Page 22 of Thwack!

Towel boy, towel boy, towel boy. That was all Denny ever heard. These big-headed, big-muscled football players thought he was nothing more than a derogatory title who could be ordered around at their pleasure, and he was sick of it.

“I happen to be the equipment manager,” he told a particularly big and nasty defensive lineman as he handed over the jock that the lineman had for some reason not been able to find in his own locker. “I’m not a towel boy.”

“Sure thing, towel boy,” the lineman said. He spun Denny around and gave him a swat on his ass to send him on his way.

Denny staggered forward a few steps before regaining his equilibrium. He wanted to reach back and rub the sting off his rear, but that would only encourage the behemoth. And others like him.

“Towel boy,” someone called. “You got a power bar or something? My stomach is grumbling.”

“If I were merely a towel boy,” Denny grumbled back as he went to the snack cabinet, “then I wouldn’t have power bars, would I? I would only have towels.”

“The towel boy’s getting pissy,” the kicker said with a snicker. No, that wasn’t even the kicker. That was the backup kicker, as if a backup kicker had the right to tease anyone about anything.

Still, as runty and ineffectual as kickers were, they were stronger than Denny, and this one grabbed him as he tried to walk past to give the player with the grumbling stomach a power bar and held him there to dispense several swats to his ass.

“Stop touching me,” Denny ordered once he’d gotten himself free.

“Aw, you know you like it,” the hotshot receiver said. “Towel boy wants to be touched all over.” He reached down and squeezed his dick, which made an attractive package all stuffed into a pair of skintight football pants, fondling it as if he were about to hand it right to Denny. Or feed it down his throat.

“I don’t like it,” Denny contradicted, but at his first opportunity, he shoved a hand down his own pants to corral his dick into a position where its swelling would be less obvious. Too many big, handsome guys touching him—that was the problem. And what was up with them spanking him? Every player he went by seemed to land a swat or two. The game couldn’t start soon enough.

Finally Coach Abrams blew his whistle, and the team collected their helmets and formed a line to head onto the field.

“Gotta get our good luck taps in,” the starting tight end—he really did have a tight end too—said from his place near the front of the line.

“That’s a hockey thing,” the quarterback retorted. Their QB was as full as himself as a star player could be—which was pretty fucking full of himself—and considered any sport that wasn’t football to be of a lower caliber.

“Good luck is good luck,” an offensive tackle countered. “What should we tap?”

“I know what the towel boy wishes we would tap,” the hotshot receiver said. “His ass.”

Everyone laughed. Denny glowered. Yes, he did fantasize about some of these guys fucking him, but not that particular guy. Except sometimes. The hotshot wide receiver might be an asshole, but he was also a really talented wide receiver and too good-looking for anyone’s good.

“I’ll tap it,” the OT said.

Denny raised his eyebrows, along with half the team. But then the OT grabbed him, flipped him over his arm as if he weighed no more than the towels they imagined him in charge of, and slapped his ass. So apparently the OT had interpreted tapping the way the tight end had originally meant it, not how the wide receiver had meant it.

“Yeah, all right.” The tight end circled back to where the OT had Denny draped over his arm and smacked him good and hard. And once those two had slapped Denny’s ass, whether for luck or just because they were a bunch of bullying baby-men, everyone had to do it. As the team filed onto the field, each player added another lick of heat to the fire that glowed increasingly red on Denny’s backside.

“Make him sing,” the OT prompted, visibly relishing it when someone delivered a particularly harsh blow. “One per customer,” he admonished when the backup kicker tried to add a second slap. But then he laughed and said, “Whatever, dude. Go for it. You need all the luck you can get.” Their kicking game had not been good thus far this season.

When the locker room was empty, the OT put Denny down on his feet, rubbed his head, and said, “There you go, towel boy,” as if Denny had asked to have this done to him.

Denny was fuming. And sore. And turned on. He wanted to march straight into Coach Abrams’s office and complain about the way the team had treated him, but just then Coach Abrams came out with his clipboard in hand and his game face on and Denny figured Coach wouldn’t even hear him if he tried to talk to him now, so he resolved to deal with it after the game. He had duties to attend to—water bottles to dole out and, yes, towels.

But after the game, definitely.

After the game, everyone was in high spirits because they’d not just won but won resoundingly, which the tight end insisted was because they’d tapped Denny’s ass for luck. Denny had wound down a little since then, the game being pretty absorbing for everyone, and was prepared to let what had happened earlier go, but he could tell from the way the tight end was talking that slapping his ass was about to become a regular pre-game ritual. Once a team settled on a superstition, they never let it go, at least not while the team kept winning. So he would have to suck it up and go to Coach Abrams and insist.

His resolve was strengthened every time someone snapped a towel at him. He hadn’t showered himself, so his ass wasn’t bare, and he didn’t have a towel of his own to snap, but that didn’t stop the guys from including him in their shenanigans. And even through his khakis, the towels hurt. His ass was already sore enough. It didn’t need the snap, snap, snap of terrycloth constantly thwapping against it. His ego was sore too. If one more person called him towel boy, he was going to snap back.

So when the team had finally packed up and cleared out, he stood outside Coach Abrams’s office twisting his hands in front of him, working up the resolve to go in there and make a complaint. He was an equipment manager, a respected professional. Not a towel boy and not a whipping boy either. The team had left him no choice.

Nevertheless, his heart was in his throat as he knocked on Coach Abrams’s door. He’d never bothered Coach before, and he wasn’t entirely sure he should be doing it now.

“Come in,” Coach yelled, his voice deep and rough, his tone no-nonsense.

Denny reminded himself that he had a serious complaint, took a deep breath, and opened the door.