Sophomore Year 8
This is the eighth of a multipart story about my year boarding with a single dad and his two sons. It was a time of highly charged eroticism more than explicit sex and led me to discover a lot about myself. This story is a slow burner, taking its time to set the stage and to draw out the characters and their dynamic. The joy is in the journey, not the destination.
In this chapter, under Buck's guidance, Hank further confronts some of his insecurities about his body and the dynamics of the story so far are situated in the context of its era. Few readers come to Nifty seeking history lessons, but some explanation seems called for to help younger readers appreciate that the events and characters depicted were not so improbable as they would seem today.
This is my first submission to Nifty, so your patience is appreciated. Life unfolds in a jumble, and memory exacerbates the challenge of packaging the past into a tidy narrative. What began as a sincere attempt to chronicle past events has evolved into the child of multiple rearrangements and embellishments. Furthermore, the era of its setting, over half a century ago, is now long gone and may seem foreign and even implausible to the younger reader.
Send your thoughts and reactions, as well as your own memories in an email, I attempt to respond to all. Many thanks to those who have sent words of encouragement.
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Sophomore Year 8
"I'm sorry, sir," I said, watching as Buck's shudders slowly diminished, his hand cupped protectively over the nipple that apparently, I had just inadvertently hurt. He didn't seem to hear me. The change in his bearing had been sudden and absolute, from imposing to injured, like Superman exposed to Kryptonite.
"I didn't mean to..." I tried again, but at a loss for words.
Buck mumbled, "No harm done, son," as he almost stumbled off the little stage. He hobbled towards the corner where our shirts lay, quietly muttering to himself "...my own damn fault... should effin' know better... time and a place for..." He slowly bent to pick up his wife-beater and bit by bit pulled it over his head. He shuffled back up on the platform before the mirror and turned to face himself.
He gazed into the mirror as though drowsy over a sink at dawn. He rubbed his head and slapped his cheeks as though to rouse himself from stupor. Seeing he was a bit disheveled, he then pulled his shorts down to tuck in his wife-beater, exposing a well furred ass and popping into place with a brisk `snap!' the leg straps of his jock that I'd visually traced all afternoon.
Seemingly oblivious of the spectacle presented to his rapt audience, he slowly tucked the flimsy shirttail and then decisively tugged the waistband of his shorts up to hold it in place. He smoothed the front of the shirt, paying particular attention to the fit across his chest, apparently achieving a military tightness to his satisfaction.
Troubled by the abrupt change in his demeanor, I ventured again. "Sir, I swear I didn't mean to hurt..."
"Hurt?" He slowly turned to face me, as if just remembering I were there. "Nah, not hurt, sailor. Not hurt at all." He seemed as though he'd been momentarily winded but with no trace of temper. "It's just like a buddy of mine used to say," and he brightened slightly as he recited in a sing-songy voice, "the more ya work em, the more they work.'"
The riddle left me puzzled. "Excuse me, sir. Not following..."
"Oh, ya never heard that one before?" he sounded mildly surprised. I slowly shook my head back and forth. Buck examined me as if assessing how much explanation I'd need, "Well, y'see, Sailor, the male anatomy..." And then he seemed to think better of it. "Tell ya what: we'll save it for later...maybe." Now I was really curious but added it to the list of unanswered questions that had been steadily growing since I got to this house.
"Now, where were we?" and Buck turned back to the mirror and gestured at it, perhaps eager to change the topic. "Ain't this thing somethin'? That Mr. Bill's a genius. I wasn't sure about it, but the guys love it, flexin' and checkin' themselves out. The lighting, that was Billy's idea, really shows off the muscles, makes `em look more defined." That would explain why I had looked unrecognizable to myself, I thought.
"I tell ya, Jacky's the worst, it's like he's almost addicted sometimes. For a while he was beggin' for a mirror like this in his room! As if he doesn't spend enough time ogling himself in the one he's got!" The expression on Buck's face, more than his words, suggested mild amusement. I was slightly confused since I couldn't remember seeing a mirror in Jack's room. Granted, I had only been there a few minutes. If I did end up taking the room, I thought, I'd have to look for that mirror.
Buck, now seeming fully restored to his former self, returned to the business at hand. "Now, a lot of guys got flat nips and will try anything to get em bigger. They want em pokin' through their shirts, like Superman. So you're lucky, Sailor, you got a head start on `em."
I appreciated his point but felt there was another issue in my case. "Yeah, but it's your actual nipple that's big, like Superman. But it's not my nipples that are big, it's this part that surrounds `em that sticks out. It looks all puffy." I couldn't believe I was talking so openly about this body part that had been the focus of so much shame the last few years.
"OK, c'mere, kid." Buck led me back over towards the lockers and retrieved one of the muscle mags from the bench. He opened it and paged through until he got to an article on Muscle Beach in California. Holding it before us both with one hand while fiddling with one of jock's straps with other, Buck commented on photos of at least a dozen different guys, all in tight suits, lifting weights and spotting each other and flexing for the camera. It looked amazing. Buck remarked on their chests, especially the guys with puffy nips like mine.
I had to admit that even the puffiest nips didn't look so bad. But I was not quite ready to let go of my chest insecurity, not after holding it so close and tight all these years. I protested, "But they all have bigger chest muscles and bigger nipples than I do."
"Well, we could work on that." Buck calmly considered my point. "First, we'd start on the muscle part and see how that goes. Chest presses, dips, flyes, push-ups, all that. Then we could talk about how to grow those sailor nips of yours. Y'now, get em workin' a little." and with that he playfully tweaked one, sending an electrical charge through me and causing me to jump back a step or two as though snakebit. "Ha ha! Got em workin' some there alright!" His playful teasing made us both laugh.
"OK," he said, serious once again, "Let's start simple. We'll get you doin' a few lunges, you can do those right? So, how bout losin' those jeans? They're just gonna trip you up. And I can tell you're not freeballin' today, gotcher panties on like a good girl." He laughingly teased and yanked up on the waistband of my BVDs delivering a surprising little tug in my crotch. Whistling a merry tune, he headed off across the room towards one of the weight racks. Pausing briefly in mid step to fiddle again with one of the leg straps, he called over his shoulder, "Just toss em in an empty locker."
My usual shyness kicked in and I hesitated. But then something about the fact it was just the two of us, in a gym, and Buck was like a coach, practically stripped down to underwear himself, and perhaps most of all, that he'd already seen my naked chest and actually made me feel a little better about it; all that gave me the confidence to kick off my sneakers, drop my pants, ball them up and toss them into the open locker nearest me.
I put my sneakers back on and stood to straighten out my briefs, thankful that today's were reasonably clean and intact. A roommate last year had joked that some of my underwear were more holes than cloth. I looked around for the nearest mirror but saw they'd all require me to leave my spot and I felt it best to stay put awaiting further instructions.
Instead, I gazed into the unlit space across the room, at the silhouettes of silent weight machines and benches and racks of free weights patiently resting in line. I now could see that the long wall behind them was divided in two: an upper half, like the other walls painted a light gray, in stark contrast to the much darker, oddly textured lower half hidden in the deeper shadows.
Just enough light reached the upper portion of the far wall that if I squinted, I could see that more posters of athletes and naked women—like those above the lockers—hung along it. No squinting was needed, however, to clearly see the large banner dominating the center of the wall. Stark letters in print bold enough to read even at twilight from a distance read: 'NO JOCK --> NO GYM.' Someone had handwritten in thick marker below, `No joke!' I deduced this was the support rule that Buck had referred to.
Some readers today may immediately equate Buck's insistence on jockstraps with a now widely familiar erotic fetish and suspect some ulterior motive. But fifty years ago, before the internet and many liberation movements and the mushrooming porn industry, gay culture was inaccessible and hence largely unknown to most of the public, including many young gay people. In my youth, jockstraps were not much known or of interest to anyone outside of sports.
In today's awareness, we might readily have diagnosed Buck as having a jockstrap fetish, although I doubt even he was fully aware of it as such and would probably never have consciously recognized it much less labeled it by today's concepts. Up until then, even I had taken my coaches' admonishments to wear a jockstrap in the same vein as being reminded to wear a seatbelt or brush my teeth before bed. There is no doubt, however, that the pervasiveness of jocks here was leading me to start considering them with renewed attention.
Back to the banner: to the right of it a wood paddle, like those I'd seen in frat houses, hung by a short leather strap. Instead of Greek letters, it bore the image of a bald eagle perched on an anchor and the stenciled initials USN.' From my uncle's time in the Marines, I immediately knew it referred to the U.S. Navy. To the right of the paddle, a sign read, "Don't make me use this, cuz I will!" and just below it, "The Cap'n." The message seemed clear and yet another expression of the penchant for ass whippin' in this household.
I should also mention that corporal punishment was much more common and acceptable in those days. When I was a kid, my mom had taken off her sandal many times to spank my butt, and I remembered `taking licks' in middle and high school as a common disciplinary technique that did not even require parental consent. Nor was it unheard of for coaches to spank an unruly player bare-assed in front of his teammates to retore order. Even my adored Uncle Quique had swatted me good a time or two when I'd acted up. And when I got older, he'd still grab me and whack my butt, partly as affectionate play but I think also partly to establish dominance, as dogs and boys will do.
Here at college, tales abounded of hazing bashes where heirloom paddles merrily pranced atop the creamy tails of prostrate pledges, and in my classes during Pledge Week I had seen a few strapping football players wince in pain as they very gingerly took their seats. All this to say, the custom wasn't at all foreign to me which made me wonder what the risk of an ass-blistering would be if I decided to take the room. Buck had pretty much guaranteed that he would not hesitate to put a boy over his knee. All this I pondered as I stared at the paddle.
"Ain't he somethin'?" Buck asked, noting the object of my gaze. I hadn't noticed that he'd returned to my side. He was carrying a dumbbell in each hand but set them down on the bench, paused again to snap the leg straps of his jock back into place and then walked back across the room towards the paddle. As he reached up to take it off its hook, once again the leg straps of his jock come into view. I wondered if he knew or even cared. I suddenly remembered a P.E. coach in middle school whose jock always seemed to peek out as he demonstrated exercises or retrieved equipment. Many of the boys would giggle and snigger behind his back in ridicule, but I'd always been very fond of this coach and tried to shush them. One time he'd made one of the boys stay after class and I overheard the coach insisting, "There is nothing to be ashamed of! It is part of becoming a man!" Since I liked that coach so much, his words stuck with me.
"He's a real beaut." Buck crowed like a proud parent as he returned to my side. "Pure teak wood, salvaged from a schooner, over a hundred years old likely." He handed it to me to hold, pointing out the rich grain and aged patina. Once more in sing song, he recited, "As a ship, he lifted sails, as a paddle lifted tails."
"So," I tried to think of a fitting response, "lots of history then...?"
"Oh," Buck enthused, "The tales this paddle could tell. As a buddy used to say, `I know him well and he knows me." And as he spoke, he absentmindedly reached his hand inside his shorts to gently rub his ass.
Slightly confused, I offered, "So, you two go back a ways...?"
"Oh, yeah," Buck responded. "Our ship captain kept him in his quarters. Any infraction, he'd give a choice: extra duty or swats on a bare ass. Paddle burns for sure but it's over lots quicker than extra duty." I then recalled the jockstrap on the mannequin had "Captain" written above the pouch and wondered what connection there might be.
But before I could ask, Buck took back the paddle, handed me the dumbbells and barked, "Give me ten lunges," and he counted them off in that curt military bark that coaches develop and kept time by slapping the paddle against his palm. "Not bad, Sailor. Not bad." when I finished. "Feelin' the burn?"
Once again, I felt embarrassed, this time because we both knew where I was feeling the burn from the lunges. Aside from my swollen nipples, the other part of my body I was self-conscious about was my butt. It was larger than most guys I knew. My uncle used to pinch it, teasing, "Hey, sobrino, we both got the Mexican ass. Be proud of it! You know, the ladies like it!" and he would wiggle his butt at me, in imitation of a bad stripper, and we would both laugh.
But instead of girls noticing, I had bullies making fun of it in gym class. That was actually what finally made me quit swim team. The bullies who had made fun of my nipples the previous year had either quit the team or moved on to other victims, so I was looking forward to a better experience as the new season started. But then the team suits for the new season were issued. This happened during the era when men's racing suits were getting smaller and briefer, from almost a square cut to a bikini. The five inches of coverage at the side of my first Speedo had now shrunk to three, which meant the new suits were lower cut. I could just barely pull mine up enough to cover my butt, which also squeezed up my nuts. And once I bent over or moved a bit, the suit would slip down, and the top of my ass crack would start to show. The first time that happened at practice, the bullying started all over again and I said, `that's it, I've had it' and quit the team. I decided to focus on wrestling instead.
This was also in the days before the gravity of bullying and its impact became part of public awareness. In the old days, cases would be casually dismissed with a "boys will be boys" justification. Authority figures were as likely to blame the victim as to confront the perpetrator, especially when both were male. The abuse of power was not readily recognized as unethical or criminal to the degree that, according to their testimony, former athletes at Ohio State University were subjected to decades of sexual abuse by the team doctor with little apparent protection from their coaches. A frequently expressed implication was that tolerating harassment was tantamount to consent and so threw a victim's masculinity into question. Thus it is not surprising that my own reports of bullying to coaches and counselors were pretty much met with a non-response, leaving me feeling a bit abandoned and adrift.
As though reading my mind, Buck broke my train of thought by slapping my ass exclaiming, "Hell, here's Hank's tanks right here!" quoting the mug he'd given me in the kitchen and laughing. "Looking good there, Sailor Hank! Solid foundation like that's worth its weight in gold in wrestling. I bet you could do some damage on the mat!"
His jovial attitude was an about turn from the embarrassment and shame I'd come to associate with the size of my butt. Maybe both Buck and my uncle were right about taking pride in my body, even its flaws. I was ready to try, even if I didn't know where to start.