HER GALLANT

I strode up behind him.

"Unhand her at once, you h-OOOUFF!!"

He cut me silent with a deft sidearm swing with his left forearm that bopped his fist against my pot belly. He never turned his head or took his eyes off hers. He simply flicked his shoulder, and jerked back his sharp shot where he knew my upper belly would be.

And it ruined me. He socked my breath and my composure out of me all at once. My belly had only ever known soft and loving touches. I was stunned that this could happen to me: Debilitating agony, deliberate and intimate -- he thrust it into me. The belly-ache blossomed inside me, a beautiful, welling pain.

My belly! My bare belly!

Poor, pathetic fist-raped man. My whole midriff was stunned limp by his stomach-punch. But the rest of me tensed and writhed in the suffering of it. Lost in my own breathless, belly-ache world, I stagger and dance in place, gripping my upper belly, utterly winded, making comical bellyache faces, tongue lolling out my gaping mouth, all from his rude punch in my stomach.

My sufferings are florid and fullsome. I act like I swallowed a mouthful of flaming pitch that's searing and scorching in the pit of my belly. I'm belly-branded on the inside.

I know it's an embarassing over-reaction, but I can't help myself. I panic at the caved-in feeling, the awareness that my belly has been socked.

He sized me up as I moaned. She stared, silent, fingers clutching her skirt. He put a hand under my chin, and raised me slowly upright. I panted breathlessly, seemingly under his spell.

He gripped me by my tight shirt and roughed me up. "BELLY-WIMP!" he grunted as he lobbed another punch firmly in my deflated stomach.

The shock of the uppercut lifts me to my toes. In a flash I feel the organ-tingle of his fistknuckles thrust bluntly up my belly.

I moo out an OOF! that echoes round the room. My eyes must have been wide as saucers.

And thus he re-sentenced me to long minutes of belly-cradling and making comical faces of agony and despair, winded, belly-raped, sounding out loud my belly-humiliation.

He stood, arms folded, watching me evolve again through the pain-stages of a bellypunch bellyache. I felt her eyes on us. I heard her breaths heavy in the long seconds when I could draw no air myself, because his stomach-punch stole that from me.

He reached up under me as I stood folded forward and pounded his weight up into me with another sock in the stomach. My wind was gone already, but the blow served to shove my body up straight in front of him.

Which served me up bare-bellied for another stomach punch!

He keeps punching, and he makes a fool out of me with his fists. He'll stick a punch in my belly then stand back to watch it make me suffer. Then he'll do it again. Right in my belly. I'm helpless and winded, but he keeps punching me in the belly.

And every time he does, I get that crumpled feeling in my stomach, and I panic with the need to breathe when I'm fully winded, and all that just makes me thrust my belly out again!

Where is my head, what am I thinking? The rival who put me in this state is standing there, eager to hit me again. Yet I stumble helpless, agonized, oblivious. Just a pot-bellied punching-bag.

All through the beating, he hits me right before I realize what's about to happen. He hits me when the fear is in my eyes but before my muscles can tense and anticipate.

Always in my belly. Always my belly.

Quick, unmistakable, to the point: fists to my belly. A beatdown all in my belly. While I whine and suffer, he lets his knuckles do the talking. And with lots of trimming and flourish. The judo chop, the big bellypunch, the combination-punch. Calmly insulting and exposing me all through it, putting me in my place, assuredly, with both his fists and his words.

I thought I would be her hero. What did I show her? Unmanly feebleness. A naked display of weakness and blatant suffering. He ramhorned his fist into my protruding belly. And I made a belly-fool of myself in taking it. Let myself go all to pieces, sobbing, suffering. A belly-beaten boy.

It was the worst beating a boy can take in front of a girl. He was an expert puncher, and a cruel bully, and he was showing off.

With that first mere thump of his fist on my belly, he had diminished me to a cliche: The wimp who tried to stand up to his bully and instead got thrashed by him. The dominant male simply slugs him in his unsuspecting belly and makes him suffer awfully in the eyes of the woman.

I just stand there, wide open, and every time he jabs his fist into my belly I howl out an "OOF!" and double over with my hands on my stomach.

Then he jerks a knee up into my stomach and bops me upright, and I stand potbellied and clueless, open target for him to plunk another fist into my belly, my wide-open belly.

Like a musical instrument, part drum and part wind-horn. I sound my one note -- that bellypunch OOUFF! -- when he wallops me in the stomach.

Yes, that plosive and deep-bellied OOUFF! sound that is my secret name, my shame name.