
‘A senior boy …’ the headmaster intones and his three chins wobble as he shakes his head in dismay. He lapses into silence unable (or unwilling) to finish the sentence. After a while he takes a deep gulp and continues with his speech. ‘Never before have I come across …’ I switch off again.
I know the story I don’t need him to remind me of it. I am a senior boy, a prefect no less, and for most of this school year I have been running the tuck shop. It’s not much, mostly chocolate bars and bottles of pop. It is open during morning break and at lunchtime. It’s popular with the younger boys who are forbidden by school rules to leave the premises. Many sixpences and shillings pass over the counter. And there’s the rub. A certain number of those coins have found there way into my trouser pocket. Great sums of money are not involved but over the course of a week I make a tidy sum.
I suppose it was inevitable that I’d be found out eventually. Stocks of chocolate and pop need to need to be replenished and the money from takings is used to buy more. It didn’t take much of an investigation to find a trail to me.
Why did I take the money? I didn’t need it. I am not from a destitute family, there is no starving widowed mother and siblings at home. In fact, my father is a doctor and my mother active in the local charity scene. I get pocket money and have a Saturday job in a shoe shop in town.
The headmaster drones on. He talks about ‘responsibility’ and ‘letting the side down’. What he doesn’t do I call me a ‘thief’, although undoubtedly that is what I am. I have stolen money from the tuck shop. I have been found out and I have admitted my guilt. To call me a thief would mean my undoubted crime would have to be reported to the police. There would be court trial, a report in the local newspaper. The school reputation would be publicly tarnished: that must not be allowed to happen. The headmaster will deal with the matter internally. He will brush it under the carpet.
I feel no guilt. I feel no shame. What exactly do I feel? I feel bored. I am eighteen years old and have been at the school since I was eleven. Shortly I’ll take my exams and probably go off to university somewhere. That is my destiny. It is what the school expects and it is what my father expects. Thinking of father, I am relieved that (so far at least) the headmaster has not informed my parents. I do not want them to know. I do not fear punishment. Father has never touched me in his life. No slipper or leather belt has crossed my buttocks (even though some of our neighbours might say that is a mistake). All I get is a silent sullen treatment. Things left unsaid.
The same cannot be said about the headmaster who continues to wheeze about my misbehaviour and the deep disappointment he feels. The weight of the world seems to be on his shoulders. Suddenly I am aware of an awkward silence. Has the headmaster asked me a question? Is this where I show contrition? Say I’m ashamed. ‘Well ….’ The headmaster prompts and I mumble a few words about being sorry, although I’m not. I’m not sorry, but nor am I glad. I am nothing. I don’t feel a thing. I don’t care.
‘Pah…!’ the headmaster exclaims. Perhaps I haven’t shown myself to be sorry enough. What does he expect? Am I supposed to get down on hands and knees and beg forgiveness? The headmaster grimaces and placing the palms of his hands on the desk top he hauls his great weight to a standing position. He steadies himself before embarking on the journey from behind his desk. He takes Pidgeon steps and wobbles around his desk so he now stands beside me. He is about my height but at least twice my size in girth. He wears a heavy suit over which he has the traditional schoolmaster’s gown. It is a mild summer’s afternoon and sweat glistens on his pudgy neck. I raise my head so I can watch him wobble across the room. He heads for the dark wooden cupboard. He pauses, steadies himself once more before plunging his right hand into his trouser pocket. I watch as he pulls out a ring of keys and slowly, carefully sorts through them until he finds the one he wants. He inserts it into the lock of the cupboard and turns it slowly. The door creaks open an inch or so and he inserts his fingers to open it more fully. I can’t see the contents from where I stand but once he puts his arm inside the cupboard I hear a distinct rattling sound. Moments later he withdraws the arm and he is holding a long thin curve handled cane.
He turns and faces me. He peers at the cane in his hand as if he has never seen it before. It is certainly the first cane I have ever seen. We are a traditional school and this is 1964 and corporal punishment is widely used but at least at this school canings are delivered behind closed doors. Not for us the sight of masters carrying canes under their arms as they walk along corridors or canes dangling from blackboards or in other ways on open display in classrooms.
The headmaster flexes the cane between his hand and then absentmindedly swishes it through the air. It makes a terrific swoosh as it flies. I watch impassively as he does this. His intention is obvious. Should I be fearful? He is going to cane me. Me, an eighteen-year-old prefect. Should I begin a protest, say I’m too old for this and such like. Perhaps I should. I don’t debate the point with myself. I know instinctively that I am going to do whatever the headmaster demands.
He points the cane at one of the heavy wooden straight-backed chairs. ‘Turn that around,’ he orders. He wants me to move it so that the seat is facing away from the desk and towards me. I do as instructed. The chair isn’t as heavy as I’d anticipated and I soon have it in position. The headmaster points his cane again, this time at his desk. ‘Take off your blazer and put it there.’ I do so.
I feel nothing. No fear, shame, nothing. It is as if I am experiencing an out of body experience. This is not happening to me; it is happening to some other schoolboy. Someone else is an exposed thief who has been summoned to the headmaster’s study and is now to be thrashed for his troubles.
The cane points again. ‘Stand there.’ I shuffle to the chair and stand facing the seat. The cane taps the chair, ‘Bend over.’ I hesitate unsure exactly how I am expected to present my body for punishment. I stoop forward and place the palm of my hands against the wooden seat. ‘Not like that!’ the headmaster’s tolerance threshold is low. ‘Hold the side, arch your back, stick your bottom out, feet apart.’ There is a lot to do for such a simple manoeuvre as bending over a chair.
At last, I am in a position that satisfies the headmaster. I am unsure where I am supposed to look. Do I stare down at the dark wooden seat. I could conceivably hold my head up and look across the room at the wall behind the headmaster’s desk. I choose to do neither and I shut my eyes tight blocking out everything.
Although I cannot see, I still can hear. Creaking floorboards alert me that the headmaster is taking up position behind me and slightly to my left. His wheezes also give away his position. He is close enough that I smell a combination of sweat, cigarettes, and something that I can’t immediately identify but later remember is the scent of coal tar soap, a product that my own grandfather uses.
‘Steady,’ the headmaster commands as he lays the cane across the seat of my trousers. For the first time I think how vulnerable I am. There is just me and the headmaster, me a fit eighteen-year-old and him an aged ball of flab. In any other situation I would be his superior and if need be I could swat him away with one punch of my fist. But this isn’t any other situation. This is a grammar school in England in the 1960s and we are in the headmaster’s study and he is in charge. He has power, I have none. If he chooses to beat me I have no choice but to let him. A barrack room lawyer might say I could refuse to bend and indeed I could. If I did, my parents would be informed and as sure as eggs is eggs I’d be suspended and expelled. So much for my examinations and so much for going to university.
I didn’t think any of this at the time. It didn’t occur to me not to follow the headmaster’s instructions. He ordered me to bend over the chair and over the chair I bent.
He tapped the cane across my buttocks. I could not see myself but I knew my trousers were fitting snugly across my buttocks. I was a sporty chap and was fit and muscular, my buttocks were meaty but firm and I must have offered the headmaster a perfect target. ‘Don’t clench your bottom,” the headmaster growled. I wasn’t aware that I was. If indeed I was clenching this was a natural defensive position, just my buttocks trying to protect themselves from the onslaught to come. I wasn’t sure how I could ‘unclench’ my bottom and I wriggled a little as if that would relax my backside. ‘Don’t wriggle,’ the headmaster scolded. It appeared I could do nothing right in the headmaster’s estimation.
I settled and felt the headmaster saw his cane across the very centre of my bottom. Then I felt him take it away, there was four or five seconds that felt like an eternity to me before a swishing sound was followed by a resounding thwack! As cane connected with trouser-covered flesh. There was another pause before I felt the searing pain. My knees buckled, my shoulders heaved and I struggled to hold onto the chair. My eyes popped open and I felt an urgent need to cry out. I gulped down the rush of air that rose from somewhere deep in my stomach. Some instinct told me I should not make a sound. Somewhere there is a schoolboy rule, you must take your beating in silence.
My backside was on fire. It’s a cliché to say so I suppose but I can’t think off any other way to describe it. There was intense heat burning beneath my underpants. Already I could detect some kind of welt was forming along the line where the cane landed.
‘Steady,’ the headmaster muttered as if to himself as he tapped the cane once more, this time maybe an inch below where the first stroke had landed. He let fly. This hurt even more than the first if such was possible. Had he pressed a white-hot poker into my flesh. Another cliché for sure, but there is a reason why clichés are clichés; they are accurate descriptions. I did a kind of sentry’s dance, marching up and down on the spot while simultaneously buckling my legs. If the chair had not been heavy I surely would have lifted it clear off the floor.
After the third stroke landed (an inch above the first so now I had three magnificent burning stripes running in parallel across my backside) any pretence at taking my punishment stoically ended. I howled! There is no other way to describe it. I jumped up, hands clutching the seat of my trousers and I whooped about like some crazy Red Indian from a cowboy picture. Tears streamed down my face and I gulped for air.
The headmaster who was himself wheezing like a broken-down steam engine roared, ‘How dare you! Get back down. I’ve never seen such a thing. I’ve a good mind to give you extra strokes.’ I continued to whoop until the headmaster took hold of my left elbow and pulled me back to the chair. A firm hand around the back of my neck forced me back face down. ‘Now, stay there and stop behaving like a junior.’
I don’t know if this had been his original intention or he thought he had better get the caning over before I jumped up again, the headmaster landed three heavy swipes Bang! Bang! Bang! one after another in quick succession. I hardly had time to register the agony of one stroke before the next one landed and doubled, no quadrupled, the agony burning in my backside.
‘Stand up.’ I didn’t need telling twice. I don’t remember too much about what happened then until I found myself in the boys’ bogs with my trousers and pants at my knees and my bottom pointing at a mirror. I was a mess. Six distinct stripes lit up my bum and radiating from them were marks that ranged from light- to dark-pink and various shades of red. Gingerly, with the tip of a figure I traced the welts, my bottom felt a bit like the corrugated cardboard that was used in packaging.
In time, now much calmer and with my bottom no longer on fire, but smarting frightfully, I went back to the sixth-form common room to collect my things. As I hobbled home, my trousers rubbing against my buttocks with each step, I re-lived the past hour in my mind. Still I had no shame about stealing the money but there was a deep embarrassment that I couldn’t withstand a headmaster’s caning without fuss.
Picture credit: The Magnet
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Male on male spanking stories 