My First Catch

I don’t remember exactly when I went to work at Comics and Stuff. I do remember that it must have been February when this happened.

In our area of Texas, there is often a part of February when the cold weather has broken, but the rainy season hasn’t started yet. For several glorious days, the temperature climbs into the seventies, there’s a gentle breeze, but few or no clouds – it’s beautiful. Then it’s either cool downpours or more cold weather, but that little break is wonderful.

I really didn’t want to be stuck in the store, but the owner had begged me. I’d only been working there a few months, and my job really didn’t involve waiting on customers – or it hadn’t to start.

Comics and Stuff was not what you’d really call a wonderful store. As a matter of fact, the word ‘dump’ came to mind when I first saw his back room. He’d been kind enough to let me use his restroom, so I hadn’t been going to comment on it, but maybe it showed in my face, because he commented for me. Then he offered me a job cleaning and organizing it.

Well, it was more money for comics (and other, less important stuff, like gas), so I took it, even though that kind of cleaning wasn’t high on my list of enjoyable things to do.

I’d been happy with the money. Miles had been happy with the results. There was enough work to keep me around on an ‘as available’ basis. And with me around, he’d taught me to run the register, so he could sneak off for lunch breaks occasionally.

So, when his kid had had some after school activity, I’d been asked to cover it.

Personally, it was getting close to the state debate tournament, so there was work I could have been doing elsewhere, and it was a glorious day, so I would have been perfectly happy to be at Dad’s house, playing outside with my little brothers. Still, you do a favor when you can, right?

And it’s not like the job didn’t have its compensations, like the youngster who had walked through the door not too long before I was going to close.

His name was Doug. I knew he was a few months past twelve, since I’d been working in the store when his mom brought him in to do some birthday shopping a few months before. He wasn’t huge for twelve, but he wasn’t tiny either – probably right at five feet, or just over, and had a lean, firm, but not skinny build.

He wasn’t exactly cute, but he was far from ugly. No, I take that back; he was cute, just no cuter than ninety percent of the healthy, active boys you see from day to day. His lips were very thin, but he still had a nice, easy smile. He had a straight nose that was only slightly too wide. He had as fair a complexion as I did, and I always felt like he should have freckles, though his skin was actually clean and clear.

For my tastes, there were two things that combined to be his best feature. Like many of us by early 1982, he was wearing his hair over his ears, but his was long enough (and thick and straight enough, unlike mine) that it swooped down over his forehead from the side part. That really worked well for him, because his hair was a dark brown that almost exactly matched the color of his eyes, and the splash of fair skin, broken by his thin, but equally dark eyebrows, just really made his face stand out.

Of course, there was one other little problem with Doug.

"Howdy," I called as he walked in the door. "How’s tricks?"

"Hey, Jack," he replied as the bell jingled behind him. "Pretty good. How’s yours?"

"Fine, thanks. Help with anything?"

"Just lookin’ today."

I nodded in response.

There was a lot to look at.

Comics and Stuff was heavy on the stuff part. There was an island of racks for new comics in the middle of the store, and then a couple of folding tables with boxes for back issues. That was less than half the store, though.

Besides comics, Miles carried movie paper (full-sized posters, smaller items, and photos from movies) magic tricks and supplies, clown supplies, costumes, and novelties. They were all fairly well displayed, and Miles actually made a large percentage of his annual income just in the month of October, by renting costumes and selling related stuff (this was before even Sears or Wal-mart sold much beyond children’s costumes, and long before anyone thought of opening a specialty store just for the holiday).

Doug was mostly a comics kid, though he’d been known to examine the other stuff. All the kids seemed at least slightly interested in the magic tricks and trying to figure out how they worked. And, of course, the novelties drew plenty of attention.

I’d never understood why Miles continued to keep an entire showcase dedicated to those items, since we were lucky to sell one in a week. He had the whole selection of high class jokes though: fake doggy doo, plastic ice cubes with a fly enclosed, gum that turned your teeth red, a pack of gum with a snap inside, snakes in peanut cans, joy buzzers, even cigarette loads. What we did sell a lot of was on top of the novelty showcase – Champagne Poppers and Snap-n-Pops. The kids loved those. Of course, what had caught my interest was less the novelty jokes than the novelty paddles.

I’m not sure why those novelty paddles had caught my attention like they had. This was hardly my first exposure to them. I remember when I was in eighth grade, Six Flags had actually given a novelty paddle as a prize for winning the lowest rung on one of their midway games. And it wasn’t like any of my friends got paddled with anything like that. As far as I knew, most of my friends got the belt. Of the ones that did get paddled, it was either a large, school type paddle, or a smaller paddle adopted from some other purpose, like a ping-pong or Jokari paddle.

Still, I was fascinated by these smaller paddles and liked joking around with the kids I saw looking at them.



After asking Doug if he needed any help, I let him browse a bit. I’m not sure if he got his money in penny packets, or if he just liked stretching out the shopping. Of course, he might have been making regular trips to the store entirely for ulterior reasons. Whatever the case, he liked to come up several days a week and buy just one or two books.

As always when he was there, I waited a bit, then wandered over to chat.

Doug had broken his arm the month before. We’d had a spell of northern weather. The snow had been a great deal of fun, but when it started warming up, then re-froze overnight, Doug had slipped and broken his wrist and something in his hand. Not so much fun anymore.

Today Doug was wearing an old pair of jeans that weren’t much darker than his white t-shirt. The t-shirt once would have matched his cast, but that was now slightly grimy and heavily covered with signatures.

The t-shirt was mostly tucked in, but had ridden out a bit in back when he’d knelt down to go through some of the boxes on the floor. Despite his fair complexion, the narrow band of skin that was exposed looked rather dark, framed between the bottom of his t-shirt and the exposed waistband of his Jockeys.

I paused behind him just a second to enjoy the view.

"Whatcha looking for today?" I inquired.

"I like those Batman you told me about, so I was going to get some of the Justice Leagues that same guy wrote, but you didn’t have any, so I was looking for the Thors I need."

"We haven’t gotten anything new in recently, so we probably don’t have the Thor, but if you like Englehart’s stuff that much, you should check out his run on Captain America."

"Cool," Doug said, climbing to his feet.

We browsed and chatted a few minutes, until the phone rang. I checked the clock on my way to answer, and it was almost six o’clock.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I looked to Doug, who seemed to be randomly flipping around now.

"We’re going to close in a few minutes. You almost done?"

"Yeah," he called over his shoulder.

"I’m going to step in back for a few seconds. You wait?"

"Sure," he answered.

I did step into the back, but not to the bathroom, like I’d implied. Instead, as soon as the door was closed, I stepped around to the back of the pegboard wall behind the register. From the front, the wall looked solid, since it was the display for any number of small, lightweight items, mostly make-up related, that were sold in small bags. From the back, I’d already made sure I could put my eye up to an empty hole and see part of the store.

And I made sure to pick one that let me see exactly what I was interested in.

I felt a little bad about it. I really did like Doug, and here I was spying on him. Of course, he was in a public area of a store where I worked, so I don’t know that I was actually doing anything wrong. And if I was wrong in deciding to spy on him, he’d never know I’d done it.

The problem was that I really liked the boy.

Doug was the perfect age for me. Of course, he was just over a year younger than my brother Matt, but Matt had never been into comics. I loved Matt, but I could talk with Doug in a way I’d never been able to with Matt.

Doug often came to the store about this time of day. As I closed up, we’d talk about comics – what was new now, the best old stuff, the history of the characters – all the things that fascinated me, but no one I knew outside the comic store really cared about.

And since he’d admitted, very blushingly, that his dad still ‘whooped his butt’ from time to time, the kid was practically my perfect friend.

Whether I felt bad about it or not, not twenty seconds after I’d entered the back room, barely long enough for me to get to the hole, Doug came over to the novelty counter. Watching the door to the back room (which was actually just covered by a curtain), Doug grabbed a couple of boxes of the Snap-n-Pops and a handful of the Champagne Poppers, then bent down and shoved them in the top of his sock. I’d imagine it was a bit difficult, since his left hand was covered from the lower part of his fingers to above his wrist, but I’d been pretty sure he had plenty of practice.

Before Doug had a chance to straighten, I walked back into the front of the store.

"You know, I really hadn’t wanted to believe you were the one doing it."

He jumped about three feet into the air and landed in the upright position.

"What…! I…"

"Don’t bother to lie, Doug. It was obvious someone was stealing them, and you took enough last time that I was pretty sure it was you. That’s why I watched this time."

The poor kid looked miserable.

I knelt down in front of him, lifted his pants legs, and removed the booty from his sock.

"Anything else?"

Doug had been trembling slightly as I recovered the goods. Now he looked down at me and shook his head.

"You know I have to do something about this, don’t you?"

"I’m sorry," he said, managing to sound very piteous.

The thing is, I believed him.

When I was nine, not long after Ralph and Mom had married, 7-11 was giving away plastic super-hero cups with a large Slurpee. Talking either one of them into a large Slurpee wasn’t something easy to manage, so I’d started helping myself to a bit of change from a large jar Ralph kept.

I knew it was wrong. I wasn’t really worried about getting caught (and didn’t think how obvious bringing a new Slurpee cup home every day would be, much less realize that the level of the change jar would be altered drastically over a week or two), but I still felt guilty. It was so easy though, and even though I knew it was wrong, I really wanted those cups, justified it because they wouldn’t buy me a stupid Slurpee, and just couldn’t seem to make myself quit doing it.

Doug was older than that, but it wasn’t hard for me to believe he’d been in a similar situation, where he just enjoyed the things so much, and he’d gotten away with it, and he just couldn’t resist, even if he’d known he was wrong. And now he sounded so miserable, yet he also seemed almost a little relieved he’d been caught.

"You know that stealing’s very serious, Doug, and that sorry isn’t enough?"

He looked down at the ground for a second, then looked up at me through his lashes. It was a very good puppy dog look, but I’d had a beagle for years, and when I was eating outside, she looked like she’d learned from a basset hound. Doug’s look was good, but I’d been trained to resist by the best.

I met his gaze until he finally looked away and nodded.

"You know stealing’s illegal, so I really should call the cops, shouldn’t I?"

He gasped – a quick indraw of breath.

"No. Please don’t."

"I didn’t say I’m going to, I said I should. And I should. This is only about…."

I paused and quickly added the value of the stack in my head.

"… About eight dollars. That’d just be a ticket, but this isn’t the first time you’ve stolen from us, is it?"

I saw his conscience briefly war with his practicality. The fact that I’d obviously known what he was doing might have weighed in as well. Finally, sadly, he shook his head.

"Your dad whoops you when you get in trouble?"

He nodded, much more nervous now.

"How long since you got one?"

He looked up at me again, then shrugged. He was obviously thinking about it a bit.

"A month?"

"He use a belt?"

He nodded again. He wasn’t exactly comfortable, but talking about the past let him forget the unpleasant present for a minute.

"You ever have to take your pants down?"

Another nod, but this time there was a mixture of disgust and resignation, more at having to drop his pants than at the question, I think.

"Sometimes, or every time?"

"Every time," he admitted.

"Just your pants or your jockeys, too?"

"Sometimes…"

I think he’d thought about saying more, but stopped.

"So you always gotta drop your pants, but sometimes you get it bare?"

He nodded.

"And how you think you’ll get it if your dad finds out you been stealing?"

The reprieve was over, and now his nervousness returned stronger than ever.

"Bare," he said, and it was nearly a sob.

"Doug, I really like you. I don’t wanna get you in trouble, but I don’t think I can just let you go either. You knew this was wrong. You knew it was wrong before you ever did it, but you kept doing it. Maybe…. MAYBE if I just let you go, just getting caught would be enough to keep you from doing it again, but I think you need more than that."

His mouth came open when I mentioned letting him go, but I’d run over him. As I finished, he looked even more miserable after I snatched his hope away. His eyes were glistening with unshed tears.

"I’m not going to call the cops. Do you think I should call your dad, or do you think I can teach you enough of a lesson if we keep it between us?"

He’d been biting his lip, obviously trying not to cry, but now his eyes went wide and he looked up at me.

"Whaddya mean?"

"I mean, I’ve got some little brothers. They’re younger than you, but sometimes I spank their butts when they need it. Do you want me to call your dad, or do you want me to spank you?"

He obviously hadn’t seen this decision coming, and I think it safe to say he wasn’t very happy with either choice.

I waited a few seconds, then re-phrased the question.

"Do you want me to call your dad?"

This time, he shook his head.

"You know I’m going to spank you then, and it’s not going to be fun?"

A tear rolled down his eye, and he was chewing on his lower lip, but he still managed to nod.

As for myself, I was having trouble talking. Ever since I’d realized Doug must be the one who’d stolen the stuff before, I’d been envisioning this moment. Now here it was. Here it was, and I was almost choked by emotion – my throat was thick with anticipation.

"And you know stealing’s too serious for a hand spanking, right?"

He clearly knew it and just as clearly didn’t want to admit it, but finally nodded.

"But you’re not wearing a belt."

He held up his left hand.

"It’s too hard to get on with this."

"Yeah, but I’m not wearing one either."

For one second, he looked relieved, until I pointed to the side.

"I guess we’ll have to try one of those."

His eyes followed my finger. He looked confused for just a second until he saw the stack of paddles.

‘For the cute little deer with the bear behind.’

It was definitely cute, but I doubt I would have thought that if I were the one about to get spanked with it.

"You’re not going to spank me here, are you?"

"No. We’ll go in the backroom."

I glanced at the clock.

"It’s time for me to close anyway. You stand over here," I suggested, pointing out a spot where he’d be out of the way for a minute and not visible from the door.

I did ring up the comics he’d chosen, but there wasn’t much to do to close. All I really had to do was lock the door, turn off the main lights, and run a register report, so it wasn’t two minutes later that I started to escort him to the backroom.

"Oh," I suggested, just as we reached the doorway, "go get one of those paddles."

His whole body winced, but he obeyed me.

A minute later, I was sitting at the desk chair in the backroom, and Doug was standing before me. He handed me the paddle. I took it and patted it against my left hand a couple of times. His eyes followed the movement like a bird watching a snake.

"Pants off, Doug."

He looked like he wanted to argue, but I think I’d already convinced him that anything that happened here was going to be better than calling his dad, but that something was going to be happening here unless he wanted his dad called.

Of course, I hadn’t expected the trouble a nervous boy whose left hand was in a cast that covered part of the fingers would have in getting his pants undone.

"Here," I said, after a long moment, "let me."

I’d been helping my little brothers get ready for baths and stuff (and the occasional spanking) for quite some time, so helping Doug, who actually held still, was pretty easy.

Doug’s fly was quickly undone, and I ran them all the way down to his ankles. They were tight enough that they needed a little help getting down past his knees, and they took his briefs with him a bit when I started. As soon as they were all the way down, I reached for his briefs.

"I can do those," he protested.

I would have liked to do them myself, but didn’t mind just watching, so I motioned for him to go ahead, and leaned back. It was worth watching. I loved the way the tight shorts fit, the waist and leg bands a solid white, while the thinner material of the panels was white, but with some flesh tone showing through.

While Doug obviously had trouble bending the fingers on his left hand to grasp something, just shoving the fingertips into his briefs to slide them down wasn’t much trouble. I’m sure that made things much less embarrassing for him at home.

It didn’t help him now, though.

He tried pushing his briefs to mid-thighs, but I snapped, without any real heat, ‘down’. He just sighed and obeyed me. With them around his ankles, just above his jeans, he stood again.

Doug’s legs were lean and firm, but not hard. He had pretty good calves, which came easily with all the bike riding most boys did if they wanted to go anyplace in our town. But it was when he stood up that I saw what I’d been waiting for.

Doug was not an especially well developed boy, but he was definitely pubescent. He was hairless, and his balls weren’t especially big, but his sac was loose. His peter was soft, so it hung down, lying across his sac, but he was actually long enough that the head hung down past the bottom. He was actually longer then me in a soft state, close to three inches. Of course, at the present time, I was much longer than him, since I was definitely not flaccid. Then again, hard or soft, he wasn’t as thick as I was.

I enjoyed the view, but all I said was, "Over my lap."

"C’mon, Jack," Doug complained. "My dad doesn’t make me do that."

"What does he do?"

"I gotta lay over the bed."

"Well, we don’t have a bed here, Doug."

He groaned, but didn’t move to lie over my lap. I thought about arguing with him, threatening to let his dad put him over the bed if that’s what he wanted, but my eyes wandered as I was considering it.

To reach the top shelves, we had a footstool. It was about knee high, but the top was wide enough to stand out. The only problem was that the top was hard, and certainly wouldn’t be comfortable. Another glance around the backroom solved that problem.

I walked over to the costumes and picked up some padding we had available for the Santa suits. Then I grabbed the step stool and moved it to the center of the room, laying the padding across the top.

"Okay then, lay down on this."

He didn’t look happy, probably having more to do with me solving the problem than with where I was putting him. He did shuffle over and lie down though, while I reached back and picked up the paddle.

Doug turned his back on me as he shuffled to the stool, and it gave me a moment to admire his beautiful little bottom. His bottom was firm, but still full enough that he wasn’t showing any dimples as he walked over there. It was also far from flat, though a perfect bottom would have had a bit more curve from back to bottom and bottom to legs. Still, I wasn’t going to complain.

Something I really liked was that Doug had some real muscle in his back, and his t-shirt was moving enough that you could see a distinct valley just above his backside. That kept going, so that the valley between the cheeks was deep and slightly parted, so it was obvious he had two separate cheeks, not just one butt with a line down it.

When Doug reached the stool, which had to have been a much shorter time than it seemed, he turned to face me again. He started to bend his legs, then looked at me instead. I thought he was going to argue about this, begging for some other change or another chance. I don’t know if he saw something in my face, if he was afraid his dad would find out after all, or if he just knew he deserved it and wanted to get it over, but after a long look, he knelt down and lay across the padded stool.

When he was down, I walked over to him.

For a second, I just looked. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to kneel down next to him, pull the chair over, or what. Then it occurred to me. I straddled him, facing his rear, so that my knees were against his hips. Then I laid the paddle on his back, between my legs, and bent down and grabbed his cheeks.

I was gentle at first, just feeling them. Then I gave a soft rub. Then I squeezed. Then I pulled the cheeks apart, not hard, but enough to see inside his crack. He squirmed when I did that. Realizing I’d really gone too far, I let go, and smacked my left hand down against his right cheek.

He took it quietly at first. I was smacking pretty slowly and not incredibly hard, so each cheek had a chance to feel the full sting before the next swat landed. Back and forth I went, left to right, up and down, sometimes with each hand, sometimes with just one. Sometimes I’d smack several times in a row on the same cheek or even the same place.

His bottom quickly pinkened, but then seemed to hit a plateau, and only slowly moved on to rose. Even though I wasn’t spanking hard or fast, my hands were still constantly smacking against his smooth cheeks, and the sting had to be building. Soon, I could feel his upper body shifting around between my legs, and could see his bottom and legs starting to wiggle.

After a while, I shifted to just spanking with my right hand, using my left to keep me steady. I was still smacking everywhere though, even reaching down to get his upper thighs, and tilting my hand a bit, making sure I got those tender spots where his bottom curved down between or to become his legs. As his squirming and wiggling grew more pronounced, I began hearing noises from him, almost too quiet at first, but growing louder – little gasps and moans.

I stopped when I heard the first real sob.

"Hurts, doesn’t it?"

"Yes," he answered bitterly, the edge of tears blatant in his voice.

"That’s what bad boys deserve, isn’t it?"

"Yes," he said again, but more sad than bitter now.

"Why are you getting spanked, Doug?"

"Cause I was stealing."

"And you knew it was wrong to steal, didn’t you?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, surprising me with the title.

"And when boys do things they know are wrong, they have to be punished, don’t they?"

"Yes, sir," he answered again, still sounding sad, but also resigned.

I picked the paddle up from where it still rested on his back as I asked the next question.

"So you deserve this, don’t you?"

Doug moaned, but he still answered, almost too quietly to hear. "Yes, sir."

CRACK!

"Ow," Doug cried, caught by surprise.

"Oo-w!" he cried again as it cracked down on the other side.

I wasn’t spanking slow and steady this time. The paddle was flying fast and landing hard. Doug was howling.

I was bent nearly in half, watching where the paddle was landing. I was tilting it to get the under slopes of his cheek and turning it to get his upper legs.

Doug was trying to get away, but I was nearly sitting on his back, so he couldn’t do much more than thrash and squirm. His arms were flailing against my legs, trying to reach around me. His butt was wiggling back and forth like some exotic dancer. His feet were beating counterpoint to the paddle against the carpet.

He wailed as the paddle cracked down, lengthwise, on his crack.

His entire bottom was a rich, red color when I stopped, and he was lying limply over the padded stool, crying hard and loud. I dropped the paddle and bent down beside him, rubbing his blazing, red rear with my left hand, while rubbing the front of my pants with my right.

Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t hold it, and I rushed to the bathroom, barely getting my pants down in time to keep from making a mess.

I would have sworn I was in the bathroom forever, but when I came back out, Doug was still over the stool, crying, though not as hard as he had been.

"C’mon, Buddy, let’s get up now."

Doug didn’t resist as I helped him to his feet. He looked so miserable, I couldn’t help putting an arm around his shoulder, and instead of resisting, he leaned against me.

After a few minutes, Doug had calmed down enough to be embarrassed by his undress. Between his cast and his sore butt, he couldn’t really handle dressing, so he let me help him with most of it, though he was clearly very uncomfortable with it. When he was dressed, I led him into the bathroom, and he seemed grateful as I helped him clean up.

By the time we were finished, he’d quit crying. Neither one of us had said anything, and I was honestly surprised he didn’t smell the spunk in the air.

"Did I spank you too hard?" I finally asked, wondering if he was going to be mad at me, maybe even so mad he told his dad.

"That was REALLY hard," he answered.

"I guess it’s what I deserved though," he finally added, relieving my fears.

"Jack?"

"Yeah, bud?"

"I really am sorry I stole that stuff."

"I know. I believe you. And now you’ve paid for it, so it doesn’t matter. Not as long as you don’t steal anything else, anyway."

"I won’t, man. Cross my heart."

I just smiled.

"Want a ride?" I asked instead, as he picked up his bag.

"Yeah, thanks."



That incident didn’t really affect our relationship much. Doug continued to come in, we continued to talk. He was very shy for a while, but we were the only comic place in town. I was honestly a bit worried when he didn’t come in for a couple of days after his spanking, but when he did show up again, he acted as if nothing was really wrong, and only shrugged when I asked where he’d been.

I’d graduated high school before Doug started, and he’d pretty much quit reading comics by that time. We had been friends as long as he read them though, and he did start coming in again towards the end of my time at Comics and Stuff, drawn by some of the new things happening in comics that he’d heard about.

By the time I started teaching middle school, Doug was already in his last couple of years at high school. By the time I opened Magicats, Doug was away at college.

And yet…



"Hi. Can I help you?" I asked automatically, one dark winter’s day, just after Christmas vacation had started.

"I didn’t know you were here. I used to read a lot of comics, and thought I’d…. Jack?"

I had to look carefully, and do it twice.

"Doug?"

"Yeah. Is this your place?"

"Sure is. You want the tour?"

"That’d be great."

I showed him around for several minutes, until the phone rang. I excused myself, but couldn’t resist a joke.

"You’re not going to try to steal anything, are you?" I asked with what I hoped was a blatantly teasing tone of voice.

Doug turned an incredibly dark shade of red and his mouth fell open as he looked at me, but he recovered quickly.

"Depends. You don’t sell paddles here, do you?"





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