by Gore Vidal
“Good,” I said, putting the foot down. “You’re learning control. Ticklishness is a sign of sexual fear, did you know that?”
A faint “no” from the head of the table. “That’s why I was so surprised at the way you reacted when I touched your foot. From what you said at the Cock and Bull I couldn’t imagine you ever being tense with a woman.”
“I guess you sort of took me by surprise,” was the best that he could think to say. In his present position, he obviously did not want to be reminded of his usual cockiness.
“I’m sorry,” I said, deftly sliding his trousers down to his knees.
As I had anticipated, he gave a slight gasp but made no move other than to grip with both hands the sides of the trousers in an effort to keep at least his front decently covered.
On the table before me, like some cannibal banquet, the famous buttocks curved beneath frayed Jockey shorts. Below the elastic, two round holes, like eyes, revealed fair skin. Teasingly, I put my finger in one of the holes. He winced at the touch. “Doesn’t Mary-Ann ever mend your clothes?”
“She . . . can’t . . . sew . . .” He sounded as if he had been running hard, and could not get his breath. But at least he had steeled himself for my next move.
The total unveiling of the buttocks was accomplished in an absolute, almost religious, silence. They were glorious. Under the direct overhead light, I was able to appreciate physical details that I had missed in the office. A tiny dark mole on one cheek. An angry red pimple just inside the crack where a hair had grown in upon itself. The iridescent quality of the skin which was covered with the most delicate pale peach fuzz, visible only in a strong light and glittering now with new sweat. I could smell his fear. It was intoxicating.
I also noted that although I had pulled the Jockey shorts down to the thighs in the back, he had craftily contrived to hold them up in front, and so his honor, he believed, was only half lost.
Intimately I passed my hand over the hard buttocks, firmly locked to all intruders, and remarked, according to plan, “You aren’t feverish, are you?”
“No . . . I’m O.K . . .” The voice was barely audible. With my free hand I felt his brow; it was bathed in perspiration.
“You are hot. We’d better take your temperature. Besides, they want it for the chart.”
As I went over to the surgical table and prepared the thermometer, he watched me dully, like a trapped animal. Then I returned to my quarry and, putting one hand on each cheek at the exact point where buttock joins thigh, I said, “Relax now.”
He raised up on his arms and looked around at me, eyes suddenly bright with alarm. “What?”
“I’ve got to take your temperature, Rusty.”
“But . . . there?” His voice broke like a teenage boy’s.
“Of course. Now then . . .”
“But why can’t you use the other kind, you know, in the mouth . . .” With the back of my left hand, I struck him hard across the bottom. He gasped, pulled back.
“There is more where that came from,” I said coldly, noting with pleasure a certain darkening of skin where the blood had been brought to the surface by the force of my blow.
“Yes, ma’am.” Defeated, the head returned to its position on the table and once again I put my hands on those firm cheeks.
“Now,” I said, “relax the muscle.” I could feel beneath my fingers the muscles slowly, reluctantly go slack.
I confess I was now trembling with excitement. Gently, carefully I pushed the cheeks apart until everything—secret sphincter and all—was revealed.
Normally at moments of great victory, there is a sense of letdown. But not in this case. For one thing I had half feared to find him not clean—unlike so many anal erotics I am not at all attracted by fecal matter, quite the reverse in fact. Yet had he not been tidy, his humiliation would have been total. So I was torn between conflicting desires. As it turned out, his shower had been thorough. The sphincter resembled a tiny pale pink tea rose, or perhaps a kitten’s nose and mouth. From its circumference, like the rays of a sunburst, bronze hairs reflected the overhead light. The only disappointment was that he had craftily managed to arrange his scrotum so that it was entirely out of view, only a thick tuft of hair at the juncture of the groin indicating the direction in which it could be found. But sufficient to the moment are the revelations thereof.
I squeezed some lubricant from a tube onto my index finger and then, delicately, touched the never-used entrance. A tremor went through his whole body—the term “fleshquake” occurred to me: so Atlantis must have shuddered before the fall! Carefully, daintily, I applied the lubricant to the silky puckered surface. He held himself quite rigid, again not breathing.
Then I grew bolder. I inserted my finger into the tight hot place as far as it would go. I must have touched the prostate for he suddenly groaned, but said nothing. Then, either deliberately or through uncontrollable reflex, he brought the full force of his youthful muscularity to bear on the sphincter muscle and for a moment it felt as though my finger might be nipped off.
With my free hand, I slapped his right buttock smartly. “Relax!” I commanded. He mumbled something I could not hear and the sphincter again loosened. I then removed my finger and inserted the thermometer, after first teasing the virginal orifice with delicate probes that made him squirm. Once the thermometer was in, it was completely lost to sight for his buttocks are deep and since the legs were only slightly spread, his cheeks promptly came together when I let them go.
I then took up the chart and read off a list of childhood diseases. Chicken pox, measles, whooping cough and he whispered “yes” or “no” or “I don’t remember” in response to the catechism. When I was finished, I said, “All in all, a healthy young boy.” My cold cheery manner was calculated to increase his alarm; obviously it did for not once would he look at me, preferring to stare at the wall just opposite, chin pushed hard against the table.
“Now let’s see what’s cooking.” I pushed open the cheeks and slowly removed the thermometer. He was normal of course but I saw fit to lie: “Just as I thought, you do have a touch of fever. Well, we’ll soon take care of that. Now roll over on your back.”
He did as he was told, swiftly pulling up trousers and shorts in front; nevertheless, the line of his belt was two inches below the navel and could not, in his present position, be pulled higher. As a result, the timberline of pubic hair was briefly revealed, briefly because he promptly placed both hands over himself in an attempt to hide the quarry from the hunter’s approach.
On his back, bare feet pointed and chest streaked with sweat, he seemed smaller than in fact he was, already more boy than man, despite the mature muscularity of the torso. The process of diminishing was well begun. He looked up at me, apprehensively. “Is there much more I got to do?”
“We must both follow the chart.” I was enigmatic as I picked up a wooden tongue depressor. “Open your mouth.” He obeyed. I pressed down the pink tongue until he gagged, noting, as I did, the whiteness of the teeth and the abnormal salivation that fear sometimes creates. “You take good care of your teeth.” I gave him the sort of grudging compliment the stern nurse gives a child. “Your body, too. I was happily surprised to find that you were clean in places most boys your age neglect.” Carefully I was reducing his status from man to boy to child to—ah, the triumph! He responded numbly to the progression, blinking with embarrassment.
“Now put your hands behind your head.” Slowly he obeyed, aware that I could now see at least a quarter of an inch of dark pubic hair, surprisingly thick and in texture coarser than the fine hairs on the rest of his body. A pulse just above the navel beat rapidly, causing the entire stomach to quiver like some frightened small beast.
I let my hand rest lightly on his navel. Crisp hairs tickled my palm as I in turn tickled them. I could feel the pounding of the blood in his arteries. The sense of power was overwhelming. I felt as if, in some way, it was I who controlled the coursing of the blood in his veins a
nd that it was at my command that the heart beat at all. I felt that I could do anything.
“You seem nervous, Rusty.” I challenged him.
He swallowed hard. “No . . . no, Miss Myra. No, I’m not really. It’s just that it’s kind of hot in here . . .”
“And you’re not enjoying your examination.”
“Well, it’s kind of strange, you know . . .” His voice trailed off nervously.
“What’s kind of strange?”
“Well, you know . . . I mean having a girl . . . you know, a lady, like you, do all this to a guy.”
“Haven’t you ever been examined by a nurse?”
“Never!” This reversion to the old masculine Rusty was promptly quelled by the sudden tug I gave to his Jockey shorts; the full bush was now visible, though nothing else for the shorts were stopped at the crucial juncture by the weight of his body.
With great thoroughness, I felt the different sections of his belly, taking pleasure in the firmness of muscles, hard rubber beneath silk. I lingered for quite some time over the pubic area, taking the powerful pulse of each of the two arteries that meet at the groin. I could not, however, make out even the base of his penis.
I then took an instrument which resembled sugar tongs, used to test the thickness of the skin’s subcutaneous layer. With frightened eyes, he watched as I picked away at the skin of his belly, pulling the skin as high as I could and then releasing it with a snap. “Nicely resilient,” I said, pinching hard as I could a fold of his belly and causing him to cry out plaintively, “Hey, that hurts!” The return to childhood was well underway.
“Stop being such a baby!” Delicately I took one of his nipples in the tongs. He shrank from me, but the tongs pursued. I was careful, however, not to hurt him.
With feather touch, I teased the tiny inverted nipple, making him writhe at the tickling pleasure it gave him. Then, suddenly, the nipple was erect. I then teased the other nipple, manipulating the golden aureole of hairs until it, too, ceased to be concave. A glassy look came into his eyes; for the first time an erogenous zone had been explored and exploited (I do not count the probing of his sphincter which, in the context of my investigation, did not arouse him, rather the reverse). I looked at the front of his trousers to see if there was any sudden swelling but I could detect nothing.
“You had better slip off those trousers,” I said. “They’re getting badly creased, the way you’re sweating.”
“Oh, that’s O.K.” His voice cracked again.
“Hurry up! We haven’t got all night.” Grimly he sat up and pulled his trousers down over his knees. I pulled them over his feet and carefully hung them on a chair.
When I turned back to my victim, I was surprised to find him sitting up on the table, poised for flight. He had trickily used the turning of my back to restore his shorts to their normal position. Sitting as he was, bare legs dangling over the table, I could see nothing of the crotch, concealed by muscular thighs pressed close together while both hands rested protectively in his lap. He was not going to surrender the last bastion without a struggle.
“I didn’t tell you to sit up, did I?” I was cold.
“But I thought you were through with me here.” The timbre of the voice had become light; he sounded like a pubescent boy trying to escape punishment.
“You’re not finished until I say you are. All right. Stand up. Over here. In front of me.”
He got to his feet and approached to within a foot of me. There he stood, awkwardly, hands crossed in front of him, torso glittering with sweat, legs as well proportioned as the rest of him, though somewhat overdeveloped in the thighs, no doubt the result of playing football. He was so close to me that I could feel the heat of his flesh and smell the healthy earthlike aroma the young male body exudes.
“Rest your arms at your sides and at least try to stand straight.” He obeyed. The target was now directly in front of me, at my eye’s level. As I stared straight at the hidden area, he clenched his fists nervously, and shifted from foot to foot. The frayed jockey shorts were unfortunately too loose to reveal more than a large rounded area, without clear definition; they were, however, splotched with fresh urine.
“Look! You wet yourself!” I pinched the damp cloth, careful to touch nothing beneath.
He gave a start. “I guess I did. I was in a hurry.”
“Boys are so careless about those things.” We had gone from bowel-training to bed-wetting: such was progress! I looked at the examination card. “Oh yes! Have you ever had a venereal disease?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Never!”
“I hope you’re telling me the truth.” I was ominous as I wrote “no” on the chart. “We have ways of finding out, you know.”
“Honest I never have. I always been careful . . . always.”
“Always? Just exactly when did you begin with girls?”
“When?” He looked at me dumbly.
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen, I guess. I don’t remember.”
“Was she older than you?”
He nodded. “In high school. She was a Protestant,” he added wildly.
“Did she make the advances?”
“Yes. Kind of. She’d show me hers if I showed her mine. You know, kid stuff.”
“And you liked what you saw?”
“Oh, yes.” A smile flickered for an instant across the frightened face.
“Did she like what she saw?”
The smile went, as he was reminded of his situation. “Well, there was no complaints.”
“Would you say that you were well developed for your age?”
“I guess so. I don’t know.”
“Did you masturbate often?”
The face went red. “Well . . . maybe some. I guess all guys do.”
“What about now?”
“Now? Oh, no. Why should I?”
“You mean Mary-Ann is quite enough to satisfy you?”
“Yes. And I don’t cheat on her.”
“How often do you come with her in a night?”
He gulped. “That’s awful personal . . .”
I took the measuring stick and with a great cracking sound struck his right thigh. He yelled. Fear and reproach in his face, as he rubbed the hurt skin.
“There’s more where that came from if you don’t answer my questions.”
He accepted defeat. “I guess I can go four or five times but mostly we just go a couple times because, you see, we have to get up so early . . .”
“Then you are quite a stud, as they say out here.”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .” He gestured helplessly.
“Would you say that your penis was larger than most boys’ your age or smaller?”
He began to tremble, aware of the prey I was stalking. “Christ, I don’t know. I mean how could I know?”
“You see the other boys in the shower, and you were an athlete, after all.”
“I guess I didn’t look . . .”
“But surely you must occasionally have taken a peep.” I looked straight at the worn cotton which hid the subject of my inquiry. Both of his hands twitched, as though he wanted to protect himself.
“I guess I’m average. I never thought about it. honest.” This of course was a lie since in every known society the adolescent male spends a great deal of time worriedly comparing himself with other males.
“You’re unusually modest.” I was dry. “Now I am supposed to check you for hernia. So if you’ll just pull down those shorts . . .”
“But I don’t have hernia,” he gabbled. “I was all checked out by this prison doctor in Mexico, and he said I was just fine in that department.”
“But it does no harm to double-check. So if you’ll slip them down . . .”
“Honest, I’m O.K.” He was sweating heavily.
“Rusty, I get the impression that for some mysterious reason you don’t want me to examine your genitals. Exactly what mischief are you trying to hide from me?”
“Nothi
ng, honest! I got nothing to hide . . .”
“Then why are you so afraid to let me examine you?”
“Because—well, you’re a woman and I’m a man . . .”
“A boy, technically . . .”
“A boy, O.K., and, well, it’s just wrong.”
“Then you’re shy.”
“Sure, I’m shy about that, in front of a lady.”
“But surely you aren’t shy with all those girls you’ve—what’s that word of yours?–‘boffed’?”
“But that’s different, when you’re both making love, that’s O.K.”
“Baffling,” I said. I frowned as though trying to find some way out of our dilemma. “Naturally, I want to respect your modesty. At the same time I must complete the examination.” I paused; then I gave the appearance of having reached a decision. “All right. You won’t have to remove your shorts . . .”
He gave a sigh of relief . . . too soon.
“However, I shall have to insert my hand inside the shorts and press each testicle as required by the chart.”
“Oh.” Dismay and defeat.
“I think you’ll agree that’s a statesmanlike compromise.” On that bright note, I slid my left hand up the inside of his left thigh. He wriggled involuntarily as I forced my fingers past the leg opening of the shorts. The scrotum’s heat was far greater than that of the thigh, I noticed, and the hairs were soaked with sweat.
Carefully I took his left testicle in my hand. It was unusually large and firm to the touch, though somewhat loose in the sac, no doubt due to his overheated condition. Delicately I fingered the beloved enemy, at last in my power. Then I looked up and saw that Rusty’s eyes were screwed shut, as though anticipating pain. I gave it to him. I maneuvered the testicle back and forth until I had found the hole from which, in boyhood, it had so hopefully descended. I shoved it back up into the hole. He groaned. Then he gagged as I held it in place. With the gagging, I could feel the entire scrotum contract like a terrified beast, seeking escape. When he gagged again and seemed on the verge of actually being sick, I let the testicle fall back into its normal place and took my hand away.