Travels With Aunt Paula I/6
by Estragon
Copyright 1996, 1997
Estragon Productions
For adults only
"The captive bands may chain the hands, But Love enslaves
the
man...."
Cal was late and it wasn't like him and he didn't want Aunt
Paula to be mad. It was Tuesday too, his lesson-day, and
Paula had promised that today's would be important. He was
already
apologizing to her as he came through the door.
"It's okay, honey," his aunt said. "No harm done. Today's a
biggie, though. Lots of new stuff. Hard stuff, some of it,
Cal. So, whenever you're ready...."
As he unbuttoned his shirt, still catching his breath, Cal
realized that Paula was dressed up in what she liked to call
her feminine best. Short black dress, nylons and heels,
make-up, ear-rings. Her long dark hair was radiant and she
smelled citrus-like and sweet. Cal knew that she was staying
home with him, but this was certainly the costume for an
evening out. He laid his shirt over a chair and quickly
undid his belt. In his haste he was fumbling a bit. But Aunt
Paula didn't seem impatient at all. She nestled in her
chair, relaxed and beautiful. She pronounced his name gaily
several times as she watched him struggle to pull his jeans
off over his shoes. He was still used to the baggier clothes
of a younger boy. But Cal had recently turned ten. His jeans
lay at his ankles as he bent to unlace his shoes. Aunt Paula
was enjoying his balancing act, which was taking many
minutes. He looked boyishly clumsy and adorable, she
thought, with buttocks high in the air, stretching his white
briefs, as he stumbled about.
When the job was done, Cal stood up proudly and faced his
aunt with exaggerated triumph and the burlesque suavity of a
magician. She laughed at the stiff little bow he gave her,
and at the theatrical way he rose up on his toes and flung
out his arms. Then, in one curt movement, before Paula was
quite done laughing, Cal snapped his briefs almost to his
knees, wiggled a bit until they fell to his ankles, and
stepped free. Naked as a nail and ready for business now.
"What's up, auntie?" he said.
Paula tried to sound serious, but couldn't help her
laughter.
"Cal," she said, "you are going to have to be less charming
or
Aunt Paula will never get to the lesson." Cal beamed. He had
loved Aunt Paula all his life. Even before he lost his mom
(Paula's elder sister) and dad, nephew and aunt had shared a
tender delight in one another that was not unlike the love
of
parent and child. Paula was very young, a few years out of
college, when her sister died; but neither she nor anyone
concerned for the boy had ever doubted that she must be his
guardian.
She invited Cal to sit beside her on the couch. She put her
arm around his shoulder and drew him against her. Cal loved
the feel of Paula's dress against his skin. The crepe was
slightly raspy and he was still boyishly smooth. Cal
appreciated the contrast: a woman's dress, a boy's exposure.
He squirmed against his aunt in the hope of being chafed.
Aunt Paula allowed it, encouraged it even. Free though she
was in showing Cal her solicitude toward him, she normally
limited his modes of reciprocation. For Paula, it would be
inexcusable to blur the line between her nephew's acts of
deference toward all women, including herself, and mere
greedy incest. The woman controls these things, she alone
has the power to strip away ambiguity, decide the
significance of every intimacy, ordain what she must never
show and what her boy must never think. Paula's every desire
toward Cal was indeed maternal, even this long-established
insistence on his naked humility. It was for his own good.
But she was being strangely lenient today. So Cal thought,
until she asked him to stand facing her once more. "Cal,"
she said, "I want to ask you some questions I know you know
the answers to."
"I hope I do, Aunt Paula."
"They're questions about boys, Cal. About ladies too. I'm
sure
you'll know how to answer. For instance: why are you
standing
naked in front of me like this?"
Cal was relieved. "Oh, I can answer, Aunt Paula. If that's
the
kind of question you mean. Yes, I'm standing naked in front
of
you because that's how a boy shows ladies his respect."
There was no guess-work here: Cal had often repeated, for
Aunt Paula and many of her friends, the tenets of her
feminist catechism. "Because a boy mustn't keep secrets from
ladies...," he continued.
"Secrets, Cal?"
"Things happen to a boy sometimes, auntie, when he sees or
thinks of ladies or girls. I mean...."
"Things, Cal?"
"Like to his penis, auntie. It stands up...."
"IT stands up, Cal?"
"I mean, the girls, the ladies, they MAKE it stand up."
Paula nodded her understanding, as though she had never
considered these matters before. It was a game she liked to
play with her nephew. She had taught him everything, but it
was lovely to ruffle him. "Why would the girls want to do a
silly thing like that, Cal?"
"So the boy will know they have power over him. So he'll be
respectful and obedient, auntie."
"And can the girls and ladies observe what happens to the
boy?"
"Oh, yes, auntie. Very often they can. But...."
"You mean right through the boy's clothes?" Aunt Paula
sounded
incredulous.
"Oh, yes. That is...."
"Then why does the boy have to be naked, Cal? I'm not seeing
this."
"That's what I was going to say, auntie. Many boys, when
they
realize what power girls and ladies have, well, they get
frightened of it and they try to hide. And if they can't
actually hide, they can still pretend that their penis isn't
because of the girls at all. But when a boy is naked, he
can't hide and...and...this is something that I think,
auntie...."
"Tell me, Cal."
"He can't hide and he doesn't feel like it either. He
doesn't
want to any more. It's just what you've always said, Aunt
Paula. My body doesn't lie even when my clothes do."
"Why is that, do you think, Cal?"
"I can't explain, Aunt Paula. I mean, you'd have to be a boy
to understand...."
"I can't help you there, sweetheart. And I think you
wouldn't
like me to."
"I mean, when you're a boy and you're naked and your penis
is
just out there like that, I don't know, auntie, you just
have to go with it. If it was just there for you, the boy,
it would be hidden inside you in private. But it's out
there, auntie. So when you're naked you feel that means
something."
"Isn't there something else, Cal?"
"Oh, there is. Do you mean...?"
"No, Cal. Don't ask me. It has to be something you already
know."
"Yes, auntie." Cal lifted his penis toward his stomach to
give
Paula an unobstructed view of his balls and pressed two
fingers of his other hand between his testes. "It's these,"
he said. "Do you see how delicate they are, auntie?"
"I do, Cal. I see."
"Do you think that these things - they're called testicles,
auntie...."
"Thank you, Cal. I'll remember that. They're very delicate
indeed."
"Do you think that these testicles ought to be just hanging
here like this?"
"What do you think, Cal?"
"I think yes, they should be, auntie. Because they're so
easy to reach this way. You can see that. So easy to do
things to. So no lady or girl has to be afraid of a person
with testicles on him. Because she can always teach him a
lesson. It's no work for her."
"What kind of lesson, Cal?"
"Her power over him, auntie. That's what I mean."
"Let me ask you, Cal: didn't you say a boy doesn't really
want to hide his penis from a lady?"
"Yes. I mean, once he realizes...."
"Wait, though. Does it feel good when a boy's penis is
hard?"
"Yes, auntie. Because it feels good to be honest and
respectful to ladies."
"And it's honest and respectful also to let ladies know
about
these testicles you showed me?"
"Oh, yes, it is."
"I mean, to let them know about how easy they are to...how
did
you put it, Cal? To do things to?"
"Yes, that's what I meant to say."
"But tell me, Cal: do you think a boy would secretly like to
be treated that way, just as he secretly likes to get hard?
I mean, if you're right and it IS the respect these things
allow him to show to ladies, there shouldn't be any
difference, should there, just because making him
uncomfortable or even hurting him is involved?"
"A boy could be more frightened of being hurt, though,
auntie."
"Of course, darling. Of course. That's why you wait until
he's a big boy...."
"How big, Aunt Paula?"
"Say, ten. I'd say, by the time he's ten a boy is ready. His
penis and those testicles you were mentioning are big enough
by then. And when he's ten, if he's had a good upbringing,
he's already had a lot of training in showing his respect to
ladies. As you have, Cal, as you have, my ten-year-old
sweetheart. You impress everyone. All my friends, and their
daughters (and you know how hard it is to impress young
girls) - they always compliment me on your exemplary
behavior. I know being so good at it keeps you busy,
darling. But it makes Aunt Paula so proud of you, you know."
Busy was an understatement. Cal's was a long story, which
begins here:
Cal was six and had been living with Paula for a year when
his
aunt's life-long faith in the supremacy of woman began to
evolve
into a concrete plan for raising her nephew. She knew in her
heart that a worshipful man is a happy man and an adored and
well-served woman happier still, and she wanted for her
sweet
nephew as much happiness as a life of early sorrow could
still
afford. Cal was her great love, and now she would make him
her
work as well.
Perhaps it was as well, then, that Cal's parents had gotten
it
into their heads that circumcision is traumatic to an
infant, and had refused to permit the procedure to be
performed on their newborn son. Paula's gifts to Cal begin
with that.
The circumcision question was one of the few occasions on
which Paula had doubted the judgment of her capable big
sister, the only one on which she'd thought her girlhood
model terribly misguided. Becoming Cal's guardian, bathing
the little boy daily, Paula found herself scandalized by the
indecency of his "in tact" look. Uncircumcised men put her
off. She couldn't say exactly why. A matter of aesthetics,
she imagined. But for a long time she tried to reconcile
herself to Cal's disheartening feature. This was her nephew,
this was her love. Wanting nothing to compromise her
tenderness for Cal on any level, even the bodily, Paula
tried for a year and more to dissolve her repugnance. She
adored the boy and reproached herself for the grief she felt
at every sight of his innocent little watercock looking,
after all, only as nature had intended. She tried every
means to banish her revulsion - argument, fantasy,
self-reflection. All the same, when the boy stood smiling as
his aunt undressed him for his bath, this moment of intimacy
which should have been one of the day's sweet interludes
became for Paula a mine-field of ambivalence. It horrified
her that she turned away from the boy's benign nudity. But
her resolutions and brainwashings inevitably failed, and day
after day, as she lowered the boy's white briefs, no
beautiful miniature of a human organ appeared, but an
obscene spigot, a pizzle waiting to grow great.
How could her sister have been so wrong? Why this stupid
anomalous loyalty to "nature" - what had nature to do with
human happiness? - and on the part of the woman, too, who
had taught Paula the arts of make-up and feminine style and
had assured her of their importance. How could she not have
recognized the disservice to her sex in keeping her
boy-child uncircumcised. Even if you rejected questions of
hygiene, there remained deeper ones, of aesthetics, of male
psychology.
Paula did fear that she was on shaky ground about all this
and
she tried every gambit to rid herself of indefensible ideas.
One
device was concentrated self-analysis, a practice in which
several years of Freudian shrinkage had made her proficient.
The result of her self-analysis wasn't cure but resolution.
For in a moment of compelling insight Paula saw how
circumcision merely completed the paring away of man's
disguise. No wonder the permanent uncloseting of that
over-sensitive glans delighted her eye and mind. It denied a
man even that wisp of covering allowed to him at birth. From
girlhood on, Paula had helped many boys and men pull down
their vanity along with their trousers. Now she would help
her nephew to a deeper humility, one that would truly get
under his skin and endure there. It thrilled her now that he
hadn't been done as an infant. She apologized to her
sister's memory for her rash disapproval of that decision.
Cal was six now. Conscious, intelligent, with a definable
personality and many of boyhood's customary traits. But at
six the shell of the ego is still fairly thin: it takes
ages, Paula knew, to build up the atrocious crust of false
masculinity that women like her were dedicated to rupturing.
Cal, happily, would never have the chance. Circumcision -
not in private, not at the surgery, but in public, at a
lively ceremony with Cal at the center and all ages of women
to witness it, almost the way religious people do it, really
- circumcision would demolish the little fortress of
reflexes and instinctual pride which is the only defense a
boy of six has yet had time to build. And the memory and the
effect of that lovely catastrophe - at a woman's hands quite
literally, for Paula had already selected the doctor who
would crop the boy - would rule Cal's heart forever.
end of part one