Far and Beyond Ch. 02

Lina and I were seated across one of the tables in the Observation Car of the Coast Starlight Amtrak train bound for Seattle. I'd just brought two cans of beer and some light snacks from the cafe in the deck below.

"Nice scenery," I said, watching the California coastline rush past our window.

"I love the ocean," said Lina, opening her beer. "When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a pirate. Not a girl pirate but a real boy buccaneer."

"You wanted to be a boy?" I asked, pouring my beer into a plastic glass. "I can't imagine you as a tomboy."

"I wasn't a tomboy. I was a regular girl, playing with dolls and wearing dresses. The wish to become a pirate was just a secret dream of mine. Yeah, mentally I'd rather have involved myself in fights with boys than playing with my girlfriends. I saw myself standing on the deck of some captured ship, fighting my foes and chopping their heads off with my sharp cutlass. When there was no one to resist, I'd kick their heads off the deck, drink some rum from the bottle and pee right into the ocean, while standing at the bow of the ship."

"Was that peeing part necessary to your dreams?"

"From a Freudian point of view, I guess, it was."

"Penis envy?"

"In a way it is," Lina smiled.

"As for me," I took a sip of beer, "I wanted to be a girl in my childhood."

"Really?"

"Yes, like you I imagined myself as a grownup person, though not a pirate, but someone like Helen of Troy."

"Why her?"

I took a pause, looked out the window, then faced Lina again and said:

"Unlike you, I didn't want to chop men's heads off, I wanted to break their hearts. Listen to this piece of poetry -

Let come what will, let Greece and Asia meet,

Let heroes die and kingdoms run with gore;

Let devastation spread from shore to shore--

Resplendent Helen finds her bondage sweet.

The whole world fights her battles, while she lies

Sunned in the fervor of young Paris' eyes.

Ella Wilcox wrote these lines. And here's another poem, by Lord Dunsany:

"And were you pleased?" they asked of Helen in Hell.

"Pleased?" answered she, "when all Troy's towers fell,

And dead were Priam's sons, and lost his throne,

And such a war was fought as none had known,

And even the gods took part, and all because of me alone?

Pleased? I should say I was!""

"Beautifully expressed," said Lina.

"Yes, I wanted to be pleased seeing men going mad about me, about my body, I wanted them to fight each other over me, I wanted to break their hearts, I wanted them to suffer with longing after me. Sara Teasdale described very well what I felt:

Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see

Aught but my body's fairness, till the end,

In all the islands set in all the seas,

And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,

Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,

Men's lives shall waste with longing after me,

For I shall be the sum of their desire,

The whole of beauty, never seen again."

"Some weird fantasies you had, Peter," Lina gave out a light laughter. "You know so much poetry, by the way."

"Well, you know, there's a poem for every occasion. Freud once said, everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me. There's one poem by Dorothy Parker that describes both your and my fantasies. This part is about you:

Oh, I should like to ride the seas,

A roaring buccaneer;

A cutlass banging at my knees,

A dirk behind my ear.

And when my captives' chains would clank

I'd howl with glee and drink,

And then fling out the quivering plank

And watch the beggars sink.

And these lines describe me:

Oh, I should like to dance and laugh

And pose and preen and sway,

And rip the hearts of men in half,

And toss the bits away."

"Yes, Dorothy Parker managed to put it across brilliantly," said Lina. "What about now, do you still want to be a woman?"

"Well, I'd like to reply in some other poetic lines - one need not be a chamber to be haunted. Yes, I'm still haunted by female beauty, and speaking of this very moment - an evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still."

"What do you mean by haunting?" Lina cast a look of curiosity at me.

"I want to possess your body."

"Sexually?"

"You may call it a sexual desire, though it's not of the thing we call sex. As Sara Teasdale said:

Your mind and mine are such great lovers they

Have freed themselves from cautious human clay,

And on wild clouds of thought, naked together

They ride above us in extreme delight."

I took some more beer and went on:

"I not only want my mind to escape my body, but break into yours. Just imagine there are some tiny devices implanted in our brains that make it possible for your mind to enter my body, and vice versa. I've no idea what you're going to do inside my body, but for me it'd definitely be extreme delight. It's not like a mere penetrating a girl's vagina with my penis, then primitive moving and rubbing it up and down, shaking my balls somewhere between her legs, but invading and possessing the whole female body, a body as beautiful as yours, Lina, possessing all and everything of you - body, legs, vagina, breasts, face. My mind would explode with delight, getting lost among all the atoms of your body. I'd be dissolved in your flesh, becoming part of it, then gather myself up again to concentrate myself within your brain and feel the greatest pleasure..."

Just then that frigging travel blogger entered the car. A tall red-headed guy of about 25 was slowly walking along the aisle, recording a video with his iPhone and speaking some text loudly.

"Now we entered the Observation Car, or Sightseer Lounge, as some passengers call it. It's a cool place to hang out, the car has floor to ceiling windows, providing a spectacular view on either side. Here we may see single swivel chairs, then ample family seats for groups up to five, and at this part of the car we see a few tables, where you may use your laptop, play some table game or refresh yourself with some snacks and beverages."

The blogger halted by our table and started recording the outside scenery right through the window where Lina was sitting.

"Could you please step aside a bit?" I addressed the guy.

"Am I bothering you?" the guy replied, still recording the video with his gadget.

"Not me but the girl."

"What girl?" the blogger turned his face to me and smiled widely.

"Don't you see there's a girl sitting by the window? Stop recording her!"

"What are you talking about? There's no girl over here. Just calm down, bro."

"Lina, please don't worry," I said to the girl. "Now I'll make him go away."

"Man, are you crazy?" the guy smirked and pointed the camera of his iPhone at me. "Are you seeing things and talking with ghosts?"

I jumped up to my feet and roared:

"Do stop making that video and get lost! "

"And here we see one insane passenger," the blogger was making some comments to his audience, "a guy talking to some imaginary girl called Lina."

I snatched the iPhone from his hand and flung it down the aisle.

"You bastard!" the blogger cried out and punched me in my nose. Blood gushed down from my nostrils. I wiped my face with a paper napkin, stepped to the aisle and straight away kicked the guy right in his groin. He at once doubled up, clutching his injured balls with both his hands, and painfully moaned:

"Fuck you... You fight like a girl..."

"To tell you the truth - I'm a girl indeed!" I cried out.

"You bitch..," he hissed out, trying to sit down on the seat at the table across the aisle.

"Lina," I stretched my hand out, "give me that cutlass of yours, I'll chop his fucking head off!"

The hilt of the cutlass lying heavy in my hand and the clickety-clack of the train wheels on the steel rails lulling my ear, my memory again brought me back to those days of my childhood...

That week I went to the bathhouse on Saturday - with my Dad. Every Russian bathhouse has a steam room where people whip their bodies with bunches of leafy twigs. The high air temperature and humidity combined with the twig-whipping provides a very healthy effect to the body. My Dad, being a great lover of this whipping massage, started his every visit to the bathhouse in the steam room.

After I stepped over the threshold of the steam room and closed the door behind me, a very noticeable fact caught my eye. All those men who were whipping the front parts of their bodies do it while covering their groins with their free hand. I at once remembered that women never did so; they never covered any part of their bodies while whipping themselves with leafy twigs in the steam room. I could remember it very well - only a week ago I had been in this room with Mom. And many other times before, and never I'd seen a woman or a girl bothering herself with protecting her groin while whipping her body in contrast to all those men around me who carefully held their scrotums in their hands while slashing their fronts with twig bunches. And after all that had happened to me in the bathhouse last Sunday I knew only too well the reason for their doing so.

Soon among the naked men and hot steam I saw my friend Mike.

"Hi, Pete," he said as he neared me.

"Hi, Mike."

"Hey, boys, let me give you a good whipping," My Dad addressed me and my friend, a huge bunch of oak twigs in his hand, "your backs first - just turn around, you both."

When our backs received enough whipping, Dad commanded:

"Now your fronts, boys, and don't forget to shield your balls."

We turned around to face my Dad and cupped our little scrotums with our hands. While Dad was working our fronts with the oak twigs, I turned to Mike and asked him:

"Do you know why we're covering our balls?

"Sure I do," my friend replied, "just not to get them hurt with the twigs."

"And girls don't cover themselves down there when they whip themselves," I pronounced loudly.

"How d'you know?" Mike asked.

"Have you ever been to the bathhouse with your Mom?" I asked in return.

"Never."

"I've been," I said calmly. "And never seen any girl covering anything in the steam room."

"Girls have nothing to cover," said Dad as he stopped whipping us to join in our conversation. "They are just "have-nots" unlike us men."

"I think girls are lucky", I said.

"But why?" Mike looked at me, totally surprised.

"Last week, when I was in the bathhouse with Mom, my sis kicked me in the balls. It hurt me very much. All the girls around laughed at me, while I was lying on the floor. They were so happy without balls. I envied them so much."

"What nonsense you talk here," My Dad barked severely, "you shouldn't envy girls but be proud of being a boy! It's high time for you to stop going to the bathhouse with Mom, or you'll surely become some kind of sissy. Envy girls, indeed! What else on the earth could be a more stupid thing?"

At his words I felt a deep desire to punch my Dad straight into his low-hanging, crinkly sack, which so funnily dangled between his legs. My envy wasn't stupid at all! Not a bit. Whatever he might say!

"Your Dad's right," said Mike, "a boy shouldn't be such a sissy as to envy girls. It's girls who envy us. I know for sure they all wish they had wieners like us. They wish they could pee the way we do."

"Hey, boy, don't you say you wanna have a pee-hole between your legs and not our male grand apparatus?" pronounced one of the men, who obviously overheard our conversation. He smirked at me and in a show-off manner grabbed his big scrotum. "These nice things we all have stuck in between our legs. Don't you feel proud of possessing them, little boy?"

"I don't think so," I replied quietly, "I'd rather have them not. I mean I'd prefer to have the thing that girls have instead."

"That's enough!" Dad shouted, "I say no more visits to the bathhouse with girls. You are a boy, a man! A man with a pair of balls and a dick to be proud of..."

But the next week Dad had to leave town on some business and when it was Saturday, I came up to Mom and asked her to take me tomorrow to the bathhouse with her.

"Pete, don't you know Dad's strictly against your going to the bathhouse with women? You're a big boy already and must go there only with men."

"But, Mom, let me go for the last time, just the very last time and no more. Please, Mommy, please, just one, the very last time..."

"No way, sonny" Mom shook her head negatively.

But I kept on beseeching her and at length Mom surrendered to my persistent pleas and agreed to take me on the following day to the bathhouse along with my sister.

That evening, when my sister wasn't in her room, I got one of her dolls and hurried along the stairs up to the loft, where under the sloping ceiling there hung bunches of twigs, awaiting their turn to be taken to the bathhouse. I undressed the doll, took it in one hand, while with the other I plucked one of the bunches from the line they hung on and for some time did nothing but gazed at the doll's smooth groin. Then I gave a sharp whip to the tiny, plastic body on its front and at the same moment felt a cringing wave dart from my own groin up through my body. The flinching motion that clearly indicated my being a boy, not a girl. I dropped both the doll and the bunch down onto the dusty floor and frantically ran down the stairs...

On the next day Mom took me with her to the bathhouse, and just as Dad had whipped me and Mike in the steam room a week ago, so did Mom make me and Vicki turn around to give our backs thorough lashing. Then she told us to face her in order to let her whip our fronts.

"Pete, cover your little things, please," Mom said.

"What things?"

"I mean your little balls, sonny."

"But, Mom, Vicki doesn't cover anything."

"Sure she doesn't," Mom replied. "She's no balls to cover."

"And I won't cover anything, either," I said stubbornly.

"Pete," Mom shook her head disapprovingly, "boys must protect their balls. If you don't cover them, you'll be in great pain."

"No, I won't cover anything."

"In that case I won't give you any whipping, silly boy," Mom replied severely and then started whipping sister on her front, Vicki's arms hanging freely along her sides, her groin uncovered. I stared at the bunch of birch twigs that kept on bouncing all over my sister's body. I imagined those twigs hitting my groin just once. Hardly then I'd be able to stay on my feet. And my sister just kept on cheerfully smiling at me.

Just beside me I noticed a girl of about my age with a bunch of twigs in her hand. I turned to her and asked:

"Could you whip me on my front?"

"Sure," she said, "just cover your balls."

"I don't have to cover them at all," I protested.

"But then you'll hurt them a lot, don't you know that?"

"But you won't cover yourself while whipping your front."

"I'm a girl, don't you see."

"Yeah, I see," I said quietly. "But just imagine I'm a girl, too."

"You? A girl with that wormie and sack?"

"Such a kind of girl I am," I muttered, "So, will you whip my front?"

The girl shook her head.

"You're a boy. And you must always protect them, I mean your balls. Anybody can see it when there's soccer on TV. Men always cover their things not to be hit with the ball," the girl covered her groin with both her hands, imitating a soccer player, and teasingly grinned at me.

"Anyway, will you whip me?" I insisted.

"If you wish so, silly boy. Hey-ho, I'm a pirate and this is my cutlass! Off with your balls!" the girl shouted, raised her bunch up and abruptly lashed my groin with it. Scores of twigs whipped my scrotum, sharply hitting all the nerve endings of my vulnerable sack. I wanted to scream with pain but there was something wrong with my breathing system. I just couldn't get any air into my lungs. I clutched my balls with my both hands and knelt down, my mouth agape like that of a fish out of water. I wanted to cry at the top of my voice: "Balls, my balls!" but I wasn't able to get any air inside me. Before long Mom noticed me on my knees and holding my balls.

"What's up, Pete?" Mom asked.

"He asked me to whip his balls," the girl explained and gave out a giggle.

"Are you okay, Pete?" Mom asked, taking hold of me by my shoulders.

"Mom," Vicki said, "it seems he can't breathe."

"But I only whipped his balls," my ball-destroyer declared.

"Mom, do boys breathe with their balls?" my sister inquired. "I think they do if they can't breathe when their balls hurt. Do they, Mom?"

"Sort of, dear," Mom answered, without looking at Vicki, while trying to help me get on my feet.

The girl with the bunch started whipping her smooth groin in front of me, smiling and saying:

"Girls don't breathe with balls, nor do they have any balls."

At last I managed to get enough air in to moan pathetically:

"Maaah baaaalls."

No sooner had Mom gotten me up on my feet as I flopped down on the wooden bench beside me, my hands still nervously clutching my poor testicles. By that time all the girls around were aware of my misfortune and their ringing laughter filled the steam room. Supported by their merry giggles and embarrassing comments on my helplessness a whirl of wild thoughts frolicked in my head - "Why do they laugh, why do they giggle when I'm in so much pain, when my balls are on fire. Don't they know how unbearable it is to be hit in the balls... Oh, damn, how can they know this sort of pain, if they don't have balls?"

The girl who'd inflicted that "girls-will-never-know" kind of pain on me was still whipping her front before my envious eyes. If only for a few seconds she could have a pair of balls on the very place where the birch twigs were repeatedly landing on now. Then one casual lash would be enough to make her scream in a shrill voice, to warp her face in a painful grimace, to drop the bunch from her hand and grasp her groin, to take the strength away from her legs... And if only my body was like my sister's, then I would be able to stand over the injured body of "the testicled girl", teasingly whipping my smooth groin just in front of her pain-radiating eyes and catching her envious glances on me. And it would be me who gleefully giggled then.

Looking at that girl, I felt that I ardently desired to be that girl, I just wanted my mind to escape from my body, leaving my terribly aching balls, and just crash into that girl's body, evicting her own mind from there for good, taking her body in my possession. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be a girl.

I got out of the bath-house much earlier than Mom and sister. The pain in my testicles had impeded my further bathing and, overwhelmed with desperate envy, I just couldn't bear the sight of naked women any longer.

Waiting for Mom to come out, I stood by the entrance door, my back against the wall and my hands taking their turns in nursing my still aching balls. Soon I saw the girl who'd whipped my balls coming out of the bathhouse. She was followed by another girl who to all means and purposes was her elder sister. They both were dressed in T-shirts and short skirts. The girls noticed me and walked up to me. Seeing me still in a pathetic kind of state, they both giggled and the elder one clutched her groin and painfully wailed:

"Oh, my balls, my poor balls, you whipped them so bad! So painful that I can't walk home. Oh, me, poor boy!"

"You are wrong, Mary," her sister chuckled, "he's a girl, so he told me."

"Oh, really?" asked Mary, ceasing her parody on my miserable state. "Had no idea there were girls with balls."

They both burst into loud laughter and I squeezed my scrotum harder.

"Okay," said the younger girl, after she managed to suppress her laughter, "next time in the bathhouse, if you need to whip your "girlish" balls again, you can rely on me. Just ask me."

"There won't be next time," I replied sadly.