textfiles/sex/EROTICA/A/autumn.txt

"Autumn Leaves" (MF/m)

Every time I hear the melodious strains of "Autumn Leaves," I
think not of romance nor of Roger Williams -- pianist or Puritan.
I think back to the last year of those fabulous Fifties, the last
year we owned a house.

It was a time when few people knew what the word ecology meant,
and when pollution was part of a dictionary definition for
masturbation. Thus, childhood memories of autumn focus on the
now-forbidden burning of leaves. 

In our part of the country, autumn came late. In fact, one could
reliably predict the hottest day of the year would fall on the
moveable Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,
when both men and women had to dress up and sit in synagogue all
day without having eaten since sundown the night before.

Naturally, our God's sense of humor -- or maybe it was vengeance
-- would send the temperatures into the 90s for one lone day in
late September or early October. And it was a boon to the
horseradish industry, for jars were kept on hand in the temples
to revive heat-prostrated worshipers.

This particular year, 1959, Yom Kippur passed uneventfully, the
last Caribbean storm -- Hurricane Golda -- was safely off Nova
Scotia roiling the lox, and I was lost in the ozone again, an 11-
year-old with a little more fascination with fire than most kids
my age.

I had learned from an observant Jew how to light a cigarette on
Sabbath by "accidentally" tilting a magnifying glass toward the
sun and aligning the beam of light with the tip of tobacco; I had
pulled a street corner fire alarm that no one but the Lord
Almighty knows about to this day, and I just plain enjoyed
lighting matches.

While idling on a vacant asphalt lot one afternoon at dusk, I
found myself sweeping swirling leaves with the side of my Keds
toward a corner where the abandoned liquor store met a chain link
fence. With my thoughts elsewhere, I was making a small mountain
of deciduous amber and auburn, umber and orange, crimson and
clover.

I didn't know what possessed me, but I fished out a book of
matches my friend Lenny had shoved in my pocket, along with a
crumpled pack of Luckies, when his father had approached the knot
of us kids with a yardstick at his side.

I suppose I didn't think that one match could do any damage, but
what could I know then? I was only 11. I read the matchbook
carefully, wondering how much money I could make as a commercial
artist, and paid mind to the warning, "Close Cover Before
Striking." (I would wish later mordantly that mom would have
closed door before striking, but I get ahead of myself.)

The first match fizzled before it even hit the pile of leaves.
But the second caught a light breeze and flared at the edge of a
brown paper bag that had mixed into the pile. The bag had a
partially full bottle of Thunderbird in it and whoosh! Up went
the leaf pile and down the street I ran, not even lurking to see
the shiny new fire engine the town had just bought.

I don't remember what we had for dinner that night (probably tuna
casserole because it was Wednesday), because I was worried sick,
both about the damage I might have caused and the fear of getting
caught. To this day, I remain basically decent  not because of my
religious upbringing or my regard for my fellow man but for fear
of getting caught. As I have told some friends in this
neighborhood, I had a chance once to liberate a formal dinner
fork from Buckingham Palace but thought the consequences of
magnetometer justice might be too severe. 

Now, my parents were fairly typical in one way -- they imposed
guilt on their children the way AME Zion preachers across town
would invoke the mighty stream of righteousness. But they were
atypical because they rarely hit -- beyond a slap here and there,
mostly there.

This night would be different from all other nights, though. When
the phone rang, just as Tinkerbelle was opening the Walt Disney
Show on ABC, I suspected I was about to take a trip to
Adventureland. It was a short trip, actually, to the basement rec
room. Although I liked to play down there, I never walked down
those stairs -- the ones with the brown plastic runners --
without a millisecond of trepidation. For behind the door, on the
knob, hung a buckle-less leather belt. The dreaded strap. I
couldn't recall it being used, but its presence was invoked in
our house more often than the Holy Ghost in the semi-detached
home of our neighbors, the Keegans.

I stomped down the stairs insolently with mom and dad following
me. Then I heard it. The strap whisked off the knob and its
tongue flicked back against the soft leather near my father's
hand. It was barely audible to anyone else, but it sang a dirge
of doom to me.

"Young man," my father said, prodding me toward the old double
bed pushed against the stucco wall that we used as a couch while
watching our old black and white Dumont. "I think you know what
this is about. The store almost burned. Mrs. Mather just said she
saw you running away."

I just nodded. I thought of blaming my predicament on anti-
Semitism or on a Communist plot, or even on a gang of Colombian
drug dealers, but I couldn't exactly lie to my dad. Well, I
could, but it wasn't going to do much good. Besides, I felt
pretty bad about what happened, especially about not thinking
through the consequences of my actions. 

Well, here were consequences staring me in the butt, and I only
hoped it wouldn't be too hard. I began crying softly right away.
At least I would finally come to terms with the strap. 

My mother threw a sofa bolster toward the middle of the bed and
my father pushed me over it. Mom sat next to me, sniffling
herself, and reached beneath me to unbutton my pants. I couldn't
believe this was really happening, but believe it I did when the
first lick slashed across my cotton briefs. 

I was going to be stoic about this, accepting my punishment
without argument, but also without much noise if I could help it.
After all, my older sister was still upstairs, and these houses
were pretty close together. No one needed to know about this.

The second of my father's stern-wristed licks slammed diagonally
the other way, from northwest to southeast and I grunted and
squealed a little. With each ass-strapping I sobbed and bucked
and mom held my wrists together a little tighter. I was clearly
uncomfortable and penitent, but after the tenth smack of Romanian
cowhide against South Carolina cotton failed to produce the
expected howling, my father stopped cold.

"I see this isn't doing much good, is it?"

"Yes, papa, it is doing a LOT of good," I protested, tears
welling in my blue eyes and dribbling down onto my mother's
dress.

"Your toches needs to understand what fire feels like, boychik,"
he grumbled. My jaw dropped, but not as fast as my underpants.
Mom had pulled me across her lap and had removed her hard-soled
sandal.

"You are a bad little boy," she whispered, knowing how to break
down my resolve. She was a beautiful woman in her day; her
friends marveled at her resemblance to Myrna Loy. But to me, she
was God almighty, the one person who could read my intentions,
know my every thought and shame me for things long before my own
conscience kick started.

Dad harrumpphed and turned his back, apparently daunted by his
failure to impose the required discipline. As in all important
things, this job would fall to mom.

In this state, it was hard to remember the details, but one thing
came back to me in a flash then and has stayed with me forever. I
must have been as young as three or four and had some sort of
serious intestinal blockage. As mom positioned me bare bottomed
over her dress, I recalled the comfort of toddlerhood when she
irrigated me in that position. I recalled in a second every time
I had a fever and she used that old thermometer and every time I
fell down or had my feelings hurt and she would hug me to her
waist as I stood, or cuddled me to her bosom as I lay.

This time would be different and we both knew it. I yelled for
mercy before that damned slipper had completed its downward arc
and screamed like a baby girl when it ignited all those invisible
matches in the back pocket I no longer had. She worked silently,
but the hand around my waist and her pliant thighs let me know
this was a labor of love for her.

"Yes, baby, yes," she cooed as she spanked me with her shoe with
velocity and location that would have made Don Drysdale proud.
Whatever pleasure I could muster in the comfort of her
chastisement was gone after the first six whacks. Then it was a
matter of enduring pain such as I had not felt before or since.

The spanking was so hard and so deserved I did not even notice
that it had ended. The flames of correction burned justice into
my naked bottom so well that each of the 18 licks was
indistinguishable from the other. 

I was crying so hard my throat and stomach muscles hurt as much
as my backside. Nothing mattered anymore, not even Sis kneeling
slack-jawed at the top of the stairs. Mom could go on paddling me
all night. I didn't care. All I knew then, and all I remember
now, is that much of my youthful confusion about right and wrong
and about family values was settled that evening as I rocked and
cried across the edge of my mother's dress and the edge of
adulthood.