Chapter 3
Chapter Three
T he morning whistle woke Quiggs, sprawled on his back with his sleep shirt hiked above his waist. He closed his eyes for an extra ten minutes of sleep, waiting for the second whistle when the line at the toilets slackened. Then he remembered last night.
Pleasssse, pleasssse, pleasssse.
He propped himself up on his elbows and stared down at his bared belly. No batter spatter anywhere. The thread around his penis remained intact. The only fullness was his bladder. He flopped back on the bunk, disappointed. The professor had warned Quiggs mental conditioning required time to produce a nocturnal emission.
No dent in the bunk above him meant Beau had risen early and was enjoying a hearty breakfast with the herders. Cadets studied hard to compete for better wages to increase their prospects for a wife—or a husband—but Beau’s skills earned more than the average civilian.
Quiggs put on his white tee and drawstring pants and visited the bathroom where the cadets grumbled about yesterday’s extra field exercises. As Quiggs shaved, young eyes followed his moves with the straight razor as if hopeful his hand would slip and sever an artery to entertain them.
In the dining hall Quiggs ate an extra serving of stewed fruit with cream over crumbled skillet bread. Flat belly be damned. He was disappointed. He deserved food. Maybe Beau would stop at a bakery after his shift and buy a pudding studded with raisins to make amends.
After breakfast, Quiggs summoned a chaperone to take him to the arena to keep his promise of exercise. The chaperone told him the arena was closed to inactives this morning because Commander Bronn was visiting. Cheered he had an excuse to skip, Quiggs visited the library.
The library was deserted this morning. Alone at his corner table, Quiggs opened the tome to the hot air balloon and sketched components for a furnace. Fuel was the issue. Among the agricultural seeds in the bunker, his mother had found a cache of nuts and planted a few on their farm. The trees yielded nuts with a rancid yellow oil which flared briefly before hissing out when exposed to air. Quiggs, then four, was fascinated by the gasping flame and gave the nut its nickname, sputternut. His mother believed the ancestors engineered the nut to provide a fuel with a higher heat intensity than the fuel processed from the vines—a process abandoned when the vines evolved inflammable properties.
He leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed and focused on a curing process to yield intense heat from sputternuts. Schematics swirled in his mind. The fiery images reconfigured from sputternuts to Miller’s nuts.
He visualized the steamy shower with Miller groaning, his head thrown back, balls slapping flesh as he face-fucked Colby. The image swirled, reconfigured with Miller on his knees swallowing Quiggs down. Quiggs’s hips snapping, his thighs jelly as his cock thrust and thrust and…
Quiggs didn’t realize he’d dozed off until awakened by a wave of tingling, indescribable pleasure washing over him. He groaned, his hips thrusting blindly as delightful pulses rolled through his cock. Fuzzy curls of steam traveled up his spine, a warm wonderful glow in their wake.
When the white flashes behind his eyeballs stopped, he found his pants sticky. Huh?
His happy cock translated for his dazed mind: wet dream, dumb ass.
Quiggs sat on the edge of the exam table on the medical floor reserved for cadets. He wore a stupid grin on his face at the towel tenting over his cock. More wood so soon? He’d jerked off in a cup for Doctor Keith twenty minutes ago.
Naked except for the towel covering his lap, he kicked his heels, waiting for an attendant to bring a black uniform, cap, and clunky lace-up boots. Instead, Professor Hines walked in. The professor’s eyes crinkled, his broad face beaming. He carried the standard gray preference slate for Quiggs to answer. It would hang with the rest of the actives’ slates on the wall of the sex clinic’s waiting room.
Quiggs valued this gray slate more than all his award plaques in the dean’s hallway.
“Congratulations, Cadet Quiggs. You are officially registered.” The professor stared at the tented towel. “Nice recovery time. Any questions before we check off your preferences for the clinic?”
“How long before I… um… get to visit the clinic and cut my braid?”
Professor Hines pulled up a chair and whipped a marker out of the deep pocket of his white lab coat. “Your first step is listing what you will agree to do. We shall begin with the most requested act cadets will look for on your slate.”
Oral sex, Quiggs thought.
“Yes or no to oral sex?” Professor Hines asked matter-of-factly.
“Yes. ”
“Will you swallow?”
“Not… yet.”
“Perform anal penetration of a partner?”
“Yes!” he shouted. In a meek voice, he added, “I’ll consider anyone.”
“Penetration of your anus?”
“Eventually.” Maybe never, he admitted to himself.
“Frottage?”
“Frottage?” Quiggs frowned. The word sounded unpleasant.
“I forget how sheltered you are from having a private room.” The professor defined frottage.
Sounded good. Quiggs grinned. “Yes to frottage.”
“Pain play?”
Sounded scary. “No.”
“Thigh fucking?
“Huh?”
The professor patiently described the act.
“Oh, yes. I’d like some of that.”
“Advanced nipple play? It seems to be gaining popularity.”
Sounded like ticklish fun. “I’ll try it.”
“Are you sure?” The professor twirled the marker as he described clamps.
Quiggs hunched. “No clamps. Very sure, no clamps.”
“Orgasm denial?
Quiggs leaned forward. “When the vines wither away.”
After Professor Hines stopped laughing, he continued. “Rimming. Perform or receive or both?”
Sex play was more involved than his inventions. “Explain, please.”
The professor enthusiastically explained a personal favorite with his husband.
This was what Blane performed on Colby. Eeewwwwww to performing. However, he had seen how Colby went wild over receiving it. “Receiving,” Quiggs replied .
“Agreeable to toys and fingers rubbing your prostate?”
Quiggs had studied anatomy. “Absolutely no penetration of any kind yet. Except a tongue during rimming.”
Professor Hines twirled the marker. “Quiggs, do you want to lose your braid?”
Quiggs kicked his heels and wagged the tail of his braid at the professor. “As soon as possible.”
“By law, a man must penetrate a partner before he may cut his braid.”
“I know.”
“Be forewarned the actives follow an unwritten code handed down for centuries. They collectively shun any cadet who refuses to receive anal penetration. Don’t think you can pay someone for the service either. The others will shun him also. Unless you check on your slate you are agreeable to being penetrated, you will graduate with your braid dragging the floor.”
Quiggs stopped kicking his heels. “You’re saying the cadets won’t make an appointment in the clinic with me for anything?”
Professor Hines nodded. “Check yes for anal. Experienced cadets, like Miller, will understand your concerns. They will exercise care, and if you aren’t ready in the ten minutes the law allows per appointment, they’ll wait until the next time.”
Ten minutes was a stupid, miserable law turning a cadet into a one-teat goat on a milking schedule.
“I agree to having my anus penetrated,” Quiggs mumbled.
The professor made the change. “In the history of Port Memphis Academy, only one cadet cut his braid without ever reciprocating. Yet he tapped every junior and senior in the academy. Still keeps his hole off limits.”
“Who?”
“Commander Max Bronn. I believe he was six years ahead of you.”
“How did he get away with it?”
“By having the exceptional body of an Athletic Champion. Every cadet lusted after Max even though he refused to offer up his ass. He said surrendering equaled defeat. Max has never lost a fight in his life. It’s why he remains unwed. By law, wedlock requires reciprocation.”
The fascinating discussion stopped when Doctor Keith wheeled in a cart covered with a spotless white cloth. Quiggs’s stomach rumbled. He’d missed the midday meal.
Two burly medical aides followed the doctor. One carried a glass of cloudy liquid. The other carried wide straps fitted with heavy buckles.
Professor Hines slid back his chair to clear a space for the cart.
Quiggs noted Doctor Keith had changed from his white coat to his surgical blues with his head covered and a facemask hanging by its string around his neck. The doctor folded back the cloth covering the cart to reveal a metal tray of scalpels, sutures, needles, and bandages.
When the aide handed him the glass to drink, Quiggs pulled back, whimpering like Beau.
Professor Hines placed a hand on Quiggs’s tense shoulder. “Drink it all. It’s a calmative. Like for your headaches. Only stronger.”
“What are those straps for? What’s this about?” He clutched the towel tighter to his lap.
“Drink first. When you’re relaxed, I’ll explain the procedure,” the professor replied.
If Quiggs had Beau’s double-jointed digits, he’d be leaping out the window. He stared at the tray, then at the doctor scrubbing his hands and arms up to his elbows at the sink. Dr. Keith hummed as he paid particular attention to under his short fingernails.
If this was the rite of passage, no wonder the academy enforced secrecy.
“Every cadet undergoes this procedure,” Professor Hines spoke calmly. “I have. Doctor Keith has. Warren, giving you the glass, and his husband Harold with the straps have. In eight weeks you will have forgotten the fuss.”
Quiggs took the glass and sniffed. The stuff smelled like it could strip the fur off a goat. When Warren appeared ready to force the glass to his lips, Quiggs slugged it down and felt as if he’d burp flames once he caught his breath.
Warren gently rubbed Quiggs’s throat until he could breathe through the burn. “You should have seen Cadet Miller when his time came. Turned green and fainted dead away. Fell off the table and hit the floor. Doc put stitches in both heads.”
Minutes later, a sense of peace flowed through Quiggs’s body. The aides gently reclined him on the table and pulled away the towel. He forgot what had upset him as the boring beige walls swirled with pretty colors.
So what if the aides wrapped straps around his arms and chest and legs? So what if they scrubbed his cock with a cold disinfectant? So what if Doctor Keith pulled Quiggs’s squeaky clean cock through a hole in a square cloth and placed absorbent pads within reach?
“You’re in good hands, Quiggs. Doctor Keith hasn’t botched a cock yet.” The professor hurried from the room.
“Is he under?” Harold asked.
“He could bleed out and wouldn’t care,” Warren replied. He placed a leather strap inside Quiggs’s mouth. “How are you feeling, cadet?”
“Mmmmphf.”
Doctor Keith lifted a scalpel. “Now about your foreskin…”
Women and their fastidious notions, insisting a hygienic penis was necessary before sex. Had they never heard of soap and water?
Absolutely the most miserable, utterly dumb-assed law ever passed !
Quiggs wore a tight, greased sleeve over his penis to inhibit arousal. The worst part of the procedure—beyond the incredible pain and the collection tubes when he could not pee the first two days—was absolutely no erection for four weeks, or he risked the incision opening. His recovery period confined him to the clinic for a week without visual stimuli.
Beau visited the morning after. He tiptoed up to the bed and patted Quiggs’s face. “My friend Quiggs hurt?”
Quiggs nodded warily, expecting an unhappy yowling at the outrage done to him.
Beau lifted the sheet and saw the bandaged area. “You burped your eel. They cut off your foreskin. My friend Quiggs is a man now.”
Quiggs was surprised how calmly Beau was taking this. “Were you aware what Dr. Keith does after a cadet registers active?”
“Sure. Always known big secret. Herders tell me so I happy never gonna be a man.”
“You’ve always known… yet you never thought to warn me? You tell me everything!” The yelling jiggled his cock, and now it ached from tip to root.
Beau patted his arm. “I think if I tell, you never burp your eel.”
Quiggs kept his voice soft. “Any more secrets?”
Beau fidgeted.
“Aw, Beau, just tell me.”
“I hear talk. Many mothers coming to meet you in two weeks.”
The string of curses sent a fresh ache tip to root.