The other day I was offered a slave.
Not for purchase — at least I don’t think so. Negotiations never quite got that far. But an honest to goodness (or badness) hot young twink to own, use and abuse as I saw fit.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this is not something I’m used to receiving in random emails. It certainly stands out amidst the offers from deposed African potentates and young Russian girls whose managers have completely misread my interests. A big algorithm fail.
To be honest, it wasn’t totally random. It came to an address I reserve for messages from various online groups and websites I engage with. I’m sure you have one of those email addresses too. Oh, stop blushing!
It came from someone who had spotted a post I’d made some time ago. I imagine that in the post I may have used the apparently key word “submissive” in some passing context, but I certainly wouldn’t have said anything about houseboys, slaves, or the like. No, I’m sure I wouldn’t have.
But here was Daddy X (false names have been further falsified) inquiring as to whether I’d be interested in giving a home to young Boi Wonder. It seems that Daddy X had been holding the reins on Boi Wonder for the past three years (since the lad was 19!) but that BW was just the younger of two such live-in submissives whose ministrations Daddy X enjoyed, and that Daddy had decided that he really needed to pay more attention to Boy # 1, who is now 26 and has been in residence for longer than Boi Wonder.
So Daddy X reached out to me with an earnest appeal to provide the lad with a new home — and presumably fresh instructions. Attached to the offer were four fetching photos of Boi Wonder. A cute twink with spiky hair and an elfin smile. In one photo, he sports a red apron and apparently nothing else, and is frying bacon. Good idea, that apron. In other shots he’s trussed up in various sorts of bondage gear, apparently enjoying himself (and someone else) immensely.
His brown puppy dog eyes said, “please sir, won’t you take me home?”
My first thought was this was something perhaps too wild even for my Daily Xtra colleague Kevin Moroso, who has been known to explore horizons I didn’t even know existed. But maybe not. Maybe this is ho-hum stuff in some circles.
The offer raised any number of legal, moral and ethical questions. Never mind such practical considerations as what the net outlay might be for such an indulgence. Is Boi Wonder in some entry-level job and will thus be unable to fully pay his own way? Or worse still, is he just lying about in restraints, and thus my sole financial responsibility? Am I supposed to put him through college?
You’ll notice that I haven’t even mentioned sex. Nor shall I, except to say that I looked up “gay male sex slaves” on Google and fell down a number of alarming rabbit holes, finally realizing that even if I could afford the costs involved, I would likely be a disappointment to the Boi.
And all joking aside, there seemed to me to be a darker side to this story. While we know that under law a 19-year-old is certainly an adult, but barely a year out of high school, can he really give informed consent to an invitation to be enslaved 24/7 to someone else’s desires? Does a 19-year-old even know his own desires? I wondered this sincerely, as I am so far from 19 myself that I have no recollection of what I knew or thought I knew at that point.
So I reached out to aforementioned colleague Moroso and over coffee and outlined the situation. To my surprise (and maybe yours) he was surprised too! He’d never heard of such a thing.
But he did have some thoughts and observations that laid my concerns to rest, and raised new questions for both of us.
Is a 19-year-old able to fully consent to such an arrangement? Well, he can consent to being sent off to war, so I guess so. And the BDSM scene is built on a powerful principle of mutual consent, and the submissive, as Kevin pointed out, is free to withdraw that consent at any time, and simply leave.
Kevin also pointed out that after a three-year residency, a Boi might have some common-law spousal claims, and we wondered where that might lead for the unwary Daddy?
It also occurred to both of us that this invitation could have been a bizarre hoax or con of some sort. To what end (blackmail?) we couldn’t imagine, but weird shit happens.
Finally, once into the topic, I realized that the term “slave” is a misnomer, though commonly used in this context. For folks whose ancestors actually were enslaved this use of the term is a bit problematic, a conversation which I discovered, down one of those rabbit-holes, the BDSM community is having at length.
The relationship is more akin to indentured service, with a really easy (“here’s my keys, goodbye”) release clause.
Fortunately or unfortunately (you be the judge) a number of practical factors mitigate against my taking in a slave of any definition, be he ever so cute. For one thing, I live in a studio apartment and don’t even have so much as a cage to keep a boy in, never mind a spare room or, heaven help us, a dungeon. And I can’t quite afford what the French once charmingly called a garçonnière — that extra little hole-in-the-wall apartment where a gentleman might establish his lad of the moment.
I hope that Daddy X has found a suitable placement for his Boi. And I’ll always wonder what might have happened had I been wealthy, with a large apartment and a spare bedroom/dungeon.
Roads not taken, eh?
Kevin Dale McKeown was Vancouver’s first out gay columnist, penning “QQ Writes . . . Page 69” for the Georgia Straight through the early 1970s. His Still QQ column for Daily Xtra runs biweekly. Contact him at stillqq@dailyxtra.com.
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