The Groaning Times Chapter 1: Our Downfall

[And many thanks to those on the Feedback message board for their praise and encouragement!]

**************************

The upheaval that led to our naked, painful and humiliating incarceration occurred in 2135, sparked by that unfortunate incident at my preparatory school. But it wasn’t simply our encounter with pretty little Tai Vu that doomed us. We lived in a political atmosphere that was easily ignited by such a tiny spark. The tinderbox was almost full. Tai Vu merely added the final kindling.

Class envy and tension between the “ haves” and the “have-nots” are as old as human civilization. Yet only infrequently have these problems resulted in actual revolution, as for example they did in the case of the French Revolution. For those readers who may have difficulty understanding how such a mundane event at my prep school could have resulted in such a drastic upheaval for us, I’ll provide a context to enlighten you.

By the year 2135 the country was a very different place than it had been in the previous century. In 2135, we Anglos (or “WASPs” or “Anglos” or “Lily-Whites” as they called us) were a distinct minority in a huge sea of “people of color,” meaning mainly Hispanics, Asians and blacks, many of whom had recently emigrated from other parts of the world. It was one of those massive demographic shifts that inevitably overtakes all countries whose wealth makes them magnets for the world. In 3rd century Rome, before it fell to the barbarians, the slaves and the plebeians outnumbered the patricians five to one. There’s nothing new under the sun.

This racial-ethnic stew in which we lived would have been manageable if the gap between rich and poor hadn’t become so huge. To blame were a seemingly endless series of recessions brought on by high-energy prices and overpopulation. Then, of course, there were the periodic stock scandals perpetrated mostly by those of my social class (to our shame). In short, the “horn of plenty” was not what it was cracked up to be.

Except for the mostly white few of my socioeconomic strata, the average person’s standard of living on the continent had actually regressed to almost the Third World level. Due to the economic problems, technological development had been stagnant for many decades.

The result was a disillusioned, sullen and mostly non-Anglo “underclass” barely subsisting on the low-level jobs we of the upper economic strata left to them.

In the midst of all this, we “blueblood’ Anglos pursued the good life. Being so confident of wealth as our protective fortress, my class chose to have fewer children so we could enjoy this leisure. Thus, we inherited more and more concentrated wealth. I, for example, had a trust fund at age 14 that would have made the average person’s jaw drop. (Now my trust fund is gone, used up to pay the boy guards who’ve ruled my life since age 14, as well as fund Princess Tai’s collection of custom-made dollhouses and dolls.)

But we hardly noticed what was happening outside of our posh suburban islands and gentrified city enclaves until we were forced to venture away from our comfortable environs. Indeed, I didn’t come face to face with the imbalance until age 13. I was riding with my 16-year old sister Hillary one summer to her cello recital in the city. An accident forced us onto a detour through one of those teeming ethnic neighborhoods. My sister’s European sports car had a flat tire in front of a parochial school. Her cell phone battery had run out of charge, so we went into the school to borrow a phone. As we entered the double doors, a sea of giggling little Asian-looking girls and boys greeted us. The children were heading out to summer school recess.

As this horde of yellow-skinned kids approached us, we thought we were in Bangkok, Manila or Ho Chi Minh City!

The dark eyed children stopped in their tracks and stared at our Lily-white faces in wonder, as if we were the foreign ones. Then they resumed their mad, giggling dash for the yard. As one little boy passed by, a toy truck he was carrying snagged the nylon stocking on my sister’s calf. The collision caused an ugly run all the way down to her ankle. Looking down in anger, she muttered, “Oh damn! This is all I need. I have to go on stage with this!” An irritated Hillary then remarked to me about the country needing to get immigration under control “once and for all.”

Lax immigration laws were a sore subject with my older female sibling. They were even the topic of her junior term paper at her own all-female prep school. (Little did my beautiful, dignified but sometimes haughty sister know how that term paper would come back to haunt her. One year later, keeping the runs out of her stockings would be the least of her worries. She would be standing barefoot and naked in a long line of other red-faced teenaged Anglo girls waiting for an 8-year old Asian immigrant girl, a “child matron,” to take her big toe prints for the inmate records of the Reeducation Prison For Teenaged Anglo Girls. But that’s my sister’s story, and she must tell it in her own words.)

Facing this rising tide of unfamiliar cultures, we upper crust Lily-whites grew more insular in our lifestyles. Estates with high protective walls and private schools became our rule. Behind our walls, life went on as usual as it probably did among the French aristocracy on the eve of the French Revolution. It was a life of super-selective prep schools, country club dances, and plans for posh corporate jobs after graduate school. There was little understanding of the struggles outside. It was the classic “let them eat cake” or “they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps” attitude. People of my class were always talking in terms of the masses needing to take “personal responsibility” and needing to abandon their “victim’s mentality.” Of course, these “pep talks” from On High set the underclass’ teeth on edge. Moreover, down deep we all knew that this imbalance was not so simple to fix. The economic “pie” had become too painfully finite.

Amidst all this economic turmoil and hardship, the popular press and the legislatures began to pander to the envy and resentments of the poor masses outside our walls. They skillfully rehashed memories of the historical Anglo abuses such as colonialism and slavery. All underclass “fingers of blame” seemed to point at us, the affluent WASPs.

The most striking and unsettling aspect of this pandering were the “cultural reparations” bills that were soon being submitted to legislatures. Of course, these bills were defeated each round, due to uncertainty about their economic impacts. But they also won more and more votes each round, for they inspired much popular sympathy. The bills even caused a rise in immigration from the Third World, lured by the prospect of a windfall. Of course, these arrivals added more votes. “Reparations” became the mantra of those who considered themselves dispossessed.

Some of these bills seemed laughable at the time, such as one that proposed that we affluent whites should not only “cede” our wealth but that all young “blueblood” WASPs should submit to a period of “compulsive compensatory community service” to disadvantaged people of color. Much to the dismay of us affluent Anglos, those who supported the bill argued that such service would be especially good for the self-esteem of underprivileged children of color. They argued that poverty had given these children of the underclass feelings of “hopelessness” and “inferiority” due to their bleak economic prospects. In the view of this bill’s supporters, explaining to these children that they were victims of “oppression” or “injustice” had done little to change this outlook. Those who championed this astonishing bill argued that “more drastic therapy” was needed to show the young ones that we rich whites were not forever ordained to rule. They reasoned that these children’s confidence would be bolstered by seeing rich young Anglo whites “toe the line” as actual servants for a few years. In a tabloid editorial, one Hispanic mother of five wrote, “Yes! Let black children see rich white boys and girls pick cotton! Let Asian kids see the Anglos sweat it out in laundries! Let our Hispanic kids see them work the migrant farm circuit! Only then will our precious ones blossom with the possibilities before them! It’s time for the world to be their oyster!”

We dismissed such suggestions as preposterous, as sheer class-envy fantasy. Little did we know that what actually befell us would make such “fantasies” look tame. One very big, very white oyster would soon be delivered to them, pried fully open on the half-shell.

One thing was very clear though from these failed bills, though. Upper class WASP control over such influential institutions had slipped badly for such radical ideas to even be entertained by elected officials. From the standpoint of electoral politics, our clout had withered badly.

Though we tried to laugh it off, such wild talk did make us feel besieged and uneasy about venturing outside of our gated enclaves. Yet it was hard to steer clear of the rising multicultural tide even there. We couldn’t avoid the underclass because they took the jobs that we considered above us, in our posh homes and private schools. For example, the entire cleaning and cooking staff of our prep school was not long off the boat.

That’s where Tai Vu came in. She was fresh from a poor village in Southeast Asia, a place of thatched huts and rice paddies. Nonetheless, this little girl was about to embark on the adventure of her life. She would turn our sheltered world on its head. Our world would, in every sense of the word, become her “big white oyster.”

It was a sunny late-Spring day after a long week of rain. I was age 14, and within a month of turning 15. Several fellow students and I had just showered and dressed after Lacrosse practice at my all-male New England preparatory high school. As we exited the carpeted and wood paneled locker room, we tossed our towels to the new Towel Boy to take to the laundry. I remember wondering if the wiry, poker-faced 12-year old spoke any English. His named was Chico, and he looked either Hispanic or Asian. It was hard to tell. And it wasn’t anything I thought more than 2 seconds about, as I was eager to get to the dining hall with the rest.

On our way across the campus green, we saw a barefoot, pigtailed little Asian girl near a line of plum trees. She was busy picking the half-ripe plums and stuffing them in the pockets of her threadbare cotton dress. She tossed aside the plums she didn’t want.

I had seen the girl once before. She was the 7-year old daughter of one of the new Dining Room dish washers. She was a strikingly pretty little girl, if one looked past her dress that seemed to have been fashioned from a discarded flour sack. Yes, it was Tai Vu.

One of the boys walking with me was Lyle, the president of our senior class and my roommate. He said, “Look at that fucking little fortune cookie! She’s trashing our trees!”

I think Lyle really thought of them as “his” trees. They (along with indoor tennis courts) had been his wealthy father’s Alumnus Gift to the school. The trees were of a rare variety resilient to the New England cold, imported from China.

We followed Lyle to the plum trees where he yelled at the little girl to stop.

With sheer terror in her eyes, the child turned around and looked up at the tall, slender blonde boy looming over her. Shaking his finger, Lyle told her that the plum trees belonged to the school and that she was not to take things that didn’t belong to her. He told her to drop the plums and go back wherever she came from.

The little girl looked up at Lyle with her dark almond shaped eyes. I could see the child understood no English.

At that point, something thudded to the ground from under the girl’s dress. It was a packet of large, imported Bratwurst sausages. It had apparently slipped from under her waistband

We looked at each other and nodded. We’d heard about the epidemic of food being stolen from the Dining Hall kitchens. Now we knew how it was being done. The mother was using her child as a courier.

Tai’s and my eyes met for a moment. I couldn’t help but smile at the little Asian girl’s spunk in trying something like that in this bastion of white power. Momentarily, the child’s face flickered with relief at my expression. I started to reach down, pick up the package, and hand it back to her.

Lyle wasn’t having any of it. He yanked the package off the grass. The little girl looked terrified again. Lyle went, “Boo!”

Tai stepped back, tripping and falling into a muddy area where a water line had been recently repaired.

The child looked up in shock and then down at her now-muddy dress.

Lyle laughed, “Hey fortune cookie, that’ll teach you to keep away from our sausages!”

The girl began to cry as she got up and ran off.

I looked at Lyle and said, “Was that really necessary?”

He just shrugged and said, “Well she tripped!”

[Given that the 18-year old Tai is now my Mistress, writing about this long-ago incident in her presence left me visibly remorseful. Of course, in her sensitive way, she asked me what was wrong. I told the Princess that if there was ever a time I felt like surrendering my sausage in her honor, it was at this moment of having to relive our shameful behavior when she was a little girl. Tai smiled and assured me that she preferred my dick attached to my body. She explained, “Oh Michael, so much white meat fell under the blade in my honor after that day. My journey to womanhood has been virtually lined with severed Anglo penises. One more big white peter on the chopping block would hardly be a novelty to me. Also, I must remind you that it was your nasty friend Lyle, not you, who truly wronged me that day. And, as you know, my brothers chopped off both his penis and his crushed testicles to honor my arrival at the prison guesthouse. I could hear the white boy’s begging and yelling when it was being done to him. I was playing with my new dolls at the time, so I didn’t know what the commotion was all about until later. Lyle’s was the first Anglo sausage they mounted for me. His was such a big, vein-rippled peter too. So I guess you could say the guilty party has paid for that insult.”

With that, she smiled and said, “Now, my literary-genius slave, stop your writing for awhile and let me milk your stiff white meat into my hair lotion. It’ll calm you down.”]

As the little girl ran out through the school gate, I began to feel uneasy about this event. I guess it was a genuine premonition of doom. You see, our encounter with the Tai had been caught by a video camera hidden in some nearby shrubs by a tabloid. The newspaper was doing an expose on the prep school “elite,” hoping to catch us in some unflattering circumstances. Never in the paper’s wildest dreams did they ever imagine capturing a video clip that would spark a revolution.

The video clip was on the news that very evening, and was replayed over and over again on the news channels well into the next day, with much outraged commentary by various minority group leaders. The clip made us look worse than the actual situation warranted. It implied that one of us had pushed the little girl into the mud.

The riots and demonstrations began the next evening all over the country. We stayed behind the walls of our school, praying that the mass outrage would eventually burn itself out. Our dumbfounded parents called, wondering what possessed us to act as we did. My sister Hillary was frantic when I picked up the phone. She said someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail over her prep school’s security wall. The administrators of our school were distraught over the bad publicity and began to debate whether suspending us for a semester would mollify the angry masses.

It was soon too late for such appeasing gestures. An extreme “reparations” bill had been waiting in the wings for a day like this. Within three days, the bill passed with extra provisions aimed at, to put in bluntly, enslaving us WASP teen prep-schoolers. Our defeat had been written into law!

The law was entitled “The Punitive and Compensatory White Anglo Saxon Protestant Preparatory School Community Service Act of 2035.” It was nicknamed “Tai Vu’s Law.”

Basically the Law not only levied bankrupting fines on members of my social class but also required affluent prep-school Anglo teens throughout the entire country to render “tribute” as well as “indefinite and unconditional community service” to economically disadvantaged people of color, no matter their immigration status. It stipulated that this tribute and service be rendered “without question, with a gracious demeanor, and without regard to the modesty or physical comfort of the provider.”

The Act went on to state “the specific nature of such tribute and service is to be specified by those disadvantaged persons with expressed grievances, without prejudice as to the age or gender of the Complainant who claims entitlement to said tribute or service.”

In short, we were required to do whatever other races or ethnic groups told us to do. Even the snottiest little kid could make us jump through hoops. Our jaws dropped in horror and embarrassment at such a prospect. This was one giant serving of crow.

Perhaps the most bizarre section of the Act was the ban on our breeding. The Act read, “Their reproductive organs and the seminal fluid thereof are heretofore banned for employment for human reproductive purposes. Any such organs or associated fluid found in violation of this restriction shall be cause for removal of such organs.”

In short, we could be neutered for even attempting to have sex with a female.

People of the underclass were laughing and dancing in the streets over this law, cheering the irony that us rich white boys (and girls) had, in effect, been condemned to bondage by an affront to a tiny Asian girl, a child of the underclass, a child of color. Tai had become an unlikely hero and symbol of the triumphant new multicultural order.

As for us, we read the new law with ashen faces and sweaty palms. The language of this astonishing legislation was so strict, yet so vague in many ways about exactly what would be done with us. It seemed to permit anything. About the only point made crystal clear was that we could have our cocks and balls amputated if we had intercourse with a female. We were all astonished to see such a barbaric provision. But at least that part was in black and white. It made my penis shrivel to imagine it, though. Our teenaged-stud days of “getting a piece of ass” were definitely over.

Once we got past the stark warning about our genitals, we fretted over what this “tribute” or “service” could actually be and when it would be required. We only knew that we should probably be prepared to provide it with as much of a “gracious” attitude as we could muster.

Our terrified Dean had all the students assemble in the Assembly Hall the next day. There, he informed us that classes had been cancelled and asked that all students except for those teens selected for “reeducation’ by the new authorities should depart the school and go home. He said the “selected” boys would have to confine themselves to campus to “await further instruction.” He then picked up a list of the names.

Though it was foolish, I saw a glimmer of hope in this. Maybe it wouldn’t be everyone. Maybe it was just Lyle and the others on our team, with me excluded. I recalled that I had at least smiled at the little girl. Maybe they saw that on film.

My heart raced as the Dean read off the names of 50 boys. Yes, 50. I soon realized that the names consisted of the handsomest and most accomplished students at our school. My name was among them, along with the other members of my Lacrosse team. My heart sank with apprehension. They were taking the cream.

The others boys, the nerdy and unattractive ones from the bottom of the social pecking order, were allowed to return to the dorm and pack their things for home. Some of these boys openly smirked at me as they walked down the center aisle. There was no love lost.

The Dean then informed those of us who remained that the telephone lines to the school had been cut and that we should confine ourselves to our dormitory to avoid crossing the new authorities. He said mobs of young street toughs were roaming outside the walls and would not treat any white teen they found from our school kindly. The Dean said we needed to wait in our dorm for “more information” from the authorities. He said that a Bureau of Reparations had been established. This Bureau needed time to “get things ready.” With that, he dismissed us.

I could see that our Dean was cooperating with the new powers to save his own skin. He was acting like their spokesman.

Stunned, we walked silently back to our dorms. As I walked, I looked over at the plum trees. I wanted to cut them down. I never wanted to see a plum tree again. But I would soon learn to nurture plum trees with all I could offer. Ironically, my manhood would depend on it.

We waited and waited in our dorms as rumors flew, subsisting on canned food from the Dining Hall, which was now deserted of help. There was little food, though. The departing staff had looted most of it.

The food ran out after four days. After going hungry for that evening, we told of the Dean. Mysteriously the next evening we found 50 box lunches sitting on the tables of the Dining Hall. Each contained two large unwrapped breakfast type bars, a cup of fruit and bottled water. We ate it all ravenously. The bars were actually delicious, though they seemed to contain a spice I had never tasted before

That night I had an erotic dream about a beautiful Asian girl tickling my penis. She was fully clothed and facing me and many other naked white boys standing at attention with erections. Our hands were shackled behind our backs. I remember thrusting my penis out, praying she would finish me before she moved to the next boy. Others were thrusting their penises out to attract her interest.

I awoke early the next morning with a huge erection. I mean, I always had an erection upon waking, but this one was different. The underside of my shaft tingled intensely, all the way into my prostate. In addition, my balls felt big and heavy.

I slipped of my shorts to look at myself. My cockhead was purplish in color and my shaft rippled with bulging blue veins. (I do have a long thick penis. In fact, most Anglo boys of my day did due to our superior diets. It was not highly unusual for a 14 year old of my time to have an 8-inch penis when erect. Mine was 7.)

I waited for my erection to subside, which it usually did. But, after 10 minutes, I remained as hard as ever.

I looked over at my roommate Lyle. He was lying on his back with the sheet off. His penis was pushing up his underwear. (Later, we were to learn that our little box supper had been prepared with ample doses of an Asian sexual stimulant called Tingleroot. The substance had worked its way into our prostates and urethras when we peed the night before. It was now tickling our sperm canals without cease. Tingleroot told our brains that big pleasure was coming, which put our balls into overdrive.)

I decided to head to the bathroom and masturbate. All I could think of was relieving this, and I sensed I would make a very visible mess if I beat it in my room.

It was then that the Dean announced over the loudspeaker that the authorities were there and that we should report to the gymnasium immediately. He then cleared his voice and added, “They..uh..have told me to warn you..uh.. not to masturbate.”

I heard voices outside. I looked out the window to see a crowd of muscular dark-skinned men and several boys entering the gate. The men looked like a street gang with their tattoos and sleeveless tee shirts. Only their armbands suggested any official capacity. I noticed some of the boys had armbands too. They were all heading our way. I sensed we’d better hurry and shook Lyle.

I wondered how I would get my relentlessly stiff penis into my jeans as I dashed for my clothes. I didn’t fancy the idea of standing in front of our “conquerors” with cock tenting out the front of my pants. I didn’t think such a display would be looked upon kindly.

I looked over at Lyle, who was now naked and puzzling over his own erection. We exchanged sheepish glances just before we saw our door fly open.

[Next: “ The Groaning Times Chapter 2: The March”]

[Please keep those comments coming!!]