The next week I went to the bath-house on Saturday - with my Dad. Every Russian bath-house has a steam room where people whip there bodies with bunches of leafy twigs. The high air temperature and humidity combined with the twig-whipping has a very healthy effect on the body. My Dad, being a great lover of the whipping massage, started his every visit to the bath-house by going straight away to 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 the 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 women 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 bath-house last Sunday I knew 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 bath-house with your Mom?" I asked in return.

"Never."

"I have been," I said calmly.  "And never seen girls covering anything in the steam room."

"Girls have nothing to cover," said Dad, who stopped whipping us and joined in our conversation. "They are just "have-nots" unlike "haves" as we, men, are."

"I think girls are lucky", I said.

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

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

"What a 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 bath-house with Mom, or you'll surely become some kind of sissy instead of a proper man you should be. Envy girls, indeed! What on the earth could be more stupid?"

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. "The 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 the thing that girls have instead."

"That's enough!" Dad shouted, "I say no more goings to the bath-house 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 there came Saturday, I came up to Mom and asked her to take me tomorrow to the bath-house with her.

"Pete, don't you know Dad's strictly against your goings to the bath-house 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, 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 bath-house along with my sister.

That evening, when the sister was not in her room, I got one of her dolls and hurried along the stairs up to the loft, where under the sloping ceiling there hang bunches of twigs, awaiting their turn to be taken to the bath-house. I undressed the doll, took it in the left 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...

The next day I was in the bath-house, and like Dad had whipped me and Mike in the steam room a week ago, so Mom lashed thoroughly my and Tina's backs first and then made us turn around to whip our fronts.

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

"What things?"

"I mean your little balls, sonny."

"But, Mom, Tina 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 a great pain."

"No, I won't cover anything, like all the girls around."

"In that case I won't give you any whipping, silly boy," Mom replied severely  and then started whipping sister on her front, Tina's arms hanging freely along her sides, her groin not covered with her hands. 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, you have no balls," I said quietly. "But just imagine I'm a girl, too."

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

"Yeah, such a kind of girl," 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..," and she 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, gaping for air with my mouth like a fish out of the 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 with the bunch of twigs explained and gave out a giggle.

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

"Mom," Tina 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 Tina, 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 balls."

At last I managed to get in enough air 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 alike 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...

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 outside, I stood by the entrance door, my back against the wall and my hands taking their turns in nursing my still aching balls. In a while I saw the girl who'd given me that prolonged pain come from the bath-house. She was followed by another girl who to all means and purposes was her elder sister. Both the girls were dressed in T-shirts and short skirts. They 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 hurt 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 and ceased her parody of my painful reaction to her sister's deed. "I didn't know girls could hurt their 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 bath-house, 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.

"But why?" both the girls asked in an impish tone.

"I won't be allowed to go to the bath-house with girls any more."

"Pity" the younger girl smiled mischievously, "thought I could help you and give you some more whipping next time. Anyway, I'll always be glad to. My name's Jane and here's my sister Mary."

"I'm Pete."

"Well, Pete, so long," The sisters giggled, exchanged gleeful glances, turned around and strolled off.

Soon there appeared Mom and my sister. Tina looked over me, snickered merrily and said:

"Mom, I think I'll run home alone. Pete's gonna be too slow. You'd better take care of him."

And off she sprang along the path that led to our house.

"Mom," I pronounced sulkily, "Why do girls always laugh when they see a boy hit in the balls. It's so painful to boys, and girls see only fun in that. Yesterday Tina hit her elbow and I didn't laugh at her. And to hit an elbow is such a petty thing compared to be hit in the balls. So why do they laugh?"

"Sonny, you have elbows like your sister, that's the point, you know what it feels to hit one of them and you don't laugh at girls when they hurt their elbows. Girls don't have balls and it seems funny to them to be so easily hurt by hitting those things you boys have."

"And it seems funny to you?"

"Pete," Mom puffed, "you're asking silly questions. We'd better start for home."

"No, you haven't answered me yet. You don't have balls, either, then it must be funny to you to see a guy hit in the balls."

"Pete, I'm a grown-up woman. Not a little girl like your sister."

"But when you were a little girl, did you laugh?"

Mom gave out a heavy sigh.

"Pete, just leave this topic alone. Now that you're going to go to the bath-house with Dad and not me and Tina any longer, there'll be no girls there and they will never make you angry with their laughs."

"But they don't make me angry at all," I said thoughtfully. "If I were a girl, I'd also laugh at boys whose balls hurt. What makes me angry is that I'm not going to go to the bath-house with you any more."

"No harm in that, sonny. You'll survive it."

"Mom, I like it more to bathe with girls than boys..."

"Cut it out, Pete," Mom gave me a stern, reproachful look. "Do stop talking all that rubbish."

"It ain't rubbish at all," I said and slowly followed Mom, leaving the bathhouse and naked girls behind...