Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 09:24:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: bpell@anon.nymserver.com
Subject: chronicles of St.Barnabas part5

5. Autumn Leaves

Autumn in New England never ceases to astound me. I forget from year to
year how beautiful it is-beautiful and sad at the same time: those lovely,
crisp days when the shrill cries of small boys at play echo musically to
the tops of the gold and crimson maples, turning the playing field into a
vast outdoor cathedral in which the choirboys sing an impromptu Te Deum as
the afternoon sun illuminates the stained-glass trees.

I spent all these afternoons watching the boys at play. Not that I am
really much of a sports enthusiast: I like sports in proportion to the
handsomeness of the uniforms the players wear. For this reason I like
soccer and detest baseball. Football is worthless, too, unless there
happens to be a cute center-in which case I like to see him bend way over
so that his tail is sticking up in the air with the hands of the receiver
cupped against his cheeks. But we don't play football at St. Barnabas, I'm
glad to say. I much prefer soccer uniforms, with their thin, loose-fitting
shorts that reveal good legs so nicely, and which afford such tempting
glimpses of boys' inner thighs-when they sit on the grass putting on their
shoes, for instance.

One day Everett Harrison got a charley horse in his thigh. As I was nearby,
I nobly sprang to the rescue. The best remedy for a charley horse, as you
know, is vigorous massage.

"Hold on to my shoulders," I ordered, squatting down and grasping his milky
white thighs in both hands. The whimpering, boy held onto me while I
slipped both hands underneath his shorts and rubbed. And rubbed. And
rubbed. I reached up as high as I could, so that my left hand was touching
his bottom cheek, while my right was rammed into his crotch. My face was
close enough to catch the lovely boy-smell of his secret regions.

Soon the whimpering subsided, and little Harrisonsaying he was "Okay
now. Thanks, sir."-Iimped away, flashing me his smile and tossing his hair
out of his eyes, leaving me squatting on the field with a roaring hard-on.

Speaking of hair, though school regulations forbid really long hair, as
long as a boy can see to read his music in church and doesn't look like a
fugitive from Greenwich Village he is permitted to wear his hair as he
chooses. One of the delights of Everett Harrison was the trick he had of
tossing his silky hair out of his eyes with an impatient, sideways, shake
of the head. Now, as he made this gesture while limping off towards the
sidelines, I felt once again a sharp pang of jealousy over the fact that
Harrison belonged, heart and soul, to the history teacher. I wondered what
they did together.

But there were other toothsome boys to watch on the soccer field. Ericson
was always a joy to behold, moving as gracefully as a deer. And Jerry
Jeffries, with his great legs, sturdy and boyish, with a beautifully carved
hollow behind each knee. And Allen Burns, whose shorts were always getting
caught between the cheeks of his chubby behind. His characteristic gesture
was reaching behind to free his shorts with his left hand. He did this with
a certain annoyance, as if cursing his misfortune to have been given such
chubby cheeks. His misfortune was my pleasure; I vastly enjoyed observing
the trouble his rubbery globes put him to. Once, during a game of
Squogball-a crude, boy-invented game played in the gym, in which the loser
had to "assume the angle" for free shots at his bum with a soccer
ball-Burns kept on losing to the delight of the others. After all, Allen's
posterior made a wonderful target, and when he bent over there were always
cries of "Cock it up, Bums," or "Come on, Burns, let's see you make it
smile!" After the game, Allen came up to me and said, "Mr. Murchison, I got
it thirteen times. I'll never be able to sit down again."

"Let's see the damage, Allen," I said, and made him pull down his shorts
and underpants. I turned him around and ran my hands over the hot, pink
globes. It was hard to tell whether they were swollen, or whether that was
their natural state.

"I think you'll survive, Burns," I sa'd, g'v'ng one of his rubbery buttocks
a pinch. "You've got the bottom for Squogball. In fact, your bottom is made
for Squogball."

"Thank you, sir," said the boy, pulling up his pants, pleased to learn that
at least his troublesome buttocks were of some use.

If autumn is sad because it is the death of the earth, it is poignantly
beautiful just for this reason. One afternoon in late fall I felt this
intensely as I sat in my high-backed stall in church, listening to the
words of the collect-when the shadows lengthen and the evening comes-as the
late-afternoon light streamed through the rose window and the
lighterthan-air voices of the white-robed choirboys rose to meet and mingle
with it. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging.. Afterwards, instead of
marching the boys back two by two, I turned them loose to run back to
school, kicking and throwing leaves, the autumn wind whipping up the tails
of their jackets to reveal their little bottoms.

I settled into my work pretty hard. There wasn't much else to do. Besides,
I was waiting to see what reverberations might follow my little fiasco with
Georgie Candy. I still found it hard to believe it had actually
happened. Was it possible to get one's rocks off just from spanking a
little boy's behind-even granted such a pretty one as Georgie's? Evidently
it was, and I was a bit nervous at first. I was certain Georgie had been
aware of what had happened, and equally certain that, despite my warnings,
he would not keep it to himself. Just how far it would spread worried
me. Luckily, though, the news seemed to have been confined to Georgic's
gang, Which meant Allen Burns and sometimes a strange little fat boy named
Blake Toms. There were occasional giggles from this group as I passed by,
and once I found a line of graffiti scrawled in soap on the bathroom mirror
which under normal circumstances would have warranted a full-wale
investigation. In this case I chose simply to wash it off. That was all
that happened. Boys have short attention spans, and I was glad that the
matter had been forgotten, or at least put aside. As for the spanking
itself, I rather think Georgie preferred not to let the news of that get
around the school. In fact, I aided him in this endeavor by excusing him
from showers the Saturday and Sunday following our little session. I was
not anxious to have his bruised and swollen bottom (if such it was) seen by
the whole dorm.

The days closed in. It was dark by five o'clock. The leaves were gone from
the trees now, and lay in heaps on the ground for boys to play in, much to
the gardener's annoyance. The naked branches of the trees were silhouetted
against the lowering sky like "bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet
birds sang." Walking back from Evensong on these afternoons I would kick
the leaves, feeling dead myself. Then the shrill cries of boys would cut
through the chilling air, and I would thank God that there were boys, that
there would always be boys, for with boys there could be no death.

Sometimes I would let a few boys come into my room for tea on these gloomy
afternoons. They liked to huddle in front of my fireplace and warm their
hands or fannies, and drink their hot, sweet tea. Even the most unruly boys
grew calm at such times. I would watch the firelight play about their young
faces, listen to their sweet treble voices, and wonder why boys had to grow
up.

Sometimes I would manage to get Ronnie in my room alone. This was the best
of all, for we would then play our little games, which consisted of my
playing with his cock and other parts of his body without actually
undressing him. Sometimes he would have a small orgasm, but usually we
stopped short of that. And sometimes we were interrupted. Usually I managed
to hide him in my bedroom until I could get rid of the visitor, but once
Max Sailer came bur5ting in on us with only a short preliminary knock,
giving Ronnie no time to arrange his clothing. It was very embarrassing. I
thought of making some fast excuse, such as "I was just examining Riley for
jockrash," or some such thing, but I decided against it. I said nothing,
Max said nothing, and I just had to go on the assumption that he had
compromised himself sufficiently with little Everett Harrison not to try
anything fancy with me.

Not much else happened before Thanksgiving, when the boys went home. Jim
Dodge broke his wrist in the gym. Blake Toms got chicken pox and was
shipped home before he was able to start an epidemic. Oh, yes, and there
was a caning. There usually was a caning sometime in the fall, as if Father
Sayers wanted to remind the boys each year that the cane was not just an
ornament, but something that was used on boys' behinds when needed. This
fall the cane descended on the ample bottom of a boy named Bruce Branson.

Bruce was an eighth-grader, a rather dull boy in every way, but possessing
a fine and fleshy pair of buns. I had been quite taken with him physically
when he was in my dorm, but had never succeeded in getting anywhere with
him. I think if I had spelled it out for him he might have agreed, but he
wasn't a boy to take hints or suggestions, and I had soon given up on him.

I don't know precisely what Bruce was caned for; the official word was
"misbehavior in the dorm." Whatever it was-a single offense or simply an
accumulation of misdemeanors-Clive Lambert apparently felt he deserved to
be caned, and Clive was not a vindictive sort of person. if he reported a
boy to Father Sayers, the boy deserved it.

Nevertheless, I always felt sorry for the boy who was to be caned. It was
not only a very humiliating experience, but an extremely painful one as
well. I remember once passing by the Head's quarters while he was caning a
lad, and hearing heart-rending shrieks and screams coming from within. I
was not present at Branson's caning (Clive was, as the reporting master)
and I did not hear his cries, but very few boys could help crying under the
cane-and Bruce, I was told, was certainly no exception. I was told that he
bawled like a baby, and that there were six raised red weals on his broad
bottom when Father Sayers at last allowed him to get up.

Almost as bad as the pain was the humiliation involved, for Father Sayers
made sure the entire school knew about canings by announcing them in chapel
the morning before. Thus the boy was subjected to cruel jibes from even the
smallest boys all day long. After his ordeal he was not left in peace
either, for every boy in the dorm has his time-honored right to have the
boy show his marks. It was a sad time for Bruce, and he was very gloomy for
at least a week afterwards. It had been his first caning, and especially
humiliating since he was an eighth-grader and had narrowly missed being a
prefect.

The long Thanksgiving weekend came at last and the boys were put on buses
and trains. I went to visit my Aunt in Dedham. She has a son, my cousin,
named Dicky, who is kind of cute, though only eight. I had a good time with
Aunt Sarah, and lots of fun of a very tame nature with Dicky. I am not sure
I couldn't have made out with him, either. He's a plucky little boy and
game for anything.

When I got back to school, it was Winter.