To his credit, the young man stayed, something that is not easy for a novice to do the first time he finds what he is looking for. For a fleeting moment, he hoped that he would be bound face to face with the stranger who was (he finally realized) responsible for his presence here. Surely it would be easier to take what was coming if he had a companion, someone more experienced who would encourage him and share the pain. But the stranger had taken care to keep his relationship to the master ambiguous. He had been respectful, but not servile. The master had not laid a hand on him.
Now, the boy found that the first direct order of the evening was addressed to him alone. He had wanted his obligations cut in half; instead, he imagined they were doubled. After all, there were two pairs of boots to trample and crush him (which he licked), two pairs of hands to bless and terrify him (which he cringed from and kissed), two wills bent against his own (symbolized by the hard flesh he was briefly allowed to expose, cloak in rubber, and worship). He was too green to understand the hierarchy. Only one of these men was the master, taking the ultimate control and responsibility. The other acted only as his tool, his assistant. Roger was, ironically, too experienced (or jaded) to imagine that the power could be distributed any other way in his own dungeon.
Out of compassion, the master bade the novice stretch out on the table, with his cock and balls dangling through a hole. This would save him the embarrassment of buckling knees. Yielding to panic, the prone boy said, “Please, sir, don't tie my hands.” “All right,” the master rumbled, and used three feet of rawhide to bind his nuts in such a way that he could not take them with him if he wanted to escape.
They began with their hands, one set gloved in thin kid, the other sheathed the old-fashioned way, in tight black silk. The boy was massaged, kneaded, pummeled, then tapped, given a series of slaps that began with light glancing blows and ended with hard smacks that landed deep in his flesh. He was allowed to rest, stroked, made hard until he plunged against the bench trying to fuck empty air, then assaulted by hands that smashed into him, broke him apart, went right through him.
While he cried, the masters broached fresh cans of beer and ordered their thoughts. When the work resumed, the spoiler knelt under the table of his own accord, rolled a prophylactic over the disembodied shaft that pointed at the floor, then captured the pawn's bound and aching parts in his mouth. While he worked the length of the cock (swollen to the bursting point) within his throat, he stretched and prodded the well-restrained nuts, choking in their sac, full of fluids they could not release. The master selected a black-and-red cat-o'-nine-tails from the wall, a standard enough instrument. But this one had been made especially for him by Fred Norman, and the braiding was (or course) superlative. The round tails were tight, thin, and faster than thought.
The pawn thought nothing of it. He had never imagined anything else, other than a belt, perhaps, being used to whip someone. It had never even occurred to him that some whips are made better than others. The master's collection had seemed a bit gimmicky to him, a butch version of his granny's knick-knacks. His memories of the only corporal punishment he had ever receivedâa few hand-spankings given to him as a childâwere vague. Lucky for him, the spoiler had told him specifically to be very honest with the master about just how much of a beginner he was.
Roger was a laconic man. He spoke freely only to the accompaniment of some object falling on naked flesh. The conversation addressed to his new victim was carried on for the benefit of the whip, to make sure Curt stayed put long enough to let its nine tails drink enough sweat and pain to keep it well fed until he took if from the wall again. Whips that are not used can become as lonely as kept women on Christmas Eve. So he explained to the young man what he was doing and why, urging him to pay attention to it, learn from it, even enjoy it. He paused frequently to allow Curt's body to absorb this new knowledge before his mind could take it away.
Under the table, the spoiler had ceased to suck actively on the pawn's cock, and simply kept his throat open around it. The whip cracks made the boy go up and down like a bridegroom, feeding his unseen comforter the whole length of his manhood at every burning, intolerable, indescribable stroke.
Again, to his credit, the young man persisted. He did not beg to be released (though he did beg for a reprieve). He did not lose his temper or revile his tormenters. He struggled with his pain, willing (though not wise enough) to savor it. But he began to see what transcendence might be possible, what god he might someday be fit to serve.
The spoiler had suddenly pulled away and stood up. His pawn had almost come, and he would not allow that, even if the boy's cock had not been trussed up, and the orgasm would not have damaged it. The master was running his silk-clad hands over the bruised scarlet skin, murmuring like a groom soothing a jumpy horse. He had no more use for the boy, so he was tender. He could tell that Curt couldn't take much more, and he was not interested in continuing at the present level. It would have taken days of this sort of work to make his arm just a little tired, and nowadays, exhaustion was the chief thing he got out of flogging.
Normally, at this point in the scene he would offer the subject's ass to the other master, if one were present. Most bottoms got pissy if there wasn't some kind of sex at the end of a scene, and he personally found it distasteful. There was a limit to pretense, after all, a limit to what you could give someone who was not your heart's desire. But the spoiler had anticipated this and deflected the invitation.
“My turn,” he said, drawing a whip from his shirt. It had been wrapped around his waist, hidden until now. He had been lucky to wear it on this night's jaunt.
This occasioned some alarm on one face, some curiosity on the other. “Be my guest,” said the master, and went to hold up the wall and commune with a small, brown cigar. This was the man who had pointed the boy in his direction. Perhaps Curt had capabilities the master had not sensed.
The spoiler shook out a dog quirt. It was a single length of light tan leather, plaited in David Morgan's workshop, thirty-nine inches in length. Of that, ten inches were the cracker of braided black cord. Sweat had started to darken its handle and the inside of the wrist strap. It was a signal whip, intended to make a rhythmic noise that would set the pace for a dog team. It could also be used to alert the lead dog to change direction, or break up a fight. It was not used to punish huskies, who had such thick fur and hides that they would have simply grinned the way dogs do when people do something foolish, and continued about their noisy bad-dog business. But a boy's skin is not nearly as thick as a wolfdog's, as Curt was about to learn.
The spoiler told his pawn all of this because he wanted the master to know that they shared a love for the original context out of which the classic whipsâworking toolsâcame, the métier they occupied before being appropriated for sexual purposes. He did not realize that the boy was also listening, hungry for any sort of clue about why he was here and what it all meant. Tops should guard their tongues around bottoms once a scene has begun. An offhand remark can burn like a brand in a receptive mind for years after it is flippantly uttered, and someone can shape his life to obtain a similar piece of praise again, or prove that a rebuke was undeserved. A top who is not similarly vulnerable will probably remain a mediocrity. An aroused bottom is an oracle.
“You'll want him standing up, then,” the master said in his gravelly bass, and he undid the cock-and-ball bondage with a single tug on a loose end. He hustled the boy to his feet and slapped his front up against the smooth wood of the pillar. This time, the necessity for bondage was not questioned. The boy had longed for something to pull against while he was on the Barkley bench, some way to express his distress that would not put an end to the scene. He was surprised when the master buckled his discarded chaps around his waist, leaving his ass naked, and zipped up the legs. Curt had not seen the interaction behind his back, when the master had held up a weightlifter's kidney belt, and the spoiler had indicated he needed his body to be protected more completely by taking the boy's borrowed leather from the pile of clothing folded in the corner.
“I'm still getting the hang of this,” the spoiler murmured apologetically.
The master inclined his head. He rarely met a top who cared to go to school, and the admission of apprenticeship charmed him. Anybody can pick up a whip and then try to chop wood with it. It's not a very effective way to keep warm in winter, and it rarely heats anybody else up, either.
The spoiler did not start by cracking the whip. He trailed it over the tense back, stepped away, grasped it by the middle, and whirled the end of it lightly across the surface, warming it. Gradually he let his hand slip closer to the handle, increasing the force of his strokes. Not until the boy's back was well reddened did he move far enough away to use the entire length of the quirt. It looked like throwing a baseballâhe seemed to be hurling something at the boy, but the whip stayed in his hand, and only a fireball of pain flew free and hit like a grenade.
When a whip is cracked, the tip of it is going faster than the speed of sound. So Curt may be excused for feeling that each scream was being torn from his throat and praying that his next breath would be his last.
He could have taken even this if he had not had to take it alone. But the stranger who had been so helpful did not speak to him, and he could not see his face. The pain had no purpose, it was madness, he was being taught things he did not want to knowâwhy men broke under torture, how much you can suffer and still live, the sublime indifference of the sky from blue to black and to blue again; finally, that he was alone with this knowledgeâalone, alone, alone with pain.
The spoiler did not intend to send the young man spinning through the existential void. True, he felt little or nothing for this piece of bait, but that was not his fault. This novice did not have any of the qualities that aroused himâfor example, a good-humored willingness to make others suffer if they would not obey. The category of beginner, virgin, or chicken was erotically neutral and empty for the spoiler. That was why he did not speak to the boy or establish empathy with him. They had nothing to say to one another. Whatever agony or ecstasy fired the boy's synapses were immaterial; no electricity would jump the gap between them.
This performance was for the master, whose eyes were glazing over as he watched Curt's fit, young body being painted with red streaks and welts. He did not have to imagine what it felt like. He could remember. More than that, he was experiencing a rare, intense pleasure from watching someone else work. Only at major tribal gatherings like Inferno did he get a chance to see tops whose working style pleased him. Even when he co-topped, he usually found respectful, unobtrusive ways to relegate his partner's activities to his peripheral vision. Not only was he eagerly watching this sober, quiet dude cut the kid to ribbons, he had a roaring hard-on and thought that if it went much longer he was going to come in his pants like a teenager.
Just before the master's excitement built to that point, Curt broke. They untied the sobbing kid, threw a bucket of cold water on him, gave him his clothes and a Valium, and called a cab to take him home. The master was so put off by this display of cowardice and bad manners (and by his own frustrating sensation of coitus interruptus) that he did not notice that the boy said an effusive goodbye to the other man's boots and ignored his own. This whipped-dog devotion saddened the spoiler, but he was relieved that the ex-novice was leaving. He might get what he really wanted now. It could not take place in front of a witness.
Curt was too much of a beginner to realize he was being dismissed in disgrace. He felt giddy with joy, thrilled at his own daring, awed by the men who had taken him to this magical place. He told the cab driver to take him back to the bar. Before he walked in, he took off his shirt, and men bought him drinks all night long to hear the history of his stripes. Just before the bar closed, he was taken in tow by a black master who had an easy smile and a bullwhip. He was off on the long road that might lead him to become the kind of person the spoiler would take an interest in again.
The master shut and locked the door after the boy, then turned to see the man he thought of as a junior S standing in his hallway with a friendly grin on his face and two beers in one big hand. The guy certainly made himself at home. But the aborted scene had left a bad taste in his mouth, and it was not hard for the spoiler to lure him back into the basement and entice him into lecturing on the merits and limitations of each of his treasures.
“Why do you think,” the spoiler said quietly, “some men can take heavy pain and others cannot?”
“Well, the masochists and submissives are not at all the same thing. There are fundamental differences. In my experience, you can't get to a masochist by humiliating him or making him chew on your boots, although he might pretend he likes it if that's the price of a good beating. And a submissive is not going to respond to anything as quickly as a hand around his throat. He understands pain only as punishment; he won't cream in his jeans at the mere thought of you hurting him unless you do it to prove you own him.”
The spoiler nodded. This was his own observation, though he would have had to extrapolate from the difference between sadists and dominants. “Why is there such a difference?” he asked to keep Roger talking.
“Damned if I know. Been doing research on this all my life, and it keeps me so busy, the findings will have to be published posthumously. Submission is a deep-seated psychological need. I don't mean to discount it. But masochism is inbred, almost biological. Somebody can be trained to be submissive, but if you want a masochist, you have to just go out and hope you find one. It's how some people are wired. Like some people can't stand the cold and other people never get cold. It's not just a matter of wanting or liking pain, I believe it literally feels different to the person who can't do without it.”