From the Stream to the Sea - 1. Chap 1

From the Stream to the Sea

Unsurprisingly it started in the summer, although that year the weather was unusually warm even in May, and for us kids it was great to be out again in the woods and fields that surrounded our homes.

During the week we would be at school for most of the day, and then in the evenings, there were chores to do around the house or we would have to attend lectures and meetings. Those seemed to us kids to be just more lessons and were really boring, but we had to be sure to pay attention, stay awake and listen carefully in case we got asked questions.

However, for us young kids the weekend was free from school, and once we had done any chores at home, we could go out and play – at least on Saturday. On Sunday, though, we had to go to church in the morning, but after that, we still weren't allowed to play outside. So really it was just on Saturday that we had a chance to go and explore.

Of course, to me at the time, it all seemed perfectly normal. I just thought it was how all kids lived. It was only after I escaped that I came to realise how different it was. But that is putting the end of the story almost before it has even started…………

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I was born and raised in this small community in the hills of Oregon. It had been established some years before I came into existence by a group of people who had decided that modern America had sold its soul to the devil and wanted to have nothing to do with the rest of the world. I don't know if they bought the land where the settlement was built or if they just moved in and took it over. There was a big valley through which ran a river and a couple of smaller valleys with little streams. Then there were hills that rose up to mountains in the distance that seemed to be snow-capped for most of the year. In the bottom of the big valley was the settlement, which consisted of about a hundred or so wooden shacks of various sizes, some barns in which the animals were kept over winter, as well as foodstuffs and grain, plus the two schoolrooms and the main meeting room.

All of the adults worked within the settlement, mainly on the land, but also doing the other things needed to maintain a self-sufficient society. There was an old truck in which a couple of the elders would go off on a few occasions during the year in order to obtain certain things. Basically, though, our world was the settlement.

I had just turned fourteen that spring, and my best friend, Gabriel, was a couple of months older. We both looked forward to our Saturdays when we could go off and do as we wished. I suppose that made us peculiar to start with, as most of the other kids tended to stay together and play communal games, but we just liked to be with each other. That particular Saturday we headed to our special place, which was in one of the smaller valleys. We'd found this spot that was by a stream where we could sit or lie on a grassy bank in dappled sunshine from the nearby trees. We took our fishing poles with us and sometime we might catch something, but that day was so warm that I think the fish were too hot to go swimming, so we did instead!

We were only wearing cut-off jeans, which was the same as we wore most days, apart from Sundays, and outside of those, our bodies were a nutmeg shade of brown. We'd always kept those shorts on when we'd swum before, but that day Gabriel stood up from where we'd been sitting and untied the string that was round the waist of his, letting them slide down his legs before stepping out of them. I stared at him, as I'd never seen him or any other boy naked before – nakedness was considered to be a sin in our community.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"What does it look like?" He replied. "I'm going for a swim. Are you coming?"

It was like a dare and a dare that I couldn't decline, so I stood up, and in next to no time my cut-offs were also on the grass and it was Gabriel's turn to look at me. We were both uncircumcised, as the community did not believe in circumcision, and being fourteen we both had a good bush of pubic hair, as puberty had started at least a couple of years ago. Gabriel was slightly taller than me and had fair hair as opposed to my dark locks. Both of us had straight hair that was cut by our mothers in what could be termed a 'chilli bowl' style. Only adult men were allowed to have long hair. Neither of us was skinny but nor were we fat, as the chores we did ensured that we kept fit, and I guess the basic food we ate wasn't the sort that would lead to getting overweight.

Gabriel suddenly ran ahead of me into the stream, and as he did so, I noticed the marks on his backside. He had evidently done something wrong last night that had caused his father to paddle him. In the settlement, being paddled as a kid was nothing unusual – I'd been paddled a couple of nights before by my father just because I'd gotten paddled earlier at school for talking in class!

I quickly followed him into the stream. It wasn't deep – only about two or three feet – and it was cold! Despite the warmth of the day, that stream had come from those snow-covered mountains, so it soon raised the goose bumps on our bodies. We splashed and played around for a few minutes but soon decided to come out. Gabriel lay down on his front on the grass, once again displaying his rear with those tell-tale marks. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out,

"When did you get paddled?"

Gabriel rolled onto his side and looked at me as I lay down beside him.

"I got four licks this morning – forgotten about them now."

As he said that, he ran his hand over his backside and grinned at me.

"What did you do? I usually get my licks at night."

Gabriel paused before replying,

"I made a mess on the sheets."

"What? You wet the bed?"

I shouldn't have asked but it was something I'd done once or twice when I was a lot younger and had been paddled for it.

"Don't be silly! I don't wet the bed; never have."

"So, how did you mess the sheets?"

Now Gabriel took even longer before he said anything.

"Adam, do you play with yourself – you know, with your pecker?"

As he said that, he nodded towards my pecker, which was what we called it back then, having graduated from calling it our pee-pee some time back.

"Sometimes," I said.

"And when you do, does anything come out?"

"Sometimes," I said again.

"Well, last night a whole lot came out of mine and went over the sheets. Mother was all annoyed, as she'd only washed them that day, and started shouting at me. Father heard her and came to see what the problem was. Told me I was very naughty to pleasure myself and that it was a sin for which I had to be punished, so I got paddled. Stupid thing was I hadn't played with myself; it had just happened, but I never got a chance to tell him that. 'Spect he wouldn't have believed me anyway.

"I don't do much, so when I do stroke it, I can keep it in my hand and then wipe my hand on my chest to get rid of it. I know we've been told it's a sin, but it feels good when I do it."

My pecker had started to grow as we were talking, and as I looked over at Gabriel, I saw his had too. He placed his hand on it and pulled down the skin covering the head. He smiled at me,

"Come on – let's see yours."

What could I do but show him my head.

"Shall we both sin together? Nobody will ever know except us, and we aren't going to tell on each other, are we?"

And so we lay side by side and stroked ourselves. It wasn't long before I saw Gabriel start to jerk and groan, and then I watched amazed at the amount of milky white stuff shot from his pecker onto his chest. He turned his head to watch me, and after a couple more minutes, I managed to produce a little stream of my own.

My earlier amazement then turned to astonishment, and I'm sure a look of revulsion crossed my face as Gabriel ran his fingers across his tummy, collected some of the stuff, and putting his fingers in his mouth, licked it off.

"Ew, that's gross," I said.

"'Tisn't. It tastes good and it gets rid of the evidence. Taste yours."

I didn't want to but at the same time I did want to, so I tentatively scooped up a few drops on one finger and transferred it to my mouth. It was sort of salty and not as nasty as I'd expected.

Next thing I knew I was feeling Gabriel's fingers on me, scooping up what I'd left, which he proceeded to lick off. What else could I do but take some of his? It tasted different, but nice – nicer than mine I decided.

We had started on the road to damnation.

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I could hardly wait for the next Saturday to arrive. Each night in bed I thought of what we'd done the previous one, and each night I had produced stuff. The next Saturday was fine, and as soon as we got to our spot, we both took off our shorts and lay down.

"Have you done it much this week? I've done it every night," I said boastfully.

"No, I've only done it a couple of times," replied Gabriel, "But I've found a new way to do it."

"What's that? Show me."

And he proceeded to do so. I was mightily impressed as he firstly stroked his pecker up to full size and then managed to bend his limbs into a position where he could get his pecker into his mouth where he proceeded to suck on it like a candy stick.

When he'd finished, he lay back with a sigh of pleasure that turned into a big grin that spread all across his face. His hazel eyes sparkled as he said,

"Bet you can't do that."

Well, I tried, but I couldn't, which was a pity because, as Gabriel pointed out, it was a great way of making sure there was no evidence of having sinned. It was something I never did manage to do either.

After I'd tried several times without success, Gabriel came over and squatted astride my legs. I wondered what he was going to do but soon realized as he lowered his head towards my pecker. It was already firm, but as he touched it with his lips, I felt as if an electric shock had passed through my body. I groaned as he started to lick up and down the shaft with his tongue. The head of my pecker was already exposed and the touch of his lips and tongue around it drove me almost wild. Total wildness came as he drew it into his mouth, and in next to no time I was spurting into it. Never had I experienced such feelings and it took some time before I calmed down.

When I'd recovered, we went for a swim in the still cold waters of the stream. When we came back to the bank, I offered to do to Gabriel what he had done to me. He seemed to enjoy it, but I struggled to contain his spurtings and felt like I was choking.

It was on our way back to the settlement that we agreed we would not pleasure ourselves during the week, but save ourselves for Saturday. It was very hard to do, as each night I lay in bed thinking of what we had done, but somehow I managed. Yet again we were in luck as Saturday was fine so we could go off to our place once more.

This time Gabriel let me take his pecker in my mouth first. I think I was better than the previous week but I still couldn't take all he gave me. That was when he rolled me onto my back and licked the surplus from around my lips and chin. I opened my mouth and before I knew what was happening his tongue was inside and we were kissing. Then he commenced running his hands over my body sending shivers of pleasure coursing through me. Next thing he was kissing my chest and my nipples and proceeded to work his way down my body until he came to my pecker. It was already leaking, and once again he found it easy to make me spurt quickly, but once he had done so, he changed his position so that he could kiss me on the mouth again and we could share my spurt as we had shared his a few minutes before.

Now we had moved from simply pleasuring each other to something much more deep and intense. From then on we would spend time kissing, cuddling and stroking each other's bodies and gaining great pleasure from that before we turned to making each other spurt. With not pleasuring ourselves during the week, we now produced much more on the first time each Saturday and were easily able to pleasure each other two or three more times before it was time to go home.

It was my idea that we should try sucking each other at the same time. That was an amazing experience the first time we did it, and in a few weeks we were able to almost coordinate our spurting. One Saturday after we had done that, we then lay alongside each other in spoon fashion, I with my left arm over Gabriel and gently stroking his pecker and his acorns. As I was doing so, of course my own pecker started to grow again, pressed up against his backside. He raised one leg and with his left hand moved my pecker between his legs and up against his hole.

"Do you want to put your pecker in my hole?" he whispered.

All sorts of thought swirled round my brain.

"Won't it hurt? Won't you have a baby?"

He laughed. "Haven't you noticed, men don't have babies. I suppose it might hurt a bit, but I've had my fingers up there and that didn't hurt much. You can try if you want, but I'll yell if it hurts and you have to promise to stop. We'll also try and make it easier."

So saying, he started spitting on his fingers before rubbing them around his hole. As he did so he told me to put some spit on my pecker. Then he got on his knees and I tried to insert my pecker. I hadn't got it in very far when we heard some noises in the woods nearby. Almost certainly it was a deer or some other animal but we were scared enough to stop and run into the stream so that if anyone came they wouldn't see what we were doing.

Summer seemed to pass very quickly and September came round all too soon. We knew that once the weather got colder we could no longer carry on our activities and neither of us knew how we would manage once we had to stop. We had by then several times gotten our peckers into each other's holes, but we both agreed that our favorite thing was to suck the spurt from each other at the same time.

And that was what we were doing when we were discovered. I suppose it was inevitable that the adults would wonder where we went to each Saturday, as we always set off in the same direction, plus we were both so much happier during that summer. But being stupid and dumb we didn't, and we were tracked by two of the elders, who dragged us back to the settlement.

We both knew what would happen to us. We were going to meet what we boys called 'The Holy Paddle', for that was what it was – a paddle with holes. In that respect, it was different to the paddles used by our fathers and at school, for those had no holes, were fairly thin and about six inches long, excluding the handle, and a couple of inches wide. 'The Holy Paddle', though, was almost twice as long and wide and much thicker. It also had three rows each of ten holes cut into the main part. We had seen it used on a couple of occasions in the past and had watched as boys were very quickly reduced to tears.

We were frog marched to the house of the Leader and he quickly assembled a group of elders to hear details of our crime. We could not deny what we had been doing, as we had been seen 'going at it like dogs' as one of the witnesses stated. I'd never seen dogs doing what we were doing, but thought it best not to say anything.

We stood and waited to hear our sentence. The elders were talking between themselves, not over concerned if we heard. One of them mentioned that Jesus had suffered for 30 days and 30 nights. We knew what a 'Holy Paddling' entailed. They took place on a Friday evening in the main assembly room where services were held on Sundays. Everyone was invited to attend and no doubt the room would be packed to see us – a lot of the adults enjoyed seeing these public paddlings. When everyone was ready, we would be led into the room, dressed only in our cut off denims, and would have to walk to the stage at the front, where the Leader and the Elders would be assembled. Then we would have to drop our shorts and present our rears to the audience who would witness and count as the licks were delivered.

I knew that the maximum number of licks that could be delivered at one time was six and I had once heard of a boy being sentenced to twelve, which meant he had to attend and be punished on two successive Fridays. However, I couldn't believe my ears when in passing sentence the Leader finally said that we would each receive thirty licks! I heard a loud noise beside me where Gabriel stood, and glancing round, I saw he was no longer there. Now he was in a heap on the floor where he had fainted.

So the mention of the 30 days made sense in terms of the total number of licks we were to receive although as we would be punished over five weeks it didn't make sense in terms of days. I wasn't going to point that out though!Almost worse in some ways there would be almost a week before the first punishment occurred during which time we could imagine what it would be like. The disgrace of having to walk through all those people and then bare our rears to them and then having to do the same over and over again until all thirty licks had been delivered, was all intended to let everyone see what happened to sinners such as us.

Once we had come out of that room, Gabriel and I were separated and returned to our families. We were not allowed to even speak to each other. As far as my mother and father were concerned, I had disgraced them before the community and fully deserved the punishment I was going to receive. I expect Gabriel's parents thought the same. Only my sister Ruth, who was a year older than me, was sympathetic, and she was the one who came and tried to console me when I started crying in bed at night thinking about what was going to happen.

Finally Friday evening came. Gabriel and I were brought together in a small room while the crowd assembled. We did at least manage to smile to each other but were forbidden to talk. Eventually we were let into the main room. All the seats were taken and people were standing at the sides and back. We were made to walk one at a time through the room and onto the stage with Gabriel leading the way. The Leader told everyone that we had been caught committing a great sin and giving mutual pleasure to each other. Because it was such a sin and to ensure no other boys did the same in future, our punishment was to be 'exemplary'. I'd never heard that word before, but it was one that has lived with me ever since. Of course, by then everyone had a fairly good idea of what we had been doing and there were voices shouting out that we were sinners who would bring great evil to the community and the evil needed to be beaten out of us.

Once he had finished talking to the assembly, the Leader asked if the people were happy with the verdict and if he should apply the paddle. There were loud cries of 'Yes' and 'Beat out the Sin' and such like. So he picked up the paddle from where it was lying on a table, told us to stand a yard apart, take down our shorts and then to bend over with our rears towards the people and place our hands on our lower legs. I had wondered which of us would be beaten first, but it appeared we were going to be punished together, which sort of seemed better.

The Leader came behind me and I felt the paddle rubbing across my rear. I think I started to whimper at that point, but then the rubbing stopped. A few seconds later, I heard a loud 'crack' and was surprised to feel nothing. It was immediately followed by a yowl of pain and I realized that Gabriel had been given the first lick. A few seconds later it was me who was yowling. I felt an explosion and a pain such as I had never felt erupted in my rear. Then it was Gabriel again before my second landed, on a new part of my rear much lower down so that I was almost lifted off my feet. By now I was crying and by the time a further couple of licks had landed I was sobbing continuously. At this point my rear felt as if it was on fire and I wanted someone to throw a bucket of water over it. That thought took me back to the stream in my mind and somehow the recollection of the fun we had had there got me through the last couple of licks.

When we were told we could stand up, we both had tears and snot running down our faces. Pulling up our shorts and then closing them as the rough denim came into contact with our rears was agony, as was walking from the stage.

On getting back to our home, I immediately went and lay face down on my bed. After a while, Ruth came in and gave me a cold damp cloth, which she said might help ease the pain. Gingerly I pushed down my shorts and ran my hand over my rear. I could feel lots of little bumps where the holes in the paddle had pinched the skin. It was agony to touch. I spent most of the weekend in bed, but of course on Monday I had to get up and go to school, by which time Friday was only another four days away……

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It was during this time that I decided I was going to escape from the settlement. I had no real idea of how to, or where I would go, but I had some months to try and devise a plan, as the winter weather was so bad that any attempt to escape would have been pointless. A family had joined the community a year or so earlier and I talked with their son, Joseph, who was about my age. He knew quite a bit about the outside world and said that they had lived near the ocean and also that all the rivers ran into the ocean. So I decided that if I followed the main river downstream, then eventually I would reach the ocean. I didn't know how far our territory spread, but I was sure it didn't go that far. I also reckoned that if I went in the river, then the dogs would not be able to follow my scent, because I was sure that as soon as I was found to be missing, a hunt would be on to capture me. And if I was captured, then that would be another 'Holy Paddling'.

Eventually I plucked up the courage to tell Ruth what I was intending to do. She warned me it would be almost impossible but said she wished she could go with me. She had recently been betrothed to one of the elders, which our parents considered to be an honour, but as he already had two wives, she hated the idea.

Gabriel and I were still not allowed to speak to each other and were only allowed out on alternate Saturdays to prevent any possibility of our sinning again. With Ruth's help, though, we started leaving messages for each other and agreed that we would attempt to escape together.

How we did that and the problems we had to overcome along the way is another story. All I'll say for the present is that we now live together in San Diego. Every Saturday we make a point of going out together – usually when the weather is good (as it frequently is here) to the beach and often to Black's beach where we can go naked. Just being able to sit there without worries, looking at the ocean and watching people having fun makes all the hardships we endured to get here worthwhile. The dark thoughts from that other summer come back less and less as time passes, although I often wonder how life turned out for Ruth because without her help Gabriel and I would have had a totally different one to that we now enjoy.

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