WARNING

This story details explicit gay sex between men, teens and boys. If you find this kind of thing distasteful, or if you are underage wherever you live, then stop reading this now, and delete this file. The story is completely fictional; the author does not condone or encourage any of the acts contained herein.

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Craigslist

Chapter 81

By: Tim Keppler (nemoami@yahoo.com)

 Edited by: Bob Leahy

 

"Tim," Feng says, one day, coming over to our place to find me. "Tan not feel...good." At four and a half, Feng is Ian's eldest. He's one of the three boys Ian, Leslie and Shawn recently adopted."

"Really? How's he not feeling good?"

"He lying on floor. He crying."

Tan is Ian's three and a half year old. He's the most petulant of their three boys, but he's always been healthy. "Show me, sweetie. Take me to him." That's what Feng does. He walks me through the gate that connects our two houses and into the living room from the back garden, and sure enough, Tan is lying on the floor, crying softly. I kneel next to him and put my hand on his forehead, and realize that he's burning up. He has a high fever. Quan is hiding behind a chair, freaked at the discomfort of his older brother. Where is the babysitter, I wonder? Occasionally, when Shawn, Ian and Leslie have to be away from the house at the same time, they hire a local girl to sit for them, as they've done today. I've no idea where she is, but that's not important right now. What's important is to fix Tan.

I pick up Tan and tell Feng to fetch Quan. We make our way back to our house. "You and Quan go play in the living room, Feng. There are books there. You look at the pictures, okay?"

Feng nods, dragging his little brother into the living room while I take Tan to the bathroom. Where in the hell is the thermometer, I wonder. No parent of young children should ever not know where the fucking thermometer is, but it takes me nearly five minutes to find it. It's completely irresponsible of me. I do find it, though, and pop it under Tan's tongue. He is a snotty mess as he sits on my lap, crying, with the thermometer in his mouth. Finally, after about a minute, it beeps, and I pull it out of his mouth to find that he has a temperature of 104.9° F. Jumpin' Jesus! I run a cool bath in the tub while I tear off Tan's clothes. The objective is to get the fever down as quickly as we can. Once I have him in the bathtub, I call Dr. Cohen, my GP, on my cell phone. Cohen isn't in the office today, but he has coverage. His associate, a Dr. Nguyen, is there, and he agrees to come to the house within half an hour. "Keep Tan in the tub," he says, "and give him half a Tylenol tablet." That's what I do. Poor little Tan is such a mess. I reach into the tub and hug him, and he attaches himself to me in all his slippery wetness. Jesus he's hot!

Within twenty minutes, Dr. Nguyen arrives. I take him to the bathroom and leave him to examine Tan while I check on his brothers. Feng is "reading" to Quan in the living room. He found the picture books and is making up stories that match the pictures. I ruffle his hair, and kiss him, and head back over to Ian, Leslie and Shawn's house to see if I can find the baby sitter. She's in one of their spare rooms, sound asleep. "Wake up!" I shout. She comes instantly awake, looking freaked. "Go home!" I say to her. "The boys are with me, and Tan is seriously ill. I wasn't aware that you were paid to sleep. Now get the fuck out of here!"

She stammers an excuse, which I don't even hear. "No excuses! Go away."

She gets off the bed and hightails it out of the house. She knows just how angry I am.

I make my way back to our place, glancing into the living room on my way to the bathroom. Feng and Quan are still engrossed in their books and Feng's story telling. When I reach the bathroom, Dr. Nguyen is just completing his examination of Tan. "He's extremely dehydrated," he says. "He must have had this fever for a while -- several hours anyway. I think we need to hydrate him. I'd like to put him on a saline drip, get some liquid into him. We need to take him back to the office to do that. Can you drive us?"

I nod. We gather the boys into the back seat of the car. Dr. Nguyen sits in the front holding Tan on his lap. Tan is swathed in a bath towel. He's very groggy, but clings to Dr. Nguyen as we drive to his office, which is all of two minutes away. We park, and I herd the boys into the waiting room, asking the receptionist to please keep an eye on them. "They're very well behaved. They won't give you any trouble." She smiles at them fondly and nods.

Dr. Nguyen carries Tan to one of the treatment rooms, lays him on one of the exam tables, and raises the side bars so he can't fall off. Then he assembles everything he'll need for a saline IV, and begins the process of inserting the needle into Tan's arm. And it does not go well. First, Tan has extremely-fine veins, the doctor tells me, and second, he's so dehydrated that what veins he has keep collapsing. It takes him nearly twenty minutes to get the IV in place, by which time there's a lot of blood on the floor, and Tan is sobbing. I have by this time climbed onto the exam table with him, and he's lying in my lap as I stroke his hair and chest. He's fine. Kids hate needles. God knows I did. But, at the end of the day, there's not much pain associated with them. It's mostly fear. I hug him, and whisper in his ear, and pretty soon he stops crying and just falls asleep. We're at the doctors' office for four hours. It takes two hours to empty 500ml of saline into him, but Dr. Nguyen also wants a chest x-ray, and he wants blood work. He's looking for pneumonia, and he's looking for elevations in his blood work that'll indicate what's causing the fever. I know exactly what he's looking for, although he hasn't said it. He's looking for swine flu. If Tan's got it, there'll be tell-tale markers in the blood that'll indicate that. "Where has he traveled recently?" the doctor asks.

"Guernville. We went camping. That's it. He's not in day care yet, so he didn't get it from a playmate. Only Feng is in day care, and Feng isn't sick."

"He could still carry it, but that's unlikely."

When the blood work comes back from the lab across the street, the results are inconclusive. "It's not swine flu," the doctor finally assures me, "but the blood work suggests it might be bronchitis with an associated viral infection -- the flu. If it were just the flu, we'd just keep him in bed and control the symptoms with Tylenol and Motrin. Given my suspicion of bronchitis, though, I want to put him on a course of antibiotics to kill the bacteria, and I want him to use an aerosol inhaler to control his cough. It's a steroid. It'll open his lungs and make him feel a lot better." I nod. This guy seems very good. He seems to know what he's doing.

At the end of four hours, we have everything we need. We even have the medications because Dr. Nguyen doesn't want us to have to stop at Walgreens. He gives everyone a face mask so we don't cross-contaminate, and sends us on our way. "Please call me tomorrow to let me know how he's doing. Even if the news is good. I still want to hear from you." This guy reminds me so much of Dr. Cohen -- very caring and very careful. That's about where the similarity ends though. Cohen is probably 65. He's grey and...distinguished looking. Dr. Nguyen looks to be maybe 28 and is...drop-fucking-dead gorgeous. I'm probably not supposed to notice that in the middle of a crisis like this, but my dick did notice. Yes it did.

When I get home, Ian is home and frantic. I'd left a note on the outside of his front door telling him where we were, but he came in through our place and crossed over through the back garden. He never saw his own front door or the note. He's been calling me non-stop, trying to figure out where the boys are, but my phone ran out of battery and shut down. Have you tried to find a pay phone recently? They're completely impossible to find. Finally, I asked Dr. Nguyen if I could borrow his mobile, but for some reason I couldn't get through to Ian or Shawn. Their phones just rang and rang. To say the least, Ian is relieved when he sees the boys. But, then he sees Tan, who I carry, and who is flushed and bandaged. He comes across to us, and caresses Tan's face. Tan open his eyes, but they're still pretty bleary. "What happened to you, sweetie?" he asks.

"I sick," Tan says weakly, and then closes his eyes again and falls back asleep.

I carry him to the boys' bedroom with Ian close behind, and Ian tucks him in. He gives me a "What the fuck?" look.

"Feng came and told me that Tan was sick, that he was crying. I went to investigate and found him with nearly a 105° F. temperature. I took him to the doctor. He has medication, but he's not feeling real good right now. That fucking babysitter of yours was in the spare room sound asleep. The doctor said that Tan had probably been feverish for hours. I fired the bitch...summarily. I told her to get the fuck out of your house. If I were you, I'd call her parents. She's a total waste of space. They should take her to the vet and have her put down."

Ian is just furious. I've never seen him so angry. Ian is usually pretty even-tempered, but not today, and when Leslie gets home, they don't call the babysitter's parents. Instead, they go to her parents' house, and I understand it was quite a scene. By the end of it, both the girl and her mother were apparently sobbing. It's a good life-lesson for her. Don't take money for a service you're not going to perform. If you're being paid to watch someone's kids, then watch them! Don't let them out of your sight. I don't know what it is today. I don't think there's any parenting going on. A second-grade teacher we know told me that his class is a complete mess. One of his students shouted at him in class, calling him a prick. Another put bubble gum on his chair so he stuck to it when he sat down. In both cases, the parents laughed the incidents off, as did the principal. It's no biggie. Apparently respect is no longer a requirement in public education, and childcare is no longer a requirement of babysitters. And, nobody gives a damn.

Trouble is, my firing the babysitter leaves Ian, Shawn and Leslie in the lurch. Leslie has a conference to attend, Ian has a full schedule of classes he's teaching, and Shawn is in L.A. None of their schedules can change without dire consequences, but mine can, at least for the next two days, which is the window of time the three of them need to get back home. So, I am the designated babysitter for Feng, Tan, and Quan, and we honestly have a lot of fun. Feng has been learning to read, but prefers to make up stories rather than reading the ones written in the books. So, he spends hours and hours telling Tan and Quan stories, stories that usually put Tan to sleep within a very few minutes. It's not that the stories aren't interesting; it's just that he's still pretty weak. Quan is absolutely entranced, though. He loves Feng's stories and hangs on his every word, some of which are in English, some in Cantonese, and some in Mandarin. Feng is having a little trouble sorting out his languages right now. He spent his first four and a half years in Hong Kong with parents who spoke only Cantonese. But, Leslie doesn't really speak Cantonese. He speaks Mandarin. So, the deal for these boys is a little more complex than with ours. Leslie and Jason speak to the boys in Mandarin, Ian, Shawn and I speak to them in English, and Kenny and Dinh speak to them in Cantonese. They'll sort it out. Our boys did. It's no big deal.

Tan takes a fair amount of mending, not just physically, but also emotionally. He's a little fragile right now. I spend a lot of time in bed with him just holding him. He's a little teary-eyed. He's still achy, but I think what he'd like to know is why no one came to rescue him before I got there. I think what he'd like to know is where his daddies were, or his baby sitter. I want to tell him that his babysitter was an asshole, but you can't really say that to a three and a half year old. What, after all, is an asshole? So, instead, I apologize. "I'm sorry, baby. I didn't know you were sick until Feng came to get me." I hug him a little tighter, and he hugs me back. Then he falls asleep, which is exactly what he needs to do. The more sleep sick children get, the better. Sleep and apple juice seem the requisite treatments, and a little chicken soup, some Tylenol, and some Amoxicillin. Two days later, he's on the mend, and giggles when I tickle him. It's my one surefire diagnostic tool for kids -- tickling. We're back in business.

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And two days after that I'm back in the basement with Dinh. Once again, he's hanging from the whipping frame, but this time, we're doing something slightly different. This time we're doing something "green," something organic. There are two kinds of ginger root, it turns out. There's the older root, stuff that was harvested later and is therefore larger but milder, and there's the fresh stuff. The fresh stuff is juicier, and a lot stronger, a lot more potent. It's perfect for what I have in mind. I've been reading about something called figging. The word originated in the 18th century, although the original spelling was feague. Over time the word morphed into figging. Figging was a practice carried out by unscrupulous horse dealers who would insert a peeled ginger root into the anus of a slow or half-dead horse. The horse would become lively and hold its tail higher. I imagine Dinh will hold his tail higher too.

What you do is peel a piece of ginger root, shaping it like a slender butt plug. Then you insert it into the anus without lubrication of any kind. The ginger juices cause pain and extreme...desire. The person belonging to said anus becomes twitchy, jumpy and very lively. The effect lasts for 20 minutes or more depending on the freshness and strength of the root. The root can also be inserted into the urethra. You do have to be sure that you wash your hands after peeling the ginger because ginger juice in the eyes just plain hurts like a motherfucker and is neither fun nor erotic in any way!

I have ginger aplenty, fresh ginger, and Dinh is seriously frightened as I peel it in front of him. He has no idea what I'm going to do with it, and that makes him very nervous. I'm going to go a step beyond what I've read about. I have the butt plug carved, and a little cylindrical sliver for his urethra. But, I also have a ground "salve" of pure ginger and its juice ready for him. This should be fun. When we're ready to go, I apply the nipple clamps first. Sometimes he loves these and sometimes he hates them. Tonight, I think he hates them. "Oh, Christ, Tim, those hurt so much!"

"Good."

I take the ginger butt plug next and insert it slowly into his asshole until he's clamped around the narrow portion in the middle. Next is the urethral insertion, a slender sliver of ginger about three inches long. Finally, I roll his foreskin fully back, and apply the ground ginger to his dickhead, rolling the foreskin back down once he's been thoroughly "salved". Then I go upstairs for a diet coke. My little Dinh is going to be an Asian stir fry before we're done with him tonight, and it literally only takes five minutes. He starts to scream...and scream...and scream. Returning to the basement with my soda, I take a dollop of the ground ginger and apply it to his nipples. I don't know whether he'll even feel it. Nipple clamps shut down the blood supply to the nipples, and with it, most of the sensation (after the initial pain of the clamps goes away). But, I guess the rest of the pain is sufficiently intense that he's scared. As he watches me apply the ginger to his nipples, he screams. "No...no...Tim!"

"How would you like to get off today, Dinh?" I ask in a leisurely sort of way, sitting in front of him.

He shrieks, and it's a long expressive shriek, a shriek I think he enjoys.

"Suck my dick! Suck my dick! Please!"

"So, rather than taking the ginger out of your ass so I can fuck you, you'd like me to suck the ginger off your dick head?"

He stops dead. He hasn't thought about this. I reach forward, and pull on the nipple clamps. He screams.

"What do you want me to do to you, Dinh?" I ask again. As I do, I roll back his foreskin, and apply more of the ground ginger to his dick head.

"Fuck me. Please fuck me. I'd like you to fuck me...please." He's babbling now. I think everything's burning and he doesn't know what he wants.

"Yeah," I say, lazily. "I can do that. I'll do that in a few minutes. Right now, I'm sort of hungry. I'm going upstairs for a carrot."

I've never heard Dinh wail quite like he does now. I hear now. He's nearly incoherent. "Please, Tim. Please...."

"I'll be back in a few minutes, sweetie, and then we'll get you fucked," I say, walking up the stairs.

He shrieks both because he's on fire, and because he knows what's coming. I once had a boyfriend who used Ben Gay as a lube. It was the most painful thing I've ever felt, both because Ben Gay is searing, and because when your asshole stretches around a dick lubed with Ben Gay...well...you just can't imagine. Now, how did he do that without causing himself massive pain? How'd he do that without searing his dick? With a condom, of course, and that's what I plan to use. I'm not planning to penetrate Dinh tonight without a condom. He may like the ginger, but I won't. I won't like the condom either, but it's better than the ginger. After about ten minutes, I amble back down to the basement with my carrot. Dinh is still shrieking. But his dick is rock hard. "So, I think you said you want me to fuck you?" I say, sitting across from him, munching thoughtfully on my carrot.

"Yes. Please...please...."

"Okay. Well, give me a minute. I've nearly finished my carrot."

Dinh is crying now, sobbing. The tears are rolling down his cheeks. Perfect! Once I've finished the carrot, I get up from my chair and take off my clothes, folding them neatly and piling them on the counter. Then I fetch a condom. I've been hard for many minutes, so rolling it on is no problem. I do that slowly, and meticulously. Dinh is frantic, both because he's in a serious state of lust, and because the fires burning on his body are just...so...damned...hot. Finally, I cross in back of him, and slowly remove the ginger from his ass. The only lube he's going to get this evening is what's on the condom, and a little bit more ground ginger. If I were to apply lotion, that'd put out the fire too quickly. I line up, and slide into him. Dinh screams as his incendiary asshole stretches around my dick. He screams again as I withdraw, and again as I thrust forward. He is in absolute agony, I think, and he loves it. I fuck him for several minutes, aiming for the prostate. He continues to sob. After maybe twenty minutes, I reach forward, and slowly withdraw the ginger from his urethra. Then I start to stroke him, and he screams again as the ground ginger spreads across the length of his dick. Honest to god, it doesn't take long. I stroke him for a couple of minutes, and then he starts to fire. He cums for what seems like forever, screaming lustily as he does, squeezing his asshole oh, so tightly around my dick. This sends me over the edge. It's a really-good orgasm, for both of us, I think. When we're done, and I've recovered a bit, I pull out of him and swab the ginger off his dick with a wet washcloth. I remove the nipple clamps, and release him, carrying him to the chair in the corner where he continues to cry for a while, and finally calms down.

"Okay?" I ask.

He nods, and seals his lips to mine for a long and luxurious kiss. "Umm...yeah," he laughs, finally. "That'll do. When I came, because of the ginger in my dick, it felt like molten lava flowing out of me. It was...spectacular. Yeah, you could say it was `okay'. `Okay' works," he says, giggling.

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After a couple months of living with us, Thao catches me after dinner one evening and asks if we can chat. I take him to the office where we close the door and plunk down in the leather chairs. He looks sheepish, and nervous.

"Did you know Nathan's former partner well? Gary?"

"Yeah, I knew him very well. He was my best friend for over fifteen years."

"And how was their relationship? Nathan and Gary's relationship?"

"Umm...they adored each other. Once they met and became a couple, I can't think of a time they were ever apart. They did absolutely everything together. They protected each other, and cherished each other. I think their relationship was the purest form of love I've ever seen between two people. They were married with...."

"No," he says, slowly. "I know that they loved each other. I know that they were married, but...umm...what was their relationship like?"

I'm a little confused. "Umm...."

"Did they have a relationship like you and Dinh?"

"Umm...."

"Was Gary dominant?"

Finally we have a question that tells me where this is going. "Yeah. Nathan likes to be...controlled...dominated. He...umm...likes to be...punished."

Thao gives me a long, long look. "Why?" he asks. "Why do Nathan and Dinh like to be punished? I have never asked you before. It was not my business. But I am now curious. Why do they enjoy...punishment?"

"I'm not sure I know how to answer that for Nathan. I don't think I ever asked him. In the case of Kenny and Jason, I spank them because it's an emotional release. They want to cry, and they can't really do that without a reason. Jason describes the experience as atonement for sins that I don't even know about. You were a catholic. You probably understand what he's talking about."

Thao nods.

"With Dinh, it's a little different. Dinh just flat out likes a bit of pain. He craves it. It's not so much atonement with him; it's just that he finds it...erotic. He likes to surrender himself, and he likes that surrender to hurt. I don't know what Nathan likes or why, but I do know some of the stuff he and Gary did together, and it was closer to what I do with Dinh than what I do with Jason and Kenny. I think he used to like a fair amount of...umm...pain. Why are you asking me this?"

There are tears welling up in Thao's eyes. "I love Nathan," Thao says. "I am so in love with him. But, based on some conversations we've had, I'm not giving him...what he wants. I think he wants me to be more...aggressive with him. I think he wants me to...take control. And...umm...I don't know how."

I nod. Thao is one of the kindest, and gentlest souls I know, but he's in love with a guy who likes it...rough, a guy who likes to be...disciplined. Nathan adored Gary because Gary adored him, but also because Gary was firmly in control. Nathan didn't want to be. Nathan wanted to be cared for. Nathan wanted to feel as though he had no control. He wanted Gary to make the decisions, and he wanted Gary to...umm...punish him...to show his dominance. Apparently that's what he wants from Thao, and Thao doesn't know how to deliver.

"So, how can I help you?" I ask.

"I don't know," Thao says, sniffling.

I give him a long stare. "Can we have this conversation with Nathan in the room?"

Thao looks up at me. There are tears welling up in his eyes, but also urgency and fear. Finally he nods. I get up out of my chair, go find Nathan, and drag him back to the office with me. When we get there, I take the chair behind the desk, and Nathan takes the chair next to Thao. Thao looks shamefaced, and really apprehensive. He's very close to tears.

"So," I say, "Thao says that he's concerned that he's not giving you what you need to feel loved. I think he thinks he's a little too plain-vanilla for you."

Nathan goes three shades of red, but looks over at Thao fondly.

"Does that cover it?"

Thao nods. Nathan leans over and hugs him, but then looks back at me. He nods. "Yeah," he says. "I love him so, but...I wish he were more...commanding."

"And what if he can't be more commanding? What if that's not in his character?"

"I'll still love him, but...I'd sort of like to...find out."

"And what do you want to find out?"

Nathan stares at the carpet, at his feet. He's flushed. "I want to find out if...if...he can hurt me." So, here's the moment of truth. Here's where we get the answer to Thao's question.

"Why do you want to be hurt, Nathan?"

Nathan gives me a pleading look. He doesn't want to go here. But, we're going whether he likes it or not. "Why?"

"Umm...being hurt makes me feel a lot more...confident...in our relationship. I feel like I'm giving something back, something that has value. I loved when Gary hurt me, and he wasn't gentle. But...umm...I felt safe with him. I loved him, and I knew he liked to hurt me, so letting him do that was giving him a gift. I'd...umm...like our relationship to be more like what Gary and I had."

I nod. So does Thao. "So, what do you want to do, Thao?"

"I need to learn to hurt him...within limits."

I nod, pensively.

"Can you teach me?"

I look at him quizzically. "What's that mean?"

"Do to me what you do to Dinh so I can understand how to do it, but also how to control it. I need to know how much pain you inflict so I can...control it...effectively."

I give him a long, long look, a confused look. "You want me to spank you, and other stuff? You want me to hurt you the way I hurt Dinh?"

He nods.

I look at him for a long moment, and then I look at Nathan, who's staring at the carpet. "You want me to do this?" I ask.

Nathan looks up slowly, and then nods. "If it's what he wants. If he's willing."

This is certainly not a request I was expecting. I was expecting something like, "Can you tell me what to do to him, or how many times to spank him, or what to spank him with." I was not expecting, "Can you please hurt me like you do Dinh so I'll know what to do." I guess my surprise is evident.

"Do you enjoy pain, Thao?"

He looks at me pensively. "I don't know. I've never been hurt before, at least not in a sexual context."

I nod. "There's a certain wisdom in what you're asking. Both Gary and I had dominant partners early in life. They caused us...pain, so we knew how it felt. I guess you really need to go through that to understand...the limits of what you can...inflict. Dominance is a mindset, though, Thao. It's an expectation of obedience and sacrifice. It's an expectation that Nathan will submit to you. You need to have that expectation. And when he submits to your will, you need to reward him -- with love, both spiritual and physical. This is a very different kind of relationship than you and Nathan have had in the past. You're going to have to start thinking of your relationship differently. Can you do that, do you think?"

He gives me a long look. "I don't know. Probably. I will try -- because I love him."

I nod. "Okay. Then meet me in the basement in twenty minutes."

There's a flash of fear in his eyes. I don't think he was expecting us to start so soon. I think he was expecting time to get used to the idea of what he was asking me to do. I'm not going to give him that time. I want him to feel subservient to me. I wanted him to understand what subservience feels like. I want him to surrender, so keeping him a little off balance is appropriate.

Twenty minutes later, I make my way to the basement. Thao is already there, sitting in one of the chairs. I sit down next to him. "So, the object of the exercise, Thao, is to make you into a dominant partner. That's what Nathan wants. He wants to be led. He wants to submit to you."

He nods.

"To do that, we're going to have to do some role playing. We're going to have to make believe. So, let's make believe that you and I are in a relationship. I am the dominant partner. As such, I want you naked and on that table on your belly, ready for punishment. Get on with it!" I say, authoritatively.

Thao looks surprised, but gets out of the chair and strips, lying on the table ready for his first spanking. I buckle him in, securing his wrists, ankles, knees, and back. He's now completely immobile. He's effectively given himself to me.

I take the razor strop off the wall, and swish it through the air. "So, what do you feel guilty about, Thao? Did you disappoint your parents when you left the priesthood? Were your parents upset when you told them you were gay? What regrets do you have? What sins do you need to atone for? Concentrate on those. This is how you atone."

I lay into him with five hard strokes in rapid succession. I don't think he had any idea how much this would hurt, because on the fifth stroke, he gasps. On the tenth stroke he screams. On the twelfth stroke he's starting to sniffle, and on fifteenth he's crying freely. Two more strokes and he's sobbing, begging me to stop. "Never beg Thao," I say, applying two more strokes. "It's the dominant partner's responsibility to decide how much punishment you receive, not yours. Your responsibility is to submit to it."

He's sobbing inconsolably. I unbuckle the restraints, lift him off the table, and carry him to the chair in the corner where he sits on my lap while draped over my shoulder. He continues to cry for maybe ten minutes before he regains some control. I hold him, and hug him. "What did that spanking mean to you?" I ask him. "Do you feel different?"

"It was...umm...cathartic. It is the equivalent of twelve `Hail Marys,' I guess," he says with a pained laugh. "When I was a priest, I would assign penance like `Hail Marys,' but, honestly, it was never very meaningful to me. I mean, how much of a penalty is it to be assigned to chant for five minutes or so? It didn't bring me relief. Why would I assume that it would bring my parishioners relief? This brought me relief. I was thinking about...."

"I don't want to know what you were thinking about, Thao. If I knew, it would destroy the cathartic effect of the spanking. It's not for me to delve into your psyche. You can do that yourself. It's for me to provide an opportunity for atonement. This is why Jason and Kenny like to be spanked. It gives them the opportunity to atone for `sins' that I don't even know about when I'm spanking them. They don't have to confess anything to me. They confess to themselves. They plumb the depths of their regret, pay for their sins in a way that seems real to them, and move on. They pay for their sins with pain."

He nods. "Yes. Do you always sit with them like this after the spanking?"

"Always. It's a very intimate time. Their guards are down. We can be more honest with each other than at any other time because they're just so vulnerable."

"And the number of strokes. Do you always give the same number?"

"No. I spank them until they're sobbing. For Jason, that's generally a lot sooner than for Kenny. For Dinh, well, it takes a while." I smile.

He laughs, and then looks grave. "Why does he shriek when he is spanked? Dinh, I mean."

"I've never really known. My theory is that it enhances the experience for him. It makes him feel helpless...victimized. It makes his sense of surrender more complete. But, I rarely spank Dinh these days. We typically concentrate on...other activities. Dinh never knows what I'm going to do to him, and there's always fear associated with the unknown. But, mostly, with Dinh the idea is to provide a more prolonged period of pain. A spanking delivers abrupt and stinging pain. But, it's brief. It last no more than ten minutes. With Dinh, what I aim for is something that amounts to an intensely dull ache. He wants to get off in response to the pain, and that may take some time. So, I look for things he can endure for up to an hour. I'll demonstrate some of those things during our next classroom session," I say with a laugh. "In the mean time, you need to go off and think about what it means to be a dominant partner. And, by the way, what it doesn't mean is control at all times. Jason, Kenny, Dinh and I coexist. About the only time I'm dominant is in the basement." I pause a long moment, thinking. "What it amounts to is understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and playing to those. Kenny is afraid of financial planning. He's afraid he might make a mistake and lose money, so I do the financial planning and investing. Jason is afraid of traveling alone. He's afraid of making day-to-day decisions, so I do that for him. I'm afraid, believe it or not, of answering the phone or the door, of not know who's on the other side of the door or the other end of the phone line. So, Kenny and Jason do that for me. These are petty things. They're stupid things. But, they're real. So, we compensate for each other, and that means sometimes Jason is dominant, sometimes Kenny is dominant, and sometimes I'm dominant. In the basement, though, I'm always the dominant partner. That's my role. That's how my guys want it, and that's how I want it, so that's how it is. That's what Nathan wants, too, I think. That's the relationship he had with Gary."

In the course of the next two weeks, Thao and I explore a lot of different...toys, and he spends a lot of time attached to the whipping frame. Little by little he starts to get it. Men have a very good barometer of our excitation levels, don't we? You know whether something is exciting by the angle of our dick. If it's pointing straight up and flat against the belly, you have our attention. If it's flaccid and wilting, you haven't piqued our interest. What I try to do with Thao is get him to make a transference. "So, imagine you were doing this to Nathan. Would that excite you?" And, little by little, his dick starts to rise. The enema, for example, has his dick hard for a full hour, even as he shrieks and pleads with me to let him release the liquid. "I dunno, Thao. I don't think you're ready yet." He sure as hell was ready. He looked like he was nine-months pregnant. He was extremely bloated. I pledged to myself when we started this process that we were not going to have sex, but the enema makes me question my resolve. "Do you want to get off?"

"Plleeeaaaassssseeeeee." He whines.

I release his right hand from the whipping frame and let him jerk himself off, and it doesn't take him long. He cums in a gush, rope after rope of cum. When he's done, I release him and he...expells. He tells me later that this was one of the most powerful orgasms of his life. Great! He's in love...with an enema nozzle.

When we get to electro-sex, our final lesson, I decide to treat it a little differently. It's always important to test out S/M toys on yourself first, but with the TENS unit, I let him set it up himself. He inserts the bipolar butt plug, the cock ring, and a sound -- a quarter inch wide, eight inch long, stainless steel rod that slides into your dick. Then he turns on the unit, slowly increasing the intensity until it's beyond comfortable, until it hurts. Then he removes the apparatus, and we wash up. Before we leave the basement, though, I take off my clothes and attach my ankles to the whipping frame. "Buckle up my wrists," I say to Thao. He looks at me, confused, but does it. Once I'm hanging from the whipping frame, I tell him to do to me what he's just done to himself. He's shocked, and a little whiney, but his dick points due north. Clearly this excites him. He inserts the butt plug, the cock ring, and the sound, and turns on the unit -- at very low intensity. "Keep going," I instruct. He tunes up the intensity a bit. "Keep going."

"But, I don't want to hurt you."

"Yes, you do, Thao! Hurting me is what you're aiming for."

Slowly he tunes up the intensity, and tunes back the frequency, until it is really, really painful. "Ow...ow...fuck that hurts. Ow," I scream. "Umm...Thao, could you pinch my nipples...really hard."

He does, and I shoot, sending that stainless-steel sound in my dick and one hell of a lot of my cum across the room. His dick by now is oozing. "I think you should probably do something about that," I say, nodding toward his dick. He nods, and before he releases me, he jerks off, watching me as I hang from the whipping frame. I believe we've liberated Thao. I believe we've released his inner sadist. Nathan will be very pleased.

And he is...very pleased. He's so pleased, in fact, that he convinces Dinh to join him in requesting joint punishment. He basically wants a four-way with Thao and me. That takes me a while to process. What would we do? Then I remember Hawaii all those years ago. You have to remember that both Nathan and Dinh were Gary's partners. Nathan and Dinh have been intimate before, and would like to be again. When Jason, Kenny and I were in Hawaii, one of the punishments I came up with was a rather innovative spanking. Well, I thought it was innovative, but it was my invention, so I would think that, wouldn't I? Anyway, I explain it to Thao, and he giggles. "That's pretty evil," he says with a snort.

"Yeah, it's good, isn't it?"

He nods, still giggling. We agree. So, on Monday evening, after the boys have gone to bed, the four of us meet in our bedroom. "Strip," I say to Nathan and Dinh. We don't usually do punishments here, but we need a horizontal platform that's larger than the punishment table. We need our bed. They take off their clothes, and look at each other curiously. Thao and I also strip. When we're all naked, I motion for Nathan and Dinh to lie on the bed on their bellies, and position them so their heads are hanging over the foot of the bed. Thao and I each have a whippy little riding crop. "So, here's the deal, guys. This is an opportunity to become better cock suckers, and you'd better, because the penalty for ineffective cock sucking tonight is pain. In a moment, you're going to reach back with your hands and hold your ass cheeks wide apart. At the same time, you're going to suck our dicks. While you do that, we're going to flog your assholes with the riding crops. When you make us cum, we'll stop flogging you. So, how long the floggings last is strictly up to you. It's strictly dependent on your cock-sucking skills. Got it?"

They nod uncertainly. I've actually flogged Dinh in this way before, but not like I plan to flog him tonight. Tonight I plan to put some energy into it. Thao and I slide into Nathan and Dinh's open mouths as they reach back and spread their ass cheeks. Then we start the flogging, and with the first stroke Dinh at least knows this is going to be a significant punishment. It takes Thao a couple of strokes to hit Nathan's pucker squarely, and then Nathan, too, knows that this is going to cause him some serious pain. After only about five minutes both guys are in tears, and in another five minutes they're sobbing. Then Thao cums...and cums...and cums. I'm next, filling Dinh's mouth with my spunk. Finally we stop the flogging. I apply ointment to both of their assholes, and then I order Nathan and Dinh to kiss, and it's some kiss. It goes on for several minutes. It's an impassioned kiss, a kiss I think they've longed for. Finally, they break the kiss and sit up on the bed...and I realize from the stains on the sheet that they've both cum as well. "Did that happen while you were kissing, or while you were being flogged?"

"During the flogging," Dinh responds.

"Me, too," Nathan says. "That was hot! I'm seriously sore right now, but that was amazing!"

He's right. It was pretty amazing, I have to agree.

-------------------------------------------

Feng and Kai have become an item. No, that's not fair. But, for some reason they're just really fond of each other. Who'd have thought that an eight year old and a five year old would like to hang out together? But, they do. They play catch in the back garden. They chase -- and are chased by -- our crazy cat. And, they like to play with Kai's dolls. Yeah...yeah...yeah.... I hear you. "Why are you giving the boy dolls? Dolls are toys for girls." Bullshit! When I was a kid, boys all got GI Joes, the action figure, because some bright marketing guy realized that boys like to play with dolls too, they like to fanaticize and play make believe. But, no self-respecting parents would give their son a Barbie or Ken doll. Me? I don't claim to be self-respecting, and I don't think that homosexuality is a choice. Having dolls isn't going to turn Kai to the ways of faggotry. Being a fag will turn him to the ways of faggotry, and if he is a fag, well, who cares? So, when he came to me one day and asked for a doll like his friend Brenda had, I took him to Toys `R Us, pointed him at the aisle with the dolls, and told him to pick out what he wanted. They still make GI Joe, as well as dolls in the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator, Spiderman, Batman, and any number of other super heroes. Kai came back with two dolls. "Amazonia Barbie" is a scantily-clad girl with black hair and almond eyes, a girl that looks as much like Kai as any doll available in this country. And he came back with a blond Ken doll. "Can I have two, Daddy?"

I nod, vaguely. "Why'd you choose these two, Kai?" I ask out of curiosity.

"Umm...the girl looks sort of like me, and...umm...the boy looks sort of like you."

Okay all you bigots out there, if Kai turns out to be a fag someday, you can point to this moment and lecture my ass about the evils of not rigidly-reinforcing gender rolls. I won't give a damn, of course, because I don't care what he turns out to be. B.F.D!

Anyway, Kai and Feng are tight. They spend a lot of time playing together, and one Friday afternoon they come to me and ask if we can go to the beach. "That's a good idea, baby. We haven't been to the beach in a while. Let's not go to Santa Cruz, though. Let's go somewhere else. Let's go to Carmel. You haven't been to Carmel. It has a really-nice beach." They both nod. They're very excited! I call Ian at Stanford to make sure he's okay with this, but he and Leslie have a party tomorrow afternoon, and Shawn is cramming for an exam. They can't go, but...please, can we take their boys with us? "Feng, Tan and Quan will love it, and it'll save us dragging them along to the party." Ian is ever resourceful.

Without the second car that I was thinking Ian & Co. would drive, this outing is going to require something bigger than the Westfalia, something that seats nine, and Budget Rent-a-Car has just what I need, and for cheap. When Jason get home, I get him to drive me to Budget to pick up the van I've rented, and drive it back to the house. Now, honestly, there was a time when the logistics for a last-minute outing like this would have been a nightmare. But, at this point it's pretty simple. Kenny, Dinh and I have dedicated our weekends to the boys, so the only one I have to check with is Jason who, it turns out, has no concerts this weekend and is free.

Carmel is about an hour and a half from us, so we pack some games for the kids to play, some picture books, some snacks, and take off right after breakfast. We'll stay the night at a Bed & Breakfast I know that's owned by a good friend, and come home Sunday afternoon.

I love Carmel. This is the town whose mayor used to be Clint Eastwood. He parlayed his Dirty Harry millions into a 20% share in the Pebble Beach golf course which is just outside of town. He was an abysmally-terrible actor, but is apparently quite a creditable golfer. Everyone does something well, I guess. The town itself has a very villagy feel to it, and a small beach at the end of the main street that extends for a mile or two. The sand there is very fine, so it's very comfortable to walk on barefoot. Yeah, I love Carmel. But, I hate the people. They're all wealthy snobs -- every man, woman and child among them. Even the shop keepers are snobs. They're all aged about seventy, are house-poor, and have 2.3 miniature poodles per household. The men talk only about their golf scores and their handicaps. The women don't bother to talk to you at all. They look down their aquiline noses at you and pass you by, so if you need directions to somewhere specific, you're shit outta luck. So, the less contact we have with the good people of Carmel, the better. But...there is this little shop downtown that I want to stop at, so I decide that we'll park downtown, check out this one shop, and then walk to the beach. It's the walk to the beach that's hysterical.

When I was growing up, my Mom used to bring storybooks home from the library. One of her favorites was Make Way for Ducklings. It was a book about a family of ducks and their children, their ducklings. They used to travel in a line. Momma Duck would be at the front, followed by seven ducklings, and then Poppa Duck would bring up the rear. That's how it feels for us. Jason leads the charge toward the beach, followed by the ducklings (and Kenny and me) and Dinh brings up the rear. To get the full comedic impact of this tableau, though, you need to know that Carmel is very, very white. You never see Asians, Hispanics, or Blacks there. So, our little parade of three Asian men, five Asian boys, and one lone Caucasian, is pretty surprising to the town folk. Some find the boys cute as we march along, and some resolutely ignore us. Who knows what assumptions they make about us? Is this a gaggle of faggots passing through of an afternoon, or is there something sinister in our presence, an invasion? Ultimately, the reactions we get from people -- good and bad -- make me nervous. So, I pick up Quan (who would much rather run along beside us) and Kenny picks up Tan. Kai is holding Feng's hand, so I'm okay letting him walk. I dunno. It's a little...weird...if you're the only minority for miles. You shouldn't have to think about this, and usually I don't, at least not in San Jose. I've been the only Caucasian in Asian restaurants any number of times, and it just doesn't register on my consciousness, I guess because I've never sensed any hostility. Here, I'm not so sure what I sense. Some of the looks we get make me wonder if we're still in California, or if we somehow crossed the border into Mississippi somewhere along the line.

We finally get to the beach, and find a place to lay out our blanket. We set the boys on the blanket, and Jason orders them to "Sit!" much as he would if he were commanding a dog. They all look up at him expectantly. "It's okay to go in the water, but if the water is higher than your ankles, you need to get out of the water. Where's your ankle, Quan?" Quan doesn't know, but Tan does, and touches Quan's ankle. "Right. The water can't go any higher than that. Also, if Quan wants to go in the water at all, I want one of you," looking at Kevin and Kai, "holding his hand, because he has no idea what I'm talking about right now, and if the water gets high, he's as likely to run into it as out of it. Finally, make sure Quan doesn't pick stuff up off the beach and put it in his mouth." They all nod, and run off to romp.

Jason is big on responsibility, on teaching the boys to be responsible, so assigning Kev and Kai responsibility for Quan surprises none of us. Don't get me wrong, we're all going to be watching the kids very carefully to make sure they're okay, but having Kai and Kevin also keep their eyes open can only help keep them all safe. And the boys do a very good job with Quan. They hold his hand pretty much the entire time they're anywhere near the water. They take their responsibilities seriously. But we still have to intervene. Tan insists on running into the waves until the water is up to his waist. Kenny is the one to rescue him...twice. The first time Kenny lectures him on the danger of drowning. The second time, Kenny gives him a time-out. He makes him sit on the blanket with us for fifteen minutes watching the others boys frolic. Tan cries piteously, and begs Kenny to let him go play with his brothers, but Kenny takes the hard line, simply shaking his head. Finally, after fifteen minutes, Kenny reaches over and hugs Tan. "How deep can you be in the water, baby?"

"My ankwes," Tan says, touching his ankle.

"Right. If I see you any deeper than that, you'll be back here with us for half an hour. Understand?"

Tan nods, and then runs off to play, and to his credit he's very careful about how deep he goes. Message received.

After two and a half hours of romping, we gather the kids together for the picnic lunch we brought with us from San Jose. Dinh picked up Vietnamese sandwiches from Huong Lan, the best Vietnamese deli in San Jose. A Vietnamese sandwich is made on a sweet French roll, and contains cilantro, pickled carrots, pickled daikon radish, slices of fresh jalapeno peppers, and some kind of meat. Jason likes Chicken and Paté, and Kenny and Dinh like Sardine. The boys and I like Xiu Mai, which is basically a soft meatball. It remains to be seen what Tan and Feng like. Dinh bought four additional sandwiches so they can try all of them to see which ones they like best. Watching Ian's kids eat these things is just hysterical. Dinh didn't buy a sandwich for Quan. He's a little too young for these. Instead he got him a cup of White-Bean and Rice pudding mixed with coconut milk, and he loves it. With the first spoonful, we know it's a hit. "Mmmmmm," says Quan, and waits anxiously for me to feed him the next spoonful. For Feng and Tan, we cut the sandwiches into bite-sized pieces so they're easier to eat. Feng quickly decides that he likes the Xiu Mai, and Tan seems to like the Chicken, and then it happens. Feng gets a bite that has one of the pieces of sliced jalapeno. His eyes open really, really wide, and I wonder what he's going to do with this mouthful. Will he spit it out, or will he swallow it? I watch him closely, and what he does is open his mouth and pant, then he chews some more, then he pants again. Finally he swallows. "You okay, Feng?"

"Vewy hot," he says, taking a slug of apple juice.

"Too hot?"

He shakes his head. "No. It good."

It takes us about half an hour to suck down these sandwiches, after which it's nap time for Ian's kids. We get them laid out on the blanket and cover them with a very light sheet. The idea is to keep the sun off of them as much as we can. I volunteer to stay with the munchkins while they sleep, while Dinh, Kenny, Jason, and the boys walk down to the other end of the beach. This is a very beautiful place, with some breathtaking vistas. The weather is perfect. It's a good day for a walk. And walk they do, they walk until they're completely beyond my range of vision. I concentrate on my book.

The next time I look up, I see the five of them ambling back toward me. Looking at my watch, I realize they've been gone for an hour and a quarter. Just as they reach me, Ian's kids begin to rustle. "Where'd you go?" I ask my guys.

"We found some shoals down at the other end of the beach," Kenny says. "We saw some starfish, some sea urchins, and some tiny little crabs. We saw all kinds of little sea animals. We just explored." I nod.

Once Ian's kids wake up, they want to go romp some more. "You know the rules, right?" Jason admonishes. "No water above your ankles." The kids all nod, and take off, running, jumping, and tickling each other. Quan pads off after his brothers, but Tan trips in the sand, and poor Quan ends up tripping over him. He lands to one side of Tan, with his face in the sand. He starts to cry. Tan is just amazing. He lifts him up, brushes the sand off of his face and chest, and begins whispering to him, comforting him. Then he hugs him, and Quan stops crying. That's brotherly love well beyond the capabilities of most four year olds.

We let them play for another hour or so, and then gather them up and head back toward town, toward the B&B where I've arranged for us to stay. It's been a really-fun day, and the next day is even better. For whatever reason, the beach is full of dogs the next morning, and the boys end up playing Frisbee with a local guy and his mutt. You have not seen anything until you've see Quan and Tan try to throw a Frisbee. It's hysterical. They have absolutely no aim, and in Quan's case, he really can't propel the Frisbee any further than maybe two or three feet. But, it doesn't matter because wherever the Frisbee goes, the dog fetches it and takes it to someone. He wants to play, and will do whatever it takes to keep the game going. After a couple hours of Frisbee, tag, and wading along the shore, we gather up the kids and head back to where we parked the van yesterday for the trip home. This has been a blast, but when we finally get to the van, Tan and Quan are both sound asleep, being carried by Kenny and me, and Feng is so sleepy he can barely walk. Our boys, too, are spent. We line them all up on the back bench seat, and they all fall sound asleep in the matter of ten minutes. It's fun to watch kids sleep. Given another warm body nearby, they'll snuggle up to it, so before long the kids are all cuddled up together, and they don't wake up until we pull into our driveway. Perfect!

After dinner, after we get the boys tucked up, we head off to our bedroom to do the one thing we weren't able to do in the tight quarters at the B&B last night. I've been longing to fuck my little Jason, and Kenny has decided that he wants to top tonight and fuck Dinh. So, that's where we start. Two and a half hours later, though, I find that I've fucked all three of my guys, and we're all exhausted. The only thing that makes sense is sleep. That isn't a reasoned conclusion. None of us says, "It's time to sleep, now." We simply pass out, one by one. And, like the kids in the van on the way home, I find the next morning that we're all cuddled up together. Why should we be different?

Published first at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nemo-stories/