My Perv

Chapter 3: "Naked T"

About a year and a half after the attempt to burn little Candy at the stake at 0camp (see "Co-op Candy") the era of "Naked T" began.

I was about 11 and my cousin Arthur was 13. Arthur was scrappy and street smart; I was passive and naïve. Arthur was sexually precocious; I was just starting to feel my hormones flow. Arthur was already about 6 feet tall; he towered over me. Because he was my big cousin, I was always flattered when Arthur paid attention to me--even if the attention was in the form of humiliation.

For example, Arthur liked to wrestle me down and give me Pink Bellies, often in the presence of his sister, my cousin Meg, who was a couple of months older than I but in the same grade I was in, and my cousin Nelly, who was exactly my age. Arthur and Meg's family lived right next door to Nelly's family, about three or four miles from my family in Flushing. All our families would gather regularly (Arthur and Meg's father was my father's brother, and Nelly's mother was my father's kid sister.) The parents would gather in the living room of one or the other house, and the kids would run off into their private world. When we were hosts that private world was often either the attic or the cellar.

The attic was a vast, open space that had never been finished--just rough-hewn boards on the floors, raw insulation between the ceiling studs and many 2x4 or 4x4 cross-braces above, that some day my father might get around to enclosing to create a drop ceiling (he never did.) In the attic we would play with my train set or construct forts, sometimes jails. We might play tag, with the losers thrown into the jail made of boards or even old blankets. The play was imaginative, and pure fantasy--nobody was hurt or held against her/his will.

The basement was quite a different environment. It was always damp, Flushing being on Long Island and water never being far below the surface of the ground. It was moldy, dank, creepy, like the torture chambers I was beginning to read about in gothic literature. Everything stored in the basement rotted or rusted. Like the attic, the basement had never been finished. Instead my father, quite the handyman, had driven hundreds of nails into the exposed floor joists from the first floor above. From the nails hung tools, ropes, chains, electric extension cords--my father saved everything and it all ended up hanging in the basement or boxed in the attic. Also in the basement were several parallel clothes lines stretching from right near the furnace on the edge to one of the steel and concrete pillars in the middle of this broad space. The pillars supported the house. Before long they would be used to restrain me.

I really liked my girl cousins, who were my age, smart, sweet and cute--both dark. Meg was wiry, Nelly was soft and curvy. Soon I would develop a crush on them both. However, Arthur was much more my playmate. Meg might take a violin lesson after school; Nelly was a Girl Scout; Arthur would hop on his bike and ride to my house, or vice-versa. My house was preferred because both my parents worked, so the place was empty every afternoon. Arthur's mom was a housewife, so Arthur rarely got any privacy at home. The play we got into required privacy.

I think I suggested it, but I could be wrong. The game evolved over time, but not long after we started it we began calling it "Naked T," for 'naked torture'. Most often it began with a boxing match in the attic. I had been given two pairs of boxing gloves for Christmas; maybe they came from Arthur or his family. We kept the gloves hanging from a nail in the attic. We would climb those steep stairs, which I began to think of after a while as my 'last mile'. Initially we would both take off our shirts. After a few sessions Arthur would keep his shirt on and only mine would come off. Then we decided on a 'progressive' format in which the results from previous boxing matches would carry over to the current match, with the past loser starting at a greater disadvantage this time. Eventually this would mean Arthur would start fully dressed while I would start fully naked--because I always lost.

Basically, the game was a strip boxing match, the winner of which got to punish the loser in any way he saw fit. The match would be several rounds and would last until the loser was naked--each lost round meant another lost article of clothing. But as I said, it didn't take long in the history of 'Naked T' before I would always be naked. Each time I would agree to the conditions and rules, maintaining the pretense that this time I would whip Arthur and win back my dignity and my clothes. But in reality I probably could have won at any time. I was big and strong, shorter and younger but heavier than Arthur. The think is, I didn't want to win. I loved being naked while my older cousin was fully dressed. I love being pummeled by him until couldn't take it and would throw myself to the ground. This would be a 'knockdown', and I would have to pay the consequences.

Humiliated, I would kneel at his command or rise to my feet. Arthur would tie my hands behind me if he was going to transport me to another part of my big, empty house. Or he would make me stretch and spread and would tie my arms above my head and wide to the overhead beams. Then he would tie my legs spread and held by ropes fastened to the banister and a side joist.

The first time Arthur tied me like this he put the boxing gloves back on and began to 'work me over', as he said. This was a term from some crime movie he liked, in which the thugs beat up the hero. I liked this term too; to this day I get aroused when I think about myself being 'worked over'--bound and helpless while someone systematically beats me. Arthur had me tightly tied. Then he began punching me in the stomach and chest, 'working me over' with increasing intensity. Eventually I would cry for mercy and Arthur would move around behind me, punching my back and shoulders and buttocks. Within a few minutes I would be red from the beating front and back and Arthur would offer me a choice of five more minutes as a human punching bag or 'three lashes with a wet noodle', by which he meant his belt. Usually I would take the wet noodle, though often by this time I was sobbing and begging for mercy--which he never gave. Arthur would strip off his belt, step back behind me or step around in front of me, and lay on the punishment, usually leaving me with half inch-wide abrasions that took several days to fade. Fortunately my public school didn't have a gym or locker rooms so none of my teachers or classmates ever saw me naked and whipped. Nor, by that time, did my mother or father see me naked. I reserved my naked body with its secrets of heroic martyrdom for my cousin Arthur. But some secrets are difficult to keep.