Stripped Down (17 page)

And then a blinding strike of pain shoots across my ass. Aunt Sissie! But she's never here for this part—she never watches me wank! I turn just enough to see she has a ruler in her hand—a long, slender metal ruler. And its every blow is pure, raw sting, a pain so strong I choke on the sudden lump that's leapt into my throat.

“You liked that earlier paddling too much,” she tells me. “It can't be corrective if you haven't suffered.”

I abandon my clit and place both hands against the wall to brace myself.

“Did I tell you to stop masturbating?” she yells at me.

“No ma'am,” I manage to mutter.

I touch myself and resume my duty. Proper posture becomes a distant memory as I slouch forward, weakened from the ruler's bite. I'm rendered dull by Aunt Sissie's severity, and that cruel, vicious implement; as it sounds against my ass, tears well in my eyes.

Pleasure rising from within, yet pain blazing from without confuses me, and I cannot focus. Though I yelp at each biting sting, though I'm slick and swollen, I discover a new threshold: I can't come. Ass aflame, cunt engorged, I rub my clit harder and faster. I grow desperate for orgasm, but I'm choking on pain that's stronger than I can bear.

I try, I try, I try…and I can't. I can't complete Aunt Sissie's final task and, finally, I admit defeat. I whimper, I sputter, I squeeze the words from my throat: “I can't come.”

Abruptly, the ruler stops its assault. Except for my soft cry of regret, all is quiet.

I do not move until she tells me to.

“Get your clothes. We're done.”

Tears clouding my vision, I fumble toward my clothes. I'm heartbroken that I couldn't do as commanded, that she's going to send me home, swollen, wet, and wanting. Failure shames me.

But just as I'm ready to step into my pants, Aunt Sissie pulls my boxers down one last time and inspects my ass. “Such marks! Won't your friends down at the gym love this! Be sure you don't hide it from them.”

I freeze, stunned by what she's voiced. She knows this? How? Isabel! Isabel told her this! She took my most sacred routine and made it illicit. She turned it into biting gossip for Aunt Sissie to throw in my face. Conspirators, they are conspirators!

I leave, compromised and humiliated beyond compare. Just as the paddle didn't invoke the right contrition, masturbating in the “boys' corner” didn't impart the right humiliation. Neither could do its job because I enjoyed it too much. And so, the ruler and the words. Together, they shamed me. Thoroughly.

That's what I realize as my ass burns against the seat of the crosstown bus. That's what stays with me as my every step aches when I walk home from the bus stop. And when I reach our abode, I just stand there on the sidewalk, unable to move forward, void of sass and saturated with defeated.

The knowledge that Isabel gossips to my auntie makes me want to cry, and I wonder if it will prove more humiliating than I can bear. I wonder if, thus broken, I will ever see my auntie again?

Finally I move, and as I walk up the steps and into Isabel's warm arms, I pray my human foibles have not fled me. I pray my shortcomings will continue to give me reason to return to my dear Aunt Sissie. Because I want her touch. Because sometimes, only it will do.

DETENTION

Jai T.

 

 

 

 

The room reeks of used pussy. The kind of stench that emanates from a woman's cunt in the heat of June. Pungent and musty. She's worn and deflated. I've left her with only my favorite tie and those menacing heels. It's the last day of class and I've waited incessantly since the first time I saw her swagger into the room. To smell her pussy. To ingest the smoke of this cigarette. Deep, greedy inhales. Slow, suspended exhales. Imitating the way my clenched fist entered and emptied her.

She's Dr. Lynn Stone, PhD. Through years of schooling, she's mastered the study of women. Through years of waking up in strangers' beds, so have I. Philosophical Perspectives on Sex, Gender, and Love every Monday and Thursday night from 7:15 to 9:30.
She's either sitting on her desk, legs crossed and covered in black leather boots that disappear into black hip-hugging skirts or pacing around the classroom with inviting heels from the blackboard to the door, up and down the mob of wide-eyed students eagerly waving their hands with the answer, begging to impress her. My eyes are permanently fixed on her, except when she scans the swarm of us. Then I'm the androgynous boi in the back of the room, slouching down in my seat, sketching explicit thoughts of her sitting on her desk, legs uncrossed and uncovered, wearing only skin and the residue of my mouth. I know all of the answers. I could tell her everything she wants to hear but I just sit there instead, detached and isolated, pining for the fantasy.

She's the kind of teacher you think about after class, wondering what she does with herself when she's not reading a highlighted passage from an essay or discussing feminist theory. I don't think I was the first of Dr. Stone's students to get off thinking about her naked body in some compromising position with myself at the helm, and I doubt I'll be the last. Don't get me wrong, Dr. Stone was not your typical girl next door teacher turned porn star with one toss of her glasses and a sway of newly untamed hair. She's brilliant, self-assured and great at what she does. She's classy. A woman. A woman who, in my mind, however, I had no problem turning into a dirty, filthy whore insistent on being fucked. In class, she was a self-identified feminist with an arsenal of fashion magazines in her bag and a history of prom queen titles and old pom-poms from her cheerleading days—all stories that surfaced during class discussions on sex, gender, and love. Stories that always included ex-boyfriends, though that never dissuaded me. Him or her never mattered—lately it
was just me and Ms. Stone. Dr. Stone. The woman crowded my mind.

It's Thursday night. I'm walking to class. I'm sweating. The air still hangs heavy at quarter past seven in the summertime. It gets trapped between the buildings piled on top of one another, brick against brick. I'm intentionally running late. I like to make an entrance. Collar up. Make her notice. When I get there and find a seat it's obvious that the air conditioner is broken. It's sweltering but I've decided I don't mind. Now, the only thing humming lies neglected between my legs. My head is teeming with thoughts of fucking her. Fisting her and sucking on her perfect, pierced nipples; gnawing on her sore, reddened clit; masticating her buzzing flesh. These are the thoughts reeling between my ears as I slowly drift back to what sounds like a conversation on masculinity. I inadvertently catch her eye, immediately sit up in my seat, open my book to the page we're apparently reading from, loosen my stifling tie and divert my eyes to my desk.

I've tolerated most of the semester this way. Not being able to get her out of my head long enough to get into the work, I've been managing to fail the class and have yet to turn in a paper, worried that if I can even sit still long enough to think about something other than that body she occupies and turn something in, she'll still be able to read right between my lines, and through them to my agenda where sex separates every letter and inhabits the spaces between my deliberate SAT words. I need to do things to her and be things to her that the authors of the essays we're reading completely and utterly condemn.

It's the last day of Sex, Gender, and Love. I had to drag myself back here, fooling myself into believing that if I didn't
show, Dr. Stone would have to remain there in room 601 until I decided to pull myself together and make my final appearance. How else would I get my final back? She would have to wait for me. Standing alone in a perfect cliché, wearing painfully high heels, fishnets, and a blouse that falls accidentally off of her shoulder allowing the strap of her black bra to peek out while she impatiently watches the clock tick seconds away, vehemently inking papers in the same cherry red as the panties she has on to pass the excruciating minutes without me. However, as I make my way back to reality and inside room 601, feeling the gaze of an entire classroom that has just been rudely interrupted by some slacker who thinks it's okay to waltz in twenty minutes late, I realize Dr. Stone will wait for no one—not even her most adoring schoolboi.

Dr. Stone sits at her desk with a pile of papers in her hands, our finals—mine cleverly entitled “Ladies and Gentlemen: The Semantics of Dismantling Gender.” I hope she realizes that I put my heart and soul into those pages. Studying every assignment she had given out from the first day of class in one caffeine-addicted sleepless night, I set out to put my most uncompromising thoughts to paper in eleven insomniac induced hours. I wanted her to think back on the past three months and come to the undeniable conclusion that I, the slacker who always waltzed in late and hid behind my desk, had actually been teacher's secret pet all along.

Dr. Stone calls us up to her desk one by one and I begin to realize that I'm a stranger to everyone in this class, having used my senses only to detect her alone. One after another, they approach her desk, glance at the letter adorning their papers, smile to let Dr. Stone know that this was by far the best class of their academic careers, and proceed to the door,
leaving it all behind. I sit at my desk in total disbelief at how easy they make it all seem, and impatiently wait my turn. The room empties slowly, leaving only the two of us and a sea of vacant desks at last. Seconds pass, then minutes. I can see my name on the edge of her lips and mechanically begin to approach her. “Dr. Stone,” I say finding my voice somewhere deep inside of my body, looking down at her behind the desk.