This is a true story which occurred in Michigan, United States. At that time, spanking was non-existent in that states’ schools but it commonly took place at home.
I was raised by a single father along with one older brother and one older sister. My brother is more than a decade older than me, my sister is 3 years older.
Although I heard my brother was also spanked harshly I have no memory of seeing it myself. My brother moved out of the house instantly upon turning 18, when I was about 7. He suffered intensely from alcoholism from about the age of 19 or 20, or earlier and lived a very volatile life until settling down years later. He always related to me as his comrade in having received our dad’s extreme punishments, so I believe he got similar to what I got.
My parents were divorced when I was about 6, I think. After that we saw our mom on alternate weekends only, and lived at home with dad. I was always very close to my mother, who never spanked me but tried very hard to show me love and build me up, imparting to me a strong spiritual orientation which is still in my life today.
I was a sweet and sensitive kid, but also a feisty boy with a lot of nerve. I think in those days, most any parent may have spanked if their kid behaved like I did sometimes, but I only knew one or two other kids for whom spanking meant such a fearful ordeal of ass beating, as it did for me.
My dad was an angry person back then. He got progressively more unhappy as time passed after the divorce. I’ve later come to understand that he hated his job, and he just seemed to be pissed off all the time. I think his divorce hurt him very deeply and I think I reminded him strongly of my mother, as he would often call me ‘son of a bitch’ when was angry and about to spank me.
He did mechanical work which meant he was very physically strong. From as young as I can remember, there was always a chance to be spanked by him. I believe I have one memory when I must have been only 5 years old, maybe younger. I was sitting on a counter talking to my mom and he got pissed that I was sitting on the counter. I think he had told me not to do that. That’s the first spanking I remember.
By the time I was 8 or 9 years old I was terrified at the idea of a spanking from him. They were done the exact same way every time, in his room, over his knee with my pants and underwear around my ankles. I was an athletic physically small kid and have a smaller stature in general. His strength was absolute.
Dad definitely had anger issues. Sometimes, I wouldn’t see the spanking coming. He would just get angry and react by giving me a seriously punishing spanking. Sometimes he would start yelling at me first, pissed off about a minor offense, but sometimes not so minor, and I would know it was coming. He would get red faced and angry yelling at me, sometimes shaking me roughly by my shoulders or slapping me on the head, sometimes bouncing my small body off the cushioned furniture, which did not seriously hurt me but terrified me. He seemed barely able to contain his rage.
Each time he spanked he would grab me roughly by the arm, usually cursing me, and haul me off toward his bedroom. When I was smaller, he would pick up and throw me over his shoulder, kicking and screaming. I would panic and beg and plead, but it never made any difference. I would cry and sob even as he was hauling me to his bedroom just because I knew how bad the spankings always were.
As soon as we were in the room, I would hear the door slam shut as he pushed and hauled me toward his armless desk chair. Sometimes without a word, or sometimes with a shouting lecture, he would yank my pants and underwear right down around my ankles, making me naked below the waist. My shirt would be pushed up my back so that I was totally bare and exposed. Since I was small, I could never keep my feet on the ground so my legs would be bent hanging over his lap.
I usually struggled and I shamelessly begged and pleaded for mercy, or would cry and apologize over and over, begging not to be spanked. Even if I made a serious effort to resist, his strength was such that he could handle me like a doll. As soon as my pants were down he would easily lift me right over his lap, or just yank my pants down roughly while already holding me over his lap.
I remember the window in his bedroom because I was always facing it, laying over his lap looking at my outstretched hands on the floor, with my butt bare, knowing what was coming. Knowing that the loud sound of his hand slapping my bottom, along with the sounds of my embarrassing uncontrollable screaming and begging would go right out that window every time.
One of our neighbour’s bedroom is about 20 feet directly across from that window. It is amazing how much I was able to concentrate on that fact in the few seconds it took for the overwhelming sting of his strong hand slapping my butt with full force to arrive. I am strong willed and was always determined not to cry, but I would cry and sob from that first slap if I were not already crying in fear before hand.
I can’t remember every spanking, and of course I was not counting how long or how many slaps, but for me every spanking lasted an eternity and I think they must have lasted a good 5 or even 10 minutes every time. Full of angry emotional energy, and with my naked bottom completely exposed over his knee, he spanked my bare ass for all he was worth.
I would scream and cry from the extreme and relentless pain. I am sure all of his frustrations with me, my sometimes serious misbehavior and his own anger bottled up from his divorce, his difficult work, and all the stresses of life were vented on my blistered crimson bottom while I bucked, screamed and sobbed uncontrollably and the minutes rolled by.
He spanked HARD and fast from start to finish, and it went on and on. If there were any pause, it would just be for him to shout something at me, and for me to catch a few breaths to scream and plead for him to stop, which only seemed to make him spank me harder. It just seemed to go on and on, one blistering hard slap on top of another raining down of my bare bottom, which ended up a deep crimson and lightly bruised for days after every time.
We lived directly across the street from my middle school, and I was always mortified that some other kid who knew where I lived would hear it. That a friend who I hoped liked me and laughed at my jokes would hear me wailing and crying like a baby. It was utterly degrading.
It was not common but not very uncommon for me to be spanked this way. I walked on egg shells and always had one eye open for anything that would get me a spanking, but sometimes it was just an unfair angry reaction from an overwhelmed and unhappy single father, with no way to see it coming. This created an unpredictable environment for me at home and I was always afraid of him.
I will say this style of spanking was abusive. He never abused any of us in any other way except for these extreme spankings, which my sister never got. He provided a safe and secure middle class upbringing for all of us.
I also learned later that my dad was treated much worse by his parents during his upbringing. He also mellowed out a lot when he got older and did not remain the rageaholic he was during the spanking era of my childhood.
Still, there is no question these spankings crossed a line of severity that most would call abuse even then, and the fact that he was usually enraged also loudly says it was abuse.
I believe he stopped spanking me in middle school because my school teachers could somehow see the signs and called him into meetings which ended with him having to take interviews with a social worker, and me too.
I think they were interviewing me to check for signs of more serious abuse, I guess having been able to tell I was spanked somehow. The social worker asked me about it and I told them I was spanked but would not go into details.
I remember my dad telling me once on the drive home from one of those social worker appointments that it was all my fault the school had ordered us to attend them, but I don’t think he ever spanked me after that. I would have been around 13.
I intend to describe one particularly terrible spanking but just in describing these generalities I feel slightly shaken up in a psychological and emotional way, and I am over 40 years old.
This is my own experience which occurred about 1985; at the time I was in fifth or six grade, 11 or 12 years old.
A friend and I loved to ride our dirt bikes. At that time, most boys had a rugged little dirt bike, the kind that later evolved into mountain bikes. They were sold everywhere. We liked to ride through the trails in a forest near my house. We also loved fireworks and would set off black-cat and M-80s when we could get them. Blowing up tin cans, pine cones, action figures or what have you.
One day we were riding our bikes through the forest trails and I had a smoke bomb with me. There was the equivalent of a gated community adjacent to that forest and some of our friends from school lived there.
Well we went over there to visit a friend, but she wasn’t home and no one was home at her house.
Without any real malicious intent, I thought how cool it would be to set off that smoke bomb. I think I chose my friend’s patio where no one was home because I wasn’t crazy enough to set it off in the forest, and we wanted to go back directly onto the trails.
We set off that smoke bomb, and watched the thick blue smoke billow up from the patio for a few minutes. I don’t remember being worried as then we took off into the trails. Now of course I can see that was serious misbehavior, but at the time it’s like I didn’t realise it somehow. I just thought it the kind of minor mischief that always went unnoticed, and I did not intend for it to affect anyone else.
When we finished our ride and were emerging from the forest trail, the police were there, complete with flashing lights, along with a few adults from the surrounding houses. We both stopped, stunned, as the cops ordered us off our bikes and started asking questions.
We didn’t tell any lies, we had been seen and it was clear what we had done. They asked our names, and about the smoke bomb. I took full credit for having done it, trying to get my friend off the hook. They asked my phone number and I told them. I listened as they used the police radio, telling someone on the other side my phone number. I knew they were contacting my father.
I froze and started to panic inside a little, though I kept a poker face as the cops explained that the smoke bomb had started a small fire in the leaves near the patio. I remember actually objecting, saying it was a smoke bomb and surely they mistook it for a fire, but actually those smoke bombs burn for about 5-10 minutes and shoot out a little flame about 1 or two 2 inches long as the burn. I don’t doubt it did start a fire.
The cops put my bike in their trunk and put me in the backseat of the car. I was driven straight home, which was only about 1/4 mile away.
I saw my dad emerging onto the front porch as the cops arrived. He was livid. He had a very short exchange with the police.
I remember the officer took me out of the backseat, with the light flashing, and walked me right up to the porch.
My dad seized me strongly by the arm and hauled me onto the porch, he pulled, pushed, and stood me just inside the front door as he finished a brief exchange with the police. In no time, he stepped back inside and slammed the front door.
I don’t remember any conversation at all, but I knew what was coming. I started trying to talk to him but he was already taking me to the room so, instead of talking, I begged and tried to apologize as earnestly as I could.
Tears were already in my eyes when we got into the bedroom. Held firmly by the arm, I saw that damned window as he slammed the bedroom door behind us. With one hand he flipped the infamous wooden chair around and was able to seat himself heavily while at the same time never releasing his grasp on me.
I remember trying to hold my pants up, begging and pleading, and when he yanked down my pants around my ankles with his right hand, pushing me over his lap with his left arm, my clinging to the waist band made no difference at all.
Before I could think, my underwear were down too and I was forced into the position. Blood rushing to my head as I faced the floor, I could feel the air on my naked butt. I could feel my shoes, pants and underwear hanging heavily around my ankles.
I’ve already explained what I had come to expect, and I knew this time I had really done something very wrong and deserved punishment. My mind was just a jumble of startled alarms as I tried to process all that had happened and was happening.
I knew it was going to be bad, but this was probably the worst and most painful spanking I ever received.
With all his full grown power, his arm worked with heated resolve as he slammed his stinging open palm against my bare skin. From the start I bawled and wailed uncontrollably.
For all my concern that someone would hear, knowing that many people may be watching my house after the scene out front, I could not hold back or resist at all. I was overwhelmed from the first. The pain was just an irresistible burning and urgent wave, lighting my ass on fire. I screamed my heart out as the spanking began and I am sure the police out front heard at least the start of it.
The impact, over and over, left me bruised for days. I beat my hands against the floor and kicked for all I was worth, but I didn’t even manage to slow him down. He held me locked over his lap, whipping his hand into me with terrible impact over and over.
I was old enough to have a sense of dignity, and through the pain I was still aware of how completely it was stripped away. I bawled in humiliation and agony. I railed and struggled, thrashed and screamed, feeling the pain but also the guilt of having truly done wrong.
The tears from my eyes and mucus from my nose ran down and off my face as the spanking continued, without reservation, for a good five or ten minutes. By the time it was over I was completely defeated, all resistance had gone out of my and I could hear a constant moaning wail coming out of me.
Finally I realised he was no longer spanking me. Grabbing me by the arm again, he pulled me off his lap and stood up. I was still screaming and sobbing, my face was wet with tears, and my bruised ass was on fire. He dragged me half naked to my room, opened the door, shoved me inside and slammed the door behind me.
I screamed and cried for some time, standing right in my room by the door where he left me. I think my brain was just totally overwhelmed by the sensory overload. I also felt very hurt emotionally. On the one hand I knew I had done wrong and hated that feeling, on the other hand I felt the way my dignity and sense of person-hood had been ripped away from me as I was reduced to a bawling sobbing mess.
I beat my fists against the door and screamed that I hated him, but no response came and I didn’t dare to open the door. I stood and cried till I slumped to my knees, and eventually pulled myself onto my bed where I lay face down, in a lot of pain for hours and cried myself to sleep.
My sister once called me out of the blue 6 or 7 years ago to tell me that she was sorry for not helping me when I was getting those spankings. She remembered my screams and talked about it with her therapist.
My older brother also related that he felt he had “abandoned” me, moving out the instant he turned 18 when I was about 7. Of course to me the idea of them somehow helping me never even crossed my mind, my dad was a feared and unquestionable tyrant for some years.
My sister once confronted my dad over his treatment of me long after we were all adults. She said he told her that he had no idea what she was talking about.
I sometimes rationalize and would like to believe it was normal, but these spankings were extreme. How else would they come up for my sister in her therapy, just from being in the house and hearing it through the door and the walls? How else would they leave such a deep a vivid impression on me, informing important aspects of my life and mind three decades later?
A therapist once told me that experiences kids receive just before and during puberty can condition them for life. This was her explanation for my super charged need for spanking in adult life. Since puberty spanking has always been a central part of my sexuality. I do think these early experiences left this imprint on me.
I struggled with my identity for years as I could not shake this overwhelming erotic attraction to spanking. Even today every time I get off, I am thinking about giving or getting spanking.
However, I have accepted this part of myself and am actually able to enjoy it now. I still sometimes wish or wonder how things would be if I did not have this thing, but I am no longer ashamed of it. I’m a successful professional with a good career in IT today. I don’t think these spankings helped that happen, but I could be wrong.
In adult life, I have always sought out and been lucky to receive strict discipline in relationships with other adults. I don’t know what I would have done without these people who have understood me and even loved me, and given me the spanking I have always needed. I am 42 years old now, but still regularly see an older man who spanks me to tears on a regular basis.
I am glad I never had a kid and passed on this spanking thing to him the way my dad did with me, though honestly I think I would never spank a child.
At the same time, I understand my dad came from a different generation. He has a good heart and did the best he could, he just dropped the ball for some time and lived as a rageaholic. I am not surprised he doesn’t allow himself to remember it. I’ve never spoken to him about it. We had an estranged and adversarial relationship for years, but are close now.
JW