Razor Strap5

As a youngster growing up no one in our household was ever spanked. This, as I’ve already said elsewhere, was contrasted by the fact that all my buddies in the neighborhood and at school were spanked, not often, but they could count on it when they screwed up. This was definitely true for our next door neighbors, the Sullivans. In those days the razor strap was the weapon of choice in most homes, and so it was in the Sullivan home where the razor strap was displayed prominently on a kitchen wall for anyone who visited there to see.

For me, the experience of never being spanked by my parents, I think started me early down the road of my curiosity about spankings, and a big-time obsession with the razor strap. This has followed me all of my life.

Of the 3 Sullivan boys living next door, I was buddies with the middle boy, Bobby. We were the same age and so we were in the same grade at school too. At one time or another I’d heard Bobby, as well as his younger and older brothers, catching a licking…summer months, windows open…with the razor strap from their dad. My feeling about all of this was a mixed bag. Hearing a licking being administered…I was frightened, fascinated…and maybe more weirdly…jealous. I remember…even perhaps at age 6 or 7…wishing I could have a licking, even though it sure sounded like it hurt really bad. I wondered how it was done…pants/no pants, standing, kneeling, laying face-down on a bed, OTK…how many licks. I still have plenty of questions about method of punishment, etc.

These were the years when nobody locked the doors at home and kids could disappear from the home after breakfast, and except for a quick return for lunch and supper, return at end of day, even after dark. Dads, mostly blue collar workers, worked long hours outside the home. Moms worked long hours at home. I’m not sure that parents had much concern about kids away from home, because parents had an unspoken network connecting them. Kids were being “watched” by everyone in the neighborhood. A “misdemeanor” blocks away could easily earn a kid a licking from dad when he presented home for the day. Those were the days.

Bobby and I connected most days, especially during the summers, mostly with other siblings or friends in tow. Once in a while it was just Bobby and me, at his home or mine, even if we were the only two in the home. It started when we were maybe 7 or 8 years old…unbelievable today. We flipped baseball cards, or ran around the yard collecting bugs and snakes. On rainy days we played 45 RPMs on the “record player” in his basement, did experiments using his chemistry set or played card games.

While I knew about Bobby’s lickings with his dad’s razor strap…and he knew that I had heard some of them happening…we never talked about those. When we were trapped in the house because of weather, and if no one else was in the house, I used to ask if it was OK if I used the toilet to have a pee. I would then scoot up the cellar stairs into the kitchen area and then over to the toilet. I liked slowing down while getting through the kitchen to have an up-close look at Mr. Sullivan’s razor strap hanging on the kitchen wall, when I’d feel the length of the strop. I felt “butterflies” doing that, and while I couldn’t get a grip one what was going on, some years later I realized that “butterflies” was actually a sexual turn-on.

While on my way to have a pee upstairs, Bobby eventually put together that I never asked about taking a pee when anyone else was in the house besides him and me, and that when I did visit the first floor for a pee, he could hear my footsteps above in the kitchen area while I visited with the strop on the kitchen wall. He eventually confronted me about that.

To be continued….