Chapter 6

My Aunt made me wait much longer than twenty minutes before she returned to outline the rules that would be in effect until my Parents arrived.

Buddy and Lewis were playing outside again, which suited them just fine when Blair and my Aunt Sam returned from their discussion about me. They were both smirking like Samantha Stevens on Bewitched when she just thought of a clever solution to some problem her mother in law created. It definitely scared me that they were smiling rather than looking grim and stern like they did when they left the room.

“Come here, Eddie,” My Aunt told me to come over to the couch where they both sat down. She didn’t invite me to sit down.

“We have concluded that you need some tough love, Eddie. You could have had a nice Summer vacation and had a lot of fun, but you make that impossible with your shenanigans and dirty language. I think part of it is your hormones, but I am not going to let you blame that for why you peeped on my daughter,” My Aunt explained. I nodded in agreement even though I felt she was being unfair and that Blair was far dirtier than me I wasn’t prepared to argue.

“In the future, when you are spoken to by one of your betters I want you to acknowledge with a Yes Ma’am or No Ma’am. If you are told to come to the couch, you will say Yes Ma’am. If you agree with something, I told you then you will say Yes Ma’am. Do you understand?” Aunt Sam asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

“Now, your mother used to be a bit of a hard head and admittedly, but we were older, and we were farm girls. What worked for us obviously won’t work for you because you don’t process things the way we did. We can still use different methods to get to the same outcome. As an example, when we were naked we felt a sense of embarrassment because we were big girls and like Blair people really shouldn’t be free to look in our windows and have a peek any old time they like, do you understand, Eddie?” she asked me.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I answered. I didn’t really understand fully. It was shocking to me on some level my mom was EVER naked. I had never seen her naked. It was not a mental image I had ever had in my mind until that moment.

“I don’t want you just to parrot Yes Ma’am. I need you to tell me what you understand so that I know you are listening,” My Aunt amended her earlier rule that I could acknowledge simple instructions, but I had to be very specific and detailed in responses to questions.

“A lie by omission is still a lie, because it is an intentional deception. Do you understand that, Eddie?”

I didn’t know what my Aunt meant. On some level I knew withholding the truth was not right but at the same time there were times when I was afraid to tell the truth because of the consequences. I knew it was wrong I was just afraid that I’d get in even more trouble.

“Well, you still have some book learning to do after all Mister Smarty Pants. A lie by omission is where you leave out details. You didn’t tell me the entire story, and whether you knew it or not, I had the wrong conclusion. Just like fibbing to a doctor or not providing them ALL of your symptoms, you cannot get the proper diagnosis, Eddie. You must speak plainly and honestly at all times, do you understand?”

“Yes, Ma’am, If my betters ask me a question, I will answer honestly and completely without leaving anything out,” I said. I was afraid she’d ask about things Blair swore me never to tell. “Will I not get in trouble if I tell you the entire truth?” I asked. I assumed that since I told the truth I would now be innocent of wrong doing.

“You must still face the responsibility of what you did. You just won’t be in further trouble for lying to your betters,” my Aunt explained sternly.

“I’ll tell you the truth from now on, Ma’am” I promised. I wasn’t sure if I could keep that promise but I wanted to be courageous enough to do the right thing.

“You can apply that honesty part to everyone, even your little friends,” My Aunt nodded that she believed I understood the first principle she wanted to teach me. “Now, explain to me what I meant earlier about what worked for my sister and me on the farm won’t work for you,” she circled back to her original question.

“I understand that the rules for girls and boys are different, Ma’am,” I answered.

“No, if you were a little girl, then you could run around without clothes at the beach, and no one would care. There isn’t anything on a little girl but a tiny slit and a flat chest just like a boy. No one cares but once you start to develop like us then everything changes, Eddie.” My Aunt explained.

She told me that as boys mature they start to like girls and they WANT to show off. She explained that as girls mature they start to like girls and they WANT to show off too. That made sense to me. My Aunt explained that when GIRLS show off they only want certain boys to look at them and not others. That is where I started to realize that girls were not as simple as boys to understand.

“The female condition is very difficult to understand, Eddie. Unless you are one of us you won’t get it. We are much more complicated than boys. They say little boys are made of Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails. They say little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice. What they don’t tell you is that when we grow up we aren’t always sugar, spice and all things nice,” my Aunt giggled.

She could see the confusion on my face and she looked like she understood that what she was telling me was going over my head.

She told me there are certain expectations of men and women as they get older. The man is the breadwinner. The man gets to make certain decisions in a relationship. The man is going to be the one the waiter addresses first when you go out to dinner. This is the way it has always been. She explained that women are expected to be the nurturer, the home maker, the one who raises the kids. She said because of these gender roles there are certain things hard wired into the way men and women think and then there are certain things that are learned.

My Aunt told me that she was going to address the things I learned.

“When it came to discipline my father had a one size fits all approach. He used the same techniques on your mother and I as he did our brothers. I think that was a flaw because what motivates them and what scares them is very different,” she explained.

She told me that the female condition lends itself to certain shortcomings. Manipulation of men and controlling them by withholding attention and sex. “A man can’t really do that to a woman. If I want attention I can get it from somewhere else much easier than he can,” My Aunt said.

“That isn’t what I heard about the other night at Captain Hiram’s,” Blair chuckled and My Aunt glared at her.

“Blair makes a good point,” My Aunt accepted the teasing with her usual smirk. She explained to me that the Men at the bar where like Fisherman. They have a rod and bait. My cousin tried to infer the rod was the size of their cock but my Aunt only smirked a little harder and didn’t say it was or wasn’t in the metaphor.

My Aunt explained that she and her friends were the fish in the metaphor. “The bait is what motivates us and it is the size of the rod and how he handles it that reels us in,” she explained.

“So obviously, you can’t use a rod and bait to catch a fisherman! He isn’t going to try to bite for bait. He is going to be motivated to get as many fish as he can! You have to teach Fisherman how to fish. You have to teach fish how to not get caught by a bad fisherman!”

That made sense to me on some level.

“You see as you get older you’ll want to see naked girls all the time, and as Blair gets older she is going to have to be the one who keeps telling them no,” my Aunt looked at Blair to remind her that was her duty and Blair smiled innocently in agreement.

“So if I made a rule that said you had to be naked all the time I realize now that you don’t really care because you don’t have anything anyone wants to see. I thought at first because you were shy that you may find it embarrassing to be naked and I intended to teach you a lesson with it. However, you proved that you didn’t care because you immediately broke my rules this morning.”

I did care about being naked, and I was shy! I tried to explain, but my Aunt told me it was not my turn to talk. I was to listen and answer when I was called upon. “You have an opportunity to speak your mind at the end,” she assured me.

“Do you know why I would use embarrassment as a punishment, Eddie?” She asked.

Frankly, I had no idea. I had been embarrassed since the moment I was stripped on the beach.

“A carpenter uses every tool in his toolbox, Eddie. If all he ever uses is a hammer, then all his problems must be nails. If my only tool were Tyrone then eventually your butt would chap, and you would get used to him. He wouldn’t be very effective would he, Eddie?” she asked me.

“No Ma’am,” I answered and hoped she didn’t want me to elaborate.

“I also use corner time. You have to learn patience. You wait, and you can’t go have fun and play. You sacrifice your time in exchange for that bad behavior. It is not pleasant, is it, Eddie?” she asked me.

“No, Ma’am, it is not,” I admitted truthfully.

“I don’t always have the boys stand in the corner naked. I only do that if that they are already naked. They don’t really care anyway and think it is fun. However, did you know your Grandfather used to make your mother, and I stand completely naked in the corner no matter who came over?” she asked.

“No, Ma’am, I did not,” I answered. It seemed hot to me when someone else had to do it – especially a teenage girl.

“My Uncles came over for a poker night, and I was in the corner naked. My date came over to pick me up on Saturday night, and I was in the corner naked. Do you think I liked that, Eddie?” she asked me.

“No, Ma’am, I don’t think you did,” I answered.

“I was older than Blair. Obviously, just spending an hour in the corner wouldn’t have meant that much to me at that stage. However, spending it with my butt on display for whoever wanted to come up and have a look was an entirely different matter. It was unpleasant enough that I learned to obey my Father and Mother and respect their authority, do you understand that Eddie?” she asked.

I answered that I did. My Aunt was prepared to go into more detail If I needed it. She did when I asked about her punishment.

One summer, your mother and I wanted to follow the Grateful Dead. It was the 1960s Eddie, and it was a very different time than now. Everything was Free Love, Peace, and grass.”

I had no idea what she was talking about at the time.

“Your Grandfather is a former Marine Seargent who fought in Korea, and he decided that it was not in our best interest to go running off in a van full of a bunch of pot-smoking hippies,” My Aunt explained with her trademark smirk like she finds what she is saying kind of funny or witty.

“My Father tied us out in the barn and took everything out of our room. No phone, no bed, no clocks, no clothes!” She explained. “He scared the hippies off with a shotgun so they would never come back.”

I nodded in understanding.

“That summer he made us earn back all our priveledges. We worked in the barn from sunrise to sunset. We slept in the barn. We ate in the barn. We got the strap three times a day whether we needed it or not just to keep our attitude in check,” My Aunt told the story, and I could see she was re-imagining it all in her mind as she did.

This was an extremely hot story, and my dick twitched. My Aunt pretended not to notice as I stood close to Blair and her so that my cock was only a foot away.

“We pulled a cart to and from town in the nude, and we washed off in a lake every night. By the time, we were permitted back in the house; we were grateful for even small amounts of privacy and comforts. We appreciated what he provided to us,” My Aunt explained that she didn’t mouth off to her Father and that she was very obedient after that.

“Your uncles all saw us naked, and they were permitted to observe our discipline. At the time we thought it was just because my Dad favored them, but I realized afterward that the embarrassment, the shame, the humiliation was a type of pain. A pain that makes you stronger, and it can work when the strap is no longer scary to you as motivation. You don’t want to get punished by your cousin, do you? It was embarrassing, wasn’t it, Eddie?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma’am, very,” I admitted.

“I’ll allow Blair to punish you in a limited fashion for that reason. You will answer to her, and she will answer to me. We have discussed her boundaries, and I believe it will be very effective for you to have to listen to Blair. I will make the same recommendation to your parents that your brother Stefan be put in charge of you when you return home,” she promised me.