My mom was always the boss in our trailer and she kept my dad on a tight leash. She'd say stuff to him or slap his face and he'd cry and then she'd tell him to stop being a baby. She liked to catch him out on something and then humiliate him in front of my sister and me and we'd sit there waiting for his lower lip to tremble. It was a sort of cruel game and he never fought back. Mom was quite strict with me too – she said I took after my dad - although she never hit me and I felt sorry for him so there was a sort of tacit alliance between me and him, like between children. I guess I thought he was pathetic – why did he put up with it? - but there's no denying we were close. Mom used to sneer about him being a loser and pick fights with him so that she had an excuse to hit him. Sometimes she made him get on his knees in front of us and beg to be forgiven for some trivial incident. When I was 11, I remember one night after bedtime hearing a slow, repetitive slapping noise coming from their bedroom. I realised she couldn't be slapping his face like that and that she must be spanking him. The thought of him over her knee getting whacked on the bare bottom excited me. I was already touching myself sometimes and I wanted to do it then. Now that I knew what was happening, I started to listen out. I realised that these spankings happened quite often. I came home from school one day just as mom was coming out of their bedroom. When dad followed close behind, he was adjusting his pants and he was red eyed. He looked at me ruefully. There were no marks on his face and I just knew he had been spanked again. Another day, I came home and everyone seemed to be out. I went to pee and pushed open the bathroom door. I remember it very clearly. Dad was completely naked. He was hunched over the sink watching himself in the mirror as he masturbated. He was wanking himself with his right hand and squeezing his balls with his left and his tongue protruded slightly from his mouth. There was a rapt expression on his face that rapidly gave way to panic. Disgusted and shocked, I fled to my room and shut the door and refused to open it when he knocked a few moments later. I was terrified he might still be nude and I didn't want to see. Of course, he was frightened too that I'd tell mom. I deliberately kept out of his way and it was a couple of days before he managed to get me on my own. He started to apologise but I cut him off saying “how could you do that?” He bowed his head. Perhaps it was his look of shame and the way he seeemed so vulnerable that made me act the way I did. I still had the picture in my mind of him doing it and it revolted me. My hand seemed to take off on its own and I hit him hard on the right cheek. Then I did it again. He stood there and took it. He didn't actually cry but tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down his face. I wasn't sorry. If anything, I felt very happy. “Never let that happen again,” I told him. I know I was unjust. He hadn't made it happen deliberately. But I realised now why mom was the way she was and treated him the way she did. If you don't control the man, he controls you.