A Frustrated Julia, a Threatened Jack
The tension was electric.
Mrs Ellroy would be out of the house more and more, tending to a cutlery business bequeathed to her by an uncle in Sheffield.
She had withdrawn permission for her niece Julia to bath Jack. So the thin, angular girl- three years old than the 18 year old youth- no longer had those thrilling glimpses of Jack's rear and the chance to soap it, lovingly, with the long brush. How she had relished the task: the two muscular cheeks, the folds at intersections of thighs and bottom, the deep cleft so mysterious and secret. Jack standing in the tub, shyly protecting his front from her gaze.
This prohibition made Julia all the more restless in the boy's company. More inclined to stare hard at the front of his underwear. Or the tightness of the rear when he was bent at a task.
He, at home, wearing nothing but his Y fronts. That being the rule.
His tummy fluttered with fear that, at any moment...
...while he washed the dishes or stood on a stool reaching for a light switch...
...Julie's bent fingers might reach out and take his white Y fronts by the waist band and whisk them to his ankles!
And he would suddenly have no secrets left, devastated by shame. Frozen with humiliation.
Adding to the tension was that with his weights exercises and swimming at the YMCA Jack's physique was getting chunkier.
Under his slicked Teddy Boy haircut, Jack was as wide shouldered and trim waisted as the young champions in the pages of Physique Pictorial or Young Adonis with whom he compared himself in the mirror. The young champions in their straining G-strings, Jack in his. Or one of his- he had five, ordered from "All Male Garments," care of a Soho post office box. At the YMCA gym one of the gnarled old veterans said he was becoming their own Steve Reeves, the world champion body builder from California.
His growth spurt had delivered hard-as-wood biceps that he flexed into half arcs. The swooping definition of his pecs excited the two women. And "devils horns" muscles, on his lower abs, seem to draw Julia's attention lower still- to the bulge in the front of the underwear, always twitching and stretching, filling out or retreating, rearranging itself, wanting to show off its shape.
Like a frisky young python...
...moving around the boy's Y fronts.
Once at afternoon tea, sitting at the kitchen table, Julia with finely honed instincts, told Jack to stand up.
His voice quailed, like an adolescent's.
"Stand up? What for?"
"Just stand up...I want to check."
Jack went as red as a beetroot.
"N...n...now?"
Her green eyes gleamed as she nodded.
He struggled to his feet, hovering hands trying to conceal the tenting of his Y fronts.
She stared.
Greedily.
Softly, hypnotised by his shameful bulge, she gave him a direction he couldn't refuse.
He swallowed.
He dropped his hands to his sides.
Her eyes stood out on stalks devouring the 45 degree erection tenting the Y of his underwear. They were one of the old pair and a fat testicle emerged from the worn elastic on the left thigh.
There was even a gap in his waistband where his erection tugged forward. Space enough for her to have dropped an exploring hand inside, like a school doctor with gloved hand, groping for the testicles of an 18 year old boy.
Jack felt she was going to command him to take the Y fronts down.
Conflicting emotions warred in the boy's soul.
A thrilling anxiety was aroused by the notion of lowering his undergarment.
Her eyes would be focussed on his rigid flesh...
The horrifying humiliation he would feel...
Jack was borne by the lurid thoughts. He prayed that her command would come.
It would be...
...devastating.
..wonderful.
And as if bidden, fluid flowed from his cock and dampened the Y front.
She too seemed at war with conflicting notions.
But a terror of going one step too far prevailed.
"Disgusting. Go to your room."
Later Jack, standing at the top of the steps, caught scraps of conversation between the girl and her aunt. Some talk of a new job. But not here. In Ceylon where the Manchester outfit that employed her as book keeper and manager of employee records was opening a textile mill. It would be a big promotion. There would be a house in the grounds...talk of manservants...responsibilities just below the top executive. Jack said nothing but prayed for her departure. A house without her uneasy, prying presence.
Later he saw a luridly coloured book in the parlour, leaning against her leather bag. It was printed on the cheapest paper and entitled Discipline and the Tropics by Sarah Maitland. There were chapters about the Caribbean with shocking drawings of naked Negro youths being spanked, struggling over the laps of ladies in Edwardian dresses, or standing totally nude being lectured by English females. The women, young and old, seemed teachers or administrators. The Negro males were invariably totally naked, not even clothes draped across chairs or hung on clothes hooks. The artist had not hesitated to portray the lusty proportions of the black males and even dared to present nearly all "suffering erections."
Other chapters were illustrated with drawings of Indian males, standing naked in corridors in an old fashioned school, with female servants in saris staring hard; or bent over with bums on display, completely nude; even naked in a classroom- the boys clearly Indian, the cross-hatching indicating dark skin, some with turbans- while female teachers lectured them tauntingly and well-dressed English girls smirked. And pointed, cruelly. This illustrator, who Jack assumed was Indian himself, seemed uninhibited about the boys' private characteristics- the cocks for the most part petite and scrotums uneven and dangling- and he daringly portrayed a majority in states of erection.
Jack's hand had shaken, his heart had raced.
Who had given this to Julia? Who was equipping her for staff discipline in Ceylon? Jack's mind galloped. An underground of female disciplinarians? Friends and allies of Gerda Halloway? He wanted to read every word but noises at the door sent him scuttling, clutching his lose fitting Y fronts and covering the erection that had reared at this encounter between the worlds of English women and dark skinned, native boys rendered clothes-free.
Dancing in His Y Fronts
Of course, there were the card games...which devolved into dances.
With, say, three or four of Julia's smart, well dressed friends- the lively girls who seemed to befriend her because she delivered access to the underwear-wearing boys who rented their rooms in her aunt's house.
So after gym Jack would head to one of their homes where a girl's parents would be out, and the young ladies able to entertain themselves for an evening. Four girls in their early 20s, with- they would assure parents- the nice young man who boards with Julia. And, they said, reassuringly, he's only 18, boyish, no threat.
They didn't mention that as soon as he arrived in his leather jacket and jeans, his flannel shirt and work boots, they would insist he strip off.
"Yes, get out of those work clothes."
"Just like when we catch you at home at Julia's."
"Just in your white Y fronts. So manly."
He winced at the instruction, eyelids flickering and his face blushing. He stumbled out a protest. But they insisted. And he didn't tell them he had switched into a nicely pressed, newly laundered pair of Y fronts in the change room, anticipating just this instruction. So he would haul himself off to another room and pull off his clothes, folding them and piling them neatly on a chair. Taking a big breath, shuddering all over and with hands over his groin, he would re-enter the dining room and suffer their stares, their grins and giggles, their gasps and their nudging one another.
Their looks almost tickled his skin.