“…. just be there, fuckface.  If you don’t show, or if you rat me out, I’ll twist your balls off and stuff them up your ass.  Got it?”  I couldn’t believe my ears.  The voice was undoubtedly that of Jared, my sixteen-year-old nephew, and he had obviously been using the extension in his bedroom when I had picked up the kitchen phone to make a call, but I had never heard him talk like that before.

            My nephew Jared was only eleven years old when his Dad flew a rented Cessna through some power lines and crashed and burned on the South bank of the Spokane River.  Jared was spared the fate of his parents and older brother only because he had lipped off to the PE teacher and had been sentenced to Saturday Detention on the day of the flight.  Thus Jared became my ward until his twenty-first birthday. 

            I am a confirmed bachelor and have no experience in parenting but I do have at least a little common sense and it was obvious to me that although Jared was a rude and snotty little turd, most of his problems resulted from his parents’ lack of disciple.   I had casually mentioned to my sister a time or two that Jared seemed a little bit spoiled, but she refused to discuss the issue, and not wanting to alienate his mother, which was also my only kin I dropped the subject.

            I knew that I couldn’t possibly change Jared into being a polite and considerate youngster overnight, so I cut the kid six months worth of slack in order to get over the initial grief and also to get used to his new surroundings and regimen before I cracked down on him.  Much to the surprise of Jared’s teachers and counselors my discipline worked miracles with the boy and by the time he turned twelve Jared was a pleasant enough young man to be around and, even though I was totally inexperienced in the science of child psychology I became the envy of most of the parents in the PTA.

             I knew that the most trying times were still to come, so it was no surprise when a year later Jared’s voice deepened slightly, he started acting sullen and moody, and he refused to partake in the nightly soak sessions in the hot tub on the back deck without first donning his swimsuit.   I had been there myself, of course, and I knew enough to give the boy some personal privacy and to not become too clingy, but at the same time I knew I had to keep his eyes open.  A couple of weeks later I became a little tired of the squeak of protesting bedsprings emanating from the boy’s room and decided to set a few ground rules for the newest inductee into the Brotherhood Of The Hand.

            “There’s nothing wrong with jacking off,” I told my red-faced nephew. “Everyone does it.  Hell, I’m forty-six years old and I still do it.  It won’t hurt you a bit, do it all you want.  The thing is, keep it to yourself and don’t make a mess in your sheets, tee shirts, or socks.  Use Kleenex or a towel or something, and be sure to wash your dick and belly afterwards or other people will smell it and know what you’ve been up to.  I usually do it in the shower, but the choice is yours.  Just don’t keep waking me up at night.”

            Although he was obviously embarrassed, I figured that Jared was also somewhat relieved by my frank discussion.  The wasn’t any such thing as Sex Ed in Washington public schools back in the ‘60s and Jared’s only information on the subject had probably came from an antiquated and heavily edited home medical reference book that he’d found somewhere.  Those books usually addressed masturbation as an unhealthy perversion and Jared probably thought that he was the only kid in the world who did it and that there must be something wrong with him.  The knowledge that all guys did it, including his elderly uncle, probably took a load of guilt off of his mind and he could now laugh at the locker room jokes and innuendos about masturbation.

            Right about the same time Jared became a lot more concerned about his grooming, and he also seemed to spend a lot of time on the telephone having hush-hush type conversations, and every time I answered the phone it seemed to be a girl wanting to talk to him.

          I remember being a horny young buck myself, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me when a year later I came home from work early and found him on top of a blonde on the living room sofa, his white ass pistoning up and down like a jackhammer. They had thoughtfully spread out a sheet to protect the upholstery, and as soon as they heard me and had disengaged she wrapped up in it before meekly gathering her clothes and fleeing to the bathroom to get dressed.  Jared sat facing me and I took a minute to survey my nephew as he began dressing.  He had just turned fifteen and didn’t have much body hair other than his crotch and pits.  He just had fuzz on his skinny legs and arms and no sign of a beard.  He was still erect and his teenage cock glistened with her juices, and his balls looked incongruously large hanging there between his bony thighs.  I finally turned my back and walked away to let him finish dressing in privacy.  His apparent lack of embarrassment told me that this hadn’t been the first time he’d been intimate with a girl.

            Now, I don’t necessarily approve of teenage promiscuity, but I have to admit that at some level I was at least a little bit proud of the boy and was also relieved to know that he wasn’t a fag.  It was also plain to see that he wasn’t wearing a rubber, so I made sure that he knew enough to protect both him and his partner the next time, and I followed up by marching him into the drug store and standing by while he purchased a dozen Trojans.  The only other source back then were the machines located in various restrooms and I wanted the kid to be able to purchase them face to face from a druggist and I also wanted the pharmacist to know that it was with my blessing and that I wouldn’t put up with him giving my nephew any crap about buying them.

            I never saw the kid in action again, but I know he was getting laid occasionally because I found various brands of empty rubber boxes in the trash from time to time, and the phone calls from various girls continued to roll in.  I was happy for the boy, and also relieved that he probably wasn’t going to knock one of the girls up, so I didn’t rag on him about it but I did make sure that he knew he had to be a little more discrete or one of the girls fathers might just hack hiss balls off in a fit of rage.  He thanked me for my advice and told me not to worry, which told me it all went in one ear and out the other, but at least I had tried.

            All in all I though the kid was okay.  Although he never seemed to study he did okay in school, and even though he wasn’t a hardcore jock he still made the wrestling team.  He was popular with his peers and had a lot of friends of both sexes, and even though he was a little too lusty for his own good he avoided serious entanglements and didn’t seem to take himself too seriously.  He seemed to me just like a normal sixteen year old kid, so when I was flabbergasted when I inadvertently eavesdropped on his phone call. I first though it might be some low key teenage prank, but the seriousness in his voice as he threatened an obviously weaker or younger person bothered me enough that I did something low down, sneaky, immoral, and also illegal:  I hooked up a tape recorder to the phone.  I could have confronted him, of course, but we had a rapport that I wasn’t willing to risk losing by falsely accusing him of something that I didn’t even have a clue about.

            “I don’t have the money!”  The thin, reedy voice of a youngster came out of the tape recorder’s speaker.

            “I don’t give a shit,” Jared’s deeper voice responded, “five bucks. Get it, or else.  You saw what happened to Shane, didn’t you?”

            “Please!  Just give me another week!  I’ll have ten for you by then!” The younger boy pleaded.

            “Okay, but you still have to show up Thursday.  Got it?

            “I’ll be there,” the younger voice replied just before the phone hung up.

            It sounded as if Jared had been shaking down him and at least one other boy for money.  I didn’t believe it at first, after all I gave him a generous allowance each week, and he worked a few hours after school and on Saturdays and was saving up to buy a car.  Jared’s dad had been pretty strung out when he died, and the only thing his creditors hadn’t gotten was a small life insurance policy which was ear marked for Jared’s college education.   Jared had approached me a few months previous about using some of it to buy a car, but I refused his request and told him to get a job and earn some money, then I would match what ever he had saved and he could use the entire sum for whatever kind of car he could afford.  This was in 1966, when twenty-five hundred bucks would buy you either a new Mustang or a Chevy pickup, gas was twenty cents a gallon, and a kid couldn’t possibly spend more than five bucks on a date.  There were lots of really nice two and three hundred-dollar cars around, so even at the one-dollar an hour minimum wage, my offer to match his savings meant that the kid could quickly earn enough money to get some decent wheels.

            I simply didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t contact the police; even if I was inclined to fink out my only nephew there still wasn’t even any evidence that a crime had been committed.  I could confront the boy, but to do so would undoubtedly mean the end of any kind of communication between us, possibly forever.   On the other hand I couldn’t abide with him extorting or strong-arming money from younger boys, and what ever the hell was going on there had to cease.  The only thing I could come up with was to watch him carefully and tail him to where ever he was going to meet the younger boy on Thursday, and maybe get a better handle on just what was going on.

            Thursday was his day off from the camera shop and Jared usually did his own thing after school on that day, so I knocked off work a couple oh hours early and set up a watch on the school.  He didn’t have a car or a bicycle so anywhere he went would have to be on foot or with someone else.  His last class ended at three-thirty and soon thereafter he strode out the front door, stood around talking to some of his buddies for a few minutes, and then headed down the street alone in the direction of Unity Park.

            I followed him easily.  He didn’t seem to be in any big hurry and he obviously had no idea that he was being tailed.  Once in the park he started down the half-mile trail around the duck pond, but then diverted down a small trail into the dense brush.  I waited for perhaps five minutes before following, and heard him talking before I actually saw him, so I crept closer until I was only a few yards from the clearing in which he was holding court with four younger boys.

            “Who’s got my money?”  Jared asked gruffly.

            “Me,” a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen answered, before fishing around in the pocket of his jeans to extract a wadded up five-dollar bill.

            “Okay,” Jared said, flattening out the bill and putting it into his wallet.  “Who else?” 

            “I do,” another boy answered, also paying Jared.

            “Me too,” said the third, handing over a folded bill.

            “Well?”  Jared said, pocketing the money and looking at the fourth boy.

            “I told you on the phone,” the nervous boy stammered, “I don’t have the money this week, but I’ll give you ten next week.  Please?”

            “Tough shit,” my nephew answered.  “You all know the deal:  Five bucks a week from each of you for five weeks, or I post the pictures all over the school.  You still each have two weeks to go.”

            “I told you,” the boy pleaded, “I’ll have it and your other five next week.”

            “Okay, you damned well better.  Meanwhile there’s the interest.  Five bucks you owe me means five minutes.  If you don’t pay next week it’ll be ten minutes.”

            “Please,” the young boy pleaded again. “Don’t.”

            “Your choice, guys.”  Jared directed this at the other boys, who looked at each other for a few seconds before abruptly seizing their companion and wrestling him to the ground.

            “I told you to get the money, Stuart, now you’ll have to let him do it or we’re all dead meat,” one boy said as he unfastened the captive’s pants.  The three boys worked together and pulled Stuart’s jeans and underpants down around his ankles and then held the boy down on his hands and knees, bare white ass gleaming in the April sun.  His pink, almost hairless scrotum was tucked up tight and protruded out like that of a young dog.

            “Five minutes,” Jared repeated, approaching the younger boy from behind.  He squatted down, lowered his hand below the boy’s ass, and then checked the Hamilton watch on his wrist.  It had been his grandfather’s and was probably the most valuable thing that Jared owned.  He then abruptly slammed his open hand up into the boy’s balls, grabbing them and squeezing at the same time.  He repeated this several times before tightening his grip to the point where I thought the boy’s scrotum might burst.  Only the efforts of the boy’s companions to hold his face down in the grass prevented him from screaming out in agony, and even then I saw a golden steam of piss shoot from his belly into the grass.  Jared released his grip several times only to once again tighten it, all the time keeping an eye on his watch.  He finally released the boy’s balls and lowered his hand about a foot and then slammed it upward hard enough to lift the boy off of his knees in a grand finale to what I now understood was five minutes of torture.

            Jared abruptly stood and threw a picture and a negative on the ground before he strode from the clearing, while the three boys pulled up their hapless companion’s pants and helped him to his feet, where they had to almost carry him from the clearing.  I’m sure they were too busy concocting some story about how their buddy managed to rack his nuts to notice me as I made my way out of the park.

            I couldn’t see the picture, but it seemed that Jared had either photographed the boys himself or had came into possession of photographs that showed the boys in some kind of compromising situation, and that now he was blackmailing them with the photographs.  It was also obvious that the boys were willing to relinquish their lunch money and perhaps their allowances as well as submitting to a form of sodomy in order to protect their secret.  The worst part of the whole mess was that I was now a part of it all.  I wasn’t some irresponsible adolescent or innocent bystander; I was the legal guardian of the perpetrator and in a court of law I would in all likelihood responsible for his actions.  I thought about all of my options, including trying to identify my nephew’s victims and paying the remaining portion of their debt for them, or even offering to pay Jared directly.  In the end I took my usual course of action and did absolutely nothing.  What I heard in the clearing led me to believe it was just about over with anyway, and I told myself that any method that I used to confront Jared would only serve to drive a wedge between us.

            Early that summer Jared announced that he had his half of the car money saved up and presented me with a grand sum of three hundred dollars, one hundred of which was in the form of twenty wrinkled five-dollar bills.  I matched it and he finally purchased a really clean 1959 Desoto hard top with a dangerously powerful hemi engine.  I made sure he had paid for a year’s insurance before allowing him to pick it up.   He reveled in his newly found freedom of mobility and I sincerely hoped that the car would put all thoughts of juvenile extortion and blackmail out of his head.

            I continued to surreptitiously monitor his phone calls, but other than a continued string of liaisons with one older woman whom I knew to be married, nothing indicated any improper conduct.  Thus it was that the call from the local police a year came as a surprise.  They said that there had been an accident, and that I needed to hurry to the local hospital.  Images of Jared having crashed the car, perhaps fatally, swam through my head as I hurried into the emergency room, but something all together different had taken place.  Jared had been assaulted, I learned, then blindfolded and stripped naked.  A stout piece of cord had been tied around his scrotum and then he had been held just outside of his car while the cord had been pulled tight from inside and the door slammed and locked.  He was found that way several hours later and at least an hour to late to save his balls.  They needed my permission to operate on him and technically, I suppose, complete his castration.  Unless they were allowed to operate, the doctors told me, there was a good possibility that gangrene would set in and he might very well lose other parts of his anatomy as well.

            The police never found out who did it.  I could have given them a number of leads but I instead chose to remain silent.   It may have been one or all of the boys that he had once shaken down or it could have been one or more jealous husbands or irate fathers that nutted the seventeen-year-old stud. 

             Whoever it was that castrated my nephew, I’d like to thank them.  Jared was still a teenager and still a handful, but he was a lot less wild after that and a hell of a lot less trouble for me.