The Stakka

By J. Stone

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This story is intended for adults only. It contains depictions of forced nudity, spanking, and sexual activity of preteen and young teen children for the purpose of punishment. None of the behaviors in this story should be attempted in real life. If you are not of legal age in your community to read or view such material, please leave now.

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Synopsis: The author, an Antropologist, witnesses a secret “rite of passage” involving seven naked youths, their mothers, their pastor, and his wife.

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THE STAKKA, 1975

By J. Stone
© 2011


In June, following their thirteenth birthday and in preparation for their passage into manhood, youths of a certain sect -- some might call it a cult -- are given over to the "Rabbi" and his wife for fourteen days of intensive, in-residence instruction, known as the "Stakka." While rites of passage are not at all unusual in human societies, the Stakka and the ceremony at the outset of the Stakka was, so far as Jeremy Stone could determine, unique.

The community of the faithful for whom the Stakka was a sacred and very secret event was itself unique. It was not Jewish; its followers believed in the redemption. Yet they practiced many of the conventions of the Jewish religion, contending as a matter of faith that "catholic Christians" many centuries ago wrongfully abandoned the sacraments and ceremonies of Jesus's birthright. They observed Sabbath on Saturday; they belonged to "congregations"; they ate no pork; they called their pastors "rabbi"; they circumcised their male infants in a ceremony they called "the Bris."

Jeremy discovered this unusual community and learned of its practices in 1963. One evening, while the Jewish youth of his undergraduate Student's Anthropology Association discussed the socio-psychological (or was it the psycho-sociological?) significance of their Bar Mitzvahs, Jeremy spoke in passing of his own initiation at age twelve into the all-male priesthood of his natal religion. And when the chortling faded, the only other Gentile of the group, Arthur, mentioned that he, too, had undergone an initiation of sorts at thirteen. But when invited to elaborate, and apprehending (Jeremy assumed) that he also could become the butt of a Semitic joke, Arthur replied only: "It was nothing, really; not nearly as significant as what you've all gone through." The Jewish majority lost itself, then again, in the mirthful exchange of happy Bar Mitzvah memories.

Following the meeting, Jeremy pressed Arthur unsuccessfully to explain his cryptic remark. The best of the undergraduate Anthropology students and already, as a Junior, thoroughly committed to a career in the field, Arthur was curiously reluctant to discuss his own cultural heritage. But during the next few months, Jeremy's persistence, empathy, and sensitivity -- these, and a promise, written metaphorically "in blood," never to reveal anything that would enable anyone to identify the religion to which Arthur (not his real name) adhered or to pinpoint the location of any of its congregations -- paid dividends.

What was immediately most striking to Jeremy was the similarity between Arthur's heritage and his own. Like Jeremy's, Arthur's religion emerged in the third decade of the Nineteenth Century from the so-called "burnt-over" district of Central and Western New York. The adherents of Arthur's religion, like those of Jeremy's, fled New York in the fourth decade of the Century to escape persecution, for the very reason practitioners of Moses's faith fled Egypt several millenia before. Moses's tribe parted the Red Sea; Jeremy's, the Great Plain; Arthur's, the primeaval forest. Each found its Zion -- Moses's, in a God-forsaken strip on the barren Eastern shore of the Mediterranean; Jeremy's in the Great Basin, which was then in Mexico; Arthur's, in the largely inhospitable, frigid wastes of Canada. Though flight brought no end to the envy and hostility of outsiders, all three tribes survived -- Moses's, by martyrdom; Jeremy's, by asserting itself; Arthur's by silence.   Jeremy's conquered its environment and grew, through aggressive "missionary" activity, into a minor world religion, the nation's wealthiest "charitable" organization, and one of its largest, most profitable business enterprises. Arthur's learned to live at peace with itself and the world in its own tiny sphere -- a few thousand souls in a cluster of congregations that perpetuated itself by procreating, rather than proselytizing.

Day by day, piece by piece, charmed by Jeremy's gentle, sincere urging and compelled by his own commitment to knowledge, Arthur recounted the essentials of his community's history, beliefs, and rituals. He volunteered, ultimately, that he had been circumcised ceremonially as an infant, and the event had been reaffirmed ceremonially at thirteen.

Jeremy forgave Arthur's failure to remember the rituals of his infancy, and he understood his friend's reluctance to speak of sacred, secret events of his adolescence. In practicing his own childhood religion, Jeremy had himself had experiences that he would tell Arthur only after considerable hesitation -- his baptism, following his eighth birthday, in which he and other boys his age were herded into a makeshift dressing room in the basement of the chapel to be stripped naked and robed by their mothers in oversized white cotton knit pullovers that doubled as baptismal gowns; the billowing of the gown about his midriff on entering the font as a dozen others, male and female, watched, awaiting their turns; his immersion at the hands of Elder Harden, which had to be repeated when, on the first attempt, his ill-clad posterior bobbed to the surface; his emergence from the font, the clinging-wet gown revealing the private details of his young anatomy; being stripped again, toweled, and dressed by his mother in the crowded, makeshift dressing room that satisfied the dictates of modesty only by giving eight year old girls their own, separate, similarly crowded dressing room. Then, his participation at twelve in a Temple ceremony in which, wearing flimsy cotton shifts, he and Kirk and Perry descended steps into a font to be dunked by strangers, then mounted steps again to sit sopping wet on a cold stone pedestal to be confirmed by strangers, one after another, a dozen times in turn, in surrogate for those who had the misfortune of dying before God revealed to the prophet the Eternal Truth.

As he described his baptismal experiences, Jeremy realized that he had never spoken of them before -- to his parents, his sister, or his friends. Nor could he recall ever having heard anyone else in his family or among his friends talk about personal experiences with baptism or with that other most sacred sacrament of the creed, Temple marriage.

There was, Jeremy knew, something very mysterious in a Temple marriage, though he knew very little about it other than that the bride and the groom were each given "temple garments," one-piece unisex undersuits that they were to wear forever thereafter, yea even as they bathed, as a symbol of their eternal bond to one another. Temple garments were hard to hide: they had to be washed and hung out to dry from time to time. But was there something else in the ceremony so sacred that the memory of it could not be shared with others? Was there something done therein to or with the bride and/or the groom that made the couple so remarkably prolific (procreationally speaking) during its first two or three decades of wedded bliss? Fodder for the imagination.

Was the Stakka, for Arthur, something roughly akin in "speakability" to the Temple marriage of Jeremy's heritage? The difference, of course, was that Arthur had experienced a Stakka. Jeremy had never been wed in a Temple, and probably never would be. Whatever the case, Arthur refused to speak of the Stakka in 1963, except in the most general terms. But his friendship with Jeremy grew over the years until, overcome finally by Jeremy's persistent entreaties and his own growing respect for Jeremy's professionalism, Arthur conspired to permit his friend's participation in a Stakka, as an observer.

Consummating the conspiracy took some doing. Arthur introduced Jeremy to Rabbi Harris in 1972. Jeremy broached the subject. Harris blanched: The Stakka, he declared, was strictly a private ceremony for the boys and their mothers.

"But," rejoined Arthur, "Others have been admitted as observers from time to time. During my own Stakka, in 1956, a young man, unrelated to any of the families in the Congregation stood alongside Rabbi Jensen during the initial ceremony and came along afterwards for the retreat."

"I know. That was me," said Harris.

"You mean you were ... When I ... "

"Careful, Arthur! Do not give up the secrets of our creed."

"Rabbi Harris!" Arthur paused briefly, then continued: "No one has more respect for our sacred traditions than I. Dr. Stone, though not of our faith, shares my reverence. I have known him for ten years, and during this time I have taught him all the tenets of our faith, except this one. He understands what we are about and respects us for what we are. He is interested in the Stakka for professional reasons, because the Stakka represents a 'rite of passage' -- a very successful one, in my opinion -- and because he has turned himself into something of a specialist in such things."

The exchange between Arthur and his Rabbi continued thus, off and on for several months, usually in writing, sometimes by telephone, and occasionally (if rarely) in person. Finally Rabbi Harris relented: Jeremy could observe the ceremony on condition that he play the part of "Rabbi-in-training" and keep his mouth shut during and forever after. Arthur's nephew, Frederick, would be among the celebrants.

The number of youths involved varied from year to year as a function of demography and the size of the Congregation. Arthur's Stakka in 1956 had but three celebrants. Ten years later, in 1966, there were seventeen. In 1975, the year Jeremy Stone witnessed the ceremony, there were seven. By virtue of unusual circumstances, one of the youths entered a few weeks prior to his thirteenth birthday; another had already passed his fourteenth.

All seven had attended the Sabbath classes that Rabbi Harris had conducted for them during the several preceding weeks. Without revealing what would happen during the Stakka, Harris taught the boys how to behave: they were not to be embarrassed by or ashamed of anything that might befall them, nor were they to hide their emotional and physical reactions, either during the ceremony at the outset of the Stakka or during the retreat.    Emotional and physical reactions were expected in the passage from childhood to adulthood, part of becoming men.

The Rabbi and his wife had discussed the ceremony with the parents. Each boy was to be given into the Stakka, preferably by his natural mother. In the absence of a mother, however, another female relative could serve as surrogate. In that event, the boy's family would call first upon the father's sisters, starting with the eldest, then upon the boy's sisters (if older than he and already in womanhood), the boy's paternal grandmother, his maternal grandmother, his stepmother, the wife of his father's brother, and the wife of his own brother. Of the seven given in 1975, one was given by his eighteen year-old sister; another by his aunt; a third by his stepmother.

The ceremony took place on Sabbath, after worship. Rabbi Harris had directed the boys and their mothers (or surrogate mothers) to gather at the altar after everyone else had departed: no one but the participants themselves and one outsider, a Rabbi-in-training, would witness the ceremony.

Jeremy found the Rabbi on the appointed day, at the appointed time, exchanging pleasantries with his congregation as it filed out of the main portal of his temple. Having bid farewell to last of the group, the Rabbi acknowledged the newcomer. "Very well," he said, extending his hand, "follow me." Entering the foyer, he closed and secured the heavy doors behind him, then led Jeremy into the chapel to meet the seven boys, their seven "mothers," and Arabella, his wife. The women, Jeremy noted, were mostly at ease, showing evidence on occasion of a quiet, reverent joviality. The boys, however, showed signs of tension or excitement or, perhaps, some of each.

Introductions done, the Rabbi left Arabella and the other women behind to prepare the chapel as he led Jeremy and the boys into the school wing, across the well-polished floor of a diminutive gymnasium, and into the men's locker. There, he handed each boy a bar of soap, a towel, and a large brown bag on which he (or Arabella) had inscribed the boy's first name. He told the boys to disrobe, fold their clothes carefully, and pack them into the bags together with anything else, such as watches, rings, and chains, that they might have upon their bodies.

When the youths, nude, finished their packing, the Rabbi ordered them into the shower. He admonished them to be thorough in the job: "Do not allow anyone to leave the spigot who is not squeaky clean!" Then, while the boys scrubbed themselves and one another, Jeremy and the Rabbi carried the bulging brown paper bags back to the chapel. They spent the next fifteen minutes or so there, conversing with the women and checking on the preparation of the dais, onto which Arabella had placed a small carpeted platform and, in front of it, a short padded bench.

On returning to the Locker, Jeremy and the Rabbi found the boys wrapped in their soggy towels, fretting noisily about what had become of their clothing. When, finally, he quieted their entreaties, Rabbi Harris spoke to the boys briefly about the solemnity and beauty of the occasion. He reminded them of what they had been told before: they were not to be embarrassed. They were, after all, creatures of God, boys on the verge of manhood: "You must be proud of who and what you are. Rejoice in humanity, of which you are part, and in your bodies, which are merely expressions of your humanity. Do not try to hide or suppress the emotions, the feelings, the reactions you will have on this very special occasion."

Upon completing this well-practiced soliloquy, Harris ordered the boys to follow him back to the chapel and leave their towels behind them, in the laundry bin, "for," he intoned, "you must go naked before God."

At the entrance to the chapel, seeing their mothers gathered informally to the right of the dais, the boys stopped short, falling upon one another as they tried vainly to hide in the shadows or behind a neighbor. Hearing the commotion behind him and the sound of an ill-suppressed chortle from the breast of a mother, the Rabbi turned toward the boys: "Come, Thomas, embrace your Aunt." His voice was firm, compelling. "Come, Michael, embrace your Sister, who loves you. Come, all of you, embrace your Mothers."

One by one, self-consciously, the boys did the Rabbi's bidding. Yet, as they approached their mothers, they tried to cover themselves; and upon reaching the women, they tried to hide within the folds of their skirts. But the mothers and surrogate mothers knew what to expect and how to handle it. Each grasped her son firmly, at the hips or upon the shoulders, and pushed him forward, into line with the others, facing the dais.

Standing in front of the platform, Arabella to his left and Jeremy at his right, Rabbi Harris called the first boy. Mark, with a helpful nudge from his mother, moved to the dais and climbed upon the platform. He slouched, turning away from his mother and the other celebrants, hiding himself beneath cupped hands. The Rabbi whispered a few words in his ear, whereupon he turned, faced the Rabbi, straightened his body, dropped his arms loosely to the side, and lifted his head to gaze upon the stained glass window at the rear of the chapel. His mother, having followed him to the dais, stood next to him, on his left. She placed her right hand upon his shoulder, then cradled his penis in the palm of her left hand. Mark flinched upon feeling the coolness of his mother's hand on the underside of his organ. He glanced furtively at that symbol of his masculinity, then raised his eyes again to focus, if possible, upon the glass master's vision of Moses and the Ten Commandments.

Rabbi Harris pronounced a few words in Hebrew, a prayer about fertility. He paused then, glanced at the mother; then at Mark. The boy showed no obvious emotion. Then, Harris placed his right hand atop the boy's penis, wrapping his fingers around the mother's hand so as to envelop the organ in a tight, warm cocoon.

They stood thus -- the Rabbi, the naked youth, and his mother -- while the Rabbi composed his thoughts. A few seconds passed. Perhaps a minute. The boy swayed a bit, from toe to heel and from one foot to the other as he struggled intuitively to keep his balance on the small square beneath his tightly joined feet. His mother shifted her weight ever so slightly. The Rabbi's grip upon the mother's hand relaxed a bit, then tightened again, fondly perhaps, as he thought of Mark and of all the boy was and could be. However, neither Mark's mother nor the Rabbi sensed the movements, the moments, that Mark felt so strongly upon his Member.

After a bit, the Rabbi pronounced a blessing in English. He spoke of the boy and of the man to be; having instructed Mark in Sabbath school, he knew the young man's personality well enough. He knew, too, what he saw of the youth's developing body -- and he saw it all -- and he felt the boy's instrument in his hand, and the devotion of his mother through hers.

The blessing for Mark, as for every other boy, was unique. Some youths at thirteen are still children; in others, signs of emerging manhood are clearly apparent: wisps of hair on the pubes, enlarged testicles, broadening shoulders, tightening pectorals. Mark was no longer a boy, physically. Nor was he yet a man. The Rabbi spoke again of fertility and the seed Mark would one day sow. Sometimes, at such times, the instrument beneath the Rabbi's hand remained flaccid, unresponsive, a weak pupa nearly imperceptible to the Rabbi and to the mother, to whom it was, nevertheless, something precious and dear. But usually, as in Mark's case, the swelling instrument of the subject's manhood throbbed in its sacred womb. The Rabbi knew the difference and all the variations between. He sensed the thoughts racing through the boy's mind. He adapted his words to the occasion.

When he finished his blessing, a prophecy of what would be, or of what one hoped would be, the Rabbi paused. A few seconds of silence; then, with a quick squeeze the Rabbi released the mother's hand. Mark flinched, again. The mother pulled away the soft cradle in which her son's penis had rested. The penis then lay (stood, in Mark's case) free of obstruction.

A small bowl of ruby red liquid appeared beneath the penis, in Arabella Harris's right hand. She reached out with her left hand, took the organ firmly between her thumb and index finger and immersed its tip, the circumcised head, into the sweet, cold nectar. Again Mark flinched. Rabbi Harris knelt upon the bench. He extended his right hand, grasped the penis at its base, between thumb and index finger, and pronounced the following invocation:

Some thirteen years ago, on the occasion of your circumcision, Rabbi Swenson, having filled his mouth with sacred wine, took this organ into it, and, so, cleansed and sanctified the fresh wound of your heritage. So, too, as a reminder of that day and to affirm your heritage, Mark, I cleanse this instrument, this gift of your birth and tool of your fatherhood, in sacred wine, and sanctify it by my lips, in the name of God.

Upon completion of this blessing, Mrs. Harris released her hold upon the boy's penis; Rabbi Harris lifted it from the bowl, placed the dripping glans firmly between his lips, and with his tongue slowly, methodically, cleaned away the crimson fluid. When he finished this holy task, he took the bowl from his wife, handed it to Mark's mother, and invited her to drink to the spiritual and temporal health of her son and his progeny. She grasped the bowl in both hands, raised it to her lips, sipped from it fervently, then returned it, together with most of its contents, to the Rabbi, who handed it to the boy, saying: "Take this chalice, my son, and drink. Drink to your manhood, to all that you are, to all that you shall become." The boy, Mark, lifted the bowl to his lip and drank. When the liquid was consumed -- for some boys, it was consumed only after several reprises -- the Rabbi rose from the bench, took the boy by the hand, led him down from the platform, and positioned him to the left, near Mrs. Harris, facing the platform, to witness the blessings that were conferred upon the other youths. The mother returned to her station on the right, and Rabbi Harris called upon the next boy to mount the platform.

When all the boys had been blessed and the last of them had been escorted from the dais, Mrs. Harris handed each of the mothers three pieces of light, pure white linen: two rectangular drapes, each about eighteen inches wide, thirty six inches long, and a long strip, about four inches wide. Rabbi Harris invited the mothers, in turn, to dress their sons. Mark's mother was first. The two drapes each had two five-inch straps of linen, about an inch wide, sewn onto one end, about twelve inches apart. The woman tied a strap of one drape to a strap of the other and rested the bow upon her son's left shoulder. She then tied the remaining straps above the boy's right shoulder. Thus was he draped, front and back. She looped the narrow strip around his waist, like a belt, and tied its two ends in a bow at the front of his right hip. And so, Mark was dressed, chastely, in one of two garments he would be permitted to wear during the Stakka. One by one, the mothers robed their sons, kissed them upon the cheek, and departed. When all had left, Rabbi and Mrs. Harris shepherded the boys to the van for the two-hour drive to the lodge and beginning of the retreat.


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Jeremy had been warned against any attempt to probe the deepest thoughts and feelings of the seven youths.   After all, the power of the experience -- and it was a powerful experience -- lay in its mystery. The boys had been told, in general terms, how to behave; they had not been told what would happen to them, or what they would feel. And from the beginning they were warned not to speak of the experience outside the Stakka, whether to their friends, their brothers, their fathers, their mothers -- least of all, to strangers. The ceremony was a sacred, private event that could not be discussed, except with the Rabbi and his wife and the other youths who shared the occasion.

One might have expected the boys to exchange reactions, even to tease one another during the long ride to the lodge. But not a word was said. Nothing about the ceremony, about what might happen at the lodge, about what happened two weeks before in Mrs. Mimms's math class. The Rabbi and his wife respected the silence, leaving Jeremy alone to ponder the events he had just witnessed.

Sensuality, Jeremy knew, was subjective. Others might well have found the Stakka ceremony repulsive. He did not. Indeed, as he watched mothers, the Rabbi, and the Rabbi's wife administer to the youths, Jeremy found it necessary to pocket his hands, to suppress the stirring in his own loins. He was not in position at the time to see if the Rabbi had a similar reaction. Sensual or not, the ceremony was, by the social conventions and mores of outsiders, both pornographic and abusive? Naked boys, attended by their mothers, submitted to oro-genital copulation at the hands (or rather in the mouth) of a grown man, who was abetted in the obscene act by his own wife.

Jeremy put the question to Arthur some months later: no, he had not felt himself abused by the ministrations of his Rabbi, nor did he consider the events of his Stakka pornographic or sensual, and he knew of no one in the 150-year history of the religion to have alleged any breach of morality either in the ceremony or during the retreat.

Jeremy learned, during the retreat, that some of the youngsters of 1975 -- seven of seven -- felt embarrassment at one time or another during the ceremony. No one would admit to feeling shame, however. Rationally, there was no shame.

Should there have been? In another context, perhaps. Six of the seven youngsters experienced erections of some degree during the ceremony. Two appear to have been more or less continuously stiff -- from the moment they approached their mothers 'til they boarded the van. Three ejaculated. Jason, the second youth on the platform, left a pearl of semen in the sacramental wine, which his mother sipped and he drank. Edward, the third boy, came moments after the strong hand of the Rabbi pressed the underside of his stiffened organ into his mother's warm, soft palm. Michael, the sixth, spilled his seed into the Rabbi's throat, despite himself, upon feeling the first few gentle lappings of the teacher's tongue.

The erections were commonplace: the rule, rather than the exception. The one youth, in whom the ceremony failed for one reason or another to stir the sensual essence of adolescence, required special attention. The words voiced by the Rabbi cast no stigma. There was no suggestion of dysfunction in the young man, who was at the time suffering familial trauma. Rather, there was only well-couched praise for his self-control.

And what of the ejaculates? Jason clearly knew that he had left his semen in the wine, but could hope that neither the Rabbi nor his mother had noticed. Both had, of course; but neither said a thing. Michael. Michael resisted ejaculation, until he could no longer. His eyes closed. His lower jaw squeezed hard upon his upper. His loins quivered as he poured his seminal fluid into the Rabbi. The Rabbi accepted the seed without response. Mrs. Harris saw it clearly enough: she had seen it before, in previous ceremonies. It was to her, as to the Rabbi, something natural and beautiful. The boy's surrogate mother, his sister, suspected: she was near enough, and her gaze was sufficiently intent to observe the muscular spasms brought on by the orgasm. Nevertheless, Michael thought that only he and the Rabbi knew.

Edward's ejaculation was apparent to everyone. But it, too, was handled (metaphorically speaking) without comment or fanfare. Upon completion of the Rabbi's blessing and release of the boy's penis, Mrs. Harris produced a small basin of warm water. Edward's mother and the Rabbi, in turn, washed the boy's sticky secretion from their hands, which they dried upon the towels conveniently provided by the Rabbi's wife. The Rabbi then took the bowl into his own hands. Mrs. Harris dipped a corner of a towel into the warm water and sponged the semen, gently and gingerly, from Edward's organ. Thereafter, the ceremony proceeded, as if the boy had never succumbed to the natural urgings of his blooming sexuality.

Edward found himself in an unusual situation. Not knowing of Jason's gift to the wine, or of Michael's to the Rabbi, he believed for a time that he alone had sullied the sacred occasion. In any event, his was the only indiscretion witnessed by all. Everyone knew about it. And to make matters worse, he came into the hand of his very own mother and left the platform, when the Rabbi was done, sobbing.

No one, least of all Jeremy, knew then exactly what Edward, Michael, Jason, Mark, Thomas (who distinguished himself by his restraint) and the other boys felt as they approached the platform with their mothers; as they offered themselves up to the ministrations of the Rabbi and his wife and the intent gazes of their friends and the mothers of their friends; as they left the platform then and stood naked beside Mrs. Harris, to await the conclusion of the ceremony. They knew what they felt, surely. But they were not accustomed to voicing their feelings. And even less were they able understand, without help, what their feelings signified.

The fourteen days of the retreat helped.

* * *

Though it was not always apparent to the boys, the Stakka, like the Bar Mitzvah of Jewish tradition, represents a bridge of sorts between infancy and manhood. But unlike the Bar Mitzvah, which stresses the spiritual, the ceremony on entry into the Stakka emphasizes the physical. It affirms the emotional ties between mother and son but, at the same time, symbolizes the separation of their physical beings. The mother (or her surrogate), through the medium of the Rabbi, gives her son over to manhood, independent manhood, in a rite that is an intensely emotional for her as it is for him. She stands witness during the ceremony to a very physical, spiritually sensual affirmation of her son's humble beginning, naked from her womb. She drinks the fluid that cleanses the organ of his manhood, perhaps the object of her desire, and, in the end, she dresses him in a simple robe and leaves him without protest, with a kiss upon his cheek, in a role and situation that is, like manhood, a radical departure from everything the boy-man has ever before known or experienced.

Does it work? It is usual in Western societies for children in their mid-teens to rebel, to establish identities for themselves apart from their parents in ways that are oftentimes painful to the parents and destructive to the children. The case of Rabbi Harris's Congregation does not lend itself well to statistical analysis: the sample is too small, and there are too many variables. But anecdotal evidence suggests plainly enough that the male children of Arthur's religion had fewer troubles in the passage to adulthood than their counterparts in other cultural groupings. The ceremony of entry into the Stakka may have had something to do with it. Or, perhaps, it was the retreat, the Stakka itself, that made the difference.

The boys brought nothing to the lodge but the clothing on their backs -- to wit, the simple three-piece garments (the "day-dresses") in which they had been clad by their mothers. Other than "night dresses" -- white tank-top undershirts -- the boys had nothing else to wear in retreat. Rabbi and Mrs. Harris handled clothing as had their predecessors since the beginning of time (i.e., since the foundation of the religion). On retiring for the night, each youth gave his day dress to Mrs. Harris, in exchange for which he received a towel. When he finished bathing, he exchanged his towel for a night dress. Then, upon completing his ablutions each morning, he exchanged his night dress for a freshly laundered day dress. Although the day dress was chaste in appearance, it afforded little modesty. At eighteen inches each, the front and back panels together were ample enough to girdle all but one or two of the youngsters at the groin. However, there was nothing to join the one panel to the other below the shoulder, except the sash, and the panels tended with movement of the body to part at the waist beneath the sash. During the first three or four days, most of the boys fussed some to keep themselves covered. But seeing the futility of this effort and the apparent indifference of the Rabbi and his wife toward their nudity, almost all the boys had, by the end of the first week, become notably cavalier about clothing. By the eighth day, three of the seven were sleeping naked and donning their day dresses only for meals. By the twelfth day, only one was still trying routinely to cover himself, professedly as a matter of principle.

Dressed or not -- and dressed was scarcely better than not -- the boys occupied their days with typical camp-time activities: swimming, canoeing, games (touch football, soccer, volleyball, softball), and fireside chats. What was most important, however, was the conversation, normally inspired by the pointed questions of the apparently omnipresent Rabbi and Rabbi-wife. These conversations occurred whenever, at the spur of the moment, even in the middle or approaching the climactic conclusion of a soccer or volleyball game. Curiously, Jeremy noticed, the boys seemed not to resent the intrusion, but rather to enjoy the conversations as much or more than the games. They talked generally about most of the issues they were facing as they approached adulthood: aspirations, disappointments, families, friendships, the meaning of life, the physiological and psychological changes they and their female counterparts were undergoing. Love. Sex.

Jeremy would normally have expected thirteen-year olds to display considerable inhibition about many of the subjects they discussed. That they did not necessitated reflection on his part as to the mechanics of the situation, by virtue of which thirteen-year olds could speak freely with one another and their elders about issues that were otherwise often very personal and very private.

The answer, Jeremy ultimately concluded, lay in the first day -- the two-hour, painfully silent car trip to the lodge; the vulnerability the youths felt during the trip, wearing next to nothing, not knowing if there would be anything else for them to wear when they arrived, and not knowing what to expect during the coming weeks at the hands of the Rabbi, his wife, and his Rabbi-in-training; and, on arrival, the catharsis. They learned, first, that they would be utterly dependent on the adults during the Stakka (Arabella Harris laid out the ground rules). Then, they engaged in a honest, no-holds-barred, four-hour exchange of information, insight, and feelings regarding the mother-son-penis-cleansing ritual that had taken place that very morning. The dialog opened with the questions, posed so bluntly, by Richard and Arabella Harris:

"Mark, how did it feel to be naked in your mother's arms? How did it feel to be first?"

"Jason, what was going through your mind while Mark was on the platform, knowing that you'd be next? Did seeing what happened to Mark help you out?"

"Frederick, you had a hard-on pretty much from the moment you took off your clothes in the gym 'til you boarded the van. What were you thinking of during that time?"

"Michael, does anyone know, but you and me, that you came when I had your penis in my mouth? ("I guess they do now," replied Michael). Why do you think it happened? How did you feel about it then? Would it make any difference to you to know that Mrs. Harris and your sister, Martha, saw it happen? How do you feel about it now?"

"Edward, how did you feel when you ejaculated in your mother's hand? How do you feel now, knowing that you were not the only one to spill his seed? Would it help you to know that Jason also came during the ceremony and that Thomas came in the van, after the ceremony, when most of the rest of you had fallen asleep and he thought no one would see him pound his pud?"

It went on from there. Having broached subjects the boys had long deemed taboo, Rabbi and Mrs. Harris opened the floodgates. They talked freely then -- seven boys, a man, and a woman -- about nudity, masturbation, and sex; about their feelings for (and experiences with) their mothers, sisters, and fathers; about their feelings for one another, girls, and other boys; about the "perpetual hard-on" of the adolescent male. Jeremy observed the proceedings from a distance until Jonathan asked if adults (meaning people the Rabbi's age) were ever sexually stimulated, like teenagers, without obvious, direct cause.

"Of course," replied Arabella. "Didn't you all see that Rabbi Stone, there, had an erection from the beginning of the ceremony to the end? Perhaps he can tell us why!"

Thus was Jeremy drawn, kicking and screaming, into the discussion. He lied. Then he remembered his own “Rites of Passage” and all they meant to him so many years ago, and so he spoke the truth. The ceremony was sensual. The boys to a man were sensual. It excited him to see them naked, to think of the emotions they were going through with respect to their mothers, and their mothers with respect to them, to think of the women (or girls) they would one day soon please so much. In a word, it excited him to think of them becoming, at so tender an age, sexual beings.

Had Jeremy violated Rabbi Harris's injunction concerning his silence? Perhaps, but then it was Arabella's doing, not his own. Having been addressed candidly in a world that demanded candor, could he have replied any less honestly? Even so, having said what he said, and thinking that Rabbi Harris would take the theretofore un-heralded evidence of his sexual stimulation to represent puerile interest, Jeremy expected imminently to be thrown from the lodge. The Rabbi said nothing about it that evening or during the remainder of the retreat, however, though it was soon clear to Jeremy that he had chastised Arabella for putting Jeremy on the spot, for he, Jeremy, was never again addressed by either the Rabbi or his wife as anything but a passive observer, rather than as a participant, in the Stakka. Even so, the forthrightness with which Jeremy addressed his feelings that first night, in explaining his own boner, served its purpose. It made him "one of the boys."

What makes the rite of passage appropriate at thirteen is the onset (at that age and for the next four or five years) of the "perpetual boner." Once beyond the "serious" dialogs of the first two or three days, youths of the Stakka could well have abandoned themselves to their childish games, had it not been for the "perpetual boner." The rules of play were simple: If you notice an erection, stop at once; insist that the erector tell, in detail, exactly what in his psyche caused the erection. Then discuss it with him, with the Rabbi, the Rabbi's missus, and everyone else.

One might easily assume that such a requirement would not be unreasonably burdensome -- after all, how many erections does one typically detect in others each day? On the other hand, how many erections as a percentage of the whole are successfully hidden from casual observation within oppressive undergarments or beneath voluminous folds of sharkskin?

The boys of the Stakka had the advantage of neither. They were of an age at which a fleeting thought could produce a hard-on that endured much beyond the memory of the thought, and also at an age at which almost any thought could produce a hard-on. Moreover, it was extremely difficult for them to hide their erections in the Stakka, whether beneath their day dresses (they wore no underwear) or when, as happened increasingly, they chose to go about the camp naked (yea, even in the presence of the lovely Arabella). And so, half a dozen times a day, the Rabbi and his wife seized upon the opportunity to re-open the psycho-sexual dialog with a "Frederick, what got you so excited?" or a "Jason, why are you erect again?"

The responses showed clearly enough the usual adolescent struggle with sexual identity. For example, when asked on separate occasions what inspired one erection or another, Mark supplied the following answers -- "Thinking about Mom holding onto my cock"; "Imagining that Mary Beth was here without any clothes"; "Wondering how it would feel if Jason sucked my pud"; "Being here naked with you, Mrs. H"; and "Just thinking about jacking off." What impressed Jeremy especially was the candor with which the youths, all seven of them, responded to the interrogatories, despite the probability that an honest response would be, in the majority of cases, potentially embarrassing to the respondent.

Notwithstanding the risk, no one in the Stakka looked unfavorably upon the opportunity to discuss hidden, poorly understood, or undefined urges with one another, with the Rabbi, and with his wife. Most of the boys thought these free-wheeling, "let-it-all-hang-out" discussions the most rewarding, most productive use of their waking hours.

And it happened only during the waking hours, for once they donned their night dresses, the boys were off limits -- even though, dozing without covers on mats in the Common, they typically displayed the most glorious, unfettered erections one could imagine.

When the Stakka ended, after two weeks, Jeremy returned to New York (not an easy trip) knowing, regrettably, that having given his solemn promise, nothing he had witnessed and experienced in that remote Canadian village would ever appear in print, no matter how many books and articles he might write about Rites of Passage.

(The End)