Soames watched the balding blond man sweat. He looked terribly defeated, kind of like Toby, the Human Resources chap on "The Office." Soames tried to smile--it wasn't in his blood, smiling on command, to make the man feel at ease.
"Calvin, just tell me more about yourself. It'll really help in the session."
Calvin Sage smiled. "You can call me Cal. All my um, friends, do." Cal paused. "My mom raised me with my three sisters, and was a very strict disciplinarian. I ran off to the Air Force after high school, but I came back after my hitch was up. I was just going to stay at home for a few weeks, and of course I was a normal young guy--"
Soames doubted this, but his face was inscrutable.
"You know, Mom wouldn't let me go out at night when I was in high school, but I thought, hey, I'm twenty-five years old now. The first night, I came in after the nine o'clock curfew she'd set me, and my mom took my pants and underwear down and whipped me with that familiar hairbrush." Cal paused, and wiped his forehead.
"Then the next day Mom told me that I had to go out and find a job, and she said she would whip my bare bottom for every day I didn't have one. I was a skilled machinist from working on planes in the service, and so it only took me three weeks to get a job, but every night that I didn't have one, Mother stripped me naked, tied my hands behind my back and bent me over a hassock, and went at it with Dad's old razor strop."
Cal looked terribly embarrassed. "And it was so embarrassing, because my older sister and her daughter, my 19 year old niece were living there for a while, and they'd watch, first in horror, arguing that Mom should give me a break, and then eventually as they realized I wasn't going to do anything about this, I was just helpless around Mom, they began gradually laughing at me."
"After my whipping, Mom would forbid me to watch TV. She'd tell me to stand in the corner...naked, until eight pm, my bedtime in high school, and then send me to bed. One night I mildly corrected my slutty little niece, who was swearing, and she actually took me over her knee--little Tammy did--and sent me into the corner where I cried, partially from the whipping, the kid has a tennis arm--and partially from the embarrassment, as of course Mom and my sister took Tammy's side in this."
Soames was getting bored. "And then when you got a job?"
"Well, then Mom would let me stay dressed and watch a little TV, but she expected me to turn my paychecks over to her unopened, and if the accounting office at the garage I worked for forgot to seal the checks, I'd be stripped and whipped again...and of course Mom wouldn't let me out of the house or yard after I came home.... once I argued with her, and Mom made me put on a pink dress and patent Mary Jane's with white socks...then she made me skip rope in the front yard."