Very late one night, after everyone had supposedly gone to sleep,
I awoke with an urge to urinate. We were sleeping in tents, four boys to
the tent. I got up and went out onto the night. It was mid-summer, a hot,
humid night. The stars were brilliant pin-pricks of white light overhead
and there was the thrumming sound of cicadas all around me in the velvety
night.
I finished my business and was about to return to my tent when I heard unusual sounds from a tent that stood a little apart from the other tents. It was the tent of two of the older boys in the troop, Jackie and Jeff. Because of their exalted status as senior boy-leaders they were allowed to have a four-man tent all to themselves. These were large wall-tents that sat on wooden foundations, with room for four or even, a bit cramped, six boys. I believe they were Army surplus.
I could barely make out a light from inside the tent. It was such a hot night that all of the other tents had their flaps thrown back to allow what little breeze there was to circulate through them. But Jeff and Jacky's tent appeared to be completely buttoned up, and I could see tiny slits of dim light emanating from the closed tent. The sounds appeared to be voices, and something about their tone made me irresistably curious about what might be going on.
I walked softly over to get closer to the tent. This was dangerous because after lights-out boys were not supposed to be out of their tents except to relieve themselves. I also knew that Jacky and Jeff would be angry if they knew I was snooping. They were both stern disciplinarians where the younger boys were concerned (they were 13 and 14 themselves--old men!).
As I drew closer to the tent my curiosity overwhelmed my fear. I could now make out the voices. I could recognize Jacky's and Jeff's, but there was another voice I did not know. I could hear the words the other voice was speaking: "No! Please! Don't! Stop!" I had to know what was going on in that tent, even though the frantic tone of that voice told me that something other than a forbidden after-hours poker game was happening!
I slipped up to the rear of the tent and found enough space between the closed canvas flaps to peer in. What I saw has remained seared into my mind for almost fifty years now. There were four boys in the tent, which was lit by a small kerosene lantern set to its lowest output. I could make out Jacky, and Jeff, and Tony another younger boy in our troop about my age. I could also see the fourth boy, whom I now recognized. He was from another troop and I had often seen him during our swimming sessions. He was about Jacky's age I think, 13 or so, not quite as old as Jeff. I will confess now, to you, what I would never have admitted at the time: I had noticed him at the swimming area because of his very fine body and his lovely deep tan. He was a junior life-guard and I had often found myself watching him as he patrolled the pier that jutted into the swimming area. I did so much want to have beautiful muscles like he had, and the tan set them off to perfection. I think I had a little at-a-distance crush on this handsome, athletic boy.
Two sleeping cots had been pushed together side by side in the center of the tent. These were the military style cots with heavy wooden frames and canvas slings on which we would put our sleeping bags or blankets. My life-guard hero was lying in the middle of the two joined cots, on his back, and his wrists and ankles tied to the corners of the cots! That was the first visual shock; the second was that he appeared to be naked!
My first reaction was to sneak back to my tent before I was caught and punished, but I was also fascinated by what I saw. I had to know what was happening. I had to stay and see, and hear, more. Jacky and Jeff were sitting almost side by side on another cot set up on the far side of the cots on which the boy was spread-eagled. Tony was squatting on the floor beside those cots, between where I crouched at the rear tent flap and the bound boy.
Jeff and Jacky seemed to having a good time. There was banter and laughter from them. "Again," Jeff said, and Tony reached forward as if to touch the prisoner. Because of his position I could not see what he was doing, but the tied boy threw his head back and pulled hard on the ropes that held his arms and legs spread apart. I could see the tight clenched muscles of his belly and chest and thighs as he seemed to strain against his bonds. He also let out a low, strangled moan--"Arrrhhhhh!" Jeff and Jacky laughed.
Jeff said "Enough!" and I saw Tony's arm return to his side. "You ready to talk yet?" Jeff said. I saw the captured boy roll his head from side to side, and then Jeff said "You will! More!" and again Tony's arm came up and again the boy moaned and struggled against the ropes and this time he again spoke the words I had heard as I had approached the tent. "No! Not again! Please! Don't! STOP!" It was clear that I was witnessing a torture scene. For some reason, Jacky and Jeff and Tony were torturing this boy, for information it appeared, but also apparently enjoying it themselves very much.
I could almost feel the heat in the closed tent. The hot night, the closed tent, four boys, and the lantern had created a virtual sauna. The lantern was on the other side of the pushed-together cots, turned down very low, but the light from it made the sweat-covered dark skin of the tied boy shine and glisten. Even at that age I had a kind of thing about sweaty bodies and despite my unease, and more than little guilt and fear, I could feel a little fluttering tingle high in my chest as I watched the scene in the tent.
Jeff and Jacky and Tony wore nothing but their y-fronts, and they, too, seemed lacquered with a covering of shiney sweat from the heat of the tent. But it was the boy on the cots that I could hardly tear my eyes from. And then Tony shifted his body a little to the left and I received my third visual shock of the night. What I could not see until now, but what Jeff and Jack and Tony were obviously concentrating on, was the fact that their helpless prisoner was totally and completely erect!
Except for my own, this was the first "boner" I had ever seen. It was fascinating. It stretched over his taut belly and seemed to pulse and jump, as if to his heartbeat. It, too, appeared to be wet and shiney. I could clearly see the curved flare of the glans and the small patch of damp hair at the top where it disappeared into his groin. I could also see that something-it looked like a shoelace- was tied around the base of his penis and around the sack of his testicles, pulling them up and into plain sight. I knew I should not watch this. It was wrong. It was sneaky. It was also wrong to do this to a boy. But I could not tear myself away from the tiny crack in the tent flap.
I could hear the boy breathing, as if he were running hard. I could see his strong chest rising and falling with his breaths. Then Jeff spoke again.
"A little more, but be careful!" He appeared to be speaking to Tony. Tony was one of those younger boys - we called them brown-noses and now they would probably be called suck-ups - who like to hang around the older guys, particularly if the older guys had power. He would run errands for them, tell them how great they were, anything to keep what he saw as a privileged position with them. Tony picked up something from the floor, a bottle. He poured something from the bottle into his right hand, put the bottle down and reached out again. This time I could see what was happening: he took the boy's hard-on in his fist and stroked up and down, very slowly, once, twice, three times. Then Jeff spoke.
"Enough!" And then the boy moaned out again, only this time-and for the first time - I suddenly understood what he had been saying all along but had been misinterpreting: "No! Please don't STOP!" Jeff and Jacky laughed again and I thought I could also make out a low chuckle from Tony.
I was a naíve boy about sexual matters, for sure. But I understood instantly and instinctively the nature of the torture to which the boy was being subjected. I was also suddenly aware of my own erection. This increased my sense of guilt, but did nothing to make my unruly member subside.
End of part 1
Part 2
So where did I leave off? Standing, crouching really, at the closed tent flap of Jeff and Jacky's tent, sneaking peeks at what they were doing to a bound boy who was, as kids today might say, "boned to the max." I felt sneaky, dishonest, and even guilty as a result of my reaction to what I was watching. I knew I should have gone immediately to the adult leaders and told them what was happening, and I also knew that there was no way in the world that I was going to do that. Clearly the "prisoner" was not being really hurt in any way. Actually, I envied him a little bit. Of course it would be very embarrassing and humliating to have this done to you-but what a wonderful feeling it must be.
Another confession is due here: for as far back as I can remember I have been fascinated by tie-up games. Games like Cowboys-and-Indians and Cops-and-Robbers were delightful to me, particularly if there was any tying-up to be done. And, of course, boys being boys (and sometimes girls, too!) there always was. I do not know to this day where this attraction to playful bondage came from, but it was evidently a part of my basic wiring. I loved those old movies where there was a dungeon and perhaps the hero would be taken there to be "persuaded" by the evil baron.
As an older child I felt guilty about this attraction because of the aggression it evidently indicated. (But of course I enjoyed being tied up just as much as I enjoyed tying up a buddy.) Later, as I grew to maturity, I came to understand that I had no interest whatsoever in sadism or real cruelty in any form. If anything, I was probably much too tender-hearted. The infliction of pain on someone else was not only not attractive to me, I found it repellent and disgusting. My pleasure was in the mutuality of game-playing. Tying up a unwilling or frightened playmate was a turn-off. Part of the pleasure was in the complete complicity (and perhaps turn-about) of "captive" and "torturer." Anything less than that simply didn't interest me. Later, as an adult, I found that I could not even bear to watch films in which this kind of real cruelty is portrayed. I even had to leave the theatre during the final scene of Mel Gibson's "Brave Heart." I simply couldn't bear to watch.
But this scene that I was an illicit witness to was very arousing to me. It had all the elements: a very well-built boy stretched out and restrained appealingly, lots of wonderfully slippery looking sweat, and, of course, an extremely sexual main-course. The sexuality had never been an overt and central part of my games and fantasies before that night. But there at the tent flap, and later, I think I realized without being aware of it how deeply and fundamentally sexual my fascination was. Whatever guilt I may have felt at what was going on, and my role in it, did not mitigate the erection that now filled my jockey shorts!
There isn't very much to tell about the denouement of the "torture session" in the tent. For what seemed like many minutes it went pretty much the same way...
"You gonna talk?"
"No!"
"Do it to him!"
"Arrrrrrgh!"
"Stop! Not too much! Now you gonna tell? Think how nice he'll make it for you if you do!" Etc., etc., etc.
Finally he broke and talked. As I remember it was very simple. "Tomorrow night! It'll be tomorrow night!" I just assumed that he was revealing the time of a raid on our troop's camp by his troop. It turned out later that I was right and that the plans were changed and they raided us anyway a couple of nights later, after we had raided them the night they were supposed to raid us. Ah, scout camp, with its little dramas of alarum and excursion!
But the conclusion was exciting. Very. "Please! You said! You promised!" the prisoner begged. "OK, let him have it!" Jeff said to Tony. Tony got up off the floor and squatted on the cots between the wide-spread legs of the captured boy. He brought his bottle and after untying the shoe-lace tied around his captive's equipment, poured a big dollop of its contents directly onto the boy's penis and balls. Then he took his penis in both hands and in five or six apparently very hard pulls had the boy gasping and moaning as his long-denied orgasm took him and he squirted his pent-up juice high into the air and onto his belly and chest. When the first spurt jetted out of him he gave a loud, sharp cry and then his body tensed into a lovely display of clenched and sweat-shiney muscles as he bridged himself up completely off the cots, touching only at heels and shoulders, and Tony pumped him dry. I could hear the wet squish-squish sound of Tony's oily hand on his rigid penis, and I realized that I was stroking myself and stopped, afraid that they might hear my movements or perhaps even my thunderously beating heart. This was the first ejaculation I had ever seen as I was just a few months too young to be able to produce sperm myself. The sight of him, muscles prettily knotted, grimacing in agonized pleasure, and fountaining up onto his own body had been more exciting to me than I can easily decribe.
But then it was over. They untied him, and instead of an instant fight or struggle he just sat on the edge of the cots and rubbed his wrists. They gave him his clothes and he slipped on his underpants. Then Jeff said, "Put your hands behind your back." Surprisingly, he did it without protest. He even sat patiently while Jeff tied his hands behind him. Then they marched him out the front of the tent, barefoot and bare-chested, with Tony carrying the rest of his clothes and bringing up the rear. I assumed they were taking him back toward his own troop area. I sneaked back to my tent.
I was still enormously excited and stopped on the way back in a little grove of saplings and jerked off to climax while thinking about what I had seen. Then I went back to the tent and tried to go to sleep. I had to masturbate once more, as quietly as I could, under my sheet. Then I must have fallen asleep. But before I drifted off to sleep I re-ran the scene over and over again, and I found that I wished that I were the one controlling the boy's pleasure and giving him that ultimate delight while he went almost out of his mind with the ecstasy of my hands on him. I also tried to imagine what it would be like to be tied like that, stretched and vulnerable, while he worked on ME. That, too, was deeply, darkly thrilling to me.
The next day, at the swimming area, I saw the "prisoner," again on duty on the pier, his orange whistle on its lanyard bouncing against his brown chest. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw Jeff approach him along the pier. I knew for sure there was going to be a huge fight and held my breath with fearful anticipation. But instead they talked together and there were some smiles between them. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but they seemed to be joking with each other! I was amazed. Jeff playfully smacked the other boy's bare upper arm with his fist and the boy retaliated playfully with a smack to Jeff's bicep.
Did I feel betrayed? Did I feel I had been watching a stupid charade the night before, a mere performance. No. Far from it. The sudden knowledge that there was no bad blood between Jeff and Chuck (I had found out his name that morning), but that it had been a kind of game they were playing gave me enormous pleasure and relief and I blush to admit that I grew instantly hard in my swim-trunks. Fortunately I was up to my neck in water and no one could tell what was happening!
So that is my story of scout camp and my first experience with real sexuality.
An Anonomous Scout.
(I wish to express my deep gratitude to "An Anonomous Scout" for allowing me to post this wonderful true story to my site - JM)