The BELLYPUNCHER (contd.)

Now I had him. Now he was helpless. I was in full control. I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him upright. But his hands wouldn't release their grip on his poor punched belly. So I shook him roughly by the collar and slapped him back against the side of the tree to loosen his clutch. Eventually he reached for my arms, and I whipped my left fist back and socked him a haymaker uppercut in the stomach, then I swung my right back and gave him the same thing again.

I saw his eyes cross briefly and he roared out an anguished belly-grunt -- uuh! The girls had a full view of it (I made sure to stand just right), and they both blurted out "oh, right in the belly!" then they looked at each other and laughed.

The pot-bellied oaf was leaning back on the tree, fully winded, with his shirt bunched up to his chest. I rared a fist back, aimed at his face, and his hands flew up to try to block it, pure reflex, while his eyes got big.

Instead I dropped the punch overhand into the upper curve of his stomach, right in the gut! His eyes got even bigger then. I let them see me hold it in him, pure mass of muscle in my punch and pure vulnerability in his soft belly.

His worthless, girly belly paid the price while I put on a show for the girls. They were chanting, "belly-punch! belly-puch!" and calling out, "beat his belly! What's wrong, can't take it in the belly?"

I stepped aside to let him stagger. I love it when they stagger. When they're torqued up by the suffering in their belly, and they can't keep their wobbly knees straight. When I got tired of hearing their giggles at that, I whipped him back upright by the collar, jerked him around toward me, ducked down and packed a sledgehammer punch right into his belly.

The BELLYPUNCHER

Yes, that's what I do. I'm a specialist. If you want to have your ex-boyfriend or cheating husband beat up, you hire me.

Bellypunches? They're my specialty. First, it not only beats your man, it humiliates him. Makes him moan and belly-ache and lose his breath and roll on the floor holding his stomach. Second, it leaves no marks, no bruises, breaks no bones. No physical evidence. That helps me stay out of jail.

I'm a good-sized man, and I learned how to handle my fists before I was 12. I didn't go out of my way to show it off, but if push came to shove I knew what to do. And I noticed that, when I did hammer some poor wimp who deserved it, the sight of it seemed to fascinate certain girls.

My current client had been one of them. She had seen me deliver a beat-down when I was right out of high school. The kid had been caught peeping-tom style outside the girls' bathroom at the campground where everyone hung out and I worked as a lifeguard.

A group of sophomores had spotted him, and as he ran off he knocked one of them down. She happened to be the kid sister of my best friend, and I saw the whole thing and ran after the boy and tackled him easily. We were beyond the trees, but just outside the camp clearing, and the girls had followed me after him.

I stood him up by his T-shirt and shoved him hard back against the tree. I heard him huff out his breath from the shock of the impact, but just to be sure I stepped up and mashed my fist into his belly.

I felt his gut squirm inside and he gave up his remaining wind with a softbellied OOF!!

The girls formed a semi-circle around the scene and taunted him and cheered me on while I hooked the back of his T-shirt up over a stump of broken branch, leaving him with feet just touching the dirt, and gave him a two-fisted belly-whomping that crushed his pride and his stomach.

Some of the girls were quite vocal, but I don't remember Carla saying anything. But she must have remembered. Now, six years later, she wanted revenge on a boyfriend who had texted lurid pictures of her to his friends. She was still with him -- planned to marry him, she told me -- but she wanted to see him as hurt and humiliated as she felt. So she looked me up.

"You understand, I am not going to bust up his face," I told her.

"I know," she said almost before I finished. "I want you to do it like you did it to that perv at the campground. Right in the belly. And don't stop till he's down and won't get up."

For Carla, I would have done it for free. But you don't feed yourself that way. She paid, and I told her what I needed, and she said she would arrange it.

"OK if Emily comes?" I asked her.

"Sure, the more the merrier," she said. But I knew she disliked my girlfriend, and the scorn was returned. "She never wants to miss a good beat-down," I explained.

"Well, you show her one and you'll make two women happy," Carla said as she opened the door. She turned then and paused and smiled at me. "This is going to be so hot," she said.

That weekend I'm out in the hot sun, right back at the old campground, right where Carla first saw me work my fists out on another boy's belly. It was no trick for her to lure her man out there, and I was waiting. I pretended to be an addled drunk, I put the mash on Carla, she burst out in huffy and demanded that her dishrag boyfriend defend her and teach me a lesson. I have to hand it to her, the girl can act.

I had the time to work him over nice and slow. No hurry, no need to hang him up on a branch and use his belly as my punching bag. I let him challenge me, gave him every indication to think he would beat me, and even let him knock me down a few times.

The third time, when he walked up to me on my knees with a contemptible arrogance, I shoved my fist hard into his bare stomach.

He folded right over my arm with a rotund "OUPH!!" and stayed doubled up even after I pulled my fist out of his gut. His hands were buried up under his jackknifed body, probably trying to pick his stomach out of his lungs. He turned away from me and staggered toward Carla and Emily, who both laughed at him.

I actually hadn't hit him that hard. He just couldn't take it. But I kept up the drunk act and let him think that was just a lucky shot. It took him a minute but he put himself back together and came out at me looking meaner than ever.

I ducked a few limp haymakers from him, and when I knew he was going to draw back for another, I stepped forward in pace with him and punched him right smack in the belly.

He never threw that punch. He just kept stepping back, backward, arms flailing and a loud "UUUUUUHHH!!!" trailing from his mouth.

[to be continued]

The WIFE

by Belly Boy

She awoke from the sweetest sleep, resentful at whomever had dragged her out of it. The room was dark. "I heard something downstairs," her husband's voice said. She said nothing. Then she felt the bed lift as he got up from it and heard his belt buckle as he slipped a pair of jeans on over his nakedness. He left the room.

She lay back on her pillow and tried to find sleep again. But soon she heard muffled thumps and groans from a distant part of the house. Suddenly alert, she sat up, grabbed her robe, and swung it over her shoulders as she jogged toward the commotion.

It came from the basement, and as she ran down the steps her robe slipped from her shoulders. But she seemed not to notice, as she suddenly stopped short at the sight of what had brought her running.

Two men in black clothes -- burglars, evidently, by the tools they had carried -- had her husband between them like a hopeless mousie between two mean cats. One would punch her husband in the belly a few times, making him double over and moan loudly, then shove her beaten man toward the other, who would pull him upright for more belly punishment.

Her wimp was a hopeless sight. Just in jeans, bare-bellied punching bag for the men in black masks and gloves. A helpless pot belly punching bag. Taking each fist deep and high in his stomach, folding right over it with the most pitiful "OOUFFs" she had ever heard.

And it left her breathless with lust. And looking at him like that somehow she knew, deep in her belly, that she'd always wanted this.

VICTORIAN

by Belly Boy

The teen-ager swung overhand at the wily old bruiser, the way he'd seen the senior boys do in the ring. His pale knuckles smacked the man's cheek. The dockhand shrugged, rubbed his face a bit, then effortlessly punched his horny fist into the poor lad's belly. The uppercut utterly winded him, and he flopped moaning to the floor. The sailor turned his tender attention to the girl blushing against the wall.

Her suitor staggered to his feet again, in a bid to save his princess from this brute. Still breathless, his face a bellyache mask, he lurched toward the old lecher. But the dockhand just laughed. "Sit tight, lass," he told the girl, "this won't take but a second." He grabbed the youth by the collar, then thumped him back against the wall. And with that the veteran took the student for his punch-bag, and thudded fist after after fist into his tender belly.

When the tar at last released that collar, the boy in it dropped breathless and writhed on the floor. Self-respect slipped from him like spilled milk from his broken body, from his punched belly.

BULLIED

by Belly Boy

And it was only after the three bullies had been tossing me back and forth, two holding me while the third pumped punches into my pot belly, for what felt like forever. And I saw the three girls sitting idly, watching, with a secret sort of fascination under their outward hauteur, the spectacle of a big, potbellied wimp getting his stomach beat up, and suffering elaborately from it.

Only after the toughs had picked me up by the arms and legs, lifted me, hoisted me so my belly hung down, and started uppercutting me in the stomach with their free hands, did the one girl get up and slowly, affectionately, tell the boys it was going too far, and they'd had their fun, and it was time to move along before someone wandered by and heard me OOF-ing like that.

And the boys drop me and go and leave me with the goddesses.

BELLYBEATING

by Belly Boy



The bellybeating. Instant, devastating, humiliating agony. Publicly stripped of all self-possession and pride. Made a braying ass, aching for air, and revealed as a softbelly in a world where only hardbellies survived.

A breathless, bellyaching boobie. Just a big, soft-bellied oaf. Whose size ought to have dominated a fight, but he never got to use it because his opponents always quickly winded him with a punch in his weak stomach, and kept him that way till they had him beat.

Just something about the way I knelt there, bowing in front of the man, the rival, who had just slugged me in the stomach. Kneeling and powerless to rise from my weak reaction to the other man's fist. Soft in the belly. While my rival stands over me, fist still cocked and hooked up, like it was when it hit my bare belly.

I could be standing proud, hands on my hips, saying the smartest, wittiest, sassiest put-down, then in an instant he'll belly-punch me with no warning and I'll be rolling on the floor, moaning like a slut, tears flowing.

And if you ever want a girl to respect you, never let her see you in a fight that ends with the other man's heel planted in your belly. Because no matter how artfully you seduce her, she always will see you like that.

The GOLDEN AGE

by Belly Boy

The mid-1960s to mid-1970s was a golden age of bellypunching on TV. The few fetishists I know seem to confirm my recollection that you could hardly watch an evening of TV without seeing at least one.

Violence always has been part of TV programming, part of its limited vocabulary. But in those days of three networks only a few types of violence were permissible on the air. That forced the shows to rely on the same few allowed violent acts. One of them was the bellypunch. And so many shows offered a convenient contextual license for it: Westerns, detective and crime shows, superhero adventures, the old gangster and noir films on UHF, hell even "Star Trek" couldn't seem to get through an episode without a bar-room brawl on some alien planet.

I clearly remember "Batman," 1964, 65, when I was 4 and 5. It was the big thing with little boys, but the writers had way more time slot than plot, and so they seemed to use action scenes as filler, and drag them out. There was an obligatory "heroes beat up the henchmen" brawl scene toward the climax. Bellypunches abounded, of course. Sometimes after someone got a good fold-you-in-half stomach punch, they'd cut away to one of their goofy comic book visual sound effects, which was part of the show's schtick. You'd see a big word "OOF!" flash on the screen, in plump, soft letters with droplets flying off them and a cartoon tongue hanging out of the first "O," like the mouth that's making the sound, the bellypunch sound.

Then there was the British import "Avengers" series, which had a different envelope than the American shows. A beautiful woman, Mrs. Peel, doled out belly-chops in batches as she coldly dispatched the bad guys. And occasionally bad girls. (I believe Diana Rigg, as Mrs. Peel, never took one herself. But her successor in the show, Linda Thornton, did on at least two occasions.)

Factor in that old staple of weekend afternoon TV, professional wrestling, and you've got the perfect storm of bellypunching (this-world version). Wrestling then was in its pre-steroid heyday of pot-bellied fighters, including and especially among the pack of soft-bellied "squash jobbers."

Professional wrestling jobber is as close to my ideal career as exists in this world. Along perhaps with fist-fight stuntman. The "jobber" is ring slang for a fighter who gets hired by the match (job) rather than having a contract, and is paid to basically lose and get beat up in public by one of the marquee names in the wrestling federation, to boost the star's career. The soft-bellied, can't-take-it-in-the-stomach "belly jobber" is one of the natural forms of that, especially if the star is a brawler.

The federations and circuits I want to work for would be full of brawlers, and each of them would have at least one slutty, sexy "valet" or "manager" in his corner, cheering him on, doing everything in her power to make sure the jobber gets thrashed and humiliated.

It turns me on to imagine having that for a career. To have to explain to girls in singles' bars what it is that I do for a living!

I remember one wrestler who had huge shoulder and upper body muscles and wild curly blond hair and a bully's sneer. He was the type of fighter who would walk right up to a jobber at the start of a match and just punch him in the belly. Not give him even a full second of dignity in the ring. Something in his eyes I recognized from the older boys who really had bullied me in my life. And he was so much bigger than them, and a known bellypuncher.

Not for nothing do people talk of verbal bullying as feeling like a punch in the stomach. The words are thrown like punches and they are aimed at your soft spot, your insides. They are meant to leave you breathless and silent and suffering. They are punches in the belly of your spirit. Verbal bullying is emotional bellybeating.

ANOTHER BELLYJOBBER MOMENT

by Belly Boy

I'm a part-time stuntman who moonlights as a professional wrestling jobber -- my specialty in both professions is "bellypunch: taker."

One day I get a call for a wrestling job in the next county. It's with a pretty big federation. They even have their own TV show. Cool! I accept the contract before I discover the details. My opponent is to be the reigning king of the ring, the vicious "heel" bad-boy wrestler they call "School Yard Bully."

And it's going to be a total belly-punch squash job for me. But worse, for my pride, it isn't even in a ring. It happens during the taping of the pre-match interviews, right there on camera, in a room.

We're both on camera, in the studio. Bully is ranting about the pitiful quality of the "opponents" the league sends him. He's building up his game, you see, weaving his plot. I don't even matter. I'm just an accessory. But to prove his point about the weakness of the opponents he's been getting, he belly-whomps me right there and drops me to my knees.

And as he rants, periodically, he hauls me up off the floor and beats my belly some more for emphasis. I'm nothing more than visual flourishes for his egotistical rant. But those flourishes cost me a belly-wimp humiliation-beating.

And of course he has a female sidekick/valet/love interest, and of course she's there, and of course she cheers it all on, and of course she turns out to be also the fed president, and the one who scouted and contracted me for this job.

Yes, right on the air, right on TV all over the southeast, and recorded on tape for constant replay, edited down to its most belly-busting moments.

Scene: Interior

by Belly Boy

She strolled into her man's room. He didn't budge from his easy chair, but he smiled. By her face, he knew it's good news.

"I've got your wimp," she said, walking past him and dropping the room key in his lap. "He just signed up for the fight."

The plot was simple. Her boyfriend was trying to boost his "win" total in the barroom "Fight Club" circuit, in hopes of getting called up to fight MMA on webcasts. She was his manager/valet/squeeze -- and half her work was to keep him looking like a contender in spite of himself. He was too lazy to line up opponents, so it fell to her to get them for him. And she was sure to always pick a real patsy, who would get beat up easily. She didn't want there to be any setbacks.

"I'll see you at ringside," she said from down the hall.

"Wait." A few seconds later she padded slowly back into the room with an inquiring brow.

He stood and approached her, in his robe. "What did you use to get him?"

In spite of herself, she glanced down, and she knew he caught it, so she just blurted it. "Like this," she said, hands on her hips, stomach pushed out. "He's a belly-button freak. That's how I hooked him."

He said nothing, then he said, "You enjoy this too much. Tell me about him."

"Nothing to tell," she answered. "Pot-bellied wimp. Tall, skinny arms, nothin' but belly."

He laughed and went past her, down the hall to the bedroom to change for the fight.

"See you at ringside," he said.

"Don't hurt my boyfriend," she said coyly. "Don't punch him in his sexy belly."

HUMILIATING

You might say, I stuck my belly out; and I paid the price for it. Right in the belly!

It's true, I was dressed like this when we got into that fistfight. No shirt. Just my jeans. Low-waisted, too. So my belly was pretty obvious. And I had gotten a little soft that summer. Which pretty much painted a bull's eye on my stomach.

I rushed him. But he saw me coming like I was in slow motion. He simply ducked out of the sweep of my wild, weak punch at his head, and slammed his fist right smack into my belly.

You could say I walked right into it, and you'd be right. Right straight into a hard punch in the belly. An uppercut, right in the pit of my stomach, and I never saw it coming, and now I'm winded and staggered-back.

He lunged and ducked down at the same time, and he piled all his weight on a punch that slugged me like a sledgehammer. Right in my belly.

Again, I never saw it coming. I felt his fist buried in my belly, and my mouth flew open and I said OOUFF! and doubled up and grabbed my bare belly with both hands.

It must have been so obvious to everyone watching me. In just my jeans. Pot-bellied. It sure was obvious to his girlfriend. She stood there, watching him use my belly for his personal punching bag. Clapping, laughing, encouraging him. She was the kind of girl who not only would tolerate a bully, she would egg him on.

"That's it! Hit him again! Right in the belly! Yeah! Can't take it in the belly. Give him another one. Right in his belly. Go on, hit him in the belly. That's his soft spot. Oh, yesh. Right there. Look at him! He can't take it in the stomach. Can't take it in the belly!"

Through the whole fight.

And now I'm standing there with my mouth hanging open, breathless, stunned, helpless, and he swings his hip and thuds another bellypunch full in my stummik. I let go an "OOOUFFFF!!" Next an uppercut thwacks me right in the pit of my stomach.

My mouth flies open. OOUFF!! A loud grunt from my stomach. His fist pulls out, and I see my belly relax back into its familiar curve, but my stomach is still crushed. I could not breathe. All I could do was groan out long, low belly-ache moans, like ooouuuooaooh!

And while I did that, he was mugging for the crowd. He knew he didn't have to worry about me. I was too absorbed in my belly-ache to give him any trouble. I just stood there, trying to press my knees up against my punched stomach. I couldn't help it. I just stood there and suffered like a wimp. Like a pot-bellied wimp.

He could have put me out right then, but he chose not to. He chose to show off and use my stomach for a punching bag.

He pushed me back and I fell into the wall. It hurt! I arched my back out. And of course that just made me stick out my bare belly.

I felt another punch pound my stomach. My humiliated belly swallowed the whole thing, and it threw me back to the wall again, howling out of my punched stomach. He followed through with a spin move that jabbed his elbow back into the pit of my stomach.

UUUUUHH!! My poor belly. I clapped my hands over my bare belly and howled. Then I made pathetic empty noises with my wide-open mouth as I desperately tried to find my stomach muscles and breathe.

He turned and kneed me upright, then he gave me two judo punches right in the stomach, one-two, with only his first knuckles folded, and the fists hard and slim as the edge of a board. They stunned my soft belly, and I folded forward in a clenching reflex, but he turned and knelt then and grabbed me by the neck and flipped me over his shoulder so I fell flat on my back. And I arched my back again and grabbed it with my hands. It was just a reflex.

But he already was on his feet and I saw him stand over me and raise his knee, and there was nothing I could do but moan as he stamped his heel down right on my pot belly.

I am nothing but a soft, pot-belly now. A punching bag stomach. The crowd has joined my lover in chanting me down. Looking back from here, this fight never was in doubt. "Fight?" No, that would require two fighters, not one. This is a beating a bare belly beating. One hard-fisted man vs. one humiliated belly-boy.