JUST THE RIGHT AGE

by Touchstone

It happened at the Wednesday afternoon under-13 practice game, at the last ball of the over. Fielding at a fairly deep mid-off I hadn’t, frankly, ben paying much attention till then. Thud went leather on willow and the ball shot skywards, and and all of a sudden, people were shouting at me “Run for it - run for it - it’s a cert”. I rushed off, hands outstretched, to where the ball must surely fall - and went flat on my face, banging my head on the sunbaked ground. I saw shooting stars in several colours, the northern lights and more besides, and was suddenly very sick in the out-field. The game stopped in disorder, the fieldsmen forgetting to change sides with this new diversion.Mr Meredith came over and summed up the mess. “You’d better go and clean yourself up” he said kindly. “And I’d better ask the groundsman to bring some sand in a bucket”. Obediently I trotted off towards the pavilion.Now the pavilion had two wings. The junior locker-room, where I rightly belonged, had only cold showers. The senior locker room on the other hand had hot-and-cold. Though strictly off-limits to an under-13, in I went, stripped off and ran the shower till it was just as I wanted it. Life just then seemed very good and the blurry feeling quickly disappeared.It was while drying off that I heard big heavy feet clumping up the steps, and retreated round a corner. Peering out I recognised the newcomer: Manby, senior prefect, captain af the First XI and many other things. Manby pulled off his clothes, got under the shower and began singing. I should have contrived my escape just then but Manby wasn’t one to linger under the shower. Emerging, he caught sight of my clothes on the bench. “Whoever is in there, come out!” he commanded. I did so, shaking all over.Manby was still naked from the shower. I took in his six-fot-two frame, his broad chest, firm stomach muscles - and enormous hairy genitals. By contrast, my testicles were not much above the size of large peas. But in spite of this, whether excitement, embarrassment or whatever, my penis began to erect to its full length - all two-and-a-half inches.Manby asked my name and form, which I gave him, and demanded to know why I wasn’t out on the field, Apparently satisfied with this, he asked my age. “Twelve years and five months, Manby” I replied. He gave a grunt. “Just the right age to have your balls pricked, I’d say. Alright, go and get decent”.I dressed and went outside to the benches in front of the pavilion, where I found I wasn't alone. Sides had changed and MacVittie, first man in, had been out first ball, Ross had survived one over, only to be caught behind in his second. Both had noticed Manby go into the changing room and were curious to know what, if anything, might have come of being found out-of-bounds by the Captain of Cricket. "What did Manby say?" Ross asked."He wanted to know why I was there, so I told him, and he just nodded. Then he asked how old I was, so I told him, and then.....and then he said I looked ready to have my balls pricked".This last revelation was greeted with a shout of laughter. "Tough luck on your girlfriend if you ever do" said Ross. He nudged MacVittie with his elbow, and MacVittie laughed too."They do that, don't they, to some boys" said MacVittie. Orphans and boys like that. And choirboys in Italy, of course. They have their balls pricked to make them sing better”I looked blank, and McVittie launched into a long explanation. How, in southern Italy, where the people were very poor and families very large, with several male children, it was quite usual to have it done to one or two of the younger ones, in the hope that they would develop beautiful soprano voices, that would never change. More often than not, the results didn't come up to expectations, and the Naples area was celebrated for the number of shepherd-boys and olive pickers with high voices, who could never get married or have children.Ross added that sometimes a well-off family, with an only daughter, would take a good-looking young boy from the town orphanage. His function would be to help her in her games, and to be around whenever she wanted. This included attending her when she took a bath. So before the boy took up these duties, he would be taken to the surgeon to have his balls pricked and be rendered harmless- that was to say, he could never do the thing with a girl, that boys wanted to do, and which started a baby."Why?" I asked. I knew next to nothing about the mechanics of sex (I seldom got an erection) and even less about the tradition of castrating boys. “In what way, harmless?”"Because" said Ross. "A boy who's had that done, can't get his willie into a girl's thing.It's just done with a pin, or something, and afterwards his balls dry up Afterwards his willie hangs limp all the time and won't ever go stiff. And it goes like a little acorn in cold weather.Ross shook his head. "Not with a pin, you goof! It's done with a hypodermic. The doctor injects a drug into the boy’s balls, which makes them dry up. The effect's just the same as having them taken right out, like they used to do to boys in the old days"."Choirboys especially", agreed MacVittie. "To make them sing better. They used to dope them with wine and when they woke up, they would have had their balls pricked"."Taken right out, you mean" objected Ross.This started an argument between the two, MacVittie adamant that boys had their balls pricked, Ross insisting on total removal. But whatever the method, the effect was the same. At this point we were joined by Harrison, another victim of the visiting side's fast bowler. Harrison, his opinion sought, was also uncertain about the method, but agreed with Ross and MacVittie on the essentials. Harrison thought that boys who had their balls drilled out were not able to fuck girls. Taken up on "drilled out", Harrison said that a boy's balls had a hard centre, like a cherry stone, and if this was removed, the soft surrounding tissue withered away, and the pouch dried up also, into a fold of skin, whilst the boy’s penis - echoing Ross’s picturesque expression - shrank to a little acorn.Meanwhile two newcomers had arrived and were listening in. Pugh and Stannard were from farming backgrounds, travelling into school each day by bus. Between them they began to regale us with their knowledge - very extensive - of the ways of emasculating domestic animals, lambs with rubber rings, bull calves with a kind of pincers. When it came to horses, Pugh was vague. "They prick an old horse's, don't they?" he enquired of Stannard. "They prick a horse's, and they dry up". "No, said Stannard. "They take them right out, cords and all". Conversation switched to fucking girls, a subject that occupied most of our speculative hours, however, there was only one boy, Messinger, who claimed any practical experience. According to Messinger, there was a girl called Wendy whom he'd known for quite a long time and during the previous summer holidays, at the girl's suggestion, they had gone into her parents' garden shed where, a few moments later, she asked him "Do you want to see me?" and let him pull her knickers down. Messinger had been tantalisingly vague about what happened next, but under pressure from the rest of us, said that he had "put it right inside and kept it in her for about ten minutes and it felt ever so nice, before she got scared and begged me to pull it out".Meanwhile a fourth boy, Stenson, added his opinion. He began by giving us a précis of the First Eunuch's Tale in the Thousand and One Nights. In this, the storyteller, while still a boy, has sex with his master's young daughter and is punished by having his testicles removed, though not his penis. However, once he is healed, he finds that he is still capable of getting erections, and the two youngsters continue with their amorous games as before, with the difference that there was now no risk of making the girl pregnant. With his balls gone, the boy could make no sperm and consequently never reached a climax, so that he could "poke" her indefinitely, his penis remaining hard all the time.Stenson was more clinical than any of the others. He partly confirmed what Ross had said about a hypodermic, but said that it was used to inject a local anaesthetic into the boy's balls, which were then removed completely. There was no interference with the boy's penis, and he could get erections as before, so long as he stayed fit. Twelve or thirteen was the usual age for it to be done. By that age, a boy’s balls would have begun to swell, and he would be interested in sex though not likely to have done much. After his operation, given the opportunity, he would be willing to try anything a girl wanted. Carried out too early, the operation produced an inert specimen with no sexual inclinations at all."So" continued Stenson "you can wank without balls, and you can screw a woman without balls, although that doesn't mean you're fertile. I think, though, if they want to be really beastly to you, that is, really beastly, they burn them out, with red-hot irons. Of course you are asleep and don't feel anything""What do you mean by really beastly?" inquired Ross."It's so as to make certain you can't do anything with a girl- you know, when you're desperate to do it, and the girl's just as keen as you are, you can't make it go stiff". He went off into technicalities: how this method of removing a boy's balls "destroyed the spermatic nerve" which controlled erections. "So afterwards you can't do anything at all, however much you want to. You know, if you've been feeling a girl inside her knickers and she's really keen to go all the way. You can strain and strain to make it go hard, but the more you want to, the more it shrinks up. That's why it's so safe".Stenson actually produced a picture - a print of an Italian "old master" to prove his theory. This illustrated the routine emasculation of a boy, the artist’s favourite- a curly-headed urchin of twelve or so - some time in the 14th or 15th century, when any barber’surgeon included among his basic skills, that of removing boys’ testicles. The young patient lay on a table, his legs held well apart on an iron frame, and secured with straps at the knee and ankle. He had no pubic hair but a well-filled scrotum and a sturdy penis, held out of the barber’s way by a decorative clamp ornamented by a lion's head Nearby, the barber reached for his castrating-irons, to stretch the boy’s scrotum and remove its contents, while in a small brazier, other irons were heating, to burn out the cords and destroy his manhood. After he was healed, he would pose as Cupid, his penis reduced to a neat little acorn that would never do anything so rude as becoming erect, to offend the artist’s clients. After we had all examined this, the discussion lapsed, leaving me with Stenson's words ringing in my ears: "If they don't want you ever to do it with a girl, they burn your balls out with red-hot irons". Twelve or thirteen was the usual age. I was twelve and five months, and Manby had said I was just the right age. Did Manby know something that I didn't? I was reminded of this episode, forcefully, later that term, when I was sent for by Matron. "It's been decided" Matron said "that you're to have a little operation. In your private area. It's the School's policy. You won't be going to the sanatorium but to a clinic in the town. It's all arranged for today week. I'll give you a note for your form master excusing you from lessons for two days and games for a week. Run along now and come and see me the day before. Then I'll tell you what you'll need to take with you - pyjamas, washing things and so on".So, Manby had been right. I kept my secret to myself although inwardly I worried and wondered. Having my balls pricked didn't sound anything much. Secretly I examined my penis - rather long, tapering to a point. If it would still go stiff, that wouldn't be too bad. I resigned myself to the prospect of having them pricked, or at most, drilled out. I thought about what it would be like, whether it would hurt afterwards (like my tonsils did, after they had been taken out), of watching in the following weeks while they dried up and withered away.But just suppose they had made their minds up, as Stenson had hinted, to be really beastly, then I had to face having them, not pricked or drilled out, but burned out. My fears that this might be a possibility became acute after overhearing a conversation on a bus, between two girls. One of them plainly came from a horsey background. Talk got round to a pony owned by one of the girls, who had been getting above himself, stamping around, rearing up and kicking."He's going to be cut next week, to make him behave better" said the girl. "I shall go and watch. I've seen it done before. It's ever so interesting". The other girl, curious, wanted to know more. "What's being cut mean?" she asked."You know, gelded" said the first girl. "It's done on the horse's private area. The vet cuts out his - you know, (she dropped her voice) the actual balls, and then uses a hot iron to wither up the pouch. It quietens the horse from the moment it's done. It shows him who's the boss. And it's not as if he needed them; no one's going to breed from him".The second girl whispered a question, which I couldn't hear, but the answer was plain enough. "No way! Even if he wants to, he can't get it in. You can see when the horse has a pee - it stays all soft". At this point she dissolved into giggles, and an old woman tut-tutted and told her sharply not to talk about such things. In my mind’s eye I could see the pony straining to get an erection, his penis hanging limp and flabby. Would mine be the same?A week later found me at the clinic, lying on a high, white bed, all by myself. There was a strong hospital smell in the room, which was very bare, with a polished linoleum floor and thick net curtains shutting off the view from the windows. The nursing orderly who had let me in had gone away again as soon as I had my pyjamas on. It felt very strange to put myself to bed by day, and I had been on my own for about half an hour, wondering what was going to happen.Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The door opened and two women in nurses' uniform came in. On their aprons they wore badges, saying who they were. Staff Nurse Edna Brown was in her forties, I guessed, a big, motherly woman. Student Nurse Helen Murphy on the other hand looked as if she was not long out of school. She was very pretty, with long dark hair gathered up under her cap. They at once began bustling about. "Now, get those pyjamas off" ordered Staff Nurse Brown "and get into this". "This" was a white hospital gown. It was open all down the back and when I had it on, I couldn't fasten it up, to cover my bottom. I felt embarrassed and silly."What's this patient in here for?" asked Student Nurse Murphy, in a strong Irish accent. The older woman whispered something I couldn't catch. Student Nurse Murphy giggled. "Now" went on Nurse Brown "we want these bed curtains drawn. Oh, will you just look at that - all caught up on one side. See if you can find some steps".Nurse Murphy skipped out while her boss got busy at the sink. She had brought with her an enamel jug and a long rubber tube, also what looked like liquid soap in a jar. She ran some water into the jug, tested it for temperature and began stirring the soap into it. Meanwhile Nurse Murphy returned with a set of steps which she climbed, to sort out the bed-curtains.Lying where I was, I was able to see right up Nurse Murphy's uniform skirt. She had black stockings on, held up by suspenders. Above the tops of her stockings I could see her tiny white knickers. And more than that, I could see through her knickers, for they were almost transparent. Big boys, like Manby, grew pubic hair round their private parts; so, it seemed, did big girls; Nurse Murphy had a dark triangle of hair above her whatever-you-called-it, a sort of bulge dividing into two fat lips. That, I thought to myself, is where a boy puts his penis in, when having sex. I wondered if Nurse Murphy had done it with anyone yet. She looked as if she might have. It was supposed to be ever so nice. After today, would I ever be able to do it with a girl? (If I could have seen the reality of Nurse Murphy having sex with her boyfriend, having orgasm after orgasm and crying out loud with the joy of it, while the boy emptied his balls into her, I'd have had some reason for anxiety). Plucking up courage I turned to Nurse Brown, who was lifting the jug on to a high shelf. "Please, nurse, what method will the doctor use?" I asked. (Pricked, or drilled out as I hoped, burned out with red-hot irons as I feared.)"He has a little guillotine" replied Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice. "But you've no need to worry about that. You'll be fast asleep and won't know anything about it"."A little guillotine" was a new dimension altogether. I couldn't begin to imagine how it would be used, unless to lop my testicles off altogether, pouch and all. Or had everyone got it all wrong: did this operation after all involve removing the penis, not the balls? Perhaps they took the balls out as well. I imagined myself in the same situation as Messinger with the girl, Wendy. Suppose I met a girl like that, who was willing to let me try anything. I pictured her pulling her knickers down, whispering "Go on, Simon, put yours in me, all the way"; my own voice, shrill with embarrassment: "I can't, Wendy! I've had this operation and I just can't! Then I imagined Wendy's voice, knowing, scornful: "I know - you've had your balls pricked. They prick a boy's balls to prevent him ever doing anything with a girl.". As she pulled her knickers up, she would begin chanting Simon's had his balls pricked, Simon's had his balls pricked. However, my further speculations were interrupted. Having sorted out the curtains Nurse Murphy drew them right round the bed. "Now then young man" said Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice "turn right over, on your tummy, and I'll give you a good cleaning-out". I did as I was told, conscious of my bare bottom sticking up. I felt her strong fingers parting my buttocks, something hard poking in, and then a gush of warm water pouring into my bowels. After the first surprise, it felt rather nice. For some minutes Nurse Brown pumped soapy water up my bottom. At length I felt the syringe being pulled out. "Try and keep that in for five minutes" she ordered "and then you can go to the loo. It's just across the corridor".To be continued JUST THE RIGHT AGEby TouchstoneIt happened at the Wednesday afternoon under-13 practice game, at the last ball of the over. Fielding at a fairly deep mid-off I hadn’t, frankly, ben paying much attention till then. Thud went leather on willow and the ball shot skywards, and and all of a sudden, people were shouting at me “Run for it - run for it - it’s a cert”. I rushed off, hands outstretched, to where the ball must surely fall - and went flat on my face, banging my head on the sunbaked ground. I saw shooting stars in several colours, the northern lights and more besides, and was suddenly very sick in the out-field. The game stopped in disorder, the fieldsmen forgetting to change sides with this new diversion.Mr Meredith came over and summed up the mess. “You’d better go and clean yourself up” he said kindly. “And I’d better ask the groundsman to bring some sand in a bucket”. Obediently I trotted off towards the pavilion.Now the pavilion had two wings. The junior locker-room, where I rightly belonged, had only cold showers. The senior locker room on the other hand had hot-and-cold. Though strictly off-limits to an under-13, in I went, stripped off and ran the shower till it was just as I wanted it. Life just then seemed very good and the blurry feeling quickly disappeared.It was while drying off that I heard big heavy feet clumping up the steps, and retreated round a corner. Peering out I recognised the newcomer: Manby, senior prefect, captain af the First XI and many other things. Manby pulled off his clothes, got under the shower and began singing. I should have contrived my escape just then but Manby wasn’t one to linger under the shower. Emerging, he caught sight of my clothes on the bench. “Whoever is in there, come out!” he commanded. I did so, shaking all over.Manby was still naked from the shower. I took in his six-fot-two frame, his broad chest, firm stomach muscles - and enormous hairy genitals. By contrast, my testicles were not much above the size of large peas. But in spite of this, whether excitement, embarrassment or whatever, my penis began to erect to its full length - all two-and-a-half inches.Manby asked my name and form, which I gave him, and demanded to know why I wasn’t out on the field, Apparently satisfied with this, he asked my age. “Twelve years and five months, Manby” I replied. He gave a grunt. “Just the right age to have your balls pricked, I’d say. Alright, go and get decent”.I dressed and went outside to the benches in front of the pavilion, where I found I wasn't alone. Sides had changed and MacVittie, first man in, had been out first ball, Ross had survived one over, only to be caught behind in his second. Both had noticed Manby go into the changing room and were curious to know what, if anything, might have come of being found out-of-bounds by the Captain of Cricket. "What did Manby say?" Ross asked."He wanted to know why I was there, so I told him, and he just nodded. Then he asked how old I was, so I told him, and then.....and then he said I looked ready to have my balls pricked".This last revelation was greeted with a shout of laughter. "Tough luck on your girlfriend if you ever do" said Ross. He nudged MacVittie with his elbow, and MacVittie laughed too."They do that, don't they, to some boys" said MacVittie. Orphans and boys like that. And choirboys in Italy, of course. They have their balls pricked to make them sing better”I looked blank, and McVittie launched into a long explanation. How, in southern Italy, where the people were very poor and families very large, with several male children, it was quite usual to have it done to one or two of the younger ones, in the hope that they would develop beautiful soprano voices, that would never change. More often than not, the results didn't come up to expectations, and the Naples area was celebrated for the number of shepherd-boys and olive pickers with high voices, who could never get married or have children.Ross added that sometimes a well-off family, with an only daughter, would take a good-looking young boy from the town orphanage. His function would be to help her in her games, and to be around whenever she wanted. This included attending her when she took a bath. So before the boy took up these duties, he would be taken to the surgeon to have his balls pricked and be rendered harmless- that was to say, he could never do the thing with a girl, that boys wanted to do, and which started a baby."Why?" I asked. I knew next to nothing about the mechanics of sex (I seldom got an erection) and even less about the tradition of castrating boys. “In what way, harmless?”"Because" said Ross. "A boy who's had that done, can't get his willie into a girl's thing.It's just done with a pin, or something, and afterwards his balls dry up Afterwards his willie hangs limp all the time and won't ever go stiff. And it goes like a little acorn in cold weather.Ross shook his head. "Not with a pin, you goof! It's done with a hypodermic. The doctor injects a drug into the boy’s balls, which makes them dry up. The effect's just the same as having them taken right out, like they used to do to boys in the old days"."Choirboys especially", agreed MacVittie. "To make them sing better. They used to dope them with wine and when they woke up, they would have had their balls pricked"."Taken right out, you mean" objected Ross.This started an argument between the two, MacVittie adamant that boys had their balls pricked, Ross insisting on total removal. But whatever the method, the effect was the same. At this point we were joined by Harrison, another victim of the visiting side's fast bowler. Harrison, his opinion sought, was also uncertain about the method, but agreed with Ross and MacVittie on the essentials. Harrison thought that boys who had their balls drilled out were not able to fuck girls. Taken up on "drilled out", Harrison said that a boy's balls had a hard centre, like a cherry stone, and if this was removed, the soft surrounding tissue withered away, and the pouch dried up also, into a fold of skin, whilst the boy’s penis - echoing Ross’s picturesque expression - shrank to a little acorn.Meanwhile two newcomers had arrived and were listening in. Pugh and Stannard were from farming backgrounds, travelling into school each day by bus. Between them they began to regale us with their knowledge - very extensive - of the ways of emasculating domestic animals, lambs with rubber rings, bull calves with a kind of pincers. When it came to horses, Pugh was vague. "They prick an old horse's, don't they?" he enquired of Stannard. "They prick a horse's, and they dry up". "No, said Stannard. "They take them right out, cords and all". Conversation switched to fucking girls, a subject that occupied most of our speculative hours, however, there was only one boy, Messinger, who claimed any practical experience. According to Messinger, there was a girl called Wendy whom he'd known for quite a long time and during the previous summer holidays, at the girl's suggestion, they had gone into her parents' garden shed where, a few moments later, she asked him "Do you want to see me?" and let him pull her knickers down. Messinger had been tantalisingly vague about what happened next, but under pressure from the rest of us, said that he had "put it right inside and kept it in her for about ten minutes and it felt ever so nice, before she got scared and begged me to pull it out".Meanwhile a fourth boy, Stenson, added his opinion. He began by giving us a précis of the First Eunuch's Tale in the Thousand and One Nights. In this, the storyteller, while still a boy, has sex with his master's young daughter and is punished by having his testicles removed, though not his penis. However, once he is healed, he finds that he is still capable of getting erections, and the two youngsters continue with their amorous games as before, with the difference that there was now no risk of making the girl pregnant. With his balls gone, the boy could make no sperm and consequently never reached a climax, so that he could "poke" her indefinitely, his penis remaining hard all the time.Stenson was more clinical than any of the others. He partly confirmed what Ross had said about a hypodermic, but said that it was used to inject a local anaesthetic into the boy's balls, which were then removed completely. There was no interference with the boy's penis, and he could get erections as before, so long as he stayed fit. Twelve or thirteen was the usual age for it to be done. By that age, a boy’s balls would have begun to swell, and he would be interested in sex though not likely to have done much. After his operation, given the opportunity, he would be willing to try anything a girl wanted. Carried out too early, the operation produced an inert specimen with no sexual inclinations at all."So" continued Stenson "you can wank without balls, and you can screw a woman without balls, although that doesn't mean you're fertile. I think, though, if they want to be really beastly to you, that is, really beastly, they burn them out, with red-hot irons. Of course you are asleep and don't feel anything""What do you mean by really beastly?" inquired Ross."It's so as to make certain you can't do anything with a girl- you know, when you're desperate to do it, and the girl's just as keen as you are, you can't make it go stiff". He went off into technicalities: how this method of removing a boy's balls "destroyed the spermatic nerve" which controlled erections. "So afterwards you can't do anything at all, however much you want to. You know, if you've been feeling a girl inside her knickers and she's really keen to go all the way. You can strain and strain to make it go hard, but the more you want to, the more it shrinks up. That's why it's so safe".Stenson actually produced a picture - a print of an Italian "old master" to prove his theory. This illustrated the routine emasculation of a boy, the artist’s favourite- a curly-headed urchin of twelve or so - some time in the 14th or 15th century, when any barber’surgeon included among his basic skills, that of removing boys’ testicles. The young patient lay on a table, his legs held well apart on an iron frame, and secured with straps at the knee and ankle. He had no pubic hair but a well-filled scrotum and a sturdy penis, held out of the barber’s way by a decorative clamp ornamented by a lion's head Nearby, the barber reached for his castrating-irons, to stretch the boy’s scrotum and remove its contents, while in a small brazier, other irons were heating, to burn out the cords and destroy his manhood. After he was healed, he would pose as Cupid, his penis reduced to a neat little acorn that would never do anything so rude as becoming erect, to offend the artist’s clients. After we had all examined this, the discussion lapsed, leaving me with Stenson's words ringing in my ears: "If they don't want you ever to do it with a girl, they burn your balls out with red-hot irons". Twelve or thirteen was the usual age. I was twelve and five months, and Manby had said I was just the right age. Did Manby know something that I didn't? I was reminded of this episode, forcefully, later that term, when I was sent for by Matron. "It's been decided" Matron said "that you're to have a little operation. In your private area. It's the School's policy. You won't be going to the sanatorium but to a clinic in the town. It's all arranged for today week. I'll give you a note for your form master excusing you from lessons for two days and games for a week. Run along now and come and see me the day before. Then I'll tell you what you'll need to take with you - pyjamas, washing things and so on".So, Manby had been right. I kept my secret to myself although inwardly I worried and wondered. Having my balls pricked didn't sound anything much. Secretly I examined my penis - rather long, tapering to a point. If it would still go stiff, that wouldn't be too bad. I resigned myself to the prospect of having them pricked, or at most, drilled out. I thought about what it would be like, whether it would hurt afterwards (like my tonsils did, after they had been taken out), of watching in the following weeks while they dried up and withered away.But just suppose they had made their minds up, as Stenson had hinted, to be really beastly, then I had to face having them, not pricked or drilled out, but burned out. My fears that this might be a possibility became acute after overhearing a conversation on a bus, between two girls. One of them plainly came from a horsey background. Talk got round to a pony owned by one of the girls, who had been getting above himself, stamping around, rearing up and kicking."He's going to be cut next week, to make him behave better" said the girl. "I shall go and watch. I've seen it done before. It's ever so interesting". The other girl, curious, wanted to know more. "What's being cut mean?" she asked."You know, gelded" said the first girl. "It's done on the horse's private area. The vet cuts out his - you know, (she dropped her voice) the actual balls, and then uses a hot iron to wither up the pouch. It quietens the horse from the moment it's done. It shows him who's the boss. And it's not as if he needed them; no one's going to breed from him".The second girl whispered a question, which I couldn't hear, but the answer was plain enough. "No way! Even if he wants to, he can't get it in. You can see when the horse has a pee - it stays all soft". At this point she dissolved into giggles, and an old woman tut-tutted and told her sharply not to talk about such things. In my mind’s eye I could see the pony straining to get an erection, his penis hanging limp and flabby. Would mine be the same?A week later found me at the clinic, lying on a high, white bed, all by myself. There was a strong hospital smell in the room, which was very bare, with a polished linoleum floor and thick net curtains shutting off the view from the windows. The nursing orderly who had let me in had gone away again as soon as I had my pyjamas on. It felt very strange to put myself to bed by day, and I had been on my own for about half an hour, wondering what was going to happen.Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The door opened and two women in nurses' uniform came in. On their aprons they wore badges, saying who they were. Staff Nurse Edna Brown was in her forties, I guessed, a big, motherly woman. Student Nurse Helen Murphy on the other hand looked as if she was not long out of school. She was very pretty, with long dark hair gathered up under her cap. They at once began bustling about. "Now, get those pyjamas off" ordered Staff Nurse Brown "and get into this". "This" was a white hospital gown. It was open all down the back and when I had it on, I couldn't fasten it up, to cover my bottom. I felt embarrassed and silly."What's this patient in here for?" asked Student Nurse Murphy, in a strong Irish accent. The older woman whispered something I couldn't catch. Student Nurse Murphy giggled. "Now" went on Nurse Brown "we want these bed curtains drawn. Oh, will you just look at that - all caught up on one side. See if you can find some steps".Nurse Murphy skipped out while her boss got busy at the sink. She had brought with her an enamel jug and a long rubber tube, also what looked like liquid soap in a jar. She ran some water into the jug, tested it for temperature and began stirring the soap into it. Meanwhile Nurse Murphy returned with a set of steps which she climbed, to sort out the bed-curtains.Lying where I was, I was able to see right up Nurse Murphy's uniform skirt. She had black stockings on, held up by suspenders. Above the tops of her stockings I could see her tiny white knickers. And more than that, I could see through her knickers, for they were almost transparent. Big boys, like Manby, grew pubic hair round their private parts; so, it seemed, did big girls; Nurse Murphy had a dark triangle of hair above her whatever-you-called-it, a sort of bulge dividing into two fat lips. That, I thought to myself, is where a boy puts his penis in, when having sex. I wondered if Nurse Murphy had done it with anyone yet. She looked as if she might have. It was supposed to be ever so nice. After today, would I ever be able to do it with a girl? (If I could have seen the reality of Nurse Murphy having sex with her boyfriend, having orgasm after orgasm and crying out loud with the joy of it, while the boy emptied his balls into her, I'd have had some reason for anxiety). Plucking up courage I turned to Nurse Brown, who was lifting the jug on to a high shelf. "Please, nurse, what method will the doctor use?" I asked. (Pricked, or drilled out as I hoped, burned out with red-hot irons as I feared.)"He has a little guillotine" replied Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice. "But you've no need to worry about that. You'll be fast asleep and won't know anything about it"."A little guillotine" was a new dimension altogether. I couldn't begin to imagine how it would be used, unless to lop my testicles off altogether, pouch and all. Or had everyone got it all wrong: did this operation after all involve removing the penis, not the balls? Perhaps they took the balls out as well. I imagined myself in the same situation as Messinger with the girl, Wendy. Suppose I met a girl like that, who was willing to let me try anything. I pictured her pulling her knickers down, whispering "Go on, Simon, put yours in me, all the way"; my own voice, shrill with embarrassment: "I can't, Wendy! I've had this operation and I just can't! Then I imagined Wendy's voice, knowing, scornful: "I know - you've had your balls pricked. They prick a boy's balls to prevent him ever doing anything with a girl.". As she pulled her knickers up, she would begin chanting Simon's had his balls pricked, Simon's had his balls pricked. However, my further speculations were interrupted. Having sorted out the curtains Nurse Murphy drew them right round the bed. "Now then young man" said Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice "turn right over, on your tummy, and I'll give you a good cleaning-out". I did as I was told, conscious of my bare bottom sticking up. I felt her strong fingers parting my buttocks, something hard poking in, and then a gush of warm water pouring into my bowels. After the first surprise, it felt rather nice. For some minutes Nurse Brown pumped soapy water up my bottom. At length I felt the syringe being pulled out. "Try and keep that in for five minutes" she ordered "and then you can go to the loo. It's just across the corridor".To be continued JUST THE RIGHT AGEby TouchstoneIt happened at the Wednesday afternoon under-13 practice game, at the last ball of the over. Fielding at a fairly deep mid-off I hadn’t, frankly, ben paying much attention till then. Thud went leather on willow and the ball shot skywards, and and all of a sudden, people were shouting at me “Run for it - run for it - it’s a cert”. I rushed off, hands outstretched, to where the ball must surely fall - and went flat on my face, banging my head on the sunbaked ground. I saw shooting stars in several colours, the northern lights and more besides, and was suddenly very sick in the out-field. The game stopped in disorder, the fieldsmen forgetting to change sides with this new diversion.Mr Meredith came over and summed up the mess. “You’d better go and clean yourself up” he said kindly. “And I’d better ask the groundsman to bring some sand in a bucket”. Obediently I trotted off towards the pavilion.Now the pavilion had two wings. The junior locker-room, where I rightly belonged, had only cold showers. The senior locker room on the other hand had hot-and-cold. Though strictly off-limits to an under-13, in I went, stripped off and ran the shower till it was just as I wanted it. Life just then seemed very good and the blurry feeling quickly disappeared.It was while drying off that I heard big heavy feet clumping up the steps, and retreated round a corner. Peering out I recognised the newcomer: Manby, senior prefect, captain af the First XI and many other things. Manby pulled off his clothes, got under the shower and began singing. I should have contrived my escape just then but Manby wasn’t one to linger under the shower. Emerging, he caught sight of my clothes on the bench. “Whoever is in there, come out!” he commanded. I did so, shaking all over.Manby was still naked from the shower. I took in his six-fot-two frame, his broad chest, firm stomach muscles - and enormous hairy genitals. By contrast, my testicles were not much above the size of large peas. But in spite of this, whether excitement, embarrassment or whatever, my penis began to erect to its full length - all two-and-a-half inches.Manby asked my name and form, which I gave him, and demanded to know why I wasn’t out on the field, Apparently satisfied with this, he asked my age. “Twelve years and five months, Manby” I replied. He gave a grunt. “Just the right age to have your balls pricked, I’d say. Alright, go and get decent”.I dressed and went outside to the benches in front of the pavilion, where I found I wasn't alone. Sides had changed and MacVittie, first man in, had been out first ball, Ross had survived one over, only to be caught behind in his second. Both had noticed Manby go into the changing room and were curious to know what, if anything, might have come of being found out-of-bounds by the Captain of Cricket. "What did Manby say?" Ross asked."He wanted to know why I was there, so I told him, and he just nodded. Then he asked how old I was, so I told him, and then.....and then he said I looked ready to have my balls pricked".This last revelation was greeted with a shout of laughter. "Tough luck on your girlfriend if you ever do" said Ross. He nudged MacVittie with his elbow, and MacVittie laughed too."They do that, don't they, to some boys" said MacVittie. Orphans and boys like that. And choirboys in Italy, of course. They have their balls pricked to make them sing better”I looked blank, and McVittie launched into a long explanation. How, in southern Italy, where the people were very poor and families very large, with several male children, it was quite usual to have it done to one or two of the younger ones, in the hope that they would develop beautiful soprano voices, that would never change. More often than not, the results didn't come up to expectations, and the Naples area was celebrated for the number of shepherd-boys and olive pickers with high voices, who could never get married or have children.Ross added that sometimes a well-off family, with an only daughter, would take a good-looking young boy from the town orphanage. His function would be to help her in her games, and to be around whenever she wanted. This included attending her when she took a bath. So before the boy took up these duties, he would be taken to the surgeon to have his balls pricked and be rendered harmless- that was to say, he could never do the thing with a girl, that boys wanted to do, and which started a baby."Why?" I asked. I knew next to nothing about the mechanics of sex (I seldom got an erection) and even less about the tradition of castrating boys. “In what way, harmless?”"Because" said Ross. "A boy who's had that done, can't get his willie into a girl's thing.It's just done with a pin, or something, and afterwards his balls dry up Afterwards his willie hangs limp all the time and won't ever go stiff. And it goes like a little acorn in cold weather.Ross shook his head. "Not with a pin, you goof! It's done with a hypodermic. The doctor injects a drug into the boy’s balls, which makes them dry up. The effect's just the same as having them taken right out, like they used to do to boys in the old days"."Choirboys especially", agreed MacVittie. "To make them sing better. They used to dope them with wine and when they woke up, they would have had their balls pricked"."Taken right out, you mean" objected Ross.This started an argument between the two, MacVittie adamant that boys had their balls pricked, Ross insisting on total removal. But whatever the method, the effect was the same. At this point we were joined by Harrison, another victim of the visiting side's fast bowler. Harrison, his opinion sought, was also uncertain about the method, but agreed with Ross and MacVittie on the essentials. Harrison thought that boys who had their balls drilled out were not able to fuck girls. Taken up on "drilled out", Harrison said that a boy's balls had a hard centre, like a cherry stone, and if this was removed, the soft surrounding tissue withered away, and the pouch dried up also, into a fold of skin, whilst the boy’s penis - echoing Ross’s picturesque expression - shrank to a little acorn.Meanwhile two newcomers had arrived and were listening in. Pugh and Stannard were from farming backgrounds, travelling into school each day by bus. Between them they began to regale us with their knowledge - very extensive - of the ways of emasculating domestic animals, lambs with rubber rings, bull calves with a kind of pincers. When it came to horses, Pugh was vague. "They prick an old horse's, don't they?" he enquired of Stannard. "They prick a horse's, and they dry up". "No, said Stannard. "They take them right out, cords and all". Conversation switched to fucking girls, a subject that occupied most of our speculative hours, however, there was only one boy, Messinger, who claimed any practical experience. According to Messinger, there was a girl called Wendy whom he'd known for quite a long time and during the previous summer holidays, at the girl's suggestion, they had gone into her parents' garden shed where, a few moments later, she asked him "Do you want to see me?" and let him pull her knickers down. Messinger had been tantalisingly vague about what happened next, but under pressure from the rest of us, said that he had "put it right inside and kept it in her for about ten minutes and it felt ever so nice, before she got scared and begged me to pull it out".Meanwhile a fourth boy, Stenson, added his opinion. He began by giving us a précis of the First Eunuch's Tale in the Thousand and One Nights. In this, the storyteller, while still a boy, has sex with his master's young daughter and is punished by having his testicles removed, though not his penis. However, once he is healed, he finds that he is still capable of getting erections, and the two youngsters continue with their amorous games as before, with the difference that there was now no risk of making the girl pregnant. With his balls gone, the boy could make no sperm and consequently never reached a climax, so that he could "poke" her indefinitely, his penis remaining hard all the time.Stenson was more clinical than any of the others. He partly confirmed what Ross had said about a hypodermic, but said that it was used to inject a local anaesthetic into the boy's balls, which were then removed completely. There was no interference with the boy's penis, and he could get erections as before, so long as he stayed fit. Twelve or thirteen was the usual age for it to be done. By that age, a boy’s balls would have begun to swell, and he would be interested in sex though not likely to have done much. After his operation, given the opportunity, he would be willing to try anything a girl wanted. Carried out too early, the operation produced an inert specimen with no sexual inclinations at all."So" continued Stenson "you can wank without balls, and you can screw a woman without balls, although that doesn't mean you're fertile. I think, though, if they want to be really beastly to you, that is, really beastly, they burn them out, with red-hot irons. Of course you are asleep and don't feel anything""What do you mean by really beastly?" inquired Ross."It's so as to make certain you can't do anything with a girl- you know, when you're desperate to do it, and the girl's just as keen as you are, you can't make it go stiff". He went off into technicalities: how this method of removing a boy's balls "destroyed the spermatic nerve" which controlled erections. "So afterwards you can't do anything at all, however much you want to. You know, if you've been feeling a girl inside her knickers and she's really keen to go all the way. You can strain and strain to make it go hard, but the more you want to, the more it shrinks up. That's why it's so safe".Stenson actually produced a picture - a print of an Italian "old master" to prove his theory. This illustrated the routine emasculation of a boy, the artist’s favourite- a curly-headed urchin of twelve or so - some time in the 14th or 15th century, when any barber’surgeon included among his basic skills, that of removing boys’ testicles. The young patient lay on a table, his legs held well apart on an iron frame, and secured with straps at the knee and ankle. He had no pubic hair but a well-filled scrotum and a sturdy penis, held out of the barber’s way by a decorative clamp ornamented by a lion's head Nearby, the barber reached for his castrating-irons, to stretch the boy’s scrotum and remove its contents, while in a small brazier, other irons were heating, to burn out the cords and destroy his manhood. After he was healed, he would pose as Cupid, his penis reduced to a neat little acorn that would never do anything so rude as becoming erect, to offend the artist’s clients. After we had all examined this, the discussion lapsed, leaving me with Stenson's words ringing in my ears: "If they don't want you ever to do it with a girl, they burn your balls out with red-hot irons". Twelve or thirteen was the usual age. I was twelve and five months, and Manby had said I was just the right age. Did Manby know something that I didn't? I was reminded of this episode, forcefully, later that term, when I was sent for by Matron. "It's been decided" Matron said "that you're to have a little operation. In your private area. It's the School's policy. You won't be going to the sanatorium but to a clinic in the town. It's all arranged for today week. I'll give you a note for your form master excusing you from lessons for two days and games for a week. Run along now and come and see me the day before. Then I'll tell you what you'll need to take with you - pyjamas, washing things and so on".So, Manby had been right. I kept my secret to myself although inwardly I worried and wondered. Having my balls pricked didn't sound anything much. Secretly I examined my penis - rather long, tapering to a point. If it would still go stiff, that wouldn't be too bad. I resigned myself to the prospect of having them pricked, or at most, drilled out. I thought about what it would be like, whether it would hurt afterwards (like my tonsils did, after they had been taken out), of watching in the following weeks while they dried up and withered away.But just suppose they had made their minds up, as Stenson had hinted, to be really beastly, then I had to face having them, not pricked or drilled out, but burned out. My fears that this might be a possibility became acute after overhearing a conversation on a bus, between two girls. One of them plainly came from a horsey background. Talk got round to a pony owned by one of the girls, who had been getting above himself, stamping around, rearing up and kicking."He's going to be cut next week, to make him behave better" said the girl. "I shall go and watch. I've seen it done before. It's ever so interesting". The other girl, curious, wanted to know more. "What's being cut mean?" she asked."You know, gelded" said the first girl. "It's done on the horse's private area. The vet cuts out his - you know, (she dropped her voice) the actual balls, and then uses a hot iron to wither up the pouch. It quietens the horse from the moment it's done. It shows him who's the boss. And it's not as if he needed them; no one's going to breed from him".The second girl whispered a question, which I couldn't hear, but the answer was plain enough. "No way! Even if he wants to, he can't get it in. You can see when the horse has a pee - it stays all soft". At this point she dissolved into giggles, and an old woman tut-tutted and told her sharply not to talk about such things. In my mind’s eye I could see the pony straining to get an erection, his penis hanging limp and flabby. Would mine be the same?A week later found me at the clinic, lying on a high, white bed, all by myself. There was a strong hospital smell in the room, which was very bare, with a polished linoleum floor and thick net curtains shutting off the view from the windows. The nursing orderly who had let me in had gone away again as soon as I had my pyjamas on. It felt very strange to put myself to bed by day, and I had been on my own for about half an hour, wondering what was going to happen.Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The door opened and two women in nurses' uniform came in. On their aprons they wore badges, saying who they were. Staff Nurse Edna Brown was in her forties, I guessed, a big, motherly woman. Student Nurse Helen Murphy on the other hand looked as if she was not long out of school. She was very pretty, with long dark hair gathered up under her cap. They at once began bustling about. "Now, get those pyjamas off" ordered Staff Nurse Brown "and get into this". "This" was a white hospital gown. It was open all down the back and when I had it on, I couldn't fasten it up, to cover my bottom. I felt embarrassed and silly."What's this patient in here for?" asked Student Nurse Murphy, in a strong Irish accent. The older woman whispered something I couldn't catch. Student Nurse Murphy giggled. "Now" went on Nurse Brown "we want these bed curtains drawn. Oh, will you just look at that - all caught up on one side. See if you can find some steps".Nurse Murphy skipped out while her boss got busy at the sink. She had brought with her an enamel jug and a long rubber tube, also what looked like liquid soap in a jar. She ran some water into the jug, tested it for temperature and began stirring the soap into it. Meanwhile Nurse Murphy returned with a set of steps which she climbed, to sort out the bed-curtains.Lying where I was, I was able to see right up Nurse Murphy's uniform skirt. She had black stockings on, held up by suspenders. Above the tops of her stockings I could see her tiny white knickers. And more than that, I could see through her knickers, for they were almost transparent. Big boys, like Manby, grew pubic hair round their private parts; so, it seemed, did big girls; Nurse Murphy had a dark triangle of hair above her whatever-you-called-it, a sort of bulge dividing into two fat lips. That, I thought to myself, is where a boy puts his penis in, when having sex. I wondered if Nurse Murphy had done it with anyone yet. She looked as if she might have. It was supposed to be ever so nice. After today, would I ever be able to do it with a girl? (If I could have seen the reality of Nurse Murphy having sex with her boyfriend, having orgasm after orgasm and crying out loud with the joy of it, while the boy emptied his balls into her, I'd have had some reason for anxiety). Plucking up courage I turned to Nurse Brown, who was lifting the jug on to a high shelf. "Please, nurse, what method will the doctor use?" I asked. (Pricked, or drilled out as I hoped, burned out with red-hot irons as I feared.)"He has a little guillotine" replied Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice. "But you've no need to worry about that. You'll be fast asleep and won't know anything about it"."A little guillotine" was a new dimension altogether. I couldn't begin to imagine how it would be used, unless to lop my testicles off altogether, pouch and all. Or had everyone got it all wrong: did this operation after all involve removing the penis, not the balls? Perhaps they took the balls out as well. I imagined myself in the same situation as Messinger with the girl, Wendy. Suppose I met a girl like that, who was willing to let me try anything. I pictured her pulling her knickers down, whispering "Go on, Simon, put yours in me, all the way"; my own voice, shrill with embarrassment: "I can't, Wendy! I've had this operation and I just can't! Then I imagined Wendy's voice, knowing, scornful: "I know - you've had your balls pricked. They prick a boy's balls to prevent him ever doing anything with a girl.". As she pulled her knickers up, she would begin chanting Simon's had his balls pricked, Simon's had his balls pricked. However, my further speculations were interrupted. Having sorted out the curtains Nurse Murphy drew them right round the bed. "Now then young man" said Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice "turn right over, on your tummy, and I'll give you a good cleaning-out". I did as I was told, conscious of my bare bottom sticking up. I felt her strong fingers parting my buttocks, something hard poking in, and then a gush of warm water pouring into my bowels. After the first surprise, it felt rather nice. For some minutes Nurse Brown pumped soapy water up my bottom. At length I felt the syringe being pulled out. "Try and keep that in for five minutes" she ordered "and then you can go to the loo. It's just across the corridor".To be continued JUST THE RIGHT AGEby TouchstoneIt happened at the Wednesday afternoon under-13 practice game, at the last ball of the over. Fielding at a fairly deep mid-off I hadn’t, frankly, ben paying much attention till then. Thud went leather on willow and the ball shot skywards, and and all of a sudden, people were shouting at me “Run for it - run for it - it’s a cert”. I rushed off, hands outstretched, to where the ball must surely fall - and went flat on my face, banging my head on the sunbaked ground. I saw shooting stars in several colours, the northern lights and more besides, and was suddenly very sick in the out-field. The game stopped in disorder, the fieldsmen forgetting to change sides with this new diversion.Mr Meredith came over and summed up the mess. “You’d better go and clean yourself up” he said kindly. “And I’d better ask the groundsman to bring some sand in a bucket”. Obediently I trotted off towards the pavilion.Now the pavilion had two wings. The junior locker-room, where I rightly belonged, had only cold showers. The senior locker room on the other hand had hot-and-cold. Though strictly off-limits to an under-13, in I went, stripped off and ran the shower till it was just as I wanted it. Life just then seemed very good and the blurry feeling quickly disappeared.It was while drying off that I heard big heavy feet clumping up the steps, and retreated round a corner. Peering out I recognised the newcomer: Manby, senior prefect, captain af the First XI and many other things. Manby pulled off his clothes, got under the shower and began singing. I should have contrived my escape just then but Manby wasn’t one to linger under the shower. Emerging, he caught sight of my clothes on the bench. “Whoever is in there, come out!” he commanded. I did so, shaking all over.Manby was still naked from the shower. I took in his six-fot-two frame, his broad chest, firm stomach muscles - and enormous hairy genitals. By contrast, my testicles were not much above the size of large peas. But in spite of this, whether excitement, embarrassment or whatever, my penis began to erect to its full length - all two-and-a-half inches.Manby asked my name and form, which I gave him, and demanded to know why I wasn’t out on the field, Apparently satisfied with this, he asked my age. “Twelve years and five months, Manby” I replied. He gave a grunt. “Just the right age to have your balls pricked, I’d say. Alright, go and get decent”.I dressed and went outside to the benches in front of the pavilion, where I found I wasn't alone. Sides had changed and MacVittie, first man in, had been out first ball, Ross had survived one over, only to be caught behind in his second. Both had noticed Manby go into the changing room and were curious to know what, if anything, might have come of being found out-of-bounds by the Captain of Cricket. "What did Manby say?" Ross asked."He wanted to know why I was there, so I told him, and he just nodded. Then he asked how old I was, so I told him, and then.....and then he said I looked ready to have my balls pricked".This last revelation was greeted with a shout of laughter. "Tough luck on your girlfriend if you ever do" said Ross. He nudged MacVittie with his elbow, and MacVittie laughed too."They do that, don't they, to some boys" said MacVittie. Orphans and boys like that. And choirboys in Italy, of course. They have their balls pricked to make them sing better”I looked blank, and McVittie launched into a long explanation. How, in southern Italy, where the people were very poor and families very large, with several male children, it was quite usual to have it done to one or two of the younger ones, in the hope that they would develop beautiful soprano voices, that would never change. More often than not, the results didn't come up to expectations, and the Naples area was celebrated for the number of shepherd-boys and olive pickers with high voices, who could never get married or have children.Ross added that sometimes a well-off family, with an only daughter, would take a good-looking young boy from the town orphanage. His function would be to help her in her games, and to be around whenever she wanted. This included attending her when she took a bath. So before the boy took up these duties, he would be taken to the surgeon to have his balls pricked and be rendered harmless- that was to say, he could never do the thing with a girl, that boys wanted to do, and which started a baby."Why?" I asked. I knew next to nothing about the mechanics of sex (I seldom got an erection) and even less about the tradition of castrating boys. “In what way, harmless?”"Because" said Ross. "A boy who's had that done, can't get his willie into a girl's thing.It's just done with a pin, or something, and afterwards his balls dry up Afterwards his willie hangs limp all the time and won't ever go stiff. And it goes like a little acorn in cold weather.Ross shook his head. "Not with a pin, you goof! It's done with a hypodermic. The doctor injects a drug into the boy’s balls, which makes them dry up. The effect's just the same as having them taken right out, like they used to do to boys in the old days"."Choirboys especially", agreed MacVittie. "To make them sing better. They used to dope them with wine and when they woke up, they would have had their balls pricked"."Taken right out, you mean" objected Ross.This started an argument between the two, MacVittie adamant that boys had their balls pricked, Ross insisting on total removal. But whatever the method, the effect was the same. At this point we were joined by Harrison, another victim of the visiting side's fast bowler. Harrison, his opinion sought, was also uncertain about the method, but agreed with Ross and MacVittie on the essentials. Harrison thought that boys who had their balls drilled out were not able to fuck girls. Taken up on "drilled out", Harrison said that a boy's balls had a hard centre, like a cherry stone, and if this was removed, the soft surrounding tissue withered away, and the pouch dried up also, into a fold of skin, whilst the boy’s penis - echoing Ross’s picturesque expression - shrank to a little acorn.Meanwhile two newcomers had arrived and were listening in. Pugh and Stannard were from farming backgrounds, travelling into school each day by bus. Between them they began to regale us with their knowledge - very extensive - of the ways of emasculating domestic animals, lambs with rubber rings, bull calves with a kind of pincers. When it came to horses, Pugh was vague. "They prick an old horse's, don't they?" he enquired of Stannard. "They prick a horse's, and they dry up". "No, said Stannard. "They take them right out, cords and all". Conversation switched to fucking girls, a subject that occupied most of our speculative hours, however, there was only one boy, Messinger, who claimed any practical experience. According to Messinger, there was a girl called Wendy whom he'd known for quite a long time and during the previous summer holidays, at the girl's suggestion, they had gone into her parents' garden shed where, a few moments later, she asked him "Do you want to see me?" and let him pull her knickers down. Messinger had been tantalisingly vague about what happened next, but under pressure from the rest of us, said that he had "put it right inside and kept it in her for about ten minutes and it felt ever so nice, before she got scared and begged me to pull it out".Meanwhile a fourth boy, Stenson, added his opinion. He began by giving us a précis of the First Eunuch's Tale in the Thousand and One Nights. In this, the storyteller, while still a boy, has sex with his master's young daughter and is punished by having his testicles removed, though not his penis. However, once he is healed, he finds that he is still capable of getting erections, and the two youngsters continue with their amorous games as before, with the difference that there was now no risk of making the girl pregnant. With his balls gone, the boy could make no sperm and consequently never reached a climax, so that he could "poke" her indefinitely, his penis remaining hard all the time.Stenson was more clinical than any of the others. He partly confirmed what Ross had said about a hypodermic, but said that it was used to inject a local anaesthetic into the boy's balls, which were then removed completely. There was no interference with the boy's penis, and he could get erections as before, so long as he stayed fit. Twelve or thirteen was the usual age for it to be done. By that age, a boy’s balls would have begun to swell, and he would be interested in sex though not likely to have done much. After his operation, given the opportunity, he would be willing to try anything a girl wanted. Carried out too early, the operation produced an inert specimen with no sexual inclinations at all."So" continued Stenson "you can wank without balls, and you can screw a woman without balls, although that doesn't mean you're fertile. I think, though, if they want to be really beastly to you, that is, really beastly, they burn them out, with red-hot irons. Of course you are asleep and don't feel anything""What do you mean by really beastly?" inquired Ross."It's so as to make certain you can't do anything with a girl- you know, when you're desperate to do it, and the girl's just as keen as you are, you can't make it go stiff". He went off into technicalities: how this method of removing a boy's balls "destroyed the spermatic nerve" which controlled erections. "So afterwards you can't do anything at all, however much you want to. You know, if you've been feeling a girl inside her knickers and she's really keen to go all the way. You can strain and strain to make it go hard, but the more you want to, the more it shrinks up. That's why it's so safe".Stenson actually produced a picture - a print of an Italian "old master" to prove his theory. This illustrated the routine emasculation of a boy, the artist’s favourite- a curly-headed urchin of twelve or so - some time in the 14th or 15th century, when any barber’surgeon included among his basic skills, that of removing boys’ testicles. The young patient lay on a table, his legs held well apart on an iron frame, and secured with straps at the knee and ankle. He had no pubic hair but a well-filled scrotum and a sturdy penis, held out of the barber’s way by a decorative clamp ornamented by a lion's head Nearby, the barber reached for his castrating-irons, to stretch the boy’s scrotum and remove its contents, while in a small brazier, other irons were heating, to burn out the cords and destroy his manhood. After he was healed, he would pose as Cupid, his penis reduced to a neat little acorn that would never do anything so rude as becoming erect, to offend the artist’s clients. After we had all examined this, the discussion lapsed, leaving me with Stenson's words ringing in my ears: "If they don't want you ever to do it with a girl, they burn your balls out with red-hot irons". Twelve or thirteen was the usual age. I was twelve and five months, and Manby had said I was just the right age. Did Manby know something that I didn't? I was reminded of this episode, forcefully, later that term, when I was sent for by Matron. "It's been decided" Matron said "that you're to have a little operation. In your private area. It's the School's policy. You won't be going to the sanatorium but to a clinic in the town. It's all arranged for today week. I'll give you a note for your form master excusing you from lessons for two days and games for a week. Run along now and come and see me the day before. Then I'll tell you what you'll need to take with you - pyjamas, washing things and so on".So, Manby had been right. I kept my secret to myself although inwardly I worried and wondered. Having my balls pricked didn't sound anything much. Secretly I examined my penis - rather long, tapering to a point. If it would still go stiff, that wouldn't be too bad. I resigned myself to the prospect of having them pricked, or at most, drilled out. I thought about what it would be like, whether it would hurt afterwards (like my tonsils did, after they had been taken out), of watching in the following weeks while they dried up and withered away.But just suppose they had made their minds up, as Stenson had hinted, to be really beastly, then I had to face having them, not pricked or drilled out, but burned out. My fears that this might be a possibility became acute after overhearing a conversation on a bus, between two girls. One of them plainly came from a horsey background. Talk got round to a pony owned by one of the girls, who had been getting above himself, stamping around, rearing up and kicking."He's going to be cut next week, to make him behave better" said the girl. "I shall go and watch. I've seen it done before. It's ever so interesting". The other girl, curious, wanted to know more. "What's being cut mean?" she asked."You know, gelded" said the first girl. "It's done on the horse's private area. The vet cuts out his - you know, (she dropped her voice) the actual balls, and then uses a hot iron to wither up the pouch. It quietens the horse from the moment it's done. It shows him who's the boss. And it's not as if he needed them; no one's going to breed from him".The second girl whispered a question, which I couldn't hear, but the answer was plain enough. "No way! Even if he wants to, he can't get it in. You can see when the horse has a pee - it stays all soft". At this point she dissolved into giggles, and an old woman tut-tutted and told her sharply not to talk about such things. In my mind’s eye I could see the pony straining to get an erection, his penis hanging limp and flabby. Would mine be the same?A week later found me at the clinic, lying on a high, white bed, all by myself. There was a strong hospital smell in the room, which was very bare, with a polished linoleum floor and thick net curtains shutting off the view from the windows. The nursing orderly who had let me in had gone away again as soon as I had my pyjamas on. It felt very strange to put myself to bed by day, and I had been on my own for about half an hour, wondering what was going to happen.Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The door opened and two women in nurses' uniform came in. On their aprons they wore badges, saying who they were. Staff Nurse Edna Brown was in her forties, I guessed, a big, motherly woman. Student Nurse Helen Murphy on the other hand looked as if she was not long out of school. She was very pretty, with long dark hair gathered up under her cap. They at once began bustling about. "Now, get those pyjamas off" ordered Staff Nurse Brown "and get into this". "This" was a white hospital gown. It was open all down the back and when I had it on, I couldn't fasten it up, to cover my bottom. I felt embarrassed and silly."What's this patient in here for?" asked Student Nurse Murphy, in a strong Irish accent. The older woman whispered something I couldn't catch. Student Nurse Murphy giggled. "Now" went on Nurse Brown "we want these bed curtains drawn. Oh, will you just look at that - all caught up on one side. See if you can find some steps".Nurse Murphy skipped out while her boss got busy at the sink. She had brought with her an enamel jug and a long rubber tube, also what looked like liquid soap in a jar. She ran some water into the jug, tested it for temperature and began stirring the soap into it. Meanwhile Nurse Murphy returned with a set of steps which she climbed, to sort out the bed-curtains.Lying where I was, I was able to see right up Nurse Murphy's uniform skirt. She had black stockings on, held up by suspenders. Above the tops of her stockings I could see her tiny white knickers. And more than that, I could see through her knickers, for they were almost transparent. Big boys, like Manby, grew pubic hair round their private parts; so, it seemed, did big girls; Nurse Murphy had a dark triangle of hair above her whatever-you-called-it, a sort of bulge dividing into two fat lips. That, I thought to myself, is where a boy puts his penis in, when having sex. I wondered if Nurse Murphy had done it with anyone yet. She looked as if she might have. It was supposed to be ever so nice. After today, would I ever be able to do it with a girl? (If I could have seen the reality of Nurse Murphy having sex with her boyfriend, having orgasm after orgasm and crying out loud with the joy of it, while the boy emptied his balls into her, I'd have had some reason for anxiety). Plucking up courage I turned to Nurse Brown, who was lifting the jug on to a high shelf. "Please, nurse, what method will the doctor use?" I asked. (Pricked, or drilled out as I hoped, burned out with red-hot irons as I feared.)"He has a little guillotine" replied Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice. "But you've no need to worry about that. You'll be fast asleep and won't know anything about it"."A little guillotine" was a new dimension altogether. I couldn't begin to imagine how it would be used, unless to lop my testicles off altogether, pouch and all. Or had everyone got it all wrong: did this operation after all involve removing the penis, not the balls? Perhaps they took the balls out as well. I imagined myself in the same situation as Messinger with the girl, Wendy. Suppose I met a girl like that, who was willing to let me try anything. I pictured her pulling her knickers down, whispering "Go on, Simon, put yours in me, all the way"; my own voice, shrill with embarrassment: "I can't, Wendy! I've had this operation and I just can't! Then I imagined Wendy's voice, knowing, scornful: "I know - you've had your balls pricked. They prick a boy's balls to prevent him ever doing anything with a girl.". As she pulled her knickers up, she would begin chanting Simon's had his balls pricked, Simon's had his balls pricked. However, my further speculations were interrupted. Having sorted out the curtains Nurse Murphy drew them right round the bed. "Now then young man" said Nurse Brown in a matter-of-fact voice "turn right over, on your tummy, and I'll give you a good cleaning-out". I did as I was told, conscious of my bare bottom sticking up. I felt her strong fingers parting my buttocks, something hard poking in, and then a gush of warm water pouring into my bowels. After the first surprise, it felt rather nice. For some minutes Nurse Brown pumped soapy water up my bottom. At length I felt the syringe being pulled out. "Try and keep that in for five minutes" she ordered "and then you can go to the loo. It's just across the corridor".

To be continued