I've always liked to collect things. Even as a schoolgirl, everyone called me a squirrel stashing things away for winter. My husband despairs at all the clutter I add to the house, year after year, but once one of my trinkets is mine I don't want to give it up. I feel like each of them says something about me, or in some cases several things about me. Just for example, take my maplewood hairbrush. I was thirty when I acquired it. The wood has a bright blonde finish that catches the eye, all round ovals and slender, curving lines. It fits so comfortably in the palm of my hand, or in the largest pocket of my purse, that you'd think it was made just with me in mind (it wasn't, in case you were wondering).
The front of the head is covered in soft, golden bristles, perfectly spaced, just rigid enough to catch one's hair and smooth it out without snagging or pulling, and silky soft to the touch. It's really a beauty to look at, or to feel. Every bristle in just the right place, evenly spaced, standing at attention and bright gold in color. It has the look and feel of comfort, yes, but also a sort of refined propriety. It's just as efficient at beautification as you'd think by looking at it.
The back of my hairbrush is the exact opposite of everything I just said. It's heavy, hard, and brutally thick, with an artless, swollen bulge in its oval frame. It makes an unpleasant, loud
clunk or
tap when I set it down against my nightstand or table. The veins in the wood are messy and wild beneath the varnish.
What do these things say about me? Well, this year my husband had to go away on business. Not the entire year, thankfully, but most of it. I work from home, our daughter moved away the year before last, and it gets so lonely and vacant with just me. So, with my husband's approval, I decided to host a pair of college students for the school year. For our proximity to the campus, and the quality of our accommodations, what I charge would be criminally low if the main agenda was profit rather than company. Come September, both freshman students were excited to meet me, and I them. Yoko and Rowan had never met before, but I scheduled to meet them both on the same day; I wanted to make sure they'd get along with each other as well as with me, of course!
Yoko was full of as much confidence as her dainty frame could hold, and she charmed me immediately with her good manners. I could tell right away that we were going to be fast friends for the coming nine months, if not afterward as well! The first thing I noticed about her, aside from the winsome smile, was her hair. Yoko has the most perfect, lustrous, gleaming black hair hanging down past the middle of her back. She had it perfectly smooth, swept back, and tightly braided, with the ribbons in an elegant little knot.
Rowan tried, I could tell. He was nothing but good intentions under that nervous exterior. But the way he came off was, well...less put together, shall we say. He forgot his ID on the bus coming here, and I had to make several phone calls before he got it back. Unlike Yoko, who immediately bore all her things off to her room, Rowan had to be reminded of the backpack he'd left by the front door. He was earnestly sorry for everything, and ashamed of the impression he thought he was making, but actions speak for themselves. Rowan's hair was almost as long as Yoko's when he first arrived, but the first thing I noticed about the boy was a bit further down the back, and far less delicate in presentation, which just matches him so perfectly.
The first two weeks came and went, and the three of us got to know each other. Before October came near, Yoko was already becoming the little sister I always wanted. She was always right there to help with the housework before I could even ask, and she asked all about me and myself her. Soon, we were spending some time every day chatting out in the sun or by the window. Talking about her classes, my work, movies, music, and eventually boys in her class.
Around the same time that we started feeling comfortable enough with each other to discuss that last topic, I began brushing her hair. Yoko's silky mane is as black as a night sky without the moon or stars, and when brushed and smoothed down it gleams in the light like polished obsidian. Whoever cut her hair knew exactly what they were doing; every strand is exactly the length it needs to be, with perfect symmetry and balance. The firm, yellow strands of my brush catch them with ease, and they cooperate so readily as I bring them to their purest shine. Sometimes she wants me to put it up in a bun. Sometimes braids, pigtails, ponytails, or loose waves. Sometimes Yoko just lets me do what I will, and we chat and giggle as if I were eighteen again myself. When we go out shopping or moviegoing or even just sightseeing, Yoko is always the picture of cosmopolitan refinement, and her dressed and bound hair is a small - but very important - part of that.
I don't have many common interests with Rowan, though he's a smart enough boy. He does have a fondness for gardening, but I'm very particular about how my rooftop garden is arranged and cared for, and prefer to keep that work to myself. He helps around the house when asked, but he forgets things all too easily, and tends to make new messes as quickly as he cleans them. I started with rolling eyes, impatient sighs, and the occasional pointed glare over pursed lips. I told him I was going to have to take more drastic measures with him soon, and though he babbled out his assurances to the contrary it wasn't yet the second week of October when I had reason to take him to task.
The back of my maplewood hairbrush is a fat, thick, heavy round thing, and perfect for a pair of fat, thick, heavy round bottom cheeks. Even in his looser denim shorts, you can always see the shape of that boy's caboose. No matter how inappropriate to the time and place, it's always just sticking out there, bouncing with each step and bulging up like a big, tangly weed whenever he picks up something he dropped, which happens frequently (and I've never seen a young man wear his "freshman fifteen" quite so well). Along with the long hair and small frame, it's a contributing factor to people mistaking him as a girl, but not the dainty and lovely kind of girl like my little baby sister Yoko! It's an improper bottom, on an improper boy, and it invites every last bit of my own impropriety. We're all cruel, savage, greedy creatures, underneath the mask of society. After that first time I pulled Rowan over my knee, I knew I would do it again very soon. He would annoy or irritate me, and I would vent that other side of me and his juicy, bouncy cheeks. The rooftop garden ended up becoming our little spot after all, but not for the reasons one might normally think.
After every punishment, with his eyes wild and teary and his bottom cheeks as bright a glowing red as my favorite dress, he'd swear to never require another reminder. He always did, though. I made sure of it! There was always something wrong with how my scattered, disorganized, bubble-bottomed renter did something, even if I had to look harder as October moved on by. This isn't a part of me that can be reasoned with, after all. There's no fairness or understanding in how I treat Rowan. At least once a week, and usually more, I'd have that tushy over my lap and reduce the boy attached to it to something as wild-eyed and savagely howling as my own id. I made sure Yoko wasn't home whenever I spanked Rowan. For her, I'd be nothing but a sweet, caring, and worldly hostess.
When he didn't resist, or show any sign of trying to relocate, I started moving forward. I'd set higher and higher expectations for him - all completely disproportionate to what I asked of Yoko, and justified by all the nuisance Rowan had been so far - and soon I could always count on having a reason to punish him when I wanted to. Not all punishments are as severe, of course, but there's no such thing as a "minor" spanking with my maplewood hairbrush! Most times, I work those naughty cheeks over with my hand until Rowan is squealing and squirming before the brush even comes out to banish his buttocks to the flames of hell where they deserve to be, for my amusement. He could have left at any time, of course, but he didn't. The fact that I started wearing shorter skirts and lower cut tops when I invited him up for our non-negotiable rooftop chats may have had something to do with that. I wasn't thinking of that at the time, though; I just dressed that way because I loved watching him go red faced and nervous when confronted with my scantily-clad self holding the hairbrush, and luxuriated in the way I forced his eyes to linger on me. Knowing I can make a young boy salivate does help me cope with being forty-nine, and Rowan's spankings are my time for shameless self indulgence!
Feeling more of his bare skin against mine when he bent over my thighs was also a contributing factor to my wardrobe choices for "tushy time" as well, I can't pretend otherwise.
Things came to a head after Thanksgiving, when it was too cold and wet to use the rooftop and I'd taken to keeping things indoors. Rowan always had an eye for Yoko, and he was spending more and more time with her after classes. I can hardly blame any young man for being interested in her, but I absolutely blamed Rowan for it! For one thing, I just didn't want these wires crossing. It would just pain me to see Yoko's childlike gaiety entwined with Rowan's lewdness and crudeness! For another, I was jealous, and while I'd normally never let such base impulses control me, Rowan and I had an established relationship revolving around just that.
I don't know how interested Yoko might have been, when he started making his advances more openly. I think she was considering it, if perhaps not all that seriously. I know Yoko prefers bigger, manlier boys, and even his new haircut and gym regimen didn't quite make Rowan into one. Regardless, I wasn't about to take the chance! The instant I had Rowan and the house to myself, I dragged him into my room and told him very, very clearly that he wasn't going anywhere
near Yoko! It also just so happened that this was the perfect time of year to use some of that fresh, juicy ginger I'd been growing last year. Rowan's rump had been spanked plenty of times before I got my hands on it, but it had never known the agony of a plump carved ginger root working together with my hairbrush! He whimpered, squeaked, and begged like never before, all to no avail as I spanked and paddled that flame-filled fanny to my heart's content.
Now, I might be deliberately uninhibited when it comes to Rowan and that naughty bottom of his, but I still understand that actions have consequences. There wasn't exactly a good reason for me to object to his pursuit of Yoko, and I needed to give him something. Of course, I'd also been needing someone to give me something for those last few months, and I think we both got what we required.
Rowan seemed to think that I'd be less harsh with him after that evening, the silly boy. Instead, well, I practically made him my slave! I don't have to justify anything to him anymore, so I stopped. If he does everything perfectly, gets perfect grades, and does all his chores, he still gets a long, hard, bare-bottomed spanking over my lap if I feel like giving him one, and I often do! If he causes me any grief, falls short in his studies, or (worst of all) does anything to upset my precious Yoko, then he just gets an even harder one, with a significantly lower chance of an extended bedroom stay and a slightly higher chance of ginger.
Yoko and Rowan came back from winter break just a month ago, and things haven't changed a bit over their December/January absence. Yoko and Rowan are friendly with each other, but they don't interact all that often. He has his friends, and she has hers. She has her alone time with me, and he has his alone time with me. Both sides of my complicated little maple knick-knack have their perfect places, and equal time to shine.
I suppose I'll just have to see where things go and how they change when my husband comes home this May.
