Miscellaneous Spankings In Books -  Under 18

I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT
 by Terrence Real

FirstSide
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Copyright 1997


Believing it a part of his paternal responsibility, my father was no stranger to the manly value of spanking his boys.  He spanked my brother and me if we dared to rebel.  And, conversely, he spanked us if we showed too much vulnerability.  Mostly, he spanked us as a proper man should, to keep us corralled and teach us our lessons.  For my father, as was true of many men of his generations, pain was a form of pedagogy.

When I think back on the violence, it is the suddenness that I remember - the swat on the back of my head as he passed, the slap across my face if I "gave lip."

To this day, as I fall asleep, I will sometimes start, hearing in my mind the harsh call of my name, feeling the quick thrill of terror rush through my body, now close to forty years later.  I remember the crash of the door swinging open, jarring me from sleep, and my father, silhouetted against the hall light, panting, his face flushed with rage, pulling me out of bed by the hair ("Oww, Dad. DAD!), and dragging me off with no words, too disgusted for words, to the offending messy towel or capless toothpaste.  "How many TIMES must I tell you?" my father would shake his head sorrowfully, bewildered, as his huge hand, disembodied, crashed down on me.

What I remember most is the belt.  A thick black belt about three inches wide. I remember the slow way my father eased out of the loops of his baggy gray work pants, tilting his head to the side as he folded it, carefully, thoughtfully.

Five, maybe six years old, I would lean over, with my pants down, bare, bent over my father's knee..  I had tried to run when I was quite young but the consequences of such disobedience and been demonstrated clearly enough.

With each stroke of the belt, my father intoned a word or short phrase as if he were trying to beat a message in through my skin. "Don't you EVER…talk BACK…to your MOTHER…like That…aGAIN.  Not EVER…DO…YOU…underSTAND…me BOY?" ("Yes.") "Yes WHAT?" ("Yes, sir.")

And then eventually enough blows would have fallen and the ritual would be over.  I was allowed to go to my bed, or sometimes, I was forced to stand at attention in the center of the living room with my pants still down, my hands clasped behind me, until my legs shook

Looking back, I can recall it all clearly from an aerial view, my father's face suffused with blood, purple with exertions, his eyebrows drawn in concentration.  The boy bent over, his pants at the ankles, like an embarrassed spectator, turning away.  The whiteness of the boy's skin.

I would have trouble sitting, or sometimes even lying, just as my father had threatened I would. "I'm going to spank you so you won't sit down for a week." And though I did sit down for fear and shame, I would often secretly wish I hadn't.

"What are you making faces about?"
"Nothing, Dad."
"A little tender?"
"No, Dad."

There were no broken bones, no scars - some bruises, a few welts here and there, but nothing anyone would notice.  Physical abuse?  If you had said these words to my father, if you had said them to , we would have laughed in your face.  This wasn't abuse.  This wasn't even a beating.  My father knew what a real beating felt like.  And he was right about that.  What he dished out to his son was nothing compared to what he himself had received.  And so the chain goes, across generations, link to link.  Whether he knew it or not, my father was doing more than meting out punishment for imagined infractions. He was teaching me, just as he had been taught, what it means to be a man.