Want.

It began with the sound of water.

Every morning for the past month, my neighbor would bathe in her backyard, and I’d listen, just listen at first, to the splash of cold water hitting skin. Oddly, I never heard the usual chorus of bathing commands like, “Raise this hand!” or “Turn that leg!” which you’d expect if a child was being scrubbed down by a hurried adult.

Curiosity got the better of me and one day, I climbed onto an old paint bucket beside the fence and peeked.

At first, it was one foot up, one foot grounded—like I needed an exit strategy. But by the end of the week, I was up there steady, two feet planted, a regular at the early-morning voyeur club. I had, quite unknowingly, become a full-time peeper.

She was a grown woman. Beautiful. Her skin glistened under the splash of icy water. Her body moved with a quiet rhythm, hypnotic, natural, unbothered. I had never seen anything like it—at least, not outside the pages of contraband magazines older boys whispered about at school.

It did not take long for me to begin massaging my member to the sight of her naked body, how the cold water made her nipples peak and how her buttocks jiggled as she moved.

One Monday morning, I stood completely absorbed, pants down, imagination up and my hand wrapped around my stiff cock when a voice cut through the air like a holy thunderbolt:

“Look at the nonsense you’ve chosen to do with your life.”

Father George. He did not just catch me—he delivered me, with the holy fury of twenty four hot strokes of the cane, right into the arms of shame and repentance. I was sentenced to bed without food for six days, my skin raw and regretful.

But even in that scorched, silent suffering… I thought of her. And despite everything, despite the ache, despite the punishment—I wanted.

~Bluebird