“Beth’s Trade” by Kortpeel

Summary: A young girl learns about cutting.

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When Mom had her accident they sent me to spend a month with Aunt Beth while she got over it.

The accident turned out to be a baby brother, all fine and healthy in spite of everything. Mom who’s the epitome of moral rectitude and a pillar of the local church conveyed the impression that she was delighted to be this instrument of the divine will and thought my brother was born to fulfill some key role in His Great Plan. She didn’t actually utter the Magnificat but I’m sure it went through her mind. Dad’s remark, that it was a pity the divinity couldn’t have done it all many years earlier, was regarded as blasphemy.

Aunt Beth, in complete contrast to my mom was a cheerful, down to earth woman with a relaxed easy-going nature. She thought it was lovely for her big sister to have a baby so late in life. More than that, she thought it was a huge joke on Mom. “Divine will, my ass! Your little brother is no more and no less than a randy moment same as all the rest of us on this Earth.”

Normally I’d have agreed with Aunt Beth but I couldn’t see Mom having a randy moment no matter how hard I tried. Come to that, knowing Mom, I couldn’t really see how I came to be conceived. Still, here I was, eighteen years old, intact virgin and quite content to be only a minor player in the Great Plan. I like to believe I’m attractive. I have a slim figure with a seventeen-inch waist same as Scarlett O’Hara at my age. I would like it if my long dark hair reached down to my waist but I’ve never been able to get it to grow much past my shoulder blades. Then the ends split and it has to be trimmed. Of course with dark hair I have brown eyes. It all goes together quite well except that I’m hoping there is still some growth left in my boobs. I’d like to justify a B cup but at the moment I’m an A. I find that my boobs look much nicer if I pad my bra with tissues. I don’t think I would like to have boobs as big as Aunt Beth’s. Hers are a DD and I’m sure they get in her way.

Aunt Beth runs a guesthouse at a coastal resort. It was still a few weeks to the peak season so there weren’t all that many visitors, just a few retired couples enjoying a holiday at off season rates. That was good for me too because the weather was lovely and sunny and I had the exclusive use of Aunt Beth’s flat roof for sun bathing. Mom didn’t approve of sun bathing; it was immodest for one thing and unhealthy for another. I knew that I looked much better with a tan and that was enough for me.

“I was worried you’d be bored,” Aunt Beth said that evening over supper. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around very much for you.”

“Not a problem. I want another two days like this to get my tan for the summer.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that. Would you like to come with me tomorrow? I have to pick up some supplies. If we go straight after breakfast…”

“I’ll still be able to sunbathe. Of course. I’d love to come with you.”

That meant being up and ready to have breakfast at eight. Because we were going into town I thought jeans would be okay with a sweater and sneakers. I put my hair in a ponytail which looks acceptable and stops it getting untidy. I’d have liked to try some make up to look a little older and more worldly but I didn’t have any. At home Mom is dead against me wearing make-up but I didn’t think Aunt Beth would mind.

“So we are going to get food?” I asked as we set off in Aunt Beth’s pick-up.

“No. Cook does all that. We’re going somewhere else.”

I was puzzled when we pulled up outside a medical wholesaler’s. I went in with her eager to see what she was going to buy but there was a parcel all ready for collection and the woman there just handed it to Aunt Beth.

“What ever do you want medical stuff for?”

“For the clinic,” Aunt Beth told me. “I still do a little specialized medicine. It’s more just a sideline now but I’ve always enjoyed it and I like to keep my hand in.”

“Oh.” There was more to Aunt Beth than I’d ever known about. Mom had never spoken about Aunt Beth being a doctor.

“You never said anything about a clinic, Aunt Beth.”

“No.” She was concentrating on reversing out of the parking space. “We like to be discreet. Some of our patients would be embarrassed. The guest house was originally a cover for it but now it’s the main business.”

“Really? That is interesting. I was thinking of going into medicine as a career.”

“Hmm. I am in rather a specialized niche, you know. I don’t think you’d learn much from my little practice. But I’ll gladly show you around if you’d like.”

You bet I’d like.

When we got back I carried the parcel for Aunt Beth into a suite of rooms on the second floor that I hadn’t known about.

There was a small storeroom where Aunt Beth opened the parcel and put away the stuff. There were dressings, syringes, rubber gloves and some ampoules of liquid. I knew enough to know that anything whose name ended in ‘caine’ was a serious anaesthetic; that’s what was in the ampoules. So there was more to Aunt Beth’s practice than cuts and scratches.

The consulting room was smallish but it reminded me of any doctor’s room on the rare occasion I’d been in one. There was a two-bed ward, empty of patients, and an operating room that had a table and the special lights over it. It looked all very professional and spotlessly clean.

“What kind of things do you do here, Aunt Beth?”

She hesitated a second, not sure what she should tell me. I tried to radiate grown-upness. “It’s a special service for men, to do with their male parts.”

Well, of course … That was an area of life to which I had given a great deal of thought and knew very little.

So much for grown-upness. I found myself blushing. Aunt Beth laughed.

Later Aunt Beth asked me if I was really thinking of going into medicine.

“Yes. It appeals to me. If I can make good enough grades for medical school that’s my first choice.”

“Name the bones in the body from the skull down.”

I did and even went into tarsals and phalanges. I knew all that from anatomy and physiology at school.

“Very good. Now name the principal systems in the body.”

That was easy. “Cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, lymphatic, neural, skeletal, dermal.”

“Not bad. Which one have you missed out?”

“Reproductive.” I desperately hoped that I wouldn’t blush again. Thinking of it terms of textbook anatomy helped.

“Hmm. Rachel, if you put on scrubs and can stand the sight of blood you can observe if you’d like. But I should warn you, this is male genitalia in the raw.“

“I’d love to Aunt Beth.”

“Okay. But don’t go all stupid and shy on me. Act as if you’ve seen it all dozens of times before.”

Over lunch Aunt Beth told me why she’d invited me to be there. ” I gave it a lot of thought and decided that it wouldn’t hurt for you to have the experience, especially as you are interested in medicine. Sweet innocence is all cute and charming but ignorance can be dangerous. It’s better you at least know about these things.”

I nodded. That made sense to me. I’d been brought up not to know about these things and I didn’t. Well, except what I picked up from the textbooks and from the other girls. A lot of what I got from other girls was disinformation. You can get pregnant if you do it standing up.

After lunch we spent some time in her theatre.

“The thing is,” Aunt Beth explained, “men are what they are and they don’t change much. Except to get cantankerous as they get older. Girls your age, you get lovely, silly romantic notions about men. Most of which are hopelessly improbable. When you come up against the reality it’s such a sad disillusionment.”

“Is it really true then that men just want to get into your pants?”

“Yours and any other girl’s. That’s the way they are made. Monogamy ain’t natural for them.”

“So how do people ever stay married?”

“They usually settle down as they get older. If a wife is wise she’ll provide a comfortable friendly home that he wants to come home to. And she’ll cater for his manly perversions. They say if a man gets steak at home he won’t go out for a burger.”

I was wondering what manly perversions there were and how to cater for them. It seemed to me that adult life could get complicated.

“And if that doesn’t work she brings ’em to me,” Aunt Beth said.

“And you make them behave?”

“Yep.”

“How do you do that?” I was no expert but I had a suspicion what Aunt Beth was going to say.

“I remove their testicles.”

“But doesn’t that spoil them, as men?”

“It does make them sterile. They can’t get a girl pregnant afterwards. That’s usually a blessing for all concerned. But they can perform still if you put them on hormone replacement.”

I nodded. “So why do that to them? What’s the point?”

“If you still want him to perform you can control his testosterone level that way. Keep him on a very low dose and increase it just when it suits you. That way he won’t pester you when you don’t want it. Or any other woman either.”

I didn’t much like the idea that my man would hanker after other women.

“But the main reason,” Aunt Beth said, “is that there comes a time when he no longer needs them. If he’s had all the children he wants he’s better off without them.”

“Better off? How so?”

“Health for a start. There are a lot of cancers that he won’t get and his arteries are less likely to clog up. He’ll probably live longer and it will save a woman years of lonely widowhood.”

I nodded.

“His own quality of life will improve too. Testosterone suppresses certain areas of the brain and stimulates others. Without testosterone he won’t have that stupid male ego that so many men have; that machismo quality.”

I wasn’t too sure of that as an advantage. I liked machismo in a boy, and that self-confidence they seemed to have. It was part of their attraction for me.

“On the other hand, it suppresses their awareness of their surroundings. A lot of men can live in squalor and filth and not even notice it. Without testosterone men become much more aware of what they see and hear and what is around them. They can express themselves and communicate their feelings better too. They become more sensitive and more in touch with their own feelings. It makes them much better husbands as a result.“

Aunt Beth could see that I wasn’t agreeing with her. “Look I’m not saying it applies to young men. It’s as they get older. For a woman in her forties say, she doesn’t really want sex all that much. She’d much rather have a nice reassuring cuddle. She wants friendship and companionship from her partner. A lot of women just put up with the actual sex in return for that. Men become much better companions after they’ve had the procedure.“

That sounded totally boring to me but I supposed it could be like that for old people. I thought mom would be like that. Not Aunt Beth though.

Mr. and Mrs. Driver checked in at the boarding house that afternoon. They seemed a nice couple and Mr. Driver was a good-looking guy in his early thirties. I sensed that he fancied me. He did look me up and down in the way that guys do. Mrs. Driver clung to him and seemed to want to control him.

Personally I thought it a shame for Mr. Driver to be fixed. He was still an active man and a player in life. However I could see that Mrs. Driver wasn’t. It seemed to me she’d kind of given up and was happy to settle for a comfortable, stress-free middle age. I’d liked to have understood more how he felt about it all. How come he had agreed to this?

I was tempted to hang around and listen to the conversation that Mrs. Driver was having with Aunt Beth but that would have been impolite. Afterwards Aunt Beth told me that Mr. Driver had been doing things with other women and Mrs. Driver had given him the option of divorce or castration. Divorce would have left him broke and he did genuinely love his two kids so he was booked in to Aunt Beth’s clinic.

Next morning Aunt Beth gave me a run through of what would happen so I’d be prepared for it. She showed me a video too. I was embarrassed to find myself becoming aroused by it but it certainly taught me what to expect and it made me rather look forward to being there when it was for real.

“Rachel, do you shave your armpits?” Aunt Beth asked me.

“Yes. Of course. And my legs and arms too.” What an odd question.

“Would you like to do the prep on Mr. Driver for me?”

Oh heck! I was blushing again. Fortunately Aunt Beth was busy with preparation and didn’t notice. “Yes. Okay.”

“Right. It’s nearly ten. Put on scrubs and then we’ll get ready.”

I took the green coverall and disappeared into the bathroom. There were other parts of me that needed a clean too. I could have done with a change of panties as well but I didn’t want to go and get them.

Mrs. Driver brought her husband in to the ward at ten sharp. He wasn’t looking at all well. There was a definite pallor about him. She got him undressed and into one of those stupid gowns that they make theatre patients wear. Mrs. Driver gave him a peck and left. She mentioned that she was looking forward to a few hours of retail therapy to relieve the strain.

“Nurse will prep you for the procedure,” Aunt Beth told him. I was the other side of the screen. I could just hear her whisper “She is much too pretty so don’t be embarrassed if you get an erection. Most guys do.”

Gosh, but I was getting all moist again down there. I hoped it didn’t show. I came in with the shaving kit and what I hoped was a friendly but ‘let’s-be-sensible-about-this’ expression on my face.

“I have to prep you Mr. Driver. Please don’t be embarrassed.” I knew that long hairs clog up a razor so I trimmed him carefully with scissors first. I had to hold his scrotum so that the skin was tight enough for me to slide the razor over it. I was careful not to hurt him. I shaved his crotch behind his scrotum too. Mr. Driver didn’t seem to mind and I was surprised at how big and how ugly his penis was. It was the only adult one I’d ever seen and I wondered if they were all like that. There was pubic hair growing on it from the root to about half way along. This was too good an opportunity for me to miss.

“Would you like me to shave your penis too, Mr. Driver? It’s not really necessary but it will look nicer.”

“Okay.”

I thought of my friends from school as I worked. “If they could see me now,” crossed my mind and I had to remind myself not to actually hum the tune.

One thing is for sure. A prick does look much nicer without hair growing on it. ‘Someone ought to tell boys that,’ I thought.

Mr. Driver was prepped and we let him walk to the theatre. He’d come back on the gurney.

We got him on the table, legs apart and knees bent. There was a lot of towelling under his testes. Presumably to soak up spilt blood.

Aunt Beth did the lidocaine injections around the area to be worked on. This was to be a local anesthetic. Mr. Driver’s penis was fully erect.

“Would you hold the penis steady?” Aunt Beth asked.

I did. Mr. Driver didn’t seem to mind at all. It felt huge in my hand and it was definitely throbbing.

Aunt Beth worked away on his scrotum and testicles. I was holding his prick away from his balls and it seemed a good idea to soothe him by gently sliding the skin of his prick up and down. He seemed to like that so I did it a bit faster.

Mr. Davis let out a sound half way between a yell and a groan and great gobs of white stuff suddenly shot out the end of his prick. ‘This must be an ejaculation,’ I thought, working him through it.

I continued to hold his now limp, shrunken willie while Aunt Beth applied some dressings. Then I cleaned up the gobs of ejaculate. We got him on to the gurney and I wheeled him to the ward and helped him to get into bed.

“It might be a bit sore as the anesthetic wears off,” Aunt Beth told him. “Ask for a pain killer when you want one. The best thing for you now is some sleep.”

He dozed off quite easily into a drug assisted sleep.

We left him there. Back in the theatre Aunt Beth showed me the testicles that she’d removed. To me they looked kind of sad and forlorn, lying there in the kidney shaped stainless steel dish. I said so to Aunt Beth.

“Well, they’ve done their job,” Aunt Beth said. “They made him into a man and given him two children. Now he doesn’t need them any more. They’d just cause him harm and make his life unnecessarily complicated. He’s much better off as a eunuch.“

“How come he agreed to it?” I asked.

“I think deep down at some level it was what he wanted. He just needed that little persuasion that Mrs. Driver applied.”

I was thinking about that when Aunt Beth went on. “There are a lot of men out there who would be better off if they had this procedure and they probably know it subconsciously. Unfortunately our culture won’t let them acknowledge it. They sublimate that knowledge and it re-surfaces as an erotic turn on for them to be castrated. “

“One of those male perversions you mentioned?”

“Yes. But you can say that any man who lets himself be persuaded, like Mr. Driver, knows deep down that it’s the right thing for him.“

Somehow, that was reassuring for me. It was nice to know that Mr. Driver would have a better life, thanks to our efforts.

“I’ve followed up on a lot of my patients over the years. Almost all of them have happy and satisfying lives.”

“So how did you get started on this, Aunt Beth?”

“Really I was never cut out to be a doctor. Sickness is distasteful to me. In this line of work I can practice medicine on healthy guys.”

“And how long have you been doing it?”

“Oh, almost eighteen years now.”

“How many men have you done?”

“Over a thousand.”

“How do people get to know about the service you offer?”

“Word of mouth mostly, and referrals from other doctors. Actually your mom helped me to get started. She knew someone who needed it and brought him to me. Once you get started the rest just flows. Two or three castrations a week is fine. You don’t really want too many of them.”

It had been quite a day. That evening Aunt Beth and I were sat in her living room when a thought occurred to me.

“Aunt Beth, if mom brought you your first patient, was he… er… anyone I would know?”

Aunt Beth smiled. “But don’t say anything. You mom would be so embarrassed if she knew I’d told you. It was soon after she fell pregnant with you. She didn’t want that again.”

Mom had had dad castrated!

So how come I now had a baby brother?